30
Nature’s
Perfumery
On confident notes
the winter was casting its elegantly cool looks from behind the see-through
curtain of this late autumn. Diwali was about a fortnight away. Delightfully
daring aestival traces were still battling it out during the day. But, pre-dawn
and post-dusk period was accelerating towards cold from coolness. While the
days, harnessing the harmony of cool and warm, were slowly-slowly changing towards
cool from warmness. Hazy, shiny noons
seemed sprinkled over the horizon in the fairest of rectitude. A few species of
migratory birds had arrived for the revision of a vision. With completely
conscientious hearts the farmers were day and night engaged in paddy
harvesting.
The would-be-priest
was standing preceptorially on the mound. The connection between his
pontificated mound and the plebian road of material desires (which had been
earlier rudimentarily filled up with earth by the ruffians) was now manifold
strong, broad and layered with bricks. It was the day for laying the temple’s
foundation stone. Freshly baked bricks shone in the exotic splendour of saffronised
sentimentality for the protection of this country. Lost in a kind of
conspiratorial imagination the religioner worked out his thoughts in proportion
to the raw material scattered around him.
His neighbour was
totally aware of the judgmental day. Feathery frail old man could really sense
the heavy and weighty prodigality of the religioner whose asceticism was now
loaded with so many bricks. Finding himself in a soup for not having removed
his hut, he’d no heart to show his guilty presence at the mound where a
politically grandstanding crowd had gathered.
His attitude’s
lifelessly unreflective odour saw him passing through the woods along the pond’s
eastern side. His frail feet wanted to keep him away from the underside of this
world of politico-religious reflections. Ever sticking to his silent world with
some mystical myrrh, he reached the road, passed by the bigger school and
abandoning himself to the freebies of a free path sneaked into the street between
the schools.
The path which
defined the village’s western margin went northwards and then from the north-western
edge of the settlement (it was only up to here that some grain in the sand
still bore his footprint) turned westwards on its dusty journey among the village
fields on the sandy, undulating plateau; passing over the canal bridge and then
still went along its solitude to reach some village deeper in the countryside.
When he took the
western turn it was his first step on the silken string of this dusty footwork
of the farmers. Undisturbed sky above the countryside in that direction seemed
embaled in the harmonious symmetry of a full moon. Sniffing at each and everything
the dog too curiously followed its master. It’d spent all its life in the
fields to the pond’s southern side, so like the master it was his maiden
sojourn also.
Giving a vague
reflection of the historic precedence of symbol over substance, the path still
seemed to portray the old world charm of past farmers passing over it to reach
the blood and sweat altars valiantly hewn in the lap of mother earth. It was
quite broad; fields on both sides; sand soft and firmly embedded in time’s
archives. Stoically leaving behind the settlement with the sprightly spiritual
tunes of a mendicant’s ek-tara.
Destiny has its
own dominoes; its own ways. Predetermined, rhetorical sproutings rarely allow
us to follow a straight path. Ossified ambiguities and circuitous uncertainties
arrive almost from nowhere. An intergalactic dice is thrown before the individual
to throw it for the sake of arriving at an alternative––a choice. But which
number would surface is beyond his control. Hence, as things would’ve it, his
straight walk on the broad path with its soft sand basking in a soothingly cool
forenoon came to a convoluted end. Two pathways branched off in a V-pattern
from here. There were some neem trees and shrubbery in the divider which
went on broadening and became invisible among tall grass and reeds swaying in
the breeze carrying a tenuous message of upcoming winter. The dog at once
entered the thickets holding the distinctness of two separate paths, and
started with its sniffing engagement in meticulous accordance with the
squirming myth of an unknown smell after which the canine world has been
running from historical times.
The master wasn’t
sure which path he should follow. Or rather he didn’t want to decide, because
decisions are taken when one is worryingly muddling along to reach a particular
destination. But still the elementariness of his vaguely footloose emotions was
feebly trying to guide him to a solacing place. He felt, thus, a feeble
imploration by his ‘existence’ to reach somewhere where it could realise and
reflect over some aeonically buried trialism. His long slumbering existence,
his unreflective being, was knocking like a terminist at the door of his frail
physical being.
He’d allowed
himself to be taken along by the path’s own journey. But now the dusty path put
forth two options before him to choose from. He stood there, stuck up in the
mazy, undeciding crevices of his being; pondering over the humanity’s pain and
petitions. Still, very strangely he wasn’t thinking of anything specific. By
the look of it, he appeared to be fastly slinking into the slough of
out-of-world despair. The dog meanwhile dashed across the thickets, most
probably after some smartly suave mouse, bunny or even a leopard cat.
Slowly and slowly
the deciding parameters began to emerge along the intricate network of neurons
inside his simple, honest brain. These were the marmoreal cravings for
seclusion, isolation, solitude and a sense of being wanderlust to find the real
peace. He wanted to float away from the hate-cultists: away from all
cartelisations of sin; where the celestial junkies don’t enter the orbits of
humanism. He raised his feeble old eyes in both directions to fully harness the
infantile emotion which’d subconsciously transpired between his mind and heart.
The path to the left seemed to be glued to the distant horizon with feeble
frankincense. Gentlest of a slope carried its ascension along the sandy slope’s
elevation. Proverbial pot of solitude in that direction seemed almost full.
Tree foliage with its signature phrase of friendliness appeared inviting
wholeheartedly. In the lightness of a moment he felt as if his feet’ll start
moving in that direction. He would’ve certainly given to this initial instinct
had it not been for the mildly irritating feeble noises of the vehicle horns
which sailed over the intervening fields between him and the road. They sounded
carrying interventionist levity into the symphonic chants of countryside
solitude. It promptly turned his head to the right as if he’d taken an evasive
action to escape any sort of disturbance. The path branching off to the right
instantly opened its welcoming arms. A still more wonderful countryside horizon
basking in its solitudional-spread came into his view. Away, away from human habitations,
this provocatively bending path appeared to reach somewhere, where there must
be perfect isolation; perfect nature which won’t weigh down his soul.
Under the spell of
wonderful awe, fancy and extreme suggestibility protruding from an exotically
extraneous emotion, he proceeded in this direction. Motherly lofty countryside
held up the chin of this ever-brooding old son and he found himself walking
with head held high; his eyes gazing at the maternally ecstatic face of Mother
Nature which seemed surprised at seeing the eager and unbrooding gait of this
old toddler for the first time. On his back, the sun (put in a wow-swirl) was
casting healing warmth over his archaically overburdened cervical area. He
appeared positively hypnotized. A mysterious sensation raised a lifeful
tickling inside the corridors of his coffined heart. It gave flowery shocks
like some electric work had suddenly started inside to reprogram his existence.
He would’ve kept
on moving like a mesmerised puppet hadn’t the magical eerie been broken by the
familiar ‘quack’ of a duck. He found himself on the bank of a little pond by
the pathway. It was just a small pool of water in comparison to the pond under
his watchmanship. The latter was as big as a little lake; busy with life; so
close to the road; humans; schools; fishing... while this one was a natural or
man-made depression; a sort of bowl to receive rain water. Despite its
smallness it could still be called a pond, because it was dug up like a deep
saucer. If filled to the full capacity its depth would have been quite
dangerous. But a mossy puddle of water, whose maximum depth was just three-four
feet, made it appear a big open-mouthed-well having little water at the bottom.
Faded grass had
splendidly mollified the angrily arched slopes on all sides. Like silent drops
of nectar inside a flower, water in this earthen bowl was perfectly serene; in
complete contrast to the chivalrous cravings of the wavelets in a brook. A
small group of ducks was swimming in solitudional bliss.
“They’ve arrived
here even before the larger one! Or is’t just a stopover before the journey
further south?” much surprised he looked at the birds floating peacefully in
unruffled waters like they appear in timeless paintings.
A countable number
of waders were methodically walking around the water edges. He sat there and
curiously stared into this silent puddle of water harnessing its own type of
harmony. It was really soothing to his greying eyes because whole of this
tranquil watery unit could be caught by a pair of eyes in a single shot. And as
the true essence of anything fully galores in its totality (disjointed parts
inevitably bring fragmentation of vision and beauty) this secure, serene maze
of the watery saucer appeared miles away from all troubled waters.
“Allah, why
can’t I have this one to look after?” a worryingly fragile sigh escaped his
lips as they opened their door to welcome the whisper in His name.
His soul was
definitely revamp-lorn today. Without any particular decision by the mind his
heart felt the feet gliding down the slope. Beautifully natural curvature of
the pasturous slope was in humanistic harmony with the ageing bend in his
spine. Restfully he laid his back against the slope and lit up a beedi.
The smoke further calmed down his nerves. The dog meanwhile emerged out of its
bushy game. Its old age imbecility appeared to have been unhoused today. Like a
puppy it jumped into the water. Unhoarded and ruffled its old saggy coat.
Licked water and wallowed in full playfulness. It was as funnily surprising as
the spectacle of an old man hopping around like a child. Again it came out of the
water, vanished in the direction of dusty pathway, rolled in the sand, came
back like a panting ghost and straightway jumped into the water. This mollycoddling
manoeuvre of the pet was at long last able to stir rarest of a rare laughter in
its master.
“Behaving just
like a puppy! Old cute ghost... as old as me!” laughter came riding the
lethargic back of a bunch of cough stirred by the deep inhalation of smoke.
From the fenestra
of this new-found aliveness ‘the stranger’ came into view. It was a curiously feathered
life which carried an unhackneyed birdie aura around it. On some winter mornings
he’d seen it poking its beak in the turf over the grassy plateau. It was about
double the size of a crow. Colour was somewhat chocolate. Two strips of white
on the flying wings shone prominently with the message, ‘Nature is the foremost
designer of colours and patterns! Humans get just some mundane, pseudonymous reflections
after a brief brush with the primordial artistry of colours and patterns!’ Its
head supported an orange plume. Large and long beak bending unpredatorily made
it look meek, docile and firmly wedded to the idea of nonviolence. He’d always
seen it alone. Also, he knew it was a migratory bird; all alone (like him),
belonging to a distant land. Instantly he’d developed a liking for it and
whenever he saw it on the grassy upland he drew parallelisms between the bird
and himself. But his heart, ever eager to be engaged in heightened imagination
about this exotic winged visitor, met a disappointment because he chanced to
see it only once or twice a week. Once he tried to reach it, his heart chanting
the name of God for blessing him with an opportunity to feel that majestic
feathering, but off it went with a flutter. At that time he just wondered where
this lonesome, beautiful bird passed its time.
Now, when he saw
it at the other end of the puddle, his mild cheerfulness suddenly graduated to
joyous exclamation.
“So it’s here you
spend your time! You alone like me! You’re such a beautiful bird! But, why’re
you always alone?” he felt a tinge of sorrowness for the bird.
In this solitude,
basking beyond the life’s edge-of-the-seat suspense and worries, more natural
and humane happenings were waiting to entertain his old heart. A little donkey
calf arrived on the scene from the other end of the pond. Without losing any
time its playful childish bray sailed over the water.
It put its muzzle
into the water, drank some and once again gave the braying horn. Its presence
there made his eyes search for some gypsy caravan or Rajasthani cow herders.
But even after a few minutes nothing of this sort emerged from the donkey’s
end. Wilderness was totally isolated. No sign of those fellows in any
direction.
“How can it be
wandering alone? This little one. Most probably left out of a herd or caravan.
Poor orphan, its mother must be crying for it!” he sighed of grief.
The ass calf,
however, was braying mutinously against all tensions of the past, present or
future’s weight on its back. Dust stricken dog instantly responded to its playing
call.
“Old fool, doesn’t
remember those kicks at its old bones that night!” malicious contradictions of
that world (and the doctored fallacy of religious commerce now being enacted there),
for a moment, seemed to sacrilegiously desanctify the spiritual calm humanistically
meditating here.
He feared the Hindutva
brigade wearing patriotism on its sleeve would pick him up from here and dump
amidst the recklessly freakish noise on the mound.
As the sandsmeared
dog ran towards the little ass it looked a weird character from a ribtickling
parody. The little beast of burden thought he was in the closest circles of an
impending attack. It thus started an escaping gallop. But the dog wouldn’t let
it go. It cut the donkey’s path and jumped invitingly. Now, the kicking
instinct in the little beast of burden got awakened. Turning its hind legs in
the dog’s direction it sent a nasty flier with its little hoofs. Old dog dug
out every ounce of agility from its crackling old bones and saved itself of any
injury. To each fretting, fuming and fearful bray and kick the dog responded
with even more friendliness. As the poise and panache of friendship, playship
and loveship cut across all forms of life, the tiny donkey finally got
convinced of the absence of any danger. So, abandoning all fears and phobias it
went dancingly from one end of the pond to another. Putting exorbitant pressure
behind each running percussion the dog gave it a chase.
The immaculate bonhomie
between the animals revitalised the cheerful spirit in the watchman. The law of
humanism, love and friendship enshrined in God’s constitution cutting across
all species, all ages and in fact all and everything with a differential
character made him understand its supreme validity through a newly emerging emotion.
He realised the broadly panoramic, beautifully tasseled and luxuriously upholstered
first reflection of the countryside further onwards. He knew it was the time to
move on. He didn’t call the dog, because he was sure it’ll follow his footmarks.
With a heavy heart
he looked at the playing little ass. How beautiful and innocent! But left alone
in the world to take care of itself!
“Water is here.
Grass too. It’ll survive by itself and grow up,” he convinced himself and took
to his journey.
“Strange and
mysterious are the dusty lines of fate! We meet by chance, spend some time
together and then move on to meet the glorious uncertainties of future,” still
holding in his frail fingers the fruit of friendship between the two animals,
suddenly wind-fallen in his lap from the tree of time, he marveled at its ethereal
sheen.
This emotive
reflection turned to philosophising, “Is there any meaning in it? Certainly! It’s
the message of Allah. These small, small times and chancy friendships
are the only things which make time immortal.”
He kept on walking
without looking back for the dog. Sure he was, after all, about the play’s
inevitable end. When the panting dog came running from behind he stopped and once
again recalled its little friend of just a few minutes ago.
“We too have to
play our little part in the game and then depart from the stage!” he sighed. “Depart
to a place far, far away!”
Great lines of
some Urdu poet took him deep, deep into the tunnel of resigned thoughts about
death:
“We’ll go
somewhere,
From where it won’t
be possible to come back!
The tear which
once falls on the earth,
Can’t see again the
place of its birth!”
To get the
anonymous poet’s share of applause, still lying due in the airs around, he
gazed into the multifarious dimensions of the sky above.
Until a decade
ago, this part of the countryside bore an unpleasant look. Too much sand on the
pathway made it seem a conspiratorial journey to a desert. Arid climate bushes
and foliage scattered a guilefully sterile smile around. But the humans were
the scene-stealers in this case. A decade-long greening effort by the farmers
through irrigation and fertilizers had fully blossomed the productivity
comprehensively ingrained in the red sandy soil. Horticulture (mainly
marigold), paddy and wheat now provided sojournal musings in every nook corner.
Whimpering and moaning barrenness of earlier was now turned to luscivious songs
of productivity.
He found himself
passing by the side of fields smiling with different varieties of marigold.
Fresh-faced flowers still smiled with their flashy sheen, even though the
morning dew had dried up. With delicate feministic pinches and a hesitant
flicker of hope some women were plucking these delicate cups of beauty and fragrance.
Just a few metres
from the path there was a small waterhole––a puddle of few dozen square yards.
Reeds and bushes around it made it look like a whole pond in a miniature
painting. Suddenly, in this little water body the same bird once again emerged
before his view. Its splendidly penanted feathering was drenched with lascivious
drops of water. It looked at him for a moment and flapped off into the vast countryside
ahead of him. He went there to check if it’d its nest there. There was none.
He smiled and
whispered, “He’s the king of this whole area! Proudly flies over the whole of
it! Wonder where does it stop for the night?”
Then delightfully
daring tunes of music softly drummed on his ears. He was much surprised. These
melodious Hindi filmi songs kept on
providing springy confident notes to his old legs, as he moved ahead. Reaching
a turn the path sloped down along a steep descention. Scene on the view was in
complete contrast to what he’d seen till now. There were many huts––almost a
little colony––in the cleared up fields. These were mushroom huts; very long
structures made of paddy straw, jowar stems, bamboo poles and polythene
sheets; big enough to be nick-named ‘hut halls’. Farmyard manure and wheat
chaff mixed with water and fertilizers was heaped around. When he saw one or
two of them in the midway stage of construction, only then he realised the
enormity of the task at the farmers’ hands. With piercingly penetrating labour
they were setting up the main bamboo structure. This one didn’t seem too tough
to erect to his care-lorn attitude for these hardworkers. But when he saw
hundreds of bamboo racks being set up inside, the whole scheme appeared
guilefully sweat-drenching. Those little, little racks meant to be seed beds
for the mushrooms appeared uncountable like beehives, which made the whole task
appear as difficult as the making of a weaver bird’s nest. Distilled view of
their long working hours and equally long patience filled his whole moral fiber
with genuine appreciation and sympathy.
An electricity
line passed along the path for some distance which informed him about the
source of music. Almost all the huts had a wire taken from the main line.
(There were no billing meters in these temporary structures. So taking little energy
sips from the big world of electricity frauds, the farmers greased the palms of
area linesmen.) The workers were divided half-half between migrant Bihari wage
earners and the farmers themselves. He passed the hut from which high volume
music was blaring. Even from so near it didn’t sound irritating, rather it
appeared loudly speaking of the farmers’ strenuous schedule for survival.
Angry dogs from
the huts chased his old pet down the path. It didn’t worry him much, because he
knew that an afraid dog very often beats the chasers in the running game or lies
down on the ground like a surrendered sack; its paws in the air, tail humbly
tucked in between the hind legs, thus giving the chasers a sense of false
victory, who then go back with a more taut curl in their tails.
Completely driven
by a mystical automatism he passed by the huts. About three hundred metres
onwards, hidden in the turning loop of the path, another miraculously
reflective naturality was awaiting him. He smelt, perhaps, the grandest smell of
his life. Tiresomely traditional smelling sense of his nostrils got a
surprising shove by the limitless superabundance of this new, almost out of
world, fragrance. What a smell it was! So elegantly feminine that it could melt
down all the inconsistencies and contradictions stenching in human souls.
For a good hundred
metres he kept on walking wondering where it was coming from. It appeared as if
God, the great sin-waiver, had lighted up a sky-high incense to purify the
whole area. He looked sideways to see something which could justify the divine
smell. To his right, at a distance of about half kilometre, the white shrine of
a local deity shone with its area-specific Godly meritocracy under a peepal
tree. It seemed enjoying some proximal moments with the highest spirit.
“That one is
perhaps too far for such a strong smell,” he estimated, while his mind
cogitated over the perfume-power of those little incense sticks which the devotees
light up on the shrines.
As he was walking with
his head turned in the shrine’s direction, he didn’t know when and how the path’s
character suddenly changed. His senses woke up in a beautiful dream. He couldn’t
believe what he saw.
It was just like a
little cradle from heaven had been lowered on earth, so that humans caught up
in a bad-smelling warp could smell the divine fragrance. Both sides of the
pathway were flanked by flowery bushes. This wild flowery hedge was about two
and half metres high on both sides and was so dense that one could not see
through it. Those small white flowers in it appeared to be glossed with the
milk of cosmic kindness. By the look of it one wouldn’t have believed the
smelling power of these tiny, ordinary petals. Sharply curving turn in the path
had made the perfumery’s other end invisible. So, someone standing where he was
would’ve estimated a very long stretch of the flowery fragrant vale holding
divine dreams in its palm. While in reality it came to an abrupt halt near the
turn’s other end, just a few dozens of metres away from where he was standing.
Standing in the
flexion flowery dale he felt his head being swayed by the sheer ecstasy of this
smell. Each invisible particle of the air smelled as sweet and savoury as the
most beautiful flower and some ebriated verse in celestial company. The smell
riding the crest of exotic splendour and mesmeric aura flew in four directions
from this nature’s little perfumery to scent the solitude around. He was
bewilderingly lost in the mammothly pristine petal-power of this little vale.
There was not much
sand on this portion of the path; as if the dust had been beaten down by this
fragrant beacon of beauty. Air saturated with divine fragrance and cosmic
couture appeared to be carving out a lucky niche for anyone passing through
it––a heavenly milestone indeed! Completely lost in a trance in the intricate
embroidery and curvated curtsey, he felt ebriated; not by any strong
countryside liqueur, which at this point of time was at a certain stage of
fermentation casked in the seclusion of a guava orchard nearby, while the water-mouthed
farmer waited for its completion. Here nature herself was distilling most
intoxicating of a fragrance. So therapeutic! So curative and sub-celestially
suasive! Oozing around to heal the worries, tensions and physical debilities of
the solitary loungers.
He stood there
like a fully drunk person, completely forgetful of all the cavernous whys and
wherefores of this world. He closed his eyes. Clearly readable lines of
spiritual sincerity emerged in his fragrant brain. Like the ultimate repository
of happiness and sojournal musings, a thoroughly distilled view of an endless
vale blinkered across the limitlessly longish network of his mind, body and
spirit continuum. He felt himself glowfully distinguished part of that glimpse of
reality. Was it real, ultimate unreal, whole or part of the whole? He didn’t
know, nor did he want to fall in the trap of such cabal manoeuvres of the
humans.
As it is, there’s
always a pellucid glimpse of reality in each and every picture mentally or physically
existing. It’s in fact an instantaneous materialisation of an instant from the
space-time continuum. To a painter the lines, colours, sketches and shades
provide two dimensional parameters to express the flickers of reality lying at
unfathomable depths inside his soul. To a thinker, saint or anyone on the path
of spirituality, three dimensional space is available to have a peep into the
deep well of reality. He, the old man, was standing there with his picture
midway between a painter and a thinker.
For once he opened
his eyes and found himself at the door of heaven. Without any other feeling or
thought, he closed his eyes once again and immersed into the ocean of smell,
going degree by degree to newer depths. On the longly arduous and hazardously thorny
path of life this perfumery seemed adorned with buntings and balloons of heroic
calm and peace. Easily breaking the ghettos of strenuous thoughts and worldly
frustration his soul, his spirit, went on elevating upwards and upwards under
the cosmic force of buoyancy experienced by his frail physical self going
deeper and deeper into the sea of smell.
Those greenish
bushes with little flowers and leaves appeared, to his soul engaged in bringing
about the sobering synthesis of imagination and reality, huge distilleries
where largest of flowers were being distilled to draw out gallons and gallons
of perfume to sprinkle it in the air, to turn everything exoteric into
exorbitantly fragrant beauty. Far away, the canopy of trees (which looked
hazily continuous even though the trees were scattered here and there) seemed
delightfully deliquescing under the impact of this fragrant feminality.
One could sense
and smell that the nature had, sometimes, reached a milestone here. A milestone
where it found a resting place in the cradle of this secluded countryside
pathway. Here it stopped for a moment and gave a beautiful gift to the path for
its hospitality.
The outside world
seemed so small, trivial, quivering with shameful indignation and ensnared in
the perfidious delusions of a falsely perceived circle of reality. He realised
if there had to be any utopian place on earth, then this one was the very same.
Looking into the intricate network of flowers he felt like the king of this
fragrant kingdom.
“What great luck
of those small insects that live there!” he whispered, looking intently into
the bushy world––the quintessentially optimistic world beneath those odorous
domes.
A little sparrow
chirped from the bushes. It seemed as if its music had been spiced with sweet
odour. The smell in fact appeared to play the background music. What a musical
delicacy it was! All octaves carried theistical sheen of thearchy. Nose and
ears simultaneously got something which was even beyond the comprehension of
all the five senses. He felt numerous senses at work to cogitate and realise
the infinite aspects of this perfumed, musical piece of reality. His body was
expanding, spreading out in all directions along with the perfume. This
harmonic expansion with selfless sweetness made his body feel rarest of a rare
soothing. It was just like a yogi’s soul feeling enlightenment by the
rays from the ultimate spiritual oyster.
The place itself
was in a sort of meditative sleep inside a trancy hermitage, so how could he
escape being a yogi himself. The hermitage and the sage: sage of the
kingdom of fragrance, where he could do tapasya for long, long times.
According to the Hindu
mythology, yogis in the ancient times did tapasya, penance, for
hundreds of years; some even for thousands of years. The path of purifying
penance was really hard: discovering the perfect proportion of our being while
standing on one leg; praying neck deep in the ice cold waters; chanting mantras while lying on a platform of
nails; feeling the coolness of His grace while sitting near a big fire (almost
upon it); doing upright meditation while hanging upside down from a tree trunk;
feeling all the weights removed from the body and the soul while buried beneath
the earth... or for that matter anything under the sun to draw out the hardest
resistance from the body, so that mind and soul could be fully reined in, due
to which the ego did not neigh like a pack-horse while being put in the cart on
the path of spirituality. Wonderful were those times! The mythological times!
The times of hard tapasya!
His every second in the natural
perfumery was timeless. Timeless on account of its aesthetic depth which
nullified the time’s all discerning differentials. Endless, limitless beauty of
this flowery stretch appeared giving a cold shoulder to the time’s tickling,
because it just was there without caring to become anything else. So those
dingily boxed up units of seconds, hours, days, weeks, months, years... found
themselves meaningless here. Hence, even a single instant here could make one feel
the ultimate timeliness.
He was the sage now; sage of this
countryside wilderness; his soul being bravely pushed up to the celestial
regions by sweetly suasive percussions.
Suddenly his meditation was broken.
Like the futility of life, the mortals’ meditation too comes to an end, because
God is the only one who’s in a perpetual state of meditation. Old companion’s
bark was the reason. Once again it’d started its sniffy, quirky mannerisms. It
must’ve seen something (a resident of this paradise!) beneath the bushes.
He looked at the turn. Bending to his
left it’d all the optimistic look of a curving gateway to an endless flowery
aisle. He started his journey thinking he won’t have to forego the smell of his
kingdom for a considerable distance. But then good as well as bad have to meet
an end. It becomes a sorry tale when we come across the former. The curve of
inevitability took his steps for the actualisation of the second part of the
above stated fact. A long, long journey through the nature’s perfumery he’d
wished. But what came afore was hardly believable like one’s own death. Flowery
bushes ended at a short distance after the sharply deceiving turn. Completely
bestruck with surprise he couldn’t believe how could such a beautiful thing
meet a sadly abrupt end. On the rarest of such occasions in his life he felt a grumbling
complaint against God.
“How can’u be so cruel?” his painful
grouse mingled with the dog’s desperate growl behind the bushes. To him this
natural perfumery’s abrupt end was nothing sort of squeezing a soft flower in a
plumber’s wrench. With extreme alas he looked above and tried to see His
exorable face. That ultimate has a thawy-soft heart, he was sure. His look at
the sandy path ahead, which looked so bleak and deflowered in its sandy
exordium, showed the sage was expecting even a miracle–a keen expectancy for
the fructification of a theandric dream: an endless stretch of the same flowery
vale to provide a theanthropic polish to the unhewn discomfort of this worldly
path.
Tears welled up in his moistureless old
eyes; tears for the sudden death of this flowery fragrant and enlivening
mystical unit in the journey of that unflowery, defragranced sandy path. Small,
shiny, flapping body of the agile soli danced in the moisture of his heart.
It exhumed dead emotions from his heart’s grave. He then wept with his whole
heart. Aah, the transient futility of things! Really lovable daughterly dale,
which for some time filled his path with petalous fragrance, was now meeting
its end.
The commonest known myth of life, which
our avowedly averse and false sense of immortality (born of deathless desires)
turns most unknowable as well at the same time, opened the repository of its
secrecy for him. Mortality bared its ultimate quiddity. Juggler’s trick between
life and death stopped to allow him to see the real. ‘All things come to an
end!’ he not only heard it but realised it as well. Now, he was bravely
standing at the perfumery’s exit door.
For someone coming from the opposite
direction the very same was the starting point of all that had started for him
at the other end. How strange! Someone’s beginning is at the same time someone’s
end and vice-versa! For someone coming from ahead it was the birth of nature’s
perfumery, while for him it was a death of that little flowery dale. Isn’t it
just like the mystery ‘which one is real-–life or death?’! Some are born, some
complete their journey-–a long and infinitely drawn out mythological process
going on and on from aeons. Life and death! Why? (Doesn’t it sound like oxymoron?)
Perhaps just to reach some milestones to fulfill some purpose in His scheme of
things!
He too had reached one. With a heavy
heart he decided to move on and cross over the few yards of the nature’s
perfumery waiting ahead.
The whiplashing fizz of life: starting
from a relatively bright scenario, meandering with all the fullness of life,
going on with the jamboree full of pomp and show, and then (marred by the inevitable
incarceration) ending in a bleak sky. Oh, the fable of life and death! The
shots of destiny from the unknown to unknown!
While crossing the last bush he
somewhat quickened his pace. The beautiful countryside which looked bridally
beauteous from the village now appeared lost of some of its charm after this
conjugal sojourn through the perfumery. But his pathetically lousy reflections
over surroundings had been workably rasped by the restorative and reformative
riant-raylets emanating from that beautiful place. He knew he’d to go to that
distant horizon today. Away, away to the hazy distance of solitude spread out
somewhat less beautifully. Nature was training this old child of hers. Training
him in worldly reflections of relativity which become the pedestal of our
individuality, our character; so that we’re no longer just used up impassive pawns on the chessboard of
whimsical manoeuvres by the others’ heavily strong individualities; to make us at
least inquisitive about the senseless perversity unhoarded around; to make us realise
and feel the malicious contradiction between the hateful look of a human being
and a cold stare at a stone by the same pair of eyes, so that the sloppy and slothful fudging of
reality no longer finds our souls fleeting with ostrich like escapism.
With an endearing shyness noon was slowly-slowly coming up. The
sun which he’d left behind in the village was gradually coming up the horizon.
The ultimate source of energy on earth following the path of its child! The old
child who’d always walked on the path of life with such a stoic modesty that he
was always unaware of the meritocracy of relative reflectivism: just like a
tiny boat tossed about and played cheerfully by all kinds of waves; sometimes
daughter like delicate shoves; sometimes moderate ones giving moderately
bearable joys; sometimes huge ones reaching up to the brink of fatality; but
for most of the time lifelessly giving cold shoulder.
Like a loosened air particle he once
again flew onwards. The hazy horizon cajoled like a pleased father:
“Come son, come! Give a nice burial to
the past! Just forgive it, for it’s no more! It’s your duty to move ahead! I’ve
always something good in store! It’s always there at its place, provided you
reach up to it!”
He knew today he was following his own
ordinance; not of destiny, the pond’s lessee or even the Sadhu. With a
mystical volition, he went on slowly-slowly; almost breeze-blown; riding the
crest of fancy. His heart had a tinge of mysterious nostalgia, which prompted
him to glide away from the torporific gravity whose centre was the mound, where
the garrulous hirelings of Hindutva’s politico-religious spokespeople
now must be spreading senseless perversity in order to effect the disastrous
emasculation of the disloyal minority.
After walking for a considerable
distance through the cultivable wasteland he reached the bridge over the canal.
The canal coming criss-crossing the fields, arching like a wild countryside
maiden. He leaned against the bridge railings. No human being was visible as if
to bestow him unstinted solitude. He peeped into the water. It was sagely
flowing with a purpose-–the hefty goal of irrigation. Water, the arch-enemy of
drought and barrenness, without quiddling away any time was going on and on for
glowing thousands of diyas in the farmers’ houses. Water, in all its aspects
general as well as situational, was flowing lost in a deep state of calm and
relaxation. It seemed so happy even after sacrificing all its wildly hilarious
walloping and scooting. Tamed water! Obediently serving its poor master; flowing
down the man-made, channeled hierarchy.
This canal had many prominent palmyra
trees on its banks. Still smaller distributaries called rajbhaya in
local parlance branched off from it here and there. One such distributary,
starting from about half-a-kilometre downstream, went straight into southern
direction. After feeding numerous little field channels, spread across the
fields like watery arteries, it reached the district road at a place about two
kilometres west of the village, where a culvert like little bridge allowed its
further watery march.
His eyes had a deep dip in the water.
It wasn’t too clear due to the silt. But its innocent dalliance was proactively
creative, which very easily got him into a thoughtful trance:
“Why does the water flow?” his childlike
spirit questioned innocently. “And where does it come from?”
Of course, to all belonging to North India the only answer is mighty Himalayas ;
our protector and subject of so many myths and fables awash with awful divinity.
It infact defines the course and content of our lofty spiritualism.
He was overcome with wonderful
appreciation for the purpose of nature: something falling as ice flakes at a
great distance on the snowy peaks and getting absorbed here in the fields for
the sake of these farmer’s bread and butter; coming down from the mountainous
anonymity to the farmer’s acclaim here. Great is the game of nature!
In the north-west direction the solitude
and isolation appeared even more aplenty. He wished only if he could escape
into it! Forever! His plaint soul was desirous to deorbit itself from the
intimidating and censorious space of the humans. He wanted to be as far away as
possible from the cheap gimmicks of sterile, malefic and outdated dogmas which
by fudging the real humanism have turned our world spookily lost in a conspiratorial
imagination.
To his belated dismay his mind reasoned,
‘You’ve come too far!’ It sounded antithetical to a human soul’s craving to
fleet away from human settlements and get lost in the pristine slumberland of
nature. Now, the solitude spread out endlessly before him became somewhat awful.
He felt he’ll be lost in those curly cascades of isolation. Afterall the constellation
of human life has been confined to predetermined orbits. Only the perfectly
wild wilderness is free from these worldly ghettos of frustration.
Looking upstream, his line of sight
came across tall eucalyptus foliage around that bend in the canal from
north-eastern direction. Led by his new-found comparative discernment (which
equips one to have options and choices even among most mundane of things) he
turned his face downstream. Low bushy foliage running north-south along the rajbhaya’s
embankment after branching off from the canal caught his preference-seeking
attention. Promptly it scripted a dusky elation and petite sensation inside his
heart. So, drawn by this mild string-pulling from that direction he started his
journey along the canal. At some arms distance his companion, the water, walked
step by step with him.
On a dried out tree stump-–a dead
remnant of once lively tree life, which now looked a gaping dark alien among
the greenish foliage in decorous exaltation around it-–a big owl was perched
atop. He was pleasantly surprised to see the nocturnal hunter in broad
daylight. And as facts are more powerful than fiction (because they father the
latter) the real appearance (read it factual) of this majestic nocturnal bird
of prey was aesthetically exalted in complete contrast to its anesthetically
presumed ominous visage (read it fictional) in the dark of night.
But then sometimes the fiction is taken
to be the fact, and to validify the unflinching victory of the latter, the real
blood of real facts is bayed butcherly. Don’t believe it? Think again! Wasn’t
Socrates forced to drink hemlock in the same way?
This big owl, lost in mystic dimensions,
was sitting with eyes closed. It looked archaically old with wisdom. So old as
if it knew too much and now didn’t want to see anything else. Devoid of its
night-time unguical aura it appeared an old warrior turned to sagehood after
renouncing all violence.
“What’s the difference between an owl’s
world and ours?” he felt owly inquisitiveness. “Perhaps nothing; or just the
shade of night? We hunt during the day. It does during the night. It turns its
neck in almost full circle. We can’t. Still we turn around our morality to have
an oblique view... to hunt!”
Ambiguous thoughts full of wisdom
hovered over his conscience like a little sun which wanted to undo the cloudy
obfuscation. He sat there, by the side of the canal embankment, looking
constantly at the owl. The bird was stoically sleeping, making a night of this
day. How unconcerned it was about the day’s head-turning combo and hectic
crescendo! He used to curse them as a species shrieking bad omens. Those
ominously howling monsters shrieking throughout night from the livid loneliness
among the banyan leaves gave him goose pimples. Not only that, in order to
satisfy the insatiable desires of their darkly-frenzied hearts, they preyed
upon the fish in the pond as well. But that was during those nights on the
mound. Here this old owl appeared a nonviolent and unominous-–almost a friend-–bird
sharing this solitude with him.
“Go on sleeping; go on sleeping...”
ecstatically lingering equipoise in his soul mused. “You don’t care about the sun
and this world of us humans! Night is thy mother!”
And the night’s shades loomed over his
closing eyes. He was too tried after this long walk. The old watchman thus fell
asleep giving a good sleeping company to the bird. Seeing him sleeping there
one would’ve very easily made it out that this frail old man hadn’t enjoyed a
good sleep, due to some lingering trauma, for the last few nights.
Tired and rolled up in the grass he
enjoyed an unabated drizzle of deep sleep. In the afternoon the sun’s warm rays
might’ve awakened him, but the shadow of trees ensured a perfectly undisturbed
long siesta in the solitude. The dog too did like the master. And both of them
were lying there completely surrendered to the myth and mysteries of this
natural anesthesia. Humming a swansong the time just flew over them.
The afternoon changed to evening and
the sun prepared to say crimson-red good-bye just above the foliage to the
south-west of canal. Sensing the effusive gleam of a subsiding sun, the owl
flew away with a loud howl. Its night was now going to break. His sleep was
broken. Like a child at sunrise he opened his eyes at dusk and smiled
satisfactorily for having such a sound sleep.
Pulsating picture of the countryside
bathed in reddish-orange colours was still casting an alluring appeal. With a
deep, deep breath he inhaled an infinitely soothing view of the petite
countryside damsel. It seemed captivatingly vivacious. He wanted to view it
from broadest of an angle, so his neck went on turning.
“Just like an owl I’ve turned my neck!”
he smiled and then looked at the empty stump. “Gone friend! But still thank you
for making me sleep so soundly just like yourself!” he was bedecked with
gratitude to the bird.
It was so calm around him as if the
last noise had gone back, a long time ago, to the primordial chaos when the
universe was created. In the lengthening shadows of setting sun, slowly and
silently he once again started his journey. Far away near the horizon, the
panorama was brocaded with mild mist. It appeared like a wild beauty dressing
up in new attire. In groups birds were returning back to their nests, bravely
cutting the tired sun rays. With a Cree....k the crane couple droned over. He
waved his hands as if he knew them. ‘In all probability they’re the ones who
leisure around the pond,’ he thought.
The sun was playing prismatically with
the sparse flakes of clouds around it. Their wispily symphonious existence in
the vast sky glowed with dusking sun-rays. Western horizon was becoming a
virtual kaleidoscope for mystic rendition of colours. At one time a portion of
clouds shone purplishly, then orange, after that saffron and later pale red.
Below, silvery mist was upcoming on this late autumn evening at the doorstep of
a cool, dewy night.
By the time he reached the spot from
where the rajbhaya began its journey, the sun’d become invisible. Last
portion of its subsiding rim had bidden a hurried bye.
Stoppers were firmly in place in the
narrow feeder outlet of the distributary, so the rajbhaya was dry. Just ahead
of thick stopper iron plates there was a narrow, deepish, gorge-like cemented
compartment. There was some water in it. Little droplets of water were oozing
from the corners of the plates turning this hole into a type of tiny freshwater
lake, whose outlet to the other side constantly dried up in the distributary’s
bed silt.
Just as his face was reflected in the
clean water of this hole, there was a huge commotion inside it. He was startled
back with fear. Taking courage he looked into it once again. They were two big
ducks. Their feathering coloured and patterned so artistically that a delighted
painter would’ve eulogised nature:
“She’s the supreme designer of
colourful symmetries!”
Faugh, human intervention! Due to
panickly flapping birdie fear the love hole became a narrow spot stormed by
troubled waters. As the space was just sufficient for both of them to cuddle
nearest to each other to feel love’s real warmth they failed to take an
instantaneously escaping flight. Awash with awe their endlessly flapping wings
were failing to result into a flying heft. To make it worse the dog’s old head
gnarled over them. It was just getting ready to jump down. If it would’ve done
so, the master surely must’ve found himself chained to the pillory of guilt. In
order to avoid all that spirit-sapping self-reproach of many weeks, the
watchman without losing any time gave a forceful kick to the dog, hurting
himself as well as the animal. The strike proved to be a clincher. Poor dog ran
away, less out of pain but more due to the surprise because it was the master’s
first kick at its old saggy coat. From a distance it whined complainingly.
In the life-shaking nid-nod and
hustle-bustle of fearful feathering the poor migratory birds from some freezing
lake in the Himalayas couldn’t take off. He
saw the nature’s nifty filigree over their feathers. Much to the primordial
resonance of relief the duck couple finally gained a flight and escaped towards
the sun below the horizon, letting out fearful quacks all the way. Oh, how fearful
they are of the flagitious nighness of the humans! Like a child he looked at
them and then suddenly turned old.
“Do our souls too escape with such
relief from our bodies when we die?” he thought at the vertex of a deep sigh. “We
too do flip-flop in narrow waterholes throughout our lives: the struggling
little holes which we consider our liberation, our destination. But all that is
an illusion. To most of us only death comes as the saviour––the freeing agent!”
he seemed eager to fly away from all spinous, worldly bondages.
For a moment the death seemed a
glorious new dream; as simple as the flight of birds.
“But they’ll come down here or there.
In some waterhole or the other!” immortal craving for life once again put the
death’s pleasant glow under obfuscation.
“No, it can’t be the liberator!” the cold,
hard logic of those pensively strange, fearful moments around death-beds struck
him with its repulsive cockiness.
He knew it was the same water channel
which reached the road. Without quiddling, the evening was holding out the
baton to the ever-eager night. So, he decided to take the companionship of this
distributary to reach the road and then the pond.
His slow steps saw the arrival of the night’s
majestic maidenhood---a dark night, so distinct and powerful in this
wilderness. On both sides of the water channel paddy fields were in various
stages of harvesting. In the vast palette of darkness some bonfires were
raising their feeble fluttering protest. In bonhomie with these fires migrant
Bihari workers were cooking their evening meals.
Almost two kilometres of distance
slowly and sluggishly drawn over the narrow footpath over the embankment seemed
constantly elongating itself along with his movement in the dark. By the time
he reached the road he felt considerably exhausted. His knees were aching.
Tiredness made the village lights appear too far. He looked at the lonely
shadow of a little open room, the serai, by the well under a friendly
group of trees on the other side of the road.
“We can have a comfortable sleep here,”
tiredness gave a clue to some possible solution.
But in the next moment his conscience
revolted for even thinking of spending a night away from the pond––the altar of
his duty.
Quickly drinking some water he called
the dog which’d already thrown its body on a comfortable hayloft. Without
complaining the pet followed its master. But its gait was flattish which showed
it would’ve preferred some rest.
Today his whole existence (body, mind
and soul) had eloped in leaps and bounds like a crazy lover with the wild countryside
maiden. But now with every step towards the mound his whole spread-out self
came anaemically narrowing down. Rumbustious ruction of worries raised their
spoil-sporty head. What might’ve happened there? The crowd, Sadhu,
politicians, brick-heaps!
Spiritual equipoise of his soul
suddenly blenched up, “They must’ve heartlessly cleared the dead wood... my hut!”
Like a fearful child shivering for the
sake of his toys the sight of his little hut and his poor provisions surrounded
by a hostile environment flashed through his mind. But he knew he’ll have to
face the spectacle of their fate. Vehicle headlights falling straight in his
eyes blinded him like the tortuous torches of those devilishly grinning crazy
denizens.
What a contradiction he was facing!
Earlier eyes had to be spread to their capacity to have infinitely spread out
shots of the beauteously luminous landscape. Now they narrowed down to stop the
tormenting blares from entering inside, while the vehicles passed by as if thundering,
‘What happened at the mound today?’ It was just like a near brush with death
after a new lease of life. From the heavenward ascension to the abyssward
descension!
Facing the suffocating accuracy of
reality he must’ve covered the half part of this last leg of his journey.
Somebody from the other side of the road, coming from the village, called him
out as the full burst of a vehicle’s head-light put him on the roadside centre
stage. He couldn’t see or make out who the caller was. He stopped there to allow
the vehicle pass by him. When the vehicle’d crossed over, the caller walked up
to his side.
“Hey miyanji, where were’u the
whole day?” he asked in a loud voice overcoming the vehicle’s noise. “Everybody
thinks you’ve fled with the laying of temple foundation. As if those bricks are
meant for breaking your little head!” he ended on a laughing note, which once
again showed the bucolic humour’s life-saving potential to topple the cart
seriously laden with unfavourable circumstances.
The old man wanted to say something or
even ask something from this friendly young farmer, but like a monosyllabic
moron his tongue got stuck at the first letter of the first hesitant word.
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me,” Bania
handed down a respectful, assuring pat at the elder’s frail shoulders. “Actually
those vagabonds were just going to throw all your things into the water. Those
processionists... it was an idiots’ circus over there. I don’t know how people
get time out of their jobs to idle it away after these politicians who always
make false promises on the election eve. Free electricity! Free water! Low prices
of diesel and fertilizers!”
Very easily the overarching arch of a
tough farming life wayled the young farmer into the rough and grough of his
personal problems from the fontal point of the present context. He hadn’t told
what happened to the old man’s things.
“What... what... happened to... mmy... h
Hut?” it was an intrepid wordy adventure by the old man.
“Oh, forgot to tell you miyanji!
Those bastards surely would’ve thrown every sinew of it into the water. They
ransacked it. Tore down. Had it not been for the effort of your employer
everything would’ve seen the world of fish at the pond’s bottom,” he said it
with pity, which showed the simplicity of a farmer while taking a short cut
from humour to seriousness and concern for others, which straightway finds him
offering some help.
“There was a little argumentative
quarrel as well,” hearing these worlds the frail old man’s pusillanimous heart
sprang in air like a pole-vaulter perpetually afraid of the land below. “But
thank God, he was able to save your belongings! In a lightning hurry he got
your possessions bundled out along with whatever your hut was made of. And then
we saw them safe to the pond’s other end. I lifted the heaviest one. But I’m
sorry, if you now look at your things you won’t be able to make out which thing
provided shelter and which seeked it! That was inevitable because everything
had to be done in such a damn hurry.”
The old man heaved a little sigh of
relief. After all, however poor one might be all of us have this feeling of
protectiveness about our provisions.
“Are’u going to the mound now?” it
smelt of some pliant warning.
The old man nodded in affirmative.
Well-honed and seasoned farmer
expressed rarest of apprehensiveness, “Don’t do that old tauji. They’re
wildly celebrating the laying of temple foundation. I heard their merry-making
cries as I passed by the pond.”
Images of those fully drunk filibusters
dancing in mad and idiotic ecstasy wickedly flashed in his mind. Hysterical
diatribe of their yells buzzed in his brain like an offertory.
“Don’t go there poor old man,”
symbiotic and synergetic softness in the young farmer’s tone reached the
pulsating epitome of pity for this frail figure. “God forbid, they can do
anything under the influence of liquour!” Analysing and weighing the helplessness
of this weak figure, the sturdy farmer offered help, “You can spend the night in
my hut in the fields there,” he pointed to the fields in the direction of the handpump
from which the old man fetched drinking water.
This sturdy, kind farmer seemed someone
who’d the heart to close the tragic hole in the fabric of his life. So, without
saying anything the old man walked behind the young farmer. The dog followed
them as the last one in the row.
The young farmer led them on the little
pathway leading to his fields. On both sides empty fields, dotted with somewhat
shiny paddy crofts after the harvesting, were silently engaged in weaving the
stirring visions of a next crop. Far away a fire had been set in to clear the
harvested waste.
“These politicians are the worst people
on earth. Almost all of us know about their dirty tricks and cheatings, yet again
and again we get caught in the snares of their promises. We’re just like
helpless mosquitoes. Political webs are too many and too strong. And then they
create issues out of nothing. Issues which people relish and eat. But they don’t
know what they eat will only spoil their stomach,” the firm figure leading the
way was heard saying after some moments of silence.
It’s a fair bet that most of us have a
jaundiced view of the political world. But when the dirty denizens throw a beam
of their witty flambeau all the flavescence turns to effusively velvety gleam.
“He hadn’t come this time for an
election campaign, so couldn’t repeat all that stuff. Having not much to say
about the gathering’s real interest he just went on harping on that issue of you
Muslims, temple at Ayodhya, awakening of dead asleep Hindus. A sheer lie! If
all Hindus are sleeping then who’s doing this tough job of farming?”
“My hut too can make an issue,” the old
Muslim thought while trying to make a mental picture of this politician.
They reached the farmer’s hut.
“This is my little darling hut!” the
farmer enthused invitingly.
His guest could figure out a little
grove of trees in one corner of the field, and below them was a distinctly
cozy––even in this dark!––sinewy shelter. Bania entered into it and lighted an
oil lamp. As he came out of the low entrance, the lamp-light appeared in
innocent dalliance with goodness spread over his cute features. He placed the
lamp on the tubewell’s watertank wall. Its flickering wick put guiding glow
over this hermitage standing there like a turreted grove in a silent corner of
the field. Completely bedecked with gratitude the old man had a look at the
place of his night stay.
The hut was even smaller than his own shelter.
But it was decidedly different. Its maker was entitled to boast about a crown-clinching
effort. Most probably it was made during those soulfully constructive moments
when the maker was lost in the visions of new horizons beckoning new hopes.
From the dark’s anonymity of earlier its appearance now jumped to enlightened
acclaim. Every sinew appeared a crystal embellishment of human hope, vision,
hardwork and well equipoised self respect. In complete contrast to it his ramshackle
hut (which was no more now) was made in the rough and tumble of a totally
unassuming physical self carelessly skinned-around a pathetically unresolving
soul. Arithmetic tailoring of this contrast struck his soul ever hitched to a
peculiar lostness.
Above it the dense, leafy roofing of
the blackberry made it appear infinitely inviting for a night’s stay. To his
mysteriously disgruntled and low-on-self-esteemed soul this little structure
smelt of a huge spaciousness about it. In the tiny grove huge banana leaves
gently ruffled (even though there was no breeze) as if welcomingly responding
to their breathes. Other trees like neem, mulberry and mango formed a
single canopy above, which made it appear like a mother hut hiding the baby hutment
in its lap. The space around the hut had been neatly and smoothly mud-floored
with yellow soil. On this clean earthen floor two charpoys were laid
out.
The old man was inhaling a full feeling
of the farming hermitage’s secure seclusion. It looked safe and strong enough
to motherly shelter one from all rains and storms of life. The world around,
meanwhile, was roofless. Unprotective.
While he was lost in these thoughts the
young farmer had put off his clothes and was sitting on the smoothly cemented
bathing place by the tubewell tank. Years of hardwork and exercises had turned
his body nicely furrowed. Dusky elation of the well-scripted muscularity would’ve
surely attracted the captivating vivaciousness of a female’s heart. He wasn’t
tall, but the statuesque symmetry provided his body an aesthetically versatile
style and flamboyance of a Greek wrestler. Oil lamp’s light flickering over the
well laid out panorama of his body seemed pridefully eager to hand out a certificate
of authenticity to the viewer. Decorous exaltation of his body’s landscape,
with light falling over well-honed crests and shades of seasoned troughs, made
it appear superpowerful. Mighty to the extent that he could save any weakling
in the world. But things are not so simple and straight in the real world. Many
of those who are physically strong are mentally pusillanimous. They’ve their
own weakening limitations not to protect the needy ones, otherwise there’re
enough robust bodies in the world not to allow any injustice to the weak-bodied.
“Many people’d gathered there,” Bania
said while pouring a bucket of water over his head, which sent a little chill
down the old man’s spine because the winter’d already started to show it
presence after the sunset.
“After prattling this and that about
those Hindu-Muslim issues he still found himself at loss of words to fully
express the boiling sea of the politics of religion inside him. While, like
idiots people just stared at his cock-eyed face. Oh, these people... they’ve
such short memories! Nobody reminded him of those unkempt promises, which he’d
barked so profoundly during his election campaign.”
The sturdy farmer took a syncretic
rubbing of his hard body as if he was venting out his simplistic anger by
squeezing the wrong juice out of the politician’s body. A vigorous massage
followed by three or four buckets of cold water in quick succession made him
cool once again.
“Searching for most poisonous of words
he uneasily gazed here and there. Then his religiously preying eyes fell upon
your heaped-up cottage and other things. That picture of yours... that old
Islamic calendar was put on top of your things. His eyes fell on it.”
The old Muslim’s heart got a pinprick.
That ordinary piece of wall-hanging flashed in his mind as the official seal
and address of all that this politician stood against. For the first time in
his life he felt insecure, fearful, as a religioner (even be that by birth). He
was too far from such realisations in 1947. The intervening period had just
flown away as he followed the solo solace of his heart, while the
pseudo-secularists paid best of a lip service to bury the two-nation theory.
But now it was convulsing its decimated, worm-eaten, paranormal body inside the
shallow grave hastily filled up with earth as the freedom rejoicers ran for
revelry. Fearsome figure of some saffron clad politician-cum-religioner raised
its crusading appearance in his fearing heart.
After pouring down a few more buckets
of water the farmer was heard saying in the background of symphonious cogency
of the water droplets dripping down after an enjoyable slip down his body:
“Pricked by its sight he sprang in air
and cried, ‘What the hell this thing is doing here? How dare’u people abuse me
and my party like this? We’re fighting against the evil so selflessly and here
are you people pandering the devil like this!’ he raised an aggrieved finger at
your Muslim paper. One of his followers quickly jumped to his feet and
displaying his patriotic loyalty tore it down and said relaxedly after the big
effort, ‘Sir, I’ve finished it.’ But the politician wasn’t to be pacified. ‘Why
on earth did’u allow someone put this thing at a place where the holy temple of Lord Shiva
In the heated hawthorn of all this
retelling he was rubbing his body so indurately that it turned red.
Putting on his clothes he said in his
indubitably sincere voice, “You can sleep outside till midnight and after that if you feel cold, you can
take one of the charpoys inside the hut and sleep there.”
After that he put off the lamp and bade
the old man a quick good-night as his belly had digested too much of those odd,
rare emotions and was now strongly protesting in the form of hunger pangs. He
thus almost ran into the darkness towards the village.
For a moment the old man felt lost in
the darkness. Below the darkly clad western horizon, embankment plantation of
the rajbhaya was still giving its still darker signs of existence.
Beyond this low and medium canopy the sky started to brighten up above the
convalescing yellowish-red glow. Some farmer had set ablaze the paddy harvest
residue. The water channel’s line of cut across the fields became distinctly
visible. Its richly reposed curves over the fertile bosom of mother earth seemed
ever-following the moral compass of righteousness.
“A few moments ago it was total
darkness,” he whispered with a sigh. “Now the fields glow in festivity.
Everything seems brightened up. That glowing part appears so proud of its
visible existence. Then it’ll end up in darkness again!”
His mind had never been hectic with the
niddle-noddle of thoughts. Nor was there any particular nidification of ideas,
which lays a strong foundation of our social individuality, to load his human
heart. His days thus passed lightly as if his light weight had a light brain
which never engaged in verticity against the passage of time. But general
contradiction he’d gone through today forced his unreflectively relaxing individuality
to pick up some pin-pointed observations. Its imprints were frustratingly persistent
on his conscience. Today’s situational paradox––from extremely relaxing solitudional
sojourn in the wilderness to the tensioned description of what happened at the
mound––drew new furrows over the terrain of his feelings. It made him oddly
contemplative about life, about himself. Human follies and foibles ever
emanating from the cocky cocoons of coggery tugged at his frail body to awake
him from a lifelong slumber. Everything seemed to come with an intrinsic
essence and meaning which was metres deep beneath the surface of his existence;
the surface of a simple, poor, plainly unsophisticated and responsibly meek
human being, lying like the submissive grains of a sandy path uncomplainingly
dusting there while the world and time trampled over. Under the impact of
spindrift splashes of this new shovel-work his soul was now digging to exhume
numerous questions, fears, suspicions and ambiguities of life.
In the meantime the dog’d gone into the
hut as if to avoid any further disturbance to its sleep. Fire in the fields
gradually faded down as the residuals turned to ashes. That part of the sky
which was shining like an illuminated stage was now losing its lightened vault.
After some time everything was once again lost in the singularly shading
profile of darkness. Only the cloud of smoke carrying the particles of earthly
imponderables was silently, invisibly rising upwards to lose its final
existence into the sea of stars.
Still looking in the direction he lay
down on the charpoy. His eyes were still lost about those last flashes
of fire. They were groping in the dark to seek something like an inspired soul
looking for the truth crowded among the melodramatic veil of illusions. Reference-lorn
they were putting a strenuous effort to find out something which could
soothsayingly accompany his lonesome frail figure caught in the slumberous quicksand
and querimonious slough of the world around.
At last a little raylet of light from
an oil lamp valiantly burning in a distant farmhouse reached his eyes. The lamp
must’ve been put on the window-sill inside the room, because the glow was
swaylessly stagnant. Playful and joyous raylets daughterly reached his eyes.
The wick was burning firmly with courage, conviction and enlightening chivalry.
Its pinpointing penetration had the sharpness of cutting the eternal darkness.
Burning bright with its enlightened heart’s luminescence it appeared a little
star just like anyone of the billions above in the sky. It was but on the same
plane as he: a tiny, primordial resonance of the super-massive cosmic bodies
above.
He hadn’t seen the face of this
politician; so he imagined one. A flagellating figure ventosely rose in his
mind; its tinsel-heroism sloggered really hard against his senses.
Caught in a feculent fear he thoughtfully
said to himself, “Oh, the facelessness of these people! At least God has a face:
a face of all the good things in life. And while feigning to put on the same
face we humans turn faceless. Faceless Gods!” timid and uncouth humanness in
his soul shrieked with awakening pain under the force of this fiendish-feeze.
Individuality-awakening lyre of
disjointed thoughts benedictively spread its stringed-sensation over the
unused, almost rusted, neurons of his brain.
“Light is light,” his mind was now drawn
to the pluralistic profile of the tiny raylet reaching his eyes. “It doesn’t
matter whether a full field on fire lights up the whole sky, or it is just a
small lamp burning far-far away, as long as the singlest ray creates smallest
sun in one’s eyes.”
Two little suns shone in his old eyes,
showing the journey completed by the waves and particles of this wavelet. Harsh
hand of cold reality took him deeper and deeper into the world of
thoughtfulness. It’s not essential to be educated, read knowledgeable books or
debate intellectually to dig deeper into the ground beneath superficiality.
Wisdom can sprout forth from the mysterious foison of ultimate reality. Also,
age involuntarily accumulates so many indistinct facts that some day one finds
one’s soul extraordinarily pondering over things. Sometimes even suddenly!
Provided, one comes across a rope to draw out bucketfuls of essence from the
deep well. Heart and mind are always there. So is the deep-deep water of wisdom
accumulated at the bottom over the years. What is absent is the fetching rope.
Fate, providence, self’s genuine seeking, even a chance happening or anything
inexplicably mysterious are the functional parameters of this rope.
The small ray stretching like a rope
between the lamp and his eyes was now guiding his soul to the orchestration of
a new doctrine. Like a spellbound child he was gazing at this small shining
star. It was powerfully crossing all the gloom which the absence of infinitely
shinier day-star had cast over this half of earth. It was so inspiring, taking
him deeper and deeper into the thoughtful world where every unit of space and
time stood out differentiated with an opportunity to catch the reality in its
small pocket well packaged for the seekers. Though he wasn’t aware of all this
in specific terms––as most of us aren’t supposed to be aware of it––still this
unspecifically guiding light cutting across the haze of ambiguity, uncertainty,
extremity... was too monumental. He felt the whole essence, beauty, meaning and
purpose of the countryside panorama spread out for miles, which his eyes had
visioned with their broadest range, was now symbolically syncopized in this
little shining point. It was unperturbed of all the intervening controvertists.
So when a gentlest whiff of breeze arrived naughtily it symphoniously swayed,
but still mystically maintained that finest thread of light linking him to the
lamp. Its lone light in abysmally colluding dark singled it out as a spot which
was bravely holding out against the silent diatribe of the invisible dark
matter of the cosmos.
He felt inspired to the symbiotic
epitome of his simple soul, “It’s shining like a little sun. Little sun of the
night! And it shines for me. To save me from getting lost in this vastly spread
out blackness!”
Like a colorific night flower it kept
on glowing. Those mystically versatile raylets were playing silent symphony
whose soft notes came riding over the undisturbed air particles.
“Biharis must be preparing dinner after
a hard harvesting day,” even the recall of food didn’t make him feel hungry,
because today he was cherishing the cuisines of deeper thoughts. “Little sun
lightening their small world. Some of them’ll forget tiredness in wine, some’ll
smoke out all tensions in opium and some’ll prepare dinner. All that in the
territory of that small sun fighting the dark for their sake!”
A bigger glow blazed on the scene.
Little sun had fathered it. The bigger glow in turn put a still larger heap of
paddy hayloft on fire. Visibility’s stage got enlarged. Little room’s front
portion, some human figures sitting by the fire, some coming out and going into
the room were the new reflectivities of this enlarged stage as more light
poured out of the faucet of fire.
“Aha, the power of fire Goddess! It
proves its truthfulness in the little flame of a lamp, as well as in huge
burning mountains and stars!” his heart felt the protectively and proactively
enlightening warmth of the flames.
Tiny glow was lost in this bigger one.
Yellowish-crimson fireball, which
effortlessly burnt on its dry, soft paddy fodder, made him sense its bonfire
fury in contrast to the equipoised beauty of the lamp’s glow.
“Earlier it was the tiny flame. From it
originated a fistful of hay-torch, which in turn ignited the heap and the
larger heaps can even inflame the whole world!” pores of his skin felt a
fearful excitement. “Perhaps it aggravates with our passions; with our uses of
it. Otherwise a tiny flame is so happy and contented to be confined to its
little world!”
The bonfire was blazing a more vibrant
and powerful intervention between his eyes and the lamp. This lostness of
little flame in the bigger one produced gem of a thought in his poor mind.
“Our inflated and dangerously flared-up
ego and desires too overburn the real human inside us!” he sighed feeling sorry
for the lamp. “And these firing passions try to reach His doors,” he was
constantly staring at the vigorously rising flames. “But it’s an exercise in
futility. Biggest of a fire can’t eat up all the darkness above,” he looked
into the dark canopy above him. “But a lamp burning in a room can certainly
light up its entire world, because its world is safely confined to that
particular room only.”
Mysteriously lingering trauma in his
soul was now doing its spadework more and more forcefully.
Two or three of them started dancing
around the bonfire. He could hear some slumberously slow and feeble tune of the
folksongs on the radio. His curious old eyes could notice just an enthused sway
of some bodies and the flames in cascading parallels of friction and fantasy
with each other.
His plaint and intimidated soul was
deorbiting from the plane of passivity. For almost an hour the fire’s beauteous
fury and the labourers’ enjoyment kept on enviably vying with each other’s
pulsating elation. But even the devilish grin of a mightiest storm has to
subside; at last the noise’s daredevilry too gets tired and cups out an eager
ear to the chirping cheers of sparrows; chopping and changing ingenuity of all
inflated egos either bursts or shrinks so dangerously as to leave it just a
negligent particle of the nether world; and all fires cool down. The bonfire
too slowly, slowly got lost in an undiscoverable slumberland. Enviably
illuminated stage got smaller and smaller. Characters faded down. And finally
steely resolve of the darkness, spurred by this weakening challenge from the light,
essayed its shadowing smile.
Overriding desire of the brighter
obstruction was gone. Much to the pulsating gleam of his heart, the little lamp
was still illuminating its small world. He was vivaciously startled by this
magnificent victory.
“It’s got the oil of contentment to
burn slowly and slowly. It knows it has to illuminate just its little world.
The bonfire burnt greedily on the discontented haystack wanting to burn up the
whole world. It thus fizzled out as quickly as it’d arisen,” dulcet voice of
these luminous ideas was now coming from deeper and deeper margins of his soul.
His spontaneously poised thoughts
turned to his tormentors, “They’re like furious bonfires. I’m the lamp!” he
felt an effusively soothing current of pride pioneering rejuvenation in his
frail body. “I’ve to go on with my work sincerely. The pond...the fish....”
He just kept on looking at the little
star blazing a new enlivening trail for his soul to follow.
“I’ll set up my hut again in that
corner where it’s lying tied down now!” he resolved, while sleep took him in
its motherly swathes.
While the frail old man was sleeping an
angel might’ve been flummoxed by the contrast between this piteously lying body
and the charpoy’s owner.
Even before one’s eyes the watchman’s
was a reclusive existence. Knees and joints jutted out prominently, while the
very same were lost in picture-perfectly doming muscularity clothed over the
young farmer’s body. Despite his short stature Bania looked prominent in his
fields. The old man, on the other hand, appeared extraordinarily trifling in
his surroundings around the pond––almost akin to a big bird. Looking at Bania
one would’ve wondered if all the happiness had been impeccably stuffed inside
him, while the old watchman appeared to be a storehouse of this whole world’s
sorrows and sufferings. When the old man walked, eternally holding his
hoe-of-no-hope, he appeared to have forgotten even himself; like he wasn’t even
aware of his own presence! His eyes appeared to have lost their glance; lost
like the eyes of a dead person; popped up just for the sake of meaningless
opening. In complete contrast, Bania’s eyes were ever glanceful and eager like
an infant’s unknown but profound priorities; too eyeful which could observe
each and every object lying around, and when someone talked to him his gaze
pierced into the deepest depths of the onlooker.
Yet, there was one similarity! Both of
them had infinitely incontrovertible calmness, serenity and patience over their
faces. But here too a critic would’ve come out with a naysaying comment:
“Both have patience, agreed! But the
old man has the calm and serene face of a corpse. The young farmer, however,
matches the patience of a sleeping infant.”
By the look of it the old man’s mere
survival could have been summarised as a miracle, while the farmer’s leisurely
rhymed gait made survival look as the easiest thing in nature. Without any
effort fate played nid-nod with the former’s oarless boat in the sea of life.
The latter, however, fought courageously scintillating battle for the agriculture’s
coveted crown pitted against the nature’s raw fury.
Despite all this unassumedness of his
soul and inefficaciousness of his weak physical self the old man carried a
reservoir of restrained grace, which showed its exuberance and inimitable spirit
when his genius woke up to show its impeccable demeanour for the fisheries. At
such times his repressed triumph and grandeur appeared to have a comic dig at
the arrant turbit-trivialities scattered around.
But why he had been so till now? So
silent, subdued, secluded and isolated from the world around him; devoid of all
fluvial flutters of the heart’s prismatic reflectivity. Perhaps, something at
an early age had been imprisoned, deodorizing him of all the fluxible and flying
worldly sensitivities around him; turning him into a loner; a loner to the
extent that he didn’t even reflect upon things; a frail body mountainously resigned
to the sways of unseen as well as seen; so resigned that a totally unexpectant
future and a blank past made his present just roll along his silent,
spindle-shanked steps.
He thus stood in a peculiar bondage to
creation. One couldn’t make out the myth and mystery of his fitness in the
scheme of things. But fitted he certainly was in some mysterious scheme of things.
If not so, why should he survive? And now when he was sleeping soundly after a
longly tiresome walk, something was getting reborn in his old body: a
noctiflorous flower blooming in the fallow grey of his life. In his dream there
was an exalted sound of inexperiencedly fluttering wings as if a bird (whose sovereign
prerogative is to fly high in the sky) which hadn’t flown ever in its life was
now realising the futility of covering little ground on its frail paws.
It was well past midnight . Pioneering prologue of the winter had
been written over the air particles which made his body shrink a bit on the charpoy.
Suddenly his sleep was interrupted as his watchman’s ears very quickly opened
their sleepy doors. A horde of big beasts was running through the fields
creating a panickly shuffling sound. In fomenting hurry the animals passed by
the hut like a storm in the dark. He almost jumped up in surprised horror. A robustly
defined dark figure was testing the rank and file of his entire abusive prowess
as he angrily chased the wild cows, the neelagais. Like a ministorm he
too passed by the hut.
It surely was the young farmer. The
watchman recognised him by his voice as well as his daring effort in the dark.
With quicksilver agility the old man got up. The barking dog sounded imploring
its master to join the chase. The canine seemed much obliged to the hut owner
for a good resting sleep. Its master also felt that way for the young farmer.
So without losing any time both of them started on this intrepid adventure. He
gave a hunting cry to his old pet which barked to the full capacity of its
lungs and took to its cumbersome gallops. The master followed the pet. He ran,
fell down in the rough and tumble of fields, got up and started again. Bania’s
shouts, dog’s barks and panicked lowings of the neelgais were his guides
in this unnerving run.
He then heard big water splashes and
loudly cheering laughter of the farmer. Old faithful was now barking with some
more effort as if it was face to face with a night-hag. Hearing the young farmer’s
laughter he felt much relieved. As he reached the spot he found the young man
rolling in comic crusade on the rajbhaya embankment. The dog was still
barking. Pridefully it rubbed its muzzle on his pyjama. Its master in
turn patted the canine’s panting mouth.
“What happened?” he was seriously
concerned about this kind, young villager.
Study farmer’s abdomen muscles got much
needed rest as he put a check on his hilarity.
Slowing down on his merrymaking the
sturdy villager exulted, “Those neelgais! Today they got a fitting reply
from us. We gave them such a shock!” he patted old fur on the dog’s back. “They’re
a nuisance to we farmers,” pieces of anger slubbered inside the cool hermitage
of his healthy physique. “Some of them were able to jump over the rajbhaya.
Some fell into it and out of sheer panic went steamrolling upstream.”
Neelgai is the big muscular beast of the size of a horse. It is now
just a helpless pawn caught on a sticky wicket. Our fundamental fallacies in the
exploitation of nature have left the poor creature just a big, wild trouble
roaming barbarously in the cultivated fields. These majestically muscular
animals wander like destitutes in the cropped fields while the signature of man’s
seasoned hand authorises large scale deforestation in the countryside to bring
as much land under cultivation as possible. Always tethered to the disarraying
dilemmas of survival, these mighty grazers now just fight to nibble a few
mouthfuls. Caught in a vicious circle, as the countryside moves more and more
fastly towards the spurious colourisation of intensive agriculture, their
fearful gallops from one area to another now write one more dusty tale of some
species’ extinction. But then farmers too will starve if they allow a free run
to these vociferous grazers. Caught unawares by this scare spectacle these
normally docile and fearful animals had even ended up killing some lone farmers
at work in the dark of night. The poor animals thus involuntarily courted a
controversy. Not hearing any ‘not guilty pleading’ from these speechless
offenders the government too pronounced its judgment against them. It not only
called a spade a spade, but condemned it as a bloody shovel. So to finish the
evil everyone got the right to possess a licensed gun. Everyone had the
unchecked imprimatur to write as many lines against the poor animals as he
wished
“They’re the worst enemies of my sleep
after all the hardwork during the day,” picture-perfect poise of his mirth-making
got agony’s distaste.
A bit dejected the young farmer laid
his back on the water channel’s embankment as if he wanted to sleep there
itself.
“Harvested paddy is still lying in the
middle of the field. And here are these funsters. They arrive at night. Spoil
it and then rest on the soft husk of my hardwork,” the farmer sounded slightly
hurt as if irritated by the peacocky-preens of the animals’ muzzles searching
for fodder in the dark.
The old man’s tongue’s anility gave in
to the viviparousness (even in sorrow) fully imbibed in this young villager. He
thus found himself capable of hitching some conversational audibility to his
silently righteous self:
“In early mornings I’ve seen some of
them drinking water in the pond.”
Like a pioneering wordy locomotive the
farmer’s chirpy voice further drew the vocal train, “Hey miyanji, you
can’t even imagine what havoc they play with our crops before peacefully
marching to your place for drinking water. They do just everything present in
the devil’s book to undo our farming effort. Destroy wheat crop. Shamelessly
wander over tiny paddy plantlets, eating them and then roll over filthily. In
the morning the whole field seems a mud puddle. And my marigolds...” he stopped
as if the decorous prologue of the flowers in their early youth was in
immediate danger of being brutally assaulted by the beasts.
“And marigolds?” the old man asked with
soft sympathy.
Addictive thoughts for the protection
of his just-started-to-bloom flowers nettled the energetic farmer, “They force
me to wander in the fields like a frozen ghost on those chilly nights of
December and January!” he stopped icily.
“Marigolds?!” the old man’s hesitant
voice tried some sympathetic warmth.
“You’re still stuck to the flowers, miyanji!”
Bania sighed resignedly, which looked so odd given the regal splendour of his
powerful physique.” You don’t know how much effort and sweat’s blood it takes
to blossom them. Even the sun doesn’t do as much during a whole sunny day for
them as I do during the night only; and all that due to these granny-fuckers
only.”
“Do they eat flowers?” the old man put
up an innocently tiny question mark from the celestial sphere of his wispily
silent soul.
The farmer laughed resignedly, “Neelgais
and flowers! You’re very lucky old tauji. The less one knows about
agriculture more happy he is. Even the mere knowledge of this crude, tough work
puts a heavy stone in one’s heart. So just imagine the plight of those who do
the actual farming.”
For a few moments his simple mind
mulled over the paramount sway of agricultural drudgery. A little chaos seemed
to compound the disturbance in his otherwise sumptuous serenity. But the
control freak put a hasty full stop to all this unwanted coction of weaker
thoughts and returned to the old man’s query.
“They don’t eat the flowers, but I wish
they did! Because, perhaps in that case they won’t do all that they do to the
plants.”
“What do they do to the flower plants?”
the watchman sounded a bit early in questioning because the farmer had not closed;
rather he was in the middle of a pause.
It appeared the old man was trying to
forestall his ever-persistent predisposition to stony meekness.
“Wait sir, wait! I’ll tell you all. Don’t
be in a hurry to listen this long tragic tale. It’ll take its own time. You
know, the plants grow almost six feet tall. To escape cold these bastards drop
their shivering bodies among the plants. Now... just sitting to escape cold is
another matter. That can be granted on human grounds. But they destroy everything.
I do so many things to make them afraid of my fields. Burn firecrackers. One
night I put my radio on its full volume right in the middle of the fields. That
too didn’t serve any purpose. I found its broken pieces in the morning... as if
they danced to its music. Sometimes I.... I just feel like shooting all of them
dead! If my heart fails me then I’ll hire those blood and money thirsty
professional hunters who’ll bestow an ample end to these ghosts.”
“How hard this life is!” the watchman’s
consoling whisper entered the villager’s ears, while a silently bemoaning
emotion from his heart started in the dark to catch up with the ill-fated
animals to sympathetically caress their silken smooth dark mane.
He knew that even the terrifying brute
power of the rawest of an emotion in this young farmer’s heart won’t be
sufficient to get him up to this sort of act. ‘Though he’s the might to do
that. He can defeat any of them in a wrestling match!’ he thought.
There was such a long synchronism
between the muscularities of this villager and those animals he’d seen drinking
water from the pond in the mist and fog of winter mornings. He marveled at this
powerful play of nature through powerful characters.
They started back towards the hut. When
they reached it Bania asked him to sleep inside the hut as it was a bit cold
now. He himself slumped on the charpoy outside. Without losing any time
sleep blanketed warmly over him. And there he was; sleeping in a distant
slumber-land; unconcerned; like nothing had happened. The old man, meanwhile,
took some uneasy turns inside the hut. And a few units of time later sleep
entered into the hut too after singing sweetest lullabies in the farmer’s ears.
When they woke up, the sun had already
risen above the sleepy village. Astronomically distant from the night’s dilemmatic
dark the morning was diffluently bright. ‘Get up old son, and make a new home
for thee!’ it whispered in his ears.
Walking back to the village with the
young man, the old man felt a strange security like his frail body had been
safely wrapped in cotton wool. An intangible emotion was lifefully joining the
diffracted parts of his mind, body and soul; to make him a life-feeling
wholesome unit. An optimistic thought cropped up in his now calculating mind, ‘I’ll
make a hut as good as this young man’s!’
Reaching near the pond, he turned his
face in the direction of the little oval elevation. Nitty-gritties of a whole
day’s masonry were taking starting yawns. Primordial, patriarchal spirit of the
God forbade him from taking the first path to his new destination leading to a
new home. He thus didn’t take a turn to walk over the brick-paved path leading
to the temple site.
“Follow that ordinary, straight path at
the other end! This one isn’t suitable for you, because it has been made too
slippery by an overzealous saffrony-sadiron!” His command fell in his ears.
In his usual restrictive self he felt a
puzzling mix of feelings––whether to feel relieved for moving away from a
hostile neighbour, or feel the moaning agony of leaving one’s place? Then to
draw him out of this little dilemma, his mind recalled the images of those joy-hogging
tramps: clingy sounds of pestle pounding hemp leaves, nefarious fumes of opium
smoke, humanity dilacerative jokes, and hallucinated souls noisily falling into
the well of digression... his fearful eyelashes skipped a flutter. He felt
hugely relieved for getting out of the place.
Reaching the pond’s eastern edge the
young farmer diverted to his village world (not before wishing him good luck
for the construction of his hut) and he took to his lonesome path passing beneath
the weathered acacian woods.
A look at his things lying in
undifferentiated jumblement gave him mildly pestering worry, but he allayed it
away with a smile, as his mind collated the place’s advantages over the former.
His gaze at his poor provisions smacked of a statistically reflective penetration,
which in turn gave an inkling of this frail old man’s new mission. Yes, he was
ready to prepare a new cosy, comfortable hut where he’ll warmly sleep during
the upcoming winters.
Sitting on one of the heaps he looked
at the mound at the other end. There was a sea of difference between this place
and that one. Constituting some conclusion here at this far end of the big
piscina, his soul’s benign indifference and old introversion felt disturbing
wavelets coming from that judiciously active mound of religio-political
activism. His simple soul had definitely, in some way or the other, an inkling of
the lethal combination of religion and politics fermenting into a sinister
brew.
Some early migrants like storks, waders,
egrets and herons were freely engaged in a fishful breakfast. Seeing them his
watchman’s conscience didn’t feel the usual blasting disturbance. He just sat
there with a benign indifference. His frail body giving no sign of that
cultured aggression against the fish-mongers. In this avatar of his he appeared
silently taking long draughts of rejuvenation and renewal before the start of a
new journey.
From among the scrumptiously indulgent
brickwork, the Sadhu’s shankha’s lofty notes rose from the archaically
subversive symbolism of religion of the mound and sailed over the pond. The
sound of this mystic instrument of percussion is always Godly irrespective of
what kind of mouth puffs which type of smell into it. So the divine conch-shell’s
message loosened up even the last sinew of inhibition in the fish-mongers’
minds. They thus started freely harpooning the fish with their gaffs.
Profoundly viviparous message of the
divinity through the conch-shell sang:
Oh birds, now that the watchman isn’t
too strict today,
Come and play with nature,
Have a wholesome breakfast till noon ,
Come ye lazy storks, come soon!
Come waders, insects wait in thy beak’s
name!
Come everybody, as it’s only the nature’s
game!
But today the watchman wasn’t to be
perturbed by these sweet nothings. His face bore a regal calmness of starry
skies on tranquil nights. His composed demeanour seemed to convince him it was
just a little holiday before the most important, perhaps the final, phase of
his duty on earth as a good human being.
A koi, a small eaglet of the
hawk family, was helicoptering over a prey in the adjoining shrubs. It also
noticed the divinity’s message and off it went from the land to the little
lough. The old man saw it flapping its feathers––it can give shame to a kingfisher
like this, he thought––at a stationary point in air above the water. With
quicksilver preying reflexes it suddenly hurtled down at a sizzling speed. Such
a dead dumping of its body by a living being would’ve trivialised the
inflationary and expansionist ego of any aerodynamics engineer.
He was filled with wonderment at this
resplendent pageant of nature, “Countless are the ways and means of nature! So
many preying faculties, and matching survival instincts as well!”
His spell of wonderment was suddenly
shaken by the tragic paradox of life and death:
“Just a second before its death in
those claws, the fish was so happy and then...” he looked into the sky with
some dejection. But suddenly his eyes lit up, “No, life is more powerful than
death, because it lasts for so many seconds. Death’s game is just a matter of a
single second. Life such a big game! Death such a little one!”
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