17
If We Leave Humans Apart,
Nature
Finds itself Bedecked with Emotions
and Anointed with Happiness
It
was March. Spring side of the season had put its pubertal promiscuity on the
canvas to paint a picture with the ebriating and coloured cocktail of mild
winter and mild summer. Yes, perennially flawless colours of spring were
zestfully sprouting forth in new buds!
The
countryside emerging out of subversively cold caverns, now found itself bedecked
with lifeful emotions. Captivatingly new, yellowish sprouts could be seen in
the cold-beaten, rough and old foliage of the banyan. Below, the windfallen
leaves had made the ground quite fertile. But still, luscious grass won’t grow
there, because the mighty mythical-shadow above willn’t allow it for the
provenance of an equally old and fabled truth.
In
the bright noon of a March
sun, when the shadow becomes soothing, sitting under the banyan the watchman
was knitting a fishing net. He’d made a little handloom using a small piece of
finger-like wood tucked among his fingers. Other end of the thin cords was tied
to the hind part of a charpoy.
Seeing
his free manoeuvres one could make it out very easily that his neighbour had
gone to pay a visit to some devotee.
There
were some ducks in the pond, which hadn’t left for their Himalayan abode till
now. In gently lolloping water they were swimming sabbatically, as if even the
summer giving its coming call from a distance was unable to break their leisure
sojourn.
The
water mark around the mound had gone low. More importantly, the moat separating
the mound from embankment had dried up, thus leaving the outside world open to
the mound from this side as well.
A
little heap of nylon threads was lying in jumblement near him. And drawing out
cords from this niggling mess his artistic fingers were making a beautiful
pattern on the tiny loom. Oodles of charm shone in his feeble, old eyes as they
blessed this ornamentally designed piece of nettings for the daughters of
water. Their Godly martyrdom for the sake of some hungry belly should come to
be done in the embrace of artistically systematised designs and motifs, not in
those suffocating, snaring, gallowy clutches of unhewn threads in the peevish
mass of nettings which the fishing party arrived with. If he’d his will fructified
he’d have changed the whole of it. Only if his fingers had that much power left
in them to weave a wholesomely artistic big net for the daughters of his
passion! But no, he couldn’t do that; growing old as he was. All he could do
was to weave as much of laurel wreath as possible, so that it could be stitched
on to the torn holes in the irritably large and crude nettings.
So,
in his spare time he’d weave as much as possible. And his two little friends sola
and paitya gave him ample company in this soulful endeavour of his, ever
fuelled by the besieging exigencies of his passion. These were the hand-held
instruments for making a fishing net. The former was held in the right hand,
having two wires with needle holes at both ends, while in between the nylon
thread was spooled around. It was his writer’s analogue of a pen, because with
its nib like ends he manoeuvred the nylon threads in the emerging filigreed
pattern. The other was a bamboo strip with a narrowly tapered end. It was held
by the net-weaver’s left hand.
Sometimes
on those long nights the loneliness would wake him up, fraternally whispering
in his ears, “Old friend, let us spend some time with each other!” And arise he’d
peremptorily. His uncomplaining fingers would then lit the lantern whose sleepy
wick lightened up his part of the world-–a tiny hut, a religioner just by birth,
a soul, and the frail figure of a duty bound old man.
The
immortal goldfish in his heart’s aquarium would then wake up too, sending
enlivening palpitations through his weakened body. Starting weaving the net was
the next logical step. His artful fingers, thus, started knitting out aesthetic
essence out of that orphaned time of some unknown dark hour.
Characteristically
semi-luminous unveiling by the lantern’s steady glow showed the net-weaver’s
little possessions. A little sack half full of flour, a glass bottle of kerosene
oil, some little plastic jars containing salt, turmeric, sugar and chilli, a
wicker-worked bowl-shaped basket hanging from the thatched roof with his meager
supply of raw vegetables, a few cheap aluminum utensils and a few pairs of old
saggy clothes hanging from a hook in the sinewy low roof was all one could see
at the first glance inside. There was one more thing too, which wasn’t visible
from outside. It was the symbol of his religion, his birth-born faith, scion of
his apparent identity and to the world his evident religious faculty. Guess
what? It was a calendar hung safely in a corner by the entranceway. By the look
of it, it was at least decade-and-a-half old. Months and dates printed in Urdu
seemed centuriously old. Their look of obliteration proudly put forward the
fact that man-made time scale had become obsolete for it and its owner. Above
this entombed time’s tabulation was a picture-–a greenish halo of light and a
verse from the Quran written across it:
La eelaha Illallallah
Mohammed Rasoolullah
Salal lallahu Alahai
Vasallam
It
was hung just fortuitously like his informal Mohammedan body blanketing a
humanist soul.
The
pole in the middle of the hut, which supported the central roof log, prevented
the lantern rays from reaching this calendar. Its thick shadow fell on the only
thatch decoration of the old man. It seemed as if Indian Islam wanted to sneak
inside a dark, sheltering grove; a sort of escapism in some safe corner. Seeing
which the cultural nationalists or the propagators of Hindutva raised an
accusing finger, charging it was nothing but their loath to consider India
Mystically
oblivious of this controversially spiralling teetotum the watchman would go on
weaving inventoried orderliness out of the cluttered heap of nylon threads
lying near him. Drowsily amorphous caliber in his fingers was sufficient to
arise a thought in any comparative mind that he was successfully bringing out the
Bengali cultural orderliness out of the rustically heaped Haryanvi culture
embaled in a bucolically grandstanding jumblement of simplicity weaponised with
satire; of dialect corrosively modified to suit the maximum number of abuses,
obscenities and foul words; of the culture of agriculture; of the arms quicker
than the minds; of the buffaloes waddling
in the pond and whole lot of work-brutes
gone insensitive to most of the sensitively refined and sophisticated things in
life.
The
Bengali sitting in that submissive posture appeared a sage musician trying to
improvise canorously redolent rhythmic notes out of this jazzy jink of Haryanvi
noise comprising of farmers’ jesting tongues, buffalo brayings, oxen lowings,
and noisy school children coming running out of it as if they had been set free
from the whirring vortex of a treacherous jail.
* * * *
In
the middle of March the sun shining pretty warmly along with gusts of mildly spiffy
breeze drew out colourful spring from the winter’s corset. The tall eucalyptus
trees in the school and along the road swayed their foliage to the soft and
silky weather. To be precise, weather was still on the winter’s side in this
period of spring’s infancy.
Dark
green wheat crop had reached its maximum height. Bulging spikes spiffily swayed
to the nimbly subtle mixture of cool and warm.
It
being the time of third and last irrigation of the crop, farmers like Bania
were worried that heavily diademed crop standing in irrigation water might give
into the crystallised passions of a spring-lorn wind gliding around the
countryside from dawn to dusk. It, however, did listen to the night’s epochal
resting whistle and went to sleeping chambers during these clear-skied nights,
when dew almost rained over the plants and trees. So, in order to utilise the
calmatively tranquil air at night, the farmers irrigated the fields only during
the nights.
The
magic and mystique of greenery had been thus sprinkled around in full fairness.
Alas, it was not for the migratory cow herder from Rajasthan! He too had house
and fields back there in the desert state. But the littlest patches of
greenness barely clutching at their existential sinews among the sand were
grossly insufficient for the big cattle flocks, whose skinny bodies and huge
horns made them appear to have committed a gastronomical delinquency.
Now
here in their land of seasonal emigration (away from droughty incertitude of
home where sand had already started to show its treacherously hot covetousness)
comprehensively thawed out herd was grazing its starved muzzle in the alkaline
wasteland palate offering the survival nibblings among the prickly shrubbery.
The
herd-keeper, his chin supported at the end of his stick, was harbouring a
mysteriously inhibited apprehension:
“These
ducks in the pond are also pardesi like us. Thank God, they don’t eat
grass for survival; otherwise the bullying farmers here would’ve eaten them raw”
The
village’s common land had shrunk to some odd square kilometres, and most of it
was covered by the landscape standing where we’re retelling the sleeping
memories of some past. Gradually decreasing common pastures and panchayat’s
fallow land now had started to create problems for these cow herders here in
this land of better pastures than their home state. It brought them in conflict with the local
farmers, who busting in their stylised masculinities gave them severe thwackings.
This
small area, however, still welcomed them generously. It had the pond, where
birds seemed to sing a pacifying song listening to which the lonesome herder
was lost of his memories about wretched sandy ordeal waiting back in his desert
home state.
“In
Bharatpur, there come so many birds in winter!” he said it aloud and saying
this turned his head westwards as if trying to imagine the big lake, a bird sanctuary
in fact, in his mind’s eye.
And
then, naturally, the solicitously flowing wavelets in the Bharatpur Lake
Looking
westwards, a strong gust of dry wind from the Rajasthan desert hit his face. It
was redolent with the smell of home and hearth. He inhaled a deep, deep morsel
of nostalgic air. His eyes were closed. And when he opened them, the sulk from
his face was magically exonerated.
The
dry wind had soaked up the moisture of his eyes. This unhumidly sagitated wind
is said to dry away the moisture from anywhere like eyes, ponds to the greenish
wheat. So, within the next week or ten days the dark greenish paint around the
fields was to turn into a yellow-whitish one. More and more water was to be
vapourised into the air from the pond, thus bringing about a gradual decrease
in its size. Then the wavelets irritated by the hottening rays would gleam somewhat
sorrowfully. There would be a little unagile look in the fish shoals. The ripening
wheat, baked almost reddish-yellow, would cropfully invite sickles and the
gradual change of late spring into summer would be done with a teary happiness:
the flowery spring giving birth to a sandy summer.
* * * *
“April1.
This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three
hundred and sixty-four.” –- Mark Twain
Leave
the universal foolishness apart. The spring was sabbatically furloughing around
the countryside. There were distinct visions of fructification.
In
ancient times, the spring festival was known as Kamadev Mahotsav or the
festival of desires. According to a bristling legend, Kamadev, the God
of sensuousness, shoots arrows around, creating rippling waves of sensual
desires. Percipient insects and birds start humming erotic songs of ecstasy and
procreation.
Frenetically
jumpy desires had come to be fruitified. The poplars along the field embankments,
which’d remained a painter’s anguish through the winter, now started to be
adorned with the artistic arcade of new leaves and shoots. Same was the rejuvenating
greenishness in keekars, which’d been cut for fuelwood by the village
women holding little axes in their hands with feministic panache.
Wild
flowers smiled with superlative charm wherever they could find some wilderness.
Neetle wild plant, white and red types of clover, wild dandelion, primrose and
thistle garlanded the wilderness. Under the hottening sun, their unmetred
wilderness saluted like a new milestone reached by any foot passing by them.
Butterflies went ebriated over them-–to pollinate, to procreate.
The
wheat crop was fastly changing to golden hues as if the colourful nature around
was acting as a sponge, soaking up the greenish paint from the cultivated
fields. Indicating the greying of crop to meet its harvesting end, there were
big yellow-grayish patches among the last little traces of faded green.
Flowery
spring in the mustard crop had already gone. Seeing its charmless deflowered
state of now one would’ve wondered whether all those uncountable yellow flowers
of early spring had drizzled down onto the ground.
The
pond was also giving a kind of sad, tranquil look despite all the cheer-up
implorations by the smiling flora around it. Devoid as it was of its fauna! The
winged visitors had already left for their summer abodes. Still, there were
some little wagtails, waders, ducks and watercrows (who were born quite late in
the season and thus too young to take a flight back with the elders) surviving
by themselves in a corner: sibling bonhomie keeping them alive by themselves,
without the nurturing care of the elders. All of them played like children; mixed
up with each other as if unaware of the difference among them.
To
knock down the human mind from its selfishly thinking perch, two ducks arrived
at the pond daily after sunset. And all of them thronged around that condescending
couple, playfully opening their tiny beaks to get parental doles from this
seemingly old duck couple.
* * * *
In
this natural region assaulted by the two extremities of hectoring weather-–hot
and cold-–balmy spring season (the delicious ferment of cool and warm) fairs
around for a little time. But during this little period of time it galores as a
most colourful spectrograph bristling with prismic overabundance.
By
mid-April the spring seems dejewelled. Wheat crop turns yellowish brown,
indicating the harvesting labour looming in the air. It seems as if all the
greenness of earlier has leached down to the pond whose water now turns mossy
green (thanks to the overworking evaporation and buffalo bathing).
But
as they say a life lived beautifully is no slave to the time period. Riotous
merrymaking by this short spring canorously defies the felony falsity, stamped
by a vainly proud time, of judging a thing’s essence by the length and breadth
of seconds spent on earth. To testify this point there’re enough wild flowers
and butterflies proving the beautiful essence of some interval of time spanning
some rhythmic fragrant seconds amidst the treacherous trap of thawed out,
bleached long hours.
Now
the sun’s warmth exceeds the critical limit for the fairy’s fair face to bear.
Hence, few flowers remain in the wilderness.
The
setting sun in the evenings shining over ripened wheat makes it look a golden
effort by the farmers. When a farmer’s daughter walks lazily across the fields
to fetch water from a well, she looks like a beautiful butterfly collecting the
last traces of spring’s juice at this fag end of those lilting, luscious
seconds.
When
the tired families of the farmers return home after an arduously-long hardwork
under the hot sun, the environment echoes with a wearily-desolate sadness for
the short-lived spring.
Brave
siblings of the migratory birds still fight it out, while the predestined twigs
and twists lay bet against their survival chances. One might wonder whether
they’ll grow up before the pond gets limited to a muddy, mossy puddle by July.
And to win the survival odds in their favour, they grow and learn faster;
speedier than the normal.
The
dying spring, however, leaves an offspring: springy hopes and aspirations of a
good wheat output in the farmers’ minds. Coming across the vibrancy of thoughts
in those simple minds, one is reminded of the spring’s perdurable, perennial
essence.
The
drops of perspiration drowsily jewelling the eyebrows and eyelids of the village
maidens become amorphous prisms-–reflecting seven colours of a married life-–through
which they see romantic visions and episodes, while the dried out wild flowers
still standing in between the furrows surrender their mortal remains to the
murmurous warmth of their palms; then and a sickle stroke entombs the dried
beauty with the eatables.
The
hardworking damsel while walking over the crofts when comes to slightly hurt
her heel, a pleasant cry of sweet pain is carried by an ecstatic whiff of air
to the distant corner of the countryside.
Under
the hatching warmth of a summer-versant sun wheat-chickens come home to roost.
If one casts a snippety look into the fields, they in return give scriptural
long reflection buzzing with lustrous hues and vivid moods of gold. Farmers
(with their combating backbone whetting its iron nerves) go all out to mine out
the resonant gaiety and vibrant stardust of the ripened gold in their fields.
It
being the season of weddings; so the sonorous sounds of bugles and drums
exhilaratively reach the rigescent ears lost in the cesspool of little, eager
voices of bulging grains inside the crop’s crowned heads.
In
this period of the spring’s natural fading with the summer’s coming of age, the
banyan gets its fruits. Small berry shaped, reddish-brown and chocolate-coloured
fruits of India
In
this season of disappearing wheat furrows, hares and rabbits do have a really
tough time. Running to survive this parlous shove by the combustible nature,
they take shelter under any isolated thicket falling in their skiddling way.
Farmers’ dogs with their forthwithly docked tails and straight pockering ears
chase them for a soft juicy meat treat. The sight of these helplessly galloping
cotton-soft lives draws out a weary compassion out of the deepest emotional
well lying almost unused inside the farmers’ hardened hearts.
Water-mouthed
hunters belonging to the scavengers’ community set out to hunt down these soft
rodents hiding beneath thickets and bushes. Mere thought of the soft juicy meat
sends champagne corks rippling in their mind, as they go on plodding the bushes
more zestfully.
Shining
wheat-husk dunes give the harvested fields a deserted look. Their thrasherward
gentle slope and a steeper one on the other end makes them resemble the typical
sandwork hot-stormily performed by the wind in deserts. In not so bright noons (because the atmosphere is
laden with pollens) these elongated domes shine silvery on the teemless
horizon.
Day
and nights the harvesting farmers draw out their sweat’s sanguinity. But there’s
always a danger of dust storms and occasional showers playing havoc with their
plans. Sometimes clouds too get excited on some such labour ridden nights.
Drops fall almost pathologically on the unhusked crop.
On one such occasion, in the eastern sky there could
be seen an incriminatingly dark cloud-–so dark that it appeared thinking of the
night’s obliteration itself–-spreading out its unwavering gloomy instinct. Then
as a ray of hope moon’s crescent cambered up with its fighting spirit along the
cloud’s fringe. It gave the thought of a supremely confident fin of a shark
swimming in the thrusting gluttonicity of dangerous waters. And later when the
pointed lunar nob (elongated big in its last phase) raised its sheen more
upwards, it appeared the emerging sail of a boat seen by someone from the
shore. It smiled there for the brutal trysts of human labour in the face of
adversarial dark night; the boat of human efforts swimming over the turbulent
waters of destiny.
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