Mother India

My earliest memories date back to sometime before Indian Independence or sometime right after that. Those were the times when humans and nature co-existed, how do I put it, eco-tourism at its best. Rural life was close to a fascinating wild life safari, at least for me, if not for my overworked mother, “Bou” as we used to call her, who had to protect our cattle from the nearby predators.

There is one instance which I remember very clearly. My father, a freedom fighter was not much of a domestic person; his interest in household issues was minimal, which caused a lot of grief to my mother. In a poverty stricken pre-independence Assam, Bou tried to make ends meet while taking care of five growing children, cattle, farmers and more importantly food for everyone. Also, before I forget to mention, our neighborhood was infested by panthers, the real ones. Protecting our cattle from these troublemakers was a nerve wrecking task for us.

One night, Bou was washing the dishes in our backyard. (Back then ladies had to clean utensils with ashes and coconut peels. There was no sink, no water supply, they would simply sit with loads of huge utensils by the well and work on them till they shine).So where were we? Ah ok, Bou with her dishes, yes, so she was doing the dishes and we were probably sitting by a mild fire nearby. As usual, she was stressed out with the daily chores and quite upset about something; we tried our best to avoid bothering her and kept ourselves at a distance from her.

My siblings and I were immersed in a conversation, when we felt that something had moved behind the cattle’s barn-Guhali, as we would call it. Suspicion and an unexplained fear of death took over us kids. Suddenly, something growled loudly from behind the Guhali and before we knew, it made a huge leap towards Bou. Bou, who was completely, oblivious to this entire thing, was taken by surprise, when the panther nearly pounced on her. She didn’t realize it was a larger cousin of the backyard kitty. Upset, as she already was, she picked up a vessel and started hitting the panther left and right. The panther, probably never expected to get bashed by a utensil, of all things. It tried to save its last bit of dignity by growling and attempting to pounce on Bou. But Bou, true in her Maa Durga avatar, was not going to be easily defeated. She probably even yelled and accused the beast for all her domestic distress, she said something like, I am already in so much trouble and I wont take S*&% from you now. The panther, realizing the meticulous threat to its life had to make a quick decision. IT JUST FLED!

We of course, just stood there watching, too petrified to react. We were not sure whether to applaud Bou for her courage to or fear her rage. “Hell hath no fury than a woman scorned”, I told myself and pledged never to anger my mother. Years later, looking back at the incident, I made up my mind. More than her rage, it was her courage that needed to be lauded, not just for her courage to defend her family from a ferocious panther; but for her courage to protect her own from all dangers, save them against all odds, and raise them to be good human beings. In the true sense of the phrase, she was indeed, “Mother India”!

Ginger Fry

The days of singlehood in Shillong should count as one of the most blissful phases of my life. In the cozy bachelor’s pad in Lachumiere, I was relishing the archetypal life of a prodigal bachelor. Meat, Liquor and no women to control my wife, my life was what can only be described as the distinguished face of unapologetic vanity.

I had just joined ASTC as an Assistant Superintendent and was blessed with a salary of three hundred rupees, an amount that was grand back then. I didn’t have a lot of expenses as the rent was barely ten or twenty rupees and food was often donated to a bachelor living alone (“poor thing” he lives all by himself, “let’s cook some food for him”). Yeah, apart from my comfortable life I was blessed with kind neighbours and charitable colleagues.

In once such occasions, some of my chadi buddies from Assam dropped by for a short stay. Meanwhile I was planning to take a quick leisure trip to my home. I had already spent most of salary in purchasing goodies for my niece and nephew (my elder brother’s adorable offspring) which included a gramophone by the way. Besides it was the end of the month so the kitchen was emptier that it usually is. What was left was some fresh ginger which again was donated by someone. I gave my cook-cum-domestic help a small sum of money and asked him to take care of my friends assuming that they would have a little bit of their own pocket money.

On reaching home, I really got home sick and my quick leisure trip became a two weeks vacation. I returned exactly two weeks later to be greeted by a rather agitated man- my servant. His first words were- I am quitting. My immediate thought was that my friends had either bullied him or abused him.

“Why?” I asked with concern.
“Sahaab” he started “when you were here, I was so happy, I was so well fed. I didn’t get to eat anything in the last two weeks?
“You mean my friends ate and didn’t give you anything to eat? I asked
“No Sahaab, I don’t know what material your friends are made of. All the time you were away, they just asked me to boiled rice and fry the ginger that was left in the kitchen!”
“What, that’s all they had?”
“Yes Sahaab, morning noon and night.. Ginger fry, ginger fry ginger fry!”


I fell short of words! I didn’t know what to say.

THE PVR TREAT

It wasn’t a dream come true for me, as I had never dreamt there is a place like this is the world. For the city-bred youngsters of today or the people fairly acquainted with the hustle and bustle of Bangalore, this probably would not mean anything; but it was a walk in the cloud for me. I am talking about my first experience in the PVR theatre.

Born to a freedom fighter (my father) and a frugal mother sometime in the 1940s, you can imagine my life was not very luxurious. My first memory of a movie theatre dates back to days when Technicolor was just beginning to make its way. The tickets would cost us half an anna (which was hard to earn by the way) and eateries were out of question. There would be a projector in the name of a movie theatre (we would call it Cinema Hall); no galleries, no balconies, if we were lucky we’d grab a couple of stained chairs, if not, the damp floor was good enough. I can’t recall many of the movies I watched, mainly because I barely could pronounce their names. They were movies about wars, and brave men and women. Mughle- Azam was one movie that I remember very well. I saw colored people for the first time on such a huge screen, they looked gigantic and real! There was a song where the dancer was seen in thousands of mirrors, there were also some very real war scenes with lots of horses, elephants and carriages. I watched them all, stunned, pleasantly daunted by the make believe world of celluloid. That was an incredible experience.

Having said that, my first experience at PVR was a hundred times “incredibler” than that day! The Oxford Dictionary might not have an adjective good enough to describe my emotions that day. The white movie tickets with yellow patches on it, gave me an idea that it would be very sophisticated (something that my little offspring pretends to be.. he he). I was a little nervous, not knowing why, but I did manage to walk on my own without holding my daughter’s hand. They made me queue up at a security check point, (I kept wondering about the reason for running security checks for a movie, they are meant for highways only). The security guard ran a metal detector all over me and frankly he did tickle me when he put it in my armpits.

What followed next felt very surreal; I felt a very soft green carpet soaking up my feet into its warmth as I took my steps inside the theatre area! Above my head there were many lights patterned in a way that the golden light melted and merged their way into the many smiling faces that had come to share that day with me. But that sight could not hold my attention for long, as my other senses started working and I could smell the titillating aroma of hundreds of eateries. If I my daughter hadn’t held my hand after we walked in, I would have forgotten all civility and jumped at them like a monkey broken free from a zoo and gobbled down everything in sight. “They are called food stalls”, my daughter told me. “I do not care what they are called; I care about what’s inside them!”, the reply came out before I could shut my mouth. She smiled at me (for a change), walked off to a counter near by and bought me some vegetable noodles. I was on a call with my elder daughter who was to deliver a child the next day; but the aroma of those noodles was so alluring that I could not continue my conversation with her. I grabbed the paper cone that read Yo! China Veg Manchurian Combo, and finished up every morsel inside that box in a matter of a few minutes.

Soon after that my daughter led me into to theatre hall and we took our seats. I had requested her for a packet of pop corn which she surprisingly obliged. Eating popcorns inside a theatre had always been one of my dreams and I was more than delighted to have that fulfilled. Although I was a little upset that she didn’t allow me to hold the popcorn cone all by myself worrying that I would eat more than I could digest.

I don’t remember the name of the movie that we were watching. It was one of those English films where the world comes to an end and only one person can save it. While watching the movie I could not stop wondering though “what if the whole world actually comes to an end? Are we, human beings, so engulfed in want of material possessions, measurable success and things of that sort that we neglect the one thing that makes us different from other species- humanity?”

I didn’t enjoy the movie much as I could barely understand it, but the evening on the whole was dream like. I missed my wife, who has been my partner in crime for over quarter of a century. I wished that I could hold her hand and share that moment with her because I knew she would have been very, very happy to share something so fascinating with me.

Of ghosts and trees and bamboos and piss

Growing up in a land blessed with nature’s bounty is something very few people are privileged with these days. Staring at the concrete jungle that my daughter lives in makes me miss the lush green fields of my birth place Lakhimpur. Well, from an investor’s point of view, the place hasn’t much to offer except for a business route that connects Arunachal Pradesh to Assam. But, for a man who has seen the place from his infancy Lakhimpur is a haven of love, familiarity, miles and miles of scenic greenery with the cuckoo singing in glory and most importantly a legion of cheerful memories.

Life wasn’t as it is today for kids back then. We didn’t have I phones, MP3 players or play stations back then. Not that I am complaining, our games and pranks were quite COOL too, although it would be tough for kids cannot relate to them today.
I clearly remember we used to have bamboo trees in our backyard and some prankster, someone just like me was upto some notoriety. It is embarrassing to mention his act, but if I don’t it will drain the fun out of my story. There were these bunch of kids actually who would come to chop down our bamboos, worse they would pee on them (kind of a gang war thing actually).

“This calls for some serious measures”, I told myself.

So one fine day, I hid behind the bamboo bushes and waited for the strikers to hit. The kids gathered at our bamboo bushes for their ritual mischief. They saw one bamboo of the branches lying flat on the ground and perhaps decided to urinate on it before chopping it off, and so they did… pee on it.

The moment their nitrogenous discharge fell on the branch, Whooosh, the bamboo branch suddenly rose up to the sky, all on its own, as if it was offended by the kids. It barely missed hitting the kids on their heads. The rising bamboo created quite a havoc as no one in our village had even seen anything like that before. The phenomenon that the kids witnessed seemed supernatural to their rustic knowledge. I sat there watching and much to my delight and the kid’s disgust, the mysterious bamboo branch actually spilled drops of their own urine on their faces as it rose. The kids, mortified, dispersed like startled ants and vanished out of my sight within minutes.

Word soon spread that the bamboo trees in our backyard are haunted by evil spirits. People started staying away from them, while the old and the wise suggested that we perform puja for it. With lesser human proximity the bamboo bush ended up being an abode for monkeys which continues to be so even today (as if we didn’t have enough trouble already). The little bastards however stopped chopping our and molesting our trees and dared not to cross even a miles distance from the trees.

Meanwhile I forgot to mention that while I was hiding behind the bushes, I had actually pulled the Bamboo branch and held it down while waiting for the boys. The moment they pissed on the branched, I let of the branch scaring the crap or in this case piss out of them.

I know it’s not a great story, just a personal feat, a treasured memory that cheers me up amidst my daily dose of bland food and nauseating medicines.

A story WELL told…

My younger daughter often calls me “naughty boy” or “impish”, thanks to my cohering habit of sneaking a cigarette into my wind pipe every now and then. Her shrill rebukes pierce through my heart but I choose not to retaliate hoping someday she’d understand. I just wish she’d understand that living in Bangalore and spending the whole day alone (while she is out at office) in a single BHK with frequent power cuts, there isn’t much for an old man to do than walk up to the tea stall nearby and drag a fag! Besides, if this behavior is impish I wonder what would have she done had she met me during my puerility.

The particular incident I am about to narrate happened when I was about a decade old. My curiosity levels were high like any inquisitive kid and being “careful” was non existent in my dictionary. I cannot recall clearly, but I do remember that something had fallen into our well. Those days there were no facility of running water and taps, not even tubes wells. What we had at our little rural domicile were bore-well like structures, only not as deep or narrow. Anyway, here’s what happened… I saw something fall into our well and raced towards it to see what it was. There was barely any light in the well, so I rested my belly on the thin wall of the well and leaned further down to see what had fallen. Before I knew, gravity had its impact on my fragile body and I was wrenched into the well. Whoosh! All of a sudden it was pitch dark and water everywhere. Since I didn’t know how to swim I hit the panic button and looked at death straight into the eye. All the sixteen hundred Hindu deities came to my mind except that I didn’t remember half of their names. Nevertheless amidst the fear, breathlessness and will to live I chanted all the mantras and prayers that I could remember, including multiplication tables.

I still do not know if the Gods heard my prayer; took pity on me or were simply amazed at my ability to remember math at such an ungodly occasion, but my prayers were heard. I heard a familiar voice at the opening of the well. “Bimal, Bimal” It was farner that called out my name.

“Bimal, stay calm. Don’t panic. We’ll get you up!”

“Don’t panic, huh? Don’t panic my a**!! You get down in here and then we’ll see if you panic or don’t? But the question is what sane person jumps into a well anyway?

“Bimal, Bimal, Are you there?”

What? Ofcourse I am here, I fell into a well, do you expect me to get wings and fly out of on my own? “Yes I am here, I fell down” I called out coyly.

"Okay. Here’s the deal…hold on to the water bucket that I am suspending. Hold on tight and we’ll pull you out okay. "

“Okay”. I answered
“Are you scared?”
“Uh Huh!”

The water bucket was suspended and I caught hold of its cold metal and the rope attached to it. Our farmer carefully pulled me up with his strong hands, increasing my hope to survive with every pull. The well was deep and it did take a while for me to be pulled up to the ground. As I approached the mouth of the well, a gallantry felling overwhelmed me but that was short-lived. I saw my elder sister anxiously waiting for my arrival and the moment I saw her I realized the rest of the family would be equally anxious, especially my mother. Worse, she’d be furious over my mischief, probably waiting to welcome me with a long cane in her hand. I had been rescued from the well and my precious live saved, great; but who would save me from my mother’s bashing?

I gathered myself up and this time it took more courage than being in the cold water. The moment I got back on ground, boom, like the Gods and Rakshasas disappear in Television serials, I vanished! I held my breath and started running as fast as my legs would carry me. (Although my sister did manage to catch hold of me for a fraction of a minute and hit a hard slap across my face. But that was still better than my mother’s bashing.) I returned home hours later when my mother’s tidal wrath had subsided and things returned to normal again. I thank God for saving my life, but more importantly I thank him for giving me the strength to defy a beating from my mother.

I could never gauge the magnitude of the risqué I had put myself in back then, I only realize it now. We, human beings do not believe in miracles unless they are physical or grand. But miracles occur in our lives all the time, we just don’t recognize them. Had our farmer not been there at the right moment, I would have drowned and never known what the rest of my life had to offer. If this isn’t a miracle what is?