Cycle Wallah

On our regular morning visits to the mini zoo in our campus, Jaysha and I often sit for hours staring at the birds and their habits. Today, however, the first thing that caught my amusement was a fancy bi-cycle. It was one of those typical Hero cycles, gaunt, ugly and bottle green. But what was peculiar was the wry ornamentation with which it was adorned. It had side mirrors with a heavy handle, like the likes of a motor bike, a huge bell and a horn, a red rubber hose crumpled to look like a rubber hair trigger on the area between the handle and the wheels, a multicolored spoke cover, red plastic pansies stuck to the handle and a frilly red felt seat with frills. It had a huge head light which could be operated with the energy produced by the cycle in motion. And there was a red, flappy mud guard too!

I could have laughed at it and had almost pointed it out to my girl. But I was caught short. Near the cycle was the owner of this beautified piece of iron. He had dressed up in fresh and neatly ironed clothes and had a watch on his wrist. He wore micro -cellular rubber shoes with the front open and clean dark brown socks. He had a slightly flushed face with eyes quite prominent as if outlined by kohl. He sat awaiting in the shade.

I tried to hypothesize and used my womanly intuitions and tried to give the man an occupation and intention. He could be a gardener of the big houses of professors, who had dressed up on his Sunday best in order to meet someone. He could be a father waiting to pick up his child from the campus school. Or he could be an electrician called upon to discuss the status of the current generator. Something, somehow did not add up perfectly.

After a while, the man took out a strip of medicines and tried to open a plastic bottle of water. It is then that my eyes fell upon his hands. He was a man affected with leprosy and some of his fingers were deformed and stubbed. It then occurred to me that he was a patient who had come to the nearby community hospital and had simply ridden down to watch the birds. He had put on the socks, even in such a prickly weather, to prevent further injury to his feet and maybe had even tried to cover up his deformed feet lest he be noticed and marked out .

The cycle was in fact an extension of him. The dressing up was not for ornamental purpose. It was to enhance utility and durability of both .The mirrors were helpful as patients have eye sight problem …. the horn and the light could be simply to make his ride more stable and safer. The thick seat cover could be to lessen friction to avoid further bruise. As for the mud guard and the spoke cover, they could be purely for facility and purpose .The man’s wounded pride, the irreversible scars and his deformity was not for all to see. He had tried to glorify the being as best as he could, though slightly going overboard, to camouflage the idiosyncrasy. He was apprehensive of social disapproval of his state and oddity and had hence dressed up, to adhere to a standard, a normal. The same, he did for his cycle.

I was unable to forgive myself for sometime, for laughing at his possession. I had belittled his wish and freedom. What I had failed to recognize was the pride that the man took of his belonging, however small it was. For him it could mean his costliest piece of vehicle and a way to freedom of movement. Like himself, he had dressed it up with attentive care and time.
I returned home, humbled and a lesson heavy in my heart. Generally we tend to understand all, name all, analyze and have an explanation for everything. Things beyond our comprehensibility, experience and perception is clearly jeered at. However maturity of living lies in understanding that everything is in a way and they are so, due to specific reasons best known .Nothing is out of place and that everything- beautiful, odd or ugly fits into one whole, universal set. We need to look at everything as it is and enjoy its freedom rather than trying to set it up into a house of generality and neutrality

My Baby Blue

My baby girl was born on a windy, February afternoon. The nurses took her away and wrapped her in a blue blanket from head to toe. All that I could see was a rather stubby nose and a blue bundle cradling near me.
The next few days were like a cycle of an half hour long feed followed by potty followed by spells of sleep followed by wails and frequent nappy changes.
I moved through the house with hair pulled back(which I had not run a comb through, for the third consecutive day) and urine soiled night gowns(which resembled more like pillow covers),smelling a peculiar concotation of dettol, urine and baby powder. My long beauty baths were replaced by short quick showers with no time to rub down.
Amongst all the thousandth unsolicited advices given to me earlier, nobody had prepared me for this.
Then, followed the stage of colic abdominal pains where I could do nothing but hold the squeaking baby all through the night. It was only in the wee hours that we mother and daughter would fall asleep. Frantic calls to the family doctor and a closet of medicines were a common site. And to think that one goes through all this and even manages to come out a winner, a mother.
Now when I look up at my talkative two- year old and wipe out a curl from her forehead- I smile. I smile for she has made my life worth. It is through her impish smile, clear sparkling eyes and her thick curls flirting in the wind, that I feel proud. Evenings are a time of togetherness where my daughter and I go for undestined walks and return with a trodden flower, a rare fern or a shiny peace of glass and try to understand life through these.
True, nobody had told me that motherhood is such.

Rain

I always had an affinity for the rains. When my friends invariably voted for the winter, I would quietly revel the rains.
In the early rainy days, when I would get up into the windy mornings, the sky would already be heavy with nimbus clouds impregnated with water from the nearby perennial rivers. There would be a lull and the sky would be dark and hanging low. All of a sudden a cool, nippy wind would sweep down, blowing a chilly whiff around the area. The ambience would be grey, dull and chilly and we would be forced to keep our bulb lights on, even at seven in the morning. The wind would bring with it the ethereal radio’s muffled voice playing an immortal melody.
However there would be no thunder and an occasional lightening would intercept the morning twilight. People would be scurrying back hurriedly into the by lanes of Cuttack, with their stock of daily groceries or a baby clutched to their waists. The pessimistic electricity supply would immediately conk off as if on effect.
The stage set and people prewarned -the rains would come. Big drops of water. Very cold and hard on your face.Sometimes their strength hurts.But ,the rains would continue to fall mercilessly as if to unload its grief. At times, it would cruelly lash out, irrelevant to the bird caught in mid flight, to the boy standing under a shambolic thach.or the petty shopkeepers trying to pull down their shutters.
I, on my part would selfishly savior the moments. I would try to embrace the moist laden wind and throw open the windows. I would bravely venture out shortly into the rains and wet my face and feet. To watch the rainbow colored bubbles melting into flowing water is sheer poetry for me. The incessant, abominable water drops would pour out all that it has to give…, on the wooden garden bench, fill the potted plants and wash even the remote crevices on the roof With beauty and monotony, the rains would rage and rant continuously for hours. In these times I would withdraw into the quietness of my room, light a candle and pick up an intriguing book. The showers would spray me, through the open window, at intervals and remind me to acknowledge its existence. I would make myself some frothy coffee and team it with crispy,spicy bhajjis .
It is only late in the evening that the rain would decide to stop and it does so in the same suddenness as it appeared. A limp sun would show his face, for the first time after a day’s tussle with the grey clouds. However the sun would retreat back hurriedly, devoid of its strength. There would be calmness and only a few persistent crows would come out to clear their throats and caw. People would wade through knee deep ,clogged water and children would jump from one puddle to the other and fill the open drains with little colorful paper boats.The earth awashed squeaking clean ,the trees and plants nod with satisfaction and approval. One can hear the conches blowing as the evening prayers take place in the households and the day pulls to an end.
The rain is a soliloquy to life and its energies This outpour is a pacifier. It energizes and refreshes ones soul and revitalizes life .Through it Nature tell us - to hold on, to estimate ourselves in relation to itself ,to bereft ourselves of all littleness and partiality and to learn to give with selfless abandon.

Big Mother Bear

She was one of the two unmarried women who brought me up. No, Bada mummy did not bring me up; rather she freed me to grow up. Often I called her Gudunu, a name which connoted nothing, signified nothing. She was Bada Mummy mainly for three good reasons- first, she was the elder of the two parents, second she was a big woman, a well robust one with an admirable height of 5’6.And third, she had a big heart.

Gudunu was the color of warm ochre, with full, distinct lips and a round, child- like face. Even at the seasoned age of seventy nine, she was always dressed appropriately with her near grey hair neatly oiled and pulled back to a bun fastened by hair pins. She immaculately wore sheer chiffon saris on a sleeveless blouse and had minimal ornaments on her-a gold band on her wrist and a thin chain around her neck.

She was a rather ordinary, uncomplicated and an unassuming individual- nothing one needed to look up to. Yet, it is from her that I learnt to live life as a luxury and to rejoice live as a treat. For her, failure and fall in life were acceptable. The craft was to move ahead with élan. She publicly confessed unapologetically, to be attached to life’s materialism and to love life and its goodies .She was sometimes selfish, sometimes attention seeking and sometimes plain obstinate. Yet, on seeing her one felt an urge to hug her.
Bada mummy was like a breath of mint air to my rather staid live. She introduced me to my happy, sportive self. When she was in her sixties, I was entering my teens. Like an untypical adult, we shared naughty jokes, sign languages, impossible dreams, senseless jabber, tips on beauty and hair care, fought at times, discussed crushes, secrets, watched spine chilling ghost stories on television and swapped novels.

I have always confidently accredited my personality to have germinated from her. Through her I learnt to dream without reason, to love without care, to dress up, to dress down, to watch Western movies, to appreciate fine architecture, to enjoy gardening., to neatly manage a house, to drink tea from china -ware, to enjoy sinfully rich food, the nuances of cooking ,to acquire a pet, to love the shade grey, to be diplomatic, to be painfully frank, to sometimes behave with necessary etiquettes, to be allowed to cry alone and the freedom to be open to everything.

She was a free spirit, a lady who would wear salwar kameez in her nursing hostel days at Delhi, cycled to the India Gate on Sundays, read Bengali literature, jumped the campus wall and visited late night shows in cinema theatres, wore boots, kept a Muslim cook when caste was a big issue and was non religious –all this post independence, in the late fifties when women were yet confined in terms of place, dreams and education. She was a pioneer as she became the first woman of the state of Orissa to have achieved a Masters degree in Nursing in those conservative times when women were ascribed the role of being only women….
Bada Mummy has had her part of sufferings, too. She had one leg of filariasis, had lost her youth’s dreams of love and family and had emptied herself from home to live alone with Choto Mummy. Yet, she did not dwell in her past much. Rarely did she become quiet and retrospective.

My Gudunu died two years back of multi organ failure. After years of intense yearning, now I have no regret, for I understand that everything good is not necessarily immortal. At a time when her whole body was infected with septicemia and she would be vomiting around thirty times a day, she would weakly inform me that she is better, lest I worry. In those dark days, torn between baby care of my four months daughter and the wish to be near her, I could do nothing, except pray. I prayed hard that she should not die and she kept on surviving and suffering. Till a day, when I willed god to make up his mind quickly, to take her if he had to and relieve her of pain, puss and plight. That rainy night, on the nineteenth of September, she gasped her last and slowly slipped away.

Green Queen

To the extreme left of the courtyard, is an old tamarind tree. Quite nondescript due to its age, position, commonality and its fruitlessness, it stands alone unbothered about rebuke or care, admiration or utility. The tree is an ascetic .It is a perpetual teacher, self controlled and composed. It teaches to look for Truth within.

A part of the tree and its roots have been corroded by white ants and ebonized by a fire. No foliage grows on that part. However, the other part bears leaves and the tree thrives on the nourishment derived from the bisected, conducive roots. Even in this precarious state, it has dutifully stood up to time against rain, hail, storm, and the vagaries of the sun, the winter and the pleasant weather. It has lived through the whimsical fall and rise of ideas, governments, policies, economies, norms and culture. Now, a host of red ants line up into the tree and dig into the sweet sour syrup running in its veins. An ive to tombs the tree in .It draws strength and support from this aged tree and has formed a sheet of screen as if to cover the bareness and nakedness of the branches from disgrace. A good many years old, this weather-beaten tree has lost its youth and its dark green luster of life. Due to its scanty foliage, no bird makes it its home Even as it is aware of its loosing years of fertility and procreation it has not lost its grace. Therein lays an awkward beauty in this tree. Unlike the young trees whose bodies are supple and smooth, the whole tree is covered with dry veins wiring out like a net of neurons. The sinews of the tree distinctly stand out like the corded veins of a laborer which tell the story of toil and age .It also tells the story of brevity and stoicism. The dark amber colored, youthful trees full of vivacity and youthful shallowness are no match to this somber, blackened tree. The branches do not jut out shamelessly. Rather, the ivory black arms of the tree gracefully point to the sky, ahead like a curvaceous danseuse positioned with her arms raised upwards. The dark beauty is actualized. The aging tree speaks that Beauty is more than allure. It lies in the spirit of living and surviving in adversity with dignity and grace and not calling in until the last bugle is blown.