Rainy flashback
By:Rajbir Deswal
Some three decades back if you went to my village, you had to cross three natural drains, a pretty thick jungle of wild growth with butterflies flitting about and, above all, an appreciably large water logged area.
Picking one’s way through the fields after scaling these ‘obstacles’ and with sufficient hop stop and jump and swim, one was able to catch a glimpse of a tiny hamlet with two havelis dwarfing the mud-houses. It was then the real homecoming for us, the natives.
On the way were women singing folk songs to lighten the burden of transplanting paddy while their children ‘trampled’ the slushy waters and the infants lay with their thumbs in the mouth in the make shift cradles hanging from jamun trees in the shady grove.
During the rainy season, my village became an island and you could not reach there without having to negotiate through chest-deep waters. Here and there, where the water was deeper, village urchins would put a flag for you to avoid the course. These children wore like a garland flower of a lotus-like growth with while and green combination.
There were countless people in my village who were bitten by snakes and almost everyone of them claimed having survived the bites of “a dozen snakes, each equal to a lathi measure, every time”. Oldies described the snakes as “not so dangerous for they were the species seen around so frequently only when there were rains.
Over the years, I gradually became a casual rather almost a non-visitor to the village. But there was no keeping out progress and the village witnessed reclamation of all and surrounding it which at one time used to be a large reservoir of water.
The village ceased to be an island even during the rainy season and since there was a pucca road I could drive up to my house without the obstacle race and missing at the same time the female chorus in the paddy fields. The scenario had changed to the extent that urchins chased and stoned your car.
As development proceeded apace, the natural drains, the quick jungle, the jamun grove, the mud-houses and the huge ponds, all vanished, gone were havelis too.
But recently, when I happened to visit my village once again to see my father still clinging to his moorings all alone it was just like the experience three decades back. The excessive rains had submerged all the development, making it seem just like old days.
From a distance, the village looked like an island. I stopped my car a good two kilometres away and with my pants folded up, waded through the water feeling the years slipping off my back as I experienced the long-forgotten excitement of it all. I was almost frolicking while all who gazed at me looked puzzled at the sight.
The childhood sensation once again got the better of me and like the boy who was lost in a mela and was united with his parents afterwards, I became ecstatic. But my euphoric vision got blurred somewhat when father said someone had died of snakebite in the vicinity.
Obviously, with progress man’s vulnerability also increases. The return to the halcyon days of yore is not an unmixed blessing!
Some three decades back if you went to my village, you had to cross three natural drains, a pretty thick jungle of wild growth with butterflies flitting about and, above all, an appreciably large water logged area.
Picking one’s way through the fields after scaling these ‘obstacles’ and with sufficient hop stop and jump and swim, one was able to catch a glimpse of a tiny hamlet with two havelis dwarfing the mud-houses. It was then the real homecoming for us, the natives.
On the way were women singing folk songs to lighten the burden of transplanting paddy while their children ‘trampled’ the slushy waters and the infants lay with their thumbs in the mouth in the make shift cradles hanging from jamun trees in the shady grove.
During the rainy season, my village became an island and you could not reach there without having to negotiate through chest-deep waters. Here and there, where the water was deeper, village urchins would put a flag for you to avoid the course. These children wore like a garland flower of a lotus-like growth with while and green combination.
There were countless people in my village who were bitten by snakes and almost everyone of them claimed having survived the bites of “a dozen snakes, each equal to a lathi measure, every time”. Oldies described the snakes as “not so dangerous for they were the species seen around so frequently only when there were rains.
Over the years, I gradually became a casual rather almost a non-visitor to the village. But there was no keeping out progress and the village witnessed reclamation of all and surrounding it which at one time used to be a large reservoir of water.
The village ceased to be an island even during the rainy season and since there was a pucca road I could drive up to my house without the obstacle race and missing at the same time the female chorus in the paddy fields. The scenario had changed to the extent that urchins chased and stoned your car.
As development proceeded apace, the natural drains, the quick jungle, the jamun grove, the mud-houses and the huge ponds, all vanished, gone were havelis too.
But recently, when I happened to visit my village once again to see my father still clinging to his moorings all alone it was just like the experience three decades back. The excessive rains had submerged all the development, making it seem just like old days.
From a distance, the village looked like an island. I stopped my car a good two kilometres away and with my pants folded up, waded through the water feeling the years slipping off my back as I experienced the long-forgotten excitement of it all. I was almost frolicking while all who gazed at me looked puzzled at the sight.
The childhood sensation once again got the better of me and like the boy who was lost in a mela and was united with his parents afterwards, I became ecstatic. But my euphoric vision got blurred somewhat when father said someone had died of snakebite in the vicinity.
Obviously, with progress man’s vulnerability also increases. The return to the halcyon days of yore is not an unmixed blessing!
No comments:
Post a Comment