The people of the village have a way to be always benevolent. It is in their bloods maybe. To the outsiders, they would prove Gods by their altruistic spirits in welcoming them. Even if the place is a village on Earth, they would want to make us believe we have crossed the paths of Heavens. And that’s what has always impressed me of them. Those bounteous spirits of them have yielded in their fields and how they kept plenty of them to offer to the outsiders, I guessed.
I wanted to pour all my City’s Smiles into her face. I did, as much as I could. I didn’t want to render her any less than what she gave.
She was a Woman of her husband and a Woman of one of the fields my father owned. I could see how delicately, yet with a swift, did she pat the lump of dung with her all-hands, in a way that it could tell how her hands were the practiced, efficient tools which had been routined with smoothness, since ages! How her legs had comfortable flexibility to bend like that of frogs! And, I pondered, how with an early entry of sun each day, that she would want to finish up her routine work of patting lumps of fresh, live dung which the cows would excrete to the latest the last night & would splash them upon a separate official wall known to hold hundreds of such dung upon its surface & it was the duty of that wall to make their dung proudly dry. When the wall would finish its task to dry the dung, she would peel them off with her usual hurried manner & check them vaguely if they were as crunchy as biscuits. The heap of biscuits, then, would be placed with their other fellow biscuits and as each day would awake, the fellow biscuits would have the other fellow biscuits to meet & gradually within a month, there would be a mound of biscuits, living happily in an organized manner. That day, she was late to pat dung, and as she saw me there, she provided me with a green, smooth smile, just as her dung. And I still remember, her smile of dung melted into my hearts of sanitized eternity.
I had been forcefully taken into my father’s car this morning to be brought into one of my father’s fields at Bavaria in my hometown Jamnagar. It was in his bloods to do farming even if he had left doing it since his adolescence. And, as the days of emptiness arrived unexpectedly due to Corona Pandemic, he was left of no other choice than to do farming to satiate his empty nerves and pocket. He would leave home as soon as the moon would, and come back, as soon as the moon would. He would scrutinize the works of field workers and sometimes would make himself plunge into ploughing of the field with a small tractor he recently bought. And that day, when the afternoon had appeared, we had got rains and when we had got rains, it was evening and when it was evening; my mother had proclaimed in the house that we were to have an excursion to Bavaria to have a look at the weather and the spine gourds.
“I want to pick up spine gourds, and string beans from there, haste, Himiiiiiiiiii!” she had screamed at me when I was being lethargic to jump into our car with mismatching pieces of garments clothed on.
And here, after half an hour, we had parked our car in front of the brick house of the field keepers which consisted of a woman, a man, two daughters, and a son. The women kept extremely amiable natures. We had been asked to sit upon the cots and the particular Woman of the house carried on with her usual activities.
I saw, she had got a steel pot which had a sharp slope to the top and a flat curve to the bottom. It was a pot that stored unfiltered water many times in a day to help her in washing utensils beside the brick house. The field was their home & their life. It seemed that every element of the field was incomplete without each other. The pot was a part of the field, though small but a dear part. The proud pot would let them survive. It would let the whole family feel that they were near water. It could make them feel that they could even establish good relations with it. They could even own it and could pamper their needs with it. Thus, the steel pot was a close fascination to the woman which at that instant, was held by her, all hollow, to the side of her waist. The waist & the pot had a single fixed place to make comfortable relations with each other. It seemed that the waist and the pot were perfectly made for each other, just like happy couples. I guessed she went to the stream to pour the half-clean water in it. I wanted to see how she would do it because it would have been ages that I would see such a tender act: eyes portraying a woman filling up the water from the stream. Little of miracles happen in water. And that day, I wanted to witness a one of such with the lady as a hero.
“Listen, shall I come with you?” I called the woman from behind, to which my mother had argued of what-would-I-do-there and to which I had replied, I-would-see-the-river. I was a girl of Tiny Acts in the world. Tiny acts. Tiny leaps. Tiny miracles.
I went with her.
While crossing the pebbled roads with no human manipulations, I could see there was a river flowing to my West, and to the East was an official pond for the fat, black, silent beasts that prevailed with huge amounts in the field. The silent beasts were buffalos and how they were relaxing voicelessly in that little pond. Each had large hoofs with an imposing pair of horns atop their heads. They will pay no heed if you allow them to soak in water for months. They would never feel solitude amongst such situations as they always have their white friends to visit frequently. The white friends, flamingos, and they, make the most contrasting pairs in the world. I was warned by that woman to never mess up with them in life. They trample the outsiders, always. But, for the time, I felt them soothing from far as they seemed to look good, silent beasts wanting to live life.
“I have never seen these many, altogether,” I uttered to her, as we went.
“Ahh, they are always here.” She replied, with her humane smile.
While we were stepping forward, a tiny, young buffalo with soft, black fur and delicate skin was outside the pond, chewing the grass. Grasses would be feeling like jeera rice in rainy season to him and he devoured his jeera rice with great passion and love.
There were a few old, lofty Neem trees with lithe boughs and with leaves, recently bathed. Drops of waters still rained under them, even though the waters had stopped raining under the sky. You would find silly, little sticks of boughs broken everywhere on land. The land showed blemishes of boughs, weeds & pebbles but those blemishes had a way to seem beautiful, I knew not. You would even find a few shallow and a few bottomless pits around, with irregular shapes woven with leaves & weeds. We walked past everything raw & original. And that thing was making my little, foolish heart every time proud.
And to the most where you could bring your eyes, you would find everywhere the dear Acacia trees. Once my cousin told that how ugly they were and how miserably would they spoil the landscapes, in too much of a manner. But I do not believe it. I have always found them as a part of nature & nature wouldn’t gift us anything unpleasant. They can survive drought conditions since they have developed long tap roots that can reach deep, ground water sources & as a result of which you would find them everywhere you go. They would accompany you like your shadow. Yet, I admit sometimes fine shadows can be intensely annoying, so as those trees.
We had finally reached the spot where the Woman was going to fill the water inside her proud pot. It was no picnic to handle a pot with full water. Yet she did. I saw the river flew by and how shallow it was. You could walk upon it and stamp your feet and play. The river served as a path to reach to its opposite end. And just as few minutes flew by, I saw two men riding on a bicycle to have reached to the edge of the stream where we were, and suddenly they lifted up their bicycles upon each shoulder of theirs and walked peacefully by, toppling their feet into the running currents to reach to the opposite end.
“Wouldn’t they slip off their feet upon the algae?” I asked the woman.
“Fat chance,” she replied.
Just as some more minutes flew by, we saw a swarm of people coming our way with lots of things in their hands.
“From where they are coming?” I asked, being quite staggered. I had never seen any speck of people around our field and that day what I saw was new.
“They are coming from their desh.” She replied, still filling the water.
“Desh?” I asked, beholding a little bafflement since I hadn’t heard of any such thing before.
“Means they had gone to their own home very far away from here,” she replied, leaning slant & putting her pot to the side of her slender, tanned waist.
“Ahh! I see, they’ve got the mirrors, clothes & hair combs in their hands and seems as if they have made a long journey,” I replied to her, gazing at all the new things I was seeing that day.
They were the native people of scheduled tribes. They had deep brown skin with thin limbs & healthy body. They were all young & studded with dull clothes. The women wore lots of jewellery & even the youngest child would have her nose pierced with a big, beautifully carved nose ring. I had always dreamt of such nose rings to put on. But I knew it wouldn’t suit to my modern clothes.
They always very easily could pass the water currents the same of which wouldn’t co-operate the outsiders much. Since their practiced feet were in good terms with the currents, they could get its cooperation. In no time, they all were towards the other end of the river with their goods from their desh.
“Since there are no more people coming the way, we should go now,” proposed the Woman.
Every particle of that place was a home to her but not to me and I wanted to gaze every of the particle there since it pleased me in plenty, but I couldn’t do that alone. I had never stayed alone under the clouds of the fields and I couldn’t even pluck up the courage to ask her to stay there with me. My spirits turned helpless and I joined with her retreating steps.
In the field, people were nicely devouring themselves. My mother had laid out a plastic sheet and upon it, all the utensils of hot food resided quietly by. When it has been to eat in field, it has proved me a thing to gambol. I have always leapt out of gaiety. My brother was engrossed wagging a wheel of a cart fastened to the thickest and one of the earliest branches of a tree which lied to the west of our picnic spot. The wheel was wagging like a dog’s tail and the heat soaked the air in the similar manner as my mother mopped the house’s floor that day at home. Amidst all the activities, we sat down with roaring abdomens, upon the plastic sheet which acted as a shield to protect our butts from the spiky grasses, and began shuffling the utensils around. The utensils shuffled, the spoons rang, until our appetites became quiet. When they did, it was the indication that we should cessate eating. We cessated.
“Come with me, Himi, to wash the utensils…” My mother announced as soon as we finished. The weather was taking a turn. It showed less pleasure and lots of suns.
“Mummy, not here also!” I replied to her, getting startled much to the extent. I had always been reluctant to do household work and if it had to be done upon the unexpected of places, it was indeed startling and annoying.
“Pick up the basket, and I am carrying the big utensils…” she ordered, shutting over her eyes to my usual laments.
It was a shallow stream to the end of our field area. The stream lied lower to the altitude compared to the field, and there existed a heap of huge stones and some bushes to be stumbled upon, before meeting the edge of the shallow running water of that stream. There were still the fewer currents leaping by, as though in motive of measuring their fitness and comparing their level of strength. The mortality of those currents of the stream was too young to evaluate. As though, the currents would ever not want to die, and impeccably, I wanted to believe that they should entertain my father’s field forever. But, there were the falls of climate as much impeccable to ignore. And, so impeccably, would they bring an esteemed evaporation to the surface of the stream that the same imagined immortality of those currents would doom into an oblivion; one day. On that one day, the young-arrived-oblivion of the stream would serve no longer a pleasure to the Man of the field. They love the currents. Not their oblivions. But, as the notorious nature has decided, the same, old currents are not revived back. It is just when the falls of climate would do its work; it would call a different set of currents to live into that stream. And they would since then, rule the wet soil.
“But, uhh, there is nothing to wash, them off from…” I lamented to my Mummy, when she was examining the best pebbles to lay the utensils upon.
“You won’t need soaps here,” she mumbled, half unconcerned, and she quickly picked up some dry soil between the gaps of the pebbles skirting the edge and began rubbing it off the steel.
“Ahh…” I was under a stagger of good impressions.
“We didn’t have these all soaps before. We used to do Mud-Rubbing only, in our days…. It’s the best method,” she bragged with fine pride and nostalgia. I did think about her nostalgia a bit. The virgin, rocky roads to have around and, to carry tiffin full of rice to feed the family members working in the field. She had told her tales, numerous times, to me and my brother, till life.
“I used to cook a cooker full of rice and Vani Masi used to carry all of them to the field…and, Ba, would come home finishing all the cooker full of…”
“I know, you’ve told us, Mummy, many times,” I said, making my hands engrossed in placing the Mud-Washed Utensils to the best pebbles I could hunt. I noticed, all the pebbles which skirted the stream were seemingly best ones.
“Here?” I asked, naively.
“Yes, why?” she uttered with her consistent insistent speech. I had always got the grips with troubles of such homely, feminine things, which I was expected to learn. I was expected to have confidence about all homely learnings and all the places which are perfect to lay utensils upon. I have always defied this settling of confidence in me and that thing has always displeased every mother on their daughters around our surrounding.
My mother like many mothers had her own controlling and overpowering side that always glistened out like a beam of flashlight under a sombre room which chiefly did make me mourning and reluctant to bear; many a times, especially, when the dominant voice would transfer into as much dominant scream and that similar idea had brought chills of annoyance over my nerves. She had been a lady of screams and innocence. She had not any bits of awareness into the today’s digital world and she had chosen to live away from those alien odds and sods, as much possible. And to a certain extent, I had come into the believing terms that if not out of anything else, the gene that concerned the speech of my mother had chosen gently to settle into my habitats of blood. I had her speech-genes and I made the exact screaming young woman as my mother would be, lots of times. Innocence & screams had a good go with me & my mother. And nothing much could we do about it, quite far to an extent.
Unfathomable was my merry time that day. Had it always been my altering disposition or I know not, but, the gaiety thing seemed to me a bit weird? And unfamiliar. The exhilaration to that extent, as that day, was not a routine, and everything bereft of routine was weird to conceive. Nevertheless, my nerves did want to stash all the merry things I saw that day and to fill up a flagon or something so as to use them as a wine, whenever required. I reckoned, that was a nice intention. And very sooner than that, my feet began stamping back to the crops and folk entertaining about, that I forgot all my intentions before I could even pour them into any flagon. I ran towards entertaining folk.
When I trod lightly upon the soft, damp mud, my weight would flatten the area covered by my feet. I had known for long about the crop spacing, which was something that my father and uncles had talked about, frequently, back in life. They would distribute the distances amongst consecutive plants so that one could comment about their density and heterogeneity and stuff which I knew a lot but precedent to a pea-sized amount. Then, I dawned stamping upon the mud, which was because I reckoned my speed could improve by walking that way.
“Mummy, I am going…. nearby those bushes….” I declared as soon as I made myself turned up before them.
“Now, where you want to roam again?” she blurted out, with her usual fears and trepidation.
“Mummy, I am going here only, not much far, uhhh, let me go, please,” I insisted with my regular soft bellows.
“Okay, return early,” she said, engaged in her own restless propensity to carry out field works zestfully.
I whisked my feet towards a massive thorny, thick tree of mature trunk far from my field, beside the trailing waters of the river. That was the only tree which kept the most soothing shade of all. I found a spot of least running ants beneath that Magnificent, and spread my legs to loosen those lazy, stiff muscles in them. A sweet gust of wind wanted to provide me a gargantuan sleep of my life. It could be a sleep of sleeps, under a massive network of thorns held up in the sky in an oval shelter, though somewhere little in the spaces did some green, bunch of leaves show their perceptive presence amongst the thorns; maybe to tell some occasional spectators as me that bads hadn’t overpowered goods, quite much in plenty. I was cynical of allowing their message to decode within me: The presence of leaves amongst thorns. Could that mean the involvement of softness to balance the roughness? In no longer time did I want to cerebrate a symbol. The symbol that related to my prevailing cognizance of leaves & thorns. It was Yin Yang. This Chinese symbol has preached dualities of matter; as in if we have colds, then we are required of hots and that if we have goods, then we are obliged to witness bads and that if we have highs, then, we are fated to have lows just as if we have thorns, then we are sure to sight leaves embedded within them. This fastening of contradictions together, maybe, felt to me an attestation to my dubiety. It had to be. Maybe, those leaf things demanded me to do that.
To say about me, I was many a times a rubberneck of lots of stuff my retinas didn’t usually come across with & remarkably when the stuff related with accessible nature like rocks, leaves, thorns, bushes & such. The emerging town of ours, Jamnagar, has left me with no whining over any pettish appurtenances like Big House, Good Markets, Good Roads, Pleasing Infrastructure, Agreeable Theatres, etc. Never have I ever moaned about dearth of things that other big cities went a bundle on and much to the fact, I would say, a paucity of assets is an opulence. A scarcity of something provides a luxury of something else. It’s never too impoverished or underrated in its nature. Big Cities never much have tranquillity of air and stench of more depravity is to be expected from. The luxury of meagreness is to be thought spiffing to have in life, with very much unforgettably does influence a splendid simplicity safe for earth. And safe for health, quite in lofty terms. And therefore, Jamnagar with balanced luxuries and paucities, had always kept my heart, and the red ants which ran by, stumbling over the mud, kept me reminding of the beauty of impeccable nature in front of my eyes. My eyes were a witness of correct earth that was living in there. But, somewhere, I could even see a wrong earth in the neck of the woods of my brain. That was, far away from there. The Urban Living. The part of earth that was contaminated and I too owned the offence of contaminating it to a noticeable height. We all own.
I reckoned deeper in my contemplations, though I knew not whether they had been misunderstood or not, that, I could have been an Anglophile in my previous birth. An amalgamation of Anglophilic brain and Kathiawadi Gujarati blood was an incongruous, strange matter to concise about. So devastatingly off-the-wall. The great tale of how I pronounced ‘Chitin’ as chi-tin with Chi of China, before my Biology Teacher marked the culmination of years of my rotten, non-belonging Kathiawadi knowledge of Anglophilic passions as just before that same teacher, I had later on managed to utter one of the creative ways of addressing the teachers which someone more than just a plain English Speaker around our surroundings only could. And when the Local Snacks Van would arrive someday in our street and bawl out the recorded, pointy voice of the items in their menu, it was me, in my tender years, to entitle English names for various items and to rodomontade them before my mother.
“Mummy, do you know, papad in English means Thin Crisp Cake?”
“Cake?” So would exclaim my mother, cynical of her sanguine opinions of what a Cake was supposed to be a Thing, in the surroundings.
“Yes! Cakeee…” I would say, wanting to establish accentuation for her credence.
“And, khichdi, means, Hotch-Potch…” I would place all my learnt proud words in a way that they were being surprisedly taken as, as though in a how-could-this-girl-know-such-a-thing manner.
Some other evidences of my Anglophilic veins were the fact that, in my tender years of growing up, I had made a diary filled with English Names & Surnames of Men and Women and with the same rodomontading minds, I would orate the extended list before my father saying,
“James, John, William, Albert, Henry, Alex….. Papa, these are all Names & Nelson, Niccol, Evans, Beadsworth, etc are the Surnames…”
My father was untutored of English and that was why, his eyes would become beady of pride, discerning his daughter’s Tiny Acts of English Love.
The instance when I could call out a ‘pastivado’ man as a Rag-a-bones man because I had heard this term in one series of The Famous Five in our convent school library, my veins had capered on inside and those Tiny Acts in brains were the cluster of evidences I always kept for plausibility regarding my Anglophilic claims. However, I had loved more the old, vintage Britain than the current, running one. I was a specific of a lover. I would love historical Britain and even, the whole of the Europe since Renaissance had marked itself in history. Those lekker people! Ahh! Leonardo Da Vinci, Vincent Van Gohh! Sempiternal! Monstrous! Ahhh!
Obsolete ways of living had been my amorosity. Outskirts of a town. A long meadow. A hut of books and bricks. And, the old ways of planting food and eating it. With so little an incertitude, I could even claim myself to be a blend of modern and ancient. And, for an unprecedented reason, I was clung between the centuries; which if to expose a lighter part of its perspective, it made me no less unhappy. I was on my go. I loved impeccably the embedded gestures of history in my mind which spread like watermelon seeds upon the course of my life. Awkwardly gesticulate life!
Sitting there on the rough, cracked land, beneath the oval shelter of thorns, I attempted to capture some pictures of mine. The moment the Al triple Camera of Vivo F1 would capture whatever stuff being asked to, it would sound a sound of cracking Thin Crisp Cakes of Udad, for, barring roasting Thin Crisp Cakes upon the stove, I knew not anything else to roast or boil or bake or cook. And, the things which we don’t fathom, we shouldn’t try to relate them with another thing. That’s why, Camera sound barely had any other options to get compared with. I had attempted to flaunt my best angle of face with stretched edges of lips brought above the Overbite-problematic teeth and grimaced a Cheshire Cat smile before the camera; my tanned but long neck has lulled my tiny, shrunk face always, which was good. As the days had advanced after my 12th Std, I had shrunk like a kismis in water. One could see no bloods running below my thinned limb muscles, and my quadriceps plus hamstrings together, one day, had decided to deform my soft, round hips into a straight, immature one. The overall deformation of body muscles was a thing, which was generally named as ‘scraggy’ or ‘skeletal’ in our surroundings. Not many days before, Kanchan Masi, who lived at the periphery of our street had exclaimed awe to my shrunken state, and advised some food to eat while she departed. I had made my lips stretched over the Overbite-Teeth and told her Yeses in whatever she went blurting about. As my face had chosen to shrunk, there was a little space for my expansive teeth to grow laterally. Therefore, they rather chose to kick themselves out. As my incisors kicked out each day, I was left with early signs of becoming a Monkey-faced girl in future. The idea of being a world’s first Monkey-faced girl was a terrifying one. It had haunted me for nights. Even though, it had some fame and glory with it, of Firstness, yet, I didn’t want to be First in some peculiar, hateful thing one could ever imagine. On the grounds that my Overbite was sending me uncanny chills, I had set off my determination on the roads of journeying a dentist before I become a Monkey-faced; as I fancied some irksome titles I would be given as post to my transformation such as An Ancient Ape, or Himalayan Monkey or something! I loved History and Past and Old School Lifestyle. But, that wouldn’t mean I would be fine with some Silly, Annoying, Irrelevant Tags!
When I stood up, I heard a shrill, distant cry of familiarity. A feminine familiarity. Indeed, it was my mother. We shared same screams. So, I could easily comprehend the purposes and intentions lying in them. Those screams meant that we were to return back to the contaminated earth. It was a time to have a departure from Earthly Purely things. Thorns, buffaloes, boughs, dung, people returning from desh and Women of Pots. It was a time to immigrate to concrete walls, glass windows, pizza huts, mobile networks and fresh smoky air.
And when I found myself returning hurriedly to the car, positioning myself to the window seat, I secretly bid a toodle-oo to that Woman of the field, and her two daughters, one of whom attracted my attention. She was younger, evaluated to have been fourteen something. Oiled hair with filthy rubber band and a broad Village Benevolent Smile. And, yes, exactly when the Woman planted me her Smile of Dung and her younger daughter, a Smile of Benevolence, I put up with my Smile of Cities, stretched and Overbite-hidden.
And, when the annoying Acacia trees swept by, countless, just a little distance away from my window, I feared of soon turning into an Ancient Ape or Himalayan Monkey!
by Himadri Patel
