The Semal Tree

The Semal tree was inanimate in that hot afternoon, a bored Kali Hawa, having nothing to do and not inclined to take afternoon nap, sat under it contemplating mysteries of universe. He saw a non-distinguished person approaching. When he came near the tree, said that inconspicuous fellow,

Do you live here?

I do for the time being. But I don’t know where people live. If they live in their body or in their home or in some exotic realm. 

Eh! I can tell you where you live but only if you will help me find the person I am looking for, said the stranger.

Really! Who are you looking for, does this fellow live here in this village?

Perhaps he does. I am not sure; I don’t know his name.   

All right what do you know about him?

Not much. But then who knows much about himself. Do you know all about yourself?

I said, Sure I know a great deal about myself. My name is Kali Hawa, I have a wife, children, relatives and friends and there is a body of work I have done in my life. That makes my persona real.

Oh! I see but for me it means nothing and I still cannot place you as a person.

Why?

Because the body of work you mention by a fellow name Kali Hawa and the people who will be vouching for you are themselves suspect as to their own identity.  In nutshell you are saying your persona is real due to other persons who do not have proof of their own identity. Doesn’t that make a recursive circle.

I see your point stranger. Perhaps I don’t know much about myself just like the fellow you are looking out for. But do you know about yourself?

I think I do?

Would you care to tell me?

I am illusion of Maya and I am your consciousness. I can tell you where you live! You live in your consciousness nowhere else. When you open your eyes and pierce through the veil of illusion you will know I am you.

Bizarre House - II

 The house we lived in Kanpur was a soldier’s barrack turned into quarters. A long shed like structure converted into four dwelling units, may be the word “quarter” comes from there. Ours’ was the corner unit on the main road side and the far end towards MI room. A long covered veranda on the front ran through the entire length of the building.

But the peculiarity was not the barrack like construction of the house, it was a mysterious door between our house and the adjoining unit. We had put a heavy wooden box snugly filling its frame lest no one would inadvertently open it and intrude privacy of neighbour and vice versa. A similar box was sitting on the other side of the door for similar reasons as ours. It was clear what was behind the door and yet it looked mysterious to little Babu who would often stare at it.

In summers we would take out “khatia” (bamboo cots, very light weight) put them under open sky, put up mosquito nets and sleep outdoors. Once Shubhakar told us that he saw a ghost making rounds of Ber tree in front of the house dead at night. I was gullible so believed him. From then on, whenever I woke up briefly in the middle of night, I would furtively look at the Ber tree, if the ghost was there making rounds. Once I was so much primed with fear that I actually felt a shadow like thing made round of that tree and as soon as it turned my way disappeared.

Of course, it could be real but most likely a false visual induced by fear.

Bizarre House - I

 Of all houses where I have lived and I have lived in many of them, 14 Mumfordgunj was quite intriguing and bizarre. It was built like a child adding parts to a sand castle, sneaky narrow stairs, and suspended in air crossover ramp. Pillars rising from nowhere and stairs going on and on without fold leading to a large terrace. “Lois Kuti” was the name of that formidable building, underneath that name was printed H Williams. Façade did not open to a regular road instead a brick paved gully lead to it. The approaching end from the main road was neat but that gully ended in crossing where tabellas with buffaloes and cows, their muck painting it into a dismal gloomy locale.  Right across the gully there was a large open space and beyond that was another locality funnily called Balrampur House a posh colony of collages. From our perch we can a standalone house belonging to “Pahadi ji”. Some guy Rama Prasad Ghildiyal “Pahadi” who wrote children’s book.     

We lived on the upper floor, H Williams down stairs in dark chaotic section. His wife an absentminded frail lady and occasional visitors to his home, a spinster daughter, a choleric limping son Vimal and another estranged son and his wife. It was an interesting household.

Gabar Singh

 

This Diwali, my sister and three brothers with their spouses, all above sixty, decided to celebrate the festival in the village. All my stories, anecdotes and adventures had an effect on them so they were curious to renew the contact with the village after a long time. Only problem was, they are not used to dealing with the cooking and washing dishes. Although cooking was something they could manage but washing dishes in cold weather was strictly NO. So, I had to search for a 'help' to do the chores.

 People have this tendency to overstate, exaggerate, so, when I approached Gabar Singh (not Gabbar Singh) from “Saur”, a village about 2 km away, they cautioned about his proclivity for liquor. He is actually a calm, stoic person not prone to exhibiting emotions.  Even when I joked about the 50K reward on his head, he calmly, unprovokedly pointed out, his name is Gabar Singh. All through the 10 days he cooked and washed dishes for us, he kept to himself not indulging in small talk, would disappear from the kitchen after cooking, remerge quietly at dinner time. My brothers had brought a few bottles of whiskey and a bottle of Bacardi rum therefore in addition to his monetary compensation I had kept this bottle of rum for him as a bonus. (villagers prefer rum over whiskey, the stronger the better)

Not that he paid any heed to our conversations, in fact he was quite attentive to all the things that were going on, just that he liked to keep a low profile. Once, while discussing murders in villages (only a couple in a hundred years, so big stories), I was not able to remember Bachchi Kaka’s name, he immediately helped with the name even though he was working in the kitchen while we were discussing the subject in the inner verandah. When, on the final day we paid him the compensation, I expected him to show some emotion on the presentation of the rum bottle, but even then, he remained stoic.

However, on the final day of our sojourn, while returning to Delhi, Meenakshi, my sister had asked him to give a few kgs of vegie Arbi (Pindaloo in our lingo) from his village “baaghiichaa”. As discussed, we found him there at the edge of his village waiting for us with a bagful of Arbi. We noticed a trace of conspicuous smile on his face, He would touch our feet again and again as is village custom (everyone junior touches the feet of seniors, I hate it), then I noticed he was smelling alcohol early at 10:30 AM.

The Dawn

 By Kali Hawa

 

I heard a Bird
In its rhythmic chatter
Unstitching the silence.
This morning, I saw dew
Still incomplete
Its silver spilling over
To usher the dawn.

 

 

Rai Sahib

  Hazaribagh used to be a laidback idyllic town full of slender but high rising Saal trees, green most of the year. Since the terrain in Jharkhand area is not plains therefore the landscape is an undulating symphony of geography. Sparsely populated, churning out little industrial output; it was like old days Dehradun or Poona, ideal for pensioners to settle down. Roads were lined both sides with green trees. The British built this town with care. Hazaribagh was only an hour’s drive from Ramgarh through the jungle of motley trees in the most beautiful rising and falling valley. Even then, as a naïve young Kali Hawa, I used to be mesmerized by the beauty of the nature although the distraction was sitting in a rickety transport cramped full of people. 

Rai Sahib had his ancestral house in Hazaribagh. It was an old-fashioned house with a very large lawn surrounded by a high boundary wall. Lots of Saals and other tropical trees within the boundary. A distinguished family of judges and bureaucrats, Rai Sahib was the youngest among the brothers and also the least ranking in family. His wife was a chic, sophisticated but timid unhappy woman. Rai sahib was not a bully on the contrary, he had a disarming amiable nature and treated wife with due respect and civil manners, when not drunk. Even when he was drunk, he became unmanageable but never a bully or cad hurling abuses and descending to uncouth behavior. It was the exasperation and helplessness, the reason for her unhappiness.

Rai sahib was my boss, He was Dy. Manager, a position on the middle of a small company, where he was neither part of the management nor a full member of young engineer’s group which had joined the recently nationalized private firm. The firm was part of SAIL group engaged in manufacture of firebricks used in Steel Plants. The management was made up of ill-educated fellows who rose through ranks, very insecure and always suspicious but got lucky when the company was nationalized. Now they were suspicious of fresh engineers therefore kept a large distance, made us wait long before letting us in their office to assert their authority, a malicious display of insecure inferiority complex. I hope you get the general drift. Rai Shaib was also new to the firm, apparently, he was booted/transferred out of Bokaro Steel plant where he worked before messing up our lives; obviously due to his drunkenness. It must have been a very difficult job for Bokaro Steel plant to ease him out of the firm, given the fact that he came from a highly connected family and Bokaro had a very militant officer’s association and those were peak days socialism.

Initially Rai Sahib swung between the company of management (they were aware of his influential family therefore respectful to him) and us engineers. Since he had amiable nature and easy accessibility, he was quickly co-opted as our own. We used to have a drinking binge once every month sometimes in a fortnight in our mess. Some of the characters in our group were hard drinkers who could never be satisfied until dropped dead and carried to their rooms. It used to be funny as we will have our cook, a Bengali bloke, cook elaborate meal for us but we hardly touched the food. We always promised ourselves, no more hard drinking, we will eat the damn food this time but as the evening progressed this guy Ajit Bijapurkar(a Marathi guy who spoke flawless Bangla being a resident of this part and nearby Bengal for ages) would borrow a bike and another guy Umakant Basing (an Assamese) on pillion speed away to nearby market hub at Ranchi Road station, knock at some known seedy joint at 11 PM in the evening, get some whiskey at high premium and return. I also went pillion riding on a couple of occasions.

So, we invited Rai Sahib to one of those binge parties, unaware of his alcoholic affliction. It was a bad idea to invite Rai Sahib to our party. It opened the floodgates. Rai Sahib was provided bachelor’s accommodation in the Guest House adjacent to our rooms (quarters as a Bihari would call), every Saturday or on the eve of holidays he would leave for Hazaribagh and come back on Monday. Once he became pally with us, he would get hold of one of us, remove from under his belt the ‘addhaa’ or ‘pavvaa’ tucked in there. He would not care if it was afternoon or the middle of the morning, get hold of a glass pour little whiskey in it and drink the rest from the bottle himself. Soon we began to avoid him but being a boss and fine gentleman otherwise, it was difficult to avoid him. Anyway, the guy was smart enough to find out when our party is (which invariable was on Saturday or a holiday eve, began to skip visit to home at Hazaribagh where his harassed wife lived. I don’t remember if he had any children, if he had they perhaps lived at some boarding school or at one of his brothers was taking care of them. I don’t remember seeing them at Hazaribagh.

It was Diwali perhaps or may be Puja (Durga Puja, just Puja in those parts) which is a big deal in Bihar just like Bengal, and brings in a connected 3-4 days of holidays. He forced upon us an invitation to visit him at Hazaribagh, stay put overnight. We dutifully arrived at his residence in the evening hoping to be firm and in control in deference to his wife whom we had  already met on a few occasions in the past. A la carte was laid out on the table, Mrs. Rai happy to see us but apprehensive of her husband turning the occasion into a disaster.

To cut a long story short, our firm resolve could not withstand the hurricane that was Rai sahib. In the end we slumped where ever we could find a place without touching the food. Next morning, very embarrassed and sorry for our behavior we fled from that home without taking breakfast for which a composed Mrs. Rai beseeched us.

I think within a couple of years, Rai Sahib left our company too, to join some contractor. I too moved away from Ramgarh.

Adventures of Little Babu; Episode : 0

 Sometimes someone suffers but nobody is responsible. Take for example a tsunami that kills lakhs of people, puts millions of lives in misery but nobody is responsible. Similarly for a four-year-old who has not evolved mentally to truly discern fairness or wrong and other subtle causality, things happened without proper cause so did not leave him perplexed. 

Little Babu was terrified of darkness and closed spaces, he was only four years old and his world consisted of talking to himself, running around naked or in shorts and shirt, eating, tasting mud twigs. leaves; generally, live by the moment. The age was at a critical point of transition, to run around naked or learn to be ashamed of nudity, to eat by himself or helped by mother in eating, learn and be thrilled at succeeding in wearing clothes all by himself and other processes of learning. The transition included overcoming claustrophobia and go to a dark constricted lavatory away from the house across the street or succumb to temptation of defecating in open on the small nalla passing by behind it. He knew the rules but those rules were so far malleable. As already explained little Babu lived in a fantasy world, if he got thrashing, he wouldn’t know if it was justified or deserved, for him things just happened for breaking rules which were not clearly defined. 

His father used to be a socially well-respected person and in his own estimation an upright fellow who adhered to all the accepted social norms and took pride in his dealings with society in a civilized manner. And there was this commandant who also believed in keeping his command in order, in neat and orderly way. The commandant, probably a Sikh, had this habit of riding horseback to inspect his domain, to see that his subjects adhered to neatness and accepted social behavior. One day while on his usual horseback round he saw a queer spectacle, a little boy was shitting on the drain behind the assigned lavatory in the broad afternoon. Incensed, he enquired, whose child was at fault. His angst probably was, when the Army has provided descent accommodation and other amenities why should anyone allow this to happen?

 Word quickly reached his father, who was in his office. This was unforgivable act by his child, a blot on his reputation and a huge setback to his image in the society. He carried a cane with a brass tip and brass blob on the handle, in double quick time he reached home with the cane. Meanwhile little Babu unawares of the upheaval, that he had shattered the balance of the afternoon, still naked below waist, in his fantasy world, talking to himself and generally busy in his own world, heard a volley of invectives and then his conscious world became numb as his father’s cane rained down on his body with the ferocity of a man in extreme anger. Every rasping strike left mark on his tender skin and a scar on his subconscious mind. His mind in an emergency maneuver hurriedly allocated space for long term memory and lodged the incident for permanent recall. In the amygdala the emotion that rose was not hurt, not anger but terror. 

So, little Babu hated his father? No, his father remained his role model for a long time until he himself became old. He was terrified of his father and all the older people for a long time.