Besides the hills, clouds and elephants what enthralled me was the sky. The night sky. The sky I knew as a child was not miserly in revealing its riches. As a crimson sun will slide down beneath the horizon, it day’s work done, and an unsure twilight will be conquered by the night, this sky will clad itself in its countless jewels, the middle of it thickly streaked with the Milky Way. On these dusty plains I have never seen the sky sporting this trail. The sky that domes these plains is too turbid to be necklaced thus. There will be a time in the year (perhaps winter) when the seven seers shone upon the tip of a hill and as the seasons wore on they slid farther across the sky, apparently engaged in their profound dialogue. Winters did not allow for it, but during our brief summer Baba and I used to do a lot of star gazing sitting in our little lawn after sundown. I liked to inhale the aroma let
out by the earth and the grass after what had been a hot day by our
standards.My age was not yet in double figures but I fancied myself as a budding astronomer.
Besides owning an elephant and wanting to be an astronomer I had other ambitions. I wanted to be a dauntless adventurer and lead my conquering armies into strange lands. All my strange lands were in the backyard and I had enough phantom armies of my imagination to lead. I fashioned swords out of sticks and waged many a gruesome battle. However, sometimes attempts at extending the battle front to our garden earned a scold and rather strict instructions from Ma to avoid waging battles in the future.
Not all my discoveries were of lands of fantasies. I discovered the gods too. Not the gods that were handed down to me but those of my own fashioning. With a primitive’s wonder I saw my gods everywhere. I would fashion stern images of them from earth and offer them blossoms from nameless plants. I offered them sacrifices. Yes, the victims were mostly unfortunate insects. Looking back I feel it was not all cruel boys’ games, my gods were real to me. At least till the age of eight. But my submission to them was never complete. The ritual done, I often crushed the image beneath my feet. This is what I will do to my gods, I will think, I will make them and mar them as I choose. But now I know that you cannot always choose your gods. Sometimes the homage is extracted from you and you have no choice but to pay it. And not all gods are propitiated by nameless blossoms.
There were more real things that I sought to discover. There were insects that I pealed off to see what lies beneath their wings and shells. I aspired to achievements in entomology too. Thus, a lot of time was expended in either slaughtering insects or collecting insect relics. Once I picked up the skull of a drone by an ant hill. The colony had apparently feasted on him. What will an entomologist say? Does a drone have a skull? Nevertheless, what I had picked did look like a skull and seemed as though it had belonged to a drone. It was my proud possession which I showed around for sometime and elicited the jealousy of some other ten year old boys. Play stations were yet in the future, we were sufficiently content with insect relics. However, my tribal friends were much better in collecting relics of an osteological kind. I think I was eleven when one day Karge strutted into the class with an important air. We suspected that he has made some significant acquisition. We could not, however, imagine that it will be the skull of a golden langur which he soon proceeded to fish out of his bag. The simian had been bagged by his father during a foray into the forest, he told us. The temptation to acquire it for a few comics was great. But I kept from doing so since I was not quite sure how Ma will react to the trophy.
I developed a hunger for the printed word quite early. All I can recall is that I have been reading since the time I learnt to read. It was not often that I felt the need to talk, even now it is no different. But I will have lengthy conversations with the characters in the books that I read. Since not all the conversation took place in my mind, very often I was found muttering under my breath. Ma will joke that it is the sign of a juvenile dementia. I empathised with the people and animals I met in the pages of books and occasionally felt one with them. I had felt in my veins the savage anger of Buck the dog when he finds his master slain by the Indians. It was the only master Buck had loved. To all the rest before he had only submitted.
Just as I loved the word I loved the earth. The earth, in fact, was one giant word to me. Many meanings lay in it and many moods for the child that I was. I tried to gather both from its feel and fragrance. And, of course, I wallowed in it a lot. I liked it when during sunny summers its skin will peel in little eddies of dust raised by the wind. It saddened me when in winters the earth will change to a deep shade of grey with no blossom shooting out of it. Sadness since has remained for me a deep shade of grey. The earth spoke through what it yielded. Through the trees and the blades of grass which grew upon it. So, I elicited the earth’s eloquence by planting a sapling and watching it grow. Since I wanted to be an adventurer I also tried to raise my own forest in the backyard. I planted many saplings, nameless and wild, on a little patch which was my own. A little blade of elephant grass I planted grew to a height of twelve feet. It never failed to awe my friends. I had my own little forest of Dengali. The Phantom himself used to gallop through it on his white stallion.
Sometimes, on some windy day, the clouds will gallop across the sky like dark stallions. They forebode rain. The rains were always. The rains were not a season. I resented the clouds because they kept me from my strange continents. But I liked the fragrance the earth let out when washed by the first drops of rain. And I liked the pitter-patter of its drops upon the roof. I liked to watch the drops roll down tree leaves like ephemeral little pearls. The rain also unleashed the denizens of a marvelous strange world. The frogs will hop about in little puddles. I found them amusing. The earthworms will crawl out of the netherworld. The ants, their colonies flooded, will busily rebuild. And I will float a paper boat in a puddle and play seaman.
There were creatures I adopted, while sometimes I forged an unspoken friendship with one. We had planted a creeper rose which crept up one of our windows. In spring time it sprouted little crimson flowers. Once a spider spun its web between its leaves. The spider was an emerald green. It had little black dots for eyes and wore sadness on its face. I took it for a pet and took to dropping ants on its web. Once it ate an ant in my presence. It was perhaps cruel, but its little, sad dot eyes remain the most human eyes seen by me.
There were other pets which belonged to me beside a brook. I had to leap across this thin trickle on my way to school. Creepers and bushes grew on its either side. Ladybugs lived on their leaves. They were unusual; their backs were of a silvery shine. If you held one against the sun it became a little rainbow between your fingers. They all belonged to me. One day I brought a couple home. I tore out their wings and tried to feed them on leaves. They died. Rainbows must not be brought home. They must not be owned. They are fragile and cease to be if you do.
We had a little snake in our garden. Sometimes it basked in the bed of marigolds and sometimes in the bed of dahlias. Ma never taught me to fear it. She only asked me never to bother it. You cannot speak of friendship to a snake. So, with the snake I forged a friendship never spoken.
Besides owning an elephant and wanting to be an astronomer I had other ambitions. I wanted to be a dauntless adventurer and lead my conquering armies into strange lands. All my strange lands were in the backyard and I had enough phantom armies of my imagination to lead. I fashioned swords out of sticks and waged many a gruesome battle. However, sometimes attempts at extending the battle front to our garden earned a scold and rather strict instructions from Ma to avoid waging battles in the future.
Not all my discoveries were of lands of fantasies. I discovered the gods too. Not the gods that were handed down to me but those of my own fashioning. With a primitive’s wonder I saw my gods everywhere. I would fashion stern images of them from earth and offer them blossoms from nameless plants. I offered them sacrifices. Yes, the victims were mostly unfortunate insects. Looking back I feel it was not all cruel boys’ games, my gods were real to me. At least till the age of eight. But my submission to them was never complete. The ritual done, I often crushed the image beneath my feet. This is what I will do to my gods, I will think, I will make them and mar them as I choose. But now I know that you cannot always choose your gods. Sometimes the homage is extracted from you and you have no choice but to pay it. And not all gods are propitiated by nameless blossoms.
There were more real things that I sought to discover. There were insects that I pealed off to see what lies beneath their wings and shells. I aspired to achievements in entomology too. Thus, a lot of time was expended in either slaughtering insects or collecting insect relics. Once I picked up the skull of a drone by an ant hill. The colony had apparently feasted on him. What will an entomologist say? Does a drone have a skull? Nevertheless, what I had picked did look like a skull and seemed as though it had belonged to a drone. It was my proud possession which I showed around for sometime and elicited the jealousy of some other ten year old boys. Play stations were yet in the future, we were sufficiently content with insect relics. However, my tribal friends were much better in collecting relics of an osteological kind. I think I was eleven when one day Karge strutted into the class with an important air. We suspected that he has made some significant acquisition. We could not, however, imagine that it will be the skull of a golden langur which he soon proceeded to fish out of his bag. The simian had been bagged by his father during a foray into the forest, he told us. The temptation to acquire it for a few comics was great. But I kept from doing so since I was not quite sure how Ma will react to the trophy.
I developed a hunger for the printed word quite early. All I can recall is that I have been reading since the time I learnt to read. It was not often that I felt the need to talk, even now it is no different. But I will have lengthy conversations with the characters in the books that I read. Since not all the conversation took place in my mind, very often I was found muttering under my breath. Ma will joke that it is the sign of a juvenile dementia. I empathised with the people and animals I met in the pages of books and occasionally felt one with them. I had felt in my veins the savage anger of Buck the dog when he finds his master slain by the Indians. It was the only master Buck had loved. To all the rest before he had only submitted.
Just as I loved the word I loved the earth. The earth, in fact, was one giant word to me. Many meanings lay in it and many moods for the child that I was. I tried to gather both from its feel and fragrance. And, of course, I wallowed in it a lot. I liked it when during sunny summers its skin will peel in little eddies of dust raised by the wind. It saddened me when in winters the earth will change to a deep shade of grey with no blossom shooting out of it. Sadness since has remained for me a deep shade of grey. The earth spoke through what it yielded. Through the trees and the blades of grass which grew upon it. So, I elicited the earth’s eloquence by planting a sapling and watching it grow. Since I wanted to be an adventurer I also tried to raise my own forest in the backyard. I planted many saplings, nameless and wild, on a little patch which was my own. A little blade of elephant grass I planted grew to a height of twelve feet. It never failed to awe my friends. I had my own little forest of Dengali. The Phantom himself used to gallop through it on his white stallion.
Sometimes, on some windy day, the clouds will gallop across the sky like dark stallions. They forebode rain. The rains were always. The rains were not a season. I resented the clouds because they kept me from my strange continents. But I liked the fragrance the earth let out when washed by the first drops of rain. And I liked the pitter-patter of its drops upon the roof. I liked to watch the drops roll down tree leaves like ephemeral little pearls. The rain also unleashed the denizens of a marvelous strange world. The frogs will hop about in little puddles. I found them amusing. The earthworms will crawl out of the netherworld. The ants, their colonies flooded, will busily rebuild. And I will float a paper boat in a puddle and play seaman.
There were creatures I adopted, while sometimes I forged an unspoken friendship with one. We had planted a creeper rose which crept up one of our windows. In spring time it sprouted little crimson flowers. Once a spider spun its web between its leaves. The spider was an emerald green. It had little black dots for eyes and wore sadness on its face. I took it for a pet and took to dropping ants on its web. Once it ate an ant in my presence. It was perhaps cruel, but its little, sad dot eyes remain the most human eyes seen by me.
There were other pets which belonged to me beside a brook. I had to leap across this thin trickle on my way to school. Creepers and bushes grew on its either side. Ladybugs lived on their leaves. They were unusual; their backs were of a silvery shine. If you held one against the sun it became a little rainbow between your fingers. They all belonged to me. One day I brought a couple home. I tore out their wings and tried to feed them on leaves. They died. Rainbows must not be brought home. They must not be owned. They are fragile and cease to be if you do.
We had a little snake in our garden. Sometimes it basked in the bed of marigolds and sometimes in the bed of dahlias. Ma never taught me to fear it. She only asked me never to bother it. You cannot speak of friendship to a snake. So, with the snake I forged a friendship never spoken.
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