Some among us are in the habit of stealing nights and words, sounds and silences, people and places. We cannot always help it. We bottle them all in and stow them away in the cabinets of our memory, where forgotten they lie ageing like fine wine, only to be taken out and sipped on cold and cruel days, when its warmth stirs our soul. I am of the ilk, and below are some of those collected snippets and moving pictures and memories, not always of a singular night but many many such nights melding into one.
“Words mean more at night
like a song
and did you ever notice
the way light means more than it did all day long?”
– Gregory Alan Isakov | This Empty Northern Hemisphere
The jackfruit tree
At night, my sister and I were often left pouting and staring in the darkness. As a rule, we had to get to bed early and we absolutely hated it. We had to wash our little feet, were rushed in, had to say our prayers, the lights were put out, the curtain to the east facing window of our bedroom drawn, the door left ajar to let conversations and a shaft of light slip-in and to remind that grown-ups could stay up late. The side of the bed we slept on was fixed, separated by a bump in the planks, the pillows & the pillow covers were, between the two of us, agreed upon. We were quite territorial you see; any crossing and one would beat the other to a pulp. So we lay carefully, on our sides of the beaten down mattress, atop a creaky bed with one of its legs broken, nail-hammered and resting against a stack of bricks. The view from the window was that of a big bulky jackfruit laden tree soaring past us into the sky. It hosted squirrels and silken spidery threads, bees and sparrows and crows and parrots by the day and strange shapes and dreams and shadows by the night. Its leaves flittered, hiding and revealing patterns as it let light from the sky and the opposite houses through. We lay awake in bed trying to scare each other off, sharing our day, talking of school and friends and teachers, comparing our test scores, squabbling, making bets and promises and elaborate plans, or guessing what would come next in our favorite fantasy series. Today no one holds the nape of my neck and runs me through to my bed, I am at liberty to stay up late and yet I miss those conversations with my little sister where between the two of us we had the world figured out.
Beyond the night sky
The chipping sound of a metal Sarota (cutter) crushing supari (betel nut) into fine bits, strip strip, rough pudgy fingers rubbing into the ground tobacco, licking slaked lime and dusting palms off, two claps. A sharp spicy aroma causing me to convulsively sneeze. Memories get muddled with time. Was it the blue-white, fabric-webbed folding chair or the classic brown wooden chair, I don’t remember which, but both their legs drilling hole into the earthen floor. Baba was heavily seated, out on the verandah on one of these and I was comfortably perched upon his dhoti-clad lap. Village had begun shrouding itself in layers of night. There was light from the lanterns and as much from the fireflies. The evening kirtan had begun in the nearby temple. Next to one of the round red pillars on verandah, a pail of water was kept out for children, the way to handpump through unsteady bricks and slippery stone slabs, being out of bounds in the dark. It was hidden from the view behind a coconut tree and banana leaves, and surrounded by wild flowers and weeds. It was a scary place to us, monsters lived there at night. The firewood mud stove was lit, cooking had begun and billows of smoke poured out. You could see a cat stealthily prowl towards the store room. Baba, at times was speaking to others, at times he was responding to me. I pointed out into the night sky, to the pockmarked moon and out beyond to the stars. I asked him what lay beyond. We were in the countryside in India, the continent nudging somewhere (probably towards the Eurasian plate), the earth spinning and orbiting the sun, that in turn circles some point in the Milky way, the galaxy itself pinwheeling and hurtling somewhere. That was as much my mind could grasp, from my textbooks and a space magazine I had purchased at a book fair. Both of us wondered, thoughts bordering around God and its form, and explanations rooted in some sort of science, logic, big bang (he postulated some sort of bang, both of us did not know what it was and figured there had to be something before, to collide). We never figured it out, growing up I never did take that course in astronomy, in over a decade i have only been a couple of times to my village and though now I do stumble from time to time upon recent research findings and wish to set-up a decent telescope on my terrace, I long back stopped looking for answers.
Summer frozen in a scoop
It was a sultry summer evening. If and when the wind blew, it carried the smell of freshly mown grass, marigold flowers and the night blooming jasmine. The air was heavy with mild fragrance emanating from the khus grass, wet in the dripping and sputtering water coolers. We did not have ACs back then, it was still a time for coolers. We took the chairs out to the lawn on our front porch and sat there talking late into the night. Ma and Papa and my sister, we spoke of a great many things. Papa, of his work at the plant (we had a thermal power plant and four chimneys in our far background spouting gray clouds of smoke), we spoke of our school and studies and teachers, of play and friends, Ma of families, grandparents and neighbors, someone of flowers in the garden and the recently planted saplings. We sat, at times crossing and at times caressing our tender feet over patches of prickly grass. Water hissed from the garden hose-pipe letting out a smell of bleach. We looked up at the stars and lost in our collective, personal and overlapping silences, we wondered. We let loose our thoughts like helium balloons. We dreamt and wished and prayed and hoped. We stole our share of the skies in plentiful, like people only in small towns can hope to do. It was mostly a deserted street in a sleepy town, aglow with the yellow of street lamps and dimly lit front porches. There were at all times some houses wearing a deserted look, with empty driveways, windows boarded up, taking cover in the darkness behind overgrown hedges, tall grass and weeds. A distant screech of swing, the slow iron fall of a see-saw and a solitary cackle of a child. Ma would go inside and get us all some ice-cream. Those days for a certain time we preferred cones. We would impatiently tear off the wrappers and take blissful bites. It was our summer, frozen in a scoop.
It was long ago we moved out from there and now when I look back, I see some other family in our house, doing things differently or our house being one of those deserted ones in the lane, with shuttered windows, tall grass, weeds and a ruined garden and the ghost of our happy memories.
Of night walks and park benches and moon
At night, a primal fear should kick in and yet on the contrary I somehow feel safer. Unrushed, not pushed around to the tick of time. Away from the expecting gaze of people, a cloak of anonymity. Something that I can wrap around myself and snug inside. The easy calm and the stillness. Unintrusive.
I love going out on walks at night, all by myself or accompanied by someone I truly like. It helps me unclutter my mind. Taking unfrequented roads, under the cover of trees or a blanket of stars, a pool of lamplight or a shade of darkness, listening to the swarm of insects, the chittering clicks or the occasional cheep of a bird or the startling howl of foxes and dogs. In the quiet of the night, you can hear the scrape of your own sandals, gravel crush beneath your feet, you can hear the other speak, you can hear yourself talk. At night I feel we are the most vulnerable, prone to telling truths, at times disarming ones, even to ourselves. We may whisper into the night, our deepest desires, our daring dreams, our drenching dreaded fears, pouring our hearts out, unguarded and unchecked. To some, if they’re fortunate enough the night whispers back.
And if on one of those walks, I can find park benches à la Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill, nothing like it.
“For June who loved this garden –
From joseph who always sat beside her.”
Resting in the grass, surrounded by trees, empty and inviting. They’re quiet observers, collecting stories over the years. The old sitting still, gathering breath and recollections, children, jumping, hopping and skipping about, the young with their butterflies, couples and confidantes and tramps. Heads resting in laps and on shoulders. Tears and hugs and kisses and love. They bear etchings and memories of different times. I have a few of my own, some back at my town and some from across the world. My childhood, lost friendships & forgotten love, resting atop or under some of those park benches, right where I left them.
Chances are if you meant something to me, I would have, on all of those walks, annoyingly, quite persistently and hopelessly so, shown you the moon. Gaping stupidly at it as if it were visible for the very first time and we were the only two people it was privately available to.
“Tiptoe through the window
By the window, that is where I’ll be…And when I kiss you in the garden in the moonlight
– Tiny Tim
Will you pardon me and tiptoe through the tulips with me?”
Antakshari and the seven stars
Songs floated from the two theaters adjacent our house, Ashok Cinemas and Mira Talkies, the sound of their generators sputtering and rattling. There were accompanied whistles and hoots and claps. The two coconut trees that rose up eighty feet behind our compound wall creaked in the slightest of winds, their long leaves brushed against each other and rustled. We lived in the constant fear that they would someday fall and one day, one of them did. Out on the verandah we sat in darkness, intoxicated by the chattering and the mixed smell of kerosene lamps, fried fish and the flower bed behind. That was also the time when once a year, every year in the sweltering summer of the east, we gathered round to play Antakshari, sitting in our pajamas, with slender cane fans in our hands to cool ourselves with and keep a whole colony of mosquitoes at bay. On wooden chairs and rope cots and the verandah swing were grandparents and parents, aunts and uncles and cousins and neighbors. The songs forever remained the same, the top picks borrowed from each generation, broken and beaten to suit our needs. Nanima, who batted for both the teams, was the unquestioned champion. Laughter and music flowed, the evening brimming with life. As the night would progress, we would move to terrace and lie there sprawled on a jute mat, more solemn, in the long stretch between the water tanks at one end and the large TV antenna mid-way. There was little light on the terrace, spare the blinking constellation of stars and a sodium lamp flickering across on the opposite building. Occasionally, backside of our house, we got to hear the screaming honk and the chugging of the train pulling along the tracks across the open fields and the far road. We lay next to Nanaji and Nanima, Nanaji fiddling with his old radio, turning and tuning to catch news, waiting for the heavy measured voice to break through the buzz and crackling. We would bug Nanima to tell us a story, any story. Stories formed pretty much everything of our childhood summers. She would choose one; her voice would rise and fall as she put words behind words and stitched and weaved a tale into the night. Tonight, she picked my favorite. She looked up and pointed towards Saptarishi, the seven stars of the big dipper and began narrating a folklore. We would interrupt her with questions that formed in our devious little minds. Nanaji would maintain his stoic quiet, save in an attempt to course correct her. Nanima, as tempestuous as those summer storms, would or would not accept. One story would lead to another, until sleep beckoned us or there were frantic calls from down below for dinner. Through the years, those words remained with us, as did the night.
I leave you here as abrupt as all those beautiful nights, when I was hoping that one would forever follow the other, but I had never quite realized when one would end and the other would never begin.
Somesh | Katyayan 