Our Favourite Indian Stories (52 page)

After paying Kallu and Radheshyam, I decided to take a shower.

The day's events had drained me physically and emotionally and I wanted to forget everything. Yet, as I lay in bed the rewind and play buttons in the mind's video got automatically pressed. I could see and hear those women talk in audible whispers.

Memories of the days when I was still young, and in love, came galloping. He and I had spent a good part of our lives together, walking across the rainbow into a world of prismatic beauty. My family had left the search of a suitable boy to me and I thought I had found one.

I realised my naivete when he told me that his family would not accept me as a daughter-in-law. I had woven all my dreams around him but he chose to hurl me from rainbow heights to the depths of loneliness. He awakened mental and bodily stirrings but left at the point where I could experience ecstasy. He did not marry me because I was from a different community. Our thoughts did not reflect religion. Nor did our breaths and emotions. I was shattered. But I accepted his verdict as
fait accompli
and set him free.

Even now his memory fills my mind and body with an indescribable emotional amalgam of pleasure and pain. I don't long for him. Yet, in some remote corner of my heart he is still there. Wrapped in folds of love. And I knew why I could not hate my neighbours.

Shoy Lall

Somebody once told me that I live on one of the most beautiful roads in the world. Yet the road to Tikratoli, not unlike the events in my life that led me to it, is full of ups and downs. You drive through a variety of countryside once you leave the road of Ranchi and, starting with an outcrop of twisted and tortured rocks, which bear a striking resemblance to a deserted landscape on some alien planet, you roll down to a narrow bridge which spans a dry rivulet. Then you climb steeply to a single clump of bamboo, and to a solitary Jackfruit tree which look strangely out of place in the barren countryside.

From there, the road slopes downwards again to a brick kiln on your right, and then climbs steadily once more to a coppice of trees on a wooded hillock. Under the Sal and Eucalyptus trees, at this spot, you will pass a tribal graveyard, and a little mud hut where you can always get the local brew, and will then come into flat, open country with many thousands of small, square fields, crowded one upon another, as far as the eye can see. I call this "The Rice Bowl" for, during the monsoons, it is a vast, seemingly endless plain of tender green blades of rice. There are a couple of tanks, by the side of the road here, in which there is usually some water, but they have more weeds and lotus flowers in them than fish. There are no trees on this stretch of the road, save for a single, massive
Kusum
, which has an old, partly hollow gnarled trunk and twisted branches that seem to be forever reaching for the sky.

Every summer, this tree comes into bloom, and when it dons its cloak of brilliant red, it can be seen for miles. And you drive along the flat, straight road until you are suddenly among the hillocks again, and you branch off left, and begin the final gentle climb. You turn sharply right into the gates of Tikratoli, and you are at once in the midst of tall, cool pines, the leafy Cassias, the Gul Mohars, ever green Acacias, Jacarandas, Firs and Silver Birches. And you forget the world outside, the harsh eroded land, the dirt, the overcrowding, and the poverty in the neighbouring town.

The story of my farm, and the life I have chosen for myself in this quiet rural setting, is a very personal one; and the road which brought me to Tikratoli was, and still is, a long and varied one. It was a road which I struggled along, despite temptations to turn back and abandon for more lucrative offers from a crowded and smoke ridden city. It was a road I was compelled to take after a long, trying and expensive illness in Switzerland. And when I first stepped upon it, I took a journey into the unknown for, almost twenty years ago, I hadn't the faintest idea what starting a farm in India, from scratch, particularly on a shoestring budget, would entail.

If anyone had told me at the time, that it would involve converting myself into something of an architect, engineer and builder, accountant, entomologist, vet and animal husbandry man, agronomist, botanist, horticulturist and forester, all rolled into one, I would have felt deeply discouraged and dismayed, to say the least. Yet today, when I look back down that road, it seldom bothers me that, after so many years of farming and, more recently a few years in commerce and industry, I have gradually learned to be a jack of most trades while actually being master of none. Nor would I now ever dream of altogether forsaking my rural interests for urban ones, of leaving this quiet corner of the country, or of setting foot on any other road which might take me away from Tikratoli, or the simple village folk who live around me here. Admittedly, there have been times when I have been discouraged; when I have felt that this is a road without an end; when I have found the way strewn with boulders, with obstacles which have seemed insurmountable. But equally, there have been other moments when my road has unexpectedly skirted these, when I have found that it is sometimes better and more satisfying to journey down a road which has indeed no end.

And the people I have met all along the route have been helpful and kind. They have taught me that if the road rises, it also falls; that an outcrop of curiously twisted rocks at one spot, does not necessarily mean that there are boulders all along the way; that barren countryside can suddenly, unexpectedly, be replaced by cool, wooded knolls; that even adjacent to a quiet cemetery it is possible to find love and life and laughter; that in a parched and unyielding land, the lotus blooms in stagnant pools, even in the midst of burning summer; that at some stage of the journey, when you are hungry, and wonder where your next meal is coming from, there will always be a full rice bowl awaiting you; that a single flowering tree, however old, can provide you the cool, welcome shade you need; that if you should stumble and fall, there is always a pair of eager hands to help you to your feet, and that, sooner or later, after a hard day, you will climb that last hillock and come home to a well earned rest.

They have taught me to work with my hands, to smile calmly in the face of famine, to conserve water in almost every possible form, to sleep under a clear, starry sky, and to husband and respect the soil, even when it fails to yield. They have taught me to tell from the direction of the prevailing winds whether it is going to rain or remain dry, and to gauge from the chatter of the birds, the incessant drumming of the cicadas, exactly how many days away the monsoons are. They have taught me not to discard entirely, old beliefs, old values for new ones in a fast changing rural environment, but to successfully blend together the two so as to get, in the end, the best of both worlds. They have also shown me, through their tribal culture, through traditional custom and usage, how simple it is to take pride in a profession and a way of life, which is still largely looked down upon and regarded as a poor and an illiterate man's occupation in this country.

Twenty years ago when I first came to Tikratoli and started building my home, I was very much a bachelor. At that time, with my finances and my horizons rather limited, it did not seem even remotely possible to me that I would one day marry and acquire a ready made family. Yet, something of a sixth sense, if you can call it that, kept prompting me throughout the long years I spent building, to construct a house in which there would be room to breathe; a home which could be the pride of my family which might, one day, come after me to Tikratoli.

So I built myself something of a country mansion in these sylvan surroundings, never for a moment thinking that I would actually be thankful one day for having done so and spread myself out over the years and made myself quite comfortable. I had plenty of room and I encouraged friends to come and stay with me every so often in order to relieve the tedium and the monotony of a lonely life in the country.

During these years, while I was building Tikratoli, I also tried my hand at Journalism and, thanks to the encouragement and help I received from friends and colleagues, (in particular, the very valuable advice and assistance I received from one of the Editors of
The Statesman
) I was able to travel fairly widely and see something of farming in different parts of India, Australia and the UK.

Just when I thought my building days were over, (I have since built a complete home nearby for my sister and set up an entire Rubber Factory in Ranchi), fate played an unexpected part in my life and brought into it a young widow, already the mother of three children, whose family and mine had known each other for a great many years. Of the three children, the eldest was a girl of thirteen years, and the younger two twins, a boy and a girl, twelve year old at the time.

So I made a few structural alterations inside the house to give them each a little nook of their own, and we soon settled down to the joy of living together as a family. If Tikratoli was a nice, spacious and attractive bachelor's den, when I got married and acquired my family, it soon became a beautiful and a complete home. My wife and children filled it, bringing into it light and music and laughter, where before there had only been the sounds of silence, and the vacuum of many quiet summers—years of wasted hours.

Today, combining as I do my industrial and my agricultural pursuits, I race the Sun from east to west each day and view distantly, even more gratefully, all my yesterdays with a growing sense of tranquillity and fulfillment. Today, I watch the colours spring to life in my quiet garden, sit in the sanctuary of my restful home, far from the smoking chimneys and the smothering smog of industry, and see my children grow in salubrious surroundings, able to distinguish for themselves, proper values of life in both the city and the country. On all the winding roads that lead to Tikratoli, their myriad tracks and pathways, there are visible signs of movement and transformation. A stirring and an awakening.

And, despite the present economic crisis, the continuous famine of goods and services, the growing drain of rural youth to urban areas, the fact that the cost of living has almost quadrupled itself since I first came to settle in this quiet corner of the earth, the stars still come down like rain every night. And, at the end of each full day, I am still able to see through the settling haze of dust, count my innumerable blessings, give thanks, and stretch out my hands and touch the Face of God.

Neelam Kumar

Humming softly, Parvati picked up the last white jasmine from her slender lap and guided her needle through its delicate green stalk. Though her eyes had stood her in good stead these 59 years, they had now started watering and, something she was too vain to admit, had dimmed a bit despite the pink-rimmed glasses her son had bought for her from New York. The fragrant flower threaded perfectly into place with the others, transforming her garland into a work of art. The moment of completion never failed to stir her. When she twisted the crown of blossoms around her hair as she had been doing for over four decades now, it reminded her of the moon in full bloom.

Each morning, Parvati would wake up with the birds to follow her self-imposed routine of bathing, praying and decorating the entrance of her house with a well-practiced intricate pattern made from pounded, colour-soaked rice powder. Each morning, she plucked the scented blossoms to weave around her long plait. And each day she examined her work critically, resting only after she could detect no flaws. Thus it had been for the last 41 years of her married life. And thus it would be, she hoped, for as long as she lived.

Once done with all this, she then entered the kitchen to brew coffee just the way Shivaswamy liked it and begin the day's cooking - a routine she enjoyed immensely. This morning, she had packed her husband's lunch with special care - taking pains to make the curry appetizing without adding too much oil (in reverence to his rising cholesterol) and his favourite dessert delicious without adding too much sugar (with deference to his diabetes). Despite herself, a smile trembled on the edges of her lips. Perhaps this was the last time she would pack his tiffin. All day, as she went about her chores, the imp of a smile would suddenly jump out of her heart and make its way resolutely upwards until it lit up the shores of her lips before she sent it down forcibly within the confines of her heart.