the village trip

the merciless, unfeeling sun bears down hot around here. it has always been like this. the trees are there in large numbers but somehow they were greener then. everything was greener then. what would seem to be a never-ending walk as a kid is just a few strides even in a stringent gait since the mind is busy shoveling the past than pay attention to the heat or the legs. a few people who were last seen playing underarm cricket are old enough to be playing with a cricket ball now and are in the middle least worried of the unforgiving heat. i hardly recognized anybody. i moved on anxious to see what would be left of the constant subject of my childhood scribblings in the last pages of class work notebooks and drawing sheets. the well was still there, very imperfect with age and caving in threatening to end its own life any day now. the two coconut trees were still there but not in their old vigor. one of them still bore some coconuts. the mango tree by the well is gone. it has been gone for 12 years now but i still check lest it should appear magically. it dint and i moved on. the old bridge over the river where the old and wise would sit in the evenings showed up in the distance. i have fished in this same river as a kid. fished with nothing more than thatha’s dhoti. we caught some fish that we intended to keep as pets though i do vaguely remember asking my grandma to drop some in the curry she was making when i returned home which she ofcourse refused. i dont remember how old i was then but i think i was maybe just a foot tall. i remember how my shadow used to look on the ground as i ran around pretending to ride a bike. the bridge had half fallen into the now dry river. it must have been an accident. that old bridge was too strong to cave in so soon.
after the bridge came the houses. i will have to cross atleast a 20 before i reach home. normally i would be met with peering eyes and questioning glances of the old people who sit outside their houses. someone would gather their voice to ask if i was so-and-so’s grandson to which i will reply with a ‘aama thatha’ or ‘aama paati’ and move on anxious to reach home. today there were none. it was too hot a day for sitting outside so i slid through the streets comfortably. i reached home to see a joyous and excited granny since she did not know i was visiting and the surprise had worked quite well. what followed was an hour or so of non-stop talk which was mostly one-sided from my granma who had suddenly become energetic and animated like a kid who got her favorite toy as a gift. she was so full of expression describing the snake she saw in the bathroom the week before which by her description could have made an anaconda slithering away for cover. for someone who had spent 70 years in the village, granma was odd when it came to her fear of snakes, mice, frogs and cockroaches. the talk then ranged from the fights she has with grandpa over the pettiest of matters (to one of which grandpa had jokingly replied saying he would wrap a frog in paper and put it along with the shopped groceries the next time she fought with him which i found very cute), to who had died/was dying since my last visit, to what plants she currently had in our huge garden and what crops were growing in our farms. i was ofcourse enjoying my lunch while listening. thanks to the new datacard, i was able to stay there and work for a week watching chicks hatch out of their eggs, watching a therukoothu (street play) and do a million other village stuff. now am back but hoping i get to go there again… soon.