The Glitter In The Cards !

The coming of summer vacations in school often left the classrooms buzzing with excitement and thrill after each day's school-over-bell. All babbling out their plans for the long two months' holidays. Many of my friends had their parents arranging very well planned vacations, months in advance. They would go to hill stations of Nainital, Mussourie or Kashmir, to beat the heat, see snow fall and do snow sports.

My summer holidays were different. Stay at home, no peeping out till late after sunset, enjoy the cool of khus fixed windows and doors and enjoy lassi or aam panaa and surely take good cool baths twice or thrice a day.The only pleasure was sitting out in a our lawns in the evening and sleeping out in khatias set out in the lawns under open starry skies and I loved it all each day, though at times the heart pined for snowy cool holidays in some far off hill station where I imagined my friends enjoying the snow under piles of woollens.

This yearning made me collect cards and pictures that my uncle would send me from far off Canada, the winters and Christmas every year in that land. I would stay glued to the photos and pictures and remain fascinated seeing the snow so well painted with a sprinkle of glitter, while the hot summer winds dashed against our windows in the scorching hot afternoons of Allahabad.

I kept many such cards under my pillow in cold December nights too, and would often slip them out from under the pillow to look at the snow glittering in the cards, and think that may be some day, I too, will get to see the wonderful snowy winters of that cold country.

Today I am mother and grandmother, my children , grandchildren are all settled on the other side of the Atlantic, that is North America. To get to meet them and spend days with them I have often made trips to this country that lay in the cards of my dreams. The initial fascination became familiar leading to a loss of its novelty. I stayed through some winters some summers, but stays barely lasted a few months.

This year my stay has been unusually long. I came at the beginning of the Fall, went through the cold winter and now am entering Spring. Have been able to see winter in all its splendour and wrath, and the dreams that grew in my picture cards under my pillow for years has almost been fulfilled leading to 'familiarity breeds contempt' status. Winter with its beautiful coat of snow did not charm me as I had dreamt in all my young years. May be age is a factor, but I doubt if age can do so much to undermine a age long developed fascination for the country.

To see the first flurries were beautiful, falling silently all through the day and night, making the nights light up as day, was heavenly. The sun falling warmly on the earth made the exact picture of glitter that all my cards had. I remained charmed by it all. The temperatures started falling to the extremes. The beauty became a daily feature and soon monotony took its toll. Day in day out it was just snow and snow. Going out of the house meant loads of woollens; from head to toe, it was just layers of the heaviest warm coverings. It became so tedious, that I slowly gave up going out of the house on such days, in fact, peeping out of the window too. Staying indoors was not bad, but day in and day out to be affected by the cold outside was not working positively. Some cold snow-piled bleak days did not get to see the sun too;cloudy, grey, gloomy were those days. No matter how much strolls in malls we did, the whole body started longing to go back to its hot summers and sun burnt summer days. All the beautiful greenery was under sheets of white frozen blankets, no sign of green life anywhere. Skeleton of trees stood out in helpless desperation braving the snow storms day in and day out. The evergreen Christmas trees, though loaded with green foliage, were draped in gowns of snow, the picture reminding me of my beautiful cards that I would slip out from under my pillow in my cold December nights in India.

It felt dead all over, a grey dull sheet seemed to sap out life from every place; but life for its people, remained the same. The same buzzing in schools and offices and stores, a don't care attitude at the severity of the weather, I was amazed at the spirit of the people of the country. Only the beautiful parks remained dead and noiseless, the swings, the slides stood like silent sentinels of long lost fun and shrills of children.

This was for months, I would go out or look out of windows and wonder, how will all the greenery, the beautiful gardens come up after months of such cold burial. Passed December, January, February..no change anywhere. Weather forecasts kept assuring Spring is round the corner. I too kept looking for some sign for its approaching.

Last evening, the sun seemed extra warm and welcoming. The temperature recorders in the house showed a good high. I could not believe it could really be so warm outside. I took courage and ventured out in a few warm coverings. Yes it was much better than what I had been experiencing month after month, but what struck my eyes, was all along the garden bed had sprung up a fresh row of green shoots of tulips, the flower that brighten the summers of Canada, all fresh and green, full of life and health as if screaming through their speechless outburst that nothing could stop them from reviving again and again. Those very beds under snow for months, had given way to dark fresh wet fertile soil and on it was this fresh picture of Life revived. So many school day poems came ringing in the heart.." in the heart of a seed, buried deep so deep, a dear little plant lay fast asleep.." as if all that poetry came to reality as I stood in admiration and appreciation at Nature's magic wand that never fails to teach us some lesson...to bear on and move on.

I again felt that there is some magic surely in the glitter of the cards that lay under my pillow with so many dreams, all is not bleak and grim as it felt all these months, the grass is green on the other side, you have to wait to see it spring up with Spring.

Rekindling of a Childhood Thrill !!

For some weeks I have been getting to know from dear friends and cousins intriguing stories and experiences of forests and jungles of the deep African greens.

African jungles have always held my imagination captive as my childhood years were strewn with bed-time stories of the mysteries of the forests and wilds of Africa. My father would narrate these stories in his full oratory skills, voice modulating with each story making the stories most interesting that could keep his little girl stay with him in the 'moshari' set up on the 'khatia' in the lawns of Tagore Town, all dark around, eucalyptus tree gently swaying in the summer breeze making the scenario just right to fit in my imaginations. I lay spell bound hearing these stories, gulping down every bit of it in my whole head. My mother, too, contributed in building up this attraction for jungles and its wild life with their adventures, from her endless collection of jungle stories that adorned her small library at home; but to this she added her real life experiences, as her childhood was in the jungles of Panna...the Panna of Madhya Pradesh about a century back...tigers snakes scorpions were common features in her stories.

Baba's stories were intriguing but Ma stories appealed more to the child in me as they were real life experiences. This fascination for the jungles took deep roots in me and the child in me remained as a child within a person who went advancing in years far from the world of the stories of lions and tigers and jungles. This child in me is there still, as I feel its childish presence each time by blood curdles in excitement when hearing such tales.

As Ma's real life stories appealed more to my mind then, I developed a fascination for the city of Panna....and I got a chance to visit the city at a very early age with my mother and my Mama(elder brother of Ma). For me that visit left a picture indelible through the years, the feel of all the stories that I had heard from Baba and Ma evolved to reality in my visit to the city.
Yes it was all jungles and dark, no electricity then too, a mysterious silence all around that deepened every evening as the sun set and like waves from distance the roars of tigers, hyenas came in from all sides. I remained rapt in fear and fascination to all this around me.

My Mama would take me roaming in the jungles in the early afternoons, with strict instructions from all elders in the house that he should bring me back before it was dusk, a restriction that added to the eerie feeling present in the air there.

I would see dark caves on mountain sides with water trickling from unknown sources of waterfalls, baboons screeching and swinging from trees looking at me as intruder in their world. I would clutch on to my Mama's finger and walk over the dried bed of leaves that rustled with each step of mine, making my fears rise with each crackling. Mama would help me walk carefully, lest I tread over some hole of those black scorpions or a deeper hole, the abode of the black cobra; that these reptiles were thickly thriving there, was easily possible as I could see dried skin of these reptiles hanging flimsily from branches or spread out as a narrow path all along in the bed of dried leaves, as perhaps the cobra shed its skin and moved away. It was all so real to see that I almost lost sense of breathing or hearing. The damp smell, the heavy scent of the damp greenery all around seemed to sap me up when a sudden clearing of all density showed a more fearful picture in front. It felt as if all had been cleared for some royal presence, some home, of may be, the ruler of the jungle, but no, the elites do not make themselves visible to the common eye, but that it was his haven was clearly made felt as in front, in a shallow big pit lay half eaten bodies of cows, wild goats in pools of fresh blood, the limbs half torn were strewn haphazardly all over....the gaping mouths of the bodies formed a pathetic sickening picture. It was broad day light, the sun had crossed for the afternoon bend, it was golden twilight, a fearful silence everywhere...I remained dumb, a sick nauseating choke was throttling me when Mama said this was last night's kill and the tiger would return tonight to complete his meal. This was no guided tour nor any planned kill from a machaan, it was just as the jungle sees it perhaps every night when the painful cries of the helpless prey goes tearing through the silence of the forests while the lord devours and satiates himself.

Mama took his turn for home, while I holding on to his finger and many a backward glance moved out with him.

I was a very small child then and Ma often remained amazed at my memory of that stay in Panna, how vividly the picture remained with me through all the years. Panna was for me a small patch of Africa.

Today a very dear and close to my heart companion gave me a line from TV news that Panna has only one tiger left in its thinning jungles...such a report at once brought out this story from a child's heart that lay dormant in me for so many years and I could live through it all over again. I thank my friend for re-kindling the thrill of those young years.