A HAPPY RAIN REMINISCENCE

This was when I was young and free of cares. It was 1980, I think. Long caftans were in fashion, at least in downmarket Barrackpore. I had a black-and-yellow patterned one, and I was very proud of my tiger-outfit. Like any other seven-year-old.

There was a khelar math (playground) near our house, used for football in summers, cricket in winters (this was way before the 24x7x365 cricket blitz), and for swimming in monsoon.

Or so we thought. A few days of heavy rain had submerged the green grass completely with only a few ‘islands’ poking out here and there. Tadpoles were swimming invitingly in the shallow ‘sea’. A few of us adventurous souls went chasing these ‘sea-monsters’, splashing about merrily…first with our kaftans (and what-not) lifted above our knees, and then, abandoning all pretense and caution, rushing headlong into the muddy water.

It was bliss to get so thoughtlessly wet, and great fun to splash the timid ones. If we jumped energetically, we could make waves in the water. We island-hopped gaily, wringing our dresses dry before plunging back into the water once more.

Full of glee and wet to the gills, I never noticed my mother till I felt the sharp sting as she literally pulled me by the ear and dragged miscreant-me off the danger zone. I was hauled back home, and was made to sit with my chilly feet immersed in a tub full of hot water and my chastised ears buzzing with pain and scolding, my bedraggled kaftan hanging on the clothesline. It never regained its original bright-yellowiness, remaining muddied with memory of my tadpole-in-tiger-disguise ‘misadventure’.

DO SHARE A HAPPY RAIN MEMORY WITH US.

THE SEA, THE SEA

My first trip to the sea was as an almost-eight year old. My parents, my brother and I went to stay for a few days at Digha, which perhaps is the beach-with-the-most-Bengali-footfalls. In the early 1980s, it was also the only beach-developed-as-a-tourist-destination in West Bengal. We boarded a WBTDC (West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation) bus in the morning, and, after a couple of stops (one for food, one for a breakdown, both accepted as ‘nothing out-of-the-ordinary’), reached Digha after sundown. Though my father took us to the beach and pointed out towards the sea, my journey-tired eyes saw only darkness and heard a muffled, equally-repeated roar – my first sea-sensation.

The next morning, after an impatient breakfast at the guest-house where we were staying, we went down to the sea, carrying towels and expectations. And though I think we lost the towel during our stay there, my expectations were more than met.

Digha is a very ordinary beach along the Bay of Bengal – brown waters, small waves, brown sands. Nowadays it is spoilt by erosion and by hordes of hooligans who go there to get always-drunk and sometimes-drowned.

But in the early eighties, there weren’t too many people around. The repeated roar of the sea was companioned by the ceaseless whispering of the casuarina and pine trees lining the beach. The middling brown waves thrilled my new-to-the-sea eyes and I loved jumping up along the wave’s curve in waist-deep water, before the foam broke some distance away and rush-rolled onto the sand. My brother was too young to enjoy the challenge of the waves, though, and started screaming when I went into the water, fearing maybe that I would drown.

The brown sands were prettified by thousands of tiny, pastel-patterned shells in pink, yellow, peach and green – all scattered here and there for me and bhai (brother) to find and hoard.

Mornings were for bathing and building sand-hills-and-caves. In the evenings, we would stroll on the beach, collecting shells, drinking coconut-water, watching the sun set slow-and-orange into the sea. And sit quietly, gazing out into the distance, wondering about the other shores that the water touched, feeling the cool-salty breeze, listening to the loud-faint-loud-faint rumble of the sea…till it became too dark to see the waves.

That sound stayed with me, captured in a large, orange, conch-shaped sea-shell (purchased, not collected). We did not have a camera, so there are no photographs of that trip, only seashells and memories.

WHEN DID THE SEA FIRST CAST ITS SPELL ON YOU?

THREE PONDS TO PONDER...

I like the sound of the word, "pond". There's a quality of stillness in it, as if you are throwing a pebble and there's a 'gloop' sound, some ripples stretching out, and then silence and stillness again.

I loved this silence in the pond which lay next to my childhood house, undisturbed in the noonday heat. I would never sleep in the afternoons, and would often spend the time near the pond, trailing my fingers in the water. My hands would get caught in the floating roots of the kachuripana (water hyacinth), which grew at a ferocious pace and covered the entire surface of the pond, all green with delicate lilac flowers. When they dried, the brown balloon-like bulbs could be pricked with a pop. At other times, the pond would be covered with tiny green shaola (lichen). Sometimes, I would crouch down on the slab of cement that served as a ghaat (pond-bank) and gather the water in huge kachu-leaves (colocasia). The leaves were water-proof and the green water would transform into a shivery, silvery, mercury-like liquid, and I would imagine it to be my secret hoard of silver-riches. Sometimes, I would watch the white, orange-beaked ducks waddling aimlessly - they all obediently returned to their owner's home in the evening when they heard the familiar sing-song "CHOI-CHOI-CHOI" call. For some strange reason, nobody bathed in this pond, though the surrounding families (ours included) would use it for washing clothes and utensils (till we were upgraded and got the Municipality water connection). Once, in winter, I got the scare of my life when I almost put my foot on a whole gaggle of snakes, all sleeping together (is that the right term?), coiled around each-other at the foot of a pink hibiscus tree bordering the pond.

The pond where I (and countless other children) learnt to swim was part of a neighbour's property. The ghaat here was cemented, with proper, though slippery, steps, and the jaldhora (water snakes) and small fish would scatter away as we plunged and splashed about, practising backstrokes, dubsatar (underwater swimming) and (feat of feats) staying afloat with our feet above the water surface.

The other pond which comes to my mind is the pond-that-never-was at my mother's grandfather's (I told you, Indians love joint families) place at Belur. This was a really big pit at the bottom of the garden, with rough-hewn steps going down to the bottom, but which had no water. All the neighbours had ponds in their gardens, so this lack of water was very mysterious and much-discussed. I remember circling this pond-that-wasn't warily on my trips to Belur, and finally, only once in my life, gathering courage to go down the pit, and gaining a fish-like view of the sky and the garden.

A FINAL POINT TO PONDER: Ponds are fast disappearing from urban and semi-urban India, buried under piles of debris, newly-consructed apartments, and the greed of property developers. I have never seen a pond in Mumbai, though there are places like Dhobi-talao and Shantaram-talao (talao = pond).
What are the ponds you ponder about?