Father arrives from the city

"Yoo hoo!! He is commmiiinggggg!!!!"My brother would dance a jig on the terrace , screaming his lungs out. "Where? Where?" Everyone would rush to the rooftop to get a better view, jostling with khokon(my bro). He had stationed himself there since day break, on the ashtami day(eighth day of the pooja) to look out for our missing-the -action father.
 My father , worked in the remote bustling city of Calcutta(now kolkata).Leave during" pooja" was rare. Still, thanks to our collective prayers and his persuasive abilities, he would manage a couple of days squeezed between the two most eventful days.Plus, he would bring long awaited gifts- Tintin comics, Enid blytons. clothes, chocolates and apples, mishti(sweets) from his favourite sweet shop "the chaturbhuj mishtanna bhandar", to the backwaters of the village.
The entire house hold would go into a frenzy of action. Way ward kids were caught, clothes changed, hair combed, and faces washed. (including the guy on the 'watch'). Courtyard would be swept. Servants, normally visible, would recede into  invisible corners. Ladies would change their saris and steaming tea and bathwater would be readied.
 As my father had to cross at least fifty slippery pathways, between rice fields(with lush green swaying crops and small fish swimming in and out of the reeds- thanks to flash floods)balancing two large duffel bags on each arm, a servant was quickly dispatched to help him in this task.This treacherous stretch also gave us ample time for the afore mentioned readiness.My father was essentially a city dweller and with his city- bred clumsiness would often stray , shoes socks and all, into the realms of rice field; creating hilarious p.g.wodehouse-ish situations.
 So, thus would father enter, on a sun washed morning, tired,barefoot, trousers hitched up to wet ankles, and in a totally bad mood.  A servant would follow, reverentially holding his dripping shoes and socks( hurriedly washed in the fish stream, to clean the mud), another with his duffel bags balanced precariously on the head.
My grandmother would break in tears and the' Poojas' would officially begin.

Durga pooja- The travel to the village

Durga is a fiery Goddess who came to the aid of the Gods when the conventional powers of masculine strength failed to vanquish a certain demon called Mahishasura. Durga pooja means pandal -hopping and eating delicacies particular to this iconic festival.
Ours was quite different. In order to be able to educate their brood well, my grandparents had abandoned their much loved ancestral village house and moved to a nearby town.This was one time in the year when we congregated back , and the village welcomed us back , infallibly, with wide outstretched arms.
As we lived in a part of rural Bihar , lot of local customs had been incorporated.
Preparations would begin months in advance. Monthly expenditures would  be curtailed to put away some money for the "Pooja".
 Orders were placed with the village potter for large numbers of ghee 'diyas' and "chiraags"(large terracotta lamps on stands). The village cowherd was bargained with, cajoled, and coaxed into supplying large amounts of ghee(clarified butter), and milk . The sole village weaver was summoned to the town and talked into producing crisp dhotis, and gamchchas(towels) by the said date.Our own mason was dispatched with a group of flunkies to whitewash and repair the cracks ,if any.
On the Mahalaya day,  the goddess would be invoked from the banks of river ganges , in a crescendo of mantras, evocatively sung .Every year, on this day, Akashvaani broadcasts  these age-old sanskrit hymns, sung in the deep baritone,at daybreak,(roughly, any time between 0430hrs to 0530hrs). Memories are still fresh, of cuddling half awake in the bed listening to the breathless rendition almost in marching rythm(not unlike the famed MS Subbalakshmi)
Rain would almost always play the spoilport. It would rain incessantly and the elders would remark that the goddess is arriving on the elephant. Like the chinese new year, every year the Goddess would select a new vahana(animal vehicle)for arriving on earth. When it was the elephant , it rained , torrents.
The rivers and seasonal canals , usually a trickle the entire year through, would assume fearsome and violent proportions.
A travel to the village was like a travel back in time. First half of the journey had to be accomplished by bus,till the village D. We would sit in the ample shade of the mango trees in the temple courtyard, with the dwarfish priest fussing over us('zamindar's family')and wait for the bullock cart to arrive. If we were lucky, the cart would have arrived early in the morning, the bullocks watered, and the driver would sit , hunched up beneath the tree, impatiently swatting flies with a leafy branch.
Once the suitcases were loaded, females of the house seated inside,(away from the prying eyes),my brother, being male, was allowed to be seated, next to the driver .Any amount of padding the walls or the base cannot prepare you for the total discomfort of the ride. Every step the bullocks take, you are either thrown forward or are lurching backwards,against the bony projections of the bamboo framework.A stone in the path of the wheels, and you are jostled heavenward, to hit your head against the narrow bamboo rafters, to be followed by a fall , on the hard and uneven base.Add to this the constant shouts of encouragement to the oxen(ranging from the shrill 'hurrrrrrr" to the gutturral "haaaaaaarrrrr"), liberally sprinkled with choisest of expletives mostly directed against the oxen,whenever the pair of them had the temerity to veer off-course.Half and hour of this ride left us with sore bodies, aching bones , bumps and bruises.
When we would reach the river of villageD,which would  be in full spate most of the time , the bullocks would halt abruptly.A brave attempt to cross the waters would end in  a total act of rebellion by the oxen.At some point the wooden wheels would be caught in the rocky bottom, covered with churning, frothy waters , and they would stop moving. Any further whipping or cursing would elicit a comically human reaction from the pair of them. As if on tandem, they would throw down their yokes, or at least try.One of them would sometimes break into a trot in a totally different direction, dragging the rest of the cart with its screaming female occupants into deeper  and more dangerous waters.
This would prompt acts of supreme bravery, as literally an army of villagers would jump into the waters, dhotis tied high,all shouting and' haarraaaaring'  simultaneously, to save the women , belongings and the cart from certain annihilation. The oxen would stop in bewildered midtrot and the day would be saved.
At this point, the matriarch would emerge from the cart, looking terribly upset and the rest of the journey would commence on foot. Smaller kids would perch on shoulders of the larger villagers and the oxen, glad to be on dry ground, would resume their brisk step, as if nothing had happened.
This journey would almost always be repeated ,every year.
We would reach home at dusk. A hot cup of tea awaited all of us , a bath and a clean bed in a freshly painted room later , all of us would be ready to welcome the Goddess next day.

Kisna

He appeared as if from nowhere.He was tired, haggard and barefoot . He probably stank too(as was confirmed later). He sat in the shade of our porch, on the cool, cemented floor, dangling his foot on the edge(as if he owned the place; other servants would remark later). He wore a pair of shorts, frayed at the edges, and his pale yellow /dirty white shirt had several buttons missing.

When my granny walked to the porch,and demanded to know, who he was and what was he doing there(as was her wont); he turned to look at her and gave her a gap toothed smile. That melted her formidably strong heart and she took him in, under her wings.

He was watered, fed,and questioned (strictly in that order).All he could say was his name(kisna).All other queries elicited the same famous gap toothed smile. We concluded (probably rightly)that he was slightly mentally deficient and had run away from his home.
.All of thirteen years, he was given my brothers' clothings and a makeshift bed in  the spare room on the terrace.

He took to us merrily, like fish to water. His chores were simple,to fetch water from the well, and occasionally, accompany us kids to the bus stop. In the evenings, he would clean the glass chimney and trim the wick for the lanterns.When we sat with our school home work, he sat next to us, peering at the illustrations, making faces at the pictures and keeping us in splits till he was shooed away by our stern grandmother.

 Occasionally he would be given a bit of pencil and paper to do his own writing, which would be reverentially folded away and added to his growing stash of colourful photos culled from discarded newspapers.

That he came from extremely impoverished state was apparent. Kisna wouldn't let water from boiled rice be thrown. He drank the whole lot, seasoned with salt, for two entire weeks, before he grew tired of it.The fact that rice in our home was cooked for nearly ten people and that rice was the staple at almost every meal must give one an inkling to the vast amount of frothy, salty and starchy soup kisna drank.

Besides prodigious appetite, he had a large heart. He would follow my granny around the house like a devoted dog. Others would laugh at his weird tastes(salt in black tea instead of sugar, mustard oil for hair , to name a few),but not my granny. In him she saw her own long lost brother(a deaf- mute who wandered off the family estate during the second world war" the days of big aeroplanes"  and was never heard of again).

That he was swarthy and a tribal to boot did not deter her. On long hot summer afternoons, she would allow him to curl up on a piece of matting in our own fan cooled bed rooms, a privilege not accorded to other servants.
Around autumn that year, we noticed a change in kisna. Normally courageous, kisna started avoiding the dark. He would stumble around pots and pans at night and would simply refuse to draw water from the well at night.At a village wedding, Kisna became the talk of the town, for having clambered over sleeping forms of the grooms' party; while going to and fro the bathroom,thereby bruising many a chest, eyeball and ego, in that order.That it was done in a moment of unintentional haste paired with lack of night vision missed every one's notice.My astute grandpa diagnosed it as night blindness, brought about by extreme and prolonged malnutrition. A month of goat liver for dinner and foul tasting oily concoctions for medicines, Kisna was back to his normal self, drawing water from well with gay abandon, in pitch dark,while belting out tuneless hindi songs.

That he was a foundling, was never to be mentioned to him, even in a fit of anger. He was one of us, he played hopscotch and peekaboo with us, got drenched in holi colours and was given new clothes during the poojas.

Never once did he mention his village or his family. Neither did he ever express a desire to go back home (wherever that was ). Once in an unguarded moment, he did let slip that his father "beat him a lot".

So it came as a complete shock, on our returning back from school one day,  to find two dusty adult adivasis sitting on our porch bench , drinking tea .

 Upon entering, Kisna was found sobbing near the coal heap, behind the kitchen, and my grandmother was sitting sullenly on her bed, counting some money.

How kisna's father discovered his runaway son's refuge is an amazing saga of witchcraft/blackmagic come true. A rational mind could dismiss it as a series of serendipitious coincidences.Having exhausted the conventional methods of looking for his lost son, the father approached the village shaman.In a state of trance(possibly hallucinogen aided), the shaman "saw" a vision of a" yellow house"(our humble abode).The 'voices' in the shaman's head also gave him clear instructions as to how to reach the said house, following which the two afore mentioned men landed up at our door step .

Predictably, Kisna did not  want to leave, my granny was distraught; she didn't want him to leave either.

None of us did. We had grown so fond of him and his eccentric , childlike ways.And as my teacher sister pointed out, "he was just picking up hindi alphabets".

But his father wouldn't budge." And after all, he should live with his parents" came a practical rejoinder from my clear-eyed , and normally silent grandpa.

So, Kisna went, wiping  tears on his sleeves,clutching his' bundle of stash', his half finished hindi alphabet primer held in hand,pockets bulging with a few currency notes that my granny had given him hurriedly; other hand held firmly by his father, repeatedly turning back to glance at all of us, gathered on the porch, to bid farewell.

We never heard from him or his family ever again.
We will never know why kisna was sent to us , to enter our lives briefly(a year and a half to be precise).We know for certain, that he ended up transforming all of us with his simplicity, trust and ability to love total strangers. 

Housework

Home work or housework is the work you do in and around the home. Normally, this is viewed as an oxymoronic phrase or an anachronism. For it is largely percieved that home is where we essentially laze around and  have a good time without so much as moving a muscle.This erroneous belief or perception is no doubt a result of decadent, overinduinlgent lifestyles, reinforced mostly in one's chilhood.Prosperous households of yore had a bevy of obsequious servants; who would comply to every (well,almost every) wish uttered by the' babalog' community. This arrangement produced vast numbers of indolent individuals, specially of the male sex, who had no clue as to what house work was, or the effort that it entailed.
Like all trends mortal, this too proved ephemeral. So , today we live in a world where maids (and reliable, non-criminal variety)are as rare as a well -preserved dinosaur egg.
 I know of a cousin who had to cook his supper for few agonising days, in the absence of his better half(who was visiting her parents) and his domestic help(who had  conveniently fallen ill ,in her mistresses' absence).His half -baked culinary efforts are an invariable source of hilarity at every family gathering.Ranging from the time he attempted to boil rice in a kettle(thereby blocking the spout with cooked rice),and cooking dal in an improperly closed lid of a pressurecooker(the pot lid' hitting the roof'  at the first whistle; thereby creating an unusual, yellow coloured, abstract painting on the white ceiling.) His used towels were discovered , concealed in various unpredictable places; inside the cupboards and on kitchen cabinets(having been abandoned in haste and forgotten ) , all bearing interesting designs wrought on by the unchecked onslaught of fungal growth.
Every housewife has a repertoire of similar stories . Of coasters used as bookmarks and dirty tea cup bases producing ringed geometric patterns on pristine tablecloths,of kitchen dusters mysteriously disappearing, to be redicovered days later(patterned in dirt and fungus) wedged inexplicably beneath the CPU of the computer.So on and so forth.
The most popular hindu goddess by far is the Goddess Durga. One of her synonyms is the Annapurna(one who fills granaries/plates with food"anna"). Another form is the humble broom 'jhaddoo'.(there is a verse in the' chandi - paath' which compares the Goddess to the broom-the 'dirt cleaner'). A woman who is being welcomed into the new household after her wedding , would be ritually blessed to "be the Annapurna".
So it is actually an honour(sanctioned by the scriptures)  to be a householder, and thereby "a filler of plates" and a "cleaner of dirt".Amen to that