Echoes from the Past

In a moonlit lonely winter night at AEC, echoes of a bird with a sound so familiar kept reverberating into my ears. It felt like a déjà vu. My thoughts were catapulted to the reminiscence of the sweet past that I am so thankful of having been through. I remember lying in the bed along with my grandma on another chilly winter night and going to sleep listening to these same echoes. Imagining that unknown bird gliding over the paddy fields… sometimes diving down caressing the paddy leaves kept my thoughts busy until I fall asleep.

As a child, I frequented my country home beside a small rivulet surrounded by lash green paddy fields, seeking the warmth of my grandma’s love. Leading a ‘township’ life probably from the day I learned to walk my county home was something like the call of nature for me. It was my freedom, a place where all my spirits rejuvenated after months of routine school work and the discipline we were put into. The touch of the grass blades on my feet, kept virgin by the school shoes and the township concrete felt ecstatic. The tiny lanes through the paddy fields showed endless routes to fulfill our fantasies.

As the Sun rises for another morning it was us me, Baba, Apu, Ripu, Dhunu who would set the poultry free before they could raise the alarm that it is time for their freedom. Helping(?) our grandpa cook the daily meals for the cattle, we had already planned for our daily adventure by then. Equipped with our home made fishing tools, which was either a bamboo stick fitted with a small fishing hook by a thread at one end or a regular household sieve, we were ready for the catch. Of course, not before digging the vicinity of the cattle yard for a can of earthworms to be used as bait. Sitting in the shed of bamboo bushes, we spent long patient hours for our prized catch and too often than not we were rewarded. Back home, time to clean up, but never without some fun and the ponds in our backyard provided just that. As the evening sets in, it was time to take a ride with our grandpa in his bullock cart!!! Probably the slowest vehicle man has ever used to commute, I still remember going through the uneven, ungraveled roads to far off paddy fields that we own in the bullock cart at a snail’s pace to bring home the harvested crop. Another vehicle my grandpa boasted off was a boat craved out of single tree stem. Anchored to the rivulet that flowed near my grandpa’s home, it was the only vehicle that they could use when there was a flood. Floods might create havoc across the world, but for us when the rainy season comes it was time for us to rejuvenate. Barely 20 kilometers from our ONGC Township, our country home, was fun to visit during the floods. Although I never remember flood water entering inside our house or porch, all the roads and paddy were inundated and with the school building where my cousins studied too going under water, the time was ripe for another adventure. Our grandfather was quick to understand our intentions and wasted no time in manufacturing the vehicle (a masterpiece made out multiple banana stem pinned together with bamboo) for our adventure, to spare his wooden boat. Now I feel, probably we four were the most pampered lot in the village to have so much facility available by our elders, just to have fun.

Of the numerous adventures I had there, I remember once going for a hunt along with few other villagers. My brother and cousins were not allowed citing reasons that they are too young and being the eldest at 13, I was allowed after assurance of strict vigilance from an elder neighbor. Equipped with a catapult, we ventured into the jungle, which was more or less an extended garden of one of the villagers and our team made few kills. Although I never thought I mastered the art of catapulting, I somehow killed a bird that day form a distance of around 6 foot. We had a feast that day, but I felt so guilty that I couldn’t bring my kill in the feast. Instead, we four decided to have a funeral of the bird and we did that by the bank of the rivulet with all the honor, we could give…

Suddenly everything changed. The wheels of the bullock cart lay untouched over the racks of an empty granary. The boat finally rests overturned, in one of those abandoned ponds. Nature has been quick to reclaim its land, once occupied by my forefathers.

Pushing the old Iron Gate as I try to take my car inside my old country home, a feeling of excitement and sadness engulfs me. Taking my shoes off as I step outside I let my feet feel the ecstasy once again. As I try to close the gate a tall lanky man came running towards me. Oh! It’s Dhunu, our neighbor. A Lab technician in Guwahati now, he too had left his native village like my cousins. An uneasy silence occupies the place. As I step into the verandah, I feel as if my grandma is sitting right there with her beetle nut grinder to offer me a handful of grinded beetle nut and beetle leaf mixture. Slowly my steps followed the familiar path to backyard cutting through the blanket of spider webs that had invaded my childhood heaven. Making our way through the herbs and the bushes, where there happens to be road once, me and my wife continued to our destination. Finally my feet rested and we knelt down to pay homage to my Ma, Grandma and grandpa’s grave in our family graveyard…