The Sun, or Surya Devata, has a personality of His own. So, while formally dawning at 6.25 am, it decided to not be visible till a good half-hour later. Then it hung, red and limpid, among the hazy clouds, yawning and stretching like fellow-earthlings.
The first earthling we met was Patelji. His head bobbed strangely. He was clutching a chillum or clay smoking pipe and grinned sheepishly. “The prasad of Baba Bholenath,” he told us. Marijuana.
The grass had grown head-high on either side and was delicately covered with dew drops. A blue and purple haze hung poetically in all directions.
The duck pond was empty.
“Where could they have gone?”
“South, for the winter?”
“This is South.”
Villagers were gathering their bundles of rice. One couple, man and wife, were threshing theirs. They had erected a makeshift pole, connected a wire from the nearby electric pole, wired up their threshing machine and it was whizzing away. Each bundle took no more than ten seconds. The rice grains were separated and fell into a hillock. The waste bundle was tossed into another heap.
“What’s going to happen to all that?” I gestured at the growing heaps of waste.
“It’s chopped up and fed to the cattle, mixed with fresh hay.”
There was the family toasting themselves around a makeshift fire. “We are bringing the children, today!” was their greeting.
A little red tractor went by. The cement bust of a lost saint stood solidly among weeds and ruins, not really ruins but the abandoned construction of some kind of room or shrine. Villagers went by on bicycles and scooters, spruced up and ready for work. What breakfast had they had?
It was 7.30. As we reached the main road after our loop through the fields, a group stood at a tea shop. Greetings were exchanged at every step. Cows and calves were jaw-deep into their mulched hay and looked at us with foaming mouths as we stopped to admire their leisurely breakfast mien. Three Cutest-in-the-World puppies shivered on the side. A mongoose lay dead. Utkarsh went by spinning his bicycle wheels, the book image of The Schoolboy.
The village was awake, acting its role. I was proud to be part of it, acting mine.
Imagination, Pain, Anger, and Love. 