The road was bumpy and narrow. Fields stretched into the distance on both sides. Women were working in the paddy fields with water covering their ankles. White birds, probably herons, picked insects and seeds. Strange large figures stood in the middle of the fields at regular intervals. Their heads were big and round. At a bend of the road, when the bus stopped to give way for an oncoming vehicle, you can catch a proper glimpse of those figures. The heads are consistently and uniformly round as they were actually pots painted white with big eyes and a mouth. The disproportionately long arms were stuffed with straw. The legs are short stubs compared to the arms and a pair of trousers, badly torn, adorned them. These scare crows, if they didn't scare the birds off, would have surely scared a ten year old boy, walking alone in the evening, just as the Sun settled down behind the hills in the distance.
The bus was packed with people. Around ten children had gotten in at the previous stop. It could hardly be called a stop. There was a clearing through the fields at the other end of which was what looked like a hamlet, dusty and with a few houses. Spotting the thick smoke and dust kicked by the bus the kids picked their bags and ran through the clearing, towards the road, flailing their arms. The bus came to a stuttering halt and the children filed in. Their infectious enthusiasm brought a smile to the most hardened of passengers and what an assortment of travellers they were. The old man in front of me rolled a round of tobacco leaves, chewed on one end and lit the other. The sweet and heavy smell of tobacco filled the crammed bus. His face carried the scars of toiling in the hot Sun. The seasons were etched on his forehead. As he puffed on the cigar his cheeks would be drawn in making him look even more frail. The children in the back seat were trying to catch the smoke he exhaled. It was as if they were trying to carve an image with the smoke. May be they were making a mental image - forming a memory. I read somewhere that you live by making memories. When someone says they like something they mean that they like their memory of that. I like Jalebi because it reminds me of those dark childhood evenings when I waited in anticipation at the bus stop. It was the first of the month - pay day. After many busses had come and gone my mother would emerge from a crowded bus and without fail she had a packet of Jalebi in her hand and we would rush to her. Do I like Jalebi or do I like that dark evening or the dusty bus stop or the sight of my mum stepping out like a super woman rescuing the sweetmeats from the jostling mass of flesh, blood and sweat in the bus?
The bus screeched to a halt interrupting the flow of time. The conductor announced the stop as Uppada and hurried the passengers to alight. The minute people got off their seats, bags and hand kerchiefs appeared on them. Men trying to get on the bus, heaved themselves into air and thrust their belongings through the windows and on to the seats. It was a Darwinian scuffle to get a seat and reminded me of the wildebeests jumping into the river. A moment of hesitation or self doubt and the seat is gone, snapped by the crocodile.
Uppada is a tiny village near Kakinada in East Godavari district. I had taken the Pinakini express from Vijayawada, early in the morning, at 5:45 AM. After four hours of seeing the lush green fields and trees, zip away from me in the opposite direction, I got down at Samalkota a small town on the famed Madras-Howrah rail line. The train passed through the Krishna-Godavari delta, the rice bowl of Andhra Pradesh and probably the most fertile belt of India. We crossed the Godavari at Rajahmundry, the train making an almighty noise while on the mega bridge that spans the river. The river often referred to as Dakshina Ganga, originates further west in Maharashtra in the holy city of Nasika Tryambakeshwar. It meanders through the land locked districts of Northern Telangana, cuts through the picturesque hills known as Papi Kondalu and emerges at Dhowleswaram, wide and majestic, full to the brim. Before Sir Arthur Cotton built a barrage to tame the raging river, its flood plains covered the whole delta till it emptied itself, after branching out into tentacles, in the Bay of Bengal. Perhaps emptied is the wrong word to use. The rumble in the ocean further down south sends, swirling dark and heavy clouds that enter India from God's own country Kerala. These travel all the way north into the Gangetic plains sending torrents of water battering down the parched land that had been baked into cakes of mud. Trickles become streams, streams turn to tributaries, tributaries pay their taxes into rivers and rivers become raging rivers. Over the millennia the cycle of monsoon has repeated - stronger at times, weak other times, delayed by a couple of weeks now and bang on target then.
Kingdoms flourished on the banks of these rivers, battles were fought, people built small houses, kings commissioned gigantic temples, humanity procreated and conducted their lives, killed and died by the river, by the monsoon. The names changed, the people changed, the clothes changed but the monsoon and the river stayed constant amongst this all. Year after year it brought down a little more of the stones from the mountains, rolling on and on till they deposited as fertile, life giving, alluvial soil. The river formed memories and layered them one over the other. You can never step into the same river twice. Having taken an imprint of a point in time, it moves on. It has recorded the steps of Adi Shankara going north on his colossal trek across the length of the country. It has stored the stampede of the marauding armies of Malik Kafur, charging down the Deccan plateau. If I got down, what will I find - the wisdom of the sages or the barbarities of the learned in the name of religion? May be the river will hold the mirror to me, a special mirror that peers through flesh and blood and shows the essence of self - unadorned, unblemished and uncorrupted. Is that the purpose of travel? A journey to discover oneself.
-- To be continued
The bus was packed with people. Around ten children had gotten in at the previous stop. It could hardly be called a stop. There was a clearing through the fields at the other end of which was what looked like a hamlet, dusty and with a few houses. Spotting the thick smoke and dust kicked by the bus the kids picked their bags and ran through the clearing, towards the road, flailing their arms. The bus came to a stuttering halt and the children filed in. Their infectious enthusiasm brought a smile to the most hardened of passengers and what an assortment of travellers they were. The old man in front of me rolled a round of tobacco leaves, chewed on one end and lit the other. The sweet and heavy smell of tobacco filled the crammed bus. His face carried the scars of toiling in the hot Sun. The seasons were etched on his forehead. As he puffed on the cigar his cheeks would be drawn in making him look even more frail. The children in the back seat were trying to catch the smoke he exhaled. It was as if they were trying to carve an image with the smoke. May be they were making a mental image - forming a memory. I read somewhere that you live by making memories. When someone says they like something they mean that they like their memory of that. I like Jalebi because it reminds me of those dark childhood evenings when I waited in anticipation at the bus stop. It was the first of the month - pay day. After many busses had come and gone my mother would emerge from a crowded bus and without fail she had a packet of Jalebi in her hand and we would rush to her. Do I like Jalebi or do I like that dark evening or the dusty bus stop or the sight of my mum stepping out like a super woman rescuing the sweetmeats from the jostling mass of flesh, blood and sweat in the bus?
The bus screeched to a halt interrupting the flow of time. The conductor announced the stop as Uppada and hurried the passengers to alight. The minute people got off their seats, bags and hand kerchiefs appeared on them. Men trying to get on the bus, heaved themselves into air and thrust their belongings through the windows and on to the seats. It was a Darwinian scuffle to get a seat and reminded me of the wildebeests jumping into the river. A moment of hesitation or self doubt and the seat is gone, snapped by the crocodile.
Uppada is a tiny village near Kakinada in East Godavari district. I had taken the Pinakini express from Vijayawada, early in the morning, at 5:45 AM. After four hours of seeing the lush green fields and trees, zip away from me in the opposite direction, I got down at Samalkota a small town on the famed Madras-Howrah rail line. The train passed through the Krishna-Godavari delta, the rice bowl of Andhra Pradesh and probably the most fertile belt of India. We crossed the Godavari at Rajahmundry, the train making an almighty noise while on the mega bridge that spans the river. The river often referred to as Dakshina Ganga, originates further west in Maharashtra in the holy city of Nasika Tryambakeshwar. It meanders through the land locked districts of Northern Telangana, cuts through the picturesque hills known as Papi Kondalu and emerges at Dhowleswaram, wide and majestic, full to the brim. Before Sir Arthur Cotton built a barrage to tame the raging river, its flood plains covered the whole delta till it emptied itself, after branching out into tentacles, in the Bay of Bengal. Perhaps emptied is the wrong word to use. The rumble in the ocean further down south sends, swirling dark and heavy clouds that enter India from God's own country Kerala. These travel all the way north into the Gangetic plains sending torrents of water battering down the parched land that had been baked into cakes of mud. Trickles become streams, streams turn to tributaries, tributaries pay their taxes into rivers and rivers become raging rivers. Over the millennia the cycle of monsoon has repeated - stronger at times, weak other times, delayed by a couple of weeks now and bang on target then.
Kingdoms flourished on the banks of these rivers, battles were fought, people built small houses, kings commissioned gigantic temples, humanity procreated and conducted their lives, killed and died by the river, by the monsoon. The names changed, the people changed, the clothes changed but the monsoon and the river stayed constant amongst this all. Year after year it brought down a little more of the stones from the mountains, rolling on and on till they deposited as fertile, life giving, alluvial soil. The river formed memories and layered them one over the other. You can never step into the same river twice. Having taken an imprint of a point in time, it moves on. It has recorded the steps of Adi Shankara going north on his colossal trek across the length of the country. It has stored the stampede of the marauding armies of Malik Kafur, charging down the Deccan plateau. If I got down, what will I find - the wisdom of the sages or the barbarities of the learned in the name of religion? May be the river will hold the mirror to me, a special mirror that peers through flesh and blood and shows the essence of self - unadorned, unblemished and uncorrupted. Is that the purpose of travel? A journey to discover oneself.
-- To be continued
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