While sitting at the window seat on a train from Kolkata, I was eagerly awaiting for it to reach my hometown Gaya…I had slept for the entire journey and hence had lost track of the train timings…I saw traces of settlements…few crackers here and there…for it was Diwali night…yet it was dark outside the window…the darkness that was darker than the darkness within the human soul…darker than the darkness within me…I dint recognize the place, dark and eerily silent…till I saw the station signboard that read Gaya…and my heart skipped a beat…was Arvind Adiga right…?
I have always maintained that a trip back to my home pulls me 20 years back in time…and I (re) live experiences that cannot be captured in words…probably can only be felt…through inexplicable moments like listening to “Aap ki Framayish” on Vividh Bharati…and it being the only radio station your fancy cell phone can capture after a flurry of radio stations in a bigger city…the silence that plays music to you at ten in the night with the whole town asleep…or the songs of birds that enrapture you at five in the morning…the street vendors selling everything from coriander leaves to eggs to curd…a business they carry on their heads and a livelihood they earn walking on dusty roads…there is innocence…there is honesty…a warmth and a personalized care…a beauty in the simplicity of life…
I am not trying to paint a romantic picture of the utter poverty in which they live their life…it is just that there is something that holds things together…has held them together since I have known or maybe since ages…some strength of character…some enthusiasm to see the seasons under the sun…storm through misery and suffering to live another day in hope of a better tomorrow…and energy to toil and a joy in reaping the harvests…something that drives people…in the same direction and yet they tread on different paths…I feel it…that something is nothing but faith…unfathomable…invincible…hopelessly powerful…
Six days after Diwali the people in this part of the country celebrate a festival called Chhath…a festival where people worship both the setting and the rising sun…fast for nearly 48 hours…men and women alike…caste…class…boundaries…everything blurs...there is an offering at dusk another at the subsequent dawn…a mass exodus towards the river…people on feet…people on bicycles…on scooters…people in SUVs…in buses and in trucks…riot of colors…red…electric blues…fluorescent oranges…shocking pinks…bottle greens…golden…grey…mustard...beige…bejeweled and simple…I don’t know if the English word fete can capture the ambience…but “mela” is what it is in Hindi…20 people accompanying one who is fasting…one driving six who are fasting to the river…everything from Mumbai bhel puri to papri chaat and from groundnuts to noodles…dust…chill...mad fervor…folk songs…seeking fertility…of soil…of mind…in life…of life…an attempt to unite earth, fire, water, wind and space…to propitiate the elements of life…an effort to see through life…to what lies beyond…
This madness when felt leaves a lasting impression…especially when it is reinforced while driving back through the narrow lanes and by-lanes of the city…the small and yet smaller shops…rusty old buildings…temples that have now given away to time…small doesn’t really look small here…probably there is nothing big to set it against…or rather the big is so big…one ends up getting lost and sees only small…juxtaposing never feels so worthless…the motifs that time replays and the refrain of the folk songs vanish into the darkness and silence of the place…of the moment…and you can only feel the wind…that has been there for a long time…ever since history has been around…and there is faith…in everything…in something…
awesome. and yes, it is romantisizing it.
ReplyDelete