Skip to main content

Sunday in the village

This was the village road until two years ago


Sunday is the best day in the village not because it is a holiday for me as for others too but because the village road becomes desolate. It doesn’t look like a village at all on weekdays because of the heavy traffic on the road. Sunday is a holiday for the road too, mercifully.

I have walked on this road for years and years during my childhood. There were hardly any vehicles those days except a rare, rickety bus and a few bicycles. People walked kilometres in those days, most of them barefoot, with the sky above their head and small dreams at the feet. Hardly anyone walks these days and the dreams have gone abroad.
 
The village river has not changed much except for increased pollution
When I decided to leave Delhi and opted for a rural life, many well-wishers advised me against it. “You won’t survive there more than a year,” one told me with the certainly of a prophet. “You give me a year!” I retorted. “I give myself only half of that.” Now I’m completing four years in the village. Life lies beyond our predictions.

And I enjoy the cool Sundays. It’s so quiet all around. Except the crow that visits frequently with a hungry caw. It perches on the bough of the rubber tree beside the waste pit and looks around stealthily before making a dive for something it espies in the pit. Interspersing the crow’s caws are occasional sounds of other birds that hardly appear before my eyes. Their sounds are soothing. Their beauty remains hidden. Good things often lie beyond our eyes.
 
Kittu loves Sundays
Kittu, my cat, wants a little petting on Sundays. He is also busy on other days; he has to visit the neighbourhood and meet his friends. Sometimes he returns home with scratches on his face: the inevitable price of socialising. He lets me clean him but won’t listen to my counsel to avoid too much of society. A cat is safest at home but a cat is not created to stay without mates, he tells me. Fine, go ahead and mate, but why do you bring to me the scores? I ask. He blinks at me and then goes to sleep on a cosy chair next to me.
 
Kittu's niche
“The soul of India sleeps in its villages.” Didn’t the Father of the Nation say that? No, my collective unconscious corrects, “The soul of India lives in its villages.” The narrow village road of barely two years ago is today a state highway. The soul is really alive. A bit too much alive, I think. But I appreciate the development. I too don’t walk these days, you see.
The road today: development
It's the same road in the 1st photo above




Top post on IndiBlogger, the biggest community of Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. The soul of the cities has gone on an overdrive. I live in Kochi and the road just outside my apartment which I have to cross every morning on the way for my regular walk tells me that we have definitely gone on an overdrive. I am jealous of your quiet Sundays. That road in the image looks so refreshingly empty.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I studied in Kochi in the late 70s and early 80s when the city was not too intimidating. I was in love with the city. But now I dread to travel in that city.

      To some extent 'development' is unavoidable. But when villages cease to be villages, it is rather sad.

      Delete
  2. It reminded me of my village days, i really miss the serenity,fresh air and the long walk.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Villages in Kerala are also changing rapidly and becoming city-like in many ways.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...

The RSS does not exist

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...

No Problems Only Opportunities

You’ve probably heard this joke. A young man walked into his office one morning and found a beautiful young lady sitting in his chair. He called the MD and said, “Sir, I have a problem.” The MD replied, “Don’t you know our company’s motto, young man? No Problems, Only Opportunities .” When Suchita of The Blogchatter sent me a mail with the topic of this week’s blog hop –  - the first thing that came to my mind was the above joke. I know many people – too many, in fact – who went through terrible problems. My own life was a series of problems in none of which was there the consolation of any beautiful woman. One essential lesson I learnt from life is that life is a series of problems. You solve one and then arises the next one. Now I have reached an age when problems are no more problems: they are life itself. If you ask me what was the biggest problem I ever dealt with, it was my last years in Shillong. I was a lecturer in a college drawing a fat salary stipulated by the U...