COTTON

 

 

My childhood is intrinsically linked to the sight, feel and smell of cotton  saris. Synthetic saris were not in fashion those days. So there were Tangail or handloom cotton saris for home use, washed and rewashed, soft, smelling faintly of soap and sun. And there were saris for going out, starched, stiff, which rustled when you moved.

There were also saris for doing household chores, stained with turmeric, damp with perspiration. I remember my mother and aunts in the kitchen in front of kerosene  or baked clay stoves, and later gas stoves, beads of sweat pearling their foreheads, staining the back and armpits of their blouses, wiping their foreheads, necks, and wet hands with their  anchol (the part of the sari which is draped over the shoulder and hangs till the hip or lower).

After they had finished cooking they had a bath and changed into a fresh set of underskirt, blouse and saris. The saris for home use were mostly striped, or unicolor, pale green , pink, yellow, violet with stripes at the ends, or with small and big checks. I have this picture of my ma fresh after  her  bath in front of  an oval  mirror. After lightly dusting her face with Pond’s talcum powder she opened her sindoor (red powder) box and with a small piece of metal , part of the kit , which is rounded and flattened  at one end , she drew a small red dot in the middle of her forehead. Tiny flecks of sindoor inevitably came loose and  speckled the bridge her nose . She then dipped the other end of the stick flattened horizontally into the sindoor and drew a thin red line in the parting of her hair. This was and is probably the daily ritual of many married women in Bengal.

In the evening, just before sunset women blew conches in front of tulsi  plants and offered their evening prayers.  Tulsi  a variety of basil is considered to be a sacred plant in India and even referred to as mother tulsi). The plaintive, nasal , resonance of conches rose and faded into the air .Women  usually changed into unbleached beige silk saris, reserved for this occasion.  I remember the feel of these saris, soft and heavy they smelt faintly of incense and of some undefinable comforting odour, perhaps that of the body of the wearer.   My youngest aunt, a fair, short, roundish woman  with a particularly devout husband performed this evening ritual regularly.

After the puja was over they changed back into their day sari, or sometimes into another sari which they would wear through the evening and the night. If there were guests coming home or if they were  going out anywhere it called for a change of sari and of blouse to match with the sari.

There must have been a mountain of clothes to wash  everyday! The size of a sari can vary from 5 to 9 metres. Then there were underskirts, blouses, tunics and dhotis or  pyjamas worn by the menfolk and children’s clothes to wash. The hands of the poor women who were employed to do the washing were disfigured due to endless hours of exposure to soap and water.  

Once a week however  Modon the dhobi/washerman came home to collect the washing of the entire joint family which he returned the week after. A short wiry man with curly hair in a thigh length tunic and a calf length dhoti he announced his presence in a loud voice. He went from family to family collecting clothes and distributing the ones he had washed, starched and ironed. He tied all the clothes in a big, white bundle which he slung over his shoulders and left . I was nine when I left my childhood home and took all this for granted. Now I ask myself how did he carry all the clothes? Did he sling them over the back of a donkey like the picture of the proverbial Indian washerman? Did he have a cycle? 

Arunima

A Glimpse

 

 

Come my beauties, cooed Moni, scattering a handful of puffed rice in front of him. A flock of pigeons descended in a shower in the temple courtyard, in a hurry to get to the rice before their neighbours.  They strutted around cooing and babbling and gobbling up the rice greedily. Moni looked on indulgently. This was his morning ritual. He woke up, fed the birds and then went with Kanai  Baul to have a bath at the hand pump behind the temple.

  

Moni got a piece of soap and two thin cotton towels from the dark, little room tucked away in one corner of the temple, originally meant to be a store room. He then went to call kanai Baul who was sitting under the banyan tree in front of the main Kali sanctuary. “Come kanai baba , let’s go have our bath.” Moni marvelled again at the dexterity and the sure - footedness of Kanai Baul . Nobody seeing him move would guess that he was blind. But Kanai Baul was a permanent resident of the temple like Moni and his body had memorised the contours of the temple. He didn’t need eyes.

 

“Ah Moni. You’re a good boy. It’s Ma’s grace that I found you on the temple steps when you were an infant. Only she knows the secret of you birth. She knew that I would need looking after and arranged things so marvellously. A blind singer and his young assistant who can make you dance to the rhythm of his dubki! We don’t lack alms, do we?” Kanai-Baul laughed uproariously.

 

On reaching the hand pump, Kanai Baul squatted under it and Moni pumped the handle vigorously. The pump sputtered and then let out a steady gush of cold water almost drowning the bather under its onslaught.  It was Mani’s turn to bathe. He sat under the pump and waited. The first burst of water splattered on his head soaking his hair instantaneously.  Water sluiced down his face creating a curtain in front of his eyes, cascaded down his back, streamed down his stomach into the thin strip of cloth wound around his waist and ran in rivulets down his legs.  He scrubbed himself vigorously up and down, in and out, spluttered, gurgled, spat , honked, till the water stopped.

“Moni have you finished?” Kanai Baul asked plaintively. “My arms are aching”

“Yes baba,”  Moni said. We’ll go as soon as I dry up.”

 

On the way back they stopped at a small roadside tea stall. The tea stall owner greeted them and made them two cups of hot, piping ginger tea. Along with the tea he also gave them home-made biscuits from one of the big glass jars arranged in front of the counter. As they munched their biscuits and sipped their tea Kanai Baul asked, “Moni, did you see her this morning?”

“Who” said Moni, playing the innocent.

“Kali of course! Who else?” exclaimed Lokhon Baul.

“No, I didn’t.” Moni  muttered.

Kanai Baul hearing his incredulity, said forcefully like many other times, “I have seen her Moni when these eyes of mine could still see. She’s pitch black, with ruby red eyes and red claws. She lives in this temple. My predecessors saw her too.”

“I’ve never seen her!”

“You don’t call her with enough love. Call her tomorrow loudly, beseeching her to come and maybe she’ll come, a queen, as black as the night, her eyes as red as the hibiscus flowers we offer to the Goddess, her beak and claws are red too, as red as blood. She won’t peck food from the ground like the other pigeons. She’s an emissary of the Goddess! You’ll have to coax her to eat from your hand. And if she does ….”

“Yes, if she does, what happens?”

“ It’s different for each person. She sometimes answers a question that you didn’t even know you had in you, sometimes cures an illness, sometimes makes your heart brim with love, sometimes puts you face to face with…..”

“What?”

“I have spoken enough. Come let’s go. People have started coming to the temple.”

They paid for their tea, took their instruments, from the room and took up their usual position in the courtyard of the temple. Lokhon tuned his ektara and began  a song

 

That night Moni dreamt of a pigeon with glossy black plumage, red coal eyes, alighting on his shoulder, digging her vermilion claws into his flesh.

 

The next morning as he threw fistfuls of puffed rice into the air, he cried aloud fervently “Kali, Kali,” and for a moment he seemed to glimpse a flash of black at the corner of his eye. He spun around and the grey pigeons rose in alarm into the air before settling back again.

 

“I’ll try again tomorrow, he thought excitedly”.

 

Arunima

 

Isn't it the night to.....

 

Isn’t it the night to transform oneself, to change into wolves, or bats, or hyenas, or owls, or whatever nocturnal creature one wants to be?

 

Myra are you listening? Myra? You never answer do you? You would like me to find out for myself…

 

Well, it’s a full moon night. The garden is flooded with a clear, soft light. The trees in the distance are amassed in the moonlight, a gathering of shadows. The mountains placid and powerful are teeming with secret life…. But why am I telling you what you already know?

 

Come Myra, be a wolf with me tonight. Let’s leap out of this room, onto the grass and into the mountains, the cold night air in our fur, breathing deep the scents of the night, loping through the woods in search of prey. We could run too, just run. Have you seen how wolves run? I’ll run like a wolf tonight, bound, roll in the grass, sneak through trees,  streak through the clearings and lie down panting with exhaustion and happiness.

 

Ah Myra, the nurse will come tomorrow. She’ll help me have a bath, massage my legs, give me medicines and ask me the inevitable question,” Did you have a good night, Mr. Bose? What if I told her,” Last night I was a wolf. I ran in the mountains, I hunted and ate, I drank water from a stream. You can imagine her expression, can’t you? She’d immediately call the doctor, “Poor Mr. Bose is losing his mind. It’s no more safe to leave him alone at home.”

 

Nobody knows, nobody Myra, and you can’t ever tell anybody. You wouldn’t want to. You don’t care. But you have seen me during the last full moon , gliding out of the window, a white barn owl, screeching in delight. I first flew onto the big lime tree beside the river, trying out my wings. The leaves rustled in the breeze. Across the river, the mountains crouched beneath the sky. I set off ,  harnessing the wind, the wind my ally, buoying me up, parting to let me through.  Skimming gliding, silently, I lighted on the big oak in the middle of the forest. The white  eyed moon gazed down and I gazed back ruffling my feathers, waiting, till I heard a squeak. . Quickly I rotated my head around and before it could run into its hole. I was upon it, my claws gripping its body, my beak digging into its flesh. It was a feast. The next day I was so tired. The nurse was worried. She kept asking me if I had slept at night, if I was alright?

 

But Myra you didn’t tell me as yet? Will you come with me? No? Why? You don’t want to be a wolf. Come to think of it, neither do I. There’s too much flesh and blood. What should I be then? What did you say? I heard you whisper something. Can you say it gain?

 

Whisssper……………..

 

You whisper but say nothing. You sound the wind in the leaves, susurrating. You sound like the wind in the grass, murmuring. Ah Myra, Myra, let me think, let me try to understand what you’re saying.

 

Why do you whisper Myra?

Why do you?

What happens when we whisper Myra

What happens?

The breath rises, the breath escapes.

The breath rises, the breath escapes.

 

Oh how brilliant!! You want me to be the wind. That’s grandiose, stupendous, mind-boggling, so, so much more than I ever dared to imagine, to be. To be the wind sweeping through the grass. To be the wind keening in the mountains, making branches sway and creak and bend. The sirocco in the Sahara piling up the soft, slippery sand in undulating hills, mountains. The monsoon winds storming over the Arabian sea, making waves rise and dance with foaming crests, herding the dark, billowing rain clouds, blowing them to the shore to burst over parched earth and thirsting rivers. Ah Myra I’ve never felt such joy!

But I could be gentle too, a soft, soothing breeze , carrying the scent of flowers, creating ripples on ponds and lakes, breathing coolness onto the sweaty tiredness of men and women labouring in fields, building houses under the blazing sun.

 

Yes Myra, I’ll do it. I’ll feel my breath fill me up , my toes, my legs, my thighs, my stomach, my chest, my back, my throat, my face , my forehead my head….And then I’ll breathe out in the clear, moonlit sky.

 

“Mr. Bose. Mr. Bose.” It’s time to wake up. Come sit up. Would you like some tea? Mr Bose?”

 

Arunima