The Grains of Nostalgia...

It was all looking blank. The new window was opened long back. Like a love struck boy or a girl, sitting in front of his/her study table switches on and off the table lamp out of boredom or anxiety to meet each other, I have been switching from one widow to the other for long without any purpose. I wanted to jot something but was gasping for words. It happens so often. The main culprit is the television. It takes away all the concentration and dedication. In the background, the song "akasa roopini annapoorneswari..." sung by the Gana Gandharvan is emanating out of the laptop like a nice breeze. Wondering, what do I exactly engage in right now? Trying to write some thing? Listening music? Watching TV? No idea but the song took me to those cycle yagnam days. Nostalgia, that is an experience. An experience that comforts the heart so effectively. Good old days when the life was spent like a butterfly, have gone long time back, but of course, memories linger for ever.

In the present situation, in a cell, surrounded by all the trappings of a modern life, there is no life. Everything happens as it has to happen. All the creatures walking on two legs are used as pawns to achieve something great. What is that great thing? No one knows but all are present at the work place sharp at seven in the morning. Sun is yet to make its presence. Still, no one gets a chance to pull the lungi from the hip and cover it over the body and curl like a millipede land enjoy these pleasant winter mornings.

I never liked to wake up in the early morning. That has never been in my daily time table. Sleeping till nine in the morning was a habit  since we reached adolescence. With great dismay, I had seen helplessly how my innocence gave way to vices like hypocrisy, selfishness and deceit as I grew older. My father had returned from Visakhapatnam by that time to lead a peaceful rustic life away from the hustles and bustles of a city life. He had a hard time waking me up in the morning those days. Not only me, but my elder brother also. We, along with the eldest brother used to sit till late in the night. U pto 11pm there was All India Radio. We sat nearby the radio to listen Ranjini one day, a radio drama on the other day and a kathaprasangam another day. How many beautiful songs Ranjini presented! Gems indeed.



Thoomba

Next day morning we slept for longer hours. My father while holding a Kerala model spade called "thoomba" goes around our compound and does a lot of physical jobs. Makes tiny bunds around the coconut trees before the monsoon starts, tiny heaps of sand (koombal) all over the compound during summer and then levels it a few months later. The entire compound looked so neat and tidy after the sand heaps were made. It was all about clearing the compound of unwanted plants and bushes once in a year. These were the simple processes an ordinary villager used to engage in, in his daily routine. In between doing so, my father comes nearby us and calls out - please wake up dears! We gave short shrift to his calls and went on remaining in the bed till we liked.

Most of the time, we did lend our helping hands to him. Working with spades were entertaining. Father stood by our side whenever we were in action. In one season, we have even ventured into the paddy field adjacent to our home. It was tough but my father wanted to do the cultivation without taking the services of the workers this time. The paddy field was full of water that time. Undeterred, we got into that. The thoomba went down and up the muddy bottom several times. Our not so strong hands struggled to lift the mud to make it a heap. Slowly the heap was seen outside the water surface. It was an exciting moment. The end result of hard work! Like that we three worked for days together. We could complete making mud heaps around an acre of the field within a few days. Before the monsoon started, father took out the seeds from our storage vessel called "pathayam". That was a wooden one kept inside a poorly lit room. The wooden pathayam had full of rice grains that we used as seed as well as food.

We three brothers at random were assigned the job of entering into this pathayam to collect the seeds. I did not like to go in, because there were a lot of cockroaches inside. Father, then deposited these rice grains in a large metallic vessel with water in it. The grains were allowed to soak for a day or two. Then they were removed and collected in large baskets. These baskets were covered with dry plantain leaves and left like this for a few days. Eventually, life sprouts out of these seeds and they are ready for a stint in this world. The smell of the new born lives is still in my nose. That was something special.

The next step was to flatten those mud heaps just above the water level and then the sprouted grains were sowed on them. We ourselves stood guard to them against the flocks of pigeons and the neighborhood chickens. These birds were a constant threat to the seeds. A few days later, there appears a green canopy in the field we toiled. Beautiful. It fills the heart with a lot of happiness. It was like so many thick green islets in the middle of a lake. There were seeds for "Virippu" and "Mundakan". WE never understood what these terms stood for, but after reaping the first cultivation, the paddy grew again and after a few months, it again yielded. The first one was called virippu and the second one mundakan.

From the islets, they descended on the bottom of the field as they grew up. Workers, using thoomba, remove the seedlings from the mud heap and place them in the field. Another group stand in a row and spread these plants all over the field. The entire stretch of the paddy fields would have reached this stage by now. Monsoon at its peak pours enough water to these tiny plants. Wherever we looked, we could see only greenery. The harbinger of prosperity was through these paddy fields for the villagers.

At last, the paddy is ready to be harvested. Several men and women cut the paddy and stack them in bundles in the compound of every house. Scores of men and women, carrying bundles of paddy walk on the bunds between the paddy fields in a line is a common scene during the harvest time. Later, they extract the rice grains from the plant by trampling upon the bundles. Once this was over, the rice grains were measured and a part of it was given to the workers as wages. Everyone disperses happily. Nothing new in it. That was how the life was throbbing in the villages like a well oiled machine. Luckily, the society never allowed the oil to be contaminated by vested interests

 

It was not about big bank balances, villas and sedans. There was simplicity in everything. None of them perhaps aimed at becoming a VP or a country manager. Five to six siblings along with their parents and grand parents lived a happy and contented life for years. The children has enough play grounds and enough time to spend with other children. Those kerosene lanterns gave more light than the hi-tech lamps of the modern era, literally.

Now, those paddy fields in my Olavaipe wears a deserted look. It is a pool of saline water from the adjacent back waters. Weeds filled all over. From all the sides, people reclaim the paddy field and convert into land. There come up big houses. That was what we love to call the development of our village. None of us are no longer interested in cultivation nor in wielding a spade, go around and make bunds around the coconut trees. Rice is available in the ration shop for Re.1 and coconut oil is cheaply available in the market. Vegetables are available in kits in the market, price of which we never ask. We too are living in an urbanised village where agriculture is considered a low class activity....