Gotya’s Garden
“Katti” said Neelu with an unpleasant pout of her rosy mouth while
linking her little pinkie finger with mine.
She said she wouldn’t talk to me. Ever.
She walked away without looking back even once. Her long black plait
slithered from side to side on her back.
I had committed the grave sin of playing with Neela that afternoon. Neela
was Neelu’s cousin and both were not on talking terms at that moment. Neelu had
seen me play with Neela.
I had come home early from school and was scouting around the
neighbourhood for a playmate. Bushy-haired Neela’s offer ‘to build’ a kitchen
in Gotya’s garden was irresistible.
Neelu had watched us from the lonely blue front window of her house and
didn’t like it.
I felt the unjustness of the accusation. I needed to confide in
someone.
After dad came home from teaching at school, he rested as usual on the
living room floor. Spreading the newspaper in front of him, he balanced the upper part of his body on his hands and bent his legs at the knee with feet facing the ceiling.
Sitting on his lower back I updated him on the episode that had
happened in the afternoon.
“Hmm” he said from time to time.
“It’s unfair, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Of course, it is” he replied.
“Do you think Neelu will ever talk to me again?”
“Do you want her to?”
“Yes.”
“Then she will.”
“Do you think Neela, Neelu, and I can play together sometime?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
The next day,Neela and I work meticulously with our clay pots in the 'kitchen'. Suddenly, Neela gives out a wail. She has cut her foot on a broken piece of glass.
Out of nowhere, Neelu came running with a strip of fabric to tie around the wound. Holding Neela on either side, we lead her home to her mum's care.
There, all grudges forgotten, three six-year-old
girls played card games together.
(Neela and Neelu’s names are changed here to protect identity.)
***
Digha Talav
It was a forbidden thing.
There were unwritten rules for children who played in Digha talav. It was a
large pond in our village which dried up in the long summer holidays to provide
us an emerald-green cushiony grass-scented playground.
However, little children who couldn’t swim were not allowed to go into
the deeper parts of the pond where water didn’t dry up till the onset of the
next monsoon.
A few days before we had spied older boys from the village building a
banana trunk raft.
When Neela, Neelu, and I went to the talav to play that afternoon, we
covered our gap-toothed mouths with our hands and gazed awestruck at the scene
before us.
The boys looked like glorious sun-burned demigods with beaming smiles
as they balanced themselves on the banana raft.
“Hop on!” invited one of the boys, my brother’s friend.
“I don’t think we are allowed” whispered Neelu.
“Oh, I do want to go!” Neela jumped up and down clapping her hands.
My heart was already sailing.
“Come on, hop on” encouraged the other boys as they rowed the raft
closer and offered helping hands for us to climb on.
The talav, our daily playground, suddenly seemed like paradise as we
gently glided over the still water. The feeling was so overwhelming. Nobody
spoke a word. We were blissfully unaware of any potential danger. Neela had
closed her eyes and Neelu was smiling.
I wonder what we must have looked like to my dad who stood far away
silently watching us – a bunch of village kids with little or no swimming
skills perched on a threadbare banana raft afloat in the deep end of the talav.
Neelu spotted him first.
“Look, there’s your dad” she pointed out his dark silhouette against
the fading skylight.
I climbed out of the raft.
We walked home in silence – my dad and I.
The short distance seemed like miles.
***
1...2...3...!
It must have been an interesting bead.
I had picked it up and had taken it so close for examination that I
breathed it in.
Friends and family crowded around me.
They crowded my little mind with fears of the possibilities the
inhalation of a bead entails.
I don’t quite remember if Neela and Neelu were part of that crowd.
Anyways, there I was with a bead stuck up my left nostril when my dad
arrived.
He swept me up with a flourish and jumped on his bicycle, placed me on
the tiny seat he had made, and rushed to the nearest doctor’s
dispensary.
Having a bead stuck up one’s nostril was not considered as an emergency
so we waited till our turn came.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think they will cut my nose open?”
“I don’t know. I am not a doctor but I have thought of a trick to get
the bead out without cutting your nose open. Would you like to try it?”
“Ok.”
“Listen very carefully. I will count 1...2...3...! At the end of the
count, I will hit the back of your head with my hand. At the same time, you
must sneeze forcefully. Can you do it?”
“Ok” I trusted him completely.
“Remember: after I say 1...2...3... Sneeze.”
“Ok”
“Ready?”
I nodded.
“Here goes...1...2...3...SNEEZE!
I sneezed violently and his hand hit the back of my head forcefully.
POP!
Out flew the bead and bounced on the dispensary floor.
It was an interesting bead indeed.
Dad became my superhero.
***
Hello Brother!
In his wedding photos, dad looks like a movie star from the sixties.
He also has the personality to match his looks. Being a teacher and a
dramatist, he makes friends easily. Riding on his bicycle around Vasai he
always had a tune to whistle.
I learnt many lessons perched on that tiny seat on his bicycle. He took
me to the market, to people’s houses, and on a couple of occasions, even to the
bar.
In the middle of Holi bazaar one day as we waited for a
watermelon-wallah with a handcart to cross the road, dad said,
“All these people are our brothers and sisters. We must help them.”
“What rubbish. You don’t even know them.”
“Even if I don’t know them, they are still my brothers and sisters.”
I challenged him.
“Alright, you see that watermelon-wallah? How can he be your brother?”
“Let me show you.”
Dad turned his bicycle towards the man.
“Bhaiyya, kaise ho? Sab theek hai na?”
The watermelon-wallah’s wrinkled face lit up with a wide smile.
“Badhiya hoon, bhai, bhagwan ki kripa hain.”
Dad smiled at me with an ‘Aha, there you are!’
***
Today is dad’s 85th birthday.
We wish him love, laughter, and light.
He has an unmatched passion for life as he himself would state in a quote:
Jis diye mein tel hain
Usse jalne ka hakk hain
Diya khud nahi jalta
   |
| Dad - the charmer, as usual |
As I sit down to write this, so many stories come flooding that one
blog post is not enough to do justice to them all.
God-willing, someday, I will tell the world more about this gentleman,
Edward D’Cruz, whom our family is blessed to call our father on Earth.
Unbeknownst to him, he has given us a glimpse of what Our Father in
Heaven would be like.
