Little Tales For Very Little People

Link to my new book, Little Tales For Very Little People, on Amazon Kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E1KJTOI


Actually I wrote it many years ago for my son when he was a toddler!

The Blue Light

GEETA had been coming to my house to wash utensils for many years. She was no better or worse than others of her kind, except that she had a tendency to pilfer small change more than most. Five rupees a month, I reasoned, was not too much to pay for the peace of the household. So I let her steal and kept her on and the wheels of the house ran smoothly.
Geeta lived in a small bustee near the narrow bylanes of the Kalighat Temple in Kolkata. Her husband had left her and she lived with her parents and sister. Her small daughter, Radha, aged eleven, stayed with her. When I had time to listen to her chatter, Geeta used to complain that Radha hated lessons and refused to go to school. Moreover, her grandparents used to insist that she stay at home and attend to household chores, much to Geeta’s bitterness.
“I live with them and, therefore, my daughter has to work as a servant”, she used to complain.
“Don’t let her leave school”, I used to admonish, before rushing away. This was during the years I had a job and had less than half a ear for the problems of others.
One day Geeta came to me crying. “Didi, let my Radha work in your house”, she wept, “She is beaten so badly, every day. Last night I went home and she had welts all down her arms and back. My father had beaten her with a belt...she will die if she stays there, Didi, she is only a little girl”.
“She can’t work in the house”, I said feebly, “Besides she must not give up on her education. Try to put her in a boarding school, Geeta”. She looked at me wordlessly. I knew and she knew that there were no boarding schools for those of such meagre income. Yet, what else could I say?
Barely 10 days later, Geeta entered looking radiant. “My daughter has been admitted to boarding, Didi, and I don’t have to pay anything. I can also go to visit her on weekends. It is all due to Mother...”
Apparently Geeta had been in the habit of putting her forehead on the doors of Nirmal Hriday, one of Mother Teresa’s Homes, which she passed everyday, and praying for a solution to her problems. That day she had completed work in great distress of mind, and rushed to beat her forehead on the hard walls of the Home. “Save my daughter, Mother, save my child”, she had prayed over and over again.
And, “a blue light shimmered from the walls and I felt a sense of peace and blessing...”, she told my enthralled staff, “The very next day Padma didi asked me if I wanted to admit Radha to her school. Just like that...
I bit back the words from my lips. My educated mind could spot many “flaws” in this “miracle”. The blue light could have been a reflection of moonlight or the gently glowing streetlamps...Or..

But I kept quiet. Radha was admitted to Padma’s school and is progressing well. Geeta managed to open a small tailoring shop and move to a one-room “house” of her own, which was attached to the shop. She is firmly convinced that it is all due to the “blue light” and Ma Teresa who listened to her plea for help. And in the week of Mother’s beatification at the Vatican, I look back over the years and still wonder. A miracle or....plain, blessed luck that even our poor can aspire to?

Rain Calling

The monsoon clouds blow grey across the skies. Sometimes they are fierce black, edged with silver. And the rains come pouring down. Rain calling again.

It is when the rains arrive that we feel we should look at Bungalow No. 85 once more. The shattered old house standing at the northern most edges of the city seems to be clothed with mystique at this time. The gnarled trees in the destroyed garden hug a century’s old secret even closer. Grass and weeds grow wildly, enticingly. Something calls…something that is almost alive…

And we answer. And almost everyone has a story to tell of Bungalow No. 85 when it rains. Only S has a story of the old house in the sunshine.

It was afternoon, S begins, a hot, sultry afternoon with the sun beating down mercilessly, when he found himself in the vicinity of the old house. Wanting to escape the punishing weather, he strolled up the silent garden path, down the winding curve of the trees, wrenched open the front door and entered.

Everything was as it should be. Sunbeams danced through the broken window panes, catching motes of dust. S. settled down on an old chair with a grin. Nothing in the sunshine, he told himself, no sounds, no groans, no old murders being reenacted…

And it was then that he began to feel uneasy. The grim old house, haunted by the shadow of an ancient crime, loomed over him. Outside there was bright sunshine. But not a leaf stirred or a bird chirped. The furniture cast shadows on the wall. Huge shadows that moved at will.

“All I felt was terror,” he used to tell us at this point. “And an almost overwhelming urge to run out of the house. But I was pinned to the chair”.

He could not move. Outside the city sweltered in the summer heat, but inside it grew ice cold. S. could almost see his feet being frozen to the ground. And then he heard it… a soft chuckle…an almost inhuman shuffle, somewhere close to him…

“I felt the hair rise on my head”, he reminisced, “For the first and last time in my life…”

Something shuffled closer…and S. flew straight out of the house and into the crowded streets.

“It could have been imagination”, he mutters. A trick of the mind. Or could it?

As I told you S is the only one who has a story of Bungalow No. 85 in the sunshine. Others can tell you many stories of the Bungalow when it rains. When clouds play drums in the skies and rain falls in harsh drops on the ruins of memories … When lightning tears apart the skies in purple fury. When destroyed trees holds fast ragged edges of violence…A story that begs to come alive once more…

Rains bring to life many things. But perhaps some things are better left untouched, better buried in forgotten gardens…or so says the wise.

Yankee Doodle

Study room, playing the piano

Sunlight slanting in

Tapping on the frosted windows

Friends peeping in.

’76 or ’77, sometime back then

When everyone was young

I played the magic piano

And friends came in.

Always the tune Yankee Doodle

Lilting over terrace floors

Floating over bougainvillea blossoms

Knocking at old doors.

So much fun, so much joy

Had we all, girls and boys

Scattered all over the world today

Where Yankee Doodle no longer plays.

Or perhaps it does a haunting note

Stopping the dull day in its stride

Playing hide and seek

With time…

Yankee Doodle times are past

Yankee Doodle dandy

Life is real and not all play

And not all sugar candy.

What happened to the girls and boys?

Not all fine and dandy.

Fairy tales are joy and woe

If you had noticed as we go.

Old houses, sunlit pools,

Are now exceptions, not the rule.

Where we once with laughter played

Stands a new building, grotesque grey.

And gone are now, the tall kind trees,

Where once thoughts roamed wild and free,

Children, strangers to play

Take over our ghosts today.

Did we think that friendship would stay?

Unspoilt by grown up ways?

In a way it has held good.

Though not as we had thought it should.

Love, betrayals, bloodshed, brine

Great comrades, greater whines,

Battered wives and bliss filled years

Moments of laughter, moments of tears.

Why did it not stay?

As perfect as it had promised to be?

Down by the magic years

Blessed by the jamrul tree?

Yankee Doodle times are past

Yankee Doodle dandy

Life is real and not all play

And not all sugar candy.

Colours of the deep sea changes

And yet remain the same,

Black to blue, from green to purple,

And back to grey again.

So do we – from love, to indifference,

From envy to fondness and pain,

Influenced by those we know not

We find ourselves again.

How easy it is to believe others,

Than trust our own memories,

How easy to fall a prey to malice,

Distrust and jealousy.

The strains of Yankee Doodle

Held our friendship fast

But the lilt of the music

How could it last?

And as friendship fades

And memories die today

How can the magic of the jamrul hold

When the tree is chopped away?

What does it matter that bonds turn to dust?

That even golden friendship rusts?

Something cannot be taken away

But what it is, I cannot say…

Yankee Doodle times are past

Yankee Doodle dandy

Life is real and not all play

And not all sugar candy…

Searching For Frangipani

Searching for Frangipani

The frangipani flower was very common in my childhood. Large white flowers with pink or yellow centres lay scattered on the ground while we played. Sometimes they wafted down gently on our heads as we carelessly brushed them away. They were the frangipani days, when the flowers twirled around us and we did not notice them. For they were so much a part of us that we forgot that they were there. And we grew up.

The flowers disappeared. We did not even realize that they were not there because the days were busy and filled with so much else. It did not matter that the faint scent of frangipani had gone.

And then one day I was in Bintan with my family playing about in a pool surrounded by shiny black rocks, when a gnarled old tree graciously flung down a handful of forgotten white flowers with pink centers, on us. “What beautiful flowers”, I said, lifting up a handful as they floated gently by. A memory stirred. Later I asked one of the hotel attendants the name of the fragile blooms. “Frangipani”, he replied.

So I discovered the frangipani again in Indonesia. And I also discovered that I had even left its name by the wayside.

Back in a city, reeling under one of the cruelest summers in recent years, I set out to look for the glowing white flowers. But they proved to be strangely elusive. “The trees had been cut down, they didn’t grow here anymore…they had never grown here…”was what many people told me.

My gardener searched along with me but there came a time when even he was ready to admit defeat. “Not here”, he shook his head. The crows cawed mockingly overhead.

And then one day I saw them again. A great tree with creamy blossoms arching over a defeated house, waiting to be pulled down. With joy I brought home a cutting and planted it with hope. A frangipani tree would grow again.

Broad green leaves grew thick on the scrawny branches as the city yearned for rain. The gardener watered the infant plant more tenderly than he watched over the others. I was impatient- where were those flowers, those starlike flowers of yesterday?

The garden closed in on itself as the longed for raindrops did not deign to fall. The frangipani put forth more leaves and not a single flower. The city simmered and glistened as an unnatural summer raged.

There is still no rain in my city. And the frangipani still has not blossomed. But I have brought it home once more. And the name has been remembered. There has been an effort to restore much of what had been lost….but maybe it will take more than memories to make the frangipani put forth flowers once again.