And They Call It Poppy Love...

It is rewarding to write - especially when when you get interesting responses. When I read my brother Bala's comment on my last post, I decided to publish it on the main page. Here it is. Thank you, Bala!

"The moment I saw your Poppycock piece, I was transported back to my second year at IIT Delhi. There were five of us who would go to practically all the English movies showing at Rivoli, Regal, Odeon and Shiela.

In 1966, along came a movie called The Poppy Is Also A Flower with an unbelievable cast: Yul Brynner, Rita Heyworth, Angie Dickinson, Jack Hawkins, E. G. Marshall, and more. The five of were excited about the cast and went for the movie.

To say the least, when the movie was over we all walked out rather disappointed. It was more like a documentary and was all about something called heroin and drug addictions.

Heroin -- we did not know anything about the drug or the drug culture. Those days of innocence!More on the movie here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Poppy_Is_Also_a_Flower "

 

Poppycock!

 

The sky at noon - from under a favourite tree

Winter. I know exactly what I want from winter in the Dooars. It should be pleasantly cool, with temperatures not lower than 11 degrees C, and no higher than 22 C. It should be just cold enough to justify the lighting of a fire in the place.

The joy of airing and wearing sweaters, snuggling into quilts and being able to knit without feeling suffocated by the warmth of wool.

Clear blue skies, sunlight to sit out in, no dust and no humidity.
Indolence.
Bonfires.
Picnics.
Flowers.
Oranges.
Peanuts.
Christmas cake.
Masala chai.

My mother has always said that the cold weather in Delhi is wonderful until Christmas, after which what she calls the 'dirty winter' begins. I can't think of a better description of those murky skies or those foggy days and nights with miserably low temperatures.

The Dooars is not as cold as Delhi, but here too, blue skies and sunny days come to an end by the beginning of January. In the morning, the fog gives way to a dust and cloud haze. Everyone seems to fall ill. We long for warmth, for an end to the misery of cold days and nights.

February usually comes with drought, chills, more dust, and an increasing difference in day/night temperatures which adds to the woes of those suffering from coughs and colds.

It's been different this year. In most parts of India, winter began early and seems to be in no hurry to leave.

For the last two days, we've had a replay of the early cold weather. The sky is blue, the sunshine is warm enough for me to lie about in chairs and drowse, and occasional chilly breezes bring the comforting thought that the weather won't hot up and spoil it all too soon.

My cold weather garden has a very few blooms. We moved into this bungalow at a time when it was too late for me to plan or plant the garden. The previous occupant had had no time either, being caught up with packing for retirement.

So I have what the mali (gardener) could manage with his own resources. I never grew poppies after our chhota bungalow days, becoming very picky as I gained seniority - not necessarily wisdom - as a tea memsaab. Poppies were things I looked down upon. They have this tendency to blaze for a day or two in glory before fluttering away their all in a mess on the ground. It's tempting to think of them as wastrels. They are completely out of place among superior species that hold their heads up as the well cultivated should.

Well they hold their own here - however fleetingly - and they have silenced me. I'd forgotten their depth of colour and the richness of texture of each petal. The 'mess' of fallen petals makes the ground come alive with colour. I'm willing to eat my words – and the poppies too - if it will prolong the heady daze of these extended cold weather days.

 

 

 

Hang Out There!

Tindharia in the Darjeeling hills is the first important railway station on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR).
It is on National Highway 55 which connects - when it is in working order - Siliguri to Darjeeling.

We drove up to it one Sunday afternoon with some friends last July. One of them, a Darjeeling tea expert, pointed out the Tindharia Locomotive and Carriage Workshop to us. The three rooftops perched on the top of the hill made a pretty sight.

We drove past and went up to the railway station. It was also a lovely old building. I wished we could have taken a train ride there, but the train service had been suspended because landslides had snapped the road link and damaged the tracks beyond Tindharia.

We wondered whether repairs would be completed. The scene changed completely in September, when the earthquake struck. A large part of the hillside below the locomotive workshop fell away.

We drove up in the direction of Tindharia today with our younger daughter. She loves the railways, particularly the DHR. This time we couldnt even reach the station.

I did not have my camera with me. These pictures were taken on my old fashioned (four years old is old fashioned these days) phone camera.
No complaints. They pretty much convey what we saw.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) is a World Heritage site.

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee describes it thus:
"The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway is the first, and still the most outstanding example of a hill passenger railway. Opened in 1881, it applied bold and ingenious engineering solutions to the problems of establishing an effective rail link cross a mountainous terrain of great beauty. It is still fully operational* and retains most of its original features intact."

*see above

Hello, darkness my old friend!

Darkness everywhere. It terrified me, a Delhi girl in my early twenties on my first evening in a tea garden.

That night, a few of us rode from Birpara Tea Garden to Lankapara Tea Garden in an Ambassador car. It was a memorable ride - the car hurtled into the darkness at top speed. It was hard to believe there was a road. There probably wasn't. I'd never been in such inky darkness before.

When the terror of the ride ended, there were the introductions to strangers at the party. I was the new bride in the district. There was only one reason I didn't want the evening to end. The drive would have to be repeated.

While stepping out of our hosts' bungalow, I looked up at the sky. There were stars everywhere! I'd learnt to recognise the major constellations and the planets in Delhi's night skies, but this sight made my head spin. There were stars where I'd been used to seeing dark spaces.

For the first time, I saw the Little Bear - Ursa Minor. It had only been a name on a star map before this. In Delhi, we could spot two stars from Ursa Minor - the Pole Star Polaris, and Kocab. These stars augured well - I was going to love a lot things about my new life in tea.

I missed the city lights. Here, darkness fell by six-thirty in the summer and by five in the winter months. Twenty-five years ago, there was no electricity anywhere in tea gardens save in the bungalows, factories and hospitals. The towns nearby were not much better. There was no street lighting, nor were there any neon signs.

Our daughters never feared the dark as babies. They wouldn't cry or get restless when the lights went out. My husband always said that this was where we failed, having grown up in a city!

I can't say when I started appreciating the darkness in a tea garden. But you do need darkness to appreciate the beauty of light.

My cousin Ambika wrote about this on her blog recently. She had linked another article for star gazers. It is really sad to think of children growing up without seeing stars in the night sky.

For some years now, I've enjoyed taking a solitary outing at nightfall. All those years ago, the loneliness was as frightening as the darkness. Over time, a love of solitude replaced the fear. Silence and darkness can become a rich environment for those who like to wander about in the spaces of the mind.

We should be alright in a world where 'Daylight is good at arriving at the right time'.*

Beware of darkness

Watch out now, take care
Beware of the thoughts that linger
Winding up inside your head
The hopelessness around you
In the dead of night

- George Harrison

*George Harrison, 'All Things Must Pass'

Earthquake!

Sunday evening, Biswakarma Puja Day. It was chilly and it had been raining for nearly twenty four hours. My daughter Swati, my husband Mohan and I were sitting with our cups of tea. We were arguing idly about whether we should catch a movie later in the evening. Suddenly Swati said, 'Earthquake!'

I had just felt a little movement, but hadn't identified it.
'Run, Ma!' she said, and already, everything was shaking violently. A loud grinding and rumbling sound started off.

We were shaken and rattled about. The lights went off at once. The noise was frightening. Once we made it outside we stood together holding one another at the door. We knew we should be running down the stairs but we couldn't move. The building was rocking violently. It felt as if everything would come crashing down any second.

We heard people wailing loudly from the direction of Siliguri.
The last time I'd heard that many people shouting was when India won the cricket World Cup.

We stood hugging one another, unable to do anything more than keep our balance. It was pitch dark. We couldn't see the stairs. As soon as the shuddering stopped, the lights came on and we took the stairs down - gingerly, because they were slippery after the rain. Two young girls who live upstairs rushed down, sobbing loudly.

Everyone in the three buildings that make up our apartment complex had come down.
No one was hurt but people were just too scared to go back inside.

We looked up and wondered if the structures would all come down any minute. We saw tall cracks - as high as twelve to fourteen feet - around many of the walls and pillars on the ground.

'We should live in a bungalow again!' I said to Mohan. We've felt a number of mild earthquakes over the years. In a bungalow, it would take a moment to run out on to the front lawn! And those old tea bungalows were built to withstand more than earthquakes.

Ten days ago, Delhi had an earthquake. My brother and I were chatting about it on GMail last week.
"Was it scary?" I asked.
"Nothing serious ... not scary ... but it's a unique feeling ... a wave which passes through your body ... your head stops feeling it by the time your legs start feeling it"
"You make me want an earthquake!!!!" I said ... and he reminded me of these words when I spoke to him later in the evening.
It felt a little eerie to re-read that chat. He'd written, "The feeling reminded me of all of us watching the landslide in Sikkim...it oozes"
Today's quake had its epicentre in Sikkim, less than 60 kilometres from Siliguri.

Time calmed us all down. I stopped holding on to my daughter. We walked around a little freely. We tried to call our elder daughter in Delhi. All the phone lines were jammed with similar panic calls.

My husband walked around inspecting the cracks with some of our neighbours. 'Only the brick work and plaster have cracked,' he said. 'The pillars are unharmed.' Only then did we think of climbing the stairs back up to see what damage had taken place at our flat.

No, the building was not going to collapse for now. Still, all the neighbours pulled their cars out of the ground floor parking lot and parked them out in the open.

In the flat, we grabbed our cooling cups of tea and checked the damage. A broken photo frame, a chipped plate, some books knocked down. My 'puja' in disarray. Nothing too bad. Nothing that couldn't wait till later. We put on floaters so that we could run if required, and went downstairs to wait in case there were aftershocks.

Swati and I sat down in the car, though she and her dad had already decided not to drive out to the wide open spaces like I wanted to. They both said we ought to leave the roads free for people who might need to be rushed to hospital.

We managed to make our phone call to our daughter Parvati, alone in Delhi, frightening and reassuring her in the same breath.

Three young boys from the our building walked by. They were in high spirits.
'We could have died!' one announced happily in a loud voice.
'How many times have we studied earthquakes in class! Who thought we would feel one!'
Swati and I couldn't help laughing when we heard them.

It turned out the boys had been to the movie hall - the one we'd been debating about.
They'd all rushed out when the false ceiling started crumbling down and the hall filled with clouds of dust.

One boy popped his head in at my window. 'You are going to sit the whole night in the car, Aunty?' he asked.
He couldn't be more than eleven years old, and he'd braved the earthquake in the movie hall.
'That will be silly, no?' I asked him. 'Want to sit with us?"
He ran for his life. Again.

This post appeared in The Statesman, Kolkata, on 20 September 2011.

A Trained Eye

When we were children, every time we went on a train journey, we would look out of the window at level crossings and feel sorry for the poor people who lived in the middle of nowhere between the big railway stations.

After I married my tea planter husband almost 25 years ago, I've lived in that world of unimportant level crossings. Our tea garden is just one of the sights that can be seen on the train line between Delhi and Guwahati.

One Diwali/Kali Puja night many years ago at the Kali temple level crossing near our home, the gateman kept the gates closed so he could light candles on the bars.

Those were days when there was less traffic. Every time a vehicle crossed, he'd open the gate and his candles would go flying. When he closed the gate, he would arrange the candles again and light them with great care, apparently undisturbed by the thought that they would only burn until the next vehicle came along.

It was a pleasant surprise to see a small puja pandal near the Chalsa level crossing. It must have been put up for Kali Puja, which was over ten days ago. A pandal's basic function is to provide a platform for placing the image of the goddess. Pandal decoration has become an elaborate and showy affair in the towns here these days.

This structure, however, seemed to be a labour of love - a work of art that came straight from the heart.


The model of the train engine was true to life, and the cabin a perfect replica of the real thing. Hats off to the people who built it. I'm not surprised they didn't want to pull it down.





Above: the 'real' cabin at the crossing. The number is the same as the one on the model.

Now that the festive season is finally over, I'm done with complaining about its drawbacks. Its good to see signs that people everywhere had their share of fun.

In the Moonlight, on a Magic Night

Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy has a magical passage in which Kabir and Lata, young lovers, take out a boat on the river Ganga on Sharad Purnima night. Reading that passage aroused my interest in the night of Sharad Purnima, the brightest night of the year.

'Purnima' means the full moon, and Sharad is the name of the season that comes after the monsoon rains, marking the beginning of cool weather in most of India.

The Sharad Purnima is the equivalent of the equinoctial moon. During the equinox, the moon moves closest to the earth. So when you have a full moon around that time, it appears larger and brighter than usual. People in the Northern Hemisphere see the brightest full moon of the year around the time of the Autumnal Equinox, September 23rd. And I don't want to offend my friend Uma in Australia - you'll see yours in March.

Sharad Purnima did not coincide with the Equinox this year, but it occurred a month later.

The Sharad season begins in the Indian month of Ashwin (called Ashshin in Bengali, and Aippasi in Tamil). The Indian calendar measures time in terms of the sun as well as the moon, with the year measured in solar time, and the months in lunar cycles. The months in this calendar don't run parallel with the months in the global calendar. When Ashwin coincides to some extent with September, chances are that Sharad Purnima will coincide with the equinoctial moon. If not, it will be the full moon after that one.

The Ashwin moon is especially significant. The new moon or Mahalaya Amavasya marks the beginning of 'Navaratri', nine days and nights of goddess worship. In Bengal, it is the beginning of Durga Puja. The tenth day of the moon is Bijoya Dasami. The night of the full moon is observed as Lakshmi Puja.

Lakshmi is the goddess of prosperity. The moon is a symbol of plenty: a good harvest of course, but much more than simply wealth. The fulness and brightness of the moon on this night stand for fulfilment, the abundance of blessings, peace and well-being.
It is said that any wish made on this night comes true.

Seasons of Splendour by Madhur Jaffrey, a book my daughters read when they were children, is an interesting compilation of the legends and folk tales that surround Indian seasons and festivals. It mentions the tradition of threading a needle 100 times in the moonlight on Sharad Purnima night. The moonlight supposedly contains drops of nectar, which enter the eyes of the person performing this feat.

I love the Bengali tradition of Lakshmi Puja. It is a day of great piety. A religious festival like this one has a simplicity and charm quite untouched by the bustle and commerce of the 'big' festivals. Any festival held in a tea garden is enhanced by the surroundings: by the large open spaces, and the peace and quiet.

Unlike Durga Puja, which is conducted by a community of people, Lakshmi Puja is performed in people's homes. An elaborate feast is prepared. For many years, a Bengali family in our garden has been sending us 'bhog' or 'prasad'. There is luchi (the Bengali Poori), paayesh (kheer/payasam), narkul nadu (coconut laddoos) of two kinds, white and brown, and the delicious bhog khichuri (rice and dal savoury) with the vegetable side dish called labra . It is delicious - like all consecrated food offerings are.

In the Dooars, the moonlight is undiluted by city lights or smog. The Sharad full moon rises over treetops, and the silhouettes of the trees seems to shrink in contrast. The light is silvery all night. I stand and gape at the moon for as long as I can. It is said that standing in the moonlight and absorbing the rays is good for the body. It does your soul good too, I'd say.

 
Sharad Purnima was two nights ago, on October 22, but it was not the brightest night of the year in the Dooars. The sky was overcast until almost ten o'clock and we couldn't see the moonrise, easily the best part of any full moon night.

Last night, the moon was still almost full, as it was again tonight; a perfect round, and to our delight, perfectly visible when it rose.