Chhumleivak

Chhumleivak was tired. They had been wandering for what felt like forever, uphill and downhill and overhill and underhill- in fact any combination of hills and wandering you could think of. Done. And they was tired.

They had swarmed through forests of bamboo and been poked, pricked and prodded in every way imaginable. They had slid and slithered on the shiny bamboo leaves that were strewn on the ground. They pushed through dark dank caves that were full of the smells of wet earth and old old secrets, to come out very near the same place they had gone in. Trudged up over the bumpy boulders and the rough fallen branches that were brought down by last year’s rains and down through a desolate grove of banana trees left all dusty and greenless by the Sumos that drove in a great almighty hurry on the road to Lunglei. The best, of course, was when they went over a river and woh could feel the cold-ish ticklish slightly zing-zing underneath. Sort of like the feeling you get when you sit on that rock in Wah-ka-dait and put your feet in the rapids, just MORE everything because a river has a lot more water in it than the streams we have here.

Now you probably guessed already, but Chhumleivak are one of what you call 'clouds'. All clouds are the same, they just take turns at doing different jobs. Which reminds me, it is your turn at feeding the chicken this week. Anyway, they take turns at being in the sky, when they are called Chhumvanraang or Chhumtuipai (or Chhumtuipailo) and a dozen other names you wouldn't remember anyway so I'm not going to tell you, and when they are on the ground they are called Chhumleivak.

Chhumleivak, like I was saying, was tired. It was nearing the end of their season, and the excitement at getting a turn on the ground was fading. They longed to be back in the sky, being pushed along by Tohmon (the wind) or basking in the warm lap of Ka Sngi(the sun). And as you know very well, when you have been walking through the hills and you get tired, it becomes very hard to concentrate on where you are going. And just like that, just because they were so tired, Chhumleivak began to break apart. What had started as a large strong brooding mass began to show cracks. They started to get thinner, and some bits began to straggle. That’s right, when you are in the hills, it is not a good idea to straggle at all! And just as they were passing a little village that was heroically holding on to a hillside, it happened. One of the bits of Chhumleivak accidentally wandered into an open window!

Now Dhobi-ka-Kutta (this was before he went to Secunderabad and became a big star) kinda-sorta-accidentally-deliberately was in the same village at the time. He was kinda-sorta passing through, but kinda-sorta looking for something to eat, and maybe even a warm place to sleep. And the smell of fresh pork-smoked-on-a-charcoal-fire was enough to make him kinda-sorta want to stay. It was an easy hunt. A nonchalant keep-to-the-shadows walk that brought him up close, a slow on-the-belly-creep-up behind the woman washing dishes outside and a mad dash to grab a mouthful and run run run! The run itself was punctuated by a muffled yelp as a well-aimed stone warned him not to try that trick again. But the pork, with a bit of leftover rice that was kept by a backdoor for pig feed made a great meal, and now he wanted a nap. And for some strange reason I cannot account for, he decided to go into a house, crawl under a bed and get some well deserved rest.

Chhumleivak was scared. This place smelt different from all the places woh* had been so far. It smelt warm and closed up, but not like the damp warmth of the caves. It felt hard, but not like the hard of the rocks in the streams or the packed earth in that large flat place. It tasted like the trees, but was too smooth to be them. Woh felt wohs way around, moving towards a strange sound, like one Tohmon would make, but quieter, somehow.

And Chhumleivak (the rest of them) was angry. They had regrouped on the other side of the village and found that a bit of them was missing! This had never happened before! Missing! And almost end of season, just as they were getting ready to become Chhumtuipai! How? Where? Now if you’ve watched clouds, which I know you have, you know that they can get together very very quickly. Just while you’re not looking, the sunshine will fade, the trees stop whispering and giggling, and the almost dry washing has a very real chance of getting another rinse. And that is what happened. Chhumleivak told the Chhumvanrang, who quickly got everybody together. Some went to go wake old Thunder (fast asleep as usual) while others went to call Chhumtuipai. Tohmon got involved as only Tohmon can, blowing this way and that, into every cave and through every tree. Chhumtuipai let go their load of rainwater, hoping to flush the missing Chhumleivak out. Even Kong Sngi lent a hand, shining as hard as possible everywhere that wasn’t covered by Chhumtuipai. And Tohmon. Whoosh here and whoosh there, blowing so hard that the lost Chhumleivak would have been blown to bits if woh were actually in the way! What a to-do there was! Even old Thunder (late as usual) bellowing away, telling everyone (who already knew) that Chhumleivak was missing! What a to-do I say.

I don’t know what Dhobi-ka-Kutta was dreaming about, but dreaming he was. But there was something on the edges of his dream, something kinda-sorta wet, but not in an unpleasant way, kinda-sorta cold but not sharp. And he could feel that kinda-sorta wet-cold something on his nose. He twitched once, he twitched twice, then he opened his eyes. Now I must tell you this, I rather admire Dhobi-ka-Kutta’s nerves. It is a rather startling thing to wake from a nice after breakfast nap because there is a wet-cold on your nose, and to open your eyes and find yourself face to face with a bit of Chhumleivak! It’s not funny, I tell you. You’d probably die of fright if it happened to you! But Dhobi-ka-Kutta (with his nerves of steel) wasn’t frightened at all. He just sniffed once at Chhumleivak, and cocked his head in surprise. Now THIS was something you didn’t see every day! Not that there was very much to see, mind you, just a little wispy-cloudy sorta thing under a bed in a room. And there definitely wasn’t a wispy-cloudy sorta thing there when Dhobi-ka-Kutta went to sleep!

And what was that ruckus outside?

Grumble grumble grumble BOOM went old Thunder. Grumble BOOM! Dhobi-ka-Kutta wondered what old Thunder was on about. Never the most articulate at best, old Thunder could be quite hard to understand when woken from a nap. And since he seemed in no danger from the wispy-cloudy thing, he sat down again to try and understand what old Thunder was saying. Aaah, thought Dhobi-ka-Kutta, as he finally made the connection between the great excitement outside and the cloudy-wispy thingy he had just met. So he stood back up, took a nice long stretch (as you should always do after a nap), reached under his super-cape into his super-utility belt and pulled out a super nudge-o-matic. Heh heh no, he didn’t. I just made that up to see if you were awake.

Anyway, he knew that he needed to help. The cloudy-wispy thing didn’t look like it could be lifted by the scruff of the neck (what neck) and marched out. And it didn’t seem to react when he called to it either. Aaah, he thought again as he hit on an idea. And very very gently, Dhobi-ka-Kutta started nudging Chhumleivak with his nose. Nudge he went, nudge nudge out from under the bed. Nudge he went, nudge nudge towards the window. Nudge he went, nudge nudge up towards the window sill. Till finally one bounce, two bounce and OUT the window went Chhumleivak. Free! Home! Yay!

Things quietened down pretty fast after that. Dhobi-ka-Kutta managed to sneak out without too much trouble, and old Thunder went back to sleep. Kong Sngi had to work extra hard to make sure the laundry dried, and Chhumtupai went back to wherever it is they hang out when it is not raining. Chhumleivak became Chuumvanrang (change in plan) the next season, and had a nice long break before they took a turn on the ground again.

And so it is, before you close your windows at night, you should always look under the bed, just in case there is a little bit of Chhumleivak hiding there. How will you know if there is? Well, just like Dhobi-ka-Kutta, you’ll feel something kinda-sorta wet-cold on your nose!

NOTES:

*I have been told by very reliable sources that 'woh' is the correct singular pronoun for sunsets, lightning and clouds. Apparently they do not have genders as we know it, and so 'woh' is the only correct (and more importantly polite) descriptor. I am yet to be told if this pronoun also fits others. In a group, they can be reffered to as ‘they’. 



thanks @ misual.com for the beginnings of this story!

Watching Hine

Watching was a lightning bolt. Not a very impressive one, to be sure, and unlikely to ever reach the sky-splitting-cloud-smacking-treetop-crackling power of some of the other lightning bolts in the herd. But Watching was happy. Because late at noon, when no one was around, and the moisture was just right, woh (yes yes, lightning bolts have the same genders as sunsets) could sometimes light up the sky just about enough for one to see the stars blink. And that, as Nilanjana proceeded to tell me, happened after woh met Wheelchair Rocket, a.k.a Speedling, a.k.a Hine.

Now Hine wasn’t quite like the other kids at school, and spent most of his time in a wheelchair. (Why, you ask? Well...why do you have brown eyes? And black hair? Yep! The same sorta thing!) But Hine did, like all of us, sometimes feel very alone. And when he did, he would wait to get home, roll his chair out onto the deck, between the chives and the watering can, lean back and look up at the sky. That was his favourite place in all the world, that bit of sky between the squat white building on the right and the lanky crane on the left. It was a beautiful patch, sometimes a deep clear blue, sometimes softly fringed by wisps of cloud, and sometimes a solid pale grey with darker patches that looked like rain. And that was just in the day. At night, the patch would be lit up, with the yellow lights from the streets and the buildings making it fuzzy around the edges. But no matter how much light there was, there was always, right at the centre, a deep dark black sky. And sometimes, there were stars. When he wasn’t feeling alone, though, Hine was Speedling, a.k.a Wheelchair Rocket, the fastest wheelchair in the world. (Just between you and me, he wasn’t there just quite yet, but had every chance of being someday!)

It was a Saturday afternoon in summer that Hine first met Watching. It had been a bright clear morning, and Hine could barely drag himself away from the spotless sheet of blue above him. It had suddenly turned a menacing black though, and rained as if it was practicing to be a waterfall like the one Africa that they showed on TV last week. The thunder rumbled and roared, almost sounding like the volcanoes had woken up again, and there were crrraaaaaacccccck!s that tore across the sky. Hine knew how to judge the distance of a storm by counting the time between the flash and crash of lightning, and these were oh-boy-oh-boy close, with barely a second between them! Flash-Crack they would go. And rumble rumble. Flaaashh-Crack! While Hine had the good sense (unlike some people I know, but we won’t name names just here, ey? We all know who I am talking about anyway) not to be out in the storm, but watched the whole thing from the window-doors. Like most storms, this didn’t last long, and soon began to blow away, and the flash-cracks became further apart as the lightning bolt herd began to drift on. And that is when Hine Speedling met Watching the lightning bolt.

Watching had, as usual, been skulking around the back of the herd, behind the big strong sky-Splitters, the always-cheerful Cracklers and a little to the left of the fizzies (officially called the Illuminators), who seemed to always take themselves so seriously. Woh was safe there, and could play little games, testing wohs moves. The fizzies dutifully ignored woh as they went about their business, and woh was too far behind to be seen by the Splitters and the Cracklers. Now I don’t know (and neither does Nilanjana, smartie pants) why Hine and Watching connected so well. Maybe it was their ing names. Maybe it was right place right time. Maybe anything-you tell me why you so good friends with that grubby bad tempered cat of yours, ey? Anyway Hine caught Watching right in the middle of a to the left-to the right-somersault-spread-glow that woh’d been practicing for a while. It wasn’t perfect yet, but was meant as a sort of off-beat to the fizzies, just as they were reaching the end of their zzt zzt zzt cycle glow. It was barely noticeable, and so the fizzies didn’t mind too much. I think Hine only saw it because Watching chose just that patch of sky to do it in, and as we know, Hine knew that patch of sky very very well.

Now all friendships, even good ones, take a while to grow. Just like planting carrots, really. First, of course, you gotta *like carrots. Then you get good potting mix, plant the carrots, water them, and make sure no pesky little kids come dig them up too early. All good friendships are like that too. So Watching and Hine liked each other. That was a start.

Now something you need to know about lightning herds is that just because you don’t always see and hear them doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. Just like the stars, but we’ll talk about that later. Each herd of lightning has an area to take care of, you see, and go past that area most days. I don’t know who decides the areas, maybe you could go ask Tawhiri sometime. Most days we don’t see them passing because there’s plenty of light in the sky from the sun, not dark like on a stormy day. The sky-Splitters and the Cracklers are only in top form about once a month, and the fizzies only did their thing when the others had done theirs.

But Hine knew to look, now, and often saw Watching going by at the back of the herd, practicing now this move, and now that. Watching also grew to look forward to seeing Hine solemnly sitting there, looking up at woh and smiling, especially when woh did the left-right-somersault-glow thing. This was turning into Watching’s signature move, and woh practiced harder and harder, and got better and better! It was beginning to get rather obvious when woh was doing it, and some of the fizzies were a little disapproving. They weren’t sure it was the proper thing to do, but it didn’t quite seem ‘wrong’ either, so they tut-tuted, but left woh alone.

It was about summer the next year when it happened. Watching had been getting stronger and stronger (though Hine was getting weaker). The sky started to darken one day as the big heavy clouds began to roll in. There was a steady wind, and people at home rushed to take their washing in, while people at work realised their nicely-dry-by-now clothes were going to get very very wet. Boom-boom-boom went the thunder, drumming up expectation. Whooooo went the wind. Boom-boom went the thunder again. And whooooosh went the wind. Then Craaaaaack! went the first of the lightning. Cr-cr-cr-cr-aaaaacK! Of course Hine was there to watch. He saw the Splitters try to out-split each other, while the Cracklers merrily did their bit. There hadn’t been a storm in a while, and the happy herd were making the most of it. And as quickly as it came, the herd began to move on. There were the fizzies now, cleaning up after the rest, the occasional soft glow around the edges as they worked. But hey! What was that? What was that glow? There again! And there! It was Watching! Woh had gotten so much better by now that...wow! Was that the stars? Did woh actually manage to glow enough to show the stars? Woooow! thought Hine. Woooow.

Hine died soon after that performance by Watching. He’d been getting weaker and weaker, and was finding it hard to hang on. One day he accidentally-deliberately forgot to take his medicine, and went on to his next big adventure in the sky. Before he went he told Nilanjana, and Nilanjana told me, so I know. The lightning herd still goes by, though, and Watching is still getting better and better. And some days, deep at noon, if you know where to look, woh’ll light up the sky just about enough for one to see the stars blink. I think woh sometimes misses Hine. I sure know I do. 

Dhobi-Ka-Kutta

“My name is not Neelu,” she said, scowling fiercely at me. “And don’t call me Neela, only Ammama may call me that. My name is Nilanjana.” Suitably rebuked, I shut up and listened to Nilanjana tell me, for the third time, the story of how the sunset came to fall in love with the neem tree.

Dreep, she said, was just a railway sunset. Woh (apparently sunsets have no gender as we know it, and the appropriate pronoun is ‘woh’) was not popular and well known like the sea shore sunsets with their admiring sycophants, nor had the splendid sun bloodied colouring of the hill-station sunsets, nor was woh quietly respectable and matter-of-fact like the ones that had settled in the city. Woh was a nothing to write home about sunset, a little spread out around the edges, more the colour of an overripe mango than anything else. Passing trains would sometimes wail out a greeting, and Dreep would ripple in reply. The Guwahati-Halflong route was not a busy one, but woh did not feel left out or alone. Apart from the trains, who were a friendly lot, woh had the hills for company, and on some summer evenings danced a slow grand dance with them, especially when a train was passing by. It was a quiet life, but happy. Dreep heard news, sometimes, of other sunsets deeper in the hills or out on the river. People came in the evenings to watch them colouring and pirouetting around the clouds that also sometimes gathered to watch. Seems there even were some in Shillong that had been photographed by students from Bangladesh, and had had their pictures put up in an exhibition! Dreep was quite impressed by this bit of news that Dhobi-ka-Kutta brought, and did a rather inspired dance that day.

Dhobi-ka-Kutta was Dreep’s only real REAL friend. A flea bitten, mangy unattractive thing, he (dogs, at least, have our kind of genders) always seemed to know what was happening and where. He spent his time at various garbage heaps and wayside tea stalls, occasionally begging for scraps from city people who stopped for tea and cigarettes. Of uncertain ancestry, he was equally detested by the dog gangs and the jackals that freely roamed the hills. He hid when he could, ran when he couldn’t, and cowered and simpered when anyone raised a hand or bared a tooth at him. But he was the freest* dog OR jackal in a hundred kilometre radius, and always knew what was going on in the world. And what stories he told! Of how some men in uniform came to the village with guns and took the best looking girls away in a truck; of how the river flooded the fields and the houses, and the same men came to help; of how the jackals feasted on the night the villagers celebrated the harvest; of how the railway lines were bombed and the trains were stopped for a whole week; of how the headman’s son ran away to the city and came back with a wife and a large white car; of how last years rains had been so hard that it almost washed poor Dhobi-ka-Kutta’s patchwork fur right off his back; and of how there was a little neem tree far far away, who was longing to see a proper sunset. Dreep was rather amused at that last one, but Dhobi-ka-Kutta swore it was true. He said the trains had told him, and even Tohmon, the wind, had confirmed it. That the little neem tree had never seen a sunset because it grew in a building farm, and though it could see a bit of sky, and often smiled up at the moon, the patch of sky was too high for a sunset to show. And that neem trees were the bestest and goodest things on the big flat world and would never lie; so the story just had to be true. Now Dreep had never seen a neem tree, and had only heard of them from Dhobi-ka-Kutta, not that woh was about to admit that. Night inked the hills, then, and Dhobi-ka-Kutta wandered off, leaving Dreep to think of the little neem tree and wonder.

Summer sprung, with flowers in the hills, and Dreep all but forgot the story of the little neem tree. Woh quite enjoyed this season, with its trainloads of travellers heading into the hills. There weren’t as many now as there used to be, but Dreep wasn’t going to let anything dampen the spirit. Woh danced the old grand dances with the hills, twisting and turning between them, moving between mango, radishy and an occasional asphyxiated purple! Woh would tease the busy-busy clouds as they hurried past, slowing them down in a muddy embrace. Sometimes the clouds would hold each other in a long line, so Dreep could not distract them from the extremely important messages they carried for Tohmon. Woh was quite stunning that year, and even the crabby old station master with the tobacco stained teeth and the spit painted platform very secretly thought so. Dhobi-ka-Kutta was away on yet another fact finding mission, and on some quiet evenings when the trains and the clouds were few, Dreep rather missed him. But then came the rains, and with them, Dhobi-ka-Kutta. This year’s rains were heavier than usual, or at least it seemed so-it was hard to really tell. The rain came in curtains and in sheets, and each batch lasted either three days or seven. When it was not pouring, everything was a dull old-dirty-whitewashed-wall gray. The flowers were long gone, and the grass on the hills looked a lurid green, drowned by the annual play of cosmic irony. Sodden bits of earth fell onto the railway tracks as they cut through the hills, and men came to clear them, wet and miserable in their bright blue makeshift ponchos. The rivers flooded, as usual, and there was little food to be had for love, money or prostitution; not even for Dhobi-ka-Kutta. Dreep came out rarely, if at all, and Dhobi-ka-Kutta, desperate to save what was left of his clumpy coat, would only come to see woh in the brief overcast interludes between the drenched obscenity of the pouring skies. His stock of stories seemed to have dried up and he only spoke, if at all, of the little neem tree.

So it was, on a dank and dull, but relatively dry day, that Dreep and Dhobi-ka-Kutta set out to find the little neem tree who so longed to see a sunset. Dhobi-ka-Kutta seemed to have a good idea of where they were headed. They travelled west, they travelled south, and on some days even managed a drunkenly steady south-west. They met a cyclone with a rather extreme idea of fun; were given a lift by a cynical north-east monsoon; had a disagreement on the right of way with a juvenile pack of lightning bolts; and were often given shelter by kindly goods trains who had heard of their brain-dead journey. There were even a couple of hills, local celebrities, who pawed at Dreep and demanded that woh dance with them for a while. They travelled through vast open spaces, the like of which Dreep had never seen before, stark and rocky in some parts, lush and green in others. Dreep for the first time saw the large imposing buildings and bridges that Dhobi-ka-Kutta used to talk of, and found them just a little menacing. As Sundays yawned into Mondays, good travellers that they were, they sometimes stumbled onto hope, and sometimes despair. They travelled hard, and travelled long; till one day, among a clump of buildings not far from a traffic-lashed bridge and a double centenarian railway station, Dreep and Dhobi-ka-Kutta found an almost pretty but not so little neem tree. It had grown tall and strong now, still trying and trying to get a good glimpse of a proper sunset. Its leaves were a gentle characterless green, pleasantly untidy, with drops of rain blushing in response to Dreep’s admiring gaze. And my! Wasn’t the not so little neem tree delighted! Here, at last, was a hell yeah-honest to god-cross my heart and hope to die-real, live, mango coloured, little spread out around the edges sunset, bobbing up and down in a most endearing way!

So there Dreep parked, in front of the not so little neem tree, lighting up when darkness was about to fall, glowing and beaming and bobbing up and down till dawn. Come rain or shine, woh would light up every evening with a soft golden glow, and Dreep and the not so little neem tree would bask in each others company all night long. The Gov’ment even built a pole for Dreep to sit on, so woh wouldn’t bob quite so much, and a glass house so woh wouldn’t get wet or cold. Dhobi-ka-Kutta was quite a hit with the ladies, and doing that thing he do, sired a good many puppies that looked as ugly as himself; prompting a rather lively argument in the local papers about whether street dogs were a menace or not. And even now, in a quiet and not very fashionable corner of Secunderabad, undisturbed except for landing aircraft and the roar of my Yezdi (1995 Roadking, if you were wondering), there is an almost pretty neem tree, and opposite it a pole from which Dreep beams down, all evening and night, only going to bed at dawn.

* “…freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose"-Kris Kristofferson, "Me and Bobby McGee".