Blurry Visions
Part One: The First Musicians
I often wonder what it would have been like to grow up in the Indian countryside.
Honking cars in morning traffic would be replaced by belled cattle jingling on their merry way. Lunch would constitute fruit, vegetable and grain picked from our fields rather than from supermarket aisles. We’d still play cricket in the evenings, because let’s face it, it’d be blasphemous not to. The difference would be that we wouldn’t play our games on concrete in the constant fear of smashing an old lady’s windowpane. That, and the fact that the ball hit by a star batsman would disappear into the depths of an adjoining lake and not a smelly sewer. The preferred way to wrap up the day and call it a night would be to lie down in complete silence and look up at the stars in a resolution 72 times better than 4K televisions playing loud reruns of asinine content.
Now, before our readers with degrees in critical thinking can interject and inform me about how a lack of healthcare facilities, technological infiltration and education will mar the otherwise rosy image I am attempting to paint, I implore them to suspend their disbelief.
During summer, would we visit a nearby city instead? Marvel at shiny cars, gape at tall buildings of glass and become apprehensive of the urgency of the crowds? Would we return home, glad to be back in a familiar place, while silently fearing the ruthlessness of the outside world?
Or would we spend countless hours trying to climb a tree because we thought we saw a nest tucked away in a nook, only to slip and scrape our knees in the process before trying again? Would we be busy splashing around in a babbling brook or cooling off in a serene pond?
I could go on and on, romanticizing about these tropes us city folk have seen on TV, in the movies and in the figments of our imagination while reading books. The truth is, I’ve already lost half of you in the abyss of un-relatability. The half that is terrorized by the idea that there may be no WiFi, air conditioners or escape from their own thoughts. The half that almost always vehemently suggests something is wrong with the world around them, when in reality something is wrong with their expectations. But that’s a rant for another time.
I do know what it’s like to grow up in Mumbai. Amidst the tsunami of people rushing with purpose. Carried away by the sheer determination of their will to be someone that matters and the utter shame of taking a breather. It was a city that would be totally okay leaving you behind if you didn’t keep up and get with the message. Maybe I was just anatopic and anachronistic in the cacophony.
There was one sound that I wouldn’t have traded away anything for. The sound of a chattering mynah on the mango tree just outside the french windows of my room. It’s almost as if it would reward early risers with a special concert, until the rest of the city woke up and drowned the music with its bustle. Sometimes, a sparrow would stand on the ledge, cock its tiny head and peer into our alien world, as if to ask “What is it so important that you do in there?”. Not unlike those who visit megacities for the first time.
I remember spending a lot of time looking outside this window, tracking the ripening of the mangoes or of the jackfruit on the tree next to it. Some years there would be a beehive to look at too. Once or twice a year, a strapping person would climb these 30 foot high trees and come down with the goodies, giving each neighbor some and selling the rest.
It’s the same window I ran to, to check if the sound I was hearing was indeed the first rain of the year. The same window through which I would shout back a reply to the friends waiting for me before they started a game. This window, when closed, kept noisy firecrackers out when I became old enough to shun them during Diwali. And this window also kept out the loud thunders and cold rain of the receding monsoons when I was too young to be able to sleep through them.
It’s fascinating to imagine what the first cave people thought of thunderstorms. Loud rumbles followed by the pitter patter of raindrops. The whooshing wind nudging leaves to rustle. A hooting owl, a howling wolf, a screeching hawk and a trumpeting elephant would round up this orchestra conducted by Mother Nature. After all, the musical instruments we have today help us recreate the very same sounds given to us by Her.
So, each time a mynah or a sparrow would land on my windowsill and look inside with puzzled eyes, I’d look back and wait for it to begin speaking in a language I wished I understood. Oh warbling creature that evolved from shrieking dinosaurs, which story do you want to tell us today? Is it the one about the first musicians?
