Moonrise from the Green Grass Roof

by Vinod Kumar Shukla

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  P.S. Section

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  Everyone

  However small

  Has an inner depth

  That is deep

  Inside one’s own self

  We keep tumbling

  Topsy-turvy.

  In that depth

  Lies another world

  Maybe opposite to the one outside

  Sometimes one wants to stay a while.

  One should stay.

  We take notice of birds when we’re children, less often when we grow up. We talk while we sit, we talk while we walk, we grumble when we’re alone. We talk lying down. We talk in our sleep. But the patrangi bird talks only when it flies. It grows quiet upon alighting.

  If it has something to say, it will fly. If it has nothing to say, it will perch. Patrangi. Sparrow-sized. Long tail narrowed to a point. Likes open fields. Can be spotted on fence posts and telephone wires. Noisy before settling down for the night. One flock finds a perch and falls silent. Another flock takes off with a ruckus.

  It’s wonderful to hear the bird talking while it flies. But it must get doubly tired—making sounds and flapping wings. So it doubles its resting—by staying still and staying silent.

  There’s a six-year-old in second grade. He wears a new earth-coloured shirt that’ll look old the first time it’s washed, and dusty-red shorts. He blends into the background when he walks across a muram field, disappearing from view before he has disappeared. Approaching from a muram field, he arrives suddenly as if transported by a zoom lens. He has dark, curly hair combed down in the back. He longs to fly. He gets lost in thought while he is seated somewhere. His mother calls out, ‘Lost in thought?’ as if she was calling him by name. He’s known as Lost in Thought at school, too, though in the student register his name is listed as Bolu. He was called Bolu, or the Talkative One, from the chattering noises he made as a little baby.

  It took a while for his mother to discover that Bolu talked only while he walked. He would stand still or sit down when he was silent. He learned to make intelligible sounds after he learned to walk. When he dragged himself on his belly, he could make ‘cha’ or ‘ba’ sounds. When he learned to crawl on hands and knees, he could say ‘cha-cha’ and ‘ba-ba’. Luckily, he didn’t talk in his sleep.

  Because of Bolu’s habit of speaking only when he walked, people wanting to listen were forced to walk alongside. His mother couldn’t walk fast enough. Nor could she understand why she was tired all the time. Meanwhile, Bolu had figured out how to manage having to move while he spoke. When it was time to go to school, he pulled out a book from his book bag, and read aloud all the way to his seat in the classroom. He became quiet then either because he needed to sit down or because he wanted to keep sitting once he had taken his seat. On the return trip home, he read aloud in the same way. If someone asked a question, he stopped to listen. He resumed walking in order to respond. His mother knew he was almost home when she could hear his voice approaching. She would undo the latch and wait for him to walk in. Bolu got good grades because of his routine of reading lessons out loud.

  His mother would serve him roti and milk but wouldn’t ask questions; she was usually too tired to talk anyway. On this day, however, she asked him what they had done in school that morning. Bolu had finished his roti and milk and sat quiet. The walking and the talking had worn him out. But mothers want to talk to their children. Children want to talk to their mothers.

  ‘Why don’t you say something, Bolu?’ his mother asked.

  ‘I had a great time today,’ Bolu said, getting up and starting to walk.

  It was a one-room house. The door was ajar. ‘The interesting thing was…’

  Bolu said and stepped out the door. He knew his mother would follow. He kept walking as he spoke. His mother came out to listen.

  ‘We saw a grey kitten in our classroom. Someone must have sneaked in the kitten in his book bag, and it must have crept out of the bag. My book has a lesson about a cat and a mouse. Could that cat’s little one have climbed out of the lesson? How would it go back in? If a kitten came out of each person’s book, there would be a pack of kittens in the classroom. They would look alike, many kittens born of the same cat in our lesson. How would I know which kitten was mine? The cat in my book knows who I am. I think she knows which textbook belongs to me. Its kitten would return to my bag first, to inside the book next, to the Cat and Mouse lesson last.’ Bolu spoke in a rush and walked in a rush.

  Bolu’s mother fell behind with each word Bolu spoke. In the beginning, she fell behind a little. Then she fell behind one step for each word. ‘Be quiet!’ she called out to Bolu. Bolu stopped speaking and walking. ‘Let’s return,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve come a long way from home.’

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ Bolu said, turning around.

  ‘Tell me what became of the kitten.’

  ‘It ran this way and that. All the students ran after it. It was exciting.’

  ‘Chaotic you mean?’

  ‘No. A boy got frightened and started to cry. The boy standing next to him started to cry. The teacher noticed this contagion and began to laugh. The entire class burst out laughing with the teacher, even the two boys who had just been crying. I was busy chasing the kitten. “You won’t get away from me,” I called repeatedly as I ran after it. But neither I nor anyone else in the classroom succeeded in catching the kitten.’ Bolu found himself close to where his mother was. He was about to say something else and step away when his mother took his hand in hers.

  ‘Why don’t you pause a moment?’

  Bolu paused.

  ‘Speak slowly,’ his mother said. ‘I’m tired. I’m holding on to you for support. I want to go home slowly.’

  Bolu thought up a poem to make his mother happy.

  Patrangi! Patrangi bird!

  I will talk when I will walk,

  You will chirp when you will fly.

  Will there ever come a day,

  Mother, will you prophesy,

  When Patrangi and I will be

  Chirping, talking while we fly?

  Bolu paused to hear his mother’s reply. His mother hugged him to her breast and ran her fingers through his hair.

  You are still a young one, son.

  Go to school and learn to read.

  That is how your wings will grow.

  When they’re fledged, you’ll surely soar.

  Bolu repeated his mother’s words. He walked slowly, stopping for his mother now and then, committing his mother’s words to memory. In this way, maintaining an easy pace, they arrived back at their house.

  Bajrang Snack Shop was located directly opposite Bolu’s house. It had been built long before there was a village—long before there were other houses. Only later did houses come up around the snack shop. Nobody knew why the snack shop was the first building. Some people thought Bajrang Snack Shop was originally a house and became a restaurant only gradually. The old-timers said it wasn’t so. Indeed, there was nothing about the snack shop to suggest it had once been a house.

  It served tea and snacks; that’s all. The owner of the snack shop was called Bajrang Maharaj, whatever his real name might have been.

  There was a cap Bajrang Maharaj liked to wear. I
t may have been white at one time but it was grime-coloured now. Even though it was washed every day it looked like it hadn’t been washed in ages. The grime was colour-fast. Bajrang Maharaj had a pudgy twelve-year-old son. He, too, wore a grimy cap. The son had been made to repeat grades a few times and left off going to school. He helped with attending to customers at the snack shop, and spent his breaks trying to decipher a book of practical magic.

  The school, called the Round School, was a distance away. The building was circular, as befitted the name. A wide verandah, into which individual classroom doors opened, ran around the entire building.

  Not far from the Round School was another school called the Long School.

  It was straight like a vertical line. When seen from above, the two schools made the number ‘10’. The long school had a long verandah in front and back. The back verandahs of both schools boasted wooden pillars.

  The real name of Bajrang Maharaj’s son was Bhaira. Everyone knew, though, that he would come to be called Bajrang Maharaj in time. The name ‘Bhaira’ was a corruption of the word ‘bahra’ for deaf. It wasn’t that Bhaira was deaf; he was choosy about what he heard. If he didn’t respond when people asked him a question multiple times, they assumed he was deaf. Then they would communicate by signs. Bhaira enjoyed this mode of communication. He never ignored a message communicated by signs. He would respond in kind. People who saw him expressing himself through gestures assumed he was dumb as well. Bhaira must have developed the power to ignore what was being said from the time he could understand words. He began to be called Bhaira while still a child.

  Bhaira was afraid of speaking to his father in words, but he felt safe using signs. Bajrang Maharaj knew that Bhaira would ignore his words so he, too, used signs. Bajrang Maharaj had the foulest temper. He would get angry at any little thing. People discovered by and by that he never got angry at messages conveyed by signs. So they began talking to him in signs. Sometimes they forgot and began speaking normally. Bajrang Maharaj would fly into a rage. If people resumed communicating by signs he would calm down. His attention would shift from rage to interpreting what people were signalling.

  Communicating by signs was not possible when people were a great distance apart. If Bhaira was away somewhere, or hidden from view, Bajrang Maharaj would shout for him. On hearing Bajrang Maharaj shout, the tiger in the forest would roar back. The tiger seemed to recognize Bajrang Maharaj’s voice.

  Whenever Bhaira and Bolu met, the first thing Bhaira would say was: ‘Don’t speak. Let me tell you what I want to say.’ Bolu would stand quietly till Bhaira had finished talking. Bhaira’s last words would be: ‘Speak to me by signs.’ Bolu would stand still and communicate in signs. In this way Bhaira avoided exerting himself to keep pace with Bolu.

  The outer walls of the Round School were smooth and shiny. The outer walls of classrooms opening to the verandah were smooth and shiny. The inner walls of the classrooms were different: they had built-in cubbies, starting waist-high and extending to the ceiling. The cubbies were deep because the outer walls were thick. They were of different sizes though, and a ladder was required to reach the ones that were higher up. The children would place their school bags in the cubbies they could reach, and take their seat on gunnysacks laid on the floor.

  Bolu and Bhaira (back when Bhaira still attended school) were in different classrooms. When school was over, grey pigeons entered through the transom and alighted in the empty cubbies. They fluttered noisily like children assembling for class. They were careful not to leave droppings in the classrooms. Their uniform grey colour may have given rise to the practice of requiring uniforms for school children.

  Sparrow hour came during the children’s recitation period. The sparrows settled on doors and windowsills, filling the room with their chaffing. Swallows entered during any period they chose. They would make a rapid circuit of the room and fly out through an open door or window. They flew in and out so fast it wasn’t swallows children saw but an afterimage of swallows. They weren’t real; they were an illusion.

  Bolu derived maximum benefit from the roundness of the verandah.

  Guruji had permitted Bolu to go out onto the verandah as needed. Guruji and the other students would follow him as he began to answer a question put to him. They had a rule that all students listen carefully to responses other students gave. Sometimes Bolu’s answer required only a single circuit of the verandah, sometimes more. On occasion, Bolu would be so absorbed in answering the question he would come down from the verandah and step onto the lawn, continuing to walk in a circle all the while. If kites or swallows happened to be wheeling in the sky at the same time, Bolu’s wheeling on the lawn would have appeared to them just like their own.

  The first time Bolu answered a question while walking along the verandah, Guruji said to him, ‘Be more gentle and forceful.’ Bolu was puzzled. How could he be gentle and forceful at the same time? Guruji explained that his pace was to be gentle and his voice forceful, so that those following behind had no trouble hearing him. Bolu began to speak in a louder voice. He didn’t speak in a hurry; he didn’t walk in a hurry. He composed his responses in short sentences, pausing appropriately at commas and full stops. He found a rhythm that matched words and walking. He avoided stuttering. He avoided stumbling. He spoke with precision, as if he was reading print. If he paused longer than usual at the end of sentences, it meant he was stepping from one paragraph to the next. His step was larger to match the paragraph break. Viewed from a distance, he and the children following him looked like participants in an education parade.

  The Round School had a round perimeter. Before he left off coming to school, Bhaira was often punished by being made to walk along that perimeter. Bolu was assigned to walk beside him, coaching him in the day’s lessons. Bhaira and Bolu were usually alone. The circuit was repeated many times; Bhaira would begin to drip with perspiration. Bolu would pause in his explanation so Bhaira could cool off.

  ‘Teach me by signs,’ Bhaira would say.

  Bolu would try to explain concepts by signs, but it was useless. At the same time, he didn’t want to tire Bhaira out.

  Bolu was walking home one day, reciting his lesson to himself. He saw Bhaira walking towards him and stopped.

  ‘Talk to me by signs, Bolu,’ Bhaira requested.

  ‘About what?’ Bolu inquired using signs. People who have an alternative to communicating by signs find signs tedious.

  Bhaira understood how Bolu felt. ‘About anything except school,’ Bhaira signalled.

  A green pigeon alighted on a rooftop. Bolu spread his palms out and joined his thumbs together to indicate the bird. He pointed towards the roof. Just then a butterfly flew by between his hands and the bird on the roof.

  ‘Butterfly!’ Bhaira shouted.

  ‘No,’ said Bolu, taking two steps back.

  Bhaira had failed to follow whatever it was Bolu wanted to say.

  ‘You pointed to the butterfly,’ Bhaira said.

  ‘I pointed to the green pigeon on the roof.’

  ‘A yellow butterfly was about to rest on the roof, but changed its mind and flew away. That’s all I saw. I didn’t see a green pigeon.’

  ‘I didn’t see the butterfly,’ Bolu said.

  Bhaira was only a step or two behind Bolu as they walked.

  ‘If I had spotted the butterfly I would have fluttered two fingers like butterfly wings,’ Bolu added.

  Bolu stopped whenever Bhaira spoke. He walked while he responded.

  ‘Friends should walk together,’ Bolu said. ‘You don’t keep up with me.’

  Bhaira had broken out in a sweat. He pulled the cap off his head and ran it over his face and neck.

  They passed a house with a post in front for tethering cows. A patrangi bird sat on the post. The end of the patrangi’s tail was thin as a line. Bhaira pointed to the bird. ‘Is that a khanjan?’

  ‘No. Patrangi.’

  ‘Do you know the khanjan bird?’

  ‘I do.’
/>   Bhaira quickened his pace. ‘I’ve been studying magic. A khanjan feather placed on top of the head makes people disappear.’

  ‘What makes them reappear?’ Bolu asked.

  ‘Removing the feather,’ Bhaira replied.

  ‘Do people go somewhere when they disappear?’

  ‘They don’t have to go anywhere, though they are free to travel if they wish. Their presence or absence isn’t known to others.’

  ‘I won’t travel when I disappear. I will stay where I am. I would have to speak in order to move. People would find out where I was if I spoke.’

  ‘You’d still be invisible. I have a question for you: do you think I could bathe in the pond while I was invisible?’ Bhaira asked.

  ‘I don’t know. You would become visible if the feather slipped off your head.’

  ‘Does that mean I would drown?’

  ‘Probably not, if you knew how to swim while you were visible. I have a question, too,’ Bolu said. ‘Can a snake still bite me if I am invisible?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’ll know for sure only after we have become invisible,’ Bhaira replied.

  ‘I mean, a snake shouldn’t be able to tell where we are if we have disappeared.’

  ‘Bolu, I have a favour to ask. Teach me how to recognize a khanjan bird. I’ll get you snacks from our snack shop.’

  ‘Will you charge money for the snacks?’

  Bhaira pulled off his cap to mop up more sweat. ‘I am not tired yet,’ he said. ‘I have many things I want to talk about. I won’t charge money for the snacks.’

  ‘Will you kill the khanjan to obtain a feather?’ Bolu asked.

  ‘I won’t kill the bird. I need a scorpion as well.’

  ‘You’ll have to look for scorpions under rocks. What’s the scorpion for?’

  ‘I need a scorpion stinger.’

  ‘What’ll you do with the stinger?’

  ‘I’m not telling.’

  ‘I’m not telling how to recognize the khanjan.’

  They had come close to the Bajrang Snack Shop. ‘Let’s finish talking before we go in,’ Bhaira said.