Moonrise from the Green Grass Roof

by Vinod Kumar Shukla

  ‘Is your name Bolu?’ the older sister asked. ‘We’ve heard of you.’

  ‘My name is Bolu.’ He wondered how they could know about him.

  By then Bolu had stepped down to the fast-moving narrow lane. He glanced around as he travelled down. He thought the house he had just emerged from might be accompanying him down. Then he remembered the door to the house closing the instant he stepped out. He must have dropped far below. The house was not in view.

  Koona had been the first to enter the mouth of the hole and she remained ahead in falling. She looked everywhere as she fell, hoping to find anyone or anything she recognized. She was hungry. As her hunger pangs grew, she noticed a house with a yellow door off to one side. The house adjusted its speed to Koona’s falling. There was a white crane sitting on the roof. Except for the yellow door, the house was blue. Koona stared as the white crane extended its wings and started to climb. Would the crane be able to fly out of the hole? Nothing had been seen to emerge from the hole till now, not even an ant. The yellow door opened and a boy ran out. He wore a blue shirt. He pointed to Koona. The boy’s mother picked him up and sat him on her hip.

  ‘How did you find your way to our lane?’ the child’s mother asked.

  ‘We are celebrating vacation day. We’ve come here because we have to appear for the vacation day examinations,’ Koona replied. ‘I’m very hungry,’ she added.

  ‘Take my hand.’

  The child was on the left hip. The mother extended her right hand to Koona.

  The little boy, too, extended his hand.

  His mother pulled Koona in.

  ‘How did you travel here?’

  ‘By falling.’

  ‘How will you go from here?’

  ‘I will just disappear,’ Koona said.

  The boy’s mother smiled. ‘Wash your hands and have some food. If everything is falling at the same time, it must appear that things are still. Does it appear to you that you are falling?’

  Koona raised her right foot. She balanced on her other foot to see if she was steady or falling.

  She played with the child when she had finished eating.

  Then she remembered the others.

  ‘I am going now,’ she said to the child’s mother. ‘I have lots to do.’

  ‘Come again,’ the mother said. She added after a pause, ‘But how will you find your way here?’

  ‘Just as I did this time.’

  ‘Come by the front door then. The front door is also painted yellow.’

  ‘There was a crane sitting on your roof that flew away. Are creatures that fly still falling?’

  ‘The crane was falling,’ the mother said, ‘while it sat on the roof. It was flying when it flew.’

  ‘I’ll write to you. Can you give me your address?’

  ‘What address can I give you?’

  ‘Could I send it to The Yellow Door?’

  ‘Yes. That should work.’

  ‘I’ll drop the letter into the mouth of the hole in the mountain.’

  ‘I’ll write to you, too,’ the young boy’s mother said. The mother had liked talking to Koona.

  ‘But the door to my house is plain wood without paint.’

  ‘Plain Wood Without Paint is a good address.’

  ‘All right,’ Koona said.

  Koona had entered by the back door. She had been travelling along the back lane.

  ‘We see many cranes around here. There’s a pond in front of the house,’ the boy’s mother said.

  ‘Is the pond also falling?’

  ‘The entire village is falling, together with its lanes and the pond. We bathe in the pond and wash our clothes there. The pond remains situated in the front of the house. The lane in the back falls faster for some reason. We avoid using the back lane. If someone enters that lane by mistake, they wait till a house appears. They walk through the house and come back to their own home the front way.’

  Koona had enjoyed her meal. The others, too, must have chanced upon food, she thought. Just when they felt hungry, a door would have opened. Someone would have invited them in for a meal. They would have gone in through the door. Those who could not leave began dwelling in the houses they entered. The village would have forgotten that their ancestors had arrived by falling. The elders would have established the village generation upon generation ago. Bolu and his friends belonged to a village that had not yet started to fall.

  When the rope slipped from his hand Bhaira grew afraid that he would die.

  He liked the cool air flowing below. He felt drowsy. He thought that people fell asleep on their way to death. If they woke up, they got to be alive. If they didn’t wake up, they slept forever. Bhaira fell asleep as he fell. He turned cartwheels as he fell. He turned on his side. He had dreams of flying. He dreamt he was turning cartwheels as he flew, when in reality he was turning cartwheels as he fell. He was lying in a curl of air inside a well of emptiness.

  Bolu felt his wind-gust wings extending after he had eaten his fill. He could hear the chaffing of patrangi birds. He had grown so light he no longer fell. He thought his substance had turned into air. Just then a sharp wind, like a broken-off piece from a typhoon, lifted him from below. He kept climbing till he was at the mouth of the hole. Did he travel via a shortcut that brought him up in a jiffy? He knocked the pulley out of the way. It went clattering down the slope. His first thought when he emerged from the hole was for his friends, who must still be on their downward journey within the mountain.

  He was aware he didn’t have much time. He went straight to the rope maker.

  There was a two-days-and-one-night rope hanging from the maulsari tree. Most of its length ran below the ground. Bolu hadn’t noticed this rope hanging down when he came out of the hole.

  Bolu walked in a circle around the old rope maker and told him about the dilemma he was in. ‘What shall I do, Father?’ Bolu asked the old man. His innocence in asking the question was as wide as the old man’s wisdom was deep.

  ‘It’s difficult for me to advise you, son,’ the old man said. ‘My special skill is to hear very soft sounds as if they were loud. Why don’t you go to Elder Brother, who strolls all the time from the past to the future? He is in the present now; you will find him nearby. He hears loud sounds as if they were soft. He hears a star exploding the instant it happens. The stars whose light you see today disappeared for him when they went extinct. Our far-off future is his immediate present. He is friends with our ancestors and keeps getting together with them. He is hard of hearing, it’s true, but this is a matter of inclination. He can put off seeing or hearing if he wishes to. He can assume seeing or hearing if he wishes to. He can see and hear the explosion of a star once, or see the same explosion many times over. Some people say he was present at the nativity of stars. They say many stars are his friends from when they were children. He may not be that old in years but he can travel across billions of years. He can see the light from a star’s collapse the moment the star is born.’

  Bolu turned these ideas over in his mind as he walked to the Elder Brother’s house. The entire house consisted of a single door, as if a door had been planted before the infinite. The door was open. In fact, there was no way of closing it. A person encountered the infinite whichever way they went, whether through the door or by its left or right. The only difference was that going through the door made for happiness. It felt like arriving at a dear person’s place filled with the comforts of home.

  As soon as Bolu went through the door, he saw the pygmy mountain.

  Elder Brother spoke before Bolu could form his words. ‘I know,’ he said.

  He spoke very softly. If Bolu had spoken first, would he have been able to hear the old man’s response from four paces away? But it was also true that the old man’s voice would sound equally soft and audible if he stood far away. Hearing him from afar was no different from hearing him from near.

  Elder Brother gazed into the hole and heard each person dropping to the bottom. He had the
right to hear these sounds. The right comes from the love we bear one another. The sound of their dropping was soft, as if they had hadn’t really fallen. They were each standing at their ease at the bottom. The individual sounds of their landing sounded like coins. Bhaira must have been the last to land.

  He had slumbered peacefully as he fell. The gentle impact woke him.

  Bolu could hear them shouting. Something came to mind and he stepped out of Elder Brother’s house. Even after going through the door, he was where he had been before. Elder Brother was no longer on the pygmy mountain. Was he still inside his house? Had he set out in some other direction? Bolu looked everywhere. Elder Brother seemed to have left simultaneously in every direction. He must have gathered the directions into himself as he left.

  They were celebrating. The friends had returned having suffered nothing but a gentle fall at the bottom of the hole. Bolu could hear coins clinking in their pockets as they approached.

  Koona reached for Bolu’s hand. Her other hand was full of coins. They had all picked up coins from the bottom. Bhaira picked up the most.

  Bolu sang:

  Vacation day is ending soon,

  A little time remains.

  Let’s toss our coins in the hole,

  Return to hear them fall.

  Our gain will not be someone’s loss

  We will return them all.

  Koona wanted to give Bolu some of her coins to toss into the hole. Bolu approached the hole but he did not take Koona’s coins. She held on to his hand. He said a stone was what he wanted to toss in. He stood at the mouth of the hole. Bhaira selected a smooth stone for Bolu but Bolu picked up a rough, jagged stone and threw it into the hole. The stone would become smooth and shiny from travelling. It might become gold and shiny or blue and shiny. May it be seen as an all-the-time falling stone among the other stones in the frame the window made. Or else, may it be seen as a single stone resting in the alcove of the scene the window made. May the girl recognize the stone as Bolu’s. May she reach for the stone and turn it over in her hand before setting it back where it was before. May the stone return to the frame of its falling. Koona wanted that some of the coins her friends dropped would clink on the doorstep of the house with the yellow door. Other friends imagined other routes for their coins.

  They couldn’t figure out what time it was. They thought vacation day wasn’t over. Then they thought it was morning of the next day; they needed to go home and get ready for school. They had to report to Guruji on how they had spent their vacation day.

  They were hungry. They found themselves, each of them, standing before the door to their individual houses.

  P.S.

  Insights, Interviews & More…

  Ten Plain Poems

  Vinod Kumar Shukla

  Translated from the Hindi by

  Satti Khanna

  Ten Plain Poems

  Vinod Kumar Shukla

  Translated from the Hindi by Satti Khanna

  1

  Once she’s out

  The house is not on her mind

  Once she is in

  Outside is not on her mind.

  The outside in

  The inside out

  The inside in

  The outside out.

  She’s sometimes in

  She’s sometimes out.

  2

  Such a mass of Rathi cows

  All of them identical twins

  Herd swelled large from many strays

  Cowherd’s loss is cow herd’s gain.

  How to tell the one that strayed

  From the others all alike?

  Best to take one

  And come home.

  Was it ours?

  Can’t be known.

  3

  Who was that person

  Who lived here once?

  Which village did he come from?

  Where did he go?

  He appeared one day

  And stayed for a time.

  He’ll appear again

  In some village for a time.

  For a time in some village

  Someone still thought of him,

  Someone forgot him.

  4

  ‘That’s where I want to go.

  ‘Where would that be?’ Mother inquires.

  ‘There.’

  ‘Tell us where there is,’ they ask.

  ‘There!’ says the daughter.

  ‘There!’

  ‘Let’s set out,’ they say.

  ‘Her there may lie along the way.’

  They start walking.

  The daughter follows,

  Stopping along the way

  To spin in place.

  Comes home contented.

  5

  Having learned to count to a hundred (1)

  Now she wanted to count the stars,

  Countless stars

  Filling the sky.

  She counted to seventy-nine,

  The other numbers she forgot.

  Not making a hundred—

  Poor countless stars.

  6

  Having learned to count to a hundred (2)

  ‘A tiger lived in a forest,’

  Mother began.

  ‘Only one?’

  The daughter asked.

  Easier to count birds in flight

  Than tigers taking cover

  In the underbrush.

  One tiger’s as good as another

  Count one tiger

  Count them all.

  The one tiger was counted

  Here and there

  A hundred times.

  Mother told the story

  Of a tiger that lived in a forest

  A hundred times.

  7

  I’m not going out there to play

  Wherever the others have gone.

  I’ll stay here alone.

  Play the game of staying here

  Till they’re done and come back home.

  I don’t know where they have gone

  To play the games we like to play.

  I’ll stay here alone

  Play the game of staying here.

  8

  The little choo-choo engine

  Of Siya dozing off

  The single household wagon

  Heavy with sleep.

  An elephant crossed the tracks

  Siya started from her dream

  Someone pulled the chain

  The train lurched to a stop.

  ‘What happened to Siya?’

  ‘What’s gone wrong?’

  9

  She’s so lovely, everyone says.

  So, so lovely, everyone says.

  How lovely would that be then?

  So, so lovely.

  So, so lovely.

  10

  Messed up map

  Slanting seas

  Oxbow rivers

  Islands creased.

  Zigzag sky

  Taking up room

  Horizons awry

  Directions confused.

  Crammed Infinite here

  Spread Infinite there.

  ‘The work of a child,’

  A sadhu declares.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Vinod Kumar Shukla is a poet and novelist from Raipur, Chhatisgarh who is renowned for evoking the inner lives of ordinary people in language that mixes daily experience with dreams, the mundane with the surreal. His first collection of poems Lagbhag Jai Hind was published in 1971, followed by Vah Aadmi Chala Gaya Naya Garam Coat Pehankar Vichar Ki Tarah in 1981. His first novel, Naukar Ki Kameez, was published in 1979 and made into a film by Mani Kaul. In 1999, Shukla was given a Sahitya Akademi award for his novel Deewar Mein Ek Khidki Rehti Thi. An English translation of Shukla’s third novel Khilega to Dekhenge (1996) was published by HarperCollins India as Once It Flowers in 2015. Hari Ghaas Ki Chhappar Vaali Jhopdi Aur Bauna Pahaad was published in 2011. HarperCollins India have just published Shukla’s latest novel Yasi Rasa Ta (2
017) in the Hindi original.

  Satti Khanna is Associate Professor at Duke University, where he teaches Indian Cinema and Modern Hindi Literature. He interprets the lives and works of contemporary Indian writers to an international audience through a series of documentary films and translations. He has translated Vinod Kumar Shukla’s Naukar ki Kameez (The Servant’s Shirt, 1999), and his novels Deewar Mein Ek Khidki Rehti Thi (A Window Lived in a Wall, 2005) and Khilega to Dekhenge (Once It Flowers, 2014). He has also translated Mohan Rakesh’s Akhiri Chattan Tak (To the Farthest Rock, 2015) and Suryakant Tripathi Nirala’s Kulli Bhat (A Life Misspent, 2016).

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  Published in India in 2017 by Harper Perennial

  An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers India

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  Copyright © Vinod Kumar Shukla 2017

  Originally published as Hari Ghaas Ki Chhappar Vaali Jhopdi Aur Bauna Pahaad in 2011 by Rajkamal Prakashan, Delhi

  Translation Copyright © Satti Khanna 2017

  P.S. Section Copyright © Vinod Kumar Shukla, Satti Khanna 2017