Stuck In The Mud (No, Not Me)

 The other day I did something that I am really good at: got the car stuck in mud, this time on the dirt track leading to Random Rubble (the farm).  I am an old practiced hand at this, so when I get a car stuck in mud, I do a thorough, systematic job following a CMM Level 5 process, with Six Sigma for company.  This time the car swayed sideways like Mariappa after his evening brew and the wheels got stuck in a deep groove formed by a tractor.  We – the car and I – sunk so low down that I could plant tomatoes and palak on my accelerator, no questions asked.  
So, I switched off the engine and waited for help.

Muniyappa was the first to walk by.  By way of intimate introduction, this Error-of-Evolution has the Intelligence Quotient that falls in-between that of a plastic chair and a caterpillar.  He had a puzzled look and tapped the car’s bonnet, expecting it, no doubt, to be made of banana fibre or Sentient Life or something.

“Sir, why did you not take this route?” he said, pointing helpfully to what I should have done.  I tried telling him that I didn’t see the mud from the driver’s seat, but gave up after the third attempt because Seenappa and two of his buddies landed up and asked me the same question, shaking their heads and grinning like that asinine scarecrow with a pot for a head in the avarekkai field.  

Everyone and his mother-in-law then got into a big argument on whether the car should be pushed forwards or backwards to get it out.  I suggested that they include up and down as well in the list of options, but sarcasm is generally wasted in my village after it is translated into Telegu.  Then Ramappa – whom I call Universe Boss because Society in general is carefully wary of him - turned up with his A2 cows and stated emphatically that we would propel the car forward. Forward, he growled again, so everyone, including the cows, nodded their heads with Deep Understanding.  

So, when I started the car and revved the engine on first gear, three out of the five stalwarts in attendance, including Error-of-Evolution, pushed backwards with all their might.  The car dug itself deeper in, of course, and Ramappa got three bucket loads of mud on his shirt, after which he used words for his fellow-countrymen that may be classified as Higher Education In Pursuit Of Infinite Reality.

Muniyappa stood aside and looked at me thoughtfully. “Sir, you should not have taken this route,” he said, shaking his head like he was doing a stress test for the Timken ball bearings at the base of his thick skull.   

Ramappa then began to fill in the grooves with mud – the first sensible thing that anyone had done – while everyone else agreed that we needed a tractor, though no one knew why, while Venkatesh kept us engrossed with three tragic, deeply emotional stories of cars-in-mud that had become discounted scrap metal.  When Ramappa was done filling in mud and swearing at the others, everyone promised this time that they would only push forwards which, I am happy to report from the trenches, worked out.  So, the car was saved from being scrap metal (for the moment.  Watch this space).

I then parked the car by the gate just ahead and Muniyappa landed up, this time examining the wiper blade intently and testing it on his finger.  
“Sir, tell me,”he said, “why did you drive into the mud?”

Grass, Patriarchy and the One Against

It’s only after a day that I ask Khullu Dhanu – of Rajput ancestry - what his full name is.  ‘Khilaf Dhanu’, he answers and laughs readily when I follow up by asking him exactly what he is Against: ‘Ask my parents, they named me!’ This guy, incredibly fit like true Pahadis, with a ready, winning smile and a generous nature, runs up and down four thousand feet of Himalayan hillside the way I scroll on Facebook, so we bond well (like begets like, you see, and I have just had my pun for the day).  So, we chat about things, the way men who have never grown up to understand modern day niceties do.

Along the way I ask him about his kids. 
‘Just two. Both are boys,’ he says and adds, ‘So, we didn’t need to have any more children.’ He laughs, with simple sincerity, this man whom I have grown to like so much.   
Gets me thinking.

All through these early October days – while in the cabs, walking the hillsides or sipping a sweet-milky tea by the road – I see women and girls carry back-bending loads of grass, trudging up slopes or picking their way gingerly down steep damp paths of stone and crumbly mud. I see small groups of them on their haunches all day (try that, will you?) cut the grasses below chir pine trees or under broadleaved oaks with dexterity and fluid motion.  

These loads of grass will be hauled midway up poles and trees in their farms for storage.  The menfolk will help in this task, but cutting grass?  Cutting grass is a women’s job.  

Four years ago, in October, I had seen women near here thirty feet up oak trees in community forests, lopping branches for fodder for goats; a wrong step – just one - and it would be all over.  But Winter - dull, bitterly cold, grey days of snow and frost – is weeks away and the livestock must survive till the Melt in March as must humans.  Stocking up on food too is a woman’s job;  in those fields down in the valleys by the Pindar and Sarayu, fields of native rice and ramdana (amaranth), I only see women at work, old moms and young grandmothers, harvesting, stacking, hauling; there is musical banter and light-heartedness in the air as they work, but, make no mistake, this is hard, rigorous, purposeful toil.  
The men folk help out too, those who did not migrate or returned in 2020, but it isn’t a partnership of equals……

Gagan grins at my observation.  ‘My neighbour has just had a boy.  After five girls.’ he says shaking his head, ‘Now they will stop the production line!’  He tells me that he only employs women at his micro-enterprise; they are sincere and responsible and trustworthy.  
But not equal……

That evening, I am at Shubham’s store, waiting for the rain to stop.  He is away, and his younger sister is a tall, thin girl with a fetching smile and friendly manner.  She has a year more of college in Nainital to finish and I have been told by Kiran and Renu, her neighbours, that she is assiduous, ambitious and motivated.  Perhaps she has no choice.

‘What will you do next?’ I ask.
‘I am preparing to write the Civil Services exam,’ she says, with the confidence and assertion that would win any heart, ‘English is tough, but Sociology and Hindi are fine.’ She thinks for a few seconds. ‘I think I can make it,’ she says with a shy smile.  

It is impossible – utterly bloody impossible – not to be touched.   
It isn’t just the rain that retreats soon after, Patriarchy does too for a moment. Optimism lives in a thousand homes like that little one in the hills.  May it win.

Keep Walking

October 3rd to 5th 2022

We walk.

We walk to think.  To pick up soap.  To meet a friend.  To catch a bus.  Sometimes, we walk because there is a path.   

That's it.  

This path that we take over the first two days leads to a crest where we sit for a while, turn around and head right back. 

Along the way, there are trees, fungi and birds to see.  Conversations to excite comment, morbid humour to stay unfocused.  Some trail mix and philosophy to chew on.  Well, here's the pot pourri.....

Egg-like mushrooms.  
That is about All
That I need to know.
Unless they are not edible

   

Our guide, Bhagwat Singh - Bhaggu - is struck by my interest in mushrooms (it takes all types to make the world, he is thinking) and is the attentive sort, willing to share his knowledge and listen.  I am just reading Entangled Life - a book on fungi - so the interest is new and I have all the enthusiasm of a recent convert.  Bhaggu hence is a perfect companion.

The only time I frown is when he helpfully points to a dense foliage below and lets us know that the Emperor of All Birds, the monal pheasant, one that I would parachute off Nanda Ghunti peak in my swimming trunks to see, has just entered the foliage and is now out of view.  

(ps: not my photo, but give me credit for lifting the best one I found online)

He points to the tall trees by the side of the path: the wild walnut is inedible, unbreakable, even unpredictable .....sounds exactly like the rotis we had on campus three decades ago (the taste, if you can call it that with fervent imagination, lingers).  

The mushrooms that he has just shown me are at the base of the Panghar tree - Aesculus indica or the Himalayan horse-chestnut - giant trees with beautiful, light green leaves that are abundant here.  And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the chestnut. I grew up with the Enid Blyton-squirrel-chestnut triumvirate in my head, so this is good to see.  If you are as jobless as I am and have no clue why it is called a chestnut, here is the definitive link to illuminate the mind: 💡🔦

https://mashedradish.com/2015/12/22/what-is-the-chest-in-chestnut/

     

This is the beautiful Khamiya tree, with epiphytic ferns of a rusty silver colour.  

We walk past lovely large oaks, locally known as baanhj (Quercus leucotrichophora - say that again, quickly), another oak called Kharsu (Quercus semecarpifolia - repeat, twice a day after food) and a stretch of conifers - good hard wood, I was told - extending across the hillsides.  

And then, these giants give way to smaller trees: enter the rhododendron zone that accompanies us all the way to the Panghu crest at 11700 feet.  The first rhodos are taller and straighter, while the higher ones seem to have wider entangled roots and cluster in a dense monoculture that must be a summer walker's delight as the flowers blossom.   

The trunks are a delicate pink
Peel the bark and it's a bloody red
Stop for a while and reflect.  Think
Rush right in where angels tread.

A broad-leaved Himalayan forest, with little trace of chir pine is a forest of my idyllic dreams, a forest that invites the denizens of these high-altitude landscapes: bear, deer - sambhar, barasingha and the occasional musk deer, going by local accounts - and porcupine (I see some droppings on the path, so Mr Prickly has been around).  

Can you, in your mind's eye, see these montane forests under a moonlit sky, with a languid, prowling Bhalu searching for tubers, deer browsing on leaves and the sleepy langurs up in the branches keeping vigil for the Big One, the leopard.....  

Bhaggu has, at times, seen his namesake - bhaggu, bageera, cheetah even, to locals - and once, at a higher elevation, saw the snow leopard with its kill.  Both bhaggus bounded off in opposite directions, one to safety and the other - a feared predator - to call his mates, all of whom returned on their two supple legs in a group to pick up the remains of the deer for their dinner, while the snow leopard cursed her luck.  

Some trees have been chopped and I hear the sound of a motorised saw below.  This is a community forest, Bhagwat tells me, managed by a van panchayat and the local folk of the village are allowed - for a fee - to chop a tree or two for their use; occasionally this privilege is extended to the inhabitant of a neighbouring village. This isn't egregious by any means, for the forest is dense, with a rich layer of humus.  

What is being done elsewhere on an organised scale in the ill-concealed guise of development is far worse, a hundred times so - the 5 kilometre road to Khati has on its slope an ecological graveyard.  We debate on the issue as we walk and it is cogently argued that to make an omelette, one must break eggs, but surely a middle way is possible? 

What a panorama tells us is that there is a larger picture that is missed

If I have learnt one thing after all these years, it is that Economic Development - whatever that means - is a chimera.  One day, I know, we will learn the fallacy of assumption as well.    

But, for now, more mushrooms follow....

And that is where this story must stay.

Looks like a thick slab of paneer, hard as as plastic chair
Tap, tap, goes Bhaggu, to prove his point.

Another tap-tap one, rock solid

An awning for your window that you can eat when you are hungry? 
It grows right back, 

Moss, fern, wood, mushroom.

No rolling stone.