Not Another Morning

The Brahmagiris

Western Ghats

June 24th

I wake up in the morning to the soft sound of monsoon rain, somewhere between a drizzle and a shower, water dripping off tree leaves and straw covering the roof of my room, each drip a reluctant parting, or so it would seem.  A cloud of moisture lifts from the canopy of the forest across the river – is there a giant smoking his cigar in there? I would think as a child - and wafts lazily across the length of the hill and the alluring smell of burning firewood from a nearby kitchen reaches me, as I sit there watching the rain with nothing else to do. 

Well, why would I want to do anything else?

 

The monsoon set in late this year here, a day or two before our journey,  and the paddies that should have been sown with transplanted saplings are bare, with a short cover of emaciated grass.  Some farmers have pruned their gliricidia hedges and placed the prunings on soil, for it is a good nitrogen fixer, but there is little sign of crops-on-ground, no hum of a tractor to suggest a hurried sowing (cattle exited agriculture in these parts years ago, so expecting to see a pair of bulls would be delusional, no less). 

 

The early morning progresses slowly in the village; children wait impatiently at the bus stop happy to be in the rain (adults call them in and are soundly ignored), women - going to work in the nearby town – chat under umbrellas and men walk to their fields or on errands; the light rain troubles no one, not the birds too – bulbuls, robins, shrikes and prinias – that are rushing about for their morning meal with an admirable briskness.   

…and then, there is the ubiquitous tea shop, the chaya kada.  I sit there, sipping some fine strong tea and savouring its aroma that blends with the smoke from the stove, watching the light rain and listening to the many conversations, for, in this landscape, people have views, often stubbornly insistent views, stronger than the tea..….

 

Many are kindly inquisitive: Where are you from?  When did you reach?  Why are you here? Where are you staying?  (“Oh, of course, I know the owner”), all in the friendly language of smiles, which, somehow, makes the tea taste just a little better and last a little longer.  I am an oddity in squelching shoes and squirming accent, yet I love the banter and the smiles and the chaya, and that’s what draws me back here.  The otters too….this isn’t a season to track them, of course, and I am not hungry for leech bites (biscuits will do well, thank you), but there are other things of conservation import to work on.

 

A chap on a bike wearing a perfect raincoat stops by the chaya kada and opens up his plastic bundle to pull out and hand over the day’s paper: no monsoon can dare interrupt this fine ritual.  The tea shop owner has no time now, but will shortly read the paper end-to-end,  missing no detail however slight, and pick tones for the day’s discussion with his stream of patrons.

A second cup of tea and the day – though just begun – is made.  Time to hit the road with my umbrella that now protects a memory. 

 

 

 

 

 

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