The farmer walked towards me, water swishing past his rugged masculine legs with every step as he stepped out of the pool of mud and water outside his house, his complexion was ruggedly dark and morose, hair on his hands and whiskers on his face were identical to his skin color granting him with the quality of a portrait. I didn't know that people like him existed outside the portraits hung up in museums. I greeted him with a smile, my elegant and adorable smile. My schooling, graduation and employment have all been away from the village, not that I totally lacked any sense of rural populace, but the closeness with which I was confronted presently, on my trip to the native place shocked me.
After pleasant introductions or words to that effect, the farmer proceeded to sit himself down on a raised platform outside the dark brown colored house, walls of which were sprayed with election promises written in blue ink. I inquired and he clarified that the slogans were part of the election etiquette which also served as an adornment to his otherwise stale house. His rug, he always carried it with him on his stout shoulders, which he used to sit on at times like this, and sleep on every warm and sultry night, and sleep beneath it on a cold and chilly night. I took a couple of drags of my refined and crystallized tobacco neatly composed into an exquisite beauty of a filter head and a long tail. it looked perfect, the trip could not have begun on a better note than this, I looked around the place, houses with sloppy roofs of cement sheets laid over the four walls built out of mud and wood, some houses had dry grass on their roof tops which the passer by sheep pulled at every now and then, each house had a bullock cart and the bulls were seated beside it, which were preoccupied ruminating all the time. Cow dung was pressed against the walls; an investment of cooking gas, children were the active participants collecting dry wood that has fallen over from a retreating bullock cart.
Mothers were dragging children to schools, beating not cajoling, screaming not coaxing, cursing not kissing. A potter was indifferently balancing the wheel, spinning it leisurely, he replaced the finished pot with another lump of mud, and was preparing himself with shaping it, it was pure bliss to stand there and admire the beauty of an ancient art, one which preceded the bloody disgusting industrial era, one which emerged out of a primitive necessity and later found itself in rich people's shores of vanity. beside him, was the furnace, now in its thirtieth day, almost finished, a potter was stuffing wood into the furnace from a small opening, the heat radiated for a good distance away from the furnace, and the slow gurgling noise of wood burning inside, punctuated frequently with a spout of fire burning something wet, followed by a whiff of hot air that escaped the furnace from cracks. 'some of us had terrible experiences near the furnace, suddenly, out of nowhere, a fire ball lands beside us, over us, leaving deep scars and lacerations, other times, they would just burn the roof of the furnace over and the fire becomes impossible to control, it just burns everything in the vicinity, which happens to be the place we live in. see, we cannot put up a furnace too far, for some of the despicable chaps steal pots from inside the furnace, we cannot have it too close, for on a windy night, it just burns us off' the farmer revealed.
Children taking nature calls quite naturally; and they stand there for hours sometimes before their mother finishes up milking the cows or feeding the sheep to come clean them up. A funny looking man went past me presently, cycling slowly and delicately, for he was balancing a huge basket of ice creams behind him, ringing a bell attached to the cycle with one hand, balancing the cycle with other hand, he looked like a martyr in one of those epic movies. Children pursued the course of ice-cream bicycle as it rattled past the grains that were spread across the concrete road before the houses.
The farmer friend of mine now slipped his hands into knickers’ pocket and pulled out a cylindrical cigarette packet, he peeled off the paper cover and revealed a closely packed bunch of tobacco sticks, fifty in number. He lit his cigarette and I observed calmly that his front teeth were missing, and I can only imagine the fate of his wisdom tooth lurking in the deepest shadows of a tobacco stained mouth. His lips were almost similar in color to his face, dark charcoal, what with the raw tobacco leaves inside those slimy dry leaf overcoats of cigarette sticks that he smoked. He was very cooperative when I asked him, if he could walk me to the lake close by. He turned out impressively cooperative by offering me a ride on his bullock cart. I accepted the offer, and he immediately threw off the burning cigarette and proceeded to untie the tethered bullocks, poor animals stood up and for the first time since I mocked their respectful rumination, the massive giant like animal stood upright, clearing his body off flies with his tail and was eyeing me constantly with a mocking defiance of my intellectual spirit. When my attempts to step into the cart from a raised platform failed, the farmer untied the bullocks and lowered the back of the cart to the ground and I silently stepped into it, but no sooner was I sure of myself, he pulled the cart by its front end and I almost toppled over. He tied the loose ends of the rope to the animal's neck and assured me that they were harmless; having said this, he ran into the house and was rummaging through the rubble inside. I was acutely aware of the disparity in tail sizes of the two bullocks, when they twitched or turned, so did the cart and with every turn, my position became increasingly clear to me, my balance was wholly and solely, so much not in my hands, not a comfortable zone.
The farmer returned with a whip and joined me on my epic journey. The cart jolted, swayed, struggled, stuttered, rattled along the path and to my horror, the wheels were so gigantic that they almost brushed the hind legs of the bullocks while they carried the cart over their neck lines. I sat myself down, pushing my center of gravity closer to the ground, now i felt better and so did my powers of observation. The farmer was constantly hissing when the bullocks trodden on to a distracted leisurely pace, and he kept nudging at them with the wooden handle of the whip. We were moving slowly and steadily, a jeep carrying people swished past us with a whiff of air that seemed to have distressed the bullocks, presently they were disinclined to take the road and were stepping away from it, pulling the cart beneath them, this made the farmer furious. He proceeded to whip them, at first gently, then sharply with loud screaming that was intended to express disapproval of the animal's behavior.
I took pleasure in watching the suddenness with which children shot out into the streets, one minute they were there, one minute they were gone, everything happened for a split second and it fascinated me to just sit there on the cart and watch the glory of the place. Different shops suited for different needs ran along the road, all of them shared but one premise, which was, they were all run on emergent needs, none of them were for fancy, they all sold something that the people could not do without on a day to day basis. An oil vendor, one could identify the shop from its oil stains all over the exterior walls, the staleness filled the air in its vicinity with wetness, even the vendor appeared totally drenched in oil; perhaps it was sweat. Then we were approaching a mill, chili grinding mill, and I incessantly coughed to what seemed like an eternity, the farmer noticed and turned the cart over to another more pleasant road under the circumstances. how he managed the turn was itself so perplexing, he prodded into the back of one of the bullocks and the beast simply pulled the cart in his direction while the other one obliged silently, when the turn was over, he merely pulled the rope tighter against the beast's neck who was presently turning in circles and as the rope tightened over his neck, the beast simply clarified by presenting with a straighter directional pursuit.
A meat vendor was frying sheep heads over wood charcoal, while his dog was intently watching over the territory, the sheep wool was collected in a basin beside him and the contents of its stomach were emptied into another pot. It all looked very unpleasant and unhygienic. we were now getting closer to the lake, outside the village's hustle and bustle, here suddenly, everything felt barren and infertile, few houses here and there, dogs, aplenty, breeding like it’s the last day on earth, a bus behind us was now honking tiresomely while the farmer took his time in pushing the cart off the road, aboard on the top of the bus were more people than were inside it, few of them were hanging by the ladder that was welded at the back, while few more sat on the little room left beside the driving wheel and the driver was understandably sweating heavily and was suffocated quite a bit, what with him sandwiched between an onion bag on one end and an ill tempered sun beating him from the glassless window on the other end.
We reached a place with wood logs stacked outside and the sound of metal cutting wood pressurized my ears to the impossible limits, it somehow did not bother the bullocks, they appeared preoccupied in their respective nature calls. The wooden debris, flakes of wood and dust made it uniformly improbable for me to figure out the immediate implications of this terror smitten place on the workers inside. Anyway, we now reached the lake and I got down to be greeted with eagles fighting over a dead corpse beside our cart, dogs were in the competition too, only they looked indifferent and left without further pursuits. Washer women were washing clothes on the shore of the lake, hammering clothes against their respective chosen flat, smooth but incredibly hot rocks, what with the sun now settled almost above the head. With each thrust forward, each hammering of the cloth against the rock there followed a heave from the women. It was like music, bang and the women heave in unison, together they bang the cloth, together they heave; it was fabulous and romantic.
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