A Small Town in the Time of Holidays
Though it was winter, the sun filled the grounds of the large house, its terrace and its open veranda in the rear. The rooms remained airy but mostly untouched by the livening light. It took some moments to make out the shape of things around if you came in suddenly from the sun. The place to be was outside unless it was necessary to laze, sleep, search, explore cupboards, or make small talk over a fresh cup of tea in one of the rooms. To a visiting schoolboy, people did not really come to capture the attention except on the occasion of a meal, the visit of a peddler or in a sitting room in the evening. As it was the period of holidays, neither were you admonished to spend more time than the bare essential on books.
The sunshine might be silent though pervasive, but it was the constant hum and bustle of the circulation in the street outside the gate that told you of the busy life of the universe—the making of hay while the sun was strong, the grasping of a chance while it was still visible. At the same time, the house along with its grounds primarily captured the consciousness with their own flurry and potential.
From strength in the morning the sunshine turns into a mellow, seeping glow through the afternoon before the sun makes its tardy descent beyond a pond in which are reflected the uniform buildings of a hospital. People take a nap in the afternoon and the noise of the street—it is more a ceaseless buzz—becomes the sound of a hushed movement. While everybody appears to be asleep, someone gets up to watch the street through a barred window of the house with a partial white drape. At this time of day, it is a distraction to see ordinary people walking the street or traveling on bicycles and rickshaws. A furious cyclist darts sinuously through the traffic and emerges on the dusty side of the street while gripping the handlebar very tight; he clenches his lips with the effort and almost closes his eyes. A bus chugs along on its flapping wheels and sags to one side on account of the weight of the passengers hanging out the door and a few windows. An agile rickshaw man in a sleeveless cotton vest and checked loincloth looks back warily at his passenger as he pedals away, since the latter is shouting at him furiously with a mind of her own.
But the eyes are invariably drawn to the running shadow of the house upon the front lawn and the broad lighted band in front of a low wall with portholes marking the boundary with the street. Just inside the wall is a small, single tree that with its sparse body catches the sun and stays in the stream of the light. The eyes are fixed on this burnished tree while the sun dips and the straight shadow of the house begins to encroach upon the tree. Then it is time to turn away from the window.
At the rear of the house, you could sense the unflickering presence of the sun—though the ball in the sky trembled when you tried to look at it. Everything stood still until the sun moved behind the trees to give out brilliant flashes through the leaves; then people got up from their siesta and came on to the back veranda. There comes a call to prepare for an early evening visit somewhere; then it is necessary to wash yourself with care because you are told that there is dirt and muck upon you. Since you have a reputation for besmirching yourself in the dust of hidden corners away from and inside the house, the command sometimes has a lot of reason behind it. But quite often, coming as it does at this moment, the order is senseless as no active play has been made through the course of the long afternoon.
Bearing the air of the recent siesta, the inhabitants of the house seat themselves or stand in the veranda, some of them musing to themselves while seeming to gaze at the dusty leaves of plants in beds at the open side. The rest are talking among themselves in long pauses about something that has passed or will pass. Tea, biscuits and sweets are then borne into the veranda and, though the items are consumed in a lackadaisical manner, at the end such a fresh vigor informs the inhabitants that they disperse rapidly to their appointed tasks for the evening.
In the night the large house stands in solemn austerity. Lights peep from behind shutters and curtains across the length of the mansion. Inside, habitual mosquitoes make spots on the plastered walls but they are few in number as compared with the time of summer. There is an inviting room somewhere in which to snuggle and create boisterous chatter whatever else may be happening in the rest of the house. Guests may arrive or some of the household may depart as guests to another house. In any case, tedium never arrives for lack of anything to do. If you are immersed in a book, you are sure that everyone else is pleasantly immersed in something as well. While the day often brings laborers and workers to the house on some matter of repair or construction, it is in the evening that the impression remains strong of tranquil individual labor within secure walls.
The street still makes its sounds but silence prevails inside those walls, broken only by the thrum of a mosquito close to the ear or informal conversation on the part of some. As the call to dinner comes, it seems that the hours after sunset have passed too swiftly. Over the meal, there may be exuberant talk of the kind that the night has not yet seen or there may be comfortable silence. Later, everyone gathers under a neon light in the sitting room for a few moments. A feeling of rounded satisfaction is present at the time of retiring to bed, when the day is finally brought to a close. The beatific quietness all around initiates the mind and body into sleep.
As the lights turn off, the street outside continues to tinkle, but it is no palpable or intruding sound. Through the half-open windows, the street throws running shadows on the walls while faint lights scurry across. A cyclist grows to gargantuan proportions and dominates the entire wall of a room before passing into oblivion at the corner above the door. While the eyes may watch in fascination, soon sleep begins to close them. Then memories of the day flash in sequence. A dream commences that is a re-enactment of some event of the day.
The house was astir from the early hours of the morning but, for one who was on holiday, it was no grave offense to wake up and get out of bed quite late in the sunny morning. After breakfast in the wide open veranda, there were about two hours to go before you had to take a bath. You were allowed to play outdoors but told not to dirty yourself as no one would help you scrub away the cakes of colored mud upon you. The whole world then lay open and you bounded out with the spring of a colt keen to graze in the freshest pastures. The sun shone everywhere: the shadows themselves had an indelible feel of sun. You wander off and are virtually lost to the rest of the world. In special spots shielded by hanging leaves, you browse among bladed stems or in the variegated ground to uncover unusual stones, pieces of sundry objects, coins, and even tiny shells and cowries. Every one of these finds is made with bated breath as if they are both anticipated and yet unforeseen. They confirm a suspicion of plenteous treasure everywhere and you return to the large house with bulging pockets in the manner of a triumphant prospector.
When the sun seemed to be too strong in one place, it was wise to move away to another spot that had grass to shield the parched earth and trees to give shade. There creepers made ivy along the ashen walls of the large house and along a front of saplings with a kind of porte cochère. If the porte—which at the most let in no more than an occasional bicycle—allowed itself to be opened, you could run out into the girdling front lawn and begin searching for objects in the grass. Although the busy street with its incessant flutter was almost to hand, the untamed grass, the hardened soil and the grisaille walls of the large house made a statement of singular isolation in which stillness was of the essence.
It was with a hushed attentiveness that you stepped forward. On the right, across a fence of cane and bark, was a hut with a front door reached by two steps. This edifice stood in the territory of a thick-thatched cottage that itself lay within the domains of the large house. To reach from the front lawn of the large house to the grounds where the hut and the cottage stood, you opened the gate, stepped into the side of the street and came to another gate that gave into the aforementioned grounds. Or, as was usually the case, you jumped on to the portholed wall and clambered along the top to leap into that ground. Just inside the gate of this sub-domain was a natural tangled arch of brushy branches that refused to tidy themselves.
Now within the territory of the cottage, a straight path is lined with the triangle tips of buried, faded bricks that are dissolving into the dust. On its borders are scattered widely some little pieces of metal, stone, plastic and paper that are the remains of objects once in everyday use. The teeth of a jade comb are mingling with the soil. A downturned passport-size photo of a long-haired film star is obstinately averting itself from scrutiny. The path has a right-angled branch midway that leads to the hut, while the main route continues to another porte, this time of wood and tin, in a wall of plaster and beam. A corner of the thick sloping roof of the cottage almost touches one side of this wall at a point where another wall of saplings begins. Inside the hut a lawyer gives advice to defendants on how to conduct themselves in court. You pass through the front door, and if there is someone already sitting opposite the lawyer, you step sideways into a waiting chamber that is dark, for the cane walls here do not admit much light. Here you listen to the witness repeating slowly the first words of his practiced speech and then speaking them rapidly, only to be brought up short on the errors he has committed from the very start.
As you step out into the sunshine, you glimpse a palm tree outstripping overhead electric wires and standing proud just inside the proper domains of the large main house. Behind the hut there unfurls another tree that has trapped more than one kite with its luxuriant canopy. Beyond the hut is an old house whose wrinkling grey does not pay sufficient tribute to the august age in which it was built; it belongs outside the realms of the large house. Taking your eyes back to the advocate’s shack, you see at the corner of your eyes the sloping roof of the thick-roofed cottage just a few yards away. With a redoubtable aspect of sapience, it suggests repose and shelter not just from storm but also from sun.
In a certain instant, two rickshaws moving in opposite directions have passed swiftly in the street outside as seen through the gate framed by the knotted brush. Now, with the back turned to the same street, not a leaf stirs of grass, creeper and tree as you come closer and closer to the cottage, although invisible compounds simmer in the sunlight. The keen-bladed but dwarfish grass grows in dense clumps at points or thins out into the loosening dust of the soil. Desiccated creepers extend themselves over the grass from the feet of some shrubs and of the sapling wall enclosing the cottage. The spell of the lieu can continue indefinitely but, if it is to have an outcome, the wood-and-tin porte in the plaster wall should open on its own. The door coruscates in the sun and makes the eyes blink: you stand there and want it to move. For it is warm and friendly inside that cottage, which is raised upon a smooth pedestal, with stepping stones leading to its dining room and kitchen. The elderly couple who reside there often give you objects to keep that help to swell the collection of the holidays already graced by countless other items discovered in the open.
On days when the winter sun was strong, the ground caked over and flaked off at the barest touch of the elements or the feet. Days when the sky would be clouded and the sun feeble were rare. On an unusually cold night the grass might retain a patina of moistness into the morning; it was then that sleeveless woolens would be worn and orders issued to stay indoors. The sun, however, shone much more often, letting all sublunary creatures wallowed and idled in its warmth.
The front lawn was almost always deserted but the back lawn was the site of games of all kinds. Sometimes it was cricket; sometimes it was hide-and-seek; sometimes it was simply running around; and sometimes it was exploration of nooks and corners. When it is cricket or exploration or both, you are in a yard where the large house stands behind and in front is a morose brick wall plastered over with cement turned moldy black. Across this wall is a chamber that lets chinks of light escape through its own cane walls in the night. On the left, a few yards away, is a detached building that houses a little room and on the right, within touching distance, is a one-room house that has a corrugated sloping roof. At base of the wall is a dirty bed of ragged flowers and distinguished flowers, including rose of more than one kind.
It is easy to get your skin scratched at this spot by the plants and by the wall. There may be a marble bille hidden or a peculiar shard buried in the flower bed, if the cricket ball has not lost itself there. Or you uncover a fragment of paper concealed in the mud and still showing signs of writing, which if deciphered could lead to the knowledge, if not the solution, of a mystery involving people already known. You hold that fragment with its blue ruled lines and fainter blue handwriting between your fingers while your heart flutters. You sit with your playmates on the smooth, clean steps of the one-room house to ponder over this find, forgetting the game of cricket altogether. Often, at a later hour, you will all march out through a sturdy wooden gate in a wall beyond the one-room house at its rear. There, just outside the domains of the large house, is a sandy path across which lies the pond whose waters reflect buildings and the colors of sunset.
