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.<\/p>\n
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\u2014the 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2014it is more a ceaseless buzz\u2014becomes 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
At the rear of the house, you could sense the unflickering presence of the sun\u2014though 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 coch\u00e8re. If the porte\u2014which at the most let in no more than an occasional bicycle\u2014allowed 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.
\n
\nIt is a diversion to watch the turgid, luminous waters ripple and heave to wash gently over a stone on the bank at the side of the path. But, sitting now on the steps and glancing up after all implications of the discovery in the mud have been considered, you view the cottage with the thick roof of thatch behind some small trees with thrusting branches. The pointed leaves on the branches wave in a slight upper wind but the thatch roof does not waver as it turns browner and browner in the pitiless gaze of the sun. Fresh with the sweat of the game and the allurement of the piece of paper, you want to sway and pass as a feather in that higher air steeped in sunlight.<\/p>\n
It was always the sun, always the lazying sun\u2014which shone with no pause all through the day. In the spacious rooms of the large house, the windows stayed bright in the light although the rooms stayed in shadow. Even in those silent and tenebrous rooms there were wonderful dreams that unfolded themselves, taking both their reason and their fulfillment in the sun that was falling upon the domains of the large house. Sometimes a gramophone plays a piece of vinyl in one of the rooms; the song trails in the magic of the dancing air and spins out more of those dreams. Both in light and shadow, every little spot around is aroused to a joysome keenness.<\/p>\n
In the morning you may wake up to hear that the cottage has sent out an invitation to breakfast; hence you have to dress quickly and go there. An elderly maid in the cottage kitchen invites you to pass in and sit at an old table. She then brings in plates with fried, turgid pancakes beside which are set down bowls of cooked, yellowed potatoes in dried gravy. The kitchen is soothingly cool as it is cradled by large-leafed trees. At the end of the repast, the elders begin to come in and then the children are asked if they would like to have some of the adult tea going around. The cottage brought people of all kinds within its walls and upon its pedestal. By contrast the front porch of the large house was usually a forlorn place redeemed only by the presence of two palatial columns on either side. Few people came to sit there and unfold their wares.<\/p>\n
A man peddling colorful garments sometimes squatted upon the pedestal of the cottage. He arrived with a number of tight-woven wicker baskets hanging from a pole slung upon his shoulder. As he sat down and, with the ease of a charmer, flicked back the lid of one basket after another; the clothes and fabrics appeared to start at the gaze of the onlookers, but nevertheless bunched closely together in their piles, each basket having a different dress or color at the top not necessarily matched by the ones below. The garments man\u2019s goods might have come from one or more of the many trucks that passed regularly between the region and the rest of the country. Certain it was that they belonged to a far part of the country. He himself might not be indigenous to the region, having in all likelihood obtained these items from a distant native land and brought them here to sell.<\/p>\n
Every three months, to the front porch of the large house would come a man to sell balls of puffed, crunchy rice that were round and sticky. He might make them himself or commission them from someone he knew well. In any event, his wife would have the final say on how they should be made this time and the price at which they should sell. There he sits with his haunches almost touching the cool, polished floor of the porch while looking up with a broad smile that shows intact although yellowing teeth. His slippers of withered leather are too large for his feet and his toenails are rather prominent. Yet he is a center of attraction not just because of the brown jute sack before him in which are present those rice balls within transparent plastic sheeting, but also because of the tidings he brings of people in other parts of the town. From his earlier visit, you know that a well-known personality in a certain neighborhood had begun a course of alternative medicine to cure his bulimia, after which he was frequently seen to be stopping in the street, staring with round eyes at a spot, and swallowing something with quite a rumble. The wife of this eminent gentleman was said to have declared publicly her intention not to accompany him any more if he continued in this mannerism.<\/p>\n
The news bearer in the porch now reveals that the gentleman in question has been calm for some time, but\u2014here he shakes his head sagaciously\u2014some other untoward signs have been observed about him. These signs would be disclosed fully only in the course of the next visit, leaving the listeners once more in suspense. He often had other delicacies to pull out from his sack but, surprisingly, you had to goad him to do it. It was during his visit that the front porch could become as lively as the interiors of the house; it was not uncommon for some of the household to sit with him and even sip tea together. It seemed the flowing talk made him and the rest oblivious of other business of the day.<\/p>\n
The people could talk out their feelings and opinions very clearly when they needed to. Sometimes they had lots of feelings deep inside but they did not speak much of them. There was always a thick surface of resounding banter that smoothed over any hesitation and stumbling in the mind. People were skilled in keeping conversation going when the occasion was right and the need was present. Many of them could in truth have switched places with the personalities on the radio and the big screen whose names and voices kept everyone awestruck in that time. Indeed, apart from the rustle of vehicles, the horns, worship bells and the occasional loudspeaker in the street, the conversations in the rooms of houses made the echo of the times with their vibrancy and their panache.<\/p>\n
Usually, in an inner room, a multitude of shelves, small almirahs, drawers and decorative objects made for a cozy enclosure in which a radio on a wall would blare out the news or carry a report. Then it would be turned off and the people in the room, seated on a bed or in chairs, would start speaking with assurance in round smiles and intimacy in familiarity. Oh, yes, that\u2019s what he mouths all the time through the radio, but, really, things are quite different, you know! A dissident in the room would neither agree nor differ but present his own unclassifiable point of view, in which case the attention would turn upon him while he leaned back in his seat, raised a leg with both hands and began to guffaw to the point of almost being choked. The tea cup sitting in his lap would tilt precariously but somehow its contents were never spilled. He would then right himself and, with merry tears glistening behind spectacles, still carry an impish smile that nothing could make go away. If you emerged from such a conversation in the night, the impassive silence of the air outside would not be intimidating in the least.<\/p>\n
Even silence carries with it a hum that may lie in the imagination or in the beating of some part of the universe. In contrast with the distinct murmur of the street outside, the large house itself had its own modest but prevailing hum, the hum of a trustworthy vessel in an endless sea. It seemed the sun shone only upon the house and its domains; the rest of its light for the rest of the world was given only grudgingly. Though there was hardly a wind in the air, everything was stirring and your heart moved with eager palpitation as you strode. Then the people around merged almost in a collective blur and you were aware only of the delectable promises they held out.<\/p>\n
It is strange but there was no sadness upon leaving the large house at the end of the holidays. With bags in your hand swollen by the collection of the holidays and cap on your head, you went to the jeep that stood outside the gate of the house. The people in the large house stood in the porch and watched you leave; some of them had smiles, some were just curious. As the street swept you away in its own stream, the house was left behind but you bore its humming throb inside you. The throb, the stir, the turn was such that it seemed you would not need to board an airplane to take you back after the holidays. You could fly away on your own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Small Town in the Time of Holidays<\/b>
\n 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\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":783,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-non-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":711,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/711"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}