Few Stories and a Mango Tree - 2

​I vaguely remember what I was doing that eventful afternoon more than 30 years ago. However, I do remember what it led to - an ideal toy for us kids and loads of fun which gave us amazing memories and a craving to own that toy someday!

Willy's Jeep is a mean machine in the world of machismo or even otherwise. It has stood the test of time, since its launch in India in the 60's, and is still considered a stud vehicle. If you have one you are the man and that's how the tagline should go!

I do not belong to that era, however, I am pretty sure that Willy's Jeep or just Jeep, as they say in common lingo, must have made its impression on the Indian psyche - especially the macho psyche - post Aradhana, the 1969 Shakti Samanta classic. Rajesh Khanna (without any bulging biceps nor a six pack to match) made girls swoon with just a tilt of head and a disarming smile - which some find irritating in our era. And what is better than Rajesh Khanna - Rajesh Khanna riding on a Jeep, driven by the hero's friend, the stereotyped Sujeet Kumar, with that smile (killer or irritating - take your pick) and gyrating head! That gave the girls of that era the much sought after reprieve from their mundane lives and boys of the 70's, the excuse to own the macho machine!

One such macho machine, with Mama astride and his Sujeet Kumar in tow, drove into our Bengali styled home in Deoghar on a sleepy afternoon. This was late 80's, pre-liberalization India, when people used to reach earlier than their travel plan messages.

Ma and Mausi were pleasantly surprised and we kids were shocked not by Mama or his companion but by that beautiful gray colored Willy's. He parked it under the mango tree at the house's entrance - the innocuous looking one with terminatoresque branches and a girth to match. And there it laid parked (or may be is still parked) to become a bag of bare bones structure minus all the proverbial bells and whistles!

The urgency of the drive or for that matter the purpose of the trip is lost somewhere in the time travel of the last 30 years or was never told to us kids. I don't even remember for how long Mama stayed but his Jeep stayed with us as long as we stayed in that house in Deoghar.

Majestically parked under that mango tree Jeep was our adda. We would be Jackie Shroff one day, or Mithun or whatever hero's movie we had watched the previous weekend on our neighbour's VCR. This story is so old that neither we had TV's at our homes, nor Doordarshan had started it's weekend movie Bonanza! Mr. Bachchan was on his waning spree and Anil Kapoor was just making his mark around that time so it was mostly Gunmaster G9 who was ruling the roost in Bollywood. And we would each take turns to be the CBI officer who was saving the country from unknown enemies (unseen , too in this case, since all of us were heroes in our heads and in our respective parallel stories).

A special mention is needed for the shiny crystal head on the gear lever, which was cynosure of all kids' eyes. It would serve as a secret transmitter aiding the very stylish Gunmaster G9 on his super secret missions, to being an automatic button to pop guns off the dashboard (which was minimalist in that Jeep), to being a plane gear lever being handled by very able G9's side kick. Sometimes the Jeep would be our aircraft and this lever with its crystal head would be magically used to drop bombs, fire bullets or just convert the craft back to Jeep.

The windshield in the front of the Jeep also deserves another special mention. It had a mechanical lever to open it and place it on the hood. We didn't have much success with the lever and I even remember one day one of us had a finger crushing experience with it (and then that kid was carried away by Ma or Mausi away from the after effects of the mercury shooting mood of the male members of the family). The Stepney* tyre that was fixed on the rear half-door (rustic yet beautiful - Jeep designers knew their machology) of Jeep also served as an essential prop in our adventure stories. Someday our hero would be hanging on for his life on it while the Jeep would be a speed boat, racing past all super villains and their Tonygunj (I came to know much later that it was Tonygun and that it was actually a very efficient assault rifle used by Gangsters of New York). On better scripted days, it would serve as a cover against adversary gunfire for our hero who would be shooting from his imaginary gun, with uncountable bullets in it, to save damsels in distress.

Jeep, the original company, has finally made an impressive entrance in the Indian market which makes me wonder - if only the owners of this Jeep had retained the four-wheeler and if only we had known the worth of that beautiful beast then!


*Stepney in UK was the place where a typical styled Tyre was manufactured, which could be used as spares in older cars and hence the name.

Few stories and a Mango Tree - 1

An innocuous looking mango tree, especially the one with branches stronger than terminator's biceps and a girth to match, can be quite a story teller. Sitting at a serene resort in Coorg and looking down at an unusually tall mango tree brought in dollops of some from a bygone era.


It was a swing, as I remember it and a pretty crude one at that. One of the top branches on that mango tree (with terminator sized branches and girth to match) had entwined across it a long rope which then encircled a tyre, if my memory serves me right, on the other end. And on that tyre was Mausi! Swinging first, sitting with legs crossed and then daringly standing up on the tyre and swinging even harder!

I must have been 6-7 years old and don't remember anyone else around. Mausi was entrepreneurial enough to have thought of the idea of a swing and was managerial enough to get her idea executed by her man Friday, Bidesia.

It was a Bengali styled house, with shuttered windows to match in Deoghar. A small verandah led to the house, flanked by pillared protruding on either side and stairs leading to that. From the main entrance to the verandah was our playground (it looked gigantic at that age), and what amazingly memorable games it hosted! From the ubiquitous cricket to football to gulli (kancha as called in our parts then) to pitto (laghori for the uninitiated) and each game with its share of memories!

The mango tree, mentioned above was to the right of the entrance and to the left was a huge cylindrical well. It had stairs, encircling the well and leading to its parapet at a height of around 10 feet from the ground. I remember this well being mostly dry and occasionally Ranjan chacha diving in to fix the tullu pump at its base. As I recall the walls of this well were pristine white.

The stairs served various purpose from being a stadium for the audience watching our sundry games to hiding place during luka chhipi (I-Spy desi version) to hiding injured kids on whom tragedy had befallen at a prime time - sample instance, once when Papa was starting for office I stepped on a glass shard, which lacerated my not so meaty right ankle and Mausi rushed to carry and hide me behind those huge walls, all this while covering my mouth to stifle my agonizing wail! All this was to curtail any shooting up of the proverbial mercury indicative of the the temper, which in those days elder male members of the family, tended to loose, irrespective of the demand placed by the stimulant - less salt in food * mercury shoot * plate flying tending to escape velocity; Your kids failing to scale up to Sharmaji's son * mercury shoot * Newton's second law, force exerted by hand's mass and acceleration proportional to temper.

Well coming back to the swing perched high above from the ground, on that mango tree and I gaping at the daring act of Mausi swinging higher and higher and each time almost coming to level with the terminatoresque branch from which the swing was hanging. And no, I wasn't cheering her for my six-year-old self was in awe-scare-shock all at the same time. Meanwhile I was already planning what I would do when I reach Mausi's age - match her dare or might even surpass it, kissing the horizon as I would sway on a better version of this tyre-swing. Yes - I was after all the next gen of her family and it was expected of me to figuratively and literally achieve greater heights!


A crack-a thud and an aaaaah is how this story ends! Crack was thunderous, thud was loud and aaaah was comparative to the wail which Mausi had tried to stifle few days ago. The terminatoresque branch turned out to be just a poser and cracked no sooner it was asked to prove its worth and Mausi came crashing down on the terra ferma. I don't remember much after that fall as I had gone back to my awe-scare-shock state again!


However, with that fall, my dreams of achieving greater heights, came crashing down too. You are nothing but a continuum of your present, past and painful lessons from the past and this vicarious pain that I have carried has made me a man who hates anything remotely related to yo-yo motion.

अब वो हँसना सीख रही है।

तनी भृकुटी को अब वह
आहिस्ता-आहिस्ता सहज कर रही है
अब वो हँसना सीख रही है।
गीतों की अपनी मंजूषा में
राग नये वो लिख रही है
अब वो हँसना सीख रही है।
ऑंखों को ऑंखों में टिकाकर
समय की गति जैसे रोक रही है
अब वो हँसना सीख रही है।
सीख के इस समन्दर में
गोता पहला ही ले रही है
अब वो हँसना सीख रही है।

वो रोकर अपनी बात कहती है

वो रोकर अपनी बात कहती है
भूख हो या हो कोई कष्ट
या ध्यान कभी जो हो भ्रष्ट!
दिन में कम,
लम्बी कहानियॉं हर रात कहती है
वो रोकर अपनी बात कहती है।

तान लम्बी कभी,
कभी हिचकियों से शुरुआत करती है।
पेचीदे नहीं
सरल सीधे सवालात करती है
ऑंखें मूंद कर भी
क्या खूब खुराफात करती है
वो रोकर अपनी बात कहती है।

A long night

He was lying on his back and through the corners of the eye keeping a close eye on, something which looked like a blob from that distance and angle. It had been a long day and his eyelids weighed a ton. He tried turning to his right on his side to get a better view. This sudden movement seemed to have caused enough dent in the environmental, rather circumstantial, parameters. He saw the consequent movement of the blob and could sense an icy shiver run down his spine! Battling cold sweat, he held his breath and position and squinted at his adversary. Only a trained sniper could have held this position and angle without any muscular movement yet with such alacrity!

All through this exercise a constant thought ran through his mind - what if...? No! He had prepared mentally for all this and trained his brain for this situation over the last few weeks! It was a mental game after all - or at least that’s what his comrades, who had gone through similar crusades, had told him! And how well had they spoken, with a glint in their eye about the raison d’être of human existence and the accompanying joie de vivre!

His adversary didn’t make any further movements and he swiftly moved his left palm over her. And that was a blunder he had not foreseen. What followed was mayhem...loud cries interspersed with hiccups! He had to give up. Slowly he rose up and picked her up in his arms, patting her and uttering musical words, which had a remote semblance of some obscure lullabies from his subconscious memory, to console her!

दुहिता

तुम रचना नये कीर्तिमान

मैं मील का पत्थर बन जाऊं

तुम चमकना सूरज के किरणों सी

मैं रंगो बू सा बस जाऊं

तुम बनना अपने रंगमंच की नायिका

मैं नैपथ्य संगीत बन जाऊं

तुम महाकाव्य सी कृति बनना

मैं अलंकार, रस, छन्द बन जाऊं

तुम मोड़ना अपने ढंग से जिन्दगी

मैं मार्ग पट सा बन जाऊं

परदेस सा अब भी लगता है

बहती पछिया, पूरवैया भी

जाने मन क्यों नहीं तरता है

खुशबू अनजानी लगती है

कुछ तो अधूरा सा लगता है।

होने को आए अब दो दशक

पर जाने क्यों यहॉं 

परदेस सा अब भी लगता है।

कुन्बा भी बस गया है अब तो

सुविधाओं का अम्बार सा लगता है,

कमी की कमी खटकती है

पैर जमने से क्यों डरता है?

कुछ फंसा रह गया है वहॉं

आवाज़ जो देता रहता है।

एक तान छठ के गीतों की

आरी सी चला जाती है

पहले से आहत इस मन को

और विक्षिप्त कर जाती है।

खान पान अपना लिया है हमने

बोली से जाने मन क्यों कतराता है

होने को आए अब दो दशक

पर जाने क्यों यहॉं 

परदेस सा अब भी लगता है।

कोई जतन करो ऐ युगपुरुषों!

जुगत तो अब कोई लगाओ

पीड़ बिछोह का तुम क्या जानो

क्या छूट गया तुम क्या जानो

उन्मूलन का दर्द तुम क्या जानो?

जब जब बात छिड़ती जन्म मूल की

माथे पर बल चढ़ जाता है,

मन निरस्त्र, नि:शब्द होकर

मसोसकर रह जाता है।

जड़ से आखिर दूर रहकर,

वृ़क्ष कब तक हलहलाता है!

दिन ढला, 

ओढ़े चादर काली

ढली शाम,

मन विचर रहा अब भी

कहॉं मिले विराम, आराम।

बहुत जोर 

आज मन भागा था

पैर जो दिखते 

तो कटे फटे 

घाव दिखते शायद!

सवाल बहुत थे आज 

कहॉं भाग रहे हैं

कोई हांक रहा है

या बस सरपट भाग रहे हैं?

किस कल के लिये

शूल चुन

शैया बुन रहे हैं?

उधेड़बुन भी है बहुत

रूक जाएँ

पलट जाएँ

या बदल लें राह?

दौड़ आधी और बची है

न कोई वाह

खतम सब चाह

थक कर चूर हो गए, आह!

दम्भ-धैर्य

दम्भ टूटे तो होता है शोर

धैर्य टूटे तो शब्द नहीं होता।

हर रोज़ जुड़ जुड़ कर बनता है दम्भ

जीत में नए आडम्बर ओढ़ता है दम्भ

प्रतिपल नए बहाने ढूंढता है दम्भ

रोकना चाहो तो बिफ़रता है दम्भ।

मानो तो चपला, नहीं तो चट्टान है धैर्य

महत्वाकांक्षाओं की नींव है धैर्य

हर आस में हिम्मत है धैर्य

समेटना चाहो तो रेत है धैर्य।

अपने चरम पर महाबली है धैर्य

सशक्त मन को करे, वो ईंधन है दम्भ

योग कर लिया जिसने दोनों का

सफल, महान जीवन का उसने पा लिया मंत्र!

वसन्त

पिताम्बरी ओढ़े देवाधिदेव हुए प्रकट
चपला सी संगिनी थी उनके निकट
हर पीत पल्लव को कर सजग
लो देखो स्वर्णिम हुआ शरद।

हाथ पैर जुड़े कैसे एक हुआ कर रहे थे
कहीं वरदान तो कहीं दुआ कर रहे थे
इस प्रलय का न दो अब साथ,
दर्शन दो हे दीनानाथ!

संगिनी, शीत लहर बन जब हुई हावी
देवाधिदेव ने नीरद की घूंघट काढ़ी
अवनी-अम्बर जम बने हिमसागर
क्षमा देव! अब हो जाओ उजागर!

वसन्त भी कब से बाट जोह रहा था
रंगों को एक एक कर जोड़ रहा था,
स्वर्णिम छटा बिखरा, समेटो अपनी जयजयकार
अभिनंदन देव! अलसायी वसुन्धरा का हो अब श्रृंगार!