Nurungukal..2  contd…

      For the last few years I did not venture to cultivate paddy as it was a loosing venture. But this year once again I decided to give a try, mainly to revive a nostalgia of my childhood experience. I am now over seventy five, yet when I feel the various scents emanating during the many stages of cultivation, takes me to a distant past and it reveals a vivid canvas of the activities I used to participate.

       To any body I believe, a scent relates to a place or an individual or an incident etc. As you walk on the street any passerby leaves a charecterestic smell. It can be a scent of a perfume or a smell of sweat. Similarly different places have individual identity recognised by their fragrance.For instance,as you climb the Nilgiri hills slowly  your nostrils receive the smell of eucalyptus. In Sabarimala a mixture of camphor, agar bathi and burning coconut prevails.  The first drizzle enchants you with a fragrance of the Mother Earth. When the coffee blooms it is the fragrance of jasmine. The sweat droplets on the neck of your beloved can trigger your senses. Were as the upholstery of your new car gives you a different feeling. Inside a hospital it is the smell of cheap disinfectants. A court room emanates the smell of pet up feelings and bundles of old documents.You can feel the scent of life when you hold a stuggling and skidding new born calf.

          Now when I stand knee deep in the middle of a muddy paddy field, and as the scent of mud slowly creeps into me, I feel my  adolescence. Gradually the sound of splash made by many pairs of  robust feet of buffaloes  as they move around in circles and the folk songs sung in chorus by a set of village damsels describimg the story of the heroes of North Malabar warriors reverberates in me as ever before.

       Un mind full of the clattering of the gauge wheels of the power tiller or the hoarse sound of its engine,now I used to sit in the shade of a nearby coffee plant deeply immersed and sublimated in my nostalgic memories. It is for this heavenly moments I ventured to revive paddy cultivation. But lo  the real claimants for the fruits of my labour took me in surprise to reap the harvest before me. They were none other than a few hundreds of sparrows and a family of wild bore. In olden days many acres were under paddy crop. Now the area has shrunk forcing the sparrows and bores to grab what ever is available. I have no regrets and appreciates their claim.  I am thank full that In gratitude they left for me at least a few bundles of hey and of course my NOSTALGIA as bonus.

     Dum… dum… dum…pee…pee…pi..