Memory tag: Travelling to Tezpur, Silk cotton trees, March
Its been ages since Green Cardamoms came to regularly as you opened this page on a Sunday morning. I have been busy shifting job and locale, moving out of a place that has been home and my first job for the last two decades. I have moved about 800 miles, a little further east and due north to Tezpur . Travelling on the highway the land, the trees, the air are in that delightful state of indecision that only comes when change is in the air. Spring is here not only inevitably after winter (of discontent or otherwise) but gently easing the transition to summer. Cool breeze in the mornings and evenings alternate with a sun warmed midday . The fields still carry over the winter crops but the trees have a new song s to sing! The Indian coral tree, the silk cotton and the flame of the forest are breathtaking to behold! Denuded of their natural green plumage loaded with full blooded blossoms at the ends of stark bare branches makes these trees well nigh fey! They almost bring the mad midsummer sun into soft spring a morning!
Every few yards one sees these tall stately trees dressed red or orange tipped against the background of sunny blue skies! Some others like the mango are covered in an apparent golden down of a million tiny blossoms holding out a promise of thousands of luscious mangoes in late summer. Suddenly this balmy weather becomes restive and the gentle breeze changes into a strong wind or even gale. Rain clouds scurry before these winds, drenching the earth, bringing blossoms tumbling down and adding colour to a waiting earth below. The apparently mundane clay breathes out the heady perfume of the earth drenched in rain. Do asteroids and comets vend the smell of the wet earth from this blue planet ? Are they disturbed by it on their now celestial journey bringing back as it does, evocative memories of a redolent earth? Will it remain with us as songs of the distant earth when we go to another planet?
Shops small and big dot the roadside now and again, tiny marts providing instant succor in tiny doses. Varied morsels in pearl pet jars, tobacco in various avatars for a sure nicotine trip and bright plastic packed wafers; chips off large MNCs for the humble consumer! Urban prepackaged sanitized coloured baubles that provide instant window dressing and enticement to the traveler, hungry or addicted. Image after image flashes by. Tea gardens, the mighty Brahmaputra, a delectable lunch in a home, memories of stories that my father told me. Of a decision taken on the banks of a river called the son of a creator, of a two week travel time by steamer from Calcutta to Pandu Ghat, of reporting to a taciturn but kindly Mr. Higgins, of the Indian Civil Service for his first assignment, of hoisting the tricolor at Tezpur …your curly headed daughter had to come here! Willing to follow dreams, thank you for giving me courage to seek a new world .My readers, I will still come back to you every Sunday, linked by the living ether .
[Originally published as part of my Column “Green Cardamoms “ in Shillong Times, Canvas, page 3.]