Rains, samosas, cricket and the reminiscence of Namrup

The little drops of water falling on earth, slowly falling on earth, releasing the wonderful dusty fragrance of earth, chilling the soaring temperature in heated lands of India, moisturising the leaves of tress and making them look greener, putting to rest the strong sunlight: A thought only imagined, but rains... Ah!! I love rains. My earliest remembrance of rains goes back to my childhood days in Namrup. It used to rain almost everyday. So much so that if there was a day when it didn’t rain, it would become the talk of the HFCL colony. All the womenfolk would rush to wash their clothes as they can now be dried in sun. You can dry clothes inside your house as well. But that leaves a kind of smell in the clothes which is kind of pungent. No, I never faced the smell. In fact, irrespective of whether the clothes were dried in sun or inside a room under fan, it all same for me. It was my mom who would fret about having to dry them without sun complaining of that pungent which made me believe that the smell actually exists. If I am able to gather the courage to have an argument for an hour over the ‘smell’, I would accept more openly: The smell doesn’t exist if the clothes are dried under the fan.

In Assam, more particularly in Namrup, the people had an almost close relationship with rains. The good thing about the place was that it had very good drainage and was almost on the starting slope of a mountain. So the water wouldn’t log anywhere. Also, it had a lot of lush green vegetation, not the green you see in the national parks of central india, they are brown, I mean the green as what you would probably see in Kerela. So it would be a wonderful view to watch rain water trickling down those leaves, cleaning the already clean surface, almost providing it a shine. Then we would have a lot of thunderstorms. They would be strong loud, audacious and continuous. Almost the whole night. The downpour would be very heavy, recording record levels of rainfalls in a day. Another good thing to happen there was the permanent electricity. In cities, come summer rains, and it is followed by incessant power cuts. So much so that it takes the sheen of elation one feels for rains. But Namrup was different, the electricity never went away. And the homes were close enough. It was a township with quarters side by side and nice narrow roads. The roads were not the slabs like the American roads, nevertheless, the trucks and busses never passed through them. So they remained clean. There was no water logging as well and no garbage. May be due to rains ro some other reason, I never found garbage collecting in namrup streets. Almost all streets had like a narrow road of say 15 feet width. Then on both sides there were strips of grass. Yeah, like the ones which are grown at the cost of hundreds of thousands of rupees in software companies in india. Only difference was that these were natural grasses. They were like another 15 feet width on both sides. And then there were boundaries of houses. In the one I stayed, there were wired bouindaries, aluminium wires, strong enough to stop animals: goats and cows from coming inside but weak enough to give way in case an adult tried to cross them. One of the strips on one of the sides of roads used to be our cricket pitch where the grass would become flat and hard and devoid of bumps because we regularly played there. The wired boundaries were our boundaries and the trees ensured we never lacked stumps. The thick vegetation here and there ensured that the green tennis ball would get lost every now and then and would start the economic management of tiny finance wizard children, where each person would contribute some amount such that the total equalled Rs25/- Then all of us would go to the shop nearby together and get another tennis ball to get the match started again. Almost always, we started to the shop with the decision that we shall continue the innings once we come back, but everytime, it would happen like by the time we are back, everyone has forgotten the scores and the moment of match specific ambition and we would start a new match again. No we never played cricket in rain. You can play football but not cricket in rain. In cricket, you need to see the ball closely to hit it for a boundary. And when it rained, our cricket was stopped. It was replaced by cartoons on TV or going to some friends’ place to enjoy a bunch of pakoras and if his parents were really mature, we would be served some delicious Tea. Sometimes we got rosogulla and samosas if some uncle had just returned from market and was in a very happy mood. After hurriedly eating the servings , we would rush to either cartoon or play a game of carom. But the best moment was to see the sunlight next morning. All of us would start having a feeling of getting the chance to play cricket in the evening. During summer vacations, the innings would start at 9 AM or so. Once we even tried a hand at playing test cricket, but quickly returned to the ‘better’ version once we realized that no one really was able to hold the stumps for more than an hour or so and bowling and fielding was getting terrible boring. Plus, if someone got out on first ball, It wasn’t really fair to him. And we had drains on both sides of the road. After the grass strip ended and before the boundary started. It was about half feet wide and one feet deep. And was almost always filled with water. We would have ball going in it regularly. But it was no thought in it. We would readily pick the ball from the drain water, bounce it hard a couple of times so that the cloth of the tennis ball, sheds the water that has been soaked into it, and start playing again.
At times when the ball was lost and we couldn’t gather enough money to buy a ball, we would go on bicycle rides across the town. The town was spread in about 4-5 M in length and similar in breadth. And we had street lights and again the electricity never went out. The roads were good and the heavy vehicles against which we had to be careful were the two wheelers. The four wheelers in the colony were only items of show off so that the owner could once in a while in a conversation say that he owned a car. There was a road from our town called the “Mohini road” ( I don’t know who Mohini was or is and multiple queries to find the origin of this name failed). This road connected the town to the foothills of the eastern Himalayas. This was around 4-5 KM but sometimes we would gather the courage to ride that much and reach there. On the way we crossed the meandering tea gardens and when we reached there we would find again grass strips at the foothills of the mountain before the thick vegetation along with the trees started. Sometimes we would go some deep in the forest of the mountains but never dared venturing too deep into them. There was one time when we started with some food in our bag at 7 AM, reached the foothills at around 8 AM. There was a bug target we wanted to accomplish that day. There was a river which came from that mountain. It had very clean water and was just 20 feet wide at the foot of the mountains. Later it became a big river and joined Brahmaputra. We wanted to reach the origin of the river!!!!
As it happened the best adventurists of the class gathered. I think we were five in all. We were in class six. We took band aid, some dettol and some iron rods taking precaution for all kinds of possible emergency. We met some villagers nearby and asked about the river. They told that the origin is around 15 KM of climb along the river. Then one reached a large pot kind of mountain, something like the top of the mountain beheaded and filled with water. There is a small crack at one side through which the water keeps falling and this creates the river. Our geology(then only geography) became our favourite subject for the moment, close second was zoology as we were told that we would encounter elephant on way. We started the journey. Right at the beginning, we realized our first mistake. The day was kind of sunny, but the river was covered with trees on both sides. At the top, the leaves of the trees on both sides met and there was no sunlight which could reach below. Result: It was very very cold. November 11 Am is not a cold time in Namrup, but it was cold. But we wanted to proceed, so we did. After around one KM of trekking, we found what was the first waterfall I have ever seen in my life. Since there was no way to reach there(we were trekking through river itself, the sides were too stony and not walkable), we were probably the first tourists to see the waterfall. It was right in front of us. Around 20 feet high. And the water was falling very strong. One friend leaned ahead to get wet in water. Till now we were sweating due to treacherous walking and had forgotten the cold. But gallop, he vanished. For a split second , we didn’t realise what happened until he surfaced again, gasping for breath. Then the realization downed on us,, a lesson I remember till today: At the base of any waterfall, right at the place where the water is hitting the ground, it is very deep. Somehow he was rescued. I thought it will deter the resolve, it didn’t. The poor guy was reprimanded to be adventurous , not a fool. As we were walking, we were selecting a leader. The person walking in front was the leader,, or rather the leader had to walk in front. The point was that the person walking in front had to be most careful. A deep hole in the surface of water, some insect, some snake on way, spotting moving trees, meaning elephants and signalling to run away(yeah, based on our discussion with villagers, we had decided to run in case we saw elephants). And in between he had to keep shouting what he felt in his legs. He would walk around 20 feet ahead of others. This was rotating, the leadership baton.
At around 1 PM, we reached a place which looked like a good resting place. We were terribly tired and averaging the estimate of each person, had travelled around 8-9 KM in water, on stones, in up down water surface. We decided to have our meal. There were small bruises in the legs of many people which were washed with dettol and we drank some water from the river as well (it was really so so clean). The place was kind of a huge rocky pot with sand inside it. The softness of the sand made it a nice place to sit and talk. We discussed our ‘strategy’. Since I was in best condition, with no bruises in legs and only one incident of a placing my foot on a thorn which pierced through my chappals and the sole of my leg as well, I was decided as the ‘leader’. But the cold air was affecting me. The sounds of many animals known and unknown were also not a comfortable thing either. We kept walking, everyone was s tired by now that the initial enthusiasm of adventure had turned into a ‘get over it’ attitude. Everyone just wanted it to end, so no talking and joking now. We were just walking and walking.
At around 3 PM , a serious fear dawned and I shouted for everyone to stop. By default, you do what the leader says, everyone. I told everyone that it was 3 PM. The sun sets in Nov in Namrup at around 5:30 PM . We were 4-5 hours of fast walk and 8- hours of current speed walk away from our origin. Now the discussion was serious and everyone tired. Many options were suggested “let’s just go ahead, if we see the origin, nothing else matter”, “are there different animals which come up at night?”, “what if we don’t get the origin by night, how do we walk?” “no we cannot use our torch while walking at night, it will attract all insects and animals near by”, “we can go back and rest at our resting place earlier for the night”, “but what about the food, our stock is over”, “no we cannot eat jungle fruits, I have heard it is poison”, in case someone is injured, what can we do at night, in day returning is easier”. I remember one of my friends when he said there “guys!!! We are going to reach the origin of the river. This might be the single biggest and happiest moment in our life, We will never be able to do it again, you cannot go back”. He was right. We decided to turn back and I as ‘leader’ walked twice faster. And we never tried again. By the time we had next summer break, some of the friends had their parents transferred and the gang was disbanded. In couple of years we got ‘serious’ with the books. The cricket continued though and so did the beautiful rains of Namrup. Many years later, while working in an MNC, I once went there and saw the river at the foothill of the mountain. I felt it staring at me mocking at my failure. And I heard myself saying that we didn’t fail. The journey itself was a memorable one. I have trekked through the bigger Himalayas and crossed rivers on single ropes, but this one was really special. I remembered the comrades of the moment and the wonderful planning, execution and a near failure.