Tales of one Village-An Old Timer Tells a Story

It has been couple of months and no letter from Nisha. Questions began to swirl in my head, most of them unpleasant, perhaps illogical and irrelevant too. Before I draw any negative conclusions I must write to her. I had an ulterior motive too. In receiving a letter from her I could replace my brother’s lost stamp.

I began. I had disappointed Viku, I wrote, when I tore up the envelope your last letter came in. 

Nisha knows we call my kid brother Vikram Viku.

I said he sulked, he pouted, he avoided my eye contacts; and rightly. I mutilated his stamp. I had hurt him. I could not be forgiven; at least for a short time. It troubled me to have hurt him.  I promised to make it up to him by helping him with his homework. I also told him I will replace the stamp when Nisha writes to me again. He smiled. He is so easy to please! You know how I love him.

More importantly I wrote I had bad news for her. I asked if she still remembered ‘Aunty’, our neighbor. Few days earlier she had died in her sleep.

I began to give her some of the accounts of the day before and the day after the night of her demise. 

I wrote, as I was describing how I would make it up to him to Viku, I heard our next door neighbor’s voice talking to my mother in the next room. It was not early but the morning seemed to have arrived late that day. It was aunty’s youngest son. The man spoke softly and somberly. I could not hear anything but I sensed the urgency in his voice. Something was wrong. As he left the house my mother said she has to go next door and I must handle rest of the morning chores myself. The old woman whom you and I, both, knew only as ‘aunty’ had died in her sleep previous night. She apparently died of old age; a disease that kills more than any other disease I have known. There is no cure for it either.  It made me sad; really sad. As you know, at deaths the neighbors here come together as much as or perhaps even more, they do at any other happier times

As you may remember, the old woman had a very raspy but distinct and an authoritarian voice; a voice of a person who had seen times; hard and soft. You will agree that she had as many wrinkles as the days of her life to prove it.  Whenever she knocked at the door or even walked in if the door was open I knew it was three thirty in the afternoon; tea time for us. She was like a clock-work. One could set time by her. The old timer did not even know how to read time. But I did not hold that against her. I liked her. You did not. You disliked her because of her authoritarian style, especially towards children. She thought, perhaps, she had earned the right to reprimand them by the very virtue of being old. I do not know how they view this in Canada but out here we are very accommodating towards old people chiding children.

I do not have to tell you that it is quite customary, in villages, to walk in on to any acquaintance, neighbor or relative in their own house. Even at odd hours. It is only hospitable for the visited to welcome them and offer something to eat or drink. We even share from our own plates. I believe we have quite an evolved sense of hospitality.

This woman of eighty five, with a family of three sons and their wives and five grand children visited us almost every afternoon at tea time. She only known as aunty had been a fixture in this area for a long time. She lived in her house as long as she had been alive.  She was born there and now she died there. Very few fortunate people, I think, seem to have that fortune. I know your family was not very enthusiastic about her visits. She liked to visit my mother, often at inopportune times. But we did not mind because she made us laugh, as well as sometimes cry, with her stories. Often she entertained us with songs in her folksy style which would tell stories of times gone by; songs of simpler, kinder times, which also included, wedding songs and dirges.  

She knew all the gossip, dirt and history of who moved in and who moved out of this village and when. Many tales were about the people we had never met or seen. They came and went before we called this village our home. They lived here before even your family moved here.

 If somebody was writing a history of this village I would most assuredly send them to her for stories. It would make an interesting and humorous reading.

Now get this, the day before her death she visited us as usual. She took tea with us, as always. But never from China wares. To her they were impure. We had to maintain one set of cup and saucer made from what was then known as German Silver. 

I began to complain about how the municipality is rationing the water and how it is insufficient for our large family’s needs. This conversation led up to the times when the village people had neither indoor water supply nor plumbing. She admonished me and asked me to stop complaining. We, meaning, she and her friends of same age from the town in their times used to walk a mile or so to wells outside the town to draw and fetch water. The water thus collected was brought home in three graduated pots stacked up high on their heads. One small pot would rest in the crook of their waist. Walking long distances balancing the pots on the heads was not easy. It was hard work, she said. We used water frugally. You should do the same, she advised. 

Talking about the plumbing, let me tell you a funny story of our times, she said. It is she talking now. We did not even have rudimentary toilets, let alone the flush toilets now-a-days. The people, men and women both, used the same open fields for their daily toilet needs. It was obvious that everybody could see every town person’s rear end at the crucial time.  Since it was a personal and private activity people would wake up when it was still dark. Women went together, as if for a walk. If someone was late in waking they provided wake up calls by throwing small stones at their windows. Likewise, men went together. On the way often men and women will catch up with one another. They all avoided eye contacts and refused to recognize one another. 

Funny part was, she added, all women covered their faces while walking to the field. I asked her why. Because she said we did not want our rear ends matched up with our faces by the men folks. 

I laughed till my stomach hurt. Tears started rolling down my cheeks. I think I miss her, I will always miss her. She was one of a kind.

I hoped Nisha and her family was well. Do write, I pled sincerely. I have many other stories to share, but they will have to wait until I hear from you, I ended.