The first night after arrival with a jet lag can be painful. A stubborn Jet lag was a real pain in my butt. My body clock simply refuses to relinquish the US Time Zone as I woke up at 3 O'clock in morning. Jet lag for me now seems to get too stubborn to relent as I age. It feels miserable to get up so early, without being able to sleep any further. Kishore Kumar's song from Rajesh Khanna's movie AAP KI KASAM - KARWATE BADALTE RAHE SAARI RAAT HUM (turning sides on bed for whole night) never sounded more prophetic.
Thanks to internet and Facebook I could keep myself preoccupied for a while until the tom-tomimg of GHANTA (brass plate) from a nearby MATHA (monastery) sounded like music to me, much more musical than the sporadic KAWALIs (group music) from stray dogs across the street. No sooner one gang of musical mongrels on the Eastern end of the street facing our house finished with a seqience of wooo.. wooo..woof.. than their western side competitive cousins responded with their musical version of wooo..wooo... wooo...woof. The Kawali sessions continued for the better part of the night with intermittent 10 - 15 minutes of breaks.
The long arduous wait in dark paved way to dawn. The eastern sky grew brighter, turning crimson red as the light morning light slowly strived to drive away the darkness. By now the early rays of morning sun sprinkled the trees with a golden hue, giving their dust covered leaves a shining copper coating. The chirping of birds grew louder, so also the sound of GHANTA from the nearby Bengali Sri Guru "MATH" (Monastery) - sounding the end of the morning session of prayer. Amidst the banging of GHANTA and GINI (musical instruments made from Brass), wafted in a Bengali Bhakti (devotional) song through the dust laden mango, jackfruit, coconut and betel nut trees. I could grasp the following stanza it -
JASHODA JANANI DAE,
BAL KRESHTO KHAE RE.
SONAR NUPUR BAJE,
HARI JENE JAE RE.
Roughly transliterated...
Mother Yashoda gives,
Kid Krishna to eat.
Golden anklet makes sounds,
Wherever God goes around.
I went over to the balcony to take a peek at the outside world. It felt bit cooler compared to yesterday with a cool breeze blowing the dust around. You must have heard about Sand mafia, Land mafia etc. Have you heard of Flower mafia ? They come at wee hours of the morning, steal flowers from the frontyard gardens and sell them off to the larger market segment. My senior citizen parents can hardly do anything to stop them.
Once a man leaned over our fence and pulled down a flower tree to surreptitiously steal low hanging flowers. When he saw me noticing, he pulled away and moved on to the next house. But not every one notices my Peeping Tom eyes. In one of my prior trips I saw a man stealing flowers looking left and right to make sure no one was noticing before letting out a bombadistic fart audible 20 feet away from me viewing from the balcony.
Our never aging gray colored gigantic local Bull never stops placidly chewing cud on his bed of a big mound of sand in front of our house with his head drooping in an up and down motion. Couple of mongrels sleeping nearby noticed the tectonic shift in their surrounding as the giant Bovine suddenly stood up, shrugging off sand from his body. The doggies shifted further off to a nearby semi-broken concrete culvert perceived by them as a more secured, safer location from the big bully Bull.
Two pariah dogs were indulged in a face off, their protruding mouths barely a feet from each other. The bigger, aggressive one about to prounce on the other like a dragon in fury. The smaller doggie in a defensive, crouching pose was snarling at its bigger opponent with its tails well tucked within the hind legs. The barking and snarling continued for a few minutes until they made a truce and went their separate way.
From a distance approached our local Newspaper walla (guy). He swung and threw the newspaper past our main gate with immaculate accuracy and moved on to the next house. A stray dog tiered from last night's Kawali sessions woke up, sniffing his way near to a man walking holding a milk packet only to be rudely shooed away - HEY HEY JA JA (Hey, hey, go away). The doggie nonchalantly walked away. Well began is half done. It was a day well began in Bhonsar, the way locals pronounce Bhubaneswar. More later...
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