Bungalow Impressions

I was at the bungalow yesterday with Ross. No formalities, no translator--we didn't tell anyone where we were going, just walked the 5 or so minutes down the road from this unreal world of servants and standards that we are staying in. More about that another time. I feel more at home on the streets of India.
Cheers,
Judy


Bungalow Impressions

Walking down the tree-lined well paved road I pass a gate. Mirzapur Club Limited Established 1888, reads the sign. The road is quiet. The only vehicles at the moment are bicycles, cycle rickshaws, pony drawn ekkas and the occasional motorcycle. When the odd car does go by it is an it is an intrusion. Brick walls of varying hights are behind the trees on either side of the road. I come to the chained wrought-iron gate of the old Hill's bungalow, my bungalow, and look through the bars. I see four chowkidars in front of the house, one doing his morning wash. They stare and one comes to the gate with a round clay water pot, unlocks a small door in the gate, leaves it open and goes to fetch water. As he goes by I gesture and ask "Can I go in?" The half head wag and the open gate indicates that I can. I go into the grounds and stop on the path just looking around. Either side of me the jungle trees are all grown over with thick hanging vines and I begin to cry. Ahead is the bungalow. A rope is strung between two trees, on it blankets and a lungi drying on it in the sun. I try to converse with the young chowkidar who comes up the path. "Mera ghar...baccha, ek, do, tin, char. Mera mammie, mera pita." I say, wiping my eyes and sniffing. He chatters away in rapid Hindi and any words I might have recognized vanish. "Apka nam kya hai?" I ask his name--the one question I can always remember.

I approach the house and on my right three men go about preparing their meal. On a low charpoy there is a stainless steel tali tray with a huge mound of rice in the centre. There are remnants of a bonfire on the ground in front of the verandah to my left, this time of year being cold at night. I come up to the three stairs on to the verandah and look beyond into the house. Through my tears I look past the huge beams lying on the floor that have fallen from the roof, the piles of bricks and the thick leaf mold, past all this to the opposite wall where there stands a fireplace. It is a fireplace of my childhood, now chipped, stained by monsoon rains and broken. All is open to the sky. I now look around at the small household that the chowkidars have created for themselves under the verandah roof. Under one charpoy are a pair of black polished boots and a pair of black shoes.A small fire is burning in a far corner of the verandah and the young boy is tending to the pot cooking on it. Around are arranged other cooking and water vessels. The man who had gone to fetch the water had returned to the small kitchen area. Behind me blankets were stretched out on the ground here and there and the oldest man who seemed to be in charge had finished with his washing and was bare to the waist clad in his lungi. His big round belly indicated his higher status.

I leave the group and go around to the back, the side which faces the Ganga. I gaze at the ruin, for now it is a ruin, blackened and crumbling. I turn to look to at the river. The wind is blowing strongly as I sit and take in the sight and sound and feel of the wind on my face. Over the steady whoosh of the wind in the trees on either side of me the crows make their standard caws, an unknown bird trills and the Seven Sisters chatter and squawk in their clusters as they move from tree to tree. Underneath the bird sounds comes the occasional bawl of a cow.

I move to the edge of the river bank, the Holy Mother Ganga below me. Four boats are on the grey-blue water, one with a rippling ochre sail and if I go closer to the edge I can see twenty or thirty more tied up. I hear the chatter of children below playing among the boats. The entire river-bank in front of me is covered with no longer flowering morning glory, or what looks to me like morning-glory, the bank which each year moves closer to the bungalow as what had once been the manicured lawn is eaten steadily by each monsoon. A large acacia tree will not last the next monsoon as it perches on the crumbling cliffside, many of its roots reaching out into nothing. Between me and the bank a small butterfly walks about on the grass and dust --peacock-blue, black and dusty brown.

I turn away from the river and back to the bungalow. Families of pigeons sit upon all the chimney pots. There are palms on each side of me. I approach the grand verandah. On one of the blackened columns some remnents of scarlet bouganvillia still climb. Moss and dead grasses have grown along the edges of the crumbling roof lines. From this side there is another fireplace and mantle, this one taller than the one visible from the front of the bungalow, as ruined as the first one I could see. "Oh, Mom, how fortunate it is that you cannot see what has become of this place you loved so much."