A fresh air breathing in the old nostrils, with the ever clean brittle rhythms of broom sticks moving back and forth of the daily dirt, and a shout ‘get up’ disturbing the dusts of my ear.
‘I don’t wanna come, there is nothing that excites me’ – I said
Don’t come, just drop us there, it excites us neither. And as always, The Engineer accepted the driver cap from all my family members to drop them to ‘Sharanabasaveshwara Jaatri’.
My vehicle protested to carve ways in the randomly moving private vehicles and zig zag moving teen age DON’s modified bikes with their above human audible red- grill horns, the group of auto rickshaws with 60-70 kmph speed with their stops in the middle of this heavy traffic inviting the waiting passengers – maarkeet maarkeet!!!! With my grandfather guiding me on my driving on this road where I have traversed some 1000000 times, keep left, drive slow, over take only from right, give hand signal while you turn, hey! There is a speed breaker....
My clean vehicle smirked to get itself parked in the parking lot that looked like a scribbled page of a lad of five. I walked with them as a body guard in jaatri, a thick cloud of dust started resting and forming a multi-layered film on the hefty drizzled sweat of my body engendered from the smiling late evening sun’s boiling temperature of 40 degree Celsius. The ‘ Har ek maal pandraa (15) Rupaye’ kinda stalls that growled with their high intensity customer attention – ‘baRRi baRRi.. jaldi baRRI’, The sugar cane juice stalls with highest possible volume of the songs from the tape recorder with dancing lights embedded, ‘ hadd se bhi zyada tum kisise pyaar nahi karna’, jeeta tha jiskeliye, ‘dheere dheere se mere zindagi mein aana’, kitna haseen chehra kitni pyaari aakhe’. The photo frame stalls that had all kind of photos, katreena framed in wood of 15 Rs, Salman portrayed inside a paper wrapped glass, Shah Rukh could only get some space on the cloth wall supported by a single nail of iron, but a special decorated 3D photo frame gathered most of the customer attention for it showed Goddess Laxmi, Saraswathi, and Ganesh from front, left, right views respectively. The loud screaming men for the sales of their ‘Channabasaweshwara ChuDaa’ engrossed me for their originality. While my eyes moved over these stalls and shops my body stirred into the gusty flood of mob giggling around, voicing their paper horn, teasing the dames who had eyes as dull as dusk bordered by their brown lashes that were lightened by the torrent of dust molecules, the dresses designed by the local tailors with absurd blue jeans with some over shining road silver pearls over the front left and back right pockets to match the shirts that had shades of chrome yellow with a flower embroidery, to wrap the bodies that were as straight as an ideal national highway road, yes with almost negligible speed breakers!.
In this difficult situation, my stomach with its frank hunger ordered my obedient brain for the obvious.
Kaisa bhai, phalli ? – I asked
10 Rs, 100 grams – he said.
Arre bhai, saadaa phalli, 30Rs/Kg milta - I bargained…
Jahaan miltha hein, wahi se le lo phir… - he slapped
I gave him 10 Rs and purchased 100 Gms !!!
My right hand dived inside the pocket in haste, firmed few nuts and threw in air; the capriciously rotating, over an unknown axis, salted nuts formed a queue in air in the direction of my mouth in defiance to the gravity. My lower and upper hungry tooth eagerly waiting for nuts, to come in between them, like a desperate couple wanting to get divorced.
I continued my bodyguard duty standing at the exit of the ‘haRR ek maal, pandRa rupai’ stall waiting for my aunts to come back from their lady shopping. The very dust-comfortable people holding hands of their small kids and shouting at the elder kids not to run and consoling their naughty kids who were protesting for every single item in jaatri, people who made very clear to others that they were uncomfortable and were new to these kinda substandard fests, and those who purchased every single item, those who window shopped the open shops.
My hanker for enjoying the Jaatri was taken away as a charge against my sin of growing up...
I stayed silent for I looked very small in front of all this.
