The Pack
Hashir
Boopalan Jayaraman
Ronak R.
abhipathak
shafling
enidhi
Nafees
savita
KK
Vatsal Rathod
madhavareddydonapati
sanketrajawat
smrutz
simplyafs
weirdpatch
Anne
Pankaj Patro
Divenita
Lakshmi
Bana
rahul aggarwal
Anu Menon
kumarsankar
smallcapdreamer
Well, it has been really a long time since I sat back in a relaxed manner and listened to the sounds of the surrounding…!
Don’t know when was the last time it happened…must be when I was going to school and those lazy sunday afternoons when you don’t have much to do after a long and delicious lunch of your mom’s….you feel that the television is boring, the songs played on the radio is boring, your walk man is too much of a pain….and then you just sit or lie on the bed that is at few inches away from the window with the curtains playing a shadowy show on the walls and the breeze from the neem tree, is even and the sunlight hitting you hard….you just wish why the school does not work on sundays too……………..!
If this wasn’t enough you just try to think of something nice and doze off into dreams when this crow do not know from where it just appears at the tree and starts singing a lullaby for you….!
You can hear its distinct crowing and adding to this you hear a distant crowing….that is so distinctly very haunting.
Yes, the crowing of the crow is really painful and your heart stirs each time it crows…!
Have you heard those distant crowing of the crow…?
I heard it today again…I heard it very close to my ears but it was somewhere on a tree further from my window and the blocks….
I was reminded of these lazy afternoons…on a summer holiday is a distant village where the sunlight is so much that you can’t play in the sun with your friends and your grand mom and grand dad calling you indoors, you lie on the mat looking at the ceiling and listening to the mythological tales, tales about godliness and devils…and how the gods fought over the evil…and how you should always be doing good deeds to keep the momentum going and how god punishes people who do the evil…!!!
The crows being the incarnation of our ancestors…they bring us the news from the other world…and all we do is shoo it away…and wait for it devour the food we offer it on every thought of an ancestor….!
I am reminded of the lazy summer afternoons and the sun seeping in all its light on to the grounds…whenever it crows!!
Filed under: Experience, Nature, Ramblings
“Once upon a time ….”
the time when our grand parents always started each story with this sentence (most of those were mythological though).
A different post to relive those times…. Enjoyed reading …
Hmmm i do remember sunny afternoons, very calm and quite but bird chriping makes everything live
In village that time No TV, no radio even no power… sometimes those afternoon used to kill me..
Oh! I used love those afternoons….We used lie underneath the trees on a cot made of coir and it used to be fun….!
The cool breeze of the trees…and the sudden gather of clouds and the summer rain!!!
The distant sound of the train…either a goods train or the long distance trains that pass by………..! We used to sometimes check the time according sound of the train sirens…!
Ah! those were days…!
I don’t know KK, afternoons i found very long, sometimes tiring and boring… i used to feel that life has stopped.. becoz no movement, no people around… either they would have gone to famrs or sleeping.but morning and evenings of my childhood in village still refreshes my memories. specially days i spent with my father
“Mark Twain” had written in his book “Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, Vol 2.” [Book details about his experiences in India] as below, during his early days in Bombay . Guess what he speaks about!
“He has been reincarnated more times than Shiva; and he has kept a sample of each incarnation, and fused it into his constitution. In the course of his evolutionary promotions, his sublime march toward ultimate perfection, he has been a gambler, a low comedian, a dissolute priest, a fussy woman, a blackguard, a scoffer, a liar, a thief, a spy, an informer, a trading politician, a swindler, a professional hypocrite, a patriot for cash, a reformer, a lecturer, a lawyer, a conspirator, a rebel, a royalist, a democrat, a practicer and propagator of irreverence, a meddler, an intruder, a busybody, an infidel, and a wallower in sin for the mere love of it. The strange result, the incredible result, of this patient accumulation of all damnable traits is, that he does not know what care is, he does not know what sorrow is, he does not know what remorse is; his life is one long thundering ecstasy of happiness, and he will go to his death untroubled, knowing that he will soon turn up again as an author or something, and be even more intolerably capable and comfortable than ever he was before.”
It is nothing but the Indian Crow. (No, I have not read that book, Not even seen it once..!)
Further notes, by Mark Twain.
“I suppose he has no enemies among men. The whites and Mohammedans never seemed to molest him; and the Hindoos, because of their religion, never take the life of any creature, but spare even the snakes and tigers and fleas and rats. If I sat on one end of the balcony, the crows would gather on the railing at the other end and talk about me; and edge closer, little by little, till I could almost reach them; and they would sit there, in the most unabashed way, and talk about my clothes, and my hair, and my complexion, and probable character and vocation and politics, and how I came to be in India, and what I had been doing, and how many days I had got for it, and how I had happened to go unhanged so long, and when would it probably come off, and might there be more of my sort where I came from, and when would they be hanged, – and so on, and so on, until I could not longer endure the embarrassment of it; then I would shoo them away, and they would circle around in the air a little while, laughing and deriding and mocking, and presently settle on the rail and do it all over again.
They were very sociable when there was anything to eat – oppressively so. With a little encouragement they would come in and light on the table and help me eat my breakfast; and once when I was in the other room and they found themselves alone, they carried off everything they could lift and they were particular to choose things which they could make no use of after they got them. In India their number is beyond estimate, and their noise is in proportion. I suppose they cost the country more than the government does; yet that is not a light matter. Still, they pay; their company pays; it would sadden the land to take their cheerful voice out of it.
- Following the Equator ”
Ref: http://www.twainquotes.com/Crow.html
Hey, thanks for the article….!
Looks like you have been doing some ground work on the topic!
No ground work.
Had read about that piece sometime back.
Your crow reminded me of that!!
Well you have given a CROWING identity to afternoon
… Nice post that really reminds me about the old sunny afternoon days in my childhood..