During our tireless travels for the last twenty years, hopping continents, countries, adapting to new cultures, learning other languages, from time to time, I was reminded of the old man who owned a little tea shop on the outskirts of Dehradun in Uttar Pradesh. A sudden cloudburst followed by torrential rains is what had sent us scurrying for shelter into his shop, and right into the wafting aroma of home. We had been on the road for only two days, and were already beginning to miss home.
Sparks from the embers smouldering in the earthen stove flew across the cosy little room nonchalantly. A blackened aluminium kettle sat whistling, adding its own trilling notes to the orchestra. It was a perfect weather for some steaming masala tea and biscuits, and the old man seeing us hunched because of the sudden nippiness which had descended over the hills, got down to making it with a sense of urgency.
Silently sipping hot tea, and munching biscuits which came from a small glass jar, we sat in the tiny room, the sound of rain on the tin roof drowning every possibility of conversation.
The rains dissipated with the same vigour and abruptness they had poured down a minute ago, and a patch of blue sky, washed clean, stretched outside, as though hung there to dry. We thanked the old man profusely for the delicious tea and biscuits. “Come and visit us sometime in Delhi,” my father said with a smile, extending him an invitation to his side of the world.
“Sahib, in pahadiyon ko chod kar kahan jayenge”, meaning, “Sir, where would I go leaving these hills behind?” was his reply.
Even after two decades, I am haunted by his words. Poignant in their simplicity, they encapsulate the spirit of a man who was as much a part of his ambience, as it was of him. And for as long as he could remember, he had lived in the comfort of its laps, absolutely content. It was the music descending from those undulating hills which had lulled him to sleep, night after night…and touched him awake at dawn. There was no parting for him from his beloved hills….
While I was busy circumventing the world, gleaning a few moments here and there, and leaving enormous carbon footprints in the process, the old chaiwala innately understood the beauty of treading softly, the world in his backyard, and eternity stretching out in front of him.
Seema Muniz, a feature writer with the Times of India group in the nineties, is an avid reader and educationist, who homeschooled her son until tenth grade, while drifting between New York and Alaska with her family. She is also an artist, with a few solo and group shows in Albany, NY, to her credit.
Attempting to say a word or two about the down to earth people, who as such are simple extension of Nature is not merely difficult but in itself audacious.
There is so much purity in their simplicity that one feels what one has truly missed out in adopting a lifestyle of modernity.
No doubt, they carry the true fragrance of the earth, the universal fragrance, our true identity, our real worth.
I often wonder how and why the primeval rhythms of life, in sync with one’s surroundings, devolved into a blindfolded rat-race. Everyone is so busy running… running…aimlessly, chasing a mirage of happiness.