The Boy With A Crutch

A crutch in the left hand,  and a melting chocolate bar in the right, three year old Anwar ran in stumbling, tumbling ,tripping ,limping  haste towards a runaway kite,  his  five year old elder brother John behind him, my five year old younger brother Ashok behind his friend John ,and I behind my younger brother. Confusing? Well, running can be quite confusing especially when it is behind a kite [reminds me of that essay  ,On running after one’s hat] which refuses to stop, merrily soaring high and still higher into the blue beyond and then tantalisingly descends down only to be caught by another kid!

 “A man running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a wife”, thus wrote G.K Chesterton long years back. Let   me add, “or a kite” to this profundity. He runs after the hat with “manliest ardour and the most sacred joy”, I could see the same ardour [although he was years and years behind blossoming into a man] and a ‘sacred  joy ‘in that spunky boy of three-“a jolly huntsman pursuing  a wild animal”. With a clenched lip concentration, he ran full throttle, many other multi coloured kites distracting him on the way, but he had eyes only for that blue and white one which seemed to have a life of its own! Confusion to the left of him, confusion to the right of him-but the three year old knew what was right for him and he limped ahead- shrieks and cries following him, but alas they followed him in vain!

 Running behind   memories can be very confusing too, one does not know which memory to chase, which to ignore!  Memories which take one to long for gotten places, to crevices well hidden from sight, to vaulting peaks, to nooks and crannies –HERE A BROKEN LEG, THERE A BROKEN EGG. What should one chase, the memory of the boy with the broken leg or the memory of the broken egg?  Confusion! Confusion!  So many memories hidden under a patina of dust, screaming to be noticed and salvaged ,from the ravages of cruel time.

Afraid for the safety of the three year old who had fractured his leg just a few days back, the entire gang was running after the boy who was running after a kite with the manly fervour of one running after a hat on a rainy day in London! Even the broken leg could not restrain the spunky three year old in his escapades! What was a broken leg when a kite was at stake!

So the tiny three year old ran after the kite, now and then casting a backward glance, lest the chasers catch him and drag him home.

“Anwar, come back, you will trip, then you will have another broken leg!”This was another entrant into the race-Mrs.Van Aalst. Although a late entrant to this race; she was running pretty fast, the mother’s heart   in her petite frame pumping her on towards her runaway son. In no time she would have caught up with him, but he was his mother’s   son after all, he outraced all!

There was a wall that divided their house from ours, and many a time John and Ashok would jump over this wall, to take a detour to each other’s houses .As he found himself face to face with this wall, he decided to take a flying leap to safety. Leaning on the crutch for support ,he flung his legs over the wall and floated in the air, holding on tightly to the baton, nay ,to the crutch, for a couple of seconds and then acceding to the laws of gravity, came plummeting down! But in no time, the human dynamo was back on his feet, not the one to be cowed down by circumstances, or a chasing mother!

John and Anwar were the kids of the Van Aalsts’ who were our neighbours in the Rajasthan university campus, Jaipur, where my father was a professor of English, and Dr.Van  Aalst, an erudite, History scholar,  a visiting professor from  the United States of America.

Dr.Van Aalst and Jeanette Van Aalst were poles apart in physique .Dr. Van Aalst was almost six feet, four inches in height,  while Jeanette, was   charmingly petite at five feet. Both were the most compatible couple I had ever come across, full of warmth, compassion and loving concern.

Passionate bibliophiles, they had an enviable collection of books on all subjects, and as a kid, I   remember being very fascinated by the attractive labels that all their books carried-THIS BOOK BELONGS TO FRANK AND JEANNETE VAN AaLST... may be my passion for books was subconsciously derived from them?

The sky is covered with a variety of kites, colourfully vibrant, and I sit on the terrace, eyes fixed at this joyous bonanza, floating, flying....to places of a bygone era..I lean against the chair, close my eyes and give myself up totally, luxuriously to the sights and sounds of the past.  And, yes , aromas too, wonderfully   tantalising aromas.....

“Happy Holi!!!”  Sang a jubilant   Mrs. Van Aalst ,as she came to our house holding aloft a huge chocolate cake, with a chocolate giraffe standing tall, right in the middle of the mouth-watering delicacy.  Its freshly baked aroma provided an olfactory trail that led us kids straight to her from different corners of the house.

“It is not holi, aunty, but Diwali,”I said smiling from ear to ear.                    

Not a bit ruffled she replied”, it makes no difference, does it? There is no special occasion for spreading happiness, is there?”

This reply brought smiles all around, and wasting not a second the kids pounced at the cake .Just then a highly agitated John shrieked with all the strength of a five year old, “The giraffe is pighhling”.

“PIGhLING!!!!”Mrs Van Aalst exclaimed in indignation knowing full well that her little boy had tried to say MELTING but in the excitement of the moment, had inadvertently merged two languages!

May be this linguistic merger was a juvenile attempt at trying to replicate the amiability that existed between the two families, in Indo American political relations?

Not one snapshot but an entire photo roll   unspools  before my closed eyes-there are so many snapshots of smiling ,shrieking,  scowling  kids, in school uniform, in crumpled clothes, in ill-fitting hand me downs which even the sartorial prowess of a skilled tailor has failed to make presentable  !Even in the black and white era of yesteryears,  some of   these snapshots are gloriously,   hysterically   , unabashedly   coloured   in bright, hues of Holi.

BURA NA MANO HOLI HAI BACCHON KI YE TOLI HAI!!,We sang going from house to house,   shouting ,   screaming, dancing and splashing colours and hurling water filled balloons at passersby ,across the wall.Holi was not just one day of fun and frolic but almost a fortnight of frothy, rambunctious rollicking fun! One of the water filled balloons hit a cyclist bang on his nose   , and  unable to bear this indignity hurled at his nose ,he descended the bicycle unleashing a torrent of abuses so colourful that the colours of Holi paled in comparison !The   perpetrators  of this indignity, ducked in different corners of the garden ,the victim peeped over the wall muttering things to the effect that parents do not teach their children any manners these days, and ,went back to his bicycle, finding no one around!

Thanking his stars that his beleaguered nose would need no rhinoplasty, the bicyclist pedalled away, soon becoming a blur in the distance...but not the memories. Definitely not the memories!  

These memories can never become a blur, they are always an overpowering presence, waiting to assault you, poke you, punch you, and pummel you at your most vulnerable moments.

John and Anwar visited us last month with their children, and we had a wonderful   time, reminiscing about the good old days when we were perennially drunk on a delicious cocktail of camaraderie, conspiracy, bonhomie and   body shaking laughter .Where has all that body shaking   , carefree laughter disappeared? In the virtual world we laugh out loud, roll on the floor with laughter, but where has that real laughter gone? Sadly incomprehensible! There is something else which is beyond my comprehension –that is how one complete language could have been deleted from John’s memory!  When he was in India he spoke impeccable Hindi, interspersed with only a few words of English [one of those English words being JUST   , which was the stock answer to many supposedly difficult questions that we hurled at him] but, villainous time, had lumpenised one complete language from a person’s memory!

An ancient wall clock chimes the hour in the landlord’s room down below jerking me out of my reverie-another hour has flown. I get up from the chair, and head inside clinging to my memories of a broken leg, a nearly broken nose .To the broken egg...I will come later.