“Where am I?”

My hand was not essentially holding a smartphone, yet I was smiling. I did not lie lazily on the cozy sofa with a riveting Tom Cruise scene flashing by on the television screen in front, yet I was at ease. No looking left and right for the rush of zippy motorbikes and I felt the happiest.

Jerk!

I was jumping and jerking most of the times as the hand-driven rickshaw van met with the boulders; the driver coolly humming a folk tune. I peeped over Dad’s shoulder, sitting next to me, to find a yellow sign-board-not the one you would find in the ornate road-bridge entry at Kolkata. It read “Manhri-2 miles,” but written in Hindi. When I broadened my spectrum of view, I found all the elements of the freehand village sketches I used to do back in my elementary school as if by magic, had teleported from memory to vision. Endless stretches of grassy patches on the right and wheat and rice fields intertwined with tiny thatched huts on the left allured my eyesight. An azure blue autumnal blue sky with white fluffy clouds was making my brain picture strange shapes and figures. Just near the hazy horizon I could see the Majhi on the shoal-draft boat by the marsh. For a moment I felt lost and isolated. Isolated from a ten by twelve foot four-walled enclosure of monotony.

A small kid tightly grasping the coarse hand of his mother, wearing but a white shirt torn from the side and black Bermudas, started grinning like a Cheshire cat at me. I turned my gaze away. What I failed to notice was his another hand held a beautiful multi-petal chrysanthemum which he dropped on my lap as the van passed by. The mother with a huge massy basket on her head smiled at me too. Was I a celebrity? What was the reason of smiling for no reason? I received no answer. The basket seemed to be ten times heavier than my school bag. Then came a halt. We leaned forward and I turned my look for what welcomed us.

Four boys and two girls were sitting barefoot on the muddy ground and scratching on it with a thin wooden branch while some tiny stones about the size of marbles lay on the dugout part of the ground. My interest was hyped. Dad explained to me the game of Kancha.

“Have you heard of Sanchil?”

“How do you even expect, Dad?”

“It’s my ancestral village and,” he paused, looking up with wrinkles on his forehead.

“…Some one or two kilometers from here. Maybe now they have ruins and nothing else.”

He heaved a sigh as if he returned from office after a late night shift. So what I learnt was that he was used to the village and his ways and I was a loser at Kancha.

I did not need a snooze option on my phone to deliberately prolong my sleep.

Cock-a-doodle-do.

That morning as I yawned away the previous night’s lassitude I ran into Rihan - a boy with as sweet a nature as the flower he gifted to me. We became great companions. At times, I went with him on expeditions.

I did not know the art of holding a fishing rod but Mr. Patience proves to be a great teacher. Sitting for hours to get two mighty killifishes was intriguing. I emerged a winner at this expedition.

Somewhere gravel roads were completely absent and Rihan made me pass through boggy flats and steep shortcuts of the village. That was too much fun. Sometimes I would join Rihan’s family in separating husks from grains too. Waking up every day at sharp 4:30 am and climbing branches of The Devil Tree were added bonuses. Life was all beers and Skittles then.

At night it was wintry. It felt like a 5⁰ in the Himalayas. I was often out of sorts but jadee-bootees helped me pull through. Rarely would the black miasma of clouds bring smiles on the faces of the farmers but would naturally depress a city person as me. I overcame the comfort which I lived in, hallucinated by an ‘Easy Come Easy Go’ philosophy. The people in Manhri had nothing with them but possessed the richest of smiles in their poorest of conditions. Maybe the enchanting abode taught them unscathedly escape the harsh realities and spread smiles.

Staying with Rihan almost every time, made me like him - a simple and mirthful kid with no worry of the future. The happy faces of the tractor driver or the farmer with the shovel or the three middle-aged women balancing water pots on their heads, one jeering at the other, or a kid skipping stones with great accuracy against the backdrop of a misty Mother Nature rejuvenated my senses. Perhaps, I did not want to return from mud to concrete; from Kho Kho to Car Racing 3D; and from delirium to boredom.

Certainly, as the name suggest, Manhri had touched our minds and hearts. People argue, yet I believe that it is good to be superstitious and orthodox at times. It is unusually exciting-more exciting than jostling in the mall. Simplicity strikes. I did not feel homesick. Manhri just becomes a well-woven fabric of memory and nostalgia.

No cock-a-doodle-do.

No shout-out from Rihan.

But my favorite ringtone piercing my sound sleep. I felt too uneasy at what had just happened.

“Good morning, son, ”said Dad sipping the cup of tea with a slurp.

“Dad, you’d once told me that you had an ancestral village…”

“Yes, two kilometers from Manhri.Why?”

I did not know how to answer.

(Desperate for staying in a Manhri with some Rihan)

.    .    .