The story begins on a cold,
pale winter morning somewhere in northern India. It starts as a simple tale and
then like all good stories grows up to become a fantastical allegory. Something
you heard on your grandmother’s lap or in my case something that my youngest
niece told me one hot, intense summer afternoon when she was 4 years old. It is
not so much about where you heard the story but how and what about it you
remember. And most importantly why it comes back from the unfathomable chambers
of forgetfulness.
I see the reticent peacock,
the benevolent fig tree and one defiant monkey and something like a story
stirs in me. I say, but the story wasn’t about peacocks, or monkeys, or fig
trees. And then the story in its entirety comes rushing back to me.
That is another magical thing
about stories.
Postscript: The peacock in
the first picture is a regular visitor to the rooftops where people leave it
offerings of food grains. In part due to their religious beliefs and in part
due to the peacock's beauty. But the same people think nothing of dumping their
daily garbage in the small wild patch that the peacock calls his home.
The tree in the second
picture is the Ficus benghalensis or Indian Fig or banyan tree, known as bargad
(in Hindi), our national tree, destined to be chopped down in the not so
distant future. For some human has claimed the spot where it grew for years as
the site for his house. Not a word is mentioned about the countless species
that will lose their home.
The monkey in the third
picture was a lone male, most likely shunned by the monkey troop, and in
desperate search for food. It eyed the vegetable grocers cart with little
success and settled for a meal of stolen roti and banyan leaves. The monkey too is revered in India but human's endless need for "space" is testing the limits of reverence.
This leads us to the
reawakening of some other story, whether well-remembered or intentionally
forgotten.
