Silsili Chronicles - The Temple of Darshan Baba - Part I

This is a story from Silsili, a small sleepy town somewhere in the foothills of Himalayas. The town has its own railway station and a post office. There are two schools as well. And the government is talking about building an army camp nearby.

Life is not as fast paced here as you would normally see in the big cities. People do not run around busily to make their ends meet. They stop and ponder on the different unimportant things. Even today children sit down cuddled in the winter evenings and listen to stories from the elders.

There are many places of interest nearby. There is the Lal Masjid, the city mosque built hundreds of years ago. They say there used to be a temple at the spot where the mosque now stands. There have been many fights between the Hindus and Muslims over this in the recent years.

Then there is the huge Darshan Baba Dam across the Rukruka river. The dam got its name from the famous Mandir of Darshan Baba nearby. There are several stories about Darshan Baba in these areas. He was an infamous Tantrik who lived in the forest near the hills about one hundred years ago. There are several infamous stories about Darshan Baba and his Kali temple. It is said that every New Moon night he would sacrifice a young boy in the name of the goddess Kali. The village elders seldom visit the temple because they fear that if they visit the temple, then they would disturb Darshan Baba in his Samadhi and that would mean the devastation of the town of Silisili by the wrath of the Tantrik who knew Black Magic.

Such stories are nowadays not believed by many, but people do not generally visit the place even during the day. They try to avoid the place and since the place is a mile or two away from the town, daily business generally do not bring people to this place. But nobody would dare visit the temple at night.

What a Child Thinks

This is not an expert's comment on child psychology neither is this a theory to judge all the children in this world. This is necessarily a collection of the different cute hypothesis and theories, that a child might have about the world around him. I have heard most of these from children whom I have interacted with as an adult and also when I myself was a child.

I will start off with a few of my own concepts about this world. The first thing that comes to my mind is my idea of the planet earth. Somehow I had this understanding that the Earth was a giant ball with all of us living on its surface - pretty good huh?? But the real twist in the tale is that the giant ball is placed at the top of a multistoreyed building!!! Now that is called imagination.

I also remember what I used to think about Birbal, a tribal man who used to live near our house in the tea garden. In our thick Bengali accent we used to call him Bir-BALL as in soccer "ball". I had never known the man by face and had only heard the name. I used to think that he must be a soccerball covered in a red hanky. I have got no idea why I had such an impression. When the man died and the funeral procession was going past our house, I had run to the verandah to have a glimpse of the man who was Bir-BALL. I was really hoping to see a soccerball covered in a red hanky. However, I do not remember how it had felt when I could find no ball in the procession.

Another winner is my idea of a school. When I was a kid, I remember my parents discussing that I am growing up and I need to be sent to a good school. Now the scholarly kid that I was, I thought that a school is a place where people go riding on a bicycle, wearing only a lungi (a clothing used in some parts of India where a long piece of cloth is used to cover the lower half of the body by winding it around the waist) with no cloth to cover the upper half. And when you reach the school, you gather your things and start to plough the field so that seeds can be sown - my way of becoming an engineer!!!

Enough of me. Now I will talk about a kid named Raja whom I sometimes used to teach science when he was a third grader. One day he opened his science book and said, "Explain 'The Universe'". He had this chapter called "The Universe" which dealt with the workings of this Universe - the Sun, the Earth, the Moon and so on. I had to go to my wit's end to make him understand that the Sun is actually much bigger than it looks like and that the Earth revolves around it. When he finally understood that the Sun is in fact a fireball millions of miles away and that man has gone to space in rockets, he asked, "If someone carries a bucketful of water in a rocket, goes very near to the Sun and splashes the Sun with the water from the bucket, then will the fire be put off?" Now who would answer that?

His next question was a very philosophical one that even Aristotle would be very pleased to hear! He asked, "You say that man has walked on the surface of the moon! Now tell me, if someone moves too close to the Moon's edge and accidentally falls off where would he go?" Then I had to explain to him that the Moon is like a giant pingpong ball.

There are even more of such unanimously accepted and acclaimed ideas which I shall try to document at some other time. I hope you all educated people will take some time out of your busy schedule and let us all know if any of you have thought or heard of any such enlightening ideas!!!

My Childhood In the Tea Gardens

It is really after a long time that I am writing again. And what better way to start writing than to write about the days which have long gone by. I am writing about my childhood in a tea garden in the Darjeeling foothills. I shall write about the few things which I remember the most.

The first thing that comes to mind are the fireflies. In those days there was no electricity in and around the quarters where we lived and every night the surroundings would get filled up with thousands of fireflies as if nature had set fire on the pitch dark night. They were in the garden, in the kitchen, in the verandah, in the bedroom, in the tea plantations - they were everywhere, wherever you looked at. I had read a short story in my childhood in which a Scandinavian scholar from the land of the Aurora Borealis had been mesmerized by the beauty of the thousands of fireflies and had compared it with the beauty of the Aurora. Hard to believe but it was really that beautiful.

There were the blazing fireflies in the night and there were the beautiful butterflies in the day. I still remember that our garden would be full of scores of colorful butterflies : red and green, yellow and black, pink, violet and what other colors I know not. They would fly from flower to flower, they would dance with the wind, fly alone and sometimes fly in pairs. As if a child had used his wildest imaginations and used all the colors that there were and there would ever be in the most beautiful canvas you could ever imagine. I know not how many lazy summer noons I have spent looking at and chasing the butterflies across the beautiful garden which my father had planted.

And there were the Westerlies, also called the Kalbaisakhi which are very common in those parts. They are the deadly storms that have become the folklore in Bengal. Every year during summertime, the sky would become pitch black in the afternoon and the monster would unravel itself upon the mortals. It would come from the western horizon and blow away any and everything that would come in its way. Nobody would dare to go outdoors. Shops would close, business stopped and life at a standstill. Then there would be a heavy deluge of torrential rain which would wash away the scorching heat of the Indian summer, soak the dried up earth to render it fertile and make the farmers smile and thank the heavens.

Nature had blessed the place with all the beauty in the world. And the people were very simple. The workers of the tea gardens were tribals from the Chhotanagpur who had been brought to the region by the British planters more than a hundred years ago. They were the sons of the soil. They would happilly work through the day with the assurance that the tea company would provide them and there families with two meals a day and the guarantee of a job for their children. They would nurture the tea bushes, apply pesticides, water them and pluck the "two leaves and a bud" that would go to the factory to be brewed into some of the world's finest teas to be sold to the rich people from the cities.

There was a man called Birbal. In our typical Bengali accent we used to call him Bir-ball as in football. I had never known the man by face and had only heard the name. I used to think that he must be some kind of a football covered in a hanky. I have got no idea why I had such an impression. When the man died and the funeral procession was going past our house, I had run to the verandah to have a glimpse of the man who was Bir-ball. I was really hoping to see a football covered by a hanky. However, I do not remember how it had felt when I could find no football in the procession.

Then there was Budhua. He was a bright young fellow and everybody used to love him. He used to play cricket with us. One day we woke up in the morning to find out that Budhua had hung himself in his bedroom. Joy Da, a lad from next door, went to his hut and brought the news that Budhua was sitting in a chair with the noose tightened against his neck. People doubted murder. But nothing could be proved. It was my first encounter with the brutality of life.

These mishaps happened sometimes. But most of the times my childhood was a funfilled joyride from start to end. Everything looked bright and sunny. No worries of the future, no responsibilities for the present and no pain from the past. Gone are those days but the fond memories are still cherished and fills my heart with joy even to this date.