'I write, so I can sleep well'

The summer of 2014 has been dedicated to traveling. I've visited big cities, small towns, road side villages, jungles and river beds. I've asked myself why I travel and travel alone mostly. Many friends can't fathom the urge to see things from my own perspective, to be on uncharted territories to live life beyond that which has been set as your horizon. Wherever I travel, it is always people that I am attracted to, more often than not people are generous, going out of their way at times to indulge a complete stranger. And in that perhaps you carry back the observations, minute little nuggests of wisdom that stay with you. It is perhaps also why I find a bit of me strewn into wherever I have traveled. And thus on many nights when I sit alone in a huge guest house from a British era or a tiny forest bungalow by the river bed, I'm prone to tracing myself across where I'm spread thin.

While traveling through Kurseong at a certain point, I stopped for some tea. While the tea was being made, I saw another woman sitting in front of a shop. She was sipping her own tea while arranging the fresh vegetables she had put on display on the shop window. My gardener instincts, led me to ask her whether she grew the vegetables herself. She seemed surprised and then happy at being asked, pointing at each vegetable she summarized how they were grown, why frost was a nuisance, how her dogs kept her company on the hills. She looked at me after a minute, as if as an afterthought and asked me what I did. I looked at her hands then, she reciprocated by looking at mine. I looked around me at the massive mountains, the terrific greens, at the little dogs playing around, at life so uncomplicated. What does one tell someone so rich in mundane happiness, what the writer does. The immensity of simplicity, on a road that bends on a tea cup, suddenly seemed over powering.

I told her then that I write. Why she asked and what. I remembered my friend Amandeep Sandhu saying, 'I write, so I can sleep well.' I wanted to tell her then that I write so I can keep your essence alive, I write so that I can find a word that describes the immensity of this freshness. I looked beyond and fell silent. She tugged at my jacket, gave me a piece of charcoal and showed me the wall of her house, 'likho kavita'

'Shewli'..The fragrance of Durga Puja

The year was 1988, we had shifted to a rather huge house in a small district of Assam called Tinsukia. The Britishers of course made sure that wherever you stayed if you are working with oil..it has to be massive.. As a little girl, settling into that house was rather cumbersome. Everything seemed to be so huge for the tiny me. Walking down lawn tennis courts and garden full of Hollyhocks I found myself keeping a distance from them. In those days, your house was yours only as long as your dad's next transfer..and under the circumstances, I always founded a nook in the garden that I could make mine. Strangely even three months after the shifting I had not found my nook.

But one fine day, something happened that changed everything. I woke up in the morning, it was early October, a lovely chill in the air surrounded by early morning mist. I shivered a bit in the chill, and went up to the window. Suddenly I saw a vision in white. In the driveway of our home, a rather ordinary green leafed small tree had been standing for long. It had neither the beauty nor the flowers to attract one. But suddenly that day I saw it anew. On the ground near the tree was a carpet of white! Every bough in the tree was covered with tiny little white flowers with a trimming of orange as if defying their colorless existence and laughing in mirth at the foolishness of man for not having noticed it for so long. As I stared at this wonder in stupefied silence..I suddenly ran down to see the tree, to touch it in loving reassurance that this was reality.

As I stood beneath the white tree, I was in for more surprise. from the tree came the sweetest of smells that wafted into me a dance. I closed my eyes and in reverence of the white bed took of my shoes and sat on the bed of flowers soft.

Ma told me later that day that these little flowers called 'Shewli' in Bangla were the first heralder s of the Durga puja..perhaps the quintessential welcome of nature to the Godess with ten hands. Over time plenty of things have changed for me..the house, the childhood, the dreams..what didn't was the memory of the Shewli tree that had welcomed me to the Pujos and the essence of their beauty..till today every Durga puja has me searching for Shewlis..the little white flowers that welcome the Goddess.

© 2011 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

( Image courtesy Google)