It is strange how the first memories of people we meet,places we visit,food we eat,are always the strongest.Ever afterwards we subconsciously compare our subsequent experiences with 'that' first time.
1979.A nine year old born and raised in the congested surroundings of Calcutta had his first rendezvous with the birthplace of his fathers - Punjab.A village in Hoshiarpur district.A dusty forty minute bus ride from the district centre.
Those memories are as crystal clear as if it was yesterday that I got off the bus in the late afternoon sun of a mellow summer.The adobe brick house was the tallest in the village,with an open courtyard and one of the rooms was mud brick.
The roof dazed me.I had never seen so much open space in my short life.Wheat and yellow flowered mustard fields stretched out and across my entire field of vision.The dome of an alabaster white Gurdwara stood out amidst the green.
Sleeping under the giant Neem tree in the courtyard on 'charpoys' with a stick under the bed to ward of snakes.The brightness of the stars and constellations and waking up at 4:30am to the sound of shabad floating on the wind from the unseen Gurdwara.
So close to nature.To where my ancestors must have toiled for generations.
And the first peacock,not those mangy specimens of Calcutta Zoo,but a real wild one,dazzling plumage,the deepest blue neck and about 5 feet away.Thankfully a few survive till date in the surrounding villages.
Guests coming to see the 'important' visitors from the distant big city.Drinking gallons of smoked milk flavoured with jaggery.The freshest 'Makki ki roti' and 'Sarson da Saag'.
The village plumber and oddjobs man using a lassoe to trip bullocks before shoeing them.The thud as they fell and how important to get them shoed.The gentle ride on a buffalo cart,undulating between wheat and sugarcan fields and a mango orchard that stretched for 3 kilometres at places the leaves so dense that the sunlight could not penetrate to the ground at high noon.
Gone today in the mindless urbanisation.The orchards and wheat fields.For exotic vegetables.And the scrouge of mosquitoes that came fifteen years after my first visit when rice was introduced.
Those friends of my age with whom we contructed a swing from the branches of that Neem tree now long immigrated to Canada and the USA or UK.London,Ealing,Southall.Vancouver,Toronto,Reno and New York.
Gone that innocence.The landscape survives.A mere reminder of the 'Green Revolution' and the prosperity.A tough but satisfying life.
