All the beautiful daughters of Mara, Ashok Aatreya [black male authors .TXT] 📗

Mostly Anand’s uncle would set it for use as it involved little mechanics also and patience. To Anand all this was a fun filled art activity. He would watch and appreciate each step of the preparation which normally took ten to fifteen minutes.
Overall, the area where Anand lived as a child and an adolescent became almost a melting pot for lower and middle class people who lived and met their day to day demands of life. Every morning in the locality, there would be a haat, where vendors would sit on the open pavements along with the road and sold their goods. Among the vendors were a bhajiwali, a cycle repairman and a cobbler…The cycle repairman and the lady used to come little early in the morning and after proper cleaning and sprinkling of water on their allotted space would set up their small shops. The lady shopkeeper Shanti was very social and humane in her dealings. She could well gauge the financial condition of her customers and accordingly would set her margins. As most of her customer took vegetables on credit, Shanti kept a diary for noting the credits and took help of Anand’s Nani who wrote her diary with pencil attached to it by a small piece of red tag. The cycle keeper Tulsiram had a small lime stone platform near the house. Every morning, he would come there, clean up the area, then put an old white sheet over a thin bed for his sitting and also put a canopy for shade.
Anand spent his childhood in the tender care and love of such people. His maternal uncle was more like a friend to him. He got Anand an old bicycle rim which he used as his sports equipment. Anand would put a small bamboo sick in the groove of rim and drive it fast taking two- three rounds in street and huge mud Chowk to the envy of other boys who only had old cycle tyres to play with. Little later, Anand learnt to ride a bicycle, hiring the small size yellow coloured bicycle from the same shop and for that he was charged one Anna per day. He was the first to learn riding among his friends. That was his childhood privilege and he always remained proud of that.
His Nani had a different approach to things…Though, she never objected his mixing with boys and girls of the locality, she rather encouraged him to play with everyone but whenever he came home, she asked him some questions to make sure Anand was not doing anything wrong. She would make him wash his feet, hands and mouth, say a prayer, then have his meal and only after that he was allowed to go for sleep. During afternoon, he was forced to stay in home because of scorching heat. Anand’s uncle would then fan him and gently put him to sleep.
Summers were really hot here. Temperature would rise up to 45 degree Celsius and the heat would be unbearable otherwise. However, as a feudal lord, Anand’s grandfather led a comfortable life. In the old days, the fan bearers toiled hard throughout ‘their lords’ sleep time’ to keep room temperature low. Back then, electricity was a privilege of rich and royals only. Even domestic water connections came in very late. People by and large, depended on public taps and wells. As for the accommodation, there was only one Barsali, an inner room, which would have no doors, but owing it to its typical architectural design and thick mud walls with roof supported by dried twigs, it would remain cool. It had only one closed window covered from the top by four bamboos for storing winter clothes, blankets and just opposite, a small old fashioned light blue Almirah of soaked wood to keep important papers, medicines and kerosene oil lamp, inkpot and pen, etc was part of the room…the back hardboard of that developed cracks and holes from rats often peeked in the room. The ugly lizards were permanent settlers as they felt at home in this house…
Besides, there was another room on the terrace. It was covered by tin shade and belonged to Anand’s uncle. It was mostly used as a store room to keep extra beds, quilts, pillows and durries, iron box etc. Anand made this room his study. Here, Anand laid his hands on some useful stuff- scattered papers of Vatsayan Kamsutra, kokkoka’s Kokshaatra and Bhartrihari’s Shringar Satak lying wrapped in an old cloth. That was the property of his maternal uncle and was kept secret on an aala. Anand would read the famous classical books on sex and after that put them back in its original position…He remembered to have read these books throughout the year…but then one afternoon he found them missing. The reason might have been his own carelessness as when he was pulling the books out, the inkpot kept behind them fell down and ink and pieces of glass scattered on the open floor creating cracking sound. On hearing that, his uncle came up … He saw Anand and understood the whole story. Though he did not say anything to Anand but after this incident Anand found his ‘treasure’ missing. Though he was benefited by these books on sex, he developed lot of fantasies in his mind about sex and women and he was eager to experience it. But in those times, one could barely get access to such books or any kind of sexual exposure. He never enquired about these books after these were lost into oblivion but always felt the vacuum created in his mind...This area, which housed his lost treasure was part of kitchen cum bathroom and was under the teen-shade which remained hot all through the noon… this entire living space gave shelter to six members and any one else who so ever came as guest also. For the daily toilet they all used a distant outpost at a nominal rent…and although, there wasn’t any regular sweeper appointed and that he would come occasionally, the place was cleaned twice a day by the pigs or street dogs who would come to lick and clean without fail case the half broken back door remained open.
There was a small cement reservoir just at the turning point of the toilet which had no door. but the water filled pot of tin put by the user of the toilet was the indicator of his presence inside toilet Anand also heard an interesting story of his one uncle who would make regular sound of cat when ever he used the toilet to alarm rats who would make the toilet a passage for reaching their holes in the backyard street…the tap had the additional little long wooden accessory attached to tap which was only touched at the time of washing hands. The brass part of the tap was tightened with the wooden stick by wrought iron wire and that would never come in contact with washing hands…. To clean hands, people used clay and no soap. That’s how life was for Anand…In spite of all this he enjoyed his days.
Anand would talk to his friends about girls and women. To fell close to film actresses quench their thirst and to have ‘sexperience,’ cinema was another medium. Anand and his friends would go to the cinema halls almost every day and spend time watching the publicity posters and pictures of movie actors and actresses in the outside hall or at the gates of the Cinema Talkies. His visits to nearby two theatres was almost regular…at least whenever there was a change of a picture in the city he would reach to see the display posters and related film material which would give him the most intimate information about the life of known and unknown actors of his times…Dilip Kumar and Shakeela, Geeta Bali and Devanand, Nargis and RajKapoor, their stories and romance stayed permanently in his mind, he had also collected lot of songs of their famous films. Anand had collected some discarded old reels of films from behind the theatre of which he and his friends would put a show with the help of pin-hole camera….In the movie, Dilip Kumar and Shakeela in their teens shared a romantic scene on the heap of grass…one weed in her half opened mouth and the hero’s eyes looking deeply into her eyes. A rare film of Alam Ara showing Delhi Kutub Minar, Chittor’s Victory Tower, many temples big houses and hills along with river-belt if framed in one and the same frame… a drop of tear sliding on the lower eye-brows of Nergis..’ That was the glamour-era of his life, which he shared with the characters of silver screen…His time of cinema travelled a long distance initially from the day when women of respectable families stayed away from the cinema and even the female characters were played by men. He shared the movie plots with friends after getting reviews from cinema enthusiasts, the ‘first-day first show’ goers. Anand befriended some local goons of the city and it was from them he got all the information about the films, at time if he got lucky, he would even get


5/LOVE BIRDS
During the festival of swings when monsoon clouds moved swiftly, he enjoyed the hennaed palms of his younger partners by clutching the strings of swing with them in his father's house. His sailing through the air when the land intoxicated by its natural scented smell, among fun, frolic and laughter, was his special gift of the season of Shiv- Parvati festival of Teej... He for the first time in his adolescent life enjoyed the pressures of well-developed bosoms of ladies and young girls of his colony and that feeling lived in his mind as permanent memory...
He still remembered the name of many girls and women. Among them Munni was a great trainer who gave him many chance to swing with her across legs, she gave him many exciting jerks and took her very high in the sky by putting full pressure of his body on the wooden paddle of the string. Wearing rounded skirt with many plates, she also used typical pressures of her waistline and private part of her bottom to create special sensation in his body. The string season came in his life every year and during the month of August-September when he was almost free from the burden of studies. The entire earth in rainy season would wear a green carpet during that Hindu month of shravana. He would wait for this time for whole of the year and took initiative and lead in putting string on Neem tree which was just behind his Haveli. To that portion the back small size ‘chor-derwaja would open.That entire area was almost in the ruined state and except huge Menhadi- Henna shrubs and old thrown away kabad, nothing was visible, as most of that part remained in semi-darkness and always bad moistured odour reigned the area.Old broken wooden stools and tables,rotten teather bags filled with rags, magazines, photo-frames and other innumerable articles were scattered here and there.It was also a store house of cakes of cow dung used as fuel when scorpions appeared anywhere.
When Anand met Munni there for first time, she was coming out from that back door after meeting his Aunt and was wearing a vibrant traditional costume of Ghaghara and Lugari (upper mini blouse exposing her shining whitish rounded portion of hip and shank. It was exciting to witness this game that very day from under the tree when she had taken high swings in air alone in good mood... and that too without short breeches. That was really a rare sight which kept him in day dreams and fantasies... He thought of such actions of Munni while going to bed that night, which developed typical stimuli in him.
Rather, Anand took many