After the wild...

It was difficult not to feel like being in the wild.

But then unlike animals this was a different kind of the wild.

He would transform from polished outfit to the white crumple free dhoti and a pure white shirt.

Yet her dad was one who didn’t seem to fit into that wildness.

He was  not just a handsome dad, he was a great one too.

He had that uncanny knack of handling her difficult head, that uncanny sense of knowing she was either wanting to cry or to smile even when to the rest around her face seemed neutral.

And unlike mother’s south stuck relatives, her father’s land had a special way of its own.

And events were the best to gauge its specialty.

The first event she felt queasy, he tightened his hold over her hand and said, “learn to adapt. Watch it all and let it find its way into your writing.”

She learnt to watch and observed that there was something about the white clad men, not the wild way their pure white dhoti’s twirled around ape hairy legs, not the way they rolled up handcuffs as if they were ready for a drunken street brawl…she couldn’t name it .

There was something about the way food was served at an event. If it be a wedding, feasting was not about pleasure alone , it was about jostling through unruly crowd, getting feet stamped and still managing to get a feast on  a green leaf.

A green leaf that would enrage the one who served it it happened to be placed in the wrong direction. And it was important not to fold it the wrong way, it would mean you wouldn't feast again.

It was a culture of red slogans amid  imported cars, smuggled gold and buried coins.

It was where nods and wishes were secondary to who spooned the green leaf first and who got stamped less.

It was a culture of up-skirt worn dhotis and gulf returned saris.

It was a culture where weddings happened in the wilderness, honeymoon on the plane to Dubai and children who grew up speaking one language and most often thinking in another.

It was a culture where contentment for women grew out of the number of gulf gold bangles and satiety for men grew out of the length of their house roof tops and the brand of the car and the watch.

It was a place that believed in order through controlled chaos.

Across the years nothing had changed much.

Amid the gulf returned husbands the difference was the up -skirt white dhotis had colored borders. And the gulf gold worn wives seemed to have given parental responsibility to the husbands.