35. Babu aaye hai - No longer a Memory

We used to play a game along the wild lands of Girmint often. One of them would find us running through the dried rice stumps and onto to the small bridge. A tiny stream, relic from underground exhausts, warmer than usual. It didn’t make a difference to us though the plants around seemed to love it and grew wild all over. How was it even possible.

This strange stream, born out of deep pits below, was it still there. I got up groaning, a two day rest in hostile territory but it felt better now. And it was time to visit the old colliery.

Prahlad looked serious. And silent as we approached the even older house. He looked intently ahead, occasionally turning his gaze sidewards at some old memory and allowing himself a brief smile.

The two Peterson villas with their impressive arches, apparently still stands. Though numerous cows graced the delicately laid red oxide floor, various doubtful occupants had divided the space amongst themselves.

Stunned, he glanced at the garden. Barren, burnt semal trees and cows grazing around. The clearly in shock Prahlad muttered, the Peterson Villas.

The three of us were in shock as well. But I was driving and had to hold steady. I did that by driving in the first gear as Prahlad muttered, ‘Ohh the doctor’s residence’. There was nothing there, not even some random standing walls, the land had been stripped bare, every material made by man finding its way to a recycled life. Yet, strangely, there was no life in the now naked floor of the house, its intricate red-oxide-pointed art depicting horsemen and ancient men exposed to the elements.

Nature had not yet broken this construct by human, yet surely grass would soon sprout through the gaps already visible by their pregnant growth towards the skies. This too shall go.

As we passed the workman quarters, crowded even on the earlier days, Prahlad craned his neck sidewards. We were on the slight turn that would never fail to provide us with joy as we invariably came upon the massive house where Prahlad grew up.

There was a hole. Actually, there were several gaping holes.

And there was no road.

The empty fields in between where the solitary cow was always chewing her cud was no longer there. Neither was the expanse of fields that led up to the ammunition depot on the right. It was a series of deep sinkholes, clearly not a mine. It could have been a pond but was unlike any pond, there was no shimmer of water or a reflection, just brown expanses with grass growing already.

There was a red cloth, strung over two weak bamboos that seemed to be a warning from the authorities to trespassers. Any other driver but me who was all-but-crawling, would have ripped the warning and driven over into one of the pits. I braked and involuntarily heard enough cuss words that I heard in my entire childhood, atleast till I was 16.

We stepped out and stared into the scars. We were speechless. The depressions were unreal and seemed to create a catatonic landscape, almost beautiful, as if nature worked on a new design recently. Yet, it was not nature’s work. It seemed other-worldly, as if aliens had landed on this remote corner and dig up the land for some valuable piece of real estate.

Prahlad let out a cry, somewhere between a whoop of joy and an uncontrollable urge to visit the loo, and shouted yes to no one in particular. For Robert and Joshi, clearly the trip was turning out to be anywhere near boring. They were hooked to it now. They were a part of the game too.

We stood stunned, in disbelief and apparently being enclosed by a fear of the unknown at this very moment. This was not a part of the deal, shouted Robert and Joshi in unison, Joshi’s tenor slightly shifting the tonal frequency of the sentence into a desi twist. I laughed first and then Prahlad too. And as we were laughing hysterically in the middle of nowhere next to a never-ending pits, an ancient man walked up to us and falling at Prahlad’s feet lamented, Babu aaye hai.