Have you ever heard of the pathway between the rubber trees that lead to a little round pond in Vattakaanam? You pass by trees, mostly rubber, the gooey white stuff trickling down spirally through their barks. The air there is very mossy and moist. As you walk through the little path, pitched with stones and brown earth, greens tufts of
grass and little slippery frogs hopping around, you tend to forget your language. When you stand there in that 100 metre long space having a width of a mere 2 metres you feel a devilish joy that you cannot get in any city on this planet. The joy that makes you want to cry because right there you feel you do not need your cell phone, that you've died and gone to your private mansion, and all the connection with people and buildings and cement and motor ways and machines is lost for ever. You should also remove your shoes. Throw them away. If you are a woman or a man with long hair, let it loose. While you stand there, it will grow longer and longer. Try wearing some kind of a loose clothing while you walk through. The breeze has a way of penetrating your skin through the cotton sheets. All you have to do while you walk is breathe in and breathe out. The rest will be taken care of.
This is the place when I was a little kid and I was rambling along with some cousins of mine that I got lost. I was afraid for my life there then for I knew wild snakes roamed around looking for little girls for supper. So I was scared. I cried but I couldn't scream because of fear that something bad would happen to me if I declared it.
So I walked as slowly and carefully as my ten year old body could carry me. And that is when I met her.
She was most beautiful She had brown skin with a big black circular mark on her cheek. Her jet black hair, shining from oil glossed over was cascading down sticking against her back. She was voluptuous. She had breasts I hoped to achieve one day. She was dressed in a strange white and red cotton sari like outfit. Her calves were showing exposing thick legs covered with thick black hair. But her arms were bare. Free of hair.
She was moving slowly. I could see her from a distance she was walking towards me. Suddenly she stopped and smiled at me. Her eyes just like those of a doe looked deep into me, narrowed a bit and her lips curled into a smile. She looked at me as though she finally found me. She walked closer to me. I just stood there. In awe of her beauty and her smile and her eyes. She stretched out her hand towards me. I kept mine in hers. She then turned around and walked leading me with her soft hands. I was still looking at her and smiled when she would turn around and smile at me.
I was in her world now. My heart beating faster. There was then the sound of water. Do you know the sound that still water makes? It's a strange sound. But it lets you know its presence. That's when the air becomes less moist for some illogical reason as though its paying it respect to the water body.
I heard the cooing of birds. I heard the laughter of children. the sunshine blinded me. She had brought me to a clearing where there was a round pond. A little wooden house stood at the far east corner of it. My cousins were playing right across.
They couldn't see me. I looked up at her. She knelt down in front of me, took both my hands and looked into my eyes. The smile that she often threw at me that day returned. The smile went into her eyes.
I realized that the noise of the children was getting more distant, into whispers. I looked around to see my cousins moving further away. The fear in me returned. What if I got lost again? I shook away my hands from hers and ran towards my sisters and brothers shouting out my presence. They stopped and turned around and nodded. I was about to run towards them again but then I turned my head back to tell her that I needed to go now.
I only saw her back walking away from me.Moving away gracefully though fast. My cousins were walking away too. I stood there for a while. The fear in me suddenly left me. I went to the little pond and sat down by its banks.
Today the property that houses a lovely old house built in stages with its wooden decks, the acres of rubber thotam, the gurgling brooks, the screaming bootleggers, the wild snakes that take shelter under your couch are all still there, uncared for, waiting for someone. The bed of roses too where my mother, my great grandmother and my grandparents have been buried awaits......
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