Walking our Ant

03 March, 2017

Walking our Ant

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People walk their dog. At our age of around four, my younger brother Surendra was around three; we were barely 19 months apart in age. We lived with our parents in Jagdalpur, Bastar.  During that time in 1936,

Bastar State was blessed with rich flora and fauna due to abundance of rains.

During the rainy season, the presence of red and black Ants crawling around the house floors was a common sight for us. We did not care to use the spray called “Raid” to chase the ants away. Instead we walked one of them as a pet for our childish game to entertain ourselves for a few hours.

For our game “ Walking our Ant “, usually in the AM hours, Surendra and I would choose and trap a single Ant of our choice on the floor of the house. The Ant was trapped between the two palms of our hands held together vertically. The ant was free to move within the open space of our vertically held palms, but not allowed to crawl up our parallel palma. Then we turtled ourselves on the floor to start the game of racing our chosen Ant  through four rooms of the house floor and finally ending up at the starting point in the first spot.  It was the circuit traversing the verandah ( patio ), adjacent dining room, bedroom, living room and then back to the verandah. Between two rooms, there was a traditional one inch tall and two inch wide wooden slat on floor at the door, which is designed for discouraging snakes and Ants from crawling and entering inside the rooms.

The Ant was forced to walk always forward on the floor as directed by the palms but never physically assisted even at the wooden slats at the doors. The game of walking and racing our respective Ant often lasted all morning hours until our Mother was calling us for lunch!

During the above mentioned innocent age range of ours, there was a mid aged maid that worked in our house assisting our Mother in household chores other than cooking. Mother always cooked all the meals for the family. The maid worked from 8AM to 6PM and invariably brought along her 9 year old daughter with her. Her name was Sukalu and she was consistently five years older than me. Being close to our age, Sukalu often participated in our various activities. Besides her there were three siblings from our next door neighbor Mr and Mrs Tiwari. Their three children were Kishan, Madan and Tara who were also close to our ages. During a hide-N-seek game, we would hide even in a hay stack or a patch of Soybean bushy plants in our garden. In today's kid language, Sukalu was our very first girlfriend!

All through these years and until we were 20 year dudes, we had an affectionate Parrot in our household that constantly perched himself out of his cage and chose a royal seat high enough to stay out of our way and a Cat's reach. He came down to us voluntarily only when he was hungry and wanted a bite of hot green pepper, peanut or his other preferences. Our Parrot, addressed as Mithoo, lived with us for almost 20 years, until one day in Amravati in 1949, while daring to frolick on he open lawn where our sister Sarojini was studying close by, a Cat swooped down on him. The swipe of the Cat's paw ended his life instantly. The cat had an unsuccessful attempt. In the evening after returning from the University, we buried him in our garden and dedicated a small brick memorial on the same spot. If Sukalu has withstood the vagaries of time to this day, she is now around 90 years young on planet Earth.

The aroma of the above sweet memories is fresh like the Raindrops in my mind even today in 2017! I may not have the Extra Terrestrial (ET) memory, but I do seem to have an Excessive Memory Retention ( EMR) which tends to be simultaneously a blessing as well as a curse; like the opposite sides of a sword.

Life on mother Earth is a many splendored journey.  Like ET of Star Wars, ultimately home comes calling...ET Come Home !

ET Go Home !