Memorable days of childhood

It was a sky blue day in April. The glittering sunshine was at its brightest and exhibited extreme brilliance. This kept people indoors and hindered them from going out of their homes. In spite of this Joon decided to go to the market to buy some provisions. She put on her goggles and took her moneybag and a lethargic walk towards the market which was quiet far. After a quarter of an hour her nose and upper lip was covered with salty perspiration. She wiped it with a thick, small, grassy-green white striped hand towel which she always carried in her moneybag. Unable to take a step further, she decides to rest a while under a shady tree, while she does this, she has a glimpse of the surrounding vegetation and a bushy flowering weed catches her eye, as though it had some magical powers it cast some sort of a spell on her and she was carried back into those unforgettable, most memorable days of childhood. The memories that can never be expurgated from one’s mind.

As a child of seven or eight years, she left the home quietly in the mid-day on every Sundays and joined her friends, who waited at a distant place called jungle, meaning a forest. Truly speaking it wasn’t a forest filled with dangerous wild animals rather a huge plot of land left unattended for ages, had turned immoderately green, with wild creepers and vines snaking up the huge trees and near by bushes and electric poles. This outgrown wild resembled a forest for children and was full of whispers and scurry of small insects having a fanfare. The hum of several bumble bees,croaking of frogs, chirps of birds, grasshoppers and juvenile small lives busy with their days work. The plenitude of wild, colourfully attractive flowering trees and plants drew the attention of brilliantly coloured, beastly, beautiful butterflies as well as these little children, who eagerly wait for the Sundays to come.

Joon with her few friends, Baby, Rajan, Geeta and Maalu surveyed this jungle in search of beautiful butterflies. Baby and Rajan were siblings and so were Geeta and Maalu.Baby and Geeta were several years older than Joon, Maalu and Rajan were of her age. Baby’s real name was Nirmala, everyone called her Baby in spite of being grown up and hugely bulky.

The first thing all the five of them did was to uproot the congress plant( parthenium). Parthenium is a weed, with several bunches of white buds. (This is known to cause asthama and allergy.) Each of us had two to three congress plant and gathered them like a broomstick and set out in the wild to hunt beautiful beasts. Beasts because they captured and captivated these young minds, whenever they looked through the window into the fields, the way they flitter and fly, with their wings as though the nature painted them precisely with a brush and lots of patience. We didn’t know the names of the butterflies, but we had christened them with our own logic. The large one’s with black back ground and pale green dots were called raja and the peach color one’s with black and white dots were called rani and if they were small they were called prince and princess. The which resembled a peacock’s feather was called a ‘maa-yeel’ meaning peacock.

The beautiful beast caught in the mesh of the broom, trying to flitter and flatter, to fly for its life, struggles, the struggle is not as violent as the bees or house flies, since it has large wings the escape is unlikely to occur. Very carefully the butterfly is pulled out of the mesh and put in a plastic container. Rajan was asked to make a pit, nearly 6 to 8 inches in depth and ½ a feet wide and he covered the pit with a polythene sheet and placed the red bricks on three sides and he left the one side open so that we could let the butterflies into the pit. This pit was to be their home for ever. Joon and Maalu went in search of flowers with plenty of nectar, especially the one which took joon to her childhood days. The pit was filled with beautiful flowers and beautiful butterflies.

In this way several of them had to complete their life span and end their life cycle at this very stage. Next day when we came to see them and feed them, we found none of them there. I still wonder where they went and their disappearance is still a mystery for me.

Occasionally when we caught hold of dragonflies, we tied a thread to its tail and allowed it to fly, it really resembled a miniature helicopter for us and we preferred calling it so, only when I started taking interest in science I learned its name as dragonfly. May be the helicopters were designed after looking at them.

A crowded city bus passes by and the horn startles Joon and she is back from her childhood into her adulthood. She sighs! And laughs at herself and thinks.

What crazy and funny things she has done as a child? She looks at some butterflies which flit and fly by her.