MY VILLAGE THEN AND NOW

May 01, 2013 at Dhavat, my native; I and my son Vinayak are walking towards the southern outskirts of the village. Studies have kept both my children busy and away. Sometimes we happen to meet after one year and particularly at this place it is the first time.  

My son Vinayak takes fair amount of interest in places and their history and in particular this place would be more interesting for him as it belongs to his village and his native.

We are standing in front of a landscape, mostly unmanned and deserted. The sun is out of vision but the presence of few silver-lined clouds make the sky scenic. There are few birds noiselessly returning back to their nest.

Down on the ground, time slowly fleeting and darkness stealthily ingressing making visibility weak; we are standing on an elevated backyard of a temple and below us approximately ten meters away is leveled cement concrete ground with a series of taps fitted along a long pipeline. Layers of dust have piled on the ground, rust has significantly corroded the pipe and shrubs have emerged on the concrete work. The stone-made steps to reach this place have eroded.

If we travel back in time around forty four years, I was around fourteen years old and I am the eye witness of the activity that used to happen here, one could see line of women arriving at and quitting this place from early morning till late morning. There is a place for buying vegetables, there is a place for grinding grains and this was the place for washing clothes. Ladies of the whole village would throng this place carrying bucket and cauldron full of clothes to be washed. Rhythmic sound of the bashing of the clothes, running tapes and the sound of the affluent twisting and turning in to the lake below would fill the air.

This activity had many aspects one was of social gathering where, while washing clothes ladies would discuss many things, it would be a summary of the event that happened yesterday, engagement of a boy and a girl, birth or death in a family, attending a marriage, health concern of someone in a family and so on and so forth. It also had the environmental aspect. The affluent would also keep the lake alive together with the trees around it. And green trees are resting places for birds.

I had left this village at an early age of three and since then I have been visiting on need basis and according to availability of time. I am not sure when this activity stopped but now it is a thing of past. Like this activity many activities have become history only to be told by the passing generation to the upcoming generation in the form of stories.