Jungle Bells

==========================================================================

It is that time of the year when jingle bells jingle all the way.

This reminded me of the bells I had listened to in my impressionable years with a variety of associations.

The earliest bells I heard on a regular basis were from the Puja Room of my mom in the 1940s. Every household in the Brahmin Street of our Village had an alcove reserved for their fondest gods and goddesses; some tiny, some huge, and others just a recess in the wall. They all had an idol or two of their family deities... a hundred variations. But an indispensable bell and a lamp for aarti.

I am no Salvdor Dali to boast that I can recall my days and nights in the womb, but everything that happened from my age of 2 when my first younger sister was born left a hazy imprint on my memory alright. The earliest is of my Father leaving everything he was doing and rush to his bath as soon as the first bell of my mom's Puja rang. By the time the second went off a few minutes later, he was seated on his flat-stool and making a pretense of his Gayatri Jap. The third bell meant that food is coming forth...it has been successfully offered to my mom's God...just in time for the first bell of my Father's School rang a couple of hundred meters away.

The Puja Bell was, is, and remains a tiny affair...Ishani has her own now and participates in her mom's puja, jingling it as best as she can with her tiny hands awkwardly.

One day when I was about 3, there was this solemn and sorrowful tung tung tung of a circular bell and an accompanying terrifying boom boom boom of a huge conch approaching from afar. My mom, like all other moms, rushed into the street and pulled their kids in and bolted their front doors. And were watching through their front windows fearfully. And all us kids peeped. And then there was this cot being carried by four and followed by ten and led by this bell-ringer and the conch-blower. Kids are curious since they know no fear of death as yet...

The best bells were of course of our school. There was this massive yard-long rail hung from the low branch of the neem tree near the HM's Office. And a hammer that was always in the custody of his Peon who had a way with it. He would emerge from the Office with his hammer in his proud hands and have a 'go' at it. First bell was long...it could be heard from all corners of our tiny Village. After a couple of minutes was the Second Bell asking all students to file in front of the Office for the Assembly. The third was to announce to the HM that all was ready for his Speech following the flag-hoisting that was touch and go always. And then just one bell for each 'period'. And after three periods, the short bell for recess...we used to call it 'Interbell'. All boys used to rush out and run to the nearest bush outside the fence. I often wondered how the girls could do without it. And then after a few more periods, the Long Bell asking every kid to rush out and rush home...

By my age of 14, my Father moved as HM to Kovur, a small town that boasted a Railway Station. I was by then in my College elsewhere and was visiting home for vacations. Since I had no friend in the new town, I used to walk down to the Railway Station and spend my time there sitting under the shade of a neem tree on a cement bench. There were only four or five trains that used to halt at that Station; but their arrival was as eventful as that of a Maharaja in his palanquin. Suddenly the Railwayman would emerge and have a go at his gong heralding the arrival of the Madras-Vijayawada Passenger...and eventually its departure...

I guess the romance of the sooty steam engine and its openness will haunt me forever...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQnjHzgnixs

and my Satyajit Ray Gen (1955)...

http://rasch187.videosift.com/video/Satyajit-Ray-Pather-Panchali-Train-Scene-1955




===========================================================================