Of Drivers & Driven - 10

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charpai

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shahidsaifi/4258866589/

The glowing white tube lights in our Loyland Bus at Muthukur came with their own problems of privacy.

In our villages in the 1950s when there was no 'current' and folks were forced to sleep in the open in their front-yards, privacy was at a premium. 

It followed the rule:

"The less privacy you have, the more you value it and guard it ferociously"

Like any other good thing of life like money, love and water.

I was told by my UP friend from Bulandshahr that in his childhood he was living in a joint family of about 30 men, women and kids. Apparently their ample home was divided into two halves called Janaana and Mardaana...the former for women and the latter for men...kids had a run of both up to a certain age. And they played in the quadrangle that separated the two. 

One can only imagine the strict rules that governed the access cards at night...

All of us at Muthukur slept in the open on our chapais (4-legged excuses for cots). The only criterion for them was their lightness so they can be lugged in and out at will whenever rain threatened us...we didn't mind a few drops in the hot and sultry weather.

The charpais were just 4 rods and 4 legs of juicy wood fresh from the wood...they were sold afresh without any seasoning or curing whatever. So the rectangular frame was subjected to either the pincushion or the barrel distortion we read in optics much later.

Once the frame was bought from the roadside shop after much haggling, it was brought home to be turned into a sleeper. For this we had to buy rolls of juicy fiber made of jute which too tended to ease and elongate, so the resultant shape of the cot was a fight between the frame and the fiber over time. And so the jute was never woven over the entire frame but a foot or a half was left on one side for pulling and tightening by jute ropes...the whole design was a clever ploy over the forces of Raw Nature.

Father was do-it-yourself-and-save-money guy and trained us in the subtle art of weaving the jute fiber over the wooden frame. He would squat on one side and do the needful and pass the roll over to me once under the cot and the next time over it to follow his handiwork and copy it. 

Now, as I said, except in the electronics lab, I was no good at arts and crafts. Indeed in our school we had a special last period once a week for this horrid workshop. As a primer we were given a hand-held spinning spindle called 'tanikhi' with a hook at its end into which we had to insert one end of a rough cotton ball with one hand and spin the damn thing with the other...the idea was that by and by the cotton ball would turn itself into cotton yarn...my foot!

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinItNt77bkWI0Noq6Le1wF3dRgxeMbG8dXEfycdAmrLTbz57Q18PrtfjKvulN22YV6xjs_PdHB8cJXjzSBh3HPzlIiYbqUd3tjQN_aaLa-C_b87uW58K5xRmhHBaGapVo5nEsvsJhUCdiv/s1600/vicFeb18-320_2036.jpg

As soon as one succeeded in this primer, he was promoted first to a regular Gandhi Charkha, and then to a weaving loom of niwar tape...

Needless to say I never graduated to any of these higher rungs...for all those years at school I struggled with my tanikhi, producing warts and blobs of cotton and getting clumps on the head.

So, when Father asked me to pull I tended to push thinking and thinking...and get a banging...there was no way Father could walk back and forth and take charge of both sides and so it was like that story of Uncle Podger and his hammer.

Father only knew the roughest and ugliest pattern of warp and woof. But there were expert weavers going about on the streets of the village calling:

"Diamond Pattern...Diamond Pattern"

announcing that they would weave an arty cot pattern cuter than the nested squares shown in the above pic...but they charged money for their craft and so kids like me who wanted to see the diamond pattern emerge out of nowhere missed out.

My friend N told me about his venture when he was a boy...he was and is an expert in arts and crafts unlike me.

Apparently he pestered his father to call that chap on the road since he wanted to see how a diamond pattern is woven. And his father, in one of his weak moments, called the expert in and haggled. The chap demanded a whole Rupee (16 annas) and father started from 8 annas. The deal got stuck when the chap agreed for 12 annas and father was prepared to give no more than 10 annas. So it was a stalemate like India-Pakistan talks over J & K at Agra. 

And the chap left in a huff and father asked him to go to hell.

And then my friend followed the chappie till the bend in the road and gave him a fabulous 2 annas dug out from his heard-earned pocket money asking him to come over promising to say nothing to anyone here or hereafter...

Kids can be pretty ingenuous when they set their hearts on something they love...

http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/b/baby_cot.asp

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