A HIKE BY THE RIVER

A river is a beautiful thing. As it flows from the mountains into the plains, it leaves behind the soft sand that it scraped with its many feet, onto the feet of the people who come to it for water. The sand is carried on by the many legs of these people, giving rise to cities, cultures and civilizations.

Moskva River

It’s a little surreal when you think about the fact that all that we see around us was once nothing more than what was carried by muddy legs after a bath in the river.

So, this Sunday (which is perhaps the last calm weekend we’ll have before the BRICS storm hits us!) I decided to dip my legs into the river that gave birth to the city that I live in. The Moscow river (called Moskva in Russian), yes, the city gets its name from it. Our hike group took the train to Mozhaysk, a city located upstream of Moscow and got down at the Polushkino station.

Hike group

From there, we entered a coniferous forest (most railway lines out of Moscow run through the forests that surround the city, so several stations are actually platforms that rise out of the muddy terrain). The hike was supposed to be 21km and was planned to last a little under 5 hours.

The forests around Moscow are quite interesting. I had noticed this on earlier hikes too. It’s not like there’s this stretch of land awash with green that looks like overgrown broccoli (or brown and white if flew over in the winter) with no signs of civilization.

The canopy above...the cover below...

No, these forests are more like clusters of trees inundated by fields with grass up to the knees. Nothing else, just grass. I mean back home, if you spotted an empty plot of land in the morning and came back with your cricket bat, stumps and the like, you would be sure to run into a board that says, “Udayam Nagar welcomes you. Riverside residences, 20 minutes from the city” Yeah, 20 minutes if you hopped onto a jet that was already at cruising speed. And here, land, rolling out till it rolled away because of the curvature of the earth. At this point, I was bubbling with property development plans. But my hike mates told me that these are actually fields of fertile land that was under cultivation not too long ago, and will soon be, as part of the regular cycle.

We continued walking into the forest, moving wild branches and hopping over fallen trees. One of the others pointed to the fallen trees and told me about the problem they were facing. A few species of

Bugged!

invasive worms were corroding the branches of the trees and killing them. Even despite the winter, he had never seen so many trees fallen. The forest canopy was less crowded than it should be, and the sun hit us quite hard.

After an hour or so, we came to a bridge. It was a footbridge, one of those that swayed like Donald Trump’s hair against a tornado. So, we had the first half of the group walk on it, while we waited, ready to jump into the water if anyone fell. But once, I got on the bridge, I realized that it was like one of those amusement park rides. While you were on the bridge, you didn’t feel it

Bridging the banks...

that much. So, I stopped for a picture at a place where none of the planks were missing. This was my first sight of the Moscow river outside the city. It was a completely different color, in fact, a completely different river.

It flowed gently and was quite shallow where the bridge was. The water was so clear that even from the bridge we could see water-plants with their heads bent in the direction of the city, almost as if trying to catch a glimpse of the Kremlin. The southern bank rose slightly, but the northern bank was relatively flat.

Weeds...Under a glass floor?!

We crossed over to the northern bank and continued to walk along the course of the river until the temptation was too much and we dropped our backpacks and jumped into the cool waters. 

Dip! Dip! Dip!!

After the hike leader signaled twice that it was time to leave and switched to stronger signals such as hoisting his backpack and walking away fast, we ran out of the river to join him.

We moved back into the forest and I ran into this charming fellow who would probably not be so charming if I got any closer. “It’s not as long as the snakes in India, but is quite poisonous” I was told. So a distant shot with zoom was to be the legacy of our meeting.

Hii there..from a distance!!

All along the river, less than two hundred meters from the water, the Dachas(the Russian word for a country-house) were ubiquitous. It must be quite something to live that close to the river, at least during the summer weekends. 

Wake up to the sound of the water smiling at the sun and produce some Vitamin D through that skin. And as the sun warms up,

“Mama, I am hungry. When do we have lunch?”
“Just a minute, darling. Papa is hopeful he’ll catch a fish anytime soon. Let’s get the grill heated, shall we?”

and that's a wrap...

   After a short break for lunch and another dip in the river, we realized that it was almost time for the last train back to Moscow. Twenty minutes and two and a half kilometers. Some of us decided to jog so they could be home for dinner. The others tightened their backpack straps and walked faster. We entered the charming town of Tuchkovo with ten minutes to go for the train. 

so long...till the next one

Tuchkovo is a slightly distant suburb of Moscow and has quite a history of its own. Named after three brothers who fought for the country, it is slightly more than a set of restaurants and grocery shops and a railway station, perhaps a Russian version of Malgudi. I had one eye on the clock and one to look around the town. We reached the station with five minutes to spare. The crowded train that entered reminded us of the drudgery of the week that lay ahead. The next hike will have to wait. 

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On Senses and Nostalgia

It’s the 11th of May. It’s a cloudy Monday afternoon, the last day of the Victory Day weekend in Russia. Yesterday, I watched individuals and entire families march on the Tverskaya Ulitsa holding placards with the pictures of the ones they lost in the Second World War. It was a sight to behold, more majestic and stirring than even the sight of an Armata T-14 rolling down the wide road. The march went on for several hours, without the slightest sign of commotion or chaos. But that too is over, as is the weekend. Tomorrow, everyone will be back to their daily grind, cursing the traffic and smiling at their bosses.

To me, today has been a relatively less hectic day, with the President of India having departed this morning. After a week, I’m at home in the afternoon, with utter disregard to the clock. I do what I always do when the clock is irrelevant. I look at my singular source of envy, the moving clouds. Moving around, without a care or ambition to worry about, or a target to follow, simply letting the wind take them everywhere, and if things got too serious, just pour it all down and be free again. It looks like it would rain soon.

I’m reminded of December Sundays at home. Tamil Nadu gets its share of rainfall when the rest of India has replaced its raincoats with sweaters. Even then, the rain cloud is a powerful middleman. Conscious of its power, it dangles the tantalising promise of rain and yet, threatening to take it away if the wind blew too strong. It takes a different level of Nirvana to console yourself that if it isn’t you, someone else would get the rain. But until you attain that, you satisfy yourself with the cosy warmth of impending rain announced by air pockets of petrichor, reaching your nostrils.

We often talk about the five senses, as if they were five separate entities, working independently of one another. But a recollection from our memory isn’t stored that way, is it? When the smell of petrichor reaches my nostrils, I’m reminded not only of rains at home, but also of the staccato sounds of my father’s hammer as he sent the last nail into the stool or writing table that he was making, or the glare of sunlight reflected off the freshly painted stool, the wavy vapours of paint that acquire almost a corporeal shape to penetrate your nostrils, bringing with them, the smell of cut onions, potatoes and chilli, dipped in Bajji Maavu. But before the vapors tingle the olfactory nerves and take the information of impending rain and Bajji (the latter has more certainty) to your brain, the ears are busy gathering the particle noises of spitter-spatter, of oil being heated.

All this intertwined with the anxious wait for the Sunday evening movie on DD-5, the Tamil telecast of Doordarshan. The antenna and the old Crown TV agreed among themselves to arrange channels according to the name of the stations. So DD-5 was set on number 5 on a TV that could show a sum total of twelve channels. Not that there were that many out there either. This was before Sun TV and the Satellite TV age. Anyway, we thanked DD-5 for the only movie of the week back then, unless you went to theatres, which not many of us did. In fact, I lived a hundred meters from a theatre and restricted myself to enjoying several Oli Chithirams or Audio-only movies from the comfort of the moonlit terrace.

DD-5 had a peculiar choice of movies. Rarely would there be a movie that got released after I was born. You can’t telecast a movie within five years of its release, I was told, though I’m yet to verify the administrative position on that.

It was always movies that were released when my father was in his teens. So, most of the movies I watched back then, be it Thiruvarutchelvar, Thirumal Perumai or Manaalane Mangaiyin Baaiyam, it was always on DD-5. When the AVM logo appeared in the distance and the camera slowly closed in until all you could see were the letters “AVM” and the word “Productions”, or when the semi-clad Gemini twins came in trumpeting, the sputtering oil on the kitchen stove would receive its first stock of onions dipped in batter.

By the time the credits came, to show the Music Director and Lyricists, the first plate would find its way to me. I often blame my inability to recall the name of Music Directors, on an inherent urge to pick the least hot Bajji and taste it. By the time my tongue began to water, half out of taste and half to suppress the heat, the movie would have started with a flute playing in the distance.

The Bajjis would become the moving commodity on the conveyor belt that connected the plate to my mouth. Before onion was over and potatoes started to fry in the oil, the Gods would have tormented Sivaji or Gemini Ganesan would have acquired a new curse for an unintentional misdemeanour. So, the smell of frying potatoes is often connected in my head with a lament of a song in TMS’ voice. A bored look out of the window would show raindrops falling from the toothed edges of the Hibiscus leaves, almost as if the leaves themselves were shedding tears at the current anguish of the protagonist.

The semi darkness of the house, accompanied by the fear over a possible power cut if the rain was heavy, often pushed me to cheer Sivaji and Gemini, to quickly find solutions to their problems, so that if the power went off, or if DD-5 decided to entertain us with its “Thadangalukku Varundhugirom”(We regret this interruption)slides, we’d at least be assured that the protagonist was alive and well.

But then, when these unintended interruptions happened, they were well synchronised with the gaps between two plates of Bajji. Until recent re-watchings, thanks to YouTube, I had never really known how most of these movies ended, though the trend in those days was to always end the movie on a happy note. But how can you be sure unless you watched? Either a power cut, or the drenched matchsticks of the antenna catching a cold would play truant, or I’d have dozed off after the Bajji.

When mother eventually woke me up for dinner, I’d be too sleepy to ask her how the story ended. And the next day was Monday, with school looming ahead too ominously to worry about the movie that got over one way or the other. Eventually, I would forget about the movie. Or so I thought. Apparently not.

A cloudy afternoon at the end of the weekend in Moscow, conjures not just the smell of petrichor, but also of rainwater dripping from Hibiscus leaves, the aroma of fried Bajis, the songs of TMS And the stories they told, the pain of the nail heads as Father’s hammer struck them into yielding wood, and even the anxiety associated with periodically looking up at the ceiling to see if the fan was slowing down due to “Voltage drops”.

Like the slimy trail of a snail, life leaves an imprint as it drags on. The snail does not look back or use the trail to return home for the night. But when we look back at the imprint we left behind, the memories are no longer a dull beige trail. They are a bright rainbow, each colour a memory acquired by a different sense, portraying a deceptive illusion of being distinct. The smell is separate from the sound, and the sound from the sight, and the sight from the sizzling taste on the tongue.

Yet, when you look closer, the lines blur, the borders fade, the colours merge with one another, forming one whole memory, that would be incomplete without any of them. As the rainbow of recollection passes through the prism of nostalgia, its blurring lines blend into yellow-white sunlight. Sunlight that falls on you like a dried dhoti that was carried off by the wind and abandoned to the earth. The lingering scent of the detergent it was washed with is oddly comforting. The arms and legs move inwards to the comfort of its warmth.

The blanket of nostalgia is, to us, a mirror to the moments when the limelight was on us. Rarely do we remember moments from our past when we were not the heroes or absolute horrors on the scene. We continue to live in the reflected recollection of this mirror, so we may not be lost to the darkness of the present that surrounds us. A light that penetrates the darkness, a light away from the unspeaking walls and the flameless stove, a light that takes us back to hammer sounds, hibiscus leaves, DD-5 movies and Bajji-filled evenings.