Filling Up, by Yashoda Singh
Twelve hands of one family with hammers, small and big, break into smaller pieces bricks that have been used before, to fill a broad, leveled piece of land. They are laying the foundation of their home, on which the walls that will then gather palimpsests of time of generations of their family, will be built. Each time this image appears in the mind, there will be another beginning, a fresh energy and people will quicken again their slackening pace. It seems people in Ghevra have resolved to challenge the limits of their capacities.
The rains have saturated the ground and made it swampy. It teases those who enter it, gripping them, making them lose their grip, and its test of their endurance does not end till someone slips at least once or twice trying to walk on it. People respond, “When Indra, the god of rains, couldn't frighten us there, where we had made our homes and lived with all that we had gathered, then what do we have to fear the streams that are forming on this land that lies empty.”
In the measured squares of plots that have been allotted to them and marked with rope and pieces of wood, people stand in water that comes up to their knees, laying foundations of their homes, raising and planting huge bamboo poles to the sound of “haiiiiyaaaa!” A sound that relieves some of their effort and helps many to co-ordinate their exertions.
They have begun the process of refurnishing their desires, the outlines of which have formed again after being scattered a few months before. Begun the process to satiate those dreams that had been woven with the tugs and pulls of the strengths and energies of the neighbourhood that had been made after years of living together. Glances cast at each other have encouragement for the other. There is a will to seem, to look, to appear better than where they have come from. The making of Ghevra is not a question of making ones 18 or 12.5 square feet. It is the filling up of an entire space.
When hands that break bricks to fill their plot stumble upon one which has an inscription of the number of the old house, eyes well up with tears. But the determined heart coaxes, and a smile appears on lips and hands gather strength to tide over this difficult time.
It seems I am on the set of a film being produced. Everything changes every moment. Everyone is involved in this change, amidst the tick-tock of their different times.
But when words from someone's heart reach yours like hot wax, melting to create their own shape inside you, it feels like everything is becoming blank. After all, walls of desires, on which forms of gods and goddesses will be made during festivals and on which little kids will learn to write and tell the world their name, are not made overnight. Such walls don't collapse when walls of brick and mortar and felled. Today they can be seen beginning to form in Ghevra.
In the measured squares of plots that have been allotted to them and marked with rope and pieces of wood, people stand in water that comes up to their knees, laying foundations of their homes, raising and planting huge bamboo poles to the sound of “haiiiiyaaaa!” A sound that relieves some of their effort and helps many to co-ordinate their exertions.
They have begun the process of refurnishing their desires, the outlines of which have formed again after being scattered a few months before. Begun the process to satiate those dreams that had been woven with the tugs and pulls of the strengths and energies of the neighbourhood that had been made after years of living together. Glances cast at each other have encouragement for the other. There is a will to seem, to look, to appear better than where they have come from. The making of Ghevra is not a question of making ones 18 or 12.5 square feet. It is the filling up of an entire space.
When hands that break bricks to fill their plot stumble upon one which has an inscription of the number of the old house, eyes well up with tears. But the determined heart coaxes, and a smile appears on lips and hands gather strength to tide over this difficult time.
It seems I am on the set of a film being produced. Everything changes every moment. Everyone is involved in this change, amidst the tick-tock of their different times.
But when words from someone's heart reach yours like hot wax, melting to create their own shape inside you, it feels like everything is becoming blank. After all, walls of desires, on which forms of gods and goddesses will be made during festivals and on which little kids will learn to write and tell the world their name, are not made overnight. Such walls don't collapse when walls of brick and mortar and felled. Today they can be seen beginning to form in Ghevra.
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