TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR

TWINKLE  TWINKLE  LITTLE  STAR !

Once upon a time our planet was far less polluted. The colour of the sky in my town was real sky blue.As I walked down a deserted dark street on a moonless night, I  could see the glistening ribbon of the road ahead in the faint glow of starlight! And as I walked  I had a great number of glow worms (I called them JUGNOO) keeping me company, moving along as the modern jet aeroplanes do now - intermittently emitting light ! That was an experience so totally denied by pollution nowadays.

Nobody then knew what  smog was except, may be, in a few big industrial cities in the west. In those days, on a cloudless moonless night, the clear black sky was densely studded with  countless twinkling stars against a pitch dark background. It was just like in the popular nursery rhyme.

In the summer months we used to sleep in the open at night. It was much cooler outside. Only the people who have slept under the stars can know what a blissful summer time experience it is! Through the night the breeze brings different pleasant smell as it keeps changing direction. And there is that almost imperceptible feeling that dew is cooling your bed sheets. You can sense the changes in the face of nature through the night. And you wake up to the call of the first cock as he crows to announce the arrival of the wee hours of a new dawn!

The towns, then, were not  crowded as today and most  houses had a good deal of open spaces around them. Most houses had a CHABUTARA in the open in the courtyard. It was a raised circular or rectangular platform of brick and cement, some two feet above the ground. It was usually large enough to accommodate a few cots for sleeping under the stars!

We had a fine Chabutara in our house too and we always sprinkled a few buckets of water on the chabutara which further cooled it. A table fan made it even more enjoyable to lie there.

When I go back on a journey into the past I find myself lying flat on my back in a cot in the 'Chabutara' in the summer months and gazing at the sky, at the countless twinkling stars. Above me in the sky a white band of starsdust stretched from the north to the south (see photo). We called this Akash Ganga (Milky Way). It is a nebulous white haze and is said to contain upto four billion stars including our own Sun within its fold. I wonder how many of today's kids have time or inclination to  gaze at the milky way or the constellations !

As I lay there I found most of the stars moving stealthily westward all through the night. But the polaris or North Star in the north (we called it DHRUVA) remained rock steady at one place throughout the night and the Great Bears (sapta rishi for us) revolved slowly around it.There is a mythological story connected with Dhruva star (north star). Let me recount it to you.

It is said that the child prince Dhruva, son of king Uttaanpaad was a great worshiper of lord Vishnu. As the story goes, the six year old Dhruva began intense meditation on lord VISHNU and the lord one day suddenly appeared before him in all splendour (see the famous painting by Raja Ravi Verma) and asked him to have his wish fulfilled. Dhruva would ask for nothing worldly. The lord then decreed that Dhruva would live a long and happy life. He further decreed that after his death Dhruva would become a  celestial body which would not  be touched even by the final cataclysm . And that celestial body, according to the hindu mythology, is the star Dhruva in the north (the north star).

To continue with the star gazing, in the sky in the south west there was that bright constellation called Orien Hunters and my father, who had a great interest in astronomy, would explain to me that the three bright equidistant shining stars in the middle of the constellation, were the Orien Hunter's belt. And cutting aross this belt at an angle, I could see a set of faint stars in a straight line making the hunter's dagger! And right above me, far far into the heavens, was a hazy small constellation known as The Kite.

Some of the twelve sun signs of the zodiac were there too and moved steadily through the night, amongst them the shining Saggitarius  peeping through the haze of the milky way. 

As time rolled on, the population and pollution in the towns steadily increased. Houses with big open compounds (with 'Chabutara') gave way to compact housing colonies, with houses close to each other. And the custom of sleeping in the open under the stars became obsolete for want of sufficient open spaces to cool the air.  The Chabutara also consequently disappeared. Otherwise too, with a constant blanket of haze over the towns, twinkling stars have become a thing of fairy tales only and there is nothing out there in the sky to see on a dark moonless night except a few very bright stars.

The time when TWINKLE  TWINKLE  LITTLE  STAR will lose its meaning altogether is fast closing on us!!
    
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THE OLD MAN AND HIS RIDDLES

THE OLD MAN AND HIS RIDDLES

A dozen children, some of them my school friends, were squatting in our lawn that summer evening facing the gentleman I will call ADP. He was sitting  in a comfortable  cane-chair puffing his cigar. He was visiting us from another town.

ADP was master of riddles and children loved him for that ! We looked forward to his visits.

He cleared his throat and began a new riddle . . .

"  . . . Jack used to keep all his socks, twenty black singles and twenty maroon singles - in all forty - in a small cardboard box near the shoe rack. . ."  ADP began. He looked at the kids. They were all very attentive.

" . . That night Jack was leaving for a party at his big boss's house. He was already late and the boss had phoned him. He picked up his shoes and as he was hurriedly opening the box of socks to pick up two socks of the same colour, total power failure occured. Darkness came."

ADP paused for effects, enjoying his cigar. The kids had inched closure in exitement, eyes wide open.

" . . . Jack needed two socks of the same colour urgently. He would put them on later when he reached the boss's house. Now the question is this : Jack cannot see the colour of the socks in total darkness. What is the minimum number of single socks that he  should pick up and rush to his car, along with his shoes? He has no time".

He did not have to wait. Answers came quickly

" He should carry the whole box" said Jaswant. He seemed to have missed the important requirement in the riddle - the MINIMUM.

" No ! ten will be the minimum " said Asha. She was a sweet seven year old neighbour.

And many more kids answered. . .  But they did not have the correct answer, none of them.

" Okay, I will tell you the answer in a while. But, first, here is another. . . . "

ADP was much older than my father. He was tall, with sharp features, sharp mind and a affable temperament. He had a booming voice which even Katwaroo, our cook, could hear in the far off kitchen.

Every visit of his made me richer by a few riddles or playing-card tricks. I still remember the trick of setting playing-cards for a magic card-game  which he had taught me in my childhood. It was done through  a secret rhymed phrase! Here it is :

"Eight kings threatened to save nine fair ladies for one sick knave". It helped me to set cards in this
order:   -8-K-3-10-2-7-9 -5 -Q-4- A-6-J .

"CHASED" was the memory code in which this arrangement was to be set by alternating Club Heart Spade and Diamond (Club Heart >A> Spade >E> Diamond = chased)!

For a long time through my childhood I baffled kids and adults alike by setting cards thus and, as they stole a card from the deck I would in a trice tell what card it was!

ADP had an infectious laughter and he would laugh and make us laugh after tricking us kids with riddles such as this :

"An electric train is running at 60 miles per hour  from Bombay (now Mumbai) heading south east toward Poona (now Pune). A wind is blowing from east to west at 30 mph. In what  direction will the smoke from the train's engine go?"

Why did ADP prefer the company of kids? Was he yearning to revisit his own childhood- a period of innocence, of hope and curiosity sans Cynicism? A child's life is so uncomplicated! And Children get pleasures out of small things of life!

Whatever may be the reason, the old gentleman enlivened the days of my own childhood, making them memorable even now - through the mist of the intevening decades !!

DOWN THE MEMORY LANE

The man who came to our house with the black two-piece candlestick telephone (see photo) rang up my father after installing it. Father was in in his office  and this guy told him that the phone was now installed.

In those days very few homes in the town had a telephone. This was our first phone.

I had noted that "Sahib salam" were his first  words spoken into the circular phone mouthpiece to my father.And then,before disconnecting  he said "please talk to your son now" and shoved the candlestick contraption close on my face and the receiver on my ear, asking me to speak to my father.

I was then a five year old boy and this unexpected  act of his made me very nervous.

I heard my father's voice in the ear-phone.  "Hello son. Are you there ? speak up." he had said.

"Sahib salaam", I said abruptly as I did not know what else to say and then, overawed, I ran out of the room !

Yes those were my first words on a phone. I heard my father laugh loudly in the earphone when I said this!

There used to be manually operated telephone exchanges in those days. Automatic dialling came later. " Number please ", a voice would say whenever I lifted the ear-phone off the hook and I would, in panic, replace the earphone hurriedly back on the hook.

After a few days of hesitation I learnt what to say. My school friend's number was 27 so I was told to just say "two . . seven" into the candlestick's mouthpiece. I did this and the next thing I heard was the voice of my school friend in the receiver. That was sheer magic! (Thank you Alexander Graham Bell).

We kids used to have our own tin-can telephones. It comprised of two (cigarette) tin-cans connected to each other by a very long  thin cord. One of us spoke into a can and the other kid, standing far away received the message by keeping the cord stretched and placing the other can  to the ear. But the real phone was some different. It enabled me to talk with ease and clarity to my friend who lived so far away!

Soon this "number please" guy got familiar with me  and sometimes found time to chat. I fondly called him Verma uncle.

Like any child  I kept asking too many questions about the working of the telephone and the whereabouts of this faceless "number please" chap so my parents ultimately decided to take me to the telephone  exchange.

As I entered the  heart of the telephone exchange building the first thing that caught my attention was the huge plug-board panel with innumerable plug-in cords and the blinking lights. And then I saw someone shifting plug-in cords and uttering "number please". This chap in his thirties turned out to be "uncle Verma" and was absolutely delighted to meet me. While talking to me he kept an eye on the plug-in  board. A tiny bulb would suddenly light up and he , after his patent "number please" act, would plug-in some cords to connect the two numbers and resume talking to me !

That was a long time back, in my childhood, and is now a mere memory snapshot. As time rolled on our phone instrument kept changing. First replacement was a black phone with the transmitter and receiver built into a single hand-set unit which was connected to the cradle-base unit by a wire and rested on top of it when not in use. Then came the rotary dialling phones (and the automatic exchanges). Later we got a beautiful olive coloured push- button phone with buttons bearing number zero to nine and much more (in place of the rotary dial).

And then finally came the wonder of wonders - the mobile wireless phones.

The rest, as they say , is history !!