Sunday afternoon perambulation Khanyana
I stepped out up above the stream on the green grass
that grows on top of the steep river bank between
shepherded goats and a tethered cow, the afternoon
sun following the rain, the water running dark from
up in the Himalayas as sweat ran into my eyes. The old
man let me into his low laid dry stone walled mill. In the
roaring dark driven by the diverted river, the stone mill
ground out the flour, the inside stone walls and steps and
wall like dusted scones and ghostly from the white powder.
He indicated the waiting grain, the bags of produce now
soft and dumpy, awaiting delivery on spindly unlikely
thin legs, it was pride in his task and handiwork. Up river
from the School for Refugees the small mill worked each
afternoon, rattling clear above the whooshing river in the
deep gorge, ancient tasks to meet the deep hunger of the
body and the soul. I stepped out for a coffee where Dilip,
[Lt Col. Retd] would make me a brew with his electric grinder
in the new coffee house. The sweat dribbled down the valley
of my back as I made my ascent from the old to the new,
picking my way through the stones of the road and from
one era to the next. The dry stone wall up near the bridge
displayed the ancient skills as the stones were brought up
from the river bed and each placed delicately put in its place
and time by the patient crouched stonemasons, whilst their
families sat and watched, the women picking their own goat
path up from the river bearing their contribution to the
growing wall. The chosen men pick and split and lay flat the stones
all interlocked like the families. I sat and had a hesitant
conversation with Dilip out on the terrace, the army man
with the carefully pressed decorum as I dipped biscotti
brought in from Delhi and became part of the changes.
AP
As a bat makes parabolas in the dusk, arcs
and loops the mind cannot harness, but
simply wonder at, so too the meanderings of
this man's mind. Sometimes his brush will
touch the surface, and maybe again, and then
some patterns will be caught in tones and
shapes for marvelling. Sometimes a confused
bird will hit the window and leave a brief wing
pattern on the glass, a rare image from nature,
one that cannot be replicated easily. So too his
canvasses, rare that they are, become images of
nature with an ironic twist of form or
colouration from the master — for he is no
journeyman, this spreader