Post by Thoithoi O'Cottage on Jul 5, 2015 8:49:02 GMT 5.5
I lived most of my childhood and short and intermittent periods of my boyhood and early adulthood on a lake farm on the outskirt of Wangoo, a village 36 mins from Kakching. Some weird routine of the Ithai Barrage turned that part of the village into a lake every rainy season and winter while it remained a damp wasteland at other times of the year. Whatever we planted at other times were killed in the rainy and winter seasons when the lake returned.
If my love for nature is not inborn, I acquired it there. The farm had just my parents and my brother and sister. We had cattle and a lovely and very intelligent dog, Kalu. There were no other human companions. Visitors seldom came there. We, the three children, played together some strange games we made up there. My brother was not with us for long stints, though--he attended a school at Kakching. My sister and remained at the farm--our schooling started quite late.
When the lake returned and our farm hut and its small yard had turned into a small island, we remained in that island for months, eking out a living eating vegetables we planted in our small yard and on the almost-submerged embankment surrounding our farm, and other water vegetables, such as lilies, thangjing, thariktha, heikak yelli, kakla, which my parents collected on a boat from the lake. During dry seasons, we rooted kaothum, koukha, tharo lemfu and thambou (lotus root). Sometimes in the evenings, I (and my brother, if he was there) herded the cattle in the narrow strip of grassy field along the foot of the small range of hills 100 meters from our hut. There the evening breeze will blow to us the smell of the lake sweetened by the thousand blooming lotuses just below the field. In the dusk, I carried on a small roll of cloth on my head a bundle of dry sticks (mostly kambirei and nongballei) for firewood and followed the cattle back to the farm.
In the spring, when thatching grass covers the very small hillock (no other plants grew on it visibly) just beyond our embankment in the front 50 meters from the hut, colorful birds (they came every spring and the hillock was noisy with their happy chirps) would weave beautiful nests hanging from the tops of the tall leaves of grass sewn up together. We would jump over the narrow (but quite wide for the children we were) canal stealthily (grandfather strictly prohibited us from going to that hillock because, as he said, it was fraught with snakes, which was effective because we regarded the hillock with a fear incommensurate at least with its size and innocuous look, though the birds' happiness momentarily obliterated our fear and beckoned us to join their fun).
...
If my love for nature is not inborn, I acquired it there. The farm had just my parents and my brother and sister. We had cattle and a lovely and very intelligent dog, Kalu. There were no other human companions. Visitors seldom came there. We, the three children, played together some strange games we made up there. My brother was not with us for long stints, though--he attended a school at Kakching. My sister and remained at the farm--our schooling started quite late.
When the lake returned and our farm hut and its small yard had turned into a small island, we remained in that island for months, eking out a living eating vegetables we planted in our small yard and on the almost-submerged embankment surrounding our farm, and other water vegetables, such as lilies, thangjing, thariktha, heikak yelli, kakla, which my parents collected on a boat from the lake. During dry seasons, we rooted kaothum, koukha, tharo lemfu and thambou (lotus root). Sometimes in the evenings, I (and my brother, if he was there) herded the cattle in the narrow strip of grassy field along the foot of the small range of hills 100 meters from our hut. There the evening breeze will blow to us the smell of the lake sweetened by the thousand blooming lotuses just below the field. In the dusk, I carried on a small roll of cloth on my head a bundle of dry sticks (mostly kambirei and nongballei) for firewood and followed the cattle back to the farm.
In the spring, when thatching grass covers the very small hillock (no other plants grew on it visibly) just beyond our embankment in the front 50 meters from the hut, colorful birds (they came every spring and the hillock was noisy with their happy chirps) would weave beautiful nests hanging from the tops of the tall leaves of grass sewn up together. We would jump over the narrow (but quite wide for the children we were) canal stealthily (grandfather strictly prohibited us from going to that hillock because, as he said, it was fraught with snakes, which was effective because we regarded the hillock with a fear incommensurate at least with its size and innocuous look, though the birds' happiness momentarily obliterated our fear and beckoned us to join their fun).
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