Poppies by Manoj Rawat (who would like to state that he or his camera had nothing to do with the "very bad" wall mural pictures)
Every morning, Nanaji would pull a chair under the old mango tree and with the sun warming his knees; he would wait for a steaming cup of black tea and the Dainik Jagaran to be delivered to him. Scooby, the big black part Doberman (with some mongrel genes that gave him a long bushy tail) would drool silently, waiting for glucose biscuits to be flung at him that he would catch midair in a fine snapping turtle imitation. Then he would sit next to Nanaji, his head almost at the same height, and the two of them would look at the bright red poppies blooming in the patch near the brick wall. To be fair, Scooby was only watching for squirrels that he could chase.
Nanaji loved his garden but lately it was getting quite wild since he wasn’t well enough to trim the bushes or dig up the beds, ensuring military discipline all around. Taking advantage of this, the red poppies had started drooping nastily over the Californian poppies, the hollyhocks had started stepping into the nasturtium beds, the rose bushes were sticking rude fingers out anywhere they wanted and the bougainvillea bush had grown its hair long and had pink and white blossoms falling untidily all over its face. In short, there was chaos all around. Nanaji could only sit and watch and complain to Nani how disorganized the garden was getting ever since the old Nepali baba had stopped coming to help after getting knocked down by a speeding car. Nani would be watering the bonsais with a pipe that had to be reattached to the tap every 15 minutes since the water pressure would knock it out, dunking the birds around in a spray of water. She would connect the pipe to the lawn sprinkler, tell him there was only so much that she could do and stalk in to switch on the radio for the election news. Then she would get involved in the colossal task of getting breakfast ready. Since Saransh, his mom and Richa mousi were visiting these days; Nani’s kitchen would dish out a delightful variety - crisp manduve ki rotis with blobs of butter melting on them, French toast with cheese bits sticking to them, alu ka paranthas with home made aam-kaa-achar and dahi. The appetizing smells would waft across the fence causing Pranay’s Nanaji, who lived next door, and took his walks near the kitchen window, to sniff appreciatively and ask what was cooking. He would then click his tongue and say “bahut badhiya” or suggest some little addition to the recipe to make the meal even tastier.
Saransh was having breakfast under the tree with Nanaji one morning, appreciatively eyeing the picture of a model whose eyes he had burnt out using a reading lens to converge the sun’s rays when Nanaji told him that the flowers would soon be gone. Summer was around the corner, the baur has sprouted on the Amrapali mango tree and it was a matter of days before the poppies would wither and fall, leaving the garden bare and brown. The butterflies would go too and so would the ladybirds, the bees and the squirrels. “Then when I have breakfast I will only have my newspaper to look at,” Nanaji said, using his fork to toss the last bit of French toast into Scooby’s open jaws. Saransh asked if Nanaji would like to live in a caravan and drive it down to wherever there were flowers blooming, like maybe Kashmir, but Nanaji said, though the idea was excellent, he was too old for it. “Maybe you can do that when you are older,” he told Saransh, making his eyes shine with delight.
The thought of Nanaji not having any flowers to look at made Saransh worry a bit and he discussed it with Mamma. Mamma - who quite fancied herself as an artist, (though Saransh knew other moms could do Standard V germination of seed homework diagrams much better than she did) came up with the idea of painting flowers on the old brick wall. Richa mousi, who was a real artist from Delhi’s prestigious College of Art, and not an aspiring one like Mamma, immediately drew up a long list of paints, brushes, primers and apex that Mamma cut in half since she said they would cost almost as much as the brick wall cost to be made. After seeking permission from Nanaji to paint his wall, a quick trip was made to Tekchand Makhanlal paint sellers near Jhanda Chowk and soon brushes of different sizes and cans of paint were piled up on a sheet of newspaper near the wall. The first time Richa mousi sketched out the poppies with a piece of chalk, they turned up looking like the gigantic Rafflesia flowers that Saransh had read about in his encyclopedia. The next time Mamma did it, Nanaji said they were looking like gudhal-ke-phool (hibiscus) and not poppies. At last, a drawing was approved and Mamma and Saransh got down to the task of scraping moss off the parts where the painting would come up. It was hard work but Richa mousi pulled a chair in the shade and encouraged them with the story of Michelangelo painting the Sistine chapel ceiling, popping grapes into the mouth every few minutes (Richa mousi, not Michelangelo). Pace of work suffered because Scooby would sneak in quietly and dash off with a brush in his mouth when no one was looking, and start taking victory laps around the lawn like a donkey. Since he had the reputation of biting people, and licking their blood off the floor, work would have to be stalled until Nani came out and slapped him into returning the stolen stuff.
On day three the flowers started taking shades and Richa mousi, who had so far only chomped grapes, oranges and papaya, and pointed out faults; mixed some colours in an empty tin lid and got down to putting the final touches on the wall mural. After every stroke, she would step back, whistle and say “sexy”. Richa mousi had an amazing vocabulary, thought Saransh, though he pretended he didn’t hear some of the words she used because he had seen Mamma glaring at her and lip synching “shut up” when he or Nani were around. Richa mousi would grin, say “sorry”, and tell him not to learn those words since they were bad words, which promptly made him repeat them in his mind and store them to impress his friends in Ferozepur.
Finally, the wall mural was declared complete and unveiled to Nanaji who had just emerged from his mid morning siesta. He immediately professed the need for some brandy with hot water. This he sipped slowly with his chair turned a bit so that it faced the wall with the bright red poppies nodding back at him. Since he also offered a bottle of cold beer to the senior artists, it was taken as a gesture of appreciation and not shock. Nani thought the red was a bit Communist party, which she, being a BJP supporter, did not approve of; but Pranay’s Nani, who peered from behind the fence of her house, declared the wall a beautiful work of art. Pranay’s Nanaji put on his glasses to take a closer look, and then offered his mango tree to the artists as the next canvas, warning them to beware of the red ants. Tulsi the house help also came out with a jharu in her hands and said the flowers were “khabsoorat, by God”. News travelled up the hill to the multi talented Lansdowne wale Nanaji (called Leonardo da Vinci in family circles) and he immediately drove down with Nani to inspect the wall. After a long contemplative silence, with Scooby growling at him to hurry up, he smiled widely and invited the trio to Lansdowne for a stay, so that he could get some flowers painted on his wall too. And that was how the poppies bloomed on Nanaji’s old brick wall and shall, hopefully, continue to do so long after spring is gone.
Nanaji loved his garden but lately it was getting quite wild since he wasn’t well enough to trim the bushes or dig up the beds, ensuring military discipline all around. Taking advantage of this, the red poppies had started drooping nastily over the Californian poppies, the hollyhocks had started stepping into the nasturtium beds, the rose bushes were sticking rude fingers out anywhere they wanted and the bougainvillea bush had grown its hair long and had pink and white blossoms falling untidily all over its face. In short, there was chaos all around. Nanaji could only sit and watch and complain to Nani how disorganized the garden was getting ever since the old Nepali baba had stopped coming to help after getting knocked down by a speeding car. Nani would be watering the bonsais with a pipe that had to be reattached to the tap every 15 minutes since the water pressure would knock it out, dunking the birds around in a spray of water. She would connect the pipe to the lawn sprinkler, tell him there was only so much that she could do and stalk in to switch on the radio for the election news. Then she would get involved in the colossal task of getting breakfast ready. Since Saransh, his mom and Richa mousi were visiting these days; Nani’s kitchen would dish out a delightful variety - crisp manduve ki rotis with blobs of butter melting on them, French toast with cheese bits sticking to them, alu ka paranthas with home made aam-kaa-achar and dahi. The appetizing smells would waft across the fence causing Pranay’s Nanaji, who lived next door, and took his walks near the kitchen window, to sniff appreciatively and ask what was cooking. He would then click his tongue and say “bahut badhiya” or suggest some little addition to the recipe to make the meal even tastier.
Saransh was having breakfast under the tree with Nanaji one morning, appreciatively eyeing the picture of a model whose eyes he had burnt out using a reading lens to converge the sun’s rays when Nanaji told him that the flowers would soon be gone. Summer was around the corner, the baur has sprouted on the Amrapali mango tree and it was a matter of days before the poppies would wither and fall, leaving the garden bare and brown. The butterflies would go too and so would the ladybirds, the bees and the squirrels. “Then when I have breakfast I will only have my newspaper to look at,” Nanaji said, using his fork to toss the last bit of French toast into Scooby’s open jaws. Saransh asked if Nanaji would like to live in a caravan and drive it down to wherever there were flowers blooming, like maybe Kashmir, but Nanaji said, though the idea was excellent, he was too old for it. “Maybe you can do that when you are older,” he told Saransh, making his eyes shine with delight.
The thought of Nanaji not having any flowers to look at made Saransh worry a bit and he discussed it with Mamma. Mamma - who quite fancied herself as an artist, (though Saransh knew other moms could do Standard V germination of seed homework diagrams much better than she did) came up with the idea of painting flowers on the old brick wall. Richa mousi, who was a real artist from Delhi’s prestigious College of Art, and not an aspiring one like Mamma, immediately drew up a long list of paints, brushes, primers and apex that Mamma cut in half since she said they would cost almost as much as the brick wall cost to be made. After seeking permission from Nanaji to paint his wall, a quick trip was made to Tekchand Makhanlal paint sellers near Jhanda Chowk and soon brushes of different sizes and cans of paint were piled up on a sheet of newspaper near the wall. The first time Richa mousi sketched out the poppies with a piece of chalk, they turned up looking like the gigantic Rafflesia flowers that Saransh had read about in his encyclopedia. The next time Mamma did it, Nanaji said they were looking like gudhal-ke-phool (hibiscus) and not poppies. At last, a drawing was approved and Mamma and Saransh got down to the task of scraping moss off the parts where the painting would come up. It was hard work but Richa mousi pulled a chair in the shade and encouraged them with the story of Michelangelo painting the Sistine chapel ceiling, popping grapes into the mouth every few minutes (Richa mousi, not Michelangelo). Pace of work suffered because Scooby would sneak in quietly and dash off with a brush in his mouth when no one was looking, and start taking victory laps around the lawn like a donkey. Since he had the reputation of biting people, and licking their blood off the floor, work would have to be stalled until Nani came out and slapped him into returning the stolen stuff.
On day three the flowers started taking shades and Richa mousi, who had so far only chomped grapes, oranges and papaya, and pointed out faults; mixed some colours in an empty tin lid and got down to putting the final touches on the wall mural. After every stroke, she would step back, whistle and say “sexy”. Richa mousi had an amazing vocabulary, thought Saransh, though he pretended he didn’t hear some of the words she used because he had seen Mamma glaring at her and lip synching “shut up” when he or Nani were around. Richa mousi would grin, say “sorry”, and tell him not to learn those words since they were bad words, which promptly made him repeat them in his mind and store them to impress his friends in Ferozepur.
Finally, the wall mural was declared complete and unveiled to Nanaji who had just emerged from his mid morning siesta. He immediately professed the need for some brandy with hot water. This he sipped slowly with his chair turned a bit so that it faced the wall with the bright red poppies nodding back at him. Since he also offered a bottle of cold beer to the senior artists, it was taken as a gesture of appreciation and not shock. Nani thought the red was a bit Communist party, which she, being a BJP supporter, did not approve of; but Pranay’s Nani, who peered from behind the fence of her house, declared the wall a beautiful work of art. Pranay’s Nanaji put on his glasses to take a closer look, and then offered his mango tree to the artists as the next canvas, warning them to beware of the red ants. Tulsi the house help also came out with a jharu in her hands and said the flowers were “khabsoorat, by God”. News travelled up the hill to the multi talented Lansdowne wale Nanaji (called Leonardo da Vinci in family circles) and he immediately drove down with Nani to inspect the wall. After a long contemplative silence, with Scooby growling at him to hurry up, he smiled widely and invited the trio to Lansdowne for a stay, so that he could get some flowers painted on his wall too. And that was how the poppies bloomed on Nanaji’s old brick wall and shall, hopefully, continue to do so long after spring is gone.
The process of getting the poppies to flower
Richa mousi adding the finishing touches. You can't see the big bowl of papaya she had just devoured
And so the poppies bloomed
Oh yes, Pranay's nani did get a few flowers on her mango tree
I guess I don't need to tell you who this is
Manu sends an April pic that shows the poppies on the wall have company now. :)
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