Day 8: February 3
On the other side of the abyss are the “Lé Lé Lé” ayeos of tientos. They are song syllables but in Hindi and Urdu, they mean “go ahead, take it.” For example, if I wanted to give you an apple, I would say “go ahead, Lé Lo.” “Take it.”
I am really in love with the Lé Lé, with taking the invitation to dance.
I love the slowness of this style of flamenco, this tientos and how clear and crisp the soniquete, the melody of the feet doing footwork encased in a square rhythm of four, but not a fast four, a slow drawn out four. Some people may count it as eight. Either way - the symmetry of the sound. I love it.
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On the other side of the abyss is the imagining the ghodawallahs of Matheran riding their horses at dawn over red earth paths, through forests in which monkeys live, paths that stop suddenly in a clearing or at the edge of a cliff or a valley.
You take a train to reach Matheran. There are no motor cars there. Or electric cars for that matter. At least, in my childhood, there were no cars there.
You arrive in a brown and yellow train.
First, you pass cities and fields (did we come straight from Bombay?). Then you enter forests. And then everybody gasps or someone shouts at the first sight of the monkeys in the forests. The train goes slow enough that you can really see the monkeys.
Everything has a reddish tint, not of memory sepia but of earth that carries that color.
When the train stops, your disembark and are immediately surrounded by folks who offer to take your bags uphill.
Then your parents talk to them and the price per bag is fixed.
And I remember this especially: there are women who walk uphill balancing your suitcases on their heads.
Women in their thirties or forties. Maybe even older.
Between the tops of their heads and the suitcase is usually a piece of cloth, twisted in a circle, to buffer the weight.
On the other side of the abyss are these memories.
And even though I am looking back, the path is forward.
Once you have crossed the abyss with the horse boys of Matheran, the journey goes forward, into the forests and whether you come out to clearings and whether the monkeys come for all your food - really you had to be so careful what you left out, I remember that! - whether you come to a cliff edge or not - really none of that is clear right now.
All that is clear is that the abyss has been crossed.
And the sight of those women walking uphill, carrying a suitcase puts me in mind of another scene, in another village. We had already moved to the states, and then during college I think, we came back to India for a visit. We drove out of town and stopped in a small village. I forget why. But I remember I was alone beside the car when I saw a woman carrying a bartan, a metal pot, on her head and a bucket in her hand and walking. The sway of her hips took me into her story, and when she turned around and caught my gaze for a moment, me in my capri pants and short hair (at that age) standing next to a car - that moment lengthened into a poem that I share here on warm winter’s day in Sevilla.
