I think of the word.. and in my mind I am humming "Shravanat ghana nila barasala"
Shraaavan.. In my minds , I am the child, in my Goregaon home..standing in the common the balcony outside my house. The gallery is wet. I stand there, looking out into the garden outside.. Garden? no its a playground, which we all referred to as the garden. Yes it was green.. There was a swing, 2 swings. there was a cricket pitch ,. the ground also doubled up as a foot ball ground.
Shravan.... its been raining. there are puddles in the garden.. under the swing, then in another corner and then in another. Its misty...and cold.
i come back home and start my studies. the floor is cold, i fold a godhadi and sit on it.. i pull out one of the 2 trunks from under the bed to use as a table. the trunks, 2 in number - one , belonging to my father - he had brought it with him when he came to Bombay, a black painted trunk. the other belonged to my mother, the one she came with after she married my father - a beige coloured one.
Shravan. mom, struggling with finishing her kapde bhaandi routine, ker and laadi, cooking, our studies and managing the 'Choodi Pooja" in between this. Shravan and choodi pooja... they went together. The fridays and sundays of the month were Choodi pooja days. she would place a tulsi on a paatla in the hall. it wasnt called the hall then. it was the 'bhaile kooda" the outside room, baaherchi kholi, the room outside. Inside was the kitchen. No.. no bedrooms . The hiuse was self contained.. in the sense that the toilet and the bathroom were inside the house.
Shravan.. mom wore a fresh saree.. a new one, a cotton one, or her voile - rust color with teh white flowers on it, vhooshing with the static. then she wore her coral mangalsutra. at that age - primary school, i realsied that they matched - the sari .. the corals.
shravan.. mom's choodis were simple. a shevanti - a few petals of the flower,petals of the sunflower, or a daisy, or a pea flower - shankhapushpi or a gokarna - am not sure what it is called.. a sontakka .. tied along with 5 durva , tied with the thread which she had reeled down from the haarwalas's packet,, or maybe not.. for the longest time we had a haarwala who came in the evenning, with that conical basket.. conical but with a flat base , a wicker basket. he would hand over a haar to my mommy.. then there werer the phool walas who would vend their wares in the afternoons.. chaar aanyala hazaar. hazaar flowers for 25 paise we thought. they sold the kaagda flowers. and we passed them thru the needle and mad gajras. all mommies and us kids. more of a vacation activity.. summer or winter - i do not remember
Shravan.. with the other festivals - rakhi pournima, nagpanchami.. especially nagpanchami..
Shravan - the fragrance of festivals..mine is more of an olfactory memory alongside the visual memory. smell - fragrance and otherwise - bring out the meomories from the recesses of my brain to the ram.. ram and rom
shravan - everything smells different... a unique shravan fragrance in the air - of the special meals - vegetbales - cooked and otherwise.. the sweets made at home.. the home smells 'shravany'..
This year - 2020 ,,,which is going to go down in history, at my place for the first time, there were no flowers in shravan, No durva, No ashter, no gulchadi (rajanigandha), no sontakka, no chaafaa, no shevanti, no gonda...no terda,, no vidyachi paane, no supari bits... nothing
i did my pooja with a silver tulasi.. the arti, the offerings of water and rice grains and prasad.. nothing else.
Nagpanchami passed by, without the fragrance of the patoli , steaming away in teh 'pedavan' , coccooned inside the haldi leaves
i misssed the fragrances,, gandha... . even the kumkum which has the typical camphorish fruity flavour, when it has come from udupi - did not seem fragrant enough.
until yesterday,,,
janmashtami,
going with the flavour of the times - no flowers,,no tulasi dal.. no razgira for the ladoos, no bhajicha alu for the alu bhaaji..
i had decided that i wouldn't be moping about it though there was a sadness
