plashed water hitting the cobbled street at dawn. Heavy rain falling on mud baked tiles called gaavthi nulia as distinguished from the much more expensive Mangalore tiles. The gushing waters of Purna river flooding the narrow mohollas. The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law duo begging plaintively for food only pre-lunch on Mondays (different days of the week for different mohollas; a clever ploy).
Hot tea sipped from a saucer with a loud sucking noise (surokko maari né chai piyéch); hardly anyone drank from the cup and many swore that the rakaabi (saucer) was a wonderful receptacle for cooling the hot beverage and enhanced the flavor of the mint lemon grass tea. Toddy being poured from a clay pot directly into the mouth of the drinker sitting on his haunches. The marble, sealing the glass bottle containing fizzy pale lemon, being thrust inside with great force. Cold water from a tap falling on a super hot theekra (griddle) placed in the sink for cleaning. Coconut being cracked, on an iron protrusion near the front door of most houses, to mark an auspicious occasion.
Galélee (ice apple or tadgola) bursting in the mouth with a swish on a hot summer mid-morning. The subtle sound produced by the deft cutting of a taut, semi ready Alphonso mango into golden pieces. Grain being vigorously sifted to separate the chaff in a huge supra (wicker winnowing fan). Aadu lasan (ginger and garlic) being ground in a round black stone receptacle called khul with a cylindrical stone called butto; producing a paste which no mixer grinder can rival. Still living lévta (mud hoppers) crackling when fried on a black theekra for those with an acquired taste, like Navsari’s caviar. A piece of marinated pomfret being gently placed in a karai containing boiling groundnut oil. Fresh mutton, pink, slippery and tender, being hammered into mince with a little black iron cleaver (chharo) rapidly struck on a wooden block (dhimroo).
Illustration by Farzana Cooper
The highly incongruous funereal music of the takor khanu from Surat ostensibly to celebrate a wedding day. Both sexes going round in circles clapping their hands and singing slightly bawdy garbas at pre-nuptial celebrations. Ladies singing or bawling out aatash nu geet during pre-marriage celebrations, and thereafter visiting another house where a death had occurred, to wail; a custom borrowed from Hindus (until the late ’70s, the Bombay Samachar obituaries regularly mentioned that baio nu radvanoo bandh chhé). Blind twins playing the harmonium (banned for many years on All India Radio) at sunset. Children learning tables in Gujarati by rote. Children reciting nursery rhymes in a Gujarati accent.
The short old priest doubling as a town crier announcing the paidust of Pestonjee and the marriage of Dolly in the same tone. A solitary priest praying his heart out at the three in the morning pre-funeral hours in bhoi pur nu bhantar and the entire moholla lying in bed and thinking of their departed neighbor. The Ahunavaiti Gatha during a geh sarna ceremony at 6.45 a.m. for a lad who had succumbed to tetanus, with the surrounding mohollas choked in pin drop silence. Nine gongs of the brass bell when the gah changed after midnight in the ancient agiary. A very young navar candidate loudly reciting a Ha during the final ceremony before an admiring audience. The Shahnameh being recited melodiously by boys in a castrato voice during a Sunday morning religion class. A rotund mobed displaying his impeccable vocabulary of abuse by alleging an incestuous relationship between the amused navar candidates and their maternal grandmothers. The high priest humming a ghazal on his way to the atash behram, oblivious of disapproving stares.
Rustomji placing three fingers deep into his mouth to clear the phlegm from his throat, a mandatory early morning practice called peenth paarvanoo (removing bile), also inflicted upon us by our grandmother. The first cry of a child after it had been vigorously thumped by a midwife in a hurry to deliver another. The unflinching breaking of wind by the benign patriarch. On a bitterly cold night, a mother standing at the first floor window and gently whistling through her lips to encourage her baby to pee. The service provider alerting you of her presence in the lane behind the houses to collect the night soil.
A rolled up copy of the Jam-e-Jamshed being flung into the house around 12.30 p.m. by a delivery boy on a bicycle without stopping. The jump-out-of-your-skin horn of the doctor’s 30-year-old Baby Hindustan announcing his return home from the ramshackle dispensary.
The bleating of a young goat exuding innocence; also heard on the Swiss Rail inter terminal train. Clucking of a jealous hen wearing colorful beads in the paachloonbaar (backyard) vying for the attention of the impervious rooster. Monkeys hopping on the roofs in search of food. Kittens whimpering on a bitterly cold December night. The owl hooting on a moonless night from a niche above the godown containing vats of vinegar.
Somebody calling out your name softly after sunset on the pitch dark Tawdi bridge in late December; and you dare not look back. Ayurvedic medicine men fully clothed in red invoking mantras in the Navsari riverside smashaan (burning ghats) on a moonless kalichowdas night, a day before Diwali.
Berjis Desai, author of Oh! Those Parsis and The Bawaji, occasionally practices law.