a day in a hamlet...

It's the day before christmas 2006.I was excited to the hilt.I was going to my native place, first time in my life.I should be.Obvious.All the way i spent time visualizing plush green fields,kids playing around, cattle grazing, nice little streams of water and all those other elements of a typical village one would visualize of. Finally we(went along with my sisters) got off the train at a place called sattenpalli, and rolled into a taxi that was waiting to pick us up. Forty more miles to knock the destination.Passed through a few more hamlets,dumped off fields,desperate stares,empty lands,and we were there.Mouthed as chamarthy.

We drove past a few crumbled walls, scary streets all strewn along with thorns, and then came to a halt,and were out of the car.We were pleasantly surprised and were gaping open-mouthed when my father and his brothers, smiling widely,were coming out of a nasty construction(they call it a house)to recieve us.We freshened up leisurely and tidied ourselves.Had food. I must say,we've had some really delicious and flavorsome curd ever.We went on to have a stroll in the evening.It's a tiny village.Looked like it shouldn't look.Isolated and deserted and dejected.As we've strolled along, all that we could see was debris and remains of the broken-down houses,constructed a while ago. Hardly any souls.Most of them relocated.May be 80 people if swept all the village.Long ago decent and well-off.Now, where trees and fruits and flowers are synonymous to thorn shrubs and small woody plants bearing sharp bristles.Pulling an analogy,it's like the place to which sharukh khan travels long to collect the lease for a piece of land from a poor farmer in film Swades (i know its exaggerating to the filmi level).

One of the pleasant things during the stroll were the breeze from the krishna river near by. We came back and ate and slept. Next day early morning we've been to the river bank close by. Saw village dwellers loading large proportions of sand from the shore into huge carrier trucks.It's kind of an employment for the village folks. We played and fiddled for a while near the shore and went back dirty.Showered and consumed food. Hurried to the station, just got into the train on time. It was an experience of sorts. I liked it. I wanted to take a video, but i dint need that. I had already comitted all the visuals to the memory.