Singapore musing: Singapore in Rain and my village

Singapore musing:  Singapore in Rain and my  village

Wow! At last I am in Singapore, the fabled city. Seating comfortably in my hotel room and looking at the Singapore skyline with a warm cuppa of tea. As I am looking out a nice drizzle of rain engulfs the city .I am looking out fascinated by the rain as always.

As I am looking out suddenly I recall my time spent at our ancestral village in India. I am surprised. There can be no connection between the ultramodern city of Singapore and Mhangrun (Pronounced as   Mhaang-roon).

In fact Mhangrun is a tiny village not even mentioned on Google .It lies about 150 miles from Bombay (Mumbai) on a rocky outcrop surrounded by barren rocky hills. It consists of Few houses clustered around what you may call the main street .Add another few houses scattered nearby and you cover the whole village. Most of these are empty as people have left for Bombay to have better life. Mostly the elderly are left with few women and children. Our former house was probably the largest house right in the centre of the village. It was a massive two storied mud and brick structure with red clay tiles on the sloping roof. There were neither any shops nor any vehicles barring an odd bullock-cart on the middy street as far as I can remember.

          I had gone there just a couple of times in my childhood. The last time I went there my grandma recalled how she hated those rocky hill in the backdrop constantly visible to her from the kitchen window where she spent most of her time. She came to this rather desolate place from a green nice town of her parents nearer the coast after her marriage at a young age of 12 .She recalled how she used to constantly used cry at the site of those hills, how bad the weather was. It used to be scorching hot in the summer, cold in winter and heavy rains in the monsoon. It seems it was a place of extremes. No wonder the village looked so empty. Probably my grandparent’s family stayed there as they owned most of the land around.

As you walk to the end of the main street, which will happen pretty quickly you see a narrower winding path leading to a small hillock. A small square building is standing with pyramidal roof covered with tiles which were red once upon a time but now black with patches of dried grass and moss on them. There is no door. If you walk in you will see three statues of gods .very roughly cut, coated with red vermillion paste and looked really scary to a small child. This is the village deity or the “Vetaal” (Literally means king of ghosts) as they call it. Just as you come out you will see couple of most handsome champak tree (Also called Frangipani or  Pagoda tree  which is species of Plumeria )I have ever seen  with a crown of  white flowers and very few leaves. How they survive in such an extreme climate is a wonder.

If you take a long walk down and go towards a winding path that takes you near the river flowing deep inside the deep gorge cut in to the rock over millions of years. Surrounding area is mostly barren except a small temple .This is the famous “Walane Kund” and I was told an interesting myth associated with it.

If you carefully come near the edge of the gorge you can look at the deep water 40-50 feet below flowing so slow that it appears almost stagnant.  If you have some rice flakes and drop it you will see huge fishes jumping out of dark water for it. But be careful to throw further. This is because of this strange story.

It was said that each time you offer rice flakes down the gorge successively bigger fishes will come out of water. You are not supposed to offer them beyond six times .But a lady from other some other  village  got married to a man from Mhangroon .After marriage she came to “Doha of Walne” with her husband .She expressed the desire to see the fishes. The husband offered rice flakes .First time smaller fishes jumped out and progressively become bigger .As he offered rice flakes for the sixth time at his wife’s insistence fishes as large as a man jumped out to eat them. His wife now asked him to do an encore for the seventh time to which the husband refused. A quarrel ensured as is the usual case between a husband and wife. Ultimately the man agreed but he tied himself to the rock temple and asked his wife to do whatever she pleases. She went ahead and offered rice flakes for the seventh time. And nothing happened for a moment. Then there was a huge whirlpool formed over the water and a huge fish that came out and sucked out everything on the bank including the wife. The man was saved by the strength of his rope.

Though I was a child at that time I was really old enough not to believe in this story. But I could not muster the guts to offer rice fakes beyond the prescribed limit. The gorge really looked deep and water seemed bottomless. While growing up I came across similar stories associated with many places in the world.

Now seating here in the midst of one of the most modern cities in the world it seems incredulous that I recall this story. Then I looked out at the rain and the city visible through the haze. The rain and haze looked so similar to my small village. I realized how humanity is bounded by this bounty of god whether in a small remote village or the most modern city.

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