A Daring Little Girl

The wind was gusty, while the Sun dancing across the sky tensed the north-Indian plains up with the heat. There is not much one can do except sitting on the haunches and watch over the wheat fields. The pristine green that ran across like frills and ribbons, coming upon from the ground like a leash. 

I thought I would browse the new Bollywood songs and listen without headphones in open space and more freely, though walking on the edge of narrow cemented canals was enough to bide the time. 

I tried playing the music but soon after it began ringing up, the connection turned out. I put the thought away to enjoy the music or follow the latest buzz on social media. Thankfully, I knew I was in a sound mood to take interest in a lot of things, around. 

Immediately then, I chanced to hear light, running footsteps from a distance, a corner of the spread-out lawn hidden by the power-house. I walked round to see a number of goats, bleating and eating the tender new leaves of the fresh spring. 

I stared at them for a moment and then thought to call out Grandma, who knew best what to do with the things like this. Quite shortly, I could see a familiar villager emerging from among the trees gently leading the troop this way and that. I decided to observe what it’s like before I lose the moment in telling the grandmother, besides the man driving the cattle grabbed my curiosity.

He waved to me as though he owed me the greeting. I flashed a casual smile and looked away. There I could find another young girl, around ten or eleven or thereabouts to join him, calling him “Papa” which means her father.

Her eyes tore a look from mine, her face was wound up with a spotless white piece of cloth perhaps the only shield against tanning and gust. I made not the way to be friendlier to either of them.

She wore a red sweater in the hot last days of the march and the usual dusty pair of jeans. But clearly, confidence and a sense of maturity came very easily to her manners and looks.

Her little feet travelled handling the younger ones among the herd. She played with them, laughed with them, and talked to them as though they entirely felt and sensed what the girl said or suggested.

Now, walking seemed to sore her feet, she sits back upon the dust-thick and shaded stable which had been abandoned by the domestic horses and cows. And gasped a low breath, staring at me then and now, maybe thinking about what an adult young man thinks of a girl driving the herd.

I was an unfamiliar face, for long afterwards, but for that instant, she took me to be a member of  Mewaris, the owner of maximum land in the village. That was perhaps easier to find out from the way her father greeted me up.

There is a cloud of dust that shook off the fragile leaves of the duo mango trees ahead of the pond. But they seemed to stand tall and look fierce like a weather warrior. I feel they go by the right instincts to handle the winds, better than I can do for the simple reason they have a long experience of some eighty good years.

A few bikers speeding along the road stopped for a short while and continued as the duststorm went on through the alleys and winding lanes.

Suddenly, a plop is all that I heard. I could not clearly figure out what had happened except for a little commotion near the tube well. ‘Good heavens’ as the shepherd cried out. “The young lamb jumped off into the well. What I should do?”

The situation was only too hopeless if there wasn’t any ladder going down for the rescuer. In a matter of no time, my grandmother who had been resting well in the hall came out and was only too angry at the shepherd to drive the herd towards our home.

“Why did you graze them into our garden?”

The shepherd looked troubled speaking a syllable. While my attention gladly fixed at what broke out, I felt even more terrible to hear the cry of the girl from within the well.

“Somebody, help me here along the ladder.”

I stepped ahead and peered down. There the child was with the young baby in one hand while holding the ladder deftly with the other. I leant down, almost bending double over, and asked her to give the lamb. She helped herself with the ladder and safely stepped out of the danky well.

Everyone was grateful to the child though no one noticed her go into the well when everyone else chose to cry over the spilt milk.