TIDBITS & SNIPPETS

Teeny tales, flashbacks & vignettes
....worthy of a chuckle, a tear or a sigh

* * * * *
Here's an amusing excerpt from Stan Blackford's lively memoir "One Hell of a Life."

Readers NOTES:
Tonga = Light [weight] two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage.
Ghora = Horse. Gharry = Carriage...
thus Ghora Gharry = Horse-drawn carriage

POPO BABA
(An excerpt from Chapter 1, Childhood)
by Stanley Blackford, Captain Ex Adjutant, 6th Royal Battalion (SCINDE)
13th Frontier Force Rifles, Indian Army

During the first four years of my life I uttered barely a sound,except when I saw a car. Then I would cry 'Popo popo' in imitation of a car horn. It was the pre-electric horn era, when cars were fitted with bulb horns to warn pedestrians and other traffic of the approach of one's car.

Photo Credit: Don Crider & f riend (Click to enlarge)

A typical horn was a long metal tube, sometimes ornamentally fashioned like a sea serpent with a large head, complete with vicious teeth and red tongue protruding from a snarling mouth, and with fiery red eyes that glared balefully at pedestrians from the front of the car as if to reproach them for cluttering up the road so untidily. The other end of the tube ended conveniently outside the driver's window in a hand-sized rubber bulb, which the driver squeezed. At each squeeze the device emitted a protesting sound like a squawking crow or a mooing cow.

Indian peasants had a habit of walking in the middle of the road, ignoring traffic. Impatient motorists, consequently felt compelled to sound their horns continually, simultaneously swearing loudly at other road users. Motorists, pedestrians, tongas, ghora gharries, rickshaws, bullock carts and their drivers, all ignored traffic regulations, meandering over the road and swearing back loudly. To this was added the shouts of bullock-cart drivers to their animals, the tinkle of rickshaw bells, and the farts of horses straining to pull tongas and ghora gharries. A glorious cacophony of noise!

©Copyright 2000 Stanley Blackford

Readers may email Stan at: stanblackford@chariot.net.au

• Want to read more of his entertaining, wry, and eye-opening memoir, here's Stan's site: http://users.chariot.net.au/%7Eblackford/

And finally - to end on a poignant note - we're including an evocative & atmospheric poem - a Rabindranath Tagore song - dedicated in memorium to Shyamal's beloved sister.

TO MY SISTER
Translation by Shyamal Chakrabarti

You came and yet you eluded us;
And as if to tell this truth,
You left before our very eyes
Casting a fleeting shade.
I will never know if your diffidence
Was feigned or real;
For your brisk steps on the grass
Spread sadness all around.
Raindrops, then, were trickling
Down the tree leaves,
And the forest was wet with heavenly tears
As you vanished gently into the moist air
To no one's great alarm.

Readers may email Shyamal at: shyam@hijli.iitkgp.ernet.in

Copyright 2003, Chipkali Creations & Stanley E. Brush