Windy Windings.

It was always a fun to be at nani's house. So much attention, so many friends, cousins, uncle and aunts ..all sizes, shapes and ages but usually every one was happy go lucky those days as back then the modern life's tensions that everyone is facing were not there..in general life as relaxed, more so in villages and small towns and everyplace was small only when you look back and ponder. Dewas was a small town a princely state ruled by Maratha king Pawars. Even this small state was divided in two, Senior State ( बड़ी पाती) and Junior State ( छोटी पाती). They must have come in the late seventeenth century along with Holkars, Sindhias and the other Pawars who ruled Dhar, other side of Indore. Due to this "invasion" of Marathas who were sent by Kolhapur rulers as an expansion of their territory came hoards of Marathi speaking people of all casts that usually happens. None of these rulers specially Holkars and Sindhias ( originally Shinde) were upper cast brahmins like Peshwas of Pune, in fact they were not even Marathas like Chhatrapati Shivaji, the fighting community क्षत्रिय). Shindes managed to rule from Gwalior the largest territory of what is Madhya Pradesh today. Holkars had a smaller state from Indore to Omkareshwar and little more to the south. Pawars of Dewas and Pawars of Dhar ( that was once ruled by Raja Bhoj of Parmar dynasty who ruled in the 11th century, who is famous with the phrase that many of us use but I bet most don't know who he was in कहां राजा भोज और कहां गंगू तेली ( where is king Bhoj and where is Gangu Teli ( oil extractor) his subject ..we will talk about them some other time, both managed to rule smaller states almost the size of a district.  I may not know but to the best of my knowledge all the four Maratha rulers never waged a war against one another. So we had a fair percentage of Marathi speaking population patronised by the rulers who always considered themselves superiors to the peasants who were natives. That is one reason why people from Malwa ( the region that these kings ruled ) consider Marathi and Maharashtrian culture as part of their own and flock to Mumbai than to Delhi.

Weather of entire Malwa is so pleasant throughout the year that people find it hard to migrate to other places for climatic reasons. You might have heard the famous word "शब-ए- मालवा", meaning no matter what season it is the nights of Malwa are always pleasant.

Anyway, so I was talking of visiting nani's house in Dewas that had different set of rulers from rural Indore where I lived. Summer vacations there was by default but when we went there to attend some wedding or other of holiday season, the joy would double or triple because .. no schools, every cousin, second even third cousin would be there, variety of food to eat and since elders were busy in making arrangements no one would bother to check what you did. Since Nani was with the god my mother would take charge of the situation as de facto commander. She was quite friendly and an extrovert unlike her elder sister and would always be given more and more responsibilities on such occasions due to her management skills. Her brothers , three of them, were quite young so after Nani's passing she was the motherly person for everyone although she herself was quite young to handle motherly responsibilities.

Weddings those days use to run for weeks not the actual functions but the general preparations. Besides the fun at home many a times the whole extended family would turn up into Mahesh Talkies , the nearest cinema hall to watch a movie once or more every week. Mahesh Talkies was a flat single level theatre with moveable furniture for the front and wooden benches at the back. Since in proper cinema halls expensive seats used to be on the first floor balcony for better viewing, Mahesh Talkies back seats would be called Balcony seats. Since I was young I would be with mother and aunts in the ladies section that was behind the front seats and quite close to the "balcony" seats. Unlike, these days, we neither had money nor anyone would go out of the hall to buy titbits during interval so we were clearly deprived of that bit of extra pleasure.

During one such weddings of our cousin Sita Didi in the late sixties we had all the usual wedding festivity fun and two or three days later when outside guests went back, the close and young people in the family went to "tekri" ( a small hill is called tekri in Hindi especially in Malwa). In those days tekri had only two deities, badi maata and chhoti maata. ( There is an interesting story of these two deities चामुंडा माता and तुलजा भवानी, that we will talk some other time). It was mandatory to visit these temples whenever there was any function in the house to seek maatas' blessings. So out the whole "paltan" ( Hindi name for platoon) of about 10 of us and we marched to tekri on foot. Tekri must be some 200 meters in height and the lower periphery that had temples may have been about a kilometer and a half and there was another layer on the top that would be some 300 meters long and 100 meters wide. We reached the first temple in about half an hour from home and after spending 15-20 minutes went to another temple on the other side of the hill. 

After the "darshan" we all climbed to the top to get the lovely view of the city and beyond. Besides the newly weds we were two couples and some five or six children. As we reached the top the wind suddenly gathered pace and it became difficult even to walk. A few meters and some 10 minutes later as we were enjoying the windy weather there was a shrilling cry and when I moved my head I saw Sita Didi's saree flew away with the wind. Wind was so high that none of us could catch it and get back to her. There no other group on that part of the tekri so she was saved of the embarrassment. I think it was winter and my newest cousin brother-in-law was wearing a coat that he removed and gave a fresh look to Sita Didi.

It has been just about fifty years or so but I often remember this unique incidence and wonder whether I laughed then or cried. 

Pic of Tekri is a stock photo from Internet.