This is first of the series of posts (not in chronological order) about the random recollections of my childhood. It might sound like it happened in some town or a village but all of this has happened in Hyderabad – the city that has changed so much over the years that when I visit the those places in the city where I grew up I struggle to recollect my memories from better times
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One: Butterflies and Dragonflies
There was an open field towards the end of the lane in which we lived. The field lead to an upslope beyond which there were railway tracks. The field (a swamp really) had a dirty lake at the center with the sewage like water supplied by a creek flowing from some unthinkable sources. It nevertheless was water and formed the basis of an entire ecosystem around the lake. Wild shrubs, plants, grass and even trees thrived there which in turn supported various insects, butterflies, dragon flies and birds. There were chameleons too always hiding somewhere in the bushes or on the trees. I rmember, as a child, I had just learnt the word ‘camouflage’ at school. I couldn’t stop bragging in front of my friends about the ‘exclusive’ knowledge I possessed every time I spotted a chameleon. “You know it camouflages itself so that the predators don’t find it and eat it”, I would say. And, there were pigs who enjoyed bathing in (even drinking, may be) the filthy, stinking water and didn’t care about a thing in the world as they feasted on you-know-what! We called this ecosystem the ‘Nala’. (Okay, ecosystem is very euphemistic but for the lack of a better word let’s call it this)
My house was a couple of minutes away from this place and most of my evenings were spent here hunting for butterflies and dragonflies. It was almost a ritual. As soon as the rickshaw dropped me back from school, I would run towards my house, hurl the school bag inside through the open door and run away towards the Nala. I would always hear my mother’s voice screaming behind me, “Drink your glass of milk before you go anywhere”. But apparently, there were more important things to do than drink milk. So, I would run away. And those important things were catching butterflies and hunting for dragon flies.
Catching butterflies was not such a difficult thing to do, especially the bright yellow butterfly with orange spots on its wings and black lining everywhere (It is called Common Jezebel; now I know but then I didn’t –there was no Google then). It was the easiest to catch. But there were so many different types of butterflies. The small blue one (it looked like a five paisa coin) was the most slippery. It always anticipated your next move no matter how still you were before you try to grab it. Catching it was a prize in itself – a matter of pride too. Then there were the brown ones that no one liked to catch. They were ugly monsters.
Hunting for dragonflies was a whole different ball game. Please note that I use the word ‘hunting’ here because that’s exactly what we used to do. We were mean hunters – with traps, nets and evil strategies. The nets were essentially uprooted congress grass (also called parthenium – thanks Google) tied together to form a big Chinese fan like tool with the leaves and pollen forming the net which would trap the dragonflies. The strategy was to stand still and try to get as close as possible to an unsuspecting dragonfly and as the opportunity presents itself, pounce on the dragonfly with the congress grass net and capture it. There were occasions when the dragonflies would escape through the small gaps of the ‘net’ but generally this would work.
As with butterflies, even in the case of dragonflies, there were different types. There was this regular black helicopter-like big dragonfly (I know now that it is called black marsh trotter) which would easily get captured in the net. And, there were those special dragonflies which required experience and skill to capture – the rani (queen) and the police. They were actually damselflies but we didn’t know then. Their slender bodies and weak flight required meticulous planning on the part of the hunter; any rough step could kill them. Frankly, I was not too good with catching these; I just stuck to capturing the regular big dragonflies.
There was another group of children who caught butterflies and dragon flies. But they were brutal in their mannerisms. They did horrible things to their ‘captives’ not unlike how the Nazis treated the Jews. They would tie threads to the bodies of these creatures with the other end of the thread firmly tied to their hands. The poor creatures’ flight was restricted to the length of the thread. These kids would also put their captives inside empty match boxes and on many occasions the insects would die of suffocation. It was an extremely disturbing sight. What was even worse was that they would pay no attention to our pleas and requests to let the creatures free. It saddened us to the core and after some time we stopped running after dragonflies and butterflies. We didn’t want the butterflies and the dragonflies to think that we were friends with these people and draw inaccurate conclusions about us.
