First, for a little throwback
time –
Last year, around this
time, around fifteen of us - a bevy of picnic-savvy buffs - were lounging at
Yercaud, a lovely little hill station in Tamil Nadu.
We had booked on our
accommodation much in advance, at an amazing hilltop hotel that overlooks a
deep gorge and a lovely ravine, an ambience that was very much alive to the sounds of Mother
Nature’s pretty-witty solemn notes of grandeur!
The resort was quite popular
for its campfires by nights!
So all of us quickly finished
off on our nibbly-nibbly dinners, and enthusiastically rushed headlong to the
campfire space, our gala jubilee-time of the evening!
Indeed a crackling campfire
awaited us all!
The campfire was set up in a
lovely ambience, again, overlooking the deep valley, with the
evening’s gentle breeze fanning up on the flames and charcoals so gentle and so graceful, and with night lights so beautifully dim that they attracted a range of crickets
and beetles that caught up with us all, along with the barn owls and the hermit
thrushes, that acted our avian accomplices on the fun!
Added, we were also offered the
music of our own sweet choices too!
You just had to tell them on a peppy
number that you so liked, and hey presto, they had them played out for you the
very next jiffy-o-jiffy!
Lovely, ain’t it!
Thus was our campfire night all
decked up to pep up big-time, the energizer bunny in us all!
But who pray, was going to
start first on the jig?
Everyone seemed to be pretty
reticent on initiating the first moves on the dance!
You go first, please!
You first, buddy!
No! You begin, and then we follow!
Not meee! Nooo wayyy!
These were some of the
voices babbling up the hillside that evening!
Reticent hearts and reticent
voices, that in the words of Pope, Alexander Pope,
were,
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to
strike! ;-)
Then came along a middle-aged
guest, with a lovely paunch on him, who, without caring a hoot to the hullabaloo
happening all around, straightaway plunged into his flawsome dance moves that
almost flabbergasted everyone around him!
But the celebratory spirit
within him ain’t give a heck to them at all!
He was so absorbed on his
moves!
Involvement you see! ;-)
Indeed, all of us, who were lined up beside
the campfire, [should be around sixty of us in number,] were quite flabbergasted
at his flawsome jigs, to begin with! ;-)
But then, this was the
trigger we’d soooo wanted!
This was the spur that
we’d so badly needed!
This was the initiative we
were so desperately waiting for!
And surprise of surprises,
quite soon, the whole campfire place was filled with festive fun, with everyone
of us falling into the fun, ;-) that went on and on for so long, that the
resort people gracefully extended on the campfire time that evening!
Later on, after the dance-fire
oops camp-fire fun almost got over, some of us gracefully went up to the gentleman,
and much appreciated him on his gesture that helped ‘launch a thousand ships’
straight on starboard! ;-)
Why pray, did I go down memory lane
and kindle up on these campfire musings for us all!?
With a purpose at that!
Well, I was quite reminded
of this memorable incident that became etched-o-etched in our hearts, while
reading through Katherine Applegate’s amazing novel in free verse, titled, Home of the Brave published in the year
2007.
There’s this little flashback narration by Kek the little immigrant boy, who says,
I remember something my mama
used to say on dark days:
If you can talk, you can sing.
If you can walk, you can dance.
