I remember our annual exam holidays during school, when we chased grasshoppers in the vacant plot that stretched before our house. Even the minimum showers during the summer blessed the land with thick, bushy plants. Short, bushy Thumbai plants with their white flowers and nerunji plants or puncture vine crept along the ground with their bright yellow flowers, which were really a treat to see. On Chasing Grasshoppers
The nerunji plants have dry, thorny fruits, that at times, can prick your feet and make you shout in pain. If you pull the broken thorn from the thick skin of your bare feet, little drops of red blood would ooze out. Whenever I got pricked, I plucked a few leaves of Thumbai plants, crushed them and patted them on the mark of the wound on my bare feet, and within seconds, I felt relieved. The fresh herbal juice of the Thumbai leaves was cold on the skin, and it immediately gave a soothing effect.
Chasing and Catching Grasshoppers
Sometimes we plucked the white Thumbai flowers and made garlands out of them. The small chakras made of Thumbai flowers resembled my favourite evening snack, ‘muruku’ made with rice and urad dhal.
While collecting the Thumbai flowers, it was a feast to watch colorful monarch butterflies that fly around the Thumbai plants to suck the nectar from the white flowers. It was wonderful to watch the butterflies stretching their proboscis and drinking the nectar. Most of the butterflies had black wings with red eye-like structures painted in the middle.
Apart from butterflies, numerous grasshoppers hopped around. There were grasshoppers of all sizes, from tiny to big grasshoppers. Green colored grasshoppers, brown colored grasshoppers, and pale grey colored grasshoppers. It took a while for me to learn how to catch the grasshoppers. The grasshoppers kept on hopping and jumping from one place to another.
We caught the green colored grasshoppers and filled our glass bottles with many of them. After having them inside the bottle for some time, we would release them from the bottle once again.
Roasting Grasshoppers for the Chickens
One day, we caught so many grasshoppers and we wanted to feed them to our chickens. We wanted to do something different on that day. We gathered dry twigs and leaves that were scattered below the trees. One of us took a sheet cut from an empty talcum powder tin. We all then built an oven with the broken bricks and stones. After filling the oven with dry twigs and leaves, we placed the sheet of tin in the oven.
With the matchstick stick we lit the dry leaves and twigs and made a fire. When the sheet got hot, we placed the wax collected from burnt candles. The wax started to melt, and it looked like oil. One by one, we took the grasshopper out of the bottle. We removed the legs and the head of the grasshopper. Shamelessly, we didn’t even realize how painful it would be for those grasshoppers. We then roasted the headless, legless grasshoppers in the melting wax. After roasting the grasshoppers for a while in the melting wax, we took them out of the fire.
We placed the roasted grasshoppers on a waste paper and called the chickens to taste the toast. The chickens came running and ate the grasshoppers within seconds. We all clapped our hands and laughed loudly. The memory of chasing and roasting grasshoppers is still fresh in my mind.
Reflection and Regret
The difference is now I feel I don’t have the right to kill the grasshoppers like this, and how they would have cursed me for taking their lives. Every living thing in the world has the right to live its life. Is it childhood frenzy that made me do that? Why should I choose those innocent grasshoppers and feed them to the chickens? Does it reflect the cruel nature that is hidden deeper within me?
When I narrated this to one of my younger colleagues, she passed on a remark. “That is too bad. How dare you do that?” I apologized to her. She shared with me an incident during her school days. During rainy seasons, grasshoppers from the school garden would come into their class through the windows. Whoever caught the grasshopper was considered lucky, and they may bring them prosperity and wealth. I felt ashamed and could not look directly at her for a few minutes.
Growing up in an environment enriched with colours of nature adorned with sounds of machines, I enjoyed life with all challenges. Nature is always a great teacher that teaches empathy to live and let live others. Though I am now living in an urban environment, the lesson that nature taught me motivates and allows me to keep on writing. I will always remember the cool afternoons in the shades of trees that made me write more on love.