Keya Sarkar: Smells of nature

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

Cooped up in air-conditioned offices all my working life, I always thought that seasons passed me by. Unless there was disruption of routine life by heavy rain or floods, seasons in

Mumbai hardly ever seemed to be the cause of joy or sorrow.

So on moving to Santiniketan I was convinced that despite what people said about how oppressive the summer could get, I would not install ACs. But having lived through two summers during which I was completely dysfunctional, I decided to reconcile to the fact that I had indeed become a creature of comfort. So I hacked off lovely wooden window shutters to accommodate an AC in my living room.

By end April, afternoons become unbearable in Santiniketan and I had to switch on the machine to concentrate on work in the afternoon. For a couple of days every time I switched on the AC, however, I would hear a noise like an animal moving around inside. But in Santiniketan one gets so used to finding frogs, geckos or mice in unexpected places that soon I kind of learnt to live with the background noise.

The noise suddenly stopped one day and I thought with relief that whatever it was, would have found a new place to live. My relief lasted only a couple of days. After that every time I switched on the AC, I got a faint dead animal stink and soon knew that I had a problem on my hands. I called my electrician who dismantled the AC, looked inside and declared that there was indeed a dead gecko inside but completely mangled. "Well then, clean it up," I said. He said he couldn't, because to open up the machine would need the services of a specialised AC service person.

I had visions of taking a cycle rickshaw and touring the town in search of one. But I was wrong, Santiniketan was making progress. The electrician actually had the cell number of a guy who serviced ACs. I said to call him immediately. By Santiniketan standards they (two of them) did arrive fast "" within a couple of hours. And more importantly, said that they could do the needful. Since in Santiniketan it is a common problem and they have to deal with corpses all the time.

I left them to their task and went around mine. Till suddenly I heard noises of some vigorous splashing of water. Alarmed I came to check what was going on and to my horror found that the machine had been taken to the well and to me looked like it was being given a bath. I wrote off my investment immediately and thought I would suffer the heat instead. But I was wrong "" the bath must have done it good. When the machine was reinstalled it worked minus the stink. I thanked the guys and asked how much I had to pay. When I paid the Rs 400 that they asked for, I kind of stopped feeling sorry for the dead gecko.

But soon the stink came back and I was convinced that I would have to get used to living in hot discomfort rather than pay for the funeral of animals which were dying because they wanted to cool off at my expense. I soon realised that the stink was far more pervasive than just in the living room. In near panic I asked my maid, my gardener and the labourers who were painting the outside of the house, as to what it could be.

They took me to the corner of the garden where some brown both was boiling in an earthen pot. And the stink was unimaginable. "What on earth is that," I asked. They just laughed in a "we had told you so" kind of way.

It then dawned on me. I was getting the house painted with mud from the garden and had insisted on using organic gum (made from animal fat) instead of Fevicol as a fixing agent. The tribal women who I had engaged to do the mud painting had warned me that it would stink when it was being boiled and for days even after it had been applied!