My Verandah Beach

However, many years ago I read a Reader’s Digest article which suggested that one could beautify the verandah of one’s own house and treat it like a beach—sit there and relax with a glass of juice on a hot summer day or just watch the goings on outside. Spending a few days in my village home this summer, and working on my laptop sitting in my small verandah, I remembered that article.

I don’t even have a large verandah, nor have I had the time and opportunity to beautify it yet. It’s just a small place, but protected from mosquitoes with nets on a wooden frame, and cosy enough for my twosome family to sit and sip tea or gossip or read or work on the laptop. A winding small road outside is mostly quiet, with an occasional vehicle or someone on foot passing by. Also, electric rickshaws—quite ubiquitous in all towns and villages now—carrying one or two passengers now and then. As in most places in India, especially small towns, animals also use the road—cows, goats, dogs, but not too many. Overall, the scene is mostly tranquil, with the occasional ripple of a passerby on the road.

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Of course, there is bird song. Sometimes a dohikotoka (magpie robin) would perch on the amlokhi tree just outside, and sing in full throated glory. Sometimes shalikas (common mynah) would talk and talk of god knows what. A couple of shalikas my wife has befriended would come right up to the steps and beg for food. They look quite tame, demanding their share of titbits.

Frisky little sunbirds and flowerpeckers would fly or hop from branch to branch, flower to flower. In their season, xokhiotis (orioles) would break into their unmistakable call, or a hetuluka (blue throated barbet) would say: hetuluk! hetuluk! but somewhat in Carnatic fashion. I have also seen haitha (yellow-footed green pigeon) on my rudraksh tree, and large bats (flying fox) eating the outer covering of the fruit of that tree. Sitting in my verandah beach, I can enjoy all this activity without disturbing any of the birds and beasts.

Occasionally a cow would come up to the gate and stare inside, as if trying to know if there is someone who would care to give it something to it. I love offering them things they like, and in this jackfruit season, their excitement at being offered what we don’t eat of the jackfruit—the skin along with some pulpy stuff of the ripe jackfruit—is extraordinary.

Then the next door neighbour’s lovely white cat would slip through the lowest bar of the gate, sit in the front yard for some time, and then go its way. In winters it would find a sunny spot and nap for quite a while. I love to watch it and marvel at its snow white fur. It rummages through all kinds of undergrowth and vegetation and climbs walls and visits all sorts of places, but manages to remain shiny white.

Then the monkeys. A large troop would descend sometimes, and forage for food in the trees in my compound and the neighbours’ compounds. They are now considered a menace with a large population, divided into clans, marauding the countryside, eating up and destroying fruits and vegetables. I am somewhat tolerant towards them although they have made it practically impossible for us to eat guavas and litchis from our own garden, and sitting in my veranda, I enjoy watching their antics outside: performing acrobatics that can shame any Olympic gymnast.

Although its not my habit to strain my ears to overhear other people’s conversation, telephonic or otherwise, sometimes I hear conversations on the road outside that make me smile. The other day I was sitting in my veranda beach and trying to concentrate on something I was writing when something outside drew my attention.

A Hindi-speaking boy, hardly out of his adolescence, and perhaps working in some factory at the outskirts of the town, was cycling past my house when he happened to receive a call on his mobile phone, and he stopped under my amlokhi tree, speaking on the phone. “Kabse?” he said, “Jabse tumko dekha, tabse.” (“Since when? Well, ever since I have seen you.”)

The dreamy look on his face and the content of the conversation clearly suggested that the poor fellow was in love and was speaking to his beloved. But I wondered what “ever since I have seen you” meant for him.

He looks so young; since when has he started a romantic affair? And I wonder how young the girl must be! Does the poor fellow even know the legal age at which couples can marry? But no, he’s not talking of marriage yet; he’s only talking about love. After all Shakespeare’s Romeo was only 16 and Juliet just 13!

Here I am in my own house, sitting in my small veranda beach, enjoying the scene outside, my amlokhi and pine clearly in view, and rudraksh and shilikha also quite near. And lots of trees in my neighbour’s compound, all green, and originally belonging to a renowned poet of my state.

May be if I move elsewhere I can list my property in Airbnb or some other such website and mention the attractions: 1) green view and winding village road outside, 2) free bird song and animal visits including monkey-antics, 3) tranquility, 4) occasional chance to overhear interesting conversation, and 4) near the birth-place of a distinguished Assamese poet…… Of course, I am only joking. My sleepy little town will never become a tourist attraction, and my nondescript property will never be listed on Airbnb.

However, there is one person who will always appreciate what this non-Airbnb property has to offer—I, myself. After all, what I have here is assured, and that too entirely free of cost. Haven’t we all had the experience of booking what accommodation booking websites list as superb in so many ways and then find the place terribly disappointing? Once I made the mistake of booking a hotel in Pondicherry on Christmas Eve.

First, the timing was wrong. Christmas and New Year make Pondicherry a much sought after destination; so even cheap, third-rate places are listed at five-star rates. Also, with all our major tourist destinations getting overcrowded by the day, we should have considered what we wanted: jostle with crowds milling around in the streets of Pondicherry or spend the time in some quiet little place?

Although we had planned to stay two nights, we checked out the very next morning, after witnessing drunken fights in the hotel on Christmas Eve! I love Pondicherry, but I certainly do not appreciate its being the booze capital of South India. Drinking and being merry is alright, but the problem is that of the thousands and thousands who drink, not everyone is trying to be merry but nasty and rowdy.

Some people are always a nuisance, and among thousands of people a few hundred are bound to be such. They can spoil all fun for everyone. In your veranda beach, you are safe. No drunken louts to bother you.

Overtourism is taking its toll on our mountains in the North. Beautiful hill stations like Darjeeling, Shimla, and Nainital are perpetually overcrowded nowadays, and the government, obsessed with “vikas”, is building more and more highways and super highways into the mountains, facilitating the movement of large crowds from places like Delhi and increasing the pressure on the fragile eco-system of the hills and the peaceful existence of the original inhabitants of the hills. While some businesses, big and small, flourish with the inflow of tourists, overtourism is always harmful to ecology and local culture.

In Europe, inhabitants of many important tourist destinations have actually started fighting overtourism, even telling tourists to get back to whatever goddamned place they came from! Only last Saturday (6 July, 2024) protesters at Barcelona displayed “Go back home” placards to tourists and squirted water guns at them. The protesters marched through Barcelona, shouting, “Barcelona is not for sale!” and “Overtourism kills the city!”

Possibly the target of these protesters in Spain are mostly Americans, but unfortunately, some Indian travellers have also succeeded in earning a bad name for all Indians by being unconcerned, indisciplined revellers instead of being conscientious travellers.

One easily discernible problem is that despite government antics on ritual cleanliness drives (Scores of well-dressed politicians with brand-new brooms smiling at pre-arranged media cameras and regular flatterers…..), many of our brothers and sisters are loud mouthed and dirty and think nothing of spitting on the roads, spewing out horrible spittle, and behaving most clumsily without the least concern for anyone around.

And then they behave in the same way abroad. Some of these people are of the mentality that when you pay for a service, you can behave in any manner you like.

So why travel to some distant place and tolerate the insufferable behaviour of pleasure-seeking (and pleasure-destroying) crowds, go through the hassle of being hoodwinked by booking cites, and also possibly face water guns? Why end your holidays grumbling and grudging about everything going wrong? Why not enjoy your verandah beach?

(Sanjeev Kumar Nath, English Department, Gauhati University, sanjeevnath21@gmail.com)

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