The Way through the Eucs

An evening walk always seemed very relaxing and pleasant. It was way back in the second year of my college, a warm autumn dusk growing into the darkening night. Like an alluring dream, a pure cool wind was blowing across the small vale where the college is located. A full moon shone as if only autumn clouds could have veiled it from being seen. The way through the woods – it seemed so blessed, so full of life, so mysterious and yet so romantic. Although I sound like poetry but this is what actually happened and the ambience added vintage to the already intoxicating dimly lit shabby path through the Eucs. Yes, that is exactly what we used to call the eucalyptus forest situated towards the south of the college campus.

“Yet, if you enter the woods,
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through,
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods . . .
But there is no road through the woods!”

The ecstasy of the small slum distributed throughout the length of the road, on both its sides, was evident through the dimly lit lanterns of the noisy houses, flickering in the moonlit darkness, with shapes moving here and there. Cries of several children creating a cacophony symbolized existence of life. Those underdeveloped areas of the town were neglected and maybe even isolated, from the rest of the social and industrial places around. However, people lived in the darkness, and it seemed, they lived quite happily. Most of them earned from their daily menial labour. These slum dwellers were better known as the scavengers.

The road was only used as the “54 Feet” Bus Route as the buses cut across through the meandering way through the woods. The last bus must have gone around at 4:30pm. And the next one should arrive next morning.

What was most romantic and alluring in that evening walk was undoubtedly a sweet melodious sound of a mouthorgan coming from afar. It was beauty and ballad personified. One could only wonder what precious talents are hiding in those wasteland areas. Well, beyond music, it was a celebration of happiness, satiety and isolation. They perhaps are like those otters, preferring their isolation and not fearing any men’s intrusion ‘because they see so few’.

But I was an intruder and was keenly following the boy with the mouthorgan. He was unimaginably sweet in blowing his mouthorgan and to the point. He seemed an expert in the art. He was walking like a small child with faltering steps, moving ahead through the middle of the road as it bent into a serpentine turn. But only to disturb the pleasant sound, there was a car blowing its horn repeatedly to have way and go ahead, and the child wouldn’t leave his path and he walked ahead unnoticed, unalarmed, indifferently.

Someone from the house on the left of the road came and moved the boy from the middle of the house, apologizing to the driver of the car saying that he was deaf and dumb – only to set us wonderstruck at the amazing prowess of producing music only by feeling the vibrations coming from the metallic surface of the mouthorgan, and producing such a wonderful ballad. I was stunned.

I kept on looking around the place. The dingy uninhabited shabby houses with earthen walls  reverberated a thought, “there is no road through the woods!”