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‘Oye dikra, bring a stick quickly, we’ll finish the bh******d!’. I’m not sure what sort of alarm clock you’re used to, but I’d be willing to bet it isn’t one that bellows this at seven in the morning. Mind you, it’s remarkably effective as a wake-up call, because I leapt out of bed in one of those confused tizzies saying ‘What? Where?’ and stumbled to the balcony to see what the fuss was about. ‘Uncle’, the patriarch of the family I was staying with, was making his way in a determined fashion towards a tall tree in the back garden, rifle in hand. I couldn’t yet figure out who (or what) the bh******d in question was, but I realised that they/it were about to have a very bad day.
The concerned dikra had by now materialised with a big stick, followed by an assortment of dogs barking their collective heads off. They all gathered at the foot of the tree, looking upwards and getting very excited, and were soon joined by a few cackling geese. Uncle steadied himself, took careful aim and cracked one off in the general direction of the heavens. I still wasn’t sure what he was aiming at, unless his daily routine included gunning down trees first thing in the morning. He loosed off another round and I heard lots of rustling noises as an indistinguishable shape fell through the branches and onto the ground. The geese fled, the dogs pumped up the volume and dikra set upon whatever it was with alarming gusto, ensuring that if Uncle had missed, he certainly wouldn’t. Uncle, meanwhile, was yelling robust words of encouragement and after about two minutes, it was all over. Just to make sure (I haven’t a clue why; not even Dara Singh could have survived that massacre), a fire was lit and the mysterious corpse was cast into the flames. ‘Ah, you’re up early, son. Good habit, good habit,’ Uncle said, spotting me and giving me totally undue credit. ‘Shot a snake, you know. Dangerous things, bh******d snakes.’ I didn’t disagree with his judgement, incestuous or not, having just seen what he was capable of with a firearm.
I looked upon this literally explosive start to my Dahanu stay as a good omen of sorts. Surely anything that I experienced over the next few days would only be an added highlight. Mind you, I hadn’t expected anything resembling gunfire and early-morning hunting trips. Dahanu, on Maharashtra’s Konkan coast, had seemed like the sort of place where the local paper would have headlines like ‘Man has sneezing fit’. In fact, when Joshua had suggested we go there, I had raised a semi-incredulous eyebrow. ‘Dahanu? Firstly, where is it? More importantly, what does one do there?’ ‘Oh don’t worry, it’s only about three hours from Mumbai and it’s on the coast. Hardly anybody goes there, it’s very peaceful and we can stay with friends of my mother’s. That aunty’s a damn good cook also.’ His last line sold me, so before long we were pointing the business end of a Bolero down the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway, Joshua stuffing his face with chips and me coming to terms with an overly-sprung suspension. The road all the way there was great, however, so it was after an entertaining drive that we pulled into the driveway of Mavais and Soli Irani’s lovely old bungalow.
It was clearly the residence of someone in the farming business - a tractor was parked by the porch, bags of manure and farm implements were piled in an open shed and a well-worn Bajaj M80 was leaned against a wall. It was an altogether agreeable place and gave off a relaxed, earthy vibe that made me feel instantly at home. We walked up the porch steps and almost leapt onto the roof in a single bound when what seemed like the Hound of the Baskervilles came snarling out from behind a chair and lunged at us, being held back at the last second by a fortuitously short chain. As we cowered, backs and hands pressed flat against the wall, Soli came out and greeted us. ‘Welcome, welcome, I hope you boys had a good journey.’ He either genuinely didn’t notice that we were shortly to be in need of fresh underwear, or this sort of thing was a common occurrence. ‘Oh don’t mind him, he’s a docile fellow with us but a bit snappy with others. He bit our doctor friend the other day, poor fellow.’ I wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the dog or the recently punctured doctor, but I let it pass.
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