How could I have forgotten!
After months of procrastination, I liberated Bubbalou from the depths of one of my journals. While Bubbalou was created in 2006, it originally entered my life in the early 1970’s, and was soon after published in an agricultural magazine. I have carried a copy of it, on a fragile with age sheet of paper, typewritten, long before computers became a common thing.
Here it is, with the back story, followed by a link to what’s become of him after he became Bubbalou. He’s happily delighting little children, like he once did me- he held me mesmerized and moved, pensive, thoughtful, resigned.
The transformation to Bubbalou was required for it to be more palatable to the young and not so young minds in the west. The ‘fatality’ of “all life must come to an end,” may not have sat well with the western mind, and certainly not an ending such as met by my friend in 1971?! This is how it all happened.
Indian Monsoon
This poem is the original of the recently published Adventures of Bubbalou, the baby water bubble. An Agricultural magazine published it, along with another poem, Sparrow's song.
The Backstory for this poem takes me back to a late afternoon or early evening during the monsoons. It was in Pandara Road, New Delhi, where we lived for about 23 years, in government accommodation allotted to my mother. At the end of each row of flats was a deep gutter for the rainwater runoff. Being an avid walker, I always sought a reason to 'go' somewhere so I could walk.
I remember heading out as soon as the rain stopped. The gutter was still gurgling away like an energetic brook, with water flowing at a good pace. I glanced into the gutter and noticed a big water bubble. Along with the blades of dried grass and other bric a brac from nature's excrement being washed away with the rainwater, it was jaunting along, floating in the water, meandering with the water's path, going wherever the water's flow was taking it.
In my late teens then, in the early 1970s, I had matured enough to have a mental bent that colors much of Indian thought process and life, the feeling of a presence of divinity and the impermanence of things. From this observation, my poem, Indian Monsoon, was born.
Indian Monsoon
I am a baby water bubble
I was born in the rain,
My life is but a short span
I'll just float down the drain.
Straws and dust are my companions
All natural gifts of God
I was born of the lady cloud
The thunder is her lord.
I sway to the water ripples
I dance to the breeze
'Midst grass and thorns and ferns,
My way, I often squeeze.
I live in muddy rainwater,
A boon to farms and fields,
For all humans bless the rain
For the harvest rich it yields.
I, too, am exposed to dangers
Encountered in human strife
I avoid those paper boats
To save my precious life.
As gaily I sail on
Merrily to the pitter patter tune,
If I'm born at sunrise
I don't live to see the moon.
That all life must once end
To this, I am quite wise,
So before against that rock, I dash,
Just let me close my eyes.
Copyright 1971 Veenu Banga
Here is Bubbalou, published on July 27th to mark a special birthday. In paperback and on Kindle:
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