ABU. To Be Who You Are. A. Manvayler
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Название: ABU. To Be Who You Are
Автор: A. Manvayler
Издательство: Издательские решения
Жанр: Современная русская литература
isbn: 9785449634016
isbn:
The earth rotated in no time, with days and nights full of events which ceased to be divided on dream and reality. They simply came together in a harmonious and diverse happy life full of wonders and unpredictable revelations. I got back to the reality of a child’s perception when each new day brings only fresh emotions.
“The Jungle Book” was opened and we lived our story. However, life in a Moscow flat and in a Goan one is not the same. We both were in the kitchen when we heard some cooing just over our heads and suddenly we lifted our eyes and saw the source of the sound. Our kitchen windows were constantly open, it was a kind of our natural ventilation, and a couple of pigeons had made a nest just in the corner, on the hanging shelf! Now we understood why from time to time bird droppings appeared in our house. Abu quickly dealt with our guests. “Pigeons are number one infection carriers all over India,” he explained. “We let only geckos live with us, although they don’t pay a rental charge.” The nest was expelled.
Goan world of sounds never lets you forget that you live in the jungle, in everlasting summer filled with life and motion. The tropics of Goa are bustling with life round the clock; they smell, quack, coucou, yell, halloo, hoot and even meow. Unidentified loud sounds always seem more high-pitched to us, it’s just how our brain works. When we can’t recognize the source of the sound it either makes us worry or we try to imagine the object which could possibly produce those sounds and to find the reason why it does so. Seeing my interest, Abu told me about birds and even showed me some of them and their natural habitats like images in an encyclopedia with pictures or a full article. Those are meowing birds. Koels are the birds of the cuckoo family and they scream like real March jungle cats. But even their sounds, in the beginning, can be easily confused with peacocks, whose meowing is even more plaintive and shrill. Goa is a region rich for unique creatures of all kinds. The bald eagles which were so stunning to me turned out into the Brahmin vultures which have several species and vary in colour. You can find brown-beige fishers mostly in Calangut, and white-black snake catchers fly in Palolem over the river. An amazing life hack: if snake catchers circle above you that means that there’re snakes nearby.
Even if your apartment is situated in the Goan jungle it’s impossible to not keep your home clean and tidy. The tropical environment of Asia requires to maintain cleanliness at home. You share your space with “two of each species” like in Noah’s ark. The land of my dreams which I was so eager to inhabit brought me more and more wonders and discoveries, and my wise teacher Abu compensated all life turmoil by constant fun and the unceasing sense of humour. Things gave us a thrill by the natural joy.
Instead of being irritated I took my energy even from not very pleasant things. Mosquitoes always started their dinner with me, even if there was a company of eight people on the balcony. Abu hunted them and beat the walls barehanded leaving blood-red spots on the walls. Later together we used to take wet sponges and washed away those cartoon traces of the murder. And Abu with his constant smile along with seriousness noted proudly: “It’s not my blood. Because mine is blue, and that one is red.”
Giant bees made a hive just straight above our window, it looked like a carving clay pot. With a fishing rod, Abu torn apart the beehive and took away a big wax piece the size of a pottery wheel. Taking precautions he got wearing glasses for building and a raincoat and looked like a one-eyed Minion. Filling up with repellent all the house we ran off to the beach. When we back in the evening we had to sweep the half-dead tiger-striped cover away from the white tile floor. Abu had stepped on one bee but tolerated the pain heroically without a sound. He just in his style commented that he’s not Winnie the Pooh. One bee we still hadn’t noticed and our friend Keith got stung by it. We barely saved him from the allergies.
By the way, the tile floor is one more interesting feature of such areas. Wood, metal and other corrosive materials are deteriorating rapidly during monsoon season. That’s why it’s more practical to use stone or ceramics. Tile floor is done almost in all Goa apartments. Many appreciate a pleasant coolness on hot days it gives. But there’s a danger too, which Abu as always had demonstrated by his own example. Taking a shower with his feet in soap, once he couldn’t keep balance on a wet slippery tile floor and fell down. While falling down he bumped his jaw on a washbasin and knocked out a tooth. Stood up, did spit, finished his shower with no screaming and panic.
He left the bathroom gloomy, wet, feeling sick from his recent fall. He went to bed without any complaining, just showed me a fresh hole inside his mouth. Bent over him I gasped in shock, and he with a smile started singing “My way” of Armstrong. And then he announced: “All is well, my darling. The great falls change people. I can speak and even sing, the diction hadn’t been affected.” I was looking at the changes in his teeth quantity in a state of tension and astonishment by the fact that it didn’t touch Abu at all. I sighed and told him: « I wish your chewing abilities wouldn’t disappoint you too. But you’re a guide, and anyway, you need nice teeth. You’re not an elephant whose teeth changes up to six times a life, but a 21st-century human who has an opportunity to place implants. And Abu sang again with his hearty laughter: “Life is plastic, this is fantastic.” I never felt bored with him.
People meet not by accident. Every meeting carries some meaning, but what exactly it does mean we often can’t guess. We already knew that we bear some significant information for each other, the revelation.
Pyotr Mamonov said: “Every human being you meet in life is an angel. He’s your helper and you’ve met him not by chance. He tests or loves you. There can’t be another.” We did love and were each other’s angels.
At times Abu was galloping from one room to another with a slipper in his hand trying to get a cockroach. Besides, that Indian cockroaches are huge, they also can fly. Abu knew that they multiply uncontrollably and he didn’t let them in our house. But ants caused me most troubles. Just a drop of something sweet and ten minutes were enough to get invaded. Usually, they intensify before monsoon starts. Intuiting the coming of hungry and difficult times, the running crowds of these insects store all around, what their hardworking feet can only get. I had an allergy for them, almost same as Keith with bees.
Abu explained that actually ants don’t bite but protect themselves with a help of their poisoned acid which they produce automatically like scared people produce adrenaline, but it didn’t make it easier for me. Abu used to apply Tulsi oil or a toothpaste on my burns which helped to minimize the healing process up to several days. And in his kidding manner said that it could have been worse, “Do you remember how many times Serj has been bittten by ants for his manhood? And you can’t apply paste there.” The unlimited life experience of aborigines in this land full of wonders and fairy tales never ceased to admire me. Abu’s encyclopedic knowledge with each new opening surprised me.
Spiders constantly spun their webs under our ceiling. Since we lived on the top floor, a sloping roof began exactly above our heads. In other words, a ceiling height from one side was two and a half meters and from another all four. Because of this difference in height, the flat looked bigger, but to clean spiderwebs was quite a thing. Of course, we found the most extreme way out of this situation: I climbed onto Abu’s shoulders with a mop in my hands, and in such СКАЧАТЬ