Greetins, dear friend! Do you celebrate days of earth, sky, sea, of children and innocence and peace, days that don’t push consumerism, empty packages and sticky tape dumped in landfills?
I want to tell you about one o’ them days like that, please come with me to the garden near Vlissengen Road in Georgetown, in my lovely native land.
Let we follow this water curving through this lumpy-clumpy grass and weed, between them trees. That screeching? Oh, tha’s a macaw in a’ enclosed area over there, wild animals been lock-up there for decades. Had a time when, in the restless hour of two a.m., citizens living nearby useta hear the roar of two lions echoing in the gloom. Was a sad-sad sound, they say.
We’re modern now, we’ve got the growls of traffic and the weeding machine. It’s so peaceful here though, isn’t it, in our Botanical Garden, by this little canal. Here’s the Kissing Bridge, charming, eh, this low arch with the white trellis and green trimming. Nah, we didn’t create it, we didn’t design this garden, this is from ye olde colonial days. Hang around today, you gon see a bride and groom taking photos on the bridge, and children skipping up and down the steps at the two ends, peering into the water.
Once upon a time, when the water was clean-brown, without scum, when no plastic bottles or empty snacks-packets drifted around the edges, the aunties and uncles brought the li’l ones here to play.
“Come,” Uncle Wats said, plucking long blades of grass. “Look.” The li’l ones, puzzled, positioned themselves near the water-edge, trimbling with anticipation of this unknown. Wats whistled low, monotonous, like breeze passing through iron pipe on a sleepy countryside afternoon.
Look, de water moving, look-look-look-look-look! The children clapped and squealed. “If you make noise you will scare them,” Wats warned; he knew Things about animals, he was an agriculture-man, he’d seen birth and dying of creatures. The children shushed. Then their mouths fell open in shock. A huge, shapeless, grey face with a fat nose was peering up at them in the water. Wats offered it the grass, and a wide-strange mouth took it, clumsy and gentle, then the hump sank back down.
“Phuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu. Phuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu,” the children whistled the almost-silent sound.
Nothing.
“Phuuuuuuuuuu.”
Suddenly! Magic in slow motion, the water began to move and three heavy, grey backs glided to the water’s edge. The children fed them grass and, slowly, the soft-wide-old-mouths took it and slipped away.
Everyone left, migrated.
One year, drought almost-dried the land of many waters. The animal carers were troubled. The canal in the garden was shrinking. They shifted a few of the water-cows to the canal in the National Park.
Praises be, the wata-cows have survived the heavy traffic-rumble and the boom-rakka-boom from picnickers’ music boxes.
Far from his lovely native land, Wats spoke less as time flowed. I noticed this at my nephew’s nikkah late last year. This Ramadan, he turned eighty-nine in a cool, sanitised-white room. A week later, on World Manatee Day, his beloved family bid him adieu as he travelled to the other world to meet my auntie.
Through the window of the ICU, a black bird walking-weird on a low wall close by caught my eye. I drifted over, into a chair. The bird paused, turned its back to the room, raised its head high and stared at the sky. It lowered its head, walked the other way, a few steps, then turned again and stared, neck straight, beak up. It fluffed its feathers, spread its wings, glossy-blue-black-bird, closed its wings and fixed its gaze intensely upwards on that one place.
“He’s gone,” I heard my cousin near the bed say.
Not minutes after, the bird left the wall.
Friend, I write this for several reasons. One is to comfort my two gal-cousins and their children. Another is to share this legacy with you.
Until the Sunday after next, take care of you, plenty love, neena.
What a lovely piece. A gently moving tribute to Uncle Wats.