Just as we were breathing a sigh of relief — the Badam tree coming alive, various native trees flowering, a little green all around; yesterday, the Ashes part of Omar Khayyam’s verse came true: Our fence across the road went up in flames.

Varun noticed the fire when it was near the gate, and all of us rushed down and beat at it with green leaves, to keep it from spreading (No water anywhere nearby :-( and managed to save the gate and beyond. But the major part of the fence is ash.

We were feeling quite oppressed — Who would have done this? And why? When Govindraj came up the slope on his bike, he too was shocked. But he reassured us: “No, sir, akka, you mustn’t think that someone did it on purpose; it must have been some careless person who chucked a cigarette, bidi or match as he was passing by; it must have been an accident; no-one would have done this to you on purpose.” This cheered us up a bit— true or not — Someone saying this was hopeful.

Today many more people expressed shock (Palanisamy said “Yennake Bak-kunnu Aayidchu) and sympathy and many of them reiterated what Govindraj told us: “No-one would have done this to you on purpose.” Poun, Deepa and Vellachi came up to meet us, as did Thenan.
The “dissenting voice” so to speak was Chinnasamy’s who said that it must have been on purpose. “They would have wanted access to your fields for all sorts of things” (Meetingu-s to have booze, Open defecation parlour, Shade of the trees to sleep off a hangover: it has been used for all these :-)

As outsiders, Sonati and I were thinking of how it must be to be the victim of some similar thing when you know that it is on purpose; when you know that you are being targeted; when you know that you are an “outsider”; when you have no place else to go; when there is no-one to sympathise with you; and when, worst of all, it happens at scale.

At the least, one would want to curse the perpetrator; which we definitely wanted to. Even if it was an accident, whoever did it was being incredibly careless; callous in fact: in this weather, everyone is aware of what a spark can do. At the worst, we can leave it to your imagination.
For us, as always, it is a question of how to respond. Whoever we meet, we are asking, “What do you think? Was it on purpose? Could it really have been an accident?”

It is however an ill wind that blows nobody any good. The mangoes hanging on one of the trees were baked on the side facing the fire. So today we had Mango Chutney for lunch:

Scoop the insides of mangoes baked by the fire.
Add a little ginger. A little jaggery. Very little Green chilly. Salt to taste.
Mixie the thing well.
It was delicious.