It’s right there. In a busy street, somewhere in a field, tucked away under a once officious but now retired-looking old-timer’s arm, definitely in the sabzi or machli mandi, almost always hanging precariously from the handlebar of a Hero cycle or Bajaj scooter and perhaps, standing all solemn and alone, in a corner of your house. You really can’t miss the Big Black Indian Umbrella.

Fit for every season, this large fixture is as synonymous with India as the black-bottomed aluminium kettle is to our chaiwallahs. As high up as Harkidun in Uttaranchal and as low down as Arundhati’s Ayemenem, this big black umbrella is an accessory to reckon with.

Kishan Singh, the lone caretaker at Harkidun’s lone lodge for trekkers had one, and it would sit right next to him while he sat wiggling his stinky toes by the fireplace, making us our first cup of tea after five hours of trekking.

The shiny steel spoke at the umbrella’s end served as the perfect rivet for the walking stick that it often became when he trudged uphill ahead of us. I imagined it to have no less horsepower than Mary Poppins’, for that man could fly up a hill. The wooden handle too served a sly purpose, that of back-scratcher!

In rural India, it is not uncommon to see a child and a particularly enterprising goat sharing the shade of this big black umbrella on sunny afternoons. Prized possession of many a village home, it is shared over the generations — from grandparents to grandchildren. It is also cheerfully offered to visiting sunscreen-slathered city people, who of course, are thought to be nauseatingly sun sensitive.

... contd.