Ella Bella

Rimpy must have been 3 or 4 years old. Living in a huge govt. quarter in Ghilamara, a small sleepy town near Lakhimpur, Assam. In this introvert, shy of modernization and materialism deciduous town with a dearth of artificial amusements people found their own sweet ways of amusement.

Every evening Rimpy’s sisters, Monju, the maid and a neighbour gathered to play. Mom had made it a condition that they could play only if they took Rimpy to play.

Only if Rimpy too went to play.

Hide and Seek.
Seek and Hide.

It was their favourite game. Hide and seek had the strange habit of beginning everywhere, out of the blue.
Everywhere. In the huge circles of flowers, in the sheds, in the huge echoing empty rooms, in the dark room (where the kerosene generator was kept), under the huge bogori ‘berry’ tree and of course in the big boulders of the adjacent fields.
While everyone was busy ‘I-Spying’ and ‘Dhappaing’ Rimpy had a very special role to play. Rimpy was ‘Ella Bella’ or not counted.

Ella Bella a unique concept, to get nuisance out of the way and still make the person feel great about it. Whoever was Ella Bella in a game had a special privilege of never getting caught or rather no one caught an Ella Bella.


Never out.
Never lost.
Never won.

Rimpy hid in one particular spot for hours. Be it a boulder or a flower bed. She heard the excited voices of the players, like a single twitching ear of a dog. The gushing nervousness of being caught, the exasperation of not being able to find anyone, hearing the unwanted ‘I-Spy’, the eagerness, relief of a Dhappa creeping from behind a bush. Those were the great pressures of the game.

Once in a while, as Rimpy sat with her frock raised, so that it didn’t touch the red, black, brown, ochre earth and she had bored of watching the crumpled grass, she stood up to see what was happening in the world above, i.e. outside the boulder. The moment her head popped out from the boulder she found her exasperated sister, Simi telling her to go back to her hiding place or Monju winking at her to hide. Thus went some more hours.

Never out.
Never lost.
Never won.

Rimpy, the Ella Bella.

Welcome

The pure, the bright, the beautiful,
That stirred our hearts in childhood,
The impulse to awordless prayer,
The dreams of love and truth;
The longings after something lost,
the spirit's yearning cry,
The strivings after better hopes..

These things can never die.

-Ruskin Bond