I am reminded again of the small village where I was born. Why existence should have chosen that small village in the first place is unexplainable. It is as it should be. The village was beautiful. I have traveled far and wide but I have never come across that same beauty. One never comes again to the same. Things come and go, but it is never the same.
It had small hills, hillocks rather, but a beautiful lake, and a few huts, just straw huts. The only brick house was the one I was born in, and that too was not much of a brick house. It was just a little house.

I can see it now, and can describe its every detail... but more than the house or the village, I remember the people. I have come across millions of people, but the people of that village were more innocent than any, because they were very primitive. They knew nothing of the world. Not even a single newspaper had ever entered that village. You can now understand why there was no school, not even a primary school... what a blessing! No modern child can afford it.

I remained uneducated for those years and they were the most beautiful years....

Kuchwada was surrounded by small hills and there was a small pond. Nobody could describe that pond except Basho. Even he does not describe the pond, he simply says:

The ancient pond Frog jumps in Plop!

Is this a description? The pond is only mentioned, the frog too. No description of the pond or the frog... and plop!

The village had an ancient pond, very ancient, and very ancient trees surrounding it - they were perhaps hundreds of years old - and beautiful rocks all around... and certainly the frogs jumped. Day in and day out you could hear "plop," again and again. The sound of frogs jumping really helped the prevailing silence. That sound made the silence richer, more meaningful.

This is the beauty of Basho: he could describe something without actually describing it. He could say something without even mentioning a word. "Plop!" Now, is this a word? No word could do justice to the sound of a frog jumping into the ancient pond, but Basho did it justice.

I am not a Basho, and that village needed a Basho. Perhaps he would have made beautiful sketches, paintings, and haikus.... I have not done anything about that village - you will wonder why - I have not even visited it again. Once is enough. I never go to a place twice. For me number two does not exist. I have left many villages, many towns, never to return again. Once gone, gone forever, that's my way; so I have not returned to that village. The villagers have sent messages to me to come at least once more. I told them through a messenger, "I have been there once already, twice is not my way."

But the silence of that ancient pond stays with me.