Dheera's Workshop of Whimsy

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Last night it rained leeches at Kamla Nehru Park, on Malabar Hill, in Bombay.

The park, the lesser known sibling of the glamorous Hanging Gardens, is tucked away on the other side of the road from its renowned elder brother, also known as Sir Phirozeshah Mehta Garden.

For those who are unfamiliar, Kamla Nehru Park houses a large, concrete boot, into which children below 12 years are allowed to climb. But that is not all. The park has a singing fountain, which comes on, to the tunes of old Hindi movie songs, every evening at 7; a posse of policemen, lurking in dark corners, hoping to catch young lovers trying to steal a private moment; and leeches.

The leeches are not a perennial factor, and nor is the singing fountain. It would be fair to say that they swap places. When the monsoon arrives, the fountain stops and the leeches appear.

This year there is a larger contingent than normal. They are besieging every part of the garden.

They remind me of my father.

When we were young, the highlight of the visit to our farm in the foot hills of Nainital, was walking through the sugar cane fields. It was there, that I found my first pet. A bird with a broken wing. We saved it from being attacked by bigger bully birds. My father, the best Vet in the world, repaired the damaged wing and the little munia bird lived to delight me for many years.

At the farm we always woke at the crack of dawn, wore black, ill-fitting gum boots, held long poles to navigate through the uneven fields and off we went in a convoy of human bodies. We inspected the crops, scratched our arms on rough sugarcane leaves, found orphaned animals and sometimes killed a snake.

The stories from our escapades on those long eventful walks could fill a book but back to the matter on hand. Leeches.

We always returned from the walks, ravenous for breakfast. And while we waited for it to be served, we performed a daily ritual that made us hoot with joy. It had to do with my father's spindly, hairless calves.

'Ready?' He would ask.

'Oh yes!' we would say, holding our breath.

And then, in slow motion, he would extend his legs one by one and our bearer would pull off his gumboots. Quite unfailingly, there was a delight waiting for us to see.

Leeches!

My father's legs, knee down, would be black with leeches! All sizes, depending on how much of his blood they had feasted on already. Big ones and small ones, fat ones and thin ones, velvet black on the top, with small, dusky antennae.

They punctured his skin and left red sores all over his calves, his feet and even in between his twisted toes! We envied my father, as none of us ever got even one leech on us. We would sit and watch him pull them off one by one and put them on the stone floor. Then we'd run into the kitchen and bring out the salt to sprinkle on the black blood suckers, to dissolve them to death. We watched in cruel fascination as the leeches squirmed and twisted, exposing their grey under bellies, oozing slime all over the floor as they died a painful death.

I wonder now, why my mother didn't stop us from torturing the poor creatures. I think she was more interested in applying antiseptic lotion on her husband's bloodied legs.

When we asked him why only he got to have all the leeches, he looked mysterious and said, 'Magic gumboots!'

My father's legs always remained scarred. Long after we sold the farm and the leeches faded away into a far memory pocket, his thin, hairless, marked legs bore testimony to the tale.

I was reminded of my father today on my morning walk.

Leeches are not common in Bombay. In Delhi, one may spy the odd creature making its slimy way up the garden wall but in Bombay, leech-spying does not happen often.

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Except in the monsoon at the Kamla Nehru Park, on Malabar Hill.