Wellll….. I simply love my peace- can’t have any parinda ‘pok-pokking’ my door any time of the day or night. ☺ Jokes apart, when it came to the decision of wooden flooring for our bedrooms, I was very sure there could be no other way than the’ 3- R way’- Recycling wood was my contribution towards ‘Mission Sustainability’.
Once again, I boarded my train of ‘dream team of materials’, which came and halted at Ajmer, Rajasthan. (Not planned at all, somehow my choice of materials always landed me in Rajasthan*- maybe I was a ‘Rajkumari’ in my previous birth ☺). Twist in the tale was that I was not there for Sheesham , Mango or any famed woods of Rajasthan but for the discontinued & forgotten ‘wooden sleepers’ from the railway tracks of yore!!
Dreaming of ready-to-lay, deck flooring like planks, which given a simple hand of oil, would gleam with ‘desi polish’, I confidently ordered a huge truck load. This time however*, the plan boomeranged right back into my face! What tumbled out of the truck made me want to throw myself onto the same tracks, in front of a speeding train!! The spooky, gnarled, blackened pile lay day & night in the open … yet not even the scavengers (I hoped would steal it away for cooking or warming themselves) cast a second glance!
“Wellll….it seems we have at least a decade worth of firewood for our ‘Lohris’ and bonfires ☺”, mused my husband. By this stage in the construction of our house, he had either become immune to my shocking experiments or he had decided- ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’. Whatever it was, that remark set off a fresh dose of determination in me. I sent a fervent prayer to ‘Indra dev’ to send a thunderbolt of strength my way and started working with the wood, patiently and tediously:
Step 1– Iron straps, nails, embedded stones etc. were extracted.
Step 2 – Holes & tears ridden sleepers passed through an ‘Ara’ to slice off the barks.
Step 3 – Groomed and made decent, the lot was brought home…
Staring at the pile, I realized that these bedroom floorings. Having undergone the test of time, however, these sleepers had turned extremely hardy, water& termite proof and ready to take on the world. Tingling with myriad possibilities, I decided to experiment with exterior applications first :
Step 4 – Planks were cut into regular width rafters to serve as exterior false ceiling
Seeing the terrace gazebo resplendent in its new avatar, the verandahs begged to be dressed the same, holes, tears, et al..
Step 5 – Lyrics of the song- “You are my theme for a dream Yes you are, A rare and lovely theme ♫♫”
…filled my mind as rustic rafters tip-toed smoothly, completing the theme magically!
Gradually, it seemed to me, my lovely railway wood had started pointing out blank spaces itself-
Now, so engrossed was I with the delightful outcomes, that I missed the dagger looks being passed at me by someone-the pile of barks (the ‘chhaal’) !! Marred with guilt, I now invoked Sarasvati, the goddess of arts herself, throwing in the ‘women power’ angle too :)/. She answered and in-turn, I decided to honor the barks with a role they were naturally meant to play i.e. of protective skins-
Step 6- Bark lengths shaped into regular sizes and used to screen vertical ducts carrying plumbing & ac pipes, kitchen exhaust etc.
While the pile did get smaller, the variety in sizes of left-over pieces got bigger. As the nightmare of the stack ending up into a bonfire loomed large, miraculously, Nek Chand, (of the Rock garden fame) our local God of ‘wealth out of waste’ came into my dreams!! The spontaneous compositions that emerged, remain my personal favorites to date and continue to delight all ..
Having had a fun-filled trip with my logs of Rail- wood, me and my husband are now happy to invite you all ,coming winters,for a round of bonfires 🙂
“When one door closes, another opens”~
Alexander Graham Bell.
True to the wise saying, from the other door, fell out a treasure trove of ingenious ideas and the house stands today, a living testimony of the same……
