Our Favourite Indian Stories (37 page)

Sankranti
reminds me of one particular day when I was about eleven or twelve. I was taking out the cows from the shed to tie them up in the back-yard. A calf was being a little difficult. I gave it a tap with a stick. As I turned away, it butted me. I screamed and fell. Awwa came running out of the kitchen. By the time she had thrashed and tied up the calf, I was standing up crying. I had bruised my knee. She took some mud, cleaned it carefully, pouring it from one palm to the other, blowing gently several times and patted the mud on to my wound. 'You must always be careful, child, with a naughty calf. Come, don't cry.' She kissed me on the cheek and went in. I wiped my eyes. Just as I was limping out of the cow-shed, I felt squelching wetness on my thighs, as if something was pouring out of my thighs. Alarmed, I thought that I had been wounded inside, and lifting up my skirt, peeped in. There seemed to be a wound between my thighs from which blood was oozing out. I cried out aloud for my mother. She came rushing out, crying anxiously, 'What is it again, my child?'

With her there was another woman who must have come to borrow chillies or salt. Awwa hugged me saying 'Don't be frightened, nothing will happen. The injury on your knees will heal in a day or two.' The other woman said, 'Why does this lass fuss so much over a little thing?... Wait let me get some
dathai
twig and squeeze the juice on the wound.' And she went away to look for the plant. I did not stop crying and told Awwa amidst sobs, 'It is not from the knee, it is in the thigh.' Anxiously she lifted up my skirt to examine. When she saw what had happened she smiled and said... 'This is not an injury... you have started getting your periods, that's all.' She pinched my cheek, when the other woman came and Awwa whispered the news. The woman opened her mouth wide and cried out. 'Must you cry over this? You should be happy.' Then turning towards Awwa she asked her to get me ready for the ceremony. So this wasn't a wound, but the onset of periods. Shouldn't Awwa have told me what 'periods' really meant? And that other friend who had her periods just three months before, shouldn't she at least have told me instead of merely giggling when I asked her? Bringing a
mora
from inside she began winnowing the seeds to clear the husk...

Work at home and work in the field. Eighty years had passed thus. Onkaramma had once kissed me- 'You brat, your used to be a skinny lizard. How you have filled out prettily like a ripe fruit! I want to take a bite and cat you.' How I had tried to rub the spot where she had kissed and she had teased, 'Yes, yes, my kiss is dirty but if a young man had given it...? Onkaramma had winked at me and smiled. This Onkaramma was of a special kind. She must have come out smiling even from her mother's womb. Even when she wasn't smiling her eyes kept laughing. Only in Ayya's presence her smile would vanish. Sometimes she would breeze into our place in high spirits, but seeing Ayya, the laugh would vanish-her face a quenched torch. Onkaramma didn't belong to our area. She was from some place near Dharwar. Only Goddess Pattaladamma knew what caste she belonged to. She wore a huge three-striped vibhuti-mark on her large forehead. Some said she was Lingayat, others said she must be a Jangama. Yet other said she might be a Basavi. It seems she had came to our village before I was born. No one really spoke much about her. To do so they would say 'Oh, that woman!' and smile. Only mother used to swear-'That bitch!' I didn't understand much, but sometimes as she came sporting that playful smile of hers, I felt like hugging and kissing her. By then she had passed her youth. Still, when she oiled and tied her hair into a knot it looked beautiful. The neighbours would stare curiously, whenever she came to out home. As for Ayya, he would behave as if he were sitting on a
Kare
thorn.

After soaking the clean seeds in water, I went to light the fire in the oven in the yard. I saw Kariya sprawling on the old ash. Since I couldn't drive him away I carried him out. It came back and began licking my leg again. I poured kerosene on the faggots and lit them. The sudden flame would keep telling me, 'How much longer will you continue to lead this lonely life?' I kept a vessel of soaked castor seeds on the fire, and blew the flame high. When I drew back from the smoke I saw the dish of castor-oil near the oven. Deciding it was too late for an oil-bath, I kept the dish of oil on the wooden
chadi
in the kitchen and came back to the fire and blew at it. In the dancing flame I felt I was seeing many things that had happened in the past...

As was the custom,
Akka
and
Bawa
came home for this year's
Deevalige
(festival of lights) also. Their children had come too, one of five and the other hardly a year and a half old. When their cart came and stood in front of our home I was lighting the tiny earthen-lamps in the small niches in the front wall of out house. The boy-child had come running to me and embraced me and I had kissed and fondled him. Turning towards Akka, Bawa had said, 'See how fond your sister is of children. We must quickly look for a husband of her,' and made me blush. 'Bawa was always like this. Under some pretext or the other, he would keep chatting with me. How he used to tease me when I was a small girl! He would pull my plait, pinch my cheeks, kiss me and say he would surely have married me instead of Akka, had he seen me earlier! Now that I was grown up, he couldn't do all that but itched to talk to me and follow me around. Akka didn't like this at all and would ask him to keep off, but he didn't bother.

Sitting with Ayya after the festive lunch, and munching betel, Bawa had broached the subject of my marriage. Standing nearby, Akka had added a word here and there. Somewhat reticent in the beginning, Ayya had said clearly, as if he were snapping a twig-'I am simply against this match. I do not like giving both my daughters into the same household. Have I not told you so before?"

I had liked Ayya's answer-Bawa's younger brother was a loafer, addicted to gambling and cards. My sister had said in an unguarded moment- 'I would rather stay single than wed such a fellow!"

After a heavy
Obbatoo
meal at night everybody went to bed. After finishing the kitchen chores I too went to bed and slept. Sometime later I felt something heavy pressing on my chest. Frightened to death I couldn't even scream. When I did manage to scream 'Akka, Akka,' it must have been a gurgle in the throat. Suddenly the pressure lifted and I sensed someone moving away. Unable even to open my eyes, I just lay where I was. A little later Akka also gave a shriek. Bawa struck a match and asked what was wrong. Akka stammered 'I felt as if someone fell on my body.' He smiled and said 'Should you get alarmed over this small thing? Can't you see that black cat, going there?'

'Where? I cannot see any cat at all,' she said doubtfully.

'Look, it is crossing the mud-wall of the middle room and going into the kitchen.' Akka now insisted, 'I cannot see any cat.'

And Bawa scolded her, 'You seem to have all kinds of nightmares these days. If you are so frightened, I myself will come and lie down next to you.'

I heard him going towards her. Then snatches of their talk... 'Shame on them both
Thoo... Thoo...
not caring for my presence! Even as I am sleeping here!... surely, whatever fell on me now fell on Akka'...

How could one be sure it was Gourakka's black cat? If it was really a cat, then Akka should have seen it. Or was someone telling a lie? I began to suspect Bawa. Could it not be he who had tried to sleep with me and, finding me unwilling, gone and pressed on Akka also? Could he be lying about having seen a black cat? Why should he have come to me when he had Akka to sleep with? She was not very old... May be five years older than me, that's all... I couldn't understand anything... My mind swayed and lurched till day-break.

When the seeds dried out fully over four days in the sun, I ground and pounded them, winnowed and put them to boil again...

That Tuesday, in spite of my entreating him not to go, Ayya insisted on going to Kadahalli to purchase a pair of bullocks. The trip became fatal for our home. There was plague at Kadahalli, but the villagers there had hidden the news from outsiders. Like others, Ayya too was deceived. When the returned home, he was running a high temperature. I gave him gruel to drink. That night he squirmed and tossed about like a rat dying of plague. He couldn't lie on his back or his sides, nor could he sit up. He was burning with fever. By the next morning he had a small boil on his left armpit. He couldn't lift the arm any more. I went out and brought the Pandit who lived in our village outside the Fort in which we lived. When he came and examined him he said:

'This is not any ordinary boil; it seems to be a plague boil. Let us see and wait till tomorrow. Meanwhile, let me go and get some medicine.'

He brought some dry roots and rubbed it into a paste on our round stone-disc used for grinding sandal-paste. 'Apply this paste every hour. Maybe the boil will melt.' I did as he said. Next morning the boil became bigger and more painful. Pandita came again. He was now certain that it was plague. I felt as if the skies had come down on me. I fell at his feet and pleaded with him to save Ayya. Stroking my head, he said kindly:

'Don't worry. I shall do my very best.' He went and brought a different root and sat grinding it and I sat near him weeping.

'Don't cry. Have faith in God.'

When he came to wipe my tears with his cloth I felt shy and turned away. But at that moment I felt consoled somewhere deep within me. In that anxious hour he had appeared like God to me.

'Take this paste and smear it on his boil.'

I took it in a dish and went to Ayya. He wouldn't allow me to touch him. I would not leave him alone. Ayya was always like that. A man strong enough to stop a charging bull in its tracks, but one who would fuss like a child over little ailments like cough, cold or headache. He would not allow me to touch his boil and started of screaming. It was only after Pandita himself coaxed him that he allowed me to apply the paste on his boil.

The boil got worse day by day. Even though Pandita laboured hard day and night there was no sign of the boil either opening or shrinking. On the eighth day, Pandita brought a bundle of a variety of medicinal roots. He made me apply the pastes, one every hour.

That night, even as the whole village slept, the light in our house continued to burn. Clouds gathered in the dark sky and it began to rain. I took the paste near Ayya and called out gently to him. He didn't wake up. He was groaning in his sleep. He didn't seen to be conscious. I withdrew silently step by step. Pandita sat dozing against the wall.

'Sir, you shouldn't lose more sleep. By now I have come to know roots to grind and when they must be applied. Please go home.' And I yawned.

'Even you have not slept the last three nights. So you sleep first. I shall remain here. Please go.'

He looked at me strangely and repeated the word 'Go' like a caress. I started wondering about everything he did and said. While his mouth uttered 'Daughter, Daughter,' his eyes, seemed to be saying something else altogether.

'Go, I myself will wake you up when it's necessary.' The words were smooth. I had always felt that people living within the Fort were different from those outside it, and their behaviour always seemed odd.

I stumbled in the darkness towards the room. I was groping for a mat and pillow when, sensing a light behind me, I became frightened and screamed. On the threshold, holding a burning torch was Pandita.

'Don't get frightened, it's me. 'His face seemed very broad and his nose was like that of a hawk's. I felt him entering the room, and my heart hammered. In the yard it rained. I saw him going out slowly into the darkness. Reassured, I stretched myself on the mat and closed my eyes. The drumming of the rain increased and somehow Ayya's mournful illness seemed to have become a little distant. I could not sleep in spite of having kept awake for the past few nights. I saw the burning torch near the yard-pillar being quenched; the dark filled my eyes. The moist air seemed to seep through my Kalkunke blanket and I shivered with the cold. I bunched myself up, too tired to take the trouble of getting myself another blanket...

Sleep must have come I don't know when In my dream I saw myself as the princess of the story Awwa used to tell me. Dressed in my rich silk sari, wearing my diamond ear-rings and gold bangles I was wandering in my garden. Ah... the Prince arrived on his white horse!... He got down from the horse!... He was coming near me... He came and embraced me.

'It's me, it's me. Don't be afraid.'

Pandita whispered smoothly as he slipped his hand in, unbuttoning my blouse. Wide awake now, I felt as if I was in another world. I had lost all control. Outside, the rain poured, rushing from all the four outlets into the yard. When I stammered 'Ayya,' Pandita said 'I have just applied the paste.' The pungent smell of the paste assailed my nostrils. And then it vanished, and I was the dream princess again. Riding the magic horse...

When Pandita slipped out of the house, the rain had thinned into a drizzle. When he disappeared into the darkness just four steps beyond the yard, I giggled. Even though I hadn't eaten well for the past weeks, I felt full and happy. I seemed to have forgotten Ayya's plague boil and Pandita's paste. I was happy as I used to be when in the past I would stand in the sun, after an oil-bath. Forgetting that it was night, I went out and stood in the rain. I felt like dancing when the spray fell on my face. Sticking my tongue out, I tried to drink the drops of rain.

I stumbled against Kariya as I came back into the house. The rain had stopped. Ayya's paste had dried up. After gazing at his face for a long time, I went to grind some more fresh paste.

Though he was lying like a log, Ayya seemed disturbed within. As I was applying the paste, he was mumbling. His lips trembled as if the word came struggling out from within and shuddered to a stop on the lips. Sensing the moment of death, memories of the past must have troubled Ayya's mind.

I remembered what Awwa used to say:

Ayya was really young then but had he thumped the earth with his toe, then water would have surely sprung out of it: He was that strong. His wife was a sick woman.