~Prawin Adhikari~
Harihar tightly grasps the toes of his opposite legs as he sits patiently in the lotus position, waiting for Sangita to knead his head and tell if the pumpkin is ripe enough for her to take to the king’s ordained feast, but he is of a much darker complexion than his peers. There is a story about Harihar that nobody in Bhaluodar wants to discuss.
Although Prabhuji was only a peon in a government office, the groom’s entourage to his eldest daughter’s wedding returned very happy because they had been showered with lavishness much beyond their expectations. With his second daughter Prabhuji felt his resources strained, but he still made a valiant effort. For the first time in the village, he hired a sturdy tractor to escort a band of musicians in novel livery, and to transport all the way from Dumre a set of factory-made dowry furniture. “What need is there to keep showing our friends that we are comfortably provided?” his wife suggested for their third daughter’s wedding, insisting that the taste of feasts he had given for previous two marriages hadn’t yet washed off the tongues of the villagers and relatives. Although Prabhuji had to sell most of his wife’s jewels to buy a new set for his third daughter, he obliged like a dutiful father that he was.
Prabhuji had to sell a plot of land to get his fourth and last daughter married. It was a barren plot, full of stones. It nonetheless fetched a good price because of a dirt lane running through, and rumor was rife that the local MP would soon get the budget for a tarmac road in its place. Prabhuji’s wife scoffed him when asked how much money he ought to give to his female relatives—his aunts and sisters and cousins and nieces—with the tika. “They all know what has become of our money, why will they greed for more? Give them a rupee coin and a flower. Your blessings are treasures enough.”
Prabhuji’s nephew married into a wealthy family and sported an automatic watch and a new coat. The new daughter in law gave Prabhuji’s wife a sari for the sighting ceremony—much prettier than the one he had been able to buy her for their fourth daughter’s wedding. But Prabhuji had no son.
When his mother was alive she taunted him often to remarry because Sharbada, his wife, had proved incapable of conceiving a male child. Sharbada gave Prabhuji four daughters, each obedient and hardworking, and he was content with his family. But how could his mother be assured an eternal seat in heaven if she had no male descendant to offer her pinda and perform the annual shraddha every year? Fortunately, the first issue from his brother was a son. Prabhuji’s mother turned her entire attention to the newborn boy, playing him on her knees all day long.
For the first three years, Prabhuji’s infant nephew was taken to his maternal grandparent’s home for the festival of tihar. On the fourth year Sharbada asked her sister in law to let young Rajaram stay behind. “He has four sisters,” Sharbada said, “it isn’t nice that they have to put tika on a declared brother’s forehead when they have a brother in the family.” Although she eventually relented, Rajaram’s mother made an ugly row. The humiliation of the incident stayed deep in Sharbada’s heart. “I call him my own son,” she recounted to her peers in a sad voice, “but his mother won’t let my daughters call him their brother.”
Prabhuji’s mother died happy that Rajaram would grow up to be strong and full of brilliant, potent seeds to bear male children with. It was now Prabhuji’s turn to worry for a son.
After his fourth daughter left his threshold wailing for her father and mother, the house became unbearably empty. Prabhuji started spending increasingly more of his waking hours in his office, asking much too often if his section officer and his intermittent guests wanted more tea. Sharbada became quiet herself, more aware than ever that her daughters counted for nothing in the long haul of eternity—only a male heir could place her alongside her husband in heaven and ensure a steady supply of panda to sustain their year in heaven, saving them from a perilous cycle of rebirths or a limbo afloat in the river Baitarni at the shores of heaven, forever within sight of the splendor of Vishnu’s Baikuntha, yet never quite getting there.
Rajaram’s wife brought respite to her mother in law. Rajaram’s mother, Jamuna, enjoyed sitting in the sun, ordering her newly acquired daughter in law around the house, picking on every little mistake the new bride made. “Not so much salt,” she would say in the evenings although Rajaram quite enjoyed his wife’s cooking. “Not so late,” she would say in the mornings, although Rajaram wished his wife wouldn’t leave his arms so early. Sharbada enjoyed no respite. Even during the four days in the month when Rajaram’s wife went over to Prabhuji’s home to cook and clean for Sharbada, now that the last of the four daughters was gone, Sharbada felt no joy.
After a particularly restless night, Prabhuji decided to take a walk down to Tari, through the lush paddy fields. His eyes ached for lack of sleep and his limbs were tired, but try hard as he would, numerous worrying voices kept him awake and at a precipice. He thought the morning air would do him good, and stumbled out of bed even though it wasn’t bright enough to see the hair on his forearm.
Prabhuji was dismayed by the sunrise. What happened was that he suddenly realized he hadn’t gazed at a sunrise in years. He had walked the village paths before dawn and arrived at his office well after the sun was up, but he had never paused to watch the sun rise over the mountains. On this particular day, although his eyes tired and ached from a restless night, he had been seized by the desire to witness a sunrise. When the first golden rays hit the hills, he had hurried towards a vantage point that afforded him a clear view. But something always came between the sunrise and himself—Gorkhali’s cattle shed once, mostly trees and tufts of grass on a slope, the stone walls around a field. When he did reach a face of the hill and the valley sprawled below him, a gentle mist swirled and stirred with frenzied fingers of a sunrise, the sun was already two fingers above the horizon.
Prabhuji felt a pang of disappointment that was heavy like mercury and enveloped the heart as if to arrest its beating. This sunrise is gone from my grasp, he thought. There will certainly be another sunrise tomorrow, and perhaps I can catch it—but it will be a different sunrise. This sunrise is gone from my grasp.
How futile this life is, Prabhuji asked himself. As he walked away, the sun made his shadow long and it snaked over the stones and shrubs by the path. How futile this life is if I can’t even hold on to a sunrise. If I have to wake up every morning to see a sunrise, and if every time it isn’t the one I saw somewhere before, fell in love with and remember fondly, what is the point in lusting for one sunrise after another?
But it wasn’t the sunrise that really troubled Prabhuji. His father had been a very greedy Brahmin. But a Brahmin’s greed is a tricky—if he becomes too covetous of the world, his greed becomes his undoing. If he cautiously avoids such greed, he achieves credits for the afterlife—by not being greedy in this world he really practices his insatiable greed for the afterlife, he hoards riches to last an eternity. It was with such wisdom that Prabhuji’s father decided to give his sons their names. When he asked Prabhuji to go fetch a slender stem of stingy nettle to whip his brother’s calves, he took the lord’s name and earned a little more piety. When he wringed Prabhuji’s ears and called him a good for nothing lout for not memorizing his lessons in Laghu Kaumudi, Prabhuji’s father became a fraction more devoted to the lord.
But what good is all the piety earned in this life if one has to wake early every morning to realize that it is a whole new sunrise, to keep coming back to this world, to earn more piety in order to ensure an eternal seat in Baikuntha?
Prabhuji’s daughters returned for the festival of tij and lit up Sharbada’s face for a few days. Sharbada dressed up like a bride for Hrishi Panchami, the day when she kept a fast for Prabhuji’s longevity and prosperity. Prabhuji wondered if he should ask Sharbada if she wanted to try for a son. But at this age, he thought. How will I bring myself to ask her such a thing? I have grandchildren already, and she must be very tired after a whole day of fasting.
Prabhuji did not realize it, but Sharbada saw how he has lost the radiance of his face, and how his cheeks and eyes sunk in. The few gray hairs that formerly looked stately in his temples were much abundant now, spelling nothing else but age. Now he looks like a grandfather, Sharbada thought. At this age, what will he think of me if I tell him that I want to try for a son?
Rajaram’s brilliant seeds brought forth a healthy son within a year. Janaki became a little fonder of her daughter in law and started helping out with the household chores after a year long respite. “My son likes to eat my cooking,” she said, although Rajaram resented his mother’s stingy hand with the spices and ghee.
Sharbada was returning with her buffalo that she had taken to Mangale’s shed. Mangale had the only male buffalo in the village, and come the season, all mother buffalos of the village brayed for the stud. The constant traffic kept Mangale and his ward very busy during the season, and Mangale’s ward was liable to a little reluctance now and then. On such occasions, Mangale would manually coax his buffalo. Although familiarity with such rustic ways of animal fertility meant that Sharbada was not embarrassed about witnessing the act, she wasn’t able to keep herself from being mildly excited. Mangale’s buffalo had strong seeds, but it wouldn’t do to want a male calf from her buffalo. The preference in gender was mostly a matter of utility. It is better to be born a buffalo, she thought, at least then a daughter is valued more.
Janaki sat on a straw mat and massaged Rajaram’s son’s limbs. “How beautiful he is,” she cooed as Sharbada paused to admire the new member of the family. “Just like his father.”
“You will carry me to the pyre, won’t you?” Sharbada asked the customary question. It didn’t matter that the infant was barely three months old—it was a duty expected of him when the time came; and to dutifully reply that he would carry her to the pyre on his shoulders was a duty he was expected to be aware of, soon as he was expected to have any awareness of the world at all.
“Of course, he will! Won’t you, Raja? And you will give me tarpan and pinda every year at my shraddha, won’t you, Raja?” Janaki enthusiastically chimed. Sharbada felt that her deurani, her younger sister in law, had said that as a tacit declaration of superiority. Janaki might be a junior in this life, but in the important race to eternal bliss, Sharbada was the clear looser. Rajaram and his son would perhaps offer the mandatory annual tribute in Prabhuji and Sharbada’s memory out of a sense of duty or a fond memory, but why would Rajaram’s grandsons continue to do the same? Without a male heir to make annual offerings in their memory, Prabhuji and Sharbada were condemned to forever swim in the vast river of Baitarni, never to reach the safe shores of heaven.
“I am still fertile,” Sharbada often thought during the day when Prabhuji was at his office, “If it were not for shame, I would still try for a son.” But, what if it is yet another daughter? The world will not only laugh at us, it will also curse the poor girl. They will be feeble and aged when time comes to get their fifth daughter married off. Already the villagers mock them at how the torrent of daughters Sharbada bore has sucked dry the fortune Prabhuji’s father left them. Of course, there had been no fortune—only a comfortable amount of land to make a living as farmers, but the villagers will still say all manners of things.
Months came and months passed. To Prabhuji each season seemed to bring a reason to rekindle his appetite, to resume his manly forays. The summer heat stirred him, the winter chill made him lust for a warm body next to him. The new leaves of spring filled his heart with hope, and the falling leaves made him want to make haste, for it was too graphic a reminder of all matters pressing. But he never brought himself to speak his mind to Sharbada. They had become dry and routine in their conversations—it was either the vegetables for the evening or the fertilizers and seeds for the fields that they spoke of. After all, they were already grandparents, and how would they talk to each other of such a thing at this age?
Malati gave birth to a son and changed everything.
Malati’s husband Keshav Prasad was two whole years younger than Prabhuji, but the stigma of impotency that had haunted him since his marriage at age seventeen had aged him more. The emptiness of a childless home that Prabhuji and Sharbada tried to fill with their sighs and incongruous pieces of colorful trinkets had been a constant companion for Keshav and Malati for almost thirty years. His incapacity to impregnate his wife [for everyone blamed the emaciated, passive Keshav Prasad, and never Malati, who was amply built, with wide, fertile hips and rich breasts] had heaped upon him accusations of effeminacy and impotence. It was after six months of worshipping under the guidance of a renowned tantrik Digambarnath that Malati had been able to conceive. When she walked around with a swollen belly, collecting this trifle and that piece of colorful garment for her yet unborn son, many women snickered behind her back and wondered who the father really was, and swore upon the gods of various nooks and crannies of the village that it wouldn’t be a son. But Malati gave birth to a son and changed everything. The boy even had the promises of the same thick, drooping mouth and ugly nose of Keshav Prasad. All doubts were dispelled.
Since Keshav was also a close relative, Sharbada did not perform the morning pujas for the first six days. Since there wasn’t much work to be done in the mornings, Sharbada stayed in bed for an extra half hour for those six dats. Prabhuji’s mind had also been stirred by Keshav’s young son, and he often closed his eyes upon waking up and imagined a baby boy in his own home, crawling on the floor.
On the third morning, Prabhuji’s hand accidentally brushed against Sharbada’s breasts. Had it not been for Keshav’s son, this accident would have remained one. But that happy morning Prabhuji and Sharbada discovered that they were still quite able, and more importantly, willing.
Three days after the naming ceremony of Keshav’s son [who was named Rohit after King Harishchandra’s son], Prabhuji asked his superiors for a three day leave and left for the caves under Bandipur where Digambarnath shared with three other ganja-smoking ascetics a nook under a huge rock. Prabhuji pleaded to the ascetic for a whole day. Digarbarnath asked him how many women in his village wanted to have sons and Prabhuji lied in reply, exaggerating the number as was prudent. “The future of my village lies in your hands, Maharaj!” he pleaded.
It was a Saturday morning when Prabhuji hastily laid out a straw mat outside his door. Digambarnath sat his well fed bottom on the mat and ran his fingers through his beard. Keshav Prasad heard of the arrival of his mentor and came rushing with his infant. “Didn’t I tell you?” Digambarnath asked Keshav Prasad, who grinned like a child caught at mischief. “Didn’t I tell you, daughter?” Digambarnath asked Malati, who prostrated before him and wept with gratitude, laying her son at his feet. “He is your alms to us,” she said. “His calling name is Rohit, but his real name will always be Digambar Prasad to us.”
Digambarnath set up his trident outside Prabhuji’s home. “I will not sleep inside a house, son,” he told Prabhuji, refusing the bed that Sharbada had prepared for him by the second hearth in the kitchen. “The shade of this tree is enough for me.” But Keshav Prasad and Prabhuji wouldn’t relent so easily. They prepared a shed out of the only piece of tarpaulin in the village. Within four days, the encampment was teeming with the various gifts the villagers brought for the holy man. Badri, a slowwitted lad of sixteen, wouldn’t leave the holy man’s side—no one could tell if it was the fruits and coins in the offerings that he eyed, or if it was the hustle-bustle of the holy man’s encampment that kept the lad tied to that place. He soon became a permanent fixture. His brothers were glad that their dimwitted sibling had managed to take himself out of their way. Not only did Digambarnath administer water anointed with sacred incantations—for all aliments known to man—he also read palms and advised on agrarian issues. His fame rose to villages three days of walking distance from Bhaluodar, and Prabhuji’s name was mentioned every time an indebted devotee took Digambarnath’s name in gratitude.
The holy man held two sessions every afternoon—one for men and another for women—on the secrets, ablutions and rituals related to conceiving a male issue, and on the duties of a woman. The sessions for the men were open only to married men, for as a holy man he wouldn’t discuss the matters related to kama, of the pursuit of bodily pleasures, with bachelors who ought to observe strict celibacy in accordance to the ashram-dharma. The sessions for women were open to all over the rajaswala age—those whose wombs were fertile—for no education on the art of being a dutiful woman would go wasted on anyone. Of course, the ascetic did not discuss carnal issues with his female devotees—this, the entire village knew, and trusted him with.
Months passed. Men of the village smiled curiously at each other, while the women set upon their duties with renewed vigor. The women quarreled less often—over a patch of grass that a neighbor shouldn’t have cut so selfishly for her buffalo, a bed of radishes that someone’s children shouldn’t have ravished. More women became pregnant, and sure enough come the ninth month, they would all bear strong sons for the village. No one doubted that. After all, even people of neighboring villages now talked of Bhaluodar with envy, for it had the blessings of a holy man like Digambarnath.
Months passed, and whenever her days in the month approached, Sharbada prayed to the ancestral deities of Prabhuji’s lineage. But the disappointment never failed to keep its appointment—every time her monthly respite came promptly on time. “Perhaps this is only to prepare my womb,” she thought. “Perhaps I haven’t been attentive enough to the holy man’s words.” She pondered if she should ask Digambarnath for a private audience once a week. She knew of quite a few men who did. There were even a handful of women who were granted private audiences with him—there was Baniya’s mother, an aged and blind Krishna Pranami widow who liked to listen to Digambarnath describe the world as an illusion, and how true bliss and true love were to be found only in the embrace of Krishna himself. There was Nirmala, a battered wife who went to Digambarnath to ask him for solutions to her husband’s violent nature, and fortitude to keep her loyalty to her wifely duties. There were Binita and Sarita, young girls whose poor but very orthodox father sent them for an hour of lectures on virtues of womanhood every afternoon.
Prabhuji had himself been secretly consulting the holy man, receiving from him various recipes for aphrodisiacs that increased his potency, the secret dates and times of the day in the particular month when influences of appropriate stars and planets guaranteed the conception of a male issue. Sharbada asked him after one night of much panting and enthusiastic wheezing if she ought to ask the holy man for a little extra attention. Prabhuji was ecstatic, for he had seen bad mouthed women completely change and husbands nagged for decades put on an air of mirth when the wives started receiving the holy man’s special attention. Although there was nothing in Sharbada that he would complain about, excepting the fact that her fate wasn’t filled with the joys of a son playing in her lap, and only Fate herself could change that, he was glad that his wife would bask in the attention of the holy man’s attention.
Digambarnath had always been well fed. He was a well fed man even when he arrived at a remote cave in Gorkha, with a clean shaven chin, a jovial smile and a shiny new brass pot as the only material possession to take up his life as an ascetic. He had broad shoulders and radiant eyes, a soothing voice that reminded every man, woman or child who he was. When he put his well fed palms on the devotees’ heads, they often shed a tear of joy, for it was truly wonderful to be in his presence.
Sharbada started sitting in with Sarita and Binita, and stayed behind for an extra half hour, through which she listened to Digambarnath. The holy man spoke of many things, and many people from the scriptures and the stories, but Sharbada was more preoccupied with the soothing quality of Digambarnath’s voice. Often times, she would feel drowsy during his long, deliberate speeches, and to overcome her own pangs of guilt and to avoid showing on her face the landscapes her mind traveled through, she looked him full at the face, often only his eyes and mouth. She soon came to admire the honest smile and bright face. He wasn’t simply an ascetic—he was also full of beauty.
Months passed. Digambarnath built a temple with the alms and presents he was given by his devotees over the year. Keshav Prasad’s prodigal son who had started it all was often seen on Badri’s back, smiling like an infant Krishna at the gates of the temple. Against Digambarnath’s insistence, most of the temple’s east wing was cordoned off as the holy man’s quarters. The idols were now a mere side-show with Badri at their attendance, while a large daily congregation stared gratefully at Digambarnath, seated on deer hide upon a comfortable straw mattress lined with kush grass. The sessions were conducted in a stately room inside the temple. In fourteen villages around Bhaluodar, people started including Digambarnath’s name along with various deities of the land when they had to swear upon their truthfulness.
Yet, Sharbada did not conceive a son. She didn’t even conceive a daughter—at least for nine months she would have enjoyed a sweet, albeit false, anticipation. Sure, it would be occasionally tainted by the apprehension that the alternative possibility brought, but Sharbada would have found anything more welcome than this indecisiveness.
Prabhuji’s excitement over acquaintance with Digambarnath waned as an entire year passed and yet Sharbada failed to conceive. When the daughters arrived for tij, the youngest daughter sat out the worshipping on Hrishi Panchami because she was seven months pregnant. It revolted Prabhuji to watch Sharbada and their youngest daughter together, the mother dressed in red to evoke the sanctity of her marriage, and the daughter carrying a bulge under her dhoti.
During the days following tij, Sharbada became an absentminded ghost. She did not refill Prabhuji’s plate with rice and dal without prompting. Sometimes she forgot to put any spices into the tarkari. Once, she cooked egg-plants together with radishes, a combination Prabhuji was known to frown upon.
Come afternoon, an eerie change came over Sharbada. Prabhuji caught her smiling discreetly at nothing in particular, hiding her mouth in her dhoti, even blushing on occasions. She oiled her hair and made a very neat parting on her forehead, meticulously hiding the stray gray hairs before setting off for the daily session with Digambarnath. She inquired with Badri about the holy man’s likings in food and prepared the dishes with more care and attention than she put into the meals that she prepared for Prabhuji. Binita had been married off; her father having harped about his daughter’s disciplined upbringing and proximity with the holy man himself. Sarita was alone in her sessions now, so Sharbada aggressively pushed Sarita out of the time allocated by the holy man, basking longer in the holy man’s attention everyday.
Prabhuji was less enthusiastic now about foraging into the forest for rare herbs and roots that Digambarnath recommended. The amulet that he religiously touched to his forehead before getting into bed was carelessly tossed under the pillow. He often pretended to fall asleep much sooner than he really did, and that hurt Sharbada. A familiar coldness slept between them, but it had acquired a malignity. Night, their common conspirator, mocked them and filled their sleep with weary visions.
An occasional sunrise would inspire Prabhuji, a woman returning to her maternal home for post-natal care would urge Sharbada and they would passionately claw at each other. But now there seemed to be more than two people in the bed. Prabhuji thought it was the unborn son, its angst pictured in Sharbada’s tightly clenched jaws and grunts, her eyes screwed in an intense effort, as if by concentrating hard enough she could coax that single prized drop of Prabhuji’s essence to enter her womb.
Abruptly one day, Sharbada stopped going to the temple. Prabhuji noticed the change. Sharbada also quietly brought out old torn dhotis and started to secretly fashion them into small mattresses. Prabhuji watched her out of the corner of his eyes but said nothing. One night, he reached out and put his hand on her breast. “What are you doing?” Sharbada asked coldly. “There is no need anymore.”
“Why isn’t there a need?” Prabhuji retorted with hurt in his voice, retracting his hand as if he had been accused of lewdness in public, in his matured age. “The monthly did not come,” Sharbada told him without any emotion.
Prabhuji had imagined that this would be an occasion for great happiness. After all, Digambarnath’s purpose in coming to this village had finally been realized. But the cold that emanated from Sharbada damped his spirit.
“We must go to the holy man and thank him for this,” Prabhuji declared the next day as he ate his morning meal. “Why?” Sharbada fumed unexpectedly, banging the ladle into the curry pot. “He did nothing!”
Prabhuji insisted upon thanking Digambarnath. He instructed Sharbada to make the holy man’s favorite dishes, hinting to her that he had been fondly watching her all the while, that they were partners in this project in fortification for eternity. His hints were lost on her. Sharbada sullenly set about biding her husband’s wishes. The cauli tarkari for Digambarnath was over salted, the roti were burnt and she didn’t even bother to make an achar.
Digambarnath raised his eyes off the congregation and read the luminosity on Prabhuji’s face. Even before Prabhuji opened his mouth, Digambarnath said, “didn’t I tell you? Hun, Prabhuji? Didn’t I tell you?” Prabhuji prostrated before Digambarnath while Sharbada looked around, uneasy in the company of many newlyweds and widows. “You are all knowing, maharaj!” Prabhuji sobbed with joy.
Three months passed. Sharbada’s womb showed no signs of ballooning prodigiously. Prabhuji asked his friends to contact him whenever a goat was slaughtered in the village. He sent for fresh honey from the highlands and asked an aged woman to prepare energy-boosting formulas for Sharbada. It must be the age, they both concluded when no improvement was visible. Three hens were secretly sacrificed to various deities, unbeknownst to Digambarnath. It would insult to question his generosity, after all. There were other women in the village, some even older than Sharbada, who were smiling again, rubbing their swollen feet with warm mustard oil in the morning sun, but Sharbada’s ankles did not swell. “Do you want to go to Pokhara?” Prabhuji finally asked. “The doctors will know better, don’t you think?”
Prabhuji was worried for Sharbada when the tractor crossed the shallow Chundi River, its large wheels rocking her over the stones on the riverbed. The long bus ride to Pokhara tired them. Prabhuji dozed off and dreamed of an empty cradle. “Now,” he thought, “that can not be true. Perhaps I was afraid that I might start dreaming of an empty cradle, and so I saw one.” Why else would the picture be so clear, like a sculpture in ice, slowly lowered into his head? He even had a headache now, because of the picture. “Perhaps I had a headache, and I pictured it as a cold, empty cradle.”
The doctor in Pokhara looked at Sharbada, and then looked at Prabhuji. The doctor was almost the same age as their first daughter. “Come this way, ama,” he casually directed Sharbada to the examination table.
Prabhuji did not doze off during the trip back. They hardly spoke a word. Prabhuji foolishly tried to persuade Sharbada to eat the warm onion pakauda and other snacks at the bus station. His moustache was yellow and oily in no time, and he smelled like a madhesi’s snacks stall. He took to teasing a three year old child, fondly calling her funny names, to which the little girl responded with carefree giggles. But Sharbada sat sullen and brooding over something dark.
“What did the doctor say?” Janaki asked while Rajaram’s son tugged a corner of Sharbada’s dhoti for sweets from the city. “There is nothing in the womb,” Sharbada sobbed and wiped her nose. “I am dry now. It is old age, what else?” Janaki looked genuinely stunned. Sharbada clasped Rajaram’s son to her breast, but Rajaram’s son freed himself and ran away from his two grandmothers who looked like a devastated sunset.
Prabhuji stopped showing up at Digambarnath’s audiences, but the worry about having to swim eternally in the waters of Baitarni troubled him constantly. His countenance dimmed once more and his hair seemed to turn white overnight. Sharbada became an old woman. Their nights were increasingly filled with sighs and regular, thoughtful breathing.
Prabhuji wondered if he should resign from his job. After all, he had already completed the twenty years required for a pensioned retirement. He had kept working out of a habit. Also, without a job, Prabhuji was afraid that the loneliness of having to sit in his house all day long would make him musty and dull-witted. But there was no reason anymore for him to walk the tiring hill every morning. He did not see Devidatta hobbling towards him. A child laughed at the old men and ran to Prabhuji. “He is calling you,” the child pointed to Devidatta.
“Old age, what to do! Now even the ears have given up on me,” Prabhuji apologized.
“You shouldn’t say such false things,” Devidatta smiled at Prabhuji. “Such a strong young man, and calling yourself old already?”
They walked together for a while. Prabhuji wondered why Devidatta eyed any approaching villager with unease, and why he stuck so close to Prabhuji. “Is Binita doing well in her new family?” Prabhuji asked Devidatta, seeking to mellow the uncomfortable silence between them.
“Fantastic,” Devidatta replied. “I met her mother in law the other day, and she wouldn’t stop singing my Binita’s praises. You could say—she is the mother in law, how will she badmouth my daughter to my face? But I have heard from a dozen people—all have same thing to say. My Binita brings light not only to her family, but to the whole village.”
“You raised her well,” Prabhuji added, for he knew that Devidatta wanted to hear something along that line.
“A father’s dharma, Prabhuji,” Ddevidatta muttered, “a father’s dharma.”
Prabhuji asked him if he was headed towards the temple. Devidatta shrank back in apprehension, which surprised Prabhuji. The two walked towards a teashop, but Devidatta, being a very orthodox Brahmin, would not sit for a cup of tea.
Devidatta caught up with Prabhuji whenever he walked in the village. They talked of this and that trifle, but to Prabhuji it seemed there was something in Devidatta’s mind which he couldn’t quite come to discuss with Prabhuji.
“I hear that bahun is following you everywhere?” Sharbada asked Prabhuji one morning.
“It is strange, isn’t it?” Prabhuji said. “I wonder what he is really trying to get at.”
“I have heard things,” said Sharbada sharply, scrutinizing at his face, his eyes.
“What things? Why are you staring at me like that?” Prabhuji became suspicious.
It was as if he was the unassuming subject of an evil prank that everyone else was a conspirator to.
“You are withdrawing your legs even before I say cut the thief’s legs!” Sharbada spitefully dumped a ladleful of hot rice into his plate.
“What tricks you are trying to play with me?” Prabhuji asked. “You can’t speak anything straight to me any more?”
“You are good at acting innocent, but let me tell you—if you do anything without asking me, I will throw myself into the river, and you will never be able to wash off the sin of driving your wife to suicide.”
Sharbada would not speak to Prabhuji about anything, although she launched into unexplained tirades of her own, addressing her concerns to no one in particular, not even the heavens but speaking to her cooking, the pots and the cows. Prabhuji tried to divine something from her ramblings, but without any avail. Devidatta caught up with Prabhuji again, late in the afternoon as they approached the village together, following a slow herd of contended cows being lovingly harkened homewards by a young lad. The chimes of iron bells hanging from the cows’ necks made the evening pleasant. With such a large herd of holy mother cows before him, Devidatta found the fortitude to speak his mind freely to Prabhuji.
“Surely, you are out of your mind!” Devidatta exclaimed. “She is younger than my youngest daughter!”
“Now, when has that ever been an issue? My father married my mother when he was fifty-four, and she was only thirteen. And a fine spawn they had. You are still young, Prabhuji, and full of strong seeds. How can you give up on your hopes for a son so soon?”
“But you will find young men for her, young and rich men. You were yourself saying how much good name Binita has brought to you. Surely, Sarita isn’t any less of a good daughter, is she? She is even more beautiful than Binita is.”
“So, you find her beautiful, don’t you, Prabhuji?” Devidatta thought he had found the spot to strike. He made Prabhuji feel like an aged pervert. “What sin you talk,” Prabhuji protested.
“It is you who talks sin!” Devidatta retorted. “I am only a dutiful father trying to do what is best in interest of my daughter, and you call it talking sin!” He fumed for a while. But the village was still a good twenty minutes away, and the two men were stuck with each other.
“You want a son, everyone in the village knows that,” Devidatta started with an explanation. “Their mothers died when they were still children, and I have been their mother ever since. Binita I have already given away to a strange village, and I get to see her a few times a year. But Sarita is my younger child. I don’t want to let her out of my sight.”
“There are younger men in the village,” Prabhuji persisted. But why shouldn’t he say yes? After all, he knew he could become the man if the occasion called for, and the paramount concern of the moment was a male child. A beautiful wife, eighteen years of age—where else would he be granted a second chance at securing an eternal seat in Baikuntha, freeing himself from the horrendous prospect of rebirths after rebirths?
“What does it matter if there are younger men? No one is of a better Brahmin family than you are, and these young men drink and gamble. Only gods know what they do when they go to the cities. Then there is Sharbada—she will be a loving sister to my daughter, showing her the ways of the world. With you, I have no worries, Prabhuji. But hurry.”
“Hurry? What about?”
Devidatta fumbled and muttered illegibly. Prabhuji’s curiosity was scratched, he couldn’t relent. “Hurry about what?” he asked.
“Sarita is already seventeen,” Devidatta replied weakly. He did not seem very convinced of his answer himself. “Seventeen is still a very young age for marriage,” Prabhuji replied. “It is a different matter that we don’t worry too much about the law; otherwise it is actually illegal to marry off your daughter at that age. You say you love her and don’t want to let her out of your sight, but you seem very eager to send her away.”
“Well,” Devidatta cleared his throat and dusted his topi, straightened it on his head and looked at the herd of cows before them. “There is only one date for her marriage in the next seven years, according to her birth-charts.” Prabhuji felt his voice falter. Was it because a father was reluctant to relinquish his daughter to the onslaughts of life, or was it because Devidatta was unsure of the honesty in his own words?
“I hear you have been joining intestines with that Bahun again?” Sharbada served Prabhuji an utterly tasteless gundruk and soy bean stew. The soy beans were thoroughly burnt and tasted like bits of coal, and without any green chili fried into the gundruk, the meal was very bland. Prabhuji paused for an instance, sighed with desperation and suddenly burst with anger. He kicked the plate away from his pirka.
“What is the matter with you, woman?” he shouted. But he also felt guilty, because Sharbada seemed to know of the matter that Devidatta had accosted him with, even though Prabhuji had yet to mention it to her. Women must have a way of knowing, he thought.
“I have told you already, if you do anything without asking me, I will kill myself.”
“Go kill yourself!” Prabhuji raised his fist. “Making my life difficult as it is. There he is pressing me to marry his daughter and I refuse him because I don’t want to hurt you at this age, and here you speak to me like I have sinned already!”
“So it is that, isn’t it? I knew it was that!” Sharbada came back stronger, revitalized by the victory of her instincts.
“And what if it is? What do you intend to do? You will kill yourself, will you? Here—I ask you. I am going to marry Sarita, because she will give me a son. Isn’t that what you wanted? Here—I have asked you. Now what will you do?”
Sharbada did not speak to him for a full three days. Devidatta informed Prabhuji that he had started preparing for the marriage, and that all that a good father like he could give was a good daughter’s hand in marriage. Prabhuji did not even bother to protest.
The third evening after the row, Prabhuji noticed a marked change in the meal. Sharbada must have spent hours preparing it, he thought. Initially, he thought he would silently eat and leave for a walk down to the temple, without letting Sharbada the satisfaction of his acknowledgement. But the meal was too good for him to not smile at her with affection.
“I have been giving it a thought,” she said. Prabhuji waited for her to elaborate. But she did not say anything further. “I have been giving it a thought,” she repeated when he got back from the walk. Prabhuji grunted absentmindedly, letting her know it was time to speak her mind. “But I will not be relegated to a corner. I have raised four daughters and married them off, and I will raise the son, too.”
“So, what is it that you are saying?” Prabhuji asked her, as if he had not been very interested. That night Prabhuji reached for Sharbada and it was awkward. Sarita’s fair face and large eyes floated under him in the dark, but Sharbada’s grunts kept chasing her away. He was very tired by the end of the act, and Sharbada made a mental note to make certain arrangements for the first night with Sarita.
“We must get the holy man’s blessings before we do this,” Prabhuji told Devidatta when the latter shadowed him the next evening. “He has given her his blessings in plenty,” Devidatta sounded very sour. Prabhuji couldn’t decide what to make of it.
Digambarnath’s hall was quiet because the evening worshipping had just concluded. The holy man couldn’t meet Prabhuji’s eyes. “Must be because his blessing failed on Sharbada,” Prabhuji thought. But the holy man wasn’t meeting Devidatta’s eyes either. “We came for your blessings, maharaj!” Prabhuji humbly begged of the holy man. “She already has my blessings, Prabhuji!”
Digambarnath responded, his face without the usual luster, his voice meek and apologetic.
“What need is there for an elaborate wedding?” Prabhuji asked Devidatta, who promptly agreed. On the appointed day, the bride’s father and Prabhuji trekked to Annapurna Mai’s temple, a clearing half hour into the woods. Digambarnath had sent Badri with his blessings for the couple. Badri set up three stones and set about cooking various vegetables. Around afternoon Sarita arrived with her friends, who took her into the foliage and dressed her in red, a veil falling across her face. But the veil wasn’t thick enough to hide her luminous beauty and Prabhuji found himself turning a few times too many to steal a look at his new wife’s face while Devidatta performed the kanyadan, giving his daughter to Prabhuji. The bride’s friends sat on tree stumps and ate whatever Badri had prepared, and that was the marriage feast. But they did not tease their newlywed friend like all brides’ friends do. For a wedding, it was a remarkably somber ceremony.
Prabhuji felt a lump rise in his throat when Sharbada led Sarita into their room. It must mean Sharbada has moved her bed elsewhere, he thought. They had never slept separately under the roof of their house, except once when Prabhuji had been bitten by a mosquito which gave him a terrible fever that lasted for a fortnight. He felt guilty that now Shrbada would have to sleep by herself. Next, he wondered if Sharbada would occasionally ask him to sleep with her. He felt ashamed of himself for having thought of such a thing.
Sarita had taken off what little jewelry her father had bought her for the wedding. Prabhuji noted Sharbada treated her with care, for she was the age of their children. Sarita ate silently, speaking only once in reply when Sharbada’s asked if the meal didn’t taste too bad. “It is very good,” she said. After a moment she added demurely, “I didn’t have a mother, so I couldn’t learn from a woman how to cook. I hope you will teach me to cook half as well as you do.” Sharbada smiled at her, but Prabhuji saw that she had been touched by Sarita’s earnestness. What turmoil must tear Sharbada from within, Prabhuji wondered.
Sarita picked the dirty dishes after she had finished, reaching for Prabhuji’s too. “No,” Sharbada interjected. “Leave his; I have always eaten from his plate.” Sarita was almost at the door when Sharbada called after her to say, “leave yours too. It is your first night in the house. The gods will be displeased if you don’t treat yourself with respect.”
“I am too old for you,” Prabhuji spoke into the air. Looking Sarita in her face still unsettled him. How beautiful that face was—the full lips, the long, straight nose, those large dark eyes on a fair face, and that blush on her cheeks. Prabhuji wandered what amount of good he must have done in a past life that fate rewarded him with such a jewel. “Am I too old for you?” he mustered the courage to take her hand. It felt too soft, too dainty, and too young to be in his hands, and that made him feel guilty. “I am too old for you,” he repeated and paced about in the room.
Sharbada’s bed, he thought as he looked at the new colorful bed sheet that he remembered Sharbada haggling for with a vendor. On a chair by the bed he noticed a warm glass of milk, covered with a steel saucer. A bunch of ripe bananas and a handful of almonds sat on a plate nearby. Prabhuji felt his eyes sting. An urge to rush out of the room and fall into Sharbada’s arms overwhelmed him. But he had bolted the door when he came in. the sight of the bolted door reminded him of the task ahead.
“I am too old for you,” he started again, at which point Sarita raised her eyes to look at his face. “But I did not ask your father for your hand. He insisted that I marry you. I want you to know that I will not ask too much of you, except that you give me a son.” It felt strange to stand before Sarita and make such a speech, but the act did take a weight off his chest.
Sarita quietly took off her red sari and waited for Prabhuji.
The next morning Prabhuji woke up late. He heard laughter from the kitchen. Sharbada was instructing Sarita about the contents of the cupboard, the various baskets where different grades of rice were stored, about the various plots of land they owned scattered around the village. Sarita cooked while Sharbada watched. It was a pleasant morning and Prabhuji felt an urge to see Digambarnath.
Badri sat crying at the temple gate while a congregation of devotees looked around, perplexed like a lost herd. “Maharaj has left us!” Badri cried. Malati clasped Rohit to her chest and quivered her lips, stifling her teary sobs. Prabhuji found it unfair that in a single morning he should find inexplicable bliss and then be handed such a blow. But that was the essence of the holy man’s teaching, he thought. “He was a wandering ascetic,” he tried to placate the crowd. “We tried to foolishly tie him to this place, but he is much wiser.” The crowd murmured its approval.
“I will not leave this temple until he returns,” Badri declared, promptly appointing himself the priest and caretaker of Digambarnath’s position and possessions. “Just because the maharaj isn’t here in person it doesn’t mean we can stop paying him out tributes,” he warned the public. “Our devotion doesn’t end today, and the gods will continue to shine upon us.” His eloquence was unexpected. It resulted in some skeptics calling the holy man a fraud who got fed up with the village. But to a larger fraction of the congregation Badri’s eloquence served as a proof of the holy man’s holiness. How brilliantly the light in Badri’s eyes shone, they thought. Surely, he is a blessed one now.
On the third morning of his second marriage, Sharbada and Prabhuji sat together to eat. Although her age old habit of eating out of Prabhuji’s plate had to be relinquished for this arrangement, she did enjoy being served by Sarita. There was grace in Sarita’s person, which infused the meal with more savor. The morning sun shone on the green periwinkle leaves outside the door.
Sharbada and Prabhuji did not notice Sarita’s face contort, or it would have alarmed them. Sarita bit the tip of her dhoti, salty after wiping the sweat off her face and neck in the course of the morning. But the saltiness of the dhoti did not help. She abruptly rushed out of the door. “Sarita!” Sharbada called after her, alarmed. Sarita hunched over the periwinkle bushes and retched. A thin cloud of worry veiled Prabhuji’s face.
“What did you do to the child?” Sharbada asked Prabhuji, mischief playing around her eyes and lips. “Third day and she is already running out to vomit?”
“She must be tired,” Sharbada added after a while. “New home, such a lot to learn—it can get difficult for a young girl. Or she must have eaten something or other.” Sarita washed her face and returned to the kitchen, but Prabhuji sternly told her to go and lie down, take a rest.
Although the morning scared Prabhuji, Sarita was her demure but lively self again by the afternoon. Sharbada told her to watch what she ate. “You are not a child anymore,” she reminded the new bride.
A week after that, Sarita rushed out again during the morning meal. “I wonder if she has worms,” Sharbada commented. But when Sarita ran out again the next morning, Sharbada picked the brass glass and followed Sarita.
Sarita shrank away from Sharbada. Something in her demeanor suggested guilt. Instinct prompted Sharbada to pounce upon Sarita, to grab her face and read her eyes, to clasp her wrists. Prabhuji hurried out too when he heard only a muffled scuffle instead of soothing motherly remarks that Sharbada usually made.
“Look what you have brought home!” Sharbada screamed at him. Prabhuji looked at the two women, confused and lost. Sarita fell to the ground, grabbed his feet and wailed. Sharbada took Sarita’s shoulders and stood her up. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “What is done is in the past. But you are family now. Only tell us this—whose sin is this?” Sarita wailed again, but Sharbada sharply rebuked her. “What need is there to let the world know? Come inside the house and tell me whose sin it is.”
The periwinkles smiled at Prabhuji, but the ground beneath him reeled. The agility of youth that he had felt returning to his veins for the past two weeks suddenly drained into the thirsty earth, and he was a dry, brittle boned old man again. Inside, Sharbada asked Sarita the name of the man. Sarita mumbled something. I don’t want to hear the name, Prabhuji thought. I want to kill Devidatta, but I don’t want to hear the name of the man.
“But,” Sharbada gasped for air. Prabhuji found the strength to stagger into the house. Sarita shrank away from him, hiding her face in a red dhoti that brought out the fairness of her skin and made her look much prettier. “But,” Sharbada gasped again, her face turned pale before she slumped on the floor. “But he told me he was a celibate!”
(Source : Suskera.com )
