sound of rain drops
Sannapureddy venkataramireddy & swatee sripada


A mid-day in the last days of ♦Ashada!
Lakshmamma, making the doorsill her pillow and spreading her pallo, relaxed at It. Black clouds in the street of sky started moving slowly like a lactating buffalo towards the sunset.
Shadows dappled all over the earth without even a trace of sunlight. The earth’s heat subsided and coolness gathered. By nightfall the clouds would be ready to ooze milk. The rain would throw streams of water with pots.
This is the fourth year without a proper wetting, reservoirs and streams have had no life, ditches and lakes have never over flown with the sound of storming water. Suddenly since last two days this jostle of clouds ……..TVs have gone on stressing the depression and storm in the Bay of Bengal for the last four days. Villagers migrated to towns holding their bellies for livelihood, noticed the smell of the rain clouds and retreated to their nests like birds. The arrival of the rain looked as a dream when she imagined it.
One should see the pleasure of the villagers for the last two days! Though not a rainy season, villagers gathered at the meeting place, started to discuss the crops to be raised- based on the amount of rain. Old people with meager visibility, keeping hands on their foreheads to stare at the clouds declared that rain is a certain.
Ladies piled up the dry sticks in a corner in the kitchen; gents clambered the mud roofs and mended the covers on it.
Movement of clouds and the lightening in them as a vine …..Followed by the roaring of thunders……. never left people peaceful at one place.
Lakshmamma settled down there at the doorsill for a nap. Sleep never perched on her eyes.
Getting up and sitting she surveyed the roof of the shed. The sky pieces in the shape of one rupee coins glistened throughout the middle log.
Hen scratched the rotten hay on the roof with beaks and toes making holes. If it rains entire house would leak.
If Shiva had been at home, he would have covered it with hay or something else to prevent leaking. She herself sent him by force to Kadapa.
Its two years since Shiva stayed at home. With the similar age group youth, in search of construction work he went to town. Earning a ten or twenty and saving something for his marriage.
She got up and went to the half-wall.
Fumbled something with her hand in the pot on the vessel…….
She inspected carefully, if it leaks, anything that would get spoiled.
She arranged everything in advance as a precautionary measure but still she couldn’t derelict her mind, for self defense she checked it again.
She tried her utmost to do Shiva’s wedding. She forced him using her daughter and son in law who resided in the same village.
It’s not known whether time for the wedding had come or not but Shiva requested her not to mention his wedding till it rains.
The rain should come ….rain should satisfy the famine ….all the reservoirs and streams, ditches and lakes should look lively with the rain…..he said, and then he would marry.
Till recent times she had a worry of it. She had a worry on his innocence that linked the rain and the marriage.
Since how long was she waiting for the rain! Inspiring the villagers, she arranged the ♦garden feasts. Imploring many she made someone read ♦“VIRATAPARVAM” in the temple, did even ♦the marriages of the frogs.
If a slight movement of the clouds appeared in the sky she had thought them as the wedding porches of leaves, the lightening as the brightness of electric lights and the thundering as wedding melodies.
No big rain arrived.
Her son’s wedding never materialized.
But, by chance, news came a week before which had broken the strong link that knotted his marriage and the rain. A situation cropped up in such a way that without any kinship with the rain, he had to get ready for the marriage.
Lakshmamma’s parents belonged to a village near Kadapa.
just small scale farmers, Farmers who cultivate the lands and crop the loans.
From the day she got married they can’t even manage to invite the new wed couple or to go to them to greet. After the demise of their parents they moved far away even for a look. Her children never tasted the sweet kinship of a maternal uncle. No news reached her before a week when her elder brother expired accidentally. By the time she went there, the flood of tears receded just leaving scant wetness in the eyes of women. Brother’s daughter was just four years, two years younger to Shiva. An innocent unaware of the world, crouched in her mother’s lap remained watching all. She recalled consoling the girl holding her.
Later, she heard that her elder brother’s wife couldn’t get a proper share of the field and managed to send her away giving something. She reached Kadapa and started running a roadside stand. No information was available all these years. Swimming her own family suffocated her and where to find the leisure to think of some one else?
Suddenly a week back Shiva arrived alone from Kadapa. He saw his aunty. Her daughter has grown up. They are surviving on a small retail shop on the out skirts of Kadapa.
Though he ran in to them, leaving his friends and his construction work, why would he come back to the village? She couldn’t understand. It seems his aunty Sarojamma had a brother, a rowdy sheeter with all addictions of drinking and gambling.
Killing his wife, he went even to jail and returned. Now he started bothering his sister to get her daughter married to him. Though she refused strongly, he compelled her dominating them.
Lakshmamma stared thoughtfully in to his face. His intention is very clear. Without even introducing himself to his aunty, he had come to get his mother’s approval.
Her heart soared high.
She fetched him to bring her immediately…. If the girl accepts she can marry her to him and invite her as the daughter in law or else they can do her marriage searching a suitable match elsewhere.
Crossing the doorstep, Lakshmamma stepped into the street and looked at the sky. From the western hills it seems the legs of rain descended. Rain is definite, no doubt in it. It may wet, rivulets and streaming may overflow…… …reservoirs and ditches might get filled. Good days might come again.
Since last four years, the earth splintered, as it stumbled upon scarcity and insufficiency of water. With parched body it awaits to absorb any amount rain in to it. If a good rain comes, it will result in a requisite amount of crop. Water levels in bore wells without any dwindle may suffice even for the forth coming years. Two years hard earned crop may serve for one more year and even if a famine strikes life would go on smoothly without any troubles. As long as the wetness remains, one should work without letting the sweat evaporate.
Pondering over it Lakshmamma went and sat at the premises.
Her nostril exhaled the rain wind greedily.
Skin glands on her body eagerly feasted the wetness in the air.
As a well prepared black soil which can have all the clouds of the sky in it, she waited for the rain with heat and smoke filled mind. For the rain water…for the sound of the stormy flow …for her son ……her niece …she waited thirstily…….
**************
In the tantrums of thunder and lightening the clouds appeared as if jumping on to the land within a wink of an eye.
The gruffness of the gale went on escalating.
Loosing the self control the branches, as if obsessed, swayed and jumped and the bases of the trees vibrated entire figures with fear.
The gale had stolen off the slow drizzle, before the latter reached the land.
Offering its company to the horror of the nature, the pitch black darkness blinded every one. Already it’s almost eight in the night.
Making an ugly squeal, on the Tar road one or the other vehicle passed recurrently.
From six in the evening the vigor of wind amplified, subsequently turning into a severe storm stream.
Then a red bus from Kadapa swiftly arrived at the mud road.
Two young people in wedding clothes descended the bus. The new wed couple -Shivudu and Gowri.
As soon as the bus moved forth, he took the suitcase into hand and with other holding her, after passing a long look at the Cuddapa rout paced forth on the mud road.
Slowly his steps congregated the speed. His walk appeared as if he was dragging her holding the hand. Now and again he stretched his worried sight on to the road that brought them there.
“If we reach the village…its enough ………no body can dare any thing…” said as if murmuring.
In the brilliance of a lightning she was trying to pace fast with him.
“Your uncle never remains quiet If he knows about us in a jeep he’ll chase us” again turning back he stared at the road. She didn’t spell a word out.
Adding to the raucous wind, rain too, moved on to big drops. On the familiar path Shiva treaded as fast as possible.
Still apprehension didn’t retreat him.
He had a fear of any vehicle slowing down on the road turning on to his mud path,
To avoid that, the journey was kept as a top secret. As soon as the marriage had concluded in a temple, they scrambled in to a bus.
He had taken all the precautions of ‘eloping’ and never revealed it to any third person except Gowri’s mother Sarojamma and a close relative Rangaswamy in that street.
As the word “elope” slid in thoughts a smile bloomed on his lips.
He had heard the word frequently. Now it has come to his experience
“The rain appears to be heavy… should go fast….”
He fastened his walk. She followed him trouncing his heels.
Suddenly he had a doubt. He realized the girl following him was brought up in a town, with all comforts and without even the knowledge of troubles or normal walking on the uneven mud path. Fencing branches encroaching half the way is a difficult task, that too forcing her to walk faster with him is nothing but running, he slowed down his speed.
Reprimanding his own barbaric manner he glanced at her with regret but in that pitch black darkness her face was imperceptible.
A kind of slow din reached his ears.
Exploiting her with the fear of her uncle in contrast to the rain drops he troubled her and kept her on wheels.
Her chest might be heaving owing to the fast breathing, she didn’t reply him. Changing his fast moving into ordinary walk he started contemplating. It’s a mistake to complain her silence.
They both just had an exchange of one or two words. Except familiarity no closeness developed between them to talk.
No proximity to open the souls except linked together with a wedding.
They used to go for construction work in her street.
Frequently they purchased things there in their shop.
At times Rowdy Veera Reddy created a scene of nuisance just in front of them.
Whenever he came, mother and daughter used to cry as orphans and the old Rangaswamy always commented that to relieve them from troubles a man should come to take away the girl.
When he realized Sarojamma as his maternal uncle’s wife, he had new thoughts.
Not too greedy to expect her to marry her daughter to a daily laborer but somewhere within a trace of hope flourished – if it rains they too will be the farmers and have a status to marry her.
The pressure of VeeraReddy augmented, Shiva expressed his wish to Rangaswamy and revealed their relationship. Acceptance of Sarojamma… every thing seems to him a dream…
The size of the drops increased…….
Involuntarily his steps too accelerated.
In black darkness, with still darker old tamarind grove, the village silhouette neared.
Whenever the rain drop perched on the body, the latter felt its sharpness.
Before the bodies turned wet with the bustle of raindrops, they stepped the outskirts of the village.
By the time they crossed the thrashing floors, the drops achieved acceleration.
Here and there in the thrashing floors, broken branches were lying. As they slithered on to the way, the leaves of them created revulsion with their touch.
He stopped at a house at the entrance of the village just close to the thrashing floors. Kept the suitcase at the door step……… as he fumbled, the door was bolted and locked…..doubted that even the roof might have been blown out …. Mother might have gone to his sister’s home.
To summon her back now is nothing but to create a chaos there.
Let it be a storm or wind, without performing the ceremonies ♦ (sangem) it is not easy to bring in the new wed girl. Hurriedly they should go here and there to call some of the married women from surrounding families. ♦Red water must be prepared mixing turmeric and lime. After performing the ritual of circling that water round the couple (Drishti), throwing it on either side of the threshold they invite them in. Till then they should soak in rain.
Expecting all this traditional performance now, appeared just a nuisance. No need to be astounded if they germinate, after soaking and soaking.
Stretching the hand he fumbled on the wall under the roof and his belief turned fruitful. Finding the key there, he opened the door and entered in.
Somewhere the current poles might have fallen down broken. Not even the dim light is seen in the village. Probing with hand he could locate the lantern in its shelf.
Taking a matchbox, struck a matchstick shielding the flame with his palms, he lighted the kerosene lamp. Stepping her right foot in, Gowri crossed the doorsill.
The lamp fluttered in the wind.
As the wind tried to push back, he closed the door forcefully and locked it.
The speed of wind intensified.
The sound of drops too amplified.
No need to mention the predicament of the branches; it seems that they may break within no time. The entire shed shuddered in the assault of the air stream. Means the roof on the mid log might have been blown out.
If the rain boosts up the whole shed would leak.
Keeping the suitcase on an old wooden box, he opened it.
“Change the clothes Gowri” he said.
She hesitated.
Taking out his clothes, after he changed, she moved, went to the other side of the half wall and changed.
Sitting on the cot Shiva opened the packets of edibles.
He took out the Fruits packet,
“Come on Gowri, sit” he said.
No nudge in her.
Got up, shook the ragged quilt, spread it on the cot and went to her.
“This is our seven storey building. This is our silken bed and cot, come sit” invited her with a smile.
She walked slowly up to the cot.
As he sat on it she too did the same.
Opening the mixture packet he moved it towards her.
“Have this…. this is our meal now”
Saying this he took out the fruits too.
“If we had married like all others at home, by this time we would have been in a procession on a lighted vehicle. The trumpets and a band of musicians, and other entertainments…... moving the sticks and lifting the balls….how nice it would have been?”
She watched him from the edges of her eyes and giggled.
Looked at her quizzically…..
Meanwhile thunder……...lightening……. swift wind from outside…heavy rain’s abhorrence……… two drops slithered from the mid log of the roof.
He realized the hassle in his talk.
“Procession in…not in this heavy rain…” tried to feel shy but attuned.
“Now too…we came in a procession…no? The trumpets of thunder...… Focus lights of lightening. Dances of tree branches…”
Looked at him once again lifting her eyes…. Taking it as a chance he offered “take these fruits” handed over a bunch of grapes.
She acknowledged those delicates with her finger tips.
Munching the mixture,
“Marriage- its ok ...……a novel way. But the first night too …what is this? The house without any light…… under the leaking roof ……and on a slackened cot with an old ragged suit... …….Are you feeling what a dwelling is this.”
Keeping grapes into her mouth she raised her eyes.
“Four years back when we had heavy rains, my paternal uncle’s son went on bothering and asking to do his marriage. To do so he had an elder, how can they do his marriage leaving him a side? The elder one’s was
a lame…nobody volunteered to give him a girl. The younger one went on troubling and never paid heed to any one…vexed entirely my uncle did the marriage and ♦Nageli both at a time. With that his craze came to an end…”
Performing a marriage… ok.. What about Nageli…”
Looked puzzled….
He understood her doubt.
“Did the marriage, with that if he was left its ok… before completion of the visits and visiting.. Not before completing the tradition of spending three three days in both the houses…he ordered a new plough, new young bulls and new vessels for him. He measured and had given him his share of grains, land and kept him separate. Declared him not to stay in a house where the handicapped lived. See his trouble! Not yet accustomed new wife at home, not yet adjusted new bulls under the yoke, not yet worn plow what to say his luck. As we saw his plight we laughed and laughed. if he gets married, he thought, along with his wife he could roam and visit all his relatives and all the villages. With a label of the new wed son-in-law, he dreamt, he could enjoy food and wandering. But when Nageli also was made as a rat in water trough, he can’t leave the home even a day can’t leave his wife even an hour…” he said
“It’s raining. It seems we too have both marriage and Nageli together…..” murmured in a low voice looking at her from the sides of his eyes.
Gowri could not control her laugh.
She tried swelling her cheeks and tightening her lips but couldn’t stop it.
The drops leaked on the mid log of the hut slipped down from the rafter and went on falling now and then, caught up the speed.
When one or two water drops fell on her, tossing them she looked up.
Exactly the flow of drops slithered on to her face. With a jerk she moved back and swabbed with sari pallo.
There also- a stream …….
Shiva noticed her trouble, descended the cot.
Holding the wooden plank towards legs, he pulled the cot a few feet away.
Suddenly she swayed back and controlled and looked at him confused, Tried to get down the cot but he stopped……..
“It’s not over! From this corner to that..
From there to some other till I take you round the entire house on the cot, a place without rain drops can be hunted”
Saying this he too sat on the cot.
Eating the snacks he asked her too to have.
She was chomping the grapes.
Whenever she picked a fruit, she hurled a look at him.
The rain and wind appeared to be competing outside. Each one trying severely not to yield to the other……..
Sound of water jumping down from the roof, the tinkle of rain drops. Hoarseness of the wind, the spatter of branches of the trees…….mixed together, echoed peculiarly.
The attack of rain drops sliding down from the mid log increased and Shiva lugged the cot one more time.
Within half an hour he shifted it from four corners.
Behind the half wall, to the dining area under the high shelf he hauled the cot.
The bamboo mat shelf stopped the leak for half an hour.
Then the real problem started. Since a long time the mat was sooted with dust and the water from it, coloured as coffee decoction, jumped on to them. They could’ even stay there.
The cot was pulled back again to this side of the half wall. What to do is not known! Pulled the cot to a corner by the side of the wall……The drops were streaming….
No place was available for them to escape.
If they could get a plastic paper, it would have served the purpose. No condition prevailed 0ut side to go to any one’s home.
Rain is a cause but no plan or wish to reveal their presence to others.
Eventually the mid house also may turn in to a water pool. He lifted the suitcase and kept it on the mid wall.
Just before turning back, as he noticed under the shelf a big winnowing basket (Cheta) with an area of a square yard attracted him. It was big, an ancient thing meant to be kept under the manual grinder. Till recently it was a must at every home in villages – a big winnowing basket. Now out dated, it reached the bamboo shelf.
He had an idea. Immediately the story of three winnowing baskets came to his mind and he smiled.
He pulled it out from under the shelf, balanced it above the cot in a slanting position obstructing the flow of water under the roof.
Now it saved half the bed, barricading the flow and diverting it out as a roof corner.
Winnowing basket’s mantra worked out.
Leaning his back to the wall stretching his legs far and with a support on the wooden plank of cot, he sat.
Water from it fell exactly on his feet.
He made her to sit like him; pulled up the dhoti up to his knee……With the same passion he adjusted the pleats of her sari up.
He did it faltering.
A strange experience!
The drops of rain from the big winnowing basket on to their feet…. knees… falling coolly. From the leaning body the experience of touch turning in to smoke and fire…………….
Whether her left bosom is getting wet …was his doubt.
Hesitantly from behind her back he fumbled her arm and pulled her to him.
An excellent thrilling….
A report of enraptured silent languages…..
For a while both remained still.
Outside, the hoarse noise of storm wind like the sound of a waterfall ascended gradually.
The water was still jumping from the corners of the roof.
It seems all the roads turned in to streams and all the rivers with floods might have transformed in to Penna Rivers.
Some one’ sheep herd awakened it seems – the bleat of the sheep.
On the north of the village the high sound of hill brook made the ears blocked.
By dawn no water source remained empty.
Breaking the banks some, overflowing the sluices some….
He felt like Laughing as he saw the big winnowing basket …………………… the lone helper…suddenly he chuckled …..
She raised her eyes to look him.
“Shall I tell you the story of three winnowing baskets?”Still laughing he said.
“Yes” she accepted.
Before the narration he laughed again.
“A couple exactly like us …poor house… exactly this way the mid log was
Rotten and an old hut…rainy season … if it rains the same trouble for them too…
In the ♦Swati Karte an old relative arrived at night time. That night rain….a heavy rain…
Accommodated the relative, provided him the cot and quilt and they slept down. The rain turned heavy. The roof started leaking. The cot was saved but at their place it was leaking. They got up, searched for a shelter without leak and sat down. after a while it started leaking on the cot too.
The relative and squatted on it moving side to side but of no use..
Sitting on one side of the wooden plank, No not appropriate… no shelter to avoid the rain.. He saw a ragged quilt on the cot and covered him self with it. After a while that too turned wet. He couldn’t understand what to do.
“If I am like this, what about the couple…” he surveyed the hut in a lightening. On the northeast corner both were seen huddled together as if glued to each other. They didn’t sit simply. Each covered their heads with winnowing baskets- the water fall on them slithered down across… a good idea to prevent wetting. Of I too can get one…how nice it would be to hide the head!” Searched the whole house in lightening…… No third winnowing basket…
Sitting gloomily on the cot he then uttered “if one heads a family, he should have three winnowing baskets. What an impoverished house is this?”
But they both never moved from the corner…” she couldn’t control the laugh.
With tinkling the laugh continued…
Suddenly a harsh noise of something breaking…………. and immediately a thud of something falling in the street shaking the earth………
She was shocked
Scared of the deafening sound breaking the ear drums, she turned to him all at once.
Her head leaned onto his chest.
Hands circled him.
“The neem branch might be broken…” with this, stroking her back to relieve her from fear, Shiva huddle her close warmly.
Without letting her to return to her original posture he held her close.
They never felt the need of a big winnowing basket now.
A small one is enough.
No need of two bodies.
One is enough.
They lost the consciousness of the world.
Strom wind, rain drops as big as pebbles, blinding lightening, thunders breaking ear drums, floods of streams, reservoir’s overflowing din, the falling of drops on them……….. Nothing recalled to their minds.
The big winnowing basket turned out as an umbrella had a surprise.
Hither to cuddled couple under its shade now forgot its presence completely. Water from the log falling on them in stream, but to the big winnowing basket it sounded “chuy” chuy” as if falling on hot iron evaporating.
It too heard the story of three winnowing baskets.
The experience it had from this couple, it sensed a flaw in that story.
Being such a big figure in the present story I had no value at all, then how could the two in that story gain such a worth?


2.
By morning, the rain slackened and the sky cleared.
People started sweeping their untidy premises filled with leaves and log dirt. Carrying wastes on heads, they moved to the out skirts of the village.
The hens were searching leaves of the broken neem tree branches for insects and worms.
Shiva collected the broken leaves and branches from the premises and dumped them at the backyard.
When the branches were lifted The chicks searching for worms with their mother fell down like slithered cotton balls.
The jumping water sound of the overflowing ponds and the din of water falls together was heard at a high pitch.
Shiva was interested in it alone.
A girl in a new sari behind the branches, whose face was not very clear, sweeping the premises- the scene, was understood. People congregated there to look at the stranger, realized who she was and expressed their surprise.
At the conclusion of the storm, as if the winged white ants breaking their hills at night assembled around the lamps at homes, within no time all the ladies of the village amassed at of Shiva’s premises.
They reprimanded Shiva’s mother Lakshmama”. Oyo. An oldie! Without giving her a bath with sandalwood paste brought the new daughter in law home? They are warm blooded. Don’t you have any brains?”
They yelled at Shiva too “what is this? Without giving a scrumptious treat and sweet brought your wife in”.
Gowri too was not an exception “Not this way girl…after giving pan leaves and nuts to all the married women and prostrating yourself to the male.
Then you should enter the mother in law’s home.”
Whatever it might be every one praised Gowri, and compared her to a raw turmeric piece and sleekness as a lightning.
They said they are made for each other. with muddy feet Pushing and pulling each other they went in.
Without deeming Gowri’s feelings, close relatives took her in, behind the bamboo mat pored water on head, after giving a bath donned her new clothes.
They dragged Shiva too holding his arm, poured a pot of water on him too and made him a new.
Mixing rice grains, turmeric and lime they applied it on their bodies with a traditional wedding song.
“Fetch the people to smear the paste–along with♥ Radha, Rukmini.
Fetch them to smear..” started with a melodious ♥“Nalugu” song and folk literature flooded there……….
The old people inspired others warming them up “if you don’t sing, they will get dumb children, sing ….sing …” the programme continued graciously.
Shiva waited for a chance to leave the place feeling odd.
He felt like running away from the midst of ladies.
He thought of running to the reservoir as soon as he gets up.
But with the leaves and branches on the road the path was blocked and he was compelled to stop and had a disastrous fate of trapping in the hands of women.
The din of jumping water never allowed him to stay at a place.
Feeling to fly away to jump vehemently in to the flow of red water in the stream……….
Men of the village might be on the bank of the stream, brushing their teeth with a neem stick till it gets ragged off. They pace up and down the bank till the hunger flutters in their bellies. They never wash even their faces.
Once or twice he endeavored to escape and moved out but the women caught him and dumped him back.
Before the “NALUGU” ritual concluded, Shiva got up and without looking back ran forth to the stream with long strides that turned in to a scuttle as soon as he left the village.
Without answering the people he met, he targeted a volley of question at them, about the volume of the tank, its water level……… Without waiting for their answers he surfaced out on the bank.
The stream had red water ripples over crowded. The over flow sound of the sluice at a distance….
The dead flies in heaps and heaps on the bank of the stream………Their wings stuck on the fences and grass ….
Along with the tiny waves the dry leaves thrust forth on to the bank and piled up on the water surface.
Shiva couldn’t constrict his happiness.
He ran a distance on the bank and with the wedding clothes he jumped cogently in to the womb of the stream.
Contentedly dived..
Cordially swam..
The yellow rice grains stuck in his hair joined the water.
The sandal wood paste smeared on his body perfumed the red water.
Swimming and swimming till the pain of four years famine dissolved …to forget the wounds of migrated life…… dived and surfaced …bathed till the body exhausted entirely…not feeling to come out from the red water ….as a gargantuan frog holding the bank he suspended…
“Oh! Shiva...” a call.
Lifted his head on the water surface and saw Hanuman swimming towards him.
“Why don’t you suggest me a good place..:”
“Place?”
“Place ... to get a good girl… my dear you brought a golden girl as a wife..”
Shiva engrossed in smiles.
“Is she a trained one or have you to put the yoke on neck and train...”
“Not trained and will not be trained...”
“That means did not know any work and you’ll not teach her. That’s it” asked wondering.
Shiva nodded his head.
“The work of fields ok... Making the food or at least didn’t she know amassing the dung?”
Shiva looked at Hanuman with derision...
“My dear fool, if she bends her body for dung she bends her neck for the field work too..”
“I am not a fool. You are a fool! You say she didn’t know the work.. And you are not to train her…to feed her keeping at home are you a rich god? ♥ (Kubera?) My god! Don’t want a girl from your side and not your adventure too” he ascended the bank.
With a laugh Shiva too climbed the bank, with wet clothes went to his field under the stream.
He walked about the creek. Over grown Weeds and bushes encroached the uncultivated land.
With the boundaries as borders, Square shaped trenches filled with water, reflecting the sunlight seemed as glass pieces.
The mother earth’s enjoyment of the previous night’s union with the rain God, in the form of tremors is visible as limitless beauty everywhere.
On the stagnant red water in the fields, white floating wings of the ants…………
Over flowing water snuggling the edges of land...
From the cut edges still sinuous streamlets as slim lines…………
The shades of ghostly signs of night’s squall still moving in the total environment, according it a veiled experience……..
On the way, in stagnated water in shallows, wetting his feet as he went in to the village, people gathered around him…details of marriage, sweet teasing, passing them…… by the time he reached home, she might have washed her hair, Gowri was drying it. She looked as if a fairy descended down from the heaven sympathizing him, the poor.
Looking at her without even a wink he went in.
All the ladies might have completed the chit chat and left … his sister too was not there. Her children, seven year Subhadra and four year Raghu were seen.
“Have food my son” Lakshmamma said.
“Uncle! Aunty too had not eaten” Subhadra said furtively. Lakshmamma went out.
The big winnowing fan, hung under the roof was still there. With a laugh when he pulled it out and adjusted under the shelf, Gowri came in, saw that scene and smiled. The whole house was wet. Mother might have struggled a lot to light the stove, Akka might have helped her.
The shed with a blown up roof, marshy mid house, the slackened bed, blunt walls ….. Gowri must be feeling impatient watching this…..she might be recalling and comparing her ultra modern mother’s home with TV, fans and tube lights with this mother in laws.
“Shall we eat?” he asked the girl.
“We had. You and aunty...” she said.
He washed his feet and came there laid the old wooden plank and sat on it. Gowri brought the plate with meal and kept it in front of him.
“You too ...” he said.
She didn’t move.
The suspicion in him grew.
“Have you seen the abode? You never might have thought that people can live in such houses too” he said.
“This is our specialty” with a laugh he concluded.
Gowri lifted her eyes and flapped her eye lids twice. Went in brought the rice bowl and curry pot and kept them in front of him. She too brought a plate and sat. Serving rice in to her plate she said slowly,
“I saw even the families living under trees without even a shed …”
Keeping a big winnowing fan as an obstruction, the mantra of remaining dry is seen in this house alone” she said with a lingering laugh.
He too laughed.
The children gazed them surprised.
Suddenly Raghu ran out calling “Grand ma ...Grandma...”
He told his grandma sitting under the neem tree,
“Uncle and aunty are laughing without eating”.
“An invincible” Gowri said.
While eating, Shiva watched the things in front, old vessel, and old plate, dimpled pot…… cracked curry pot …….He never had a look at the household thing so carefully before. He never felt the rudeness of their antiquity this way.
He felt ashamed to see the shapes. What she may think-he felt bewildered? Rice and dal affirmed taste of his mother’s cooking.
She might have brought rice on loan from somewhere. Rice and dal is a rare food for them all. He should think of Gowri who might have been used to a variety of food as breakfast and so on.
By the time he finished eating Subbareddy and other friends arrived. They all migrated with him to the town for construction work. They knew even Gowri’s family.
“What is this ..?” Subbareddy asked surprised looking at the log of the roof.
“Night I climbed up and racked it, my brother in law” Shiva told
“Why?”
“As soon as she entered in, your sister grumbled –sunlight during day and moonlight at nights should touch her body. when she sleeps in she wants to see all the stars”
“Stop your boasting ... move courteously let us bring ten bundles of thatch and cover the roof”
“Do that my dear boys.. You will be blessed” Shiva’s sister Shivamma entered just then and said.
Leaving his sister with Gowri he left with his friends.
By the evening they completed bringing ten bundles of thatch, cleaning the roof and covering it too. Gowri praised their unity with looks.
She is astounded with the incidents of the last two days. Shiva’s arrival, introducing and revealing his relationship marriage proposal every thing was looking as a dream.
Her maternal uncle VeeraReddy is a cruel. He killed his wife ruthlessly.

Her life also he wanted to turn into ashes. They could not counter him. If Shiva had not turned up her life would have been crushed under the feet of a rowdy.
When she recalled the things of Kadapa her mind recalled mother. VeeraReddy might be troubling her! Probably disquieting her about Gowri’ whereabouts. …..
She saved her daughter fixing her self. The thoughts of her mother brought grief..
Even to call her no phone facility is available in the village. One or two had the cell phones but they always roam outside.
Night at dinner time Shiva told, “It seems yesterday and today VeeraReddy went to your home”
“Ah! is it ….”
“Danced in the streets, rebuked your mother and bothered her to tell about where she sent you. Your mother cried and told she has no idea of you at all. One who eloped with her will leave the address or what she said. Without even her knowledge we eloped is the story she said to every one. When she was forced to tell at least the name of my village she said it..”
Her heart beat amplified.
“What now” she said
“Why?”
“He may come here”
“Who? VeeraReddy? Let him come we pelt with stones and toss him away” he said no anxiety was in him.
“How do you know all these things?”
“Went to the neighboring village and called”
She looked at him adoringly.
Not only he, but even his mother, her paternal aunty who was anxious about her safety made her shrivel with thankfulness. As she came to know about the troubles they are in, not only she sent her son to bring her, but said if she could not accept him she thought of doing her marriage with some one else –that thinking itself is a symbol of her great soul.
The whole day how she demonstrated her affection! Every second looking at her and experiencing her as a rare thing her looks tickled Gowri.
Still she is not addressing Shiva with relationship, not calling him …
Before became a husband he is a close blood relative. Night she addressed her ‘♥BAVA’ to settle her mind.
She felt relieved when she called Lakshmamma as “♥Atta” sweetly.
***********

Next day morning Shiva started to town along with Gowri. Lakshmamma called him a side and said something. As soon as he reached Kadapa the first thing he did was to make her call her mother and talk to her to satisfy herself.
Sarojamma be braved her daughter. As per convenience she told that she would visit the village as early as possible.
Gowri felt comforted. Shiva took her to a picture.
Purchased for her some essential stuff.
Not even a mirror was there at home. Though she stopped him he didn’t listen. Though she told him to be careful in spending lest the principle for cultivation may deflate he didn’t paid a heed.
He purchased a bag of rice.
Till he purchased the cooking utensils and packed them he didn’t compromise. Then as per his mother’s instructions he took clothes for his sister’s family, returned to village by the evening bus.
As she saw the superfluous things brought by her son, she expressed her surprise.
Took rice in to palm watched carefully and went in to pondering.
But Shivamma supported her brother only.
Evening Ramanamma, their opposite neighbor, put Gowri into conversation.
“You are bringing my brother in law in to people” she said. Gowri couldn’t understand.
“All these are rough mobs. No good and no bad. No question of looking at the world. From the day I got married I am troubled so much. Just in one

Gowri didn’t talk.
Recent familiarity…such a big inquisition…… she couldn’t face it in any way!
How can she change Shiva and in what way? She couldn’t understand.
She never asked him to buy any thing. Actuality she insisted him not to.
Whether Ramanamma extolled or blamed her she couldn’t realize.
Along with ♥Aslesha Karte♥ Shravana arrived.
By that time rice saplings came to maturity and with in a day or two they should be planted.
Already it’s late; the time had elapsed but no way at all. Water in the tank was brimming over playing blissfully. All the farmers decided to turn it in to a field of rice. Every one entered the watered fields. Shiva couldn’t escape.
Not even spending three nights after the marriage, before the toughness of wedding clothes slackened, before he acquainted himself with his new bride he had to enter the marshy fields.
With lunch carrier, along with Gowri carrying tools on his shoulder he reached the field under the reservoir.
People working in their fields threw a strange look at them and resumed their work.
After making Gowri sit under the shade of black acacia tree comfortably, he went down into the field. He went on uprooting the weeds there. Just staring at him she couldn’t sit. Slowly she too entered the field and tried to heap the uprooted weeds, but he stopped her, didn’t accept her working at all. With a warning of the thorns piercing her; he brought her back to the shade. Ordered her not to leave it he went back.
All the ladies along with men were struggling in hard work in surrounding fields and folding hands with out any work and sitting in the shade watching them looked odd enough to Gowri.
Again her trial to get down in to the field…. His impediment ….
Entire scene falling in to the eyes of people working in neighboring fields ….
Old Govindamma from a neighboring field came out that side “what do you want my dear girl?”
“We work day and night in hot sun and heavy rains too. But now we already started feeling revulsion. How can you work in here in the thorny bushes? You were grown up so delicately that if you walk without slippers even the petiole of a pan leaf may pierce your sole. Is it right on his part to munch you rudely as a pan leaf bringing an educated girl like you?” she said. Gowri stared at her.
“Can’t sit without any work, ♥Avva” said.
“I am not Avva,♥ Jeji” she corrected.
“Shiva’s mother is my sister’s daughter. I am your Jeji.. Jeji” she explained.
“Am I not sitting without a work..?” she concluded.
From the edges of her eyes Gowri looked at Shiva.
He was smiling.
As expressed before the old lady was not without any work. If not working, why didn’t she remain at home?
At this age, a thought of going to a field is a work itself!
She advised me to stay with out work like her…means as an old old lady?
Shiva might have laughed with in him probably for this simile. Educated girl should not be munched as a pan leaf she made me a delicate pan leaf….
Without biting how can the mouth turns red? Gowri could not bear her comparing to that of an old. Keeping the sari pleats up at the waist she got down in to the field. Before she placed her second foot she screamed-“♥AMMA!” and lifted up her leg.
Within two steps Shiva reached her inquiring
“What happened?”
“Thorn” she said.
He slowly brought her on to the boundary.
Made her sit under the shadow of acacia and took her foot in to his hand. She felt a sudden tweak.
Surveyed the surroundings..
Looked in to his face…..
No new feelings on it...
Keeping her sole on his knee, wiped off the mire with fingers, and slowly moving the fore finger went on searching the thorn.
The blood flow in the sole resembled a scene in a mirror very clearly.
Her soles were not harsh as his palms.
When he searched carefully for the thorn as a black spot in the muscle black, but at the left side of the heel a red dot was seen, he understood that as a wound of berry thorn and giggled.
Looked at him questioningly…
“I thought it might be an acacia thorn or something like that ...but only a berry thorn…” said and removing a safety pin from the black strand around the waist, brought her heel close to his face and delicately chiseled her skin.
Meanwhile Govindamma came there again. “Are you going to pull out with your teeth?” said looking at Shiva’s posture.
“Not a big one…just a berry thorn…” said.
“If it’s a big thorn he would have pulled it with teeth” Gowri quivered.
The point of the safety pin was piercing the skin. Though it pained a bit, a kind of delight……
Even if a blood drop flows, a feeling of something was joining her heart.
“That’s why grandma, I asked her not to come down in to the fields” Shiva said.
“Don’t let her down, don’t! you should bring her up delicately” Govindamma said.
Whether she said normally or sarcastically, Gowri couldn’t comprehend.
Everything of this scene was visible to the People in the neighboring fields.
Nobody came there leaving the work but – to go on working without tiredness they had a story. About it --strange stories…. Mocking words …and sarcastic comments…
Totaku Ramaiah, an uncle by his kinship came up to the edge of the field, as if greeting Shiva “have you come here to weed out the fields or to take out thorns in our girl’s sole?” he asked
“What to do uncle? Your daughter is a delicate doll” Shiva said with a laugh.
“You know that already fool, and brought such a sensitive girl to drop her down in the thorny bushes? You should look after carefully!” Ramaiah said.
Looking at Gowri, “born and brought up in a town and an educated girl, you have no sense to bring her down in to the mire” with a laugh he left the place,
Shiva also laughed. Gowri was still feeling the pull of the wound in her sole. Before midday the hunger as a disturbance moved in her belly.
She thought it might be more than one in the afternoon. Looking at the sun Shiva said it’s not even twelve, she felt surprised. It’s strange to feel hungry so early.
Both sat facing each other under the acacia shade.
Opened the carriage and took a vessel each.
“So much rice! Take some Bava!” Gowri said.
He laughed “Not much..”
“Can’t eat…”
“If it remains...I’ll”
Lifted her eyes and stared at him without a wink.
While talking, when she ate the rice completely, is not known to her.
That she thought as so much, now looked less and still emptiness was there in the stomach. Taking out the third vessel, taking the rice fistful, though she refused he fed her. Felt shy, looked around and took it in to her hand.
Next one directly went in to her mouth, not to her hand. Scared she looked around and opened her mouth.
She was shy. if some one from the surroundings looks at them?
They may mock him- she felt worried.
On the other side despondency of missing a sweet experience…
In the midst of so many feelings she caught another fist of rice with her mouth.
“Oh! My finger…finger” when Shiva yelled suddenly she opened her mouth. Both went on laughing.
The pain of a thorn evaporated in the sweet sharing of eating the lunch.
“How much had I eaten Bava!” she expressed her surprise.
“Not alone”
Knotted her forehead and looked…
“When we swallowed food on the banks of the field’ only half counts in our eating and the other half goes to the wind, the sunlight, and the shade of the tree” “and the stomach expands on the field banks” he said.
Might be true –Gowri felt.
That might be the reason for his forcing to bring another box of rice even after her refusal. Spread his towel on the floor Shiva laid down. When she tried to spread her pallo he invited her to his side. Huddled close to his stomach Gowri laid down there.
People of the neighboring fields thought of coming in to the shade but the scene under the tree looked strange to them and felt shy. So they managed at some other place…….
After half an hour Shiva got up.
In front of him with the support of a stick Govindamma was standing. As soon as Shiva looked at her she turned her mouth in a volley of ways, moved her head fast and retreated.
Shiva could understand.
Within the smile he infringed a sigh and looked at Gowri. She was fast asleep comfortably.
Slowly stood up tied his dhoti up and descended in to the field. After working blissfully for an hour he had a doubt. He stared at Gowri steadily.
The sunlight, as expected by him, was creeping on to her face. As the sun turned west the shade of the tree slowly moved away from her. He washed his feet and climbed up.
She was laid there on the young grass forgetting herself completely. The shades of Night’s sleeplessness and tiredness were not yet melted on her face.
He felt shy and pitied her. He went up to the river broke four branches of the bushes, removed the leaves and turned them in to poles. In the wet mud around her he positioned the poles. Untied his dhoti and tethered the four corners to the ends of four poles. Now she had a shelter on her giving shade.
Looked at her contentedly and went to his work.
After an hour later Gowri woke up.
As she heard words in a low din she opened her eyes. As she saw a mosquito net type thing on her, she felt puzzled for a moment, as she could not recall where she was.
“This…. take this blanket my son”
“Why?”
“Tie a swing on the branches of the tree. Keep that girl in that and bring a long rope tie it to your waist and to the swing. As you work whenever you bend and stand, it moves” as she heard Gowri realized what was constructed on her.
She got up and sat.
The neighboring farmers were teasing Shiva.
As he was working in the field with only banyan and drawer they mocked at him throwing satirical arrows. As she was the center point of them she too felt shy. As soon as the farmers went into their fields she went and sat on the edge staring at Shiva.
In the evening as soon as he was seen in the street Subbareddy came on to him for fighting. “Is the tree your fathers? You have not allowed any one there…”
“Me? Why should I? “Shiva looked puzzled. “How can they come? In the midday in broad day light, when you both husband and wife sleep huddled together. How can they come? You have no shame. But they had it to come..”
He understood the matter. Diminishing with bashfulness he laid his head down.
As SubbaReddy went on rising with the same speed neighboring people laughed. Then a relative of Shiva came to his rescue – paternal uncle…Reggayala duggayya.
“A city girl and in a good fitness, when she went and fell on him how can he deny… is he not a husband?”
“See uncle. If you say anything her a word ….she is our girl we won’t accept... Have we not seen her in Kadapa? Never used to come out from home…… .A good traditional girl…. You don’t know this fools intricate ways. So you say,. He deceives others…”
For sometime both argued. Its main purpose is to make fun of Shiva. All the people laughed and enjoyed.
*************

Gowri had great respect for Shiva who went on working without even lifting his head and without even tiredness. As sweat drops on his muscles reflected tiny glistens in sunlight, she stared at him without a wink. As the work increased his gnarled muscles reached the perfection and she felt of touching them to feel the ultimate joy.
Evening when he takes bath, with a pretext of applying soap on his back when she crept her palms on to his chest and played with the muscles, he used to turn straight looking into her eyes teasing lifting his two hands up as if giving his body, she came out and felt shy and ran away inside. Why did I behave that way—when she thought the swollen muscles with sweat drops shining on them moved in her eyes…. .And she developed an obsession for them…without her knowledge she developed a blind love for them …his swollen muscular body made a strong impression on her mind.
Without even a bit of unwanted fat any where on the body, the muscles swell up where they have to and shrank where it needed glued to the bones-- his body as a Greek statue attracted her and created a desire in her to look at it. ‘That might be the male beauty” she thought.
Shiva was not allowing her to step in to the mire and marshy lands. Not permitting her to work.
As soon as he comes out from the marshy fields he enters the water tank and washes and swims a short distance too. Sitting on the bank she watches him without even winking, watching the movements of his body when swimming, when climbing up giving her hand for support , giving a towel, if no body was around, wiping his body-she started doing all these.
Second day he invited her too to enter the water.
“I don’t know swimming”
“I’ll teach you”
She felt shy.
A fear of someone from the fields’ may enter the bank of the reservoir; on the contrary the whim of learning swimming from him …Shiva noticed her thoughts.
“Let us go where no body comes”
Along with her he went to the edge of the reservoir where it was overflowing. Still it was brimming.
Water was shallow. When she entered the water with him he stopped.
“No body can learn swimming wearing a sari” he said.
“Then…need a swim suit…” expressed her surprise.
“Sari would roll on to legs”
“How then...”
“Take out the sari”
She felt shocked and looked on either side.
He himself keeping his hand at her belly button pulled out the pleats. Kept the removed sari as a heap a side……… Fixed the petticoat as a tight fitting from under her thighs….
Except handling over her body to him she could not do any thing. She was enraptured and inclined in to his hands.
“Come on” he took her into water.
She felt a sort of tinkling throughout her body. It was leaving the entire body in his hands flapping legs and hands on the water.
“For some more time……this far only ….” Saying this she remained in water till it turned completely dark.
Darkness provided them a very broad loneliness.
Loneliness without any trouble………the age old secret loneliness… normally not available to any one……..
The loneliness that will be accorded with the experience of touch of a feeling of a single body with two different …..And the feeling of loneliness……….
In that lonely quiet water plays…….
Water as a royal bed, as a swing and as a bed of threads and a bed of green grass as a sand heap turning wet with a drizzle of water …a secret door opening in to the world of happiness came into their control …completely tired and exhausted, climbing the bank…………leaning onto his shoulders the head that turned heavy with the experience of enthrall till she walked half the distance faltering in steps ………the feeling of that experience haunting her till midnight as the smoke of incense ……as soon as it turns evening looking forward towards the reservoir …till it turns dark learning swimming and as soon as it turns dark wetting their bodies and drying them……..
He cleaned a bit of the field, extracted the weed bushes, turned the land with spade and prepared a bed of saplings, seeded the soil. As he completed all these she learned perfect swimming.
He cultivated the other lands with a tractor.
When it rains, he thought of planting grains and chilies. It’s too late for ground nut. That too the principle amount for that is too high. To get the result is nothing but gaining in gambling. So no dare ness to go for groundnut crop.
That day--- just before darkness Gowri was swimming all alone in the water. Went deep and trying to bring the mud from inside and diving in and coming up in that trial. Stretching his legs into water, sitting on the bank Shiva was staring at her. Somewhere in the town of Kadapa hiding her body under nighties and Punjabi suits, without even crossing the threshold------ one who stayed at home without any response to anything –that girl, now like a young buffalo disturbing the water in reservoir…….he felt it strange.
How smoothly she adjusted herself in that village atmosphere! how miraculously she glued to this poor life!
Still he was in thoughts the sounds of sheep …as they passed under the bank on the path. Bringing her head above the water surface to take breath and going again in showed that she may bring the mud from inside. –if not tired. Unless he goes there she‘ll not stop her trial.
“Unless she takes rest on my back or in hands for some time she’ll not get the smartness that creates electricity in water” before he tried to slip in to the water …suddenly a loud yell…
“My God! Died.. Jumped in to the reservoir …. Getting drowned…. My God the daughter in law of Karreddula’ family….. jumped in to the water come on…”
With a jerk Shiva raised his head.
Son of Mekala Guraiah ran across the bank yelling
He sat behind the tree, so probably they could not see him. Gowri alone was diving in and coming out they thought wrongly that she jumped in to the water to die. Meanwhile, shocked with this Gowri swam to the edge.
He stretched his hand and helped her to climb up. Squeezing the petticoat on her body itself, “that boy might have felt afraid, he thought that really you jumped in to water to die. He’ll go up to the village shouting” he said.
She could not understand what danger it creates. An outsider watching her –was the hesitation which she had now.
“If this news reaches the villagers it’s a trouble really”
“Why?”
“To bring you out from the water all the villagers will come down together”
“Is it true?” looked as if it is incredible.
She could understand the scenes of danger to some extent
“What to do now Bava?”
“We should go there to meet them” said this and he looked at the village.
In the midst of gathering darkness hurriedly she wore the sari, turning the sheep left by the boy they started moving towards the village.
Meanwhile, from the grove of long trees a shrilling voice
“ Hanumanthu, Shiva’s wife jumped in to water, climb the edge fast”
“Which side did she jump uncle?”
“We don’t know the side, look at the water carefully”
“People still in the fields, not yet left to their homes warning each other, started running towards the tank.
She imagined the forth coming incident and felt ashamed. Encountering them and providing an explanation ---she felt shy.
“Why don’t we go in to village through some other way?” looked at him quizzically.
“All the men in the village jump into water; all the ladies with lamps sit on the bank crying”
“What for?”
“As you jumped and died in water, before they turn all the water out, they never return home”
She didn’t utter a word.
She could not believe that such a big incident is going to happen.
Many accidents might have occurred on either side of the street where they lived. Except listening, no body bothered to go there at all and very few crossed their door step to see.
Shiva might be exaggerating it.
Not before walking a furlong they saw with a heaving Hanumanthu was running and climbing the bank. “See my dear, she never jumped either in the reservoir or a well , wanted to wash her feet and slithered. The clothes became wet. I was there only. Without noticing me that boy went on shouting… come down” Shiva said him in a high pitch.
Hanumanthu stopped.
As he watched both wife and husband in front of him he confirmed. “The foolish donkey, he stirs the village completely…” scolded the shepherd boy.
“You climb up and go home soon” he said.
As they reached the outskirts of the village the sound of talking
Warning each other, crying, and grumbling, running sound of the steps, light of torch lights and charging lights…Hanumanthu shouted and informed the matter…but still people were coming….
As they saw Shiva and Gowri they stopped. As she saw so many people Gowri‘s heart quivered. No word came out from her mouth. All came forth for her, hoping her safety moved and melted her heart.
The purity of their heart that stimulated for a fellow being’s safety created a sort of emotional stir in her. She was immensely moved by still accessible human affiliation among them. Without her knowledge the walls of her heart quivered. The nostrils had swollen and eyes became streams.
Everyone felt happy to see her safe. Ladies came crying turned their cry in to scolding the shepherd boy.
When the danger changed into delight their hearts became light. People with gloom retreated in amusement. They twisted the incident into a hilarious episode.
By the night it became a great hit ridicule.
Every one talked of it …narrated the same story…...Discussion…….laughing…..the incident that carved all the villagers in to innocents became joke.
The shepherd had fooled every villager.
Gowri felt embarrassed first.
When she saw so many people feeling for her, she moved completely. They ran crying, scolding the men to run fast, when the pleats of their saris obstructed their run faltering and falling controlling they ran….
No body could describe her mother in law’s crying…they said.
“My daughter in law… what can I do.. My daughter in law …” beating her breast she fell down on the floor…
People who attended her too went on crying… on one side Gowri was still feeling hesitation and shy but the wish and whim for people enlarged…. the belief on human nature developed without a move back ….
All these are my people…the intimacy and closeness
Love for their tears which they had for her…
After that incident she experienced a feeling of every one in the village as a blood relative and as her own …a sort of firmness that she had from all of them…
For a week the incident went on rolling among the villagers.
Accidentally if somebody said a fake they started to bluff it out referring -“what you say seems as the daughter in law of ♥karreddula jumping in to the reservoir”
That started congregating strength and established as a maxim in the village.

*****************


3.
Lakshmamma cleaned the premises with cow dung, went in brought lime powder in a coconut shell and kept it in her daughter in law’s hand.
‘Put a ♦rangoli’ after half an hours struggle Gowri could manage a rangoli with dots.
Next-door ladies came and saw and cherished it. Lakshmamma had a bit of leftover food of the previous night and went to the field taking the buffalo with her.
The buffalo is pregnant and will deliver in a month or so. It belongs to a fine family and race and finer roots. Two years it gives milk, Last time its male calf was strong and even if a thief sells, it could have fetch two thousand. Shiva also had the habit of eating the leftover food in the morning. leaving the habit for Gowri, He arranged to prepare ♦upma with wheat ♦sooji, or making ♦Uggani with ♦murmure, cooking ♦Pulagam with green gram dal, ♦poori, ♦chpathi or ♦dosa arranging one or the other breakfast somehow.
Gowri realized on the second day itself that the link between breakfast and field work is not at all feasible.
If it is a breakfast, she has to stay at home to cook lunch and has to take it in the afternoon to the field. on the contrary if rice and curry are cooked in the morning she too can accompany him. If it is pulagam they would have taken it as lunch too in packing, but it was uggani. If she stays alone at home she had the thoughts of her mother.
She felt home sick. “She might be feeling worried about me” Govindamma arrived calling her
“Grand daughter’
She thought of calling her grand ma then bit her tongue, corrected and recalled the relationship and articulated.
“What’s it Jeji?”
“Has your mother in law left?”
“Ah!”
“What about Shiva?”
“Even bava too”
“Then yourself?”
“Have to cook rice…”
“Rice? What is it?” She looked ingenuously.
That is either rice or sangati (A type of meal prepared with raagi flour as a soft lump exclusive at RayalaSima) ...”
“Tell that my dear, rice or geece (a meaningless rhyming word) we can’t eat it”
She felt of laughing for her satire.
“Then what you people had in the morning?”
She went inside brought uggani in a plate and offered her
“This …take this…….. and eat it”
She examined the item in the plate carefully, crushed it with finger tips and said “worms. Insects …how do we eat it” she mocked.
After giggling for a while Govindamma put that in her mouth, chewed it and showed her contentment.
“Its good, have you done it? you might have… how do your mother in law know all these recipes except cooking Sangati four times. You made it scrumptious.” Again and again chewed it with a sound, uttered her admiration.
Gowri liked her gesture.
“I saw while coming in, the Rangoli is good. Birds everywhere on the Rangoli” the old lady said.
“Birds?” Gowri couldn’t understand.
‘What I made was dots Rangoli but not a pictured one’
The old lady’s sight might be poor to say this. She walked up to the door and looked at it. Dots Rangoli only………
When she was turning her looks a scene fascinated her.
It’s true. Birds all over the Rangoli…………. the sparrows… kicking the Rangoli flour with their beaks….chirruping and beautifully pleasant………
What is there in that to eat? She couldn’t understand, it was nothing but the powder of stones…
“What you mixed to the Rangoli powder? Which flour?” Govindamma asked.
Gowri could guess then why the sparrows kick it with their beaks, and what they select and eat.
Her heart shivered as she realized that they mix flour in the powder of stone only to feed the sparrows. Early morning cleaning the premises with water mixed with dung and spreading a rangoli is nothing but feeding the sparrows. How great the deed is! And what a meaning it had! The acknowledgement of another creature’s hunger turning in to a traditional habit –how divine the thought would be! How much bounteousness lies in it….
For midday Gowri cooked rice.
To cook Sangati accurately was not known to her. Once or twice in Kadapa she tried but either it was half cooked or turned in to lumps at the base.
So she decided not to try it so early.
When she was packing rice in a carriage Shiva came
“How can you come in this hot sun so far …..” he said the cause.
She looked at him strangely.
Rice and cluster beans juicy curry was scrumptious.
When both were eating calling him…..
“O! Shiva” a lady arrived at the door.
“Having food?” she came in as close relative “What is the curry?”
“Come and eat aunty” Shiva called.
“I had Sangati in my hand” saying this, “cluster beans curry…” she bent and had a serving spoon of curry in the middle of the Sangati lump in left hand, moved to the door and squatted there at the threshold. Gowri remained staring at her astounded.
“O! Mma, come here” eating Sangati dipping in curry she called someone in the street. Another woman reached there. She also had Sangati in her hand. “Sit, my daughter cooked the curry, delicious! What do you have! The pickle………?Have it” she stretched her hand. The new comer couched facing the first taking a bit of food dipped it in the curry and started eating.
“Come and take some curry sister?” Shiva called.
“Not needed, it won’t be adequate”
Gowri took a scoop full of curry to serve them.
“My dear sister in law, don’t think that we are beggars and with sangati in hands coming to every house. We are like this. We never feel satisfied unless we share what we cooked with others” she said.
Meanwhile two other women joined. Shiva also got up and joined them with his plate. Gowri too couldn’t avoid it.
“Not even three days passed after the marriage, and you had two plates?” one of the women expressed her astonishment.
“Eh girl! Give your plate to me and share his plate” another one insolently snatched her plate, Gowri felt shy and huddled as a bud. Shiva remained laughing.
Smearing the curry from others hand, teasing each other they created a pleasant atmosphere there and accomplished their eating.
“Now get up my dear sister in law” some one looked at Gowri
“Given us the curry, fed us at your home, the Sangati had caught to our palms. Have we to go home to wash?” Hurriedly she went to the backyard and brought water in a pitcher.
“It’s impossible to wash with water my dear daughter in law, the new bride of the house where the women had their food should lick the hands. If we wash with water the fortune of the house will get washed away”
“Come if it is dry, it won’t leave easily and you have to scratch with teeth, we don’t know whether your teeth are strong or not. Now lick with tongue and wash, come on have it” one of the women stretched her hand. Gowri perplexed and couldn’t understand whether it was a teasing or a reality. Shiva laughed within. “By the time you lick all our hands, your hunger will be satisfied. You might have felt shy to have food …”
“Do you know how tasty would it be ...?”
They might have continued the teasing but as Shiva folded his two hands pleading, they stopped.
After that they provided self introduction and revealed the correlation. With a pretext of work they left the place.
Suddenly they appeared and strangely left.
Unexpectedly they arrived as a slow drizzle in summer humidity to wet and accorded her a new experience.
Gowri never ran into such incidents in her life. She might not have the least thought that such conditions and experiences do exist among the people.
“Did they hurt you?” Shiva asked.
“Close relatives are like this, you too will be the same when you are familiar. ..Without teasing each other and laughing we can’t live…”
“I am not offended” Gowri replied.
“Oh!” as if relieved of a weight on his chest feeling it, left the air.
He never expected all the ladies to come and mock her at this level. He couldn’t believe that Gowri responded to that teasing as a village girl. A fear was haunting him of the sarcastic teasing of Old woman and close relatives may smash his dreams. He thought that town people could not withstand the mockery of the villagers.
Reason was RamiReddy’s son in law.
He was born and brought up in a town and was in a government job too…….. That’s the reason RamiReddy paid a heavy dowry and made him his son in law.
He had condescension towards the villagers and was restless to look at them. Used to grumble at the houses and roads …….. Never talked to any one……… he behaved as if he had descended from the sky. Villagers had a natural instinct of mocking and teasing the new wed. Especially the son in law…….. That too, a very costly son in law bought in lakhs. So they thought of teasing him at a grand level. When he was bathing, they poured rice water, mixed barn with sugar in sweets and when he had them, they teased him. Fried snacks in castor oil and showed their mockery. Kept pot pieces, when he sat as they broke making noise, they laughed. Instead of talcum powder they kept chalk powder, when applied soap to face they abstained water. When he sat on the cot, tethered his shirt to the threads of the cot and told that he was called by his wife. When he tried to get up, the cot too moved with him, everyone clapped and ragged him saying he would drag the crag in competition. ..Tied a stone at the end of his shirt with a strand and made fun of him that he had a tail and he was ♦Anjaneya. He never took any of these fun fares as sweet experiences and a reward, took them offensive and created a problem. With a pretext of insult he never visited his mother in laws. He never entered the village. RamiReddy brings his daughter at festive times and other celebrations, gives her a few presents and sends her back. He curses everyone that mocked his son in law. So the town sons in laws cause always a terror in the villagers and their mockery. Lameness arrived on to their ridicule, making fun, their naughtiness and mischievous deeds.
Shiva felt fortunate that Gowri never reacted as Ramireddy’s son in law.
In the evening along with his wife he went to the fields.
Extracted the stagnant water in saplings and supplied a new, made small canals with a shovel, made the edges weeded out the useless plants –he worked till it turned dark. She too tried to uproot the weeds with him when she pulled out just two, her palms became red and blowing air with mouth she sat. But Shiva did it very easily. She couldn’t do anything but to stare him with out a wink. She had a strong desire to swim. Every cell in her body was excited to have the experience of the lake water but the trace of the recent incident sprinkled water on her hopes. By the time they reached home, the buffalo and its calf returned. A bundle of sticks too were there at the stove. Squatted on the cot out side Lakshmamma was chatting with her son in law.
“Without feeding the animals if only the field’s work is looked after what’s the use? At least a bit of green grass should be given to the pregnant buffalo” he advised.
“We had the hay, look at the heap..”
“Dry blades! What energy would they provide? The woman of the house should bring a basket of green grass to feed it, then it will allow you to milk..”
“Who should bring?” son in law did not say anything.
She could understand the intention behind his talk. He was suggesting giving the basket to daughter in law to bring the grass. What he said has truth. As soon as the marriage when they enter the mother in law’s home, going for water with a pitcher , taking a basket and going for grass, with a broomstick sweeping the dust and doing things as they did at mother’s was familiar in farmer families. Daughters in law express their physical activity in doing various deeds. Work alone displays their beauty in the streets. It might be their family background as farmers. But her daughter in law’s condition was different. Her family never did any cultivation.
Lakshmamma too had a thought of her daughter in law. But for melting their muscles and evaporating their blood, they can’t get their food in farmers’ families.
She left everything to god.
When it was dusk and they heard the sound of bus. It comes once in the morning taking the villagers to leave in town. And in the evening it carries them back. If one wants to come back he /she should get down at the crossroad and walk to the village. As soon as the bus reached there within no time a call came to Shiva’s ears. “Shiva it a relative for you…go to the bus...” first he doubted whether it was for him or not. “Amma (mother) might have arrived ...” when Gowri expressed her doubt immediately he left the place.
Her suspicion turned right. Sarojinamma arrived.
She descended with two air bags. Gowri Queried about her welfare
“How do you do amma?’ she replied dryly and her expressive eyes conveyed many more things. Fumbling with her looks she asked many questions and to translate looks in to words, she never expressed any hurry.
She fetched superfluous amount of flowers, fruits etc…
Brought Gowri’s clothes left out there.
First of all, she greeted Lakshmamma calling her “sister in law” and affectionately questioned her welfare.
Both together groped the past.
Lakshmamma had dug her memories of mother’s house. With a sympathetic feeling she shared the grief of Sarojamma. Next-door women gathered. They talked with Sarojamma. Exploring her dressing and language they went on chatting in general.
Though she was talking to her sister- in-law, or conversing with the neighbors Sarojamma’s looks lingered on her daughter alone.
Neither the house nor the surroundings attracted her. Her looks were moving as flood froth to her daughter,
Staring every bit of the body carefully,
Has she lost her colour?
Has the eyes became weak, what about the laugh… has she turned thin? Is she combing her hair carefully? Decking herself as usual... is she not feeling sleeplessness due to evocative feeling?
In the bright current light she widened her eyes to examine her.
She fumbled her whole body and inspected it.
She personally gave her a bath, pressed the shoulders. Estimated the softness of palms feeling them and even had a look at her heels.
She noticed her palms delicacy as before and left a sigh with relief but as she came to know about the thorn episode she washed her heel and looked at it. Struggled as if the thorn pierced her throat…... advised her not to go out with out slippers. Whatever she passed in from one ear of Gowri and came out from the other with the same speed.
The black and red scar that remained from the wound of thorn left a sweet experience to her. Mother’s anxiousness brought a smile on to her lips.
Though the delicacy in her daughter seemed reduced a strange brightness on her face satisfied Sarojinamma. Lunch time she talked to her daughter elaborately.
Veerareddy had come two times and created nuisance.
She had tears holding her daughter.
After that she talked to Lakshmamma for a long time.
Shivamma from the other street arrived with some other ladies.
They conversed with Sarojamma and talked about the new wed couple. Finally they expressed their opinion that if she brings the eatables as ♦Sare it would be nice, Sarojamma too felt it appropriate.
But it’s impossible now to bring such things from her home.
She kept the problem openly and sought their advice. Shiva laid on the cot outside under the neem tree. , inside Sarojamma adjusted the quilt made by old rags, spread a sheet and laid on it.
Already it was too late.
Gowri had not yet come inside and put off the light. Sarojamma stared at the logs of the shed. A slight doubt in her mind that her daughter may not come in. She may sleep with her husband. Her mother sentiment could not take it easily. The door to the back yard was kept open and cool breeze lulled her. A pleasant wind, the wind that invites sleep………..
Added to that not even the buzz of a single mosquito was heard, that surprised her. Meanwhile Gowri came in bolted the bamboo mat door and occupied empty place by her mother. The thin lonely feeling that was lingering in her mind slowly melted away.
“My daughter ...still my loving kid ...Leaving her husband alone she came here shows that she is my golden treasure …my heap of gems”
She pressed her affectionately close to her. Experiencing the separation of ages she hugged her. Then she started the real probing.
She asked her in detail about married life, inquired about Shiva’s attitude. Expressed her doubt of making her roam in hot sun and wind………
Expressed her anguish about the cot without a bed, showed sadness towards their poverty and cultureless life that did not allow them to have a cot of a broad tape………
She felt the agony of a suspicion whether she could get coffee and breakfast in the morning or not. Condemning all her doubts when Gowri provided patronizing answers she felt satisfied on one side and looked doubtful on the other. If the problem slackens VeeraReddy’s nuisance subsides she said she would take them both to Kadapa. She promised that she would improve the existing business and provide a comfortable life to them.
Sarojamma felt moved as she looked at her daughter huddled in to her belly.
‘She never expressed but the girl is homesick’-she felt. She longed for my closeness…… Thirsty for my touch ……..desired for the food of my hand… only daughter that too without father…. Brought her up so lovingly without even keeping her down from the chest…how much this pretty girl might have been waiting for my arrival since last one week.
Huddling her daughter still closer, enjoying the comfort of the touch she closed her eyes. At least two more nights I should stay here to heal the separation wounds of my daughter –she thought.
Compared to all the relatives, siblings, father and even the life long companion a mother is much closer and dearer to a girl.
Throughout the night she should relax in my lap, with out even turning a bit I should allow her to sleep comfortably.
Touching her back affectionately filling her thoughts with endless love feeling proud of her daughter’s innocent love that would make her sleep huddled close to her throughout the night Sarojinamma drifted in to sleep.
The village atmosphere without the attack of mosquitoes and humidity accorded her quite peaceful pleasant sleep.
The moon resplendently, melting the night moved on the path of sky….running with a new liveliness playing hide and seek with the clouds. How long she slept so deeply was not known. What time it would be …no comprehension of it at all…
A resonance came up to her ears …she could relate it to the overturning of vessels in kitchen, with a jolt Sarojamma opened her eyes.
Her heart missed a beat.
The thieves in town came to her mind, lifting off her sleep. Sitting as she turned her look a side, a white cat slipped in to the back yard…
Her heart settled down and she breathed peacefully.
She got up to close the back yard door, had a doubt and looked at the cot. Her eyes were filled with surprise. Gowri was not there …might have gone out.
Walking fast she tried to open the door, but it was bolted from outside. As it was a door of bamboo mat she pushed her fingers through and lifted the bolt.
Opened the door and walked to the premises of the house. Looked at the cot of Shiva, It was not there where she had seen it at night. In front of the neem tree just opposite to the heap of the hay a cattle shed was there. Suspiciously she walked that way. Smell of the dung and cattle… stepping foot in foot before she reached the side of the shed she stepped two times on fresh dung, just before the shed under the pieces of moon light that slithered from the braches of neem tree on the cot when she watched the scene she felt shocked. . On the cot of threads, not even a bed spread was laid properly; keeping her head on the chest of Shiva Gowri was in deep sleep. Sarojamma could not believe her eyes. .the girl who used to sleep comfortably and relaxed on a soft bed now lying down on the hard threads in a narrow space..
How did I mistake….. Thought that she would relax in my huddle and forget the separation of these eight days….
In front of the agony that she had for the separation of a few hours from husband this separation of days turned worthless.
How innocently I thought with a mothers love.
She retreated. She went out washed her feet and laid on the cot but could not sleep. Mind still can’t digest the scene that she had seen. Still can’t believe whole heartedly. Searching for various reasons and trying to convince her mind that her daughter is not away from her. Probably at night he would have taken her away from here, may be by force dragged her away. She had a sound sleep due to cool weather. Can not notice every thing….
When she thought this way her mind felt contented. It seemed as if she got her lost daughter again.
Till the cock crowed she could not sleep at all. One after the other every cock took up the duty of crowing and the street resounded with it.
Just then the sound of murmurs at the door……….
After that the sound of opening the door slowly…
Walking step in step the touch of her daughter lying beside her.
Huddled close together shrinking in to her belly …recalling the night’s posture carefully practicing it …trying to befool her….
“Aura! What an intelligent girl are you? How much did you learn? Not even seven days completed after marriage, how many tricks you learned? Though a new wife how can you befool your mother? We too were daughters at a time baby! We had a bit more intelligence than you…when it came to daughter I too like my mother forgot every thing. I believed innocently that my daughter did not know anything except me. You taught me a very good lesson, dear girl, how can I obstruct your happiness dear. Be dear to your husband. like newly coming words, as still settling curd, like half fried moong dosa you be always tasty to your husband” Sarojamma’s heart grumbled affectionately.
Taking daughter and son in law in morning bus she went to town,there ordered sweets in sweet shop, along with them to have a speciality she asked for mysore pak and jhangri. Bargained bananas…. Purchased new clothes to daughter and son in law….
She purchased things for her daughter’s family life. She asked her daughter to take the things she liked to have.somehow Gowri was looking strange to Sarojamma. After the night’s incident she appeared as a new wife but not as her daughter. Through out the way she remained looking at her. That night called all married women in the village distributed sare and she saw that they blessed her daughter. she stood up for the programme and did it. When it completed it was too late.
Like the previous night when her daughter closed the door and tried to lay close to her, Sarojamma asked her daughter, “is there no other cot dear?”
“Why Amma?”
“ this cot is too narrow for me , night I couldn’t sleep at all. I’ll sleep alone . you go to some other cot. …” she said.
Heart came in to her throat and Gowri felt restless.
She might have known the thing that happened at night. Shrinking with shyness closing her eyes tightly she walked to the door. Slowly she opened it , went out and bolted it. With a run she reached Shiva and leaned on to him.
As she enjoyed the thrill she talked about her mother noticing their secret deeds.
Morning Sarojamma started to her village.
“Uncle may create a nuisance at home. If he knows that you have come here he’ll kill you. No Amma, don’t go. You stay here only. “Gowri cried with tears.
Sarojamma didn’t talk, but didn’t stop her journey too……
‘Leaving everything to God’ soothed her daughter and clambered the bus.
But through out the journey she was thinking about her daughter and herself.
The thoughts of VeeraReddy moved her heart completely.
After that about her daughter, her present life condition, the last night’s incidents…………..
The threads cot on which her daughter slept moved in her eyes again and again,
Day time she examined it, it’s the cot of neem fiber, if lies down with out a sheet, pressing of the thread makes marks on the back.
Daughter, whom she brought her up with out even letting her to climb down, now, leaving her sleeping on that rough threads cot………….
If the loved one is with what matters whatever be the cot? Even if it is a heap of sharp stones or a bed of thorny fruits ……………………..

******************
4.
When Sarojamma stayed two days there, she felt the anguish for her daughter is still lingering in Shiva’s eyes. How much was she worried about ……. her daughter’s welfare. How much she was worried for her …… for her daughter’s taste, Giving her coffee even to her mouth, feeding her giving morsels of rice to her mouth, giving her a bath, changing her dress, combing her hair, giving final touches to her make up, adorning flowers in her plait , …he felt all this too strange. She behaved like a mother who convinces a teasing child.
After Sarojamma left Shiva felt that his responsibility has increased. As it was not related to the family but as it was regarding Gowri he couldn’t even escape it.
As he started obliging the new responsibilities willingly for Gowri, he himself felt surprised.
Responsibly taking care of her food, of her decoration, and spending his time only for her……
To acquire vegetables that give a new taste everyday to the tongue was a difficult task.
As per the need just grinding salt and mirchi, eating hot Sangati with it fast and going out washing their hands was the habit of villagers.
Shiva was also the same in the past who could have sangati with burned red chilli smearing on the fish and can go to the work easily.
But now when he goes to food Gowri’s delicacy was coming to his mind.
When he watches the pickle in the plate he could see Gowri’s face with tears in it.
Though he saw to it that everyday some dal and curry were made, even that bored him. It was difficult to get vegetables there in that season. Morning the green leaves sellers will come. Taking a few grains and bargaining for green leaves, making the whole street resound with their jostle was the routine there. The cool morning resounds it.
Boiling the green leaves, draining away the water keeping and pressing it in a basket, and mustering it with mirchi and dal powder makes it so tasty.
Pleading with the shepherds, giving them a bundle of beedis Shiva managed to fetch a kind of plants, imploring the other boys he managed other green leaves from the hills.
All these when cooked will be tasty with sangati. Some of the leaves would give an excellent taste to dal. If brinjals and new leaves of tamarind are added, the heaven comes down to the tongue.
It would suit either sangati or rice or roti.
As he enters the field his eyes would search for cooking greens.
As a good rain blessed the earth nature turned pleasant. All the trees with new leaves started looking resplendent. The vines that crept onto the trees dropping all the dead leaves are again looking lively with greenery.
They were crawling on fencing bushes like green snakes.
Now every plant with new leaves began diffusing greenery in that green empire. It was the time that was utilized entirely by nature to smear green colour to its body.
Even the barren lands turned green. The short grass became a thick long grass bush.
The sheep herds that went to the hill for fodder started returning to the villages. When it rained in the nights they rested in heaps on elevated areas making them stink with their urine and droppings by the morning.
Some gathered the sheep in their fields under the bore wells.
As Aslesha crossed no leaf was moving. Nature looked tensed. The west winds that started in Rohini gradually turned into big Avadi and small avadi winds and now completely slackened. The air developed frigidity now.
As it rained another time wetting the land, the cereals were planted.
One or two tried dipping motors in bore wells but still the underground water has not yet recovered.
Shiva planted mirchi in the field under the bore well.
He planted at the rate of six kilos of seeds in an acre.
Even as the agricultural work was looked after the Makha was already in the middle.
Sarojamma arrived with new clothes and steel tins filled with eatables.
She prepared a few snacks on her own, fed her daughter herself.
Gowri thought of sitting with Shiva but it was not possible before her mother.
Sarojamma understood the tastes of that place when she visited last time. Morning itself grinding chutney and making Sangati ……swallowing a lump of it and running to the fields …..if possible some may cook a curry for the midday meal. Otherwise they adjust with the chutney itself. In the night those who can, go for rice and dal. In many houses they have dal only once in three four days. Coming to these sweet meats like all other villages, only for the most important festivals all the villagers make same variety of sweets. Arishes and vadas of alasandas for sankranti, for ekadashi the laddus of pelapindi, for the new year (Ugadi) sweet chapathis with gram dal and jaggery inside, for sriramnavami soaked moong dal and jaggery water, for musalamma festival pulagam and chicken, cooked grams and for vinayaka chauti kudums. The same tradition throughout the village.
Sarojamma felt anxious that her daughter should look special when she was in the village.
On the very first day of her arrival she went and met Shiva’s friends who were known to her. Went to their homes and squatted there. She went even to Shivamma’s home. What she told them all was the same. How she brought up Gowri without even allowing the sunrays to touch her, and even here she would look after her without any scarcity, she would bring good clothes as in town and would give her a good life. As a part of it how she brought the things and snacks and sweets.
“ just to have a look on her, in case if they ask her to work, or if they trouble her – to notice it.” Finally she told them.
Just before coming out concluding her conversation, “not many days, I think even before the New Year …as soon as I can get rid of my rowdy brother I’ll take both of them to town. There they can live happily looking after my shop. What is here? However hard they struggle in the mud it’s not even enough for their food and clothes” she said.
Many thought that what she said was fine.
They felt happy that at least Shiva’s life would be alright. But when she talked about her daughter’s welfare and requested them to see that Shiva looks after her properly they couldn’t control their laugh. They went out and laughed a lot for her request. No husband in the village ever looked after his wife in such a manner as Shiva treats Gowri. That only they couldn’t digest. “Still better way means he should carry her on his shoulders” commenting this way they went on laughing.
As soon as they saw Shiva they went on conveying the message given by his mother in law. “Look after her in a still better way. Carry her on your shoulders, if you put her down, you’ll be punished with slippers” they started mocking at him.
Shiva too felt like laughing. He laughed heartily along with Gowri.
He went to the field to see weather water was there in the bed of rice plant.
The rice plants emitting green colour looked very pleasant, looking so beautiful that eyeballs may explode. ‘Should ask mother to put a scare crow’ he thought. As water was less he pushed it along the canal and turned it to the bed.
Here and there in the burrows of edges he could see the movements of the crab.
Those who laid the seeds recently, kept flags to avoid the cranes stamping it.
“What my boy! Your luck is good” Reggayala Duggaiah from the neighboring field said.
“What is it?”
“Elders say the omen of good luck –from the day your wife arrived, your luck has turned to the best. Your field under the water is the best one. Before the crop comes to hand, town life is assured. What a fortunate future”
He looked at him blank. “Your mother in law said, she will take you to the town and hand over her business to you, that will be better for you instead of struggling in the mud...”
Shiva didn’t talk another word. He heard of Sarojamma talking it to many people in the village.
Pretended that he never heard it or cared it, but it was torturing his mind. He had an experience of some perilous waves rushing towards him. Previous night even Subba Reddy said the same thing.
“Where can I go leaving you all? Without doing your marriage how can I leave this village?’ he replied with a laugh.
He was joyous and joking with his friends and looking passionate but feeling a commotion within. Though he tried to indulge in conversations, the turmoil remained the same. He thought of talking about it to his best friends.
He felt the need to share it with the closest to get an advice.
He could not recall who the closest are. But the mayhem remained as it is. Eating or talking or working whatever he did, it went on announcing its presence.
He continued to search for the friends to wipe off this problem easily with their hand…
Suddenly at a particular moment he understood that the searching friend is none other than Gowri and only she had the strength of reducing his disorder.
On the contrary, if he thinks logically –Gowri, he felt is not the right person to solve this problem. She is the daughter of that mother and a lady used to city life. She may support her mother only. Am I not thinking this way because I like her so much?
Let it be a trouble or happiness he should share it with her only, it was his policy, so finally he decided to keep the problem in front of her.
That night itself he started his trial.
“Your mother said it seems she planned to take us to the city soon” he said.
“We should go Bava! As soon as my uncle’s nuisance subsides we should go” Shiva had a shudder gestured on his face.
“Without enjoying the feast of mother in law’s home how can you be a son in law? We should go, have the feast there, and come back tubby and chubby, then you have to lift the allem gundu (stone) of this village…” she said inspiringly.
He laughed.
After a while he said in a low voice, “not for the feast Gowri,”
“Then…”
“It seems we have to stay there itself. However hard we try, these lands never give proper crops, except the famines. We can look after the shop in Kadapa and live happily. That’s what she feels”.
Gowri stared at his face. The heaviness of the words explained her something-she felt.
Remaining silent for a while she asked,
“What do you think, Bava? Tell me what you feel?”
Without a reply he cast his head down and remained silent pondering over something.
She repeated the question.
After a while he lifted his head slowly. By then there was a change in his eyes.
“Gowri…Gowri…I cannot come leaving this village…” he reached her at once and hid his face in her lap.
The change in his voice caught his mental status. Gowri could understand the depth of his heart.
Born and brought up in that dust, drank that water and breathed that air –now it’s impossible to adjust to the city life - she felt as if he said it.
As if somebody dragged him forcefully and he was pleading with her to save him he is in his wife’s lap…..
Is he not probably thinking that I too became one of the forces that drag him? …
“If my uncle turns good…then.. If he turns into a gentle person then she would take us. By that time another famine would come ...” she said laughing.
He didn’t get up for a long time from her lap. She sat stroking on his back with two hands as if calming a child.
He was lying like an infant quietly. He submitted his problem and remained peaceful.
She felt as if she touched an infant.
It looked smart and pampering. Consoling him like a mother was strange to her.
As if he is a son seeking shelter….
Herself as a reassuring mother….
This feeling appeared queer.
Some enchantment… ‘
The same feeling she thought she had once in the past…..a few days back, probably she never had it totally into her experience.
Like a silhoutte it moved in her mind and disappeared. ….her pleading him to eat the food , though he said he was not hungry… requesting him without heeding him, then suddenly she remembered her mother and felt shy … She has now understood that the real feeling behind that shyness is mother’s love and she has experienced it.
Gowri was engrossed totally in a kind of mesmerism.

****************
Shiva noticed four or five bore wells with fixed motors—it seems they were recharged.
Water started coming in a flow, not like squeezing its neck and getting a tumbler of water now and then. He too should fix a motor and see. It was disconnected two years back and kept at home. Whether it is in working condition or not should be checked. *Mirchi has not yet grown. Cultivated lands are looking like a spread red carpet.
From afar he heard the chirruping of the birds at the pitch. Near the streamlet the Kalive trees attracted him. Not yet ripened new fruits on all the branches-black fruits as if resembling the eye balls. He cut the leaves of banyan tree, made it in to a dish, filled it with fruits and started towards his home. Suddenly he heard the noise of an aeroplane above his head.
As he lifted his head he saw a black cloud crossing across him. Before he could understand that it was a cloud of honey bees, and moved aside some bees dashed him, snuggled him and moved on. Somewhere a place with flowers or maize with flowers or cotton fields might have attracted them.

If she had seen this scene how much she would have been elated with joy!
She likes to swim in the water pools. Feels happy to roam on the banks of fields……she runs with enthusiasm for the thundering clouds………. drizzling rain drops and glistening lightening………. Thoughtfully he walked towards his home.
As he clambered down and started to go up on to the bank he heard some conversation. He stopped a while and listened carefully. He moved four more steps ahead.
As he could understand that the talk was about him he stopped.
That voice is of elder MallaReddy, a close paternal relative of him.
“Unnecessarily this boy is agonized about the fields, cultivation, bore and crops. That girl never allows him to stay here. …it looks as if the bird flies away. It will take away him too. She was obsessed with him. She will keep him as a jasmine in hair and go….”
“It’s about me …my future…they forecast the future based on Sarojamma’s words.”
Shiva doesn’t feel like listening.
Some anxiousness…a kind of fear ….some disturbance…
Inside the layers of mind, his belief on her…….. Trying to suppress all his fears..
He felt as if he brought her up here.
What is this? How can she tame me away now ……
Her taking me to town, in their language if it is treated as eloping ……they all are supporting it. If my life shouldn’t be wasted in this mud, they feel that it’s better if she takes me away.
She wouldn’t do that - though he tried to convince himself within, some hassle somewhere.
Gowri says it’s impossible that her uncle would turn into a soft person and they will not be taken to town at all.
Suddenly VeeraReddy may not turn into a sage, but on one or the other crime if he gets imprisoned –if his obstruction is not there, doesn’t she mean that we must go to Kadapa?
“Meanwhile another famine may arrive” she said even that –means she intends to say that if a famine comes we all should go on migration permanently?
Within her she might be planning of leaving this famine stricken land and go to town to feel the comforts.
Thoughtfully he went home.
He kept the Kalive fruit’s dish in front of her.
Washed and squatted on the wooden seat.
She brought rice and curry vessels.
Both started their dinner.
“It looks water has accumulated in the bore. I have to fit the motor.” He said.
“Then?”
“Let us have sunflower crop?”
“How many months will it take to ripe?”
“Sankranti should cross…”
“So there is no chance of going to my town even in Sankranti?”
“Let us call your mother here itself?”
“It’s the festival of sons in law Bava! Do you know the newly wed sons in law stay at mother in law’s home during that festival? You too should come to my home” she laughed.
For a minute he looked at her without a wink and lifted the plate to drink the butter milk.
The married girl with her husband, going to her mother’s home for the festival, visiting all her relatives and tasting their affection, teasing of friends taking husband’s name, getting the sizing up of her friends about the suitability of the couple, the closeness that entwined from the childhood, sitting around her with questions as forefingers untying the wires of love secrets, to listen to the music of hidden tunes, not only herself but they could understand her husband too……. The great festival is nothing but the rare chance of experiencing all these….
Gowri tried to imagine going to mother’s home with Shiva beforehand… he might not have brothers in law but I should be everything to give the experience……….she thought.
If she could get rid of her uncle’s trouble, it’s enough.
Wiping his hand with the towel Shiva started to move out.
“Where?” she stopped him, “who would eat this?” she brought the dish with Kalive fruits.
Evening when he has returned from the seed beds he saw a sage at the Ashram outside the village. He was talking to some strangers.
Shiva went close to them.
He was explaining something about Puranas. He was quoting the words of Kashinayana.
“Jejinayana and Kashinayana are similar ones. Both are legendary figures. Jejinayana’s devotees sing the verses of philosophy where as Kashinayana’s devotees say that food is the figure of God. Who is that God? It’s Jejinayana…..” he went on speaking.
Subsequently his words turned towards the relationship of wife and husband. He started talking about the couples like Vashista and Arundhati quoting their affection.
“I have a small doubt?” Shiva questioned the sage.
“Ask my dear”
“Some ladies till they turn old, say my home and my village when they mention about their mothers’ home. Why do they do so?
Though they had husbands, sons, daughters, grandchildren here itself ….even before the death they say the mothers’ home is their home.” keeping his face innocently he asked.
The sage stared at Shiva head to toe.
He moved with Kashnayana for many years. He had the ideas of him imbibed in every cell of his body.
“A very profound question my dear.” He closed his eyes, remained silent for a while. Exhaling deeply he looked at Shiva. “Illusion my son, it’s illusion…..the desire ….some women soon after the marriage, forget their mothers’ homes. Mother’s house turns to a rare thing to visit as a guest. Some till they reach the graveyard glue their eyes and ears to their mothers’ homes. They can’t get rid of the obsession of mother’s home. Nayana used to tell..In Chilakapadu, a lady from the moment she entered her mother in law’s home used to long for her mother’s home all the time. But she couldn’t go all alone. She needs her husband with her. She should take him away too. She can’t stay even a minute without him. She went on bothering him to stay with her at her mother’s home. When he didn’t turn up she left food and water. Nobody at home knew what to do. When Nayana was going that side the girl’s father in law narrated it. After listening it he laughed and said “that girl has developed tremendous love on her husband but not on the family of him. She thinks he is her own but his house, fields, buffalos and hen –she never treated them as her own. Try to develop in her love for them all”
This is the thing my dear. When they accept everything related to their husband as their own the desire of maternal home perishes. Otherwise till death they look that side only.” The sage said.
For a long time the discussion went on on that matter. Finally the sage said a thing.
“Any gentleman gives his wife the liberty of calling him as her own. The liberty of considering whatever belongs to him as her own is very rarely accorded by the husband my son”
That night even after going to bed the words of the sage resounded in his ears.
That means ….Gowri had not yet developed love for the house, the fields, crops and the village.
Feeling happy to look at them is different. Living with them mingled is different.
Still Gowri remained at looking and enjoying them.
That‘s why she could respond to her mother’s ideas.
She tends to take me away from here.
Love should be there at least on the labor that was put in cultivating the land if not on the field. At least obsession must grow on the sweat that grows the crop.
He remained thinking.
For a long time he could not get sleep that night. Gowri, who was sleeping lying on his chest, suddenly woke up. She understood that he was not sleeping.
Resting the hands on his chest she lifted her head.
Staring into his eyes she asked, “Couldn’t you get to sleep?”
He was silent.
“Are you not well?”
“Nothing. Can’t sleep, that’s all” he said.
“It’s too humid?”
He nodded his head in accordance.
“Clouds have covered the sky, so the air has tightened.” She clambered down the bed.
She brought a hand fan, sat by his side and started swinging the fan.
He stared at her seriously.
Then he felt- have I misunderstood her?
She is not yet acquainted with the work of the fields and the greenery of the crops. Before noticing her real response to them it’s a mistake to come to a decision. Like all other women she too spoke of her mother’s home as her home. It’s not fair to think this far taking that word.
As he had this feeling he felt all the clouds in his heart faded away.
He placed her on his chest and hugged her strongly.
****************

“O God! You have given me my maternal niece as my daughter in law as I requested you; you have given her good thinking too. You have created love in her for my son. After providing all these, you have to see that she‘ll not snatch away my son like a kite from here.
O God! You made the heart of the earth soft, before it turns hard see that we can earn a bit of food. Make us the ants to amass each grain. This tree is turning dry and the leaves are falling.
Before the lamp turns off see that the nest will not get abandoned. See that the two birds never leave this nest.
The buffalo is mine but let them have the milk; I am hatching but let them have the chicks. I am the guard let them have the crop. Let me water and they should enjoy the fruit. I’ll bear all the curses and troubles but they should have children as blessings to put in my hands. Do this favor please,” On the edge of the rivulet a stone statue that already lost the nose and face was standing.
Lakshmamma was prostrate in front of it. Inside the greenery the buffalo was grazing on the green grass.
There on the edges of the streams very tiny sparrows are going very high with a sound and whistling there with a shrill voice, folding their wings there, slanting down to the earth like a stone, in the last minute spreading their wings moving into the air, they are performing a strange play.
“Mother earth, four years you were dry but I have never left you. …even after the grass and trees that penetrate into you with their roots turned away from you I have never left, even the one born from my womb left the place to have food but I have never left you.
When you turned soft with a few rain drops I smeared the swamp on my body and turned cool. When the famine perched and you became emaciated just throwing dust on my chest I shriveled but have I left you? The worst time awaits it seems, my son and daughter in law may go away leaving me. You are alright, why do you throw famine at my chest mother?” she sat on her knees in the land that turned red due to cultivation, folded her hands, stretched them through the gap between her knees and leaning her forehead on her arms she prostrated and prayed.

**********
“O! Shiva” somebody called him from outside.
That voice sounded like Govindamma’s.
Gowri peeped out through the backyard door. “Why don’t you reply …you rascal” her voice resounded
It’s Govindamma’s voice! “is he not there?” she looked at Gowri and asked. “No Jeji, he went to the fields..”
“Do you know What that rascal did?” though her voice was severe Gowri through experience realized that most of it was nothing but sarcasm.
So she didn’t falter.
“What did he do Jeji?” she asked.
“What to say girl,” she crossed the threshold and entered in, “A very big honeycomb was in my barn, it was there for a long time. As big as the head of a goat, believe me. It was hanging on a branch of a fencing tree. On the full moon day we get the festival, and by that time there would be more honey in it. so I thought of extracting the honey from it by that time. And I have been watching it everyday. When this rascal saw that I don’t know –even when I was there he intruded in, shoved away the bees and took away the honey comb!
Though I yelled at him he never stopped. I requested at least to give me some honey, what he said did you know? I am unable to lick the honey, not only that, he said I would smear it on my mustaches then they turn white and glisten … am I a male to have mustaches and beard?”
Gowri couldn’t control her laugh.
She went to the other side of the half wall and hid her face in her palloo.
Here and there on Govindamma’s face under her nose and on the chin very thick hair protruded out.
Shiva might have teased her on noticing them.
Laughing she took out the honey dish.
“He told me to give you honey if you come. Many villagers would be there at the barn, and it won’t be sufficient to give it there, so he brought it home” said.
“About the honey it’s ok. But why did he mention about my mustaches dear” the old lady asked hissing with passion.
“Stretch your palm” Gowri said.
Still grumbling Govindamma stretched her palm.
Bringing out her tongue to lick the honey she had it and made a sound to show its taste.
“Oh, rascal! How tasty it is,” rebuking Shiva, licking it with tongue, enjoying it she entertained Gowri. After her going Ramanamma came, talked about Shiva. Asked her the trick with which she turned him into a pet bird, inquired her about their shifting to town.
“What curry did you cook?” asked.
“Dal”
“I thought of drumsticks” Ramanamma said.
Gowri looked at her quizzically.
After talking a while with her she came to know the meaning of her words. Somebody has stolen the drumsticks from her courtyard and she had the doubt on Shiva.
Not even about the drumsticks, he waited for a chance and when she was taking her bath he plucked the drumsticks away. If someone climbs the short wall at the drumstick tree her bathing behind the bamboo wall would turn public. She doubted that somebody saw her naked. But she didn’t spell it out.
Seeing her trouble Gowri felt like laughing. As Shiva didn’t bring the drumsticks she felt relieved and laughed within.
Recently such complaints on him increased a lot.
After Sarojamma’s second time visit and her announcing about taking them to the town some change has come in his actions.
As he saw Sarojamma’s anxiety for her daughter he has changed a lot. As he came to know Gowri’s food habits he was anxious to give her new tastes. When he was walking in the fields whatever edible leaves come his way, he plucks them to bring home. For vegetables he started even going to the neighboring villages. He was struggling a lot for the mushrooms that grow at the edges of marshes when the thunder grumbles. When he watches them, without anyone’s knowledge he uproots them, conceals in his towel and brings them home. Pleading with women addressing them ‘sister’ and ‘aunty’ he brings whatever is available. If he comes to know about the honeycomb wherever it might be he goes there walking. Whatever be the height of the tree he climbs it. Rushes into the bushes, crawls on the crags, shoving away the bees brings home the honey running fast.
Though his friends follow him, without making himself available to them he enters his home and puts it in her hands. He teaches her to make rotis and to eat them dipping in honey. Once the honey bees attacked him. Keeping her hand on his body which has become red with their bite when her eyes turned wet with tears he chuckled. With that she increased her crying. He laughed still louder.
“The bees wouldn’t have bitten me, but people were coming from the other side of the barn, if they watch me, we will not get the honey home. So without shoving away the bees I brought the comb with its branch running. The bees on the comb got up and gathered around my body.” He explained the reason.
“Why do you have the misery? Can’t you give them some?”
“They eat a lot. You don’t know anything, so I bring for you….”
As she felt highly emotional she hugged him strongly and forgot the world around.
From someone in the village he even purchased ten kgs of groundnuts and kept them for her. –in the after noon if she feels she could fry them and eat.
He brought four Kgs of Ulavas for making guggillu.
He started attacking secretly on the drumstick trees and flower beds of the village.
In the beginning people felt surprised but now they started responding pleasantly. How he troubles himself for the taste of her made them laugh.

“If you bring a working ox it’s ok, but if you have an ox just for adoring you should face troubles like Shiva…” they started showing a finger at him.
Either at midday or at break fast time bringing their Sangati in their hands women come into the house, each one have a spoon of curry from the pot and start mocking—“ these are the beans from Subbanna’s garden. How did this boy enter their home?” this way they mock him.
When he goes towards the fields some edible fruit or root or vegetable –whatever is available, even a flower to decorate, he hides it and brings it home. When they start a new cart and distribute dal and roasted rice or if they give something at the temple (a newly wed girl after taking blessings gives the passers by dry fruits and sugar crystals with betel nuts and leaves), even if they serve sweet and hot in wedding feasts without bothering about surrounding people and what they think, without any shame he hides and brings it home to keep in front of Gowri.
Even people understood his attitude. So when he sits in a line for food in any feast serving sweet and hot they say ‘this is for you and this one for your wife…’
They serve him extra and laugh at him but he never cared them. Moreover he asks them for a paper to pack, adds even his share in it and takes them home.
Let this be at the fields or at the trees they should keep two shares for him and mock at him laughing.
“Why did he get two shares?” if someone questions
“Ok let him take. He has a wife” they giggle.
As if he brought a rare flower and taking care of it keeping his palms around it to see that it would not shrivel –this is his anxiety for Gowri.
“If this girl gets pregnancy, he will bear the labor pains” a relative woman teased him.
“Are you scrubbing your wife’s back?” another lady, related as aunty mocked at him.
“If the slippers are nice are we going to wear them in the neck? You should keep the things where they belong” an old man advised.
“After his marriage we couldn’t bear our women’s pestering. They expect us to sit in front of them, they await us to feed them and we should walk together they say. Where did you learn all these, my son...” his friends augment on him. “We went on telling them, that he brought her here eloping. If he didn’t look after her so affectionately she wouldn’t stay here in this village home, did they pay heed? No! They ask us what would have happened if we brought them here eloping? What to do?” A friend enacted whimper.
a newly married bride murmured with another newly married girl “how can everyone get a husband like Shivanna?”
Though he heard all, he walked forth with a smile. He felt that all the comments added inspiration to do his duty.
Gowri felt surprised. She felt it as a wonder that though many people mocked at him he didn’t move at all. Though she felt proud of the special respect accorded by Shiva which no one in the village has ever received, she even felt the pain as he has to bear the mockery because of her. She felt shy as if all the villagers were looking at her oddly.
So with a thin voice she said one night “when you go out, you mix with them all Bava! Forget about me”
He stared as if he couldn’t understand. “Why don’t we express our liking for each other at home alone? Isn’t it enough?”
He looked still puzzled.
“if you attend a wedding feast, have you to bring sweet and hot for me asking them and packing? Has anyone done this way for his wife except you? Don’t you feel anything if they laugh at you?” she said.
Shiva breathed easily and exhaled.
He looked as if saying ‘just this?’
“Didn’t you feel bad if your friends keep two servings in front of you teasing and telling ‘this is for your wife and this one for you’, Bava?” looking into his eyes she asked.
Shiva sat in front of her on the cot in padmasana. He heard her completely with closed eyes. As she completed he opened his eyes, looking into her eyes he said “why do we bother about others?”
Looking deep into her eyes, he continued
“Let it be bitter or sweet I feel like eating it together. What do they know except laughing?” With this he held her head in his two hands and brought her close to him. “It’s not that you never tasted the hot or sweet. I never meant that you have not tasted the fruits of the village Gowrie. I don’t feel like eating alone. When we both eat together then only I enjoy the eating. So I bring everything home. Let them laugh. We are not doing any bad thing? As they laugh and laugh they get tired. Let anyone laugh or smile I can’t eat anythingwithout sharing it with you. Let it be trouble or comfort, we both should face it together….” he went on telling. She couldn’t utter a word. She could even realize that her eyes turned and remained wet even after a long time.
She leaned on his chest –as she couldn’t control her emotion. This single incident made her desire his closeness very strongly within her heart. It made her feel anxious even if she couldn’t see him for an hour. She felt a strong desire to spend with him most of her time. She couldn’t tolerate if neighboring ladies sit with her for a long time. –she felt that they obstruct their solitude.
To tease him and laugh at him both wife and husband provided the villagers a new thing each day.
Not even half an hour used to pass after Shiva’s going out into the street, with the pretext of some work, Gowri used to walk into the street. As he was seen in the midst of people on the slab of cement bench she used to order someone to call him. After receiving her call he never used to stay another minute there.
After a few days everyone understood – if she comes into the street and her looks roam here and there, it’s for her husband.
“A call has come for you dear. Only you have a wife contrary to the entire world. As soon as she comes out from the home you should step into the house. We must get the scolding from our wives” someone said sarcastically.
“Even if our wives come here and shout like sheep we didn’t move. Why do you fear her so much? Useless fool” someone’s warning………..
Shiva never pays heed to these.
With a smile he moves to his home.
As he was trying to tame her to the village surroundings in a beautiful way, Shiva’s actions turned out for a discussion in the village.
The troubles he was facing for the sake of his wife made everyone laugh.
The saplings of mirchi started rising up and looking beautiful.
Even the gram started looking up with a measure of a hand and looking fresh and appealing. Even the rice saplings are grown up and are ready for transplantation.
Shiva’s brother in law had a cart and oxen. Both started preparing their crop beds with them. They shifted the fertilizer on a cart and spread that fertilizer in the cultivated bed. Shiva has to go to his brother in law’s field also to work.
With that Gowri couldn’t escape the loneliness at home.
No pastime at all.
Nobody in the village stays at home.
She feels eagerly to go to Shiva but he remains in his brother in-law’s field.
If she goes there it seems his work gets disturbed. Two sparrows started making a nest in the roof of the shed. They are making a nest in the hay in between the main logs and the short wood pieces. They are bringing hay from outside. From the broomstick in the corner they carried the broomstick pieces. In the process of construction of the nest half the hay had fallen down. She felt vexed to sweep it again and again. From the month of Bhadrapada this nuisance started. On the day of Vinayaka festival they carried away even the leaves meant for Vinayaka puja.
Afternoon Ramanamma came with Sangati in a plate.
“What leaves did you cook?” she sat on the bed.
“Have you had your lunch? otherwise bring it here.” She said.
Gowri too brought Sangati in a plate and sat in front of her on the floor.
“Haven’t you gone to the field now? Is there no work today?” she asked Ramanamma.
“ one who has a land and an animal never have any leisure. How can the Kapu’s get a free time?”
“then....”
“ only you should stay at home, no others?”
“ I don’t mean that sister, I am not used to this field work”
“ Am I used?” she dragged the voice “my mother too brought me up without even asking me to do anything. Now I came and get dumped here in this rough group and getting squashed. Even if you go for labor work they have at least a day holiday. But these people farmers never get any rest and not even enough money! As I had head ache I stayed at home today.”

“Who had taken the Lunch to the field?”
“Who else? My husband.” She said “ if we put the very hot Lunch in basket and carry it on the head the head will burn. We can’t put down the basket. We can’t walk at slow pace. Boils will come and we feel like crying. So with this pretext I stayed at home. If I stayed alone I would have died with boredom, you are there at least………..”
Gowri stared at her for a while.
Some thoughts gathered in her mind.
“Sister” meanwhile somebody called from outside.
Ramanamma lifted her head to see. A woman holding a basket filled with Sangati on her head and a child in her hands
“can you look after this child for a while sister, I’ll go to the field, serve the food and come back……” showing the child she asked Ramanamma.
“as if we don’t have any work” after washing the plate, throwing the water in the backyard Ramanamma said.
“ sister…sister” though she requested she didn’t pay heed to her.
“without any work she is at home. if she carries the child for a while do her muscles get worn off” grumbling she went off lifting the child up in her arms.
“ If we stay without work these bloody women get jealous “ Ramanamma too grumbled.
Gowri remained listening.
Evening Lakshmamma came home early.
“come on sister , let us go for water” Subhadra came with a pot. She was wearing a lehanga and a blouse with a ONi and with the freshness that was accorded by youth she looked like a flying pigeon.
Meanwhile other ladies too came there with pots. They forced Gowri and took her with them. Hitherto Shiva has never asked her even to carry a pitcher of water. Early morning before it turns bright he fills all the vessels in home with water. Even at night again he brings.
To pump the bore well Subhadra helped.
Lifting the water-filled pitcher with a jerk onto their waists, when the water sprinkle on nearby people and the elder ladies chase them, young girls running in the streets like young calves looked elegant to Gowri.

It was not a tedium but a pleasure to get a pitcher of water pumping from the bore well. When she went home her mother in law was sitting on the floor and gathering something.
“What are they Atta?” she asked.
“Grains of rice”
Gowri felt surprised.
While searching for the traces of earthen lumps or removing the dust in the rice they might have fallen down. The old lady was taking each one and collecting them in a bowl.
“Let me sweep them with broomstick ” Gowri said.
She stared at Gowri head to toe.
“No, how can we sweep the rice that we eat? It’s a wrong thing.
When the rice grains get cooked it’s the food. Food is the incarnation of god. You don’t know the value of this grain now. You have never faced the famines. If we live economically now, there won’t be any need for leaving the village in famines” she said.
When she brought four more pitchers of water, it turned dark. When the last pitcher was at the bore Shiva entered the village.
“Oye my son” Govindamma called him.
“What’s the matter?”
“Your wife is struggling a lot even to get up. Without even pregnancy she looks as if delivering a child. Go to her” she said. Shiva couldn’t understand. When he saw Gowri coming from the bore well keeping the pitcher on her waist he understood the sarcasm of that old lady.
With long strides he reached Gowri, snatched the pitcher from her with a single hand and walked home.
Lakshmamma looked at him oddly.
“Even for a pitcher of water she felt heavy”.
Shiva went out as if he couldn’t hear.
She got up and went to the cattle shed. Kept the grass in front of the buffalo, as it started eating she sat on the cot in front of it. Some thoughts started haunting her. Trying to gather them together she removed the cloth bag from her waist, unfolded it and took a betel nut and a pan leaf to chew.
She couldn’t approve of her son’s attitude.
“So many got married in the village, So many marriages I attended in my time. How many bridegrooms have I seen? But never saw one like my son.
He brought a wife who didn’t know the work, Ok. He should teach her the work. His wife is beautiful Ok. If they both work hard in the field then only she looks beautiful to all.
By the time of first rains farmers go to the coastal districts and bring the young calves, which haven’t even got separated from the udders of their mothers. They have not even forgotten the jumping in the streets. But by the time the earth turns wet and suitable they put the ploughs on their necks. Slowly they teach them the work. Is his wife more sensitive than all these?”
Not only the fear of her son’s not teaching any work to his wife but she had some other fear also. That was about the expenditure.
Whatever fruits and edible things come into the village everything he purchases without a second thought. She is ashamed of his purchase of groundnuts from another farmer. If somebody mentions this matter – she feels bashful. She never saw any farmer purchasing the peanuts for just eating except for seeds. For seeds any way, it is a must. When they take out the seeds from the pods the broken seeds are preserved for use in curries. They mix them in jaggery to preserve as lumps to eat. But purchasing the nuts to eat is not a suitable thing for a farmer. If they are children they eat purchasing whatever comes to them. why do these grown ups get tempted?
She recalled the famine that tortured them till recently as a tuberculosis disease. As they couldn’t bear its torture, people left the village and searched for labor work. How can it be forgotten so soon?
Because of God’s grace, now good times have arrived. How can anyone say about tomorrow whether the same times come back or not?
Again famine may hit, it’s not the characteristic of a farmer to leave the village and go whenever the famine arrives. A farmer should be like an aloe Vera plant once if it takes water full of its belly at least four years it should stay without needing even a drop more.
They should go on dragging the life keeping life even in bones but one should not die weak and emaciated like a cholera patient.
This is the year when God has given us good times, when a good path is shown one should walk in that throughout the year. The earth mother should be tamed fixing the feet in the soil, sending the roots deep, and strength should be absorbed into the belly.
People are getting down into the soil taking their whole energy into their legs.
Is he not neglecting his work by being obsessed with his wife?
Now if he forgets his duty, remains lazy this season he should starve in the forthcoming famines. If a season is neglected it’s equal to losing the capacity to face a year’s famine.
“What can I do, O god!” Lakshmamma’s heart dumbly grieved.
“Spending as a squanderer, how can he be useful?” she thought.
Look after your wife carefully, feed her delicious food, in that taste only you should bend her neck to accept the load. Let her get habituated to loads, how can it be just if you go on feeding her?
****************
Legs clambered down into the rice fields. A great jostling was there under the tank.
The weather was pleasant with the farmers shouting at the oxen giving vent to their inability to walk faster in swamp, troubles of farmers cultivating with buffalos, teasing between related people in the neighboring fields.
When the fields were ploughed they covered them with leaves or something. As they started planting the previous day’s extracted plants in the surfaced watery bed Shivamma started to work.
Lkshmamma stayed at home making Sangati.
Gowri was at the field. Shiva’s brother in law Balaiah was making the walls and [missing words] “grains should come… for an acre we should get grains full of barns! come …come on” Subbamma called.
It turned inevitable to Gowri.
She tried to tether up the saree like others but it was a futile trial. Tried to tie it like a lungi …impossible…. If she gets down into the field with the saree, stamping it with mud, it’ll be hell to pull her saree up and work. Noticing her trouble Subbamma came and tethered her saree up. Gowri clambered down into the muddy field. It’s difficult to lift the leg and stride in the mud. When one leg is lifted keeping the other one in the mud without slithering is too difficult. she has to wave her hands in the air to balance herself.
No other person is facing this problem. As she was not used to it she has got to struggle with it.
Even the saplings are not getting fixed in the mud. Taking a sapling with two fingers deep into the mud and bringing back empty fingers out is not known to her.
Subbamma taught her it holding her hand. She herself managed two rows. As she went on teaching Gowri they remained far behind the others. Munemma started singing a song.
Oho my dear
What stench you have
A vessel full of grains
And the belly filled with lumps
To eat you are oxen
But for the work, a lazy lass
Gossiping at the barn getting slaps from your man”
As she uttered ironically everyone laughed.
“What a twitter you had?” Subbamma stood up.

“You are not even a bottle gourd at my home
Not even a cloth bag at my waist
Not a rabbit in the grass
Come on my girl
Let us compete
Even as a friend
You tell the distance I’ll throw the stone
I’ll sing you tell the tune
I’ll say a puzzle you solve it
Otherwise I untie your saree
My dear servant’s daughter”

She threw the challenge with her words.
Meanwhile two labors came up and completed the work.
Everyone was laughing as Subbamma and Munemma teased each other.
“Unless two people helped you out you couldn’t come up sister in law. Are you the same at eating too, unless my brother stretches out his hand won’t you get up?” a young lady a sister relative of Shiva teased her.
“We helped her out not because we had pity on her. We were scared if Shivanna comes out to help her as she remained back….”
Everyone giggled.
What she said was true to a large extent.
As Gowri remained behind Shiva thought of planting the saplings from the other end. When she was struggling to pull out her leg from the mud and dancing in the air almost he felt like running there to help her put.
Some people even noticed his anxiety. Subbamma started a song standing in the middle of the field.
“Sesame seeds turned powdery
The mill made a sound
My brother had lice in his hair
His wife tried to take out them
But fell in the ditch of rice water
And struggled and struggled …”
Shivamma giggled.
“Shall we tether the tall brother in law
To a log
Shall we feed him hay and pour the husk
Standing him on the mound turning a plate around
Shall we give him harati?
The shameless guy”
She turned a wisp of rice saplings around him. Listeners felt enthusiastic.
Munemma didn’t step back to Subbamma. She was confident that if she opens her mouth others would be nothing in front of them.
“A child this side and another one that side
One more moving in the belly
A bit of rice and dal
How can it be sufficient?
My sister in law
Licked the rice spoons
Well wishes to my sis in law’s hair
Well wishes to frog in a ditch
Well wishes to my sis in law’s voice
well wishes to the blind crane
That roams in the marshes.”
As one or two joined in the chorus it went on well.
“Ok, ok it’s enough” Balaiah said smearing the edges with mud.
Munemma stood up holding the saplings’ wisp in a hand.
“What’s the matter bava?

You say ok ok
Your ok is in my arm pit
Your address is in my belly button
Come in the night to converse
Come in the dusk to cram …” with this she bent down to plant the saplings.
Everyone giggled there.
A laugh bloomed on Gowri’s lips too as snow wetness.
“As your husband is no match to you, you have no fear at all” Balaiah said.
She raised her head.

“What fear? Or is it a way?
A bullet of thorny fruit
Is it deep after falling in a well?
The softness of Nalleru
The haunting of onion
Or the stabbing of a cotton seed?”
“Why do you argue with her young boy? An ugly mistress!” said an old lady.
Munemma turned to her.
“You come on, an old hag, let us see.
Your hair turned gray let me put forth a puzzle, solve it and show, ( when you can get all Guntur chana ,chennapatnam thin petals mogunur white cotton –you get that fruit, on top the money, sides a lady a friend of mine –if we call the youth of washerman the king would die and another alien became the king I’ll come ) tell what is this oldie let me see.”
She threw a challenge.
With the entertainments, songs, poems and puzzles and teasing with all this jostling Gowri felt a movement in her heart.
As she went on planting the saplings bending with them she didn’t realize the back pain.
As the planting concluded and the labor climbed up the edge and watched the field,
It looked the saplings fixed in the mud absorbed the melody of the words and have already turned green.
Saplings that were kept in the middle of her two fingers and fixed in the mud were there in that greenery making her feel thrilled. The consciousness of giving life to some of the plants germinated mellow feelings in her heart.
With the jostle of singing the work went on well.
Before it turned dusk all the labor retreated their way to home. That day Subhadra brought the cattle home with her fellow children. All the buffalo walked in line as a herd to homes.
“It seems the buffalo reached its time to deliver the young. The udders are as long as an arm “ Munemma said to lakshmamma.
“Soon you’ll have the favor of a lactating buffalo”
“Not so soon, it may take a month more….” Lakshmamma said.
Everyone talked at least a word about the colour, shape, extracting milk and the quality of the calves of the buffalo.
Gowri never thought of all these good qualities in their buffalo. She thought of watching all these in their animal. She surveyed the herd completely. She tried to recall their buffalo that always used to be tied at the end of the shed but its shape never came to her thought of vision.
It was not seen even in the flock.
All the buffalo looked the same.
How can people recognize their own buffalo? she couldn’t grasp.
As she came home she felt the body pains as an aftermath of the day’s work. Back was paining, thighs were heavy, shoulders slid, and every muscle of the body started sounding with unknown pulling.
With the hole day fixing her feet in the mud and pulling them out the whole body looked as if broken everywhere.
She lay down across the cot.
Lakshmamma could notice her daughter in law’s condition.
“ it seems her story has concluded…”
She bent her lip and smiled. Middday’s Sangati was there, the curry is also there. So she washed half a cup of rice and started cooking it.
Brought the hen under the basket, put the fodder to the buffalo, she had a morsel of food and came out and sat under the neem tree on the cement bench and opened her pan bag.
Govindamma came there asking her a bit of pan.
Grinding the pan in their mouths both started to talk. Till that minute Shiva roamed in the streets and came home. “ where is your daughter in law?” Govindamma asked lakshmamma.

“ she is inside.”
“Didn’t even come out…….”
“Today she got down into the field… she is never used to do any work ….
Her body might be paining, laid across the cot….”
“ why don’t you boil water and give?”
“ let them only boil”
“ O my foolish lady” Govindamma slowly got up, went up to the threshold and thought of pushing it open.
Words came out….
“ only one medicine for these pains….. Massaging till the muscles move………. Pouring hot water till the skin turns red. I’ll do that……” Shiva’s voice…
“my rascal” grumbling Govindamma returned. She went up to the cement bench and called lakshmamma “ don’t go inside” and trailed away from there.
As she walked slowly Shiva’s words echoed in her ears. The feeling behind the words rushed up to her chest like the waves of an ocean. It was trying its level best to come up as scenery. Even after reaching home the same sounds echoed in her ears.
In her thoughts she asked silently –where did you learn it my rascal?
She roamed up and down in the street two times.
Mind was not stable. She sent a person to call Muni pilla.
Took out her cloth bag from her waist and put a piece of tobacco in her mouth.
As soon as Munemma arrived she conveyed the matter in her ears. Munemma looked at the old lady strangely and laughed still stranger.
“Won’t it be wrong, Avva?” she asked.
“If we tell someone or if we make it public then it will be wrong…”
“Say so?”
“Yes”
Both moved.
The moonlight looked as if flour was spread on the ground.
The sound of tinkling of small bells came from the oxen. They moved towards the back side of Shiva’s home to the barns. lakshmamma noticed them from the cattle shed.
“where are you going?” she asked.
“ Avva had some stomach upset” Munemma replied.
Both went behind a heap of hay and stood there.
They waited till lakshmamma moved from there and went to the premises of her house. ‘after that they moved slowly and reached the backyard wall.
Standing there they activated their ears, as if drawing the water from the well the sound came.
Under the wall a few crags are there. If they climb them they could see into the backyard. Munemma climbed it and peeped once.
Shiva might have gone inside. The old lady looked at Munemma ardently.
Munemma, as the feeling of some stealing occupied her mind, looked the surroundings carefully.

“Come on ...if you hang this way for the whole day how can it be?” Shiva’s voice.
“ I’ll bathe…you go”
“Who will brush your body? Should apply the oil to do the massage, Take out your clothes…”
“No …no…. no”
“Why do we have shame in between us? Hand over your body to me, you are an infant. I am your mother that’s all…….”after that her voice is not heard. She might have handed over her body to him. By that time inexplicable feelings filled Govindamma’s heart. With Munemma she climbed a few crags and peeped in.
There…….
Drenching completely in the drizzle of moonlight sitting on a wooden seat a naked body………as the oil was smeared the moonlight glistened on it….
As a heap of brightness…….as if the pollen dust was ground and made ……
Moving the muscles of that doll as waves a man’s palms moving secretly ……….as the muscles moved the raising of gasps as a symbol of comfort and enrapture………
Sprinkling gleam..
Expressing the affection of ancient human bodies which never knew the feelings of domination…….
Govindamma’s heart was filled with happiness. A marvelous feeling that never had even the touch of teasing drenched her heart.
Lifting her hands up she folded them. As the body started quivering looking at the scene she clambered down the crag. Without even bothering about Munemma she walked away from there uttering something. On the way when lakshmamma greeted her she didn’t even lift her head.

Munemma too was in the same condition. If all the folk songs which she used to sing are mixed into one, and are rolled in the moonlight, it results in the naked body there. The palms and finger tips moving on it …….probably might be her lips, tongue tips and sighs……….
Munemma now is realizing what she has lost in her life ………… Govindamma felt that she had now a fistfull of lessons to teach about what an young couple should not lose.
Between the bodies of man and woman even if they are husband and wife how many restrictions! How many borders! And how many stone walls! How many mountains!
A truth is realized in the moonlight.
“O God! Give these young couples strength to look at their full bodies at least once with their eyes. Give eyes to their hearts. Give courage to look at each other’s body without any concealment. Whoever reads their body never disdains it. ., let it be a man or woman…..O God, give them all the palms of Shiva, and Gowri’s soul to all the girls … changing herself into an infant and slipping into her husband’s hands , give that mind of hers…….
************

“Poleramma, mother! I’ll give you butter milk with rice, cool my eyes! See to it that my daughter in law folds her hair and fixes her palloo in waist and tucks her saree to get into the fields as a stick of paddy preparing to work. Let her be a pod of jowar, in the fields. I’ll hang jowar pods in the temple…the sparrows are awaiting. I’ have to sprinkle soddalu in the yard, ants are looking forth in groups. With crying my eyes turned red, cool them mother!”
In the middle of a nest of stones, near the trunk of an ancient neem tree in front of the statues smeared heavily with turmeric and Sindoor powder… squatting there on her toes Lakshmamma folded her hands.
The buffalo were on their fodder outside the fence.
“Stop this mocking life mother, even the foolish stupid is laughing at them. Giggling..Life has become a laughing stock…..
Daughter in law is good, son is good. The obsession they have on each other too is good. But the obsession won’t give them food…..
Poleramma mother! I’ll leave a hen for you, cook food for you, and listen my grief. You have given my son a good wife, a good daughter in law to me too. As she developed love for him let her have same love on the home, hen and buffalo, and on crops too, mother.
Mother, let my daughter in law recognize the buffalo of this house, give the looks to identify the hen of our own, give a heart to know the hunger of the buffalo and the looks to know the thirst of the hen….
Family life isn’t just her body and her husband’s. Besides caring for the hunger in the bellies of theirs, let her have a look at the world too.
You have given a good time, give good vision too. If good times are there definitely bad times too would follow. Give the eyes to notice the famines. Give her looks even to find a sesame seed and preserve it. Give her the eye balls to know the smallest grains that roll from the house.”
I’ll give you rice with butter milk and a big hen”
****************
Till the Mrigashira the west winds ruled.
In Aslesha, nature became taut and the wind remained frozen.
In Makha and Pubba the wind started moving but without any direction. By the end of pubba the attack of mosquitoes increased. People brought the dry cotton pods to home, extracted the cotton and placed and burned the half dried shells in the streets. They caught fire without a flame leaving out smoke in nests smearing all the streets and shoved away the mosquitoes. Even they burned the Sodda left outs to propel away the mosquitoes.
Gowri started going to the field with Shiva. She was pleased to see the change from the reddish mud bed slowly to spilling green colour. When walking on the edge the frogs jumping into the pools, leaving out the old burrows, when they were filled with mud, making new holes and constructing new forts, the crabs slithering suddenly in to their holes as soon as they watch human beings leaving foot prints, all the field scenes were very nice to watch ………..
Now and then they both jump into the water secretly, dusky evenings they come out from the water completely intoxicated.
People still went on teasing Shiva. He didn’t even stop to provide material for their mocking. Gowri didn’t turn old to Shiva still.
Even his actions were not old to the villagers.
Evening after bringing the buffalo home tethering it in the shed laksmamma went into the house. She moved on to the backyard, washed the dung that stuck to her hands scrubbing. Wiping the wetness to her palloo came in, bent down to see behind the vessels, fumbling she took out an egg and kept it in the grains vessel.
Gowri felt surprised to know the presence of an egg there. Whole day she was at home. When did the hen come inside and when did it leave the egg?
Taking grains in full hands lakshmamma walked out. As she Made sounds with lips “bho bho ph” and called, all the hen gathered around her jostling and walking over each other. After finding a clean place in the premises she scattered the grains.
Gowri couldn’t understand what chanting was there in her calling.

The sounds ‘tak tak’ made by the hen kicking their beaks on the floor were amusing to her ears.
Listening to it when she was in thoughts Gowri heard the old woman’s voice
“See! Someone’s hen is in. shove it out”
Hurriedly she came out.
“Ish, isho” she tried with her hand to send them out.
All the hens were scared. But she couldn’t recognize the outside hen. All were the same, how to find it out?
“See that flowery hen, shove it out”
She shouted from the shed. Flowery hens are four, which one…………….?
Lifting her hand she shoved all.
Meanwhile as Shiva came there the problem was solved.
As soon as he entered when he shouted “shhoo” the alien hen has got scared and left the place. Home hens went on eating the grains without any fear.
She had seen a kind of authority in his voice in shouting. Official warning. Only his own hens were familiar with it.
“Your wife still couldn’t even identify the hen and the cattle” lakshmamma said. Shiva smiled.
Gowri felt ashamed.
She couldn’t understand how to recognize them.
Evening Sarojamma arrived from Kadapa.
Again she brought some snacks and sweets, other requisites to Gowri, clothes and a big suitcase.
The attack of VeeraReddy it seems didn’t stop and wouldn’t in near future. He went on scolding after having a drink, and weeping. If he could find Gowri he said cutting her mangalasutra he would marry her again- he says as a drunkard.
“Could he see Gowri in Kadapa? Let him come here. Give the address aunty, let him come and take her” a sort of gruffness sounded in Siva’s voice. “no, no! let me face my problems my dear son, if not today, tomorrow …. If we have patience he would adjust…. But I have only one grief
After the marriage I couldn’t even keep daughter and son in law at least a day at my home. Not even once I could have a feast for you” she wiped her eyes.
But when she went out she went on singing the old song. She said very strongly that she would take her daughter and son in law to the town definitely. Though she was there only for a day she went and saw the fields. Sitting with the oldies she estimated the value of the property, if the field is given on rent or lease what would be the result –she calculated.
She called her daughter close to her and told her very strongly-“when it rains for four days their faces and fields glisten green. Let the sun shine for seven days, look at their faces! let the famine come and see their lives! Let others do whatever they want but you are not going to work in this muddy life. You should look after the shop in Kadapa”
She washed her daughter’s hair with shikakai, and gave a bath to her. When she washed her hair, Gowri recalled Shiva.
Smearing oil all over her body how long he massaged moving the muscles is not known to her. First in the beginning she felt shy but soon detaching from all other feelings a kind of listlessness and enrapture filled her mind and made her forget the world.
She couldn’t even remember that her body was there, where the pains of muscles ran away is not known but the whole body started with a kind of numbness slowly experiencing as if nobody existed …experiencing as if her whole body evaporated into the air ……when hot watered touched her descended onto the land …what an excellent experience was that !
Yesterday when Munemma came in she stared at Gowri head to toe, and singing a song like a mad girl she went out. Gowri felt her behavior odd.
Old Govindamma too behaved the same way. Sitting beside her stroked her hands and thighs; as if touched by chance she even felt her breast too. As she looked at her strangely she got up and went out.
In the night Shiva went for hunting rabbits. Lying by her daughter’s side Sarojamma had a chance to talk the whole night.
They talked about Kadapa matters once again, and many more things they discussed. Huddling her sleeping daughter close to her lap made her mother’s soul happy. After the talk she closed her eyes.
Somewhere in the middle of the night when something moved on her body the sleep layers went off she could understand it as her daughters touch. Keeping a hand on her daughter hugged her and slept.
Her mother’s heart felt ecstatic. By the next time she even kept her leg on her mother; she thought still Gowrie had the child’s nature. After a while she felt heaviness on her chest and fumbling with hands. Keeping her head on the chest her daughter was sleeping deeply.
This is a new pose.
When she was an infant while breastfeeding her, she used to sleep the same way. After that this pose is not known to her. Now again…….
Sarojamma understood and had a thin smile.
Her chest couldn’t bear the weight of her head.
Breathing is difficult. Slowly she moved her daughter’s head down.
Already most of the night has moved on…
After a while her daughter woke up, looked at the watch, took a bed sheet and blanket, opened the door and walked out. This surprised her.

Even son in law is not there, where did she go?
Sarojamma followed her. She went into the shed, laid the cot, spread the sheet, covering herself with the blanket when she slept there she felt surprised. Shiva has not yet come, then…
She too thought of sleeping by her side there… leaving that thought she came in and sat on the bed. . She couldn’t sleep. Once or twice she went out and looked at the shed, but couldn’t have the courage to peep in.
By the time the darkness tore off as if it was unavoidable she went and saw, the same pose ……keeping her head on her son in law’s chest she was sleeping.
She returned from there and called her “Gowri”
After two times’ calling she replied. When it was completely bright then only Gowri came out from the shed with a bundle of meat in her hands.
Sarojamma cooked rice and Charu, Gowri’s actions were moving in her thoughts. Recalling her experiences in her youth she tried to analyze Gowri’s attitude.
By the time of morning when her husband was about to return from the hunt she went into the shed and slept there keeping her body ready for his touch.
She couldn’t even see the traces of shyness in her face as before. She behaved as if everything is natural.
“How much did you grow up my daughter?” Sarojamma thought.
Estimating beforehand when he could come back home, waiting for him there at the planned place, knowing thoroughly if the work has not completed he may get delayed in coming waiting there from the decided time ………. can’t you bear one night’s separation when he won’t be at home my daughter? Even wife and husband have to meet secretly like lovers? You are the only wife whom I saw cheating the elders and awaits for a husband my dear excessive daughter, I can’t understand whether you both are wife and husband or lovers, my dear?
But how many days would this obsession will remain? Till you get a child only. If you are so enamored it won’t be too long to get a pregnancy..” she thought.
The rabbit meat was tasty. Morning with jowar roti, afternoon with hot hot Sangati lump the curry had given to the tongue a lunch pack of memorable remembrances.
Sarojamma left the village in the evening.
As the meat was so much lakshmamma sent some to her daughter’s home. Both the children had their food here itself. When it was dusk Govindamma came.
“Where did he go my girl?” she asked.
“Might be in the street Jeji” Gowri told. Sitting on the bed she said,
“What are all the things he learned after marriage, your husband? how many cunning things and tricks did he learn?”
Thinking that she might have brought some problem Gowri asked, “ why Jeji?”
“Everyone had a share of rabbit meat, but he brought two parts”
“Why do you people give?”
“Not given”
“Then…”

“ ‘At the wedding feast they had given sweet and mixture for me and my wife,
Mushrooms also you shared two parts, vegetables two parts ……..for you all to tease and laugh at, we myself and my wife are handy, all useless things you provide two parts and laugh at us’ he insisted that the rabbit meat also should be given two parts and brought it home” she said.
Gowri felt like laughing.
She had already heard it from him two three times. Asking again and again she laughed falling on him.
Sparrows tested the patience of women whole day. Even though they swept umpteen number of times the dirt went on falling.
Lakshmamma went on grumbling.
Gowri too felt tired of it. When the matter went to Shiva he brought a long stick saying that he would destroy the nest.
Lakshmamma stopped him.
“They might have laid eggs my son. This time let them hatch chicks. Next time we will not allow them to make a nest at all”
Gowri looked at her mother in law with surprise.
“Why do you grumble unnecessarily, then? Do we live alone in a house? They built a nest somewhere in the roof of a shed, can’t you live taking it easily that they are not an obstacle to you?” Shiva said.
Gowri stared at him still feeling odd.
Evening lakshmamma was sitting under the neem tree on a cement bench chewing pan and nuts.
Meanwhile a dog arrived there hurriedly, looking backwards, it went up to the hay heaps and stood there. The belly was reaching down the earth and udders were swollen. It might had a number of puppies in its belly so that pregnant dog was heaving stretching out its tongue out.
Meanwhile two youth came there with handful of stones.
” aunty where did it go?” asking they looked on either side. As they saw the dog there at the heap they threw the stones. With a shout it jumped aside escaping the stone hit it went down in to the heap.
“Come, come out today we should see your end” one of them searched for a stick.
“Why boys? Why do you bother it?” lakshmamma asked.
“If we forget a while it enters the houses aunty, every day it is eating away the food from the vessels. Biting the bamboo it is making holes to the doors, we should break its legs to get rid of it” he said going towards the heap with a stick.
“Oh, it’s not a big thing, it’s a pregnant dog. You gather sin if you beat it” She said.
“Let it be sin or virtue, we can’t bear its torture.” he didn’t return.
“O boy, I tell you don’t go to that dog” she yelled at him.
As he tried to move forth, “what? Do you have no intention of living peacefully for a while; it’s a pregnant dog and will deliver soon. I said not to hit it and you want to beat it, are you a fool? come back” saying severely she stood up.
He stopped and looked at her.
“Without stealing how could it have food? It has four or five puppies in its tummy; it should eat food for them too, not only for it. Without barging into houses from where could it get so much food? Have you bothered anytime to call it and provide a morsel of food? What do you men folk know about a pregnant’s problem? Not hitting it, when it comes near your home, provide a morsel of food. Will it barge into your house then?” she went on yelling.
Both, muttering something went away from there swiftly. Gowri stared at her Atta without even a wink. Inexplicable feelings moved behind her eyes, so she remained there like a statue.
Even if it is a pregnant dog, though it is a robber her advice to provide it with food but not to trouble it, entire day when the sparrows spoiled the house her objection to spoil the nest and if needed not even stepping back to fight for them ……..she seems so innocent as if she did not know anything but this immense humanity in her ………………how much Gowri felt so surprised by her attitude….. she couldn’t express.
****************************


Uttara Karte arrived with thunder and lightening, pouring out a good rain.
As they get wet the Kalive fruits spoiled. Here and there Balija fruits ripened.
If the half ripe Balije fruits, buried in a ditch, covered with small pebbles and Tangedu leaves and if a heavy stone is kept on it, next day if you take out them, they will be ripe in jaggery colour. Children feel immense happiness to gather them and eat.
Gowri too joined the shepherd girls and being one of them was a sweet experience.
After that Shiva too brought home the half ripened fruits and buried them in a ditch near the wall and with Gowri he too turned into a boy of knickers.
From the east hills Mutras people from Kappalapalle started bringing baskets of Bikki fruits.
Bikkis are not yet ripe, but they collect and ripen them to sell.
He made Gowri to taste a variety of fruits.
At the end of Uttara east wind began, sodda started graining.
Groundnut plants had small pods. Light albumen with a layer of water around it looked up under close scrutiny. Still the plants went on giving out new aerial roots.
The crops had the pestering of birds.
In the middle of the field a platform raised on posts and a man on it, in his hand a catapult or a sling and a stone in it...The target of the stone is the parrot. Unless the stone hits, the parrot will not get up. Stone hitting is a rare thing.
Before the parrot perches on the land people go on yelling in the fields. As the shouts go on, the parrots trying to perch on the seed pods get up and, fly away – pleasing the eyes.
Taking out a sodda pod he squashed it, blew away the husk from it and placed them in Gowri’s mouth. Thereafter baking it on flame he introduced a new taste.
When the sky thundered, he brought the mushrooms that grow in the fencing edges without anyone’s knowledge, made them to cook as a curry and prepared her to experience a strange taste.
Now a days when they go to the fields in the evening Gowri started responding strangely.
“See, this complete line is planted by you. There on the side of that bank………as you couldn’t pull out your leg you stamped on the plants …..They started growing strongly. Wherever your hand touched even the rice plants are intoxicated, it seems” Shiva commented……
She looked at the rice crop……….
The growing crop of rice seemed to her as a very affectionate one…..
She stood there on the bank and stared at the lines which she planted for a long time. A kind of proud satisfaction in her heart……. as the saplings planted by her grew strongly. Intoxication of green colour in her eyes……
Mirchi looked beautiful in lines… even the weedy grass grew beautifully. Presently the mirchi crop is higher than the weed grass so it declared its presence. Otherwise if not cared for a week the weeds override the mirchi.
So urgently Shiva called the labor and made them remove the grass digging with a crow bar. When Gowri too tried to work with it for a while her palms grew boils.
After removing the weeds, mirchi plants looked beautiful in green lines on the reddened soil. With the hand technique of the labor the field turned healthy.
Even in the rice field they removed the weeds and sprayed the fertilizers.

After lunch, in the afternoon when the couple went on talking something, with a sound a lump fell on the bed sheet.
With a jerk Gowri jumped as she saw a strange creature there.
The strange creature, opening its mouth in red colour like a big frog started making sounds.
Holding her close to him he stretched his hand to that creature. Kicking his hand with its beak, as it went on revolting he caught carefully the chic that had not yet grown the feathers or the tail.
It went on yelling with a screeching voice.
Its mother sparrow just came in. It started chirruping endlessly and flying here and there.
The young birdie that came up to the edge of the nest, by accident fell down it seems, he explained to Gowri.
She was still looking at it hesitantly.
Then, slowly she stretched her hand and touched the young birdie, and the creature went on revolting against the touch of alien hands. Its whole body was shivering; everything became a fist of heart and went on palpitating.
The mother bird still continued yelling.
“What to do this? Shall we keep it as a pet?” she asked.
“ It’s a great sin to separate mother and child. …..we should make it reach its mother. If we look after the motherless children its ok, but it has its mother, know.” Saying this he tried to keep the birdie in its nest.
The nest was too high to reach for him. Even after standing on the cot he couldn’t reach. He thought of bringing a ladder. As he looked at Gowri he left that thought. He smiled as he had planned the thing in his mind. “Come close to me” he said.
Sitting on his toes he said “climb on to my shoulders”
She could understand.
“Oh, I am scared” she said.
“that I will throw you down…..”
“NO, no I may fall down”
“Even if you fall it would be on me only. Come on”
It was unavoidable to Gowri.
Adjusting her sari, keeping her legs on either side of his shoulders she squatted. He got up slowly.
A laugh with awe…
Some tingling smiles…..
When he stood straight her head came nearly to the roof of the shed.
She caught hold of his hair with her both hands, stuck her two legs onto his ribs on either side.
Like an infant holding its mother tight, with a strange experience her whole body quivered. She felt a kind of ecstasy on his neck.
He handed over the young birdie as if asking her to keep it inside the nest.
Taking it from him she stretched it to the nest. Inside another young one without any movement was looking at her. Mother bird was anxiously moving on the beam and yelling. Gowri kept the birdie inside the nest. It went close to its sibling and huddled to it.
“Is it ok, shall I keep you down?”
She didn’t reply.
It looked pleasing to ride on his shoulders.
“Shall I bring you down or throw you on the cot.. .”
“Can’t reach the nest ………” she said. “A bit forward …no no…a step back this way yes …. a bit that side, again you are away bava…”
She made him move this way and that.
He could understand the matter.
From wall to wall he ran four times to and fro and asked her “is it reachable now” as she felt the tickle throughout the body laugh blurted out.
She laughed loudly.
He too joined in the laugh but suddenly lifted his eyes upto the door. Wrenched a bit and stood staring without even a wink…….. When she came is not noticed but old Govindamma, half opened the threshold and standing there in the door. She was gawking at them.
As soon as Gowri saw her she felt an odd revulsion and Gowri slithered down with a struggle.
As Govindamma realized that the couple noticed her, she came to her senses.
“You fool” she said beating on her mouth with a hand.
He too responded quickly.
“When a wife and husband stayed in closing the door, are you not ashamed to open it and see?” he went close to her and said.
“Shame … you or me?” she disdained at him.
“You and you, why should I have?” he went on to her, “have you not enjoyed with your husband? My grandfather had never held you in his arms? In early married days he had carried you on his shoulders and kept you down at the outskirts of this village, I heard. When I carried my wife for a few minutes, you feel jealous of it, you oldie?”
“You fool …….you fool …..” She was shocked and sent a red look at him and hurriedly retreated.
He had a bad mouth, he can say anything. When I refused my husband he carried me here by force. By force he troubled me a lot. All the villagers forgot all this long back. How can this fool find out all these things? He dug it out again.
She didn’t even stop near the house.
“Even a young fool slapped so strongly” she thought.
The next day Govindamma had still stronger slap.
Night at the time of dinner along with Munemma she went towards the hay heap side, deceiving Lakshmamma reached the backyard wall.
Sitting on a crag there both started munching the betel nuts and leaves.
On the day of planting, to reduce the body pains of his wife Shiva smeared oil and massaged her. Did he stop it there or is he washing her back everyday? They had this doubt. To clarify it they hanged about there.
Normally village people take it granted that scrubbing wife’s back is a womanish work.
“That fellow! He scrubs his wife’s back” was the normal mock if anyone helps his wife.
To find out for themselves they waited there.
But on that day they had an obstruction to their probing.
Reason for it is Laksmamma’s doubt about their deportment.
Munemma who never used to come that side, is recently seen there a number of times, that too with Govindamma walking into the barns, and after that they were not seen.
So she started keeping an eye on them that day. Deceiving her, their reaching the backyard wall is seen with her eyes.
It surprised her a lot and how to analyze their actions is not known to her.
She noticed that they both stood on a crag and started peeping into the backyard. She didn’t even delay a minute, straight she went in, and the backyard door was ajar.
Somebody was bathing inside it seems, son or daughter in law…
A male voice is heard at low level and bangles’ jingle is added to it.
Son might be bathing and daughter in law probably might be scrubbing his back.
What might they be doing? If there is nothing odd, why should these two ladies peep in so much?
From the crevice of the door she sent her looks there. The scene there made her wrench.
Shiva was poring water on his wife’s head as a stream. She was washing her hair. Lakshmamma immediately pulled her head back.
She felt shy.
Retreated fast……..
A few minutes she felt frozen….
After that when she thought of it she couldn’t understand what was odd in it to peep in from the backyard wall. Newly wedded…
……one will have a fascination for one’s wife. Is it not a fault to watch secretly their sweet nothings hiding this way? That too from the wall of my backyard, watching my son and daughter in law…..that means dragging the family to street….Lakshmamma felt furious…

“Oh! Shiva….”she called.
“What mother.” he came out.
“The calf is not tethered. see that ………” when he went to the hay heap she went inside. She dipped the pot into the water kept for the buffalo.
It was stinking rotten ‘going into the back yard without even looking at her daughter in law she threw the water onto the other side of the wall and returned.
Two ladies under that wall, drenched completely in that water and their bodies smeared with cooked rice grains, the pieces of mirchi and curry leaves and the reeking stench covered the surroundings.
They couldn’t bear it.
But couldn’t even make a sound..
Couldn’t even go home too……..
Grumbling inside they moved towards the hay heap.
There Shiva was tethering the calf. “What avva? What’s the matter?
You people are so fragrant” he said sarcastically.
She didn’t give a reply.
“Whose there?” Lakshmamma’s voice……
“Govindamma, it seems she had fallen in the tank of kadugu …….alas, bring a pitcher of water…….” said.
“Kadugu water, where my son …….. Might be the water I threw out. When the water in the drum started stinking and even the animal didn’t like it I threw it outside our backyard wall. Might have fallen on them, but my son, what was this oldie doing under our backyard wall?”
By that time Govindamma already moved out. Before her, Munemma had slipped out.
Shiva could understand the matter hazily.
“You old fool” he thought.
Mother did a nice thing, though it’s by chance, a good thing.
For how many days they used to come under that wall?
Might be peeping over the wall…….
Will they spill out what they saw in the streets?
Won’t they murmur it to other ladies?
But what untoward thing did we do?
He was squatting on the cot and thinking. Villagers may laugh at the things I do, but they are not meant for the villagers…
I am not enslaving with a fear of her flying away like a bird..
As others think, I am not introducing the village, the home, the fields and trees in an excellent way to her.
I am not making all this to obsess her with a fear of her leaving me and going away. In order to habituate the young oxen, brought from the coastal districts they provide good fodder before getting them into control –but I am not thinking that way to teach her the work. I am introducing her, what I am, my body, my soul and unfolding my life. I display everything in front of her, explaining everything in transparency to her. Leaving the house that developed affection and closeness and her mother, she came into this barbaric home with faith in me. So I have to explain her me, my habits, actions and my outlook on her. From the heart I am spilling them out.
Me and my existence is just nothing, my everything that belongs to me –the fields, the cattle, house and the premises, water sources and tanks, streamlets and rivers, trees and other things, playing and singing …everything …..Everything if she gets introduced to, then only it can be taken that she understands me thoroughly. So I am familiarizing her with everything in a systematic way step wise. Explaining patiently... Still many more things remain to be known to her. Incidents and circumstances would be many more……..
Me and my surroundings everything she should feel as hers.
She should get a feeling of her own. To get such an experience I should make acquainted everything in a proper manner, under natural circumstances.
Everyone mock at my trials…. .And they laugh. Even old cranes like Govindamma couldn’t understand it and follow the wrong route.
I should teach this old lady a good lesson one day. Munemma too should get her share.
He went inside. Everything he told to Gowri. Her heart grieved, if they discuss it with the other women how could I face them?
Don’t they treat her as shameless lass!
Hiding her head in his chest she expressed her fear. He chuckled. He narrated Govindamma’s story and explained Munemma’s history.
He assured that they are not in a position to spill it out in the street.

***************************
Lakshmamma always used to wake up early in the morning, sweeps the premises before the darkness shatters. But that day didn’t get up till it turned bright. From the time she got up she started searching for something on the floor fumbling with her fingers.
From the distance of four cots an old lady came inquiring what she was searching.
“What’s it?”
“A betel nut piece” Lakshmamma said. “When I was taking it out from the bag to make a pan it slipped. I can’t see that”
That old lady too started searching. As the eyesight was poor, even if a small piece touched their fingers, they pressed it and assured. Now and then even if they get the sheep droppings they were pressing them and they are falling down powdered.
Gowri was watching all this from the premises. Sitting on the floor moving slowly and fumbling the floor with fingers as if cultivating……… she felt surprised.
Meanwhile Shiva went to them, traced the petite betel nut piece and handed over it to her. Boundless happiness was seen in her face…
For just a piece of betel nut which not even costs one fourth of a rupee so much gloominess…. as if they lost something important. Her anxiety to search for it……. and to get it…… After getting it so much happiness on the face …a small piece of nut causes so many emotions……
In the past also she noticed once or twice –when neighboring old women asked for a piece of leaf or a nut -if it is a leaf ---tearing it half and giving, if it is a nut, breaking it and giving a piece ….
Even if she eats pan that too is in the same way….half a leaf, a piece of nut and a bit of tobacco powder …that’s all. How many leaves and nuts and how many pieces of them would be there in the cloth bag, everything is known to her. When she opens the bag and folds it fixing it on her waist how many precautions she takes, her mother in law………
Not only she, all the other old people are the same……….
So much saving even in this small matter is amusing to Gowri, picking and preserving the rice and dal grains, when they apply the castor oil to hair, rubbing the oily hands on knees and calves, without even leaving a small piece of cow dung in front of the home and carrying it in a basket and adding it in the heap, when the sticks of a broom slip down feeling as if the fortune is slipping down and picking them up and fixing them in it. Without letting the clothes get spoiled while sitting and getting up taking care, even if the pieces small pieces scratch out from the walls, taking care smearing it with river mud. Like this…………..even in small matters ………….observing so much saving……..
When she felt surprised of all these, saying that to encounter the coming famines living with saving is the only way. When Gowri saw such things Gowri felt surprised and pleased.
Midday Ramanamma came–bringing another lady….She said that her relationship is the sister in law’s. Name is Bhagyam……………..
Within no time she became so close, clinched with teasing words,
Ramanamma was going to her relative’s house and came for a nice saree from Gowri.
She opened the suit case and handed over her a saree and blouse.
Bhagyam too said that the saree looked nice..
Along with saree when Ramanamma was hiding it in the pallo ‘
Looking at her strangely
“Why do you want the blouse?” Bhagyam asked.
“Without a blouse shall I wear only a saree?” Ramanamma said looking at her strangely.
Gowri smiled.
“Search in your blouses” Bhagyam said.
“Why?”
“Didn’t you know why? Have you ever seen your chest in the mirror? Unless you have a child and the arms fill the blouse won’t fit to you…just opposite to you…….look at her chest. Compare it with yours…..if you can’t see properly let me measure them with a thread” said. Bashfulness played hide and seek on Gowri’s face.
Unconsciously she adjusted her palloo.
While going Bhagyam placed her hand on the fold of her waist and said “how did you nourish it my dear?”
With a jerk Gowri moved that hand away.
She went away but caused a sweet experience in her mind.
To recall it again and again how many times she stood in front of the mirror is not countable. Immediately after Hasta Karte, Ashweeja month arrived. The days of Mahalayas started.
Sodda grains came into the barns.
The concerned person of the house- comes and smearing the floor barn with cow dung, grinding the crop, removing the husk, night watching it, when rain clouds are seen, hurriedly carrying the grains home –solving all these problems machines arrived. Within hours everything is completed. Without giving a place to difficult words and works the crops reach home.
The attack of hay bags started bothering the green fields. Bending and hiding in the crop without going into the notice of the owner, cutting the grass stealthily started. In green crop the stealing of the colouful sarees too looked artistic.
It might be an art of robbing or the art of tolerating the rebukes of the chasing owner.
No effect of Dassera festival was seen in the villages, except the youth going to towns and watching the pictures throughout the night, showed by the competing cinema theatres. When Hasta was concluding one day lakshmamma came in with an old basket.
“O Shiva!” she called.
“What mother?” he came from out side.
“We have to hatch the eggs bring some waste” she sent him.
As soon as Shiva went towards hay heap, she ordered her daughter in law to take out the eggs from the Ragul vessel.
Keeping the pitcher on it a side, Gowri kept her hand in. picking up each egg from the grains she placed them carefully in a plate.
“How many are there?”
“Fifteen” counted with eyes and replied.
Shiva pulled out grass from the heap and brought it.
“How can your intelligence creep this way? Does anyone hatch the eggs in this cold season in Raagi waste? This is useless waste my son. In summer we have to hatch them in arike waste. Go. Go and bring it……..” she said.
“Even the hay of an animal has the qualities of heat and cold?” Gowri thought and asked it out.
“Arike waste has uncontrollable heat” she said.
“If we burn anything in this waste it melts definitely/. Previously in the past when rakshasas lived in iron, bronze and brass forts to melt their forts eeshwara gathered the arike waste to burn them. …” she went in to Puraaas .
Meanwhile Shiva came with arike grass.
Adjusting it in the basket, lakshmamma made a flat surface with it.
“Keep the eggs in the basket my son” she said.
“You do that mother, if you do then all will turn into chicks..”
“Last time not even half turned into chics, all are spoiled. This time either you or she should hatch they…one of you do it”
Shiva looked at Gowri.
“Take the egg….” He said.
“No, you take out and put them in “
He took two eggs out, holding one; he handed over the other to her. Both laid the eggs in the basket carefully.
Gowri kept almost ten eggs in the basket from the plate, remaining Shiva kept…………
Placed the basket in a corner in the cattle shed, brought the hen and left it on the basket………..
Gowri felt as if she did a great thing. Without her effort the vibrations of that act moved in her heart.
That night she prayed god.
“ “God, make all the chicks without spoiling even one …”
She felt as if she transferred her great pressure from her shoulders on to God and felt relieved. When she came to know that based on the number of chicks coming out from the eggs hatched by a new wed girl and the percentage they consider the goodness of her and her fertility in future to have children she had some anxiety too in her.
She grew a kind of care on the basket of eggs. She had suspicion of dogs and cats coming into home –they may eat them away. With a fear of the big cat attacking the hen and carrying it away nights she started covering it with another basket.
When Shiva goes to his brother in law’s field or when he competes with his friends she felt bored alone at home.
Except the old and the children no woman stays at home.
So many hen linger around the premises and hay heap. Still Gowri couldn’t recognize theirs in them.
When she knows that nobody is at home, Ramanamma started coming. Most of the time, she criticizes the mother in law’s home in her words, depicting her husband and his relatives as rough people.

Gowri somehow didn’t like her words. She couldn’t understand the thing that though the entire life must be spent there how she hates the people and the surroundings?
When Ramanamma comes alone she talks only those words.
Fear of her coming ……fear of the situation that she had to listen her words…………when she remains alone the fear of Ramanamma started chasing her……..

It’s a great consolation that now and then Bhagyamma visits her, with her bringing the experience of a fragrant air drenching her in it and going.
Old Govindamma and Munemma almost stopped coming there. But when they come across in the streets some unexpressed feeling in their eyes. But she feels as if the look is narrow….. With fear as if tearing her.. And as if they explain her secrets to others……
It seems the loneliness without Shiva is intolerable. No time passes even if she aquats for a long time…..
No TV, no paper, .still closing the door she sleeps fast …but the time never moves …..
In the evenings one or the other woman comes and drags her to the boring...Then no question of passing the time…
Day time only…….
Streets are without people during the day time only…….
Chitta arrived. The scenes of dogs’ wrestling in the streets increased. Even the atmosphere strangely turned pleasant. Very hot sunlight regimes for sometime, meanwhile from the blue unknowingly a big cloud conceals the sun. Across the fields from the mountains a big passing shadow coming and going away fast looks pleasing. Not only the shadows but it suddenly drizzles rains too. From somewhere a cloud along the rough land moves over like a bedsheet sprinkling rain drops. Without even caring the people in the fields as if in a great hurry it moves away. Another cloud from some other directions wets everyone before it exits, before the people run to the shade of the trees. The clothes get wet and dry immediately…….
Water is seen in every ditch… In day time, feeling thirsty if they dip their hands to drink they burn the hands... The water would be hot enough to take a bath. If stirred with hands, cool water like the ice pieces comes up from the bottom. All these strange scenes specific to Chitta, owning the atmosphere displayed all such things.
The buffalo delivered at the end of Chitta.
Morning onwards it showed its restlessness in grumbling, and started oozing. So without sending it for grazing with other animals lakshmamma kept it at home. Leaving it in the shed she sat in front of it on the cot. Gowri was interested to see it deliver. By ten the pains it seems started to it, it could neither lie down nor stand at a place moving here and there. Lakshmamma started consoling it.
After some time the head of the calf came out a bit black from the vagina.
The buffalo that should deliver slowly lying down stood up...Moved here and there and again lied down, tried to deliver the calf. When it was not possible it stood up. As lakshmamma was watching its trouble she saw her daughter in law standing there leaning against the pole.
Ordering her some work she sent her away from there. She had her own doubt.
The girl never watched such deliveries, if she imprints in her mind that deliveries are painful and fearful it’s difficult. When she gets the experience of a delivery it’s alright.
With great difficulty the buffalo delivered. After the head, the forelimbs and then the entire body pushed out and slipped on to the ground with wastes.
A male calf.
Lakshmamma felt happy.
She called her daughter in law to show it. When Gowri came there with boundless affection the buffalo was licking the body of the calf. Stiffening its ears and shooting its eyes surrendering its body to the tongue of its mother the calf lied down innocently and marvelously.
Plucking the nails of the new born she said to her daughter in law to heat water in a big vessel.
With a stick she sat at the buffalo. Till it throws out the tissues she should sit there. She is beating the dogs hiding by the side of the wall trying to reach the buffalo.
Even if they reach deceitfully her buffalo chased them away.
Gowri came back announcing that water is heated.
“Is it boiled?”
“Yes”
“Let it cool. Meanwhile it would throw out the waste….” She said.
After some more time, the waste came out.
Lifting it up with a stick she placed it in the old dung basket, took it out to the barn, threw it out somewhere and returned. With hot water she cleaned the body of the buffalo and washed away the blood and amniotic water stuck to its body. She applied castor oil boiled with garlic on its body and snout.
Cleaned the floor ……..
By then the calf was trying to stand on its legs severely. Meanwhile Shiva came.
As he watched the buffalo already delivered he enjoyed it like a child. “a new guest arrived to our home……” said to Gowri expressing his happiness.
Giving his two hands as support he made the calf stand and walked it one or two steps, but as he left it fell down.
Within half an hour its feet turned strong. He made it stand, kept a stick between its legs and ordered it to walk.
It walked up to its mother and started fumbling for milk.
Within an hour of its birth the calf walking, searching the udders of its mother and keeping it in its mouth trying to drink milk –widening her eyes Gowri expressed her overwhelming surprise.
How did the calf know? About the place of udders and about the milk in them.?
This might be the secret of the creation- she thought.
Taking the calf to the buffalo, placing its udders in the mouth of the young Shiva made it drink milk. As it was drinking the milk he affectionately touched its face with his fingers –Gowri came there.
She was eager to touch the calf.
Sitting by his side she touched its mouth. Moved her fingers on its cheeks.. The surfing formed by the milk as the calf squeezed the milk, touched her fingers and made her pleasant. Black and beautiful calf made her happy. First two days the milk turned in to Junnu.
From third day they started boiling the milk and using them.
By that time Shiva was in great need.
Immediately he made them prepare strong coffee and had it greedily.
Without mixing even a drop of water he had the food with thick curd eagerly. Played with the calf….touching the buffalo affectionately and feeding it with grass blades, keeping them in its mouth….
A new bustle came into the house with the delivery of the buffalo. Morning and evening with the bleat of the calf the premises turned in to a Rangavalli. With its slight and deep cries the street changed to the dais of Sankranti.
Gowri had had a new world to her. To hug affectionately, to linger around noisily, to chit chat and to play with, a good friend is available.
Bringing home the new leaves and tearing them into two, Laksmamma is not only placing them in its mouth but also teaching it to munch it slowly and carefully after pressing the blades with its lips and pulling it inside the mouth.
When the buffalo goes to field, whole day Gowrie became a companion to the lonely calf. For the leaves to put into its mouth she started waiting for the grass baskets in the street. When she fed it with torn leaves keeping them in its mouth after eating one or two when it refuses her pleading and requesting, it’s jumping when the tethered card is loosened, its escape and running in the streets introducing her every lane and by lanes of the village, show casing her actions to the old people guarding the children, the young calf was more mischievous than Krishna.
The black acacia on the edge of the field grew fat and its complete body had yellow flowers all over beautifully as if covered with gold. Like the hangings on girls’ ears the flowers glided elegance.
The berry plant looked majestic with flowers and fruits. Tangedu contributed beauty to the earth with dazzling brightness with its beautiful golden flowers.
Tamarind fruits started ripening. Dal cooked with kachcha tamarind tasted delicious to the tongue.
As the rice is masoori it already started turning red. Probably somewhere in the womb a little belly might have started. With the age of youth that emits greenery the crop lulled everyone with dignity.
Gowri felt inexpressible satisfaction looking at the crop squatting on the edge. When she watched the growing crop she felt strange. The saplings planted by the finger tips in the marshy land growing with branches and branches………. Emitting greenery…what is seen today won’t be available the next day. If two days are missed…… new smartness in the fields……
Even the mirchi crop is growing strangely…

The land that turned dry with famines started providing sumptuous meal to the crops as it drenched sufficiently..
In the midst of Swati Karte one week it was completely cloudy. The hen remained inside the houses, in the cattle sheds and and the barns but never peeped out. With hay only they started feeding the buffalo. Unraveling the tether they never sent it to the fields. First three days when it rained in cats and dogs the birds on the trees became wet in rain and fell down starved and died. Old mud houses soaked in rain water and shriveled down.. As all the houses leaked throughout leaving no place even for standing, the cattle sheds only provided the shelter. It turned impossible for ladies to burn the wet fuel in the stoves. The days were so bad that they had to cook their food pulling out the roof! Pulling the roof though they tried to burn with the hay it was useless – except the emitting smoke.

Gents covering with plastic paper or an umbrella went upto the tank and returned, watching whether the edges of fields are secure or broken… they were worried about the bank of the tank getting leakages…..
The sound of water fall reached the village.
Behind this background one night from the back of the vessels came the sound of kik keek and the consoling of the hatching hen. The old lady was in the shed on a cot so she couldn’t realize but Shiva noticed that the hen has lifted up the chicks.
Morning after returning from the rivulet he went to the basket.
Swelling its wings with a kurr sound the hen showed its hostility but he lifted it up holding its fur and watched. All the chicks filled the basket. Collecting the broken pieces of the shells and throwing them out when he watched still four more eggs were there to hatch..
The petite chicks looked innocent and beautiful.. Gowri too peeped from behind Shiva.
He moved the remaining eggs holding with his hand, heard them keeping near the ear. The eggs did not spoil yet. The cry of chick is heard from inside in a low voice.. He made the voice heard by Gowri too. She felt marvelous.
He kept the hen again at the same place.
He congratulated Gowri as all the eggs are turning into chicks. He praised her good hand. Gowri felt happiness……………immense pleasure….
As the hen showed her hand as a lucky one she had boundless affection for the hen.
By that time she heard many stories about new brides and daughters in law in the village. In the villages they had a tradition of implying whatever happens good or bad to the entry of the bride. Many faced bitter experiences. In a house in the village in the Fort Street when a buffalo died of snake bite they decided that it is the effect of the new wed girl’s entry to the home. In another house when a person was injured, in another house when a herd of pigs spoiled the crops, in some house if a mother in law suffers from a chronic fever..Everything is attributed to daughters in law. To support it they say a proverb too “the time the animal comes and the time the girl enters……..”
Though Atta and Bava never feel that way what about the neighbors?
But everyone said hers is a lucky leg. The day she entered the village the rain swept away the famine of four years and quenched the thirst. ……filling the tanks ….raising the rice crops……… crops growing without pests and mirchi growing without any ups and downs and coming to the fruits, the buffalo giving birth to a male calf….. all the eggs changing in to chicks……… everything is good.
I should keep it up.
When she was musing, so many doubts hanged over her. If the crops get infested? Or the herd of pigs tramples it….. if the calf eating useless things succumbs to death …if the chick are taken away by the kites and crows .. The present luck of the leg can be overturned by these problems……..
She remained thinking.


8
“My mother fortune! My golden daughter! I’ll offer you a basket full of grass, take my daughter in law with you and let her bring a wisp of grass for the calf. My dear younger sister, my favorite daughter in law! I’ll dig your field totally. Make my daughter in law work in the field my dear, Subhadra! In the early dawn, when still the darkness prevails I clean your cattle shed but see my daughter in law sit a while at the buffalo to extract milk.
Brother, Ranganna! Let me be your sibling, see that my son gets some brains. If he looks after his wife how could the field work be done? Tease him and teach him some sense. Subbanna when you were young as you mocked at my son when he came crying I fought with you with overwhelming mother’s love. Now I fold my hands and implore you brother, you all mock at him. Laugh at him. Meanwhile tell him that if they forget themselves in befitting times they die starving.
My dear crop! Where did you loose your youth? As soon as I got married have you given me any free time to equalize the sleep of three nights? You made me your slave. Throughout the day time you made me your puppet and played. When my husband died of a snake bite have you given me any time to cry? You called me to work for you as a laborer though I had no comforts, with an alluring that all comforts will be with you and you tamed me, you made me believe that none other than you can give any comfort or can be graceful . What happened now my dear? Have you lost your charm as an oldie like me? Have you seen how easily my daughter in law snatched my son from me? She announced with a bang, that she is more beautiful than you. What a strange thing my mother? Instead of taming the new arrival you slipped the child from your hand into her pallo. You make them come to you mother. Crop mother you prove that you are still young and you’ll not get the old age.
Sadhayya! Is my son a monk or a family person?
If he has a family he makes his better half a real half. Teaches her how to walk without slipping from the banks and ridges, how to give cooperation he should teach. He should teach how to get shelter under the hay, when it rains, how to huddle under the Tangedu tree when it is too hot, but never teaches to sit at home. When he can not make his wife get an obsession on crops, on fields, on animals and pets, hen and birds what should we call him rather than a monk. How can he be a family person?”
*************

Diwali festival that arrived in rains could not show much effect on children, here and there a tus…….tuf...Dham…. burr…….sounds of half burnt crackers were heard feebly.
He brought crackers under an umbrella. Made his wife burn them in the premises under the cover and enjoyed like a child –Lakshmamma felt astonished to see her son.
Kartika month arrived.
As a result of good rains the wet earth turned cool and cold started. Near the barns of groundnuts and fields, villagers who remained there to guard them, started burning the waste to get heat in early mornings. Uprooted cotton sticks provided fuel to have bonfire.
Morning keeping some milk for her daughter in law’s coffee Lakshmamma started sending milk to the booth. Evening milk sufficed not only for their needs, drinking and setting curd but she used to give butter milk in charity too. The calf was tamed to Gowri so well.
While sitting on the cot when it licks her legs with rough tongue, it gave a new experience to her.
Midday Bhagyamma arrived with two other ladies.
At that time Gowri was on the cot in the shed. The calf was licking her fingers.
As she saw the scene Bhagyamma laughed.
“Should not be so lazy sister in law” she said looking at Gowri.
She couldn’t understand.
“If you are so lazy to bring at least two pitchers of water how could it be?” she said.
Gowri looked still perplexed.
“After your meal, water is not available to wash your hand and you made the calf to lick your hand” as smile moved on her lips she said. Others giggled.
Gowri likes to look Bhagyam’s laugh tirelessly. Pleasantly she responds…….
“Not because of the scarcity of water. My sister did not like to waste the food washing it” one of the women said.
“Can this fill the stomach of the calf if it licks the fingers, she should feed it either leaves or grass …” Tulasi said.
“Not feeding it with the grass brought by your Atta.. You too should bring it cutting… you should know which type of grass it likes the most. You should search and bring it…….”
It’s true! She is feeding the calf daily the grass but didn’t know anything about it.
She went on narrating the names and different types of grass and which it likes the most. Finally they proposed
“Come with us in the evening, you can cut and bring” Bhagyam said.
Evening it was inevitable for Gowri to follow them.
“Just for a normal walk only your waist twists so much, I doubt if you carry a bundle of grass on head, would it withstand?” Bhagyam commented from the back. Gowri looked at her from her eye corners.
Mocking at each other they went to the fields.
They showed all the leaves of the grass. That they named before. Even after revising them a number of times she couldn’t remember.
While cutting the grass some fun and jokes…
As they saw In the middle of crop lines behind the bushes of vines signs of a man and woman rolling there ….. They joked on the new wed daughter in law of that town
“As you and your husband could not sleep in the narrow house –it looks as if you made your bed here…….” They teased her.
“See Tulasi, the one coming is your husband it seems… he is going towards your fields…probably for you…. Go fast” words played on Tulasi.
As Tulasi saw stretching her head, an indescribable feeling flashed in her eyes.
Kandi trees bloomed full. It looked as if a golden colour is painted at the tip of the branches. Even the Alasanda wines which crept on the floor between the trees blossomed. Gold colour in the sky on that side and a flower carpet on the floor this way…….
Ladies normally squeeze the Alasanda leaves in palms, in that juice adding lime powder, before it turns dry taking it with a nail they put it on forehead as an oval grain as a dot.
That dot as radium on forehead, in green colour, gives a strange beauty.
They tied the grass with wines. Keeping it close to their chests as the books of college girls Gowri moved with them slowly to home.
Everyone noticed that Tulasi remained at the field but nobody mentioned about it. Gowri felt immense pleasure as she fed the calf with the grass that she pulled out, bundled, and carried home.
Next day onwards she started going in the morning itself with the grass baskets and collecting grass for the calf. Thanks to the calf, she started to recognize the types of grass too. She felt pleased to go for grass with same aged people.
Lakshmamma stood on her word and offered butter milk rice to Poleramma on a Saturday. Adding onion pieces to the curd mixed rice, when she placed it in the hands of children – eating it as Prasad of Poleramma, children had it as a memorable event in their life. Recently the hen turned close to Gowri. Feeding them with stale rice or grains, touching them affectionately moved them close to her. Before she scatters grains with her hands they dive up and kick the grains with their beaks.
If she walks out with a closed fist, the mother hen looks at her. Fluttering its wings it comes close to her. When they heard the sound all the chicks from nearby places and nests come running and moving their wings and obstruct her walk encircling her feet and never allow her to move forth…
They come in between her steps. She squats under the neem tree, scatters a few grains and keeps some in her hand. Some eat the grains on the ground but some chicks attack her. They make her slither the grains down. Kick the grains fallen between her toes. If she lifts her hand up to avoid them, they jump and kick her with their beaks. Even after that if they could not reach, they climb on to her shoulders to try. To get that strange experience, Gowri started playing with them everyday.
When they were in a tête-à-tête in the shed, showing the petite chicks, when Shiva says your children, she had a slight shiver in her heart.
Some overwhelming experience kicks at her heart and whole body she feels enraptured. Yes when I hatched them the eggs produced them; they had life in my hands –that feeling, some obsession on the tiny chicks…. affection and warmth….
By the time Vishakha neared its end, rice grains had full bulging. No rain trace in that karate but whenever clouds appeared, the old warned the young “never drench in raindrops, if you get wet in Vishakha you get harmful fevers…”
Another old man started then, “Where should we get the rain? The Bharatham ends with Karna, and the rains end with Kartika –people say”. As soon as the buffalo enters the home, it started eating the small wisp of grass kept for the calf; it started fumbling for green grass at the tether and in the baskets.
When Gowri witnessed its struggle she felt wetness in her heart. Her heart felt sad as she watched its anxiety for the green grass. The grass that they bring from Shivamma once in two days aggravated its hunger and anxiety. She fell in thoughts.

Early in the morning Bhagyamma, Tulasi and other four women came with the baskets sticking under their arms.
“Where did you come?” Lakshmamma inquired.
“Are you not coming for the grass aunty” someone asked.
“Me? With you?”
“Yesterday you said you’ll”
“Well, have I told you that I’ll come behind you? You are in youth and even the stones break under your feet. How can we be together?”
Meanwhile Gowri came out, neatly combed her hair, and got ready taking up the basket from a corner she asked her “Atta, where is the sickle?”
Lakshmamma looked at her strangely.
She couldn’t even open her mouth to give a reply.
“She wants a sickle Peddamma, the girl who can break the stones is asking. Get up and give the sickle”
Bhagyam said.
Before Lakshmamma got up Gowri searched for it and walked out with it.
Keeping a towel on her shoulder and basket under her arm she moved out with them.
Lakshmamma couldn’t believe her own eyes.
Moving the neem stick in his mouth he walked in and went to the backyard, washed his mouth, wiping his face with a towel he came out and understood that Gowri is not at home, looking at the shed and the hay heap, he asked “mother where is she?”
Then she came in to this world.
Even after that she couldn’t tell about Gowri. “She went out, see coffee is there on the stove” she said.
“Let her come” grumbling he tried to walk towards the shed.
“She won’t come now” she said.
“Why?”
She said the matter.
He didn’t even enter the house, wearing chappals he walked towards the fields.
Encircling the rice fields and mirchi, he stared at all the fields. Behind the dal lines he searched for the movements of colourful saris.
He searched in the mirchi fields.
He felt anxious.
With a whim of pulling out the grass with all other women she might hurt her hands, the palms may get boils, giving pain. Even after cutting the grass as she didn’t have the habit of carrying a basket, her neck may get twisted he worried. When he saw Pedda Mallaredyy at the Kandi field he asked him. “Uncle, have you seen any women with grass baskets in the fields?”
“Why do you need them?” he asked.
“Nothing. If they come in groups and attack our fields, how can we feed our animals?”
“Who brings grass at your home?” he inquired.
“Why? Why doesn’t my wife……”
“Oho! A wife to bring grass! My son, is it the one that stays at home or have you brought someone else too?”
“Tell me about grass pickers, uncle?”
“When I am here who can enter our fields? See there on the other side of the stream”
Shiva didn’t even stand a minute there. Behind the stream in the kandi fields as women went on cutting grass bending, he rushed to that side. Standing there on the edge he examined each and everyone but Gowri was not there in them. That was not at all Bhagyamma’s group. He turned back.
“Is that the only group that came here?” he asked MallaReddy.
He knotted his forehead.
“Whom do you want?” he asked.
“My wife had come” he said as if shouting at him.
“My dear fool” he laughed.
“See that side. In those fields another group is there. Go and see” he said.
As he suggested they were seen in the fields. As soon as Shiva was seen everyone’s face turned to Gowri.
“We are brooding on that ‘why he didn’t come’-he has come” Narayanamma said.
“Go now… he will carry not only the basket but you too” Tulasi said.
“Where will she go?” Bhagyam caught up immediately..
“If they want to follow their husbands as soon as they saw them why should we come in a group? No one should leave the group whenever they want. Together we came, together we should go home. No body should slip in the middle. From today onwards this is the rule” she said “if all go behind their husbands whom should I follow? My husband never comes to a place where women gather.” As she said it all the trees heaved with laughter in golden yellow colour.
“My dear Shiva, your wife had not yet tired my brother, see how we had brought her exactly the same she looks. …” she pulled out Gowri holding her arm.
“See her palms, not yet turned red nor had any boils. Look at her cheek, didn’t turn pink with a rash touch of branches, and look at the turn of her waist…. No skin came off due to the twisting of vines. Have you seen? Look properly with wide eyes, then go from here.” in the midst of everyone’s laughter she said without any hesitation.
“Let me pick up a bit of grass for her before I go, Bhagya sister” he bent on the Mirchi field.
Though they prevented him he didn’t pay heed to them.
Stubbornly he pulled out a large amount of grass. As he couldn’t bear their bothering he left the grass there and moved off across the fields.
As the heat sharpened, they pushed the grass into their baskets, filled them again with the grass heaps hidden by them at the streamlets, around the edges of the basket they adorned beautifully blossomed grass flowers, making a base with turning of a palloo, kept the baskets on their heads. For Gowri, Bhagyamma made a base with towel, lifted and adjusted the basket on her head.
The basket seemed not too heavy to Gowri. She thought she could carry it. By the time she reached the field the reality of carrying it came to her experience.
The basket on the head turned into a crag and the green grass became a heap of stones. All the nerves in the head had swollen and crept onto the neck and she felt that at any moment they may explode. The agony of the spine was inexpressible. Vertebrae are leaning on each other and as the weight could not be tolerated she felt that the link may break due to the pressure.
By the time she covered ten more steps, she remained backward completely. Lifting the leg also looked too difficult. By the time she reached the decision that unless she throws away the basket she can’t escape from that physical pain, she felt that somebody lifted the basket from her head and tried to turn that side. But the neck didn’t help. As she turned her whole body, taking up the basket on to his head, leaving the path across the fields Shiva walked forth. She felt relieved.
He might have felt that if Bhagyamma watches she may stop him. So he was walking away from them.
His moving fell in the eyes of women.
As they turned back no basket was seen on Gowri’s head.
“Sent it with your husband?” Tulasi asked.
“She might have felt that if the weight on head is relieved it’s alright. Whoever had taken the grass basket became her God. Even if a beast pulled it off her she would have slipped it down. Has she realized that her husband had taken it?” Bhagyam said. She turned back at her, pricking her swollen neck nerves, sweating face and waist twists glistening with sweat drops with looks.
Women yelled at Shiva to stop.
Shouted at him to hand over the basket……… Their shouts he felt as catapult stones and he moved on swiftly like the parrots that fly away scared. His way of moving made them shout more and laugh at him.
As if he had stolen something and running away his swift walking made them vibrate.
Gowri felt immense pleasure and satisfaction as she fed the calf with the grass cut and carried by her.
Evening when she emptied the grass basket in front of the buffalo as it ate greedily she felt unutterable shudder.
Next day morning when her Atta came with the milk pitcher saying
“ as it had stomach full of green grass it gave more milk” and moved to the milk booth she felt happy.
The green grass brought by her turning into milk was a strange feeling.
In the month of Kartika, at least on one Monday, Shiva thought that he should visit the cave of Belum in Nallamala hills.
He thought of adoring Belum god along with Gowri. But his mother obstructed him saying that they should not climb the hills in the first year of the marriage, so he dropped the idea.
Gowri started going everyday with Bhagyam group to bring the grass. In cutting the grass and in carrying it she had immense help of Shiva.
Shiva faced many problems to conceal others’ look and to get the grass basket.
To cut and hand over the grass to Gowri he felt anxious.
Women never allowed him to reach them, even if he could they didn’t allow him to cut the grass, though he managed to cut it they never allowed him to handover it to Gowri. But still he had his own plans. Beforehand he finds out where they go, he pulls up a bundle of grass and covers it with a sign and moves out. One day he keeps a few grass blades on it, and on the other day he keeps something else. All these signs they decide at home. Nobody goes there feeling that a lady gathered it. As soon as Gowri looks at the sign she lifts the grass into her basket. Shiva’s grass basket episode is known to everybody in the village. Mornings when people saw him there at the fields everybody mocked at him.
Before his inquiry they say-“see your wife……. she went that side fields …… go …go that side...” Some provide wrong information to mock at him.
Deceiving him at least one day Gowri should be made to carry the grass to home was Bhagyam’s whim. So searching new ways she was targeting Shiva to new tortures.
That day in the beginning itself Shakuntala Veeraiah misled Shiva. When they went to east fields he showed hand towards the west. After ten fields when he saw Duggayya he too showed that side only. Crossing the tank Shiva roamed all the waste lands and returned. Nobody was seen. Time was elapsing. He could understand that people duped him.
He couldn’t guess how Gowri could manage that day as she is used to his help in filling her basket every day. Where was she is not known. How far was she? He didn’t know. How much she might be struggling? Might be feeling affronted by her friends. Once if she gets hurt it’s very difficult: everywhere fields and fields only. Where to search for her? He walked and walked, ran on the edges between the fields. Once again he rounded all the fields. Everybody in the fields laughed at him. They had a nice game to play with him. Can make him in to a toy to play…..
The time approached for the women to start returning home.
Anxiety grew in Shiva. He went to Subbamma who was seen in the Mirchi field.
He lifted both the hands, folded them,
“Sister in law where is your sister?”
She was noticing his trouble for a long time.
“Why do you feel so trouble, Abby she’ll not abandon you” laughed perfidiously.
“The head is burning, neck looks as if broken. Back couldn’t stand. Tell me where she will be, I’ll salute your mother”
He implored piteously.
She hooted loudly.
“You say bundles of grass and baskets of grass
My sister is there at fine grass my dear
Brother in law my sister is there”
She described all types of grass in her song and finally said “my dear brother in law my sister is there”
He could not bear the delay.
“Is she going to faint for the unbearable weight of the basket? Tell me exactly sister in law! I’ll touch your feet behind the fields ……..”
Her body quivered as she heard it. As her lips shivered she stretched her hand towards east.
“They are in the lands by the side of the ditch, go” saying this she cast her head down.
Shiva moved at a stretch running. By that time all the women started lifting the grass baskets on their heads. From the edge he looked watchfully at them.
He shouted three times as a sign which inspired Gowri.
Within two minutes the basket was on Shiva’s head.
*************
Afternoon holding a pitcher when Shiva was moving towards the bore well Shiva Reddy called him.
“O Shiva”
“Uncle” he expressed his obedience in his voice. Went close to him and inquired
“What uncle?”
ChennaReddy was sitting on a cot on the verandah. On both his sides two more people were there.
“What happened? Nowadays not at all seen?” he asked.
“Nothing uncle” Shiva scratched his head.
“Always we roam in the streets and fields, we can’t see him. You never look at the street, how can you see him?” the man opposite him said.
“Why?”
“His wife arrived”
Smiles moved on ChennaReddy’s lips.
“Has she studied anything?” he asked.
“Yes!” slowly he lifted his head “she did Inter” he felt shy.
“You are lucky! Your fortune changes”
Shiva couldn’t understand. “Our village’s Anganvadi centre is almost finalized. As we have no educated daughter in law we are getting the sanction and again it’s cancelled. You did a good thing. Though the daughters of this village have no education you brought an educated girl to this village…”
“How many more days did the girl stay here brother? By the time of new year (Ugadi) she may snatch him too to the town” Duggaiah said.
“I heard a shop is there ... That is good …..” said ChennaReddy.
“if the centre survives we could do something later..”
Even after Shiva left the place they discussed something. Sanctioning the post on Gowri’s name, after that they can manage to transfer it on some other’s name, if they couldn’t get an educated girl continuing that on Gowri’s name with someone else……
As everyone was guessing if she leaves the village by the New Year it’s all right, if not they won’t keep the Anganvadi post for her. At present, they are utilizing her as a tool, that’s all.
After Shiva’s arrival for the second pitcher ChennaReddy blurted it out to Shiva.
“Educated girl, it’s a sin to keep her away from the letters…
At least take the newspaper and give it to her.”
Shiva didn’t delay at all.
Folding the paper on the cot he kept it under his arm. As she saw the paper Gowri too felt happy.
That afternoon a few women gathered around her. Listened the news in the paper…they asked and listened with interest about the cinema theatres in Kadapa and the pictures in them. Some, though they lacked literacy compared the pictures in the paper to that of the TV serials as “Nagastram, Kalpana, Alu Balu” etc.
Gowri thought of the Anganvadi center, and her working there as a teacher. She already had a bit of knowledge about child welfare centers that work under the women and child welfare branch.
Providing nutritious food to the children under five years old, sports and songs, preparing children to attend the school through stories is the duty of anganvadi workers. It is associated with creativity. It’s not everyone’s fortune to get a job and profession to sing and play with children and conversing to them in incomplete words.
She started thinking.
Shiva had his thoughts in some other route.
“If she settles in a government job here it’s like fixing her roots in this soil”
“Getting nearly a thousand to twelve hundred rupees of fixed income every month is not an ordinary economic profit. O God, do this help” Lakshmamma thought.
As everything is getting politicized villagers thought that Gowri getting the anganvadi post is not a small task.
“What’s the matter teacher?” Bhagyam came early morning.
“Everyone is thinking that you are going to get a job to teach small children”
Gowri smiled.
Taking the basket she walked with her.
As they moved they saw the group.
Snow started melting in the sunshine. From the leaves of the crop it was going up like white smoke.
“Today we should cheat your husband” Bhagyam said. So I’ll not tell where we go, and how we return too. All should come behind me.”
Gowri smiled.
“What a husband is he? Should not keep a grass basket on wife’s head, is the wife’s waist snatched away by a sickle? May be the branches prick away the powder smeared on face, are heels taken away by the land? Is the grass dragging away the palms? If she gets entangled in the vines are we all not there? Why don’t you tell sister in law ………….” Looking at Gowri she said.
“Your brother, you should tell” Gowri said.
“So cunning you are!”
Their teasing session amuses the listeners. “Today under any circumstances I’ll make you carry the grass to your home. The neck should strengthen and the waist must get firm. What a man is he? Never allows you to get strong…..might be expecting softness to hand ……from where did he come………..from behind the bushes, or the fences or the turnings …….like a kite taking away a chick…….let me ask this ..I am innocent ..he came behind you………….cut the grass and carried it…..then what is the need of your coming? Let him only come.” She said.
Crossing the borders she stepped into the neighboring village. That was her mothers’, so she could go there without hesitation.
After cutting the grass changing the route she moved towards the east.
Gowri’s neck bears the weight to some extent. By that time Shiva lingered all the fields four times. Bending down he examined all the crops..
Nowhere he could see the group of Bhagyamma and nobody could provide any information.
“Sister in law, O sister in law” he went to Subbamma.
From the edge of Mirchi field she stared at him. Swiftly turned her head to the other side and stood.
“Tell me whereabouts of your sister, sister in law” he pleaded piteously.
She didn’t even turn her head.
“Sister in law is headstrong
Like anew pitcher
My sister in law with golden hair hangs” he started singing.
She moved her head towards him fast-
“I am not fortunate enough to get you touch my feet behind the bushes …go” she said looking into his eyes.
He felt a sudden jerk.
He remembered that he said that the other day….. without any mistake, he could understand the other meaning in it as if slapped on the face.
Turned back immediately…..
Started walking across the fields as his heart palpitated. Sitting on the foot path in the turning of the rivulet he tried to cool his tumult soothing it carefully.
The group of Bhagyam went on moving bending in the fields with a firm decision not to be seen by Shiva.
If they walk a distance of a field, the path of carts will come. If they clamber the road Shiva couldn’t do anything.
“Today it’s definite that he is hoaxed. He will be defeated in my hand. How many days it has taken to swindle him? If we are determined what will he be?” she said.
Lifting her head Gowri looked at her strangely.
They walked a few steps in the shallows of the land. Suddenly Gowri shouted in a low voice “ the basket is lifted away”
With a shock Bhagyam turned and looked at Gowri , the basket was missing on her head.
A movement in the bushes on the edge of the field…….
She sighed helplessly.
Now where is the need to clamber the road?
Moved on the edges of the fields…
She felt desperate that she couldn’t cheat Shiva..
She felt sad as the trouble taken throughout has gone into the stream.
Walking with tight lips nobody talked.
Nobody sent their looks at sides except walking fast as the sweat glistened on their waist twists.
After walking a distance of two fields only Bhagyam could recover. Consoling herself she started mocking and joking.
Suddenly a man stepping behind the bushes bending down.. fell in her eyes. She felt surprised as she recognized him as Shiva.
Where is the basket that he took away?
Why did he come again? She started examining him from the edges of her eyes.
From the bushes he came up to Gowri
Some thing he asked… she has given some reply… lifting her head she showed towards the turning of the rivulet… suddenly he disappeared as if running towards the stream.
Bhagyam couldn’t understand any thing.. After a while he was seen again….Now with the grass basket on his head …walking fast towards his home.
She felt wondered.
When Gowri lost the basket this scene should be seen.
It came so late means….
He went to the turning with empty hands and returned with the basket means…. She could understand the matter…….
That means Gowri tricked them all…
She acted hiding the grass basket in the turns of the rivulet.
She told him that and fetched him to bring it..
Bhagyam didn’t disclose this secret to any other friends in the group.
Midday when they met for paper reading she asked Gowri about it.
Gowri said the truth..
As they bet to defeat Shiva she said she did it.. she couldn’t guess her Bava ‘s defeat because of her, so she did it.
She couldn’t see her Bava defeated by other women.
“That means he should get defeated only by you?” Bhagyam asked.
Gowri smiled casting her head down “where is defeat and victory between a wife and a husband, sister”
Bhagyam stood staring at her.
Evening she called Shiva, “Abby, as all others talked I too believed it as truth brother, educated and brought up in the town , how could she remain in this rough house, I felt that not only she’ll fly away but will catch hold of you to snatch. If you could not leave the place I thought she would leave you and fly away… but I realized when we started friendship. From the grass baskets’ episodes I realized what she is.. I didn’t know whether she desired you before coming or after coming but she never leaves you.. I’ll give that guarantee. Let others talk whatever they feel ....look after her this way only… don’t let any change in your looks..” said.
Shiva felt enraptured with the words. They resounded again and again in his ears. Even in the midst of people he turned introverted by those words which made him smile. They haunted him day and night..
Lying down flat in the cattle shed with eye balls shivering with quivering he found the strange vibration in heart that blossomed on his lips. It turned him crazy leaving the world aside.
Margashira arrived. By that time Anuradha karte trailed half way..
Paddy started coming up. The grains had the milk and birds kicking them started munching turning them waste.
The cold matured. Early dawn people started burning fir in their premises. The streets started waking up with the beedi smoke and tête-à-tête of Old people covering themselves with bed sheets and sitting in front of the fire.
The crop which she planted from the finger tips is coming up and getting ripe, the chicks hatched from the eggs from her hand are beautifying the lane, the buffalo eating the grass brought by her and turning it into white milk –made Gowri feel obsessed with the crops, buffalo and the chicks. As she felt that they all belonged to her and her hands she developed a kind of affection on them.
ChennaReddy called Shiva.
The details of under-five year children should be collected. Survey required going to every house.
He handed over the Pro forma regarding that.
Taking Bhagyam with her two evenings Gowri moved around the village all the houses. Overall there are only seventy two families and thirty seven children. She filled the pro forma carefully as instructed in it and sent that.
Though he didn’t go to the houses Shiva stood in the street.
Thanks to the survey Gowri could see the entire village officially. She could know the initial names and names of the individuals. She saw Raghava, Bhagyam’s husband.
His gestures showed that he is an introvert and never mixes with others.
Bhagyam too complained the same.
He never talks closely to anyone. While sitting in the premises immersing in plays, if goes to fields lingering there alone, he never talks in a day at least ten sentences even to his wife, that too small sentences. Never asks to give him food. He waits sitting at the dining place. If she waits for him to ask he serves himself. As she is so garrulous he looks just contrast to her.
“Make him mix with people sister in law” she requested pitifully.
“ Me?” she looked surprised.
“Tell your husband”

As Gowri slipped into thoughts she started a song requesting her as Sita to recommend Rama to save her.
That night Gowri mentioned about Raghava to Shiva.
“He is too dumb, natural to him. … if we go together for guarding the field, he never even utters a word a hell…” he said.
She put forth Bhagyam’s request. He too went into thoughts.
That day a cell phone came to her access. So Gowri called her mother. After formal greeting she said ‘bring a sewing machine next time when you come.’
No sewing machine was seen in the village. Not only her own clothes, she could stitch her friends’ too, she thought.
After noon when all were sitting outside suddenly the mother hen with scaring shouts ran to the tree shade. By the time all the chicks like the broken pieces of a mud pitcher scattered and hid themselves either behind the stones or to the people to hide between their feet.. a small chick couldn’t move fast, and the shade of a kite fell on it cruelly. Clutching it with its toes it dived into the air. The chick started shrieking in the gap of its feet.
People at the mound started waving the hand kerchiefs and towels and yelled but the kite didn’t care.
Shiva could not bear the fact that under their eyes the kite lifted away their chick. Immediately he bent down to the earth, lifted a piece of a big stone and threw it towards the kite, shouting as if the nerves will break. His fellow people too threw the stones. Stones moved in the air just scraped the kite and around it. Their yelling shivered the wings of the bird. Scared of the shouts and the fear of stones it slackened its clutches and the chick slipped down. One of the youth collected it in his hands in the air itself before it reached the earth. If they had delayed even a few seconds the kite would have pulled out its eyes. By now by the attack of the nails of its toes it had wounds at two three places.
Scolding and cursing the kite lakshmamma came hurriedly and took the chick into her hands. Covering it in her hands blowing wind at it took it inside and started treating it. Even as she was doing that she was cursing the kite for sometime and scolding the inability of the mother hen for sometime, Immense sadness filled on her face.
As she took the chick into her hands Gowri too shivered. Daily climbing on to her elbow the flowered chick used to look in to her eyes. She felt bad to see the chick that looked like a cotton ball now lying helplessly in her hand.
She realized now, if others throw a stone on their hen or another one comes to a fight or kicks it how the old woman used to feel meaningless anguish.
That agony comes into experience if one develops a psychological rapport with the dumb innocent lives.
The old lady feels even if a fence scratches the buffalo making it bleed.
Not only she, but many in the village are the same. She remembered. A month back when an ox died in someone’s house how the ladies of the house whimpered. She felt surprised to see them cry that day. “Have they to cry so much for the death of an animal?” she thought. “Can’t they buy another one?” She thought.
Now she came to know the philosophy behind that sadness. As they developed human relationship to that extent, that they treat even the beast as a being of the household.

With this single incident many changes resulted in Gowri. Every trivial matter she analyses to understand. Gradually she started to comprehend human relationships in agricultural families, psychological kinships. Closeness with a buffalo, affection on the crop and land.. Ownness of the house everything she came to know..
**************
Evening the buffalo returned home but not her mother in law . Directly it went to the calf. The calf put its face in its udders and started kicking it.
Watching the scene Gowri hurriedly took a small stick controlling the buffalo. She took it to the bind and tethered it there. The calf started shouting and panting.
She waited for her mother in law for some time. Lifting her head she sent her looks running on the path.
She believed that her mother in law would come soon.
She placed a wisp of green grass in front of the animal.
It started munching it greedily attacking the grass. It swayed its head as if calling the shouting daughter to come to her.
After waiting some more time for her mother in law she decided that she would milk the buffalo.
Leaving the calf a few minutes till its mother gets ready to give the milk she pulled it out. Bringing the milk pitcher she sat at the udders of the buffalo.
With the water in the vessel she washed the udders and tried to squeeze them to extract milk. She felt it impossible to continue shifting her fingers from one to the other in continuation of milking. When she pulled one, milk started coming in a flow. She was still struggling to milkthe buffalo properly. Meanwhile Bhagyam came that way. Sitting by her side she taught her how to extract the milk. How to fix the pitcher between the knees, how to handle the udders she extracted the milk and teased her.
After completion of the milking they noticed Shiva sitting under the neem tree. He was watching at them.
Bhagyam smiled and said it would have been nice if I hadn’t come.
All this training would be given by him you would have learned in a much easier way-she said looking at her askance.
Gowri took the milk pitcher with a giggle.
Lakshamamma came late after the darkness descended. She gave an explanation that she swa some women trying to pluck away some of the ripe mirchi from the field so she shoved them away and guarded it for a while before returning.
By the end of Jyeshta the rice came to maturity and the Mirchi reached the cutting stage.
Arranging labor Shiva started cutting the mirchi and drying it in the barn at the home.
All the barns turned into dry mirchi carpets.
Some ripened with eye glittering redness and the remaining with greenish red colour looked beautiful. Heaping them at nights and spreading them in the sunlight to dry in the morning is the routine.
Morning when they move towards the barns, they are experiencing a strange state of not even watching a thing at close by distance as the visibility diminishes with the smoky fog smearing all the fields.
Snow drops cover all the ripened mirchi in barns.
On the grass and on the crops it encroached everything and while walking as the heels get wet with it, the whole body shivers and twists… in that smoky fog with strange colours the bonfire burns… the winter provided a strange experience to all the creatures.
If they go into the fields they could get edible pods in abundance. From the entering to the exit one can have something or the other to eat plucking out from the plants.
Shiva started bringing a basket full of edible pods everyday from the fields. They give a strange taste if boiled or fried in the fire. One can go on eating a basketful of them. It never ends and never fills the stomach.
Evening milking the buffalo became an extra duty on Gowri’s hands. Though Bhagyam helped on the first day, after that the whole training went on on Shiva’s hands only.
On the edge of the streamlet pigs’ attack on fields started. Everyone started to go for guarding the fields. As it turns night, with a bed sheet on the shoulder, holding some weapon in their hands, all men as a group of words move towards the fields.
Not only the owners of the fields near the stream, but others too went for guarding. Mornings through the thick foggy smoke of the fields covering themselves completely with blankets they enter the village from the edges of the fields and gather around the bonfire in the streets.
Though all his friends went for guarding Shiva didn’t move out from the home. Sending all to the fielding he is remaining at home, sleeping warmly by the side of his wife.
Lakshmamma tried to tell him once or twice.
She stared strangely and oddly at his face which had no movement at all and was puzzled. Where did the experience of all these years go? With these hands only I taught him everything? Taught him to till the soil and sow the seeds, sapling and cultivation cutting and storing the grains everything personally she taught him.
When groundnut is seeded, eight days for the crops season a month how to guard them she taught them constructing a hut there.
Covering him with her blanket too, protecting him from the cold she guarded. What happened to that experience?
If the impressions of the pigs were seen he used to get distressed. When the foxes rooted out the groundnuts and ate them he felt resented. When the buffalos by mistake had a mouthful of rice he used to yell. Now what happened to him? He is not even bothered about the destruction of the crop means has he moved aloof from the farmer’s profession?
She could not bear it. She felt as if invisible famines like storms had fallen on them.
He might be passionate to his wife but if he forgets the crop……
How could it be?
A farmer should have any thing only after the field and the crop.
Whole day she went on thinking.
Finally she beseeched her daughter in law.
“What can we do my dear; it seems the pigs are stamping the crop. If the herd of pigs enters the field a night, we get nothing from the field. What bad days arrived to him he is not uttering a word. If he sleeps at home holding the cot the crop would be destroyed.”
“Holding the cot” sounded to Gowri as ‘holding you’ and she felt a shudder. Imagining the destruction of the crop how impatient is this old lady to ‘we’ people.
Probably she might hate our physical desires.
She felt the whole body had shrunk with shame.
Two nights she bothered Shiva.
Third night he moved out with a blanket on his shoulder along with his friends.
That night Gowri couldn’t sleep.
As if the cot spread out wider she couldn’t even feel the edge though she rolled on it from side to side. Though covered herself completely she couldn’t bear the cold. The hot breath, heart beats and the bodily touch which were holding her and protecting her everyday, disappeared suddenly. She could not close her eyes.
As it is the cold season the whole village turned silent before eight.
Except the sounds of TV in one or two houses even the dogs are not barking.
Another hour Gowri wrestled with sleeplessness. She checked whether the doors are closed properly or not. She doubted about keeping the vessels properly and checked it out. As she remembered she is alone she closed and bolted the door once again properly.
As she was struggling to get sleep lying on the cot, when she was about to close her eyes –she heard the noise at the door. She opened her eyes with a quiver. Heard carefully……..
Once again the movement of the bolt...
Her heart palpitated.
Thought of calling her mother in law sleeping in the cattle shed,
Meanwhile a call……
A call as if whispering ………
“Gowri, open the door.”
She recognized the style of the call, and the known voice.
Surprised, she went and opened the door.
Shiva covered in the blanket came in nuzzling her. By that time it might have turned cold due to the attack of snow. The edges touched her body coolly.
Either side field people were sleeping close to the stream, making the arrival of pigs impossible so without informing anyone he came off. She had a doubt, had he come back as he could not stay leaving her? His body seemed as an iceberg.
It took a long time to evaporate his shivers. It became a routine. He was cautious that he should not fall in his mother’s eyes. But the neighboring field’s people noticed it the very next day and showed pity saying “he has a wife” ironically.
Next day when they started to go for guarding,
“Oh Shiva, everyday you sleep with your wife cozily. We die of cold. Shouldn’t we get warmed up at least a day?” Roshayya said.
Somebody giggled.
“We have wives and we never had that whim, but you got it. How can you get warmed up without one? Are you going to sleep holding the stove?”
Everyone laughed.
“Can’t we get warmth anywhere except from a wife?” Roshayya yelled. “If a nice hen is provided won’t we keep a stove at the stream? If we take a few sips of drink and bite a few pieces what a heat we get? What do you know?”
Everybody liked his taste.
“Oh! Your intelligence started working lately uncle”. A youth lifted him up.
Without even asking Shiva’s accord, they passed on the proposal for the chicken. Shiva tried to escape that he didn’t know anything about drink.
“Had you married at home wouldn’t you have supplied drink to all?”
“May be to dancers and wrestlers…”
“We too dance….and wrestle. All the streams and rivulets should shudder…the pigs should run away…………”
Roshayya said. Shiva agreed to bring three bottles of drink, and a three KG hen.
“How can you dare it? The time of marrying my sister….”
SubbaReddy said. Next night nearly ten people who had fields near the stream gathered. The place had the jostle of cutting the hen, burning the fire, and cooking rice etc.
Another five joined them. “From where did these sons come?” Roshayya expressed his impatience. Once again he counted the amount of chicken, opened drink can and examined. Two in the newly arrived take drink too and he started grumbling.
“What are you muttering? You have whatever you want and give us the remaining only. You …” Gurayya warned him.
Roshayya didn’t delay. He had his stomach full and filled the gap in the bottle with water. Went hurriedly to the stove and put a half cooked chicken piece in his mouth.
Soon the folk songs started blurting out from his mouth.
“The drink of the acacia,
How much enjoyment it gives….. Stretching the two edges of the towel he started dancing.
Remaining people came to know about mixing water in the drink. Cursing Roshayya, hating him, spitting at him somehow they had it full of their bellies and bit the pieces. … They got intoxicated.
One of them congratulated the drink as it gave enjoyment even after mixing water, another one argued that Roshayya never mixed water and that he is a good man..So they had the pleasure.
They had the drink, ate the meat. After drinking the soup of the hen all became equal. The non drunkards became untouchables. Some of them sitting in the sand and others on the boulders started singing folk songs. Without even eating food Shiva left them long back. The stream area resounded till midnight with the songs and poems. Others of far off fields guessed that something happened there but they could not come due to cold. Some of the drunken slept on the sand reaching up to the edges of heaven and the others crawling on knees and elbows reached their beds and started waiting there for the fairies.
Whether they went to heaven or not, or the fairies came to them is not known but the pigs after the midnight entered the fields greeting them with their grumbling sound.
The non-drunkards got up; they felt confused for sometime if they are the snoring of the drunkards or the grumbling of the pigs. As the sounds are heard in moving groups they doubted and shouted loudly. To reply to the sounds when they heard creeping sounds in rice fields they felt shocked ‘”Pigs. Pigs my god!” with their shouts, whistles, and stone-pelting, and the sleeping people getting up and yelling, someone who brought the crackers in his pocket burned them and turned the scene into a war front ..in all these hustle and bustle the pigs got scared and left the idea of coming to the stream, walked across the rice fields and got up to the edge. From there through the rough lands they moved away.
After that nobody had the sleep.
Those who slept on the sand too clambering down the heaven with tired bodies reached their huts in the morning.
It was very clear to everyone that due to their drink and sleep this disaster resulted. Morning when they looked at the fields from the bank up till the tank bank the rice crops were tamped and spoiled making a path. They had no chance to eat it but stamped and destroyed. As the youth are vigilant a great disaster is avoided. Though it was very common the story behind that was a topic of discussion in the village. Though they can’t point out Shiva the villagers cursed the drunkards who forced him to bring it. Some of them searched and discovered the point on which Shiva yielded to them and laughed at him. Others expressed their surprise. As the old came to know that to sleep with his wife he provided them with the drink and meat, they smeared their mustaches and dug the past memories.
“This is nothing. If you know about our stores in youth you people feel wondered. My wife was at her mother’s home then. A busy time of agricultural work……. We used to work whole day. After bathing and having food laying the cot in shed and making the bed and without my father’s knowledge leaving the home walking ten miles I used to reach my wife. Again by the dawn I used to return to my home, look after my oxen and go for my work.” An old man narrated his experience to another and the other started his own.
Lakshmamma when she came to know the matter she looked at her son strangely as if she couldn’t understand him. She couldn’t utter a word. She quivered imagining the herd of pigs entering their field.
Even after this, whether he had any sense or not..?
Still might be returning home….
One night she watched hiding….
She saw her son returning home before ten o clock.
Her heart missed a beat as if the crop gets destroyed that night itself. The anger on her son is rising up. She felt impatient on her daughter in law’s negligence. She grumbled that a woman who gives enjoyment to her husband giving place in her bed when he forgets his duty is not a woman but a donkey.
She felt the fear of losing the crop … and on that destruction the famines may walk and come …a shiver in heart when the thought of famine entered………
Early morning she went to the old Govindamma.
She narrated the foolishness of her son to her and wept.
She called Munemma and told everything.
Son never comes to a proper path…daughter in law who should correct him closed her eyes with intoxication… now someone should make her open her eyes…
“Amma” she caught Govindamma’s legs.
“Daughter” she held the hands of Munemma.
They understood her anxiety and decided what to do.
That day in the afternoon when Gowri was alone Govindamma went to her asking “what curry have you made my grandchild?”
She made Sangati and beans fry. Asking her to put the curry on the Sangati lump in her left hand, keeping a piece of beans in her mouth she made a sound with her mouth to indicate the taste.
“nice , very tasty” once again she made the sound lifting up the tongue and making a sound touching the upper mouth ridge.
Gowri was looking at her. This old lady reduced coming there drastically recently. Both knew the reasons.
Why did she come now –she can’t understand. When she was thinking of her coming a song entered the house in the form of Munemma.
“cook rice for me my husband?
you have the left overs my husband?
give me curd rice my husband?
you have the butter milk my husband?
lay a cotton bed for me my husband?
you lie down on a threads bed my husband?
provide me bed and pillows my husband?
you have an old comforter my husband?
Gowri stared at her top to toes.
Both came together means there is something.
“ Bhagyam hasn’t come ?” Govindamma asked.
“ No Jeji, didn’t”
“ She said she would come , why didn’t she? Let her come …”
Saying this she kept a morsel of food in mouth.
“Why did you bother her grand ma.. You are old, if you say one she says ten. Though her husband is a dumb she is a nest of words….” Munemma said.
“ God is not blind or mad. That girl is so garrulous that’s why he matched her with that dumb …….” The old lady said.
“Recently he is befriending our Shivanna, it seems both are going together to fields and trees. With him he too may turn into a dumb I am afraid” Munemma said.
“When he goes with him, why did he sleep throughout the night at the field, without coming back at dusk……..”
The old lady’s law point.
Their conversation turned to guarding the pigs.
“It seems pigs entered your fields last night?” she asked Gowri.
Gowri looked at her shuddered.
“When our Subbi got up and made sounds others too shouted so they went away.. If he hadn’t discovered how much time they need? .see eating this lump of the food …..To waste the crop and the field too…….Very rarely we got the time. The crop has come up…… the reap would have gone waste…….”
Gowri felt a pounding in her heart.
Nobody told her about this, even Shiva.
“If no one guards they might come tomorrow…” Munemma said. “ Loss of crop and blaming from all….”
Gowri couldn’t understand why they should be blamed.
“Are they not accusing now?” Munemma dragged.
“Some useless people might be there. They can’t live unless they talk about others…”

“Who said and what?” Govindamma expressed her surprise.
“If you go out and listen you know what it is. Sitting at home how could you know it?” once again she dragged the words.
“To whomever you talk they talk about this girl only” she looked at Gowri.
Gowri lifted her eyes confused.
‘“He is a fool and a rough fellow…..he has no knowledge. So he feels it’s enough hugging his wife and sleeping.
What happened to this girl? Intelligent… didn’t she care the destruction of the crop? Is she going to die if sends him out” everyone whisper this only.’...
Gowri felt her head reeling.
“What do those fools know why she keeps him at home” making sound once again Govindamma said.
Turning to Munemma, “what can this girl do? The total mistake is her mother in law’s. She sent her to bring grass. When she brought it, she had pains all over the body as she was not used to do that work … to get rid of the pains he has to smear oil and massage her at nights... He has to pour hot water… how can the villagers know all these troubles? Everyone has their own problems...” satire sounded in her voice.
Suddenly if the earth furrows and takes her in vanishing her it would have been better –Gowri felt. An ocean of whimper that didn’t allow the words and the scenes to see drenched her completely like a storm. Water oozed on the eye balls. From the edges they fell down on to her cheeks. The scene in front of her turned hazy.
“ What have we said, you may complain to your husband that we said something and made you cry… we said the truth …” without even washing the hand she walked out fast.
Munemma didn’t even stay a minute there. Forgetting herself with crying Gowri fell on the cot with a sound. She didn’t know how long she cried. When mental agony melted away as tears, her brain started working.
The blame that fell on her is not an ordinary one. In the view of the villagers she did an unforgivable crime.
Work…it’s their life.
Work…it’s their livelihood…one should inspire them to do the field work but they never tolerate if someone turns them away.
They believe that she is the reason for Shiva’s not going to guarding. …it’s true. Before wife’s arrival three fourth days either with one or the other pretext, to guard the fields, or the grains from the pigs, nights he never used to come home.
Till date many farmers do the same. After her coming only he is not leaving the house and going. He left his duty. Left his farmership. She is the reason for it.
What mistake is there if they make her a malefactor?
She remained thinking.
Till the buffalo returned home and calf started shouting she remained that way.
Night after food along with the bed spread she placed two blankets on Shiva’s shoulder, handed over the axe to him. He looked at her as if asking why two blankets?
“I too will come to the field”
“You….” Surprise filled his eyes.
“Yes, I would like to see how it goes on guarding the pigs…”
“What is there to see? We have to sleep there huddled for warmth in the cold …”
“Let me see that”
“You can’t bear that cold.. I myself can’t bear it, that’s why I come home and get scolding from mother…..”
“You are not coming home for that ...” she looked at him from the eye edges.
He laughed secretly.
She didn’t listen at all.
Let her see the attack of cold a day, she could understand –he thought.
While going itself she came to know the attack of the cold. Going inside his blanket huddled close to him she started walking. Keeping her under his arms, making her walk without slipping on the banks looked strange to him.
That Shiva brought his wife with him- spread to three four neighboring fields..
It would have been nice if he had brought the cot -he thought.
He felt bad that he didn’t make a hut.
Taking out the gunny sheets concealed under the acacia base spread them on the green grass and a bedspread on it… the bed looked soft …
The whole atmosphere was cold.
Darkness turned into fog and occupied the earth. Covering herself ompletely Gowri huddled close to him.
“Who is that going that way?” somebody shouted.
“I am Ranganna, going to sheep...”
“Don’t go that way; don’t go that way……”
“Why?”
“Snakes are there …. Big snakes! come, go from this side...”
Shiva signed her moving his fingers on her back tickling. PeddaRamaiah diverted Ranganna who intended to go from where they slept. When he whispered about the twisted snakes and who they are Gowri shrank completely. Shiva felt tickle all over the body and embraced her.
She thought that she may not get sleep as it is a new place.
But it never looked new to her, except the lack of a cot and extreme cold. As any other day in the lap of Shiva in the midst of greetings of his warm breath she slept normally.
Suddenly shouts came flying from far off fields..
The shouts that make people alert though pigs haven’t yet come.
As if recognizing their existence there, they are catching hold of the shouts from one to the other..
Shiva too shouted at the pitch of his voice.
Gowri shuddered. Her whole body quivered. The trace of fear moved along her spine swiftly. Sitting up she looked at Shiva.
He explained the situation and made her lie down.
By that time the whole earth turned wet with snow. . Bed sheets turned cold.
Cold started creeping in but could not show its face between the two bodies.
Slowly the strength of the cold increased. It started to yield their bodies.
As the cold increased Shiva pulled her into his body completely trailing around her. Without allowing the cold to touch her he is covering her with his body as a blanket.
Before midnight the blankets became wet. If they can sleep without moving, the body temperature inside the blankets and the warmth of the breathing then can bear the cold. Once and again if they move the hands and legs, changing their posture adjusting the blanket the cold would be cruel.
Shiva knew that well but Gowri had no comprehension of it at all.
She couldn’t even bear it till the midnight. Though she went into his body she could not bear it. The clothes on her body became the fire of cold burning up till the heart.
She knew the humidity of summer and wetness of rainy season but she never saw so practically the attack of snow in winter like this before.
She had no idea of the severity of changes of nature in that way. Anything is known only after experiencing it. If adamancy changes into a habit one can bear it.
Whole body shivered severely. However she tried she could not control it. The shiver started coming up from the belly button. The nerves of the head started paining as if cracking.
He understood her condition. He didn’t delay then. He brought a bundle of cotton sticks from a nearby place and made fire with them. Though sitting in front of the fire the cold didn’t recede.
The heat touched the front part, back side as if licked by a calf it’s shivering cold, how to warm herself with the fire also she has to learn as lessons from Shiva.
When the blankets were made hot on the fire to cover within five minutes they are drenching again. She proposed to go home though it was dark still.
“That’s why I return home by that time” he said.
“Not at all for that” clearly she condemned the statement and looked strangely at him. After heating the blankets thoroughly, covering her properly with one, making it tight with a towel around her ears he adjusted the edges to come up on to the shoulders.
Finally he made a big flame, heated the body and moved towards home. The grass was wet completely carrying the snow drops.
If she didn’t hold the frills of the saree they are turning wet. It looked as if walking in water upto the knees. While walking in the fields and on the bank Shiva was lifting up the dhoti up to the thighs. She too lifted up the frills like him and taking care of not to wet the clothes bravely walked in that darkness. The pods of rice drenched in ice scraped up till the thighs writing ice scenery on the body and making them Shiva to that strange experience. As soon as they entered the home and closed the door –everyday as they feel the shiver of cold inside –today looked warm strangely.
“Tomorrow you will not come to the field?” he asked smiling.
Huddling in his chest closely after remaining silent for a while she replied, “Take the cot and put it there. Make a small hut there.”
Shiva looked at her with great admiration.
***************
After Moola Karte went Pushyam month arrived. Massori rice came to cutting. Another kind wouldn’t be ready till another month passes. One side the barns of mirchi and on the other side the rice crop cutting…all the farmers were very busy.
Sarojamma arrived at that time.
Her daughter’s face was shrunken and she became very thin. The colour turned dim and lips cracked due to cold … she doubted whether it was her daughter.
Arranging the sewing machine in a corner anxiously she tried to move towards her. Keeping the pockets of sweets and hot she tried to touch her fretfully.
Tried to greet her with tears… “Daughter” saying this she thought of holding her and crying…
She thought of questioning her son in law who was avoiding her. Tried to ask her sister in law an explanation….
But Gowri had not given chance to these.
Keeping the basket of lunch on her mother’s head she said, “Come, let us go”
Sarojamma was shocked.
She thought of throwing away the basket.
Controlling the anger behind her lips she followed her daughter. On the way she opened the epic.
Threw out her unhappiness..
Gowri didn’t reply even to a question.
People of the fields on either side lifted their heads and looked at them strangely.
Mother insisting the questions, and daughter’s silent replies surprised them.
Supplying food to the labor, after they had it, both started to return.
The filled waste on the barn, labor thrashing grains, sighing songs and people working at the barn could not be enjoyed by Sarojamma heartily.
She had boundless anger on her daughter now.
She was jumping as a piece of salt on fire for her daughter’s acts.
On their way home she asked her walking step in step. Grinding her teeth she tried to turn forth to talk. She thought of pulling her daughter with her plait and to give a blow. She felt like slapping on her face.
Keeping the basket at home Gowri moved out.
Without caring the yelling mother at her back she moved into the barn.
The labor is there at the bed of mirchi. They are grading them picking out white ones. Sitting by them she too started working. Sarojamma couldn’t swallow this. But at the same time couldn’t throw it out too.
For a long time sitting under the neem tree she stared at the barn. ……..without a wink……..looking that way.. Some scenario moved on her eyeballs.. Melted the eye balls and slithered as tears………
With whimper and emotion walked swiftly to the barn…….
“Have I not brought you up without even letting you keep your foot on the floor? Have not seen you that your pals shouldn’t have mud? Have I made you at any time to carry a kilogram weight on your head? Have I ever made you to walk a furlong?
Even to go to a cinema have I not taken you in an auto? What a bad time you are having now?” with this she caught hold of her daughter’s hair and swayed her head. And she scattered the mirchi in front of her with legs.
“When I delivered you I went for cutting my stomach, now again you are cutting it…” With this crying she slapped on her back repeatedly.
Labor felt shocked.
They got up suddenly and stopped her. Govindamma and Munemma were there in them.
“How do you know the grief of my mother’s heart?” she shook off them all at once.
“ I never did this marriage to see her this way. If she remains a few days silently here I thought of taking them back to Kadapa to handing over the shop and seeing them like kings. See you people look at her! Look at her hands. Red and with boils… look at her lips …cracked and black… look at her face .white and pale…look at her entire body my dear women .. My golden daughter turned to ….look at her… A sensitive girl who was a palm leaf became a berry branch……” saying this she cried loudly.
Gowri without lifting her head went on moving her hand in mirchi..
The workers never witnessed such scenario. How to console her is not known to them. They never saw a mother feeling bad of her daughter going to a field to work or working hard. They couldn’t even digest it.
Their primary comprehension is when given to a working person it’s unavoidable to go for work.
After listening her nuisance for a long time as she couldn’t tolerate Govindamma said-“it’s good they came to mother in law’s home as soon as they married. If they remained at your home it looks you wouldn’t have allowed them to sleep on a single cot. ….”
Sarojamma lifted her head and looked at the old lady.
“Whatever make up you put on after sending her to her husband, before it dawns the hair will get entangled, the flowers in plaits wither, and pure white eyes with kajal too turn red spreading the kajal. If the husband is rough ……biting the lips and wringing the cheeks, tearing the blouse …he may wound the whole body….going by your stance you seem to never send your daughter to her husband even on the second night…”
Laughter came up forcefully but the working people giggled in the trial of laughing without a sound.
Sarojamma turned her mouth this side and that. “Though old no romance came down” immediately Munemma raised her voice,
“The girl is frail and her waist is slender
Lips are red and the young one is precious
Your daughter is a modern delicacy
She is an elegant beauty
But the fashion never remains for ever aunty. Who knows whether she is pregnant or what …. After nine months there won’t be any thin waist and no red lips, neither the beautiful walks …what can you do then aunty…
If you ask back your delicate darling daughter with thin waist and lean lips where can he bring them…” she sang it as a song.
Gowri still cast her head down and is moving the mirchi.
Once again Govindamma raised her voice “a girl understands the circumstances and adjusts with them”, to stress this she narrated an obscene story of a father who faced troubles exaggerating his daughter’s delicacy too much.

What she felt is not known but looking at Govinadamma hotly Sarojamma moved slowly and went into the house. Squatting on the cot she went on thinking.
The danger which she thought should not come has come. Gowri fell into the same peril.
When she tried that she should but that itself glued to her like a strong gum. Agriculture is a great addiction. Placing seeds in the soil, if they germinate feeling as if they gave life to them, getting obsessed when it grows into crop, taming the buffalos and domesticating hen, let any number of diseases or famine or whatever comes, awaiting for another season, another vision another luck hopefully…
I neglected and could not notice the changes in my daughter, this time my coming is delayed a bit, if I had come at least once or twice a month I I would have noticed her attitude and would have taken care of it.
Daughter’s attitude it’ self is hurting me. how can I question him about anything? I could not see their forcing either. How furtive the girl is, otherwise how can she made me carry the lunch..
However hard she tried to convince her mind, she could not.
Evening workers came that way while going home.. Opening the door they peeped in.
Lying on the cot she lifted her head.
“You have come here in a good time of crop coming to the barn, if you are a good mother you too with your daughter would have worked in the barn”
Govindamma said.
“No need for me to do so…” Sarojamma said.
With a restless gesture “people made her a puppet and playing…they face the consequences.. I told in the beginning itself not to do any work or make her do.. That I’ll make them do the business… have they heard me? Wringed her out completely…….. I thought he would look after her carefully he made her life wretched…” she started crying again. Everyone felt shocked when she blamed that he was no looking after her properly.
“You too blame him only” Govindamma dragged her voice.
“Only carrying her on head is left ... All the new wed brides are asking their husbands to look after them as he takes care of her, and showing their anger on them. All the husbands are scolding him. You too are cursing him.. My dear, let me tell you one thing. No married woman should say this, but
I am old without a husband. So am expressing it, if I get youth once again by God’s grace I wish at least a day I should be his wife ….” Saying this looked at Sarojamma and suddenly left the place.
“O my old lady! “ Munemma expressed her surprise.
All retreated laughing.
After that Gowri entered in slowly. Sarojamma got up like a furious cobra. She blurted out whatever she had in her mind.
She scolded her daughter like anything. Gowrie like a palm leaf stood casting her head down. She let her scold as long as she had the strength.
After that she lifted her head “so what should I do now ...Come let us go.. Bava too will come with us. Let us go to Kadapa”
“You talk this way because we couldn’t go..” Sarojamma shouted.
“If we stay here, it’s unavoidable ma.. What should I do sitting at home? Even if you search the whole village you’ll not get one to talk. How long can I sleep? I feel mad. No time moves if I sit without any work. I have to call Bava home to give me company.. He will stay but the crop in the field gets destroyed. A year’s struggle goes down the drain… the village curses me.. They spit on me.. They blame that as I entered the threshold, I destroyed the family..
They curse you too as you gave birth to such a wretched.. They accuse you for bringing me up this way… that’s why ma.. I go to the field to get a good name to my mother … to get a good name as a daughter…. To get a good name as a daughter in law and to prove that as a new bride my entrance is good …I go to the fields… for your sake and for my sake …not for my bava nor for my mother in law…… for me and for you” saying this she walked out into the backyard.
*************

Sarojamma left the village but the vibrations that she created there have not yet subsided. When Munemma explained her anxiety all the villagers laughed. Govindamma walked into every lane and by lane and narrated the story of Sarojamma to everyone. She alerted new wed girls to take care of their mothers.
Shiva came to know everything about the nuisance that Sarojamma made. Immediately he took his mother aside and requested her and his sister not to talk or grumble anything anywhere.
Again commotion started in his heart. Some unknown fear entered his mind and shivered him. Though talking in the streets, or working at the field or teasing other villagers even when having his food some disturbance sounded within him.
He had experienced the same stage once in the past. That time it was just his imaginative fear. Now it is confirmed. She is ready to snatch her daughter away. She is trying even to take me away holding with her beak.
What to do is not known, How to stop it is not known.
Restlessly he lingered around, could not stand at a place, or sit anywhere. He couldn’t even sleep in the nights.
Lying on the grass heap at the barn once again he surrendered himself to Gowri. Hiding his head in her lap he whimpered.
For a long time she remained consoling him. At last she hugged him and started crying.
As the grains were thrashed and the raw grass was heaped heat was coming out from it. The blanket that covered them was soaking in the snow.
One side the cold on the other side heat melted their bodies in a strange situation draining the agony of one heart into the other. Learning the feelings that could not be expressed in words with their touch, leaving the words hiding the problems, shoving away the agonies they both started moving into a stage of stillness not only with their bodies or the hearts but with souls too………
*************

Standing by the side of dry mirchi Shiva started brushing his teeth with a neem stick. The red mirchi, wet in the snow started glistening in the sunlight strangely. Slowly he walked towards home.
As he came into the shade of neem tree in the cleaned and wetted premises Gowri sat huddled together putting a rangoli.
Sitting under the tree on his toes brushing his teeth he started watching her.
He is wetting her body completely with his looks.
Imprinting her movements in his eyes………..
Reading her feelings on her face too…….
He could not believe that already six months have passed after her coming there.. The way she came alone to the village bringing the rain with her, stepping in his feet seems afresh to his mind. Dousing in the leaking shed the whole night, narrating the story of three Chetas brought a laugh.
Her appearance of that day moved in front of him. Trying to join the present state of her, he struggled for a long time.. Somewhere some incongruence …
Yes, between that time’s physical appearance and the present one, there is a difference.
As her mother complained delicacy in Gowri’s body has reduced. Smoothness has changed. The glisten of muscles disappeared.
The cloudy scars, related to the agriculture hovered over her body.
As she is in front of me continuously I could not find it out..
Yes! Sarojamma’s accusation is nothing but truth.. Gowri became thin.. The load of the work made her beautiful skin dim.
Shiva went into musing.
He struggled a lot to introduce the greenery and the village life to her. He spent all his work and time for her. He became herself to the world.
To introduce her agricultural work his mother felt more anxious than him. She planned many things, taken the help of many people. He knew all her trials and remained silent.
Probably he too might have helped his mother silently indirectly.
This is the good time which has arrived after four years of famine. The entire earth turned fertile. The time looked as a new betel leaf. If stepped on any layer of the mud the time touched the feet like a green plant. If got down into any ditch it touched as the snouts of fish …
It makes even the muddle head into a new leaf. Time that needs no introduction …this time to introduce the village in such a good time they have to face so many troubles.. Targeted Gowri to physical troubles..
We introduced her only the good times of agriculture..
She did not know the famines… she had no familiarity with its cruelty… she did not know that the famine eats the good terms between the humans.
Farmer’s committing suicides, consuming pesticides, even for the slight economic problems going to the courts with fights, for just wetting water the wars between the siblings, to know all these…. Gowri should acquaint to famine. . It’s natural that another famine comes.
Now how easily they introduced the good times to her, can they familiarize her with the famines?
Can they explain their gesture? Agriculture looks beautiful in good times. Green crops, golden harvest, milk oceans, everything is good. They struggled a lot to introduce the good things.
Tomorrow the drying heart of the farmer, dry crops, when the bones come out from the buffalo as they could not feed, dying hen with diseases, a pitcher of water to be brought from a distance of miles, attacks of debtors how can we introduce all these to Gowri elegantly?
Shiva fell into thinking.
As she completed the Rangoli, she kept a lump of dung in the middle, placed a yellow pumpkin flower on it. Moving away from it standing with a hand on her waist she was assessing her own skill strangely.
She felt all the dots in Rangoli as young children below the age of seven hearing her song, submerged in playing, sitting huddled together.
The rangoli looked like a design stitched on the sewing machine. It looked like a toy taken shape in the hands of DWACRA society members and it seemed as the women came to her to learn alphabet.
As soon as Shiva saw the pumpkin flower in the rangoli Sankranti moved in his mind.
Behind that new son in law’s eating the feast at mother in law’s home….too…


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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 07.06.2010

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