HEAVENLY BLISS
By Dr. Poranki Dakshina Murthy
Translated by Nidadavolu Malathi
000
Suddenly, from out of nowhere, people started pouring into our town; not just a few small
crowds, but a multitude of them. Our shelter was flooded with folks day in and day out. Some had no room
anywhere and they started cooking on the front porches of some of the houses. A few others set up tents
near the village well. The entire place was a chaos.
For the town’s storekeeper, it was a blessing. He buried his head in the cash box and kept
counting his earnings; he didn’t have time even to check which way the pin on the weighing
scale was leaning.
Children could not stay home; they went bustling around, looking important and busy. Of
course, how can they stay home while so many people swarmed the town; and were scurrying around,
like at a wedding party, with hundreds of new faces, short braids, and tiny hairdos. The children
went to receive them with great zeal. They were everywhere, like a shower of pogada flowers,
after the tree was shaken.
For the past four or five days, people started pouring in as if it were a village fair. The town was
small, I mean very small. In fact, it can not even be called a town. Originally, a few huts were
built by the roadside. And then, during the reign of the Vijayanagar empire, two wells were dug
and a few more families found their homes, hoping that the wells would provide water for their
subsistence. Then they settled down and started farming the land in the area. That’s how it
became a township. Nobody cared to give it a name. The people never needed it. The
Revenue department however registered that land under the name of a neighborhood village.
The town has one specific advantage though. Since it was located by the roadside. Other
villagers, on their way to the city, found it a handy place for stopping briefly and resting.
On that day, Sivanna, a farm hand, had no time even to breathe. Normally, he was not a sweaty
type of man, no matter how hard he worked; and so, he never looked tired. He was busy
working, with his head down. He had no time to think. Still, a thing or two kept surfacing in his
mind off and on, giving him a jab at his heart. Whoever could have expected that such a huge
catastrophe would occur in their town?
No, nobody could’ve expected it; it is not unusual though, for the Rayala seema area. There
are some dim-wits who’d call it ratanaala seema [diamond ore] but, it’s a rock bed to speak the
truth. There are no canals to bring in water for farming in the area; and so, the farmers have to
draw water from the wells, breaking their backs. Sometimes, they would have no rains for four
or five years at a stretch, causing drought; the wells dry up, and the people have to struggle
even for a morsel of food. Often the poor families are forced to leave the land, which they had
trusted for centuries. They would go away to distant lands, in the hope of staying alive. That’s
when families go away in huge clusters, leaving behind the gloomy townships. That is not
unusual. But the people in this particular town never faced it, not until now.
***
By the end of the day, the commotion died down. Sivanna finished packing all the stuff that
belonged to his landlord in boxes.
He went home and lit up the stove. The splinters caught fire and the flames shot up. He put a
pot of water on the stove, added the maize grits and covered it with a lid. Then, he sat in front
of the stove, watching the flames. He watched, without batting an eyelid, as the splinters blazed
and the flames enveloped the pot. Vapors started oozing out from under the lid; the maize was
cooking, hissing softly. He picked up the ladle and stirred the maize a few times, covered it
again, and lowered the flames.
While he was sitting there, he made up his mind; he pushed away all the thoughts that were
hovering in his head. No matter however much he suffered loneliness in that hut, unlike all
others, he would not leave town. His landlord was leaving with his family; he did not ask Sivanna
to go with him, not in so many words; but his wife said something to that effect. At the time, for
some odd reason, he thought it would be nice if he went with them. He waited for his landlord to
say the same thing but that did not happen. He was disappointed a little but did not suggest it
himself. Then he considered going to some other place by himself, if not with his landlord, and
making a new life for himself, as a day laborer or something. After all, he was just one person;
could not he manage somehow? He was at the prime of youth and hard-working. Then again, the
other thoughts took over—the thought of leaving the native soil, however worthless it was,
depressed him. What kind of relationship he has with this soil? Can’t tell! He could not explain it.
He never shed a tear in his twenty-years of life; yet, today the thought of leaving this place was
agonizing.
Sivanna told himself, “I am not going anywhere; I will not. The entire townspeople can go away;
the town can be deserted totally and all the houses abandoned, but I am not leaving my home.”
He convinced himself that all this was great—lighting up the stove by himself, washing and
pouring the maize in the cooking pot, and after it was cooked, emptying it into the plate, and
sitting down with his food and a slice of pickle, all by himself, and sitting for hours on end like
that—all that seemed interesting and pleasurable for him; it even felt like a custom he must not
sidestep ever.
Sivanna finished eating, spread a mat in the open on the front yard, and lay down with his
hands tucked under his head. He kept staring into the sky. The moonlight spread sparsely on
his face. He dozed off.
A little after midnight, the commotion stirred up again. Sivanna could hear the noises from the
wheels of the moving carts and the jingling bells around the necks of the bulls. He got up
quickly, washed up and went to the landlord’s house. By then, the carts were already there,
lined up. Sivanna loaded the boxes in one cart, single-handedly. The landlord’s family got on
the other two carts. Sivanna followed the carts to the outskirts of the town, to bid farewell. The
landlady said to her husband, “I was hoping Sivanna would go with us.”
“Yes, that would’ve been nice. But I don’t think he would want to leave this place,” he replied,
sounding casual.
Sivanna heard their conversation. He knew that those words were not spoken wholeheartedly;
he would have felt hurt under different circumstances but he was not worried this time. He told
himself again, “That’s true. I can not leave this town and walk away.” The carts went past the
boundary line The landlord told Sivanna to turn around; he stuffed a ten-rupee bill in Sivanna’s
hand. Sivanna didn’t want to accept it. He pulled back; the landlord called out for him. She said,
“Look, Sivanna, this is our pleasure. Don’t say no. I know this is nowhere near all the things you’
ve done for us. Yet, please, don’t refuse it. Ayya garu would be hurt. I know you don’t need this
money. But sometime later you might want to go somewhere and then you’ll need it. Save it for
that purpose. One more thing. Keep an eye on our house.” Sivanna nodded politely.
The carts moved on. Sivanna stood there for a long time and after the carts were out of sight,
turned around and went home. After his landlord left town, Sivanna did not step outside his hut
for a couple of days. In the meantime, almost all the houses in town were vacated. Even other
villagers who were passing by stopped only for a few hours or a day and moved on. Some were
on carts, some on foot, and a few older persons were carried by other men in dolis ; and their
animals followed behind them.
Sivanna came out of his hut on the third day; the sun was going down. He went to the village
meeting place—the concrete patio—where people used to gather. He saw the three grimy
stones, set to serve as a stove for the passersby. He went farther; he found nothing but a few
rags and used papers; all the houses were filthy for want of care. Some of the streets were like
dark tunnels; no smell from the animal sheds; no sight of greenery to be found anywhere, not
even for sample. Sivanna kept walking, recalling the persons in each house as he passed.
As he approached the well, he saw something white; it was moving. He went closer.
A cow!
He was taken aback. Poor thing; probably, she escaped from the herd and returned home.
“Hum, you are also like me; leaving home breaks our hearts, right?” he said.
The cow lifted her face and looked up. Sivanna patted on its back gently and started walking,
with his hand on her neck. The cow, as she followed him, kept looking back towards the well.
“You, silly animal, looking for water? Let’s go to my place. I’ll give you all the water you can
drink,” he said. Then something else occurred to him. Where could he get fodder for the cow?
The cow was walking slowly, nibbling on the blades of grass that dropped here and there from
the carts that went by earlier. Sivanna chuckled.
A faint layer of moonlight spread on the cow, and seemed to condense on her. Sivanna was
amused that he should find this new life here where humans could not survive. There was no
way to know whom that cow belonged to, or which village she came from.
Sivanna was walking, laughing to himself. The cow was walking behind him. Suddenly, some
sound was heard from one of the side lanes. Sivanna did not hear it but the cow did and she
stopped. She bellowed with pricked ears. Sivanna also stopped and then heard sobs coming
softly from the side lane. He was taken aback.
The cow bellowed again.
Sivanna went into the lane. The houses on either side were very close to each other and the
lane was too narrow; it was like a dark tunnel. He went farther and heard the cries of a little girl.
He moved quickly and found the little girl. She, barely five-years old, wore a skirt and a blouse
and standing alone. She saw him and stood there without moving.
Sivanna’s heart moaned at the sight of her. He could not imagine whose child she was; who
could have forgotten here, from which village—no way of knowing.
Sivanna was baffled as he thought of the series of events that were occurring in his life.
He picked up the child and held tight to his chest. He said, “Don’t cry, baby. Nothing to fear. We’
ll go to our home. I’ll feed you, sing lullabies and put you to bed. Okay? You’ll not cry
anymore, yes? We don’t have to worry about anything. You, I and our cow—we three will be all
right. Let’s not leave this town ever. This whole town is ours now. Let’s not go anywhere any
time, ever again. Okay?”
The child stopped crying but gasping for breath. The cow was walking ahead of them. Sivanna
told himself, “It must be a blessing, the fruit of my good deeds of past several past lifetimes.
How else can I account for this strange events—this little child coming into my life at a time
when the entire country was hit with drought, the entire town starved for food, and deserted the
place. I was the only one, alone and scared, to stay back; how could I explain these new
relationships in my empty life?”
He pulled the child’s face closer and kissed on her forehead. The little girl put her two hands
around his neck and snuggled her face in his bosom.
The heavenly bliss he felt in his heart at that moment was beyond belief. Only the full-blown
moon would know!
***
(The Telugu original, vennela pandina vela [Fullly Glowing Moonlight] was published in Jwala.
Permission from the author is gratefully acknowledged.)