Chapter - 2
“Hei, look at this, how these paddy grains have sprouted without even
one going waste” – a thin body with her saree pulled up to her ankle, nose
rings that had lost their shine sitting on her withered, oily face. Ear studs
with gemstones, stuffed with shellac. A contented look on Rasokkiyam’s face
seeing the paddy grains in the palms of Panjalai, who stood holding her hands
out to him like the goddess of food.
He had purchased those paddy seeds from Karunkuli, where one
could find paddy fields filled with knee-deep mud and panicles looking down
with their weights. Rasokkiyam would usually like to see the quality of seeds
by making a handful of seeds sprout before he used them for sowing and seedling
so that he could either change the seeds or adjust their quantity if he found
them poor in quality. Neither did he like to regret about the poor output nor
blame the seeds for their quality after sowing.
“No matter how the quality of seeds is. They sprout just
perfect as your hands are very lucky,” Rasokkiyam said, smiling at her.
A sudden gush of shyness overwhelmed Panjalai, she grinned
silently. She knew well that what he had told was true. He used to sow the
seeds only after receiving it from her hands. All the tasks such as planting,
weeding, and harvest- everything would start from her hands. Not only that, it
was she who had been behind him for everything- from tirelessly toiling on the
fields matching her husband’s skills to maintaining a family.
Suddenly the kids and calves resting in the front yard got up
and eagerly ran towards the gate. Bhooma, carrying a bundle of grasses with
some pearl millet stalks sticking out, was struggling to open the gate as the
pollen and chaff of the stalks mixed with sweat fretted her skin.
“Wait there a second.” Rasokkiyam opened the gate, pushing
the calf aside. She couldn’t move a step as both the kids were trying to nibble
the grass with their legs up on her body but in vain, frequently sliding down
her frock and bleating in disappointment. The calf seemed to be as strong as a
donkey. Bhooma had a sharp pain in her neck as if it had gotten sprained when
the calf that ran out of Rasokkiyam’s control pulled a pearl millet stalk
sticking out of the bundle with force in a flick of a second. Putting all these
troubles behind, a nanny goat tethered to a guava tree broke the coir rope with
a quick twitch and ran to Bhooma with the same speed, leapt over her with its
front legs strongly placed on her abdomen, and tried to nibble the grasses.
Bhooma had the worst of the day with this ordeal as she was afraid of the
safety pin, fixed loosely in the place of her shirt button, falling off again
and thus facing the same ignominy she had faced in the field…and she grasped
her shirt tightly from sliding down.
“Don’t you see them obstructing your way as if at loggerheads
with you? Better drop it down somewhere. We can collect it later,” Panjalai
shouted at her.
“I know everything. You mind your business,” Bhooma replied
impetuously and threw the bundle away in the front yard. The kids and calves
had their share of bites from all directions.
Cracking her neck slightly, with sweat and mud, she sat on a
chair. Her pet dog, ‘Naughty,’ which was till then resting near the doorway,
went to her, stood beside her, brushing and wagging its tail very frequently, and
licking her hands probably to prove its loyalty more. Panjalai, who came out to
wash the rice cooking pot, thrashed the flirting dog with the pot, yelling at
it, “When you went to her in the morning, she shooed you away by throwing
stones at you as if she was averse to even feeling your smell. Didn’t she? Now
you have gone to her again and are dallying with her like your neck leash.”
“Not taking him along with me like a pillow is the only great
thing I miss, it seems. He will dig out the peanut in the hostile fields and
aggravate the problems that are already brewing more there,” she threw out a
caustic reply.
Completely unconcerned with anything thrown at him, the
‘naughty', with the stains of charcoal on his skin after being smacked with the
rice pot, went near to her and settled on her feet, curling up his body.
The sun began to scorch, and so did the impatience. Bhooma
was sitting quietly, watching blankly at the cows and bulls, which were
pulling, tautening the ropes to the point of breaking as they grew restless at
seeing the green bundles of grasses. Rasokkiyam glanced at her and grew
apprehensive about her tense look as he ambled to the cows and bulls, fed them
some grasses from the bundle, which they were trying to untie with their
snouts.
Panjalai dragged the nanny goat, which was chomping on
tidbits while standing on a cot, by its broken coir rope to the guava tree. It
wasn’t that easy to drag the goat. “How strong you must be that you could break
such a sturdy rope. It seems that this must be tethered with an iron chain
henceforth,” she said.
Panjalai sensed something amiss when she saw Bhooma sitting
immobile for long till the former completed cleaning the house and dumping the
ashes from the stove at the garbage pit.
“Why are you sitting like this? Aren’t you going to the
school? Go, take a bath,” Panjalai said.
Hardly had those words fallen out of her mouth, Bhooma
spilled out, painfully, “As an adolescent girl, it has become too big for me
that I have to go to the field myself all alone to shoo away the birds.”
Hearing her words, Rasokkiyam stopped abruptly as he was
about to enter the house. Grossly confused at her words, Panjalai retorted, “I
don’t get you. Our field is within a calling distance from here. Shooing away
the birds doesn’t require these many big stories. Moreover, it is quite
surprising to know that you have become aware of your adolescence only today”
“It doesn’t matter to you. Does it? I am the only girl out
there. You could have asked Anna to spend some time in the morning in the field
before he leaves for his work.” She was about to break down.
“Leave this matter if you don’t like to go there. Why this
unsolicited melodrama seeking justice for a petty issue? Rasokkiyam told, went
in.
“Hold your benevolence. She is just an empty-headed, arrogant
girl. Who’s asked her to go to the field? She goes there herself and then
brings tons of complaints here. Get up, have your bath. Even if all the demons
of the village come together, they will run away if they meet you. You are
whining here as if they are waiting in the field to swallow you up by stuffing
you in a single blade of a betal leaf.”
“What happened? Why is my sweetheart shooing the birds,
crying now?” Her aunt Ambujachi queried as she was putting the pitcher down
from her head at a corner of the house.
Bhooma’s anger shot up suddenly. “You keep your children in
your house so that they don’t have to go to the field. I am going alone there
to shoo the birds that include your field as well. That is why my tears
did appear so inferior to you,” words spilled out of her mouth in anger.
Her uncle Kanagaraju, wearing a lungi folded across his waist
with the colour- banded underwear visible outside and a towel, which one
couldn’t discern whether it was a blanket or a rug, covering his upper body,
arrived there, possibly after overhearing their conversation.
“Leave aside this petty matter. I will go to the field myself
from tomorrow and shoo away the birds from both fields. Now, you be concerned
only with your school,” he told as he was cleaning his tongue with a forked
twig, gargling his mouth while standing along the gate.
“No…No…It is unnecessary. Some men would turn up in the early
morning before the rooster crows and take you along with them to show you the
prospective cattle in some villages for doing business. Then, the flocks of
birds will empty the field. Even if you go there, who will bring these animals
green grasses in the morning? They get so impatient that they don’t even allow
me to open the gate when I come near?” She pointed to the kids and calves and
indicated that his suggestion was unfeasible.
Panjalai grew agitated at her words. “Sitting fixedly like a
stone mortar, you don’t want anyone to go to the field, and you have your stock
of stories to tell if at all you go there,” said Panjalai. As she was speaking
fast, she saw the pearl millet stalks with panicles and asked her daughter,”
Why the hell have you brought so many panicles that would be enough to make
rice flakes? Had you let those birds, they would have picked far less than
this. Is this the way you shoo the birds?”
Bhooma’s face shrank more than earlier and grew gloomy.
Rasokkiyam must have sensed something. He went near to her, fondly cleared the
pearl millet flowers from her head, and asked her, “Why are you looking dull?”
She must have had something that gave in to her. “I just
tripped over the ridge and rolled down the pearl millet stalks and broke them…”
She couldn’t continue further.
“Did you get hurt?” he asked her anxiously.
“No…I wasn’t hurt, pa” —the image of Sikamani walking on the
ridge with his head lowered came over her mind in a flash.
