| Ki. Rajanarayanan. |
This is an English translation of “Thel Visham” a comic short story written by Ki. Rajanarayanan. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.
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There was a farmer in the village. His wife was a very
beautiful woman. Her breasts were exquisitely beautiful. She developed an
illicit affair with a shop keeper in the next street. What sort of an affair it
was! If she went to his shop with one bundle of cotton, he would give her
ration worth two bundles. If she brought quarter of a kilogram worth grains, he
would give her items worth half a kilo gram of grains- almost double of items in
every dealing. One day night she was late. He was eagerly waiting for her. She brought
some grains as usual. After their usual dealings were over, he noticed her
standing hesitantly. He looked up to her as if asking her what was up.
She told him, “You grow weaker day by day. Why don’t you
consult a doctor and take proper medicine?” Hearing her loving words, he opened
up his heart and confided her his desire to have her, hesitantly though. Without
directly engaging his words, she was asking him something else or the other. This
man was just attending to her meaningless queries. They were talking to each
other like this for some time without knowing what actually they were talking. At
one point both remained silent as to what to talk further. That time, he asked
her, “Can I come to your house tomorrow?” Not responding to his question directly,
she threw a brief smile at him and left.
The farmer left his home next day early morning to plough the field. In minutes he started ploughing the land, he saw his water
pot being toppled by a crow. As he wouldn’t be able to work under the scorching
sun anymore without water, he stopped ploughing and went back home with the empty
pot to fill water in it. He found the door of his house locked. As there was no
justifiable reason for the door to be locked at that hour, he peeked through the
key hole out of inquisitiveness to see why the door had been locked. A grand
visual came in front of his eyes through the key hole- The shop keeper’s mouth
was on his wife’s breasts…..The farmer knocked at the door fiercely. The door
opened. On seeing her husband standing at the door, his wife started howling at
him, “O! My good heavens! You have come here at the right time. Haven’t you? Look
at my deplorable condition. Would you ever find such a pathos anywhere? If I hadn’t
found him, I would have died by now” she cried inconsolably.
The poor husband stood in front of her unable to understand anything. The shop keeper was standing with his head hung, looking down. The farmer asked his wife to explain what had exactly happened. His wife told him, “How can I explain such a shameful thing to you? Such a shameful thing. After collecting cotton from the field, I was coming back home cuddling the bundle against my breast. Suddenly I felt a piercing pain on my breast as if a live ember had fallen on it. I dropped the bundle down and saw a black scorpion falling off from my breast. It was excruciatingly painful. It was simply unbearable. When I was screaming helplessly, I was informed that this man was an expert in sucking out scorpion's poison. When I called him, he denied as he wouldn’t enter anyone’s house if the male member was not present. I somehow convinced him that my husband was not that type of a person who suspects my integrity and it wasn’t wrong since it was an emergency. So I brought him home. The pain is relatively better now compared to that time” she explained her husband amidst crying.
Her husband comforted her, “It is alright. Don’t cry.
Such things do happen at times. It is beyond our control. Thank god, this man came
to rescue you at the time of emergency. Actually I came here to collect water
as the pot was toppled by a crow”. He expressed his sincere thanks to the shop
keeper, filled the water in the pot and left.
After some days, one day the farmer came running home
yelling that a scorpion had bitten him. His wife who was busy in the kitchen came
running to him anxiously and asked him whether it was really a scorpion that had bitten him. He told her that it was a well grown scorpion dark in colour and he
had caught it too.
He started yelling again, “Aiyo…I am unable to bear
the pain. Go to that shop keeper and bring him immediately. Please run fast and
bring him” he hurried her up. She ran to the shop keeper and explained him everything
that had happened and insisted him to come along with her. If he didn’t come
now, her husband would then suspect her, she told him. The shop keeper thought
that this could be a drama just to check whether he would be available on call for any
emergency. He went along with her as he had no other excuse to deny. The shop
keeper asked the farmer where the scorpion had bitten him. The farmer lifted
his dhoti up and showed his….
We, along with our grandfather laughed listening to this story. “Then
what happened after that?” we asked our grandfather. “Afterwards? It happened
afterwards. That was it. The shop keeper was caught as he had no other way to
escape” he said.
***Ended***
