Life and Death: A Short Story by Naikal Gangera

In the corner of the one-room hut, on the mattress spread on the cot, Leela lay awake. Her eyes hungrily swept the familiar nooks and corners of the room.

Life was ebbing away from Leela. She saw the scene in her mind’s eye: the heresay-bearers squatted on the small verandah of the hut, smoking beedis, would tie the nanami. A father’s anguish would gush from two tearful eyes. Folks would whisper to one another: Leela died of T.B….like her mother. Leela shuddered.

A rough, but soothing hand pressed her forehead gently. Leela’s face, pale and worn out with pain and grief melted Jetho’s heart.

“Don’t cry dear”

“Bapu..” she had much to say. But her chest on which the ribs were so exposed one could count them- heaved and subsided rapidly. Something, which she could not understand, beat furiously in her heart.

Jetho pulled out a spittoon from under the cot. Leela spat into the spittoon. Jetho saw traces of blood in the spittoon as he threw some mud into it.

“Don’t worry your head off on silly thoughts. There is nothing wrong with you. You are as healthy as me.”

Leela smiled. Jetho knew, only too well, the meaning of her smile. A long sigh escaped his throat.

Lighting his hookah, Jetho sat on the edge of the cot, as he did every day, and sat thinking:

“I’ll take Leela to the hospital in town for treatment. After she is cured, I’ll marry her off to a boy from a good family. I’ll spend the rest of my last days playing with her children."

“Ek jor, eh…ek jor. Jetho’s reveries were broken by the hollering from the street. Paso, pulling a handcart was shouting to the boys who were lending him a hand. “Yeh, once more..ah…that’s it my boys..another heave…that’s it.”

Paso stopped the cart in the middle of the street and as is the custom, announced in his baritone:” Lya, come out everybody! The buffalo has arrived!”

Jetho shuffled up to Paso with slow steps. The carcass of a buffalo was spread out on the cart.

“Paso, where did you get it?”

“From Rambhai’s house.”

Out of force of habit , Jetho reckoned. Two hundred rupees for the skin and the horns. Another fifty for the bones.

The crows mustered in full strength around the handcart. A couple of them, more aggressive than the rest, ignoring the presence of Paso and Jetho, pecked at the swollen eyes of the carcass.

After drinking a cup of tea and lighting a beedi, Paso beat vigorously on a tin drum with a stick. This was a signal which meant ‘come and collect your meat’.

With the expertise of a surgeon doing a post mortem , Jetho cut up the buffalo. The crows hovered overhead and dogs prowled around the cart.

Suddenly Paso leaped up with a shout of joy. The buffalo’s stomach had yielded a gold necklace of considerable weight. There was praise all around for Paso on his luck. The buffalo had freed him of all debts, they said- even those carried over from his previous birth!

Soon all the old, rusty aluminum vessels were filled with beef. Chulhas were lighted and the chimneys belched smoke. The aroma of boiled beef wafted across the street majestically.

“Bhai, you are really a lucky man,” Jetho said to Paso as he handed him the hookah and turned to go home. Hanging lantern on the peg on the wall, he glanced at Leela. Leela was sleeping. If anything happened to her… he trembled at the thought. He took her hand in his and felt her heart throbbing.

Leela opened her eyes. The yearning for her old, happy days lay curled up in her drowsy eyes.

Jetho sat up on the bed. He brought her a glass of water from the water-pot. Leela drank the water, got down from the cot and stretched herself.

“Go to sleep, dear.”

“ I have been lying on the bed all day, Bapu.”

Leela sat on the edge of the bed. A number of bugs were hovering around the tube light. The flies sitting on the clothesline had started dozing off. A lizard in search of prey was prowling on the mossy wall. A dog sitting in front of Paso’s hovel was cracking bones picked up from the garbage heap. Intermittently, it barked at another dog which dared to venture near.

“Hey girl, is Jetho in?”

“Yes,” Leela replied and went into a fit of coughing.”Bapu, Dasbhai wants you.”

Jetho, who was removing the half burnt coals in the tube of the hookah with a twig came out in the verandah. “ Saheb, what can I do for you?” Before he had finished, a slap caught him square on his cheek. Jetho, who was no more young, staggered and fell. Dasbhai stepped on Jetho’s chest and kicked him in the ribs. “This is what comes of seeing your wretched face first thing in the morning..Lost ten thousand rupees.  You, low caste scoundrel!”

The neighbours managed to placate Dasbhai and separate him from the helpless Jetho. One of the Jetho’s front teeth was broken. Wiping the blood from his face with the torn sleeve of his shirt, he pleaded in a broken voice, “Baap, we are like sons to you. Forgive us…”

Dasbhai walked away in a huff. Leela who had watched everything in silence was lying curled up on the cot, tears in her eyes.

“Don’t cry, dear.”

“Bapu, that scoundrel hit you and ..”

“To live in this village one has to take some roughing up as it comes.” He rubbed her forehead gently. “I could have thrashed him, but… what would happen to our people? Who will give them work? ”

“Jetho kaka,” Paso said, “You are the one who has always stood up for us. By hitting you, Dasbhai has trodden on our self-respect.”

“Forget it.”

A small group of men had gathered around the well. As he lighted a beedi, Jetho lighted a beedi. Jetho heard Dasbhai’s cry.” Bring a rope, somebody!” Save my Tiniya!”

Racing through the crowd Jetho leaped into the well. Feeling his way in the water, he managed to get his hands on the boy who was nearly unconscious.

Dasbhai threw the end of a rope in the well. Jetho held the boy over his shoulders and caught the rope. The name standing around the well pulled him up.

The boy was laid on the platform of the well. Thumbing the back of his neck in quick succession they expelled the water trapped in his lungs. Soon he was quite all right. Dasbhai put his hand around Jetho’s shoulders.”Bhai Jetho, Forgive me.”

“God brought your boy back to life”, Jetho said as he turned to go home.

“Dasbhai, your faith is true. That is why your son was saved.”

Dasbhai ran after Jetho and stopped him. He took off the necklace around his neck and handed it to Jetho. ”Take This. I know it’s  hardly anything. But, as they say ,if I don’t have a full flower, let me give you at least one of the petals.”

“No, bhai, I can’t take this.”

“Come on, I am giving this to you with my whole heart.”

Suddenly Jetho thought of Leela.

If the necklace is sold in the market.. There was at least twelve hundred rupees in it. Leela’s T.B. could be cured.

“No”, Jetho told himself. “I can’t take it. I won’t be worthy of my mother’s womb, if I do...”

"Dasbhai", Jetho’s  voice had hardened. "Don’t be a fool."

Jetho turned and walked away leaving Dasbhai staring at his retreating figure.

As he passed the colony of Thakardas, he met Paso .Paso was pulling a handcart on which  lay the  sprawling carcass of a buffalo.

“Hey! Where did you get it?”

“I got it from there.”Paso pointed to the colony. He lighted a beedi and gave one to Jetho.

“Kaka, you better rush to the Kanbi colony. That Ram Doshi’s buffalo is dying.”

Jetho climbed onto the dilapidated stone platform in front of Kanbi colony and squatted on it. He could see every single house in the colony from there.

He head the buffalo moaning from Ram Doshi’s cattle shade. Ram Doshi was gesticulating furiously trying t explain something to his wife.

The buffalo went on moaning.

Suddenly, everything held into place in his mind like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. Rama Doshi’s wife had lost her necklace that morning. Supposing it had fallen in the yard while she was grazing the cows and suppose the buffalo had swallowed it.

Jetho sat himself thinking,

“Yes, that is what it looked like. The buffalo’s swollen belly. The bastard had certainly swallowed it. But never mind, it will croak and I will get the necklace.”

Leela’s T.B.will be cured in no time. Ram Doshi   owned fifteen bighas of land. He was not likely to lose his sleep over it. The necklace had been pawned to Ram doshi by Fulchand’s wife who had parted with it with such agony. As if her heart was been wrenched from her,  that her curse had become attached to it. Ram Doshi’s wife lost it and the buffalo gulped it down. Tough luck for the buffalo. 

The flow of Jetho’s thoughts was cut off by the arrival of the village gate. The vet made a thorough examination of the buffalo.

The buffalo won’t live, doctor saheb, it will save my Leela. There is gold in its belly. I will get Leela admitted in a big hospital in the city. I will raise a pandal in front of the house for my Leela’s wedding. I will invite the whole street. I will present a watch to the bridegroom. Carried away by these reckonings, he hummed a wedding song.

Thali Pavalu nache, Bhamra re..

Mahin vevaini kheti nache bhamra re.

Bhali vevan bhali nache bhamra re,

Nachyanun nachaman mange Bhamra re.

The buffalo suddenly bellowed. Jetho felt dizzy. He ran frantically to the vet.

“Doctor saheb, did you work some magic on the buffalo?”

“There was nothing wrong with it. It just ate too much and got constipated.”

As the vet walked away, Jetho glanced one last time at the cattle shade. The buffalo bellowed again and rocked its head.

Crest-fallen, Jetho walked home. He had not gone far when he saw Paso running towards him. Paso gripped him by the shoulders. He could  say nothing for a moment.

“Kaka”, he blurted out, “ Leela broke her neck and vomited blood. Kaka, poor Leela. Poor girl, she has left for Prabhu’s abode.”

"The buffalo lived, and my Leela died." Jetho raved as Paso dragged him away.

Today, five years later Paso is still at loss as to what made Jetho go insane, the buffalo’s survival or the Leela’s death?

Nanami = ‘thingummy, a euphemism for a dead body.