A Divo for the Family: Joseph Macwan

                                                   

An age has passed since that dark, fateful night ; but it still remains fresh in my memory.   It was in the month of bhadarwa. It had rained cats and dogs for three days. Water had seeped in through the raw walls of the mud hut and the smell of damp cowdung, plastered years ago on the floor, hung in the air. The groans of pain from the room escaped through the cracks on the closed door into the verandah, where the thin flame of a lamp was flickering. Ashima, tormented by her rheumatism, was tossing and turning on her rope-coat. 

The great, tide to a pole on the verandah, was getting restless. It went on getting up and lying down by turns and scraping at the wet cowdung plaster on the floor. As it was about to let out a ;bleat long suppressed in its throat, Ashima chided it; ‘ keep quiet , you rascal. I know you are getting edgy too. But we all have to go through it, haven’t we? “It seemed the goat was abashed by this remonstrance, for it stood still and started at the closed door.

Ashima trembled, stricken by an invisible terror, as a few drops of the departing rain which had ravaged the earth to its heart’s content for three days, like the rivers of sorrow in Ashima’s life, tapped on the tiles of the roof.

Flashes of lightning lighted up the mango tree in the yard. The wind swung the empty nets hanging from the rafters of the roof. A shaft of pain pierced Ashima‘s heart.  The tower clock struck three and a heart rending scream shattered the peace of the might. With the ring of the clock came an echoing cry : ooh …ah …ooh …Ashima  who had been confined to her bed for days, her rheumatism giving her a racking pain in every joint in her body, got  up from the cot with a jump.                                                                      

‘Icha, open the door, I say! All my troubles have ended! I can smile again; I can laugh a thousand laughs!  Icha, open the  door!’                                                                                                                                                                                       With a tug Ashima pulled back the latch, opened the door and entered the room. Icha Suyani and Moolchi Marvadan started at her dumbfounded 1 that Ashima could miraculously cast off her pain and illness and strut about, her chest heaving, at the birth of a grandson was something they had not reckoned for !  Moolchi was busy clearing up while Icha was cutting of f the umbilical cord. Caressing her daughter in law‘s forehead , Ashima cried ecstatically;                                                                                                                  

 “ oh my dear , I was barren; you have made me fruitful you have pulled me out of my widowhood . O, my little boy how you have lighted up our lives! My darling! My precious angel of fortune!’                                               

At this, her rheumatism caught up with her and Ashima collapsed to the floor in a spasm of pain. Moolchi and Icha lifted her up by her arms, carried her to the verandah and laid her on her cot. Ashima’s eyes looking up at the edge of the slanting roof of in the abating  darkness, travelled back to her young days. Twenty five years ago, she had sat on the bridal seat beside Vashram, all decked up, on this same verandah. Vashram was his mother’s eighth child and the only one who survived into youth.  Vashram’s father had died when his mother was five months pregnant with him. Being with child she did not leave her in laws’ as custom decreed. Brightening up Vashram became for her a kind of marital bliss with its yearnings and anxieties.                                  

 When   Ashi stepped into the   house as the bride she dreamed of bright, joyful days ahead. But before the young couple had completed the first year of their married life, cholera struck , both mother and son were devoured by the monster . It soon became widely accepted in the neighborhood that death had come to stay for good in Vashram’s house .there were many who had no qualms about describing Ashi as a ‘witch’ or a’vamp’. The wise and the experienced among them were of the opinion that Ashi would promptly return to her house with her father who had come to mourn Vashram’s death. She would marry again - so ran their reckoning. But when the women of the neighborhood had come to send off the bereaved wife persuaded her  to put on her widow’s weeds. Ashi made them dumb founded with her behavior. When the chhedo ended and one of the women bolder than the rest, asked  her to put on her mourning. Ashi  suddenly stood up, casting off  all her widows modesty. In a voice loud enough for her father and the elders of the caste sitting on the verandah to hear, Ashi declared ‘ I shall put on mourning ; but am not going anywhere. This is my home and this is where I will live for the rest of my life. May Bhagvan; help me see better days. Go away, all of you ! I want ‘to ‘have a word with my  father.

And they all went away mumbling, “All right, all right. It is her home and nobody can throw her out. If she wants to spend the rest of her life here, who are we to say no?”

“Baap, you  can go home” Ashi told her father. “Don’t worry about me. I will send word if I need anything. Let me look after the house.” Her mother could make nothing of her behaviour. But Ashi was true to her word and soon came to be known in the neighborhood as Ashima. She resolutely turned her back on the temptations of youth and kept the young men of the family at arm’s length. Soon she was blessed with a child. Her mother who had come down to help her left after a  month,  her heart beaming with joy and gratitude for the people of the neighborhood overwhelmed by their generosity and love for Ashi. Her daughter was indeed an angel who brought prosperity and happiness to the family!  

 As the child was considered a daan (gift) from god, they called him Dano. Ashi laid him to sleep in a hammock tide to a free . As she went to work in the fields. Holding her hand Ashi petted and indulged him with vengeance, as if she was making up for any neglect he might have suffered in his previous births! This however proved to be his undoing. Ashi would spend the last paisa she had to satisfy every little whim of his. He used to sleep on the same bed with her till he was twelve years old. Eating a morsel of food from Ashima’s hands was a pleasure. Dano found difficult to forgo, and the urge to go against his mother’s wishes he found irresistible with money coming freely to him. Dano soon took to gambling.  He never went to school. But had acquired enough bad habits by the time he was sixteen.

Begging and borrowing from everybody she could get hold of in the neighboring villages, she got him married at the age seventeen. She borrowed seven hundred from the merchant for whom she did odd job. When she was out of work , added it up with some money  she  had saved and handed the whole amount to well wisher who took charge of the wedding. Ghooghra was distributed in the whole locality. Minstrels rendered wedding songs for three nights. Ashima saw to it that the guest had their fill of everything. Everything was arranged so impeccably that even the fastidious busy- bodies had little to complain of.  Ashima made everything look so gorgeous that nobody would have thought it was the wedding of a widow’s son.

Drawing water from the deep, legendary well of the village, balancing the pitcher of water delicately on her hand, the young bride walked onwards, her hips swinging enticingly.  The hearts of the young men sitting on the parabdi missed a bit.

Pashi was struck by Ashima‘s natural goodness. She sat about reforming Dano. She did not stay much at her own house the first time she went there after marriage. The next time she returned even sooner. “ Find some work for me, Ba, ”  she said to Ashima.

"Don’t we have to pay off the Patel’s debts and the house repaired ?"  Pashi took on any work that  came by; from digging  pits to cutting crops. As Dano was allergic to any kind of work, Pashi found it hard to make both ends meet. But Pashi love for him soon became a bridal which made it impossible for him to continue with his old happy go lucky ways. Love bloomed in Ashima’s yard.  But the days of happiness did not last long.

One day while digging on the mud bank of a canal Dano felt a stringing pain in his stomach. When he vomited, there were a few drops of blood in it and all courage drained away  from him as he saw the spectre of TB  glooming up before him. Soon fear,  more than  weakness, made him cling to his bed. And the talk of curse of death in the family, dating back to the death of his father, made his condition worse. Ashima and Pashi spared no pain to get him the best of medicines and treatment they could, Dano had given up drinking. But now when he slipped out occasionally for a fling. Pashi felt pity for him. To keep the wolf from the door, mother and daughter in law had to work the whole day, while Dano lay curled up on the cot on the verandah. He grew thinner and thinner with each passing day. The charms which    Dano wore assiduously on his  wrists and neck were of no help. Before the end of the first year of her married life, what was destined for Pashai came to pass and the cruel hands of fate shattered Ashima’s dreams.

Grief made Ashima numb. Pashi wailing would have melted stones. But looking at Ashima’s cold expressionless eyes, the women of the neighborhood who had come to mourn Dano’s death felt the old woman would go out of her head if she did not cry. “Cry, Ashima,” they said shaking her violently let out the chhedo, for Dano is no more. But Ashima was deaf to the entreaties. Nobody could make out what had happened to her. But Pashi’s belly revealed that what everybody was at a loss to understand. Ashima’s eyes were fixed on Pashi. Suddenly Pashi who was sitting near her husband’s body sobbing got up and went to her mother in law. “Cry Ba, cry your heart out. What else can we do but cry. Unburden yourself Ba.”

The divo to your family is growing in my womb. Ba,  I want leave you alone and go away. You were alone in your widowhood. Now we are together,  two women sharing their widowhood. Ba, open your mouth and cry.’

Hardly were Pashi’s words out of her mouth, when Ashima’s lement shook the earth. Suddenly she embraced Pashi and fainted. Like Ashima a generation ago, the people of the neighborhood watched Pashi entering widowhood with a life throbbing in her womb. Six months after Dano’s death, the strokes of the tower clock once more brought tidings of joy to Ashima. The worth of a divo alleviated her grief over Dano’s death. Welcoming the child to the family like an honoured guest,  Pashi and Ashima felt the weight of widowhood falling away from them. Time has always proved to be healer of their sorrow. The problem of settling the debts they had run up over the wedding and Dano’s treatment occupied their minds but Ashima did not fully recover from shock of her son’s death. Her rheumatism made things more difficult ultimately as it is predestined the burden of bringing sustenance for the three of them and paying of the debts fell on  Pashi’s shoulders.

But Pashi was undaunted in adversity.  Ashima’s rehumatism was so bad that she could not even rock the child’s cradle. Pashi had to carry the child in a bundle tied to her back when she went to work. She made a little hammock out of a sheet of clothe hung it up on a tree on the hedge and laid the child to sleep in it before she went into the fields.  In the afternoon, she returned home with the child on her hip and handed over the money she earned to her mother in law. In this manner, Pashi managed with great difficulty, to stave off hunger for five months. Then came winter. As Patel had lent them money, they had to work in his fields.

The Patel, however offered a compromise:  “ Cut the buds, in four vighas for the whole season.” That will be a hundred less in your account. I won’t take any interest on it “

But Ashima said pathetically: “What you said is fair, Patel. And we will pay back everything true to our work. But how shall we live? There is a little child to look after now. It is always illness and I am too weak even to get out of bed most days. How long can the poor girl manage everything by herself?”

The Patel relented. “Alright. I will give you a rupee for each day’s work.”

The buds had to be cut once in about ten days. It took two days of back-breaking work for Pashi to complete four vighas. On the rest of the days, she searched for work elsewhere. It had rained on the last two days and the cold had become bitter. Born in hardship, Dana’s son was a fragile child. Now it was the turn of the bitterly cold winds in the Patel’s fields to test his tenacity, in the morning, Pashi gathered whatever clothes she could get hold of and covered the child with them to keep off the cold. Before she started cutting the buds, she tried to nurse him, but the child would not put his lips to her nipples. “I will nurse him when he is hungry, Pashi said to herself. She laid him in the hammock hung on the tree, rocked him a few times and assuming he was asleep, went to work. Disturbing thoughts passed through her mind, as Pashi began cutting the buds. The frost and the rain had made the buds unbearably cold to touch. Pashi shivered and let out quick breaths as she worked. There was nothing she could do about it. She was born in a community which had resigned itself to be considered with tee ‘victims   of fate. Through Pashi’s fingers stained with the pith of tobacco became as numb as a leper’s. As the sun rose into the sky, the cold became tolerable. Pashi became restless and a vital question tormented her, “Why haven’t my breast swelled with milk and why hasn’t my Deva woken up yet?” Finishing off the raw she was cutting, Pashi walked to the tree, put her hands into the hammock and felt the child’s forehead. The pith of the tobacco on her hand and the  clothe she had wrapped around the child’s body prevented her from realizing that its forehead had gone ice-cold. She took the baby in her arms and presented her nipple in its mouth. The chill of its body sent a tremor through her. As she pulled the child closer to her, its lifeless head dropped onto her chest.”My child!” Pashi’s heart rending scream echoed in the fields. The terrified shrubs on the hedges held their breaths. Pashi parted stonily at her dead child. Then she looked up at the sky. If there was anything like a god up there, her look would have killed him. But the tobacco buds in the patches she had left uncut stacked out their thumbs at her derisively. And above her head the cloudless sky stretched endlessly. Pashi placed Deva’s body back in the hammock and started cutting the buds. What should she cry for anyway and in these   desolate fields who was there to hear her?

By one in the afternoon, Pashi was through. She took Deva’s body from the hammock. Blindly, like a mad woman she ran home. She ran into Patel on the hedge at the far end.

“Finished?”  the Patel enquired, a little surprised. Without answering, Pashi stared blankly at him. The Patel did not observe anything unusual.

“Good. Here, take this.”  He pressed a rupee coin into her hand. Lying on her cot in the verandah, Ashima was waiting for Pashi.

“Here is the money, the Patel gave me.” Pashi said as she handed the coin to Ashima. She then placed Deva’s lifeless body in the old woman’s hands. “ And here is the divo of your family.”