Sarada

Every day without fail she sits on the footpath in the market place, impassive and quiet. A begging bowl with some coins, an aluminum container of food and a stick spread on a neatly stretched cloth, on which she sits, forms her paraphernalia. She is never seen begging to anyone but I guess her gentle looks incite munificence in the onlookers. Coins thrown by them by way of compassion must be unintentionally becoming the reason for her steady attendance in the market square day after day. Apparently she herself does not come and sit there on her own. Her frail frame does not guarantee such determination. Who is the unflinching presence behind her occupation in the street?  Is it her children who found their mother’s old age lucrative or a cult which thrives in the city with the help of weaklings like her?

Speaking of weaklings and tough ones I am reminded of a woman in my childhood. Born into a backward caste in the middle of the twentieth century, her occupational life had a natural flow of ending as a maid servant. Her married life however was tumultuous. Following the caste based profession, her husband used to climb coconut trees. As expected of a middle aged man who earned daily those times, he religiously spent his evenings in the local toddy shop. This gave a riotous disposition to their home atmosphere in the evenings. Seven children were born out of their chaotic nuptial knot and one of them was struck by polio and was crippled for life. Sometime in the early 1970’s the drunkard husband for unknown reasons tried to commit suicide by hanging himself from the roof of their house. He succeeded in ending his life story in his second attempt. She was halfway through grinding the rice for the next day’s breakfast in our house when a neighbor came running to report the appalling incident. She ran to her house half a kilometer away and seeing him hanging from the roof took out the hatchet from the kitchen and cut the cloth which hung his body. He died in her arms. She has recollected this moment many times later without a speck of emotion in her voice or face. She brought up her seven children and married off her eldest daughter with the income earned by working in our house and weaving palm leaves. Her extreme honesty and reliability earned her a steady income.

Today, all her children are married and settled. Each one chose their own path. Some she conceded and others she reconciled but was never perturbed about their future. Her second daughter married a Muslim man. For two of her sons she found brides the others chose their own. The polio crippled son got a government job but had to take an early retirement due to his ill health.  Her old thatched house was renovated after the three cents where her house stood came in her name after the land reform acts.

Every year I go home, she comes to see me and tell my sons the tale of her walking me to the nursery every day in my childhood. Impassively she would accept the hundred rupee note I inconspicuously thrust to in her hands and leave with a mischievous smile on her face. She stays separately in a room in her house and still works for a living. She broke her right arm in a fall which is a little twisted now but doesn’t stop her from sweeping courtyards and washing utensils which assure her food and livelihood.

This woman always had an air about her which told that she is her own master. Years and serendipity does not seem to worry her. Knowing not how to read and write, how has she learnt the universal truth, the secret of a healthy life without ever worrying about the future?  May be she belongs to a different world than ours.  Blessed is that generation who got to enjoy the best this earth has to offer in terms of resources and splendor.