Mati ki Mooraten

Budhia
Ramvriksha Benipuri

Translated by
Mangal Murty

All on a sudden, a goat-kid came frolicking, and started nibbling and chewing the soft, supple leaves of the chameli plant. I hadn’t by then developed the aesthetic sense to be totally entranced by the merry prancing of that little beauty, joggling her long ears in each which way as it nipped and munched the lush leaves, looking hither-thither with her large black eyes as it champed on, and also occasionally bleating meyn-meyn, as if calling its mother-goat. Rather, that day I felt such pity for the delicate chameli sapling which I had brought with great care from the neighbouring hamlet. Which I had planted with my own hands, watered it, and felt delighted to see its tiny leaves budding forth each day. But this little rogue had now undone all! Furious with anger I tried to hit it hard. But like a swift doe it leapt away, as I ran chasing it.

‘Don’t hit it, Babu.’ – This was Budhia. A small girl of hardly seven or eight years. A red rag with several patches wrapped round her waist, barely covering her knees. A totally bare body sullied with lots of dust. A dark face with black tousled mop of hair, also filled with dust and surely with lice. Yellow snot trickling out from nose which she tried to suck in every time. Hearing her words and looking at her grimy face I felt like slapping her cheeks instead. Till I looked down around her feet, and my child’s heart got riveted there.

‘Oh, what’s all that you have made?’ I peered closely at the clay figures spread around her small muddied feet. Clay toys she had freshly made of soft, wet clay from the nearby pond. Artfully decorated with little flowers of mustard, gram and peas growing all around in the fields. Toys not with properly carved faces, but of course with limbs like humans, and bedecked with flowers of varied colours, imbued with their own charm.

‘What’s all this?’ I asked. She felt shy.
‘You won’t beat me? Then I’ll say’.
‘Surely I’d have beaten you. But you’re pardoned’.

She stood smiling. ‘Please sit down here.’
But how could I sit in that mess. I only bent down for a closer look. And she started.
‘This is the bridegroom with the wedding cap’, she said pointing to the mustard flower stuck on its head. ‘And she is the bride, with her colourful skirt of the gram- and pea-flowers. They are getting married. With all the marriage music, of course’. And she tapped on her belly, and whistled with rounded lips – ‘With the drum and the pipe. And this is the kohbar, where they will spend the wedding-night.’ She pointed to a walled square, also made of clay. ‘And this, their marriage-bed’. A few green mango leaves sprinkled with tiny pink flowers. ‘Here they will sleep. And I’ll sing the marriage songs for them.’ And her crooning bagan at once. Singing and swaying. I was under a spell. For a while. Then I suddenly remembered my chameli sapling, and ran there, counting each torn leaf and lamenting. Swearing all the time of devouring the cursed goat-kid alive, and showering abuses on Budhia.

* * *

‘Babuji, would you kindly help me lift this load of grass?’ I heard a voice as I was on my evening stroll north of the village, lost in my own thoughts. My bent head rose up.

Daylight was waning into evening. Down in a field beside the road stood what looked like a young girl. A big tied bundle of grass lay beside her feet. I got irritated by her temerity. I was now a city man in clean clothes, keeping myself away from the filth of the village people. And after all I wasn’t a grazier or a grass-cutter to lift bundles of grass on others’ heads. Who in the village could dare ask me for such a thing. But look at this young girl...

‘Kindly, Babuji!’ She entreated.
I gazed at that face, sizing up the face and the voice. Arre, Budhia! A full grown young lass? Grown up so fast? I looked around. No one there. Evening’s darkening. Who could help this poor, lone girl here. Out of sympathy, I helped raise the bundle on her head. Soon swaying rhythmically she walked away with it.

Just then a loud laugh burst forth, and the next moment I found Jagdish by my side.
‘So now she has got a new fish in her net!’ Jagdish had an impish twinkle in his eyes, and raillery in his voice. Then he started his long recital of Budhia’s story.
‘Budhia is no longer that girl of patched skirt. She now has a flowing chooner that is ever colourful. And her choli is now stitched by the Sewaipatti tailor. True, you find her carrying loads of grass on her head every day, but her palms you’ll not find calloused, nor dirty. Her skin is still dark, but not with the sullenness of the stagnant pool. It now bears the rippling music of the Kalindi, with many a Gopal playing their flutes on its banks, and many other Nandlals dreaming of a romantic union with her. Wherever in the open fields she walks, life surges and sways. Her black locks are now set with fragrant jasmine oil, her forehead adorned with a resplendent tikli. In place of one Gopal in the Vrindavan with a thousand gopis around, you now have one gopi surrounded by a thousand gopals. Even Gopal wouldn’t have felt the gaiety in slinging the thousand-headed Kalia serpent and dancing on its hoods which this Budhia now feels in stringing together so many gopals and making them dance to her tunes. As if, Radha of the dwapar era is avenging herself through Budhia on today’s menfolk in this kaliyug. That Radha ever pined for Krishna’s love, and this Budhia makes all the gopals always crave for her company.

Damned wretch! – My virtuous soul cried. And in the growing darkness I slowly wended my way, with bent head, back to home. Jagdish, too, went his way. And hardly had I walked some distance towards the village when I suddenly felt an electrifying touch of someone rushing past myself. Instinctively, I looked back.

‘Kindly forgive me for this second fault’. She said and stood still. It was Budhia. I fumed in anger – ‘Wicked girl’, I shouted. ( I’d almost said – Slut!) But instead of blushing or looking bashful, she burst into a loud laughter. Coming closer, she giggled – ‘D’you remember, Babu, my goat-kid had eaten your chameli plant?’And her pearly teeth shone in the dark.

‘Get lost, naughty girl!’ My face must have burnished like red coal.
‘And that bridegroom and his bride, that wedding-night chamber, that flower-bedecked bed, and that song! Should I sing it again for you, Babu?’

The wedded bride goes to her hubby’s home, And yet she trembles in fear as she goes...

Singing it tunefully she ran away, swinging and laughing. Oh, how shameless, how brash indeed! – I kept muttering between my teeth. But her giggles and laughter kept echoing as she fled.

* * *

The wheat harvest was on. My brother said, ‘Bhaiya, there’ll be a large number of labourers today. They might try to steal. Come to the fields with me. You’ll have only to be there. The work will go on smoothly.’

It must be the farmer’s blood in my veins which made me walk to the fields just to have a new experience. The harvest had already begun in the small hours of the morning, so that the ripe corn would not be jerked off the stalks. With the pale moon still on the horizon casting its fading light in the fields. It was already over – the harvesting. The labourers were tying up their bundles of the harvest. And their womenfolk and children were picking up the stray fallen ears of corn. I had been deputed to watch lest they stole some of the harvested stalks instead of the fallen corn. I just stood there keeping an eye, when I saw, at a little distance, in a corner of the field, behind a labourer, a middle-aged woman, her children hastily picking up corn, and also, perhaps, doing some ‘foul play’.

‘Aye, you there, that woman, what’re you doing there?’
She seemed to be completely oblivious of my loud call. Though her man appeared to be warning her. Once, twice, thrice –all my shouting went unheeded. Seething in anger I proceeded towards them. Seeing me coming all four of her children – well within six years of age – all got close to their mother. The youngest one of a year and a half hid behind her feet. From a distance, I shouted again – ‘Aye, what’re you doing?’
Bending down in the field, without stopping work, she just turned her face towards me and said, ‘Salam, Babuji’.

‘ Arre, Budhia?’ It was Budhia, the same Budhia, the little girl who wore the red rag wrapped round her waist. The Budhia whose chooner never went faint. Uff, but what had happened to that merry childhood, that blooming youth...and now this old woman, in a torn sari, and even the choli gone, hair all dishevelled, face shrunken, cheeks and eyes – all sunken. And, oh, those two well-rounded, proud blossoms of her youth which once maddened the young men of the village, as she was bending at work, hung like the udders of an old goat – lifeless and cold!

‘Budhia?’
‘Yes, Babuji.’

Turning her faded face, she gave a faint smile, and went working. Her man, who had by then tied up his pile, called her – ‘Hey, come and give a hand.’ Budhia left her work, straightened up, gave me another wan smile, and proceeded to help with heavy steps. As she stood straight, I noticed a pregnant belly.

‘Wait, Budhia, let me help,’ I blurted.
‘Na, Babuji. I wouldn’t ask you to do it. You may get angry.’ Her two front teeth glowed with emotion. My heart missed a beat. Old memories cascaded in. That dark evening, her bundle of grass, her pleading for help, Jagdish’s sarcastic remarks, my exasperation, her frivolity. Just then her youngest child broke into a cry. She turned to the child, and I went to help her man lift the pile. The strong, hefty young man walked away in a swaying rhythm with his pile on his head. And Budhia, trying to push her shrunken breast into her child’s mouth, kissing, smooching and pacifying him, said to me –‘How many children do you have, Babuji. Look at these kids. The wretches are so wicked. They have sucked me dry, spoilt my body, and still would not let up. They’re a pest.’

The other three children stood by her side. She would stroke the head of one, and pat the other’s back, and with her moist eyes poured her love into each one of them, cuddling the one in her lap close to her breast. And yet, exuding contentment, she kept prattling of this and that. My gaze stayed fixed on her face. Eyes staring and the mind musing.

The rainy season was over. And the floods had receded.

The river again flows with a tranquil, serene visage. The floods are over, as is all the brouhaha of life. Even the mud has dried up, and all weeds and straw washed away. Absolute calm reigns on the river.

And I have angelic motherhood before my eyes – only to be revered and worshipped!

[Ramvriksha Benipuri (1899-1968),born in a middle-class farmer’s family, belonged to a village Benipur, near Muzaffarpur. Dropping out from school, he joined nationalist journalism during the first Non-cooperation movement, editing journals like ‘Tarun Bharat’, ‘Balak’,‘Yuwak’, ‘Yogi’ and ‘Janata’, spending over nine years in jails in several short or long spells, the longest (1942-45) in Hazaribag jail, where he was a co-conspirator in Jayaprakash Narayan’s daring escape from prison. A close friend of J.P., Benipuri was among the founder members of the Socialist Party, taking an active part in the Kisan Andolan in Bihar. But the full flowering of his literary genius came in the late 40s, after his release from Hazaribag jail. His prison writings include most of his masterpieces: ‘Patiton ke Desh Me’, ‘Kaidi ki Patni’, ‘Mati ki Mooraten’, ‘Ambapali’, etc. – a total of more than 70 books of stories, novels, plays, memoirs, and children’s literature. His biography of J.P. became a classic in Hindi. Later he also edited famous literary journals like ‘Himalaya’ (with Shivapujan Sahay) and ‘Nai Dhara’ – all from Patna. He was elected to the Bihar Legislative Assembly in 1957. His ‘Granthavali’ has been published in 8 volumes by Rajkamal, Delhi. He died on 7 September, 1968.
‘Budhia’ (a name, not meaning ‘old woman’) is the last story in ‘Mati ki Mooraten’. The meanings of the italicised words are almost self-evident in the context. Kalindi, Kalia, Dwapar, Kaliyug, Nandlal, Gopis, Gopal, etc. refer to the Radha-Krishna story of the Hindu mythology. – Translator]

(c) Dr Mangal Murty