Original Konkani Story: Sadho Sadhu’
Author: Felicio Cardozo
Translator: Augusto Pinto
Once upon a time there lived an extremely wealthy and exceptionally virtuous man. He was also a very hardworking, honest and decent person who would treat everyone with the same respect, taking no notice whether they were powerful or humble or rich or poor. He always desired the best for others and spoke what was right. He believed it was his duty to lend a helping hand to others and whenever anyone asked him for something he simply didn’t know how to say: ‘No’.
There’s a saying that people love to dig where the soil is soft. He was the kind of softie whose stellar virtues, everyone – whether poor or rich, weak or powerful, sick or healthy, young or old – would take advantage of for their own selfish ends. They began to heap all their problems on his head and his basket of burdens began to fill up so quickly it began to overwhelm him. To cut a long story short, over a period of time, he became not just poor but destitute.
So miserable did his state become that he began to starve but nobody was now willing to offer him even a little rice to eat. He would get so thirsty that he would dehydrate but nobody would offer him a drop of water. He had nowhere to stay but nobody offered him shelter. His clothes got torn to shreds but nobody gave him a piece of cloth to cover his nakedness. In addition his health began to deteriorate but nobody bothered to even ask about him.
A good many days passed in this fashion. Misfortunes began to heap on his head and his condition became extremely precarious. He begged and pleaded for help from one person to the next but nobody was willing to allow him to come anywhere close. Finally dejected and despondent he decided to abandon his village and all its everyday concerns and he went to a remote spot in a far away jungle and sat there.
Many months passed by and his hair began to grow long, so long that it completely covered his entire body. His beard became like a bush that extended way past his belly button so much so that birds began to build their nests in them. If anyone with even a little knowledge of biology happened along they would have suspected that this was a Himalayan yeti if not Darwin’s missing link.
One day the following occurred: a cowherd lost one of his cows. He looked for it over hills and dales; fields and orchards; the whole village and the neighboring ones. He asked everyone he met, he fell at the feet of the gods; he consulted witch doctors and made offerings to sants but every effort proved fruitless – he just couldn’t find his cow anywhere.. There was not a clue, not even a whisper, as to what had happened to it.
In his continuing search he ventured into the forest. There he stumbled upon the hairy man, the sight of whom gave him a shock. He thought that it was an evil spirit and was terrified. But after a while he gathered his wits about him and tiptoed closer to the man. “Oh this is a sadhu! And no ordinary sadhu, but a great one – he’s a Sadhu Maharaj!”, he exclaimed to himself. Gradually, as his fear abated, he recalled that sadhus were holy men who had the power to look into the unknown and predict the future. Did he wait any longer? He threw himself at the feet of the Sadhu Maharaj and began to ask him about what had happened to his cow. The Sadhu Maharaj who had all this while been dozing away, now woke up and hearing this unknown fellow yakking away loudly before him, he was startled. Blinking in bewilderment he looked up and down at the cowherd who kept babbling away incoherently about some cow of his.
When he understood what was happening he humbly explained that he was not a sadhu and he didn’t know anything about the cow. However the cowherd simply did not believe what he said. True yogis, he thought, were humble and modest, just like this sadhu was. Hence he just wouldn’t leave the sadhu alone, until finally, getting irritated, the sadhu ordered the cowherd to move on.
Have you heard the old story about the crow who got blamed when the branch of a tree on which it happened to be sitting chanced to come crashing down. Something on these lines happened in this story too. After being shooed away by the sadhu the cowherd started calling out to his cow. To his amazement, as if out of nowhere, the animal appeared before him soon afterwards. Oh God – the joy of the cowherd knew no limits! When he got back to the village he went around announcing to everyone: “A miracle! It’s a miracle! Sadhu Maharaj brought my cow back to me!” One person who heard this story told others, “A sadhu just chanted one mantra and his cow which was a hundred miles away appeared before him!” A second person related it as follows: “The sadhu brought a dead cow back to life.” A third narrated the story to a fourth like this: “A tiger had devoured the cow and all that was left were its bones. The sadhu just blew a puff of air over the bones andthe cow came back to life!” These and other stories like them began to circulate like wildfire not just in that village but even in lands far away and as a result, the fame of the sadhu multiplied many times over and people began to make beelines to see him.
The petitions of people from all over the place came pouring in and were placed at his feet for his consideration. The poor fellow began to get alarmed. Someone asked, “Lord, make me rich.” Another said, “Lord, give me a wife and children.” Yet another said, “Lord, give me good health.”Like this, they would demand of him anything which came to their minds that they felt they wanted. Along with these petitions, they began to lay heaps of cash at his feet. He, poor fellow, in his usual humble and gentle manner tried again and again to explain to the people that he was a simple person with no special quality about him, until he would get exhausted with the effort. He literally begged them with folded hands to stop their foolishness. Did anyone believe him? The more he tried to explain the reality that he was just a simple, ordinary man, the more they were convinced of hisimportanceand greatness.
As time passed everyone – boys and girls, men and women, the old, the venerable, the barren, the fertile – all and sundry began making a beeline to meet the sadhu. The poor fellow was really confounded. What was he to do? He had no desire for money but he found heaps of cash piled at his feet. He didn’t care for clothes but at his feet were placed very highly priced cloth pieces. He had no appetite for food, but before him were the most delicious dishes. And he had no interest in the company of people but all around him were hordes of people. That’s when one aspect of his personality got revived: an immense empathy towards his fellow human beings. He began to distribute whatever had been placed before him to the poor. As time passed by poor and destitute people began to regard him as a saint… And his fame began to spread near and far away.
However there was one surprising development: all those who had at one time taken advantage of his simplicity and naivety and had reduced him to misery and penury, these same people began to thump their chests and proudly proclaim: “We are responsible for making him famous!”
(The original ‘Sadho Sadhu’ was published in a collection of stories named Tufan in 1966. The author Felicio Cardoso was a freedom fighter, and a Konkani teacher, journalist and writer. Augusto Pinto is an academician, a noted critic and translator)
