Original Konkani Story: Nagpancham Author: Vasant Bhagvant Sawant
Translator: Suresh Gundu Amonkar
The Aslesha rains poured and poured without any respite. It had been pouring ceaselessly the whole week. During Shravan, instead of a steady drizzle, torrential downpour lashed the earth. The whole island of Bolkarna was water-logged. The farms and the fields on the river banks, the sluice-gates and everything else, was under flood waters. Two steps of Malikpursha’s temple were also submerged. However, there was no threat to the waddo on the higher land, but people were bored stiff in the absence of work. Actually, after the sowing operations people in the village collected mushrooms as a side business during Shravan. Trudging through the woods, they picked mushrooms and sold them in Sanvordem, after ferrying across the river. Freshly grown cucumbers and ridge gourds were delivered to the market in Ponda. If they were lucky to land a snapper, they would have it delivered to senior Desai’s residence and that would earn them odd bucks. But this year, owing to the heavy downpour and flood, they had to give up these routine seasonal occupations. The ferry-man had already placed his craft on a high plateau made by placing planks on horizontally placed stones with a roof made of interlaced palm leaves. And to ensure its safety, it had been firmly secured by a fist-thick rope to a coconut palm.
Seated on a sopo on the verandah Hari Bhagat reclined against a pole, his gaze hovering on the flooded bank across the river. Sanvordem bank was dimly visible in the misty rain. All of a sudden, his musings themselves took the shape of the path before him. Instead of following the embankment road, he walked with long strides through Vissu Bhat’s kullagar. He walked up the drain, which turned into a gushing stream and onto the Panshi turn on the road, and stood there to catch the bus. The thick traffic on the mines had halted owing to the heavy rains. He boarded the pick-up van of the mushroom vendor going to Sanvordem-Mollem to buy mushrooms at cheaper rates and sell them in the Margao market. The van brought him to the Tisk; he bought medicines for his ailing son prescribed by the doctor and returned to Sanvordem by the tempo-van that plied regularly to deliver milk from the milk-society. But his steps slowed down the moment he came to the river bank. The gushing river overflowing both the banks appeared veritably like Veer Bhadra personified. In a jiffy the frail figure of his sick son appeared before his eyes; he really didn’t know what spirit possessed him… In a split second, without any hesitation he plunged into the raging river. Verily death was swimming before him. He was panic-stricken while he fought against the fierce waters. At last he triumphed over the ‘Nagin’ after a frantic fight and came ashore on the Bolkarna bank. He was thoroughly drenched. He felt his pockets with his hands for his son’s medicines – tablets and bottles – but they had just vanished in the water.
“…may I serve you…eh..aren’t you having a bite?”
Hearing these words from his wife, his reverie was shattered. He looked around like a man who has just woken up from a dream. He wiped his withered face with a towel and closing his eyes for while, he heaved a deep sigh.
“Serve me…just a bit,” he said getting up unwillingly. His wife had kept two plates. He went into the bathing hut and after washing his hands and feet, sat on a paat.
“When did the chap go to sleep?”
“Just a while ago…after moaning and whining.”
“Has the temperature dropped?”
“…”
“Gave him the tablet?”
“Yes, the remaining one”
“Medicine…I really don’t know what to do next; he was born with a spoon of medicine in his mouth.”
“Tomorrow is Nagpancham; I have put lentils and grams for sprouting, I hope he’ll recover a bit.”
“O! Tomorrow is Nagpancham…this is the third one!” he sighed, “it seems like, once again we will have misfortune on our heads.”
“God forbid!” she said and as she placed her hand on Hari Bhagat’s mouth, tears gushed from her eyes. Neither of them could gulp another morsel of food.
The young and the old alike of Bolkarna mocked Ranu Bhagat as “cheat” Bhagat. He looked after all the rituals and worships in the village, but that no scruples in swindling people in God’s name. He had entrusted charge of all his fields and farms to Hari and now was free to carry on with his unscrupulous ways. Hari never took kindly to his father’s wicked disposition. But Ranu Bhagat didn’t care a bit and always swore at his son and daughter-in-law. A few months after Hari’s wedding, he larked about while climbing a betel nut palm, fell down and broke his hip. As he was bed-ridden, Hari Bhagat had to look after the ritual worship in addition to fields and farms.
“A witch…you have endangered our lives ever since you stepped into the house,” broken-bones Ramu would swear at his daughter-in-law from his sick bed. Poor daughter-in-law bore all this in silence while she cared for her father-in-law. After a month’s illness, he passed away in his sleep. But even in death he didn’t die with good intentions. He died at the very end of Ashad under the spell of an evil star. They had to leave the home quarters for three months. They couldn’t celebrate the annual Nagpancham owing to the mourning period. Next year his wife delivered during the first showers of Shravan and they could not worship the Cobra-deity in the period of pollution. And now this was the third Nagpancham. His one and a half year old son was groaning with high fever for the last three days… After repeated convulsions, he was getting stiff… herbal medicines would not work either… he couldn’t take him to the doctor as flood waters were not receding. Hari stood before the idol-dome in the backyard and invoked God’s blessings. If the son recovered he promised an offering of a goat. His wife quivered as she heard him invoking in one voice the deities of the village, the family, the family purush and the village spirit. She didn’t even realize how soon he had reached the temple of Malik-Purush, the family ancestor, after wading through knew-deep water with a plate of sandal-paste and flowers.
“Don’t you worry sister, your son’s fever has come down,” just as these words were said by the neighbour’s wife, the temple bell rang. Both folded their hands quickly. “My words will come true,” she said. She felt the child’s forehead and found that the temperature had dropped slightly. “Look here, he is sweating, the fever will certainly go,” she said.
Hari applied the ash from the temple on his son’s forehead. His wife too touched the ash to his forehead and neck with fervor and faith. Both were overjoyed to notice the fall in temperature. His wife put her hands under the water excitedly to feel the lentils and grams she had soaked for sprouting. Using the shale he had brought from the hill, Hari painted a five hooded Cobra on the wall which was smeared with cow dung up to knee height. The Cobra was lined with a vermillion border and OM was painted in charcoal black. He glanced towards the river from the threshold of his house, while he flailed his hands. The flood water was receding and though it was impounded by the compartmental walls, one could see the green tops of the paddy saplings.
Hari had hardly reached the bund for his stroll that his son started whining. His mother suckled him. He drank milk for a minute and cried again. He brought it out and turned stiff as wood. Hari rushed back immediately after a boy gave him a message of his son’s critical condition, flinging the coconuts he had found on the way. Men and women in the neighbourhood had thronged the house…and his wife was screaming; the son had turned his eyes upwards. A lady had pounded some kind of herb and held it to his nose. Two of the neighbourhood women held Hari’s wife tightly. The son was as good as gone, the faint beating of his pulse was the only indication of life. Hari just couldn’t bear to stay there. With a melancholic face he came out and sat on the sopo, holding his head in his hands. The sun hidden behind dark clouds was setting in the west. It was almost clear that the calamity of Nagpancham could not be averted. All the vows and prayers were adrift with the receding flood waters.
The up-turned eyes of the son did not revert to their place. His heart pounded like bellows. The neighbours started returning to their homes and their comments were hurting Hari’s heart like steel arrows.
“Shamba, I don’t think he will live to see the morrow,” said one.
“What a pity, poor Hari,” said another.
“What kind of sicknesses we see these days God alone knows,” said a third
“What flings of adversity are these…”
“Oh, the other day, that Mahalu’s grandson…only a year and a half old…just had a fit….he was gone in six hours.”
“What an accursed village this is! Surrounded by water, can anyone even get a doctor quickly?”
“May I say one thing…? Something must have gone amiss with Hari’s ritual worship. This is his third Nagpancham in distress.”
“Arey, tomorrow is Nagpancham, is it not? We wouldn’t be able to dig mother earth with any implement, even if we have to dig a grave for the poor lad.”
Hari was in a fix. Tomorrow is Nagpancham. We can’t hurt the earth…and if he passes away at dawn tomorrow? His corpse will remain the whole day and night…and…and…
He didn’t even wait to ponder; he rose. Lifting the pickaxe and shovel in the dusky darkness, near the compound wall in the backyard, he started digging the grave … …to bury the son who was to die the next day.
