On entering her kitchen that early morning, Hira's heart was filled with both sorrow and anger at the sight of her rice pot.
The earthen lid had fallen off at the side and there were all sorts of shits in the pot, like, hairs, small pieces of bone and last of all human excreta.
She was extremly unhappy for not being able to take her favourite daily diet of rice-in-water for the third consecutive day.
She was upset no end but had no clue as to what to do about it?
Cursing her fate she wondered how can anyone be so vile and inhuman!!!
Hira, aged about fifty years, was a widow belonging to an orthodox brahmin family in a remote country side. She was brown skinned, slim and a little more than average in height. She was active and daring in nature.
As per the custom of her times, she was married off in her early teens. It was a large joint family with three brothers and her husband was the middle one.
As ill luck would have it, she lost her husband while she was still in her prime and a mother of two, one daughter and a son, in that order.
Luckily, however, the daughter was married off while her husband was still alive.
The son-in-law hailed from a good family of their community and was well groomed in keeping with the times. In short, a worthy eligible man for a son-in-law.
However, as they say, misfortune never comes alone and Hira lost her son-in-law too early in the day to an epidemic.
After that her life turned topsy turvy. She was constantly tortured by her in-laws both physically and mentally. She had no one to look upon to except her son Bula. But Bula was a minor and a carefree boy who all the time whiled away with his friends in merry making only. As a loving mother she too didn't want to bother him about the pain and sufferings of her life. She endured all silently for years.
Finally when Bula came up age, she decided to create her own dream world. Thus, one day she left her in-laws home and built a small two roomed house made of brick walls and thatched roof in a vacant plot nearby.
A small kitchen was also attached to one side of the house. But the kitchen didn't have either a proper door or a window. While a door of sorts made of bamboo logs was appended but a round open hole in one of the mud walls catered for a window.
This was her dream world which she and her son had built putting in their hard labour for a couple of months.
As it is, she also inherited some landed property as a member of the joint family and the income from it was sufficient to sustain the two member family of mother and son duo.
As such, she was in search of a suitable bride to marry off her son. Life for her seemed to settle down a little at last.
After a long time she felt happy and was in a relaxed frame of mind. But No! God was so unkind to her all of a sudden.
She wondered who on earth could be so jealous of a poor woman like her? She was quite upset now.
Neighbours and others alike said that it must be the handiwork of a tantrik only practising witchcraft. No human can dare do this. Some suggested to consult a tantrik herself to get rid of the menace.
But she was in a different mind. True that she was upset, it is also true that she had no one to look up to but she was far from broken or defeated.
In fact, she was pure steel inside. In her long struggle for survival, she had faced many a devil 😈 both formless and in-form as well. She, therefore, resolved to have a rendezvous with the devil that very night.
Having so resolved, she went about her day's work as a matter of routine as if nothing had happened to her. She kept her son away from the plan lest any harm came upon him.
Those were winter days then. In the northern hemisphere the days were short and the nights long. Sun sets in quite early behind the lusty greens of the rustic life.
In those days, dating back to about a quarter to century hence, nights in a villager's life were harbingers of dread and nightmares.
People hurried and scurried to take shelter in the safe confines of their huts even before the night broke in.
In the instant situation, it was all the more alarming for them. So, all the Hira's neighbourhood went to hibernate inside their huts even before the sun was down through the western skies.
An errie silence prevailed the moment darkness descended and night set in.
But oblivious to the scenes around her, Hira went about her works for the day as usual and took dinner along with her son who went to bed soon afterwards being tired by the day's frolicking with his frienHiraThen she finished some residual chores and was finally free for the night. She was now ready to confront the 😈.
She caught hold of one of her favourite solid bamboo stick from the corner of her house and went inside the kitchen.
She slumped down into a corner and sat in silence for a while. However, after a day's hard work she was dead tired. Now, the night meal had it's effect on her and she soon dozed off.
She doesn't know how long she slept. But when she woke up, it was in the dead of the night.
The roaring silence all around was frightening and in the pitch dark atmosphere of the kitchen room it was hard to see even a few feet away. She was now shivering in the biting cold because she had only a light scarf on her.
However, thoughts of her mission and the unknown danger she was going to encounter slowly warmed her up. Such moments as of now, she thought, were ideal for the devils, both living and non-living alike, who venture out to make a kill. So she immediately readied herself to face the unknown.
At this moment, there was some rumbling nearby as if something soft was brushing against a wall.
She was alerted and adjusting her vision in the darkness tried to locate the source of the sound.
Oh No !!!
What did she saw ???
It was not only extremely dreadful but entirely out of the world.
A long hairy black hand square in shape was slowly coming in through the small opening in the wall towards the rice pots.
For a moment she was shaken out of her wits. But the next moment, gathering all her courage, she held the stick firmly in both her hands and with all the strength in her command gave a solid blow on the approacing object !!!
There was a suppressed faint cry outside the kitchen room and the object withdrew quickly.
She called out her son loudly and came out from the kitchen to find the culprit but there was none to be seen around in the darkness.
Needless to say, from that date onwards there was no recurrence of the mischief ever.
(The End)
Viswamitra (25/03/2023)
