Devi Dies ...

It was April 1939, hot and sultry in the district forest town of Tirupattur. A baby girl had been born in the Forest Ranger’s bungalow and the mother and child as per custom were in an inner room, isolated from the rest of the family for the first eleven days. The widowed grandmother was in charge of the kitchen, and also taking care of the two older children aged 8 and 5. Her son would take his meals in the morning and leave for an inspection on foot of the vast forest reserve to see that there were no poachers, and that all the fine teak and mahogany trees were marked, and had no diseases attacking it. It was also his job to see to the welfare of the tribals living in the forest belt. He was always accompanying by two assistants. His father, before him had been a forest ranger too, in the vast estate of the Raja of Parlakamadi ( in present day Ganjam district of Andhra Pradesh) and his love for the forests had grown during those early years and he had naturally opted to follow in his father’s footsteps as a Govt. of India Forest Officer. His family in this small forest town were happy accompanying him on his various transfers every two years. Though his salary was meagre, their needs were met from the fruits, vegetables and grain grown in the large compound attached to the forest bungalow.
He was a great believer in Nature cures, and he had learnt about the bounties of Nature by way of the medicinal herbs and plants, and he kept these handy in the house. His eldest child Devi was eight years,a bright sparkling girl who romped and played all day. His son, younger by three years was quieter and followed his sister wherever she went, but would after sometime tire and return home to be with his mother.

Now his mother had a new baby girl just 4 days old, and he was not allowed to go near her. She would shoo him away, if he entered the small dark room- She told him that in a week, she and the baby would come out and sit with him or watch him as he played with Devi.
The harvest that year had been good, and the gunny bags of paddy straight from the fields had been stacked in a corner of the central room, where in the middle of the room was a large long wooden teak swing on chains, on which the grandmother would lie down in the afternoons, fanning herself with a palm fan driving away the flies.
Friday mornings, the grandmother after finishing her chores in the kitchen would call out to Devi to get ready for the oil bath. This was a ritual which all South Indian women and girls observed unerringly. The sesame oil would be heated in an iron griddle with a few peppercorns in it, till the first peppercorn popped and then removed from the fire, and allowed to cool. Two or hree pieces of turmeric roots and stems plucked from the garden would also be taken to the bathroom, which would be smoky with woodfire, where a large copper pot placed on the mud choola would be heating water.
The oil would be massaged on to the head and body and washed off with soap nut powder called Shikakai a natural product from the forests, and the turmeric root would be applied on the face and arms again a natural antiseptic scrubber. The boiling hot water from the large copper urn mixed with cold water from the well was all ready in the dark smoky bathroom, and the effect of this oil bath was soporofic .
The father and the old grandmother would however take their bath from the water drawn from the well outside the kitchen. The hot water was only for the children and the new nursing mother, whose bath later in the day was given by a domestic help after all her chores were over, and the little baby too was given an oil massage and bathed in hot water, that lulled the baby to sleep all day.
The grandmother had called out for Devi to get ready for her oil bath, and the girl had come from her game of hopscotch in the yard outside where she was enjoying the game with her village friends.
Devi half helped her grandmother, as her mother from inside the room called out to her to open up her hair, and take her towel and sit on a low stool in the bathroom, and be ready for her granny. The grandmother brought the warm oil and the container of shikakai, and had also made ready a small plate of burning coal embers from the kitchen on which she would sprinkle the fragrant resin-incense or "loban",covering it with a basket on which Devi would spread her long wet hair which would dry up quickly, leaving it smelling fragrant for the whole week. Later in the day, the grandmother would pluck the jasmine flowers from the garden, or better still, look out for the spiky pandanus flowers, which she would weave and plait into Devi’s silky hair. She enjoyed doing this even thogh it took a full hour.
Devi finished her bath, and stood outside the room where her mother was feeding her baby sister. Her mother smiled up at her, longing to take her on her lap and cuddle her. Instead she asked her to take out her books and learn her lessons.
Devi obeyed, taking her school bag to the big swing, and took out the large picture book which had pictures of boys and girls playing, and large words telling a simple story. She slowly stretched out on the swing and lying on her stomach kept the book in front of her, and with one leg on the floor, gave the impetus to the swing to move back and forth. She felt sleepy, the bath was so soothing, and grandma’s massage was so comforting to the body. She was about to doze, when she felt a searing pain rip through her leg. She screamed and turned round on her back and pulled up her leg --- she saw a long black object slithering away behind the bags of rice grain. The leg was throbbing with pain, and blood was slowly oozing out from two points on her ankle—her repeated screams brought her mother out of her room, and the domestics outside came in—The child was shouting –"Snake bit me, snake bit me”- The domestics looked in horror, at the child’s wound and one of them, pulled out his turban from his head, and tied it tightly on the upper end of the leg near the thigh. The others brought long sticks with them, and rushed to the corner of the room where the stacks of gunny bags of rice were piled up. They were cautious, as they did not know if there was a single snake or a pair. As they moved the bags at the bottom, they heard an angry hiss . The men shouted—"It’s a Naga Paambh or King Cobra!
The child has been carried and put on the ground outside the house. A sharp penknife had been heated in the kitchen wood fire, and brought to cauterize the wound. Before that two men had run out of the house to bring the father back quickly, as well as the tribal medicine man.
The women of the house were wailing. Devi’s mother carrying her new-born baby in her arms was holding her daughter’s hand and speaking to her, Devi was slowly slipping into a deep faint, and her limbs were jerking in spasms. The mother sank on her knees and prayed to the Gods to spare her child, and take her life instead. The widowed grandmother had Devi’s head on her lap, and was slapping her cheeks and whispering into the child’s ear, not to sleep.
The father was located by the village boys running into the familiar forest trails and they all came running. Meanwhile, within the house, where the rice grains were stacked a small drama was unfolding –The angry hiss of the snake gave away the fact that a snake indeed was hiding there, and as three men with forked sticks stood by ready to pin the snake as they best knew how to, moved the bags, a long black cobra slid out, moving fast into the middle of the room and then coiled its toil and raised its hood majestically—then from behind the remaining bags another movement caught the eyes of the men, and they were rooted to the spot it was a King Cobra, rarely seen except in the deep jungle. It was almost 12 feet long, and it slowly and without concern joined its mate in the center of the room, and it too reared its head and swayed sideways. The men were paralyzed with fear and awe and something else. They had come into the house to seek out the reptile and kill it, and as was the tradition to burn it into ashes. But a pair of mating cobras was something else—in killing them, they would incur a curse which would follow the family for generations to come.
The father of the child in his khaki dress panting and sweating, with a gun in his hand entered the room, and recoiled too. Was this the creature that had bitten his beloved child? He stared at the pair, and knew beyond doubt, his darling Devi could not survive the venom of a king cobra. The “Mantravadi” a tribal doctor much respected by the tribals of the forest was busy trying to remove the poison from the child's body by his chanting and medicinal herbs, but he had watched the child’s body getting colder and stiff. He had tried to persuade the weeping mother with her crying baby up from the ground, but she was stretched beside the child and would not move away.
The father, was moving quickly from the room inside the house to the child outside, had to take a decision in front of his band of forest assistants and villagers who had filled the room to see the strange spectacle of the mating snakes. The two cobras had coiled their bodies as one in one slithering movement and their necks were intertwined two. They looked like one snake with two heads and their eyes were watching, hypnotizing all the beholders.
The gun roared and the smoke that filled the room made everyone cough and rub their eyes. In seconds when the air cleared they looked down at the writhing coils, but the heads had been blown away across the room lying grotesquely, whilst the rest of the body was still writhing in different motions. The men picked them on their sticks and took them away to burn with dead leaves collected in a heap in the compound.
The father made his way slowly to where his dead child lay stiff and turning blue. The ‘Mantravadi’ got up from the ground his head bowed and said simply “I could not save her, the poison was greater than my spells."
Thus a lovely little girl died on that Friday morning, and this tale told for the first time outside of the family is recounted by that very tiny baby 4 days old , who never saw her much beloved sister Devi except in the family album photographs.
Footnote: The author now in Nepal on a special assignment to start and head a new residential school, has now found a new vocation. She has been writing short articles of stories from her childhod, many of which she has sent to www.chowk.com
She believes it is the idyllic surroundings around her that has given birth to these outpourings. As a matter of fact, her last story "The Indus that strayed" has been picked up by the daughter of one of the characters in the story RAMJI, the author's cousin, who migrated to California years ago, and who passed away some years ago. His daughter has made contact with the author and wants to take up the threads from that story and write more from what her father told her about Mirpurkhas. Thank you "chowk" for bringing people together!