Chapter 4
I
Dhanesh remained obsessed with nostalgic memories of the past for some time and his trance was broken by a raucous noise of a peacock. The peacock, when it unfurls its plumage with the onset of rains to invite the peahen, is the most beautiful bird, but its raucous crowing is the most loathsome. He hastened to pick up his axe and admonished himself for wasting time with idle thoughts. Dhanesh felt that he would have to start the felling anyway as there was no way back now. He hastily drank a draught of haria and shook off all hesitations to strike the bark hard and an agonizing shriek of pain from above the branches subdued the thud made by the axe at the contact with the hard crust of the trunk making the birds around flutter away screeching. It was no illusion he thought and he picked up fallen down leaves of the tree to clog his ears to escape the panting of his age old friend. With a few more strikes he could remove the bark and the reddish juice dripping from the cut appeared like blood to befuddled Dhanesh. ‘It’s not simply a tree but something humanoid,’ he thought. I’m to kill him anyway, but it should be painless. I have to do something to palliate his pain and stop bleeding. ‘Wait my friend, I’ll medicate you and you’ll be free from bleeding and pain.’ Dhanesh said aloud, put down his axe on the cemented platform and made for the bush skirting the forest. Many times whenever he had cuts or bruises he administered some herbs and the pain and bleeding subsided instantly and the wound did not take much time to heal. From the bush he picked up leaves of dholkalmi and a creeper. He mashed the two herbs together and applied the liniment after cleaning the reddish gum dripping from the bark and commenced felling again.
The thick bark was to be removed first and then the difficult part of the work would start. He started removing the bark cutting along the lines drawn by Meghraj. The thick bark was hard and it took a long time to be removed and Dhanesh did it carefully and part by part. Gradually the barks were removed from the area in between the two parallel circles marked by chalk and the bone-like inner part of the trunk was laid bare. Now he would have to strike harder to negotiate with the bonny inner part and it may be very painful to the tree. Dhanesh cleaned the spot and smeared it with the herbal liniment again. ‘The glue is also soothing to pains of wounds’, he muttered to himself. The sun was now high up and the tree cast a large shadow against the sun. Dollops of cirrus were visible through the crevices left by the foliage of the tree. Dhanesh looked up and imagined the clouds to be vehicles of the gods who were looking disdainfully at the heinous betrayal of Dhanesh of his tree friend. He felt sad but he had to do it anyway to save his son, his daughter in law and the children. He got some solace by arguing that the curse would befall on him alone and not on them. They were always against this dastardly job. Dhanesh thought. No, they won’t suffer for his sinful act; he thought and felt an inner comfort. But was it justified to indulge in sin to help dear ones or anybody else? But now there was no way back and he had to fell down the friendly tree anyway.
II
A servant from Nimu’s house arrived with the lunch packet consisting of rice, chapatti, achar, chilli and potato curry. Nimu had dropped word that he himself would come with dinner packet in the evening and examine the progress of the day’s work. Dhanesh cleaned the cut off part of the trunk with dry leaves and pasted the edges with mashed kendra grass. This herbal grass prevents infection and is very soothing for wounds; even nasty bed-sores and gangrene had been cured by this grass. But what was the need to administer palliatives to a friend whom he was going to kill? Was it sheer hypocrisy? No, he thought. He was simply trying to make the killing as painless as possible, Dhanesh argued to himself.
Dhanesh ate with relish as he had rarely the opportunity to take such rich food. They could not afford such costly food, and in the household jobs the food served to the menials were always of low quality, even worse than the food they themselves prepared. But Nimu was a different kind of person; even Bengali babu’s were not so kind to the menials and servants. The master sahib was saying that day that he had never seen an honest Marwari like Nimu; he was like a lotus in the dunghill, the school master had emphasized. He was right, Dhanesh thought while smacking the rest of the nimbu-achar.
Resting a while after lunch, he started his unpleasant work again, now much slowly as the crumbs of the hard timber were jutting out like splinters at each stroke of the axe and hitting his bare body. Nimu had suggested him to cover his body with a cloak he had bought exclusively for the job and wear goggles but Dhanesh had declined. He was well accustomed to felling trees bare-bodied and his calloused skin could endure the onslaughts of the splinters but he should be careful that they did not hit his eyes. The sun now had dropped down behind the forest ahead and the birds started returning to their nests in groups, screeching and edging out wavy lines against the murky sky.
Nimu came with cakes for snacks and for dinner, chapatti, dal, cabbage-curry and mango- achar. He was amazed to see the neatly cut opening on the trunk of the tree and he was all praise for the aesthetic sense of the madesia axe-man. Dhanesh explained to Nimu his subsequent plan. He had already removed the hard bark of the tree and part of the bonny inner body and next day he would cut deeper. Nimu told him that he was highly satisfied with the first day’s work and he would come again the next evening. He should have come in the morning and noon, but he was hard pressed with other works at the gaddi and outside. He also made it clear that his visits were simply to encourage Dhanesh and not for inspections as he had full confidence in the honesty, responsibility and dexterity of Dhanesh.
III
The gloomy red sun dropped down into the west and Dhanesh dug a hole at the north-east corner of the land and cremated the detritus of the bark covering them in dry saal leaves. Returning to his room, he took his dinner and dropped his tired body on the mat, fell asleep in no time and transported to the mystic land of dreams. He found himself seated beside an old man in a vast grassland. The puckered splotchy skin of the man suggested very old age, may be many centuries. Dhanesh felt it must be the mango tree and tears rolled down his cheeks. The old tree-man smiled and said,
‘Don’t cry my friend. I’ve already traversed through centuries and I have no desire to live any longer. I’m grateful to you for offering me the opportunity to do the sacred job of sacrificing my worthless senile life for a noble cause, to save a family from ruin. I have lived through ages and now can’t recollect the farrago of things I’ve encountered in this long life but now an incident comes vivid to my mind and this is more interesting than stories you read in books. Today I’ll tell you the funny story of the naughty leopardess and this would soon do away with your moroseness.
These large cats you know live in deep forests and at times invade the human habitations to hunt cattle and even children. But this time a leopardess settled at a bushy ditch close to my trunk to protect her cubs from their father who if found alone would kill and eat the small cubs. This is the custom of the cats. There are also other ferocious beasts around and therefore the leopardess always kept close to the cubs, breast-fed them and lived on small animals, rabbits, rats, birds that could be found close by. She became very weak and famished at first. The eyes of the beautiful cubs opened in a few days and now they could move out and play, but their mother always kept strict watch so that they could not go to the jungles and endanger their lives. Soon they learnt to climb trees and now their mother could go out for hunting and kill deer and other larger animals for the family. It was exhilarating to watch the games and mock fights of the cubs. They liked to play hide and seek on my branches. People of the locality do not kill or harass mother beasts and so they abandoned the road alongside me and took another road for going to places lest the leopardess attack apprehending they would do harm to the cubs. Some, however, were intrepid enough to offer goat flesh to the mother and the cubs and they watched, with amazement, the leopardess and the tiny ones devouring the flesh.
After some time the mother left with the cubs into the deep forest. None of them ex
cept the smart one who was a deft climber returned again. The naughty one was a female and she liked to swing from and sleep on my branches at night and I enjoyed the hug of her pulpy body. She soon grew into a full fledged leopardess and still she never liked to trespass into the villages and human habitations. She used to come to me at night, played for a long time and then slept on a broad branch. She climbed the highest branch in moonlit nights and watched the views around. She hunted rabbits, rats and birds in the bushes and trees around. Sometimes she harassed the small animals by chasing them simply for fun and letting them go when they were panic stricken and exhausted and thereafter she laughed loudly. I once admonished her, “why do you harass the poor animals for nothing?” She replied, “it’s an interesting game.” She, however, learnt a lesson very soon and it was very funny.
It was a moonlit night and a wild boar entered the land losing its way and started moving hither and thither to find the way out. The leopardess, who was then swinging in a lowly branch, noticed the boar and jumped down and started laughing and chasing the panicked animal. Noticing the large leopard after it the poor animal got more confused and started running aimlessly and after some time its back got stuck on a closely knit cluster of trees. Our heroin started closing in with a majestic style, frightening the boar with clenched teeth and grave roars and the latter having no way out unleashed its spear-like sharp fangs and started running toward its adversary in a last bid to save its life. In a moment our bullying heroin turned back and hastened to climb up my branches. I was amazed to feel the flutter of her terrified heart and started laughing aloud. She said angrily, “why are you laughing like a fool?” I retorted smiling, “you always rejoice frightening weaker animals and now you have a good lesson being frightened by a smaller and weaker animal.” She protested, “not at all, my running and climbing is just a part of the funny game.” “May be.” I laughed aloud again.
She got angry and started scratching my barks with her nails, tearing off leaves and breaking off small twigs. For the rest of the night she did not return. But the next evening she came again and said politely, “sorry for my rude behavior.”
One night she disclosed to me her plan that she would steal a calf from the cowshed of a villager. I cautioned her, “don’t do this; it may lead you to trouble.”
“No trouble at all; the wattle walls of the shed are brittle and at night when nobody is around I can easily steal the calf and I hope the soft flesh would be excellent.”
“No, you should not do this; don’t incur the enmity of the humans, they are dangerous. If you are on their right side they are the most benevolent friends but if on the wrong side, they are the cruelest enemies.”
She laughed out loud, “dangerous! They are the weakest animals.”
“Weakest physically indeed, but they have heads which none else have. They have poison arrows and I’ve seen a new weapon, the fire-club that emits fire with a thud and can kill even an elephant.”
She didn’t believe me and stole the calf and devoured it. Then men from all the villages came out with clubs, spears and bows and were frantically looking for the cat who, sensing trouble, had already fled to the deep jungle. Then came a white man with the fire-club and planned to wait on my branches at night to kill her. Fortunately the stage for the hunter could not be prepared that night and when the cat came to sleep I told her the situation. She had already been terrified to see the prowess of the weakly humans and fled into the deep forest and never came back.’