The village holy fool

 

Ishwar was called Bawla by the villagers. He was too simple even for the bucolic times during the last decades of the century bygone. What else the society calls a man who isn’t cunning, calculative, scheming and shrewd? The absence of this typical smartness entitles a man to be called Bawla or fool.

He was a huge man, with a rolling gait, mostly on his toes as if he was going downslope and trying to check or put brakes to avoid a free fall. In his simple kurta pyjama he looked like a kindly grizzly bear. In the face of smart clamor around, he bore a perplexed, puzzled look. As kids we were afraid of him. Someone would shout Bawla at his back. Then he would go on rampage like a bull angry over a red flag. He would run after the culprit with a brick in hand, shouting mild imprecations and cuss words that he had mastered.

He was quite poetic in response to the insult ‘Ishwar Bawla’ and would shout ‘Teri Maa Ne Kare Tawla’—something to do with the offender’s mother—before launching a full-scale attack. I but once witnessed his real side. We had gone for a cricket match to his part of the locality and there Ishwar allayed all my fears. He was a gentle spectator and his talk made perfect sense to my thirteen-year-old self. Most of his talk was about the significance of keeping good manners by the children. I could feel that this was the acme of his realization born of his first-hand experience of the errant behavior of the village children.

Now after decades, having gained a bit of insight, I would call him a holy fool, a God’s innocently pure child, too simple to get into the mainstream chauvinism.

Ishwar was unmarried and stayed with his joint family. He was famous for eating copious amounts of laddoos and puris at marriage feasts. There were episodes when he literally emptied the laddoo basket singlehandedly and on being reminded that it was his own stomach and he shouldn’t torture it like this, he would storm out cursing why had they invited him if they hadn’t the guts to pacify his hunger.

He was very dismissive of women. He followed a credo: he would tie his fodder bundle—a huge one as you must have guessed—and heaved it upon his shoulder first and then hoisted it further upon his head. He never requested anyone to help him put it on his head even though his bundle was always double the size of what a big farmer could carry. Usually the farmers and the peasant women would request a fellow man or woman working nearby in the fields to help the bundle onto the head. But whenever anybody asked Ishwar for help, he would snap, ‘Why did you make it bigger for your capacity to lift it of your own? You should have only as little as you can heave unto your head without assistance.’ Still the peasant women would tease him to help them with their fodder bales. It would result in a barrage of his credo repeated in loud voices to make it clear to them. He looked perturbed that they couldn’t make out even such a simple thing even after being told so many times. Maybe it gave him a nice feeling that he was the only sane man in a village of fools. Well, maybe he indeed was.

He knew exactly how to save his life. One particular farming brat was a specific threat. The boy loved to play truants which the target took on their face value. Whenever the boy came driving his tractor and found Ishwar coming on the way, he would practice mock attacks on Ishwar, trying to make it feel as if he was going to run him over under the tractor. Ishwar would run helter-skelter, thinking it was the doomsday. As a man learning from experience, he devised a plan after many rounds of running to save dear life. He would pick up a brick and stand with a ready-to-strike posture as the tractor passed. Self-defense is good.

Once he was getting his shaving done at the village barber shop. The mischievous young farmer arrived there. Ishwar, his immense torso tied under a chador and his big face copiously leathered, looked sideways as his naughty adversary entered the shop. The young farmer picked up a razor from the counter, stood behind the chair bearing Ishwar and started sharpening it on his palm, while staring at Ishwar with a determined expression. Ishwar stared deep into his foe’s reflection in the mirror on the front. His eyes went glazed with fear, plain raw fear of death. He knew it was the doomsday and the enemy is going to slaughter him right there. He knew exactly what to do. There he escaped, flung the chador away with full force and ran out of the shop, all leathered up, yelling at the top of his voice, ‘He is going to cut my throat with the razor!’ A few village elders had to do a lot of convincing to get him back into the chair and make him believe that the boy was just joking. But Ishwar would ensure that the boy was off the scene first. The latter was requested to leave the place. Later, the barber had to deal with a whole lot of doomsday stories told by a shivering Ishwar. ‘He was sure to slaughter me today if not for my timely escape!’ he was muttering.

He ate chapattis that always counted in double digits. An honest conscience and big body needs a full stomach to sustain. He looked very relaxed while eating, slowly munching his morsels like an uncaring bull chewing the cud. The people joked about it, but he wasn’t afflicted with the malady of changing one’s ways on the basis of what others say or think.

Once the entire joint family had gone to the fields, the ladies having prepared a big stack of many dozens of chapattis in the early morning to have lunch at home after finishing the farming work by noon. All of them returned tired and very hungry but found the cache of chapattis gone. Ishwar was extra kind that day. After finishing his usual quota, he summoned all the dogs in the village in his booming voice. All the dogs were well fed that day and slept very peacefully.

He knew that it was a cunning world and he had to be very vigilant. So he followed a strict protocol regarding monetary transactions. Whenever he purchased somethingfrom the village grocer’s shop, he would demand a firm, articulate ‘yes received the money’ from the shopkeeper after handing over the money. He was always scared that someone not acknowledging the receipt in his standard ‘aa gaye hain’ would cheat him and would demand the money again. There was a big ruckus in the street one day on this account. The villagers found a very nervous, almost on the verge of fainting, Bihari ice-candy seller, a slight man cowering under the verbal harangue unleashed by the big-built Ishwar. Among the verbal torrents, the burly man slurped on the melting red ice-candy. The matter stood like this. Ishwar had carefully handed over the five-rupee coin owed to the seller in lieu of the purchase. But the seller won’t acknowledge the receipt by repeating the standard phrase ‘aa gaye hain’ which an angry Ishwar kept repeating. ‘He isn’t saying, “Aa gaye hain!”’ he was heard shouting, much perturbed at the seller’s effort to cheat him of his coin. The Bihari seller had hardly any clue to the standard monetary protocol followed by Ishwar. So the poor puzzled fellow stood on the verge of nervous breakdown. Imagine an elephant haranguing a rabbit over a monetary deal gone wrong. Then the villagers clarified the issue to the panic-stricken ice-candy seller. He gently said, ‘Yes, paise aa gaye hain.’ ‘See, only now the deal is done! He was thinking of duping me. Took the money and won’t say it that he has taken it, so that he could demand it again,’ a much relieved Ishwar guffawed while taking big slurps at the melting ice-candy so as not allow even a single drop go waste due to negligence.

Mothers are mothers. No wonder, he too was the star of his mother’s eyes. At the high tide of her maternal surge, she would put boiled milk—many liters of it—in the broad iron basin used for carrying anything from wheat, soil or cattle dung, leaving it to cool so that her lovely son could gulp it down. Ishwar would then consume it like a thirsty male buffalo much to the solace of her heart. ‘And still they say he is a fool and fit for nothing. Can they even match him in this?’ she would let out her maternal grudge against the society.

He was a powerful man as is proven by almost a quintal of fodder bale getting hoisted upon his head without any helping hand. But a gentle giant he was, a mere child in a big body. He never used his physical force as per the dictates of an abused ego born of taunts, jeers and puns targeted at him. Yes, he would be irritated and would mutter, grumble, feign attacks, but all this fell well short of any serious injury to anyone. As per the norms of the raw physical strength, he was capable of breaking the bones of the entire locality singlehandedly. Yet the children could well afford to entertain themselves at his cost.

On the last day of his sojourn on earth, he was seen restlessly running around the village. He was in his late fifties I suppose. In the afternoon, after the daylong running to complete the rest of his journey, he lay at the village cremation ground for the last rest. He preferred to die there itself, perhaps to still keep his credo of not allowing anyone to carry his load. He died without much fuss, taking it like an elephant would call it a final day in a forest, without suffering and without much fuss.