Dharambeer has been very cautious and careful in life. He is an athletic, tall man, a kind of agile panther with both ends tapering to give him the exquisite appearance of an elongated oval figure. He isn’t portly but his stomach is wide enough to adjust unbelievable amount of eatables. Just like a python can struggle to fit a deer in its stretched mouth, Dharambeer too once put his best foot forward to eat almost five kilogram of tinda (Indian round gourd).
He was faced with a dilemma as he
sadly looked at the over-ripe vegetables in his field. These could no longer be
sold at the market because over-ripe
tinda don’t cook well. Usually the farmers pick them and throw them either
to the cattle or into roadside ditch. But the thought of something—belonging to
himself—going waste severely jolted Dharambeer. He but had a solution. Nothing
better than eating them raw. In accomplishing the feat he surpassed a
medium-built buffalo in gobbling raw, over-ripe tinda because probably even the animal would have serious issues
against finishing the entire heap. He munched with purpose, with steely
determination, led by his fear of seeing his belongings going waste.
An elderly farmer told him later,
‘O my rich son, why did you put the seams of your stomach at risk by eating
like an angry bull. You could have easily avoided the tinda from going waste even without eating them. Why didn’t you
simply save them to dry under the sun to use the seeds for further sowing in
the next season?’
He carried the same cautious
attitude in saving every single paisa. Regarding the cropped land he went
overboard and struggled to grab every square inch of land in the agricultural
farms around the field-dividers separating his land from the neighboring farms.
When he cut barsham fodder he became
an artist. He performed the task with the delicacy of a goldsmith working on a
little item of jewelry. Thus passed the decades. He had saved a few lakh rupees
from all the sources including his little landholding and his job as the
village postman.
Then his sons came of age. Like
young energetic colts, they galloped quite freely. He had to cave into their
persistent badgering about buying a car so that they could start their careers
as cabbies in Gurugram. So the fruit of his lifelong care and caution was
invested in a car. They drove it with enough youthful zeal to turn it into an
old dented car within a year. Destiny has its unique ways of summarily
disposing what we propose.
I feel sad for him as he walks
very dutifully carrying his bundles of letters in the village streets. But I
would term it as a successful life. His caution has kept him on a tight leash. He
has walked very straight without looking sideways. A very disciplined life I
would say, almost like a tapasya.
