Dating : Storyteller’s Stories

Some, in the village, said that she was out of her mind. Some even discouraged me from going to her. But my fascination towards a good story always led me to her. For one sitting of the story, I gave her a piece of jaggery and two cups of rice, which my mother let me have whenever I wanted to. That made the storyteller happy, her broken-tooth grin on receiving that fee beamed out a satisfaction. She was not a beggar. But a poor old woman who was thought to have lost her head, after her son left for the city never to return. With no husband to support her and her old-age induced inability to work her wage, she tried to survive on the help of the villagers who took pity on her when they wanted to. But my visits to the village during summers gave her a job, which she obviously loved.
All her stories started with one usual phrase, “This is a true story.” After listening to five of her stories it became very clear to me why some assumed her to be nutty. It was just because of her overly animated and enthusiastic method of telling a story. Her eyes would widen as if she was herself mesmerized by the tale she was spinning as she narrated it out to me. Her hands flayed in excited gesticulations and she would frequently get up and act out the scene to her listeners. The hard-working villagers did not understand that or the emotions that flowed through her stories. They thought that to be a waste of their time. She would stop them once in a while and ask, “Do you want to listen to a story?” To which they would reply, “No time mother,” and walk away smilingly.
She was full of stories and I believe that stories kept bubbling in her all the time. When she sat on her doorsteps waiting for an eager audience, her eyes gave a glint. You could tell that another story was in the making inside of her. That was how I remember her from our first meeting. I was a ten-year-old child taking a tour of the village with my father, who was the village chief at the time. She had asked him the same question, “Babu2, do you want to listen to a story?” My father had waved at her in a combination of acknowledgment and dismissal. But that offer had already caught my interest. And I said, to her disbelief, I might add, “Yes, I want to.” Only after a little coaxing, my father let me be with her, leaving an attendant behind to bring me back home after the story session ended. The first story that she told me was about a little bird.
There was a little bird that accidentally landed in the nest of two other birds. There, that little bird was mistreated and pecked incessantly by the accidental foster mother. Her foster father tried to peck her out of the nest many times. But amazingly he could never throw her out of her nest. The chick realized how much bigger she was from her foster parents. The pecking still continued but as she grew bigger the foster parents started to leave her alone.
Then she learned to fly on her own and one day flew away from the nest. Only to return a few months later and see a snake trying to steal the eggs her foster mother had just laid. Her foster parents’ nervous and constant chirping attracted her attention. For some time she observed the snake’s oblivion towards the birds and the powerless frustration of her foster parents. She felt sorry for them and swooped down to snatch the snake. That saved her brothers and sisters. That was when she realized that the snake was her food and that she was an eagle. Afterward, she came down to sit on a tree close by and watched her foster parents rolling the eggs. Their anxiety had receded and they appeared to have the ability to love. Eagle thought why they couldn’t love her.
As she lamented silently for the love she craved but couldn’t receive she saw her parents looking at her. After a while, they flew to the branch the eagle was sitting at and snuggled under her wings. Their remorse and gratefulness made the eagle very happy.
She had poked my arms when telling about the pecking the little bird received. She got up from the floor and tried to emulate the eagle swooping down on the snake and of the snake’s curled body in her beak. In the end, she hugged me to depict the last scene of the story. The whole story is still engraved in motion in my brain. She was a dramatic storyteller.
She told me a horrifying tale once. And she had started with the same phrase, “This story is true.”
There once was a grass-reaper. She was so good at reaping grass that almost everybody in the village hired her to cut the unwanted grass. This grass-reaper had a goat at home and so she was very happy to reap grass as that made for the food for her goat. The king of the village once called her to reap the grass of his garden and was so pleased with her that he gave her two cows in return. Now the grass-reaper needed more grass. So, she would get out of her house at dawn and come home at noon with three loads of grass for the goat and the two cows. After she fed the animals and ate her lunch she would spend all afternoon making yogurt and butter from the milk she got from the cows and the goat. Every week she went to the bazaar and sold the yogurt and butter.
She worked very hard every day. Soon she realized that the reaper’s blade was becoming too weathered from constant cutting and sharpening. “Soon there will be no metal left on the blade,” she told herself, “I should buy another reaper from the bazaar next week.” And so she did. Now she was able to reap more grass faster. Quickly her goat and cows became quite fat.
One day the king called for her and asked her to reap all the tall grass that had grown near the pond, which was in his palace. She knew that nobody else would work in that area as it was known to be full of snakes. She hesitated a little. But how could she refuse the king? And how could she deny all the grass she would get to take home. Moreover, she knew that nobody could reap grass faster than her. She thought, “This new reaper is quite sharp. I can probably kill any snake that comes in my way.”
She hummed as she cut the grass. The sun was shining on her face on that early summer morning. She was happy. The grass was soft and light green as early summer grass should be. Her reaper glided swiftly over the tender grass. In an hour she had accumulated two loads of grass. She would stop every now and then to look behind her and marvel at the area she cleaned so quickly then bend over hurriedly as she saw the larger area, in front, that still needed to be reaped.
She reaped continuously for hours. When the sun was about to set she cleaned the blade of the reaper and admired its shiny sharp edge. Then she went to the pond to wash it. As soon as she dipped her hand in the water she felt a stinging rising in her fingers. And she understood that a snake had bitten her right thumb. In an instant, she snatched her reaper from the ground and slammed its shiny edge over her thumb letting the dismembered digit fall in the water. Tears started to flow down her face as the pain took over. As she looked over the pond water she saw a snake swim away. His hood, above water, sported a distinct “U” mark as he glided majestically away from his victim. Her body was trembling from fear and pain. Not many had survived a King Cobra’s venom. And how could she forget that her younger brother had died, at six years of age, in only half-an-hour after a Cobra bit him?
I sat looking at her face in awe as she finished the story. “What happened then?”
“Well, she lived. In fact, she is still alive.”
“I thought this was just a story.”
“No, I told you that this was a true story.”
“Oh! Where is that woman now?”
“Why? Do you want to meet her?”
“Yes.”
“All right!”
And with that she let her hand dance in front of my face. It had a thumb missing.
Later, when I had recovered from the shock of realizing that the story was indeed true. I asked her, “What if he bit your ear?”
“I would have cut my ear off. That would have been better because that wouldn’t make me deaf. But without a thumb, I can never use my reaper.”
I have hence believed that all the stories she told me were true, even the most fanciful ones in which animals could talk like humans. I feared to ask who in reality that eagle was.

Notes:
1- Jaggery is the traditional unrefined sugar made from sugarcane. It is sometimes molded-in round shape or cut into rectangular pieces.
2- Babu is a traditional Indian term for “Sir”.