(Rendered by the Author from Kannada)
SOME years ago I was stationed at Santaveri in
Kadur District. This is a small village on the road between Chikmagalur and
Tarikere, built on one of those little hills which form the foot-hills of the
Bababudan Range. It is a pleasant enough place for a day or two, but the
pleasure palls on the third or fourth day. The peaks of the Bababudan feast the
eye, but life in the village is fairly difficult and one has to exert a lot
even to get the ordinary necessities of daily life.
One of these is milk and that is precisely the one
thing that you cannot get in Santaveri. With no milk, you have also no curds,
no butter, no ghee. We had little children in the house. What kind of life
could they have without these things? My wife bought the exceedingly diluted
milk which could be got in the place for three days, and decided on the fourth
day that we should have a milch cow or buffalo of our own. I looked out for a
cow or a buffalo and after some time was able get a very good buffalo with a
calf some four months old. The mother was young and strong and, though a
buffalo, really beautiful. It had big lustrous eyes and the tenderness with
which it licked the young one, it was a delight to see. We allowed the calf to
drink all the milk it needed and yet had enough for the needs of the household.
My wife was greatly pleased with the buffalo and, as it brought happiness and
prosperity to the house, called it Lakshmamma.
As is usual in all villages, the buffalo had to go
out to pasture during the day. A boy whom they called Bimla was the cowherd in
Santaveri. We sent Lakshmamma out with him. My wife proposed to send the calf
with the herd. I thought that this might not be desirable. But she said that
the calf was so young that it would be unhappy, away from its mother, and would
deteriorate in that cold place if tied up in the stall all the time. After some
discussion, we decided that the calf might also go to pasture. They were duly
provided with bells to their necks. These are bells made out of cocoanut shell
and help the cowherd to place straying cattle. My wife warned Bimla to be
specially careful about the calf and, of course, he promised. Though I objected
to the suggestion when it was made, I must admit that it was a pleasure to see
the proud mother stepping with grave dignity on the journey to the pasture with
the little one walking close at her heels. It was very like looking at a young
human mother walking proudly with her little son up the village street.
For nearly two months, the buffalo made this trip
to the pasture and back, with the calf, regularly and safely. So regularly and
safely indeed that we lost any feeling of danger to the buffalo or the calf.
They would go out in the morning along with the other cattle and come back in
the evening well before sunset. As the herd reached the out skirts of the
village, Lakshmamma and the calf would turn homeward and come straight.
Lakshmamma would walk into her stall and stand at her place and look towards
the mistress, almost as if she invited her to come and milk.
One evening at the end of about two months, the
buffalo and calf did not come in at the usual hour. My wife noticed this after
some time and wondered why and went out to enquire. The cattle belonging to our
neighbours had come back. Lakshmamma and the calf seemed to be the only two
that had not. My wife enquired for Bimla and learnt that he had come with the
cattle into the village and had gone back again to the jungle. Why had he done
this? He should have noticed the absence of Lakshmamma and her calf and
returned to search for them. What a fellow to have gone by himself and without
telling the owners! He could have taken help and we should have been spared
anxiety. My wife did not know what to do and sent word with the children to me,
in my office, of what had happened.
I came to the house in much anxiety and spoke to
our neighbours. It was clear, they said, that Lakshmamma and her little calf
had been left behind and that Bimla had gone again to look for them. He did not
wish to get a scolding; so he had gone back after leaving the other cattle in
the village. It struck me that this must be so; also that if any of us should
go to search for the cattle, we should wait for Bimla. The search would be
useful only in the area where the cattle had grazed in the day, and to go there
we needed Bimla as guide. So we decided to wait for Bimla and, in the meantime,
got hold of good stout sticks and some lanterns and persuaded a friend in the
Police Station to accompany us with a rifle.
One hour we watched for Bimla. I could not believe
that any hour could be quite so long as that one was. Every second of it seemed
to insist on having all its value and move in slow deliberation. The boy,
however, turned up at long last with a face that was the picture of despair. My
wife wanted to scold him for his carelessness and for having gone away again
without telling us that the cattle were missing. I restrained her. The boy was already
sufficiently upset. To scold him would have merely upset him more, and that
might make the search for the cattle more difficult. She agreed and desisted.
In a few minutes the four of us who had decided to
go out for the search, with the Police friend with his rifle, and with Bimla
for guide, set out to the forest where the cattle had grazed that day.
We reached the place soon, but saw that the search
was likely to be long and not easy. The cattle could have gone in any of twenty
directions. We went down a number of ways and came back, unable to make out
where the buffalo and calf had gone. At one particular instant, I thought I
heard the buffalo’s bell and proposed that we should go in the direction of the
sound. But it was then rather late and, before we had stepped ten yards, one of
our friends said: “I do not believe it is a buffalo’s bell. Any moment, going
down these lanes in the forest, we might come face to face with a tiger. We
have only one rifle for the five of us and should be in danger if a tiger came
along. We do not now if the buffalo and calf have not, after some wandering,
gone back to the village. Our wandering in the jungle cannot help them and
meanwhile our wives in our houses will be feeling anxious about us. I think we
should get back to the village now and come in the morning and search.” One man
said this. And the others seemed to concur. The buffalo and calf were mine. How
far should I insist on these friends risking their lives in searching for my
property? If they were prepared to search, I could be with them. If they were
not, I could not force them. As for leaving them to return and searching for
the cattle by myself, the thing was simply out of the question. So, after a few
minutes of deliberation, we all turned back home.
The night was a very sad one for our household.
“What a silly thing I did,” said my wife, “sending the calf with the buffalo!
That foolish creature must have strayed into the forest and then, because it
went, the mother must have gone after it; and now, in all likelihood, they have
been killed by a tiger. What an intelligent creature Lakshmamma was! How pretty
the calf was! They finished the time that they were destined to spend with us,
and have now gone to pay their debt to some wild beast.”
The position was bad enough without this vivid
picturing of what had happened to the buffalo and calf. What their loss meant
was brought fully home to us in the milk that again perforce was bought from
outside. The children were so unhappy that they would not take their meals.
With great difficulty we persuaded them; and, as for ourselves, in order to
satisfy my wife, and my wife, in order to satisfy me, both pretended to eat a
meal; and, with our sorrow for pillows, lay down to a rest that was no rest.
Throughout the night I seemed to myself to sense Lakshmamma and the calf
feeling the claws of the tiger. I suppose my wife had the same feeling.
In the morning, as soon as it was light enough, I
got up and called to our servant and started out with him for the jungle. My
wife came out, looked disconsolately towards the buffalo’s stall, and stood
near the doorway watching us go out. Not knowing what was in store for us, or
knowing for certain that it was nothing good, neither of us had the heart to
utter any word of cheer to the other.
Reaching the jungle I walked again with the servant
down the paths which we had explored the previous evening. The result was no
better. As we stood undecided, I fancied I heard a buffalo’s bell. It was the
same kind of fancy as I had had the previous evening. “There,” I said to the servant, “I heard the bell.” The
servant gave me a look compounded of some pity and a good deal of wonder at my
stupidity. How could a buffalo and calf, left in the beat of a number of tigers
in the jungle for a whole night, be alive in the morning to sound their bells?
There was no need for him to say this to me, as I knew it myself. Yet there was
this illusion.
This is how we are made. Our hopes give rise to
illusions and we yield to them willingly; and they encourage our hopes. But for
hope and illusion, men could not live.
Over a furlong we traveled in the direction of the
sound, crossing a somewhat thick belt of trees and shrubs. Beyond the belt was
an open circular space. As we stepped out of the belt into the open space, I
saw a buffalo right in the middle of the circle. I could not believe my eyes. I
thought my illusion was persisting and looked again. No, it was not illusion.
It was a buffalo sure enough, and a little beyond it there was lying on the
ground a something very like a calf. As I stood for a half minute, taken aback
by the vision, the buffalo, which at first had its face away from us, turned in
our direction and I saw it was Lakshmamma. I was overcome by joy. I do not
suppose that I would normally run to meet anyone. I ran then, calling out
“Lakshmamma!” Previously I had not thought of the buffalo as anything more than
an animal that gives milk. But that moment I realised that we were two
fellow-beings and that I was deeply interested in Lakshmamma’s joys and
sorrows. I had not previously touched Lakshmamma. But in this auspicious moment
I walked up to it and touched it with that joy with which I might have touched
a friend.
Lakshmamma was a grave and dignified creature. It
was not given to show its feelings. But that morning it also seemed to feel
unusual. Just after a moment’s hesitation, it responded to my greeting and
extended its snout towards me. I noticed several injuries on Lakshmamma’s body
and its horn-tips were stained with blood.
The servant was dumbfounded when he saw the buffalo
alive and standing. He looked all over the place and made out what had happened
the previous night.
“Sir,” he said, “this is a miracle. A tiger came
here last night and the buffalo fought it. Here is the circle in which the
tiger and the buffalo moved, we do not know how many times. It should have been
a small tiger. In any case it preferred to attack the calf as the surer prey.
If the buffalo had been here alone, it would have attacked the buffalo. Also,
the buffalo would have been half dead from fright when the tiger appeared. But
because the calf was here, the mother took courage. Who would believe this,
Sir? The mother kept the tiger away from the calf, going round and round and
round, and must have gored the creature once or twice. After this, the tiger
should have thought better of it and decided to come again later and run. See
here, Sir,” he said, running his fingers along the tip of one horn of the
buffalo “this blood on the horns, and here is the tiger’s hair sticking.”
This surmise seemed quite correct. We could see the
marks of tiger having, gone all round the calf, and just beside these marks
were the marks of the heroic mother’s hoofs.
If the surmise was all correct, it was also not merely
a case of the mother having saved the calf but the calf having saved the mother
too. For, if the calf had not been there to tempt the tiger and stiffen the
mother, it would have been all over with the buffalo.
The thing was indeed a miracle. The servant brought
the calf to the mother, and together we brought them into the village.
The whole village trooped to our house to see this
heroic mother buffalo and the young one which she had saved. My wife cried for
joy and, lest the mother or the calf suffer from the evil eye, put some saffron
on their face and waved red water before them and burned broom sticks. There
was no need for this, however, for every household felt as if the buffalo and
calf belonged to it and had returned from the jaws of death to make it happy.
Later in the day my wife said: “What a heroic
creature our Lakshmamma is! I have heard of Veera Thimmamma, the heroic mother
of the royal house in our village, having saved her state from enemies. That is
why she came to be described as ‘Veera.’1 Our Lakshmamma is like
Veera Thimmamma. Not mere Lakshmamma but Veera Lakshmamma.
And we called our buffalo ‘Veera Lakshmamma’ from
that day.
1 Valiant.