25th September 2013

Far from the din and bustle of the town in a lazy hamlet lived the man. Name isn't important, it's accrued/assumed meaning is, which would've reverberated in the far acoustic corners of any sapiens as righteous.

Even in a small village full of seemingly innocent people the dynamics of human psyche work in the same fashion. He was instantly loathed for his righteousness which to others seemed sycophancy.

He had an agenda and agenda was survival and he'd do anything to survive. So he went on to make paddy fields with his bare hands on the locations where nobody dared to go, stay apart abandoning the piece of land for fodder. Stone by stone Pebble by Pebble he picked up from abandoned river bed of a rivulet creating barricades to divert water flow. People said he was crazy and nothing would ever grow there, where's the moisture in the soil they said, even if he manages to clear off that sandy patch.

"Ohh and in the rainy season the water will bring all sorts of rubbish from uphill and there will be a grand deposit in those beautiful fields", someone added. 

None dared telling him that on face, all watched in awe and amazement when without brick and mortar he built a small canal along a straight wall of asphalt to water the initial sowing of seeds, the feat which will be watched every year from now on but never will be repeated by anyone. He built bunds at the uppermost end of the field to direct the rainwater so as to avoid its inflow directly into the fields and he sowed groundnuts in the lowermost field which has maximum sand content. 

People again mocked, "groundnut and paddy together?" 

Huh what a nut!

 If anything is childhood has taught him it was to have owned fields in which he could grow his own food so that he doesn't have to steal, although he stole from his own mother's fields but it was a bit complicated then. Now he was the owner of  meager fields and was hell bent on making barren land fertile. He had no share in home therefore he was given a cursed land to live, which was inhabited by inhospitable spirits feared and worshiped by the whole village.

There were two huge stones which were considered to rule that area and they didn't like any intrusions into their domain. Therefore as per local legend his uncle and aunt who made a hut there were cursed with infertility and some might have considered it hoax until at the pre end of their journey one of them got blinded and then second one followed the suit.

 It was this hut in which he and his wife was thrown out after his return from the army. No accounting was done for all the wealth he had sent to the family. Now residing in the forlorn and forsaken hut his wife would receive all the affection of in-laws from the blind couple. 

People whispered that they would never be able to have children the curse of Batalhery have passed over to them and soon they would also lose the vision. 

His wife was a religious woman or more so scared. She followed all the procedures of worship to appease the gods as well as the spirits which lived there. She would often see things which she had only heard in earlier common household. 

"Jalansheer" the carriers of fire on the head or those whose head was on fire was supposed to be the people who died sudden and unprecedented deaths and had not completed their tenure on Earth. She had heard that they are visible only in the night but here at Batalhery she would see them just after sunset on the hill across the river. 

Thung or Fahu were the spirit of children who died early and every now and then they would make sounds of Fahu Fahu she would hear sounds all night and once she went to Potters kiln to collect the pot where she was encircled by Fahu which were like cotton sponges floating in the air and she sweared that they tried to choke her. 

Then there was this one legged one eyed stump called rhula which she saw with her own eyes in the night when she came out for some work. She shrieked! and shaken by her sudden shriek Bhuri came out and then he slept outside the hut the whole night so that she may sleep inside comfortably. 

Then there was the legend of bhirithy half man half horse or a human with a head of horse and it would pick up small children and eat them it was supposed to be some sort of occult practice in which a human could shape shift to become that being to fulfill some sort of ritual. In as much as the terror of common crowd went to such extent that police had to arrest one individual named Shivgeer who was the force to give his sample and traces of blood were found in his feces.