Buduththatha

Memories.Blessings. Gratitude.

Long ago, in the early years in the village, our daughter was an infant. She would go on her knees crawling around the home, taking a lick at the floor now and then. Our floor, and walls, were mud, and the child had developed a taste for mud. Mud eating can cause many problems including a variety of anaemia as per ayurveda. According to local wisdom also mud eating was not to be permitted, and can cause kaamala, jaundice. I would be on constant alert, and so would she to outwit me. The father was always away at the neighbouring forest on afforestation work with the village people . Men are more ambitious than women. Women know that an infant takes time to bring up.

Buduthatha was on the back street. The drylands next to our home were his, and he used to spend the day there digging pits and planting trees. Thatha means grandfather, and he was one of the gentle grandfatherly souls. He would, inbetween work, sit at our home on the stone bench in front for a chat and an drink of water. Bringing up an infant in a mud home in a village meant constant attention, and I would also be glad for his company through long summer afternoons. He advised me to tie uo the baby's hands in the little cloth bags in which villagers keep their betel leaf and tobacco, to prevent her from putting mud in her mouth. I did try that also, but the wails that ensued almost lifted our thatched roof off - and the experiment died swiftly.

Years passed, and Buduthatha walked more slowly, and with a stick. He could no longer plant saplings, but he used to sit in the field morning to evening and drive away all the parrots that could come for the bajra crop he would sow between the trees. He would call out to me for a drink of water which I would take down.

Gradually he slowed down further, and one days he fell ill and was hospitalized. His kidneys failed. The family realized that dialysis was not an option for them, and he was brought home and cared for well. Till one day, he breathed his last. He was buried in the field next to our home, and the samadhi, as they call the grave, has always felt like a blessing. I have no photo of his, and yet somehow it does not matter.