Story:
Mahesh Paudyal
Bhuvan
“I WILL ATTEND school too,” said Bhuvan to his master one day.
“What has school got? Grind the best of snuffs for me, every morning and evening, and go with the sheep during the day. I shall find you a minister’s daughter to marry. Those silly schoolboys end up picking smugglers’ daughters.”
Bhuvan, innocent of mind and honest by heart, believed his master. He had no one besides Nakul, his old master. The master had brought him home after his parents died of tuberculosis. Bhuvan was just three that time.
All day long, Bhuvan went after the flock of sheep that hardly settled in a meadow. They would run across all farmland, and Bhuvan would find the hardest of times, gathering them. The farmers lodged complained to old Nakul every day. Their millet field had been badly damaged, and the tender corn stalks had all been munched on the head along the fringe of the way that cut across their fields. But to all of them old Nakul said, “I will marry Bhuvan to the minister’s daughter. He will help you find a contract with the minister.”
“How is the minister’s daughter?” said Bhuvan to his master, one day.
“She is like a fairy,” said the old man, “with golden hair. Sun and moon dangle down her ears, and her disheveled hair sends forth the best of perfumes in the world.”
Bhuvan, eleven now, knew to some extent what beauty was, but the old man’s description was too abstract for him to understand. During the day, as he was after the sheep, he would find some shady haunt, pluck off thick hickory leaves and with a ballpoint pen his master had given him, he draw the pictures of his imaginary bride. The sheep sneaked into all farms in the vicinity and ate the heads of the corns growing around. He would write poetry with the tip of calipers on the bamboo shoot and read them to his sheep. His sheep would move their heads as though they were touched by the beauty of his verses.
“How old is the minister’s daughter?” asked Bhuvan to his old master one day.
“How old are you?” he asked back.
“I don’t know, for I have no parents to tell. You have never bought me a birthday cake, and I don’t know how old I am.”
“You must be eleven; so, the minister’s daughter is ten.”
Ten! Ten were the number of little lambs in the heard of his twenty-five sheep. Ten were the lines of his latest poem scripted on the bamboo shoot. Ten was a lucky number he thought. ‘But next year, she will be eleven, and she will be a shepherdess—like me,’ he thought.
“She will be a shepherdess next year,” he said to the old man one day.
“Silly! She is a minister’s daughter. She is not unlucky like you. She will be a great singer perhaps.”
“Singer!” Bhuvan shouted, and started crooning a song in the loudest of his voices. As the sheep fed on the neighbor’s wheat, he climbed atop the alder trees and sang the best of the numbers he knew. “The minister’s daughter sings like this,” she shouted to the heard of sheep as homeward they plodded in the evening. To his song, the jingling of the neck-bells mixed, and the caravan returned home in the fashion of a musical band.
The old man had built a make-shift hut for Bhuvan very near to the stable. He would sleep up on the balcony with his wife. All night long, the sheep would make noises of all kinds, and Bhuvan’s sleep would break again and again. One day, he said to his master, “I will sleep with you, up there.”
“The minister’s daughter loves the sheep-bell, and she will not marry you for sleeping upstairs,” said the old master.
“Sheep-bell,” shouted Bhuvan, and returned to his shed. He remained awake all night, listening to the sheep-bell sound, dear to his imaginary wife.
“I will go the blacksmith tomorrow and ask him to make the best of the bells,” he thought and went into deep sleep.
The next morning, he forgot the bell and went with his herd. To the musical sound of the bells, he added his voice and envisioned the minister’s daughter floating like a fairy in the air, walking with him towards the meadow, far away in the north. All day long, he crooned, trying to produce the sheep-bell sound. He was happy to think his voice worked perfectly well, and his wife would cook for him a meal like his master’s: mutton chop, cabbage soup, fried potatoes and lemon pickle. Ah!
“I want a meal like yours,” he said to Nakul that evening.
“The minister’s daughter will hate you for that,” he said, “for, she is a vegetarian. Moreover, she just eats corn grit and boiled water. More than that, she says, invited diseases.”
“Perhaps she loves some meat, and some green leaves.”
“Oh no! She is a fairy that floats in the air. Meat makes her too heavy and the leaves too light for that.”
“And some milk, perhaps?”
“Milk she loves but only the sheep’s.”
“Sheep’s milk,” shouted Bhuvan in jubilation, and ran back to the shed to see the udder of his sheep. Yet, eight of them had just got babies and their udders were quite big. He took a pail and tried milking them, and with difficulty, got a quarter of the pail filled.
During the day too, at the meadow, he continued milking. People passing along the way would stop to see him do so, and would ask why he was doing that. “The minister’s daughter loves it,” he said. “Crazy” said the passersby, and moved away. He was unhappy with what they said.
Year after year, the herd increased in size. Lambs would grow into sheep, and newer lambs would be born. Bhuvan’s burden increased day by day.
Still, he did his duty without any grudge. He believed that the minister’s daughter would surely come, and he would be married.
“How old are you, Bhuvan?” asked a farmer, who grazed his cattle on the same meadow, one day.
“I don’t know, for the old man has never bought me a cake. I must be eleven, for the minister’s daughter is ten.”
The farmer laughed, for he knew, Bhuvan had told him the same thing some fifteen years back too.
“You are twenty-five, Bhuvan. I was there when your mother bore you. It’s high time you got married?”
“Is it so? I will tell the old man then.”
In the evening, he pestered old Nakul to find the minister’s daughter soon for marriage. But the old man said the minister’s daughter would be unhappy to see a herd with less than two hundred sheep. Frustrated, Bhuvan ran to the farmer who gave him the idea and complained. He urged him to meet his master and give him some pressure.
“Bhuvan says he is ten,” said the farmer to Nakul. “He must be crazy,” he added.
“I suspect the same. Sometime back, some villagers told me, he was milking the sheep in the meadow.
“Why don’t you get him checked by a doctor?” suggested the farmer. “After all, he has no one in the world besides you.”
“You’re right, but who will herd my sheep if I take him to the doctor’s?”
In fact, that was a predicament. The old man had grown so fat that he could hardly run after the unruly sheep.
The farmer thought for a long time and said, “I will herd your sheep for a day. Do take this orphan to the doctor’s.”
Next Saturday, Nakul was seen walking towards the town with Bhuvan. That was the first time this man was seen walking with Bhuvan in all those years.
“Normal,” said Nakul to his friend farmer, returning in the evening. Satisfied, the farmer went home.
Bhuvan continued to herd the sheep, singing songs for the minister’s daughter. His verses on the bamboo shoot grew obscurer each day, and he could hardly harmonize with the sheep-bell sound. He often fell on the ridges running after the sheep, and always complained of severe chest pain with his fellow shepherds. Once, when he puked blood, the friends sympathized with his condition.
Back home, the old man would hardly be found waiting. He would always be out. He came late at night and slept upstairs without asking a word to Bhuvan.
One fine morning, he said, “Bhuvan, get ready. We are going somewhere.”
“Where?”
“To meet the minister’s daughter.”
Sensing that all happiness of the world had fallen on his palms, Bhuvan jumped on the courtyard and within a minute got ready in the best of his dresses—a second-hand shirt, a pair of cotton pants, and a pair of plastic shoes—and presented himself in front of the master. Showing an unprecedented turn of emotion, the old man took off the coat he was wearing and gave it to Bhuvan. Bhuvan stared at his master’s eyes with disbelief. When old Nakul ordered him to wear, he happily put it on.
Then the two walked out. Late in the afternoon, they stood on the bank of the Koshi River.
“Bhuvan, can you see a boat there?” said the old man, pointing to a black, floating thing far away downstream.
“Yes,” said Bhuvan, with no confidence.
“The minister’s daughter is on board the boat. She is coming to meet you. Wait here till she comes. When she reaches here, make sheep-bell sound and sing the best of the songs you know. She will marry you. Come home with her at night. All along the way, continue making the sheep-bell sound.”
With untold happiness floating on his eyes, Bhuvan looked downstream. The mighty river, with an unconceivable width for him, flowed without a sound.
Bhuvan waited but the minister’s daughter did not come. The sun set and the boatmen on the bank went home, anchoring their canoes to poles on the river bank. The stars twinkled and the lonely moon shone in the sky; its image danced on the waves upon the Koshi River.
As night deepened, the chill of December almost froze Bhuvan’s blood. Yet, his eyes looked south. Far away, he could she dark images moving. He could also see lights, flashing in the river water, and going out of sight instantly. He still waited for the minister’s daughter and sang lest he should forget the sheep-bell sound.
At midnight, the black thing far away appeared moving towards him. Yes, it had a light on it, and was flickering in the cool, winter bridge. He grew impatient, for the minister’s daughter was approaching him at the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world slept.
His heart pounded frantically, for the black thing was nearing his each moment. It beat so fast that he felt happiness beating out his ribcage. He could control himself no more.
So, he woke up from his position, untied one of the boatman’s canoes, and rowed into the Koshi River.
Chilled to the marrow by the frosty winter night, his stiff hands hardly helped him. A potent surge of the mighty river carried his row away, and soon the canoe capsized. The black thing, far way was no more visible, and the light did not flicker anymore.
A fisherman found his dead body on the river bank early next day. The police checked his body. The doctor’s report, wrapped in plastic, was still in the coat Nakul had gifted. It said, “Mental Retardation, Tuberculosis, possibly due to malnutrition, and Pneumonia.”
Even as people on the river bank gathered around the dead body, three Indian trucks fully loaded with white, healthy sheep speeded east, along East-West Highway.
Translation: Writer Himself
