In this excerpt from ‘Bride in the Hills’, Kannada writer Kuvempu paints the quiet morning routine of Subbanna Heggade, a farmer attuned to the rhythms of the natural world
Nights are an ineluctable torment for old age. With the approach of the eternal sleep of death, life becomes nightmarish, unbearably tiresome. The disquiet that comes with the knowledge of the inevitable immersion into death’s oblivion leads to a vague anguish of the soul, an essentially formless despair, that morphs into a thousand worldly maladies, vitiating sleep. Even more infernal are the nights for an old man who, shunning the world of God, dharma, art or culture, is absorbed entirely in material enhancement of wealth; who, by eschewing the sprightly adventures of a spirited atheism, subsides into the slow death from apathy, opting instead for the infinitely more lifeless tradition of theism. Moreover, if the wife’s company is absent as she is dead, then, surely it will ensue that an idle mind is a devil’s workshop. To escape from that devil’s workshop, Subbanna Heggade used to rise much before daybreak.
As was his wont, Subbanna Heggade wakes up early that morning as well and emerges from his cavernous room to the veranda. It has poured last evening; the dawn breeze is chilly, even more cold on his aged body. He wraps the blanket tighter. Like every day, he leans on the pillar, selects a tasteful areca nut from his pouch, blows over it, draws the mortar and metal pestle closer, and pounds the nut. For an extroverted old man, silence can be devilish. The sound of pounding chasing away the demon, Heggade is relieved, reassured, at peace.
Waking up to the world
In that silent, old house devoid of other sounds, the voice of the pestle is sovereign. Soon, the grate of hooves and horns, snorts and sneezes issues forth from the pens in front and from the sheds behind. The babblers on the tree or on the fence begin their love talk with whistles and counter-whistles. Immediately, from the coral tree bereft of leaves but brimming with flowers, a drongo accompanies with its elaborate melody, embellishing each note.
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But Subbanna Heggade is oblivious of the birds’ whistle and the drongo’s song. He stops pounding. Eyes squinting, he peers at the veranda. The dark interiors of the house present him the inviting silhouette of the pens embossed on fields still shrouded in dark.
The sounds wafting from pens speak to him employing a phonetic system of secret symbols he has mastered with long years of practice. He can decipher and sense every one of those notes — be it the grunts of huge boars or home-grown female swine or piglets, the sneezes of sheep or goat, the crowing of the red-beaked roosters or the white cockerel that Thimmappa won in a cockfight. His repertoire of sensibilities for those tones has been honed to such refinement that he grows ecstatic relishing the cadences of those sounds like a great poet enjoying the soundscape of his superb epic metre.
The dark slowly makes way for day light. Masticating on areca nut and betel leaf, throaty notes announcing his authority as master, Heggade heaves up from his plank. That master-of-the-house echo resembling a cough serves as an alarm for the Old House.
Then, the lazy sounds of those sleeping in the tile-roof and thatch-roof houses wake up to their daily chores. The mongrels sleeping cosily in ash heaps beside the broth-stove outside are also woken up rudely. Huvi of the Halepaika community starts work in the cowshed hefting a wooden tub to feed the cows. She snaps at the dogs, ‘Hachaa . . . these dogs . . . are they alive or dead?’ Poor fellow, one of those pooches was yet to yawn, stretch its limbs and come out of his stupor. A sudden whack on his back lands from the wooden tub! Though startled, he neither barks nor whines, not even to register the pain. He has yet to wake up to the world.
It is daybreak. Wrapping his dark, short frame up to the knees with a black blanket and covering himself securely, Subbanna Heggade comes down to the front yard. As he feels the cold air hitting the front of his bare bald head, freshly shaven into a horseshoe just the previous day, he goes back into the house and comes out with an ancient, flabby cap covering his pate. Crossing the yard gingerly using the stones laid out to avoid stepping on the slush, he approaches the shelters.
Perhaps the animals inside the pens really love this animal outside!
The luminous dawn
As if at a signal, through every tiny window and gap, the chicks jump up and down, setting off a ruckus. Overjoyed at the prospect of freedom, the sheep stampede towards the door, jostling against each other. All the swine, sows and piggies scamper restlessly, grunting. Subbanna Heggade watches his mute family indulgently for a while, trying to make up his mind which of the pens he should visit first. One of the sows has just farrowed down. Considering its well-being the most important, he starts moving towards the pigsty.
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The moment he steps off the stones laid out to avoid slush, the muck mixed with the shit of chicken, sheep and pigs squirts through the gaps between his toes. Unmindful, he goes to the door of the pigsty. In fact, he savours the odour, familiar from daily acquaintance, that makes for harmony in his heart like the arrival of a dear friend. Going round the pigsty, Heggade peers through the holes. Not like spectators who watch groups of animals in the zoo, but like a parish priest who looks after the spiritual welfare of every sheep in his ‘human flock’. Like a doctor who keeps an eye on every one of his patients. He pays close attention to the gash under the earlobe of one of the pigs, the crack in the paws of another and the sores in the mouth of a third. As if he was rehearsing, he mutters to himself the instructions for the farmhands, though no one is around him.
A sudden commotion starts in the pigsty as a well-grown, rutting hog charges at the pigs. Heggade curses it heartily. The nerve of it! Unless this hog is given away, there’s no peace in the pigsty. Heggade watches the distant, sprawling paddy fields devoid of green, nestling in the valley amid the hilly region.
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Seeking the warmth of the baby sun, Subbanna Heggadere moves the black blanket he has wrapped round his aged body and places it on the pigsty. The moment the tender sun kisses his wrinkled, dark-brown body, the pleasing memory of the hundred carnal pleasures of the past, buried deep down his subconscious mind floats to the surface in the lake of his consciousness. He doesn’t know why, but his body feels comforted, his mind contented. The dark despair caused in his heart by his son Thimmappa is dispelled by the luminous dawn of his daughter Manjamma’s arrival. Now that the first light of dawn has turned golden, he feels invigorated.
A citizen of the universe
…Subbanna Heggade, caressed by the tender sun in rain-soaked Malnad, experiences such a sense of elation. How many times in the past hasn’t he enjoyed the beauty of sunrise in different places, different times, different forms, different circumstances, on different shores, different mountain peaks or different jungles enveloped by creepers! Today’s sunrise is just a key to the treasure house of those accumulated samskaras. What if it is an old, dilapidated house? What if it is near a pigsty? What if he is an unlettered, uncultured Vokkaliga farmer? What if he is a ripe old man? Subbanna Heggade too is very much a citizen of the universe.
The sun on Heggade’s back feels like honey on the tongue. He rubs his back cosily, almost caressing himself, heaving a long sigh. The world, free of sorrow, turns happy. A feeling of universal harmony fills his heart. He has a sudden surge of affection for everything — the pigs, chicken, sheep, trees, forest, sky, the flock of wild singing birds and the entire neighbourhood. In the structure of Heggade’s lifespan, his life at this moment becomes the golden flag pole on the cupola of the temple playing with heaven.
He moves swiftly and opens the door of the chicken pen. Cocks, hens, chicks, cockerels, roosters of all shades and hues of red, white, black and brown, all spotted and speckled, all clucking and crowing cheeon . . . peeon, kok kok… kokko rush out. All the fowls scurry out all at once, each elbowing out the other. The foul breeze generated by their feathers feels only natural to Heggade. Scudding through swiftly, a few chicks scratch the surface of the slush; others peck at the garbage heap; yet others bolt towards the manure pit. Watching it all from the appreciative eyes of the master, Heggade thinks, an indulgent smile on his face, look at their alacrity . . . all just to scatter manure!
Excepted from Bride in the Hills by Kuvempu, translated by Vanamala Viswanatha, with permission from Penguin Random House
