An unusual prophecy

It was the dark of a wintry January night in the coastal village of Sulanguri. Maya returned from the kitchen in the back of the house to find Supti in labor, in the bedroom. She immediately sent word for the midwife and the expectant father Hari. The former arrived in half an hour from a hut in the next lane, the latter in one hour from a house in the next village where he had been teaching and fishing. It was well past midnight when a girl entered the world.

Maya sent for the priest the next morning. The priest came, a short, plump man with a rotund belly and an air of importance about himself. He seated himself on the platform around the old banyan tree, whose girth exceeded its height. The tree had been there before any man had been in the village. The learned men said the tree was two hundred years old. The unlearned ones said that its roots reached the centre of the earth, and that it was an offence to try to gauge its age. ‘One simply does not ask how old a God is’, they remarked. But it was true that the village had grown itself around the tree.

 ‘Did you say Brahma Muhurta, the Creator’s Time?’, the priest attempted to confirm.

‘That is correct’, confirmed Maya.

The priest then descended into a state of deep thought. ‘What time would you say?’ he enquired immediately, exiting his thoughts.

’03:48 am’. This time Hari spoke with confidence.

The priest nonchalantly retrieved his almanac, which was a bundle of loose, brittle pages which were brown with age, tied between two maroon boards, with a yellow string. He turned the first few pages after meticulous examination and froze on the eleventh page, with disbelief. He then let a loud sigh of astonishment through his gaping middle teeth. For never in his forty years of practice had he encountered a birth in the auspicious moment.  He took a long, hard look at the newborn laid in front of him. She had been born under the rare camaraderie of the Sun, the Moon and the Star Gods, an event which happens once in one hundred and forty eight years. 

The priest labored hard to recollect the teachings his own teacher had imparted to him when he was just an adolescent set out to learn the mysterious and divine ways in which the universe functioned. However, the knowledge seemed elusive today. He cursed himself for not having paid enough attention to his lessons that day when his tutor had tried to apprise him of the implications of being born in this divine moment. He had been sanguine that he will never have to use the knowledge in his time on the earth. He frowned, narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips between his teeth, in mental toil. And then he suddenly raised his right arm in the air and spoke loudly and with poise, as if trying to betray the confusion and skepticism that had shrouded him just moments ago. ‘She will give life to many’, he declared. 

‘What do you mean by many? How many children will she bear?’, Maya enquired instantly, without much thought.

The priest gently closed his eyes as if vetting his prediction which he minutes ago believed he would never make in his lifetime and which he now believed he had made for the last time. ‘Only time will tell’, he concluded in a dismissing tone. 

‘Please tell us something more, O learned one. We low lives depend on the great knowledge of people like you to make something of our lives’ ,Maya made one last attempt at placating the priest with careful choice of adjectives and self-deprecating rant. There was a momentary silence as no one spoke any further. The air under the ancient tree was heavy with suspense and anticipation. But Maya soon realized that her pleading was futile. Sensing that it was the end of the priest’s visit and time had come to make her offering to him, she reached for the knot at the end of her veil to retrieve a large silver coin. 

Maya was a forty year old woman who had been widowed much before her time. Her husband, who had died from a long wasting illness, had left her a handsome inheritance. And a house. And a daughter, who she had named Supti. 

When the priest opened his eyes, he looked like he had been teleported into another world for the last few moments. He had, however, heard Maya’s last words clearly. He had also taken notice of the silver coin Maya stood with, cupped in her palm.

‘Name her ‘Romola’. It will be a good name for the little one’, the priest spoke for the final time and motioned with his left hand for Maya to keep the silver coin, for he needed no pecuniary incentives to reveal this. He felt that the enormity of the event was such that merely by being invited to prophesy, he had been ingratiated. The look of affection on his face for the child, and the reverence for her destiny, softened the corners of his eyes. He carefully packed his almanac in his bag and exited the compound.

Thus, in a matter of a few hours after her birth, the girl’s future had been foretold. 

Over the next few months, as news of the strange prophecy travelled, Romola saw visitors from far and near to celebrate her birth, or so they said. Most people flocked to find any unusual features about the baby, anything that could warrant such a prophecy from the most scholarly of the priests. They moved her arms and legs, as if to exercise her body, secretly looking for something unearthly, like an extra thumb, a missing finger or a birthmark. But they were disappointed to find nothing.

The prophecy was met with a wide range of emotions- confusion, mockery, jealousy and indifference. The women spoke with envy when they decried that their own daughters had not been foretold of their fertility. Young men passed on sheepish smiles to each other. ‘We must warn our boys to keep a distance of two yards from her, lest they impregnate her’, they mocked. Older men and women were simply confused on hearing about the prophecy. However, the wise were unconcerned and declared that it was a silly one.

And as with all news, good, bad or ugly, the events of the fateful day too faded from the short lived memory of the Sulanguri public. 

When Romola had seen fifteen springs in her life, she was made aware of the prophecy by Maya, over a summer holiday. When she asked her mother if this was true, Supti spoke of the events with great adulation. She had slipped into and out of consciousness that fateful night and all of her knowledge of the events were narrations from Maya and the midwife. Yet she felt that a display of reverence towards this prophecy would appease the Gods who had aligned the stars so perfectly during her daughter’s birth to bless her with abundant fertility. Supti’s own chances at becoming a mother for a second time had been ruined, for her pregnancy had been complicated and her labor difficult. A doctor in the nearest town had warned her that another pregnancy could endanger her life. 

Romola’s father, however, was a man who was wise in the worldly ways. He paid no importance to the prophecy and was quick to dismiss any discussion whenever it started.

Romola was twenty one when proposals of marriage started pouring in. Romola was beautiful, well-read and skilled in carrying out household chores. One fine autumn day, a suitor named Raghu showed up at their door with the local matchmaker, asking for Romola’s hand in marriage. Romola’s parents learnt that Raghu was a thirty year old orphan who had made quite a name for himself, all on his own. Though Hari was in no hurry to wed his daughter, Supti had jumped at the idea of the matrimonial alliance. ‘He has his own shop and a house in the town. And he demands no dowry. Plus he has no other family. Romola will not have to deal with nagging in-laws.’

Romola was summoned from the study room and asked if she was ready for marriage. She looked at her parents with confusion. She was a young girl without a care in the world. Marriage had seemed daunting to her. But she had also secretly dreamed of the romance a husband had to offer. Therefore, she left it to her parents to do as they saw fit. In that moment, Hari wished that his daughter had not been so timid and had offered some resistance. 

‘Is she not a little too young for marriage?’, Hari swiftly lodged his objection.

‘You speak of age? Have we not seen girls as young as fourteen years of age being married to men four times their age.’ She paused for some breath after quickly putting to rest the objection, as if she had already rehearsed the reply. 

And then sensing another round of opposition, Supti spoke pre-emptively. ‘I tell you, Romola will be happy. Even I was fifteen when you married me. Our Romola is of legally marriageable age. At least we are not breaking any law.’ Her relief at not violating the law far outweighed her husband’s fears of their daughter not being ready for marriage. With these words she sealed the alliance without registering any more protest from anyone. 

Romola’s mother was largely correct in predicting her marital bliss, but only for the next three years. The first three years, Raghu was kind to her. He tended to her when she was sick, shared the household chores, and brought her generous gifts. He was everything Romola had dreamed of, and much more. However, even after three years of marriage, her womb had not warmed up to bear a child. 

Romola saw the brides who had been newly married to the men in her neighborhood, get pregnant in a month or two. At the local grocery store and the theatre, she would see their bellies swell gradually over the next few months. Each night, before getting on the nuptial bed, she would pray to the Gods to bless her with motherhood. It was not that she was full of motherly love to usher on a child; for she was not even sure she wanted one now; it was more out of fear that her marriage with Raghu was under stress. For the last six months, Raghu had routinely asked her to take the pregnancy test and had watched the results with attention and disappointment. This disappointment had slowly turned into distress, then into disenchantment. Romola knew that their marriage had started crumbling under the burden of his longing for an off-spring. Their love-making exercise had slowly been reduced to a marital routine which she had to endure most nights. It was no longer pleasurable, as it had been in the early days of their marriage, for her mind was mostly occupied with fear of yet another cycle of non-conception. 

Doctors, hakims, tantriks and specialists from all sciences and non-sciences were seen, but to no avail. Concerned elderly ladies advised her to feed home-made bread to a black cow every Saturday for five consecutive weeks. This, they said, had helped another woman who had shared Romola’s predicament. ‘She was immediately with child’, they remarked. Bipti insisted she eat rabbit meat every week, to attain the fertility of a rabbit. Maya prescribed her to drink raw pigeon eggs beaten in milk. The advice was unending. The next four years passed with Romola trying one fruitless antidote after another.

But these days, it was more often disdain than concern that met Romola. One morning she heard two women gossiping while she was spreading washed laundry on the clothesline in the terrace.

‘It is such a pity that a man like Raghu who earns so well cannot have a progeny. Look at those penniless men whose women push out one child every year, even when they cannot feed them, clothe them.’ 

‘Some women have their wombs knotted tightly from birth. No seed can germinate in them. Raghu certainly deserved better.’

Seven years had passed since her wedding. She sensed a silence descending between herself and Raghu. They no longer spoke to each other playfully. He no longer involved her in his day to day activities. He had stopped sharing with her, news of his business.  

One autumn morning, there was a warning of cyclone and torrential rains. People in the coasts and adjoining areas had been asked to retire from their offices, shops and schools early. Raghu had returned early from his shop and called for her loudly. ‘Romola, I cannot live like this. You know how badly I want a child. I have been saving up for my kids ever since I started earning. What use is this life if I don’t get to have any? I have always dreamt of being a father. Of filling this house with kids’, Raghu’s convictions about parenthood seemed stronger than Romola’s ever did. The corners of her eyes started to swell with tears and in a jiffy Romola knew their marriage was over. She had suspected that Raghu was being coaxed by his uncle and aunt who lived two hours away, into a second marriage. And she had known that Raghu had been gradually yielding to their cajoling.

That night, as Romola lay on the couch in the seating room, the cyclone hit the land. Raghu shut all the doors and windows tightly, and then withdrew to the bedroom. Romola felt oddly at peace with herself. She was no longer crushing under the burden of being the barren one in their marriage, though barren she still was, there was no marriage now. For the first time in the last few years, she slept well that night as the cyclone ravaged through the fields, the villages and towns and swept everything that came in its way.

The next morning, as the cyclone receded, Romola packed her few belongings and left for her parents’ house, never to return. She found the old banyan tree at the centre of her village, uprooted, its branches and leaves scattered in every alley in the village. The news channels said that such intensity of the storm had not been felt in the last seventy years. A hundred thousand trees, big and small, had been uprooted by the storm. She saw her parents standing at their doorway, waiting for her. They knew from the look on her face and the luggage on her shoulder, the events that had preceded the storm. In silent agreement, they laid the rules that Romola’s broken marriage was not to be discussed. Quite unexpectedly, she found the residents of her parental village to be more accommodating and than those of her husband’s town. No one here said anything to discomfort her. 

The relief efforts started shortly after stock had been taken of the damage done by the cyclone. Romola volunteered to be the head of the plantation team. She started by planting a banyan sapling at the spot where the ancient banyan stood. She planted from dusk till dawn, and in the evenings, one could find her teaching at the evening school in the village. She found solace in routine. Only occasionally she found her thoughts wandering. Looking at the banyan sapling, she sometimes wondered what the priest would have to say about the prophecy now. But this was not possible, she reasoned with herself, for he must have died. 

Three years later, she got news from a mutual friend, that Raghu had taken a new wife shortly after she had left. The new wife had given Raghu a girl that year, and was carrying again. She had not expected to feel contented at such news. Yet, she felt happy now. She was happy for Raghu, and his new wife, whose name she did not know.

One January morning as Romola was taking stock of all the trees she had planted, she saw a lady with a large broom sweeping the platform around the banyan tree. She was a hired contractor, not from this village. The sweeper slowly approached Romola and started a conversation.

‘I hear you have planted many a tree here.’

‘That is right.’

‘How many would you say, to be exact?’

‘Eighty four’

‘That is quite a number. How many of them survived?’

‘All of them’

‘Each one of your creation has survived! Look at all the lives you have created.’

Romola had been a very proud person all her life. She was proud of her intellect and her education. Yet, it had taken an unwary stranger to reveal to Romola what had been hiding in plain sight for the last three years. The prophecy made by a stranger under the banyan tree on a January morning thirty one years ago, had been decoded today, at the same spot, by another stranger. With tears in her eyes and a smile on her lips, Romola picked up a shovel in her right hand, and a sapling in her left, and set out to give birth for the eighty fifth time.