STORIES OF THE SOIL by Nirupama Dutt

Author:Nirupama Dutt
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184753097
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2017-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

The House with a Pipal Tree

Pipal wala Ghar

S. Tarsem

The Haryana village where Mahesh was posted was some twenty kilometres away from the nearest town. The government rules were strict and he had to live in the quarters of the village health centre. For a few days the hospital caretaker cooked for him but Mahesh did not like his cooking. When Mahesh went home and told his mother this, Sursati at once got ready to go with her son. She quickly put together utensils and some other things to get Mahesh’s house functional. Her husband Mulkh Raj, who was a schoolmaster, was almost incapable of behaving as a husband should. Instead of going with them, he asked Vaid Des Raj to accompany them. After showing a little initial hesitation, the vaid too agreed to do so. Mahesh did not think there was anything odd about the vaid accompanying them because he had always called him ‘Uncle’ and considered him a part of the family. In fact, the vaid had played a greater role than Mulkh Raj in making Mahesh a doctor.

After seeing them off on the bus, Mulkh Raj came home and sat down, depressed as though he had returned from a funeral. As there was a power cut, he dragged his cot under the dek tree. The dwarf tree was shady and Master Mulkh Raj had planted it in a corner of the courtyard. He preferred the dek to the pipal tree and only when the vaid would call out would he oblige him by sitting under the pipal.

When Mulkh Raj had first come to this house, there was a small pipal sapling growing in the outer wall and now it had become a full-fledged tree. Many a time he thought of getting rid of the pipal but he did not have the heart to break the wall. The owner Sukhdev Singh had rented out the house and gone to Kuwait. When he returned after ten years the roots of the pipal had spread themselves beneath the outer hall and reached his kitchen at the back.

The three rooms at the back were Mulkh Raj’s and the outer hall was Des Raj’s. One door of the hall opened on to the street and the other on to the courtyard. The courtyard was common and it had one tap from which Mulkh Raj’s family and Des Raj filled water. Des Raj would even bathe there sometimes, not filling a bucket but just sitting beneath the tap. The family was so familiar with Des Raj that they had no objections. Mulkh Raj bore all this in silence because there was no question of him vacating since Des Raj was an older tenant.

Vaid Des Raj was a popular man around the village. When he was away, there was no doctor to take care of the ailing. He charged very little money for the medicines he handed out. If someone was not able to pay for the medicine, he did not bother about it. Some households paid him only once a year, after the harvest.

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