The First Trillionaire

Untitled Part 32

It was the month of February. It was chilly and the air was crispy. Shail was about six years old then. Every morning after her mother gave her lessons, she was allowed to go play with the children under the shade of the mango and litchi trees near her house. The village children used to gather there every afternoon to play hide and seek. The girls used to play with dolls that their mothers had made using canes and torn pieces of sarees. One of Shail's friends, Tashi, had brought a pair of goats with her that day. All the kids were busy playing around those two beautiful goats.

"Let's give them a name!" one of the girl in the group exclaimed.

After a lot of discussion, they named the white goat Amiya and the black goat Jamunia, after the names of the two fruits, mango and jambul.

It became their every day schedule to treat those two goats as dolls and get them married to each other. None of those kids had ever wondered why all of a sudden Tashi's parents had bought home two goats. The goats grew big within a few months' time and then came the day when the story of their make-believe weddings became a nasty memory for all those kids.

Vanashree was giving the usual everyday lessons to Shail when someone called from outside. Shail ran and opened the doors. It was Tashi's mother. After the regular round of greetings, she told Vanashree that she had come to invite them for the 'bali' (sacrifice) at the Maa Durga temple that day. Vanashree agreed to attend the puja along with Shail.

Unaware of what a 'bali' was, Shail finished her lessons and went out to play with her friends. The goats weren't there and nobody was playing. Tashi told Shail that the goats were to be sacrificed at Maa Durga's temple today. Tashi's parents belonged to the 'Thakur' clan and they had brought the goats from a farmer to offer them as sacrifice to Maa Durga after their 'mannat' for a male child in the family was granted by the goddess. The children could not believe that the goats that they had been playing with for so many days were brought to be killed. The whole afternoon was spent thinking of ways to save those goats. The children gathered together and went to Tashi's father who was bathing those goats and they put in front of him their dilemma. They pleaded with him to spare the goats. The man laughed at their childish demands and told them that he would buy them new goats to play with. No amount of requesting and crying was able to move him. Even the Thakurain turned out to be a stone-hearted woman. She scolded them and asked them to play with the dolls. The children went away downcast and heartbroken.

Evening came and the goats were decorated with garlands of flowers. Thakur and Thakurain carried the goats to the temple in their laps. The villagers kept saying that the goats were so well fed that Maa Durga would be really happy with the offering. The strange thing about the evening was, not a single child was dancing while the dhol and nagada were being played at the temple. Not a single child from the village went to the temple that day except for Shail. Vanashree could not leave her alone at home and therefore she was forcefully taken to see the sacrifice. The goats kept bleating as if they had sensed that they were going to be murdered ruthlessly by a bunch of superstitious people. There was a Gandasa in the hand of the man who chopped off the heads of the two goats. In the evening, everybody in the village was feasting on meat of Amiya and Jamuniya, considering it to be Maa Durga's 'prasad', while Shail sat in the corner of her bed and sulked until she fell asleep.

***

A loud knocking brought Shail back to the present. She had almost fallen asleep on the commode seat crying, just as she had that day when Amiya and Jamuniya were slaughtered.

"Shail," it was the lady from the accounts department. She got up quickly and came out.

"What have you been doing inside all this while? Mr. Gaurav has given you some work. Have you finished it? Why are your eyes so swollen up? Have you been crying? Is everything OK?" she kept on asking questions one after another without pausing for a breath.