A watercolor by Rao Bahadur M. V. Dhurandhar, 1923. Public area.

Jhaverchand Meghani (1896–1947) wrote nearly 100 books—novels, biographies, and collections of tales, poems, songs, and performs. His life’s mission was to protect the culturally distinct heritage of Saurashtra—a big peninsula jutting into the Arabian Sea from India’s western state, Gujarat, generally known as Mahatma Gandhi’s birthplace and the final pure habitat for Asiatic lions. In 1922, Meghani launched into a multiyear journey throughout Saurashtra to doc its oral folklore earlier than it was misplaced to the forces of colonialism, industrialization, urbanization, and preindependence nationalism. The shortage of correct roads or railways meant touring over treacherous terrain for days on horseback, camel, or bullock cart to satisfy villagers, rebels, and outlaws, and navigating treacherous terrain. This story, “The Glowing Bride” (authentic title: “Parnetar”), is from the second quantity of a five-volume assortment, The Essence of Saurashtra, printed between 1923 and 1927. It takes place in Ranavav, the setting of legends from the period of the Ramayana, an historic Indian epic. In a preface to The Essence of Saurashtra, Meghani insists that his historic figures are depicted merely and in truth, with out embellishment. Like the very best folklorists, he acknowledges that folktale is “autobiographical ethnography”—how a tradition describes itself somewhat than how outsiders describe it. My translation goals to protect cultural specificities—the meals, the clothes, the textures of every day life, the Hindu cosmological worldview of the ultimate act—whereas providing readers a universally resonant story about love, innocence, and the accidents that may form our lives.

—Jenny Bhatt, translator

On the western border of Sorath, there’s a village referred to as Ranavav. It’s named after a well-known native properly. As soon as upon a time, farmsteads flourished in that area like perennial blossoms. As newborns clamber over their mom to suckle at her life-giving breasts, so the households of an agrarian Kanbi neighborhood ascended the hills and nestled into Mom Earth’s lap to develop grain and earn their livelihoods. This can be a story about that point.

Kheto Patel was one of many Kanbi landowners in that area. He had a daughter whose luminous magnificence earned her the identify Ajwaali, which means “glowing.” However they referred to as her, merely, Anju. Each time Anju smiled gently, it was as if, for a second, rays of sunshine radiated in every single place. Beginning early within the morning, Anju would cook dinner ten to 12 hearty flatbreads for her father’s meals. She would muck out the stalls that housed their 4 bulls and clear the courtyard, turning it right into a recent, garden-like sanctuary. Then she would milk their two buffaloes, greedy their udders as thick as a person’s biceps and pulling them so skillfully along with her fists that creamy streams of milk would gush forth. Swiftly churning that freshly drawn buffalo milk, she would make as a lot buttermilk as potential.

Many guests got here to supply Kheto marriage proposals for his stunning, achieved Anju. Kheto would all the time reply, “My daughter continues to be too younger.”

***

Sooner or later, a fellow Kanbi youth got here to Kheto Patel’s home. He had scarcely any clothes to cowl his physique. His face was sallow and uninteresting. However there was a glance in his eyes that stirred compassion. Kheto Patel employed the youth as a subject laborer for the mutually agreed compensation of three meals a day, two units of garments, one pair of footwear, and, when the crop was ripe, as many grain stalks because the younger man might reap by himself. The brand new rent, Mepo, set to work instantly.

Anju herself would go to the fields to offer Mepo his every day lunch. Anju seemed ahead to taking him his meal so eagerly that she would end all her chores properly earlier than midday. An enormous dollop of butter on two hearty flatbreads, a few juicy coleus stems that she would put aside to pickle in lime brine specifically for him, and a cool earthen pot crammed with thickly flowing buttermilk—when Anju gathered this stuff and went to the fields, her face seemed extra beautiful than at some other time of day.

Sitting beside Mepo, Anju would feed him, coercing him with mock threats. “When you don’t eat, then your mom will die.”

“I don’t have a mom.”

“Your father will die.”

“I don’t have a father both.”

“Your spouse will die.”

“Her mom might be nonetheless elevating that lady—my future spouse—someplace on the market.”

“Then whoever you take care of most will die.”

On listening to that final risk, the boy would turn out to be ravenous once more. Day-to-day, his happiness grew unbounded. As soon as the boy requested, “Why do you present me a lot kindness?”

“Since you’re an orphan; you don’t have any dad and mom.”

One other time, on listening to the repetitive kinchuk-kinchuk sound of the water wheel that helped irrigate the sphere, Anju requested, “Mepo, what would possibly the wheel and the axle be saying to one another?”

Mepo mentioned, “The wheel is recalling his earlier life. He’s saying to the axle, ‘Girl Axle! In that former life, you have been a Patel landlord’s daughter, and I used to be a poor laborer …’ ”

“What a courageous hero! Lastly you blurt out what’s in your thoughts? You’ve turn out to be somewhat daring for a meek little monkey, haven’t you? Simply wait until I inform my father!”

Such have been the harmless flirting video games they performed.

***

On this pleasant method, the summer season handed. Mepo had labored arduous to plow the sphere and make it as pliable as a smooth mattress. Overlook about weeds; he didn’t go away even a single stray blade of grass standing. His fingers have been lined with sores from consistently digging out the dry, useless stalks. Anju would come and blow her cool, smooth breath on these sores. She would tenderly pluck the thorns from his ft.

When the monsoon rains poured down, it was as if Mepo was being showered with luck. The sorghum and millet stalks grew so massive that he couldn’t maintain one in a single fist. Within the afternoons, when Mepo stared, unblinking, on the tall crop, Anju would ask, “What are you ?”

“I’m trying to see whether or not this will probably be sufficient grain for a girl to comply with marry me this 12 months.”

“However what if you happen to didn’t want any of this grain to get a spouse?”

“Then I’d positively be referred to as a destitute orphan who has nothing to supply his bride!”

***

The date for the massive harvest day was set. Throughout every of the times main as much as it, Mepo reduce a bale of inexperienced grass to offer to a blacksmith within the village. That they had turn out to be good mates, and the craftsman had made him a small sickle. After it was cast, the steel sickle was cleaned and whetted with water from the Ranavav properly. And the way did it prove? It had such a well-honed sharp edge that, if it bought shut sufficient, it will possible chomp off total arms or legs and ship them flying by the air.

On the morning of the much-anticipated harvest day, Mepo took his brand-new sickle and started tackling the heads of grain. By midday, he had already cleared three-quarters of the sphere.

Kheto Patel got here to have a look and left goggle-eyed. Again residence, Patel mentioned to his spouse,, “Patlaani, we’re ruined! By the point evening falls, that boy could have introduced down each ear of grain in our lot. Per the settlement, all that he reaps will belong to him. What is going to we eat for the remainder of the 12 months?”

Anju heard her father’s lament. She started adorning herself along with her best weaponry: a voluminous skirt in passionate purple, with mirrorwork embroidery for good luck, and a flowing veil of bridal crimson to cowl her head. She combed her hair, looped her lengthy braids over her brow, and crammed the parting with shiny crimson sindoor like a brand new bride.

Gathering the provisions for Mepo’s meal, Anju set off sooner than traditional on this special occasion. For lunch, there was a decadent new deal with: ghee-drenched laapsi cooked with roasted wheat flour, candy jaggery, creamy milk, chopped nuts, and selection bits of dried fruit.

Mepo sat all the way down to eat. However his coronary heart was not capable of calm itself right this moment. Anju chattered about numerous matters to maintain a full of life dialog going, but he confirmed no curiosity. Stuffing his mouth hurriedly with just a few morsels, he rinsed his fingers clear to sign he was carried out consuming. Untying the aromatic cardamom she had secured to at least one finish of her veil for an after-meal digestive, Anju provided it to him. He didn’t care even for that uncommon and cherished cardamom right this moment. Mepo bought up.

“Now sit down, come on! You received’t stay wifeless if you happen to miss reducing a few ears of grain.”

Mepo didn’t yield to her. He didn’t even smile at her quip.

“As we speak, your grainheads are dearer to you than Anju, proper?”

Mepo’s coronary heart didn’t soften.

“Look, I’ll have you ever wed to your future spouse totally free. Sit with me for a bit. Right here, take a look at me not less than!”

Mepo turned in the wrong way and walked towards the ripened grain stalks.

“Wait. Why received’t you hear?” So saying, Anju ran to him.

The deal with of the sickle was tucked into the waistband of Mepo’s tunic, and its curved blade hung loosely round his neck—as was the customary observe for subject laborers after they took a break from reducing grain. In her earnest, harmless ardour, Anju grabbed maintain of that sickle deal with and tugged Mepo towards her, demanding, “You received’t maintain nonetheless, will you?”

Mepo stood nonetheless. He stood nonetheless perpetually. With simply the slightest tug, that Ranavav-whetted sickle sank deep into his neck. Proper earlier than Anju had raised her arm to seize that deal with, Mepo had smiled at her ever so barely. That amusement, too, remained frozen on his face.

Mepo had needed to marry. Mepo was married. In those self same superb garments from harvest day—that voluminous skirt in passionate purple with mirrorwork embroidery for good luck and that flowing veil of bridal crimson—Anju lay on Mepo’s funeral pyre beside his corpse. The god of fireside, Agni, blessed them with a marital mattress of glowing, rose-red embers.

From that point on, this verse has been sung within the loving younger couple’s reminiscence: 

A sickle so robust and eager,
It reaps people, racks them excessive.
A virgin in Ranavav, serene,
Mounts a burning mattress to die.

Additionally, from that point on, the well-known Ranavav properly has remained sealed and buried.

As we speak, there’s a massive memorial on the spot the place the properly as soon as was. Aside from the verses, no seen signal or sight of the properly itself stays.

Writer’s Observe: Fictional names have been given to the characters of this story as a result of the true names couldn’t be confirmed.