HIS MOTHER’S CURSE
The young man, Kommu Puniah, wanted to make sure, before he started on his journey north, to trade in hides, that when he returned he might wed the maiden, Subbamah. She was a comely girl, about thirteen years old, and, as she was a distant relative, he had often seen her, but of late years he had not dared to speak to her, for such was not the custom.
He had spoken to her family concerning her, and they had agreed to the marriage. But he loved Subbamah, and one day, as he stood talking with her grandmother, he knew that Subbamah was behind the door, listening to every word. He said: “I shall be gone one year, and when I return I shall have rupees in my hands. Do not let Subbamah marry any one while I am gone.” The old grandmother replied, “When you return, we shall give her to you as a wife.” Something moved behind the door, and Puniah knew that Subbamah had put her hand up to her face, and that she was pleased.
Not one year, but five years, Puniah stayed in that northern district, and never did he hear of a Madiga returning home with his cart-loads of hides but he sent word to Subbamah’s grandmother that he was doing well, and would soon come home to wed Subbamah.
Puniah belonged to the Nasriah sect, and so did his kinsman, Seshiah, who was with him in the north. A Madiga, Darla Yelliah, a trader in hides, who made frequent journeys back and forth, came to them once in six months to buy of them the hides which they had traded from the Sudras. This man, Yelliah, was a Christian and the three men began to discuss their religious beliefs, after they had settled their trade in hides. Yelliah sang a Christian hymn, and the other two men sang a Nasriah hymn, but asked to be taught the Christian hymn.
Yelliah said they ought to let all the forms and customs of the Nasriah sect go, and pray to the true God. They wanted to know how this was done. It happened that they were on the bank of a river, on the way to some distant village. Yelliah took a cloth which hung over his shoulder, and spread it on the ground. He told his companions to kneel with him, and to listen, for he was going to talk with his God, who was his Father. Before he left them that day, Yelliah taught them the ten commandments. They said after he was gone, “We can continue to sing Nasriah hymns, but it would be well to pray as Yelliah did.”
Whenever Yelliah passed that way he told them more, and after a time they said, “We will stop drinking sarai and eating carrion.” But the Malas, with whom they had made a contract for hides, were displeased. They said: “You are not living like Madigas. You do not eat carrion. You are Christians.” They refused to fulfil their part of the contract, and as Puniah had nothing in his hands by way of proof, he lost all he had advanced. After that he bought hides outright, though it was not as lucrative as by contract.
Puniah returned home, married and settled, and was prosperous. He found a man who could read a little, and asked him to teach him. Through him he heard that a Dora had come to Ongole, and decided to go and see. He took a load of goat-skins and journeyed to Ongole to sell them. As he entered the mission compound he met Pentiah, and sat down to have a talk with him under the trees. He was interested in the pretty booklets which Pentiah was selling. Books always had an attraction for Puniah. Years after, when he was an ordained preacher, he had accumulated a library of Telugu tracts and books, as many as were to be had. The fewness of the books gave evidence of the paucity of Christian Telugu literature. But Puniah was proud of his library, till one day, before any one observed it, the white ants came and ate it all. Later he bought of a mission family, for a few rupees, a “meat-safe,” made of teak-wood, which the white ants cannot eat, and, as he explained to me, “iron windows all around,” by which I understood wire-netting. In this piece of furniture, made to keep food from flies and insects and beetles, Puniah felt that his new library would be safe. With his love for books even then Puniah readily agreed to take them a number of tracts away with him, to sell them for Pentiah in the villages where he went to trade in hides. Before he left, the two men went to the bungalow, and Pentiah introduced Puniah to the Dora as a man who is living like a Christian and is willing to sell tracts. The Dora invited him to come to Ongole to school, and he said he would come.
This invitation was repeated several times as Puniah came and went on trade. He agreed every time that he would come, but the trading instincts were strong within him; he hesitated because he had plans for accumulating rupees. One day he came with a bandy-load of goat-skins to Ongole, and, as usual, went to see the Dora.
He said, “How are you, Puniah?”
With the affirmative nod of the head common among the Telugus, Puniah said, “I am well.”
“How much money did you get this time?”
“I got thirty rupees;” and he proudly rolled the silver out of the red cloth which he had tied tightly around his waist.
The Dora held out his hand and took them, and said: “This is the fine for your wavering words. Four times you have told me you are coming to school, and you have not done it. Salaam.”
And the Dora went into the bungalow.
But Puniah did not go. He stood outside and watched the Dora walking about inside. Twice he came to the door and asked, “Why do you not go?”
“I want my money.”
Finally, the Dora called him, took him by the shoulder, gave him a kindly shake which almost took the young man off his feet, but pleased him exceedingly. “Here is your money. Will you come to school?”
“I will come.”
But the Dora called his preacher, and said: “Jonathan, this young man lied to me four times. He now says he will come to school. If he does not come—you are witness—you must deliver him over to me. Write down his name.”
Jonathan wrote his name, and he went home.
After this Puniah was restless. He sold his cattle, paid his debts, and when everything was ready, and he was planning to start for Ongole, his wife, Subbamah, said, “I will not go.” Now, Subbamah was a good-looking young woman, and she liked to adorn herself with beads around her neck and bangles on her arms. When they were married the Madiga Dasiri had, according to custom, taken the talibottu from a pile of rice and handed it to Puniah to tie around Subbamah’s neck, in the presence of all their relatives, as the sign of marriage. The talibottu was of the size of a coin, very thin, but made of gold. Her other ornaments had very little of gold or silver in their composition, but they looked well.
It seems in the early days, when the first converts among the women saw that the Dorasani did not wear bangles or beads, they thought it was part of the Christian religion to do without these ornaments. Bangarapu Thatiah’s wife, Satyamah, broke her bangles, and wherever she and her husband went in those days it was remarked that when they preached in the Rajayogi sect they wore silver rings, but now they had nothing.
The glass bangles which the women wear are not merely ornaments: they show that the wearer is not a widow. Among the Brahmins, when a man dies his relatives take away from his widow all the jewels she wears. Sometimes they are torn from her cruelly. I think it must be in imitation of this custom among the twice-born Aryans that the Madigas take the widow to the new-made grave of her husband and let the Madiga Dasiri with a stick break the glass bangles on her arm, so that the pieces fall upon the ground.
It happened during the early years of the Mission that the wife of one of the preachers went to a village where she was well known, her arm bare of the customary glass bangles. “Go away,” said the women to her; “we do not want your God. When you were here before, your husband was living. Now look at your arm—your bangles are gone. What has your new God done for you?” After this, it seems, the Missionary and his wife told the women to keep their bangles, because they saw that a social custom was involved, with which it was not well to interfere.
Puniah’s wife, Subbamah, had evidently heard of this, and she said she did not want to go about without her jewels. But Puniah saw that her mother and grandmother would not hear of the plan of letting her go with him to Ongole. He went alone. After six months he returned for Subbamah. The mother and grandmother cried, and made a great noise in the village. But people said: “What trouble is there? She goes with her husband.” Subbamah said, “I am going.” When they were resting under a tree, ten miles out of Ongole, Puniah said to Subbamah—as he pointed to a large bracelet on each arm and several toe-rings, all made of a kind of pewter, “These will not look well in Ongole.” She said, “Then take them away.” Her bangles she kept. With considerable pride Puniah took her to say salaam to the Dora and Dorasani, and they said, “She is a nice woman.”
The years passed, and Puniah became a preacher who showed ability to carry every additional responsibility that was laid upon him. Subbamah had little children about her, but her mother helped her take care of them while she taught in the school which she and Puniah had started. One day a visitor, Kollum Ramiah, came to them, who was in trouble. He believed in Jesus Christ, but most of the members of his family were against him.
Puniah had been in this man’s village, and had been invited to his house. Wherever he went in the village, whether he talked to a group of women pounding rice or spoke to the children at play, Ramiah had followed him. In the evening he had killed a fowl and given it to his wife, saying, " Make a good curry for our guest." And he heard, where he sat, how the old mother grumbled and said, " Is this man our relative that you should prepare such good food for him ?"
That night Ramiah trimmed the wick of the little oil-lamp, poured in a plentiful supply of cocoa-nut oil, and placed it on a post in a sheltered corner, where the wind could not play with the flame.
The rest went to sleep, but Puniah and Ramiah sat together till dawn, and talked about this new religion. And Ramiah said: " I believe in Jesus Christ. All I have done thus far to get salvation was useless."
Ramiah’s wife was on his side; otherwise he stood alone in his family. But she too was full of trouble. Her husband’s mother told her in spiteful words that she was to blame for all the evil which was coming upon them. Why did she side with this man who had forsaken the old faith ? She did not tell her husband that she would leave him if he joined those Christians? But her husband saw the pressure brought to bear upon her. He said to her, in the presence of the whole family: “If you will come with me, I am glad—come. If you do not want to come, then you must stay, but I shall not stay with you. On your account I am not willing to lose the salvation of my soul.” With a sense of great relief she said: “Where you go, I shall go too. Why should I stay where you are not?” No one could, after this, put the blame upon her.
When Ramiah saw that his baptism would make him an outcast in his own family, the hope came that perhaps some of his wife’s relations would unite with him. He made a journey of sixty miles on foot, and was kindly received by his wife’s uncle and brothers. They belonged to the Nasriah sect, and, therefore, looked leniently on the step which Ramiah was about to take. They said, “Come with us to the annual feast at Tiprantakamu; another branch of the family living farther west will meet us there, and together we will hear what you have to tell us.”
The journey was undertaken; and under a large banyan tree in Tiprantakamu the family sat down together for a council. Ramiah announced boldly, “There is no other way to salvation but through Christ. Why should we continue to follow false roads?”
The uncle of his wife, by reason of his age and dignity, was the head of the whole family. He replied, “Nasriah told us to follow him like children, and he would lead us on the way to salvation.”
Ramiah said: “You do not follow Nasriah either. He said, ‘Do not worship idols.’ But you still bow to Poleramah and Mahalakshmi.”
His wife’s eldest brother looked at the matter from a different point of view. He said: “That Christian religion may be the true religion, but we cannot bear it. Nasriah said, ‘Do not drink sarai, do not steal, do not commit other sins’; but no one asks us whether we are living by Nasriah’s rule. If we become Christians we shall have to walk carefully. It is too hard. How can a man live by the Christian rule?”
There was a murmur of approval from the family circle. It was certainly more convenient to remain in the Nasriah sect. The Christian standard of living seemed too severe.
Ramiah appealed to them to give up their idol worship and come with him. But the discussion was losing its interest for them. There was talking back and forth to no purpose.
Finally, the aunt of Ramiah’s wife spoke. She was a shrewd woman, and was accustomed to being heard whenever she had a remark to make, which occurred frequently. She said: “We have good food to eat now, because we bow to Poleramah and Ankalamah. If we stop bowing before them we may have nothing to eat but a little porridge with pepper sauce poured over it.”
This was a practical solution of the question which pleased every one. Several rose up and stretched themselves as a sign that they considered the discussion ended. Ramiah said, “Then, for the sake of your food, you are willing to lose your souls.” And he too rose to go, for he knew that he had failed.
On his way home Ramiah visited Puniah and talked the matter over with him. Puniah told him of men who, like him, were outcasts for a time, but whose families finally came with them. Ramiah was full of hope when he found, on his arrival at home, that his father and two younger brothers listened to him gladly. But his father was a meek and quiet man, and feared his wife, and his brothers hesitated and looked to him to take the first step. Ramiah felt the time had come to act. He went to Ongole and was baptized.
As he approached his village on his return from Ongole, he found his wife sitting by the wayside, her little boy asleep in her arms. She thought he might be returning about this time, and sat there waiting for him. “What shall we do?” she said; “your mother is full of anger, and says she will not let you come into the house.”
“Never mind,” was the calm reply; “we shall find a place somewhere.” They slowly walked to the house, and found the mother in front of it, pounding rice for the evening meal. When she saw her eldest son, and noticed, as he took off his turban, that the juttu was gone, she said, in a voice choked with fierce emotion,—
“I brought you forth and cared for you, in the hope that in my old age I should be cared for by you. You have gone on a road on which we shall not follow you. Henceforth I shall not eat food that comes from your hands. Go away! You are to me as those who are dead!”
Ramiah had too long been a man of weight in his walks in life to submit to oppression now. With a firm step he walked into the house as one who has his home there. His younger brothers had neglected their few acres of ground during his absence. He started out to work early next morning. No one dared interfere with him. But the rules of caste were stronger than he. When the family ate, he could not eat with them; the food for him and his wife was put on one side. The village people objected to letting him draw water from their well, lest he pollute it, and they all fall sick. He had to dig a little well for himself, where happily he soon struck water. Those days dragged heavily and wearily.
But the mother’s harsh rule could not endure. Her younger sons were baptized, and she dared not repeat her curse when they returned home shorn of their juttus. The old father lay sick, and death was approaching. His sons knew that his soul was thirsting for every word they could tell him of the Christ; but he dared not mention the source of his peace and joy for fear that his wife might speak harshly to him. He died with a quiet faith and trust in Jesus of Nazareth. Ramiah and one of his brothers went to Ongole to school, the youngest stayed at home to support his mother. Outwardly unyielding, she was yet glad to have some one at home on whom she could lean.
A few years had passed when it happened that the youngest son journeyed to see his two brothers at Ongole. While there together, word came to them that their mother, after a short illness, had died. The three men looked at each other. Each knew the thought of the other. But Ramiah hid his face in his hands and wept: “She said that I was as one dead to her, and no food would she accept at my hands in her old age. She has died with her sons far distant, alone, as she said she would be.”
There was pain in Ramiah’s heart whenever he thought of his mother. Tears came to his eyes when he told of her curse.