The Wishful Traveller

A stranger wanders into a remote village in India. He then commits a series of mistakes in the eyes of the villagers and his fate hangs in the balance.

The Wishful Traveler

I lived at the edge of the world. Literally. My village was situated right on the lip of a chasm that expanded into darkness, right into the Thar Desert. My family has lived in this precarious position for hundreds of years now. The village elders like to tell us the story of how the village founder had stumbled upon a magical well which had happened to save his life, after he had been lost in the desert for days.   The truth was, no one really knows why our village was set apart from the rest of civilisation. We are in India after all and it is weird when the nearest village is situated more than thirty minutes away. But we didn’t actually mind, our ancestors had made sure that we would be self-sufficient enough to meet all our basic needs. We had a natural spring, a patch of cultivatable land, and an endless supply of rocks, which we hauled up from the said chasm.

What my village did lack in, was education, healthcare, technology, i.e. pretty much anything to show that we were in the twenty-first century. Rural India by itself progressed at a very slow rate and in my village, time was virtually at a stand-still. Now, how did I discover the fact that we were stuck in a time-warp which none of us had no way of even being aware of?

The credit goes to a young man who accidently wandered into our village one day- it was not much of an accident actually- we might have lured him in. Usually, we don’t have much to entertain ourselves with and wandering strangers were always a big hit with the crowds. All we had to do was send a young boy into his line of sight, wait for him to grab the strangers’ attention and then to run like the devil was chasing him, right into the village. This inevitably, would lead the strangers to follow the young boy out of sorely misplaced concern. 

The village people crowded around the new arrival and I squirmed my way through the crowd to a spot right next to the stranger. He was dressed in a simple cotton shirt and a khaki dhothi with a hat to keep out the sun’s rays. He carried a yellow coloured satchel which immediately piqued my interest.

“Where am I?” he asked, looking around at us with a curiosity that almost matched ours. He didn’t look particularly worried. That was his first mistake, and as mistakes go that was a pretty big one.

“This is the village of Onkahara,” one of the men informed him. As he swivelled from side to side trying to make sense of it all, I made a grab at his yellow bag once it came close to me, and it fell out of the man’s hands. Out tumbled the contents of the bag- a compass, a ledger-like book, few tinted bottles, an old tin case and IT.

The village people all gasped in fright when they saw IT, and took several steps back. I hastily removed myself from IT as well and threw his bag at his feet.

“Get that thing away from us,” I said, pointing at one of the items in particular, “It’s the devil’s instrument.”

He laughed at that. A short laugh full of mirth- and not entirely free of scorn. This did not go unnoticed, that was his second mistake.

“You mean this?” he held it up for all of us to see, “It’s just a magnifying glass, I use it to study rocks, gravel, sand, things like that.” This puzzled us, and added to our suspicion. Who in their right minds would study sand after all?

“Can I stay here tonight?” he asked us, oblivious to the suspicion in the air. 

“Please. It’s getting dark and I will not be able to find my way back now.”

 We glanced at each other and finally one of the elders came forward and said, “Yes, you’re welcome to stay here, if you are willing to hide away that thing,” he then pointed at the magnifying glass with disdain and fear in his eyes.

“Why? Why are you all so scared of it?”

“I’m sorry but that cannot be revealed,” the elder sounded apologetic and tried to alleviate the awkwardness in the air by saying, “Well, there is one thing we don’t mind showing our guests,”

He noticed me standing near the man and he casually motioned to me, “You, take this man to the well. You know the drill.” I nodded gleefully and tugged at the stranger’s shirt,

“Come,” I skipped ahead of him creating a path through the crowd, who parted and gave way silently. Nobody tried to follow us, not even at a distance. 

We walked in silence for some time, with the stranger peering around with interest and often pausing to stoop down and examine a pebble or a rock. I didn’t mind, for it gave me an opportunity to study the stranger. To my eyes, he looked quite comical with his huge spectacles, the wide-brimmed hat and his dhothi. I had never seen anybody dress this way before. He also had a slight accent which was entirely unfamiliar. He later told me that he was from a land called Tamil Nadu, I have heard of that place- my elders always told us that it was at the other edge of the world.

He started asking me a few questions after that.

What’s your name? Nadine.

How old are you? Eleven.

Do you go to school? A shake of the head- No.

Why not? A shrug.

He went into a bit of a thoughtful silence after that, with occasional curious glances thrown my way.

Finally, we reached our destination. The well- the one which had saved my ancestor and sparked the rise of an entire village around it. The one we called the truth-telling well.

It was a normal looking well, with huge stone slabs making up the sides and the mandatory rope over a pulley with a bucket tied at its end which can be used to draw up water, but here, we almost never did- it was considered by some to be an almost sacrilegious act. Surrounding the well, in exact concentric circles- up to a few feet away from the well- were the miracle pebbles. I picked one up, from the outermost circle and showed it to him.

“Now, I’m going to ask you a question,” I said it as seriously and sincerely as I could, standing as straight as possible, and looking right up at him into his eyes. I have been taught this speech ever since I was little, and this was only my second opportunity to actually say it. I continued, “And, you have to answer it truthfully,” He stared back at me fascinated, he looked all around us and seemed to notice that we were entirely alone in the middle of nowhere, for the first time.

“Okay, but where is everybody else?” He asked in an off-handed tone, “And what is that stone in your hand?” He asked that last question the way my grandmother asks the shopkeeper how much a bag of flour costs- desperately trying to conceal their interest and appear unconcerned, but the gleam in their eyes giving the game away.

I regarded him with distrust, our elders had always told us to be aware of outsiders, but the question I have to ask will soon either assuage my doubts or support my suspicions.

“Do you wish to harm our village in any way? Have you come with the intention of thieving, murder or taking away one of our women? Answer truthfully, for you cannot lie.”

“No,” he threw his hands up in the universal gesture for surrender. “Of course not!” With that, I threw the stone inside the well, and peered inside. The reason we think of this well as magical is because once one of these special stones are thrown inside right after asking a question, the sound of the stone hitting the water will be heard only if the person is saying the truth. And it usually worked well only when the question was posed by a boy under the age of thirteen. Or so, tradition has it.

Plunk.

So this man has leaped through the ring of fire, or rather over a ring of water, successfully.

“Okay, so let’s go have some dinner,” I think he was surprised by my change in demeanour after that. I was generally considered by many to be a little too serious for my age, and my inquisitiveness usually drove people off as well. But here was someone from the outside world, who didn’t mind my weirdness, so I started to ply him with questions, questions I had been biting my tongue to keep from slipping out till now.

“Where are you from? Why do you study rocks? Does everybody from your land wear such dhothis?” And so on.

But he didn’t seem to mind. He answered me patiently and with as much detail as he could. In fact he appeared to enjoy answering my queries as much as I enjoyed asking them. He told me how different the outside world was, how they had little boxes into which they can talk and be heard by someone else on the other side of the world. He even showed me one of them discretely. He called it a cell phone. I told him to hide it or else the villagers might get it into themselves that this was also an instrument of the devil. I had heard about telephones before and the cable lines which carry voices from one place to another. But this was completely new, and I was extremely fascinated- albeit a little scared of it as well.

Since, I had been the boy assigned to take care of him, he would have to stay at my house and eat the food made in my kitchen only. Another wacked tradition of ours.

That night my mother prepared the usual roti and dhaal with a traditional lamb curry made in his honour. The man ate his fill and proclaimed it to be one of the finest meals he has eaten in a while which simultaneously satisfied my mother and sister.

He retired to bed early and the rest of my family soon followed. All of us stretched out on mats and bed sheets covering the floor of our living room. Our guest was allowed to sleep in the spot right underneath the window as it was the most well-ventilated place in the room.  

I stayed awake a bit longer than the rest, I still didn't entirely trust the stranger. My instincts proved to be right as- soon after the sound of snoring filled the air the stranger quietly stood up from his spot of honour and quietly slipped out of the house through the window.

Curiosity stilled my tongue and I decided to wait and raise the alarm once I learned what he was up to. I slithered on my belly, imitating a snake I had been closely watching the previous day, in order to make my way to the door without a noise. We usually leave the door open at night and I sleep very close to it which made it easy for me to slip out and locate the stranger who could be seen making his way down the road. I followed at a distance, my footsteps hardly making a sound, caution and excitement making me feel light as a butterfly and keeping me light on my toes.

I soon realised that he was making his way back down the very path we had traversed in the day. He was making his way to the well. I almost let loose of a yell then, but again I decided to wait just a bit longer.

He made his way cautiously but with a certain surety in his steps, he remembered the way alright. Once he neared the well, I saw him kneel down and pick up one of the miracle pebbles.

"Are you going to stand there all night or are you going to come closer?" He asked. This proved to be his final and most costly mistake of all. He uttered this question casually, letting it slip into the night sky and make its way to me, causing me to nearly paralyze at the thought of being caught. Instead, I impulsively let loose of the yell I had been holding in all night, rather as a reflex than a need to alert the rest of the tribe. But I couldn't take it back in any more than I could have controlled its utterance in the first place. Hurried footsteps and querying voices could be heard making its way down the path to us. The stranger only shot me a bemused look before standing up and making his way around the circle of stones to the other side of the well, closer to the edge of the chasm.

He didn't seem too interested in the well which puzzled me, I had thought that was what had drawn him here. But to my surprise it was the miracle pebbles he discretely picked up and pocketed. It was these pebbles for which he had to pay the ultimate price for in the end.

The villagers had spotted us by now and they made their way down the path.

"What happened?" The leading member of the party asked me brusquely. I merely pointed at the stranger as an answer.

"What are you doing there?" He now thundered at the man whose expression very much resembled a rabbit caught in a trap.

"I didn't do anything," he said holding his hands up in the gesture for surrender.

"He took some of the Stones." I supplied helpfully, not willing to help a thief even if he was still technically my guest.

A silent hush fell over the crowd, and the village elders gathered in a circle quietly debating what is to be done with him. After what seemed like an eternity, one of them came forward and proceeded to promulgate thus-

"You will not be allowed to leave this village for six hundred and twenty-nine days, you will stay here and offer any services you have for the good of the village. You will be fed at the temple twice a day and you shall sleep there as well." A pause. "Most importantly, you are to give up all your belongings and never come near this well again."

And this was how my "school" acquired a new teacher, whose knowledge was definitely a resource and which was what propelled me to leave that village and explore the world outside. The man in the end, decided to stay on after his period of imprisonment was over and continues to teach all the young children of my village.   

The day I left the village I asked him, "What made you pick up those Stones?"

"My dear child," he answered. "The stones you've been throwing into that well are fossils containing insects from a bygone era."

He had taught me what fossils were and the impact of what we were doing hit me.

"Why haven't you tried to stop us?"

He smiled wearily, "Oh, I tried. Those initial days I was here I fell on the feet of every elder and begged them to not throw them away like that. But they dismissed it as the mutterings of a vagabond and I've learnt to accept the fact that people will do almost anything before they accept that they have been committing a mistake." He ended with a cryptic, "You should keep that in mind."

I nodded warily and left for his world, leaving him behind in mine. I think though that perhaps, he felt sorrier for me than I did for him.

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