Gowda’s Malli

Gowda’s Malli *

BY MASTI VENKATESA IYENGAR
(Rendered from his verse-tale in KANNADA)

II

Morning came and the whole village was surprised to learn that the Gowda had taken Malli to be his concubine. Malli sent word to her brother that she had chosen and that the Gowda was her man thenceforth.

The Gowda’s mother grieved for some time that the woman her son had brought home was not his married wife, but consoled herself later saying: “It is no matter. I am glad he will feel lonely no longer.”

As for the sisters-in-law, how did it matter to them? To do the drudgery of the household there was one bond-woman more. Marriage could not make it better nor concubinage worse. She would carry rubbish to the dung heap just as well as if she were a married daughter-in-law.

The elder and younger sisters of the Gowda were pleased enough, because this new woman could not claim to be mistress of the house and oust them from their places. Malli was no serpent nor snake: she was merely a grasshopper.

Pilli came in the afternoon. “How are you, Mallakka?” she said, using new courtesy in the form of address. She had addressed Malli differently just the day before. Today Malli was installed in the great house, and Pilli was as before a servant, lower in degree.

Malli was conscious of no exaltation for herself nor of inferior degree in others. One thought was uppermost in her mind: the desire to delight her lover and to look on him and rejoice, single of heart and mind like Nandi in the presence of Shiva.

As winter ripened and its cold days passed in procession and the reapers gathered in the harvest on the fields, Malli and her lover gave delight to their two bodies pouring libation to their plighted love with sun and moon alike as witness.

What great matter to mention is this, you ask? Friends, would I call this a great matter before people who think it is not? To those who think nothing of the taste I call sweet, sugar-cane is no such thing; it is just a piece of bamboo, specially thin and long.

As Gowda and Malli were not wise in this fashion, their lives became pledged to the hilt to the joys of new-found love. And in tasting the body they forgot existence, the earth all made over to a bliss as of paradise.

Is it possible that from this fabrication of flesh, blood and more such stuff there can arise a bliss so deep and true? Or, may this be the way of Him who made the world? How otherwise does it happen that its mud and dirt turn to flower and fruit?

Two children Malli bore and lost: a boy who died shortly after birth and a girl who grew for six years, bright like a falchion of gold and increasing as the new young moon.

The girl of six years was one day gored by an angry cow and died of the injuries. As she closed her eyes, the statuette which Malli and Gowda had cast out of their love and longing dropped from its pedestal in their hearts and fell and kissed the dust.

Malli cried for her child and wiped her eyes dry; then she began to console her Gowda and his mother and the others in the household. “You have wept enough,” she said. “Weep not any more. So much sorrow for the child of a kept woman was never heard of and were surely absurd.”

By this time Malli had become dear to the heart not merely of her Gowda but of her mother-in-law and her sisters-in-law and of others in the household, and indeed of all people in the village and in the villages around.

For she laboured hard to please all like a woman paid to serve. And when her Gowda sat for his meal before a plate, she would walk up to him and hold out her hand for a share, and take what he gave and wait till the Gowda had finished his meal and then eat it.

The Gowda was hurt by this procedure and said, “Where is this prescribed?” Malli would say: “It is my own prescription. This body is yours. Properly speaking, you ought yourself to feed it.”

The mother-in-law had lost her teeth and needed someone to pound the betel and nut for her. This Malli would do for her, as often as she needed, the livelong day. When the old woman complained that her body ached, Malli would massage her. She did not mind doing it; she had no other work in the house and, as for pride, she never felt it beneath her to serve if she could please.

With the sisters of her Gowda and the wives of his brothers she was always friendly and smiling; and when she went to the well to wash her own clothes, she would take their clothes also. What could any one say against a person always prepared to do so much for others?

A year from the day on which the Gowda accepted her, Malli had a sari for three anas, brought and presented it to Pilli; “Sister Pilli”, she said, “I owe it to you that I joined my loving lord.”

When she pounded the paddy or ground the ragi, Malli would ask her mother-in-law for a handful for herself and keep it aside; and when she had gathered enough, she would send it to the temple or give it to a beggar; and thus her life grew finer and finer with the passing of the days.

Thus daily refinement in Malli’s way of living was a thing for wonder to her Gowda. This common girl of the people who knew nothing when she came to him, what a lot she had learnt! And how beautiful she had become!–her teeth a row of jasmine buds and her eyes stretching out to touch her ears.

About the time that the daughter died a company of Boyees happened to come to the village. Malli settled with them that, for three candies and a half of ragi, they should make a pond for her at one end of the village tank.

When the pond was dug the Boyees said: “Let us have a share of the merit of this service,” and, asking for no more than the daily food, worked for another month and riveted the pond. The pond was beautiful to see when completed, and in an auspicious hour the Goddess of the Spring of Water was worshipped and the pond made over for public use.

The pond had to be named at the name of worship and Malli wished it to be called the Gowda’s pond. The Gowda objected. “You got it dug with grain earned by your own labour. It is yours; let it be called by your name.”

Finally, the Jois gave a decision to suit both. “We shall call the pond Malli’s Gowda’s pond. For the pond is the Gowda’s and the Gowda is Malli’s. Keep that name and see: it will sound beautiful.”

The Gowda bought some land by the side of the pond and got a grove of treees planted on it. Ten years the tope grew. At the end of it they led God in procession to the place, gave a feast to the people, and named the tope Malli’s Tope.

“What use,” said Malli “is Malli without Gowda? Throw the thing away. If the Gowda wears it, it is a pair of sandals; if he does not, it is so much old leather. Do not make too much of an owned slave of a woman.

“If you must call it Malli’s tope, call it Gowda’s Malli’s Tope.” And that is the name by which the people call it today. Year after year the Gowda and Malli, in pleasing and happy converse, fostered the love between them sitting here; and it grew as did the trees.

In the feast of the winter equinox they held a festival by the pond, bringing the image of the Mother of the Universe in procession to the place; and for this purpose built here a small hall of stone in the name of the Gowda’s mother.

To say that Malli, though not married, gave to her Gowda all the joy that a married wife can give is to understate the fact. So golden and so flawless was the blending of the souls of the man and his beloved woman.

Attending to his duties as headman, the Gowda would sit with ten people in the village hall. What wife could sit there and prepare betel for him and hand him some area and the prepared leaf? Was ever wife seen doing this?

This Malli did for Gowda. She was with him wherever he went. She really had nothing else to do. And so the years passed with them and the porridge of their love was warm even to the end of their years, neither cooling nor growing stale.

When the children of the household grew, they were married. Daughters-in-law came and knew no other as mother-in-law. Beginning as a concubine, Malli ended as the mother of the household. In truth, there was not a single person who did not feel beholden to her.

What spell did she cast or what incantation mutter? Where did she learn the magic for all this enchantment? All that she had was a mind that knew not harm. Can magic and enchantment ever equal this possession?

The Gowda’s mother closed her life one of these years, tended by Malli to the very last. Dying she said to her: “You have been to me both daughter and daughter-in-law, and to our house the Goddess of Prosperity. My dear, you are purest gold.”

Malli consoled the Gowda on the old woman’s death and took her place towards the grand-children of the house. With no children of her own, she yet realised to the full the joy of seeing young life growing before her eyes.

Fifty years the Gowda and Malli thus lived together as man and wife. Malli’s caste was forgotten, and forgotten the fact that she was not a married wife. The love that had grown between the man and woman adorned the two as a crest of honour.

And when his days were over, the Gowda came to leave his earthly body to go to his God. Malli sat beside him and spoke words of courage and good cheer; and playing her fingers in his grey hair made him this request:

“You are going now; presently I shall follow. Leaving this life it will not do for you to forget me. She who was married to you is waiting there and will join you. Yet keep in mind this poor creature Malli.

“When my days on earth are done I shall come to the presence of God. His servants will ask, ‘Whose woman is this?’ Say immediately, ‘She is mine.’ It is infinitely beautiful when the man who owns one makes this acknowledgement in that Great Presence.

“If I had been married I should myself have answered and said, ‘I am the Gowda’s woman.’ I have not been married. If you do not claim me, it is not open to me to claim you. If you do, oh, heaven will be as jaggery, warm and freshly made.

“In the next birth we shall marry and in sooth be man and wife. Let us have no more of this inferior relationship of man and kept woman. If God should see that our love of each other is true, it is not too much for Him to grant.

“I have a great desire to be your married woman and make one dish and another, and serve it and see you eat. If it is clear that we long for this deeply enough, God will grant this desire and cleanse my next life of the rust of concubinage.”

The Gowda made the promise and placed his hand in Malli’s hand and with his eyes fixed on hers, breathed his last breath. Malli dropped on the ground that moment, stricken by the sense of her loss, worse even than she could have been if death had come to her.

In order that the dead man’s soul might go straight to his God, Malli had all the ceremonies properly conducted; and, in a manner befitting a life so long and so prosperously lived, gave food to the poor and distributed clothing.

When the Gowda’s mother died, the wives of the brothers had raised the question of a partition. To live together is all very well for those outside to see; within a house there will be a hundred pin-pricks.

The brothers had then gone apart. Now, when the Gowda died, one of the daughters-in-law raised the question of a further partition. Malli spoke to her and said:

“Daughter, with hoof stuck in the mire of this household, see this old cow. Take pity on me, the shoe which the Gowda once wore and has cut off. Stay together while I am alive, and when I am dead live as you like.

“‘My mate and I’, the bird can say; ‘I and my young one’, can say the cow; ‘brother and sister, elder and younger’, this can be said and its consequence borne only by you who are something more: a woman.”

With these words to the daughter-in-law, she said to the sons: “Brothers, break up the household and begin to live apart only when you have grandsons who can stand up to your shoulders. If you partition before that in a hurry, half the fruit of your labours will go to your servants and your men.”

“It is one thing to say that your sons and grandsons labour and that you are sitting in peace and watching. It is quite another to say that you will labour and your son will labour and your servant also will labour. For then your property will surely be frittered away.”

The wail had its effect. For, after all, the sons were not little boys. They were young in the presence of Malli, but, in fact, old enough to be heads of the village. “Be at peace”, they said to the old woman. “We shall think of it later on.” And so the house had the same old door and the fields had the same old berms.

When I knew Malli she was old as old could be. She would be seated on the platform in front of the house. There were faint creases on her face but so faint as to be almost invisible. Indeed all signs of old age sat but lightly on her.

The children of her house and of neighbours’ houses would gather round her whenever so minded and, with her as judge, play blind man’s buff. In the fervour of their play they would pull her and fall on her and shout and dance galore. It were a shame to describe all the bother with which they bothered her.

Despite the trouble the old woman would keep smiling and play with the children as if she were again a child. “You make me judge, will you?” She would say. “Much judge you will make of me who have to go and stand before the Great Judge myself.”

The few teeth that she still retained were still bright as of old; and her eyes were bright with the memory of the joy in which they had dipped in the past. The face was comely; the ears small and neat; and the smile was as sweet as ever. Even old age had been kind to Malli.

The day that she died the whole village mourned the old woman. They elected a place near the feet of her Gowda and buried her remains there; and that night, in accord with the wish she had expressed, had special worship offered, and prayers said for her.

Malli had long ere this placed money at interest and provided for a service in the temple on the anniversary of the day of the Gowda’s accepting her. A rare concubine she was and a rare lover he!

The great Ninth Day has gone and the carnival of lights has passed and the clouds have finished pouring their store and the sky is brightening. Cold days are creeping in and the moon has grown to the full, and in the temple are lit the lamps burning row on row.

And today is the day of the service in the name of that lover and that beloved. The whole village comes to the temple in memory of the two. If this goes on for a great many years, will Gowda and Malli, I wonder, be deified in the people’s mind?

How many couples are there who have themselves dug the ground, and planted trees and raised them by the labour of their hands, and gathered oil-seed and ground it and got oil and lit lamps with that oil in the presence of their God?

This Gowda and Malli did. And today, with the pots of oil derived from six Ippe trees which they raised, there will burn in the temple, in service of God over the whole evening, one thousand lamps in rows.

And all the time that the great Ninth Day and the carnival of lamps come and go, may these lights of the Gowda and Malli continue to burn in the temple; and may memory of their love, like incense burnt for God, be fragrant in men’s hearts for ever and a day!

* Concluded from the August number.