Two-inch Thorns
A response to the prompt, ‘Wild Tricks from our Ancestors’, from the publication Tea With Mother Nature
“They tried to kill him thrice,” he said, “and all three times he was saved by divine Providence.”
I had gone to Kerala, to visit my father. He will be 92 this year, and I didn’t have the heart to fly away to another country, without meeting him, whatever the pandemic pundits said. A day before my flight back to Mumbai, we sat together he and I, and he spoke about the old days and the old ways, seamlessly weaving together magic and reality, a belief in the Almighty, and a touch of superstition.
“He was a self-made man, my father,” said my father, of his. “When he was able to, he bought himself a parcel of land in Tiruvalla, from the owner, Raghavan. All went well, until it was time to draw the boundary.”
For there, at the boundary between the two lands, stood a prized and legendary coconut tree, able to bear enough coconuts every year to both use in the household, and sell. “My father insisted that the tree was part of his land, the owner, that it belonged to his. They shouted and screamed at each other: then he sent men to kill my father. The first time, he managed to run and escape. The second time, they planted thorns in his path.”
“Thorns?” I asked, mystified.
“Yes,” said my father, with his trademark grin.
Apparently, there is a bush with thorns two inches long, and very vicious. Raghavan got some people to cut up the bush and strip it of its thorns. Then each of them was carefully laid along the path my grandfather usually walked on, when he went out of the house on his way to work. He owned a small village shop selling everything that the locals needed.
The next morning, my grandfather stepped out smartly: and gasped in pain. He turned his rubber slipper over, and there was this wicked looking thorn curving into, and out of it. He removed it, and put his feet down again, and shrieked with pain. Then he looked at the path he was to walk on. Planted neatly along it were these lethal-looking thorns, that could pierce through the rubber slippers that people wore wherever they went, in those days.
My grandfather realised instantly who the author of this mischief was. He knew where the thorns came from, and how lethal they could be. He had to squat down, and remove every thorn that seemed to have sprouted overnight. If he had been barefoot, it would have pierced his skin right through.
He escaped this attempt to hurt him: then Raghavan sent in paid hit men.
But that, is matter for another story.
©️ 2022 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
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