Fifty years have gone by. If you go to Vedon village, you can see a golden urn from afar. It is placed at the thakur’s door. Adjoining it is a cemented pond where lotuses bloom in abundance. Nobody catches the fish in it, and beside it is a huge samadhi. It is Atmaram’s memorial, related to which many tales are prevalent. Some say that the bejewelled cage ascended to the heavens and some believe that it disappeared, with the parrot reciting ‘Sat gurudutt Shivdutt daata’. The truth was that the moon-like parrot had been swallowed by a saturnine cat. People say that at midnight one can still hear the incantation near the pond—‘Sat gurudutt Shivdutt daata, Ram ke charan mein chitt laaga.’
Even about Mahadev there are many popular legends. The most accepted one is that after having memorialized Atmaram, he set off for the Himalayas with many sanyasis and never returned. He came to be known as Atmaram thereafter.
Translated from the Hindi by Deeba Zafir
The Correction1
The gardener Durga worked at the bar-at-law Dr Mehra’s place and earned five rupees a month. His wife and three young children made up his family. His wife ground wheat for her neighbours while his two children, sensible for their age, foraged for dry twigs, leftover grains of wheat from fields, and dried cow dung for fuel. Yet, despite this hard work, they lived in penury. Durga would often steal flowers from the garden, keeping away from Doctor Sahib’s eyes to sell them off to the temple priests. Sometimes he would also lay his hands on fruit. This was his extra income which took care of his smaller domestic needs. Many a times he requested Doctor Sahib for a hike in his salary, but for Doctor Sahib any increase in a servant’s salary was tantamount to the spread of a contagious disease which devours one and all. He would openly declare, ‘Look, you are not bound to me. If you don’t find this salary good enough, you can always find some other place to work. There is no dearth of gardeners for me.’ So, Durga had no courage to leave a secure job and search for another. He languished in this job and continued.
Doctor Sahib loved gardening. He had planted a good variety of flowers and plants in his garden which he had procured from places such as Darbhanga, Malihabad, Saharanpur, among others. He would be extremely happy to see his fruit-laden trees and gifted his friends with bouquets of flowers and baskets of green vegetables. He was not very interested in having the fruits himself and instead derived greater happiness in seeing his friends relish them. During each season, he would invite his friends over to his place for parties and his picnics would be the star attraction of their entertainment.
Once, during the summer, he invited some of his friends to feast on mangoes. A rich harvest of Malihabadi Safeda mangoes awaited them in the garden. Doctor Sahib had been watching over the fruits every day. As it was the first time that the trees had borne fruit, he wanted to hear the compliments his friends paid to the sweetness and taste of his mangoes. The mere thought of this gave him the same joy a wrestler would gain by showing off the talent of his apprentices. He, too, hadn’t come across such big and succulent mangoes. He firmly believed that each of them would be so delicious that it was unnecessary to taste them beforehand mainly because one fruit tasted would deprive one of his friends from having it.
It was evening and the month of Chaitra. Friends had arrived and were sitting on chairs in the garden beside the pool. Arrangements for milk and ice had already been made but the mangoes had not been picked as yet. Doctor Sahib had wanted to first show them the fruit hanging on the branches before picking them so that everyone believed that the mangoes actually came from his garden. When all the gentlemen arrived, he announced, ‘You would be inconvenienced a little but you must come and see the fruits hanging on the trees. It is a sight worth watching! Even roses don’t carry such a lovely blush as these seem to have. Their colour seems to ensure their taste. I had got the cutting especially from Malihabad and the plant was nurtured carefully.’
The friends got up. Doctor Sahib led them on the path to the garden, on both sides of which were rosebeds. Pointing out their loveliness, he finally reached the Safeda mango trees. But surprise of all surprises! There was not a single fruit on them. Doctor Sahib thought perhaps this wasn’t the tree, so he moved a couple of steps ahead; he found another tree, he moved on and found the next tree. Then, he retraced his steps and stood below a Safeda tree in shocked surprise. Undoubtedly, these were the trees, but where had all the fruit gone? There had been around two dozen mangoes, but now there were none! Then he looked at his friends with guilt and exclaimed: ‘How strange! This tree does not have a single fruit. I had seen in the morning that the trees were laden with fruit. Look, these are the stalks of the fruits. I am sure this is the mischief of the gardener. I will break his bones today. See! How this rogue has cheated me! I am very sorry for the trouble this has unnecessarily caused you. Honestly, I am so
