Fiction

It was hard times: the fifties. Years of drought and failure of monsoons had wiped out many. Among the many, were we. Though my father was a rich zamindar, owning acres and acres of fertile slopes on the foothills of the Singara-Segoor belt by the Nilgiris on the Mysore side: We were finished. Herds of marauding elephants, driven by thirst and hunger raided the plantations laying them waste. Year after year – the elements saw to it the once-rich family of ours, was reduced to penury. Bank loans and subsidies put us in debt far, far beyond or repayment capabilities. The ‘mudalali ayya’ appendage was never to be heard again. Thus, when my father died, he lay on his death bed, holding my hand;

Son, I have something secreted for you- use it wisely.

I stared at him, I knew there was nothing, he was senile and hallucinating. He pointed to a tall earthenware jar that stood by the corner, nodded and shut his eyes – forever. It was September 1952. Our family of three, my two siblings and mother were now on the bread line. Our education at a hi-profile convent school aborted. Mother retrieved some property deed and possession certificates – I knew it was coming. We needed to sell ourselves out. Nilgiris, and the idyllic days of lairdship were over.

Next afternoon, funeral riles and rituals over, I shoved all the original registration and ownership papers of or holdings, and before I left for the Masinagudi tahsildar’s office, I emptied the jar’s contents, only finding a faded hand scrawled paper. There was a hand drawn map – of a plot of sixteen acres down a deep gorge just beyond the Moyar ditch and river. On the right bottom of the crumpled map were ownership details. My father’s.

Good, I thought. A few extra thousand, maybe. However, a plea was scribed too, ‘no matter what do not sell this piece. It is our ancestral land and should stay ours’.

Everyone here knows the closer you get to the upper reaches of the blue mountains, the more inhospitable the terrain becomes. Pathers, bisons, elephants, black-faced langoors – they will ruin you – nothing of cultivable or agrarian value can be raised here, in this scrub jungle.  No one tries: No one sells the non-productive lot, for no one wants to by it.

I walked seven miles east to reach that piece of land. It was a mess. No one would want it, even for free. I stared once again at the crumpled piece of paper from the jar. On the reverse side were, in small writing with numbered and inked instructions. Look for the survey stone number fourteen. Walk seventy steps north. Dig four feet deep. I returned prepared the next morning, measured and dug, four, five, six feet. I found nothing. The pot of gold, buried treasure, my fancy dreams –alas.

Then, I felt it, a small cloth bundle. I hurriedly unknotted it. Nothing, a few dry seeds, one silver Empress Victoria coin along with a small chit of paper folded within a small soft plastic sheet. The paper was as if written yesterday, clean, white and neat. The seeds were obviously housed along with the piece of paper to prevent it becoming manna for termites or bugs. All here know certain leaves and seeds are preservatives and anti-biotic. The chit read - now, move fourteen strides, adjacent and north, dig down to four feet. Again, at the end of an hour’s labor in the rarified Nilgiri air, I found nothing – except another packet, with similar contents. Eighteen times, all day, I followed instruction after tip – and except for a sore back and swollen hands, I was, where I was. With nothing, except broken dreams.

The next day, I returned and worked on. Then after a week, giving up, I covered up all the pits and trenches that pockmarked the area. I wondered why my old man had sent me on this wild goose chase. Or was someone else ahead, beaten me to it?

Life moved on and in 1990, I returned for a break to the Nilgiris and my favorite childhood haunts and relive those halcyon days. All that was ours, was now not ours. All of us had migrated to Mysore, and to different walks of life. My mother had passed away, and all of us remaining, went seeking our own fortunes. I never made it big. A small time insurance agent, making ends meet. My brothers fared worse.

I stood at the third hairpin up the Kalhati ghat, and saw the misty blue hills and breathed deep in the eucalyptus tinged air. My eyes misted too as I remembered how I had spent the best part of my life here, nestled in verdant sholas, with miles upon miles of tea growing luxuriantly in the higher reaches. Now, ugly resorts and diesel spewing jeeps raced down the pristine quiet hills.

I trudged down and up, till, I suddenly remembered a small patch of acreage that was ours, unsold and unwanted. The lot that had sapped me decades ago as I had scoured every scrub and stone for my father’s promised treasure. The old elephant paths had gone, but my intimate knowledge of the crevices and cairns led me deep down a gorge, eight hundred feet down. Five decades!!! Yet my memory of every rhododendron or rock-face, was intact.  

Then up a last small mound: I stood looking down the deep valley: And stared, and stared. Mouth agape.

There, standing in front of me were rows and rows of massive teak trees, each with a bole diameter of four feet or more. Hundreds. Sixty or seventy feet tall, each trunk bore a massive central beam from which spread out a crown of large massive leaves.

I sat down and gaped, and drank water from my canteen to wet my mouth. This is incredible. Here was at least one hundred lakhs worth of timber! Five lakhs worth teakwood to a tree, and multiply that by five hundred. One, two, three crores? No sir, many, many more. I gulped some more water. I am rich. A multimillionaire!!!!

I closed my eyes and watched the cobalt blue sky. I nodded and said a silent prayer to the spirit and soul of my father. He did leave me a treasure. Each discarded seed from each cloth bag, scattered in the trenches and pits had now yielded more pots of gold than one man can ever want.

I chucked up my insurance job. With the price of teak logs being what it is, I hit a bonanza, el Dorado!!!!! Nilgiri is worth gold. My father knew that. Now I know it too.