Sweltering heat hit the face of the petite school girl as she dragged her feet on the red bricked lane. Steam escaped from the lid of the boiling earth from the stove of the blasphemous earth. An avalanche of heat overflowed in copious amounts from the perspiring goblet of summer.Drenched in sweat, clad in her crimson and cream school uniform, the girl whiled away the trying time by getting engrossed in humming a playful tune, not bothered about her disheveled appearance.
An occasional thud could be heard on the hardened soil, as she was walking back home from school. The afternoon sun bit her skin and she could not help but wonder from where the sound was coming from at that time of the day in the vehement heat of July. After spotting a colossal old banyan tree, she stopped for a while in the generous shade . The sound still echoed in the silence. Out of curiosity, she started walking towards the source of the raucous sound. A poignant sight melted her heart, which had remained strong in the formidable heat.
A pit had been dug beside a mustard field, about eight feet deep and the sound that had aroused her curiosity, was that of a rusted spade, escaping into the stillness of the air, whenever it sunk into the grumbling earth. A frail old farmer clad merely in a torn dhoti, wiped beads of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, enveloped in mud. His bones peeped out from behind his wrinkled skin that spread over the bones as a mesh of cobwebs woven together in place. But, hidden behind the pallor was his youth. A youth that had been forced to age into a diminutive old frame, strong physically yet weak in stature.
The girl stood absorbed in the moment, with her hands cupped over the eyes to be able to see clearly. To her utter surprise, the farmer looked up at her wearily and smiled. He asked her gregariously if she needed any help or if she had by any chance lost her way.
A sea of pity gushed into her heart but with heaviness in her heart she politely refused. On the other hand, she inquired about the reason behind his heart wrenching plight. She came to know that the leviathan landscape was in the hands of a wretched landlord, who had hired the farmer to slog for him, only to sell of the mud dug out by the end of every week. The farmer was a prey of selfish motives. This was merely because the indignant farmer had once been unable to pay off the debts of the landlord. The story tugged at the strings of her heart and she implored him out of the pit, to sit under the shade of the banyan tree. She watched him scraped off the leftovers from her lunch box that had a slice of bread and butter left in it a few seconds back. After the meal, he told her about how the town used to be a village once and promised to delve into details about the long lost culture, some other day.
He walked back to the field but his shoulders no longer drooped as before. Even the shoulders of the girl no longer felt tired under the weight of her bulky school bag. There were heavier things to be worried about and taken care of. Today she had walked back from school from a different route but she knew that she would follow this path everyday and no longer crib about the heavy baggage upon her shoulders.
