The Colorful Tale of Ilaa

Close to the city of Paithan, in a small village called Sauviragram, which lay along the banks of the great river, Godavari lived a woman named Ilaa. Being cotton farmers, her family was well to do, but not among the richest in their area. It was the harvest season, and cotton had to be picked from the plants. The wholesalers and traders from Paithan would be arriving in just a few weeks, carrying gold and goods for barter. They would exchange what they carried for the cotton that farmers grew. The bales of cotton had to be ready in time! Work was at its peak!

But Ilaa was not to be found in the fields. She wasn’t working. Instead, she was sitting by the banks of the great river Godavari.

‘I am sick of this!’ she grunted loudly. The river, as if it heard Ilaa, nodded silently in unison. Her thoughts didn’t create ripples, but nurtured fierce waves, thought Aastha, her friend, turning her face to hide the emotions. Aastha was Ilaa’s neighbor, all-time acquaintance and a forever tag-along. But Ilaa never minded it.

They were similar yet different. Similar in age, but different in dreams. Similar in looks, different at heart. Similar in living life, but different in enjoying it. Similar in strength, different in power.

The tiny balls attached to her anklets took the wrath of her frustration. They flattened sideways with her tapping on the rock she is sitting.

She suddenly stopped, remembering that it was the gift from her friend, her late husband to be precise. And along came bitter truth that neither she nor her anklets were supposed to be there. Widowhood was as bad as a witch. The sound of her breath and the rhythm of her moving legs both entwined both alive, not by fate but by fight. A fair fight against the norms of society. Against all odds, her Father, Madhava strived to save his daughter and he did protect her, her mother in just another form. That was day when she was walked by womenfolk to her husband’s pyre, when she hardly knew who a husband was.  

Many hands were trying to choke life out of Madhava’s throat by clasping his jutting out nerves. Ramaji, to whom Madhava lent his cow for a few days to make living with her milk, was thrusting his strong muscles around his head. Naroba, who received generous discount for his yearly cotton needs from Madhava was now, pinning his arms to his back. So did, Neelesh, Girmaji, Sadashiv, Kailash, Pandurang, Narayan and others in Sauviragram.  

Out came the appeals, requests, cries, pleas, begging, hustling, struggling, fighting and finally rebellion. It didn’t come in the form of a blow or a punch but even more powerful weapon i.e. ‘word’.  Ilaa shushed the women around her and the monsters around her Father with a loud ‘Oyii’. With a jerk, she came back to reality which stung her bitter. With a sigh of frustration she again said, ‘Why is this world so unfair?’ It was like this same expression was imprinted on her face ever since the town crier announced the value of a single bale of cotton.  The worth of each bale was completely dependent on the seller. A Hindu would get a couple of sheep, while a Muslim would exchange three for one bale. The elderly farmers were taken for granted; all they would get was a bag of staples sufficient for a month. Young Pathans were the only ones who can set their own price. They would demand two gold coins per bale, but would settle for two coins – one gold and one silver. But ironically, the buyers accepted the deals of costliest vendors, for it’s a matter of respect and prestige. He who bought stuff for lower cost was laughed at.

Aastha, judging her frustration, meekly said, ‘It’s always been like this, you and I can’t change the world for what it is.’ Suddenly cursing her for a passive reply, she excused herself to get back to the task she was doing, washing clothes. To escape her mother-in-law’s pestering questions, she brought a pile of soiled clothing to wash. Young girls in the village meeting Ilaa was not encouraged or tolerated by anyone. Ilaa and her Father, they both were known to spoil the minds. Unfortunately, they were not banished, but punished.

Now, after five years, things were still the same. Ilaa went back to her mumbling. It included cuss words, solutions, plans and more plans. While Aastha laughed and chuckled for a few, she dismissed most of them and remained silent for some. Such was Ilaa, a rare mix of fun and strong, lovable and strict, understanding and hell-bent. Rare is often not the correct the word to use, if there existed something that’s just one of its kind.

The plans went on like this. First idea was to disguise like a man, second was to send her produce along with her Father’s, third was to sneak into neighbor’s tents and shout out the bargains their customers want, fourth was to sell it all to a local farmer, but who would buy it from a woman? The last was a prayer for rains.

A group of kids were cautiously and silently passing the river to reach the other side, the side she, Aastha and Rajan, her friend/husband had discovered – ‘The Magical Mystery’. She hasn’t been there since Rajan died. She waved the kids to come and they happily hopped their way towards her on the small stones on the shore. Ilaa was fondest kid among everyone in the village until the day she raised her voice against the kangaroo court and threw her purdah off her face to make her voice loud and clear. In the times, when no woman was seen outside her house or the fields uttering a word to a stranger, there she was shouting her lungs out, saying the things the elders didn’t know, heard or have the capacity to understand.

The kids chatted with her for a while and left for their picnic to the ‘The Magical Mystery’. She drooled and drowned in her thoughts, but couldn’t find one single solution. This was her second year as an independent farmer. She had learnt the techniques to nurture Mother Earth from her Father, but couldn’t flush out the rotting conservativeness that was seated hundreds of fathoms deep in everyone’s minds.  She was not like Chimabai, who saw her own daughter burn down to flames when her son-in-law, who lost his life in a gambling game, was cremated. She shrieked and cried, but never opposed. Ilaa was not the kind who thought that people can only understand the pain when they have endeavored one. She instead, gathered a bunch of forlorn women and motivated them to join in her engagement. Thus, Ilaa and her entourage aging between 15-25 years have emerged as a sole women only peasant group. Last year has been a disaster with scores of bales lying down unclaimed, unbought and thereby deemed unworthy. They have to later distribute it for free among the villagers, which most of them threw out even before the young women left the premises.

These memories made her even more sad and helpless. Fighting back her fears and tears, she decided to take a break. Without even saying a word to Aastha who was calmly observing her from a distance, Ilaa walked away. And, Aastha knew where she was going. Ilaa took to the thinnest part of the river and crossed it on her foot, she took a sharp right turn immediately when she could feel the Godavari water till her calves. There after ten minute walk, hop, bend and duck, she reached her dream valley. She and her friends named it ‘The Magical Mystery’, because no one knows of its existence, except the kids in the village. It was a small pond, surrounded by flowers of all colors and sizes. They smelled like heaven and it felt like home.  The entire area was about a few hundreds of meters, but it felt endless because of its greenery and hundreds of flowers. Being there itself gave her a new energy and relief as if the solution is there right in front of her. And yes, there was the solution. And yes, Ilaa found it.

She gathered her team, working in the fields and explained them why the cotton buds they collected have to left open in the air in the room rented in the corner of the field. This being the last day of collection, she asked them to come a little late tomorrow. As one after the other they came in, they realized what the hero of their lives is upto. A week later, when the market was open, Ilaa was there at a tent in the center of the market place. She was not in disguise, not there to overhear the customers or to accept defeat. This was her year and every coming year too. She opened the gunny bugs carrying her cotton and put them on display in the front. Every head there in the market turned to see, what appeared like a garden – full of flowers of all colors rolled into buns of various sizes. Ilaa created colored cotton, using the natural colors from the flowers of ‘The Magical Mystery’. She collected the flowers of different colors, dried and powdered few and grinded few more separately. The cotton was left to dry out completely and later the cotton was powdered, sprinkled and soaked in colors and dried using the one whole week for their advantage. Sensing the surprise package at the market, all the traders swept their feet towards Ilaa’s tent. Gender didn’t interrupt them, but uniqueness definitely attracted them. Thus, Ilaa like promised on the day of her husband’s death, ‘Woman is the Power you Worship, the Teacher you Pray, a Mother you Bow to. For once, practice what you preach. Because I do. As a human, I want to live and as a Woman, I want to live as much as a man wants to. I promise, this is not just my day but a day of every woman.’

When the rest of the country was still following the phrase ‘a loyal woman follows her man to the grave’, Sauviragram has welcomed a future. A future of ‘Us’, not just ‘We’.