The Drunkard's wife ( aka the village shrew ) and the Goddess ....

Stories by Grumpy Grandpa Pandemonium 

Aka 

Parag Raje

This story is dedicated to My spiritual Guru, Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi and all the women in the world in recognition of the tremendous unimaginable struggles they have to go through

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The Drunkards wife ( aka the village shrew ) and the Goddess....

Better lower your hand or else you will have to reckon with me! 

( Part 2 of total 4 )

So now one stormy night with a heavy downpour raining outside, the drunkard demanded a few tasty hot fried snacks ( known as Chakna in Marathi slang and told as being Cheow meow to onlooking kids) before he began his daily devotional ritual. He was very particular about this daily practice and meticulously loyal to this daily ritual of having snacks followed by downing his quota of alcohol. 

It so happened that as their credit rating was at an all time low, the poor drunkards wife could not manage to get any food items from the village grocer. Besides she had grown old and her charms did not work on the creditors as before and they now insisted on cash payment instead of other means of barter for the goods she would take from them.

So as she expressed her inability to serve him the snacks in not so polite terms, he lost his temper for being lax in her wifely duties and with few swift firm proddings by his feet and a few choicest words he usually reserved to address and honour her whenever he was furious, he drove the hapless woman out of his house into the dark stormy night. The drunkards wife seeing her limited or almost nil options of getting any sort of shelter, from anyone else, due to her fame and descriptive titles, and with no hopes of getting back into the house without being received by further fist blows and feet kicks, she decided that the cemetry on the village outskirts was the safest and only refuge available for her at that time of the hour. 

Reaching the far away cemetry, she became aware of her ravenous hunger. Futilely she scrounged about for non existing food when suddenly she saw a fistful of wheat flour placed on a leaf being the leftover items of some black magic rituals which she surmised had recently been conducted in the cemetry. Taking this as a good omen, she mixed the flour with rain water and patting it into a roti or round bhakri, roasted it on the fire of a nearby silently burning funeral pyre. However as the roasted roti or bhakri seemed too dry and hard to swallow she looked around and suddenly saw a temple of the village protector Goddess ( known as Gaon Devi ) a little far away with a flickering oil lamp burning within. Taking this as another sign of divine succor or help, she entered the temple and moistened the dry bhaakri or roti with the lamp oil and quickly gulped it down. Her hunger a bit satiated by the bhaakri, she curled up in a corner of the temple and soon was sound asleep due to the tiring day and cold rainy weather. 

Now all this while the temple Goddess who was known as the Village protector and Guardian Goddess was observing all the activities of the drunkards wife and seeing her audacious action of taking the lamp oil from her temple to soften her bhakri, was aghast and shocked to put it mildly. Never had she seen such outrageous behaviour before. She had always been accustomed to a supine subservient behaviour by all visitors to her temple all bowing, prostrating, praying, weeping or extolling her in gratitude or for want of her blessings. Here, for the first time since the temple was consecrated, was a woman who had brazenly entered her temple directly from the funeral pyre without observing any ablutions or purificatory rites and without any permission or protocol dared to take her lamp oil, and without offering even a morsel of that disgustingly created and horribly cooked food to the Goddess, had eaten it all and was now brazenly snoring in her holy premises in her very presence. All this was too much for the Goddess, and she lifted up her right hand which had hitherto always been held in the blessings pose, ( ashirwad mudra ) upto her slightly open mouth with tongue stuck out and her eyes rolled wide open in a pose of surprise and wonder. 

Just then dawn broke and the Goddess froze back into being a statue with her changed pose of wonder and surprise intact. 

Unaware of all this, the drunkard's wife after a sound sleep, woke up early in the morning before the temple priest or anyone else had arrived and left the premises nonchalantly as if nothing had happened the night before. 

Naturally none in the village were any wiser about her nocturnal adventurous activities... 

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End of Part 2 of Total 4....

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All copyrights of this story / article / essay / poem are retained by the author Mr Parag Raje.