Story name - MR RAO THE STORY TELLER

I met Mr Rao in Bombay in 1979 when I and my younger brother shifted to a new flat in Khiranagar, Santacruz west, from our old dungeon in Girgoan Khetwardi. Since my brother used to be out of Bombay shooting his films, I used to look after the flat and made friends with the colony inmates. Mr Rao used to gossip with his friends near the gate and we used to bump in regularly. One day he introduced himself as the retired engineer from Koraput Orissa, my home province, though he belonged to Dharwar Karnatak.I told him I was a writer and painter. He was elated and asked me a favour to write for him a love story which he will dictate; he was a thorough reader of Indian literature and did not like the love stories one used to read. I volunteered and he came over to my place regularly between eleven am and one pm.My mother supplied us with cona coffee and the old man dictated his story with vivid description.

It was the story of a brahmin boy whose father was a family pundit of a zaminmdar in a village, and worked as a school teacher. The zamindar had a young daughter of the same age as that of the brahmin boy. They used to see almost regularly, but never fell in love. The magic spell came in fine morning as the boy was going to take his bath in the temple pond and the girl was coming back from the temple after her puja.Both fell in love and continued to meet near the temple only to create rumours in the village and the old zamindar heard about them. Since there was a cast difference the zamindar plotted and through the school inspector transfrred the pundit to another school.So love affair broke temporarily.

The boy grew up to be a graduate and became a tahshildar in a village where the girl had married to another young zamindar. Girl's husband made friends with the young tahshildar and invited him to his house for dinner. The two lovers met once more and the love grew but without much talk or meetings. None suspected they were lovers. Problems cropped up here because of the girl's pregnency, for which she had to be shifted to the city hospital since there was some complexities.The tahshildar also got a promotion and was transferred to the city and heard that the girl was in the hospital.


He met her husband in the hospital and took care of the family and in the process the love life grew stronger. Every body used to bring marriage proposals for the brahmin tahshildar, who refused promptly all the time. When asked why he was not getting married, though doing a fine job, he would not reply anything. But tragedy struc here. The girl died during the child birth though her son survived. It was a tragedy for the young zamindar the husband, who took the wife's dead body and cremated near the river side crimation area. The young tahshildar was there. Everybody returned after the crimation but not the young tahshildar. Later his deadbody was discovered in the river many miles away.


It was a good touching story. I typed it out. But I had to come to Orissa for a work in the family with my mother and stayed on with the parents for three months, and then returned to Khiranagar Bombay. First thing I did was to hand over the story to Mr Rao and searched for him; but failed to see him at their place for chatting. Other old men asked the purpose of meeting Mr Rao. They were all over seventy five years old.
I politely replied that I had to hand over the story he had dictated to me. The friends of Mr Rao asked me to hand over the story to them and they would hand over to Mr Rao soon. I did not do that nor pondered about the meaning of what the old men's words were. I went to Mr Rao's house and met his son who said that Mr Rao had expired eleven days back at Ahmadabad in his daughtewr's place. Then I realised the meaning of the words of Mr Rao's friends - Give the story to us; we shall give it to Mr Rao. They shall also follow Mr Rao to the heaven. The story is still with me, but not the writer.


Ajit Kumar Bir, bhubaneswar, Orissa, India.