Based on Night of the Scorpion - by Nissim Ezekiel
I remember the night my mother
was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.
Parting with his poison - flash
of diabolic tail in the dark room -
he risked the rain again.
The peasants came like swarms of flies
and buzzed the name of God a hundred times
to paralyse the Evil One.
With candles and with lanterns
throwing giant scorpion shadows
on the mud-baked walls
they searched for him: he was not found.
They clicked their tongues.
With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother's blood, they said.
May he sit still, they said
May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of all evil
balanced in this unreal world
against the sum of good
become diminished by your pain.
May the poison purify your flesh
of desire, and your spirit of ambition,
they said, and they sat around
on the floor with my mother in the centre,
the peace of understanding on each face.
More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,
more insects, and the endless rain.
My mother twisted through and through,
groaning on a mat.
My father, sceptic, rationalist,
trying every curse and blessing,
powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.
He even poured a little paraffin
upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame the poison with an incantation.
After twenty hours
it lost its sting.
My mother only said
Thank God the scorpion picked on me
And spared my children.
People came rushing into Chinnaswamy's house with night lanterns and brandishing sticks and wooden lathis. His wife Vanaja lay on the floor writhing in pain. What had happened? Was there an intruder, a thief who was caught red-handed. Onlookers from the road peered into Chinnaswamy's house inquisitively. Yes, there was an intruder no doubt, but it was no thief. The creature hogging the limelight that evening was a scorpion that had stung Vanaja.
Chinnaswamy had agricultural lands in the Musiri village of Tanjore district. Short, stockily built and potbellied, he was the caricature of a prosperous rustic. He seemed to have had a bumper harvest of rice and paddy cultivated in his fields this year and stored the grains in the rather spacious store room of his house. It was a cold, dark room with stone floor. Vanaja had entered the room to take rice from a container allotted for their domestic consumption by Chinnaswamy. Cradling her 2 year old son, she entered the room and as she was opening the container, a sharp sting sent her screeching 'Aiyo' on top of her voice. The scorpion had found its way amidst the stacks of rice to set its poisonous fangs on her toes. That was it!! The next moment she was clutching her leg and hollering out in painful agony.
Chinnaswamy was chatting with his next door neighbour then and the noise jolted him as he ran in to see what the matter was. Soon the whole neighbourhood was alerted about the scorpion sting. A small crowd of curious bystanders gathered around his house.
It was monsoon time and the rain was coming down in torrents all day and night. The slimy creature had come to seek refuge in the storeroom.
Chinnaswamy's little son started howling when he heard his mother scream in pain. His seven year old daughter Mathangi was shell shocked. She, however, tried to pacify her brother who was crying his heart out by now. The villagers were a rather illiterate lot ridden with superstitious beliefs. They wanted to beat the scorpion to death and ran in to catch the elusive culprit who slinked away with great agility back to his hiding place between the huge piles of grain stacks. People seemed to trickle in the whole night giving unsolicited advice on how to treat the scorpion bite and nurse the patient. Nobody seemed to have a clue, at least not a rational one. They were talking of evil spirits lurking which had to be appeased and such other trash. So they invoked the name of gods to counter the harmful spirits. The village was totally steeped in blind faith and ignorance! Nobody volunteered to do anything fruitful to help Vanaja who was in excruciating pain. They just kept spouting superstitious nonsense and created a real pandemonium. Every movement of the scorpion will increase the level of poison in Vanaja s blood stream they garbled. Chinnaswamy had a worried expression. He had a half-baked knowledge about naturopathy treatment. He was, to put it rightly, a quack. He tried his hand at various herbs and potions to see if it would alleviate his wife s sufferings. Vanaja s pain showed no signs of abating as she tossed and turned. The villagers urged Chinnaswamy to drive away death. Nobody seemed to know of any practical antidote or remedy.
The uproar and commotion they created scared the children. They were horrified by this mass hysteria. Mathangi folded her hands in prayer with tears gushing from her eyes when she heard the people sitting round her mother discussing about rebirth and all her sins being washed away. She just couldn't think of a world without her mother. Her little brother started wailing again as he saw his mother was unresponsive to his entreaties. Vanaja lay in a subconscious stupor, so to say, oblivious of the happenings around her.
Why was there no quick medical treatment? The only qualified doctor was away on a holiday and everybody gathered around Vanaja had bleak hopes and were keeping their fingers crossed.
Hours passed and the venom gradually started losing potency. Vanaja s eyes opened slowly. The villagers were awestruck. Chinnaswamy and his kids couldn’t believe their eyes. It was like a dream come true for them. The people said good had won over evil and that Chinnaswamy’ s good deeds in his previous birth paid off as his wife came back to life from an almost state of no return according to them. Amidst all their rantings, Vanaja s voice was barely heard as she tried to communicate something. Her first thoughts were about her children. She wanted to know if they were safe and sound and breathed a sigh of relief when she learnt that the scorpion had spared them and targeted her instead!
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