The poet goes back to when he was a child. When he was young, his mother was stung by a scorpion, which was hiding underneath a sack full of rice due to non-stop 10-hour rain. This happened at night.
He stung the mother in a second with his 'diabolical tail' and went out in the rain again.
On hearing the shouts of pain from the mother, a lot of peasants came in and kept on chanting the name of God so that they can stop the scorpion (Evil one). Notice how he says that the peasants were like swarms of flies and he elaborates by saying that they 'buzzed' like flies do.
The scorpion was still in the room, so when the peasants brought in candles and lanterns, enlarged shadows of the scorpion was thrown on the walls. They were searching for the scorpion because they believed that 'with every movement that the scorpion made, his poison moved in Mother's blood', so if they killed it then Mother's suffering would stop. When they couldn't find it, all they could do was click their tongues.
They prayed that the scorpion would sit still. They told the mother that with all the suffering she receives now, the sins of her previous birth will be removed and the misfortunes in the next birth decrease. With this suffering, the balance of evil and good is maintained. The poison will purify her of 'desire' and 'spirit of ambition'. They had made a circle around her with expressions of understanding (i.e. of her pain). With more people coming in, there were more candles and lanterns, and more insects came in, but the rain didn't stop.
The mother was on a mat groaning and twisting about. The narrator's father was a man of science and probably a doctor. However, he was so tensed at that time and with a lack of proper aids, he was doing everything the villagers told him to. He tried every curse and blessing, powder, mixture (medical solution), herb and hybrid. He also put a bit of paraffin wax on the bitten toe and put it on fire. (This is a very old method of removing pain. If anyone suffered a cut of some sort, they would put paraffin wax on it and set it on fire. This was a convenient method curing cuts and bruises, before bandages.) He saw the flame move around the affected area.
It went up to such an extent that a holy man/priest/guru came and performed a religious ceremony to remove the poison. it was only after 20 hours, the pain stopped.
His mother was thankful to God that the scorpion bit her and spared her children.
Hope this was helpful :)
No comments:
Post a Comment