The nose ring

There was once a poor little boy who lived in a village a long time ago. He stayed in a small hut with his ailing mother, and worked odd jobs to make ends meet. At first, he grazed cows. Slowly, through years of careful observation, he learnt how to milk them, to plough fields with them, to use their dung and urine in medicines and to use their horns for ornaments. By the age of fifteen, the boy had mastered the art art of cow rearing.

One day, with he was helping a cowherd with his herd, a villager came running to him, and told him that his mother had been overcome with the most severe seizures. The boy rushed home and ran to his mother’s bedside. He was beside himself. Over the next week, he called in all kinds of medical practitioners, mystics and men of god to cure his mother, but in vain. When it became clear that his mother was fast approaching her next life, he sat beside her day and night and tried to ease her suffering. Before she died, she pulled out her nose ring, which was embedded to her flesh, and gave it to the boy.

“All that I have suffered in this life is for you, my son”, she said, “A medicant gave this nose ring to me when your father died and told me that this ring bestow upon me great suffering, but the person I pass it on to will know only happiness and joy. Take it as the only gift your mother has ever given you, my son, and go seek your fortune.”

And she drew her last breathe.

After the cremation, the boy went to the goldsmith, and asked for his nose to be pierced with his mother’s ring. “I can give you a ring much more becoming of a man’s face, sir”, the goldsmith said, but the boy refused. From that day on, he decided, he would not part with the ring.

The nose was pierced, and caused him great pain. He went to the river in the forest to cleanse his nose, when lo! he came upon a gold mohur. This could easily fetch me a house, he thought, but I know just what to do with it. He went to the zamindar, and purchased a cow, an ox and a plot of land from him. He took them home and tied both of them inside his hut, so as to keep them safe. Every morning after that, he milked his cow and skimmed the milk. He sold the skimmed milk to the villagers, the butter to the zamindar, the dung to the medicine men and used the ox to plough his field. The rains came, and he harvested a crop. He used the grain to repair his house, and the hay to feed his animals. With the leftover money, he bought another cow. Having no one to care for but himself, he invested steadily into his business, and over the period of several seasons of rain and drought, grew to be as rich as the zamindar himself.

Soon, people began to talk of him as the only man in the village who was worthy of the zamindar’s daughter. The boy, now a man, paid little heed to it first, but it soon crept into his thoughts. “How can someone as educated as she marry a simpleton like me?”, he wondered. He secretly hired a pundit to teach him how to read and write. With his hard work and diligence, he soon mastered the alphabet.

“How can she marry someone as uncouth as I am?”, he wondered, and went to the barber for a shave. He began to spend more and more time with the village’s elite, and copied their mannerisms. “How can she marry a simple cowherd?”, he wondered, and ventured into businesses he had no idea about. Soon, his whole world was dedicated to making his being worthy of her.

One day, he ran into her in the market. She was surrounded by a group of friends, who were all actively teasing her for being in love with the rich cowherd boy. She would have none of it, and finally snapped saying that his nose ring made him look so much like a girl that she would rather marry one of her friends instead.

Upon hearing this, the boy went to the goldsmith and asked him to take the nose ring off. He then went to the zamindar’s house, presented the nose ring as a gift and asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The girl not being present at the moment, the zamindar replied that he would get back to the boy after her return.

The boy returned home in a state of anger. “I’ve done so much for her”, he thought, “and she wouldn’t have me because of my nose ring?” His anger and disappointment twisted into a bitter demon in his head, and his love for her turned into an uncontrollable desire to possess her being. So he snuck in to the zamindar’s house in the dead of the night, and tried to abduct her. He was pleased to see that she was wearing his mother’s ring. As he was walking our of the door, she awoke, and asked him what she was doing. He did not reply, and she began to try breaking off. The very idea that she would defy someone who has done so much for her irked him further, and he smashed her head against the pillar, causing her to die instantly.

The noise awoke the zamindar’s house hold, and they all came rushing to see what the matter was.

The boy was hung the next day, and the heartbroken zamindar passed a law stating that the bride and groom could not meet before the wedding night, so that such incidents do not take place again.

Was the nosering really lucky? Was it his mother’s guilt that she did not leave him anything of value that compelled her to make up th story? Or was it soemthing her derision made her say? Was it true?

And what of the boy himself? How did his sound judgement and business acumen fall before his all consuming passion for an idea, a thought that was not even his own? Does society make us all rave for things that are never meant to be ours?

Did the girl deserve to die for the ill-judged remark she made in the market? Does bad conduct merit punishment, especially in a society that is so underdeveloped? Did the ring bring her luck, and decide that death would be better than living a life bound to a lunatic, in a society where her consent has no value?

What would be an appropriate punishment for the loose tongued villagers, who were responsible for the ruin of both the boy and the daughter?

A simple, childish story evokes such thought.