‘Well, your job is done,’ sighed the goldsmith and walked away. Even though Govindappa Nayakkar invited him home for dinner, he refused. He would not accept the earrings either; instead he asked for them to be given to a poor pregnant woman of the Kammalla caste.

‘Where are you going now?’ Akkayya asked.

He told them he was going to trek to Kasi.

‘Of course, you may go wherever you wish,’ replied Krishnappa Nayakkar. ‘But you are leaving our village after a funeral without bathing and you are leaving on an empty stomach. Do you think that will do us any good?’

‘My dear kind men, please do not think badly of me. You will lack nothing,’ he spoke the blessing as he touched his sacred thread, and left.

28

WHEN HE WAS DRAGGED TO the stake, the villagers made sure the children and pregnant women were sent away. Then they bound both his hands behind him, and doubled up both his legs and tied them. He was slowly made to sit on the sharp tip of the stake and was pressed down. The stake drove through his anus and came out at the nape of his neck. His body trembled wildly. Blood and faeces rushed out, a terrible groan came from his throat. All this happened in a few moments. The stake had come clean through his neck almost a foot high. They untied his legs only.

From a distance he looked as if he was sitting on a pole, swinging his legs and gazing intently at the ground.

There were two guards with spears behind him. The elders believed that a man on the stake should never see them. Whatever he utters as the stake pierces through him will come true. Hence he was faced away from the village.

The guards made sure no one came that way for two whole days.

That night was strangely quiet in the village. His screams were even more frightening in the dark.

‘Water … water … please give me some water,’ he cried.

One of the guards came to the village and asked, ‘He wants water. Should I give him some?’

‘Water! That woman drank his share of water when she died. Why does he want more?’

The women appealed, ‘Please … he is going to die. Let him have some water.’

Finally, Govindappa Nayakkar said, ‘Well, it is not a crime to feed a sip of water to a dying man. In fact, you should give him whatever he asks for.’

The guard cut a broad palm frond, turned it into a spoon and poured cool water from the pot and held it up to the man’s lips. He slowly sipped but could not drink much.

He wept in sorrow. It was as if he was talking to someone. ‘Dey, sinner, you have killed and earned a woman’s curse.’ His face screwed up in pain.

The third day, a few girls arrived with palm boxes, with the excuse of collecting neem seeds. The smiles and giggles of the young girls, who were at the doorstep of puberty, washed away the fear of death in that place. The man on the stake wasn’t able to raise his head and see them, but even in his torture their laughter cheered him up.