The Ox And The Toddler Poem by Unnikrishnan Sivasankara Menon

Reminiscences 10

The ‘Green Revolution' had not yet reached Kerala. Dr. M S Swaminathan was still in Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) , New Delhi. Tractors and tillers had not seen the light of the day. At least not in our village.

At home, we always had a pair or two of oxen to till the paddy fields. As Father was working with the school, transplanting on the entire stretch of a large extent of our paddy fields used to be organised on a Sunday. On that day, we used to borrow a few pairs of ploughing oxen from four or five neighbors so that the work is completed in a single day. The ‘debt' was repaid by our chief labour Jacob and our oxen working their field for a day each. There would be more than a hundred persons working for us on the day. I remember Father shouting orders and Jacob executing them. Mother, with her three or four assistants would prepare and serve food for all. She would allow us to share the food with the labour, on the sidewalks of the field. Our job was to serve water, buttermilk and tea to the workers and running small errands.

Father was always proud that our pair of bullocks was the best in our neighbourhood farming community. This story is about one such ox we had when I was just a toddler. His name was Kannan. He was a good worker, but not friendly with anyone. Everyone was scared of him, including Mother. He would attack anybody who approached him with a menacing hiss and shaking his horns. The only exceptions were Father and Jacob. So he would be tethered to a coconut palm always. Mother and other labourers would not approach him even to give him fodder hay or water. They would leave these at his arms length and then push them to him with a long log.

One mid-morning. Everyone had gone to schools, offices or the fields. Mother was busy in the kitchen. Or was she feeding her cows or giving them their daily bath? Whatever it were, I toddled out of the house on all my four limbs, without attracting her attention and trespassed into the area under the realm of Kannan. A woman who was doing some work in the yard saw me trundling towards Kannan and came running to rescue me, crying at the top of her voice all the way. Kannan got irate for reasons better known to him. He just gathered me on his beautiful bent horns and threw me away. I fell at the feet of the labour woman. Later on she spread the news that I was not breathing nor was my heart beating when she picked me up. But Mother used to conclude the story saying that I was smiling when she took me in her hands.

Anyway, I remember that a white ox with ash-coloured patches who was unapproachable to most of us, was in our stable until I was six or seven. Was he the same one or not, I am not sure.

No damage was done, so everyone believed. Until I got married. My wife, who heard the story from my sister, complains to this day that Kannan has rubbed his short-tempered character on me. That was damaging enough!