Dhiru Ma

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Dhiru Ma

Dhiru Ma was a widow with no one left to rely on in her final years. Her son, Dhiru, had long since passed away. She was already seventy-six—just a year younger than the oldest man in the village—and, in that sense, the eldest woman there. Yet she carried within her a strange calm, not born of resignation but of certainty. She knew—without fear, without drama—that her end was near.

She was a spiritual woman, and perhaps that is the one endowment spiritual people are believed to share: a quiet signal, unmistakable to themselves, that life is nearing its end. Dhiru Ma did not believe she would leave the world through a prolonged or insurmountable illness. All her life, she had known nothing more than the occasional cold or cough; even in old age, there was no cancer, no lingering paralysis, no Alzheimer’s curse. She felt she would simply fade away, quietly, like a lamp whose oil has run out.

No one would have believed her had she spoken of her end with such certainty. She was still mobile, almost hale and hearty. She drew water from the well herself, lifting the pitcher without help. Only days earlier, she had attended a function at a relative’s house nearby, and people remarked on how well she looked for her age. Some even said she was beautiful—perhaps meaning graceful; her facial comeliness was only redolent of a glorious past.

And yet she knew—this was an inviolable truth—that she would be dead within six months, perhaps sooner.

Once this certainty took root within her, she began to prepare.

Hers was a preparation—not for heaven, to befriend gods or consort with celestial nymphs; not for rebirth, to resume earthly enjoyments; nor for any other netherworldly journey meant to enlarge the soul’s stature. She had no dreams, no voices, no visions of what awaited her beyond death. What troubled her was something far more earthly: what would happen after her death—to her body, and to her dignity. Perhaps she belonged to that vast multitude who believe that the dignity earned in life does not perish with the body.

She knew the ritual well, so she visualised it. Her body would be taken to the cremation ground. Five men—a panch—would set fire to her pyre as she had no living descendants. And even before the flames fully consumed her body, arguments would begin. Who would take her homestead? Who would buy it cheaply in a “distressed sale,” contributing just a pittance to the so-called common fund of the village? Her small plot of land—barely eight hundred square feet—had long been the object of many covetous eyes in the hamlet.

They might not even wait for her body to turn to ash.

The thought unsettled her. She had never worried about her future while alive. But once she sensed her death approaching, she worried deeply about her dignity after death.

So she decided to make arrangements while she still could.

She looked around for someone she could trust.

The schoolteacher was a decent man—the first to notice that she was the oldest woman in the village—and he held her in high regard. Yet she knew society would never allow him to oversee her cremation when “responsible villagers” were present. Her immediate neighbours, by contrast, were cruel and cantankerous. They routinely threw rubbish into her backyard—hair, household waste, dead mice, broken glass. Once, they even tossed in what they believed was a dead cat, after beating it with unmitigated cruelty. Dhiru Ma discovered that the animal was still alive. She nursed it back to health, traced its owner, and returned the pet to him.

Such people, she knew, would show her no mercy after her death.

She thought of the village headman—and dismissed him outright. He was infamous for abusing widows. The village records spoke silently of his misconduct. Worse still, he had repeatedly sent feelers to buy her land—sometimes offering to finance her pilgrimage, sometimes proposing to build her tomb with her name painted in indelible letters, and many such inducements. She knew that the moment she placed her thumb impression on those documents, she would be pushed out to beg on the streets.

By holding on to that small piece of land, she had ensured a dignified life. Selling it—either in life or after death—was not an option.

Thus, she remained alone with her dilemma.

It was her firm belief that she would catch a minor illness within three months and die in the fourth. That left her barely a couple of months to decide. She had savings of ten thousand rupees—her entire life’s accumulation, partly from an old-age pension.

It took her a week to decide whom she could trust. She knew this was not a task that could be entrusted to someone bound by social conventions or compelled to act in obedience to the village’s collective attitude. Somewhere within her, it was clear that only a person standing outside the accepted boundaries of society could fulfil her final wish—someone whom people dismissed as abnormal, or wrote off as a drunkard; a person who, if understood and treated with care, might prove far more sensitive and steadfast than anyone else.

It was in this line of thought that she remembered Vimal, who lived at the far end of the village. Once, she had found him lying by the roadside, drunk and senseless. She had sprinkled water on his face, brought him back to consciousness, and allowed him to sleep on her veranda that night. In his drunken rambling, she had learnt his story: repeated business failures, a motorcycle seized for unpaid EMIs, mounting debt, unemployment despite education up to the tenth class, a refusal to work as a farm labourer, and finally, a wife who had left him, worn down by his drinking.

Another evening—while Dhiru Ma was still testing her decision within herself—Vimal appeared again, drunk, seeking shelter on her veranda. But this time he seemed different. There were no complaints about a loveless wife, no tirades against the government for failing to provide a job suited to his education, no curses directed at the financier. He was drunk, yet unusually quiet—as if the presence of the oldest woman in the village had stirred some restraint within him. And he was ravenously hungry.

Dhiru Ma fed him puffed rice with green chillies. As he ate happily, she asked softly, “Will you do one thing for me, my son?”

Vimal, who was slowly regaining lucidity, asked what it was.

Instead of answering directly, Dhiru Ma said, “I will give you ten thousand rupees—everything I have.”

Vimal stared at her in disbelief. “For what, Ma Ji?”

“You will keep the money,” she said calmly.

“But for what, Ma Ji?” he asked again.

“I will not live beyond six months.”

He asked if she had cancer or some other terminal illness diagnosed at a hospital.

“No,” she replied. “I have lived enough.”

She then placed the bundle of notes—ten thousand rupees—into his hands.

“If no one comes forward to cremate my body after my death,” she said, “you must take the lead. Whatever money remains after that is yours.”

Vimal did not argue. He did not return the money. He stood up and went home.

The next day, he returned to Dhiru Ma’s place—not to see whether she was dead, not to question her certainty—but to ascertain whether she was a spiritual woman, a madwoman, or simply a reckless one who had entrusted her entire life’s savings to a drunkard.

He came again the next day. And the next.

Soon his visits became twice daily. His curiosity about Dhiru Ma grew stronger than his urge to drink. By the end of the month, he no longer felt like having alcohol, not even a sip when offered.

Word spread that Vimal had reformed. It was a village where word of mouth still carried time forward. His wife heard that he had given up drinking. She returned. On seeing the money, she asked for jewellery to celebrate their conjugal reconciliation, but Vimal refused.

“That money belongs to God,” he said. “If we spend even a paisa, we will be cursed.”

Surprisingly, she agreed. Her grievance had been his alcoholism; once that was cured, she was content—even without ornaments.

Soon, Vimal was seen walking to the fields, a spade on his shoulder. No one believed it—not even his wife. He worked as a daily labourer, guarded maize crops at night through the flowering season until harvest, fought off wild pigs, earned overtime, and slept during the day.

One morning, returning home after a sleepless night, he saw a crowd outside Dhiru Ma’s house.

She had died at dawn—precisely in the fourth month after her first premonition.

People argued about who would cremate her. Who would feed the pallbearers? No one agreed. By noon, they dispersed, sprinkled Ganga water on themselves, and went home to eat lunch.

If anything at all were to be done, they said, it would be decided later—after a formal meeting of the village elders was convened.

Thus, no one lifted her body, questioning what the old woman had ever done for them. These questions were rhetorical—not meant to seek answers, only to vent grudges.

But Vimal did.

He hired labourers, paid them wages, cut wood, built the pyre, and lit it himself. The panch—the five respected villagers—did not show up at the cremation ground because they were still busy deciding how to cremate the body. When the fire had done its work, Vimal hired a priest, paying double when others refused, fearing the villagers’ wrath. Finally, he held a feast in her honour.

No one could refuse his invitation.

Holding a grudge against a dead woman now seemed absurd.

That night, after the rituals were over and the guests had gone, Vimal’s wife asked him again. She spoke softly—hesitantly—asking where the ten thousand rupees had come from.

Vimal did not answer immediately. He went to the small wooden box where the money lay untouched. He counted it—every note was still there.

And he decided to remain consistent in sharing the information.

“It was never mine,” he said at last. “It belongs to God. I am only keeping it until He comes to take it back.”

Thoroughly perplexed, his wife asked nothing further.

From that day onward, the money remained where it was—neither spent nor worshipped. And strangely, it no longer mattered. Vimal worked, earned, slept without guilt, and woke without thirst.

As for Dhiru Ma—she had departed exactly as she had lived: without burdening anyone, without begging from anyone, and without allowing even death to steal her dignity.

And Vimal—once brought low in everyone’s eyes by his addiction—found his own path when the time came; not merely standing shoulder to shoulder with others, but becoming a better human being than most.

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By

Ananta Narayan Nanda

Bhubaneswar    19/12/2025

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