FURNACE GURAVANNA
( A STORY BASED ON VILLAGE LIFE REAL EXPERIENCES)
I love to recollect my childhood incidents in my village. I was eight years old boy then. In our village there was a person named as Guruvanna and he had a small furnace. He used to work in the furnace to make shafts of iron tools needed for farmers and farmers used to pay him a rupee or half rupee for that purpose. Ardhana in those days equal to three paise and Ana equal to six paise. sixteen anas were given for a rupee. A Copper coin with a whole in the middle was there for which we used to buy a lot of snacks.
My father was a miser and he hardly gave money to me . He was angry with me when I ask some money for buying snacks . "Why do you want money my boy ? He quipped and yelled. . Well, I got angry. I told him I wanted to buy goggery bars , peanuts bars , boiled roots .
Some muslim vendors sell those snacks and I was really dying to buy and became restless as my father never gave me money.
I got an idea. I went to tamarind trees far away from my village and I wanted to pluck dried tamarind nuts . Muslims vendors used to buy our dried tamarind and in return used to give us all food stuff which we asked for. There was no money exchange but only barter system, I could not climb the tree as I was a small boy. I tried to hit tamarinds with small pebbles and each time I hit I used to get lot of tamarind nuts . I pick up and put all nuts in my pockets of my shorts. I used to give all nuts to muslim hackers and they gave us plenty of food stuff.
When ever I come from the school, I used to sit in the furnace shop of Guravanna . We call him furnace Guravanna because he was the only person owning a furnace in our village. I like red iron bars, the sound of the hammer hitting the red hot iron bars . Just pressing and releasing Leather pockets for the furnace blow wind down to the furnace for heat generation with the help of burning coals. The melted and hammered iron bars were hard pressed to make needed agricultural implements. One day, guravanna son did not come who was helping his father in blowing the leather cysts .
Guravanna then called me .
'Hi Sami! can you blow this leather cysts for furnace? "He said.
I was really happy to do the work for him.
"yes brother , 'I said.
"Well my boy.. Blow slowly " he said.
He educated me on the job. I had to laugh.
I did blow Leather pocket up and down and wind continuously passed into the furnace . After one hour, I got pain in my shoulders and my hands were not moving.
I stopped blowing as my shoulders were paining.
Again strongly Guravanna said ' blow ..blow..'
I looked somewhere and did'nt do it.
"I will get you all that food stuff ...Pl do the blowing work sami..'' said Guravanna.
When I heard that he is going to buy all the food items for me, I gained energy and I strongly blowed cysts . Meanwhile, because of speed winds, a large fire , a burnt coal lump fell on the chest of Guravanna.
''That's it, bastard .... Stop ... don't blow man ''...He abusing me firmly , cried for the pain .
I was terrified with the unexpected event and ran up and my legs shivered with fear and cried loudly.
'Catch that fellow " Guravanna loud voice frightened me.
fearing the threat by Guravanna I was hiding in a small room in the back yard of my house over night.I heard my mother crying and my father was continuously abusing Guravanna. In the dawn , I silently slept on the mat lying in my house besides my parents .
Ten years after this incident , When I met Guravanna , he recollected the incident and loughed loudly the crazy job i did on that day .
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