On the edge of a remote village called Kaagal lay a thin, scattered forest. Long ago it must have been a dense jungle, home to large wild animals. All that remained now were a few peacocks, some snakes, a scattering of rabbits, and a cave the villagers called Kurudu Huli Guhe, the Blind Tiger’s Cave. Nobody could say whether a blind tiger had ever actually lived there.
One day, a sanyasi arrived in Kaagal. A sanyasi is someone who has renounced everything: worldly possessions, material desires, even the ties of family. Sanyasis live as wanderers and rarely stay inside a village, so this one made his home in the forest, sheltering in the old cave. Before long the villagers were calling him the Kurudu Huli Guhe Sanyasi, the sanyasi of the blind tiger’s cave. As names tend to do, it soon shrank to Kurudu Sanyasi: the Blind Sanyasi.
He could, of course, see perfectly well.
Every morning he walked into the village to ask for alms. Some days he came back with a handful of grain. On better days, he came back with a feast.
Manjunatha was an orphan boy who brought his five cows to graze in the forest. One afternoon he came upon the Kurudu Sanyasi and, being a curious boy, began asking him questions. Where had he come from? How does a person become a sanyasi?
The sanyasi answered with a question of his own. “If you are out here grazing cows all day, when do you go to school?”
“I don’t,” said Manjunatha.
He wanted to, very much. But since his parents died, he had lived with his Doddappa and Chikkappa, his father’s elder and younger brothers. They looked after him well enough, but Doddappa would not hear of school.
The sanyasi was quiet for a moment. “Your cows don’t need you watching them every minute,” he said. “While they graze, I will teach you. Mathematics, language, science, the scriptures. Whatever I know, you can have.”
And so Manjunatha’s forest school began. He loved it. Every morning he drove the cows out to graze, spent the day learning under the trees outside the cave, and at sunset herded them home again.
One day, in the middle of a lesson, the police arrived. A necklace had gone missing from the village head’s house, and the sanyasi had been there that very morning, seeking alms.
“I have stolen nothing,” the Kurudu Sanyasi said calmly.
Manjunatha jumped to his feet. “Why would he steal? He’s a sanyasi! He has given up everything!”
The police had no time for a boy’s arguments. They searched the sanyasi’s robes. They searched the cave from end to end. They found nothing. Then they took him to the station anyway, where they roughed him up and questioned him late into the night about the necklace.
The next morning, the Kurudu Sanyasi lay asleep in his cell, his body still aching from the interrogation. A constable shook him awake.
“You’re free to go. We’ve found the real thief.”
He sat up slowly.
“That boy who was with you yesterday,” the constable went on. “His Chikkappa walked in this morning and confessed. Said he took the necklace himself. He didn’t want an innocent sanyasi punished for his crime.”
On his way out, the Kurudu Sanyasi stopped and turned. In the next cell sat Chikkappa. The two men looked at each other for a long moment. Neither said a word.
The sanyasi hurried back to the forest. Inside the cave, he went straight to the boulder at the very back, the one the police had not thought to move, and rolled it aside.
Everything was where he had left it: the gold chains, the bangles, the earrings, the jewels he had carried away from one village after another. Everything except the necklace.
In its place was a folded letter.
I know you stole the necklace. Some weeks ago I came early with Manjunatha’s lunch and heard you moving something heavy at the back of the cave. I did not think much of it then. But when the police took you away, I remembered, and I came back and rolled the boulder aside myself.
I also know you are a kind-hearted man, and I am sure there is a reason you have been taking jewels wherever you go. It is not my place to ask. I have taken only the necklace, so that the police would believe me.
Manjunatha has grown very fond of you. You give him a love that none of us have been able to give him. Take the jewels and leave at once, and take Manjunatha with you. Give him the education he deserves. If he stays here, his Doddappa will make a slave of him.
The Kurudu Sanyasi read the letter twice. Then he took off his saffron robes and put on ordinary clothes. He shaved off his beard.
Minutes later, Manjunatha came running up the path.
“They let you go! I heard they caught the real thief. I wonder who it could—”
He stopped. For a moment he did not recognise the clean-shaven stranger standing at the mouth of the cave.
“Manjunatha,” said the man who had been the Kurudu Sanyasi. “We need to leave this place, as quickly as we can. I will tell you everything on the way. Just come with me.”
Leave a Reply