19. Fire and Water

Shundagarh is a village on India's east-facing coast. It is a village of simple mud and grass houses built on the beach just above the waterline. The Khadra Hills rise immediately behind the village, to a height of one hundred and fifty metres. A simple, good-hearted old man, whose name was Jalpur, farmed two small fields on the very edge of these hills, over looking Shundagarh. From his fields he could see the fishing boats that travelled up and down the coast. He could see the children playing on the sand; their mothers washing clothes on the flat stones where the Shiva River flowed into the sea; and their fathers landing the latest catch or repairing nets and telling stories that had no end.

All Jalpur owned in the world were the clothes he wore day in and day out, the miserable hut that he slept in at night, a few tools and cooking pots—and his fields. The corn that he grew was all that made life possible. If the weather was kind and the harvest was good, Jalpur could live happily enough—not well, but happily. When the sun was fierce, and there was little or no rain, then he came close to the line between a life which was too hard, and death itself.

Last year the weather had been so kind, and the harvest promised to be so good, that Jalpur had been wondering whether he could sell all that he had and live with his son farther up the coast. He had been thinking about doing this for some years. It was his dearest wish to spend his last days with his son and his wife and children. But he would go only if he could give; he would not go if it meant taking food out of the mouths of his grandchildren. He would rather die hungry than do this.

On the day on which Jalpur decided that he would harvest his corn, sell it, and move up the coast, he looked out to sea and saw a huge wave, several kilometres out, advancing on the coast and on the village of Shundagarh. Within ten minutes everyone in Shundagarh would be drowned. Jalpur would have shouted, but the people were too far away to hear. He would have run down the hill, but he was too old to run. He was prepared to do anything to save the people of Shundagarh, so he did the only thing that he could do: he set fire to his corn. In a matter of seconds the flames were rising high and smoke was rising higher. Within a minute the people of Shundagarh were racing up the hill to see what had happened. There, in the middle of his blackened cornfield, they found Jalpur; and there they buried him.

On his grave, they wrote the words: Here lies Jalpur, a man who gave, living; a man who died, giving.