| Shundagarh is a village on India's
east-facing coast. The Khadra Hills rise immediately behind the village, to a
height of one hundred and fifty meters. A simple, good-hearted old man, whose
name was Jalpur, farmed two small fields on the very edge of those hills. From
his fields he could see everything up and down the coast. If the weather was
kind and the harvest was good, Jalpur could live happily enough — not well, but
happily. When 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 family. But he would go only if he could give; he would not go if it meant taking food out of the mouth of his grandchildren. He would rather die hungry than do this. On the day on which Jalpur decided that he would harvest his corn, he looked out to sea and saw a huge wave, several kilometers out, advancing towards the coast and 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 preparing 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. Immediately smoke was rising high. Within a minute the people of Shundagarh were running up the hill to see what had happened. There, in the middle of his blackened corn-field, 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. |