When the rains began, life itself had to be put on the line. Sex maniacs hid behind bushes and pounced on women, leaving their honour in shreds, making them wish for death. The wind whistled across it, tossing you about, while your heart thudded with the terrifying tales you had heard of water witches sitting on the wells.

Beyond the hills stretched the bare scrubland, wearing an armour of dense green prickly plants as sharp as the teeth of the reptiles. Besides, assorted snakes, serpents and vipers, slithering around as though to inquire after the health of passersby, brought your heart into your mouth. These hills and valleys echoed with an occasional blood-curdling roar of a tiger and stories flew around of people having spotted one. As if that was not enough, there was still the long, unending road to town covered in mud and dust, so that every stubbed toe and stumble brought the ancient ancestor to mind. Why curse the ancestor? Because he had chosen to settle in Phansavale village, abandoned in a dip between cliffs and crevices, like something forsaken by God.īetween the village and the bazaar stood two upright hills, their rugged, twisting slopes covered with pebbles and stones that knocked your breath out as you climbed slippery paths that could send you hurtling into nowhere if you lost concentration for a moment and two streams that wound through the forests and valleys, swirling over small and large embankments.

On their way to the Ratnagiri bazaar, our village women and kith and kin, carrying neckbreaking headloads of firewood and grass, bamboo bundles and sheaves of grain-stalk, raw and ripe mangoes in season, would stop at the foot of the climb and first attack our ancient ancestor with choicest curses before attacking the climb. First two pages of Aaydaan (The weave of my life )

The Weave of My Life by Urmila Pawar