Kashmir, which is the land of the wildest colors in spring, wears a mantle of snow in winter. The people retire to their homes and remain there weaving warm blankets and clothes. The kangri, an earthenware bowl, held in a frame of wicker-work, can be seen on every person, young and old. Hot embers are put into it and it is slipped under their voluminous gowns. This keeps them warm. But there are others who find the winter months too long and the time too heavy on their hands and so they go down to the plains of the Punjab where the winter is not so severe. Here they take whatever job comes their way and thus they manage to pass the long winter months.

Sunder, a Kashmiri farmer, had come to the plains to take on the job of a domestic servant for the last two winters. Though he did get some money at the end of each month, he got it only after sheer hard work. From the crowing of the cock, till well-nigh mid- night, the work at the house was such that at times poor Sunder did not know whether he was standing on his feet or on his head.

Well, two winters were enough to give him a grave dislike for house work. He wished to do something else for a change. He toyed with the idea of buying a hen as a humble start. The idea of starting a poultry farm had been his long cherished dream. A friend of his, who was also a shop-keeper agreed to take on the responsibility of selling the eggs at a small commission. With a major hurdle removed, Sunder went and bought a hen. She was a brown one. She became the apple of his eye. She capered, she pecked and she clucked and to Sunder nothing could be more beautiful. Then came the time when she started laying eggs. Indeed their quality was so good that they sold at quite a high price and in a short while Sunder had made a neat sum. With this money he bought more hens, made an attractive coop for them and soon he boasted of a small poultry farm. He was far happier looking after the hens and chicks than he had been as a domestic servant.

He was proud of his poultry farm but proudest of all was he of his brown hen. She was to him the symbol of good fortune and he never tired of talking about her. All his conversation now centered around her- oh, she pecked so delicately, she strutted so majestically! Whenever he joined a group of his friends, they would exchange knowing smiles and settle down in a resigned sort of way for they knew that the conversation would now center around the inevitable hen. This became such a pet topic of his that people started referring to him as ‘Sunder, the brown hen’.

‘Did you meet Sunder today?”

‘Who, the brown hen?”

A time came when the name of Sunder was completely left out of the conversation and people started referring to him as the hen. As soon as the children of the village came to know of this nickname, they made Sunder’s life miserable. Whenever and wherever they spotted him, they would cry, ‘Brown hen, brown hen’. In the beginning Sunder would just shrug his shoulders and walk off, but when it became a regular affair it started getting on his nerves. To make matters worse, the older men too joined in the fun. If they saw him, they would call out, ‘Brown hen, how is your business getting along?”

Sunder’s irritation changed to anger and obsession. Whenever he stepped out of the house he was sure that everyone, everywhere was mocking at him with his nickname He brooded over this and soon he lost control of himself. Often when resting at home, he would imagine voices calling out, ‘Brown hen, brown hen,’ and he would rush out threatening to kill the imaginary offenders.

The village elders looked at such acts with a worried frown on their wrinkled foreheads. ‘Brown hen is losing his sanity,’ they would say. After a while, in a meeting of the elders of the village, it was decided that ‘brown hen’ needed a change of place and people to regain his sanity. They persuaded him to go to the plains. Sunder welcomed the idea and left for the plains. Here he set up a small shop.

He spent happy days for though he had to work hard, the people were friendly. They did not know his nickname and so no one east teased him. The years rolled by and Sunder’s heart yearned to see his near and dear ones. He pondered over this for days. Should he take the risk of going back to his village, he asked himself repeatedly. Surely the name brown hen had been forgotten by now, he thought consolingly. At last he made his decision to return.

As he went homewards and neared the Pir Panjal range, he met a group of people. The men fell a-talking. One of the men asked Sunder, ‘Sir, from where do you come?’ ‘I am on my way back from Punjab. I am going to Sopur.’ ‘Aha! said another of the group, who had all this while been intently looking at Sunder, ‘You resemble the man we once knew as brown hen. Are you by any chance the same man?”

Sunder stopped in his tracks. His heart was filled with anger and sorrow. So the name had not died down as yet, he thought despairingly. The village people would once again tease him back to insanity if he went back there. He bid the men goodbye saying, ‘Yes I am the same person whom you once drove mad by giving him the nickname of brown hen. It seems the name is still fresh in your memory and you will once again make my life miserable. I am going back to Punjab and to my little shop there. No one knows my nickname and I thus live happily there.’

And so Sunder went back to the plains. He never went back to his village and the name of ‘brown hen’, it is said, gradually died out.

A Folkstory from Kashmir sourced from Folktales of Kashmir compiled by Bani Roy Chaudhury

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