It is hard to realize what a real famine is. There are many tales describing the horrors of the great famine which raged in Orissa a hundred years ago. For three years together there was no rain. The wells, the brooks and even the rivers dried up. The ground was barren and dry and everywhere the crops failed. There was no sowing, no reaping. Rice became a luxury and men began to forget what it tasted like. Plants, too, were nowhere to be seen. Men started eating grass and the leaves of the weeds and soon even they became scarce.

As the days and the months passed, the stocks of rice and grains, which the rich people had carefully hidden, were also used up. After a while they could only have a little gruel, hardly enough for them and their children. Even this could not be had daily. Men died of hunger. The cry of pain and suffering was heard everywhere. Many took to begging and beggars were seen in every village and town.

Villages were deserted, as the villagers left their homes to go to the towns in the hope of getting food. But the towns were no better. Even there men were dying of hunger. Yet, even in the midst of this grim picture, noble acts of sacrifice and heroism were seen.

There was a village near Kendrapara, in the district of Cuttack. There lived an old man with his wife, his son and daughter. The old man worked as a daily laborer and, even in the good old days, was hardly able to make both ends meet. When famine came, nobody engaged him, and he too, like many others, became a beggar. His wife and children also went out begging. Though they begged all day long, they could get only a morsel of rice sometimes. Some days, they could get nothing and the family lived on leaves of trees or grass boiled for their meal. Often they had to remain hungry for days without any food.

The old man became weaker and weaker, till he fell ill and died of starvation. His wife and daughter became too weak to go out for alms. His son, Sanatan, who still had a little strength left in him, now felt that it was his duty to provide food to his mother and sister. Every day he went around the village to beg. What little he brought home, he shared with his mother and sister. Often he would return home empty-handed. The village folk who had no food for themselves could offer none to Sanatan. He then went to far-off villages to beg for food.

One day, he went about begging from village to village, but got nothing. Yet he walked on and on. He was too weak to move his limbs but the thought of his starving mother and sister gave him strength and he kept on. After two days of wandering in search of food, he came to the house of a well-to-do woman. The kindly woman, seeing his shrunken body, took pity on him. “Son,” she said, “I can’t give you enough rice to fill your stomach, but take and eat just this much.” Sanatan carefully spread his cloth on the ground and the kind-hearted woman put some cooked rice on it. “Eat my son,” she said. But Sanatan tying it up in a bundle replied, “How can I eat this? My mother and sister have had no food for two days. I will take this home.”

He had a long way to go. He felt tired, weak and hungry. He walked some distance and rested a little, then walked again until he could walk no further, and he rested in the shade of a banyan tree with the precious rice near his head. “Let me sleep a little,’ he said to himself, ‘then I may be able to walk home to my mother and sister. Oh, how hungry they must be!’

He laid himself down. His weary eyes closed. Soon he fell fast asleep but that was his last sleep. Hunger had done its cruel work. Some time later, people who passed that way were surprised to see the boy dead even though he had food with him.

“How could it be,” they asked, “that the boy died when he had rice to eat? People are dying of hunger but this boy is dead with food by his side! This was a great surprise to them. But how could they look into the heart of the dead child which held more love for his mother and sister than for himself?

A Folkstory from Odisha sourced from the Folktales of Odisha ed.1 compiled by Shanti Mohanty

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