Short Story I

“Everyone called him One-Arm Subbanna,” my grandmother said, in a reflective tone. Her faded eyes looked out beyond the guava tree, her gnarled knuckles curled around the steel dish of rice that she was cleaning.
“Who’s Subbanna, Grandma?” we chorused obligingly. Summer vacations could be burdensome when you had to stay indoors.
“My grandfather’s brother,” she replied, her hand moving rhythmically, sorting out the small stones from the grain.
“Oh,” we were disappointed. Surely our grandmother’s ancestor was lost in the mists of time and couldn’t be all that interesting.
“Why did he have one arm?” I piped up, always the one who has to know why.
“He was the bravest man in the village and that’s what got him into trouble,” Grandmother replied.
That wasn’t really the answer I was seeking but it would have to do. Grandmother would come around to it in her own time.
“The children of the village would gather around the village circle and play during the summer,” Grandmother continued. The village circle was a raised platform of bricks and mortar built around the trunk of a truly ancient peepul tree.
“All the adults were having their noon siesta. Oh, my! The summers in Nellore! Why , you youngsters who cannot stay without electric fans even for a minute. I wonder what you would have done then,” she chuckled, her wrinkled face creasing. Like the rivers in monsoon that change course without warning, Grandmother would often go off at a tangent, leaving us high and dry and without the end of the story in sight.
“So what about the village children?” my cousin said, drawing her back to her original story.
“That summer had been particularly hot. The forests were all dried up and the deer had migrated to other places in search of water. That’s when the leopards came out to hunt children and stray dogs.” We shivered. Surrounded by brick walls, in the midst of the teeming city, hungry leopards were remote but deliciously scary.
“So, that afternoon, a leopard had hidden itself in the peepul tree and was waiting to grab an unwary child. Subbanna was a well known hunter back then, his prowess with his rifle was family lore. So when the leopard crept down that tree trunk and the child he stalked screamed in terror, “Puli! Chiruta puli!” he dashed out on to the street and discharged his rifle,” Grandmother continued.
“And then?” we asked.
“And then? No bullets came out! The rifle had jammed,” she paused for dramatic effect.
“Oooh!” we gasped.“The leopard snarled but would not back off. So he hit it with the rifle butt and it charged him. With no other weapon in sight, he stuck his arm up its throat as far as it would go. The leopard could not attack anyone else but it chewed his arm till the police constable came running up and killed it. They had to amputate his arm and he was called One-Arm Subbanna till he died.”