“Because you will be preparing the human offering this time”

The fat landlord went pale on hearing these words, his body trembled and he weakly sprawled on the floor. These words echoed in his ears creating a deafening silence. Gathering his wits for a while the fat landlord questioned the Village head,

“Sarpanch, but we already provided an offering twelve years ago; why would we have provided another offering in such a period?”

The Village head stared at the fat landlord with a nonchalant expression and explained, “Yes! Twelve years ago, it was indeed your households’ turn to prepare the offering but as far as I remembered you traded that place with a Sudra.”

“Now after twelve years it was that Sudras turn to provide the offering, but since you traded the place it is your turn now. I remembered you have a son aged around nine, he would be a perfect offering for the Rakshasa.”

After speaking up to this point the Village Head stood up from the seat and prepared to depart reminding once again while leaving. He didn’t want one man’s folly to be the doom of the entirety of the village. Seeing that it was the fat merchant, he gave the merchant some face by personally visiting the merchant. If it was someone else, he wouldn’t even bother and just send Kotwal to their doorsteps.

With the departure of the Village Head, the fat landlord laid sprawled on the floor staring blankly in the space with dim eyes. His son shook his head and brought him out of his denial. The fat landlord roared,

“There should be a way! No there must be some way! Why would my Raicharan be sacrificed for the likes of this village to be food for that Rakshasa? Did God bless me with a son just to be eaten away by the Rakshasa?” The fat landlord was going crazy with such thoughts in his mind.

Seeing such state of his father, Marichi thought for a while and exclaimed,

“Father! Why don’t we do the same thing we did twelve years ago to buy some more time? We can ask someone else to be our scapegoat this time too. There are lots of servants who are in ‘debt’ and would do just anything to repay it.”

“Good! Good Idea son! This is a fantastic idea. Let me call someone to procure information about this.” He called a servant to fetch the information. Shortly after, the servant came up with a bundle containing the birth record of all the children during the past ten years.

The fat landlord quickly grabbed the parchment made of palm-leaves and began to madly skim the information through the parchment. 

There were forty families in the village divided into four Varnas, there are five Brahmana families with three of them doing extremely well and rest two living in poverty. Then there were seven Kshatriyas families mainly responsible for guarding the village against external threats and maintaining order in the village. The Village head was always elected from the Kshatriya Varnas who were physically strong enough to lead the village during any calamity. Next, Vaishyas Varna families amounted only to four with two being major families and the remaining two being small families. His family was one of the major ones. 

About seventy percent of village wealth was distributed among these four Vaishya families. The rest thirty percent was divided among the Kshatriyas whereas Brahmanas would usually live on the donations provided by the village for their valuable knowledge required to provide basic education to children of Kshatriyas and Vaishyas. Their services were also required during rituals in many social events held across the village.

As for the Sudras, being able to fill their stomach twice a day was considered a luxury for them. Amassing wealth altogether is a pipe dream for these illiterate people whom Brahmanas refused to teach even a single word. They live in extreme poverty being exploited by the rest of the Upper Varnas. The entirety of their life is spent on serving the Upper Varnas with nothing to gain. Being born in Sudra Varna was considered a curse. There was no case of any Sudra living happily without any social exploitation.

Organizing all the information from the twenty-four Sudra families, the fat landlord was a little disappointed to see only two families with children below 10 years of age. As for the Upper Varna, forget about it he can’t touch as much as the hair of their children or else his family would be skinned alive. In this world of supreme power, material wealth was just a fleeting luxury that is in your possession today may very well belong to someone else tomorrow, just because the latter was more powerful than you.

That’s why he was looking for a chance for either of his son to get an official position in Capital and thus get the backing of the Royal Family. Then Who would dare to harm his family and he would be freely able to expand his business over the entire kingdom and drown in more riches and luxury.

Shaking his head of such thoughts, the fat landlord silently stared at the two parchments in front of him. This was the information of two Sudra families with a child below ten years of age. He avidly took the first parchment and began to read the information written on it. After reading through the parchment his brows scrunched up and displeasure appeared on his face.

This Sudra family indeed had an eight-year-old girl. But there was a major problem, this family was not under their control, or to be precise it worked under the other major Vaishya Varna family. If it was the other two small families he could have successfully negotiated with them at a price. But there was tension between the two major families over the share of the business and it is almost impossible to ask a favor from them. The fat landlord worriedly rubbed his nose and his earlier died down. He had an ugly expression and with a shaky hand grabbed hold of the remaining parchment.

Reading through the parchment the fat landlord expression changed several times. From dejection to elation, then it turned calm after that the fat landlord had a strange expression on his face. ‘Why hadn’t it clicked his mind before?’ The gears in his brain cranked and whirred and an idea came to his mind. Written on the parchment was the name of Adhiraman’s family with his seven-year-old son Rudra.

“Servant! ….Servant!” the fat landlord screamed.

A moment later a servant appeared while huffing for breath and bowed before the fat landlord. The fat landlord snorted once and bellowed, “Go and fetch Adhiraman now! I want him present here standing in front of me in the next half an hour. Now Go!”

The servant bowed and left hurriedly towards the field to find Adhiraman. After the servant left, the fat landlord slumped heavily on the seat and inhaled deeply to catch his breath. When he was relaxed finally, Marichi who was standing there silently the entire time asked in a feeble voice,

“Father! Are you thinking of repeating the incident which happened twelve years again.”

He silently stared at his father’s face to see his reaction. The fat landlord replied calmly, “Life is like a Chausar Board when a Mohra loses its value; it is best to discard it early the later to suffer losses.”

The fat landlord picked a goblet from the table in front of him and calmly took a sip and continued, “That Adhiraman is way past his prime and will no longer be useful in any fieldwork a few years later. Whereas his son is just seven years later, it will take him a while to be able to work properly in the fields. He would be the same as any other servant we had working in our field, So very little value for his work. But now we are in a pinch, if we can exchange his place with your brother then his value will be justified.”

“But father how will you convince the peasant for this exchange” questioned Marichi in a doubtful tone.

“We had done it once, we would be able to do it again. We will just let him be free of his debt and he would happily accept the term” the fat landlord chuckled and replied.

“Are you sure father he will agree to our terms? What if he disagreed? He had already sacrificed his first son will he sacrifice his only second son now” unconvinced Marichi asked again.

“He has to! There is no other choice for him. If he wouldn’t we would pressure him to. If force doesn’t work then we would have to find another way. Either by hook or by crook this must be done” the fat landlord snorted.

“Master! You called for me master” a trembling voice came from outside the hall.

“Come in! I have something to discuss with you.”