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| Saudagar won rave reviews from the critics and the press. It also had the honour of being chosen as the Oscar Awards Entry from India that year. |
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Motalef, fondly called Moti, a tall and fair youth, was the most skilled tapper in the village. During the winter months when he passed with pots full of date palm sap to the hut of Maju Bibi, a young widow who prepared `gur' for him, the village belles could not turn their eyes from him.
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For Moti was still a bachelor. Not that he did not want a pretty young girl for his wife, but he could not manage the `meher' the fathers of pretty grown-up girls usually asked for. One day Moti saw Phoolbanu, as succulent as a juicy fruit, with youth rippling through her well-shaped body. He followed her to her house and saw her father who demanded five hundred rupees as `meher' to be paid in advance.
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As he came out annoyed, he met Phoolbanu who threw a challenge. If Moti really liked her, he should show his spirit. Moti accepted the challenge and asked her to wait till the end of the winter season and she promised. |
He tried his best to raise a loan but it was too big a sum for him. He thought and thought. The `gur' Maju prepared from the sap he collected, fetched the best price in the market and he had to pay a heavy price to Maju for her labour. So he thought of a plan. |
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One evening he proposed to Maju. The poor widow accepted his proposal. She could not see through his plan. Moti married her. That year he took contracts for more trees and worked like mad while Maju worked without rest, without let, for the man she learnt to love.
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But Moti hardly listened to what she said. He married Phoolbanu and brought her home. They spent their days in a sort of ecstasy like a pair of love-birds-till the next winter. And Maju married an old widower and went to live with him on the other side of the river. The winter season came and Moti started working with renewed vigour. He brought pots of sap every morning & instructed Phoolbanu how to prepare `gur' but she did not have the knack for it. After the first day people who always extolled Moti's `gur' refused to buy from him. Moti tried to induce his young wife to pay more attention to her work. He could not control himself when, one morning, he found her away while the sap burnt. He quarrelled with her and even beat her but the `gur' did not improve. |
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Market day followed market day and Moti would sit with his `gur' unsold in his basket. The remarks of his creditors and his old customers and the jeerings of the others of his trade haunted him day and night and one morning, while collecting sap, he gave vent to his anger and broke one pot after another filled with sap and returned home empty-handed. Phoolbanu was surprised -- the season was not over. She could guess what was gnawing him and felt hurt as he sat there tight-lipped. She tried her last trick -- asked his permission to go to her father's house for a few days. And tears came to her eyes as he agreed without a word of protest.
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As Phoolbanu crossed the river carrying a small bundle, she noticed Moti coming with two pots of sap. For a moment her face brightened up with hope but she was shocked as Moti turned towards Maju's new house. She followed him. |
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What was Moti up to? How would he face Majubibi? How would she treat him? |
