They start gathering firewood from the red gram fields next to the village. Right at that moment, Ellamma sees Ramreddy dora walking by. At the sight of him, she swiftly removes her slippers and resumes work. The field is full of thorny bushes that poke at her feet. As if that is not enough ,a long dry red gram stalk pierces her foot like a knife. Blood gushes out.She controls her pain and calls out to her son,
“Awwa, you sit here. Let me collect some more wood and then we can gohome with the pile.”
Badeyya, it is killing me
Why do you always have to remove your slippers when the doraswalk by?
Badeyya, do you think they will keep quiet if I don’t remove my slippers?Even when they look as if they have not noticed anything, they will keepit in mind and vomit it out some other time. Do you think we can live if weoffend them? This pain will disappear tomorrow. The snake has poison inits fangs; the scorpion in its tail; but the doras are poison all over. They keeptheir vengeance alive till they die. To fight them, we need caste, powerand land. We have neither the caste nor the power. If we have to gain thatpower, caste has to go.
This dora appearedlike Yama, right when we were collecting firewood. I barely removed myslippers and my foot got pierced. See what happened! Now the dog haseaten them. I am left without slippers. Isn’t that dog’s life better thanmine, Badeyya? As madigas it is our work to make slippers. Your fathermakes slippers for all the small and big castes in the village. Our slippersshield their feet from mud, stones, thorns, twigs, worms and everythingelse. Even when they go the moon they wear our slippers, don’t they? I amborn in the caste that makes slippers for everybody, but my own feet areleft bare. Let me sit for a while.”
in the morning,when his mother and father were going to the forest he showed his work to his parents.
Baddeya started making slipers for his mother when everyone were asleep
” Ellamma, hos mother can’t stop praising Badeyya. After coming back from the forest, she tells everyone in the village about his achievement