“Dharma, Dharma! Have you seen Kham-el? Have you seen him?” Harviti chittered, as her bright round face appeared from behind the gate.
Thud. The heavy pestle fell, dropped by a stolid Dharma, and grains of wheat flew in rebound over the stone of the mortar.
“You should be here, helping me make the bread, instead of wasting your time playing around, dragging your shawl through the dust” replied the older woman. Harviti hopped from one foot to the other, clearly brought short by the reprimand, but too eager with her news that she burst forth again in glee.
“You didn’t answer my question, Dharma!” she told the older woman cheekily, “Have you seen Kham-el?”
Dharma sighed and brought the pestle back into her hands.
“What is the idiot up to now? Is he still following that ridiculous notion? Does he still say that his name will be remembered for all time, by all people?”
“Yes! And today, after completing his training-”
“Training? Huh!” The pestle thudded down again. “You mean hiding in a cave on the hillside for months, doing no work but still eating my bread, lifting rocks all day?”
“You are too hard on him. He is very…”
“Strong? Handsome? Stupid?”
An excited cry of children came from the sandy street past the gate, and cut short any comeback that Harviti might have had. She instead skipped to the gate, and, wrapped half around it, exclaimed:
“See, this is what I’ve come to tell you, grumpy! Kham-el’s finally ready! Hurry, or you’ll miss it!”
She disappeared.
Dharma frowned for a while, but eventually hitched up her bright shawl and sari and slouched to the edge of the gate, in the shade of a teak tree. Not far across the shallow bowl of the road she could see a young man, Kham-el, surrounded by a group of other villagers: the women shyly tittering behind their hands, the men mostly loud in consternation. Dharma also saw, with a sudden feeling of dread, the cart laden with hay: this season’s crop for the entire village.
Kham-el’s rather loud and unctuous voice could be heard easily across the stagnant, blistering air.
“…my name will be remembered for all time, by all people!”
“You said that last harvest! And we all remember what a fool you made of yourself then!” jibed one of the older men, and everyone laughed. Kham-el’s face grew red, but he kept talking
“I have been training harder this year. I will succeed, this time! You’ll see!”
Kham-el’s moustache bristled with anticipation as he prepared to reveal his masterstroke.
“ I will,” he began loudly and clearly, “carry the entire harvest to market – by myself!”
A kind of stunned silence was all that followed his words – for a beat. Then, a roar burst forth from the group, louder than Dharma would have ever thought possible for that amount of people. She noticed, grudgingly, that Kham-el was very calm about this and must have already thought this through. He ignored the angry yells round him, and merely ripped off his robes so that he was naked to the waist.
“Any who does not agree with my plan can fight me over it!” he boomed across the crowd, and, after a few measuring glances at the notable bulk of Kham-el’s torso, it was not long before silence returned. Kham-el’s grin shone as he paced to the cart that held all the hay in the village – a mountain of hay, pale gold and gleaming in the sun, piled so high as to make the very thought of one man lifting it absurd, completely absurd-
Kham-el, after a few limber stretches, had set his back against the stack, and, with much grunting and sweating, began to take the load. His muscles, truly an awesome sight to behold, pulsed with veins. People around him were caught in a state of anxiety, too scared to approach this absurd thing, yet too horribly fascinated to turn away. They cried out as one when Kham-el appeared to stumble (but righted himself quickly), and gasped in shock when eventually, eventually, the whole tower of hay was supported by this single man.
“My name will be remembered for all time, by all people!” came a muffled cry, strained and laboured – yet triumphant. Kham-el now appeared to be a haystack on legs, legs that took jerky, uneasy steps down the road.
The applause began soon after, slowly, but growing quickly. Children ran forwards to dance laughing around this incredibility.

One little girl ran forwards holding something in her hand: a single stalk of wheat left in the bottom of the cart, the only one missed by this amazing man. She carefully tried to tuck the stalk into the side of the trundling stack, but she was too small and the stack moving too fast. Several other children noticed, and the oldest all reached to help. As they pushed the straw onto the pile in that flurry of movement, everything happened at once. A shudder crossed the entire mountain of hay, a strangled moan escaped from under it, and the pile collapsed with a soft thud – much like the thud that the pestle had made, Dharma thought, feeling sick. And she knew what happened to grains when a pestle struck them. Kham-el was most definitely dead. The applause stopped.

The aftermath of the accident was the worst. Not only was much of the harvest lost – wind had swept it away from the pile, and not all could be salvaged – but the broken body of Kham-el had to be uncovered, the wheat cleaned, the corpse buried. Dharma found the little girl who had found the last stalk of wheat in tears, clutching the offending straw to her chest and rocking backwards and forwards. Dharma tried her best to console the girl, took the stalk, began to walk back to her house.
“So, this is the straw that broke Kham-el’s back. All people will indeed remember him, for all time. But not for the reasons he hoped.”
With these last, rueful words, Dharma again took up the pestle and began to make flour for her bread.