Introduction
Sibia is a twelve years old girl. She lives in the vicinity of the forests. She belongs to a very poor family. She is an immature child-woman who passes a struggle some life of hardships. Due to belonging to a poor family, she owns no materialistic possession but a rag. She is an undernourished girl. She remains half-starved.
She cherishes a dream of having beads for making necklaces. Her dream comes to be true at the end of the story when she encounters a crocodile. She saves a Gujar woman from the grip of the crocodile by piercing its eyes with her hayfork. While collecting her things, she gets the blue bead from the water and she picks it up and keeps it to herself. Sibia has been shown as a girl of strong willpower and determination.
Her Utter Poverty
As Sibia is bom in utter poverty, she can not desire of having any materialistic possession. She does not have good finery. She dresses in earth-coloured rag. She has tom the rag in two to make a skirt and sari. Besides it, whenever she goes to the bazaar with her family, she sees many things being sold at the different stalls. She greatly longs to have them, but her parents do not have money to fulfill her desires.
She imagines how nice it will be to hear the ‘rattling swish of beads’ necklace around her neck but she has to wait till her family can afford another needle to drill the seeds.
Sibia has no sufficient food to satisfy her hunger. She always lives in the state of half-starvation. Here is an instance which shows how satisfies her craving for more food.
‘Sibia was eating the last of her meal, chapatti wrapped round a smear of green chili and rancid butter, and she divided this also to make it seem more, and bit it,…….’
Her Sole Dream of Having Bead
This physical world is full of attractive materialistic things which fascinate everyone, but Sibia’s utter poverty does not allow her to own any of these things. She has cherished the only dream of having a necklace of the bead. She sees other women wearing necklaces made out of shiny scarlet seeds. She too wants to have it, but each seed is hard as stone and is to be drilled with a red-hot needle and the family needle is broken, so she has to wait till they can buy another.
An Industrious Girl
From her very childhood, Sibia has been working hard. She has grown an immature child-woman. It seems as if she were born to toil as we find in the following lines:
‘But Sibia, in all her life from birth to death was marked for work. Since she could toddle, she had husked corn and gathered sticks and put dung to dry and cooked and weeded and carried and fetched water and cut grass for fodder.’
As a child-woman, she goes with her mother and some other women to get paper grass from the cliffs above the river. Then she sells it to the agent. She toils all day at this work. She skips along with the sickle and homemade hayfork beside her mother.
Her Being A Fearless and Courageous
Sibia is a bold girl. She does not hesitate to do any adventurous act. When she sees the Gujar woman being attacked by a crocodile, she, from boulder to boulder comes leaping like a rock-goat. She heroically comes on wings beside the shrieking woman to save her. Using her presence of mind, she aims at the reptile’s eyes with a hayfork and saves the Gujar woman from being a victim of a crocodile. Then she helps the woman reach her encampment.
Her Showing No Complaint of Her Destiny
Sibia does not have any complaints from her destiny. She seems to be contented with her life. She, without having any grudge, takes the household responsibilities on her tender shoulders and supports her family. She remains cheerful and does every work happily. Though she longs to fulfill her desires and dreams and suppresses them calmly, she does not feel sorrow.
Her Being Very Simple and Polite
Sibia is a very simple and modest girl. She does not boast of her encounter with crocodiles and her saving the Gujar woman. But she shows it to her mother as nothing has happened to her. At the end of the story when her mother asks her what happened to her, instead of narrating her heroic act shows her the blue bead which she had found and expresses her extreme joy.
Treasure Trove Poems and Short Stories Workbook Answers
