Sarpanch Elections

22

                              Sarpanch Elections

Isn’t the political scheme prudently planned? Yes, it’s! So, whenever people feel a bit rusted (apolitically) political porringer is once again beaten. Same happened in the countryside. Elections for the local bodies-–gram panchayat, block samiti and zila parishad-–were announced.

At higher political hierarchies a commoner’s role is just limited to casting his/her vote. So, all those politically unemployed ones flocked to file their names as grass-root contestants.

Most crucial election was that of village headman for which seven candidates were in the fray. Unmindful of becoming the butt of ridicule, the scheduled castes this time put up their own candidate. It was in inharmonic contrast to the previous elections when their votes were purchased, coaxed or assured by friendly patron-pressure of the upper caste peers.

To spring another surprise, a particular block of the village which had never tasted the job of village leadership, this time decided to keep its vote bank united. The decision added one more name to the contesters list. A young man---bearing a pair of sleepy eyes---from this block, who cherished politics just like a parrot’s craze for ripened fruits, utilised this new-found unifying sentiment and politically effective voters’ knot of his block. He was thus the first one to declare his candidature. In great anticipation, with water in his mouth, he moved his fingers through the brush-like hair on his head.

The contestants were pulling the innermost chords of their political acumen to chalk out winsome permutations and combinations. They seemed so excited. After all, the cosmic arena glittering with celestial fireflies (which they saw from so far during the parliament and state assembly elections) had come down to the grassroots level.

Votes were to be interchanged and bargained among various contesting categories. For example, a sarpanch candidate could muster up the support of block or zila parishad candidates in return of supporting the latter.

The conmen were engaged in hectic parleys. Election’s magic pill had been swallowed completely. Propelled propagation of illusions came promissorily. Keeping their fingers crossed about their own choices people raked up such dare-to-bare debates in order to unveil each other’s real choice. Secrecy was the main principle. There was to be a long, long list of back stabbers––people who enjoy the pre-election corrupting beneficence to the hilt and then fudge on the last day.

The candidates weren’t giving unduly distinct importance to any single person or family, afraid that it might hurt the political pride of someone else. So they preferred to knock at the doors for political alms in the dark of night. Ridiculously fair and square: the candidates walking in the dark of night, passing the opponent by an arm’s length, recognising each other, only to walk away silently like thieves. So many winking bubbles burst in the dark of night that the poor day could only imagine and guess about it.

There were kingmakers too. So witty and phantasmagoric that they’d the capability to fracture the conjugal political fidelity of even an opponent’s wife. Persons who’d borrowed money from them, worked on their fields and other lower caste people who took it a pride to be caught in the ensnaring circlet of ‘master-servant’ relationship (for it could be utilised favourably in the intra-caste disputes) were the main chunks of these kingmakers’ clout. With dozens of such passive votes secure in their pockets these politically more important people walked with a vision of sophistication.

If everything is fair in love and war, then it’s more so in an election. Attacked by the amorous solemnity of political creativity each and every voter felt ambushed.

The crooked staff and stone pulpits of the grassroots politics had been made more quarrelsome and lucrative now with the passage of constitutional provision for providing constitutional status to these bodies. It secured financial status (or plundering security) of the littlest cog-–the village headman-–in the democratic machinery. The luminary legal eagles had passed the provision in the hope of effectuating real transfer of political and administrative power to the lowest rung of democracy. However, to these would-be-headmen a fuzzy summarisation of the above lofty vision was only limited to a single corrupting phrase:

“A headman these days controls a big amount of money, which he can very easily gobble up.”

So these elections were becoming fiercely competitive---almost like bloody pitched battles. Violence loomed large. Animosities arose. Numbing dissection of society occurred on many farcical fronts.

There were about three thousand votes in the village. The battle was to break even a single vote from the opponents’ bank. How could then an aspiring candidate leave the solo-membered ‘Election Boycott Morcha’? During the assembly elections he had been criminally left out as a political untouchable, because there were too many other votes at stake. So, redeemingly all of them visited his house, complaisance oozing from their tongues.

In the dark of nights they came one by one, expecting nobody politically motivated already doing the same there. The masons approached with trowels in their hands to mix this little piece of stone-crush in the political mortar.

On one such occasion Ram Singh seemed hell bent upon venting out all his grievances into the face of this very, very young political turtle craning its neck out into the big world of craggy craftmanship:

“Yes young man, I know your political ambitions. This’s your first step on the ladder. Now, don’t sway your head in negative when I say sarpanch election is dirtiest form of politics. Fleeced by that communal scoundrel you joined that hate-preaching, supposedly patriotic rashtriya organisation, which claims to be purely apolitical. ‘We’re just for the service of this nation,’ crabbedly they suppress the communal politics running in their veins. And I say membership of this organisation is nothing but an implicit membership of its political patron. So here you’re contesting elections apolitically! Young man why don’t you prepare for some examination and get some job?”

The crusader’s animadverting words provoked the young khaki patriot a bit. His upper lip twitched, which put his finely-trimmed and drooping moustache into some agitation. “But tauji, I’m doing it for the service of people. In camps we’re taught to serve the country. I’ll serve my country as an Indian!” the young server of the motherland, having a strong and supple body, speechified.

The teacher revamped his logic, “Ok! Let’s move aside from this election. You say you want to serve the villagers as an Indian, then what place do you’ve for poor Mohre?” the verbal conundrum fell as a little bombshell on the young head-of-the-soil.

Mohre’s was the single Muslim family left out in the village.

The pinpricked young soul saturninely said, “Who’s saying they’ll be thrown out of village? They can live as they wish.” His wholesome mouth tried to elongate and broaden the ideology his young senses had happened to dabble in.

“Can live as he wishes!” the teacher’s aggrieved soul mimicked. “You say this with ease and confidence only because you’re more Muslim than him. By the knowledge of it I mean. At least you know the most sacred religious place of his faith is outside this fatherland of yours. You also know their festivals, medieval history, and history of their organisations during the pre-independence period. The poor man doesn’t know an iota of this... however, in all probability he’ll come to know all this over a period of time due to your loudly yelling patriotic taskmastership. A Muslim-–just a name’s worth. And mind you, if you were more Muslim than you are presently, you would’ve condemned him as a Pakistani!”

The teacher seemed eager to go to his old chest of drawers in a corner by a wooden bench along the wall, as if he had something in it to validate his point. He, but, left the idea. Nonetheless, his rabid fulminations of secularism almost culled the young man into ‘the controversy’. Prudishness spawned the young man’s face. To while away his uneasiness he bent down to adjust his strapped sandals.

“What’s this tauji? You’re unnecessarily stretching it too far,” the vote-monger meekly protested.

“I’m not stretching that far, son. Only trying to match your little depth in your supposed service of the nation as an exclusive Indian or name it a Hindu.” With a strange look the teacher looked at the terracotta figurines of the Gods and Goddesses placed on a stone slab set in a corner of the room as if he wanted to know the true meaning of ‘Hinduism’ from them.

The impulsive young patriot, revolving around his nationalistic fondness, stood stock-still, “Now since tauji you don’t want to forget about this illustrious organisation of ours, I must tell you whatever we’re doing is good for this country. Our principle is just simple. Whoever lives in this country must be faithful to it from mind, body and soul. Simple and straight!”

“So you fellows have the ability to peek into the souls and minds of the people!” the teacher was now intently looking at the painted idol of Lord Rama in the centre of his collection. The bulb was dimly on. A thick strand of cobweb laden with dust and soot hang from the ceiling before the bulb’s feeble smile. It sent a slightly imperceptible area of darkness between the two persons in the little room.

“Because their religion is their first priority! India comes at the bottom!”

“Then what do you people propose to do?”

“We want Hindu pride to get so strong… so as to undo any disloyal plan!”

“Oh, my God!” Ram Singh screamed and then laughed hoarsely.  “Disease is in the heart and you people are striking the head. My dear, what has Muslim disloyalty to do with your agenda of creating strong, militantly strong Hindutva?”

Just for the sake of a single jewel-precious vote, the young religious nationalist kept quite.

With an air of invincibility the teacher continued, “There’re fifteen crore Muslims in this country. If you people go on targeting them like this, one day they’ll come to understand and realise the tragic truth of ‘two-nation theory’. Two religions, two nations. God forbid, if they start believing in it! It’ll result in some other sibling of Pakistan. But mind you young man, only you people will be considered the illegal fathers of this new bastard!”

“But why do’u blame us for each and everything happening now?” young man flinched with a complaint. “There’re jehadis in Kashmir. Want to dismember and destroy India. See, what’s happening in Kashmir.”

“Those bastards suck my blood more than yours! But still when I oppose you, that doesn’t make me less patriotic than you. I fear for the partition of India. As an Indian I also want Pakistan’s annihilation for its wrongs during the past half-a-century. But you people can’t do that. So just for the politically beneficial symbolism of that unachievable goal, you people choose soft targets and propaganda talk. Break a mosque here and there, stone a locality, and throw verbal ammunition. Oh, the weaklings! Hinduism is stronger and greater than Hindutva of such type. It’s grown compositely; has evolved; not been shot like an arrow.

“My dear worried-man-for-this-country!  If you’re genuinely interested in serving your fatherland, you can do numerous other constructive things. If still you people aren’t able to move away from your obsession with the Muslims then why are’u beating the head instead of heart where the disease lies. Work cooperatively with your self-perceived enemies, the unfaithful Indians. And if still your patriotic blood rushes too hot then cool it in the icy heights of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. If they can do it for their religion in our part of Kashmir, then why can’t you?”

To save his patriotic vainglory from the secular thundershowers, the young contestant decided to leave, but not before ending on a very polite note, “Be it so tauji. I tender apologies from the side of our organisation. Please, don’t forget to cast your vote in my favour!”

On another occasion Rishal Singh, the consensus candidate of lower castes, entered the apolitical devil’s den. A short, black man with sharp eyes, he must’ve thought at least he might be able to persuade and mellow down the dissenter with the heat of his humility––in order to secure at least one vote outside his harijan chunk.

To this another political transgression into his home, the teacher gesticulated with a guffaw:

“Welcome Mr. Rishal Singh, our would-be first harijan pardhan of the village!”

A humble and shy Rishal Singh couldn’t speak anything. He just muttered a wish to the owner of apolitical house.

“Hey Rishale, why do’u feel sorry and get blushed like this? Cheer up like an upper caste fellow, man! Now, you’re an equal contestant. Drop your congenital humility and fight for the liberation of society from casteism. Oh, sorry! I made a mistake in suggesting that. A teacher as I’m. Just start preaching. I correct myself now. Brandish your caste card and plead for votes. Caste my dear is the first and foremost identity in India. Whatever status one might achieve, he, however, is known first of all through his caste. You must feel proud of certain people in other states who’ve formed governments on account of being born in low castes. They, but, maintain the lower castes’ plight at the same politically exploitable level, so that it can be harnessed during the next elections. And now you follow the suit. I promise to caste my vote in your favour if I find your symbol on the ballot paper. But I swear that I won’t be forced to break my vow! You’ll sit down and bargain for the price of your votes.”

After that it was the turn of old Ramdhan, a hereditary Congress supporter, who grinned so distinctly as if the iron-lady’s blessing hand perpetually hovered over his humble head. Exuberantly taking care of the nuts and bolts of his criticism, the teacher targeted this old man:

“I’m sorry chachaji, my criticism of patriotic and casteist politics shouldn’t turn you hopeful of my support to the Congress. Of the above two, former has robbed charisma and the latter a huge chunk of dalit votes from the fatigued khadi fabric of your party. You’ve a loyalty facet to your support for Congress. As a boy I heard that an influential state Congress minister once made you the chairman of the local cooperative society. You made so much money out of that. Out of sheer gratitude you then took a vow to vote for Congress till the end of your pedigree. Mind you chacha, this party of yours is the root of corruption in politics. Divine legacy of the Mahatma has been used for corruption, nepotism, cronyism and callous embezzlement of public money. Corruption has been institutionalised during these fifty years of Congress rule. To keep alive the poorly conceptualised ideals historical blunders were committed. And now they weep and browbeat over this totally hypothetical concept of secularism. The mother of all these little devils! Now weeps over the misdeeds of these daughters and sons. Seeing the khaki patriot it yells a warning to the Muslim, ‘Hey, go and hide! He’s coming to smack you to pieces!’ Tell me, has it done anything except this foul cry in the minorities’ ears? Every time a wrong of it is laid bare, they cry, ‘See, what’s happened!’ Time’ll come when the Muslims’ll start fearing this word ‘secularism’ more than the trishul in the saffron brigade’s hand. Where was secularism when five thousand Sikhs were butchered in the aftermath of iron-lady’s killing? They say she was killed by the terrorists. But tell me, who were those who killed five thousand innocent persons? Were they terrorists? No they’re not---because they’re from a different class altogether! The Congress loyalists… humph!... who wanted to prove their loyalty to the first-political-family by butchering as many Sikhs as possible.”

Next in line was Chander Bhan. Above sixty-five, but his strong chin and moustache made him look properatively stronger, if not younger. ‘Village’s-first-graduate’ was his specialty. For this little literary distinctness of his, he beat his chest in pride that he wasn’t hollow-brained like others. So his political choice needed some brainy stuff. Hence, some leftist ideological pamphlets and books formed the substratum of his promissorily hallucinating political world. That exalted and grand utopian dream of the socialist state now constantly wafted after the skin and anatomy of his political faith.

“Here comes the comrade: the lone flag-bearer of red revolution. He became a communist because he thinks being a one-eyed educated fellow among the blind illiterates naturally makes him a perfect choice for becoming the heavenly state’s representative. A state of leftist Gods! For which comrades commit dirtiest of crimes chosen from all types of governments. Those mighty fables to irrigate which millions have shed blood! Yours but has been a commendable endeavour-–to break the leftist jinx of being limited to just two states in India. You, but, lost even your security deposit in the last elections!” the irrefutable apolitical disinfectant let out a mocking burst of laughter like ‘laugh-when-someone-lets-out-a-fart’.

In the deep recesses of the comrade’s heart intangibly hollow exigencies of the vision of sophistication, the vision of God, boiled like hemlock. His soul must’ve pined, ‘Why these aeonically wronged, plundered and enslaved souls still misperceive the cosmic gala in a galaxy to be just a vulgar dance of moppets?’

“Do’u know the communists’ present position in India? Just conspiring and hoodwinking, crooked-old king-makers! Doing every democratic, capitalist and dictatorial manoeuvre to keep them afloat in Kerala and West Bengal. You people’ve just played havoc with ideology. See the recent history. Except those marching rightist rioters, can you name a single party with which you people haven’t joined hands? Armed cadres of Naxalites, having failed to create revolution, are now poor common terrorists playing a bloody part in the casteist politics of Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. Come to any sort of coalition at the centre, one can be sure to find communists in it. You people’re fit for just one thing. Go on eating as much fish as possible in the cultural recesses of saline coastline in Bengal and the beautiful, siesta-arising backwaters of Kerala. Do it for the sake of your brains. So that it keeps on ticking fastly, intellectually and off-beatly than others of the trade.”

Then there were rest of the contestants, the infants in the political cocoons, who’d just recently propended towards the election arena to gather some loot from the funds bestowed to the headman for doing minor works at the grassroots level. Panchayati Raj Act at least assured them that now there was to be a horizontal spread of corruption, breaking its earlier shackles in vertical politico-bureaucratic attics. After all there’re about six lakh villages in India. So by the socialist principle of corruption, six lakh new homes could now draw their salary from the treasure-trove of public money.

The lone critic addressed them anecdotally:

“Here’re the new entrants! They’ve heard so much about the political fortunes. Like little hungry larvae they too have preyed upon the smallest bait at lowest step of the ladder. They’ll now fight like dogs for these few crumbs. Does anyone of you know what Panchayati Raj means? Subjects under it? Role and responsibilities? Position in the hierarchy? In this big political pond you’re being fed like little fish only to be eaten later by big sharks. They’ll make you-–the politicians at the higher hierarchies-–aspire and think like a politician, so that you start doing all the political dirt-work for them at the grass-roots level. I pity you, all of you!”

His depoliticising verbal carnage was such that neither they could cry nor laugh at each other. At least there was a wide, crabbedly twitching consensus among them: ‘His was a hopeless case of political infertility.’ After that none of them attempted an encore. Hence, without any bruises the campaign moved ahead as it was expected.

Now day and night the small fries were engaged in glorious gossip. Ruche and lushy saturnalians were in full political fervour. Rickety and ramshackle chauvinism of earlier sarpanch elections this time was replaced by the facetious fusillade of a fully formal election campaign. With pinpoint precision the contestants’d taken big inspirational cues from the previous assembly elections. Posters bearing catchy slogans and candidates’ photographs almost plastered the walls. More profits and boons were at stake in the zila parishad elections. Thus, many campaigning vehicles were in the fray in this category.

One candidate announced a discount from his spendthrift pockets on each wine bottle purchased from the small wine outlet at the village bus stand. Drinking aficionados were thus having a gala time. Enthusiastic cynicism of the drunkards now became a nightlong issue.

Our blessed soul which departed on the eve of assembly elections-–which made us conclude that at least he was spared of the last whip-–now got politicised.  A neighbour candidate of the dead (who was in a fair chance of winning the elections) was drawn into a dirty political controversy involving his past quarrel with the dead man. Opponents were showing a wreathful concern for the sacrilegious punch at the unfortunate sufferer when he was counting his last helpless days. By raking up this time-barred past, they wanted to break the pledged political unity of the candidate’s locality. Also, the lower caste people were being reminded how mercilessly with a casteist tone this fellow rebuked them (the poor landless ones) whenever they happened to be in the near vicinity of his fields just to cut grass from the field paths, dividers and embankments.

The night before election was impassively long and drawn out with an air of drab conspiracy. Each candidate was hearing very strange rumours about himself. Rishal Singh, the lower caste candidate, had sold off his candidature to the highest bidder. People of Dhanak and Bhangi communities were in the glum of nightmarishly nervous energy. Everybody conversant with the mystique intrigues of village politics knew this was the votebank which could be very easily and bankably taken into an intoxicating stride. The economic position and caste status of these socially marginalised people had made them lame-duck voters, without any choice of theirs. While rest of the people had the status to go to sleep without worrying about vote-mongers barging into their houses in the dark of night; these poor untouchables of the past were, however, very happily open to the very same thing. So they were taking it as a festivity to spend the time with influential people of the farming community, and that too in the shy, humble, archaically caste-ridden air inside their little, dirty shelters.

They were the easiest of prey. Yet it was a tough task to gobble-down this soft cake, because it was an open competition for grabs. Whoever possessed the political acumen to keep them baited till the very last moment was to emerge victorious.

During the last elections, a candidate jailed many of them in his poultry farm where they’d the liberty to kill and eat as many chickens as they wanted and drink to their farthest limits. In the morning they were dumped---all of them senseless and choiceless---in the polling booths to get the formalities done on the ballot paper. These very voiceless, choiceless votes proved to be the deciding factor in a hotly contested election.

Now, on this last deciding night there were rumours that supporters of a particular candidate were standing aguard around the locality of these prized voters. They were beating anyone from the opposition trying to sneak into the forbidden territory, where chickens were being riotously fed to sacrifice the eaters at the altar of democracy in the morning.

It was such a fraudulent night. None of the contestants and their core groups of supporters slept. Insatiable vengefulness of the conspiracy-witch was doing ruinously excessive rounds. Laden with huge stocks of wine, the supporters were wandering in the streets so that anyone could be boozed up at the littlest of a hint. Murky persistence of rumours and half-truths ate into the souls of two candidates as their desperately disbelieving ears heard they were sitting down in the support of a new-found ally. (Here sitting down means ordering one’s supporters to vote in the favour of the new-found ally.)

A wooden-faced baldie emerged victorious. On his thanks-giving sortie his denying looks already seemed in a tug-of-war with the eternal optimism lurking on the faces of flannelled fools.

The Sadhu in the Avatar of Paranormal Physicist

23

            The Sadhu in the Avatar of Paranormal Physicist

From the ancient times trials, tribulations and tragedies of human diseases have forced those in the spiritual trade to turn their reflective, intuitive, praying and meditative faculties into the mysterious cosmogensis of malfunctioning in the human mind, body or spirit. Slogging hard against these holdups, medicinal and healing techniques have grown in parallel with our belief systems.

Be it the patients being cared in Greek temples, Egyptian priest-physicists doing doctoring or other traditional healing methods prevalent in ancient civilizations, now even the scientific community has come to believe that a religioner can find himself equipped enough to concentrate some synergetic component of the unknown infinite on the disharmonic part to start positive stimulation in the patient’s immune system.

It doesn’t matter that Hippocrates doctored a coup by extracting a curing element which we can see at the operational level unlike the religious dosage. Still, till now faith healing has remained an important aide to the struggling primary health network in the countryside. Here the mundane world of pleasures, pains, testing trials, rewards and losses has still enough lacunae to knock the disbelieving reason’s Mickey out of the commoner’s conscience and turn him a believer in the operatic prowess of paranormal forces.

The witchcraft performed to cure Bhagte’s sister-in-law hadn’t worked. The poor little beautiful flower was still sulking under the clutches of a defragrant fate. One more miscarriage had occurred. Bhagte’s mother, ever weeping for their emaciated and ragged fate, personally pleaded before the exorcist to dispel the edaciously dejuicifying black-bee from their flower. The Sadhu thus paid a visit to the devotee’s house.

Masking a transcendental equanimity of mind over his face, the exorcist sat there silent as if mustering up some energy for the contrived melodrama to follow. Like a jigsaw puzzle the young woman with a symmetrically round pink-red face sat cowering before his fearsomely bulging figure. Tremulous timbre of fear was surfacing with a dead-whiteness over her feminine face. In nervous agitation her fingers started playing with the cheap beads of her necklace. Her coarse headcloth hooded over her face allowing only a glimpse of her beautifully cut pair of lips and the dimpled chin.

“When did the bitch spoke last time?” the exorcist’s unemotional, abnormal hate for the prey baulked.

The tone carried rumbustious riot of awe through the young woman’s soft body. To muster up some courage she clutched at her mangalsutra. Draped in the nine-yards of cheap, pink cotton sari she further shrank into its protective folds.

“No maharajji, it hasn’t spoken since that last holy ritual of yours,” her mother-in-law, adjusting her breasts inside the large, closely-fitting upper garment, cackled a pleading with a strangely suffering introversion.

“Oh, Shiva! It’s gone mute. The fatal one! After that witchcraft it’s come to know that someone more powerful has come hence wants to chuck-up all those soft little lives without making any fuss about it.”

Last trace of pink vanished from the young woman’s face. She shivered as if thrown into a hellish cauldron. Sweat beads surfaced on her wheatish brow around that big bindi in the middle.

“Someone’s got it done upon her. Do’u suspect anyone of this?” his facial convulsions showed he was fastly falling into the superstitious intrenchment.

“Not particularly,” the old woman cudgeled up her debilitated brain. “Oh, yes!” the grizzled veteran suddenly uncorked the genie of suspicion. “I’m sure it’s the deed of that bitch, Hariya’s wife. People have seen her doing such things in the dark of night. And why should I curse her only, this fool is also responsible for all this. Despite my constant warnings she kept on visiting her house. She’s eaten many things given by that infertile bad bitch!” she stared at her daughter-in-law and gave a reproaching tug at the young lady’s neatly tied bun at the back of her head.

Scornful look of the old woman soared up the fear to several new notches inside the pixy figure of young woman.

The lethal cocktail of faith and superstition, like the retrenching abnormality of fire and ice existing together, came jostling and haggling. The ritualist brandished his hotch-potch puffery:

“Humn... don’t worry mataji, I’ll teach it a lesson!”

“Not only this, do something to that brother-eating living witch also!” her wrinkled, rickety body appeared tearing asunder in a fit of revenge.

The exorcist, meanwhile, lit up a fire. He poured many strange articles in it. Invidiously pungent fumes––capable of bringing volcanic eruptions of sneezing and coughing––filled the small room. Harmonious hierarchy of her shapely nostrils was disturbed and distorted. Some blurring straddles shimmered across her body. Water came out of eyes and nose. Intonations and inflexions of some bipolar depression surfaced.

“Aaan chee... aan chee...” shaken by the sneezing her head almost banged into the fire. Her mother-in-law pulled away the plain headcloth, leaving her open and unprotected before the beholder of the family’s faith.

Flames reached up to her face as if to burn the evil spirit along with her cheeks still glowing like the autumn’s full moon smiling over the discharmed and windfallen nature.

The exorcist inveighed furiously with some chants. His stygian mannerisms would’ve put anyone in a horrified wonderment.

More than the fire and fumes it was the rapier-sharp tongue of the exorcist which seemed to torment her. Sonorous simplicity of this flower had been condemned to face this gladiatorial sandstorm. Watery pearls of her eyes stared at the tormentor. Such a vulnerable, small and beautiful creature caught in a piteous hellhole. The sight seemed to empower the exorcist. Fatalistic critiques, the diabolical adversaries of this helpless female (or for that matter any of the beautiful women) hissed inside his soul. Pitiful vulnerability of this tragically troubled young woman sent his exorcist adrenaline pumping to its fiercest peak. This kind of pitying excitement left him with an instinct to bludgeon this juicy fruit to death. Fire and brutal excitement reached the remotest corner of his heart-–the place of primordial hate for the enemy of asceticism. Insatiable vengefulness of this paranormal animosity left him, for a moment, stone dead-–a demon. Yawning abyss on his face left her soul quivering to the core.

The high priest of supernaturalism gnashed in a monstrously fanatical tone, “Speak, speak out you bitch! I know you’re here inside this poor woman! Why do’u eat the little ones in her womb? Speak out otherwise I’ll burn you in this fire!”

Weird dimensions of exorcism conjured up polemical rhetoric inside his soul which in turn effectuated super-ego inflation. His eyes turned to preter-human redness.

“Speak out, I order!”

No answer came. The religious raver tarted up as much inveteracy in his questioning as he could. With a ravaging raucity he kept on banging her head with the loquacious lores of hotch-potch mutterings and a broom of peacock feathers. Tone and pitch in his voice went on deviating from the normal. Fire and smoke kept on aggravating. Occasional throwing of some powder at her head now became a torturing norm. He seemed to be paying oblations and offering prayers to the devil of hallucinations, of extra-sensory perception, of hypnotism, of witchcraft, of paranormal....

She was now abnormally staring into the fire; the smacking of eyelids now decreased to almost nil. Breadth of vision was glazed into the supernaturally lucent hallow of fire. Like a javelin thrower he now put more and more force behind the prevaricating chants. And what happened next was jerky enough to shudder the life away from the old woman.

Call it the hallucinations in which the senses get mired up in the rave, rant and ravel of strange things; or hypnotism; or (if you’re a believer in ghosts and haunting spirits) the haunting spirit forced to unshackle its maliciously invisible absurdity. Humph, readers pick up your choice!

Sharply yielding and flowerily vulnerable face of till now took a giant swipe. There was a nipping retort. A sudden surge of egoistically astraying power unnaturally waved over her cotton-soft skin. A sort of macho-muscularity was superimposed over the feminine flower. Her breathing became stormily heavy. Petalous aperture of her lips contorted mischievously. Eyes dropped dead as if she was no more interested in seeing normal things of this world. It was for sure that the poor creature’d given in either to the exorcist or the spirit.

“Yes, I’m inside her!” gates of silence were broken.

It was an invidiously strange voice. Like a beautifully rippling brook had been captured by a gurgling nullah. Like the epithalamiumic harmony of her soft vocal chords had been captivated by pettifogging jangling of thick chains.

“Who’re you to disturb me like this?” it sounded colossally proud of itself.

“I’ll burn you in this fire! Go away from this body!” the exorcist bayed for its blood.

“No, I won’t!” it sounded rock-adamant.

“Even your granny would!” the ritualist messed up his tone to thunderous proportions.

In rambling self-possessiveness the exorcist let out dolorously chanting grunts. It appeared as if he was torturing of his own soul as well. His body shook like hell was boiling inside. Watching him like this one would’ve surmised a pint-sized rationale just like this:

“To make a haunting spirit afraid, the exorcist himself has to become a bigger, more fearsome ghost.”

Are the evil spirits really afraid of provoking an exorcist?  Or is there some mechanism in our subconscious mind which provides an escaping outlet to the tortured self-–like submission in this case-–when one has been put in a situation where the attacking elements jam up the senses, thus, preventing normal sense-perception procedure? Anyway, whatever might be the cause, the haunting spirit broke down (or the inbuilt escaping mechanism saved her from any further torture?).

“Oh, master!” it gave a piteously long sigh. “Don’t burn me. I hold your feet and plead for mercy. I’ll do as you wish. I’ll never haunt this body again!” the voice plummeted down to fluminously surrendering calm from its earlier proclamation of Himalayan hugeness.

The exorcist doubled his torturing efforts. The poor body couldn’t tolerate this final assault and the spirit was gone. But before it was gone, it’d soaked too much energy from the body (or is’t the benumbing intoxication and nausea produced by the subconsciously struggling ‘escaping instinct’?). Whatever might have been the reason, effect was just the same. The pretty woman lost her senses and dropped on her back. Subtle shades of a deep slumber blossomed in the beautiful orchard of her body. Slipshod whiteness corpsely domed over her cheeks was slowly, slowly defeated by rosy hues.

“Give her this bhabhoot to lick after the meals,” the exorcist-doctor prescribed his medicine after the operation.

The Boy who’d Whispered a Resistance to the Sadhu’s Fusillade against the Gypsy Girl

24

             The Boy who’d Whispered a Resistance to the

                 Sadhu’s Fusillade against the Gypsy Girl

His little voice of truth had symphonically tried to interfuse her innocence with the soft, innocent beats of his little heart on that eventful day. It however was lost purposelessly in the noise of the grown-ups’ frayed tempers. The religioner, but, felt some ingrained prejudice against this mutineer revolting to cleanse the tainted flower.

This little one had bright teeth shining against the background of his swarthy cute face. He bore a pair of circular, surprised eyes. His little nose was a bit round, while his combed down hair was cut in a straight line across the middle of his forehead making him appear coy and subdued.

Aha, the unhindered bandwidth or spectrum of childhood panoramically bathed with showering sprinklings! When the sunshine of unselfish emotions rains down, drenching everything in humane warmth. The elders are, however, always on craggy tenterhooks with their sharply unyielding and twitchy nerves; their hearts too stony and cumbersome to have full view of the inscrutable wilderness sprawling across a child’s heart.

The little boy’s heart had leapt for the defence of that weeping, helpless girl when the villainously bearded fellow slapped her. While the whole fee-faw was noisily going on, he’d cried bitterly. Perhaps it was a piously true mourning for the injustice being meted out to such a beautiful girl, which the yawningly big eyes of the elders missed.

If we missed a particular incidence among that swirling storm of happenings on that day, then we can recall it now:

The boy had pounded his little fists on the religioner’s lame leg, who whacked him onto the ground.

The boy’d cried, “It’s you who lifts children, not she! Why were you wandering in the streets that night? Even Pa was with you.”

Amidst such noise of war proportions even the Sadhu himself hadn’t heard the little one’s counter-charge.

After a few weeks of the happening, the guru was invited to a satsang, religious discourse, at the community chaupal of Bhagte’s caste. Personal care attendant-cum-disciple was the event manager.

A few religioners, singers of Kabir’s poetry, local morality and ballad singers, and a group of musicians (wielding tanpura, dholak and harmonium) waited to open the flash-channels of religious rivulet.

From the very early age Bhagte’d grown up attending such musico-religious gatherings. Incense smoke arising along with devotionally charged-up particles of God-lorn metres, local folk-poetry, sermons encapsulating linguistic version of the ultimate reality were the things which’d firmed up his faith to unflinching proportions.

Predominant themes of these devotional songs and bhajans were the sayings and preachings of medieval bhakti saints and very cryptically said factoids of social conduct (which ended up giving a satirical little nudge) by the native religious figures, whose luminant memories hadn’t yet faded away from people’s guidance-seeking psyches.

Such was the period of medieval India when the art of devotional preaching reached the cusp of human sentimentality in His name; when the lonely lounging lollops in a particular section of the human heart made it a permanent temple in His name. Unfalteringly whole-hearted and single-minded devotion to the guru guided one to the farthest limits of faith. Saint poets like Kabir’ve hailed a true guru as greater than even the God.

Bhagte on his part knew so many of these sayings that he never failed to put up one or two in any context and situation. So much so that whenever a debate, argument or even an idle talk was going around him, he kept the noble composure of his silence. Then suddenly-–but without any disturbance-–a great couplet would escape from his mouth as the prologue and epilogue of a beautiful God-fearing thought. Other than this he won’t say anything else. They, however, termed it a lampoon’s timidity.

Further, it was his utter spellboundedness to the guru’s God-like lofty position so soulfully eulogised in those sacred religious ballads, which made the Sadhu a worshipable symbol of his faith in God.

These kinds of gatherings meant so much to him. He took part in them as if the occasion was no less than the greatest festival of India. So today too he was attired in best of clothes. A neat bath and well-oiled hair combed in cutest of a style made him look like the humble prince of this tiny religious fair. The Chaupal too wore a festive environment. He was arranging things with a gait which personified his pride for managing such an important thing: the very same thing he grew up watching as a spectator from a distance.

Hidingly mixed up in the motley crowd, his boy was staring at the villainous foe, the bearded bulky fellow the likes of whom he’d seen in some Hindi movies watched with a bated breath on a neighbour’s television. The seven-year-old was the only brother of his sister siblings. His father put him to tentation.

“Deepu, go and call your mother,” Bhagte’s morose and mopish tone failed to bring paternal tartness in the order.

With some uppishness the boy, in khaki knickers and white shirt (oddly this was not his school dress, because mostly on such occasions his school dress also served as the best piece of clothing), looked at his father. His little twinklings eyes seemed to complain to his father for his hob-knobbing with the bearded bad fellow. That’s how children define elders-–either good or bad; no mixed up in between characterisation. To the boy’s unstigmatised senses the religioner seemed the rakshasha, the demon, who’d imprisoned a beautiful fairy in some folk tale.

“Why’re you staring at me like this? Go and call your mother. And you too come with her!” the father pitched up some tartness.

“No, I won’t,” the boy seemed adamant.

“Now do’u need a little slap for that!” while saying this with feigned aggressiveness, the father seemed more perturbed than the boy himself.

The boy at once ran out on his spiky legs to avoid any such eventuality. His backside showed a very neatly washed up rumpled shirt, explicitly telling he’d worn it only this morning after it’d lain crumpled up in some old trunk, waiting for some special occasion to arrive. His cheap plastic slippers drummed-up his pace as they struck musically against his heels.

The boy returned with a cowering figure that followed the little man as if he was her sole protector. The disciple’s little wife was shyly draped in a red sari tucked a couple of inches above her ankles. Its colour had lost the charm despite retaining some redness. Her large silver anklets prominently displayed their trinketish garnet-garishment against the background of red socks and black sandals. Below the lower edges of her sari, pleated ends of a plain, faded petticoat were visible. Only her blouse had some mundane ornamentation, but most of it was hidden under the dexterously drawn pallu of her sari which also served as her purdah.

All it displayed was the cake and ale of countryside fashion prevalent among these poor ladies with nice, hardworking hearts; though it might seem ragged, emaciated and sun-bleached to the knuckle-rapping city sentimentality. Still, an odd emotional resonance in these bucolic hearts tries to chalk down a bright fashion statement on a few special occasions: extreme coloured wares; black sandals over red socks; anklets which jingle disproportionately to their tiny, trivial existence; too much oil in the braided hair, which makes head appear like a bald scalp painted dark black; lipstick missing the feminine edges making them appear funnily simple dummies; their hesitating dabbling into the glitters and shimmers of mascara, kohl, lipstick, bindi and nail-polish; dupattas and chunnis salvaged from some neighbour’s long obsolete wedding dress. Such are the crooning vital stats of folk-fashion.

In his simple unauthoritative voice Bhagte ordered his wife from the upper ladder in the harmonious hierarchy of lopsided relationship between husband and wife in a traditional, conservative society:

“Go, touch the feet of guruji and ask for blessings!”

The big, hairy and bare-chested religioner was enjoying his time with a thin old man wearing a big garland of flowers. Whatever might have been the nature of their conversation, but by the look of it one would’ve wondered if they were bantering away jokes. A slobbery peel of laughter culminated in a loud pat on his thigh as if he was a commoner just like any other person in the chaupal.

“Guruji, here’re your children!” Bhagte gave a little nudge at the shoulder of his shy, hesitant wife. “Turn their life successful by your blessings,” he almost pleaded.

She went forward and put her head on the Sadhu’s feet with the meekness of a goat.

“Shiva Shambhu bless you the best of a fortune, daughter!” the fiery-eyed God’s confidante showered a blessing in his dry and depersonalized tone. His firm upper body became religiously taut.

“Now you, Deepu!” head disciple felt a sensation of nervous energy as he smelt particles of defiance above the kid’s head.

With horror in his little twinkling eyes, the boy didn’t budge from his ground. His childish, willowy figure seemed stuck up like a peg in the ground.

“Yes, yes! What’re you waiting for? Get blessings from mahatmaji for your well being in life,” the father repeated, shoveling the son forward.

The boy’s face contorted in a firm resolution.

“No... no Pa no, I won’t! He beat that girl and... and his friends killed her brother who came to save her!” he almost fainted in the effort.

Aha, what big sympathetic space in children’s hearts for the wrongs committed to fellow human beings! Why then it goes on narrowing as we grow up, and finally take part in those very same wrongs?

The religioner’s coarse, craggy and cross face turned diabolically adversarial. There was a hell-raising flashback and flashforward of her memory. His large temples under those staggeringly big locks and curls of graying hair throbbed with stormy agitation.

“Didn’t I tell you that bitch’d cast an evil charm on this little pigeon of yours!” with inherent deceit and destructiveness he stared at his disciple.

“Now you little foolish haunted one, come here!” he raised his hairy hand towards the boy.

“Now, I won’t!” completely fear-frozen, the boy started to weep.

As was to be expected, Bhagte gave a whack with his moderately thick, veiny and hairy hand at the boy’s back for perpetrating insult to his revered guruji. The boy let out a fluminous cry.

“No... no... Pa... no! He’s a bad man. Didn’t I tell you how he beat that girl? She knew a, b, c, d. Even then he hit her!” the boy cried at the top of his throat.

“Shut up you fool! What filth are you shouting?” with an emaciated look Bhagte lost the divine equanimity of his flawlessly cool temper.

His boy was publicly unspooling sacrilege against the symbol of his faith. With shaking hands he put his palm over the kid’s mouth to stop the unholy voice. The boy writhed under his grasp. In desperation, his freckled cheeks twitching with fear, the father gave many kicks at the boy’s bare, callused knees.

“Seems he’s still under the black charm of that filthy nomad,” the predator preyed upon the suffocated prey. “Didn’t I tell you how witchy these homeless wanderers are? Now see with your own eyes. She wasn’t able to take him with her, but left an evil spell on him. Look, how he speaks from her side as if his own father doesn’t mean anything to him!” he sermonized his accusation against the tiny reality-knower.

Bhagte almost shivered under the impact of his dark prophecy.

The little valiant bit his father’s hand and stood his ground, “She knew one, two, three and a, b, c, d so well. And... and didn’t pull my ears like masterji when I forgot the count. She knew all of them. Even then you beat her! Why?”

He threatened the religioner with his innocent eyes. Bhagte gave another merciless thwack at the back of his head.

“A girl of those illiterate lampoons knows all that lies in fat books! Ha... Ha... Haa! What a powerful black magic!” the sermoneer strengthened his position.

His disciple took it from where the guru’d left, “You... you... fool! How could’u be haunted this much without my knowledge? Oh, God! Why’s this happened to me? Me! Me, who has always followed your path. Oh, this little bewitched fool haunted by the cursed ill magic of that devil spirit hiding inside that pretty faced girl!” his faith was dangerously taking up the contours of webby superstition from which it’s so difficult to get out.

He couldn’t speak anymore. His lips quivered in a violent commotion. His tongue choked. Aggrieveness was then worded by the salty stream of tears. Glimpsing through the diluvial lenses, the purblind view of his guru seemed magically aglow. Words once again welled up in his throat; this time in the form of a prayer.

“O Lord, he’s my only son…the latest step in our continuance on the path of goodness. Why in thy name he’s been ensnared in this danger? Please Lord, please... save my child!” with sad, teary he was staring heavenwards.

With his hands clasped together he looked at the boy’s face so intensely as if to see the effect of his prayer. His belief in God was so close-grained that had there been an oracle from above, it won’t have surprised him even a bit. But then we no longer get surprised by miracles. Rather, the hard facts of real life are becoming manifold surprising. And beyond this, God’s ways and means are so implicitly indirect that it’s hard to differentiate between a commonly known reality and a miracle.

The voice of course came from the religioner’s mouth, “Don’t be too worried Bhagte. Why’re you giving trouble to the God who’s too far and has too many works at His disposal? He’s deputed people like me for such simple and easy tasks. Don’t trouble Him for such little things. I’ve handled most dangerous of evil spirits. I assure you that I’ll very easily bury this one in earth.” Hawk-fierce tone of the thick-set religioner now mellowed down to religious proportions.

The Sadhu’s heavy, sly eye-lids stopped their work for a moment and he peeped into the honest and ardent eyes of his disciple. With the air of a saviour he signaled Bhagte to bring the boy to him. An obedient Bhagte shoved the boy towards the clutch-lorn hand of the religioner. Displaying the quickness of a bird of prey, his spiritual mentor’s inexorably hard fingers caught hold of the boy’s seraphically soft tissue-–his earlobe. Acting on the nocent reflection of his soul’s instinct of mercilessly preying upon soft targets, he twisted it with full force.

Tortured by this demonic interjection into his softly mellifluous childhood, the boy gave a loudly abusive cry.

“Leave me... leave me... you sister-fucker... leave me!” amongst the painful shaking of his round head, the obscenity sounded clear.

Oh, those jocosely jousting urchins, whose tongues grow up believing that obscenities and foul words are just name-sake common things of usage! Bhagte’s son was no exception. He poured out his whole knowledge in the matter. In fact, some of them were hair-raising in their offensiveness.

From top to tail, every ounce of the religioner’s soul baulked a separate harangue.

“Pretty foul mouthed evil spirit, you see,” his nostrils quivering, the godhead tried to control the blatantly open show of his rage. “If not done away with very soon, it’ll drink all his sweet blood. See... see how it comes? The blood!” he but failed to put reins to his anger. His broad cheek-bones and that grizzled look bestowed him some strange, savage handsomeness. The veins on his hairy temples were sending repercussions through whole of his head.

In broad day light it was turning a bloody, paranormal thing. With preterhuman gumption, fear psychosis fell upon the gathering. Earlobe was cut at the corner. “The blood of evil spirit, which she drank from him!” having a quick glance at the father on the verge of fainting, he added, “Don’t worry Bhagte. I’ll protect your boy from this gory spirit. Take my word on this!” The pious guest-of honour’s thickly bearded jaw was drawn like a pincer.

Staring at the spawn, once again he started his ritualistic thuggery, “Om... Om... Om... Go away you child’s blood sucker!”

The exorcist’s soul went for a perilous stoop. His fingertips were tainted with the sanguine symbol of his inner paradoxical fury volcanically smouldering inside the stony fortress of his religionhood. Sole worldly chink in the walls of earlier had by now acquired a few more worldly siblings. Now he was fully determined to brave up the worldly, materialistic fusillade. His utilitarian religious armoury, thus, was naturally bound to get some more cleavages.

Like a predator gearing up for another strike he rolled his fingertips laced with the mire of unholy deed. Seeing a tiny unit of his existence dead and dried-up on the insensitively dying flakes on his foe’s fingertips, the child was drawn into a mysteriously chimerical world of childhood inquisitions. A severely hard lesson churned out of it. Don’t mess up with this monster; otherwise consequences’ll be more punitive.

Defeatedly the kid dropped his gaze onto the ground. His silently suffering sobs bearing a testimony to the treacherous lesson learnt from the mutinous episode. From his kamandla the fearsome, barrel-chested exorcist splashed water over the boy’s face. A serenely swelling-up sob was disharmonically captured by a chilly hiccup. Once again he stared in those bulging blood-red eyes, which devilishly ordained, ‘Never put up a revolt against me in the future!’

And he---a mere seven-year-old---understood the message very well. A further splash of water carried once chirpy kid into a sea of unplayful gloom. It was his initiation into the glum world of fear and unchildish imagination. The religioner became the sole symbol of jaw-clenching fee-faw and unknown inhibitions. Afraid that any mischief of his would throw him into the devil’s tentacles, he put unnaturally hasty breaks to his childhood manoeuvres. A mysterious sorrow and fear blanketed the flower.

His father, who used to have nightmares watching the son’s naughtiness, was now chanting the name of his guru with every breath, servilely thankful for bringing the harbinger of his pedigree on the right track. In a society where a father visiting his children’s teachers is able to muster up just this one reformative phrase ‘Sir, give him hardest of a beating!’, so we should’ve no problem in estimating this father’s obligedness to his guru for the mighty lesson taught to his son.

Still, there was a mildly nagging worry. Only to keep the grain of paranormal insecurity alive inside his disciple, the exorcist’d closed the religious discourse that day with these words:

“See... See! Didn’t I assure you I’ll handle it! See, the evil’s withdrawn into its shell. But, it still exists in some littlest of point inside the body and can invigorate itself if this little fool gives it an opportune time!”

The boy from that day did his best not to let it happen. A miraculously reformed boy, indeed!

                                                    25

                         Myths, Legends, Folk-tales: History

Apart from the common Gods of a particular socio-cultural and religious section there’re smaller local Gods, deities and deified family and clan ancestors who firm up the faith of smaller constituent settlements. Similarly, there’s a parallel (or constituent) unit of local legends, myths, folk and fairy-tales alongside the overarching hierarchy of common cultural and historical milieu.

This village too basked in the luminous solitude of its own little myths, legends and historical tales. As far as history is concerned who can give a historically confident account of nearly six lakh human settlements across the length and breadth of India? Some people of course can: the genealogists, known as bhats. But only on one condition: one must have some acquisitiveness (at least to the extent of a dilute dilettante’s taste) to catch up with some last scion of this fastly extinguishing profession. And to find one it’ll take an archaeologist’s effort.

In earlier times, practically every settlement did boast of one such unofficially recognised historian, who in his books kept the family names across generations, their charities and donations to the bhat ancestors. From sandiest of remoteness they still arrive with their books probably once or twice in a year. Give then the host a few anxious moments by parroting the monotonous chronology of unknown names from an indistinct past. But a slipshod present rambling along the flungs and flumps of modern life is grossly short of time to have even a single look at the subtle shades of an unfacetious past. So in order to get rid of this time waste the host ends up doling out a little charity to the redundant lineage record-keeper. So a bhat is just worth some wheat and some money for the pacification and appeasement of ancestral souls still trying to pull at the physical sinews through those words in the fat books cover-bound with a ragged red cloth.

If someone’d the patience to look at the first page in the village bhat’s book, he would’ve learnt the village of our tale came into being in 1285or 1286.

“People from Prithviraj Chauhan’s clan!” the genealogist’d have tried to varnish a glow of molten gold over the lacklustre past.

Isn’t it surprising that these innocuously unsophisticated and simple villagers of today draw their lineage from the clan of mightiest arm of Rajput resistance against the Muslim attackers?

“Yes, your forefathers, the ancestors of whole village, belonged to that great warrior clan and migrated from Rajasthan.”

But, why an emigration out of the land of the proud sword-bearing arms of India?

“Perhaps, Islam’s sustained campaign slowly won over them... they, who were ever ready to die for a cause, left the sandy wastes for better pastures. If there was no external cause, they finished it up among themselves. For pride, women, clan, ethnicity, etc., etc.”

Oh, is’t so! But, why do they look so unwarrior type now? Of course, except the roughly enthusiastic cynicism of their dialect.

“Time’s rust eats away most of the things. Might and bravery are no exception to that.”

Still, it’s sensible enough not to get killed at the mere drop of a pin!

“Very sensible your excellency! I go off from here. If you’ve anything to give, then give or burn my burden as the Islamic zealots did with our scriptures during the medieval times!”

Now after history, a bit of talk about the native legends from the hollow-cheeked grandpas, who make them sound characters from not so popular folk-tales. For sure, within a decade or two all these’ll be lost in the anonymous bibliography of greater history. Eldest surviving members most of whom would be finishing their journey within the decade to come sometimes pull at the memory cords of these native legends now on the verge of extinction. Chapters of ‘might is right’, robberies, wrestlers, saviours, mighty great bets (which sometimes ended with a loss of life) hesitatingly flow out of the time’s culvert beneath the road of ‘present’ clogged with a heavy traffic of events and happenings.

If someone has the time to listen to the robust old man who still gulps a lot of milk, butter-milk and butter (although, winning it in a fight with the daughter-in-law, who mutters with each mouthful of his, “Bloated oldie, we’ve no more of it! Now, eat us!”) then the conversation would take such a shape:

“You people, the strongest of youths among you! Even the weakest of our times would’ve killed you in wrestling. Have’u heard about Bagha? No! Oh my poor youngling, he was that pahalvan from our village who was known in the whole state for his wrestling powers. Never, ever lost a fight in his life!”

“But he did once!”

“Haa... even your father wasn’t born by that time. And here you’re trying to stigmatise the strong man.”

“Isn’t it a truth that he was defeated by a dead weight?”

“Oh, you fool! You people of today call it a defeat. Then you people don’t know what victory means. It was in fact a most memorable victory. Greatest victory I ever saw! You know, the stone was at least two hundred kilogram. Get all your pahalvans of today to lift it. All of you, I challenge! Go, it’s still lying there!”

“But he died under that, dadaji.”

“No! He’d won. In the bet it was just to be lifted above the head. What happened after that, it’s nobody’s business. No such thing as dead or alive after accomplishing the feat. He was as mighty as Hanuman holding a mountain above his head. His hands were trembling. And we children were celebrating because the respect of the whole village had been saved. Then the elders realised the great victor was holding his trophy for too long. Too long to fatality! His eyes were glazing wider and wide to match the effort. Hugely anxious they shouted at him to throw away the stone. Aaah... he won’t! They ran to push the death hovering over his head to one side. The mountain fell with a bang; near his feet. Only then he toppled over the defeated stone lying at his feet. The victor, the greatest victor! From that day they started saying, ‘Never play with the weight, stone or iron, for who could do it is no more!’ Such were the pahalvans of our times!”

There’re so many other such lower heroes forming the unknown lower leitmotif of the commonly known microcosm of graceful columns and fine facade of the palace of higher folk-tales. Time’s poignancy and penetration cut them down to still smaller and smaller size with the passage of each generation. Most probably the grandpas of our tale’d be the last ones to vivaciously think about them; bringing them back from time’s abditory. So, while the din of life continues unabated, the elders still whisper homage to these unsung heroes.

Further, there’re so many other still smaller heroes in the small shelves of little local abditories in the universal archives of cosmic history. Figures who lived believing might is stronger than mind: animally eating unbelievable (to create unofficial records) quantities of butter, chapattis, milk, butter-milk, raw vegetables and lumps of jaggery. One fellow like a mini elephant ended up uprooting a grown-up acacian tree. His arms gripping it like an elephant’s trunk. One used to run so fast that the British collector came to hold a darbar in the village to see and award him. Another one had the might to try his hand on a buffalo. They say he made a successful attempt at lifting a grown-up buffalo. Growing skeptic, yes? Well, the old eyes which once saw the spectacular feat still try to convince that it indeed happened. ‘How was it possible?’ the skeptical present generation might still insist. Some worldly-wise spirit can put up an effort:

“Man’s will power when extends to the extreme horizons, it enters the realm of God. Then everything becomes possible. The man started lifting the animal right from the time it was born and went on doing it everyday thinking he was lifting the same, almost weightless, little calf. Thus, even if each day added a little weight to the animal, the cosmic constant of his will-power nullified that. His resolve stood rock firm. The actual weight isn’t the amount of mass lying in a stone. It’s what it seems to one’s mind. So in the end the man ended up lifting a whole of buffalo!”

Well, what a fellow! Shining like a celestial truth at the fringe of the world of myth, legends and folk-tales.

Then, another was from the world of shooting-–marksmanship, we mean. Yes, don’t you believe it? Buddy, heavily stands a skeptic’s head because it wears the crown of overpossessive logic. Still, you’re justified a bit in your disbelief. After all, in that era of purest rural-rusticity, when they’d few things to eat, same wares to wear and almost the same work of ploughing, how could someone from the village be expected to possess the guts and time to excel in this sport of cribbling and trickily demanding specialisation. Hoom, well... if someone is driven by dreams and determination then walking on one’s own chosen path becomes possible.

The above mentioned person was a simpleton farmer. Now, talents in most of the cases are inborn. His sun-bleached face betrayed an excellent sense of distance, marksmanship, force to be put behind the throw and the likes. Had it not been the case, how could he hit so many birds in his attempts to shoo them away from his bajra fields. That too with the help of such a crude throwing instrument called gopia. It was just a double rope whose both ends were held in the hand. The other end consisted of a woven loop to hold a pebble or earthen clod. Operating methodology required it to be swung around the body and then release one end of the rope with all expertise, inborn and learnt judgments at the bird-drove eating the crop. What an instrument! Swinging it around one’s head to hit the target! Littlest of a delay or snag threatened to bust the aim’s ceiling. When it came to the gulail (the sling-shot) he showed the exact accuracy of his art. This instrument consisted of a rubber tied at the upper ends of a V-shaped wood. Stretch the rubber with a pebble pinched between your fingers and go with a bang.

As talent is no slave to either temper or tongue. Such people when get the refined tools of their interest they don’t miss the target. They always put behind those who from cradle to coffin have the opportunity to see, smell and feel those very equipments in and around their houses. Similar was the case with this rough diamond lying in the bucolic countryside mine.

In pre-independence India, whenever the Britishers felt the pinch of urban-suffocation, pithy aphorisms from the countryside would start playing welcome songs in their ears. Attracted by this irresistible pacifism of the panoramic and poor sprawls they would arrive with a royal charm and aura; their ladies and retinue accompanying them. Following the path of mildly charming nature and hunting-lorn they found themselves in the oriental pastures; their overburdened, ruling, reforming senses enjoying a relaxing, spicy twinge of the subjects’ lower world. On such occasions the gora sahibs in hunting top-boots, breeches, flat-topped hats and solar topees, tight-waisted jackets with low collars and shirts having lace-cuffs---all in all the European-style smart casuals---revealed their uncynical, unofficial persona to the peasantry clad in home-spun vests and small loin-cloths. Sometimes they came in open carriages; sometimes in closed ones. On some occasions, the otherworldly white ladies descended from the curtained palanquins. On other occasions they were the defiant and flamboyant damsels on the steeds; subtle shades of their delicate curves mysteriously evincing through the gossamer delicacy of their wares. Looking at these blondes and brunettes, mischievously concealing their fairy forms in that coquettish transparency of silk, calico and muslin finery, the natives took long and silent sips of sensuousness.

The village pond, as was the case at the time of our tale, was the favourite spot for migratory birds. To earn a sporty dinner their rifles would go through a fiery and furious drudgery. The bird-hunters lay in the shrubbery and tried their marksmanship. Their ladies, standing like fairies draped in those neo-classical pleats, frills, folds, silken laces and flimsy and wispy gauze, clapped at each hit.

Whenever a bird failed to take off with the flock flying for life and flapped in the water instead, either their dogs or the native servants ran to get it out with all humility and obedience. The village boys too vied with each other to collect the empty bullet shells-–an object of hilarious satisfaction whenever they got one.

Now, it so happened that on a fine wintry sunlit noon the Britishers were having a bad day. Several shots had been fired since morning, but the groups of ducks flew unharmed (not to be seen for almost half an hour after the noise). Waiting game was thus becoming treacherously long drawn. The ladies in lace caps were getting bored. (Even with their perennially rejuvenating habit of checking their make-up and dress!) More serious was the failure before the subjects’ eyes. And then someone from the village, who had been a soldier in the British army and a veteran of world war first, felt his arms itching for an aim. He strugglingly smattered across a sentence or two in English; was lucky to convey the message; was luckier in getting the sahib’s nod. He, but, had grown old; quite strangely with great speed; could, thus, smell the looming failure. So the old man tucked forward the young farmer (who never missed a mark in his fields) as an alternative shooter. The proposal stirred up a hornet’s nest of laughter among the sahibs and mems. At one point of time the laughter even reached to the extent of a seeming irritation and a bit of anger, for they were too desperate that day. But one of the many good things about the Britishers (as is the case with the people of many nationalities) is that they want a perfect laugh, but before that they’ve the patience to offer a chance to the target of their laugh.

“Take this and shoot!” they stiffened up their lips. One of them kicked a tuft of gray grass with his sharp-toed boot. Out of eagerness one lady adjusted her lace cap.

The situation might have been warlike for the simpleton, but not for the old soldier. Deftly he told him the preliminary nitty-gritties of rifle and aim. With a war cry he urged him to the mission. Most of those present were expecting the boy to fall back due to the shock and the bullet going to the skies putting angels on their heels to escape from the hunting piece of metal. But they were wrong. Tools are the slaves of talent and will, not vice-versa. Inside him were the qualities of a fine marksman. He’d never depended on the nozzle and trigger of a rifle for the perfection of a shot. Rather, it was the stillness and aimful instinct in some concretised corridor of his brain. He pulled the trigger. Perhaps, for the first time his shot went precisely in harmony with what was inside him. It killed as many ducks as a single shot could.

All and sundry human fragilities apart, let’s have a look at another simple good thing about the Britishers. They react decently in such situations, in place of becoming belligerent due to ego hurts. In a fluminously mellifluous gesture, they heartfully congratulated him. From then onwards they saved themselves from all the dusty creepings of earlier times. With artful pleats of authority over their faces they watched comfortably, while the new-found, bolt-upright shooter did the job. He became a local hero, because his farmer fans thought that even the Britishers depended upon him. As it was to happen-–another good thing about the Britishers-–they deemed it prudent to have him in the army: a British way of making full use of the dependable subjects, so that both parties were happy in their respective roles as ‘authority’ and ‘efficient workers’!

In punctilious reserves of the village’s small history book, there were heroically voracious eaters-–another parameter of measuring might, pride and achievement. Someone could drink a whole pitcher of butter-milk; someone could eat chapattis whose number dangerously progressed towards three figures; someone could eat a mini mountain of butter; someone ate as much jaggery as an oxen; someone could eat as much sugar as the depth up to which five kilograms of melted butter reached in a sugar sack; someone could plough as much area as would put a tractor to shame.

Such were the laconic halts of time in its journey through these goat-tracks of small history. These were the moments which fell somewhat heavily from the time’s flow: just like a small pebble dropped into a pond, creating ripples for a while before vanishing again in the same monotony. Others meanwhile flew featherily, smoothly-smoothly... without creating turbulence of any sort.