21
Summer
Tales
The
pandemonious buffoons thought they’d found a compeer. The religioner in turn
thought he’d got some cushion-support in the event of an accidental fall in an
unfriendly world. Above said two elements defined and determined the true framework
of relationship between the vagabonds and the holy figure. But such is the
plausible perception of reality through hypothetical ways that the compages of
a relationship appear to be only what we believe them to be. So to many in the
village it appeared to be the classically miraculous case of a holy sandalwood
tree attracting venomous snakes to defang, to dispoison them.
Whatever
maybe the gloomy depth of evil’s saturnalia during the present times, people
still try to believe in the mythical mini-miracles performed by even most mundane
of a friar. Major force behind this conviction in the present episode was
Bhagat Ram, who angelically described his spiritual mentor’s large heartedness
(like Lord Shiva, who’d soaked up the poison from the seas, which turned His
body bluish) for savourily accepting these criminal outcastes in order to
reform them.
The
corpulent figure, thus, clad in red ochre cloak seemed holier than earlier. At
least to those who believed in religiosity it appeared so; to atheists it was a
gross case of lampoonisation; and for the nonchalant agnostics there had been
no change in the situation.
The
crannied reality, however, would be very aptly portrayed by the short conversation
between the religioner and the vagabonds.
“Why
don’t you throw this nuisance into the pond and live inside his hut?” amidst a
glorious gossip the religioner pointed to his neighbour.
They
sang an unnerving song, “Yes, we’ll! But only if you start cooking fish for us.”
These
perfect neophytes, as we now should start presuming in full veracity, were
there just for the fact that the mound and its one dweller (the other one they
forced to cook fish for them using his audaciously prolific culinary skills)
had shown the willingness to play host to the dispiteous air carried by this
thorny circle of friends.
His
occultism found embracing vast space for their drollery. Most often they ended
up divulging all desires of their tattling tongues while lying on his pallet in
a corner inside the hut. And when they got bored with the grimly funny talk,
all of them ran for the palestra which they’d dug up in the salty sand of the alkaline
wasteland. Here they brought out the bodily or physical side of their buffoonery.
All this left them white ghosts, thanks to the whitish sand sticking around
their sweat-drenched bodies.
After
taking a bath their mouths had water for the Nidor, which now came sweeping
down to their nostrils. In fact they’d stopped visiting their houses. To banish
the home’s last and only call (a plate of food) they dumped some flour sacks in
the religioner’s hut. Arriving at the mound after a daylong of eve-teasing
school and college girls in the buses, one of them now brought vegetables for
cooking. Their initiatives and innovations of making bread knew no foolish
bounds. Oh, those breads of ghostly appearances which matched their moods! Who
could keep their appetites within panivorous limits now? They’d lots of fish
and a fantastic cook as well. Seeing them chopping the fish and eating raw
salted-strips, mute anger for a moment sizzled across his duty-lorn conscience.
The
helpless watchman could only see them committing the fish-larceny. Their
predatory hands butcherly skinning out the hides left him with remorse and
anguish.
His
heart would sink for the employer, “God save him! Now we have perennial
predators.”
Tying
buoys and floaters to the net-line, he stole a few accusing glances at them
while they gobbled-up the delicacy made by him. But squeezing a piece of
floater was all he could do. “Oh God, please make them miss the thorn of molee and let it stuck up in their
intestines!” he prayed silently, while watching them skin the eatable water
dwellers. “God, this dead singar has three thorns, one inside and two
outside. Let one of them take revenge for me!” his old eyes peeped into the fillets
of fish lying in the pan.
But
alas, that won’t happen!
Even
the stones seemed to cry out as he saw little agile soli flapping like a
hostage to the evil fortune inside their fists. This sight almost broke him
down. For the sake of a little
enlightening lamp immortally burning over his entombed love, he’d never cooked
a soli in his life (even when the Bengali netmen insisted with folded
hands). And now his angulated anguish mourned many a times at the sight of those
little fish unsanctimoniously turning to motley meat in the frying pan.
Coming
across a singee in their catch, he prayed to the almighty, “For thee anything
is possible, O God, it doesn’t matter if this fish is eaten to save a man’s
life when his blood is frozen! Let it do the reverse now! O fish, give them icy
deaths for thy sisters sake!”
But
that too won’t happen. They emerged warmer-blooded due to the nutritious diet.
Many
a times he expressed his dread and discomfort to the pond’s lessee. The latter
however lacked the guts as well as verbal ammunition to tackle the fishmongers.
“Let them do it to the glut of their abdomen, because if we try to stop them
they’d surely do it to the glut of their evil souls. The latter would result in
an incalculable loss to us, because a single bottle of poison will kill as much
fish as they won’t be able to eat even in their lifetime.”
One
day, it proved to be a red-letter day for their snaring skills. They caught a
palmiped, a web footed duck. The poor bird was loitering near prospis plants
and emerging grass on the littlest of an island which showed its humpy back
above the fastly decreasing water level during the summers. Holding the fluttering
creature they arrived with hoopla. The bird was flapping its wings so
vigorously that the enthralling rendition of the same amount of energy, if
utilised in a freely flying flight, might’ve carried it back to its summer
abode (where it should’ve been at this period of the year). The bird’d
committed a mistake in overstaying (or was it one of those little ones who were
left behind after the elders’d migrated back with the arrival of summer?) and
now had to pay for it.
Sometimes
for the change of taste they prepared sweet porridge, while their friend mused
over his new pair of footwear which they’d bought for him. The ritualist
misperceived it to be a gift from the would-be-disciples. A pandering bribe,
however, would be a more appropriate word. Basking in a ripply mood he felt himself
just like a spiritual and temporal head of this parados.
Watching
the brilliant abundance of their gluttony, the upkeeper came across some solo consolation:
“Thank
God, they don’t have the paternoster line! In that case they would’ve eaten all
of them.”
Thanks
to their pantomorphic eating habits, the monk’s reclusory now boasted of a
small kitchen section in a corner. Here flour, garlic, radish, raisin, mint, salt,
sugar, chilli, peasecod, palmyra and other raw vegetables smacked of a worldly
ingression.
Wretchedly
impious owners of these things were so off-stream that they would praise a
cawing crow instead of a cuckoo’s dulcet song. Socially quavering villagers of
the common stream were not left with any option other than to fake apathy to
this stinking nullah flowing in the near vicinity. Their household-bound spirit
vituperatively whispered in their ears, ‘Neither friendship, nor animosity with
these people!’
So,
they greeted the hoodlum horde with a totally fake smile and tone, and forgot
them like horns from a horse’s head once they’d passed by their side.
Meanwhile,
the friendship between the old dog and the watchman was whispering slowly in a pleasant
willy-nilly.
If
God likes the greenish sweep under an azure sky more than anything forcibly
erected by man; if roses, jasmines, violets and countless other flowers form a
more odorous carpet than the riff-raffy canvas create on the floors by the
joyhogs; if the supple surfing by some honest wave inside a good heart is more
pious in His eyes than a boisterous and stormy sashay over the whole of this planet;
if primroses of spring and brown leaves of autumn are more real than any
mountainous myth; if a small rivulet with its wild hilarity and rhythm is as
ecstacious as Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden; if
a lacy and gauzy voice in a meditative sing-song is His true voice, then... and
only because of this dear readers, this budding friendship between these two
weak creatures-–an old man, and an old dog-–is as mighty and holy as anything
else.
* * * *
Unharming
and generously old appearance of the watchman must’ve put one in doubt whether
even the birds were afraid of him or not. At least during the migratory season
the birdie mass swooped over the big sprawl of the pond with an air of invincibility.
Such a dazzling swipe of birds: saras crane, brahminy duck, common pochard, the
gadwall, pointed stork, black neck stork, cormorant, cattle egret, white ibis,
pintail duck, common teal, shoveller, common pariah, shikra.... Thank God, they
left for some other place during the summers!
While
operating that fire-cracking tong the watchman seemed a historically old and
frail cannon operator; belonging to the lineage of some burly Muslim cannon operator
of the Islamists’ medieval army, when Islam was finding a foothold in India India
Aha,
what a colourful play of transfusions in this land having infinitely embracing
hands! Cannonading hordes after a tiresome journey of tempests always found at
last restful siesta. Islamic blood flew unhindered through the universally
accepting veins of this mighty land; this land ever ready to accept doleful
donations from the outsiders. Thus, there have been numerous waves of migration
into this crest-jewel piece of earth. In fact, time has seen so many
transfusions that presently no one can/should claim to be the original blood of
this great body. If there is anyone to legally claim such a title, it’s the
primitively indigenous dweller of this land residing in the deep, deep forests.
He, however, doesn’t know the language of this claim, because a long time ago
he took a backseat while the civilizational onslaughts came surging.
The
sematic contours of Indian socio-cultural evolution are in full conformity to the
principle of the evolution of species based on natural selection. If according
to Darwin ‘the change occurs when an organism is confronted by a changing
environment,’ then the Indian socio-cultural organism has sustainably changed
through thousands of years: convulsing, taking adaptive turns and emerging out
more composite whenever it was confronted and challenged by the change. One
such holistic outcome of the challenging change is our religious history of the
medieval times.
Medieval
Bhakti movement’s offshoot named Sufism peppered human soul with liberal
values, music and dance. Brilliant blooms of this faith seemed to chant ecstatic
intonations with the Koranic eulogy to unity and brotherhood.
“Hold
fast by the covenant of Allah altogether and be not disunited. And remember
Allah’s favour to you when you were enemies, then He united your hearts. So by
His favour you became brethren.” (3:102)
Oh
Allah, why is it that thy subliminal messages have been so misinterpreted and
misunderstood? Why thy purity has been turned to a peculiar admixture by the
prudery of some of thy followers? Why more Muslims have killed each other than
being killed by non-Muslims? Why Shias and Sunnis so often engage in
stone-blind butchery? Why two branches
of the same sect like Sunni’s Deobandis and Barelvis pelt stones at each other?
Why a pious faith has been put in harrowing jehadi incarceration by some
of the followers boiling in sectarian cauldron?
What
happened during the last and decisive phase of our freedom struggle? The blood
which had been so healthily transfused into body Hindustan
during the medieval period started to show unreceptive signs. After six-seven
centuries! Craggy, carcassy craftsmanship (two-nation theory) belched with
rabid fulminations:
“Give
us a part of this body. Head, chest, abdomen, hands, whatever it might be. For
our survival a limb has to be cut off.”
Aah,
what a bull-shit farce! As if that particular blood had concentrated in one
particular limb. All of a sudden! And those oracular protagonists tried their
heinous best to assemble that genre of blood in a particular section of the
body. Then in wild religious revelry they mercilessly did the amputation.
Without anesthesia, mind you! So ignorant of the untenability of this operation;
ignorant of the fact that they won’t be able to draw out all of it from those
veiny rivulets of composite culture–-the ganga-zamuna tahazeeb–-which
flood across body Hindustan like a mysterious magic potion! Those poor bastards
failed miserably. The amputated limb is rottening contagiously. While the
crippled body limbers strugglingly; trying its best to heal the wound. But now
its own body has got a strange and stealthy immunity: the self-proclaimed
antigens fighting to finish up the germs.
New
doctors are trying day and night to keep the amputated limb alive in an intensive
care unit; providing oxygen to the two-nation theory, the theory of two religions
and two nation-states.
These
deadly spiders secrete rigid religious webs and in this zig-zaggy, sticky,
webby world numerous preys are caught: preys in numerous training camps to make
them psychopath killers and butchers in the name of religion, in order to turn
the whole blood of body Hindustan repulsive
and unmatching. (Forcing the antigens to bark, “There are fifteen crore
terrorists in India Hindustan .
The
evil progenies of communal ghosts are tattooing a whole generation, designing
their psyches with multiple small punctures at their souls by the needles of religion;
those fratricidal and parricidal needles mixing the deadly pigment into the warmth
of young blood. Oh, those huge vats where the blissfully unaware thousands are
dumped to be coloured as jehadis!
Their
opponents, meanwhile, jot down articles of counterpoising faith. They dandle
the historical dirt; leave the pre-Harrapan history as some untouchable and inconsequential
part littered with savage aborigines. With the help of their dare-to-bare
revelations we come across a full-fledged urban civilization, the Indus valley civilization. Its urbane characters smile
vivifically from the excavations in the land of seven rivers. Aye, you
motivational historians just keep your breath to cool your porridge! What about
the origin of Harrapans? So many conflicting viewpoints: middle east, central Asia to name a couple of them, along with the radiant
reflection that they were native Indians. Then around 2500 B.C. there started
the desiderative surge of migratory Aryan attacks. To a bit of surety to our
theorizing brains, they seem to have come from central Asia .
The land there was no more theirs. Pastures were vanishing fastly. Riding on
their fastly galloping horses they defined one’s land as ‘reaching for where
the butter is’. These freshly conquered pastures saw the advancement of
Indo-Aryan civilization along the fertile land of north-India. Ever flowing,
nomadic and ecclesiastical water of the mighty Ganga
has been the spectator to this silent and subtle revolution of transfusion and
transmixing.
Where
do the fortune’s wax and wanes take us from there? A savoury tug-of-war between
the Aryans and those who’d settled before them (errily we call them natives,
because by the law of human anthropology only some dark interior of Africa can proclaim to be the land of natives; for the
ancient-most traces of modern man’s ancestor have been discovered there). Magadha Indus or Hind as the Persians preferred to call
it.
Afterwards,
ritualism reached a crescendo. Prudishness spawned the colloquial chanter’s
face. Of course, there were some whose souls felt pierced by the aculeated arithmetic
of Brahmanism. Sparkling sparklets of their doubts gave birth to Buddhism and
Jainism. Later Hinduism took its institutionalised and formal shape in the
fourth century during the Gupta period.
To
further crash down the exclusive claims of any settler, we have Jewish settlements
along our western coast dating back to the initial centuries of the first millennium.
Zoroastrians came; Arabs came in the eighth century; Persians followed and
later the Turks. Islam came with them. Ganga-Yamuna doab glowed with the
glorious halo of secular ‘tahazeeb’.
Then
another feather was added to the multicultural plumage of this land: Christianity
arrived with the Europeans.
Such
has been the history of body Hindustan . Now,
let us put a question: To whom this land belongs? From the above historical
snippet we can’t answer.
* * * *
There
was a small haveli outside the village. It was ghostly and abandoned. Silently
erasing strokes of time had done its distinct deed over the layout, workmanship
and architecture. Its owner belonged to the trading community. About two
decades ago he’d settled in the city, keeping it (or leaving it abandoned) as
the mossy monument of their past. So there it stood, somewhat frightening due to
its isolation.
The
arched gateway still stood in a tragic quandary. Courtyard walls had started to
fall. Half of the wooden gate was missing. The vault above seemed such
frightfully flaccid that any averagely fearful human being would’ve felt a
spine-jangler fear while crossing it. Two podiums on both sides of the huge
wooden doorframe were still there and evinced audaciously prolific
architectural tendency of the medieval times. Carved on the fronts of these
podiums, elephants, lady dancers and peacocks were fighting against the demise
and destruction in their stock-still ornate designery. Watching them it struck,
‘What are these aesthetically enlivening things doing at such a place?’
The
hands which had chiseled these motifs were long dead; or in fact no longer
exist in the modern masonry. Such masonry is now totally obsolete.
Architectural aesthetic intricacy has been supplanted by the unsophisticated
modern style whose dull monotony has no place for curves, cornices, motifs and
vaults (as if the modern mason’s hands have been ordered to go straight without
looking sideways for inspiration).
Red-stone
slabs on both podiums were still smooth as if the time had failed in its forgery
to roughen them up. The frontyard looked a virtual mini-jungle. Full of bushes
and tall grass it seemed hundreds of years old. A slightly developed footpath
across the rough and rumble ran into the main structure like an ingression into
the abstruse world inside the dilapidating structure. Across the courtyard a
portico, running along the whole breadth of haveli, opened its mouth in
some gloomy abeyance. Its roof was intact, but the floor was in tatters. Dark
mossy patches of sand were evincing their rimosity here and there. Down the
walls one could see water marks produced by the rains. It meant the roof too
had started to give away. If one could emerge from that dark main structure
consisting of seven-eight dungeonically dark rooms, he would’ve come across the
sawdust of time strewn over a primordially isolated backyard. It seemed as if
the time’s destructive force was iniquitously eating into the main structure
from both sides. Still, the robust girth of bricks worked in lime mortar was
enblock stuck up against the time’s swiping past. Blocks of carved stones were
lying in the courtyards. Gone was that statuesque gesture which a sculpted
stone puts forth for some human heart’s hilarity. Now, lying dead they stonily
seemed to say:
“Ostensibly
swirling chisel of time disembarks human endeavours with a millimetric accuracy!”
Like
their myriad other manifestations of breaking social conventions with a destructive,
negative swash, the criminally tainted zany group enjoyed the recondite world
inside this abandoned building. They played hide and seek in the dark corners
of haveli. Climbed into those hiding places along the upper walls where
only the bats could see them. In a room, which had fortuitously some light,
they had set up a sort of melodramatic stage for the irate iridescence of their
souls. It could also be rated as a sort of temporary office for their sole
occupation of satiating their ever astraying senses. There were two charpoys,
two-three tin boxes, some discarded packets of eatables, a kerosene lamp, many
empty liquor bottles, spent cigarette buts and some not so old rags. In
complete conjugal fidelity these things waited for the masters’ arrival.
There
was no electrical wire fitting in the big, abandoned house. But a bulb dangled
from the ceiling in this temporary living room corseted inside the dead structure.
A big spool of electricity wire was lying in involution in a corner. The same
was the sole (and illegal) medium between the bulb and electricity wires at a
distance of couple of hundred metres.
Whenever
their souls pined for a full-hearted dance, they used this reclusory. Here they
did whatever their minds’ vitiosity prompted them to do. On many, many occasions
the fraudsters sneaked here, after the sunset, with some prostitute. And a long
night of sexual drudgery was in the wings. In the rambunctiously flavorous game
of sexuality they competed with each other for the maximum number of
ejaculations. The little lamp meanwhile flickered to light up their tale of
cantankerous sex and sadism.
On
a few occasions they’d arrived there with a television, battery, video player and
a few pornographic cassettes. The poor prostitute on such occasions had to bear
their anger for not letting out those lusty moans and unbending of her tired
pulpy body in those bone-breaking postures which they ordered her to do in
imitation of the expert foreigners of the trade.
Sometimes
when they fell into the trance of playing cards-–in such a stony silence and
sobriety that one might’ve wondered if the missiles had spent their fussing,
fuming fuel-–the inharmonic investiveness of their stony moods would’ve
surprised even time: whether they cared even a fig about any of its units?
On
many other unaccountable occasions, they gave full leeway to their stolidity
and the damp air inside boomed with braying non-veg jokes, which are so many in
the local dialect that they form almost half of the local literature (if we can
consider such a thing to exist). And after committing that farcical rambling
over their craggy selves sleep would silently arrive as their ultimate saviour.
The
place was thus acting as a safety valve to the unruly malevolency ebulliating
inside their dangerously inflated selves and psyches. However, when the devil
in them woke up beyond the outletting capacity of this valve, they speeded up
the decay and destruction of this place.
The
human brain has five parts: emotional brain, intellectual brain, moving brain,
instinctive brain and the unifier. But in their case, these clear cut boundaries
had been anfractuously transgressed by the moving and instinctive ones, leaving
them as human-monkeys capable of doing anything without the least concern about
the consequences.
* * * *
It
was not that the summer was all about sweat and sandstorms, dry mouths gasping
for moisture, decreasing waterbodies and dusted earth. If beauty lies in the
eyes of beholder then there was enough of it around. Lovely song of cuckoo
amidst the sandstorm spells exemplified the above mentioned tribute to beauty.
This savoury song of the nights during the summer season soothed anyone tormented
by heat and unable to sleep. Numerous mating calls of the sparrows in this
flowerless season could fill one with wonder that this charmingly compulsive
and procreative instinct is no hostage to spring only. The peacocks were
cocking day and nights, like they’d mistaken the sand and dust in the sky as
the monsoon clouds.
All
summer beauties apart, one could even experience the adage ‘water is life’
vivifically in real life as well (and this too, not when one feels thirsty). It
happened when accidental water drops fell upon the faces of those sleeping in
the open. There was no irritation even if soundest of a sleep got disturbed.
These small crystals were no less valuable than the gold itself-–so rare and
thus so precious. These pre-monsoon showers were the droplets of hope that
monsoon won’t fail and life willn’t dry out of the village.
Also,
who can forget those gems of perspiration hemmed upon feminine brows and cheeks!
Seeing the beauties in sweaty trouble menfolk felt a sweetly cool sensation
sauntering down their spines. In the baking heat orange-red flowers of gulmohar
trees in the school viviparously blossomed with new hopes despite all those
tragic happenings with the august institution. Vibrating heat (more aggravated
by the hissing loo) ripened
the sweetness inside juicy water-melons.
Grass
on the little plateau was completely beaten dry. It looked like an old lady.
Still, the ennobling endeavour of flowership surprised one. Like phoenix the
spring seemed reborn from smouldering ashes. These were the numerous grass
flowers. White, cup-shaped and so tiny that one might’ve wondered at the
infinite limits of beauty’s laconism. These along with a few yellowish ones
filled an odd butterfly with wonder over these unexpected springy gifts. Much
fabled ‘rejuvenation’ might’ve taken its original inspiration only from such a
spectacle––little lifeful flowers smiling amidst weirdly dry and dead grey
grass (and that too under the full fury of a scorching sun!).
Sandstorms
were the commonest thing to occur. Bravely holding up against this furious
battering by the thirsty wind (which’d so many orphan grains flying with it)
the huts’ survival and strength became more prominent. It was more so in the case
of the watchman’s hut, which like his own physical state had a survival at the
fringe of it. Thus, there was hardly any windy spell which didn’t left the polythene
covering angrily ruffled, torn out, partially blown, or the elephant grass and
paddy stalks forming the inner thatched vaultage being loosened and dangerously
shaken, or the side hay being torn apart as if the hut wanted to have a window.
Hence most of the time of its occupier was spent in repairing this ramshackle
shelter over his poorly laid out provisions.
His
neighbour, however, was almost free of worries in this matter. Bhagte’d
strengthened the hut’s foundations. Lower portion was securely plastered with
black soil. Strong nylon ropes criss-crossing all around it provided a walled
security to the thatched substratum. Also, being a virtual master in the
thatchcraft, he’d woven the elephant grass, bamboo, dry jowar and paddy
stalks with a weaver bird’s skill. Still, a hut is only but a hut. It can never
give the security of a bricked house. So, there were some traces of worry for
the Sadhu too, because strongest gusts of wind left his hut shaken too.
The giant banyan, meanwhile, swayed its hanging roots so obsessively that it
seemed in danger of falling over them.
Occasionally,
dusty sandstorms brought clouds with them. With flabby hopes everybody looked
heavenwards. Alas, these sandy clouds limbered forward just making preludial
noise! If some drops fell on the parched land, their virgin fragrance told the
tale of a maiden kissed for the first time.
Pond’s
water was constantly on the decrease. Two smallest gobbets of an island
sprouted forth their existence as the miniature representatives of their big
brethren holding the land’s solid banner amidst vastest of watery sprawls. Both
these tiny humps seemed so near yet so far. Right from their first sight,
nobody saw them barren. The mossy soil emerged out of water already wearing a
greenish dress, over which a few days’ sun saw new little leaves of grass. Here
on these lush green tufts of grass birds walked with a pompous liberty.
In
the evenings wheat-harvest residuals were being burnt. The western horizon
seemed lit by many little setting suns.
Summer,
the season of water-melons! As if all the sweet essence of vapourised water had
been concentrated in the luscious juice of these fruits!
Sadly
sonorous song of a spring-lorn cuckoo found its perfect sad-synchronism in
Rajasthani young lasses walking like summered flowers after their cowherds. Passing
along the roads on their migratory journey to escape the drought’s treacherous
trap in their home state, these fully ripened females in lehanga and
buxom bodice (embroidered and mirror-worked) seemed so erotic. Watching these pastoral poems walking along
the road one might’ve wondered the full feminine figures from the Rajasthani School
* * * *
There
was a girl in the village; very beautiful, college going and belonging to a
respected family. Just to remain inside the arena of her vision, the boys
hovered around this flower like honey-bees. A lot many of them looked so funny
in their parochial and snidely peculiar clothes. In fact it was not the choice
of wares which determined their dressing sense; rather it was the chance factor
of incidentally coming across an opportunity to get some new addition to their
little corset of soundly and iniquitously beaten clothes.
With
a fully-fabian love spirit they tried their best to get the attention of this
provocatively pleated flower, which appeared so loftily beyond the reach of any
dandy in the village. Then one day the news broke like a bombshell. Like D.H.
Lawrence’s high class, villa owning lady in ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, this
young lass too gave her heart to a down to earth real man––a young migrant
Bihari labourer. Despite his wretched poverty and illiteracy, the fellow had
the guts to represent himself as sleight, smart and sophisticated.
If
someone uttered some interpolation into his book of fashion, he said sourishly,
“Can only the college going fellows do this?”
Once
the secret was busted, most of the villagers bayed for his blood. Atrophied
souls of the ruffian group however made them jumpstart in support of this
lover. They planned meticulously (and with sincere subservience) in order to depiece
the village’s common ijjat. They groomed him to look dandier with their
own money. Thanks to their pandering lacquerwork the chap now possessed a few
new T-shirts, pants, furiously fragrant perfume, soaps and a new pair of shoes.
Surrounded by this newly lit constellation of dreamy lights, he was now seen
bravely chasing the college going girls.
The
vagabonds had a personal motivation behind this latest misdemeanour. By showing
friendship with her beau they wanted to have access to her girl friends in the
college. Consequently, there started a saga of secret love plannings at
abandoned nook-corners, thiefly exchange of letters, sign language, foppish
code words and phrases, and much more.
It
was a plan executed with a fine-toothed comb. One day, she persuaded some of
her city counterparts to come out on a date with her boy friends from the
village. After all there are so many secret tricks in a woman’s placket. She
played her cards very well and convinced the suspicious city damsels to meet
these interesting idyllic people in an isolated street.
To
the meteoritic plunge of their hearts, they dressed themselves in fanciest of
vibrant coloured clothes. Till now their relationship with the opposite sex was
limited to the narrowly filthy walls of harlotry. So, walking with those
educated urban girls they looked a bit reined in and pretended to look suavely
sophisticated as if they had been educated up to at least graduation.
One
of them had never been so near to a ripened juicy fruit (and that too untasted)
in his life. One of the girls took a liking for the puppy fat around his face
and constantly kept on staring into his innocuous looking eyes. She then
started to talk to him. Beats of his heart went on aggravating with each and
every ogle by those kohl-lined eyes. The poor bastard got so excited that all
his senses rattled only one message in his brittle brain: “This girl wants to
have sex with you!”
This
was all of feminine nature he was conversant with. An unknown woman who looks
at you and speaks to you means no other business except dying for sex. He
looked backwards in the empty street, and then stared ahead. With the agility
of a silent love panther he straightway jumped at the prey. In littlest of a second
he was upon her. Clutching her with such force that she could hardly breathe,
what to talk of crying for help. To add to her death-frozen plight nobody from
the group had seen them, because they were walking a few steps behind the rest
of them. He rubbed his frothily bad-fumed mouth over her freshly washed pretty
face. There was a rapist’s tug-of-war with her salwar’s draw-string.
At
last her cry echoed through the street. Thank God, it came before her honour
was lost! All of them ran to help the poor prey. They thrashed him, kicked him,
spat on him, pulled his hair, and pinched him. But all in vain. Like a
centipede he was sticking to her. Then the strongest of them put his arm around
his neck and tried to kill him by strangulation. The predator gasped for life.
The prey slipped out of his lusty vaultage. By the miracle of God, her honour
was still apiece. Only the salwar cord was broken. She ran, at full
speed, holding her salwar with her hand and vanished in the first house
whose gate she found open on this sweltering hot noon , when practically no one dared to come out in the
sun.
They tried their best to convince her to come out of
the house. But she won’t. Later, the girl from the village was thrown out of
the college for her supposedly conspiratory role in an attempted rape. The
criminal, with baby fat over his face, went to the jail. And when he came out on
bail after three months, those innocent soft tissues on his face had hardened
in synchronism with the baking devilry inside him.
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