18
The Local Goons’ Prurience and Profligacy
Finds a Sympathetic Space in the
much Obliged Sadhu’s
Religiosity
High
on a chilly, criminal whim those tramp characters (all of them so young and
helpless under their vagabondage’s eternal damnation) had killed the gypsy in
cold blood and cold winter. They then went into an escaping hibernation, only
to blossom up once again in a forgiving and forgetting spring.
These
young village goondas were self-spoilt brats. Inside their split open
fickleness worms of felony were growing and coarsening fastly. There was no family
responsibility, restriction or fear to deworm their licentiously fledgling
selves. Finding themselves almost weaseled out of social norms at such a risky
stage of life, their lewdness went boomerang. As far as any type of socially
obedient trait is concerned, they had none of theirs; and others’ they didn’t
believe to exist. So, it was all fair play for the young devil in them.
A
veil is a veil, either face-to-toe or head-to-ankle. Similarly, a crime was
just a tiny, bearable unit to them; beyond differentials and typifications. They
didn’t even care to hide its iron fist in a velvet glove. After all, they were
no politicians to make it appear as a socially and politically acceptable
kid-glove treatment.
Further,
a man’s behind can be used either for an encouraging back-slap or ghastly
back-stab. Unfailingly, the God will do the former. A human being might end up
doing any of them, depending on the circumstances. But, the evil and his
progenies will invariably do the latter. As per their take on this, they fell
in the last mentioned category.
Rightly
interpreting the crime’s secret exegesis, they kept local-made pistols, knives
and swords. Voguely versant with the fact that some blacksmiths can make pistols,
they had in the past faked friendliness with the Muslim blacksmith. They sat
around him, caressing his crude iron products, feigning artistic appreciation
for the rough and gruff of those workers’ tools in the hope of winning his
confidence by mellowing down his rigescent iron nerves, so that he might get
ready to take a risk and make illegal weapons for them. But the sturdy little fellow had been adamant in his outright
denial to the same. Their confidence was thus blighted a bit. So, when after many
sessions of cajoling the blacksmith still stood his ground (this ordinary human
had an extraordinary forthright instinct) their combustible character got a mix
bag of irritating emotions-–anger, despair and mocking humour.
“Hey
miyanji, you weigh just 250 grams,” one of them was heard saying, angry
sarcasm dripping from the tone.
The
Muslim kept himself busy in putting coal in his furnace. That being the month
of Ramzan, during which the Qu’ran was revealed to the Prophet, he kept
his lips sewn up for the sake of keeping his tongue clean during this holy month.
The
belittling satire’s semblance spread its tentacles through the group. So, another
one’s soul’s declivity showed its wrong angle, “I think, we can cook whole of
you in a cooker. All at a time!”
Strange
peels of laughter emerged out of this out an out farce. The target tried hard
not to pay any heed to this. To the taunt’s response he blew air very hard into
the little furnace, as if the rising smoke would act as a smudge and drive away
these malevolent insects from his shop.
“Then
I’ll eat the heart of roasted chicken!” The thick-headed fellow said it with
such a cherishing tone as if he wanted to eat the ironsmith’s meat in reality.
Another
jeered out his vandalic tongue, “I’d like to have his leg.”
“As
for me, I prefer his hands.”
“Me?
I take liver.”
And
they went on with the Hannibal
The
ironsmith’s eremite silence broke the barrier of holy constraint. Rampaging
frustration broke the religious barrier to his tongue.
“You’ve
forgotten a thing!” his tongue whetted its counter-taunt. “Whose mother is
going to eat this?” he held up his penis beneath his pyjama and
protruded it like a little missile.
The
Muslim let out a piercingly loud laughing shriek whose intrepid adventure
settled score in a single stroke.
Conflicting
dilemmas of their mind, body and spirit would’ve easily turned them into
rattling and ranting pugilists. But here, in complete contrast to their
expectable response they were seen dumbfounded. Only one thing can explain
this. That in humour even the most beastly persons have to accept defeat with a
sheepish grin.
There
was another pinpricking fact in the episode---about the mother. But, these
firecracking joyhogs weren’t conversant with the respectable aura around the
word “mother”. So, on hearing the ironsmith’s counter-taunt they might’ve found
their shirts quite clean. It was poor mother who’d silently bore the prank’s
burn.
After
that initial period of shock, the foolish foppishness lying drollingly inside
their choppy souls burst crackly. They were now seen rolling in laughter as if
one of them had hit the winning note in the taunty game.
Reaping
the tiny saplings of crime, once they’d looted the Aeon House (a tiny
manufacturing unit-cum-residence of a businessman from some city, situated by the
road outside the village) and were jailed for a brief time for the same. Also,
all of them had tasted the jail’s pious life for possessing illegal local made
firearms. In fact their young chief (a de-facto or de-jure sort
of mentor is naturally bound to crop up in such a group) had raped a girl, who
later committed suicide. Further, two of them had once eloped with a minor girl
from the village.
Alcohol
driven vice and virtues of their astrayed youth had made them stubborn, stern,
manipulative, filthy prank-mongers and mischievous. All the above counted qualities
had spread a cloud of vagabondage over the village. And in fact the villagers
were afraid of them, because there was nobody to whom they were liable to feel
fear or answer for their wrong deeds. To earn a livelihood they sold illicit
liquor, opium and many sharp edged weapons; looted a few trucks and snatched a
few motorcycles at nights. The villagers bound by soft socialites found
themselves lily-livered before this group’s brassy and hardened antisocialism.
Their
friendship with the Sadhu (who now, after that bout of helplessness,
wanted to add some muscles to his holy body) blossomed in the sulphureous air
of early March. The ruffian jamboree’s sniggering cynicism was always in
discordance with the mitigatory air prevailing in the village. They thus had so
few places in the village to spent time in accordance with a gambling den’s
immoral immurement. So, every new place on the platter was accepted with full
heart. The religioner offered them mound (did he want to settle score with the
villagers for their eight-month-long criminal negligence of his religiosity?),
and they quickly hitched on to the place.
They
proved to be a perfect nuisance to the poor watchman; ate small fish like
barbarous sharks; laid snares for the ducks in the vegetation around the pond’s
edges. The watchman’s heart, ever muddled in morally piteous considerations,
cried dewy duets of mourning whenever some unlucky migratory pintail duck got
caught and the butchers took it by its flabbing feathers which were awaiting in
this spring to take her back to the Himalayan kingdom. Sometimes they forced
him to cook the prey for them, and at other times utilised his utensils and the
mud and brick fireplace to do it themselves (because the religious hut of their
new-found friend couldn’t be used for the same). In this way their friendship
went on blooming like the primroses of spring, while the watchman sulked like a
brownish frail fallen leaf of the autumn.
Contorting
contours of their vulgar control (or miscontrol) spread their vulture-like
dirty tentacles over the mound. Just a cursory look at their rowdyism was
enough to affect a pinch at any decent buttock to turn the eyes squint with a
purplish spasm on the face.
They
came out with heinous-most humour about the watchman. The marauders though met
some initial resistance from the dog, but after a few rattling kicks the poor
animal understood very well how to behave. These harum-scarums had turned so
reckless and rash that whenever they reached the mound, there was a sort of
mini riot. The block-heads fought mini-battles among themselves by bursting the
firetong near each other’s feet. And when they’d spent all his gun powder, he
could only smile guiltily, fearing any other facial expression might find him
thrown into the pond.
They
were so prattling about their tattles that in a very short period of time the Sadhu
came to know about the scandalous side of all the girls and women in the village.
It’s however another matter that these were the fabled facts made mountains out
of mole hills during those sottishly long idle hours.
From
their new elevated hideout they now cast lusty glances at the women who’d
brought buffaloes to the pond.
Most
of the people in the village, especially the illiterate old women (ever dwelling
on disappointments due to the mischievously invasive problems in their families)
had come to believe by now that the Sadhu’d occult powers to perform
minor miracles. And others who were having a good time, facing no impedance
from ill fate or misfortune were convinced that the fearsome exorcist was
capable of putting some obstacle in their smoothly running wheel of life, if
ever they happened to have a row with him. So, they always played it safe.
Conjuration survives on rumour mill, which was gradually catching up speed
since his arrival. To top it, his appearance made him seem capable of ugliest
of an incantation.
But
this group had no such black magic driven fear. Their idea of life was altogether
different. Immorally humouring mirth inside them wouldn’t take even a single
superstitious sigh even at the mention of most gory of witch-crafty practices
performed in the ghostly darkness of a graveyard, the mother of all black magic
techniques.
Yes,
the cremation site occupies the most awful place in the dark world of occult
powers. Here the gory practices and supernatural arts related to the dug out
corpses-–like having sex with them, enslaving their souls for foretelling the
future–-have been heard to be prevalent for a very long time. Floating jargon
of grisly rituals using human bones and skull still turns most chivalrous of
hearts dimly undecided about what to believe and what not.
Some
people say they’ve seen one of the most evil practices of black magic, muth kriya
(murder by remote control). Cremation sites thus acquire a kind of bewitching
and hypnotic aura during the nights and most of the people, even the most courageous
ones who normally get ready to empawn their life just like a mere wooden piece
on a chess board, don’t dare to imperil their souls for the fear of some coldly
callous after-death consequence.
Others
swear by the fact that graveyards are the fearful consanguine sites where chakrapujas
are performed. In this the dead persons are said to be gathered in a circle and
questions are asked to them about the future events. Even in the broad day
light the elements of black magic like wine, meat, bones, fish, corn and many
other repulsive things, mysteriously scattered along the ashes of the dead,
send down fearful chill down the spine of many of us.
This
violescent path of witchcraft, which passes over the dark terrain while
chanting mantras over the corpses, certainly embales truths, half-truths
and pure figs-of-imaginations into a cravenly-babbling puzzlement.
Well,
so far so much about the graveyards and much-much more hidden in the long hours
of dark nights. The people who assume that they’ve a lot to lose to such evil
forces are always fearful of the black magic. So, many of them take shelter
under the vigilantism and healing power of the white magic. But these
congenitally foolish young ruffians did never think they’d anything to loose.
The hoodlums in fact made a mockery of the cremation site many a times.
One
evening, during their long-stretched idle prattling, rote repetition of their
buffoonery got hooked to the topic of graveyards.
Like
on thousands of other such occasions, one of them started a miniscule tug-of-
war among themselves. “I bet he can’t go to the cremation ground after dark,”
he pointed to the weakest link in their self-proclaimed chivalrous chain.
The
young monster, considered to be a coward in the groups’ rudely mocking bravery,
had so much at stake to prove his fearless worthiness.
“Why not?” he masked a fake jingoistic
posturing over his face. “I’ve done it in the past as well.”
“Then
let us have a bet,” they chorused an ensnaring gospel.
Hesitant
scapegoat thought for a moment. All those clichéd and stereotyped tales about
the graveyards flashed in his mind. But, he’d stretched his false hardihood too
far. It was just impossible to backtrack now.
Robbing
him of even any last chance, one of them put up a proposal, “Well, you can take
my pants with you and bury it in the ashes of the old woman who was cremated
this noon . We’ll fetch it
back tomorrow.”
Springing
in his foppishness, he promptly unbuttoned his pants. Grinning like a foe in
his boxer shorts, he handed it over to the poor fellow.
Now,
he knew that he had to oblige, otherwise they would become more monstrous than
even the graveyard ghosts. He thus went, his soul buzzing with funeral oration.
With tentative steps he reached the destination. His heart ready to burst out
against the lungs’ ghettoisation, knocking and crying, “Please, please let me
go out of your ill-fated body, wherein the ghosts’ll dance in a few moments!”
To
make it a grisly tryst with the paranormal, they too sneaked in from the other
side and sat hidden there.
Under
bombastic pot-shots by writhing fear, the fellow was waging a relentlessly grim
struggle with his senses. Slowly and slowly he reached the small ashy elevation
where the old woman had been cremated during the day. He was damn sure the old
witch, who looked so repulsive and spooky while she was alive, was ready to
settle scores with him for his misbehaviour to her (there was hardly anyone in
the village who hadn’t bore the butt of their jokes and misdemeanour).
As
he began to bury the cloth with the help of a small stick of wood spared from
burning with the rest of the pyre, one of the hiding vagabonds let out a cry,
which sounded an exclusive preserve of the ghosts. The challenger fell down and
then ran bellowing in the dark. Perhaps, the ghosts won’t take the trouble of
wetting their clothes. Thinking thus, he jumped into a nearby puddle of filthy water.
Next
morning all of them went to the spot, picked up the half buried ware, washed it
in the greenish, mossy puddle of dirty water in the near vicinity and left the
scene without a single hitch.
On
another occasion, helplessly led by the crucifying hollering of the mischief,
they’d buried an egg in the ashes at night; took it out in the morning and ate
its omelette with such ease as if they were the saviours of the world from the sordid
tales of black magic and witchcraft.
All
of it proves that they considered the Sadhu as someone of their own ilk:
no more, no less. It was however another matter that the religioner wasn’t
aware of their crematorial escapades, and prided himself for having such
influential, fearless fellows in his coterie; though many, many steps below
than (not even on the first step of the disciplehood’s staircase) what one can
call as pupilage.
The
helpless watchman had no power to control such haywire, wanton energy toppling
over in high winds. His worthiness as a watchman could thus be questioned on
this account. He was also aware of the lessee’s helplessness in this matter.
Hence, both of them consoled each other by saying everything was just right.
He
didn’t know much about the group’s personal history. One day when he was inside
his hut, his neighbour and his friends were enjoying a conversation. They were sitting
on a big, broad divan (which they’d brought there for their own
convenience) under the banyan’s pleasing shade. He heard somewhat deep and
resigned tone of the head hoodlum. It was unusual. In fact, he’d never expected
him to be serious. With sober pauses and pronunciation, he was speaking sacerdotally:
“What
do you people know about prisons? Nothing!” he was high on opium. “I, who’s
spent three years in a jail, know how much effort it takes to spend a day
there, when one isn’t in mood. And how time flies when’u get a company
according to your mood. When I was sent there, for the first twenty days I was
almost dead dumb; couldn’t sense anything except a constant stare at the walls
and ceiling. Fearing that I’ll break down or go mad, the havaldar said, ‘He’ll
go mad if he isn’t given some opium and other intoxicants.’
“For
the next few days I was in very… very heavy drinking… eating tobacco… smoking
opium and those pills. And when I came out of the stupor, I found myself amidst
strange companions or in fact friends. The friends who made me forget all my
cowardly pain. One of them was especially generous to me. The reason? I don’t
know why! But I’m really thankful to
him, for he saved my honour. Do’u know, a man like me who’s fucked all those
girls, would’ve surely got the very same done to me, had it not been for that
friend. Every new entrant is given intoxication pills on the very first day by
those friendly inmates. And when he loses his consciousness, he’s sodomised
throughout night. Only the rarest of rare are able to save their honour. He
saved me. Didn’t allow me to eat that sugar which they put on my chapatti,
saying it was the welcome feast. Later he told me the whole story… said, ‘I
saved you because you look like my younger brother.’
“People
in that hell of a place still think about their families! Then we formed a kind
of gang there. Do’u know why? For survival! If you want to save yourself, don’t
want to wash others’ clothes and do that entire menial work, don’t want a kick
at your shin at each and every step, then you have to become part of a gang. We’d
our weapons of convenience. Each and every prisoner! From small nails to
knives. In fact one or two were able to sneak in revolvers. Being an
influential member of a big gang, I never washed my shorts myself after bath!
“We’d
our private cookings at nights. Who cares about these damned households and shops?
We ate porridge, pakoras, even mutton and chicken sometimes. One can get
anything there. It is a big underhand market. And to purchase something from it
one needs money, for which we sold opium at a very, very high price. Ours was
quite a rich gang. After that we’d sit down for smoking and drinking and fall
asleep only when all these dirty people outside in a free world wake up. My
friend Vijay Path knew the reality of these so called good people roaming in a
free world. He’d say, ‘They’re bastardly bad. Only we are the good ones. And it
being the age of kaliyuga we have been imprisoned here to protect us
from those free wolves.’ He was such a nice fellow. ‘Hey you, all of you, cheer
up! Only we’re the good citizens of this country. Otherwise why should the
government pay for our upkeep?’ he used to say.
“He
was in the army. Once he came home, found his mother murdered by his younger
brother. The poor woman had come to know about the illicit relationship between
her younger son and Vijaypath’s wife. And as it happens, these bad people
charged the soldier with murder. Don’t think that he was a fool like us. He
knew many bookish things. ‘Do you know why government is keeping us here?’ he’d
thunder, ‘Because it considers that we nice fellows are capable of a revolt. We
might change the whole set up. If it spends hundred rupees daily for our upkeep
here, it doesn’t do any favour to us. It’s all in return of those so many taxes
paid by us: house tax, Income tax, Water tax, Sale
“What
strange places these prisons are?” the watchman thought. “I don’t know what
they take from a man and what give him in return? Perhaps, they take away even
that small amount of goodness left inside and add to something which is already
bursting to its seams.”
The
numero uno ruffian had a kind of hermetically sealed prison-vision
before his eyes while he was narrating all this.
Each
and every word spoken by them was acquainting the religioner with newer and
newer depths of the dark, deep and erroneous well inside their souls.
A
few days back, seeing them poisonously coiled around his guru’s holy body,
a quiescent Bhagte had complained coyly. To this his chronically habitual
master answered sermonically:
“Oh
Bhagte, for God’s sake, hate the sin not the sinner! They’re not that bad; just
a bit astrayed. They can be reformed in a holy company like mine. Do’u think, I’ve
any other motive than bringing them on the right path? See, people can say
anything about this. They’re after all just common householders who can’t
discriminate between a sin and a sinner. We, the people of God, can’t fall in
such traps. For us all of you common people are human beings first. One day you’ll
realise that I was right. As for myself, for whose reputation you’re worried, I’
m a sandalwood tree gone all pure and holy due to life-long penance. Mild venom
in these little snakes can’t affect me.
One day they themselves will be purified.”
* * * *
There
was a thick trunk of sheesham tree lying in the pond’s water just a few
metres from the water edge to the village side below the mound. About a dozen
water-snakes were usually seen sticking around it in a casually cavalier
reptileness; their yellowish feckless hoods popping out of water and all that
antiquely ornate length lost below in the greenish water. One or two could be
seen in whole length, lying austerely empty on the wood. Some roguishly hissed
out their tongues from the big hole at the wood’s end.
The
watchman knew a majority of them were almost harmless; just their snaky
appearance made them seem proclaiming dangerous averments. But, a snake is a
snake. Its mere sight rings the lifeful instinct of danger; afraid of any
millisecond’s mistune when it might end up showing its nanosecond’s biting
chivalry. The village lads, ever effulgent with castrating rhetoric against
these poor reptiles, were always ready to kill them for the sake of antiquated
animosity between man and the snake, wherein the former ever afraid of dear
life places the latter (all of them and in all types of circumstances) under
one rubric––danger.
Till
now, the watchman had been successful in saving the reptiles from the children’s
impassioned antipathy; though they ran away abusing him, while one or two stood
for a few brave moments, cocking snook at him. To this the old man just smiled.
But this new gang of clamorous choir boys was beyond the control of even
wildest of his dreams. Killing the poor reptiles became their fun-game. Each
raid resulted in one or two victims. With revulsioning bellicosity they hung
the victims on the keekar twigs and branches around the mound as the
trophies of their huntings.
The
sight of someone killing a snake was a sacrilegious thing to the religioner.
The mythical reptile being a virtual connotation of lord Shiva, who kept a few
of them coiled around His body. While the profane fellows committed the crime,
his fearful soul silently baulked prayers lest one of them bite him as a
punishment for his friends’ crime. Whenever he tried to stop them, the
outlandish linchpins doubled their effort, saying they wanted to taste the dizziness
of a snake bite. So, if lord Shiva exists, He would definitely effectuate that
as a punishment to them, they’d declare.
As
for the watchman, all he could do was just leave the place and go across that
shrubbery along the pond, where he found snake sloughs shed among the bushes.
“These
idiots can’t dare to touch the one here,” he thought, looking at a big tuft of
bunchgrass by which was lying a fearsome cast-skin, half out and the other half
hidden in the bush.
Sparse
and minimalist reflection of his mind promptly estimated that it must be a big
black snake. “It can single-handedly teach all of them a lesson,” he thought.
Driven
by its canine vigilantism, the dog drollingly harped on its smelling prowess
along the slough. There was a loudly violescent hiss from the bush. The dog
fell back and then started barking to the capacity of its old lungs. The
reptile let out a barrage of rattling and ranting hisses.
“Devil
of a snake it is!” the old man jumped away to safety. “Seems angry after
casting away its old garment! Aah, only if it comes to the rescue of its weak
brethren there! Poor fellows, can’t hiss, don’t bite; only surrender meekly to
be killed.”
His
zig-zag gaze puzzlingly criss-crossed the bushy maze, then, caught sight of the
freshly smooth, shiny black body of the reptile. His heart, leading a solitary
life, for a moment sent a fearsome shudder. The dog further backtracked.
“This’s
the law of nature. Might is right!” he sighed and moved further backwards.
(To
the thick-heads, their rudely mocking manoeuvres were nothing but decent
symbols of power and might.)
“Bad
humans are even more dangerous than this snake.”
The
tramps were the genesis of this thought. Their hisses seemed more venomous:
hurling embitteringly farcical jokes at him; sometimes holding him in funniest
of ways (which was equally humiliating, given his age); eating fish at will;
killing water snakes at the mere fig of an idiotic fancy; kicking the dog
whenever he happened to bark at them (even by mischance).
Their
host at the mound found most of these harebrained acts quite pleasing. He,
perhaps, felt obliged for being spared of this free-willed treatment of theirs,
which spared none from snakes to human beings.
Sometimes, once again doing the rote repetition of
their rampaging bumpkinness, they climbed up the banyan and vanished in its
big, broad leaves. Their presence there could only be gauged by loudly
disharmonic songs, whose littlest of musicity harped on the same string of some
delusional insanity. While coming down from the singing recesses, someone would
volunteer to play Tarzan among the tree’s flying roots. Hanging hilariousity of
this dolt would have pinpricked at the inflated ego of a monkey.
No comments:
Post a Comment