26
A Wantonly Contrived
Vehicle: Jugar
Near the pond’s
edge, in marshy shallow waters beneath big grass, a long-necked egret was
tossing and convoluting its slender neck. Flapping its big white wings (like in
pain) it rose to a few feet in the air and dropped back as if something was
strangulating it. Its yellow beak was pantingly half open as if it was damn
tired from top to tail after a long-long flight, and was feeling head over
heals now.
The fraudulent
glitterati were idling away their drab time in the asinine air beneath the
banyan. One of them saw the troubled bird. He cried at an ecstatic acme:
“Hey, look at that
one!” he exulted, “The lanky seems to have caught a real big one and dancing in
a hurrah.”
For a moment the
egret seemed to overpower the problem and rose to quite a height. But then it came
dashing down as if arrowed.
“It isn’t
merrymaking you fool!” another shouted one noisier phrase into their cat and
dog lives. “I think it’s eaten a big fish which’s now angrily swimming inside
its belly.”
Failing to witness
another flying effort by the bird, the humpty-dumpty patricians ran to reap the
fallen fortune. Their dangerously sloppy sentimentality and simpering
chauvinism resulted in a madly mirthy and muddy race along the water edge. The
victor caught the victim by its neck.
With a gay, gawk
and gladdened heart, he shrieked acoustically, “Baah... the fish’s here! Lo...
lo... I can feel it moving under my fist!”
His polemical
rhetoric was a preternatural gesticulation upcurled by a rare opportunity to
come across a bird-piscine delicacy.
“Huumnn... that’s
why they say greed is bad,” the stumper tapered down his boohooing voice to a sort
of suntanned stoicism, which very surprisingly seemed to have an understanding
of the morale of some story taught to him by his teacher Ram Singh almost a
decade ago.
Feeble resistance
by the bird showed that still there was life in it which felt pain. Ravishly
raw tormentor in one of them saw a chance for palpable indulgence.
“Leggy, now you’ll
have to pay for it. We’ll eat’u along with that fish stuck inside your feminine
neck!” he mused like a sage beyond the pleasure of life and pain of death.
With the quickness
of yamdoot he broke the choked neck. Others felt robbed of a chance to
wheedle their crime-lorn senses. But still showing a tremendous rein to their
temperament they ran to the mound. Here the rising smoke indicated something
was already cooking.
The watchman saw
them running with the dead egret. He at once understood their next step. Taking
a deep peep into his chambers of knowledge he braced-up himself to answer their
hair-raising questions flashed out by the myopic consciousness of their utmost
blind conscience.
“Get that knife!”
the chief hoodlum ordered, “It’ll be a nice experience to skin an egret for the
first time.”
“Are’u sure you
can manage it?” one of them dared to bare his opposition.
“You foolish
asshole, I’m capable of skinning a whole elephant, you’re talking about this
little feathery thing!” head vagabond trampled the opposition.
“Get its giblets
if you can find it. Yuumm... it’s so tasty!” another one yelped like a greedy
dog. “I’ve heard about good tastes and bad ones. But all of them’ve a good
thing in common-–a tasty liver.”
Droop in the
watchman’s posture increased its angle of inclination in their presence. Arched
like the back of a tortoise he excused himself politely, “I must beg you
pardon, sirs...” he fumbled with words, “but I’ve heard that it’s not good to
eat the meat of this one.”
They stared at him
as if they’ll eat him in place of the egret.
“What do’u mean by
that?” they fussed in a trickily demanding tone. “I mean only, sirs, that if
you eat its meat you may have asthma.”
“Oh, my devil!
What information!”
Though the
information was enough to deter them from eating it; they, but, won’t show it.
Their falsifying fabrication of the whole episode was such that the adviser
felt himself a fucked fool despite his advice being taken positively.
“Gosh... I’d like
to have asthma,” one volunteer came forward, his face glossed like a tanned and
dyed leather of goatskin due to an excessive use of some cheap cosmetic cream. “They
say heavy coughing makes your lungs quite strong. So just for the fear of this
minor breathing problem I won’t forsake the health of my lungs,” he said
charily. “And look at this crane-necked. Did it get anything from its good breathing
through its slender neck? Got only a choked death! Only if it’d powerful lungs
it’d have puffed out the fish with a force like this!”
To flaunt an
advertisement of his inflation, he inhaled a huge quantity of air inside his
lungs which bloated his chest to the limits of his narrow shirt. He then exhaled
the storm out of the impenetrable secret chambers, which ruffled many a
featherings over the dead bird.
One of his
compeers exclaimed, “I, for sure, will eat whole of it and my asthma will make
me so strong-lunged that I’ll blow you like a bird, old man!”
The watchman kept
mum to these antagonistic sprouts. He knew the futility of any further
reasoning.
As it was to
happen, it happened. They heeded to his advice, but only after they’d clinkered
so much that the beginning point was nowhere visible and the adviser stood
creditless.
Saucily they bypassed
the issue. “You must tell us old man, which ones are there to eat and which
ones to be avoided!” like a king the head vagabond ordered.
The watchman pondered
over what to say and what not. The question’d struck his frail body like a
bone-chilling gust of wind winding through a kloof.
“What about that
one?” the trouble-maker pointed in the direction of a short legged grayish-black
bird.
“That’s a digga,”
the watchman told the bird’s Bengali name. “It doesn’t cause any harm. But meat
is tasteless.”
“What about that saras?”
“It loves to eat
snail shells. That makes its meat not so good.”
“And that one?”
“It’s... due... is
also not good.”
“Ducks?”
“Ummn... many of
them... aren’t good.”
“Tortoise?”
“Only in case
there’s asthma.”
“And now you’ll
say the fish too isn’t good---tricky old man!”
“Look old man, we’ll
not spare anything! And if you play any such trick in future we’ll chew up you
too!”
One of them stood
up and walked towards the watchman with a bloated chest and a warrior’s gait.
Evidently he was going to hurt the old man.
Oooh... thank you
God, for still maintaining the prettyish prevailing of some sane sense!
One of them pulled
him back saying, “Why to waste your fist for such a little wart. He’ll die. He
isn’t worth dying by our hands.”
Hearing this
favourable judgment, the old man started to leave the stormy scene.
“Hey old man, can
we eat snakes?” came the voice from behind.
“You mean... which
ones? The watersnakes or of land?” the old man asked obediently.
“Now, you’ll say
that all’re good for health so that we get poisoned deaths.”
* * * *
In tandem with
their mental maladies and afflictions one day they were farcing away time at
the blacksmith’s shop. The small man with extraordinarily large hands was busy
in the music of ironwork.
“Hey miyanji,
you people’re really sexy!”
The blacksmith
stopped for a moment. This sudden comment was totally out of context to the
general idle talk. So it came like a mischievously stinging arrow from nowhere.
“Do’u think so,”
hardihood’s rough notes seemed a bit pampered with the compliment.
“Yes!” bizarrely
unique nod tried to satiate his sexual senses.
“What made you
think that?” the blacksmith asked, just as he bended the red hot iron into
question-mark shape to make a scythe.
“Because you keep
so many wives and produce so many children,” the hoodlum put forward his
ding-dong logic.
“Aaah... what a
religion!” another gasped his own brand of immorality.
“Children’re the
gifts of Allah,” it was refreshingly on a different pitch–-an emotion.
“Haaa... what
witty people you’re! Go on indulging in sex with many wives. What’s more
important, do it in Allah’s name. Allaah...” he stood up and gave
a lewd jerk to his buttocks like a dog engaged in fulfilling a bitch’s heat at
a public place, “Allaah...” another one came, more swift, “Allaah...”
with each thrust he went on increasing the intensity of sexual lewdness.
A look at the
Muslim’s face told that the cage of his faith had been kicked irreligiously; he
thus cudgeled-up his brain to hit upon a mundane explanation to the issue being
painfully kicked by their legs. ‘Why high fertility rate among us?’ his mind
tried to counter the hostile accuracy of the above fact. He found one:
“It isn’t that it’s
grace of God only. There’s one other reason also. Do’u people know something
about our penis?” he grinned with a mischievous wink.
“Not really well.
But I’ve heard the foreskin is cut off.”
“Exactly, that’s
it! The reason for our entire sexual prowess. Oh my boy, it does wonders for
our potency. It keeps it so clean and ever ready to rise at the slightest
provocation. Yours however feel lazy and sleepish imprisoned in that prison
cell.”
They laughed at
the joke.
“And miyanji,
just imagine if the mullah’s knife cuts the knot also along with skin by
mistake!”
“Even then a
Muslim’s would be enough for a woman. About Hindu’s I’ve doubts!” the
blacksmith gave a purely exhilarating laugh.
“If so miyanji,
then please cut his,” they pushed forward the one who was slightly pug-nosed. “He’s
the weakest link in our sex train; does it the least times with a prostitute.”
His liquid brown
eyes appealingly stared at the blacksmith, as if he wanted to get it done at
the anvil itself. Then suddenly a despotic streak surfaced over his face.
“No!” like further
he raised his hand in air. “I don’t want to become like you. You people don’t
even spare your own relatives. Follow up this dirty maxim, ‘Pick up flowers of
your own garden before someone else does the same!’ So, no such thing as getting
my penis on a Muslim’s anvil.”
The humour of
course had reached its offensive limits. But the blacksmith was witty. He knew
how to cut iron by iron, keeping the veneer of diplomacy and tact reasonably
well.
“Yes, my dear! You
people let yours stolen away by all sorts of idiots and bastards.”
His explosive
laughter mingled with a forceful strike on the iron.
Just then a
drunkard tottered by their side. They knew another entertaining episode had
chanced across them, and at one go they started after him.
Mired in a strange
maladjustment, the drunkard stopped, popped out a ‘halfie’ of local made wine,
gulped down whole of it and fell down like a heap. With the quickness of light
one of them arrived with a handful of semifluid jaggery and pasted it on the
drunkard’s face. Another one then arrived with two little puppies and tied them
to the neck bearing a plateful face of sweet delicacy. Skinny street puppies
were really hungry. At once they preyed upon the dish. The drunkard was almost
unconscious and the puppies were giving him a great facewash. Onlookers
laughed. The group meanwhile created a mini-battle scene with their
acrobatically boisterous jumpings, ecstatically hysterical yells and intestine
shaking laughter.
* * * *
Meandering through
the corridors of controversy, carrying a whirring, phantasmal air of
camaraderie and confrontation, they arrived at the blacksmith’s shop. The
vandal-chief was swinging a cloth bag in the treacherous trajectory of his
hand. A palm of victory mordaciously hung over the group’s head.
Throwing it into
the ironworker’s lap, he exclaimed in a rising and booming voice, “Hello miyanji,
just have a look at the greatest sum of money in your life at a time!”
Notes were padded
up in rubber bands. Their rumpled shape added a fascinating unorthodox
dimension to the means and method used by their latest owners. The blacksmith
was hammering on the chaff-cutting blades to sharpen them.
“Now, just’ve a
smell and glance at them, and in return put a wooden handle in my axe,”
regaling struts of tongue were in perfect synchronism with his bizarrely ambitious
heart-beats.
“A good amount of
money, indeed,” curiously-spellbound the poor ironworker remarked. He expressed
the laconism of his theory (earn money through decent deeds) in his simple way,
“I hope somebody wasn’t sent to jehannum to earn these.”
“No way miyanmaster,
murder for such a pittance... no... no! Seems you underestimate us,” he said
mopishly.
Anyhow, the crime-tinted
reality was either a snatching outside a bank in the city, or pickpocketing in
the bus, or a little robbery, or a theft, or....
The prime vandal
chose a whitish-red acacian wood handle, well rounded and dried up.
“Put this one in
the axe,” the order had a hard-edged and hawkish frills around its corners.
The blacksmith
knew it was an excellent choice. But he knew he had already got the price of it
by just looking at the notes. Anyway, the price was twenty rupees.
He tried to
protect the best one from falling into the clutch of free fists, “No-no, too
much dried up, I think. It’ll break even while putting in. I’ll choose the
right one for you.”
As the economics
of scale and judgment required, he chose the worst one.
Smiling in a way
to get him bite the bait, he said, “It’s the son of Satan. Won’t break. No
matter how many heads and wood you may break.”
It was a morbidly grayish
one with imbecile knots septicidally strewn across its length.
“Hummnn... you
clever buttock, trying to dupe us…you clever ghost!” his instinctively
suspicious face turned red. “Do’u think we’re blind? As if we can’t see the
knots.”
“Knots!” the
blacksmith exclaimed. “Why worry about them? They’re good, I assure you. Don’t
all of us have them? And they say it’s the greatest one for pleasure,” the
blacksmith winked at him with half a smile and sparkling eyes.
“Oh, you fucky
idiot! Only if I knew how you snare the customer!” ruthless candour of their
laughter was gone through the ceiling.
Cleverly taking
advantage of the whole situation, the blacksmith put the handle into the tool
or weapon. He thus got rid of the handle which won’t have found favour in the
eyes of even a single experienced farmer.
“And what about this
rusting blade?” he pointed to the rusted metal part of the tool. “Can’t you get
rid of it and put that... that,” he tried to spot something inside the shop.
Once again an
anxious blacksmith saved himself from a loss. This time too it was his lewd
witty humour which found so much appreciation from their tawdry and salacious
senses.
“Gee, why worry
about rust, sir? After all we too get it somewhere... somewhere... maybe... well... knoo...” he stared at them
meaningfully and then cackled with laughter.
This time their
laughter was purely exhilarating. His facetious twist made them forgetful of
the issue of an instant before.
“By the way, miyanji,
rust in our case might be inevitability. Because, whatever effort we might put
into removing it, the bloody thing still finds a foothold. But, what about
yours? You people get the foreskin cut and become lande in the eyes of
Mr. Thackeray. I think, there is no chance of getting rusty in that blunty of
yours”.
“Oh, yes!” the Mussalman
exclaimed under the impact of rigidity and plasticity of the compliment. “Long
live dear, well thought! This’s the only reason why we cut it down even while the
little one cries; to save it from rusting in the future. So that it remains
clean. More power, you know! That’s why a Muslim has so many children and can
marry so many times.”
“Do’u people put
your clean ones into the mouth of your ladies?”
“Allah,
save me! Why should we do that? We take the name of God by the same tongue. And
God’s created a special place for it to be put in.”
“Then why worry so
much about its cleanliness, as if it’s the face of your wife? The place meant
for it never complains about its rusticity!” scoring this victory they laughed with
explosive notes and took to their hurrying heels from the scene.
From here they ran
for some mound musings. There the religioner was sitting in a distraughtly
insightful mood. In low spirits and low tone he was mulling over the still
sluggish take off of his latest religious venture. But the gloomy clouds inumbrating
over his soul were suddenly pushed forward as he heard the familiar bark of
wantonly growing up puppy dog. It was an ambidextrously shrill bark. Ballu was
growing perfunctorily funny––a sort of botchery caught in the snags of
offbalanced age and physicality. Having feasted on so many fishy leftovers,
with each passing day it was growing arrogant, daring and cunning. And his ever-rewarding
masters, the foisting funsters spotted and pandered each and every canine misdemeanour
of his.
“Hey maharaj,
again sitting with your beard hanging sad!” in all coherence and continuity,
the pet’s ugly voice was followed by the master’s. “Fly with joy! Man, you now
belong to a rich tribe!” he threw the money into the stoic’s lap.
A harangue buzzed
in the religioner’s body. It was like an electric shock. After all, the papery
symbol of all our material cravings rubbed so close to his religious rock.
Phew, the heaviness and excitement of this worldly materialism! The sage sprang
up like a frog. He didn’t know what to say and how to react to it.
“Ss... seems a
g... great amount of money!” he stammered.
“Yes!” the group’s
chief gleamed; but with a reflection added, “No maharaj, it’s a small
amount---only thirty-six thousand. It was a trivial matter, so little money.”
Ever caught in the
religious pillory, his currencyless life had always bypassed the worldly market
(though some change always jingled in the pockets of his cloak, which he
earlier considered to be just comfortable and congenial murmurs of asceticism).
Do’u know why mendicants don’t starve even without money in their pockets?
Because they don’t require money to eat, drink, sleep, or build homes. They
relinquish most of the things which bring money in existence.
His piercing orbs,
however, were now searching worldly utility of his religiosity in the pallid pall-mall
of this rural settlement. Money shone as an exquisite cuisine on this
metaphorical buffet-table of worldly desires.
Aha, how much he
wanted to posses these nondescript and inconsequentially printed papery scions
of our material cravings! How much his ears wanted to hear the soothing
rendition of a gift-song:
“It’s a gift to
you maharaj from your disciples. We put it at your revered feet and
donate it for the construction of a temple.”
Yes, a
worldly-lorn ascetic wants a temple of his own to secure a professional
pedestal in the comfortable lactescence of a human settlement.
But, alas it wasn’t
to be!
The hoodlum
proposed acrylically, “You tell us what should be done with it?” it sounded
grossly contradictory because a serious proposal of this nature required utmost
politeness.
Exclusive allure
of the money left the ritualist fumbling for words, “What... what can I tell?
It’s your money,” like a stalking predator he ogled at the money. “And... we...
people, the ascetics, don’t need...” his soul’s silent rhetoric once again
writhed in the pillory chains of religiondom.
“So will we do maharaj!”
mercilessly they picked up the money from the cradle almost dying for it.
Even the smallish
glimmer of hope was done away with.
“It’s a place of
such trivial things---this village. Here we don’t see any mode of spending our
money. So we’re going to the city,” their ding-dong propaganda gibbously
murdered even the last hope which still held out its lamp of life.
The mendicant
waited and waited for the whole day. Hoping they’ll come back, with a changed
mind perhaps, or return with some gift, or something which might add to the
expensiveness of his godhood. But they didn’t. With a sullen face and in low spirits
he imagined about the festive fiesta going on somewhere.
“What an
irreligious waste of money!” barren moonscape of his soul bore the burnt of
marrow thrashings.
Next day, he was
sitting beneath the soothing shade of the banyan. Even the official date of the
arrival of monsoon was at least a fortnight away. Heat was merciless. Above the
tree’s canopy-head an open hearted sun was blazing furiously. The heat,
constantly surging into the upbeat echelons, had baked the greenery into trashy
recession. Under the impact of heat’s towering inferno, even the remembrance of
cool, greenish, watery, dewy days seemed to fade from the retina of memory. The
pond, now almost a third of its monsoonal cusp size, was left a greenish, mossy
puddle, where the iridescent flicker of life was showed by some fish-flaps. Net
casting now was so easy. And while the agile water dwellers were dragged out
they looked relieved of the suffocating confines of the hot and filthy water!
In the stupefying
lull of afternoon heat, fishing operation was perspiringly going on. A four-wheeler
was parked by the road. Its load-carrier-back had been turned into a big aquarium
by attaching thick waterproof sheets along the inner sides. In the murky
confines of water the fish were swimming. Many of them were still gasping topsy-turvily
because they’d forgotten breathing during the journey from their natural container
to the present artificial one.
Suddenly, the
already panicked fish, groping around for the murky prospects of life, felt a
jerk. Water in the big, makeshift container got scuppered with a scintillating,
fearful sensation. There was a mini-storm inside this tiny unit of a waterbody.
It was a vehicle to vehicle impact for sure. More than the intentional as well
as the accidental prowess of the metallic intruder, what irritated most was the
loud lubberliness and lubrically humorous human escapade, which eclipsed even
the metal noise.
The offending
vehicle got a scaremongering reverse and the bullying, low-pitched, haughty
drone of the mischievous machine unceremoniously moved ahead. Even a blind man,
who’d only heard the monotonous noise of vehicles in his leniently lone and
lissome world, would’ve aspired for eyes to see this overhasty and shrill rhetoric
of man-machine motley mix. Audaciously and clinically the vehicle withstood the
rough and rumble of irregular western earth-embankment of the pond. Stopping
below the mound in the dried moat, they loudly called for their friend. The
latter came promiscuously rambling out of the tree’s shade. Like a child his
curiosity knew no bounds. His heartbeats buoyantly gushed. But, oh that rhythm
breaker––the crutch! Amidst the confusing conundrum of his strides he fell down
slope. Fountains of laughter sprang out of the mouths of brazen cheats. With a
humiliated face the religioner looked around. He was pusillanimously shaking as
they helped him stand up. For the first time in his life the Sadhu had
so much difficulty in adding the wood to his physical.
“Don’t worry maharaj! From now onwards you’ll not have to
depend too much on that idiot wood of yours. Just let your buttocks be put here,”
he pointed to a large wooden shaft meant to be the seat of this vehicle.
The vehicle was a
strange sort of thing. Most probably the religioner’d never come across such a
thing. It was a contrived vehicle called wanton or jugar in local
parlance. Disintegrity of the design of this off-roader would’ve mocked at any
automaker’s technology. It was the product of desi art and craft of
ruralisation of technology: picking up different parts from different sources; designed
by those witty mechanic-cum-carpenter-cum-ironsmiths, who make use of any of
the spare machine parts coming their way like tyres from one, gear box from
another, engine from still another, same with the headlights and so on. What
came out was a contrived, four-wheeled jumblement, which’d no number plate, no
registration certification, no insurance against an uncertain future and
required no license.
The chassis was
designed in the form of a typical four wheeler. Bonnet wasn’t required above a
screaming engine. Minimal of chassis had a witty handiwork of iron and wood
which required no body shell or paintwork. The driving seat was a wooden shaft
along the whole breadth of the vehicle. If anyone saw the front seat occupants
from above, he’d have mistaken them as parts of the engine itself. Its
down-to-earth design eased its movement over sand, pot-holed roads and stumpy
crofts in the fields. Handling the dodgy wheel at a dazzling speed and
compromising boggling turns would’ve provided delight to any adventurous
driver. Traction control depended much on the driver’s mental gearbox than the
obsolete parts fighting asymmetrically against each other.
“Look at the tyres!”
one of them epilogized the gang’s prized possession. “In perfect A-one
condition. Do’u knows maharaj these’re the front tyres of an army truck.”
Another one added
to the information, “See the caliber of its engineer! He’s combined an army
truck’s gearbox with a four cylinder Eicher tractor engine.”
“These strong
lights can make a day doubt whether it’s night still,” still another added
epithetically.
It’d no provision
of switch-start. The boss at the steering wheel bade the order like a king. One
of them started to revolve the starting handle. The engine gave a coalescing
and clumping (and still mysteriously straying in four directions!) sound. From
among the prolixity of nuts and bolts he somehow switched on the headlights.
Prolately the mischievous machine opened its eyes. As there was no battery, its
nocturnal eye-sight was determined by a dynamo: more the pressure on the
accelerator, more the lustrous-rays beaming forth in bewildered anger. He
pressed the accelerator to its limit and the elephant trumpeted to its strength
in blatant disregard to any type of harmonic sound.
“In speed it can
beat a car and in strength even the trucks prove to be do-nothing doodles
before it!” his sharply etched words distinctly cut above the crabbedly rough
and rounded up mass of engine noise.
The religioner’s
boiling earthly aspirations took a chaperoning turn for this most subjective
form of personal transport. He’d seen many of his ilk (the religioners) zooming
in personal vehicles aside his pathetically pathless feet. He felt the
scintillating excitement and sensation of the ownership of a vehicle.
“How much did it
cost you?” he wanted to know about the purchase price, because an owner’s pride
is directly proportional to the cost.
“All that we had,”
the group-controller yelped like a famished predator. “That fool wasn’t
listening to anything less than forty-five thousand. We parroted thirty. But
when the whole thing became too much shoppy for us, we did what must have been
done at the earliest. We gave him thirty-five and said, ‘Now you’ve only two
options. Either take the money or lose it with a beating’, and he proved to be
a clever one.”
Totally inurbane
vehicle too seemed happily singing blandishment songs in praise of its new
owners.
He threw the bait
which the religioner’s heart was waiting so eagerly, “Won’t you like to have a
joy-ride in our new farrata, maharaj?”
An affirmation
took some time to emerge from the glitz blitz of his heart, so without waiting
for an approval from their friar friend they hoisted him up, and in the next
instant he found himself sitting on the open seat behind the engine, whose
black shimmering mirage seemed to pout its mouth to gobble him up. Oh, what a
dangerous place to sit on! No side support, only an iron railing at the back.
Feet had to be adjusted by hoeing ones toes inside some oil-smeared niche in
and around the engine. Slightest of a negligence and your foot-wear or even the
leg could be lost.
On the front shaft
the driver, the Sadhu and another fellow (who seemed second-in-command
from his mannerisms) were sitting. Rest of them stood on the open carrier-back,
leaning against the railings. The religioner raised his head to see the faces
hovering above his head.
“It’ll be better
to sit at the back side,” he proposed his safety.
“What a miss,
maharaj! It’s your friends’ vehicle, so you too are its owner. And the
owner sits on the front seat,” the deputy fully opened his heart in courtesy.
The ritualist knew
the inveracity of his request. He found himself lost in the mazy gallery of
spooky mansions. Still, there was one thing he did hope to get in lieu of all
the forthcoming troubles: an impression in the onlookers minds that he was the
owner and they his disciples. All it required was just a formulaic symbol, like
any representative of his religiosity fluttering above this vehicle as the
first sign of its identity. In his creative silence, mercurial and sublime
pictures of a car or a jeep bearing a saffron flag carrying the bearded fellows
zoomed at an alarming speed. Aah, how belated such calculations were!
He held up his
saffron sash to those standing at the backside. “Would’u please tie it to the
railing?”
“Why? We aren’t
going to ask for votes in your name!” they chorused a ruination of his request.
“Then, I’m going
to jump off here!” he feigned a proportionate adamancy and laid his hand at the
crutch resting on the seat behind his back.
The driver
however, with the help of his naughty arc-lights, envisioned some first-rate
fun somewhere down the famished road. With resolve and gumption he patted the
religioner’s thigh and said large-heartedly:
“Why worry maharaj? This’s your own
luxury vehicle. Do as you want.”
With their
offensive, intumescent hearts they tied the cloth. In the next moment, the
vehicle turned to the look of a religioner’s personal conveyance.
What a gangling and
fast jump-start it was! Almost a scuppering rhonchus. An utmost inexperienced
driver in the party-head messed up the start in the quicksand of
disproportionate, colossally unwise amount of clutch and speed. In the vicious
tailspin of this mishandling, the vehicle jumped ahead like a leopard-frog. Sadhu’s
head banged against the back railing. His toes lost their hideout as the wanton
moved ahead on its punitive projecture.
Right from this
neighing start, like an arrogant horse, the vehicle seemed to enjoy this bumpy,
risky, wayward promenade. It was the worst-case scenario of a gallopy,
bone-rattling ride. A car was coming from behind. Group from the back shouted
not to give side to it. The driving boss looked back. His face pouted with an
ominous smile. It showed his ever-persistent addiction to drag an innocuous
incident into freakish disaster. With a specious gesture he pressed the
accelerator, while his hands––holding his own brand of immorality––pulled the
steering wheel to the right.
It became
horrifying for the Sadhu. Those treacherous bumps, jerks and yells
frightened him like a child. Each and everything coming from ahead appeared to
ram into them. He was just forcing down all the gravitational force of his mass
into his buttocks, in order to make them almost glued to the wood beneath. Like
a predator’s clutch his fingers were clawed into the shoulders on both his
sides. His feet now and then found the support of one part of the engine or the
other. Like a dead-afraid goat he bleated to slow down the speed. But they were
relishing the competition with the car. The chirp, twitter and murmur of his
fearful sanity got very easily eaten up by the growl, grunt and bellow of their
fearless insanity.
Black, oily and
smoky engine was howling like a yamdoot. He was sure this journey’ll
come to an end at the doors of hell. His soul was shattered and crushed to
pieces by the procrustean pressure of their vagabondage. After many-many years
he remembered or realised another such nerve-wrecking experience.
He had been once,
as a member of the ashram group visiting the mahakumbh at Allahabad
* * * *
Mahakumbh, the celebrated religious bath
festival, when millions of consecration-lorn Hindus take purifying, sententious
dips in the holy waters of the sangam at Allahabad Ganges . In
the lubricious lap of the mother river, uncountable believers jump with amorous
intentions. This luciferous event, occurring once in a dozen years, attracts sadhus,
sants and commoners from all over India
How broad Hinduism
is! Mystical auras of the legendary figures have their relevance to the
farthest limits of space and time. To those rigid, rational souls who’re ever
caught in the grumpy facade of intellectual rumination, it at last provides a
simplistic presentment of the ultimate truth; leaving them sinking into the
comfortable and peaceful chairs of faith, where only the ‘realisation’ rules
dormitively. Mahakumbh too bankably and connotatively tries to open the
ultimate knot for the benefit of commoners.
When the
luciferous Gods and lucifugous demons churned the ocean to get the pot of
nectar, it symbolised the lubric path of divinity on which good and evil forces
try to take a foothold for the mysterious purpose of creation. During the scuffle
for this pot of ultimate essence and immortality divine drops fell over four places:
Allahabad Ujjain Nasik
Perennial
fragrance of the ultimate cause is ever revolving in beautiful harmony, rhythm
and time-period around one constant: the ultimate, the unchangeable, the immortal.
At the lower hierarchies, celestial bodies revolve and spin under the force of
this most potent force as per the laws of predetermined reoccurrence. We at the
lowest rungs of creation meander inside a predetermined sphere or circle of our
fixed fate. And here in these mazy manoeuvres of ours rose-tinted and
picturesque emotions, fame and flak, muddy lowlands and famed highlands fuel
the sustenance of life.
Well, to get in
groove with the cosmic harmony we too symbolically celebrate the same planetary
conditions which prevailed at that mythical, destiny-defining moment. Mahakumbh
is one such event.
It’s celebrated to
symbolise the churning of good and evil inside the human beings. According to
Hindu scriptures life is a protean septation between good and evil. Churning
between these two incendiarily divisive forces fuels it. A successful life is
the one in which goodness emerges victor like a glittering pearl.
Aha, the nectar of
immortality and goodness! As blissful as Hinduism! But alas, Hinduism is a too
broad and mighty river in which most of its followers don’t know how to swim!
So many evils tinge the urge to attain sinlessness with the holy dip. Sadhus
from different akharas, for example, engage in obsessively pompous
fights to take the first wallow in the holy water.
It was one such
fight for the nectar among the gung-ho go-carters, the religioner of our tale had
been caught in. The akhara where they were staying laid its claim to the
first bath. But as soon as they entered the waters their rivals attacked with
tridents. Always on hair-trigger alert, a stampede occurred. He lost his
balance and fell down, while the battle was fought over him. One burly, naked naga
sadhu snatched his wood and used it to break as many heads as he could. He
was as much horrified as his sentience allowed him to be. When the
high-fighting naga saw that the fat prey lying below was also from the
opposition he vented out his full fury at him. Heavens, why didn’t you break?
The very same crutch which’d so servilely bore his weight was now severely
denting the shape of his skin and anatomy. Finally the rival dumped the tired
wood over its fainting owner. At last, when he found himself alive with
uncountable bumps and bruises, he couldn’t believe his survivability.
Now, this joy ride
with the flannelled fools very punctiliously brought alive all that chaotic conundrum
at the Mahakumbh. The engine, wantonly trying to rake up the time-barred
past, was making noise in an equal proportion. Those painful pangs suffered
decades ago made him give up all hopes of life. But then life instinct in us is
the eternal optimist. He mustered up the courage, commitment and cussedness of
his saintship. Through prayer he tried to inveigle life from death-traps.
“Om
Namah Shivay, Om Namah Shivay, Om Namah Shivay....
He then felt more
than usual bumps; cauterisingly ferocious in fact. By some last message sent
out by his senses through the emergency exit doors he got to know that end was
very near. Chanting of mantra fell silent. Then he was sucked into a
large jolt which sent him half toppling over the engine. Something grassy fell
over him. The vehicle stopped.
At one sharp turn
the driver had failed to keep it on track. It went straight into the fallow
fields and rammed into the robustly safe protection of a paddy hay-rick. All
shivering, the dispossessed and voiceless Sadhu got down. In wonderment
he ideated over his survival. The vagabonds meanwhile amused themselves by
rolling in the soft saviour.
He pleaded to go
back on foot. But they teased he was twenty kilometres away from his reclusory.
He said he’ll go by another vehicle and tried to run towards the road. But they
prevailed over him. Once again he found himself at his former place.
After a long-long
day of surprising survivals they returned to the mound. The religioner didn’t
say anything pedagogic for it’d have been like casting pearls before the
swines. He just silently suffocated all his damnatory complaints and threw
himself on his pallet.
Making a jarringly
discordant noise they too flocked into the hut.
“Enough of this
purposeless, selfish merrymaking,” the mentor’s redoubtable tone sounded above
their talkfest. “We’re now in a position to do some social good,” he took a
deep-deep cush
“What do’u mean?”
they asked sequaciously,
“See, we’ve the jugar,”
he gave a dandiacal twist to his face, “Don’t you people think it can help us
reach here yearlong without wetting our legs?”
“How?” they
sounded loudly idiotic.
Life returned to the
religioner’s ears.
“Ah, you fools!
You don’t understand! We can fill up this ditch between embankment and mound
with earth and save our friend from being marooned during the rainy season.”
The religioner
sprang back to life. He sat up and seemed happy to a fine degree.
“Why?” they
countered with an eccentrically frivolous frigidity.
The religioner’s
florid thoughts were banished to scorching sands.
“That’s the
difference between you people and me; you can’t understand the exact profit
from this venture. Once we do this for the village we’ll become heroes and
girls’ll start giving lines to us.”
They hailed his intelligence.
At last the religioner saw some riant ray of hope.
Next day, heavily loaded
with earth the new metallic friend of theirs reached the natural conduit
between the rainwater catchment area to the western side and the pond. The
social-good-doers were completely unaware of the consequence of their social
work. None of them possessed the brains to estimate that stopping of this natural
inlet into the natural reservoir of water would choke the pond eco-system
within a year. Village headman, pond lessee and other respectable, responsible
elders ran to bring this fact to their notice.
“Please, at least
bury two cement pipes in the form of culverts at the base of earthfill to allow
the rainwater into the pond! Otherwise the buffaloes will die of thirst!” the
headman pleaded.
“No, we never
leave hollow, weak spaces beneath our solid works. Who knows it might break and someone gets
injured! No sarpanchji, we can’t take risks!”
It took the whole
village’s effort to waver their rabidly focused glow of foolish endeavour. Two
big cement pipes were buried as the sane foundation of their insane earth dump
in order to save it from becoming the pond’s death warrant.
With licentious
libidinousness they soldiered-up against the task and completed it within a
week. During this time they were constantly deriving inspiration from an imagination
that all households in the village were having a talk about them at least once
in a day (which included their beautiful girls also!).
Till now the guru’s
notion about his sole full-time disciple (Bhagte––an emblem of moral accuracy
and righteousness) was that he (the guru) was trying to cross a river in
a leaky boat. Approaching monsoon season was giving him nightmares. Proleptically
he was having dreams in which he found himself marooned in waters where only
Bhagte reached up to him with few survival crumbs. But in one stroke the
hoodlums edited out the black dots of his diversionary, watery fate (just a
fortnight away, mustering up its strength in monsoon clouds somewhere over the
blue waters of the Indian Ocean , to wash away
his work of almost one year). Thanks to the Gods he worshipped, now there wasn’t
to be any rainy-determinant between his religiosity perennially available at
the mound and the devotees. A pot-holed, metalled road buzzing with metal
noises linked to his sageship through a yearlong traversable earthen link. The
last fosse between his asceticism and worldly paths had been filled with earth.
All the hardwork
of one week had sapped the juice out of their jinks and jocundity. So, very
oddly they appeared a bit jaded and damped down. Hence, in order to regain the
resilience of their rhonchus instincts they chalked out ambitiously elaborate
and feisty tactics for the next whole week. As a prolusion to this multiple-act
drama they arrived at the mound with two big ducks and a watercrow. Humming a
swansong of celebration they straightway sneaked into their non-veg kitchen on the
mound.
The night like a
sweaty sultry seductress was just about to hide the day in its long, dark
locks. Watchman’s hut being small and all closed, except the little entrance,
the night’d already sprawled its magical invisible necklace inside it. In quite
solicitude the radiantly focused lantern was engaged in its choral work of doling
out dreamful diamonds of visibility. A pastil was burning on a highly holy vim
and vigour. Even in this heat the tranquility inside seemed fully blossomed, as
if the warm air inside’d had spoonfuls of honey and zum-zum (holiest of
water to the Muslims). The watchman was sitting with two Biharis who’d stayed
with the host.
Scapegrace vandals
cast their disturbing looks into the genially bustling little heaven. It was a
wanton eyewashing manoeuvre by a counter-culture.
“We’ve wasted a
whole day after these! So, I hope these’ll end up very tastily in our bellies!
Take great care to cook, otherwise....”
Their yajna
of crystalline peace and purity was sacrilegiously abused as the dead birds
fell like an explosive among them. One of the Biharis, a shaky and skittish
wooden-faced baldie, sprang in air as if blown away. The other one, with a
sun-flecked, languorous face having warty skin, bankably controlled his panic
as well as surprise and kept on sitting stonily.
The scappling
order left them hurry-scurrying in obedience. The Biharis went outside to skin
the birds’ featherings, while the watchman walked down to his firewood stock to
get fuel for the choolah.
After distitling
the hut’s earlier occupiers they dumped their dissolute bodies on and around
the watchman’s sleeping place. Placing the lantern in the middle they started
playing cards like great hunters leisure themselves at the end of a hard day of
hunting after some wild animal in the jungle. Playing cards was the only activity
which focused them at a single place or issue for the maximum period of time.
With a
taste-teasing culinary skill the Bengali and his Bihari visitors inched ahead
to a luscious dish. Their fingers cutting the meat giblets, green chilli,
garlic and potato seemed engaged in the food filigree of a finer cultural decorum.
With exquisite draft and doctrine the systematic proceedings moved ungreedily
towards an endearingly fruitful result.
In complete
contrast to their clamorous hysteria, there was today a fastidiously refined
air and aura around them. There was as much silence as would allow audibility
even to a feebly burning hiss of the wood in the choolah. But, this
regimented orderliness made them appear silently engaged in paranormal
intrigues. The cuisine makers, meanwhile, sneaked a peek at the hoodlums’ surprising
serenity; their repository of basic cooking instincts coming to face the
dilemma of ever-widening gulf between reality and illusions.
With his
punctilious hands the watchman put mustard oil in his blackened and dented pan
to boil; and when it did, the Biharis put the vegetable mix in it. An episodic
cry of the last water molecules in the vegetables mourned an epode for the
greenish poetry written on the leaves. It drew the group’s attention. They took
a break from the game. Their looks cast overtly inhuman imprints on the pan. A
sententiously greedy sigh followed and––miracle of miracles––like utmost honest
facsimilists they once again picked up the cards exactly as they’d left them.
It seemed the demons inside them had been pacified.
Analogous to the purity
of angelolatry, the Muslim kept on frying the vegetables. When the meat
pieces were put into it, sweetly possessing aroma sprayed its particles
around––as if the birds which once flew so freely, now the selfless, sweat
essence of their souls was drizzling a mouth-watering majestic mellowness
around. Once again the card players raised their eyebrows.
In fragrant
harmony the meat went on cooking. By this time the moon too had raised its disc
above the dark mass of keekars along the pond’s eastern edge. Slowly,
slowly its one end began to be cut to invisibility. It was a lunar eclipse. The
moon’s gazelle stare began to be cut by some seriously sarcastic geometricism:
a kind of weather feasting also! Below, a warm breeze blew over the pond water
like a gloriously crooning songstress. The warm weather in all its stimulating
suppleness seemed to prepare a delicacy for the eclipsing moon.
The meat pieces
kept on turning from the raw flesh of something, which’d lived and flown during
the day, to the eatables for some peckish tongues which were still somehow
holding on to their patience. Watchman’s expert hands added salt to the
contents. It was the most risky job. In order to avoid all the spoilsport its
amount had to be innocently proportional to perfection. After this some water
was put to make it frothy. The meat then went on boiling, they kept playing
cards, and the shadow over the moon went on progressing.
When the frothy
liquid in the meat began to give bubbling sound, it was a clear sign the job had
been done. Ripely musky smell reached their nostrils and they threw away the
cards. The hoodlum head tasted a teaspoon to declare the result of their labour.
He sprang up under the impact of a cherishing tongue. They grabbed whatever
they could from the hut and in an instant each of them was having some kitchen
article to claim his share. Like vultures they preyed upon the delicacy. It was
jarringly discordant to the cultured eating etiquette required to eat the
artistic Bengali cuisine. Wine flew fluminously down their throats. Their
diseased energies returned. Lewd jokes came swervingly. Pranks pranced with
stubborn streaks.
Once in a rare
while, the lunar eclipse occurred in its totality. The moment was stretched
legendarily long. Night shades appeared in drawling disarray. The round faced
perfusive pergola now cast its celestial percolation only around her edges.
Much
to the respite of the hapless three with eclipsed fate, the ruffians got over-drunk.
More thankfully, sleep came to the rescue of the poor hut. Before they could
make a song and dance of their misdemeanour gone immune to all social medications,
they were seen snoring in a heap. After this the moon’s smile went on increasing
as if it wasn’t afraid to see something pitiful (which might’ve been in its
mind when it started to hide its smile).
