Summer Tales

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.

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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. Those big cannons which now lie like a sleeping volcano; their nozzles waiting like a crater to hurl out history. Three such big cannons, the noisy witnesses to a period when the ethno-religious panorama of India got one more welcome addition, still survive today. They’re Mulukh Maider in Bijapur, Maindak in Daulatabad and Kulalbandgi at the fort of Murud Janjira.

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!”) So that they might march upon cartographic aggression: a mission to amputate maximum possible limbs from the body 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 arose as the collective specimen of this erotic architecture sculpted by the constructively frictional forces acting between these two plates. Oh, thou utmost annalist, what a churning it was taking place! Spiritual temporalities of the sages were angelically awed by the compliantly wonderful dawns of the subcontinent. Shrutis, smritis, vedas, upanishads, puranas and upvedas (all of them being the soul’s weapons) dazzlingly pierced the dusty stagnations of the physical prudishness. There were no Hindus; they were just the people of 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.

    

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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.

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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 of painting had been cruelly put before the world to watch them in real life.

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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.

Sarpanch Elections

22

                              Sarpanch Elections

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then what do you people propose to do?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lone critic addressed them anecdotally:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sadhu in the Avatar of Paranormal Physicist

23

            The Sadhu in the Avatar of Paranormal Physicist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Speak out, I order!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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