Myths, Legends, Folk-tales: History

25

                         Myths, Legends, Folk-tales: History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But he did once!”

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

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

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

“But he died under that, dadaji.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Wantonly Contrived Vehicle: Jugar

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, caught in a stampede at the holy venue.

                                              *  *  *  *

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. Godly episodic and auspicious occasions of Paush Purnima and Mauni Amavasya provide nectar-like sanctity to the holy waters of the 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 and Haridwar.

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 at his cigarette.

“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).