Why Lonesome Efforts get Betrayed by the Spirit of the Times?

19    

                Why Lonesome Efforts get Betrayed by

                            the Spirit of the Times?

The district collector was much concerned. Some hen-pecking reports of hay-fever from the countryside were falling in his unobtrusively stiff ears. His tone and tenor suggested he was serious about it. Very strangely picking up this trouble, spotting it with an odd microscopic view of his responsibilities, he gave a clarion call for its eradication. A health program billed as ‘Hay-fever: Diagnosis and Prescription’ was launched–-much to the chagrin of his administrative subordinates basking in diametrically antagonistic attitude.

Primary health workers, child development officers, panchayats and anganvadis (crèche) were forced to come out of their cosy circles of obscurantism and spread the consciousness about the precautionary and remedial measures of the disease.

One such team, feeling cross and dejected, was on its way to the rural areas. Task at hand was almost unachievably Herculean: to find out the suspected cases and churn out some official looking report using the data inputs from the suspected and actual cases of the fever.

Sulking in the sallow complexion of their minds, the team traveling in a blue-white state government old and jangling jeep was trying to cheer up its sagging spirits by making the responsible collector the butt of their jokes. As the vehicle came to a hiatus halt by the school, the profligate ninnies (who were having a lusty sneak-peak at young girls of tenth standard through the school windows) came to know about the team’s painful plight.

Drawing a semi-abstract serious expression on his face supporting a scar tissue on the left cheek, one of them proffered an aid, “There’s the suspected case,” he pointed his stubby index finger towards the frail old man standing by his hut. His tone sounded proud for adding some naughty information to the official diary.

The doctor, a true scion of corrupting consumerism in his trade, narrowed his sad eyes behind his glasses. He had silver strands in his thick, rumpled hair. His thickly set jaw-bone became taut with the propensity of a pipe-wrench. The speck of a figure against the background of mud, pond and the harvesting pollen hazing around dimly made its appearance as his first inspection prey. And that too without much of an effort! His muttonchop whiskers flashed a ray of hope. It was a reawakening light. That meant no unnecessary wanderings through the streets of this village! Hurray!

“You mean that someone by the hut near the tree?” rekindling magic of an easy prey lifted his spirits. “Call him!” rendezvous aplomb of his duty sounded razor-sharp like a surgeon’s knife.

The compounder, a restless man with his eyes deep in their sockets, dashed down the embankment. Out of breath he shouted from below the mound.

“Hello, you sick man! Doctor is waiting for you there!”

The fishkeeper was lost in the harvesting rituals going full speed in the fields around. Poor fellow, unaware that same dusting nuisance had put him eligible for an attendance in the doctor’s court.

“Hey you, don’t you listen deaf old sick man!” chivalrous little cog in the state’s health plan yelled angrily.

The fisherman came out of his porcelain thoughts and suspiciously stared in his direction.

“Come on old wrinkled sack rottening with hay-fever! The doctor’s waiting for you there. Come quickly!” arraigned array of notes this time sounded giving an ultimatum.

“Me? But, I’m not sick,” puzzled old man managed a feeble protest.

“Oh, you spindle-shanked one! Like every criminal a patient too says this. Now, don’t waste time, otherwise we’ll drag you from here!”

“But… but…”  his crackling feeble voice seemed pleading.

The Sadhu came from behind like a jostling lame duck; his profound eyes full of disagreeable looks.

“Yes, yes get rid of this feverish skeleton, otherwise he’ll condemn a same fate to my robust body,” he said spinously, pushing his neighbour.

With conflicting dilemmas inside his head, the watchman followed the health worker.

The five-minute wait had raised tempers in the officials’ hotheads. The angry looking doctor put his stern stethoscope all over the frail body; popped the watchman’s eyes and stared in them accusatively; asked him to protrude his tongue as forcefully as he could; took hold of his magically beating pulse.

Undecided and mulling over his diagonically-stripped shirt, he said, “We’ll have to take your blood sample.”

The old man’s eyes parted wide with awesome uncertainty. He took it to mean bottles of blood. Butcherly the doctor pricked his finger and mercilessly squeezed out a mildly sanguine droplet. “Ayee…” from the old man’s strangely contorting face let heartless peels of laughter around him. The doctor grinned with his prize-drop on the slide.

“We’ll test it in the laboratory,” a much relieved doctor said; happy at last that he was able to do something enough for ordering a lunch in the name of his official duty. “And yes, in the meanwhile don’t run away and take these pills, one after each meal-–if you eat any.”

Once again there was an appreciating burst of laughter, accolading the doctor’s prankish mood.

Within a month of this episode the collector was got rid off-–transferred. His sylphid administrative manoeuvres had turned him an eye-sore to many of those who had been forced to do their duties. Reclamation of the encroached lands, cleanliness drives, official action on complaints and many other such minor issues were the sinful administrative acts which filled up his pot of posting in just three months. He indeed ruffled some feathers during these ninety odd days; made some headlines in the local press as well. So, as a reward he was felicitated out as quickly as possible.

When people get habituated to clichéd chaos, then a hand trying to bring about orderliness becomes reprehensible. Embittering tirade of his righteous spirit was thus prematurely suffocated. So, all he was able to do was just accomplish a little flower bed. And once the gardener was gone; cactus, thickets and bushes once again sprouted vandalically to reclaim their former teemless land.

                                          *  *  *  *

The one man mission was going on as usual. The teacher was busy even during these summer holidays. An additional room was under construction in the primary school. He was working as a labourer under the mason’s authority. Villagers laughed at it as a salary-man’s ineptitude. A teacher bringing water buckets from the pond; holding the ladder; laying out soil and mud; carting bricks! What a dedication for doing something constructive for the society! Numbskulls, but, condemned it as a whimsical contrition by an about-to-go-mad mind.

The vagabondage was ever ready to unsheathe its dirty sword against all his efforts trying to turn all falsehoods and half-truths into humanistic full-truths. The very same brats who shivered before him in nursery classes now scribbled blasphemous vulgarities on the school walls. Some were written when the plaster hadn’t even dried, so they were permanent.  As for the chalked down literature of indecent foibles he was able to wash them down. However, while doing so what pained him most was the familiar handwriting than the sexually explicit obscenity. So he was ever trying to plaster up the literary nuisance of his former pupils. But despite all his efforts, whole of his righteous pride would water down filthy sewers when he came to see (in the company of female teachers) his penis caricatured on a wall and nastiest of prose and verses raising a storm of shame at the littlest of a look.

Some people are so lion-hearted about their constructive attitude and aim that all the bickering and stumbling blocks of society prove lily-livered before them. Their victory mightn’t stand out glaringly, but only their heart knows how much good-will they’ve earned in the eyes of God by holding the rope from the side of an outnumbered goodness in the tug-of-war with badness during the present dark times.

Ram Singh was made of such unbaffling stuff. His school––which the government claimed to be its own––was his home. So when the whole village was stuck up with their small houses, his bibulous self was soaking up the woes of this big one. Whole length of the wall along the street had been cleansingly, restoratively plastered and whitewashed. A new gate, shining with the palpable synergy of a mighty gateway to reform and renovation, welcomed in its nice décor of rustproof underclothes and a shiny new grey painted suit above. Repaired roofs of two rooms now essayed a rejuvenated protective smile over the students’ soft heads learning the lessons of life under them. The latest room now smiled for completion as the windows and doors were being installed.

This was the meaning of holidays for his duty-bound heart, which in its persistence and patience knew how to take genuine steps for the plausible, practical perception of reality (without mulling over the hypothetical ways of obstacles which cropped at each step).

What were those lady teachers doing during this period? Enjoying holidays, of course. At least, there was no need to deploy prudery to shirk work now. Even during the vacations they held unforgettable grudges against him. During the school’s private days he won’t allow them to spend a single moment in leisure. But now as government teachers, security of wage at the month’s end and a cool pension after retirement had put off the rein: so all the good things naturally got exiled. No role and responsibility of the village elders and panchayat now; no low drone of that palpably ponderous relationship between teachers and students; no feisty notes of cordiality among the staff: because the job now wasn’t encrusted with the pleasing spectacle of some distant selfless cause and aim. What was left was just a harshly cold formality in the name of education.

Many teachers had served in this pair of schools for the past many, many years. Some of them were from the village itself. Some came from the neighbouring villages and a few came from the far off districts. In fact, the science teacher, Shri Suresh Chander was from Uttar Pradesh. Rami, now a peon––messman in the private hostel of the past––hailed from a remote hilly village in Garhwhal district of then Uttar Pradesh. His children were born, brought up and educated on the school’s sprawling campus. It was thus a big happy joint family of teachers, their children, students and the proud patriarch, Pradhanji.

But then the smoke arising of the patriarch’s pyre sang funeral oration for the joint family as well. It was thus to be broken. Modern society has no place for such big joint families whose members enjoy camaraderie in full veracity. Once the government got its secret wish-list fulfilled, usual reshuffling and casually cavalier changes came out hissing. Hardly a month passed without a farewell to a long-long companion who was now transferred to some other corner of the state. Loony lyrics from the dormant recesses of past bade a teary-eyed farewell to a brother, a colleague, a fellow staff member and a friend. At each farewell there used to be a pining surety that in future they won’t get a chance to assemble (all of them) under a single roof.

From the drowning vestiges of the great man’s legacy, students fled like mice from a sinking ship. In lackluster frenzy parents took their children to other little-little spicy school shops cropping up at every nook-corner of the state; true, sincere and serious education meanwhile plummeted down to suicidal depths.

Like the systematic squeeze of shoe laces criss-crossing through the eyelets, the government dismantled or knotted down the great man’s legacy. Hostel was done away with. Poor Rami (Ram Dutt his real name) lost his job. During these many years spent in the plains’ bonhomie, rugged, mountainous wilderness from his character had been eroded down. So he couldn’t even think of going back with his family to their native village. And what could poor science teacher do? He wasn’t shifted and there was no hostel. So Rami doubled up as a cook for him. And the gardener, in addition to his official responsibility, acted as the peon. In this way five or six of them were left in the school’s empty immurement, where the past’s golden memories waged a relentlessly grim struggle with a grimly hedonistic present.

The new teachers, strange and impersonal like machines, filled up the ranks. None of them knew a single line from the great man’s epopee, which was once written over this countryside horizon like a rising new sun; lived its life fully and then died in the dark night. The solitary soul of Ram Singh was, meanwhile, trying to see his star lost in the celestial zoo twinkling with stars, planets, galaxies, novae and super novae.

Now there was no annual function proudly saluting the school’s anniversary; no calling of students by referring to their fathers’ names; no caring inspection tours by the village elders; no play between the teachers and students after school time. What was spared by the modern education? It was just a little commemorative shrine on the great Bengali’s ashes; at which no one looked for inspiration.

And what happened to teacher Sube––bravely, cajolingly holding the first step on the educational staircase in his multifaceted role as a friend, guardian, playmate and guide to the kids. In those glorious days, he walked with a teacher’s utmost pride entailing his army of hundred student toddlers. Master Sube’s army it was called. Phonetics of the cramming kids seemed to fuel his heart’s soufflés. Like Ram Singh he too had been shifted to the adjoining school. Sheen of his past vigour had gone. Now he was a mute spectator to the official apathy; while the lone campaigner came in full-headed confrontation with the government-permitted convenience.

It seems the society tends to abide by the law of entropy in the universe, i.e., its tendency to disorderliness is always on the accelerative side. Hence, all those who’ve tried to manage the social chaos have been treated in a more chaotic way. Or say, chaos has backfired on them.

Take for example master Suresh, the science teacher, who had been imprisoned like an undertrial culprit in the new scheme of things. During those floral and leafy days he used to be filigreed with praise for his rekindling magic in mathematics and science. Naughty versatility in students drew flak at his mere sight (due to the awe of his mastership) despite the fact that he was a slightly built unaggressive teacher, who very rarely used a stick.

But now the headmistress––government had sanctioned her the power to bully the staff for even non-educational matters––had no respect for this misfitted man in her staff. She was completely similar to those idlers who know nothing of their subjects, and come to school just to fill-up the attendance sheet and pass time. Genious of that bright past was many times humiliated by this lady who was once heard saying, “You don’t know how to teach! I’ve got complaints!”

Or on a bigger scale, consider the heroic struggle waged by Ram Singh at the social front. Alas, social tide finds these small waves coming from a different direction unbearable and antagonistically destroys them. Yes, by the look of it there is no justice acoming for the good things being braved at small, small personal fronts. And what role our media plays in this? Nothing at all! Exclusive preserve of its farcical light falls only on the floating jargon. Otherwise, how can it be possible for a floral life like the great Bengali’s to go completely unnoticed by so many pockering eyes and noses of multitudes of media persons? Psst… such people, such lonely heroes never find a single line dedicated to them amidst such a huge amount of garbage being printed daily!

To shamelessly exemplify our point, media had produced a local hero (out of thin air). A local lad, who’d paid for a small role in a mediocre TV serial running on a not so popular channel, got a four column interview along with his heroically ornate photograph. He hadn’t done anything in the serial except a few brooding appearances during those dull reeled moments. But it created news. While the real constellation of a human life, like that of the school’s founder, never got a look from any media person’s news-pockering eye. This is the social justice of the times!

                                                20

  The Loner Gets a Compliant Follower on the Solitary Path

Dogs since the days of human settlement have seen their masters’ evolution from those primitive ways in the forests and along the banks of mighty rivers, when the animal and its master fought in the walloping game of survival. Now, thousands of years away from that paean-past they have been left out as exotic showpiece pats in big metropolitan cities.

At least in the rural areas the street dogs still make their ends somehow: poorly inveterate creatures, they can’t survive elsewhere. They’re the beggars without a begging bowl. Across the countryside there still survive many of them. Dogs festooned with a pet-belt; stray dogs wandering as a nuisance; skinny desi dogs and stockily built local wild dogs such as gaddi; hunting dogs, sleek and lanky as if they ate months ago, like the Rampur hound.

How sulky-silent their world looks in a noisy, palaver world. Yet the canines try to raise a voice against the human foibles: like their loud crying howls when they get struck for sneaking into the houses; or those periods of nightlong barking in the rote repetition of some historical contrition; or fooling themselves by barking at their own echo following 0.1 seconds later due to the laws of sound in some dark corner.

Occasionally they do get a chance to have a pinprick at the unfaithful master’s deflated ego.  So, the modern man has still a fear of them while walking across streets (coddling the ill-thoughts in protuberance inside his heart) in the dark of night. Or for that matter, who can feel too confident of his footsteps while knowing that he has to pass a silently sulking dog whetting its greed and waiting to bite from behind without a growl, as if reminding, ‘Beware of humans like me!’

Then there’re dogs like our very own in the story: an unhectoring recluse whom the minimalist circumstances forced to abandon the dewy duets of isolation and come near a human settlement. And when the matter of choosing a human ally came, the stoic shibboleth cleverly opted for the less qualified of the two persons on the mound.

Its innocently-muddled dark eyes belied its age. Big muzzle, in contrast, showed all that old age weariness which can be seen on the old wrinkled human faces. A nameless one, it didn’t know the fleecing traits of the pet ones using playful tricks to get food. It just looked mutely; its big ears drooping quiescently; its black coat hung flaccidly as if the force of gravity affected it more than the rest of his body. It kept its finely shaped head somewhat slouchily tilted to the right, as if wondering over something. Gloomy clouds of his appearance shadowed the visibility of his true virtues. Demystifying visage of old age however filled even a human heart with an elderly respect for this old canine.

Like any other dog this one too had a keen sense of smelling. But its lack of systematic search for the prey left it only drooling its nose around bushes in complete vain, while the bunny or mouse sat secure inside.

Thank God, it got a kennel right in between the huts, where it lay snoozily! And whenever its look fell on any of the mound dwellers, it seemed to say excusably, ‘No owners, and no enemies. Just give me your leftovers.’

Age-enforced unaggressiveness made him look on the side of some timidness. But when it barked at a stranger coming up the mound or at some trespasser during the night, huge convulsions over its coat made its ferocity many times exaggerated. However a few kicks from the Sadhu’s nocturnal visitors, and now the gang’s buffoonery, convinced it that they all were enemies and not a single friend among them to bark for. So, whoever came there he allowed it without any resistance. In a way it made his life easy manifold, because he didn’t need to put his old lungs to trouble any more.

When it walked on those paws, with some of the nails broken, it seemed to pedal the time’s languid tides. Till now he’d found this new place quite bearable; a sort of dapper den free from paroxysmal street dogs. But the rough and tumble of life’s path gets sharply accentuated by the cregs and clefts we happen to step over. The dog too met one.

One day, the hoodlums arrived with a new addition to their group. It was a punster looking tabby-white puppy. The little canine was at that stage of its physical evolution when the growing puppies look naughtily wanton. From its mischievous playful side, humoured mirth of a troubling childhood was self evident. There was a dog collar around its neck. Chain attached to it was proudly held by the head hoodlum, who seemed so happy to steer ahead the petardy misdemeanours of this little pet of his.

It trotted with a pailful sense of belonging, of being possessed and cared. All its masters, fully emblazoned with errant conduct, seemed to wink at each and every misdeed of this little troubleshooter. In synchronism with the conscious strivings of the above realisation, little purplish muzzle of this tiny punster tinkered and sniffed over each and everything that came its way. It would slangily smell at the passing-by feet and then edgily snarl. Seeing such tantrums its masters (Goddesses of whose religion were punks in their harlotry) burst out in ringing laughter: happy that this new addition too was marshalling its attitude according to theirs, and definitely one day will leave an indelible stigma on some civilized skin. Its fox like little head made it look quite funny and cunning at the same time. Nipping at the turncoats’ footprints, its bubbly and chirpy misdemeanour seemed to congratulate its masters for putting one more purposeless step on the meaningless path of life.

Peacefully and serenely, the oldie was sleeping in its kennel. Sitting on the divan they unhooked their friend’s chain. Little monster burst in his antics as if freed after a lifelong imprisonment. It went directly to the hermetically sleeping object, lying in the kennel like a heaped big blanket. Roguishly it sniffed at the old spartan. By the look of it, its puppyhood appeared to be shackled into a narrow compartment of mischief and misconduct. It ran its muzzle around the sleeper’s ears. Loud breath abrasively disturbed the slumberous air blanketing the mound’s third occupier. Sharp gnarls irritatingly threw freezing cold water over some verdurous canine dream. The intruder’s tail docked to an upright curl with such a force that its thin backquarter looked pervertively funny.

Spuriously rotten cry of encouragement came loudly from the chief vagabond’s mouth, “Come on Ballu! Teach him a lesson! Though you’re pint size, but don’t forget you’re the pet of such a brave man. Come on, prey upon him and bring him to dust!”

Pandering lullaby by the master quickly removed even the last inhibitive doubt from the little canine head. It thus caught hold of the foe’s ear. The sleeper opened its eyes with a nightmarish anguish. But before it could retaliate against the funny trespasser, its worldly wise eyes fell upon the hooting hoodlums. Realistion of kicking consequences forestalled any action by the old sleuth.

“Come on Ballu, what’re you waiting for? Tear it off! We’ll cook it for you today,” he sniffed with such rashness that he himself seemed to be howling.

“Hey Ballu, go to his backside and do with him just as we made you do with that little bitch!” yelled another.

“Yes, fuck this old ghost!” another exclaimed, emphatically emotion charged.

“Why? Why, do’u people want my Ballu to become an old-rectum-fucker at such a young age? You can do it yourself man. First of all I want him to grow strong and then father puppies from all the bitches in the village. Especially with that fine-hipped bitch of darling Sushma!” he let out a pogromically lusty moan, as if just by imagining about the beautiful girl he’d ejaculate.

“You won’t get her. So, get after her bitch. Ballu will help you!”

“Aye, motherfucker! Seems he’s got his heart stuck on that little bitch. Why not? The owner hasn’t spared him an eye. So if not the girl, let it be with her bitch.”

“And you? You say this! As if I don’t know about that bitch with which I caught you in the sugarcane fields,” mud-slinging started among the bitch maters.

“Hey stop!” lampoon leader bade his flail-order. “If bitch fuckers’re lily-livered like you, then I don’t want Ballu to become such. Rather I’d accept him as your mother’s mater.”

For a moment there was a humiliated silence.

Then the horrendous slur chorused retaliation, “Once addicted to mothers, he won’t spare your mother too, even if she’s living in hell.”

His---the head hoodlum’s---parents had died a few years ago. All alone in the world with his daredevilry, there was no reason for him to feel insulted. As for the rest, two of them had a helplessly surviving single parent. Others had very easily presumed their still surviving families to be long dead. Hence, all of them were congenitally naive to the exploding offence of these vulgarities.

Once again they got busy with doggy prattle. Ballu was now breaking all boundaries of decency (even among the dogs). After all there is a limit to everything, beyond which the punitive consequences follow without bothering about any further consequences.

Now the little cog of nuisance was at the top of helplessly lying big dog. He was having big tattering bites at the elder’s aged honour. His masters were slangily whistling and clapping. Fully engaged in the shuffle and muffle of black shaggy hair, the doglet was barking shrillest of a growl. With mouthful of black fur the attacker gave strong jerks as if to tear it off the skin.

The victim arose. The culprit was now hanging from its side. With a mouthful of the old dog’s skin and hair it paddled its legs helplessly. In a strong swipe the blackie brought the chubby, tabby nuisance to the ground and guffawed with its broad mouth over the mousy thing as if to gobble it up.

Ballu cowered itself into a small bundle and gave such a loud pitiful whining cry as could be heard right inside the village.

The master cried at the top of his paroxysmal voice, “Oh my devil, kill that big bear!”

They picked up whatever they could manage at the shortest notice and struck wherever they could. Poor old dog got the hardest of a beating in his lifetime. The puppy escaped. Its tail completely disappeared between the legs. All of them ran after the dog which dashed for life. Finally it got out of their reach, but not before getting whole lot of strikes. So by the look of it, they appeared satisfied with the revenge.

After this incident, they’d take Ballu forcibly to its opponent and make it quarrel with the blackie still cyclostyling its mind over the beating. In the meantime, many hands were ready to strike right at the moment it showed slightest of a resistance to their dear pet.

Their nightmarishly malevolent manoeuvres were humiliating even by the parameters of canine world. This warped psyche of theirs shifted the old dog from its middle position between the two huts. The poor animal knew they belonged to the hut on the banyan side, inside which Ballu walked so proudly.

Animals never leave their place so easily. They stretch us to the farthest limits of brutality, before they finally give up. So, the poor old dog left the kennel and started to pass its time on the little paddy hay-stack which the watchman had erected for his cooking fire. This place was at the easternmost edge of the mound. Here he was out of their eyesight. Much to the oldie’s respite they were so uncaring even in animosity towards a thing or person that they didn’t care about it as long as it wasn’t before their eyes. The tattlers were thus always embroiled in the general gloriole of vainglory in which no particular thought, emotion, thing or person raised its existential aura. And the day it would; only God knows what might be the consequences.

The dog was now surviving completely on the morsels from the eastern hut: the hut with a tenebrous look. Yet, there was a type of saintship about it. Its occupier knew why and how it’d happened. But he could only be a mute spectator to the whole thing like those insentient objects around. His heart thus pitifully sighed for the old tenderling. These were but only compliant humanistic pronouncements upheld by the court of his invisible conscience, which were very easily overruled by the reality. However, inside the secure depths of his court he could defend this dog like George Graham Vest, who, during the last decades of nineteenth century, served as a senator from Missouri.

Here is his ‘Tribute to the Dog,’ whom he defended in the court like this:

“The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog.

“A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he maybe near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come in an encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince.

“When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings, and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.

“If the fortune drives forth the master an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him, to guard him against danger, to fight against his enemies.

“And when the last scene of all comes, and death takes his master in its embrace and his body is laid away in cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by the grave side will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad, but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even in death.”

All said in a divine compendiousness about the dog and his master! But throughout his life, the old Blackie-–if we can put him in the baptismal immersion of name during the fag end of life-–had no master, and now there was this man who thought about him on the lines of George Graham Vest. Piteously the watchman would look at the dog and his thoughts certainly started to revolve around a fondness for the old animal which seemed to wait for death serenely and then leave this world as stoically as it’d lived-–unknown, untaught and unnamed. But now the constellation of a solitary line seemed to pull him in the predetermined orbit of a master. There was nothing anfractuous about it. It was as simple and natural as it can be.

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.

                                               *  *  *  *

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.