THE CANINE LORD


One day as I loafed around, my keen eyes alighted on the delicious, 5-star-quality left-overs in the garbage-pile, next to a palatial mansion.
The left-overs were plenty enough to give indigestion at least to ten stray guys like me, and to a hundred stray animals.
I thanked the heavens for the obscene inequality for the once-in-a-lifetime access to the dream delicacies.
My hunger, long reduced to ashes in its own fire, was revived like a phoenix by the fragrance; it pecked at my entrails with the merciless sharpness of a raven.
But alas! I had hardly embarked on my nosh up, when the royal canine, tethered to the tremendous gate of the mansion, got jealous at my bliss. It started yelping and yapping and yelling at me as shrilly as its delicate vocal faculties allowed it.
That disturbed the siesta of the still more delicate Mistress of the Mansion, forcing her to the real world outside her air-conditioned universe.
What she encountered was the most hideous sight of her life: a pauper, who hardly had a bath for weeks and or a shave for months, barely clad in rags, and offensive to all civil decencies, feasting merrily on the delicious left-overs!
Either it was my malignant mien, or my satiety (something unknown to the wealthy), or the paranoid instinct of the rich - she lost all her cultivated composure; her size-zero frame could hardly contain the volcano: I was scared lest her anger bursts her fragile fiber-glass-figure.
One of the exalted tribe, with its trust in animals, and innate distrust in men, she promptly let loose the doggie at me. Once un-tethered, there was nothing that would stop that loyal slave.
I was in no mood to fall prey to that blue blooded son of a bitch (no pun intended). Wisely I crossed over the road; once at safe distance curiosity took over me.
The Canine Lord had no interest in me, whatsoever.
Always used to the high society, it was quick to climb up to the very top of the garbage heap, sniffed it elaborately, encircled around itself, looked satisfied, and as if to show to the world whom the territory- along with all its spoils- belonged, leisurely pissed, alas, on my coveted delicacies.
Once relieved so ceremoniously, and with a face radiating with superlative ecstasy, it victoriously declared:
"Praised be the Mistress Who throws Us the Bone!
All Our Loyalty licks Her Royal Feet alone;
Away you tramp! Hoot, hoot your hunger,
We’re the Pedigree Canine Lord in the Manger!"

O MASTER !
I write this with a heart rent apart by pain and dilemma.
Those were the days of the desert. Sanddunes overtook me, whichever way i set forth, and engulfed all horizons. The desert erased my footprints, and obliterated all the tracks ahead.
The desert had its own temptations: resentment and self-pity. I was angry with the world, and guilty within. I judged the world, and hurt myself. Sandstorms growled around, till all that was left was my sandy sepulcher.
Then thou uttered thy word to me. Thy word was my redeemer. Thy word saved my soul from the damnation. Thy word was the raison d’etre to hold on. Thou were no flesh and blood, thou wast a word, the Word. The Word resurrected me a phoenix.
And i was not the only one. Thousands and millions were the forlorn travelers, each of them lost in a desert of his or her own, and thy word pointed to them the inward oasis.
Thou gave us a simple prayer or object to meditate upon. Thou spoke to us through books, through audiovisuals, and, to the blessed few, in person. Thou told us simple things with profound meaning, intended to make us likewise. We indeed were the lumps of clay that we were, bound to our orbits, but now waxed and waned in and out of thy light and the earthly shadow, with occasional glory of the full moon.
And then, O Master, the same media, which lent us access to thy noble self, said that thou, our Sun, too had thy spots, thy eclipse, and worse. For our simple devout minds, it was blasphemy. It pained us.
More and more scandal mongering went on. The spate was unrelenting, the storm violent. For us thy name spelt peace, hope, and piety; it shocked us to see it dragged in alleged crime, felony, misdemeanor, bail, and arrest. Accurst be he, who would even think of thy ashram, the site of our pilgrimage and annual holy congregations, to be also a broth teeming with virulence and vice!
We are simple folk with simple faith, O Master! Our eyes can’t penetrate stony walls. Our naïve innocence builds for us simple illusions, and these illusions suffice to illuminate our little space. May we not be disillusioned; that will orphan us, that shall kill us.
Bewildered followers are hurt, confused, and pained. Their anguish is expressed through protests, demonstrations, fasts, and by courting arrest. They take to streets to defend thee. Their simple faith makes them rally around thee. With all sympathies for their feelings; with prayers and hope that the allegations are baseless, i am sorry, O Master, i cannot join them. I believe, as thou only have taught me that Truth is no subject to numbers. Let the facts speak for themselves. I won’t take sides. I won’t comment on a matter that is sub judice. I respect the law of the land, and i believe in the law of the Lord; thou only taught me the equanimity.

Whatever the verdict of the law, i am no one to judge thee. I won’t blame thee if thou too come out to be mere mortal flesh and blood; i, in my naivety, and in my faith, am too indebted to thy Word to do so.
I would only be pained at thy fallibility, O Master! i would silently mourn my spiritual loss.

SHAME

Our first attempt on the King’s Court was foiled by the duteous guards (we salute their martyrdom).
Next, we planned better, and were more careful. Several of us human-bombs sneaked into the King’s Court, incognito, and lay in wait for the opportune moment.
As we witnessed the proceedings at the King’s Court, we realized that the guys inside the King’s Court were all set to do more damage to the nation, than we could ever do.
With all the meticulous cross-border planning, all the utmost secrecy, all the unheard-of hardships, all the grueling training, all the constantly lurking insecurity; with all the ammunition worth millions; and at the cost of score of our comrades, all we could achieve was to kill a handful of innocent people once in a while.
Fellows inside the King’s Court managed the worse by their actions – and yet worse by their inaction.
Put to shame, we fell back; and reported to the Boss.
The Boss was highly pleased, and was ever so thankful to his chance accomplices inside the King’s Court.

HOSTAGE

It was siesta time on a Sunday when my younger daughter rushed in, breathless, shaking with fear, eyes moist with frenzy, and barely able to articulate-
“Dad..dad..snake..a big snake.. in the garden..in our backyard!”
Prompt, I got up, put on my slippers, and ran to the door.
“Dad..” the elder daughter, with better presence of mind, handed me a mosquito-net rod.
By now, quite a few people gathered in the garden. Bursting with energy, they rolled up their sleeves and brandished their weapons: hockey-sticks, walking-sticks, bamboo-sticks.
“Did anyone actually see the snake?” I verified.
“Yes uncle,” rang a jubilant chorus, ”so big, so dark, it could be a cobra or something!”
“Poisonous, eh, dad?”
“Look my child, snakes never attack unless provoked. Besides, only 4 percent of them are poisonous. That means, 96 percent, or say 90..may be 75, or at least 50 to 60 percent of them are harmless..er..i think so,” spake the omniscient oracle.
Well, the snake was nowhere to be seen. So the warriors, vented out their bravado by hitting at the shrubs and bushes.
“We shall not rest until we hunt him out of his hiding, and have him killed!” announced a guy very much like a big bug Prez declaring Holy War. Nevertheless, now the crowd started losing its enthu.
Suddenly, the snake showed itself, crawled round the corner, and...
“Dad! The snake has entered our house!” cried my daughter.
I was paralyzed with terror.
Sympathetic bystanders were too prudent to take further risk. They disappeared one by one. We four, left all alone, sat outside our own home like refugees.
Now it was dark. “Let’s go inside’” said my wife at last.
We entered the house, with wary steps, ever so cautiously. First thing, we switched on all the lights. I tightened my grip, slippery with sweat, over the rod. We searched all the rooms, even the bath and the loo, every place: the wardrobe, the cupboard, the shoe-rack and the kitchen-rack, behind the TV trolley and the sofa, under the divan, everywhere. And, as I groped under the bed with the rod,
‘. . .Hiss!’
I jumped with a start.
Well, that was the pressure cooker, which my wife had put on the gas. I laughed at myself.
But where was the snake?
That night we slept with all the lights on; actually we hardly slept.
Came the morning. The girls left for school.
“Should I stay back, to be with you?” I asked.
“And for how many days?” retorted she.
“Ok, I go to the office. Call me if required.”
She didn’t call. I came back in the evening. Nothing had happened.
Thus passed the day one, and day two, and day three, and so on. Sunday came, and went. Nothing happened.
The snake was never seen again. But an uneasy quiet looms over the household, like shadow of a giant hood. Girls wake up frightened in mid-sleep, come to us, cannot sleep, and doze off from sheer exhaustion of staying awake, still sobbing. All of us stay huddled together - like cattle under a tree, mutely watching the fury of the ravaging storm around.
Now it is more than a month since the snake was seen entering our house. The event has lost its news-value. Now nobody in the neighborhood ever talks about it.
The routine goes on. But everyone is lost in his or her own cocoon of dreadful silence. Girls no longer sing freely, fight freely, or shout at the top of their voice. They study, help their mother with the daily chores, and move around quietly like good girls. Their unnatural, precocious goodness pains me.
I no longer have my Sunday siesta. Neither the TV nor the books interest me. No longer, I am the full-throated bathroom singer I used to be!
Wife no longer wears flowers in her hair; fragrance, they say, excites snakes. We didn’t even have had one of those mind-cleansing, wholehearted fights since ages. Last Thursday was our marriage anniversary, and we didn’t even know it until after four days.

The unrelenting uncertainty has made us violent. Last week, my wife noticed a rat in the kitchen, and the good lady got wild.
“It’s only a rat, dear,” I tried to pacify her.
“It’s these rats that bring snakes after them! Don’t you know that?” she screamed.
The reminder made me furious. All of us got hold of whatever came handy – brooms, sticks, rods, whatever, and chased the brute, till it got exhausted. The poor thing stood there in the corner, resigned to fate, shaking and squeaking with fear. For a while, it reminded me of my daughter, my little cherub, similarly breathless, shaking with fear, eyes moist with frenzy, and barely able to articulate, as she saw the snake in the garden.
“Dad, don’t leave that bastard..let’s burn the bloody thing alive!” shrieked my little cherub.
I was aghast; where did she learn that?
However, highly contagious was the hysteria, and I, the man of the family, charged at our helpless target, struck it, hit it, butchered it with all my might. At last, the rat lay dead, its tiny pink mouth agape, blood trickling from it, the tail convulsing occasionally, and still my blows won’t relent.
Eddies of adrenaline still stirred my blood: the effect was almost erotic. True, violence is the Viagra for the impotent.
As I carried the dead rat with its tail to the garbage bin, a strange thought crept across my mind: do snakes, like human beings, watch some innocent fellow being done to death, and smile stealthily?
The thought of the snake drained all machismo out of me.
The rat incidence is long over. Since then, nothing untoward took place. Situation is under control and peaceful, as if under curfew.
Nobody knows where the snake is. May be, it has long left the house? Everyone saw the snake entering the house, but no one ever saw it leaving: the incertitude kills us.
The neighbors, the watchman, the snake handlers of the city, the family doc- all the Disaster Management Team- have assured us their immediate help ‘in case something happens’. Post-disaster management is ok man, but what do we do till then?
Till then, the invisible terror holds us at its mercy; dictates our life and singes it with its fiery breath; squeezes and stifles us in its chilling coils. It binds our limbs, clips our wings, and smothers our song. It holds each moment of our life hostage to its whims and will.

FLAGS
As usual, I was walking all alone. Along the farthest possible edge of the road. Happy to be too insignificant to bother anyone.
The great family that is the universe was being torn apart by petty factions with hyper egos. Perhaps the global hatred had permeated down to this lane, as it had every nation, every state, every city, every town, and every village. Rumors, like limbless ghosts, floated silently in nooks and corners of paranoid psyche of people.
The administration had issued a decree making it obligatory for everyone to carry her or his identity card on her or his person. This made it easy for those who wanted to classify, label, and stigmatize human individuals, and then to execute necessary action.
Thus, that day, as usual, I was walking. All alone. Along the farthest possible edge of the road. Happy to be too insignificant to bother anyone. Given the great international scenario as it was, it was natural that everyone would not exactly appreciate a fellow walking alone and quietly like this.. along the farthest possible edge of the mainstream.
So they stopped me.
‘Hey you…who are you?’
‘…’
‘Name? Let’s have a look at your i-card..’
‘I.. don’t have any’
‘What the hell do you mean by ‘don’t have?’ Everyone is supposed to carry one around the neck..don’t you know?’ One of the guys slapped me hard in the face, and dug his weapon onto my chest.
‘Where do you stay?’
‘.. am homeless.’
‘What do you do?’
‘..am jobless.’
‘ours..or outsider?’
‘..a vagabond..how do I tell?’
‘This side of the border..or the other ?’
‘Border? What border? I never had anything to do with borders and territories- political or ethnic. That’s the reason I am here without any i-card, and I land up roaming like a stray animal.. belonging to nowhere.’
I noticed a brilliant spark in the guy’s stare. The weapon pressed a bit lighter now on my chest.
‘Then join us. C’mon, hold this flag. And here is your weapon.’
‘I reject all flags. I refuse all weapons.’
The guy’s stare regained its coldness, and his weapon its sharpness.
‘I guess you don’t refuse to be alive…’
‘Don’t know.’
By this time, others in the gang were pretty bored. ‘Let’s leave the fellow. Seems to be some harmless idiot.’
Having soundly thrashed me, they left. Till the time I was conscious, I could hear the abuses- and the spirited slogans. Something something zindabad..something something murdabad..!
I regained consciousness after a while. Limbs sore. Senses numb. Having nothing else to do, I continued what I was doing..walking all alone. Along the farthest possible edge of the road. Hoping to be too insignificant to bother anyone.
They stopped me again. No, this time the guys were different. Same dialogue. Same querries. Same unanimous verdict. Only the flags and the slogans differed in details. Now this group was zindabad, and the earlier one murdabad. The abuse and the thrashing were same.
Both groups abandoned me as a harmless idiot. But soon the news reached their leaders and made them furious. ‘What? left that fool alone? Alive? Idiot yes, but not harmless! Go.. catch him. Kill him. Finish him. What if everyone stopped caring about ethnic or national or linguistic borders and territories? What then will happen of our asmita card? What the hell we leaders will do then? How will we survive? Go.. kill that bloody idiot!’
Frail and weak though I was, I did regain my consciousness once again. I promptly realized that even after all this, I had no head injury. No damage to my brain. So I did not become wiser. I still continued walking. Again, all alone. Along the farthest possible edge of the road. Praying to be too insignificant to bother anyone further.

Vague voices in distance alerted me. Gradually the scene became clearer. I saw both the groups, earlier shouting slogans against each other, united. Marching as a single body. Warring groups joining hands. Warring flags fluttering in unison. Warring weapons dancing to the same rhythm. Hurt and aching everywhere though I was, I was overwhelmed with ecstasy at this expression of integrity. I fell on my knees and facing the heavens thanked the Almighty, when..
The slogans became clearer.. and it dawned upon me that..well, this time I was the defined, common target of the composite mob. And I ran for my life.
I ran. I ran fast. I ran out of my breath. I panted. I gasped. I collapsed. Face buried in dust.
Next moment two accurately aimed spears struck me in the back. Each carried a flag of the two different groups.
I had refused every name, every label, every stamp, every stigma, every flag throughout my life. And here lay my dead body with two different flags deeply embedded in it. Isn’t it funny!

(Translated by the author from his original Marathi “Pataakaa”)

GUIDE
Imagine yourself lost in a disorderly crowd of giants, all of them at least thrice as tall as you!
That’s the memory childhood brings to my mind.
Once, i lost myself in a crowd of rough, rugged, hardened adults. i was always a sick child, small and weak for my age, and hardly reached their knees. Men shouted, threatened, abused, and spat vitriol at each other, at some unseen enemy, and at the whole world.
Dust thrown up by the rowdy multitude choked me. My head reeled with air, foul with sweat, tobacco, and alcohol. Fresh air was beyond my reach: i was too short among those giants.
Ruffians trod on my tender feet. Their crudity crushed my childhood naivety. My cries never reached them amidst the pandemonium; even if they did, who cared for an unknown, lost orphan in that vicious squabble?
I stumbled and staggered through shins and shanks, bumping against knees. I was brutally crushed, kicked, trampled and tossed, losing all sense of direction and time. The crowd seemed endless, and so my ordeal.
Then someone stooped down to me, lending me a finger.
It was no abatement of my plight; my guide had his own ways and ideas. The moment i held his finger, he clasped my wrist in his iron grip, and dragged me after him without mercy.
My body ached, my legs pained, my feet were sore, even my wrist sprained at being pulled. At one moment, frustrated and fatigued, i even rebelled, and tried to pull myself from the unknown and unforgiving guide. But he won’t leave me.
I could not see his face. The unrelenting crowd, the dust, and stampede made this impossible.
“Who are you? Where are you taking me?” i shouted with all might. His stoic silence was impenetrable. He simply tugged me after him, without wasting a word, or a glance, as if under some imperative compulsion.
He won’t pause, he won’t rest, nor let me rest. unmindful of my injuries and abrasions, indifferent to my hunger and thirst, he kept me pulling after him day after day, night after night.
I resigned to fate. I continued to stumble and to stagger; to bump and to get bruised; to be crushed and kicked; to be trampled and tossed. Now, i may say, i had a direction, though i didn’t know what. No choice, no volition; it was just being dragged after the unknown, unseen guide.
At last, our endless journey took us to the fringes of the crowd. Gradually the dust around settled down. I lifted my eyes at my guide, my savior, the author of my fate: he was the blind madman of our town.
The hubbub faded in distance, and he left me abruptly.
It was long before i came to myself.

Later, life taught me that people are never bad. Insecurity makes them callous and competitive. Mobs are lost individuals. Wolves are lost lambs.
Whatever that may be, the traumatic memory left an indelible scar on my pliable psyche.
Thankfully, never did i outgrow my abhorrence for the ways of the world; for its notion and necessity of competition; for its fetish for success.
I am grateful to my guide, who was blind to the manners of the mob, and deaf to my puerile protests.

GUILTAs usual, the first shift bus takes us back home. It’s 4 in the evening, the most indifferent and ill-defined hour of the day.
We surrender ourselves to the driver’s acumen, and doze off, exhausted from the day-long boredom, the non-happening routine, the inertia, and the ennui. Nothing happens. Nothing excites. Life, whether at home or at work, is a stalemate.
Sudden brakes jerk us violently out of sleep. Still confused, we scan the surroundings, smacking, swallowing, and mumbling incoherently.
Our bus slows down. Onlookers have crowded both sides of the road.
Ha! Something seems to have happened!
Quick observers are the early reporters.
“A horrible accident-!”
“Both of them dead-!”
Hey presto! Gone are the boredom, the inertia, the ennui, and the snooze in a jiffy! We all spring from our seats to have a peep at the scene outside.
A horrible accident indeed it is. A bike – one of those new hi-tech beastly machines- probably speeding in the wrong direction, has dashed against the road divider, throwing off the two poor teenage riders.
Blood flows sluggishly from the broken skull of one of the boys: a bright red pool, sparkling in the slanting sun, slowly thickening and blackening on the rough concrete surface. The lump, that was the brain, still convulses in the dust. The other boy lies spread eagled, still and stiff, without the slightest scratch on his body; probably internal bleeding killed him. The new brand sturdy hi-tech bike is almost unscratched.
With nothing else happening, even the fatal and the morbid is a welcome diversion.
“O God-!”
“O shit-!”
“Both were just kids..”
“Think of the poor parents..”
“This new generation..”
“These modern bikes..”
“These road conditions..”
“These contractors..”
“This corruption..”
“This system..”
By now, our bus has wormed its way through the road block. Freshened up by the lively discussion, we reach home.
The newspaper, the TV, the net, the gossip, the family, the kids, all take me through the rest of the evening, to a dreamless sleep. Never again the accident comes to my mind, except in those deeply reflective moments, in the ultimate solitude of the WC.

But horrible indeed was the accident. Not forgotten easily, it crops up at the coffee table, next morning.
A colleague who worked in the general shift yesterday, joins us.
“Yea, our bus too passed the spot at about six. The two guys were still lying there, still crowded by the onlookers, and no police anywhere as yet.”
“Disgusting!” react i, over a sip, ”two boys lie on the road, dead for hours, and . . .”
“Didn’t you read the newspaper today? In fact, one of the boys was actually alive, when the police took him to the nearby hospital- but it was too late. He had severe brain damage, with more than two hours already lost.”
“We are a nation of idle onlookers”, sighs out somebody.

Everyone of us is silent.

We too had passed the very spot.
We too had seen the accident.
We too had assumed both the boys dead.
We too never bothered so much as to check.



The accident injured the boy. our apathy killed him.