PAPA

The door-bell switch makes a dead click, and nothing happens – power failure! Do I knock at the door? I know it is siesta time, and no one will like to be disturbed. But I am desperate.
I am a smalltime sales-girl, selling encyclopedias, atlases, dictionaries and the like. I go from door to door, usually in afternoons, and try to sale my ware to people - mostly housewives.
Sales-persons are rarely welcome. More often than not, they are shooed away like stray dogs; or else, scanned as if they were beggars or burglars. Being rude to the unknowns, particularly to the needy, seems to be the mark of prudence.
Encyclopedias et al are weighty items: burden to carry around, and some task to sell- because of their special genre, and of course, the cost. One runs around for hours before a copy is sold, and that can drain you to death.
I have had nothing since morning, except a few biscuits and a cup of tea. It’s already evening, but the March sun is still scorching. The one- liter drinking water bottle that Mom forced in my bag, hardly lasts for an hour. My mouth is dry, and lips chaffed; worse, i need to visit the loo very badly: that makes me more desperate.
I summon up my courage, and knock at the door: first tentatively, then a bit firmly, then repeatedly, and then impatiently. Then i suddenly realize that the door is locked; these tricky latch locks are never as obvious as the padlocks. I fret over the lost time.
I must rush before time runs out. Mother worries herself to death if i am not back home before dark.

We were a normal happy family before Papa left his job for business. What was the business, i never knew. But home was never the same after that. Papa had shady visitors, whom he called partners, always coming to him late in the evenings. He talked to them for hours behind closed doors. Neither Mother, nor we kids were allowed in his room.
A sinister change crept over the family. Mother looked terribly stressed with her mask-like face and vacant stare. She became weak, cranky, and quarrelsome. She developed diabetes, lost weight, and shrunk to a mere skeleton, and now almost mute. Dark circles under her eyes looked all the more weird on her pale face.
Papa remained away from home all day. At times he locked us inside, and left the house till late night.
Strangers came and asked for him at odd hours, when he was more likely to be at home, and then there were loud brawls. Doors and windows remained shut, and all lights put off whenever Papa was at home.
Papa disappeared for days, and then for weeks. Whenever he did come home, he sneaked in like a thief, and usually drunk. Sometimes he was rowdy; at other times, dumb with guilt. We frequently moved house, always chased and hounded by strangers: angry and threatening; desperate and sad. They came with the police; again they came with musclemen.
Papa ran away. Poor Mother was left alone with two kids, and faced all the abuses, insults, and curses flung at us. We shook with fear, clung close to her, and she was too stunned even to console us.
Now it has been months that Papa has disappeared. Initially he did made calls, until we no longer afforded the phone connection. We have lost all contact with us. Life goes on. We are used to his absence; we miss him no longer - in fact we feel relived. People too have stopped bothering us; perhaps they have lost whatever little hope they had; more likely, they take him for dead and gone.
Mother works as house-help. I left school after my matriculation, and work as a helper with a kindergarten sort of; this sales job is only to tide over the vacations.
Little bro studies in the sixth, and continues somehow.
Little bro..! He is the light of the home. He is the only whiff of fresh air in this damp and dingy life.
How he longs to touch, to smell, to browse through the glossy, crisp, colorful pages of the illustrated dictionaries! How it pains me to rob him of that innocent pleasure, lest the books are soiled.

Not much time is left before nightfall.
Here is a small house, may be, only a one-room-kitchen. The simple and homely ambience speaks of a decent and dignified household, though not of much means.
I hasten to the doorbell. “Yea coming, wait a minute please..,’ responds a lady. After several anxious minutes, an elderly, rather plump lady opens the door.
She has a kind face, mellowed by having seen and suffered a lot in life. Her eyesight seems to be rather weak, for she cranes her neck and screws up her eyes. “Yes, my child..?” enquires she tenderly, as she wipes glasses with the palloo of her sari.
She puts on the glasses and comes closer,
“I think, I know you. Aren’t you..why not..yes, for sure. . .”
I am standing in the door, against light. She holds me by my arm, and takes me outdoors to have a better look at me.
The soft face stiffens. The kind eyes freeze in glassy stare. In horror, she pushes me away and i fall down to the ground. She slaps me, kicks me, pulls my hair, scratches my face till it bleeds, rips my dress apart, and gets at my throat with all her beastly strength. I choke, struggle, plead, beg for mercy, and all is in vain.
Even as she thrashes me, she shouts and wakes up all neighborhood. “Yes now i know you..you are the daughter of that rascal, that cheat, that son of the bitch, who duped me..God-knows-how-many like me, and ran away! You wretched girl, you be his daughter, don’t you?” she screams wildly.
“You know, your father, that bastard, duped me for eighty thousand rupees! Hear you, Eighty thousand rupees! Do you know what eighty thousand rupees means for a poor family like us? That gave my husband, a flour-mill worker, heart attack. And now the doctor advises a bypass, do you know? Who is going to pay, that scoundrel of your father?
“My son left his engineering college in the second year, and now helps at a garage, do you know? It was for his education that we starved and saved. That blasted father of yours, that sweet-tongued devil, he promises me 20 per cent interest, and one fine morning, runs away with all lifetime savings. Runs away like a coward! God, take him away! Feed him to dogs! Curse on him! Curse on his family! Curse on all you vipers!”

Scores of onlooker watched as she thrashed me black and blue. Nobody interfered. Perhaps, i stood for all the cheating, exploitation, and all the wrongs life had done to them. They were not bad people (this i say today, as i recollect events after years), they were not heartless; for them poetic justice was being meted out by Nemesis. It didn’t matter if i was innocent; the real culprit was beyond their reach, and, after all, I was the villain’s blood.
She snatches my bag, throws out the water bottle, pulls out all the books, tears them apart, throws them in dust, tramples them.
“No auntie, please don’t do it..they cost more than five thousand. . .”
“Five thousand, that’s what you say, eh? And what do you say about my eighty thousands, about my husband’s bypass, about my son’s engineering, about my cataract, about our daily bread, about..?” Breathless, at last, she is speechless, still fuming and sweating.
At a loss to know what to do with me, she bends down, collects a handful of dust, and throws at me.
Beaten and humiliated, aching and paining all over, i stare blankly at the glossy, crisp, colorful books- dusty, crumpled, and pages torn to pieces.
I wail aloud, and cry out, “Where are you Papa? You know, i hate you..how i miss you, O Papa..!"

PROTHANASIA

She almost evaporated with ecstasy as she spoke of the latest techno-feat: roses could be made to yield flowers within a period less than a tenth of their natural flowering time.
That would, said she, boost up the floral market.
(Frankly, i shudder at the very idea of associating flowers with the barbaric world of marketing, sales, and commerce.)
Well, the techno-feat should, thought i, consequently boost up the bouquet-and-banquet market, the felicitation-and-obeisance market, and finally the obsequies-and-wreath market.

Yesterday, newspapers showered accolades on a child prodigy, who earned some bronze or silver at an intensely grueling and immensely prestigious international contest on astrophysics, at the tender age of 13.
The news items also carried photographs of the celebrity. Alas, the child hardly looked a child! No innocence, no mischief, no smile; the stiff stature, the starched three-piece suit, the coveted medal hanging down the neck, the thick glasses, and the sickly smile: the poor boy indeed looked a grey emeritus professor. Gosh!

Someone runs (or is made to run) so-many-hundred kilometers at 6, and makes headlines.
Kids crotch dance in the limelight, drive the audience crazy, and are past climacteric before puberty.
Athletes dope themselves, break their own records year after year, dope again till they are found, and then wither away.
Before thirty, professionals are already lonely on the loftiest peaks.

True, most of us are not a child prodigy.
Most of us never get to bask in limelight.
Most of us never break any records.
Most of us never make anywhere near the peak.
But – and not without a streak of envy - most of us do wish we could do all this.
Our envy betrays our discomfiture with our self.

With success saturation well before midway, what does a guy do for rest of the life?
Life no longer grows, it swells.
It no longer flows, just gets scummy.
It no longer smiles, only frowns.
It seeks beauty-parlors.
It needs laughter-clubs.
Having lost himself, the guy goes on world tours in search of opium.
A normal life span feels a bit too long, too boring.
Early death from heart attack or stroke is a nice quick fix.

It’s all hire-n-fire: come on; make yourself useful; work out; work it up; work away at it; stay workable; burn out; and quit.

Have we lost the art of living a simple life at its natural pace?
Where lies the line between prodigy and precocity and progeria* and prothanasia*?

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progeria, premature aging; prothanasia, premature death

THE FIVESOME

Every five years, the five flirts woo me.
“The countdown has begun, O dearest,” they remind me," pick one of us to represent you. And, mind you, don’t forgo your fundamental right, don’t flunk your fundamental duty.”
I know the fivesome fairly well.
The first one is Mr/Ms Fanatic. For him/her, the present and the future have to be a clone of the past; and democracy is nothing, if not the tyranny of the majority.
The second, Mr/Ms Fierce, is a chronic and highly infective case of paranoia. ‘Your-forefathers-did-this-this-to-our-forefathers’ is his/her favorite refrain.
The twain makes a gay pair. Both breathe at least five centuries, if not five millennia in the past. Both frown at my being a wholesome human being, and are hell-bent upon reducing me to a uni-dimensional religious /regional /linguistic /communal iota.
Next is Mr/Ms Fleece, a megalomaniac who holds sway over all high-end industries: agriculture, winery, tobacco, sports, education, and all. In the process, emerges a paradox: his/her purse gets fatter than the national exchequer; the part engulfs the whole.
Mr/Ms Feudal, the fourth one, easily the most cunning of all, has quietly tricked the entire democratic machinery to perpetuate the Dominion of the Dynasty. Lineage is his/her oomph, and totalitarianism, the orgasm.
The last one is Mr/Ms Façade. Graduated from the ranks and files of chain snatchers and petty pickpockets, today the underworld don dons the honorable VIP attire. Earlier he/she paid - and now collects 'protection allowance'.

I am ashamed even at the thought of being represented by any of those five fiends.
Disgusted, i turn away , refusing to favor anyone of them.
“Fie upon you, O felon!” they cry in unison, ”How dare you sabotage the principles and process of democracy like this?’
See, who talks about democratic principles! A nice funny farce: only if, for a while, one forgets what is at stake.
“I must have the choice to vote negatively, with all the dignity and immunity of secret ballot- not a mere ex-gratia obligation,” assert i.

“Your indignation is alright man; but has anything positive ever emerged out of something negative?”
“Who speaks there?” i sharply turn to the voice.
All i find, is a mirror staring at me.
Even as i watch, my image metamorphoses to a five headed monster.
Truly, the fivesome not only represent me; they, five-in-one, reflect my social self.

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.