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Cock Tale

There were quite a few interesting happenings in my life during last summer, if only I could call them interesting at all. Bachcha log, you do not need any parental supervision while going through this post. It contains nothing suspicious. Suspicious is the word parents usually use for vulgar ‘items’, lol. Sounds good. Quite acceptable. Anyway, let me initiate the tale. The Cock Tale.

Summers have always been relentless in our country, irrespective of the zone. Be it Delhi, Chennai, Nagpur or Patna. I, by the way, spent my summer at a place called Durgapur near Kolkata, thanks to audacious planning of IIT Delhi. To make matters worse, I was virtually impelled to spend eight hours a day in a fuming steel plant. If you have never been to any steel plant, I would advise you not to plan any visit there in any given circumstances. If you are, in case, asked to choose between spending your whole life with Bin Laden and visiting a steel plant, do not even hesitate to choose Bin Laden. Steel plants are horrible places—charcoal powder floating in the air, lumps of burning coal radiating infrared rays. To make matters worse, hot, luminous liquid iron flows to make one realize that he is spending time in Hell. Hell on the face of earth.

By the time I used to return back to my hostel, every joule of energy was sucked out of my skinny body. The only plus point of my stay there was that boys and girls shared the same edifice (not the same room though). Most girls being Biharis. It took me 21 long years to discover that even Bihari gals are cute. I always thought that only one girl in Bihar was cute. Hey, what am I proceeding towards? I am not here to describe my love interest. That will be done in some other post. May be, never. Despite all those searing hours in the steel plant, I was not very unhappy. The most irritating part of the story started later in the night; or I should rather say, early in the morning. At around 3 AM. The hero (in fact, the villain if you ask me) of this saga is a cock. Murga, in Hindi. That bloody cock!!!

On every single morning at 3 AM, the cock started to crow at the top of the voice. Considering that I usually fall late on bed, that vociferous noise at three in the morning was nothing better than some Himesh Reshammiya song—shabby and painful. I managed to ignore it for a couple of days. But brushing aside that atrocious sound every single day was just too much for asking. One morning at six in the morning, my patience gave up and I came out of my room only to find that the cock was crowing right in front of my room. I waived my hand and asked that cock to move out of that place, of course in human voice. Sadly, this time around, it was too much of an ask for it. It crowed back at me. Sparked by its protest, I slapped it. Oh yes, I slapped it!! The cock fell away, around six meters away. It wasn’t moving at all. I was shocked. And possibly, so was it. I never wanted to hit it so hard. I, perhaps, underestimated my strength and certainly overestimated the cock’s strength. I was, more or less, sure that that cock died instantly. I looked all around me, making sure that no one was watching me. Relieved by my solitude, I quickly moved back to my room. There was a mixed feeling inside me. Mixed-- due to two reasons. I was both happy and sad. Happy because I sensed that I was not as weak I thought myself to be. And sad because I had killed the poor cock. That too for a crime not so grave. Anyway, since the cock was then dead, there was no point thinking about it and losing my sleep over it. The noisy cock might have been enjoying in the hell, I thought.

I woke up at nine. The corpse was not there. It was the beginning of a new day for me with the same old job. I went to the steel plant. I came back at five in the evening only to find the cock hopping around with a band-aid sort of thing rolled around its neck. I was again happy and sad. Happy because the cock hadn’t died and sad because I would have to resist its creaky sound again. Yet again. In the night, the butler was asking guys in the mess if they knew somebody who hit its pet. I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. When being intrigued, the butler revealed that THE cock was its pet and someone hit it. He even asked me if I knew that bloody guy. I considered myself no lesser than Satyawadi Harishchandra. So, telling lies was not my job. When caught in an insurmountable problem, pretend!! Someone tried to kill your cock?, I asked as if it was my dearest pal. He nodded. I didn’t reply to him anymore and hastily changed the topic of discussion.

Days went by. The cock wasn’t crowing anymore. I was rather surprised by its silence. I had got used to it in one way or the other. That silence didn’t let me sleep. I asked the butler the next day if his pet cock was fine. He replied me woefully that he himself killed his pet cock because its health was degrading. He served its flesh to us only, he said wryly. What an excuse to kill somebody, I thought. But the hero was killed. He was no more. May its soul live in peace in heaven. And the villain was still roaming freely.

I was happy and sad, again. Yet again.

Contrast

Though I was born in a small town called Giridih in Jharkhand, I originally belong to Madhupur, a suburb, countryside area, about forty kilometers away from Giridih. My ancestors lived there for a long, long time. My grandmother and my two paternal uncles still reside there. The home where they live is basically a four-room hut. The cemented floor is broken at a number of places, making sure that it projects an ancestral look. There is a large courtyard in front of that hut which gets extremely swampy during rains. Since my father had earned a job in Giridih, he moved out of that place. After working for ten years in a government owned bank, my father owned a decent house at Giridih.

Even though we have moved out of our ancestral home, we visit there every now and then. Our visits happened to be more frequent while I was a kid. We went there every year on the eve of Durga Puja, our prime festival and then, during summer vacations. The gathering during the Durga Puja used to be the best five days of the year. There used to be a sense of sacredness in the air. The large idols of Goddess Durga were worshipped on several streets of the town. People waited for months to celebrate this grand festival. I waited for weeks for the start of my Durga Puja vacation to buy new clothes, to go to Madhupur, to be a part of melas with my cousins and family members, to join my bare hands in front of the Goddess of power.

The stay during summer vacations used to be lengthy, usually ranging between a week and a fortnight, thus giving ourselves enough time to mingle with grandmother, uncles and aunts. During those 10-15 days, I, as a kid, was obviously more interested in being in the company of my cousins in my age group. The summer afternoons did no harm to their reputation by keeping the mercury level soaring high. Since electricity is not a 24*7 resource in our part of the country, hand fans were the only respite. The sun beat hard on the soil. Water disappeared from the wells as if it were put on fire. I, along with my cousins, waited for the sun to be merciful as the day gradually progressed towards its end. Arrival of the evening marked indispensable reprieve from cauldron like environment.

The evenings were particularly special for us as they invited vendors who sold ice-cream in their big containers on wheels. The containers were partially filled with solid ice to keep the ice-cream in good shape. The ice-creams were nothing more than small cuboidal pieces of ice in ripe, green mango flavor and others in coconut flavor with thin wooden sticks attached to them. The mango flavored ice-cream cost Re 1 while the coconut flavored one was worth fifty paise.

The vociferous shout of the ice-cream vendor infused astounding energy in our sweating bodies. After acquiring few coins from our mothers, we always rushed barefooted towards the main wooden door through the soil-laden courtyard. The touch of the bottom of feet with the blistering soil acted as sweet pain experienced while journey towards a historic achievement. The coconut-like taste and sourish flavor of ripe mango filled us with joy. Every bite of ice and every drop of flavored cool water (formed by melting of ice) was delight to the tongue. The trace of coolness that ice provided on the inner part of the cheek and the teeth was nothing less than divine elation. We tried to last our ice-creams as long as possible. And if our part of the ice-cream came to an early end, we used to ask for small bites from others. We tried every trick in the book to gain a part of others’ share. Sometimes the tricks worked, sometimes they didn’t.

These days, I live in Delhi, the capital city of this supposedly great country. Delhi—where money flows out of pocket like water in the drain during rains, where millions of people survive just in the hope of a better tomorrow, where people virtually run in order to maintain their lead in the race in their respective fields, where earning money is the only way of celebration.

Deepawali is the prime festival in this prime city of India. People buy gifts for each other. The costlier, the better—that’s the basic idea of people while buying gifts. It’s a way of demoing the weight inside their pockets. It’s considered a kind of insult if your presents to others appear cheaper than what they gift you. It’s a matter of fact that most of them struggle to answer if asked why exactly Deepawali is celebrated. Though this city may strongly disagree, what eventually matters in (and to) this city is money. I, on the other hand, tend to spend quite Deepawali’s on the roof of my hostel, watching millions of rupees, in the form of firecrackers, being burnt in a matter of few hours. Burning firecrackers, for instance, is also a contrived method of displaying the pile of money you sit upon.

Since grass on the other side always looks greener, people from all parts of the country visit this city to earn money and then, to spend it if they succeed to earn any, against every odd. I, as a student, am yet to enter this race of earning money; and then more money. I just spend money that is sent to me by my parents residing at that small, unknown town. It’s just that the denomination in which I spend money these days has multiplied several folds; may be hundred-odd folds. A simple, far-from-extraordinary cold coffee or cappuccino costs around fifty bucks in Barista. A decent meal in a decent restaurant costs above hundred rupees. A vegetarian pizza costs around two hundred bucks at Pizza Hut. I have started visiting these coffee shops and these decent restaurants since last couple of years, thereby increasing my monthly expenditure to an alarmingly high amount; amount that I, as a student, am scared to think of.

But the saddest part of the story is that I don’t find these 50-bucks coffees and 100-bucks meals even half as tasty and satisfying as those fifty-paise and one-rupee ice-creams. Ironically, the cost of the bread doesn’t (and can’t) determine its taste. Money, as they say, can’t buy everything…

But, who knows, I might also become a part of this demeaning city with the passage of time...I can only pray to Goddess Durga to shield me against all evils of this only-money-matters city.

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