An Extraordinary Lesson

 A friend had invited me for dinner. He said he would take me to his parental house in a remote village in Bastar District, Chhattisgarh. I was supposed to stay back there that night. We hoped into his Tata Sumo for that wonderful 80 KM journey. The journey itself was very thrilling, into thick jungle with slushy roads, crossing rivers that were flowing almost to their brim. Lakes, waterfalls and what not. Everything was in perfect harmony with nature. We passed by many local people carrying loads of fire wood and happily singing in chorus. Crackle of laughter from the tribal girls. Everything was so exotic that I thought

 “If a man does not keep pace with nature, perhaps, it is because he hears a different drummer, the commercial type.”

We settled down in front of his palatial house with a huge fenced compound. Two well fed Dalmatians, which looked very sincere and obedient. They were there to guard their property at any cost. By the look on their faces I could make out that they would not tolerate any nonsense to their property, which is their mother land. “This is Khej and the other is Beedi” he said. “We have another German shepherd named Ann, it is quite old and will remain in the back yard.”

 It was getting dark and he just brought out a Jonny Walker Platinum, when we heard a rumble. I turned to see that about a dozen cows and equal number of buffalos just quietly walk in to the compound. “They are my family” he said. There was no one, either leading them or driving them from behind. They just went to their places and quietly stood as if they were born to do nothing else. I felt it strange but did not mention it my friend.

“Ramu, Ramu” he called into the house.

“Ramu went home early, he is not well” a lady’s voice from inside the house.

“Darn it, I will have to tie up all these myself” my friend was annoyed, more because it was detraction from a wonderful topic we were discussing.

“Excuse me for a while” he pleaded and left to harness his ‘family’.

I was watching him with great interest, wanted to see how good he was at it.

My friend just went to one of the huge buffalos and put his hand around its neck and made a gesture as if he was tying it up. Actually he did not, but was just pretending. He repeated the same act with each and every animal. It looked like one of those Charlie Chaplin’s silent movies. Washed his hands in the open tank and came back to me.

I felt it funny, was he trying to fool me?

“What is that you did?” I asked half laughing.

He just smiled and said “Just see”

We fell back into our discussion and drinks. Our discussion centered on present day politics, corruption and mainly around the ‘Fight against Corruption’ He had his views and I had mine. But we had a ball of a time, with actual nature around us. The bright moon, the rumbling clouds, the gusty wind, made it an exotic evening. It was very late in the night and slowly, the Jonny Walker was taking over us and so, we decided to call it a day.

Suddenly, Khej and Beedi sprang to their feet, their ears straight up, sniffing the air around and almost in unison started to bark and ran towards the gate. Many stray dogs joined in the barking. It was sudden explosion of commotion. The dogs were running helter-skelter barking away to glory. Ann the German shepherd also joined them. There was utter chaos. A cloud of dust rose from the commotion of the dogs.

“Must be a bear or a wolf” my friend said and to reassure me “it is not a tiger, I can smell a tiger from a mile” he said and rushed inside and came out with a huge double barrel gun. He too ran towards the gate into the darkness.

I stayed put at my place, I was not familiar with rules of the game and so decided not to interfere. In all the chaos and confusion I found the cattle absolutely unmoved. They were happily cud-chewing as if nothing can happen to them. But do they realize that it is for them that the intruder had come to kill. But the cattle did not move an inch. I thought that it was very strange, but maybe because they are just cattle.

Slowly everything came back to normal. My friend returned. “There was nothing there.” He said.

We decided to go to bed and I had a very sound sleep that night.

It was around 7 O’clock when I woke up. I was served hot piping tea in the front verandah. I was sipping tea and again saw my friend walking towards the cattle shed. I was shocked to see that none of the cattle have moved from their places, even though they were not tied up. I saw in amazement, my friend went to each of the animals and again pretended to un-tie them, by running his hand around their necks and exactly the way he does when he actually un-ties them.

Then each of the animals started to walk out of the shed for a drink of water or grazing.

I was profoundly startled, dumbfounded and flabbergasted.

“What is this magic? I asked.

He laughed out loud. “It is not any magic, you know these cattle, and all their lives are tied up in the evening and untied the next morning.”

“So,” he continued “By just pretending to tie them, they assume that there are tied, they do not even think otherwise.”

“Same is the case when I pretend to untie them” he concluded.

That was an extraordinary lesson I learnt in life. But thinking otherwise is our Indian common-man similar to these cattle.

Now, think, just juxtapose the cattle to our Indian Common-man, my friend to the present day politician and the dogs as the team fighting against corruption and read again. How similar.