Saints Play Cricket

Saints Play Cricket



Sitting amongst prostrated angels and distractive huris, ‘TheNothing’ was pondering about the occurrences in his ‘dream world’; a world that was purely fantastical and make-believe sort of. He was the author and this ‘dream world’ was his book where characters died and were born; where accidents happened and miracles occurred; some characters became famous and some were looked down upon with neglect; this was the place where passions erupted and anger exalted; love was made and war was tailored and peace often discussed but never given; and most importantly in this place itself the characters speculated about the author of their world. All of these characters were uniquely imagined and brilliantly portrayed resulting in an amazing tribute to the divine Gallery of art; in fact it was a highly believable fiction but nonetheless it was a fiction only. This well-written and much praised ‘world’ rotated in its position in one of the orbits of the Gallery which surprisingly was situated in a vacuum.

Paradoxically, the characters of this epic talked about their author in their own ways and ended up strangling each other’s throat and choking to death. One character had to die to give place to another – that was the only way to satisfy the hunger of this particular author’s hyperactive imagination. And if anybody was to be blamed for the choking, strangling, biting, raping, swearing, nuclear-ing, it would definitely be the author. Had he not imagined and written it that way, the characters would end up in a fairy tale plot with a happy ever after. But this author was a crooked person who wanted strife and hatred marring his pages and gladness, good and truth to dwell in short paragraphs.

Poor, poor characters! One cannot but lament for their misfortune of being written by an author who suffers from delusions and has ended up having more than two alter-egos among which one ego has a hundred and one different names. Hell, he even developed an ‘anti-TheNothing’ ego which defied all the other egos and it was preached by ‘TheNothing’s prophetic characters that this was the greatest villain and spoiler for all dwellers of the dream world. It was taught that this villain would taint the good characters and avenge its banishment from the sweet garden of pleasure. But that’s another story.

Under the rule of such a psychopath the characters are bound to be unruly; there can be nothing but surety about that.

***

In a land far, far and far away from Arabia, the inhabitants were running zigzag, fuzzy lives; the fuzziness and the waywardness of these people had gotten so out of hand that their economy, politics, psychology, commerce and every other ‘–logies’ and theories were failing; ignorance was giving way to the reign of chaos and strict Darwinism, that is, only the fittest shall survive. It was this difficult puzzle that ‘TheNothing’ was pondering upon. The problem that he had designed and erected was consuming his own wits and he worried that soon his imagination would dull down to dust if he exercised his brain so much to keep this rough kingdom running. Thus, for the first time, after thinking for thousands of light-years he came to a decision and took a bold step of doing what he never did before.

The box architecture mimicking ‘The shrine in the sand’ was situated in the heart of this city; the only difference being the colour. The followers of ‘TheNothing’ went to this mock-heroic temple to worship their creator in holidays. On a working day it would be relatively empty, and on such a day emerged ten saints on the streets of this sick city.

Excuse me, did you misunderstand the fact? They didn’t emerge out of the temple; they emerged from their houses, as it happened with every preacher of past ages. These shirt-pant wearing saints claimed they knew the truth and had mastered the ways of curing this city. The same group of men, who had been watching BayWatch on TV and hurting young girls in a bad way, was now a packet of saints; they proclaimed their innocence and the usual story that they had attained enlightenment. Everything they had done before the enlightenment was now a past never to be narrated again and if there was any brave storyteller then he would definitely be buried with a Banson Pack to last him in hell. They were sad for one reason, they couldn’t call themselves the last prophets, but ‘saint’ is as good a word as ‘prophet’; except for the letters nothing is different – by meaning both are arrogant dreamers.

Every other body in the country was ignorant about their genesis, in fact they were illegitimate; the author in a hurry had skipped some chapters and ended up creating these ten characters without any genealogy. It didn’t matter; the general innocent characters loved illegitimate self-proclaimed saints; their own author being one to proclaim that he had no father nor mother nor a family tree or a childhood.
Was He afraid of digging His past? Or was He tired of it? Tired in the sense that once upon a time, he went on mining deeper, only to find that there was always something behind what he found. So maybe, one day he just called it a stop and threw down his shovel and declared that he was the first of everything and nothing had preceded Him. May be he knew, if he didn’t conjure up this formula that ‘at some point something must have come from nothing’ (where ‘nothing’ is a pun), his author profile would remain incomplete forever and more importantly when would he write if he was to excavate his past, and not finish his profile quickly? So he too in a way was illegitimate with no knowledge of his roots and it was he who hypocritically made himself the root of all his characters.

***


‘TheNothing’ had a passion for reasoning like true scholars; needless to say that he was the father of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and even Ibn Sina. And just like an individual of logic and reason, he never forgot to establish a thread of reasoning for what was done in his imaginary world.

A plump faced, pink lipped she-pig with fluffy hair and a big-mouth, bespectacled tigress, were the rulers of this country. They never missed a chance to pinch and poke each other. And it was their unreasonable gossips and foolish feuds that formed the base for these saints to appear. So these ten saints hit the road in Toyota LX car blowing ‘folk’ music; they were heading for the government offices to take up their posts. In order to bring about changes in the people, miracles were not enough. Touching somebody and making their sickness vanish like a magician’s rabbit would be an extremely exhaustive job because everybody was tainted with disease and everybody meant trillions in this country. Moreover, there would be probable chances of diseases being transferred to the saint’s body itself. Uh, who would take all that risk? It is better to sit behind a political desk, on a government chair and issue an order to give out free medicines to the diseased. As for the executioners, it was just another order to hardly care for. A trillion people can’t be disease free; they can only take care of a handful which included mostly their relatives. Anticipating less work, more food the ten saints drove till they reached their desired offices. Food, money, luxury – every saint in the group warned the mob about the evils in these, while they bathed in Persian food, American money and Bangladeshi luxury. Which prophet was not poor? Which prophet’s dream of a better life didn’t match with the descriptions of heaven? Utopia was their vision of heaven where milk ran in streams and pleasure coves would be many. Hark, let’s not discuss heavens, it’ll allure you to nothingness – one of the biggest traps set by ‘TheNothing’ to bring an end to his characters.

Coming back to the country and precisely speaking, the arrival of these monks, who will buy Ferraris later on, was the direct result of the snake-mongoose quarrel between the two queens of cricket who had been introduced before except that in a different metaphor, in this battle the tigress queen with the serpent tongue had won and summoned these saints out of ‘TheNothing’s imagination. Once they took their irrespective seats, the country was becoming healthier but only apparently, the actuality was very different.

They issued certain orders that could only be acceptable to a foolish fool. All offices, markets, shops and everything that was business were supposed to close down at an early hour. Even then residential areas would suffer from black-outs for at least two hours each day and the unit price of electricity for the rest of the twenty two hours was increased cruelly. Now that was just official, unofficially some residential areas suffered for more than four hours. And there were even routined days when particular places would receive no electricity. Along with electricity, the price of gas, water, oil also touched the Himalayan peaks. Speaking of Himalaya, had the clam Buddist monks been present in the country, even they would be moved to hunger strikes by this height of stupidity.

With so much of spending there was no field of earning for the citizens. The woman who wanted to bag a little more money by working extra hours had no chance to do so, except for giving pleasant time to her boss in the absence of electricity. Even then it would be steamy, sweaty and uncomfortable. Moreover, bosses had become very cautious about taking a shake from employees because of that horribly prying association called ‘Badness Domon Commission’, the employees of which had it in their duty to breach the privacy of others and still call themselves the soldiers of democracy, liberty and enfranchisement.

Not that they were totally bad but that they were minimally good – was agitating for some to know. They caught tricksters – yes agreed. They caught runaway prisoners – yes agreed. They caught murderers – yes agreed.

But who would answer the other questions. They caught helpless farmers – can’t deny. They caught poor workers – can’t deny. They worked with partiality for the Saints – can’t deny.

They demanded papers of income, expenditure and properties from honourable men and women (‘honourable’ in the way Antony used it). Who was to check the ever-growing wealth of the ten saints; the same saints who were sitting under air-conditioners polluting the atmosphere when the whole city plunged into darkness; the same saints spraying expensive perfumes and wearing Raymond shirts; the same saints who were becoming heavy in the bottom day by day and still enjoying BayWatch with their families; the same saints who ate marionette beef steaks with bread and wine when their followers cooked cabbage soups because the prices were in extremities; the same saint who drove in cool cars when their people were facing traffic jams. Of course, they had the worry of a whole kingdom on their mind but then they also had the privilege of swallowing sleeping pills. What about the woman who was dying of Hepatitis in her shack, coughing the whole night and day?

Suddenly the tigress appeared on television screen criticizing the saints’ policies and the she-pig was now nodding in agreement with the tigress. Realizing that their cathedral of faith, tower of innocence, and weapon of truth would crumble under the venomous words of the serpentine tigress and the side-support of the strong-headed pig, they hatched a plan.

In order to overthrow the tigress and the pig, they should be brought to an amphitheater and challenged there. When they lose, let it be publicly seen and heard and felt. Such was the saints’ planning and soon invitations of a cricket tournament were sent to the two respected animals. When they reached the arena the next day, it was booming with the noises of people – some girls crying for lollipops, men whistling at chicks and so on and so forth. On an empty ground the tigress and the pig entered, hand in hand, stark naked as animals always are without the slightest bit of shame. Then came the ten saints suited with armour, furnished with balls – hard crocket balls in order to play cricket. The two helpless creatures were given bats, something they had never handled before, something that was alien to them, something that had given them pleasure but didn’t belong to them, literally and figuratively. They had never played cricket before and both possessed golf-ball hollows physically, but handling a BAT – wow, a new experience for them. Now they had the chance to move a bat anyway they wanted and shove it in wherever they wished. The pig selfishly fantasized about her orgasms and the tigress fumed, imagining the bat going up the cunt of the head saint.

In no time the bowler saint took his stance, then ran and in a matter of few seconds the ball was in the air and before the pig could put her bat forward, there came a shout from the audience and everybody turned towards the TV screen crowning the field. A small pig was caged and being taken to the zoo by some law enforcers. “Son”, shrieked the she-pig holding the bat, and then she ran, howling in desperation. When the audience looked back at the ground, they saw one of the saints pushing the stumps with the ball in his hand. The umpire raised his finger; it was a run-out.

The next ball had to be stronger, because the tigress had no such drawbacks – her tiger was watching her from house and her cub was in a faraway jungle. The bowler took a frightening stance near the rope that marked the last boundary – the boundary which when crossed gives the batsman a score of four. He ran from there… after thirty seconds he threw his ball in an expression which accompanies Herculean ejaculation. His face was glistening with sweat beads and his eyes were determined, but the ball moved slowly as if the air was a viscous liquid and it had to cut through. During the run his legs had taken away all the strength that his hand held. The tigress saw the ball, fixed her eyes on it and clawed into the bat. She was confident that the ball would leave the stadium after being touched by her bat. She moved two steps forward just like the way she catches a deer, but then the saints were cleverer. A sudden push from the back was all it took to make her lose her balance. The ball touched the bat at an awkward angle and flew high into the air. The wicket-keeper caught it and the umpire smiled; he had been sold out already; it was a catch out.

Avoiding all the jeers and jokes, she left the field. The tide had turned, now the majority believed that the saints were a stronger team to support than the animals. How they won wasn’t a question worth debating. Might is right. Sword is definitely mightier than pen.

After two days when the sun rose colouring the sky in misty red, the tigress was shackled by ten thousand footmen and put behind bars in the National Zoo. The media jumped gleefully realizing that this day they would make the biggest business for the slightest glimpse of the grounded tigress. The tigress not only gave them a glimpse but also a smile and a hand wave. Now, that was enough to sell the newspapers of the day and print even more. It was also sufficient to send a majority group of fickle minded people to a dilemma of insecurity including the she-boar.
The saints in sainthood smoked hookahs and drank saki celebrating the end of an upheaval. But it was only the beginning of another action-packed chapter by ‘TheNothing’.

***

The saints argued with the general masses on behalf of a group of lawyers who couldn’t even prove the allegations against the tigress whereas the fifty lawyers fighting for the tigress had proved their reasons for unleashing her. The saints blamed her for being bribed by fresh goat-meat and that too, three tonnes of raw meat. But isn’t it natural that a tigress shall eat meat and a pig ‘thrown-outs’ of a farm? Much like the way, the saints were consuming tonnes of wine now, the tigress and the pig had enjoyed their time. What can be wrong with that, but blessed be the author who had to write his book that way.

The scholars from the neighbourhood decided to call for a silent non-cooperation movement, but they were threatened – by whom? None knew and the saints acted as if they knew nothing about it.

All that and more was happening in this land which was… which was… dream or reality? – Reality for its dwellers and dream for its author. And with each step the characters were moving towards anarchy even though seemingly their steps were right; it’s not their fault; the author is blamable. Face it, saints or no saints the author is suffering and so will the characters of his book.

This gradual decline shall continue unless all the egos of the author converge and form one whole self and he writes a book afresh, not repeating all the errors he had committed earlier. But until that time, I’ll be the storyteller of his written tales, sitting behind the veil, peeping at his work and gorging out all that I see.

***


Epilogue

If you don’t love somebody, it doesn’t mean you hate him; if you are not a friend to somebody, it doesn’t mean you are enemy to him; if you don’t care for somebody, it doesn’t mean you neglect him – there is always a middle ground. If this land is not India’s, it doesn’t mean it is Bangladesh’s; there is a ‘no man’s land’ in between.
So be warned, don’t believe or disbelieve me – take the middle path; don’t question about dream or reality… just be the spectator sitting on the verge of your seat.