Among the six juries the most garrulous was Sambhu. Sambhu was a little childish in his ways, though he was the oldest one among the six friends who were all indispensable to one another despite many differences from different perspectives from social belonging to taste, from education to, of course, finance. However, it was amply time-tested that they shall continue to remain friends, whatever it took. At Sambhu’s back everyone discussed in the locality that due to his too candid nature, his least intention to apply diplomacy and perpetual innocence, he could not make his life the way it should have been.
Naturally during the discussion on what to do with the dog, Sambhu put it in the simplest of manner, straight away, having no sign of emotion on his face.
- Kill him. There is no other choice.
Keshto remarked, with an expression of outraged anger turned into apt replication and mimicry,
- Kill him….Is it that easy dude?
- Why not? Don’t pretend to be a saint.
- What… why?
Raghu tried to soothe Sambhu,
- Well, even if we ARE going to kill him, and what is to do there with this ‘saint’ thing?
- Don’t just budge and don’t let me open my mouth to all.
- Why?... What has Keshto done?
Asked Tulu
- Ehhh….No, I need not tell you here, because you won’t believe me.
Nadu said,
- Tell us, Sam, I’ll treat you to a Gold Flake king size.
- No, I am ok with my bidis. And you are a liar. Last time you made me steal the ripe mangoes from the Mukhujje House and never treated the biriyani you had promised me.
Kamal remarked,
- Well, let it go Samu, I’ll keep his promise this time for him…Just tell us what has Keshto done?
With the gradual and steady swells of Sambhu’s eyeballs everyone straightened their spines to welcome the blows through Kesho’s story from Sambhu. Everyone knew it would be less to remark on them as ‘arch rivals’. Keshto was smiling at the situation, as if he had done nothing and all his friends would be enthralled to hear an exaggerated and a twisted version of the truth from Sambhu, on whatever he spoke forth. Everyone knew, save Sambhu, that another piece of pure humour was going to be created.
Good creations always need inspirations. The best poker in the team was Kanto. He was very good to catch the right moment to prick the balloon. So he invariably added,
- C’mon Samu, tell us, else your fat belly would puff larger with vaults of secrets of people in it. Well lemme guess…Has Keshto kissed Pompa?
Kanto had mastered the art to scrape the truth out from the most stubborn man on earth who is not ready to speak out what is asked for. Kanto, with his edge of slicing a conversation with blatant lies, apparently inadvertent and wild guess to entrap that very man to blow out the naked truth straight, always won the mind game. To make Samu speak was just a cake walk for him.
- All bull shit. What is kissing to do with killing a dog!!!
- No, I was just thinking that a lover has the guts to do anything because everything is fair in love and war.
This really was the switch to allow the flow of the sludge in a gush from Sambhu.
- No no …It is not all about the girl.
- Then????
- Last day he had been to Maluapara.
- So what…anyone can go there.
- …let me finish it…
- Who is stopping you?
- You….
- Well don’t lie about him. He has done nothing. Anyone has the liberty to visit Maluapara and we all have some friends there too.
- Done nothing!!!! He had beef kebab with paratha. And you say that he has ‘done nothing’!!! Just think that a Hindu is having beef. What would his ancestors think of him?
- What!!! Keshtooooo!!! YOU had BEEF!!!! Shame on you, Keshto!!! We should disown you as friends. Even your ancestors shall do the same. You have forced them to do it with such basic violation.
Kanto delivered this with all the possible nuances possible in the climax of jatra. After taking a deep breath, suddenly he again poked Sambhu,
- Samu are we not going to tell Shyamal Kaku (Keshto’s father) about that?
Kanto tried to raise the effect of the situation with his exceptionally melodramatic expression, again. Everyone laughed. This was crude humour and out of the way. However, Sambhu maintained a seriousness and added,
- We should. And now see, he is hesitating to kill just a mad street dog!!! He bloody has eaten the flesh of a whole ox and now being sentimental unnecessarily. Don’t you kill mosquitos? Don’t you kill hens and cocks? Don’t you kill fishes? Don’t you kill rats and mice and…
- Shut up, else I’ll kill you, now.
said Keshto with frozen and sharp voice that was devoid of any sort of light air. When Keshto used to take a serious stand on anything he was quite good in making the other people around understand that with his abrupt change in the inflection.
Now the fact that the dog needs to be disposed of somehow is not liked by Keshto and everyone else, but Sambhu. Everyone expected that even Sambhu would understand in time when he gets the real reason behind it.
Keshto always maintained, since his childhood, a different equation of relationship with all the local street dogs. He used to feed them all, daily, made a shade for them to rest, collected clothes for them in the winter. And among all the dogs Lokka was his most favourite one. Until a month ago, Lokka was quite like Snowy to Tintin.
So, it was not an easy task to kill Lokka. They had to wrench their hearts out to plan for Lokka’s brutal murder. Everyone was concerned to take care of Lokka when he would be dying.
Keshto said,
- He should not suffer much of pain when he would be killed.
Everyone agreed that pain is inevitable while dying but it should not be sustainable one so that he suffered long just to die.
All started to think of the ways to get rid of Lokka, the most adorable street dog in the locality suddenly turned violent and biting people indiscriminately. Lokka’s crime record in the last fortnight had reached two deaths from hydrophobia, five bite injuries and two motor bike accidents. The injured ones are all bed -ridden and struggling to get back to their normal lives.
One of the bikers, badly injured by Lokka’s guerrilla-style attack from the right side, recollected after he got back his full sense, thankfully. It could have been worse because the accident had caused him injury on his back-head resulting into senselessness and vomiting. Now that the news of his getting back to senses kept all the friends in good spirit. They all went to see the victim in the district hospital. His name was Pratap Maji. He described the incident in verbatim:
- I could hardly control myself and my bike when the dog had attacked me from my right. I pulled my legs up so that it would not be able to reach me to bite me and and in doing so in motion and frenzy, I lost my balance and control and bumped straight into the deep open drain to my left. I don’t remember anything after that.
This is what the twenty-six-year-old boy from the neighbouring locality said. He added that he had a family. He lived with his widowed elder sister and her two year only female child. They both are dependent on him, only. After her husband’s death in an accident this poor lady had been driven away by her in-laws from their home. Pratap and his motorbike are the only resources to do something, earn the livelihood and live on. The motorbike also has suffered heavy injuries, which have the possibility to be healed up by the insurance company.
Such stories are common. Very common with twisting drifts in the middle boiling down to the basic theme of ‘fight to survive’. What is wonderful is that the different routes they take to culminate there are still unique. So very unique to raise our eye-brows, "How is that possible!!!"
And still, what I believe is, even with the recent advent of the Artificial Intelligence, life remains the same with the bottom-line that “Truth is even stranger than fiction.”
The young man’s confession changed something in Keshto. It can be felt but cannot be explained. Suddenly, he, who takes life as it comes, started talking about the deeper things in life,with high philosophical edges, awaiting relative interpretations.
So when it was concluded that Lokka was to be killed shortly, what Keshto said was,
- Only human beings have souls to be recycled into life and what about the dogs?
Sambhu asked,
- Why?
- Because it cannot come back as an apparition to avenge his murder.
Kanto was scared to find Keshto in such a condition.
- Bhai, are you alright? Please, do not be upset, everything will be fine.
- Yes it should be. People lose their children and still live. You know Kanto, what is the most terrible thing in life?
- What?
- To see one’s children suffer.
- It is life. What to do?
- When the child is a human one, one has to endure it. But in the world of the animals, the weak ones, and the diseased ones have only one choice.
- What is it?
- To die. Their parents themselves kill the weaker ones.
- What do you wanna say, man!
- Nothing.
The next morning the friends were all together like every other day. Keshto was feeding the dogs a little far away and fondling their manes. Lokka appeared from nowhere. Seeing Lokka, we all secured ourselves so that he could not attack us. Keshto pretended that as if he had not seen Lokka and kept on cuddling the other dogs. Lokka, with much of jealousy, could not stand it. He went near Keshto to have the best share of Keshto’s care. Keshto ardently took Lokka out of the litter of matured dogs behaving like pups. Keshto always carried a solid log of wood used as a door hatch in old days while feeding the dogs. Lokka was eating from Keshto’s own hands and as he was rubbing Lokka’s neck with the other hand. All could see from a distance that Keshto was nodding his head and talking to himself and the dog both. Lokka was cooing with such love from Keshto as the later continued feeding and rubbing him on his shoulders and along his neck. The log of wood was lying beside the right hand of Keshto.
In a flash of a moment Keshto picked the log up, one sudden heavy blow right in the middle of Lokka’s head, out of nowhere. The mad dog was dead in an instance. The log hit Lokka hard, as he was being fed by Keshto, like a thunder. It ripped Lokka’s brain apart with inside out. The sight was unbearable and beyond any description. We all shut our eyes with such unexpected fatal and gory strike. The dog instantly died with no chance to cry even. We were dumbstruck.
Keshto waved his murder weapon from a distance to us, and shouted as a fallen hero in state of shock.
- This is what is called painless death…painless death. Yah!!!….Painless…absolutely painless.
And for the first time in their lives the bosom friends saw their bravest friend Keshto break down into crying.
They had all done many bad things together, learnt even worse things together. Through learning the darker sides of life, they found out what it takes to be good human beings, above all and everything. They believed that a drunken person is the most truthful one. They believed that the prostitutes are the most honest human beings, by profession.
But this was new, altogether. Unexpectedly new and deeply moving. Through the death of just a mad street dog, they learnt for the first time, what ‘life’ is like, once more, with an added heavy layer.
They all rushed to Keshto. Lokka laid beside Keshto’s drooping figure like a white stuffed dog on a scarlet carpet. Without a word, all pulled him up from his fallen state. He was smudged in drops of blood. Silently, they grabbed everyone else tight in their arms, smelling of unwashed clothes and sweat. All cried together, sitting in a circle, starved, until it was dark. No word came off them.
Kanto managed a jute sack from his factory. Kamal managed a spade. Tulu and Nadu, in the middle of the night drove a tricycle van to bury the corpse of their beloved Lokka somewhere beside the train line. Keshto withdrew himself from everything. And Sambhu, in fear, never came out of his house for the next few days, until Keshto went to his home and sought his presence. He came out and broke down into crying straight on Keshto’s feet.
- Forgive me Keshto…It was my idea.
- Your idea was brilliant bro and we all did it seamlessly. Get up man!!! Lokka did not suffer much, as you had told us. I did take good care of that, no?
Keshto’s vision was diffused with the liquid, that keeps our eyelids shutterring up and down with perfect agility, popularly known as ‘tears’, as he was torn apart, from within.
With the news going viral that Lokka was no more, though not the way he was driven to escape from the earth, the entire neighbourhood was contended with a deep sigh of relief.
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