A Flock of Sheep moving Towards a Cattle-bazaar

A Flock of Sheep moving Towards a Cattle-bazaar

Jagannath, the perfectionist or Jaga, the fastidious he is. This luxury of perfectionism and fastidiousness does not look odd   because he has pocketful of money. He works in a bank and his wife acts as an agent of soap and tooth-paste, produced and marketed by some American business group. This soap will wash off dirt from your soul and make you light. A blue light will emerge out of your soul. Laugh like a jester. Make the world simply a laughing club. It is this Jaga (as known in his locality) i.e. Jagannath (as known in his air-conditioned office) looks for patal, chandramukhi-potato and drum sticks, cultivated without using pesticides. He combs the market for adolescent koi-fish. The world got drowned in sadness when the American Trade Centre collapsed. Jaga too wept pitcher-ful of tears. Food, rich in vitamins and minerals is needed for sustaining this strain of mourning. Jaga or Jagannath knows it very well. His reading table is scattered with several health journals. These journals are daily food for his thought. In his office he has a number of excellent listeners who have been suffering from hyperacidity and look like yellow grass under bricks.

   Now Jaga or Jagannath will go in search of milk. He has been preparing himself, donned with pyjama, Punjabi and rimless speaks. He carries a steel- can in one hand, a newspaper in another. Jagannath opens the front door softly and crosses the well and its cemented platform. A cat jumps down from a crumbling wall and mews. Very soft and significant is this mew. Jagannath remembers Lord Jagannath and whisper:

-       Since yesterday, the tomcat mews now and then, Lord knows what the problem with him is.

Jagannath mutters to himself and marches on towards Bandhgoda along the Sriniketan Road. There’s in Bandhgoda a small cow-shed from which Jagannath likes to collect pure milk. This milk and American protein will make his children as healthy and smiling as the children, watched in advertisement sow on the television. Seeing Jagannath-children   his colleagues will feel inspired to look for pure milk and protein for their own children. This age is an age of togetherness. Teachers, make your group. Bank workers, get together. Cheaters and touts get united. Homos and gays build your union. Jagannath marches on along the Sriniketan Road. He finds a flock of people on the road from a distance. Will he get into unwanted disturbance? Jagannath thinks that a crooked way is better than a straight one. But ultimately he decides to go straight towards the crowd, towards the riddle. To decipher the riddle is also a duty with Jaga and the like-minded people. They look like Sherlock Holmes, Feluda and Kiriti.

   The crowding does not have any grave reason behind it. A brand new duck-back portfolio bag has been found lying on the way side. The bag looks swollen. A crowd of fifty men it is. Some of them are morning-walkers and some of them are market-ward. Each face has been scarred with curiosity and terror. Some pieces of fear and curiosity start falling down from the lips:

-       What does it contain?

-       None confirms that it does not have RDX in it.

-       It may be a bomb or two.

-       The police should be informed.

-       Please, make a call from your mobile phone.

-       Not from my mobile set. Rather make a call from the telephone booth.

              A boyish man, an owner of a tea-stall goes to the nearby telephone booth to make call to inform the police. Research on the possible contents of the bag continues. A dead body is found lying in a ditch at a distance of 50 yards. One identifies it to be the body of Jaga, the beggar. Not of our Jagannath Chakravarty, the bank officer. None knows      Jaga’s surname.  But Jaga has various identities as Jaga, the beggar, Jaga, the thief, Jaga, the pickpocket, Jaga, the rapist. He has achieved many things in life except a ration-card, a voter’s photo identity and a mere thatch roof to put his head in. Unidentified and undefined terror lives between the bag and Jaga’s dead body. Anecdotes of diverse sizes and colours start cropping up their heads. When people are thinking in this direction or that, a cat jumps down from a crumbling wall and gives a call ‘mew’. Is it a she-cat or a tomcat? Before one’s being confirmed, it runs away. It means that its identity remains unexplored.

My dear reader, see how this cat has disturbed our tale’ linear narrative pattern. Let me bring both ends of the thread together for your easy following. This means we want to return to the episode of Jaga, the beggar who does not have any voter’s photo identity card. Jaga had a mother who gave him shelter to his embryo. And it is his mother’s womb which Jaga got the only safe place in the world. He knew nothing about his father. Or it might be that he knew about him. But his knowledge or no-knowledge proves insignificant into us. Jaga’s mother used to work as a domestic assistant in two –three households. None knows what her name was. It is not now any more possible to know it. She too had no ration card and voter’s identity. Her name is written nowhere in the world. Two years she had died. None cremated her body. Jaga was out of Bolpur, the town Jaga was born and brought up. None knew where the boys of the locality took her dead boy and what they did with it. No anecdotes regarding this are available in the wind. The answer is not always blowing in the world.

Counter-reasons follow reasons. Arguments follow arguments. Suddenly the police van reaches. The furore all at once subsided. The police interrogation having started, the crowd starts thinning. Each and every one apprehends that any careless statement may get one into ditch. It is well said that one should better face eighteen tigers than face a policeman. Physical, mental and monetary harassment are unavoidable.

Without wasting a minute the police pick up the bag and Jaga’s dead body of their van. In the police station the bag and the dead body will be post-mortem. The police will analyze if there is any connection between the bag and the dead body. None knows where and how terrorists have cast their nets. The international agenda of removing terrorism from the face of the world will pardon none. Anyone may be a terrorist. Those who are not with us are with the terrorist and against peace.

The van starts moving towards the police station. Ho, what a good luck for Jaga’s body. After a short while, his body will be vivisected. The highly sophisticated instruments, the gifts of the new science will touch and care his body. Jaga’s body will realize to what extent the new science and technology have advanced. One from the crowd quips: “Lucky guy. His mother did not get cremated. And he is lucky to be carried to the morgue in the police van.

Today is Saturday. Today is a day of Illambazar’s cattle market. A cattle broker drives a flock of sheep towards the market-place along the road. Small comments, apprehensions and fun-making get lost in the chorus of the sheep-hooves. Our Jaga, the perfectionist too continues marching towards the cow-shed in search of fresh and pure milk. Frothy and pure milk is the only object he aspires.

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