Skip to main content

Gau Rakshak

Fiction

Love Kumar had no clear idea of what he was going to do with his life as he stepped out of the jail having completed the term for the rape he had committed seven years ago.  He had met all sorts of people in the jail, like politicians and godmen.  Until he met them in jail serving terms for crimes ranging from rape to murder, Love Kumar had thought that crime was the prerogative of the undeserving poor like himself.

He had not wanted to commit the crime.  Life made him do it.  That’s how he saw it at least.  Life makes the undeserving poor do all sorts of things in order to get on in the world ruled by the deserving affluent.  Politicians, for example.  People give them the right to swindle.  His own MLA had a huge body of thugs and goons who would do anything for their leader.  That is in addition to the official security provided to the politician by the State.  And the people voted him again and again to power.

Love Kumar used to stand in awe when such political leaders passed by escorted by a retinue of body guards, official as well as unofficial.  It was a similar awe that overwhelmed him when he saw Lalita.  He was working at a construction site.  Lalita was another worker.  She was young and exceptionally pretty.  Such prettiness does not belong to the working class.  So when Love Kumar felt drawn to Lalita it was in fact the undeserving poor’s aspiration to reach beyond his class.  That is how life is.  It makes you want to move out of your class to the next one in the social hierarchy.

Love Kumar ogled Laita whenever she passed by with the bricks on her head.  Once he saw her putting down the bricks and rushing somewhere.  Curiosity made him follow her.  There was a child, a year or so old, sitting in the shade of a tree.  There was a cloth chain binding him by the waist to the tree.  Lalita picked him up, sat down under the tree, unbuttoned her shirt and popped one of her breasts into the child’s mouth. 

“He is constructing this building,” Lalita said later when Love Kumar managed to speak to her.  “It is his hunger that is constructing this building.”  She patted the child on its back.

Love Kumar was consumed by a hunger.  The sight of Lalita’s breast had whetted that hunger beyond control. 

The Court could not understand that hunger.  It sentenced Love Kumar to a seven year-term.  The deserving rich don’t understand the hungers of the undeserving poor, Love Kumar knew.

Encountering politicians and godmen in the jail was an unexpected experience, however.  It made Love Kumar think that the line between the undeserving poor like himself and the deserving rich like the politicians and godmen is a very thin one.

There was this man in jail whom everyone addressed as Guruji.  They said he was a godman.  One day he raped one of his devotees, a young woman who had sought his blessings in order to help her overcome her problems.  Guruji asked her to meet him alone.  He made her drink something and she was dazed.  When she woke up from her spiritual daze she realised with horror that the Guruji had added one more problem for her: she was pregnant with his child.

Love Kumar had not deceived Lalita, however.  He told her that he felt ineluctably drawn to her.  Just once, that’s all I’m begging from you, he pleaded with her.  She told him point-blank, Bhaad mein jao. He couldn’t take that from another undeserving poor.  So he gave it to her.  She deserved that.

Guruji and Netaji all have their special places even in jail.  They deserve that.  They belong to a different class, Love Kumar knew.  He longed to reach that class as he walked on having got his freedom from the prison.

It was then he saw a group of young men stopping a truck carrying cows.  Love Kumar stood to watch.  He had heard from Netaji in jail that gau raksha was the latest fad in the country.

The young men dragged out the people in the truck’s cabin and beat them to death.  Hiding behind a tree, Love Kumar watched as the gau rakshaks divided the cows among themselves.

Enlightenment descended on Love Kumar.  He knew he could change his fortune easily now.  He decided to become a gau rakshak.


Comments

  1. I get the point of your direct, unassuming story, Tomichan. Criminals of all kinds have to be exterminated and the Law alone is entitled to do that. Anyone trying to impose another layer of law over the Adminstrative and Judicial arms of the state should be also sent to jail forthwith. Anyone issuing Fatwa or a religious dictat by any other name and religious origin (Muslim / Hindu / Christian / Jewish / Tribal) should be made to face a firing squad.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Instead kangaroo courts have mushroomed all over the country and enjoy the blessings of the authorities.

      Delete
  2. That feeling of desiring entitlement has led to so many crimes. Although some go unnoticed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Many may go unnoticed today too. But the number of crimes is staggeringly high now, nobody can ignore them anymore.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Joys of Onam and a reflection

Suppose that the whole universe were to be saved and made perfect and happy forever on just one condition: one single soul must suffer, alone, eternally. Would this be acceptable? Philosopher William James asked that in his 1891 book, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life . Please think about it once again and answer the question for yourself. You, as well as others, are going to live a life without a tinge of sorrow. Joyful existence. Life in Paradise. The only condition is that one person will take up all the sorrows of the universe on him-/herself and suffer – alone, eternally. What do you say? James’s answer is a firm no . “Not even a god would be justified in setting up such a scheme,” James asserted, knowing too well how the Bible justified a positive answer to his question. “It is expedient that one man should die for the people, so that the nation can be saved” [John 11:50]. Jesus was that one man in the Biblical vision of redemption. I was reading a Malayalam period...

Are You Sane?

Illustration by Gemini AI A few months back, a clinical psychiatrist asked me whether anyone in my family ever suffered from insanity. “All of us are insane to some degree,” I wanted to tell her. But I didn’t because there was another family member with me. We had taken a youngster of the family for counselling. I had forgotten the above episode until something happened the other day which led me to write last post . The incident that prompted me to write that post brought down an elder of my family from the pedestal on which I had placed him simply because he is a very devout religious person who prays a lot and moves about in the society like the gentlest soul that ever lived in these not-so-gentle terrains. I also think that the severe flu which descended on me that night was partly a product of my disillusionment. The realisation that one’s religion and devotion that guided one for seven decades hadn’t touched one’s heart even a little bit was a rude shock to me. What does re...

Loving God and Hating People

Illustration by Gemini AI There are too many people, including in my extended family. who love God so much that other people have no place in their hearts. God fills their hearts. They go to church or other similar places every day and meet their God. I guess they do. But they return home from the place of worship only to pour out the venom in their hearts on those around them. When I’m vexed by such ‘religious’ people I consult Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov in which there are some characters who are acutely vexed by spiritual questions. Let me leave Ivan Karamazov to himself, as he has been discussed too much already. In Book II, Chapter 4 [ A lady of Little Faith ], a troubled woman comes to Father Zosima, the wise monk, and confesses her spiritual struggle. “I long to love God,” she says. She knows that she cannot love God without loving her fellow human beings, or at least doing some service to them. The truth is, she says, “I cannot bear people. The closer they ...