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Fiction
Little Raju
was sad, very sad. Tiny drops of iridescent tears clung to his plump, little
cheeks like pearly dewdrops on a shimmering leaf edge yet to be kissed by the
rising sun. His cute little cat, prettier than Teddy Bear and naughtier than
Jerry’s Tom was killed by a speeding car. Raju had named him Tom. Raju was Tom’s
Jerry. No, Tom was Raju’s Jerry, clever and cunning and always on the run.
Until a speeding car ran over him.
Until a speeding car ran over him.
“Tom’s a lucky
cat,” grandma said wiping away the pearly drops from Raju’s cheeks.
Grandma always
said that. Raju believed her too. Until now. Now that Tom is dead, grandma is
wrong. Still she said, “Tom’s a lucky cat.”
“Tom’s a dead
cat,” Raju protested.
“He died
young,” grandma said, “only lucky cats die young.”
Tom was a
little kitten that was roaming outside the gate when Raju returned home from
school one afternoon. Little kitten.
Cute little kitten with golden brown patches on his snow white body. With a
golden brown tail that stood high like a mast. Raju picked him up and walked
home.
“Where did you
get that creature?” Mama hollered as soon as she saw the kitten.
“Lucky cat,”
grandma said.
Grandma
convinced Mama to let Raju keep the pet. “Children grow up like normal people
better with animals.”
Papa smiled
when he heard that.
Papa and Raju
competed with each other to feed Tom milk and fish. “Lucky cat,” grandma said.
“Not every cat
gets so much fish and milk,” she said one day when Raju asked her why she
always said “Lucky cat”. And so much petting and pampering.
In his
previous birth Tom must have been a good person, grandma said one day. Good
persons die and go to heaven. They are not reborn. But this Tom of yours must
have had a tragic flaw.
“What is tra…,
trash…, flow?” Raju asked.
“Like the little
worm inside a fruit,” grandma said. Something lying deep within. Not seen from
outside. Not part of the fruit, yet corroding the fruit slowly. Something that
is not you and yet is inside you inescapably. It makes the mightiest person
fall like a weakling. And when a mighty man falls, even if the fall is not much
of a fall, the fall becomes the man. That’s the tragedy of great persons. They
can’t afford to fall. Even a small fall takes heaven away from them. And so the
person has to be reborn, maybe as a cat like Tom, petted and pampered until his
real destiny takes away everything, everything including the pampering here and
the fall of the previous birth.
Raju peered
into grandma’s distant eyes. She was not looking at him now as she spoke all
those words. It was as if she was not here with him, she was there somewhere,
far away, among the invisible stars beyond the blue sky. It was as if she
longed to be there, far away, with the invisible stars beyond the blue sky.
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