Lucky Cat

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.

“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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