Poop and Butter

Fiction

Even after years of observation and contemplation Derry could not determine which side of the bread was to be buttered. The problem started when he was a little boy. Little Derry sat looking at the bread in one hand, holding the butter on the knife in the other, and wondering why he could not apply the butter on the other side.

“Okay, then apply it on the other side,” his mother told him with losing patience. Then Derry would wonder why the other side. Initially mother thought it was just a childish game. When it went on endlessly, she decided to take the boy to the parish priest for counselling and blessing.

“Both sides are created by the same God and hence equally holy,” Reverend Father Nicholas counselled little Derry.

“I thought the baker created the bread,” Derry said solemnly. He looked like Immanuel Kant saying, “I want to stop philosophising, but I Kant.” Rev Nicholas was offended by the boy’s solemnity. The priest was used to everybody saying Amen to whatever he said. Here was a kid questioning the limits of God’s creativity. “I don’t know why the Lord wanted children to go to Him,” said the priest as he crossed himself.

The epistemological metanarrative of the bread’s ontic dualism starts up a cosmic dance of neurones in Derry’s brain even today when he is in his late twenties and doing research on a COVID vaccine along with many experts who are biostatisticians, microbiologists, molecular biologists, pathologists, bacteriologists, virologists and a whole galaxy of researchers.  

There is a sense of urgency about this particular research quite unlike others. Usually all great research discoveries are made by mistake and the greater the funding, the longer it takes to make the mistake. The COVID vaccine research is different. It has the same urgency of Xi Jinping poaching on international borders like a congenital kleptomaniac and that of Pakistan acting like an impish boy who pricks the bum of a fighter with a pin stealthily while the duel is going on in a crowded street. There is an equally intense sense of urgency in the words of Derry’s own leaders who take a flight to a border area just to deliver a jingoistic speech on a camera.

Urgency everywhere. There is urgency in the prime-time TV debates. There is urgency in the adverts that creep into those debates. Smoking Kills, says an advert to COVID patients who are not sure of their tomorrow.

Tomorrow is becoming uncertain for too many people. The numbers rise every evening on the TV screens. Fourteen million urgencies in the world. 600,000 final farewells.

Derry’s government has other urgencies too. “BJP’s Maharashtra unit has raised 500 crore rupees to topple Ashok Gehlot government,” says the news headline on the TV. “Varavara Rao may have dementia,” says another headline. Dalit couple swallows pesticide as cops destroy their crops. The ever-rising prices of petrol and diesel have ceased to be news anymore. PM Cares Fund is not auditable. Who cares? As long as we have jingoism shouted loud from the nation’s borders, what does anything else matter? Patriotism is our birth right. Give me blood and I will give you patriotism. Jingoism, at least. Slogans, for certain.

Which side of the bread to butter? The question arose again in Derry’s mind like an eternal conundrum. Both sides are unholy. The baker is unholy. Killers are calling themselves Yogis today!

Who has messed it up all like this? So irredeemably? Doesn’t every politician know Burke’s Rule: Never create a problem for which you don’t have an answer?

Derry is standing outside his research lab, in the backyard, under a gulmohar with flame-red flowers. He needed a fag. Smoking Kills.

“Mitron,” a TV was audible from a nearby window. “In the fight against COVID, India has extended assistance to 150 countries,” the voice boomed triumphantly. Jingoism is going beyond national borders. Learn from us, China and Pakistan.

A sparrow drops its poop from the gulmohar and it falls right on Derry’s cigarette extinguishing it. Not only fart, but also poop! Derry is amused. And then voila! He is enlightened. Like the Buddha under the bodhi. Like Newton under the apple. He knows it. He knows who is behind it all. Behind it all. But it’s no use. It’s too late to do anything. Except go back to the research.

PS. This story was provoked into existence by the latest Indispire prompt: Write a short story that starts or ends with- "It was too late to do anything when I found out who was behind it." #shortstory