Moha and Mrigo- a short story

It was another day in Delhi. The buses screeched through the roads. The air-conditioned tall buildings gave shade to the chai-pan ki dukaan and the hotels. The air-conditioned cars looked miniature amidst the rusty buses.

A bus shook to a halt. A girl in a bright pink kameez and white dupatta boarded down. The little mirrors embroidered to her kameez reflected the vital sun. The bright pink color on her lips and the dark circles around her eyes were so unlike Mrigo. Mrigo had grey lips and his eyes hid behind the shine of the square frames of his spectacles.

Mrigo lighted his cigar with a restless pleasure. He had been in the bus for so long. That he was free now, free to smoke his heart away, was such a delight.

Then Mrigo crossed the main road. He walked in a brisk fashion into a lane. The kirana shops were closing down. Their iron shutters were the colour of the leaves of huge trees behind them. Mrigo looked forward. But he could not stop smiling at the shaggy shadows on the road. The shapeless canopy was a sharp contrast to the square shadows of the shops.

Mrigo turned a corner, threw the cigarette butt away, stepped on it to extinguish the spark, and seated himself on a bench. There were humans, people he knew. “Curry chawal bhai?”, asked a familiar shrill voice. Mrigo squinted to look at the owner of this voice. She had emerged from dark draped in a red saree. Mrigo was about to nod when he smelled black pepper and garlic. Suddenly, the anosmic dark room turned aromatic. It overpowered him to say, “Mutton rice, behen”. “Meat is raw now!”, answered a young lad.

The woman glanced at the soot-bottomed aluminum pot and coughed with one end of her red sari in one hand and a bowl of onion rings in another. “It will cook soon”, she said with conviction and asked the lad to offer Mrigo some water.

Mrigo did not mind waiting for three soft melted mutton pieces and two huge half-cut potatoes half-drowned in red aromatic gravy. He began to stare around. All the shops and doors of houses had closed down. Two goats strayed around. Mrigo felt a sudden wave of joy and a pang of sorrow. He vaguely noticed the lad tossing a glass of water before him and turning away.

A Mrigo with small limbs hit Moha between his horns. Moha came rushing at Mrigo like a bull. Mrigo grasped the steel-like curved tips of Moha’s horns with both hands. Moha pushed further and Mrigo pushed him back by horns. Then Mrigo let go of his horns and Moha went silent. Mrigo made a heavy pat between her horns once again. And again and the summer noon was for them alone. When the other villagers went for a siesta after lunch, the Sun-god smiled at the two lads- Moha and Mrigo. And the canopy of lush green leaves gave them shade.

Then the Sun god would reach the horizon and bid farewell to the two lads. The onlookers would smile at this friendship. Mrigo would shout, “Moha… Moha… Moha”. Moha would respond with bleats.

Then the only source of light would be the stars on a new moon night. Mrigo could see only Moha’s yellow eyes and his black body would camouflage in the dark.

Krishna, why did you create eyes? Eyes help to see the horrible but eyes are much more than that. Eyes communicate love and speak when speech fails us. Only if Moha would have no eyes then Mrigo would never know how much his black goat friend loved him. Mrigo would never feel how much Moha was in pain when they castrated the male beast. Mrigo would never have cried so bitterly when Moha could not fight him day after day after being castrated. Mrigo would not see Moha bleeding for being the way you had created him, Krishna.

In the world of power, innocence is the weakest force, love is its unpleasant side effect. Everyone has to fall somewhere in the hierarchy of power and little did Mrigo know that Moha fell in its lowermost rung. So they served the delectable meat of Moha that Mrigo refused to accept. So they had never stopped Mrigo from befriending Moha because that did not affect the hierarchy of anyone. So, Mrigo did not complain as a mid-aged man against corruption or consumerism. This is the way they raised him to be and this is the way he had become. Then why did Mrigo pay for the mutton rice but leave without tasting it?