A buffalo that tuned a Mausiji

 

Some people have such incorruptible, indomitable sense of discipline that they would literally make it a credo of their life to avoid any kind of debasement and deformity to the laboriously polished veneer on their persona. Tau Karan Singh had such a disciplined, well ordered and perfectly set-up life off duty that even the duty hours in uniform as an army man stood out a liberal spree of pleasantries and fun. He maintained his well-disciplined tempo, while his peers appeared simply limping and hobbling on the path like errant brats. Any comparison was out of cards.

After retirement, and his routine of thought, action, speech and behavior still more firmly etched in the sacred book of a well-spelt, managed life, he slightly lost the legendary equanimity of mind only in one instance. The stubborn buffalo, ever caught in the ignoble excrescence of indiscipline in its dull brain, tested his patience, the main bulwark of his disciplined life, which stood unruffled even during wars.

Well, there is a pleasanter side to even very grim affairs. Talk to any soldier who has been stationed in Ladhak, he will talk of snows and multi-pronged sorrows in the barren desert. But mention Ladhak to Tauji and an august, illustrious and vivifying smile would surface on his gentle features. It was a very soft smile but you could feel its subterranean sprawl, its vastness in his soul. You just could feel it. The ravishing immensity of those memories would take him in its soft embrace. The precipitous slopes and climatic malignity lost their meaning. You could see that his soul was dancing in inexorable joviality with some fond memories. He would smile and have a lungful of tented kitchen warmth and aroma. ‘Well, the butter toast, fruit jam and tea in the snows tasted far better than anything I have ever eaten in my life!’ he would recall the taste in his mouth, as if lost in a dream, his soul sorteying on sublime promenades in those high barren mountains.

Coming back to the buffalo, she would go into the farthest recesses of the village pond, forcing the ex-soldier to wade his way across the bunch-grass and pinching shrubbery lest she escaped into the countryside for an undisciplined furlough. Both of them would return after a few hours. Her horns adorned with muddy clumps of grasses, promiscuous signs of her indiscipline and revelry.

Tauji, who would have thought hundred times before reprimanding even a Chinese or Paki soldier if they crossed the border inadvertently, finally lost his patience and would chastise the disorderly beast. ‘Sali!’ he would mutter as he gave it a tiny rap on its haunches. This exclamation turned into a regular affair, given the buffalo’s freewheeling indiscipline, so much so that the villagers started to address the buffalo as his son’s Mausiji.