Sher ka bachha

 

A few weeks back, 65-year-old Randhir, a hardworking farmer, happily shared the exploits of his two-year-old grandson. The kid is surely large for his years. ‘He shakes up and bashes all the children including four-year-olds,’ he shares the proud, panoramic characterization of the upholder of his pedigree. ‘He is strong, I can see,’ the grandfather is already mulling over his future as a famous wrestler.

The kid must have felt the encouraging vibes emanating from his grandfather. But the proud grandpa should know that kids basically hone their skills—good, bad and all—within the house to begin with. So even the grizzly bear look of the grandmother, a strong peasant woman, was not sufficient to deter the little wrestler from making her the object of his fun exploits. Carrying his exploits a nice notch higher, he hit her with an iron blowpipe on her knee. It was a painful strike leaving her in an ennui and indecision whether to throttle the perpetrator or to heave him over her head and then dump as a punishment. But a crisp articulation of the intent to defend her child by the boy’s mother, herself a big woman so much so that when she decked herself for town visits she looked like a caparisoned jumbo, deterred the ageing matriarch from carrying out her intent. She went limping for many days.

‘The boy did what I always intended to do but could never do it for the plain fear of her,’ Randhir secretively mused. There have been long and sluggish decades of their matrimonial innings, both of them trying the art of scapegoating to find fault with each other in their routine farming life full of challenges at many fronts. You could sense the oppositional molecules floating in the air whenever they were together. The plain fact is that the sturdy woman, all along these years, has been strong enough to pin him down in a hand-to-hand combat and emerge winner with a clear verdict. So he is happy that his little grandson has done what he failed to do in decades.

Little did he realize that the children love to have fresher objects to carry out their commendable feats. Randhir is far away in the serene precincts of a peaceful place in sleep. Suddenly he is jolted out of his siesta by a painful strike on his head. The kid gallant is seen grinning holding the peasant’s favorite danda. He saw stars in the day forming constellations holding staggering forecasts for the lamp of their pedigree. But he somehow checked his impulse to beat the boy like a young errant colt. He closed his eyes and tried to regain his dream world.

Another strike and this time he swipes to clutch the culprit but the attacker slips away. Randhir now knows the offender has to be taught a lesson. He feigns to sleep. The fun-loving boy stealthily creeps up to him and before he aims his third strike, Randhir comes to life like an old, black panther. The little antelope is in his grasp. He picks up his chappal and gives four cool strikes at the little marauder’s bum. The boy now maintains distance and doesn’t stealthily approach his grandfather when he sleeps. He thinks his grandpa feigns sleep especially to lure him to strike and then grab him to beat him.