The illustrious past of a liquor-lover

 

His wife may give an outraged sniff at this, and rightly so, but the simple fact is that Munsi is the number one liquor-lover in the locality as of now. ‘He is of No Use!’ is the public and private opinion about him. He but is not comfortable with standing out as an ungentlemanly emblem and cheekily, vehemently in fact, denies this belittling charge. Cutting through the teeth and tentacles of the not so flattering status, he elaborates through his slurred speech how he was the most layak among his siblings during the childhood.

They kept buffalos and the calves born in poor peasant barns had very high mortality rates because there was hardly any milk left for them. A kind of tortuous starvation it was for the little ones. With the calf gone, the buffalo ma would have problems in lactation. Tau Dayanand, of grand vision and pioneering conscience, had a nice solution to the problem. So even though ninety percent of their calves perished, there hardly was lactation problem among the buffalos. The process of milking ran smooth. Munsi stood, crouched rather, as the proxy calf for all the buffalo mothers grieving the loss of their kids.

A special calf robe was devised for him. Made of dark, coarse blanket, it gave him a nice calf look as he was paraded first in front of the buffalo that walloped him with slimy affection and licked him profusely. He was then made to crawl to the udder side and mock a hungriest calf’s suckling at the teats. Getting to the pulsating vibrancy of motherhood, the buffalo would then get ready to fill the bucket with a magical sweetness of temper.

However, it wasn’t a cakewalk all the time. In bad mood, and smelling something fishy in the business, the buffalo would sniff at him loudly, prod him playfully, even pushing with a mild punishment, which is too much for a human child. He would get kicks also sometimes as the lactation phase entered the late stage when the buffalos deny the supply of milk.

‘I was the backbone of our economy during those famished days. If not for me, they would have starved to death!’ he proudly elucidates his credentials that are presented to nullify the ‘of no use’ status bestowed upon him. He then proceeds to guzzle the remaining liquor bottle with pride.