Fate and Fortitude

 

Fate seems to play its cards almost randomly, just like a throw of dice to make everything incidental. If not for this, the divine hand cannot do such injustices as this. Kala, the hardworking laborer, had to change his vocation due to chronic arthritis. He turned a smart vegetable seller, expertly shouting the names of vegetables with typical hawker’s intonation. After much practice in honing the hawker’s art and memorizing the vegetable names, he now suffers another setback. A hawker’s voice is his basic skill that draws people to his cart. He was finely shaping in the art. Sadly the budding vegetable hawker suffers a paralysis attack. His tongue has gone immobile. He has lost his voice. A man who was earning fair bread with his tongue has gone silent. He isn’t even fifty. In contrast, Laroop, who is around sixty-five, is gradually getting his tongue rasped to avail more bite and sting. He gets sloshed daily and shouts the dirtiest, foulest, vulgar most words known in the dialect. His mouth is a stinking equivalent of gutter. God seems all too happy with his poisonous tongue that spews out muck, venom and profanities—a kind of vocal horror show.