Dark Horse

The older kid, Jason, was totally off his rocker. He went on a tangent and asked me if India indeed had any cars or the people still used elephants for transportation. I didn’t quite fathom what prompted him to ask such ignoramus nonsense. That was such a dumb questioning that I couldn’t help but snigger. And I must admit he was just being curious in a very simple sort of way with no offence intended to me. Axel shook his head for a moment and then looked at me with a grin on his face. I nodded at him knowingly in an approving manner. So Axel took over from there.

He said, “Heck no, kid! Don’t you know this simple fact? India doesn’t have any cars or automobiles for that matter. It must be pathetic wondering about such trivia. But why do you ask?”

“No, I am just curious. Like we have here fancy cars. What do they do over in India?”

Axel said, ”Well, Jason! They ride elephants as you rightly pointed out. For these animals they have special type of roads. Like any where else, some times there is a traffic jam with all those elephants running amuck. You know what I mean.”

Jason asked Axel, “There must be whole heck of a lot of elephants over there. Eh!”

“You better believe it. It’s really crazy out there in the middle of all those elephants running around.”

“So, how does one control the beast?”

Axel said, “You see, like we have a driver to drive a car around. They also have a person mounted on the neck of the beast controlling its movements.”

“But, where are all those animals stored?”

Axel said, “No problem at all for them elephants. You see, like we have parking lots, they have multi-storied parking for elephants. There are huge elevators to move these animals up and down. In fact all the elephants have identification tags so the owner can find them.”

Jason exclaimed, “Oh, wow! You aren’t kidding me, right?”

“No, absolutely not.”

Jason continued, “Far out! That must be fun.”

Dark Horse of Seventh Samurai

With all the new beginning of sorts, I was laughing at myself inside. It was for the simple reason that having had one hell of an education, what I meant was from a topnotch school, IIT Kharagpur, I was not able to earn a decent living. What a joke! What a travesty of justice! My highly valued alma mater could not guarantee me what I had expected it to precisely do. That was to help me provide in my own profession, some semblance of good generous pay packet to support the comforts and luxuries I had aspired to have. Was it too much to ask for? Really! Probably, some of it was because of my own folly. I must admit that I was quite a simpleton in my worldly ways. I could have compromised with the circumstances like the bribery, licking up to bosses and undercutting my coworkers and friends. But I never thought these traits to be honorable or decent. At least not for me, treachery didn’t make sense at all. So there I was getting rewarded for self-pity. It dawned on me, perhaps, my own country didn’t have enough need of me. Or rather it had, by way of euphemism, made me an NRI (Non Resident Indian), or in more circumspect thinking, tongue and cheek of course, I was exiled to a foreign land for a few pieces of gold so to speak. That way I was liable to send back whatever little or more I could, out of shear love for my native land of birth. The sweat money sent to the native land was not called taxes, oh no, not at all, it won’t be convenient or politically correct. Would it? But we did definitely know, however, that Mother India did benefit enormously from the NRI dollars and we mustn’t forget that. Unless we would rather be ungrateful bastards! But nevertheless I was quite pleased with my new beginning. I looked forward to learning new ways, knowing new culture and speaking new tongue, Fascinating prospects I must say!