Wiseman wth a Fe'dog

Wiseman with a Fe’dog

-In dedication to Miss Butterfly

Chapter I

Late November day.
The wrist-watch that had been continuously clinging on in his wrist for years was ticking 3 p.m. time. He must have known it was not at all a good time to set off for a journey, but he didn’t care. He simply carried a bag- which would have zipped in two pairs of shirts and jeans, a book (on whose sides were smeared red), three pens(each of  red, black, and blue ink), a newly bought notebook, and an unopened packet of cigarettes- and walked away with his female dog, Fe’dog- as he would coin the name for his dog. He never liked his dog be addressed by the term ‘bitch’.

It was then for the last time that I had seen him, but I didn’t even think to guess that it would be for the last time I was seeing him. He was a man of heart- so wise, so kind. “If two souls on the earth aren’t being benefited out of me, what worth is my living?” He had said to me with truest of his all emotions when I had gone to see him in his home last time. As he would say, he would do. Man of words too was him. Everybody, even the dogs and pigeons of Krishna Mandir, liked him.

On seeing the things that were packed inside his bag, I asked where he was intending to go. “To write a new story”, he had answered. “With three pens?” I asked again, this time with a strange look straight in his eyes. “Yes! To write in same ink again and again is boring to me, and my creativity flowers less in dull circumstances.” This was his answer.

I took his every word nothing more than literal that day. “Perhaps he had taken up a new profession.” I had said to myself, but I didn’t know if that man had ever known to write. “Any change is possible in life after one falls in love, or in tragedy,” I thought with my naïve brains.

“What is that only book for?” I asked with an amazement for the book.

“Well, there always should be a source that a writer must refer to anytime he wants.” He tried to convey with his looks that he was not lying, and I trusted him. “I am telling this to you but, yeah still, it’s my secret of creativity. I must be honest, at least for now and forever.”

“Yes, I can understand that, but why is the red smeared all over its sides?” I inquired.

“Ah, I knew you would ask that too. Well, to be frank, I don’t even know why any color has to be wasted on the sides of any book. But I can tell you why the red has been used.” He went on, “Because red is the color of blood of all creatures-birds and animals. It reminds that every life on earth is a Will of the Almighty One, and pride of each civilization is His glory.”

I felt as if the talk had gone beyond my comprehension, so I changed the topic. “I can see the cigarettes but where is your lighter?”

“Oh, you would want a smoke, wouldn’t you?” He took a cigarette stick out of the packet and handed it to me. Then he took his lighter out from his pocket and lit and helped me kindle the stick, and said, “Well, young man, everything you need should not be packed inside one single bag. You will yourself know why as you grow mature.”

It was in the company of that very cigarette that I had seen him walk down the same road which he had been walking since he first learnt to walk. Neither was he a stranger, so that a chance of befriending with people would still have been alive, nor was he a friend, so that an attachment with them would keep him away from setting off for such a destinationless journey. I puffed in the smoke and slowly expelled; nobody seemed to have been aware of his presence; and now, nobody would seem to become aware of his absence from the next day.

And this way he simply walked away from the town, never to return, with his Fe’dog.

Chapter II

Sun rose and sat, and rose and sat again.

Many weeks passed and nobody knew when the wise man had gone and where to. People had begun to brag rumors about him. Some said that he had gone underground to politics as they had heard him giving big talks somewhen about political and economical affairs of the nation. Some said that he had been arrested by the police for protesting against the government and had already been killed. Some believed that he had eloped away with the carpenter’s daughter as she had been missing too. When I tried to convince that he had gone to write a new story and that I had myself seen a new notebook and three pens in his bag, they laughed at me. They said, “Well, gentleman, nobody would sell off his ancestral land and home and distribute the money among the poors just to go to a vacation to write a new story.”

Chapter III

Concerning the man no word I had heard from the valley or from the hills until one occasion.

After four years, six months and thirteenth days of the man’s departure, I got an opportunity to travel out of the city. It was not that I never wanted an outing away from the city during the period of four and half years, but something always built a fort to fight against my temptation. And because of this, I think, I had grown jealous of the man as he was no more in the town (to deal with the same selfish, mean and ignorant people).

A friend of mine all of a sudden had found himself in an urgency to go back to his village home. He didn’t tell me the precise reason why he immediately needed to go back, nor did I insist him to tell. All he had wanted from me was to travel with him for around a week. Without a second thought, I agreed. My long unmet desire had solely enticed me to make that spontaneous decision. With a few printed elephants in my pocket, I went with this friend.

I don’t remember exactly which part of the country he took me. I was completely drunk the day we took the bus out of valley. All I remember is that inside the bus I had slept and dreamt of the same thing which I don’t share in public.

It was completely dark when the bus dropped us in front of a guest house. Pretty sleepy and drunk, I followed the footsteps of my friend. All day long journey in the bus had made us hungry. We dined in the kitchen of the guest house and made straightly to our room. I was feeling totally different-as if there is no such thing like past or the future; as though I had just fallen from above and I had to go back after few days. So I tried to collect as many beautiful moments as possible for they are the real things that make one rich. I was enclosed within four walls, and in front of me was a friend, two bottles of booze and a packet of Surya. There was just nothing to worry about, except for one thing- what to do next for more entertainment. After some time, Sukuti and other meaty snacks came in and we started drinking again.

We conversed and drank until late night. It’s always better not to tell the conversation of two drunken grown-ups in the public. Next morning when I woke up, it was already eleven thirty. My friend was not in the room, but was his note:

                6: 08 a.m.

                Mate, I’m gone. Will be back after two days. Sorry I can’t take you along.

                Will tell you everything when I’m back. Don’t worry, a  friend  of  mine

                 will accompany you tonight. J J

                Will bring you a local-bottle when I return. JJJ

                ---M.

I wondered only about one thing. How could that man possibly wake up so early and went off with such ‘hang-over’ in his head?

I woke up and bathed. (The attached bathroom in guesthouses so fascinates me that no matter whether it is hot or cold, I always take more than a couple of bath in one night stay.) Then I went to see the city. There in a local restaurant I had my meal of the day. It was around seven when I returned to the guest house. And to my astonishment, there in the room was already my company- lain flat abed under the blanket; and, in addition to my surprise, my friend was a woman, young and handsome of only around twenty-two. “Some men keep their words even when they have spoken with a drunken tongue”, I thought and thanked my friend.

  

Chapter IV

She pulled her shoulder off the bed and rested it over the wall. Now I could see her easily. Youthfulness and beauty together had gifted her face a glow. She carefully moved her lips to speak. “You should not be outdoor until late when you are a stranger”, darting a friendly yet a little uncomfortable look with her big dark eyes, she said.

“I am not late”, I said without looking at her. “Maybe you are a little early.” I wanted to know at first why and how she was there lying in my bed, but soon I realized that would be so childish of me. Any man could easily breathe a perfect romance in the room; so to save my maledom I pretended not to have been surprised at all. Instead I behaved as if I knew everything so well about her, except, of course, her name. “Tell me by what name should I call you?” I asked.

“Call me Maria.” She said with an animation in her tone, “Maria of the Eleven Minutes!”

She was not Maria. I knew it because Maria in the Eleven Minutes was a Brazilian and she worked as a prostitute in Switzerland. She must have been far more beautiful and intellectual than this woman in my room. But still this woman wanted me to call her by this pet-name; and I had no grievance in making her merry. “How long have you been in this profession, Maria?” I asked her an innocent question.

“WOW! That’s very bold question to be asked to a prostitute. Tell me how many experiences have you had before.” She countered-questioned me.

“Few, of course! Who is a man and hasn’t had any experience with a prostitute?” I told her, “And besides, I think any man who has no experience with a prostitute is an incomplete man.”

“You tell that because you want to impress me?” She asked again.

“Do you think that I need to impress a woman who is already lying in my bed?” It was my turn to counter-question.

She blushed and smiled. With a darling smile like that, any man could easily have fallen in love with her. “You are so beautiful,” I asked, “Why are you a prostitute?”

“Well, you are not the first one to compliment me this way.” She said “The first reason is that I hate this society and its ethics. Second, being a prostitute, I mean an expert prostitute like Maria, it’s easy and pleasuresome on work. Third, it allows enjoying a lot of leisure time reading books and travelling to places. Next, I can observe different sorts of men; you see it’s always very exciting to discover the same truth again and again that how every man is same as another in a pretext that they all claim themselves to be so different and unique. Ah, next reason is that…”

She probably had seventeen more reasons to be a prostitute but I ran out of patience to hear. I stopped her putting forward a question, “What do you mean you observe men?”

“I study them”, she answered. “Every human being is a separate discipline if studied in depth, especially men who are socialized so as to suppress  their emotions.”

“What is the finding of your study then?” I asked her in a tone that underestimated her. She grew rather serious and said, “I think I just said the main theme a moment ago.”

“Which one-that all men are same?”

“Exactly”, she said. “Let me tell you another thing as well. No, wait! Read this.” She raised her hands above and in her hands was a book---short story by Oscar Wilde. I had not yet realized that she had been holding a book all this time since I entered into the room. She turned the pages of the book until she found a piece of paper. It looked handwritten and something like a poem. “Well, it’s given to me by my client four and half years ago.” Handing it to me she said, “It tells you that every man is a two years old child from inside.”

Before I began to read the poem, I remarked upon the book. “You study Oscar Wilde? I have not known anyone since long who reads short stories.”

“Not only short stories. These days’ people don’t read poetry too. I think it’s because of the easy availability and cheap popularity of novels and books.” She said.

Red words in the piece of paper read like this:

Two years old child inside me

Weeps for a pair of motherly arms

To hold on

Water fills in the hollow of the eyes

As the old songs get played in the air

Oh! How I used to run after the freedom

And for the independence.

Today I am a man

And no chain on earth is strong enough

To bind me

But Oh! I am just a man

And how I long to belong

Chapter V

If I have ever told anyone that the night with Maria is one of my best nights ever, I have not exaggerated. She was a beautiful as well as an intellectual woman; thus, was one of the rarest things on earth. Apart from physicality we performed that night, I would like to narrate what we talked about.

She was so good with her tongue. Every word she spoke seemed to have come out of the deep understanding, and the way she used to get animated with her emotions was enough for anyone to get interested in hearing what she had to say next. Besides, she knew a lot about human sentiments. And while in conversation, unlike any other woman, she never emotionally black-mailed to win over an argument. She had an impressive way to critically analyze and put forward logic. Since she had a habit of reading books and since she had to deal with ‘different sorts of men’ everyday, she must have been that good with words and emotions, I think now.

“Which do you like best- poetry or story?” I inquired.

“Poetry!” She said without a thought, “Because it speaks lots and lots in few words. With story that’s exactly opposite. Lots and lots of words have to say about few things.”

“The way you reason and understand tells me that you must be a voracious reader. How often do you get a new book to read?” I wanted to know.

“I am not what you are seeing me to be.” She told me, “I am a slow reader. I have been reading this same book (she raised her hands and showed me the blue cover) for more than a month, and there are more than a dozen of half-unread books in my room. I don’t read in haste and read anything. Authors who are my favorites are few and very few are their volumes of works which I can understand. So I want to give plenty of time to each book I read.”

“Tell me what your best book is- of course besides Paulo Coelho’s Eleven Minutes?” I asked.

“The Bible-mainly the books by Solomon. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and Angela’s Ashes by an Irish-American writer Frank McCourt are my all time favorites. Besides, the world famous The Little Prince by a French writer Saint-Exupery and Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls are my five-star rated books.” She said as if remembering the things which were already told on similar other occasions. “And besides, I simply love any book by Coelho. He is such a fascinating storyteller! I wish I could write like him some days.”

“Who doesn’t like Coelho?” I said in praise for Coelho. His philosophy about ‘Soul of the World’ and ‘Personal Legend’ in his book The Alchemist is marvelous. I have not known anyone who has read Coelho and doesn’t like him.”

“But I have. There was this guy, a client of mine, four and half years ago, who didn’t like Coelho. He had said that Coelho was a cheater who mimics concepts- from mainly the Bible- which I too feel true sometimes. ‘But that’s not enough reason to hate someone like Paulo Coelho’, I had argued with him. The client who I am talking about was himself a poet and it’s the same poem which you just read a moment ago he had handed me that night, four and half years ago. In one of his books, Coelho had stated one should find true love “by risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in your search for Love. As long as you keep looking, you will triumph in the end.” And this poet could not just agree. He said for him life was a serious matter, and so was love. ‘How could anyone advise to play hit-and-trial with such serious things like life and love?’ The way he asked me this question hinted me that he was in a deep emotional agony.”

“Well, every poet is in some.” I hurried to say, as if I was one myself.

“Every human being is in some agony or another if you say so Mr. Client,” said Maria. “But this poet seemed so differently bothered. Life had ceased to please him and death could no more terrorize him. That night he had talked about love, soul and about the God. With the same intensity he talked about life, society and the misery therein. He also talked about people and their ugly faces. He said he despised every single one of them.”

“Didn’t he tell you why?” I inquired. I had grown rather curious by now. “He must have had at least a good reason to do that, otherwise he might as well have been a victim of his own emotional complexities.”

“Me too had thought in the similar fashion at first that the man had been a victim of his own emotional complexities. But being four and half years older than that night, I realize today that the man indeed was a wise man who had transcended beyond his own self and had become half-enlightened. He had found a half of God by living in the society and becoming aware of its purpose and prevailed misconceptions. A man can never be satisfied with a half of anything- a woman can but it’s another thing; so, to find the other half of the God, he had set off in search of a deep solitude. It is the same phenomenon that had occurred with the Buddha and the Christ. Both of them had gone away from the society to find the ultimate truth and both returned to the society to preach about God when they became fully enlightened.”

“You mean to say that this man will too return as a Buddha or a Christ?” I asked with an unexplainable emotion of astonishment.

“Maybe, or maybe not.” Maria answered simply. “Because hundreds and thousands leave their societies in search for the truth- the God. God is not a piece of Yarsagumba- those who faces the hardship and continues to search with a deep inner lust to find, can find one. God is formless and unimaginable. Only rare people find God. And very rare of the Finders return to the society to preach about God. Ordinary people cannot understand what they are being preached. They mistake the Finders themselves for the God and start making idols and building religions after their name. People get divided and, thus, a new fraction comes into the existence, which is to claim its superiority over all the other in a due course of time.”

Maria had made points, but I didn’t understand what she meant when she said “the man had found half of the God”. I asked her. On her answer she said, “One seeks for the God only when he has seen Him.” Her answer made me more perplexed, more curious. I asked her again about how that man had found the God.

“Well, Mr. Client, it- the Way- is the most incomprehensible thing that only the Finders know because they have themselves had walked through it to the God. There are so many ways as taught in religions, but all those are simply rubbishes preached always to satisfy someone else’s petty interest. The truth is that one finds God only when all of his desires are completely dead, not even the one to go in the heaven and see the God.

“Desires are dead only in a dead body!” I exclaimed. “One lives to fulfill desires.”

“But what if the fulfillment pays one no satisfaction at all?” Maria asked.

On getting no word as the answer, she broke the silence herself. “You have got it all wrong, Mr. Client! ‘Wrongly Socialized’ in that man’s word. Desires are dead not in a dead body but in a dead heart. When one’s all desires are dead, the only thing left for him to do is to become a righteous person, a good human being-carelessly good. An insight burns inside him that everything has been made by the One Single Hand, so he begins to desire good for every other member in the humanity.”

“Desires are dead when one is fully aware of his limitations.” Maria went on, “And very few people can resist new desires to entertain in their mind after  older ones had died. They are who we refer as ‘the victims of emotional complexities’. When the complexities get solved, they know the purpose of their life and the meaning of their death. They become known to that single destination to which some refer to as heaven and some as hell. It is where we were before our birth and we will go after we die. In fact there is no ‘we’ and ‘they’. All are the part of the One and without each other, the All and the One are incomplete. Everybody has come from the same place and will go the same place. Nobody has brought here anything and nobody will take anything. Everything here in the world is ‘a maya’- an illusion, and people fight for their illusions. This is the era where the more illusioned you are, most probably you will win the competition because of your strong-headed determination. And this society encourages you to become more illusioned, more materialistic and more artificialistic. People fight with each other under the blanket of civilization and when an individual protests, he will be mistreated from tomorrow. They fight to earn and they earn to spend. They take markets as their paradise and spending as the heavenly comfort. Infrastructures are being developed to promote consumerism and sellers have found out ways to forecast what the people- ‘their consumers’- will desire next. The scene is totally hopeless. People don’t realize that the misery is a byproduct of someone else’s luxury. It’s not a thing to preach; it is a wisdom that people should realize it from their heart as they grow. They don’t because they are not allowed to grow to their fullest. They are all socialized wrongly in their families, schools, religions and cultures.”

"Put every junk of yours to an end, Maria." I said rudely to her. I am a bold man and don't consider my listeners' response when I speak. "Do you think that I am a stupid to believe in all that is being said about the society and the holy God by  a prostitute? You have concluded wrongly about that man, Maria. If he were a wise man and 'half-enlightened' as you have taken him for, he would not even think to sleep his night off with a prostitute."

No matter how intellectual and wise be a woman, she cries. And so did Maria when I said I don;t believe in things about God said by a prostitute. She got up to the window, removed the curtain and let the  brightness of moon come inside the dark room. She lit a lighter and smoked the roll. It smelled like Marijuana.

I didn't protest her smoking. She was a prostitute. So no social ethics could bind her. She could drink and smoke drugs; who card! To her client, the wilder she became, more fun. But when a half-dressed woman smokes off her pain in the absolute silence of midnight moon, a man is bound to pity upon her."

CHAPTER VI

 Throwing the burning end out from the window Maria tore off the silence. "The truth, Mr. Client, mostly reveals itself in the miser part of the world and there must be some heavenly purpose in it. But you would not believe me, would you?" She smiled ironically and continued, "You men can't even understand simple pains of ordinary women, how could you possibly understand the agony of a  prostitute? You learned to hate  a prostitute before knowing one, before experiencing one. It surprises me and often sends me atop of the Everest when one embraces and kisses a thing of intense hatred with his both eyes closed."

"I never said that I hate prostitute. i only meant that a prostitute should never advocate for the God or against the religion." With a soft tongue I said.

"Why?" She demanded. "Aren't prostitute made by the Same Hand which made you and all the other people?"

Getting oneself int an argument is worse. With a woman, that is even terrible. I preferred silence. Perhaps I had been bound to, because of my wordlessness. And my silence annoyed her. I could read that in her face.

"Do you think what I told you about the society, the Finders and the God are my own words? No, Mr. Clients! They were told to me by that man four and half years ago, when I was much younger in age, an d in experience to understand them. When I recall those words today, I feel as if they are the only true words which I have ever heard form any human mouth. Bout you don't still believe that the man was a wise man, do you?

Like an obedient kid, I swayed my head in agreement. "What if I said that the man didn't even lay his fingers upon me? What if I said that the man paid me, of course with some extra tip, just for listening to his life-stories and his cold assimilation?" She turned her gaze away from my face and said, "I can understand that it's hard to believe, but one doesn't believe doesn't necessarily mean that it is not the truth. The man had come along with a bitch, no! a Fe'dog. It is what he wanted me to call that female dog with."

"A what?" I asked.

"A Fe'dog."

Originality is one of the many things what men are remembered for. The man who had disappeared four and half years ago from my town of Lalitpur had come to this place and spent his night with Maria. I knew about the history of that man better that Maria. I had smoked with him for the very last time in that town. I considered it unwise to talk about a man with a prostitute. So I didn't dint Maria that I knew him. Rather I pretended as though I was totally unaware. "Tell me how did he look like?" I asked.

"I am not one of those prostitutes who remember their client by their appearances." Maria answered.

"Then you must remember him by his name."

"He wanted me to remember him with any."

"What do you remember him with then?"

"Wiseman with a fe'dog." Maria said.

CHAPTER VII

When I woke up to my regular alarm next morning, Maria was not in the room. She was gone. I looked for some note or anything which could tell me whether or not she would return. But there was nothing . She had walked off like a mysterious cat. 

I checked for my wallet and things. Everything seemed fine and okay. Maria had gone without her payment. I wondered why she would do  that. "Is it because I finally believed her about that man so she was trying to be grateful with a free-service?" I thought, "or is it because she wanted to slap me off with an unpaid favou-that she wants to make me a taker from a prostitute, a thing of common hatred?" I lit a Surya. "Things burn and smoke disappears.", I said to myself.

Chapter VIII

The friend of mine returned after two days. He begged for an excuse saying that he thought it would be wise not to  involve me, a third person, to manage his family affairs. He might have imagined me being fierce at him for hi sudden disappearance. But I was not. I was rather thankful to him for the experience with Maria.

I inquired with him about Maria. He said that he had not known any prostitute with that name in the town or any. I tried to explain her appearance and ways, but it was all hopeless my friend could not recognize her. "I am sorry mate. I don't know why you ask details about that woman." He said that night, drunk in the local booze which he had brought from his home, "Tomorrow we will go to the friend of mine who sent you the woman..."

"Maria" I hurriedly said.

"Oh, yeah the Maria, to you that night."

The first thing we did the next morning was that we went to see this friend of my friend. He had s small tea shop nearby the bus-park. Brokering prostitutes was is side-business. He would get tips form the clients and commissions form the women.

I asked him about Maria. He told me he didn't know any woman with that alien name. I tried to tell him how she looked. "These women change their appearance every fortnight." He said impolitely to me," I am sorry I cannot tell." I thought he asked for money. After all he was just 'a Dale'. I threw my hands behind my back to fetch my wallet. My friend realized this and told me it would be useless. "If he had known, he would not have lied." Said he in the bus later that day, "because, you see, lying to a customer is unethical to any business."

In the bus, I wanted to tell my friend that Maria had served me for free.'A prostitute serving for free the first time!" It would be very hard for him to believe. He was certain to think that I was making stories up myself. I remembered the words from Maria. "One doesn't believe doesn't necessarily mean that it is not the truth." But I cold not assimilate the wisdom from a prostitute and tear off the mystery to my friend.

CHAPTER IX

Until today I have not told anyone about Maria. Just like the people have forgotten completely about the man who had left my home town of Lalitpur four and half years ago, I have forgotten about her. Sometimes,  I wonder to the bright moon if I could see any, or both, of them in the future.