| By : ( Posted on :30 Nov, 2005 ) | Total Views : 502 | Previous | Next |
Baghaa the dog masculine, calm, challenging, tough, a true leader in the eyes of other dogs in his locality. He was loved by the street dwellers and by the butcher who had a shop on the pavement he lived on. So life was cool. Food generally came from the butcher as the left over of the meat, which the normal human beings did not eat, and that sometimes was shared by the beggars on that pavement. Since everyone loved him, he reciprocated that love by wagging his tail and loving them. .
One day the butcher, on receiving a letter informing him about his son’s illness had to leave the place at once. He decided to keep his servant there to look after the livestock and closed the shop. He left. Meanwhile Baghaa made a new friend. It was a she-goat. Normally she-goats are butchered only if they are incapable of giving birth and producing milk. Their friendship started not in the usual way but after a quarrel. The goat always teased him by saying “Baghu” and Baghaa sometimes told her “Let him (the butcher) come. I will have you chopped off first …” The she-goat said “I bet you cannot touch my flesh.” Anyway they soon became good friends. She ate jackfruit leaves inside the cage and Baghaa shared the meager food outside with the beggars. Sometimes she advised him to start eating the leaves like her. On hearing this he would be angry again. The butcher was back after long 7 days. Thank God, his son was fine now. He patted Baghaa. He opened his shop again and the first one to be butchered was that she-goat .It cried a lot and Baghaa heard it. He was very hungry and could eat anything but when he was given his usual bite-the left over, he could not touch it because he could not eat bits of his friend. He nearly fainted with hunger. He hovered here and there and again went to eat the fleshy ordeal but could not even dare to touch it. Two days passed. He ate not a bit. He was mentally and physically shattered.
On the fourth day of his fast he started eating leaves and swallowed each lump with painful tears. The food did not hurt him but her memory did. As a sign of love and respect for their leader Baghaa, the other dogs in the locality stopped eating flesh. Everyone was amazed to see this. The whole city of dogs became self-willed herbivores. But there was so much leftover. Who was going to eat them? On the next morning, there was a big queue of people near the butcher’s shop, as people could now avail of meat as well as the left over in that shop.
Baghaa munched the green leaves and gazed at the blue sky silently as if to say to God, “Let there be light…”
