Requiem for a Turkey

I picked her from a vendor who sells gallinacean birds. In fact she was marked for slaughter. Her whitish feathers and plumes where mud brown out of dirt and the cramped existence in the abattoir. It has been three months since.

I and C used to talk to her when she, out of her curious and inquisitive self ventures on to the veranda of the house.. We used to tell her that she is a lucky turkey. And that seldom will people by fowls from an abattoir and domesticate them. Wonder if she understood us. Perhaps! She, along with the tom turkey we have, always preferred to be near us when we are outside the house. She with her mate  used to follow us around the compound . Twice she fell into the pond, and had to be pulled out. She leans over the edge looking for insects by the ledge of the pond and also to quench .The good thing that came out of her two adventurous falls into water was that her muddy brown plume were washed off the dirt. and became milky white. She even started growing new bright white feathers. We called her ‘Old lady’. Because we did not know her age and presumed that since she was kept for slaughter she must be pretty aged. Sometimes she kept an imperious air. She was agile and some times ran quite fast when chased by the male or the ubiquitous guinea fowls.

She often jumps on to the chair in the verandah and purr. She I guess wanted to be seen sitting next to us. This happens most often in the morning when I and C sit on the verandah with our morning tea. She stretches her neck long and looks at us inquisitively.We felt she is a turkey with human sensibilities.

She had a very annoying habit of teasing the dogs especially Blacky, the Labrador. She used to entertain herself at the dog’s annoyance. She used to stay very near his meshed enclosure and stare at him with a mocking air. The dog gets annoyed and absolutely exasperated that he barks and jumps all over wanting to pounce on her. The acrimony of the dog gets unbearable and we will have to shoo her farther away from the kennel.. C warned her of the danger of getting close to the dog enclosure and irritating it. But I guess she was indifferent to that advise.

Yesterday, strangely she decided to do something she has not done before. Take on the two Rotweillers at the other end of the compound, Rambo and the hyper bitch Emma.

The old lady perhaps found irritating the two dogs at the same time, quite enjoyable. She was moving around close to their enclosure teasing them and enjoying their irritated bark. But then she did the unthinkable. She pushed her head through the metal mesh into the enclosure and clucked at the dogs. And before she could wink or yelp Rambo the Rottweiller had her head in its mouth! It did not take longer than a couple of  seconds. The old lady was limply flapping her wings, and head gone- decapitated – pulled out. The head was gone into the mouth of the Canine. It was ripped off from the torso. The strong jaw bones of the Rotweiller clapped the canines deep into the sides of her head and the force of the pull severed her head along with the strand of the wind pipe.She may not have realised the pain  of the gruesome and brutal manner of death. It was swift!

It was stupid and casual of her to have put her head into the enclosure. Well then she did not realise the reprieve she got when we took her away from the slaughter house. Like many of us she took her life a bit casual and paid the price for the indifference in very, very dear terms.

She now is cleaned and dressed and in the freezer waiting to be meal for the dogs tomorrow.Sadly we found that she had been laying eggs some where in the compound and the crows where feasting on them- she was full of maturing eggs when we cut her open to remove her entrails.

Meenakshi

Some faces can never go away from memory. They are etched in us. And elapse of time seldom eclipses or erases the face.. Even before adolescent days, I was sent to my ancestral house to spend summer vacations. The white sands of that place bordering the sea, with its un- demarcated boundaries between families and homes was indeed a vast expanse, a canvas that an adolescent mind saw as a never ending horizon.

It was there that I happened to know Meenakshi. This must have been in my early teen.

She was pretty and cute little girl perhaps thirteen or fourteen of age. her facial expressions where captivating and her eyes always seem to tell  the wonder the world is .She was sparkling and loaded with life. She used to join us (I and a retinue of cousins) when we venture out to the mango groves and the lily ponds that where strewn all over. She was always effervescent amongst us and in what ever we did and where ever we went. The day used to begin at around 6 in the morn when we children from different house holds used to scamper around the vast expanse and beneath the mango trees in search of  ripe fruits that may have fallen down during the night. And Meenakshi was always the first to be around. It was a sort of early bird gets the food kind of situation.. Hours used to be spent in the ponds frolicking and yelling, splashing water and diving deep and surfacing from nowhere. Meenakshi was ubiquitous in all and every where. She was the daughter of Kaikeki Amma..  Kaiki as we used to call the elder woman used to do house hold chores there. She used to venture to around four houses that where spread around .Meenakshi was the last child of her long line of seven children. Being the youngest of the siblings she had to at times absorb the audacious attitude of some of her big ones. Meenakshi used to tell me how much she loved her family her, mother, father and the sisters and brothers. The family was maintaining on a kind of collective pooling of resources that they bring home. And Meenakshi being the little one was let to enjoy some of the spoils and indulge at times, (but all that was free was always with a rider).

Every visit to the land of fun and frolic during each summer holidays, and Meenakshi  seemed to be growing in splendour  and lure. During one summer, I noticed that Meenakshi was not around to charm the holidays. I was told that she was married and had gone away with her spouse. I felt a bit forlorn for not only having lost her presence,but out of a bit of envy as well.

Years went by and I met her again during one of my visits to the ancestral home. She was into the mid forties and the travesty of life, I felt had corroded her beautiful face. There where streaks of grey on her forehead. The cheerful girl who used to charm and pleasant with her presence was now doing house hold chores for sustenance. Where she always used to sport a saffron hot red sindhooram , her fore head  was pale.. Her family had hit it rich and moved away .They where now free from all the trappings of the country side and was immersed in affluence and pomp. Meenakshi told me that she visits her mother on most week ends. The old woman Kaikeki Amma who used to vex to meet ends working as house maid now employs a retinue of servants at her beck and call. She owns a rich farm as well. Meenakshi’s life had fallen by the wayside to ill luck and bad times. And she had to come back from the city she lived after her wedding, and take up what Kaikeki Amma , her mother did long before- work as maid at various house hold.

I asked her if she could not approach her family for assistance. She smiled wryly and said nothing. Then she whispered with a faint sob, that she went to see her mother to pay for the half liter of milk she takes home for herself from her mother's dairy farm. And all that her mother could tell her was to remind that she did not pay the month’s bill on time and that the price of milk is not what she pays. Her mother did not see that she was devoid of even the last strand of gold chain she used to wear. And that she had to sell it as a last resort to burn the kitchen stove. Kaikeki Amma  either failed, or did not notice or simply turned her eyes away from the glaring fact that how bereft her daughter Meenakshi  was.

Machiavelli

I have the book “The Prince” by Nicholas Machiavelli. And I have been reading it off and on. Though the book is of a hundred and odd pages and was bought from ‘Land Mark’ Chennai some years ago it has taken me all the while to even reach any where near the end page. Now that I get frequent calls from R and she keeps reminding me of reference books she wants for her political science class, I decided Machiavelli’s ‘Prince’ would be an earnest choice of reference. I have to give her the book when she comes home in a few weeks time.


However to me, a lay person, with little understanding of political treatise and political science, the book was more telling from a social point of view vis a vis myself as a social being and the others - friends, relatives, acquaintances, business accomplices etc.What  is told in the 'Prince' is ipso facto seen happening all around in various relationships.in the present world.

Machiavelli did not precede father figures of political science like Aristotle and Plato but he lived centuries after .He lived in the fifteenth century in Italy, and, is  considered as one of the pillars of political science and the art of  political dispensation, a la Chanakya in ancient India. The “Prince” was published only a few years after his death, though he shared the treatise with his close people.

It is trifle unjust that Machiavelli’s name must be identified with or taken as synonym for wickedness, furtive and be seen as a repelling trait or character in a person.

Machiavelli was born during a turbulent time in Italy. And the Papacy was at one end trying to dominate the Princes and assert divine dispensation. Whilst the princes and the wealthy elite where sceptical about one another and were at loggerheads and war.Machevellie was trained by his strong father and he entered Florentine bureaucracy as junior. He later was sent to French court as envoy. He soon got absolute authority in war related matters and the militia. After a grievous coup de tat he was imprisoned, tortured and let free. He retired and retreated where upon he wrote the “Prince”.

The Prince is a discourse of prudent and crafty political dispensation. It is simple in context, how a ruler can achieve control over his domain. Scruples and values have no meaning when it comes to struggle and perpetuation of power. Though morality is given a pedestal it is seen in the context of political dispensation and necessity. The criteria are acceptable cruel action, decisive swift and short lived. The book is a manual which explains how to acquire and keep power.

The church proscribed 'The Prince' as it has always done to thoughts .Machiavelli’s   treatise is based on his observation while in the government and the ways and means by which Princes conduct themselves.

 Interestingly Machiavelli did not believe that virtuosity brings happiness.. And terrifyingly he says the ruler better be feared and loved, and better be feared than loved, that he can rule. It is no wonder that taking the Machiavellian cue many coups have seen total annihilation and rooting of the surviving members of a dynasty. Let it be the Bolshevik revolution, the French, or the Mujib family annihilation in Bangladesh, brutal and swift action has been the thumb rule.

 Machiavelli documented his observations as to how, if , when and why . He valued virtue. He valued individual freedom and hence a republic. But he warned, that for freedom and liberty to thrive the citizenry has to be virtuous, courageous and on guard. Though he believed that it is difficult to achieve an assembly of these idealism and they rarely existed anywhere.

Machiavelli believed that human nature was immutable and led by passion.

What is strikingly contemporary is the cunning and deviousness that is orchestrated in day to day life in our society. The usage “Machiavellian”, as an adjective and a synonym  for stealth and wickedness to achieve once end though was only commented upon by Machiavelli is now practiced in his name .The immutable nature of human beings is incorrigible as well. In every aspect of human society and life we can notice the prophecies and inferences of Machiavelli zealously practiced. .If Machiavellian thesis was about drama that would be enacted in courts of princes, and their wily ways to harbour power, in our present day society, it is in fact a daily facet of life be it in politics, business or social and personal relationships.