Once upon a time and a good time it was lived a happy horse on a misty mountain flanked by gentle brooks which became a river further down the plains. Down the plains where other things happened. The mountain was full of free creatures; birds, sheep, goats, and horses. There were people too, who lived in small huts, who worked all day without hurting anyone, cooked, ate, and sang together in the evenings before going to sleep. Always with a lot of peace. Peace which fell slowly and silently along the hills. There was no need for anyone to be more wealthy or powerful than anyone else. Everyone just listened to and understood each other. And the air smelled of raspberries and ripe plums. The smells grew deeper and hung like a moving curtain as one walked into the woods. Into the woods where children chased butterflies without fear. For there was no fear there. The sun rose and set differently each day, and all the animals and people knew the difference in colours each time. Aqua, amber, musk, magenta; many more. Mixing and twirling together. The horse knew it too. On the mountain everyone could speak to everyone else with signs and movements. There was no need for anyone to know more than the others. There were no secrets or bits of special knowledge which made anyone feel superior or more worthy of love. Everything, from food to laughter and skills, was shared. And the young and the old helped each other grow and live together. Always with a lot of kindness and care.
Sometimes some children came to play with the animals. Their favourite was the horse. For it could run beautifully across the hills like a lovely light. He could gallop and trot across the mountains in different rhythms which looked like dances. Especially under the full moon the horse looked like a beautiful beam of blueness moving on the meadows, the slopes, by the small brooks. His best friend was a small boy who loved spending time up on the hills with him. They spoke to each other, told each other stories, shared fruits which fell from the trees, and stared at stars together. Sometimes the horse would ask the boy to sit on him and they would go for a long run, which felt like flying, spreading wings, swimming across skies. Together, they ran into the woods where bigger animals lived with the darker flowers and taller trees, where nobody feared any attack from anyone else. Thus, they lived, with love, laughter, and tender trust. In the mountains where rains mixed with the lights between leaves, and where children and squirrels shared berries and nuts.
And then one day some men from the plains come up with many machines and money. They first started measuring the meadows with long ropes and scales. They said they were there to build hotels. Places where people from very far away would come and stay, for a few days. The mountain men and women did not understand what this meant. Why would someone come and stay in places not their homes and then go away? The men from the plains said this would bring business, make everyone richer, set up better facilities such as shops and play-grounds. The children were puzzled as they already had the entire mountain to play around. But the men from the plains had some important papers with some important signs so they could do what they wanted. Soon, some very noisy machines with long trunks attached to their fronts came and started breaking everything to make spaces for big buildings. The long, lovely trees were felled and killed and then were quickly taken away by trucks to be turned to wooden furniture for the buildings called hotels which were coming up fast. Then more trucks full of bricks came, with stones and many other things which turned the massive meadows to what the men from plains called construction sites. Suddenly, everything seemed and sounded fast, angry, full of noise. Some men on the mountains were paid more money and given more attention than others and were made to feel important, special, different. Everyone was asked to move, shift, or leave. The men from the plains kept saying soon everything would become stable. That was the new word across the changing scenes and sounds on the mountains amidst all the things which broke and died. Stable.
Then they went for the animals. Many were shot and killed, the ones that the men from plains thought were wild and did not look nice. The children saw many dead friends being carried away in trucks, their bodies to be turned to leather goods or meat. There were papers with signs from important people which allowed this as well. And then it was the horses’ turn. They were chased with ropes and cars, the old ones shot and killed and the new ones trapped into a small place. The boy and the blue horse hid inside the woods for a while, till they were found out by men who grinned with guns on their shoulders. They did not want to kill this horse for they were building something for animals like him, a stable.
Soon some mountain men were given new jobs which promised them a lot of money. The boy’s father became a watchman for the stable. The place where the blue horse was put in to be used later for the men and women who would come to enjoy the mountains. Inside the stable the lights were low; the air seemed sad and slow. The boy would come and bring food for his father and look at his best friend from afar, the blue horse who earlier galloped like a beam of light, now breathing heavily, like everything else, tired and tied.
Soon the hotels were made, the parks were built, the shops were ready to sell. Tall chimneys began to breathe out smoke that turned the mountain skies more grey than blue. Many men, women, and kids came in big cars with bags tied on the tops. And the sun began to rise and set with less and less space to spread. Its colours vanished, leaving just the tinge of slow yellow which came and went at the same times every day. It was all stable.
The men from the mountains, including the boy’s father were made to wear uniform and taught to salute the tourists. And the blue horse wore a uniform too, tight ropes which cut into his slowly ageing body; waiting to be taken out whenever the visiting people wanted to see him or ride him carefully, steaming and stamping in the small, smelly place.
The stable.
About the Author:
Avishek Parui (Ph.D, Durham, UK) is an Associate Professor of English at IIT Madras and an Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. He is the author of Postmodern Literatures (Orient Blackswan, 2018) and Culture and the Literary: Matter, Metaphor, Memory (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). He is the founding chairperson of the Indian Network for Memory Studies (INMS) and a member of the advisory board of the International Memory Studies Association (MSA). He is a writer of short fiction whose work has been published in The Bangalore Review, The Bombay Review, Out of Print, Kitaab, and Borderless Journal, among other places.
Awesome rendition Sir.