Humor: Bullstruck

BULLSTRUCK

Travelling in a crowded DTC bus, I happened to notice a slogan painted on the curve where the roof meets the side. “Untouchability is a crime against Man and God” it read. Whoever had put up that slogan needn’t have worried; I couldn’t have practiced untouchability even if I’d wanted to. An angular bony gentleman was “touching” my midriff with his elbow and a rather corpulent lady was “touching” my left big toe with sole of her Kohlapuri chappal.

Though national solidarity is a desirable goal, I wished I wasn’t so “touchable” or in such intimate physical contact with my fellow citizens. I was luckier than most, having acquired standing room inside the bus, many of my fellow commuters were doing a Spiderman imitation in the doorways.

The aforementioned gaunt gent livened up the journey and not just with his funny bone applied strategically against my solar plexus. He was dressed in an Edwardian toff’s outfit from the waist up and below that a diaphanous dhoti draped his skinny shanks, bisected by the big bony knobs of his knock knees. A pair of enormous horn-rimmed spectacles magnified a rather sour, pinched expression.

As the bus turned a corner at high speed, a brawny youth up front lost his balance and was catapulted tumbling into the narrow bosom of the living antique. Given the panache with which DTC drivers pilot their chariots, this was a common enough occurrence and the youth sheepishly disentangled himself.

“YEWH uh’re ay ROWDY!” shrilled the enraged aged worthy, “UH’EYE shell KEEK yewh wid maii SHEWHS!! Gandyjee TOHT us ’ow to deal wiv ROWDIES la-ak YEWH! Yewh uh’re ay disgrace to thee NAY-SHUN!!”

“I, uh…erm v-very s-s-sorry, sir,” stuttered his beefy bete noire in a ridiculously faint and high-pitched voice.

This feeble riposte was drowned out by a non-stop refrain of promised kicks that continued throughout the journey. Where in the Mahatma’s many writings (An Autobiography? My Experiments With Truth?) did he prescribe the quelling of disorderly elements by kicking them with size eleven feet, encased in antique English leather pumps and drooping socks held up by garters? His attire dated the venerable sage to circa 1910 and now in addition to overcoming arthritis and rheumatism to perform a Can-Can in a moving bus, he had made a quantum leap forward in time to 1947!

His vocal expressions of militant nationalism were diluted somewhat by his dress which was 90% Vilayati. Unfortunately, the 10% Swadeshi part was draping his nether regions.

Had this superannuated curmudgeon been less intent on flights of extravagant rhetoric and oratory, liberally laced with somewhat incoherent invective, he might have looked down before alighting at his stop. His head turned back to deliver a final blast of scorn, the ancient relic nearly stepped on the horns of a Brahman bull grazing alongside the running board of the bus. The bull pirouetted neatly, there was a ripping sound and then it gallumphed off, trailing a length of white Khadi from its horns like a jaunty cockade.

The auld codger, now 100% Vilayati, performed an impromptu pas-de-deux in midair to the aural accompaniment of a bloodcurdling falsetto screech. He landed non-Nureyev in the churned mud of the roadside, which rather ruined a natty pair of knee-length drawers, cellular, in a tasteful shade of fire-engine red. It was just as well the bull was not around anymore.

As the bus pulled away from the scene of the Great Leap Downwards, I saw the sage being hauled up from his semi-recumbent position in the slush, by the scruff of his scrawny neck. 
His Samaritan was the brawny youth, a beatific grin transforming his burly features.