All the king's men

The story begins in a crowded vegetable cum fish and meat market of South Kolkata.

In early hours of morning the place becomes favorite hunting ground of hundreds of avid buyers who jump in cut-throat competition for the best quality food-stuff and subsequently dump them in the kitchens for their wives to handle just before sprinting for their offices. And those aggressive and boisterous vendors who bank on unique power of their vocal cords to lure super-busy customers. If you ever have a chance to set your feet over there you might encounter one of the most chaotic places under the sun.  

The crowd starts thinning out slowly as time touching upon ten. By next one hour the place is left with fewer heads who roam rather aimlessly to collect left-out remains of the mart in half-prices. The vendors, many a time slacken their stubborn negotiations that time following hefty profits of roaring morning hours.

The vendors also perform a bit charitable jobs targeting local homeless and street-dwelling beggars who are common visitors of breaking mart.

That’s usually the time for our king to show his precious presence.

A tall, lean and thin, slender, bewhiskered man in his mid-seventies with sharp features and confident movement but not donned as perfectly as to carry the royal attitude and expression. But that doesn’t undermine spotlight from him for a second.

He is accompanied by a middle-aged, funny-looking, pot-bellied, bald-headed ‘Man Friday’.

The uproarious vendors recognize and appreciate his presence with due respect. They exchange unusually polite words with him under a flow of awe whenever he is on transactions. He never bargains for low prices. That remains job of the vendors to cut short of price of their left-out items. They sell them to him in half-price, even less, sometimes free.

This is not just because he buys their stuff in bulk.

They know very well he buys those stuff for his men.

The king’s men!

A handy bunch of around twenty stray dogs.

God only knows, where from such large number of dogs land together in the market and how come their timing coincides so keenly with the king?

They never block zigzag, constricted passages cutting through the market, neither scream nor bulldoze each other like crazy buyers of the morning; rather wait within a perfect queue on the open field adjoining the market while king’s loyal ‘Man Friday’ assembles eating stuff for them under a vigilant supervision of his master.

The buzz is only audible when much-awaited food are served. The happiness becomes prominent in their body languages with constant wagging of tails during gulping food. Two in the party keep their tails erected althrough while munching spongy fish-bones. They are fervent lovers of fish. The rest freak out on raw skins, feathers and bones of chicken.

The king pours his heart out to his ‘men’ during the gala dining time. His eyes sparkle in unfathomable happiness when he fondles and feeds them. His smile looks pure and heavenly. For some he even inserts food directly in their mouth like a doting father. His affectionate hands don’t take break for a second while ruffling their heads and necks.

The king!

His real name is Raja Dutta Chowdhury.

His ancestors were kings of Southern Kolkata much before independence of India.  Chowdhury kingdom had been dismantled long back leaving behind a large, dilapidated palace. Raja occupied one small corner of the broken palace to spend his days all alone there.  The God-forbidden place had no other soul. He was the only living and left-out royal lineage.

Raja’s wife had expired long back. The couple had no children. Servants and attendants who had once flocked in hundreds abandoned the palace one by one as financial crunches hit royal family hard soon after they had lost their kingdom to the British rulers and subsequently the independent nation.

Nitai was the only one to stay back and took key position in Raja’s solitary life as his ‘Man Friday’. 

Daily morning he accompanies Raja to the market and helps him in feeding his dogs’ squad, cooks for him two times a day but never spends night at the palace.

People say the palace is haunted and infested by spooks. They become mostly active at night. Nitai can’t think about spending a second over there after the sunset. He is terribly scared of spooks.

But spooks can’t keep everyone away from the palace. Especially the local property dealers and builders. They aspire to raise a multiplex cum mall over there. Estimation wise it would be a highly profit-making veture for them.

But Raja has no mind to hand over the palace for any commercial purpose. Repeated negotiations, threatening phone-calls, financial enticements, nothing could perturb our king.

He is not scared of the hired ruffians of the builders. He is neither disturbed by terrorizing ghost-stories originating from his palace.

All because his ‘men’ are with him, almost every time in the day and night.

They hardly let their king stay alone during night-time. The palace turns into nocturnal shelter for several groups of stray dogs belonging to nearby streets. Local burglars and law-breakers know it well. The fierce dog-brigade of the streets keeps them at bay.

The king takes his regular quota of liquor which is followed by dinner together with his ‘men’. This happens almost every night. Nitai brings raw food stuff once again for them from the same mart on the verge of evening, generally little after he prepares dinner for his king. He then leaves for home with a relieved mind that his king is now in the safe hands of his ‘men’.

Their peaceful routine met a sudden, unprecedented disruption one day with deep trouble looming large over the king’s men.

Dog-bite cases were rising by leaps and bounds in city hospitals. Few bite-cases succumbed to Rabies over a short time that pressed immediate alert button. Media was becoming constantly vocal against Health Department’s careless attitude.

The situation almost forced the Municipal Corporation to throw a massive drive to clear city roads from stray dogs.

Several gigantic trucks carrying large cages hit the streets with hundreds of municipality workers to nab and encage the dogs and clean the streets.

When Raja heard the news from Nitai he lost his temper instantly.

This never happened before.

He became furious.

‘Take my gun out!’ The fuming king screamed at his Man Friday. ‘I will teach those Municipality guys a lesson of their lives.’

There was an old-fashioned, East-India Company made gun lying in Raja’s palace for long.

‘The gun is totally rusted now, Babu. It doesn’t work either. The bullets are also missing.’ Nitai tried to calm the king down but in vain.

‘Useless a*****e! Why can’t you keep the gun fit and its bullets handy all the time?’ the infuriated king was about to thrash him.

‘Babu, the gun has no license. Using an unlicensed gun would be highly risky.’ Nitai argued as politely as possible but couldn’t stop the king from rushing to the streets where dog-catching drive was on full swing.

‘Babu, Babu…..don’t run so fast. Please…..’ Nitai trailed his master’s steps madly, ‘your heart is not in good shape…..’

Raja gave complete deaf ear to him.

His high-pitched threatening messages couldn’t put a break on dog-catchers. Neither he was able to deliver any physical resistance on the dog catching drive.

His fair complexion turned staunch red. His whole body was drenched in sweat. He was panting heavily in intense excitement.

‘Oh God, something grave shouldn’t happen to him!’ Nitai was terribly worried but baulked to stop him. He knew that would make him more upset and restless.

Raja finally started urging to the pedestrians. No one bothered. Rather some pedestrians ended up helping the workers in catching dogs.

The helpless, hapless king failed to save his men.

 He all of a sudden dropped himself down on the street with grasping his forehead in sheer despair. His ‘men’ were no more seen in any of the places. They were dumped inside the closed cages of the trucks which were already filled with tons of dogs picked up from other different areas of the city. They were desperately looking for ways to escape but couldn’t. Many were already engaged in scratching, screaming and biting each other. The workers were inserting bamboo sticks through gaps of the cages to poke them as a measure of noise control.

Soon the dog-catching mission was over. The trucks loaded with dogs left the place leaving behind a devastated king and his baffled Man Friday in the mid of the road.

‘Where they are taking my ‘men’ to?’ asked the king in a broken voice aiming to the emptiness surrounding him.

‘I heard that they will be taken and abandoned in Dhapa. They won’t make a return from there and crowd the city anymore.’ Nitai replied to his master.

Dhapa is located at the outskirt of Kolkata, a semi-forest area where city’s garbage and waste products of all kinds were dumped on regular basis for biological recycling.

‘They will die over there…all my men. They won’t get an iota of food in that deserted, filthy land.’ The king suddenly broke in heavy tears.

‘Don’t cry Babu. Please. You fall sick.’ Nitai lightly placed his hand on his shoulder. He very well knew that pacifying this old man and getting him back to normal condition would be now a very tough job.

‘They took my kingdom away. Now they take my men.’ Raja’s voice turned blank. ‘Why should I live now? For whom? What for? Can you tell me Nitai?’

‘Let’s go back home Babu. People are laughing at us.’ Nitai tried to lift him up from the ground. The king caught random attraction of the pedestrians off and on. Some of them already made him laughing stock.

‘Let them laugh.’ Raja suddenly lied down on the road. ‘You go back to my palace and live there. That is no more my place now. You take over that. The palace is now yours. Now onwards I will stay on the roads.’

Nitai took his master back home after a long negotiation, with the help of some local people, mostly shop-keepers and vendors who were at least in the position to read his stormy mental state.

The next few days Raja didn’t get out of his room, sank in alcohol and didn’t take a grain of food.

Nitai was in real dilemma.  He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t leave his master alone at night but lacking the courage to stay in the haunted palace.

His nights became equally sleepless.

After spending few tense hours of night at home Nitai generally came back to his master.

‘Nitai, can’t you at least for once take me to Dhapa? I will find them out over there and get them back.’ Those were the only things Raja kept on telling him whenever he got back to his senses.

Nitai couldn’t find any suitable replies to that.

I could have easily ended the story right here, may be dragging it a bit more till death of the king as Raja lost all interest in life since the day he had lost all his men.

So he should die now.

But………

I was forced to drop a ‘but’ here as something unique happened in between.

One morning Nitai got delayed for his morning duties. He slept off in the early hours of the morning and got up late.

An urgent message from the palace almost flied to his home by a local man that actually broke his sleep, ‘the king wants to see you right now, Nitai.’

Nitai ran.

When he reached the palace he was almost breathless. He couldn’t see the king. He checked all the places. Raja was found nowhere.

His surprises knew no bounds.

Where the king had vanished after dropping an emergency message for him?

His mind clicked on something else.

He sprinted to the market.

Raja was right there in the spirited buying mood like before. ‘Where were you Nitai? I had been looking for you so long? Even sent a man to tinkle you at your home?’ He got a solid blast from the master.

‘What happened Babu? You are here?’ The dumbstruck Nitai somehow managed to ask him.

‘They are terribly hungry.’ The king said with a big bright smile. ‘There was no food for them in that stupid place of Dhapa as I anticipated and kept on telling you. We need to feed them right now. Get ready Nitai. They are waiting for us in the field.’

‘The dogs were back, Babu?’ Nitai fell from the sky. How could they make their way right here?

‘Today early morning. They all assembled at my place and broke my sleep. Nitai, I knew, I knew that! No one can separate my men from me. They are back.’

Nitai ran to the open field close to the market.

The dogs had already lined up there like before, waiting for their king to serve them food.

Nitai counted them one by one. Exactly twenty of them. No one was missing.

All the king’s men.

They are finally back to their king.

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

A amazing story shared dear friend. I liked the set-up and the story line. You create interesting characters and I like the ending. Thank you dear friend for sharing the amazing story.
Coyote