…and that is why lions bathe

Summer vacations from college, those beautiful days of slumber. Disturbed only by the miffed rants of a distressed mother, asking the young man to take a bath, have breakfast, or at least brush his teeth. Another of those disturbances had just landed in front of the TV.

“When are you going to brush your teeth?”

She knew what she was playing with, and she knew what was to come. And, she hated it. It made her frustration diffuse out of the pores of her skin and haze her vision. It made her want to lose her motherly instincts and land a sumo punch into the young man’s belly. She curled up her wrists and twitched her ears in abandoned anticipation.

“Shero ne kab muh dhoye?” (When did lions wash their faces?)

There it was. The banal yet effective mechanism had been held in force by the young man’s father; from whom he inherited the ‘king of the jungle’ mentality. Which, to put forth in simple words, is a simple one-step process – imagine a lion in your place. Would it go for a bath? Would it like to brush his teeth? Would it find dinner at that strange (read vegetarian) family’s place an interesting activity to indulge in? And so, father and son lived a merry life at the expense of the distraught mother. The newborn in the family was watching this, and although too young for implementation, he was taking his first steps towards the “League of lions”, as they liked to call it.

Two things are impeccably consistent in Bangalore – Traffic jams and rains. As I was returning from the lunch this afternoon, a mild shower had me looking for my umbrella. Certain neurons connected unexpectedly, and I had a perturbing remembrance of the mother’s revenge.

The league of lions had an arrogant dislike of the rain. Dryness is sacred in the world of lions. Rain means getting wet. Wetness is disgusting. Wetness is a precursor to bathing. Lions don’t bathe. On that beautiful Sunday of July, the weather was pleasant, the winds were flowing fast and cold and dark clouds hovered in the sky. The established lion was all set to take the young lion and the formative lion on an excursion to the local marketplace, ostensibly for buying groceries. And while they were at it, a few pakodas wouldn’t topple any government.

Just as they were to leave, the mother offered her advice to take an umbrella along with.

Peals of laughter followed. And the league left. As fate was to have it, it rained that day. It rained just as the first pakoda went into the young one’s mouth. And it rained as it had never rained before. Cycles went floating, poles were uprooted and New Delhi recorded its highest rainfall in a single day for decades.

The rain didn’t spare our protagonists either. They reached their den drenched from head to toe, their clothes sticking to their skin, spotted by ketchup at places and soiled by kichad (mud) at others.

Noor Jehan wouldn’t have rejoiced on seeing Taj Mahal as much as the mother did at the grim sight of the three wet men, in mock admiration, as they went about their way, consecutively cleaning up themselves and taking baths. Then with one blow she dissolved the league and ended the family tradition.

“Shero ne kab chaate uthaaye?” (When did lions use umbrellas?)