I present below the second part of the Post-Marriage Story that
resulted from George Pinto's elaboration of a Bambino Martins riddle
involving a Goan Bhatcar, his two sons, and three pets, on the Goan
Forum. This part deals with what happened after the cow married the
goat in George's elaboration of Bambino's riddle. I would like to
warn readers that this is a long post, and presented here in three
chapters because of length limitations. Some of the statements in
this story are only relevant in the context of a discussion between
three other contributors to the Goan Forum, but the subject matter
should be of interest to everybody.
THE MARRIAGE OF THE PETS
The two creatures that are the subjects of this story were excluded
from the opportunity to savor the subjective perspective offered by a
theoretical pantheist religion, because their masters thought that
they could not think for themselves. So the poor ruminant beings spent
their lives ruminating on their own, unable to express their views in
any forum. They had to settle for loving and caring for each other,
and quietly solving the material problems of their lives, for which
thankfully they received at least one generous undirected salute on
The Goan Forum. As if the treatment that they received in the Goan
bhatcar's household was not enough, their private lives and their
marriage were unfortunately subjected to a smear campaign initiated by
a hastily formed Silicon Valley internet rag mag startup company whose
aggressive accounting practices, we have now learned, are exemplified
by the equation "2+2=5".
One of the early casualties of this media-generated morass of
confusion was the sexual orientation of the cow. The cow was not a cow
or gay as reported. He was a transvestite bull who had a fairly
healthy, albeit somewhat awkward, heterosexual love affair with the
goat before marriage. Any awkwardness that was there in the physical
relationship was adequately remedied by the cross-dressing, which
provided a prosthetic benefit in facilitating the many recreational
activities conducted by the ruminant pair. If you have not already
guessed it, this union was one where the need for recreation
superseded the need for procreation, because of the very practical
uncertainty about the identity and size of the offspring. For this
thoughtful choice they were once considered for the "Freedom from
Cynicism and Insensitivity Award" of the Independent Republic of
Chimbel.
However, like most marriages this one also had to sooner or later face
a minor crisis. The predicament began when the bovine husband received
that annoying phone call in the middle of the night, this time
claiming that recreational sex was a conspiracy hatched by liberal
intellectuals, and artificial birth control, a money-making scheme
launched by the scientific establishment still rooted in the cultural
context of the socialist university dorms of the sixties, but tempted
by the irrational capitalist exuberance of the nineties. The seeds of
guilt sown by this phone call and other similar ones, each containing
familiar but slightly different liberally used quotes of a
conservative British intellectual whose name escaped the caller, ate
at the unrecognized conscience of the bull, who began wondering if he
was indeed wasting his own seeds. The "spilling of seeds on the
ground" he had heard had displeased God and caused Him to slay Onan,
although the phone calls never mentioned this.
Tormented by these progressive thoughts that had found their way in
his otherwise imprisoned mind, not having received the benefit of
a passionate and subjective freedom that can only come from an
ultraconservative religious upbringing, the bull in cow's clothing
wondered how he would broach the topic with his beloved bundle of
mutton. But with appropriate deftness and lack of condescension that
would make his co-travelers (even those who have long since got off
his bandwagon to join a real band) filled with delight, he laid out
his problem before his caprine wife, proceeding with great caution to
make sure she would not be paralyzed by his analysis.
So with the right amount of confluence of streams of emotion and
reason, to create warmth like the kind you only feel in a bathtub
fitted with properly functioning hot and cold faucets in a vacation
resort in the Bahamas, where they like to entertain people with a 2
night stay in a five star hotel, with a promise not to engage in a
face-to-face argument, even if the guest is the elusive Raul, he
mooed:
"My dear bokdi, we are getting old, and I think we have had enough
fun. We have to think about our future, our posterity and our legacy.
Don't you think we should have a calf?", slightly apprehensive that he
might have caused his wife to spend many a sleepless night juggling
contradictory ideas, when her mind and her hooves could be on
something better.
The wife, startled by the tone of her husband's newly found voice as
much as the content of his first real conversation, let out a sudden
burst of bleats, like the explosive sounds emanating from an
unidentifiable string instrument handled by an amateurish sheet
musician:
"What kind of a calf do you think we would have, if we let ourselves
have one? Are you not afraid that it would be a misfit or an unfit?
How are you going to thwart the problem of the survival of the
fittest?"
The bull visibly taken aback by this barrage, but trying to maintain
his composure, responded:
"Evolution is a myth - survival of the fittest, a ploy, and the
population problem, a farce, as was finally admitted by the New York
Times", surprised at himself for having so effortlessly reproduced the
staccato messages left on the answering machine by the middle of the
night anonymous phone calls.
And unperturbed by this realization, he continued:
"The problem of poverty and inequitable supply of food will be solved
by unelected secretive neoconservative governments in nominal
democracies, where the press reports domestic good news and foreign
bad news", wondering where this stuff came from, not knowing that the
phone messages were interlaced with subliminal voodoo vibes from a
Caribbean island.
"It is not natural to continue our marital relationship with no
intention of having an issue. It is against the law of nature", he
rambled.
"But our marriage is against the law of nature. What about that?", she
asked.
"I know. But I don't like to juggle contradictory ideas in my mind. I
have been told to accept only those ideas that harmonize nicely with
my world-view, and reject those that do not", he pleaded.
"But I am not sure whether we will have a bokdai (goat-cow) or a gokdi
(cow-goat), to say nothing about a boilokdo (bull-goat) or a bokodboil
(goat-bull). Are you not afraid that I might have a difficult delivery
depending on the exact nature of our baby?", she persisted.
"Yes, I know. That is why I think we should consult an expert on cows
- President Pandurang Fernandes, who was a cowherd before he was
appointed President by the Supreme Court of Chimbel", said the bull,
relieved that he was finally able to make a point that he had waited
so long to make.
Overwhelmed by this academic debate whose only aim she felt was
one-upmanship, the goat finally gave up with a facial contortion that
resembled a smiley, but whose meaning was not immediately apparent to
any creature with concealed or exposed male sexual characteristics.
___________________________ (continued)
Cheers,
Santosh
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