Still Waters – The Prelude

Like every gentleman in our ranks, I do accept that my pedigree is nothing short of anything else debatable. I have to start by nailing my shortcomings across in order that this story may maintain a better balance than that of fantasy tales. That done, I would like to state that I did know a few things. The indignity of my own mother’s wafting smell of the mispronunciation of my name could not stand in my way of knowing what it was. That was before I decided to tweak its spelling in order to make it possible for her to pronounce it without mispronouncing it. It worked.

These were the small pleasures that no one would deny me. I was not gifted in many things that every little Tom, Dick and Harry in my age-group was. When (if) we sneaked out of our homes for unauthorised (no one ever authorised it) football, the rest of the mob would chuck me between the two sticks or stones that were improvised goal-posts. There are a few times when I was lucky enough to be in the same team with someone who was less gifted than I was. How lucky that may have been, I cannot tell since I always went back to my mother’s house with a ‘sausage’ toe testament to the imbalance between friends and foes in my age-group. Then of course, my mother’s word was final – “Eat the football for dinner!” I never gave up, albeit the brewing rage deep inside of me.

As I sought solace in the written word on a piece of paper, the sun was slowly disappearing beyond the reach of my eyes and darkness encroaching. The chicken hovered around the doors. The constant calls of my mother became more vivid as the silence of night settled in. At this point, she was ordering me to take the cows back to their shed, something that meant more than just that. I had to literally, with the help of a rope, take the bull by its horns and direct the angry beast to its resting place – hopefully for the last time. Regardless of how sorry my mother would be, I could not help but pray for some thief to come by in the middle of the night and coerce with Simba to let them steal Nyundo. If they managed to get through Simba’s five-star security system, however, Nyundo would not have been an easy nut to crack. I still fantasised that somehow, the bull would disappear out of my world and let me grow up fearlessly – or with lack of anything to fear.

I awakened from my fantasies soon enough to maintain my distance with the bull. I let him know the size of the stick I had in my hand just in case he was brewing any trouble. The response was one of a kind, one that made me sigh with relief. This was one of those nights when I would go to bed happy just because a bull obeyed me and did exactly what I expected of him. You could tell I was happy from the boyhood tunes I was humming soon before the singing spontaneously went off-key – then silent. Boy down! The reaction speed of the beast was more impressive than what the creature had achieved for its CV. Perhaps even more impressive is the figure of a mother standing there sympathising with you.