The two writers laughed aloud as I ended story. Not that it was kind of thing that one likes to hear in morning. Some would quickly go on their knees and pray that “cup” passes next door. But pray as they might, it is a “cup” that we all must drink from.
By cup, I am not referring to cups of tea in our hands that we now resumed to enjoy after telling them story. DD Phil, romance writer who ladies like to call Filemon, with a stress on last syllable, was looking dreamily. Sitting with his right hand supporting his chin, his left on chair, and suspended tea cup on table, one would have thought that he was plotting a scene in his next fantasy novel.
Of course, story that I was telling them was more fantasy than real. What is real again in this world? For Val K poet, sitting with all cares in this world—his legs wide apart as poles—everything (and that includes life) is poetry. It is no wonder that someone says, “Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyways.”
Whether story was a comedy or a tragedy is another matter. But it was a story about life. And whether life stories are sweet or bitter is for you to judge. Look at verdict of these people.
A chief of King Edwin says: “The present life of man is like a sparrow.” Apostle James, a Bible writer, calls it “a mist that appears for a while and then disappears.”
But story was more about equivocations—double tongues. And is life not a tale of equivocations? So, after I finished story, we resumed our tea drinking and compared story with other equivocal tales.
The first to come to mind was King Croesus who went to consult oracle before embarking on a major military expedition. He was assured that if he went to war, a mighty empire would fall. He believed and went to do battle. But empire that fell was his!
And then there was Macbeth who was thoroughly deceived by witches. He didn’t think that tress “move” and he never believed that there was any man not “born” of a woman. But he was dead wrong. Equivocation did both people in.
The best of such double tongues, however, was that of great hinter who was warned that he was to be killed by an animal on a certain day. So finicky hunter refused to step into bush on that day. But lying in his room, head of one animals that he had killed which he had suspended on a rafter, got loose and landed a death-blow on his head!
When I got message to proceed to country with God speed, however, first thing that came to my mind was not a word that began with letter E. And then message became more incessant: You must come home in December. I refused invitation. Yet, my people sent an emissary who spoilt case for not explaining why I was wanted back home. So I tarried in city, waiting for war of cyclpos.