The phantom of the old tiger that jumped in from the window
like a breeze had bloomed the king’s daughter's pair-seeking desire that
remained a bud till now. She was accustomed to a belief, without her knowledge,
that men would have an exclusive trait for themselves, and she now began
thinking that she had found what it was. Her mind grew restless in a mixed delusion
of being awake and asleep, thinking that only the men, not the women, had the
deftness and courage for theft in love. The part of the lesson that examined
the roots of dreams taught me that the visual of the old tiger—jumping in
through the window along with its moon-like dim light, scent of breeze,
weightlessness of feathers, and smoky form—had, in fact, pierced through her
heart like a lance of masculinity. It was at that moment that the eyes of her
youth opened, and at that level, the dreamlike qualities of the visuals and the
mortal moments of dreams began to play with her. She closed her eyes and delved
into the bizarre world of dreams with her eyes closed as if being aroused by
the masculinity she had fantasised about. She wished whole heartedly for the
success of the yagnas her father had been conducting in demand of a male child.
Being uncertain whether she was awake or sleeping, the king’s daughter was
waiting with the bloom of her femininity for the heft of masculinity to fall
upon her to satiate it. But dear courtiers! The old tiger that entered, went
straight to the adjacent room, parting the curtain, and disappeared instead of going
towards the bed of the king’s daughter. That magical tiger had the habit of
curling its body under the servant maid’s cot while sleeping in the adjacent
room, as it was smaller than the bedroom, cramped, windowless, and warmer than
the bedroom. It happened that day too. The king’s daughter, waiting for her
wooer and snoozing with her eyes closed, fell asleep in that tranquillity. The
scene that she witnessed in her semi-sleep state slipped out of her brain’s
memory spot and fell into the dreams with the dull appeal of a drawing room. At
the same time, an unquenching carnal desire was awakened. If she had seen the
tiger’s soul wandering without peace when she was fully awake, she would have
opened her eyes again to look for it. Or she could have understood while being
fully awake that it was not of humans. Even that tiger, which had lived for
many generations without falling into the eyes of a fully awakened human being,
could have confirmed its existence only in the stories and continued its state
of being as a melancholic soul in the
room without anyone’s attention. The event—the reason behind the bizarre dreams
of the king’s daughter—would have gotten cracked up at the very top layer of
her consciousness. There wouldn’t be any chance of fame or popularity to both
this story and my fame today. If she hadn’t at least seen the two pug marks
crawling on the floor the next morning, her dreams would also have been ended
just like that of any other young girl lustfully waiting for her wooing male
partner. But, since she had been ordained by destiny to appease the soul of a
wild animal wandering for generations, seeking salvation, the king’s daughter
saw a pair of pugmarks that belonged to the tiger, which began regaining its
mortal weight and form from the very moment it was exposed to human sight the
next morning on the floor below the window inside the bedroom.
***
The black magic says that, among all animals, only the tiger has
the eligibility to enter and enjoy the dreams of a woman by taking any form.
Other animals would prove themselves as not human with a mere movement of their
breath. The tiger is not like that. It is as majestic as humans. It possesses
resolute moves, noble ideas, belligerence, and a feminine heart to enjoy music
like humans. Tiger remains the aspiration of soldiers on the battlefield and
the dreams of beautiful women in the bedroom. It never allows its front paws to
leave their footprints on the ground. Though it was created as a four-legged
animal due to its destiny, it has a strong desire to show its front legs to
others as its weapons. Ordinary hunters and common people wouldn’t know about
it. The one who mastered the treatises on the body parts of animals would know
the very characteristic traits of a tiger. The tiger would erase the imprints
of its front paws on the ground with the help of its shadow that crawls upon
it. The two pugmarks of its rear paws not covered by its shadow would only be
visible to others. The king’s daughter was powerfully attracted towards one
such pair of pugmarks. Yes, she was attracted anyway. She wasn’t confused at
seeing them, nor shocked. Those pugmarks didn’t bring back to her the visuals
that slipped away and fell into the dreams of the previous night. She had been
aware of the fact that they were not human footprints. As she hadn’t seen any
wild animals before, she couldn’t figure out what those circle-shaped
footprints were. The manner in which those pugmarks moved along the edges of
the wall was just enough to make her astounded by arresting her attention. The
very nature of the pugmarks without straying from the proximity of walls for
any obvious reasons was the main reason for her astonishment. The interior
bottom of the man-sized ornamental flowerpot that stood on its way along the
wall had those pugmarks imprinted in it. The moist phantom of the breath was
seen misted up in the centre on both sides of the circular surface of the
marble mirror, which the king’s daughter used to deck herself up daily. The tip
of the night lamp’s wick, lit in two big caskets, was found twisted sharply
towards the direction of the adjacent room. Who else could have been the owner
of the feet that had left their marvellous imprints on the objects they penetrated
without considering them worthy of their obstacles? Other than air and light,
who else would have the courage and elegance to move around in my room like
this? The king’s daughter thought that it was either the breeze or the moon
that had walked that night in her room. Her youth allowed her to draw an
extremely handsome man by mixing the features of the body according to the
footprints she had seen tangibly and letting it wander in her dreams. Her
subconscious mind was even ascertained of itself with a reason why he left her
without copulating with her. She had composed some verses that brimmed with the
heaviness of misery and the heat of coital longing. Those lines must have
emerged in her heart immediately after she saw those footprints. While her
composure, without making others panic after she was shocked at seeing those
bizarre footprints, showed the greatness of her acumen by birth, the verses she
composed after being enticed by those footprints showed her mastery in the
craft. Later, she always kept mumbling those lines herself, as she seemed
attracted towards rhythmic beats and the imaginative opulence of those lines
she composed. How did I come to know about it? I had seen those lines spilling
out of her mouth, effortlessly and pompously, during the days she was with me
to learn the craft. But I wasn’t aware of the fact that it was a manifestation
of the eccentric disease that affected her. Singing those verses in her own
voice, listening to them with her own ears, being forced into an illusion that
they were all true, and eventually letting them rot in her dreams were all the
results that couldn’t be conditioned by the weakness of her adolescence with theoretical
knowledge but by the experience. On the first night, I heard those lines rising
up from her navel, being played as background during the time she was enjoying,
playing with her friend in the world of dreams she had built herself. The woman
playing in the dream listened to those lines that the king’s daughter mumbled
while asleep. It was these lines, sung again and again, that had slowly changed
the usual yearning of a female into an eccentric disease.
In a long dream of breeze
A tiny move of my face.
In the enduring life of the moon
My femininity remained a single sigh.
Why am I not the slumber of air?
Why am I not the breath of light?
That is why
This night pesters me enormously.
My confidant adorning himself with ambivalence
Drifts away from me
Like a merciless relative
who leaves the sickly with disease
along with flowers.
Whenever that dream girl closes her eyes, leaning on the real
girl in the state of sleep, to allow her friend onto the bed at the peak of
playing, I am again seeing the sleeping girl in front of my eyes chaotically
begin gibbering through fear, repeatedly, with the severity of fever that she
was not sick. The fear—that her extremely handsome friend, who had the
lightness and scent of air and glow of moonlight, was going to leave her, as he
wasn’t interested in having sex with her—tears her face off and leaves it
unsightly. Now I am seeing again that the last lines of the verse are squirting
out of the sleeping girl’s mouth with the foul odour and colour of waste. Even
I couldn’t bear that disgusting scene. But the dream girl, apparently not aware
of the real girl’s agony and the horridness of the verse’s lines that flowed
copiously down on her body, was still waiting with her impeccable face,
lounging, for him to copulate with her. Such a pitiable and horrible scene it
was. It was a wonderful scene as well. Narrating the agony that small girl
underwent while having tangible footprints as finite forms penetrating her
dreams and hurting her body that lay outside the dreams, thinking about her
dream friend, my tongue aches and stutters. It is true that even I couldn’t
bear the very sight of the horrendous form she got. If so, how could that
handsome man with a soft heart and smoky form bear it? Unable to bear the foul
odour of her song, he spat on her face, leaving her to wake up with shock, and
disappeared immediately. Not one day or two days; it had been happening for
months. Since she lost her friend due to the fear of losing him and was thus
affected by a severe fright as she had kept on losing him, the king’s daughter
submitted herself to an eccentric ailment without even her knowledge. Due to
this effect of the dream, her mind started believing that she had no longer
been fit to mate a handsome man in the real world. Till we brought the animal
hiding in the bushes of memories for generations into its physical form and
showed it as a real tiger to her eyes by playing ‘the coition of star dwellers’
on the third night, the dreams kept reminding her, without her consent, that
her face had become so despicable due to diseases that any handsome man would
spit on it. The story says that even the last man at the end of the sea of
people that had spread over many miles could hear the grief-stricken words of
my great-grandfather, who completed narrating his story with the note that the
images of handsome men reminded her of the spittle flowing down on the face,
thus causing a repulsion that rose up from the stomach and kept her under
perpetual fright.
Other than this city whose streets
had the restless spirits of animals—which perceive the universe as a womb in
their dreams and want to keep themselves safely in it—roaming the streets
carrying the dead winds of the chopped trees, who else could have created the
despair of a young girl—who could match the power, beauty, courage, and
erudition of twenty-two men—being affected by a bizarre disease that made her
believe that she was only fit to unite either with an ugly or a sick man?
***Ended***
