Raja and His Buffalo
He was born in December, the month when the frost spreads its icy fingers across the landscape,
and turns everything it touches into a hardened, deadly shell gleaming with winter jewels.
With the rush of life, his parents neglected to name the child for several months, but as winter
changed to spring, his mother called the child Raja, which meant “her prince”. The irony of his
less than princely surroundings, somehow lost on her.
Raja grew up in small village of his birth where snow threatened to fall and a deep chill
burrowed its way through the tiny village. It clung to the steep mountainside as if seeking shelter,
too small and insignificant to be marked anywhere except on a 1:50,000 military topographic
maps. A village noted only when recruiters needed cannon fodder for the war effort.
Every day, Raja's father took him with his brothers to the corn fields, to work for the local
landlord, planting and harvesting corn. Raja's mother and sisters worked in the landlord's house,
paid in grain. They owned a small hut with a big yard and a buffalo. Not counting the animal and
the simple wooden furniture, all their earthly possessions would fit in a dowry chest. They
dreamed of a better life, with hazy and unreal visions of what such a life could be. Their
aspirations drew from the films they saw once a year in a slightly bigger village, but larger
villages intimidated them and made them feel small.
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