"Yes, Chacha, but those wolves were of their own land, foreign wolves."
Promising to meet again, he started walking quickly towards his Basti (village). There were
many Jhokes (small villages), on the way. When he passed through the nearest Jhoke, he saw an
old man fettered in chains. Rafeel knew him; he was Bukshoo who had lost his mind in youth.
People of the village fastened him because he threw heavy stones at people. Rafeel stopped for a
while, to look at that caveman whose white beard was touching the land, and mouth was
frothing.
Bukshoo looked at the stranger, made a bowl of his hand, threw dust on him and started rolling
like a tired donkey. Rafeel could not digest that horrible scene and started walking again. His
country had become an atomic power, but Bukshoo was still in chains.
"Damn care! I won't think about people. Already I have suffered a lot, I won't say anything
against anybody, I want to live with my mother. To hell with the people, my mother is now too
old! Democracy, justice and emancipation are just romantic notions. Here everything is futile,
shallow and absurd."
He stroked the ground with his foot and kept on walking. He heard the voice of mountains:
"Everything is shallow. Everything is absurd."
To overcome those oppressive thoughts, Rafeel looked at the red light on the mountains and his
thoughts ran back to his childhood. He remembered the day when all the people of the village
were gathered to see this strange thing for the first time many simple farmers were so frightened
that they hid themselves in their homes.
Everyone narrated it with their own innocent perception. His elder brother told him that it was
the light of a uranium reactor. Khair Shah, shepherd of the village, never believed that it was a
man made thing; he was sure that it was the light of a saint, sitting on the mountains. Most of the
simple villagers were followers of Khair Shah.
In that far-off village, where there was no electricity, no clean water, no medication for dying
people, it was something supernatural.
Soon Rafeell's father brought radio, for the first time in village, villagers ran out of the village,
voices from that box made them frightened. It took them many months to become adjusted to
that speaking box.
When Rafeel reached near the cluster of big, thick trees; a melancholic memory struck his mind.
It was the place where they had found the bones of Kaloo, a brave lad of the village, never afraid
of the wild beasts, which would come late at night.
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