PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

Over the regular quota of steaming tea and crisp biscuits, Prakashan was telling a tale, stroking his sparse beard and grinning.
Years and years ago when time was unshackled by clocks and watches, a team of fifty skinny men went on a pilgrimage to find Truth and reach Equality York. Midway the journey, when the group halted for a few pieces of black bread and boiled water, two of them sneaked out to have a puff and indulge in a bit of gossip. Nobody knows what happened next. The buzz is that like a brisk Hitchcockian cameo, they were sucked from the culvert they had been sitting on. Other pilgrims, worn-out from incessant toils and vicissitudes of life as they were, would not let a single stone unturned—literally. Forgetting their own troubles, they procured a few torches and somehow roped in the help of local residents. Behind every fence, beneath every boulder, inside every shanty did reach their probing eyes and flickering wickers. The frenzied search, however, was eating into their weak bodies and weaker minds. Reluctantly, with watery eyes and bleeding hearts, they abandoned the search and continued the journey. The bushes were ugly, dark and deep but they had promises to keep; and miles to go before they slept. The meandrous road to Equality York stretched itself indefinitely before them, like the way to heaven: narrow and thorny.
The two pilgrims, in reality, had not met with a gruesome fate. While reclining, they saw a Cadillac swishes by with two sexy figures doing something inside and experienced enlightenment in silence. In a spilt second, they realized the hollowness of the troubles that had been pestering and nagging them for long. Land, labor, production, agriculture. They waved down a Ford and hitchhiked a backseat ride to Equality York, all the way crooning “The way she came into the place, I knew right then. . .” They knew better than any one it was the duty of a comrade to stand for the destitute and the downtrodden, whether they are blacks, Hispanics or dalits.
On reaching Equality York, one grabbed a big microphone and announced smugly: “Your attention please. Forty-eight members of a Equality York bound bus are found missing. Please report to the mike point and understand you need the constant guidance of persons like me in long journeys like this. You are also reminded that it is impossible to revise the schedule we have set and reactions would be best if sobered up with obedience.” And the awed forty-eight realized it is not the duo but they who had grossly violated the rules of the journey and thus betrayed the great cause.