The Symbol

I am waiting for some food here. Waiting on Suleiman. He does bring it after a while, all cold and pulpy. I hate him. I truly do! I liked his uncle better. People called him Liyaqat. He treated me well. However this Suleiman guy, he isn’t up to the mark but I am still here. Want to know why; because it’s hard in the world out there. And here, here I’m getting food (sure food as good as shit) delivered right to my mouth, so who’s gonna want to go unless we are talking life and death! And I will tell you, now we are definitely talking life and death! I need someone to fuck right now otherwise I am gonna fucking die!

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We are walking past a lot, I mean, a lot of humans. Seriously, they are just like us. They don’t stop breeding. This reminds me, I need someone to fuck. I am a big boy now. Been for 2 months and this imbecile, Suleiman doesn’t understand why I was humping his hand before. He doesn’t get my need, my need to seed.

You know earlier, I was all praise for Liyaqat but he was actually the one who abducted me from Kudsiya Park. Coincidentally this park is just across the length of the ground we are walking now but I am in a cage so I can’t just stroll away to the park.

Suleiman’s uncle, Liyaqat took me when I was little and taught me how to understand human language. Now I hear Kudsiya has a kind of rabbit sanctuary because my family there didn’t stop fucking which is why the British government thought of giving them a decent home, exact opposite of what they did to the Indian people. Ha-ha.

So we are crossing the crowded ground and there’s Diwakar Deshbandhu standing atop the stage talking. Suddenly, Suleiman begins to turn towards Diwakar. I get anxious. These humans and their fights! I have had enough of them.

I even asked Liyaqat to not play peacekeeper in the riots but he didn’t listen and he died. Anyway we reach the stage. Deshbandhu showers praise on Suleiman for continuing to pet his uncle’s rabbit in these hard times. Seriously!

Then Diwakar or as the humans fondly call him, The Other Mahatma takes me out of my cage. I bite him hard. I dig my paws into his hands. He resists reaction but I know he is in pain. He quickly makes his usual speech about maintaining Hindu - Muslim unity when soon partition begins. Meanwhile I am about to chew his finger off but I don’t since everybody’s watching. The crowd won’t leave me alive if anything happens to their ‘Other Mahatma’.

Anyway after his usual shtick, Diwakar raises me in front of the maddening crowd and announces that from now on, I am ‘The Symbol’ of Hindu – Muslim unity during these divided times.

You know what I say to myself then. I say, ‘Fuck me!’

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People call me, Kumar. Shree Kumar. They say I am smart and cute and handsome. I am a rabbit for the 88th god’s sake. Why do humans find me interesting? And what is with Indians and white skin? In my case, that would be fur but I guess you get the point.

I feel Liyaqat stole me from the park, not because he wanted a pet but because he wanted a white pet. I saw how he looked at dogs. None of the Indian dogs are white. That’s an issue with Indian people. They are asking the British to leave but Indians are still a slave of the British’s white skin. Indians love any and all white animals and after cows, a white rabbit is the best one you get as a pet.

So returning to my predicament here, my name’s Hindu and my handler’s Muslim. Wow, perfecto! I am the perfect Symbol of Peace. Well, fuck off brothers. I am not of any religion, caste or creed. I say again, I am a rabbit, a buck who has reached his age of sexual maturity so I now need to do some does now. Comprendo!

And wait for the legendary irony of the situation - I am now the symbol of peace. A symbol meant to represent freedom but actually I live in a cage! Hah!

My mind’s going berserk thinking of all this. After finishing his speech, Diwakar puts me back in the cage. I don’t want to be the Symbol of Peace. I want to be a Symbol of Sexuality. Bloody hell! As Suleiman gets off stage, the crowd begins chanting my name, ‘Shree Kumar! Shree Kumar! Shree Kumar!’

‘Fuck’em all upside down,’ I pray to the merciful 88th god.

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On a dizzy afternoon, a man comes running to Suleiman at his cycle shop. He tells him happily that finally the riots are happening without any intervention. After seeing Suleiman’s horrified face, the man realizes that Suleiman is a Muslim and he will probably be killed.

The man then reasons with Suleiman saying that it is just that he a Muslim dies in Delhi because in Lahore, Hindus and Sikhs are being murdered.

The man continues, ‘It will look like Indian Hindus are non-violent if they don’t murder some Muslims and dispatch their dead bodies in trains and also planes-if possible.’

The man then runs off to announce his good news to the next person. Suleiman hears screams of people being slaughtered down the road. He hurriedly searches his pockets. There are some coins. He grabs my cage and off we go.

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It’s good for Suleiman that his shop is right outside Delhi Railway Station’s back-gate. ‘Just a few hundred metres of running distance and then we would be on our train to Lahore or at least somewhere it’s secure’, Suleiman says to me.

I meanwhile want to tell Suleiman that he is most certainly going to die but I can’t since Suleiman can’t understand my language like Liyaqat. In the very next moment I realize that it would be great if Suleiman dies. I can be off to my precious Kudsiya Park in no time.

‘And anyway why should a rabbit interfere in the matter of humans’, I reason.

So as Suleiman and I come up the curve of the road with the railway station’s gate in our sight, we see people being cut to pieces by people at the entry.

I think to myself, ‘We rabbits won’t do that. That’s not even cannibalism. Nor is it survival of the fittest. It’s just...what’s the name for it, yeah, ‘fucked up humans’’.

So while I am contemplating about the human race, Suleiman brings my cage up to his face and talks to me.

Suleiman says to me, ‘You know I can’t understand you like Uncle did. But I know you get me. I am sorry if I was lazy. I am just unable to collect myself since Uncle died.’

Meanwhile Sword People are now heading towards Suleiman. I try and alert him but he’s an idiot

and so he continues his melodrama.

‘Blah. Blah. Blah. I am releasing you now’, Suleiman says to me.

He continues, ‘Save yourself my little white friend. I am going to be dead.’

I feel bad for Suleiman. As he is about to open my cage, he is greeted with a call rather than a sword.

The Sword People leader say to Suleiman, ‘Don’t let him escape. We got to kill him.’

‘Wow, I didn’t see that coming. Let’s listen how this angry gentleman arrived at this decision. Also, why is Suleiman obeying these idiots? He can just let me go. I will save myself. I am a bloody rabbit. I am fast and small’, I think in a microsecond.

The Sword Leader continues, ‘This rabbit is the symbol of peace. He is the symbol of a forced Hindu-Muslim unity, forced upon us by that Mahatma.’

Then, someone in the Sword Leader’s group asks him exactly which Mahatma is he referring to but the enquirer doesn’t receive an answer. While that’s happening, Suleiman releases me. I run. Then after I have ran a few hundred metres I realize, ‘Wow, I left Suleiman there to die.’

Then I think, ‘Wow, there’s nothing I can do to prevent his death but at least I can witness it so that I get closure, you know.’

I turn and see Suleiman following me and the horde of rioters following the both of us. I stand there knowing that Suleiman can’t be saved. He isn’t a rabbit. However, I still wonder, ‘Can I save him? Should I save him? Surely, Liyaqat would have wanted that.’

Right there and then, I have an epiphany. Why don’t I show these rioters my genitals and proclaim to them that I am not really a Symbol of Peace, rather I am a Symbol of Male Fertility. They should celebrate me rather than skin me. And you know what, I do just that. I show them my penis.

However it doesn’t amount to anything good since as it turns out humans, especially rioters aren’t interested in a rabbit’s dick. Suleiman although is surprised to see me exposing myself to strangers.

In that moment while running for his life Suleiman later told me after learning rabbit language that he realized I was a virgin like him and that before dying we both needed to jerk this load off our boulders.

So Suleiman picks me up and says to me, ‘We are both going to Kudsiya (which is actually a prostitution center where the ladies started a rabbit sanctuary and got funding from the British).’

And in that moment of clarity I just knew, we aren’t going to die today. And I proclaim in my head, ‘From that day on Shree & Suleiman became’… Sorry Suleiman just got shot in his leg by a British. ‘What? Why?’ I wonder.

Meanwhile, we gotta go. We can continue this later. See you,for now.

The end or is it?