INSIGNIFICANT ACT OF A CAT – DESCENDANT OF A LEOPARD

Insignificant it may be the Friday morning’s in the Middle East for many, but for someone like me, I anxiously long for it. I am steadfast in sticking to the routine and head to have my breakfast at the nearest cafe.

It was not just a Friday but the one after the Booker Prize for 2018 are announced in the month of October when winter season has set in, in its coolest, in its figurative sense and not in the literal sense of the term.

This time around the Irish author made it to the top. Anna Burns, the author whose book Milkman with a pink cover captured the coveted Booker Prize and was now in my hands, I mean the book.

After having completed reading Greer’s Pulitzer Prize winner book “Less” the next in my list was Milkman and accordingly started reading which is normally after ordering for breakfast at the Chennai Curry Cafe, with seating arrangement in its courtyard with garden and garden chairs around, savoring the early morning sunshine in the month of October, amidst a few other customers who prefer to have their breakfast at similarly laid out landscape.

A year before when my place of work was in another state although in the Middle East, a different day of the week was more engaging. It was not the mornings but the evenings slipping and sliding into nights, when my colleague and friend used to visit me to have a long session of reading novels and 156 sonnets of Shakespeare and both of us trying to understand the poems with the help of dictionaries and translated versions in Arabic as explained to me by this Egyptian Mohandis (Engineer). His taste for Philosophy and interest in reading books jelled with my interest in literature and reading out loud to each other the various novels by taking turns kept our interest in tact and enhanced our knowledge as well.

It was also during those days and mostly Thursday nights both of us planned to identify certain famous authors who were expected to arrive at the Book Fairs and Literature Festivals.

We used to read their books and novels, thereafter prepare ourselves with a volley of questions that we could direct against them and also express to them our take on their works.

As per our plan we could meet at these Book Fairs and Literature festivals which used to run for a week or in some cases a fortnight, the authors, historians, film stars, sports personalities who launched the debut novels, biographies, autobiographies, travelogues etc., and to specify a few of them, were the likes of Jeffery Archer, Ian Rankin, Bettany Hughes, Jerry Brotton, Sashi Tharoor and his son Kanishk Tharoor (both of them launching their respective books in the same book fair on the same day and at the same venue), Orhan Pamuk, Imtiaz Dharkar and Chetan Anand and pose questions and get some expected and some unexpected, some shocking and others amazing, some to the point and the rest with certain amount of ambiguity answers.

After a few months when I got transferred to a different state which is my present location my book reading sessions continued with another likeminded man, who also found It ideal to have his breakfast at the same café after returning from the gymnasium which was on the top floor of the building in which the Café was situated. He also used to carry a book with him and at this instance he was carrying a book by Elif Shafak.

I was half way reading the book Milkman and found it very interesting and especially Anna Burns attitude, which was that of sledgehammering to oblivion the beliefs of people in the saying “Brevity is the soul of wit”. There were sentences long enough to almost cover a page and very few short sentences. Anna Burns also used the literary device of not naming any country. Instead she made extensive use of phrases like over the border, across the border, beyond the border, alongside the border and so on. The novel also had a considerable element of suspense in it and conversation between the daughter and mother could be considered as capturing the spotlight.

Now seating arrangement of the Café being in the courtyard with garden also had some animals moving around eager to be fed by the customers. In this case a cat.

I am one who is not a lover of pets from close quarters especially the cat. I vividly remember my friend the Egyptian was on the contrary quite comfortable with them and at times used to tease me by getting the cat close to me.

Now here also I could see a cat loitering around and expecting customers to favour with food remains. The same cat was seen and in between my reading sessions of this novel, I used to get distracted by this cat as this cat sometimes seem to be adamant not to budge unless he is imparted with the share of the meal. Sometimes the waiter used to shew the cat away but at times when the waiter was not around one had to deal with independently, if one wanted to remain in peace and continue with whatever he or she is doing. It also had no regard for gender or age of the customer. It used to stare at people who tried to ignore it.

One morning I happened to see the cat after having its meal moving to a corner of the garden and digging the ground with its paws and after a few minutes the excavation was completed then the time came for installation and after the installation of natural call was accomplished, the cat started backfilling. It was a strange sight for me to see and I realized what one misses if one does not observe from close quarters. How the cat has achieved such skill? Have we the mankind learnt from it or is it the vice versa to excavate, install and backfill? Really speaking I found this insignificant act of the descendent of leopard or may be tiger a matter of great significance.