[The profundity in the last line of Part VII wasn't intentional. I got distracted and spoke the truth. To dissolve this guilty lump forming at the tip of my typing fingers, I shall hasten back to the 'humorous' bullock-cart story, if not the steam engine one. Proceed]

I agree, I shouldn't have started with the description of the carts in Part VII, which as usual, got us this far (off). In fact, I realize now that I shouldn't have done it in Part VI either. I should have started with the bullocks instead.

But then I remember the first time I tried to explain about it to my Romanian friend, I had to start with Sandra Bullock. And from there, it took us quite a while to proceed anywhere else. At least, anywhere close to the above, dull story.

Prudently, here, I shall proceed straight to the bullocks and stick with the story of the steam engines, carefully avoiding any further reference to Sandra.

By the unwritten tradition of Srirangam (some of which is being revealed in these essays, in a convoluted time), the name Sri Ranga or shortly, Ranga, is given to, thankfully not the carts, but the bullocks.

These bullocks were certainly skinny, with particularly innocent and sad faces with some white stuff oozing permanently from their otherwise closed mouths. Their skin is usually dirty white in color, with lots of localized movement that senses an imagined touch from an invisible hand. Depending upon the way you look, either the skin or the lots of minute spots on them, look dirty black or dirty white.

In general, I am tempted to say their skin is dirty blackish-white and their horns were dirty whitish-black, but I am not Thiruvalar Vairamuthu. Only he is paid to conceive poetical oxymorons of that sort for Tamil movie songs. More on this in a future essay, if I get to stay alive that long, in cyberspace and fleeing time. For now, it suffice to state I am an ordinary moron, wondering about the oxymoron overtones in phrases like Bengal Government, Intelligent Girl, Indian Cricket etc., for which I receive perhaps a wry lip movement from my readers, (their faces look like {;>) sideways, when doing this) and definitely no pay from Zine5.

Resuming the story, the bullock-cart drivers were mostly bearded men, with drooping white mustaches that reach their white beards. For some reason, they were all very old. Perhaps by karma, they were born old, like the late Ashok Kumar of Hindi movies. They wound a smelly white mundasu as headgear and an equally dirty white dhothi as their waistcloth, with an extra-wide, green, buckle-belt over it to support it there. The green buckle-belt had silver colored buckles and three brown purses, two of them with black buttoned flaps while the third had a dull white steel zipper.

One of these purses invariably carries lots of coins and some 1 and 2 rupee notes, folded beyond possible differentiation so that, when taken out later, they come either as 12 or 21 rupee notes.

The second carries 'nose powder' (podi mattai) suitable for the noses of both the bullocks and their drivers. This 'nose powder' is sold nowadays as scented gunpowder at the Bullock-boy (Fake Cowboy) shops of Texas. If they are out of stock, you may want to try with the IUPAC* under aromatic toluene.

The contents of the third were not revealed to the passengers back then, especially for younger ones like me. Nevertheless, as a boy, I know it had something exotic and dangerous, which at the behest of the cart-driver would turn me into a gold bug or one strand of the straw that the bullocks chewed.

Have you ever imagined what life (and death, as you will know in a short while) would be for one strand of a straw?

* IUPAC - International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry

To be continued...
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