«Gadha koi gaali nahin, Tarif ki thali hai»
(ass is not an abuse, it is a plateful of praise)
Yet the equine sub species, donkey,
itself never received much attention, forever overshadowed by the more
illustrious kindred sub species, the horse. But recognition of the asinine virtues
of “King of Spain’s trumpeter” is overdue. PM, Narendra Modi by his spirited
riposte to Akhilesh Yadav’s donkey jibe now firmly imprints the donkey in our
political consciousness. Henceforth political discourses may sound half-baked
till the ass in some way worms its way in. And mind you, the mentions may not all
be in unedifying terms. As Mr Modi pointedly stated, the donkey is an inspirational
animal. It immediately conjures up a vision of an indefatigable, steadfast,
loyal worker; attributes that corporate CEOs would love their crop of young job-hopping,
footloose, aspirational executives to be liberally imbued with. Donkeys are gratified
to Mr Modi for securing them an enduring and place in our political lexicon.
It’s not that the donkey’s worth is
newly discovered. At the height of Sumerian
civilisation the donkey was synonymous with wealth and power. Opulent Egyptians
were known to own flocks of over 1000 asses. King Narmer, the first of the Pharaohs
went to his grave with ten donkeys. Donkeys have close association with
divinity too. A Hindu legend has it that Devi Kaalratri, rode a powerful donkey
to capture the demons, Chanda and Munda for Goddess Chamundi (Kali) to slay. In
biblical times, the ass is said to have saved the diviner, Balaam, from falling
under the sword of angel of the Lord, a biblical truth that Dutch artist,
Rembrandt recorded for posterity in 1626 in his painting ‘Balaam and the Ass’. The
donkey is the symbol of Egyptian sun god
‘Ra’ and the Greek god of wine, Dionysus. In John’s Gospel Jesus is said to
have made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem riding a donkey, an event
commemorated by observance of Palm Sunday in Christianity.
Popular culture too is spliced
with narratives involving the ass. Our folklore echoes with exploits of the dhobi
and his donkey, the immense value of the beast starkly manifest in the aphorism
‘dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka na ghat ka’. Read carefully! the animal spoken of is
the dog, not the ass. While Indian pejoratives include ‘suar ke bacche’, ‘kutte
ke bacche’, ‘bhais ki aulad ‘but never ‘gadhe ke bacche’. The animal is too valuable
to be so stigmatised. If one, perchance, mistakenly happens to bark ‘gadha
kahin ka ‘or some such calumnious phrase, shouldn’t you therefore ignore it and
move on, giving the ignoramus utterer the benefit of doubt? Better still,
follow the Bachchian precept;
“agli baar koi aapko gadha kahe
toh bilkul burra mat maniyega, balki usse thank you boleey ga.”
Let’s now face it, donkeys are here to stay. This beast that typically brays for an average of 20 seconds
at a time, sends its ‘denchu… denchu…’ across a distance as much as three kilometres.
Oooo…..the animal is a real power pack. And now we are told the mouse-coloured hide
of wild asses of Gujarat glisten for months even without a single water wash. Asses,
it seems, come maintenance- free. I wonder what chemicals do their innards secrete
that keeps its skin burnished, ever smooth and glossy. Shouldn’t an
enterprising FMCG company put some money on the table to fund research into
unravelling this mystery? If we can bet on finding oil within the uncertainties
of treacherous deep sea prospecting, this one is much safer and profoundly
beneficial for mankind and obviously, profitable to the angel investor. The wild
ass of Gujarat holds the key to an ever youthful, sparkling human skin, one
that Yayati longed for and begged his sons to bestow upon him. The burden lies,
fairly and squarely, on mankind to unearth the processes that make the wild ass
so resplendent. If it does, a destiny greater than a mere beast of burden, or as
a delicacy of donkey meat on a Chinese dinner plate, awaits the ass.
Less publicised is the amazingly deceptive,
and manipulative nature of the beast. To all outwardly appearances, a shy,
languorous, slow, dim-witted creature, the donkey is a promiscuous lecher with
a remarkably developed libido, a step far ahead of its human master. The
He-donkey gets the hots even for the mare, a female outside its sub-species.
The offspring from this cross copulation is the mule -a sturdier and better
adapted draft animal. Zebra dams too get seduced by donkey sires to birth
Zonkeys. Not to be left behind the she-ass, called jenny, tempts the stallion
to stoop low to conquer her and give birth to a hinny. Besides promiscuity
there is an element of shrewdness too. The donkey’s genetic blueprint
guarantees that the mules, zonkeys, hinnies it sires are all born sterile
ensuring that on coming of age they do not compete with the parents.
However, the most endearing qualities
of the beast are best brought out by William Wordsworth in ‘Peter Bell’. The donkey
in it uncomplainingly bears severe lashing from Peter but refuses to budge till his master
lying dead on the ground is taken care of. Peter Bell is filled with remorse
and laments,
He lifts his head and sees the Ass,
Yet standing in the clear
moonshine.
‘When shall I be as good as though?
Oh! Would, poor beast, that I had
now
A heart but half as good as thine!
Still, literature has largely
failed the donkey. R L Stevenson in his book ‘Travels with a Donkey’ has some
pretty disparaging things to say of his 12-day travel mate, Modestine, the she-donkey.
Nothing quickens a donkey’s pace beyond “something as much slower than a walk
is slower than a run”. ‘Proot’, the masonic prompt word donkey drivers use to
goad the animal to move is also ineffectual “I prooted like a lion, I prooted
mellifluously like a sucking-dove; but Modestine would be neither softened nor
intimidated”. To his chagrin, when he loses the trail and trusts Modestine to
find it, he learns “the instinct of an ass is what might be expected from the
name, in half a minute she was clambering round and round among same boulders,
as lost as a donkey as you would wish to see “
Popular perception is even less charitable.
A Pashto saying from Ethiopia cautions donkeys are bad company “A heifer that
spends time with a donkey learns to fart’. In the Panchatantra tale ‘The Donkey and the
cunning Fox’, a wily fox lures a fat donkey to its death in the claws of an old
lion and then persuades the lion to bathe before feasting on its kill. While the
lion is away the fox eats up the donkey’s brain. The lion returns to find the carcass
without a brain and the fox cheekily affirms “Donkeys have no brains.” The lion
agrees. Donkeys are stubborn and troublesome say the Italian, ‘women, donkeys
and goats all have heads”. Worse still is the fate of “Buridan’s Ass” that sees
goodies all around yet dies from hunger because it can’t decide which goodies
to go for.
The French proverb, ‘DUR COMME UN
ANE’ (……as an ass) about sums up all asinine ‘Tarif ki thali ’.‘DUR’ may mean
anyone or all of - difficult, hard, inconvenient, stiff, harsh, bitter, laborious,
petulant, doughty, dour, severe, stern, tough-minded, hardheaded, unfailing, astringent,
rough and ready. WOW! no less than seventeen traits. The donkey qualifies as a cult-like
figure, indeed.
Alas! Donkeys are an endangered
species. Across the globe just 4 crores survive, mostly in underdeveloped regions.
China with the largest human population, also hosts more donkeys than any other
nation, 1.1 crores strong, followed by, and this may excite most Indians,
Pakistan. By contrast, we have only 4500 wild asses romping in our solitary wildlife
sanctuary for asses, an hour and half drive away from Ahmedabad. Mechanised transport
has sounded the death knoll for all beasts of burden. Let us conserve and grow the
species of asses.
The growth can be organic, through
breeding, or inorganic, that is to say, otherwise; in the final analysis, only the
asinine head count matters.
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