TURTLES CAN FLY

                                                      (Photo- the turtle at Kodungalloor)


After watching the movie "Turtles Can't Fly', Mr. Turtle came out of the cinema and tried to see whether he could make some sense out of this affair.
"So it is so well known, that the cranes had made no such statement, and would never do, but for the intervention of a cunning fellow who had entered them and tried to move them in that way.
The problem with him, i would say, was that he wanted to push his thing into my mouth, screw me up,and make me without a voice of my own.For that, he tried to instil fear into me, troubling me with my own powers, because I was always flying about before him, but he couldn't bear it that i could fly, put his weight on me, the weight of the house hold that i had to carry along within which he tried to entrap me, allowing me no space to maneuver, covering me with a hard 'protective' shell and sending me down to the nether world where i and my own were to swim about, because he wanted to take over the other worlds for himself. So it was that this house that i was made to carry about and within which i was attempted to be entrapped and made out to be 'tender meat' for him to prey on without the freedom to move about, to fly.
And then, after having marooned me so in a house like that that had used my own bones to tie me up, he went about the world telling tales about me, about my 'incapabilities' and so on, which he had found to be many. I couldn't run the race with a hare, he imagined, unless the conditions were totally to his disadvantage, for having been lazy or asleep, he had to let me by, if i were ever to win.
But i didn't buy his argument, because even entrapped and subsumed as i was at that time, i could still swim around the whole ocean while he at his best could only manage to travel a few miles around.As for the pace at which we moved about, it was easy for me to see that he wouldn't survive easily for a single day in the ocean that i moved about in, and his laugh was mainly due to a misplaced notion of competition and enemity that the cunning bald-heads had put into his mind. Given a competition that were to take place in the sea, he would have been equally troubled, though he would never admit it that way.
He had put this house- hold to cover us all, precisely for that reason, because, as a free spirit, he did not want us to move around and about the earth, and so he had these prison houses, these shells, these narratives, these constraints, taboos, rituals, dis-eases and so on put on me, so that i couldn't move about in the upper worlds, confining me, with his cunning steps, to the nether world.
And as for the earth or the skies he couldn't allow me any, for he wanted all the folks to be thrown out of the paradise and it cleansed of them. But unfortunately for him, the very key with which he had blocked my way also had locked him out. So the paradise, then became remote , almost impossible, for all of us including him and me, and the middle person, who was the other. This was when he took over the right to speak, the amrut that he had stolen which was meant for everyone, the land he had gained control over through cheating and extortion of ordinary people, with his ugly wide over-stepping in three parts, to dispense of litigations with no sense of justice, firing arrows filled with deceit and cunning at people who were at the moment not even fighting him, in that cowardly manner, shooting from behind, from hidden places. He would want our thumbs to be cut off, our ears filled with lead, our clothes taken away, lands set on fire.Thus we ran of kuchh, kuch time ke liye (for a short time.).
The cranes who were to carry me to the sky, as the story goes, had put a piece of wood  in my mouth, as they do with animals and domesticate them with a bite or a leash, or tethering them to a yoke, wishing that i couldn't open my mouth to speak at all, allowed only to curse, and was so held as a prisoner of his hatred for the world, for the holy spirit, the free moving spirit of the world, to which the sun and the moon provided its chariot wheels, and which flew about, that way, in the skies, alongside the infinite, that was God, the father.
He had his temple constructed on my skin, my temple, my back, with his family and prison house of words, his obsessions with himself providing the shell in which he wanted the world to be imprisoned, quarantined, kept away from each other, refusing to touch each other or love.
As for paradise , the space for everyone, of equality, care, egalitarianism, he couldn't have it, and instead created a mirage of heaven, where only those chosen by him could enter. For the rest of the world, he predicted the worst of the troubles, and hell fire, devoid of all pleasures.
If a raven flew about in the sky, he will try to some how cut off its wings, if a Sita came along, he will try to entrap her in a golden idol, a line which was not to be crossed, a mirror, a chain on her legs, a weapon thrust into her hands, an antagonism which would pitch her against the world, and the million hooded snake of infinity, to a Rishabhanatha, a Parswanatha who was a patron of the margins, a buffalo god. The Muriya knew about his designs, the Gond did, his attempt to burn off the Nagas in a 'sarpa satram', his prodding to step on each other , to fight, his turning of a dancing bhairava to a nataraja, his 'kaaliya' mardans (beating of the black prople). He tried to straddle me with the weight of the whole world, and i bore it that way, taking it lightly. He had wanted to make a football out of me for the world to play a few games with, but i refused to comply altogether, sometimes filling his post with a few goals myself, as others also did, or filling his dog's mouth with a few shitty arrows, because he wanted us to wallow there, in his spit and shit, while he enjoyed his purity, with the shit safely hidden away in his head and innards.
But fortunately, this could not be done, for at a certain point, his devices became known, for knowledge itself, which was to know the ledges, margins, 'boundaries which society put upon itself and to overstep them, came to the aid of the many, with such force that the shell was shattered and the holy spirit, the free spirit, took to its wings, no more confined or confining, and the turtle came around , flapping its wings, as grace descended, and the smells of orgiastic pleasures took over the paradise.