Of mice and men
Sansar Chandra

IN Hindu mythology, mouse (mushak) has a pride of place as the vahana of Lord Ganesha — one who removes all obstacles and bestows perfect bliss. The believers insist that anyone who maligns His vahana invites the wrath of the Lord Himself. Somehow my experiences with this ‘little creature’ have been so different that I think of it more as a ‘dushta durjana’ and less as a divine vahana. And these experiences, I’m going to recount even at the risk of annoying Lord Ganesha.

It happened way back in 1923. I was a little child then. Suddenly, people started dying in large numbers. So great was the panic that we, as a family, had to leave the city and move into the countryside. Several weeks were spent under the tents, practically cut off from the world outside. No newspapers, no news. Only the fear of death stalked everyone. And to fight this fear, my father would read Bhagavad Gita in the mornings and play cards in the evenings. And who do you think was responsible for this state of affairs? Who else but this wicked little ‘mousy’ creature! Later, I was to learn how plague had struck. Mercifully, we survived the ‘great plague,’ and I’m still around to tell this story.

The second time, it wasn’t plague but Partition that caused our ‘displacement.’ In 1947, when India became a free nation, I was teaching at S.D. college, Lahore, then a reputed educational centre. After Partition, all the educational institutions, especially those run by the Hindus and Sikhs had to be re-located. The authorities of our college decided to move to Ambala cantonment, and so did we. Initially for a couple of years, the college had to function from a makeshift building. As there was an acute shortage of accommodation, some of the young teachers among us had to live in the tents pitched in vast compound of the Brahmin Sabha. Of course, the rats were our constant companions in these tents. So it was but natural for us to feel jealous of those colleagues who had found themselves a reasonably decent accommodation. One such person was my senior colleague, P.L. Zia, who lived in a rented flat. Despite this fact, he would often feel sad and nostalgic, thinking back to his Lahore days. Once he was so overwhelmed by this nostalgia that he decided to write a poem, comparing Ambala with Karbala. One of its couplets ran something like this:

(Rats are the agents of pre-mature death. For those who love the light of life, Ambala is something of a Karbala.)

On listening to this poem we realised how he, too, had been a victim of rat infestation all along. Now my friend’s intention was not really to condemn Ambala as a town, but only express his annoyance with the rats. Except that he had gone a little overboard. The local gentry was up in arms against him. Before they could register their protest, his landlord who was a perfect Ambalawi and loved his town to distraction, threw his luggage out on the road. As a result, poor fellow landed up in the very same tents in which we used to live. Rats had literally nibbled away at his domestic peace, reducing him to a homeless vagrant.

Rather late in my career, I was able to save enough to buy myself a new car. The feeling of owing up a brand new four-wheeler was simply inexpressible. One fine morning, when I opened its door to sit inside, I was shocked to see foam scattered all around. This wretched creature had somehow managed to sneak inside my car and torn both the front and the rear seats to shreds. I felt as though I had stepped inside a carder’s shop. A seemingly harmless creature had, once again, got the better of me.

And now every time, I set my eyes upon this ‘cunning little creature,’ I wonder what really made the ancient writers celebrate it so much in the Panchtantra. In one of the stories, a mouse named ‘Hiranyaka’ is depicted as man’s friend for it is supposed to have nibbled away at the ropes of the snare that trapped Chitragreeva,’ the King of pigeons, and released him. It’s quite possible that these writers didnwant to earn the displeasure of Lord Ganesha. Or is that they had heard of this English proverb: "Love me, and love my dog, too."

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