Rambunctious Ramu had climbed up the ladder of juvenile delinquency and, ensconced comfortably on the top rung, had been pelting people with pellets of peevish outbursts. The silver spoon he was born with was used to scoop out dollops of mischief, mayhem and general misdemeanour.
His parents tried their best to rein in this wild mustang of a boy, but he’d kick viciously against the corrals of discipline and roam across the unrestrained prairies of rowdiness.
An assault of pinches greeted every little boy within Rambunctious Ramu’s ken just as a heavy heave of yanks and tweaks greeted the pretty pigtails of every little girl. Pebbles of abuse from his smutty mouth were slingshot at his teachers and he brazenly blew the cigarette smoke of disrespect into the faces of his elders.
He accosted friends with Monday morning scowls and frosty evening frowns. He waylaid strangers with Mikado glares and Kaiser stares.
He greeted his parents with the hauteur of a banana republic dictator. Insolence wafted from him like wisps of fusty fog in a chilly Devonian spinney and the footprints of impertinence betrayed his presence wherever he roamed.
In class if he wasn’t yawning like a bored bonobo in a West African rainforest, he would be firing salvos of paper rockets at his teachers with the megalomaniac zeal of a rabid American president.
Instead of reading his texts he’d invariably be discovered gazing outside the windows at boundless vistas of tomfoolery. If his teachers gently chided him and asked him to read he’d pout his lips and knit his brows into more knots than a pensioner’s flocculent cardigan.
Soon enough the milk of kindness that had been sloshing in the cisterns of the teaching faculty had curdled into hate and Rambunctious Ramu found himself expelled from school.
Being thrown out of school made him more cross than the crucifix of Golgotha. He ground his teeth into grist of vengeance. His blood boiled with bubbles of retribution. The proverbial fly had flown off the handle and was buzzing an anthem of reprisal in his head.
In an attempt to soothe the ruffled feathers of humiliation he made his way to a secluded sylvan forest nearby teeming with trees fashioned from spring day tranquillity, and flowers blooming with the giddy joy of new love. There was Santa Clause wonder in the air and rainbow wishes in the breeze.
Ruby ladybirds danced a twinkle toe dance round blades of grass covered with sparkling drops of crystal dew. Glossy opal butterflies fluttered between gossamer strands of silver web. Bumblebees decked with ebony and gold droned and sipped the nectar of hope. Enchantment hung from every branch and optimism fluttered in the leaves.
Rambunctious Ramu was breathing too much fire and fury to notice any of this. He was fretting and fussing, fuming and cussing. Lost in a labyrinth of confusion he wandered lonelier than the loneliest cloud.
He was suddenly arrested by a sound – the twittering sound of the tiniest bird of paradise. He looked up at it and was captivated by the google colours shimmering in the midday sun. Its resplendent tail glistened a coral red; its neck sparkled a Maldives blue; its motley wings flickered shades of pixie pink and twilight purple. Each refulgent feather told a story as captivating as the Arabian Nights and as mesmerising as the marijuana monologues of a Berber baba.
The bird was made up of a smidgen of magic, a soupçon of serenity, and a scintilla of blithe good cheer.
In other words, it had everything that Rambunctious Ramu didn’t have. So he pulled out his slingshot, carefully chose a pebble and took aim. When the projectile smashed against the tender creature it died in an instant and fell like a block of coffin wood at his feet surrounded by the debris of tiny feathers and broken dreams.
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” he remembered Keats had once said. Rambunctious Ramu took one glowering glance at the bird and walked away saying, “No it isn’t.”
