Camp ka Saathi 'MOMO'

Artist: Ajinkya Patekar 

 I am not a believer of spirits, sometime back I would have called myself an atheist. Till recent times I had an extreme optimism to believe that there were no ghosts. I mean we are so pissed of with our lives, why would we want to continue to live in the same places and meet more living people even after our death? It would be a revenge with your own self man! But my strong belief in not believing began deconstructing some time back; specially after I began having too many serendipity moments and really scary Deja vus. Since then I have come to peace with my mind with an utopian idea that if at all there are spirits around us, they are surely there to help and protect. They were good souls, and they loiter around because they find it their duty to protect nice people or weak ones; anyways they can- they are already dead what harm can come to them?

With passing years (and may be since I want to believe that I am maturing too) I find these happy protective souls more often around me. I have had cab drivers returning laptop and mobiles that I forget after the rides in frenzy; I have had people offering rides when they saw hooligans pestering me and my girl friends on road. My husband believes I am alive thanks to these so called 'spirits' around me as I walk like a zombie's nightmare, without the slightest attention to other people and vehicles on the road. All in all, there are many of these around me, and thus I sleep in peace in train flinging my luggage and valuables on the top rack, and sleep like a rock not worrying that my Cab drivers are gonna abuse me!

Trust me I am not trying to scare you, in fact its an assurance, once you set this in your mind its pure bliss out there! Let me share you with you the story of my very latest 'soul' ful experience, MOMO. With the fortunate small break in between the lockdowns that government gave us, me and my crazy friend Ruchir managed to organize a camping-out-in-tents art camp. It was in a secluded spot, to protect ourselves and our friends from other human-people like us. Yes, that's what we have been doing from last March, dodging people so that we don't get Corona. Anyways, getting back to the point, this was a secluded spot in the backwaters of dam water with no electricity, street lights, dead end road right next to the water body with active currents. We were so happy to be outdoors, these things hardly bothered to scare us. The first windy night tossed our tents around and chilled our bones through our wind cheaters. And right then one of our dog scared/hater friend brought this tiny weakling, scrawling species of a puppy, holding it as far away from her body as possible; and for absolutely no sane reason called it MoMo. Why would you do that to a dog? But as I said before, she is anyways not much fond of dogs.  

                                                              PC: Ciby Samuel

And MoMo became one of the artists campers from that night. It was stray, motherless and itchy. It had come from no where. And it had some weird skin thing making it very very scratchy. And it preferred to sleep only on laps, mind you just laps, of living people (even if you gave him a fancy warm bed). And for some reason (and certainly not pity) everyone took care of it. It was a fancy one, didn't drink milk or eat glucose biscuits, the official dog food of India. With weak shaky legs it managed to grab a fish and savoured it the next morning.    

PC: Pooja Shinde

And it ran around and came in between everyone's feet. It wanted to be part of all conversations all the time, big time attention seeker, we thought. MoMo sat through all our night conversations, drinking sprees, smoking sessions and slept and woke up with us. Someone bathed him, actually he could have been bathed more than once in the day. It was medicated, cleaned, skin treated and all, basically properly taken care of, and abused at the same time. So in short treated like a friend. 

VC: Uday Kawale

After loitering around for 4-5 days of camping, one of us got worried that MoMo wouldn't survive after we left. So with all care it was kept in a box, and was driven in a Ford Skoda back to the city. It then peeped out of the box, ears waving in wind on a bike; slept a day in the city house and vanished in thin air the next morning. 'Search parties' went around for a couple of days but it had vanished from the face of the earth

Trust me, the moment it vanished, I knew it was that fancy protective soul! MoMo came the night we were scared, saw that the camp went well and then just left. It was one of the participants as though. And all came and went back safe. Not being superstitious guys, not at all, in fact I am on the edge of being an atheist. But these super fancy protective souls are breaking my beliefs. Like this chap MOMO; keep a check around you, may be the irritating thing that follows you around is actually there to help you!