Balachandra was the first to recover from the calamity. He stuttered something and rushed into the vegetable market to the left.

Had anyone seen a runaway horse? He asked people immersed in shopping bags, change and vegetables. No one had noticed anything. And Balachandra Parab ran back to the statue as if he had suddenly remembered something.

“Stay right here,” he told the women and those left behind from the band. Balachandra’s wife tittered along with the rest of them. She knew exactly why her husband had taken on this mammoth exercise. It was out of pure spite. Just to drive home the fact that her father had not engaged a horse at their wedding.

She laughed quietly to herself. Balachandra Parab didn’t wait to glare at his wife. “Dagadu…Dagadu…” he shouted as he ran in and out of the vegetable market.

Soon he was on Goshala Road. The grim question before him was where to look for the horse. If it was found, Dagadu would be on it. Or should he look for Dagadu and not for a horse with a rider?

Eager helpers peered into the ditches on either side of the road. Perhaps Dagadu was lying there.

A school had been let off in Goshala Road. Balachandra stopped the children who stood perplexed, looking for a way to cross the road. He asked, “Did you see a horse? Did you see a horse?” even as another questions nagged him. Where was that rogue, Gulama, the fellow who had brought the horse? Must have gone looking for the horse, he decided after a little pause. After all, he should be more anxious about the animal than anyone else.

Balachandra then looked only for his brother. He got into a rickshaw and roamed the different roads and alleys. He stopped every now and then. Was that a horse? No, just baskets. And that? Was that Dagadu standing by the side of the road?

Balachandra felt muddled. His eyes also kept darting to the meter and, as soon as it registered Rs 16, he stopped the rickshaw.

He looked around him. He was far from the suburbs, near some kind of a playground.

And Gulama? Where was he?

As soon as the horse neighed and took off, Gulama had sprinted to the station and taken a train to VT. Gulama, of course, was the boy who had brought the horse, but the horse wasn’t his.

To be continued next week

Excerpted from Lukose’s Church & Other Stories
Publisher: KathaA

Illustrations: Suman Choudhury