Of Men and Guns

I had a dream!

No, not the Martin Luther King, Jr. variety of dream! In fact, my dream was from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum.

I saw Dick Cheney.

Now don’t get me wrong! I don’t willy-nilly go having dreams of Dick Cheney – I am sure there are better or at least more photogenic folks to dream of in my precious sleep time.

But this dream was interesting because in it, I saw a rather relaxed Dick Cheney which, you will agree is rather bizarre – yet perhaps understandable since he now does not have to carry the burden of running this country any more. (Oh sure, you are right. Actually, GWB ran it! No, I never wink – what wink?) All I remember is he looked all masnad-nashiN, had a hukkah in one hand, was holding an Urdu newspaper in the other and reading it approvingly, going "bakhoob, bakhoob!"! Something did not quite add up. So I look closer and lo and behold, the Urdu newspaper was the National Rifles Association (NRA) manual and that hukkah was really a rifle and he had it pointing straight at me – and he was not saying "bakhoob, bakhoob!" – it was more like "bekoof, bekoof!" Finding myself at a disadvantage, I did the only respectable thing a self-respecting dude can do in a situation like that.

I woke up, of course.

But Dick Cheney is an interesting character. In a well-publicized story, he once went quail hunting (no, not the ex-veep) with a pal of his named Whittington. We don’t know what exactly happened but upon return, the friend’s face was full of pock marks, thanks to Cheney’s gun.

I wonder what happens to the ENEMIES of Dick Cheney!

Khair, this dream got me thinking (always a dangerous sign!) that even in one’s dreams, one can never be too careful with that old Dick!

Perhaps it is something to do with the name – we once had a same name president and all I remember of him is the "not a crook!" phrase with a couple of V-signs to boot. He looked kind of funny – like a naked Frankenstein holding his pajamas upside down – hung out to dry the way my village washer-man did with those of our Civics teacher Idris miaN of legendary girth!

Or maybe it is just the Karma. It was simply meant to be. Hey, the hunting mishap could have been just a couple of boys being boys. You put a couple of boys together – even if the "boys" are old enough to wear adult diapers – and sooner or later, perhaps more sooner than later, they will get into a skirmish.

That’s what men do. Flowers bloom, the sun shines, birds chirp and men fight.

Like Newt Gingrich put it so lucidly – men were meant to hunt giraffes! Show a man a giraffe and you will get his hunter’s juices flowing! If we disregard for a minute the implications for Mr. Gingrich’s own gender – assuming (safely, I think) that he has never actually hunted a giraffe, this is a rather profound, sobering thought.

Hunter – thy name is man!

No hunting, no manhood!

Men are hunters and women…well they are… they are, not hunters! (No, I am not going to tell you what old Newt said about women! Go ask him – at your own risk, of course!)

But I think it is unfair to portray women as being less than serious fighters – I mean, when they want to. In fact, if you include verbal fights, women can give men a run for their money any day and any time of day. When attacked, a woman would generally attack back.

And back!

And back!

And before you know it, the man would have turned tail and run – armed or not!

So women do just as well – or just as bad – as men, except for one little thing.

On this venerable site and elsewhere, I have seen many individuals, usually males, get viciously attacked by others who are not males – often rather unfairly, I think. I have seen long-dead personalities dragged out of their graves and references made to what I have called in the past certain outdated tools of violence.

The tool! What tool?

Suffice it to say that the said tool has been the focus of many a Hollywood movies – even epics. I have seen this whole topic of the tool dealt in less seriousness than perhaps was its due! So obviously, I must make every effort to set things right! Like some alumni mass mails proclaim so thoughtfully – if we don’t, who will?

In this country, we often go on and on – on how important the so-called Eighth Amendment to the (U.S.) Constitution is – which deals with the issue of cruel and unusual punishment. But there is another, even more important amendment and if there is anything in which men believe more strongly than the Eighth Amendment, it’s the Second Amendment – the right of the people to bear arms! Therefore, that outdated (and generally discounted) tool of violence shall remain nameless no more!

The object, of course, is the gun! Yes, those little playful beauties which can wreak such tremendous damage!

Yup, THAT tool!

You see, gun control is a highly emotional issue in this country! We – the men – take our guns very seriously. I could almost have been a member of the NRA myself, if only it were to set its membership fee a bit lower (say, a buck for lifetime – a properly discounted desi rate)! But that is not likely – those big guys (you know – the REALLY big guns!) – they only deal in real money – as in muchos dineros! They are often loaded – and I don’t mean just their guns! If I remember correctly, until recently, the NRA folks were actually living in George W. Bush’s personal closet in the White House. That smart-alec Obama – too young and innocent to really know how good the guns are for him – kicked them out! How sad! I don’t know about this Obama guy. I wonder if he even owns a gun. I doubt it – it’s the beautiful Michelle Obama who seems to be more of the gun-toting type – like a total pistolwali!

Not everyone owns a gun. Sometimes, they use substitutes – for instance, in Bihar, we manage with lathis – which can also be quite potent weapons but are not guns. A lathi does the job – more or less. More than bare hands could do – but less than the real thing! Yet, some folks are so proud of their lathi they rub oil over it regularly – they call it their tel-pilai-lathi!

But it ought to be obvious to EVERYONE that guns are a blessing to us from the Good Lord – made available for a good reason! We must never take our guns lightly, or trivially.

Unfortunately, there are some among us who do exactly that! Mostly such gun-haters are individuals who don’t own guns themselves – they never have, and never will!

I think what they do is – secretly dream of guns! Take the tree-hugger types, for instance! (And by the way, why would one want to hug a tree?! I have never been able to figure that one out. Everyone knows one cannot have sex with a tree.) Such individuals would not miss a single opportunity to ridicule guns, to trivialize them, to make a total mockery of them; it won’t be too far off the mark to say that given the chance they would not even hesitate to physically destroy them, if only they could get their hands on those poor babies!

No gun is safe from such do-gooders! Thankfully, the opportunities to get hands around guns are few and far between for most such individuals! But what quintessential risk-takers they are! They have absolutely no respect for the lethal power of guns! It happens to others, too. Some folks can even play crap-shoot with guns – even the ultimate crap-shoot of life or death!

You won’t believe me when I tell you this. (I hope you are sitting down for this!) In a stark display of how casual one could get with those guns, there are people who – listen to this – would hold a gun in hand and put its barrel-tip (sometimes the whole barrel) into mouth! No kidding, right into the mouth! As a sign of courage – no less! They call it the Russian roulette or some such name! (Everybody knows the Russians don’t play Roulette – they probably don’t have any money – and if they did, they would have better uses for it – like drinking vodka.)

I don’t get it. What exactly the gun-chompers expect to accomplish through such acts? Bite off the poor thing? Test how sound those gums and how sharp those teeth really are? What if the gun were to explode? Suppose the gun were to explode and discharge – imagine feeling the heat of discharge – on the tongue – a case of the tongue getting singed before it can sing!

Or do they think that they are conducting a scientific experiment for a potential topic down the road (and I really mean down – way, way down!) Like the late Mr. Dangerfield so elegantly stated – they have NO respect!

On the other hand, we – the real gun owners – the owners of REAL guns (not the toy variety mistaken for the real thing in the subcontinent) – take these devices extremely seriously – never to be trifled with! To give you ONE example, some of us gun owners even make a serious ritual of cleaning our guns with our very own hands – an act too serious to be trusted to others!

Please don’t get me wrong – I do not believe that people have the right to go about brandishing guns everywhere in public and shooting it left and right.

But it is not a good idea to separate a man from his gun. It is cruel and unusual punishment. It is like – how can I best explain it– the Taliban chopping off a man’s hand!

As I have said countless times before, people from the subcontinent could learn a lot from the Americans, even of the brown desi variety – after all, we have successfully withstood some extreme tests of hardship over the long haul whose lessons are – at their root – well, unflinchingly unshrinking and timelessly monumental! And so are our guns!

Guns exist for a good reason! Only the Big Guns can handle big pains, and I certainly would NEVER dare to be in the line of fire of one of them! You see, we are talking about people who can sometimes indeed make you wish you really owned a gun!

Or at least had access to one – especially if you are of the fairer sex!

And Mr. Cheney (hope you don’t mind if I call you Dick!) if you are reading this…

Rest assured I will never ever want to be considered your enemy. And if I had a gun as big as yours, I would never let go of that delightful thingy!

I am sure you make a great pal, my dear Dick!

Don’t shoot, now!

(Portions previously drafted as a blog.)