BURNING DOWN THE ORPHANAGE

The invading soldiers crossed the bridge and entered the forest of Banam Kurong in late afternoon, arriving at the orphanage before dusk. A heated discussion with the abbot of Pr(e)i Wihar turned into a shouting match. When the aged Buddhist monk slapped the commanding officer, all hell broke loose. Within minutes the soldiers were all over the monastery, bludgeoning and hacking the children who had sheltered there since the early years of the war.

When they had finished their slaughter they forced those who could still stumble, both monks and the young, to slop petrol over floors littered with dead and dying, and walls splattered with blood. Then they torched the place. Victims who tried to escape the buildings were machine-gunned. Many were already badly burnt when they were shot.

By late night the last flames died down, leaving charred corpses and collapsed walls. There were only two survivors - a human and a dog.

On a low hill a few miles outside the forest the commanding officer, still smarting at the effrontery of the bonze, gave a speech to his troops. "The children deserved to die. They were given a test - to reject the bourgeois values that bound them to a feudal order and in service to mere monks. They failed that test miserably! Had it been otherwise, they would have risen up and enslaved their masters. We had no choice, they were too corrupt to live."
He was absolutely correct.

Dawn, brutal and bright. Curls of oily smoke still drifted in the dark between the trees.



TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO DREAM

Last night, Savage Kitten and I went out to dinner at a local dhabba. It was heavenly - the murgh makhni was buttery and rich, the palak paneer creamy and divinely spiced, the masaladar bhengan textural and garlicky. Especially that last dish was to die for - eggplant chunks of just the right dimension, gepriggelt in ghee, with ginger, methi leaves, fennel, turmeric, coriander, dark toasted cumin. And garlick. Lots of garlic.
Perfect to enfold in fluffy naan, pulled apart with burning fingers.
Toothsome, oleaginous, aromatic.

Plus machli pakora and thick sweet lassi.

We may have eaten just a bit too much. It was extremely good.

By ten o'clock mild twinges of gout made themselves felt. Not bad enough to keep me awake..... and that, you see, was the problem.

Sleep was not quite peaceful repose.

It's strange what your mind does when it dreams - the uncontrolled id takes stimuli and interprets them the easiest way possible, forming images and sensations that are illogical in tandem, but make complete sense by themselves. The result is that you experience events which are unreal, and often unrealistic.
This dream, however, was very real. The images were extremely lucid, the sensations vibrantly painful.
When I woke up I could still smell petrol.

It's been a while since I last dreamt in the Tamarao language.

Savage Kitten also slept badly, and also dreamed of an orphanage. But her dream was far sweeter, albeit equally disturbing - someone had given her teddy bear to an orphanage, and she was determined to get Ms. Bruin back.
Even if she had to burn down the place to do so.