The Punter

He knew all about horses At least he thought so. So he bet on them. Always on which horse will win. He felt it beyond his dignity to bet on a horse losing. After all, the horses had some self respect.

He was a bit arrogant when it came to horses. He was an idealist as well. A strange combination one would say but it served him well. He knew if he was right and did his bets honestly; the horses would not let him down. Now as you would know, for any story to succeed, you have to get in some drama, action, passion till the point of time when there might be a strange sense of indigestion.

So in the peaceful life of this old punter of ours, came a few young colts and for the first time perhaps he slipped. He picked a few colts, rooted for them, what the heck he trained them for greatness. And then came the second round of colts. Better, stronger and designed to break every record ever held by horses!

But now something strange happened! The first set of colts began behaving strangely. It was almost as if they had become humans, full of jealousy for the new kids on the block.

And slowly the races began to look like wrestling fields with the horses crossing courses and neighing and kicking up dust till our poor punter was covered with mud. He thought, “What the hell. Enough of horse racing for a life time!” just as he was about to leave, he got a kick on his back. And what a kick it was.

He was bedridden for years. People said it was one of the older colts but our punter would have promised that it was not even a colt that he saw through the corner of his eyes as it kicked him, it was in reality a mule!

It was said, the older colts ran over the racing fields and the younger colts never ran a single race after that on those courses.

Years passed. Our Punter was old and wiry but much better now that he had given up on racing. But the other day, he opened his television set in his perfect Lego world and he saw an arena larger than anything he had ever imagined.

And there were his younger colts, racing and winning and breaking every record known to horses and to men.

And as I saw him watch the race, I wondered if this was a story of horses, of colts who grew up or a punter who honestly like most existential heroes, did almost nothing and yet was the protagonist.