The performance

The guests were coming and Suni assumed the task of catching and killing the rooster.

He had years of experience catching them, and a knack of pinning their head down with his toes and separating the head from the body using his trusty old foldable pen-knife. The knife’s handle was carved from deer antlers which made it a very rare possession. It was worn out with heavy usage but was kept very sharp. He used it for everything almost, from trimming his nails, to sharpening pencils for his kids, to making brooms from coconut palm leaves, to opening beer bottles and beetle nuts, yes everything! It was his extended arm. 

The rooster was a tough catch, oldest and the biggest one from the pen, the Giriraja breed. He held the feet of the struggling rooster together, with his strong hand and reached for his pen-knife with the other, tucked in his lungi. He bit the blunt side of the folded blade to open the knife, lowered the struggling rooster to the ground, stepped gently on the head with his toes and rocked his knife back and forth on it’s warm neck. 

He felt like a performing violin soloist. The rooster was his Stradivarius and the pen-knife, his bow. 

Somewhere a crowd gave a standing ovation to a soloist.