The Sacrament

The goat was munching on grass contentedly. It was still very young - if it were a month younger kid would still be the proper technical term. The goat was not on a farm, or any other such livestocky location, but was in fact chewing grass inside a house, or rather on top of one, as it was tethered to a post on the roof of a rather large house. And so the goat stood on the roof and fed its fat round face on big bundles of green, juicy grass.

"This," he thought happily, "Is heaven. It should stay like this till the day I die!" Of course, he wasn't nearly in goat heaven yet, but compared to his life so far, this was pretty close. He'd never been this comfortable before, and he doubted that he would ever be this comfortable again. Little did he know.

For the goat, life had never been harsh, and there had always been food aplenty, but this lavishly indulgent life, which he had taken for granted since he got here a month back was a whole new experience. He could still remember that night last month in great detail, mostly because almost all other nights he'd seen had been indistinguishable from each other.

It was the night of the last full moon, a month ago now. His owner had taken him far from the farm, where life hadn't been all that bad really, and put him onto a truck. The journey seemed to take all night and none of the other goats on the truck had any idea of where they were headed or what was going on. Instead they just kept complaining, and bouncing into each other.

They had all been taken into a huge open maidan, only it wasn't open, but overflowing with people and goats. The were big goats and small goats and old goats and young goats, goats with thick coats and with big horns and with strange accents to their baas. Goats everywhere and people everywhere walking here and there and pulling the goats and pushing the goats and prodding the goats and staring at the goats.

Now as it turned out, not a single goat there knew what was going on. The were all as bewildered as he was, as none present could speak human. Expect the humans of course, but since none of them could speak goat it didn't help matters either. One human word though was used again and again throughout the day, which impressed itself on him - bakr-eid. He had no idea what it meant of course, but remembered it nonetheless, even as he chewed his grass in the warm sun which kept off the winter chill, and mused about how much his world had changed in that one day.

He had been poked and prodded endlessly and after some time one of the people who had poked, prodded and peered, had talked to the master, and then suddenly the goat realised that he was being dragged away by the new human.

How he had protested then, he remembered, grinning to himself in the way goats do. He had fought against the pull and tried to run back to the herd, as soon as they'd stepped out of the maidan. He was lucky that the new master hadn't let go, but dragged him into this opulent world, and a life of fresh, juicy and tender grass. He fervently wished that the rest of his life would be like this.

And what happened after that? Well. I never did get to find out, but I've always liked happy endings. So in my head at least, I try and think of the goat, sitting on that roof, sunning himself, and eating obscene amounts of grass.

And I never, never let myself think of the biryani that was sent over to our house from the house with the goat on top.