This goes back a long way, all the way to 2015.
While this is critical and fundamental to our business, Muskan has this strange and self-destructive habit of shying away from travelling with me whenever I head out overseas to meet and interact with those whom we depend upon to put bread on the table. Takes a lot of effort and cajoling on my part for Muskan to pry herself away from the Tea Studio and her mutt ‘Max’. This was one time when she had relented.
We had flown in from Hamburg to Carcaixent, our final port of call before heading back home, to meet and interact with my friend Alberto. The day following our meeting, our flight out from Valencia being at somewhat of an unearthly hour and much as I dislike large cities, that afternoon we reluctantly checked out of the quaint place in Xativa which is where I always park myself when visiting Alberto, to get to our hotel in Valencia by early afternoon. Having checked in, we decided that in the evening when the heat and humidity had subsided, we would potter around in the old part of the city which Alberto had told us was well worth a visit.
The old quarter being at some distance from the hotel, on the advice of the hotel
concierge we hopped on to the tourist bus which, after meandering around though the streets of Valenica was to get us to the old quarter. Approaching that part of town, from the upper open-air deck of the tourist bus, we saw a fairly large (definitely not so by Indian standards) crowd of folk milling around on a street corner. Strange! Because nowhere in Europe does one come across crowds just hanging around. Perched as were with a bird’s eye view of the street, we could sense a buzz in that crowd. Looking around I noticed a huge banner with a larger-than-life image of a guy dressed up as, what to me appeared to be, a court jester. Tucked away within the Spanish text on that banner I read one word which I understood – ‘Toro’. Having only read about it and having probably seen one in some movie or the other, I asked Muskan whether she would be interested to see a bullfight. Her excited ‘yes’ had us hop off the bus.
On alighting we saw that we were at the Plaza de Toros de Valencia. The entire area, festooned as it was with a huge number of banners and posters, wore a cheerful, bright and festive air about it. Each one of the banners had a large photograph of this gentleman in brightly coloured tights topped up with this strange looking headgear (which we learnt is called a Montera) for some odd reason, standing on tiptoe. Obviously, the matador and obviously the prima donna of the show.
Having purchased our tickets (rather steep I may add) at the teller and being advised that the proceedings would start half an hour later, we quickly want across to a grocery and armed with sandwiches and cold drinks, hurried back to the stadium where, in great anticipation, we plonked ourselves on our ring-side seats.
To louds shouts of ‘Ole! Ole’ out of the Barrera came an obviously agitated bull, appearing to be perplexed the animal put its head down to stage a couple of mock charges towards various sides of the wooden stockade. The moment the bull was seen to be tiring, five or six peones armed with long lances made their way into the centre of the ring, doing nothing more than harassing the poor fellow who was getting more agitated by the minute. Seeing him to be fairly exhausted four Picadors, mounted on hoses protected by some sort of armour on all flanks, armed with long lances came strutting into the ring to carry on harassing the bull from where the peones had left off. At regular intervals one or the other would charge at the hapless creature, piercing it’s hide, further enraging and tiring out the bull to the point where one could see bubbles of blood frothing out from the animal’s nostrils.
It was then that this prima donna poofter walked in with his nose in the air, to be
greeted with loud cheers of ‘ole ole’, after which he started waving his cape to attract the bull’s attention. Every time the bull would charge towards him, this bloke would do a dancing sidestep for the sweeping horns of bull to by-pass him towards his left or right. While this fellow was busy doing his silly ballet, the mounted Picadors were busy harassing the animal further. Reached a stage where the forelegs of the totally exhausted and out of breath animal buckled and folded up. The poofter, waited a couple of minutes before moving up to the bull coaxing it to rise which the by now half dead animal, did most reluctantly to give one more exhausted charge. At which point the ‘ballerino’, from behind his back, pulled out a sabre hidden from sight of the bull, to stab the animal very hard in the soft flesh between its shoulder blades. The bull simply toppled over, obviously stone-cold dead!
This being not at all what I had expected, horrified and with loud and repeated shouts of ‘ole! Ole!’ ringing in my ears, I turned to look at Muskan who I saw had tears streaming down her cheeks. When buying our tickets, having been told that there would be six encounters, I asked her whether she wanted to sit through the next one. Without waiting for an answer both of us, having abandoned our snack pouches where we were sitting, literally sprinted out of that gory scene of what I considered to be a most unfair contest ending with the ‘public execution’ we had just been witness to.
Out of the stadium and on the street, we both stopped to catch our breath and then silently and aimlessly just walked around to calm ourselves down. Took us more than two hours of ambling around before we could get ourselves to sit down at a roadside café for a beer. At just about that time, the encounters inside that ring having likely ended, a crowd emerged, streaming past the street alongside which we were seated.
Amongst that throng were little kids, all of 10/11 years old, laughing and prancing around as kids always do. Left us very confused wondering that what was it which, once inside that stadium, had transformed these gentile fun-loving kids and grown-ups, into a crazed mob all lusting for blood.
An unanswered enigma which lasts to this day.