A Purposeless Life —Akunna Ejim   

This fellow I know has money to burn. As far as I know, he’s never had to hold down a job in his entire life; never needed to, actually. His father had been a politician who had been drummed out of office on account of the vast amount of money he had been accused of pilfering. The media had a field day gleefully reporting all the fraudulent conversion of public money into private accounts. The total figure had so many zeros behind it, it was simply astounding and this was just the funds that had been recovered; there were certainly other undiscovered accounts stashed away in foreign banks. There had been talks of prosecuting the man for such unprecedented greed. However, in true Nigerian fashion, nothing had come out of it and he had gone scot free.  So, this guy didn’t have to work at all; there was no need to and so no drive. So all he did was spend money— there was certainly a virtually unlimited reservoir to draw from. He spent his life in pursuit of pleasures which inevitably lost their appeal and he’d soon be looking for something else to fixate on. Through the years, he’d had a lot of pet projects to amuse himself; he’d had so many I simply lost count.

One of his pet projects at a time was exotic animals which he procured and imported from different parts of the world. He started with small animals like rare fishes, then two ostriches, an African civet, an albino boa constrictor, two crocodiles which I saw with my own two eyes––from about half a mile away, I would go no further. In fact, one of the crocodiles had escaped from its pen and taken a leisurely stroll down the  venue late one night before it was spotted by some drivers who later claimed that the eyes of the crocodile had flashed at them like LED flashlights while others claimed that it glowed more like the eyes of some kind of demon from the very pits of hell. Anyway, people mobilised and cornered the creature while some mobile police men who were nearby came to investigate the source of the entire ruckus. When they were informed that it was a crocodile on the loose, they got back into their van, secured all the locks, closed all the windows and proceeded to request for back-up. It was quickly ascertained that the crocodile belonged to the young man in question and some people went to bang on his gate to demand that the reptile be removed and handlers were dispatched to corral and bring it in. Nothing came of the incident and the young man kept bringing in more dangerous animals. There was a puma and even talk of a Siberian tiger, at which point most of the panicky residents started making arrangements to relocate to safer neighbourhoods since they were scared to step out of their own yard for fear of which other animal would escape from the guy’s place.

Anyway, of all his acquisitions, the one which continues to amuse everyone to this day is the bantam cock. The young man had decided that he wanted to amuse himself with cock fighting and so he ordered some birds which were specially trained in the sport. This was the first of the birds to arrive and it was indeed a professional fighting bird. Just a look at its appearance told the story of its life. One of its eyes was gone—probably clawed out by another pugilistic bird. Its beak and talons were razor sharp—honed, no doubt, by its previous owners so as to inflict maximum damage during fights. What’s more, the bird was filled with seething hatred and suppressed violence just waiting to erupt, all courtesy of the abusive life it had led. It was like holding a tornado in a matchbox.

One day, my guy went to pay his latest acquisition a visit. The creature was none too impressed nor happy to see its new owner, so it ignored him. The young man tried to get some kind of reaction out of the bird—no such luck. He prodded and poked and jabbed at the poor bird with a walking stick and still, all the bird did was fix the guy with a baleful glare from its one beady eye. All present concluded that the bird had lost its verve and as such was only good for the stew pot at this point. Little did they know that the clever creature was biding its time with a particularly nasty ace up its feathered sleeve. Finally, the guy gave up on the bird and turned to go and, quick as lightning, as though it had been waiting for just such an opportunity, our fine-feathered friend flew into the air with a blood-curdling shriek and latched onto the guy’s behind with its sharp talons and wicked beak which it buried deep in the guy’s buttocks. The guy let out a howl which could be heard miles away and the neighbours thought that maybe he had unleashed a pack of howler monkeys or something the way he was carrying on. It took three grown men to hold him down while they tried to pry open the talons of the vengeful bird without worsening the damage on the guy or attracting any violence on their own persons. Eventually, the triumphant bird was wrenched from the young man with bloody talons and beak. It took a full month before the guy could even think about sitting down because he received stitches in his backside from the deep gashes he sustained during the attack from the bird. This cured him of all interest in animals and he donated all the ones he had procured to a zoo. After this incident, it was on to another meaningless project.

Sometimes we think if only we had it all––riches, wealth, fame––we would be really happy. However, you never fully appreciate anything that gets handed to you on a platter. It may seem that the young man has everything, yet at a tender age his life has already been defeated and he seems to have given up on doing anything constructive with his own life that will leave a positive mark on the world around him. The grass is always greener on the other side till you cross over and look back to discover just how good you had it.