Brief encounter

I stood back from the narrow path to let a guy leading two late adolescent camels past. Wherever you were you were quite close to several of the animals. I was not paying so much attention, but my head was already turning as I registered a loud crack, a jolt and, focus now on the offending beast, I saw an oblique withdrawing leg, and a head, turned half back towards me, and an eye that wished to meet mine, to register that this was not an act of random violence. That registered, it turned away. Then the physical sensation.
A camel’s foot is like a boxing glove. It hit me on the outside of the thigh well above the knee, and at the point of impact there was no bruising or pain, but the force bent my leg in the direction the knee joint is not articulated to bend.
It was OK, I could walk, and actually I felt a gammy leg was quite appropriate, a bit Raj. But the paranoia was much worse. There were maybe ten thousand camels there in the desert scrub outside Pushkar and none, as far as the eye could see, kicking anybody. There was a whole lot of camel noise, groaning and wheezing and existential protest, but no violence. Except this one camel, which had kicked me, deliberately, clearly, because the foot came out at forty five degrees to just where I was standing; and, from its expression, knowing exactly who it was kicking. Either, this was revenge for some slight or wrong in other incarnations; but you would have to believe in reincarnation for that. Or, and this is how I calmed my rising sense of persecution, the stupid animal had mistaken me for someone else.
Before, I had worried about the technique of sticking a piece of wood through camels’ noses as a sensitive lever to which to attach the reins. Now I found that practice not so much of a concern.