By: BILAL AHMAD NAIK
They would literally feed on them by deriving the power to do so from no one else but them. It sounds astonishing, but it is a bitter reality that the authority that subjugates people is mostly derived from the subjects themselves. The wolves that feed on the blood and flesh of the sheep manage to rule them in all affairs and would even manipulate their behavior.
The meticulous wolves reached this stage gradually by checking the response of the sheep to diverse stimuli beginning with appearing in the attire of the sheep before they could show their true colors. Many sheep were in the delusion of being autonomous over their actions unaware of the fact that what they called as ‘self-directed action’ was but a reaction absolutely in accordance with the preconditioned program set by their masters. The adeptness of the wolves was in their creative way of changing their strategies and putting their subjects through different and novel situations. These tactics mostly did not go well with the sheep and they would condemn, object and sometimes even protest.
The wolves would test their patience, sometimes listen to their voices of dissent and occasionally surrender to the dissenting voices by reviewing their set agenda with some relaxations, exceptions and reservations. The sheep kept dividing into groups and sects and the wolves had cunningly formed different groups so that various kinds of sheep could be wooed to one faction or the other. Some of the sheep would call one group of wolves as brutes; others would call the same group as saviors. The whole absurdity of things worked in a stupefying fashion.
When a group of sheep blamed any section of wolves for their miserable condition, some section of wolves would back their argument. This kind of conflict was the primary bond between sheep and wolves. One group of wolves would blame the other of the assault on the sheep. The other would blame them of discriminating against those sheep who were affiliated to them. In the midst of this mayhem the sheep had to bear the brunt while the wolves reigned.
There was a maxim that these sheep regarded sacred. It read, “no thy sheep my sheep when it comes to sheep versus wolves; if a sheep is killed by wolves, all sheep shall unite to take revenge”. But this maxim along with many other values of the sheep world that defined them in the past had become redundant. Though all the sheep would recite it and invoke it in many debates but when it came to putting it to practice, they mostly misinterpreted it to suit the interests of their masters to whom they owed their allegiance.
Thousands of sheep had been massacred by the wolves so far. Unabated murder of sheep was the greatest of atrocities that they had been subjected to and in the game of thrones this factor was the key decider. The sheep had surrendered their will long ago and seldom used their brains.It had made them mentally too poor to keep a count of the deaths of their kinsfolk. in the game of thrones, the sheep were supposed to rate and select the different sections of the wolves based on the number of sheep having been munched by them. The game was played in a fair manner and even some wolves from other forests were invited to watch the process. Only the terms of this game were puzzling. The sheep were free to choose butdue to their cognitive weakness the sheep needed guidance from the wolves to arrive at this decision. The group of wolves that came at the higher end of this scale that ordered them according to the number of sheep consumed by them in increasing order would get out of the game. This was followed by a second round in which the topper would get eliminated and so on and so on till there remained only one group. This group was labelled as the savior of the sheep and all the sheep would surrender their will and power to this group. It always happened that this chosen group used to let loose a reign of cruelty and suppressed the sheep. This resulted in sheep thinking of game of thrones being a futile exercise. But only realizing so was not enough to come out of this pandemonium. It inter alia demanded determination and consistency which they lacked badly.
Eventually this group would continue to rule the sheep until most of the sheep did not reach to the consensus that it is this group of wolves that is at the forefront in eating the sheep and they would like to be ruled by some other group. The cycle would repeat and the chances of sheep to come out of this vicious circle were only debilitated by the game of thrones that some sheep inadvertently played. It started with wolves appearing in the sheep’s clothing and reached a stage where one could see sheep’s trying to copy the attire of the wolves. Did trying to resemble their masters in attire and thereby gradually shedding their own identity bring back the lost glory of the sheep no one knows, but it was this class of sheep that was doing major harm to its own community.
