The Cat and Shakespeare

by Rao, Raja

  ‘John,’ he said, while the mother cat stood behind him.

  ‘Yes, Mister,’ said John, very sure of himself.

  ‘John, this is a cat,’ he said, lifting up the cat and placing it on John’s table. The whole office stopped work. Even Bhoothalinga seemed involved in this silence.

  ‘What’s that?’ cried Abraham, and came over to John’s table.

  ‘Oh, I am only talking to him about the cat.’

  ‘What cat?’ said Syed, his hand on Govindan Nair’s shoulders.

  ‘Why, man, cat. There’s cat only. All cats belong to one species—cat. Call it cat or call it mar jara which is Sanskrit or better still poochi which is Malayalam, it’s the same—isn’t that so, John?’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ said John, rising up from his seat.

  ‘So, gentlemen, I wanted to know how much zoology our friend knew. What is a Persian cat called in Latin? In fact what is the Latin name for a cat?’

  ‘Felinus,’ said Abraham, remembering his church instructions.

  ‘Then felinus persiana would be a Persian cat,’ said Govindan Nair, who knew of course everything.

  ‘Yes,’ said Abraham dubiously.

  ‘And man?’’

  ‘Humanus.’

  ‘And I?’ he said.

  ‘Ego.’

  ‘Make me a Latin sentence, Abraham. Ego esse humanus malabario et lux esse felinus persiana, or some such thing.’

  ‘I don’t know that much Latin,’ said Abraham.

  The curious thing was that the boss did not call. The cat continued to raise her tail and bunch herself to be caressed. Govindan Nair still held the penknife in the other hand as if it were his pencil. Man must hold something with his hands, otherwise how could he know what he is about? If you carry a penknife like a pencil in your hand you are a clerk. Is there any doubt about it? ‘Speaking biologically,’ Govindan Nair used to say, ‘a hundred generations of clerks will secrete lead from their bowels and clerks’ fingers will bear capillaries like those in the new office pencils. You write morning, noon, and night. You could even write in your dreams.’

  ‘What is clerk in Latin?’

  ‘Clericus is Latin itself.’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ said Govindan Nair. Seeing the whole office around him, and the boss silent—it was a hot morning—he added: ‘Define the cat, Mr John.’

  ‘Mr Govindan Nair, a cat is a feline being.’

  ‘What are its characteristics?’ Govindan Nair started making a firm and rapid movement with his knife (back and forth), as if he were sharpening the pencil on the beautiful skin of the cat.

  ‘Its characteristics are—its characteristics are,’ mumbled John, and as somebody said, he had cleared his bladder audibly. It poured an acrid smell into the room. Bhoothalinga Iyer had a bad cold, and one could hear him snuff in snuff. There was such silence in the office (but for the burring sound of Govindan Nair, who always burred anyway) that Bhoothalinga Iyer was sure everybody was at work. There was suddenly silence even in the ration shop. And this was the sort of silence which sometimes rises like a temple pillar from earth to heaven; all creation seems still, as if the universe pondered: What next?

  ‘First of all, it’s of the same family as the lion,’ said Rama Krishna, a young clerk. He had joined them only three months ago, fresh from college.

  ‘Then?’ asked Govindan Nair.

  ‘Then,’ said Abraham, getting very anxious, ‘it goes in and out of one’s house as not even a man can.’

  ‘What very intelligent colleagues I have,’ remarked Govindan Nair, smiling. ‘Then?’

  ‘A cat is the purest animal in the world.’

  ‘Why so? Hey, there, Syed, what does your Muslim theology say about it?’

  ‘In Muslim theology only the chameleon is evil. It betrayed Muhammed. And the hog. But the cat, it is sacred.’

  ‘No, man, I know your theology better. The cat is not sacred in Islam. It is sacred in Egypt. It was called Bastet.’

  ‘And it wore a crown?’ said John, a little reassured that all this was a joke.

  Govindan Nair quickly made a paper crown; he cut the three sides of a triangle and gave it a point, and placed it on the head of the cat and said: ‘Hey, Bastet, you are sacred, don’t you understand?

  ‘And, Syed, what is it your people do when what is sacred is treated as what is sacred?’

  ‘We kneel and touch the ground and ask for Allah’s blessings.’

  ‘Now, Mr John, you understand. Here is Bastet. You have brought a very god to our poor ration office. You be the priest.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said John. He knew Govindan Nair had something up his sleeve.

  ‘Kneel!’ shouted Govindan Nair. ‘Kneel, man!’ And he brandished his knife, holding the cat firmly with his left hand. ‘Or say: No sir, I am a low-born, I am a coward. Kneel!’ he shouted. Bhoothalinga Iyer’s chair creaked. ‘You don’t insult a cat like this, stuffing a cat into a rat cage.’

  John knelt devoutly.

  ‘There, once again,’ shouted Govindan Nair.

  John knelt again, crossing himself. Syed had his hands brought together. All the office was one noumenal silence.

  ‘Kiss it,’ shouted Govindan Nair again.

  John kissed the cat. Bhoothalinga Iyer came and stood behind the crowd. He thought some file was being tampered with.

  ‘Govindan Nair!’ he shouted.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ And Govindan Nair went towards his boss. The cat jumped down the table and everybody gave way to the cat. By now she’s lost her crown. Rubbing against his legs it cried meow, meow and Govindan Nair lifter her up and placed her on his shoulder with his right hand. His knife was still in the left.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Bhoothalinga Iyer.

  ‘We’ve been discussing the Latin formation for Persian cat. Do you know it, sir?’

  ‘In Sanskrit it is called marjaram,’ he said as if he were saying it with only the tip of his tongue. ‘And for Persian cat there’s no word in ancient Sanskrit.’

  ‘In Malayalam it is called poochi-poochi,’ said Govindan Nair, as he went back with the boss to the inner office.

  The boss sat down in his chair.

  The cat jumped on to Bhoothalinga Iyer’s table. It saw another tassel of a file and started playing with it. Bhoothalinga Iyer, seeing all the eyes of the office (for everybody, as it were, came to see what was happening), wanted to shout: Get out! Get away! But his tongue would not say it. How can you say with what is not what is? How can you shape words that cannot come from yourself? What do you do if you find yourself a prisoner? You want to escape. Govindan Nair laid the knife on the table and said to Bhoothalinga Iyer: ‘Sir, tell me a story.’

  ‘What story?’

  ‘Any story.’

  ‘I know no story.’

  ‘I’ll tell you a story,’ said Govindan Nair, and lifted the cat and placed her on his shoulder.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ he began, and before he could go on, the cat jumped on to Bhoothalinga Iyer’s head. Bhoothalinga Iyer opened his eyes wide and said, ‘Shiva, Shiva,’ and he was dead. He actually sat in his chair as if he could not be moved.

  Govindan Nair rushed back home with the beautiful Persian cat in the cage and let it loose in the house. Then it was he went to Bhoothalinga Iyer’s funeral. Bhoothalinga Iyer’s wife, Lakshamma, was moved, deeply moved, by all the consoling words Govindan Nair spoke to her. He spoke of death and birth and such things. He too was weeping. His boss had died. Bhoothalinga Iyer had asthma. And asthmatics have weak hearts. And the snuff did not help, did it—said the Brahmins at the door of the temple.

  For some strange reason, everybody came to console Govindan Nair at his office as if he had lost something. Kunni Krishna Menon from the next house came and spoke as though Govindan Nair needed condolence. Perhaps he would be promoted to his boss’s place—there was such a rumour. Then he could not run down and play with the children, remarked Abraham. An officer could not do it. ‘Then you be boss, Abraham,’ said Govindan N
air, hugging him.

  With two deaths within forty days Govindan Nair moved about in a bemazed state. He had loved Bhoothalinga Iyer, and true, it was the cat that had jumped on the boss’s head. But who had brought in the cat? John, of course. And Bhoothalinga Iyer had no business to be asthmatic. And so the boss died. Usha talked across the wall to Shridhar, and he died. True, you call it pneumonia (Dr N.O. Pillai said so), but Shridhar died. Thus Govindan Nair made Abraham the chief, and had him so nominated. He preferred, did Govindan Nair, to be clerk. People said this and that, and they said now Govindan Nair can go on building houses. A boss cannot do it. Govindan Nair said, ‘To be a boss one has to be asthmatic or diabetic,’ and everybody laughed. For Abraham could not live without insulin.

  Abraham was withal an able officer. He bought himself a new (second-hand) bicycle, a green B.S.A., and when he came to office he looked like a padre going to his flock.

  Abraham’s strength was that he was a good man. If good men did not run ration offices who should? This was the argument of Govindan Nair. We should not all become British agents. So Bhoothalinga Iyer’s widow was given rice as if Bhoothalinga Iyer were still alive. Where after all could the poor man have gone, with the scarf on his head (tied tight like a turban), and his perpetual cold because of snuff, and his love for service regulations, Section No. 345 of the Travancore Civil Service rules, etc.? Yet he did not die a gazetted officer. He might have, had he lived longer.

  Ration cards for orphans and such others were not looked into too carefully. You gave a card eventually to those who needed it. The rascals were there for the rest. Someone will always build a temple spire to expiate his sins. Man has a heart white as a rice pod but he makes it dark as a lentil pod, for he thinks the world is a scale, and the master weigher is not Abraham. Lord save us from our sins. Lord, may rice be rice, and lentil be lentil. That is the secret of the world. You want to make the rice lentil. Botanists will tell you, rice is Oryza sativa and lentil Lens esculenta. How can the sativa become esculenta? How can two not seek the not-two? Find this secret and you need no gold to seek happiness.

  Govindan Nair brought back the cat and gave it to me. Somehow he thought I would look after it well. ‘I look after a cat?’ I said. ‘Ask Saroja and she will tell you,’ Govindan Nair said. ‘Don’t ask Saroja, ask Shantha,’ and Shantha said that I love cats. Do I? If anyone tells you, you are a rascal, can you prove that you are not? How do you know? What do you really know? Can a rascal see his rascalry? How could he, poor man? So if Shantha says I love cats she must be right. After all, she is seven months pregnant and she must know it better than I. They say pregnant women are holy. They have second sight. Does Usha think I am what I am? She thinks I am her father. How do I know I am her father? Because she tells me so. Because Saroja said: ‘This is your child,’ when I went back on leave two months after the child’s birth. ‘This is your child,’ she said. She must know. Who knows, anyway? Knowledge alone knows. So how shall I ever know if I love cats? I must know cats and I must know that I know that I love cats. When cats are there, where am I? When I am there, what becomes of the cats? ‘It is not easy, Shantha, to say I love cats.’ ‘But,’ she protests, ‘Govindan Nair says you love the cat. That is why he had the wall cut just where the stones stood for Usha to speak to Shridhar. When you can walk to the next garden, you can say “I love the cat.” Can you not say I love I?’ ‘No, Shantha, I love you.’ Shantha says: ‘Good it is that I am a Hindu woman and you are my lord. If I were not that, but one of those big-bosomed women of the European films, smoking and kissing in public, I would not say yes to you all the time, I would say no.’ ‘Then what is it you want to say, you my Hindu wife?’ ‘I say, to say I love you is to say I love myself.’ ‘Who said so, Shantha?’ ‘Sage Yagnayavalkya said so.’ I now understand. Yes, I love Shantha because she has my child in her. That is the secret. She has myself in her.

  The cat came in and pawed the rug on the floor. The cat was not pleased with something. ‘What is it doing, Shantha?’ I asked. She said: ‘It is asking for its mate.’ ‘Where shall we find a mate for her, Shantha?’ ‘She knows herself where it is to be found. She knows the self. So she is the self.’

  Shantha is always mysterious. Just as Saroja was always clear. Shantha always says two things at the same time. No wonder she and Govindan Nair like each other so much. She says: ‘How can anything mean one and one thing? Look at the bilva tree. It’s bilva tree all right. But were there no light, would it be a bilva tree? So when you say it’s a bilva tree, that means there is the tree and the light that makes it the tree.’ ‘If I touch you, Shantha, there is no light in that.’ She said: ‘I can see you have never been across the wall. For there you could touch me and see yourself touch me.’ ‘What, what’s special about that?’ ‘The specialness is that it is not special. You think because I bear a child I am special. Very, very special, my lord.’ ‘Yes, you are.’ ‘But you know, as I teach in my school, all that is born had a mother. The father is not always so clear. Look at the bees and the flowers.’ ‘So the mother is necessary for all children. Thus motherhood has nothing special. And what about fatherhood, Shantha?’ ‘Don’t you go on teasing me. Show me the proof of your fatherhood. You have a belly small as a cucumber,’ she said and laughed. ‘Yes, that is true. Where is the proof of my fatherhood?’ She said: ‘There is proof.’ ‘Where is it, Shantha?’ ‘I am your proof. You are only seen by me. Who could know you as I know you? So the proof of my lord is me. The proof became concrete and became the child. I must know I am. You made me say I am.’ ‘Who says I am, Shantha?’ ‘Nobody, and that is your proof. Only I say you. And you say I. That is the proof of proof,’ she said, and became very silent.

  That’s always the difficulty with Shantha. She speaks true. She always speaks in puzzles. And when I ask her why, she says woman is the biggest puzzle. Is that a proof of proof? No.

  So, I was saying Govindan Nair brought the cat and left it with me.

  Two months later Shantha gave birth to a lovely child. From the moment he was seen, we said, ‘Why not call him Krishna?’ He was so blue, and her father was called Krishna Pillai. She loved her father, so she loved me. I loved the child, so the child loved her. The father, did he love me? Poor man, he was dead and so long ago. Was he reborn as the child to love me? Who knows? Shantha’s mother said our Krishna looked just like his grandfather. After all, you see what your eyes see. That is the root of the problem, said Shantha. So we gave the child no name.

  I should be happy with the child, with Usha who had returned to me after spending the Christmas holidays with her mother, and the cat. But I can never be happy. How can you know you are an Indian? You must know India. If I am to be happy I must know happiness. What is happiness?

  Govindan Nair’s definition is, of course, simple: The mind that is not when the cat carries the kitten, that is happiness. That’s not very clear. It is just like saying, my nose is that which I catch by carrying my hand behind my head, and turning round quickly hold a facial projection which could be called my olfactory organ. Strange, such roundabout definitions. Man, do two and two make four or not?

  ‘First tell me what two is, and I shall answer the rest,’ he said, and laughed. ‘You is one. I is one. Where is the two?’ he asked. I heard the baby cry, so I went to give the feeding bottle to him. And I sang a song and sent the baby to sleep:

  Jo, jo, push the cradle, jo,

  push the cradle of Sri Rama,

  push the cradle of Victorious Rama,

  push the cradle of Sita’s Lord, Rama,

  push the cradle, jo.

  I sing of man because he is my neighbour. After all, one’s big neighbour is oneself. The neighbour’s neighbour is always the Self. I speak of the wall and the cat which make the world I live by. Usha is my daughter, and she has a bad cold and is in bed. Shantha’s child is two months old, and still we’ve given him no name. ‘Call him man. Mister,’ says Govindan Nair. For him, nothing is particular, a chair means all chairs, a knif
e means all knives, a clerk means all the clerks that go on bicycles to offices, sneezing and wheezing like Abraham. Even a bicycle for him means only a B.S.A. Shall I call my son man? I have made a secret vow. If Govindan Nair is acquitted (for alas, he was arrested by Rama Iyer, not on a charge of attempted homicide, which would have been legitimate, but on a charge of bribery with the one-hundred-nine-rupees document), I’ll call the boy Govinda, Govinda, but from the way Govindan Nair laughs and teases Rama Iyer one knows the case is lost. As I told you, Govindan Nair had passed his first year in law. Besides, he was born as it were for argument. He could never see anything except in definition of its situation. If I said, for example, the bilva tree, his mind would not think of Shiva and the hunter, as it would occur to you and to me, but he would think of the manure the tree must have had (rotten banana leaves, of course), and of the man who planted it and was it morning or evening when it was planted. The man who had planted it became so important that I teased him often and said the mother is more important than the son. Yes, he said, that is so. The kitten is held at the scruff of the neck by the cat. Who is more important, sir? How can you argue against that?

  In fact I used to send food to Govindan Nair at the Central Jail. He said, ‘When you were ill I sent you food (and Shridhar came to you), and now I am ill (for what is jail but a philosophical illness?), you send me food, and Usha.’ The face of Usha made Govindan Nair happier than anything on earth. He was convinced Usha was Shantha’s child. That was again the way with him. If he saw black and found it brown, he could prove it was brown because he saw only brown. His argument was so simple: ‘Is there seeing first, or the object first? If I have drunk a glass of coffee with milk and in actual fact I have not, but believe I have, which is more real, my exhilaration or the coffee that was drunk? Proof is only oneself. Proof simply means I know. So brown is brown. Don’t you believe you exist, even though you know you will die? How do you say that, Mister? When you know this rotten fat thing, with pus, blood, excreta, with semen for procreation, and bile for digestion, with the five sheaths and the nine supports (called dhatus by our forebears), the blood that oozes to the heart and the urine that is thrown out—this filthy sack of the five elements, what does it become? It stinks, sir, it stinks when it is laid on fire. It not only stinks, but as in the case of Bhoothalinga Iyer, it sits up suddenly in the middle of its end, it sits up, and one would think it was going to shout an order: Hey, there (sneeze, sneeze, two sneezes are good)! Hey there, bring me the Ummathur file and seventeen sacks of rice gone—and yet it’s a half-corrupt, half-burned thing purring with many fluids. “Chee-Chee!” This body. And this mind, with its encaged gramophone record, another His Master’s Voice, and all it needs is a white dog listening to its music. Yes, that’s the mystery, sir. The dog listens to this mechanical music. Hey, ho, you say: