The palm rat stood up on its hind legs, sniffing worriedly at the wind. Magnificat’s eyes glittered.
“Caught my scent,” she said, cheerfully, “now to give it a sporting chance. Rat! How fast can you run? If you reach the foot of the stone cross before I do, I promise I won’t eat your tail, otherwise beware the bite marks.”
And she was off, her long tail swinging jauntily in the monsoon winds, like the whitest of white banners.
“Goodbye, Magnificat!” called Mara as she shimmered out of view. “And thank you!”
Mara’s fur felt warmed, her whiskers settled as she ended the sending. She heard the splash of the river, and then she was back in her house.
—
THE SENDING HAD BEEN exhausting—she had gone too long a distance, stayed too long. Mara swayed, aware that she was falling asleep on her paws, and then the floor came up obligingly to meet her. The Bigfeet were there; she heard the click of their shoes as they came to her side. Their concerned voices reached Mara from an immense distance away, and she dimly felt them touching her nose, to see if she was unwell. “There’s nothing wrong with my nose,” she wanted to tell them, “it’s only the tiredness of sending and summoning, that’s all.” But though she opened her mouth, she fell asleep before she could mew. The Bigfeet cradled the Sender and carried her back to her basket.
When she heard the sounds, Mara struggled to open her eyes, though it felt as if a thick blanket lay across her eyelids. Her whiskers strained to rise, and gave up. She turned, wrapping her paws around her head so that they covered her ears, and she fell down the black well of sleep. The Chief Bigfoot came in to check on Mara, worried that the sounds from the house—made by packers, who had cardboard cartons out in the bedroom and the kitchen, and had already emptied the living room—would have upset the cat. But the Sender slept heavily, her ears closed, her ribs moving in slow, deep breaths.
She woke once, rising unsteadily to her paws, the fatigue wrapped so tight around her that she didn’t attempt to smooth her sleep-ruffled fur. Her whiskers would not rise; her bones ached, and Mara shuffled over to her litter box and then her water bowl with legs as stiff as if she’d been a venerable old cat with white covering her muzzle.
The sound penetrated slowly through her tiredness. The babblers, led by Sa, were singing their hearts out in the park. Mara listened, her ears twitching, but it took a while for the meaning of their song to sink in.
“So long, farewell, please let us take our leave
We have overstayed our welcome in Nizamuddin, we believe
The Bigfeet have chopped our old homes down and built over everything
Eviction notice has been served, so now we must take wing
But thank you for the grubs, thank you for the trees
Thank you for the shrubs, and for our days of ease,” trilled Sa, Re, Ga and Ma.
“No need for sadness, no need for doom and gloom
We’re shifting nearby only, backside of Humayun’s Tomb
Any time our old friends feel like a change or rest
Please feel free to invite your good self to be our honoured guest
One small advance tweet, to check our nests are not indeed full?
And to welcome all of you, we shall gladly do the needful,” finished Pa, Dha and Ni.
The babblers hopped onto the top of a bus, settling themselves with much fluttering of wings and gentle squabbling over seats on the luggage that was lashed to the racks. Mara saw two grey, striped shapes join the babblers; Ao and Jao snuggled up together on a lumpy sack that contained cabbages. The bus rumbled by the park every day, swinging across the road towards Humayun’s Tomb. The cats hated cars and buses, and preferred the long walk to the tomb, but the birds often took the bus to visit the endless stream of cousins and second cousins once removed from a different nest or branch of the family who lived in the peaceful, verdant gardens that surrounded the old monument. The Sender watched numbly as the squirrels and the babblers left, unable to do more than send a tiny twitch of farewell in their direction.
She knew she would feel bad about the babblers and the squirrels leaving Nizamuddin later, but at this point, her whiskers were leaden, unable to sense or feel very much. The Sender stumbled sleepily into the drawing room, looking for her Bigfeet.
Mara stopped at the edge of the carpet, her tail waving uncertainly back and forth. The furniture that she used as scratching posts, appreciative of the effort the Bigfeet made to provide her with the best, had been wrapped in thick layers of cardboard. The bookshelves stood empty; large cardboard cartons were stacked one upon another. It was a disturbance, a rearrangement of the order she was used to, and even through the fog that had enfolded the Sender, she wondered uneasily what it meant.
And then she forgot about the crates, as the smell reached her nostrils, making them flare, washing every last speck of fatigue away. Mara was wide awake, her blood racing, her tail up and lashing from side to side. The air of Nizamuddin was thick with smoke, and when Mara twitched her whiskers, she smelled green sap and sawdust, the acrid odour of smouldering wood and bark.
Katar used the roughest part of his tongue, rasping at his fur savagely, pulling at the knots and smoothening them out, but it was of no use. Woodsmoke infiltrated his fur; the ashes had mingled with the grey, and no matter what he did, the smoke clung to his skin and to his whiskers. It would not leave him, any more than it would leave Nizamuddin.
His attention was caught by the harsh keek of an adult cheel, calling out its protest against the smoke curling upwards into the air. The cheel was a handsome bird, his gold-and-brown feathers dappling the blue sky, and he flashed past the rooftops, using the merest flick of his wingtips to skim around the columns of smoke. Something about the way he flew seemed familiar, but Katar couldn’t place the bird. He assumed the cheel was one of Tooth’s new flying officers.
A prickle touched his whiskers, reminding him that he was late. The tom gave his fur a last, hopeless tug, combing the ashes out as best as he could with his paws. Checking once for Bigfeet, he let his whiskers unfurl, wearily getting onto the Nizamuddin link.
“How bad is it?” he asked without preamble. “Beraal, Hulo, Qawwali?”
There was a crackle on the line as Beraal joined in. Tiredness poured from her whiskers, too, and Katar could feel it even if he couldn’t see the black-and-white hunter. “The kittens are all right,” she said. “There was no risk of fire—the Bigfeet were only burning branches and twigs—but the smoke got into Ruff’s eyes and Tumble’s nostrils, so they both needed attention. We’re staying out near the canal, though the pigs have left. They’ve gone upstream.”
The canal’s waters upstream were a thick industrial sludge, so tarry that Katar had once, at the height of summer, seen a family of pigs cross through the waters as though they were wading through mud. It stank of the harsh aroma of petrol.
“It’s bad in the parks,” said Hulo, his mew rough with exhaustion. “The whine of the saws hasn’t stopped since morning. The trees have lost their limbs, the sap pours down their bodies, and the small fry have either left or sought cover. Not that there’s much cover left if you ask me. The babblers have already gone along with Ao and Jao to Humayun’s Tomb. Ao tried to fight the Bigfeet, if you please, as if they would pay much attention to something his size, but they cut down his tree anyway.”
Katar felt a weight descend on him, as though something heavy had pressed down on his fur, and it was some moments before any of them spoke. Ao and Jao were the oldest of the squirrels of Nizamuddin, residents since Miao’s time, and were among the very few of their kind who had outlived predators for almost eight years. Katar’s whiskers trembled as he imagined the squirrels chittering, forlorn, in the bare fork of their tree, deprived of the shelter of the branches, the comfort of the places where they stored their stocks of food for winter, the company of their friends, the mynahs, the baya weaverbirds, the bulbuls.
“The nests?” he asked, dreading the answer.
> “All gone,” said Hulo, and the link crackled with the tom’s sadness. Hulo was a great stealer of birds’ eggs, and considered unprotected nestlings fair game, but he and the mynahs also exchanged gossip, and he loved their concerts. He would sit on the roofs, adding his own loud voice to the mellifluous musical soirees of the bulbul family.
The birds would leave, too, Katar thought.
Qawwali took over, his mew slow and heavy. “It has not been so bad for us at the dargah,” he said, “there were few enough trees here, so the Bigfeet had less to chop down. But, Katar, the young toms of our clan have been leaving all through winter, and while it is traditional for them to go off on long hunts to prove their worthiness, many have not come back. They have chosen to stay in Khusro Park and turn pigeon-fanciers; to settle down in the shade of the bungalows where the Bigfeet live beyond the overpass; to move further and further away from the place where we thought they would raise their litters. The smoke has driven deep into the dargah, and while the old alleys can support the few of us who are left, it is only us who still stay—the ancient families, Katar. There is my family; Dastan and his boys have a corner of the Ghalib Academy to themselves; even Abol and Tabol talk of moving.”
He coughed, and Katar could sense how badly the smoke had affected the old warrior; the grey tom’s whiskers rose in sympathy, as they heard the harsh rasp of Qawwali’s chest.
“I worry about the rats,” said Qawwali, his whiskers quavering. “Time was when I could despatch them with one swift blow, and when they would scurry away at the merest whiff of our scent. But now they are growing bold, Katar, there are no young warriors and queens left in the dargah. If it was not for Tooth and his companions, they would strut around the streets as though the fragrance shops sold perfume only for their wretched tails! But such is life. One mustn’t complain too much. If you’ll excuse me, Katar, I will take my leave. Must do something about this cough, it makes me sound like a wild dog, not a respectable old cat, yes?”
After he left, Katar had to will himself to continue.
“What shelter and food do we have left for the summer?” he said. “In the parks near the dargah, there is little enough left. The trees have been stripped by the Bigfeet, or torn down to make more of their houses.”
“The rats and the garbage dumps,” said Beraal, “that’s all we have left.”
“It’s bad this side,” said Hulo. “Beraal’s litter is the only one that survived this year, but when Tabol talked to me of leaving, she said many of the young queens felt that there was nothing left for them in Nizamuddin. Especially the ones who had seen their litters waste away from hunger, or had their kittens killed by the Bigfeet’s cars. What can we do, Katar?”
Katar’s whiskers sagged, but he made himself come back onto the link.
“You know what we have to do, Hulo,” he said.
“Leave Nizamuddin,” said the black tom, almost growling. “But where shall we go? Qawwali would share his food with us gladly, but there isn’t enough. There won’t be enough when next season’s kittens come along.”
The air seemed to shimmer with heat, and they felt a ripple of electricity go along the link, as though a strange cat had leaned in and touched her whiskers directly, tip to end, to their own.
“Nizamuddin cannot hold the clan any more,” said the Sender, joining the link. “If you stay here over summer, the older cats will die, and few of your kittens will survive the time from the monsoons into the winter. The trees have been whittled to matchsticks, and if there is no room for the birds, there will soon be no room for us.”
“Us?” said Katar. “You live with the Bigfeet, Mara.”
“Indeed, I do,” said the Sender. “But I have walked through Nizamuddin often, sometimes with Doginder, sometimes with Beraal. My nose is almost dead from the stink of the smoke the Bigfeet have spread today, but if you will let me, Katar, I would like the pleasure of greeting you formally. May we touch noses and tails?”
On the roof, Katar’s ears prickled as he heard the approach of another cat. He turned, rising as he swivelled. An orange cat with bright green eyes watched him with interest, her long whiskers signalling friendly greeting.
“Hello, Katar,” she said. “I thought it was time we met, since I’ve already met Hulo and Beraal. I wasn’t alone, Hulo, Doginder saw me to the stairs. He’s gone off for a long run—he wanted to get the stench of the burning wood out of his head, but he’ll be back soon.”
Beraal felt her whiskers swell with pride. How far her pupil had come, she thought, from the days when a tiny orange kitten struggled to control her wayward sendings, and feared setting a paw outside the safe boundaries of her home.
Katar lowered his head, and let the Sender brush his fur. She did so very carefully, touching his whiskers only lightly with her own, but he felt an electric crackle—the Sender’s power—course through his fur all the same.
“It is good to see you out, Sender,” he said.
“I should have come out sooner,” she replied, her mew grave and sad.
“You are here now, little one,” said Hulo over the link. “But what can the clan do? We are not birds that we can take to the air and fly wherever we please.”
The Sender stretched her whiskers out, so that they could all sense her over the link, the three clan elders, the dargah cats listening with some curiosity, the little queens, the toms.
“We have paws,” she said, “and whiskers. They can take us further than you might think. In my sendings, I have seen much of Delhi. The Bigfeet may have shredded the shape of your old lives in Nizamuddin to pieces, but there are other places.”
A young queen, one of the skinny market cats who was often seen tagging along with Tabol’s family, broke in on the link.
“We can’t lope all over the city looking for places that suit us better,” she said. “Who will find these places for us?”
Katar took over the link, his whiskers suddenly calm and strong, despite the acrid air, the heat, the emptiness of his own belly.
“You forget,” he said, “as we all had forgotten in the years of plenty. When Tigris grew silent and retreated to her Bigfeet’s house, none of the clan suffered. The prey waxed fat in those days, and the Bigfeet in the market fed us instead of showering us and the strays with kicks and curses. We have forgotten what it means to have a Sender of Nizamuddin. Your whiskers are longer than ours, Mara.”
The rumble was so loud that every cat in Nizamuddin heard it: the sound of heavy machinery, digging up the stumps of the trees; then the whine of the saws started up, the noise making their whiskers ache.
“For all of our sakes,” said Beraal, before the link shut down and the cats went back to their business, “I hope your whiskers will tell us what to do before the worst of the heat hits, Sender.”
—
KATAR SAT SLUMPED, HIS fur dull from the ashes. He watched the Sender spread out her whiskers. “For Southpaw?” he asked. Beraal had told him that the Sender scanned the skies every day. “Yes,” she said. “It is hard to find one cat in a city this large—hard enough to hear only our kind, when you have the chatter of the monkeys, the stray dogs, the slow speeches of the cows, the clamour of the birds, not to mention the Bigfeet. But there are so many clans of cats in the city; so many of us slipping silently through the lives of the Bigfeet. Southpaw might have made his home with any one of them.”
Katar blinked, and combed his whiskers, trying to imagine the city that lay outside the boundaries of the canal and the tomb, beyond the lines of scent that had marked the borders of his life and the lives of the clan for as long as he could remember. He knew about the other clans near Nizamuddin, but had met only those who had passed through on their journeys elsewhere.
“Have you visited the clans around Nizamuddin recently?” he asked.
“All of them,” said Mara, thinking of her last stroll, when her whiskers had taken her to the back of Khan Market, where the restaurant cats took long naps in the shade and occasionally taunted
the busy, bustling, anxious government colony cats. “The Race Course cats near Safdarjung’s Tomb are very dashing, but the stable cats have had many litters this year, and our clan is too large to be welcomed. There is the clan who lives near Isa Khan’s Tomb, but they are very solemn, and seldom mew loudly, and the kittens would disturb them greatly. The clan who lives near Ashram is very friendly, but they throw midnight parties—you’ve heard their late-night caterwauling—and enjoy their brawls very much. They would feed us, but they would fight us just for the fun of it. The Supreme Court cats, Affit and Davit, have extended their deepest regrets over the situation in Nizamuddin—that’s Affit, he always talks like that—and suggested that we join them in their chambers whenever we like. But unfortunately, their Bigfeet have shifted from paper files to computers, he says, and there has been a running shortage of rats for some moons; we would not want to add to their troubles.”
Katar listened, his ears flicking in interest. “Why would the rats be affected?” he asked, diverted despite himself.
“Davit says that the rats like nibbling on fresh matters. The computers give them nothing to eat—the wires aren’t tasty—and the old cases are too dry.”
As Mara continued, a map of the world outside the one he had already known began to take shape for Katar. He felt his fur settle, and he curled up, allowing himself to rest. For the first time since winter’s sharp teeth had settled into their flanks, he began to believe that the clan would find a way through this tangle.
The Hundred Names of Darkness Page 27