The grey tom looked out over Nizamuddin. The Bigfeet’s homes on this side, near the cool, vast lawns that surrounded Humayun’s Tomb, were calm and relatively untouched. But Katar had spent some of his youth here, and remembered a time when he and the other hunters would have been able to cross the roofs without effort. Now the buildings went up so high that only the monkeys could even begin to find a way through the jungle of cement and brick. All over Nizamuddin, the greenery he had remembered, had disappeared over time, leaving behind this bare landscape.
The heavy, humid wind assaulted their nostrils yet again with the stink of bonfires, and Katar tried, unsuccessfully again, to scrub the smell out of his fur with his tongue. His whiskers tingled; he could not imagine staying on in Nizamuddin any longer, even though he could not see where the clan might go.
—
HULO HEARD DOGINDER’S EAGER bark before he saw him. “Hang on a tick, Hulo,” Doginder called. “I’ll come around the back—oh wait, shortcut.”
The tomcat, pausing on the stairs that led to the Sender’s house, closed his eyes and flinched as Doginder charged the bougainvillea hedge. “That’s too high, Doginder,” he said.
“Not at all!” said Doginder, panting as he made his run-up, his tongue flopping out in between barks. “Now that I’ve switched from being a Rescue Dog to being a Guard Dog, I’ve been practising leaps and bounds, this is going to be—ouch, all right, maybe not.” Stuck in the middle of the hedge, Doginder wriggled with all his might, trying to get his belly out of the branches. He made it, finally, and bounded up to Hulo, knocking over a small cactus in its flower pot with his tail. “Just as well Ao and Jao aren’t here, they’d have been calling me all sorts of names by now. I miss them, though they seem to have settled in at Humayun’s Tomb quite happily—one of the mynahs brought a message. Has the Sender shared her plans?”
“Not yet,” said Hulo. “She’s busy with her Bigfeet; says that she thinks they’re moving house.”
He hunched his fur around him, feeling miserable, though he didn’t want to share his sadness with Doginder. There were too many creatures leaving Nizamuddin, he thought. The babblers, the squirrels he had known for most of his life, and now the Sender.
Doginder’s tail stopped its joyous waving. “Mara’s going?” he said in dismay. “I wanted to tell the Sender that I’d been offered a position at the dhaba. Guard Dog, you see, they need someone to deal with the rats, and they picked me! No leashes, no chains, all I can eat, though I have to say there’s a limit to how much leftover butter chicken you can take, and so long as I chase the rats off, I’m free to do what I want. Must say it’s a relief, I’d been on short rations for a while. That’s changed, see?”
He turned to his side, so that Hulo could see how rapidly his jutting ribs had been replaced by the beginnings of a promising paunch.
“Impressive,” said Hulo. “So your lot have also had trouble finding prey?”
Doginder sat down and scratched behind his ear. “Ever since winter!” he said. “The prey’s thinned out, not that we could survive by hunting alone—I’ve often wondered how all of you manage. The garbage dumps used to be reliable joints, if you don’t mind fast food, but there’s been too much competition this year, what with the rats lining up at one end and the monkeys swinging by whenever they get chased out of their neighbourhoods, the crows, the mice. There isn’t enough for anyone but the Bigfeet in Nizamuddin any more. I’d have had to leave if the job hadn’t come through.”
He scratched with considerable thoroughness, and added, with great pleasure, “Good job, that, and I’ve made friends with a young chap. Fine pup, wants to grow up to be a Ferocious Attack Dog, since I’ve resigned from that post. I have a new designation now. Which do you think sounds better? Guard Dog, Dhaba? Official Guard Dog? Guard (Official) Dog? Yes, that sounds about right. G(O)D, Dhaba, Nizamuddin.”
“Excellent,” said Hulo. “I’d better be off, Doginder. Glad you’ve found a nice billet.”
“Me too!” said Doginder. “I would hate to leave Nizamuddin, no matter how much it changes. I was born here, just like you.”
Hulo’s whiskers went up. “You feel that way, too?” said the tom, his battered ears swivelling towards Doginder. “My whiskers drop when we talk about leaving. I was born in the alleys of the dargah, and the smells of meat and perfume, the bustle of Bigfeet, the clamour of the call to worship and their raucous chatter every morning as they set up their shops, the cheels overhead, even the stinky canal—it’s hard to make my paws believe that we’ll have to leave.”
Doginder trotted alongside Hulo.
“It’s easier for some of the dogs,” he said. “They don’t mind. They said that if we’d been pups at a breeder’s place, we’d have had to go to different houses anyway. And the pedigrees say that the Bigfeet separate them from their mothers; they leave home almost as soon as their eyes open. They’re right, but I like it here, even if the Bigfeet do make a ruckus. I like breathing the air of home.”
They parted, but Doginder’s bark echoed in Hulo’s ears for a long while. “The air of home,” he thought, his whiskers cast down, “the air of home.” He felt the thinness of his own ribs as he walked, the slack folds of his stomach hanging down. The previous night, he had gone over to Beraal’s, and watched Ruff and Tumble assuage their hunger pangs by licking at a plastic bag, which had a ghost tang of milk. The food he brought back was no longer enough, and though Beraal was back to hunting, she, like the toms, had nothing to hunt.
Custom held them in its claws; he had met cats outside of Nizamuddin who thought little of hunting songbirds or mice they had grown up with, but the clan followed the old traditions. They slaughtered pigeons mercilessly, considering them vermin, like the rats. But they would not kill the bulbuls or the mynahs, nor would they do more than occasionally tease the babblers or the squirrels; the songbirds were not fair game, and even in a summer of starvation, none of the cats had considered changing their hunting habits. This was a question of habit more than kindness. Growing up in a time of plenty, he, Katar and Beraal had been taught to stalk only birds who flew in from elsewhere, visiting strangers. As the old trees went down, one by one, the flame trees and the fig trees, the neem and the laburnum and the silk cotton trees, there were fewer birds in Nizamuddin, especially those that could be considered prey. The flocks of plump pigeons who had once been so plentiful that they fluttered like grey, noisome clouds around every rooftop, dwindled, and then disappeared.
There was no help for it; the clan would have to leave, and now that the Sender had become so much closer to the clan, perhaps her whiskers would tell them where they would find home next. Hulo could feel in the depths of his fur that this would be a killing summer, a deadly monsoon, and his blood whispered to him that he could not stay; and yet his whiskers rippled insistently into the past, bringing back memories that told him he could not go. The hunger that gnawed at him every night was one matter; the sight of Beraal’s kittens, with their slack bellies, Tumble’s lethargy and dull eyes, was another. He padded off towards the market, walking more slowly than he usually did, mapping the neighbourhood—the park, now dusty and dry in the absence of grass and trees, where the Bigfeet played games of cricket, the empty place where the Cobra’s Tree used to stand, replaced by a three-storey building. He marked each curve of the road, each bend in the canal, breathed in the tang of mutton curry and garbage, jasmine blossoms and tar, not realizing he was mapping the scents of Nizamuddin, storing them up against the day when they would be forced to leave.
—
MARA POPPED HER HEAD out of a cardboard box and growled at the Bigfeet. “I am going to live here forever,” she told them crossly. “Don’t imagine you can win me over with your fancy scratching posts and those intriguing toys you’re dangling over my head! I don’t want to leave my house!”
The Bigfeet cooed at her sympathetically, and one of them squatted near the box, dangling an enticing toy inside it. Mara turned her back on them, digging up
the cardboard floor mutinously.
“How could you do that without asking me?” she said, ignoring the way in which the toy—a green felt mouse attached to a red plastic wand—smacked her hopefully between the ears from time to time. “All I had to do was nap for a little while, and you pack up everything? You haven’t even asked if I’ll miss the park. All right, it was a crowded park and I had to dodge the Bigfeet, but it was mine, wasn’t it? Go away. Quit swatting me with that admittedly fine, irresistible toy—hey, wait, don’t take it away! Come back! That’s my green mouse, you hear? Give it to me!”
Soon, she was batting the mouse around the carton, delighted with the thwacks it made. Her Bigfoot jerked the mouse up and Mara pounced at it, happy to see that the strength had flooded back into her paws and limbs. The mouse skittered off the sides of the carton and bounced in the air. Mara wriggled her backside and chased the toy, flying around the new sofas that didn’t smell at all of either the Bigfeet or her own fur. She made a note to herself to fix the scent problem, and then the green mouse popped up from behind the sofa. “Game on!” she said, mewing ferociously.
The mouse squeaked and scurried across the ground, the Bigfeet careful not to step in between Mara and her green felt prey. For a moment, the Sender thought she should lower her whiskers and stalk off, just to show them how upset she was at the idea of leaving Nizamuddin and the clan, but then the red wand rose enticingly and the green felt mouse whirled across the doorsill. Mara laid her ears back and shot across the sill. Before the Bigfeet could draw it back, she had it, and was lying on her back, batting it between her paws. She wrapped her whiskers around it, and smelled the catnip inside the mouse. “That’s a dirty trick,” she said to the Bigfeet, who had followed her out onto the balcony. “You know I love catnip! I know you’re trying to bribe me, and—this is delicious.”
The game allowed her to relax, but later, Mara stared unblinkingly out over the park, thinking of Beraal. She had dodged the traffic and braved the dogs to go and see her mentor, not wanting to leave with the Bigfeet without making her farewells. Beraal had raised her head wearily; her black-and-white fur was matted from the humidity, and she had not bothered to untangle or comb herself. “They’re underfed, Mara,” said Beraal, “and my milk is almost at an end. If we don’t find hunting grounds soon…” Mara had understood that the Clan would face some hardship, but Beraal’s next words had helped her see how grave their situation was.
“We must leave Nizamuddin now,” Beraal had said. “It will be hard, our claws will dig into the soil and try to hold on as we walk away, but I have nursing kittens. And if they are to survive, then my whiskers say we must leave, or else Ruff and Tumble will die before the monsoons. I cannot hunt for them as well as myself; there is not enough food for all. With the Bigfeet’s racket and their incessant construction, we’ve lost almost all of our old shelters. At the height of summer, when the heat is at its most fierce, Hulo, Katar and I will have to choose. Do we hunt for the clan, or do we hunt for our own survival? If we come across prey, or stray scraps from the Bigfeet, will we link and let all of the other cats know? Without us, the clan will not survive; but even with us, the clan will have to fend for itself through the worst months. The old and the ill will die. Those who are injured in the next few months will die. And most litters will not survive.”
Mara’s fur had gone cold, despite the heat of the evening. She had known this, but the despair in Beraal’s mew made it seem inevitable. The wind blew hard, a dry, desiccating wind that rasped like a fevered tongue across all of them.
“The right place is close by, Beraal,” she said. “I can feel it in my whiskers.”
“Take us there soon, Sender,” said Beraal, curving her belly protectively around her kittens. “Another few days of starvation, and these little ones won’t be able to stand up, leave alone walk.”
Mara had left with Beraal’s mews ringing in her ears. She ate well, and when her Bigfeet cuddled her, she butted her head lovingly against their legs, forgiving them for deciding to move out of Nizamuddin without consulting her. They switched on the air conditioner. She sat in front of the vents, letting the cold air ease the terrible heat of the day, and she purred at her Bigfeet. But the Sender’s thoughts returned time and again to Ruff and Tumble, and how they had lain there so still and listless while she and Beraal mewed and murmured.
The next day, when the packers began loading her Bigfeet’s furniture into the truck, Mara shivered, but she did not protest. And when she was placed gently into her cage, she did not yowl, or send the few remaining squirrels dropping from the branches of the trees with the force of her sendings, as she would have in the past. Instead, she raised her whiskers, and linked once.
Katar was out on the walls of a Bigfeet’s house, hoping to steal some small scraps of meat from the wedding feast that was being prepared. Hulo, sitting with Qawwali in a quiet courtyard in the bustling dargah, paused in mid-conversation. Beraal looked up, pausing in the middle of washing Tumble. The Sender’s mew was calm and her whiskers steady, as she bid them farewell. “This is your Sender speaking,” she said, and all around Nizamuddin, the cats listened to the young queen who had finally claimed them as her clan.
“I don’t know where my Bigfeet are taking me, or where you will make your next home, but I’ll send to Katar and all of you when I do know. This has been a long, hot summer for you, a season of desperation and ashes. But even the longest summer ends; the rains will soon be here, and I promise that you will welcome the monsoons from your new home. Hunt as best as you can, eat as much as you can. Keep your strength up, and make sure that your paw pads are well-cleaned and toughened. You’ll need them for the journey ahead.”
Doginder left his post at the dhaba to race behind the Bigfeet’s car, offering his friend a 21-bark salute. Behind him, a tiny stray with long ears and solemn brown eyes pelted grimly in Doginder’s wake, taking his duties as a Ferocious Attack Pup very seriously. Then the car turned the last corner, and the truck rattled off behind it, and Nizamuddin’s Sender was gone.
—
WHEN MARA WOKE up, she was in her old basket; the stuffed monkey that had been her only friend before Southpaw had marched in to her room so long ago stared up at her, its glass eye winking; but the house smelled different.
The Bigfeet laughed and scratched between her ears, and scratched under her chin, and Mara wriggled on the cool marble floor, as happy as a kitten. She stretched, letting her tail extend to its maximum length, and looked back at the living room. If you put a few scratches into the covers on those new sofas, and knocked a heap of books over so that the friendly chaos of the old house was retained, Mara thought, it might feel like home. It was bigger than the old place, and there was more room for her to scoot around on her belly. Her worst fears had been assuaged that morning when the doorbell rang, and the Chief Bigfoot came in. Mara was very impressed with the powers of the Chief Bigfoot: she hadn’t been in the car, or in the trucks that had brought the Bigfeet’s furniture, so she must have navigated between Nizamuddin and whatever this new place was on her own.
The Bigfeet were leaving the room, without her permission, yet again. One of their worst flaws was their inability to recognize that they were supposed to ask her before they ended a play session, but Mara made allowances for them. The house was new, and they, too, might take some time to settle in. And the balcony, much wider and larger than the small terraces in her previous home, beckoned. The Sender settled herself into the cool earthen embrace of a flowerpot, tucking her tail and paws in neatly.
A jarul tree formed a hospitable roof, spreading its wide branches over the balcony. Some of its lush mauve blossoms had fallen on the floor, and Mara found that they made respectable scratching pads. Java plum trees, white fig trees and white frangipanis bent their heads together in the large park that faced the house. She heard a few Bigfeet, and saw their cars drive by, but this place seemed much quieter than Nizamuddin’s bustling, noisy streets had been. The jarul branches cares
sed the balcony, forming a natural ladder on one side, while a goolar tree with its scaly bark and red figs offered a staircase on the other side.
She wondered whether to spread her whiskers out, to let them scan the area for her, but she was still cramped from the cage and the car journey. The goolar staircase was tempting, and Mara padded down its twisting length, deciding to go for a short stroll wherever her whiskers wanted to take her. Perhaps she could even tell how far she was from Nizamuddin. Downstairs, she yawned, stretching until she had stretched the sleep out of her fur. She cleaned her paws thoroughly, then raised a hind leg above her ears, to make sure that she did each side with care and attention. She watched the road until she was sure that she understood the Bigfeet’s rushing, intermittent traffic patterns. Then she crossed, and when she found a break in the long high wall that ran the length of the road, Mara went through.
The place felt strangely familiar, in a way that told her she had travelled these routes before through her sendings. She spread her white whiskers wide, her green eyes abstracted as she took in the scents of the air; this place was home to dogs as well as Bigfeet, but the only clan of cats she could find seemed to be much further away. She wrinkled her whiskers at their scent trails. Instead of criss-crossing each other, with the rich overlay of smells and scents forming a tapestry, the cats who lived on the other side of the road appeared to roam vast swathes of territory on their own. Their brisk, no-nonsense scent trails met only at the borders and boundaries of their terrain. There were other networks of scents hovering in the background—the intricate lacework left behind by clusters and clans of bats, a heavy, oozing set of trails, thick as ropes, strung out across the terrain, that indicated small predators—but so many, Mara wondered? The links between birds of different feathers opened up, shining like skeins of spider silk, as delicate and as intricately woven. This would bear exploring, the Sender thought. She let her whiskers lead her through the greens and the roughs, but she didn’t attempt to steer her whiskers in any particular direction.
The Hundred Names of Darkness Page 28