by Vikas Swarup
'See, Wise One, what have we brought. It is turtle meat, absolutely fresh. Pemba caught it just yesterday.' Melame opened the lid, letting the smell of the meat waft into the hut. If Nokai had a weakness, it was for turtle meat.
The bait worked. Presently the door of the hut opened and a wizened hand snaked out, grabbed the pot and dragged it inside. After a long interval the door opened again and the torale gruffly invited them in. Melame and Pemba slithered through the opening.
The hut was quite spacious inside. It contained a single raised sleeping platform in the centre. The ceiling was decorated with all kinds of objects – animal skulls, nautilus shells, bows and arrows and pieces of multi-coloured cloth. There was a wooden pan on the ground full of strips of dried boar and snake meat. A crackling fire burnt in the far corner in another earthen vessel. Nokai sat in the centre of the hut on a majestic tiger-skin rug, believed to have been a gift from the King of Belgium, whom he had once cured of the usually fatal black water fever. The earthen pot was lying in front of him, licked clean.
The medicine man peered at them with his hollow eyes. They glinted like pools of water in the near-darkness of his hut. 'Why have you come to bother me?' he demanded gruffly.
'Our race is in trouble, Wise One,' Melame replied. 'Our wild pigs have disappeared, turtles have become as scarce as the dugong, and our tribe members are dying like flies. Talai was the third one to go. Why are the spirits angry with us?'
'All this is happening because you lost the ingetayi,' Nokai said sternly. 'The sea-rock was a gift from our greatest ancestor Tomiti. It was engraved by Tawamoda, the first man. As long as we had the sacred rock, we were protected. Even the deadly tsunami caused no damage to our tribe. On the contrary, we were blessed by a girl child. It is only since the ingetayi disappeared that our tribe has fallen on hard times. How could you allow our most sacred relic to be stolen?'
'I really don't know, Wise One,' Melame replied sheepishly. 'We kept the sea-rock hidden deep inside the Black Cave at the far edge of the creek. None of the inene ever ventures that far. It is a mystery who could have taken it.'
Nokai gave another burp, groped about amongst the bones, rattles, charms and sea shells scattered across the tiger-skin rug, and came up with a large pearl oyster shell. 'Look at this,' he said. 'Once this was a living body, but today it is just a dead, empty shell. How? Because the spirit which resided in this shell has gone. Puluga resided in the ingetayi. When the ingetayi left Gaubolambe, Puluga left the island too. Now we are without his protection. The friendly spirits are angry with us for letting our God go. They are the ones causing all this havoc, these deaths. It is the curse of the onkobowkwe. Naturally, the person who stole the sacred rock will also be cursed. The spirits will not spare him, but they will not spare us either, for allowing the ingetayi to be stolen.'
'So what do we do? How do we save ourselves?' Pemba asked.
'There is only one way. Someone will have to go and recover the sacred rock,' Nokai replied.
'But for that we must first find out who has taken the ingetayi, and where it is residing now,' Melame said. 'Only you can help us locate it.'
'Yes, Nokai will help you locate it.' The medicine man nodded. 'But in return I want enough turtle meat to last me the rainy season, a big pot of honey and at least five nice pig skulls.'
'Granted, Wise One. Now just tell us who has the sacred stone.'
Nokai dragged the earthen vessel containing the fire closer to him. He rummaged through the items on the rug again and extracted a large lump of red clay and some brown seeds. He threw the seeds into the fire, where they burst with a bang. He smeared the red clay all over his face and body. He then went to the sleeping platform, raised the thin mattress and brought out four large bones from underneath it. 'These are my most prized possession. The bones of the great Tomiti himself.'
Melame and Pemba kneeled in deference to the great ancestor. Nokai sat down on the rug once again, spreading the four bones around him. Then he put his head between his knees and appeared to go to sleep. Melame and Pemba settled down to wait. They were familiar with the medicine man's routine. He was preparing to visit the spirit world. The brown seeds and the red clay would repel malevolent spirits, the bones of the ancestor would attract benevolent spirits. They would enter the hut, bringing a cold draft in their wake. Being blind, they would feel the torale's body all over, making him shiver with cold. They would then truss him up like a pig, load him on their back, and fly into the sky.
For close to eight hours, Melame and Pemba watched over Nokai's body, as inert as a stationary turtle, while shadows lengthened outside the hut. It was late evening when the torale finally woke up with a start. He seemed groggy and disoriented. His eyes were bleary and there were numerous small cuts and bruises all over his body.
'Water, quick, get me some water,' he cried. Pemba had a jug of water handy. The torale drank greedily, half the water cascading down his chin. Catching his breath, he announced dramatically, 'Ingetayi a-ti-iebe. Nokai has seen the sea-rock!'
Weary from his ordeal, Nokai narrated his journey in fragments, with Pemba and Melame having to tease out the details from him. This, he told them, was the longest trip he had ever undertaken. One that took him across the four oceans to the land of the inene. Soaring high in the sky, he had passed over snowcovered peaks and long, winding rivers. He had crossed barren sandy deserts and lush green valleys. He had seen metal birds flying in the sky and long iron snakes moving on the ground, smoke billowing from their hoods. The spirit of Tomiti himself had then led him on the trail of the ingetayi, crossing dense mangrove swamps, honing in on a vast bustling city teeming with people, where concrete buildings stood taller than the tallest mountains and where the night was lit up by the light of a thousand suns. He had swooped down to a small green-roofed house next to a small pond and that is where the ingetayi was, sitting atop a pedestal in a small room, surrounded with images of the inene's gods.
'Tell us who lives in the house, Wise One. He must be the one who stole the sea-rock,' Melame urged.
'I saw only two people in the house. An old woman, wearing a white dress, and a short, bald man, with bushy eyebrows, thin lips and a bulbous nose,' Nokai replied, adding, 'He also wore glasses.'
'Banerjee!' Melame and Pemba exclaimed simultaneously, recognizing the description of the senior welfare officer who had left the island two months ago in an unseemly hurry.
'Puluga be praised. All our troubles will now be over,' Nokai declared. 'As soon as the sea-rock is returned, the spirits will be propitiated. We will have enough honey and pigs and cicadas and turtles. No one will die and become an eeka.'
All three men stepped out of the hut and Melame broke the news to the other members of the Council of Elders, who had been waiting patiently since morning.
'The only issue now is who will undertake this mission? Who will go to the land of the inene and recover the sea-rock?' Pemba tossed the question.
The elders looked at each other's faces and looked away. A profound silence fell over the assembly. The wind dropped. Even the children running around with their toy bows and arrows ceased their sport and stood still, nervous and confused. The only sound was that of the distant waves breaking against the reefs. The air became heavy and dark with tension.
Suddenly, an empty bottle of Kingfisher beer dropped from the sky and crashed at Melame's feet, narrowly missing Tumi, who was breastfeeding her baby. Everyone looked up in alarm, wondering what new punishments the spirits sitting up in the heavens were doling out for them. They frowned when they spotted Eketi relaxing up in the garjan tree. He waved at them.
'You leg of a chicken. Come down immediately,' Pemba bawled. 'Otherwise I will become the first father to ask Nokai to turn his own son into a dog.'
Reluctantly, Eketi shinned down the tall tree. His movements were quick and nimble, like a monkey's. He jumped to the ground and stood before his father, a sheepish grin on his face. He was tall by the standards of his tribe – a good fiv
e feet – and muscularly built. He wore red shorts which were torn in a number of places and a dirty white T-shirt bearing the logo of the Dallas Cowboys. A small plastic bottle containing chewing tobacco dangled from his neck.
'None of you have answered the most important question our tribe has been asked,' Melame addressed the elders again. 'Who will volunteer to recover the sacred rock?'
The question was met again by a wall of silence.
'What has happened to your people, Chief?' Nokai berated Melame. 'Is there no one prepared to defend the tribe's honour?'
Melame stood like a condemned prisoner, silent and impassive. It was Eketi who finally broke the impasse. 'Eketi will go,' he announced calmly.
Melame looked doubtfully at him. 'Do you think you will be able to handle this task? All day long I see you loitering on the beach, drinking beer and coca, trying to palm money off the foreigners.'
Nokai stepped in. 'Puluga be praised. Eketi is cleverer than you think. For three seasons I taught him my secrets. But he has no interest in becoming a torale. He wants to conquer the world. Nokai says give him a chance.'
Melame turned to Pemba. 'You are his father. What do you say?'
Pemba nodded sagely. 'I agree with Nokai. If Eketi stays here, the welfare staff will make him their slave. He will be doing chores for the inene all his life. Let this be his initiation ceremony.'
'Yes,' Nokai concurred, 'the ultimate tanagiru. It will rejuvenate the entire tribe. And when he returns with the sacred rock we shall give him a hero's welcome, just like our ancestors gave Tomiti when he first brought the rock from Baratang Island.'
Melame turned to Eketi. 'You know it will be a hazardous journey, don't you?'
'It is a risk Eketi is prepared to take,' Eketi replied, sounding more mature than his years. 'It should be a risk the tribe is prepared to take. Our very future depends on it.'
'Don't worry, Nokai will protect you,' the medicine man said reassuringly. 'I will give you tubers which have the protection of the spirits, and pellets which can cure any ailment.' He stepped inside the hut and returned with a decorated jawbone on a black string. 'Once you put this sacred bone around your neck, Puluga himself will become your guardian. No harm will come to you.'
Eketi kneeled before the medicine man and accepted his blessings. Then he took off his T-shirt, ripped the tobacco pouch from his neck, and put on the jawbone which glowed like phosphorescence against his coal-black skin.
Pemba injected a note of caution. 'What if the welfare staff catch my son?' he asked. 'You know the hiding they gave Kora when he tried to get into the speedboat without their permission. That man Ashok is very clever. He can even speak our language.'
Eketi dismissed this with a wave of his hand. 'So what? I can speak English better than him. The welfare staff are fools, Father. They are interested only in making money. They have no interest in me. But how will I go to India? Eketi cannot fly like Nokai.'
'We will make a canoe for you,' said Melame. 'The best boat we have ever made. You will leave at the time of the moon of full dark. No one will spot you. Within a few days I am sure you will be able to reach the land of the inene. Then you just have to find that rotten egg Banerjee and recover our stolen rock.'
'And how exactly will Eketi find Banerjee?'
'By finding the green-roofed house.'
'Do you have any idea how big India is?' Eketi cried. 'It is bigger than the sky. Searching for one green-roofed house will be like looking for a grain of salt in the sand. What I need is something called an address. Everyone in India has one. That's what Murthy Sir taught us in school. Now who has got Banerjee's address?'
'Oh, we didn't think of that,' said Melame and scratched his head. The assembly fell silent.
'Puluga be praised. I believe I may be able to help,' a voice rang out. A shadow detached itself from the trees in the background and stepped forward.
The islanders recoiled in shock. It was Ashok, the junior welfare officer.
'Kujelli!' exclaimed Pemba, which was the Onge equivalent of 'Oh shit!' though its literal meaning was 'The pig has pissed!'
'I come in peace,' Ashok declared in fluent Onge as he approached the gathering. A clean-shaven man in his early thirties, The Tribal 49 he was of average height with a thin build and short black hair. 'I will take Eketi to India,' he said. 'I know Banerjee's address in Kolkata. I will help recover your sacred rock. Will you describe it to me?'
He took out a pen from his bush shirt and opened a thin black diary.
5
The Thief
I WILL BE DEAD in approximately six minutes. I have consumed a full bottle of Ratkill 30. The powerful poison is making its way through my bloodstream. It takes only three minutes to kill a rat; double that for a human. My body will be paralysed first, then it will slowly start turning blue. My heartbeat will become irregular, then it will stop completely. My twenty-one-year-old life will come to an abrupt end.
This is the time, Mother would say, to remember God. To atone for my sins. But what's the point? Lord Shiva is not going to come down from Mount Kailash to get me out of this jam. He never helps us poor people. He belongs only to the rich. That is why although I live inside the temple, I don't believe in God.
My late friend Lallan would have surmised that I am pretending to commit suicide to impress some chick. But this isn't a drama. And it isn't even suicide. It is murder.
Mr Dinesh Pratap Bhusiya is standing in front of me, pointing a revolver directly at my stomach. An expensive imported piece. He is the one who ordered me to drink the rat poison. Given a choice between dying by bullet and dying by poison, I chose the latter. At least it will be painless, though that watery brown liquid had a terrible taste; it was like swallowing mud.
There is a manic glint in Mr D. P. Bhusiya's eyes as he watches me die. Of all the Bhusiya brothers he is the most dangerous. I saw him the other day, torturing his pet dog, poking him in the eye with a pointed stick. In fact, there is a mad streak in the entire Bhusiya clan. His elder brother Ramesh is a serial adulterer, trying to bonk every girl in the neighbourhood, from the sweeper to the washerwoman, while his fat wife spends her time at the beauty parlour. And his younger brother Suresh is a serial adulterator, selling impure goods to unsuspecting customers. Everything in his general provision store on Andheria Modh is adulterated. He mixes crushed pebbles in pulses, sand in rice, artificial colours in spices, chalk powder in flour. He sells fake milk, fake sugar, fake medicines, fake cola, even fake bottled water. Come to think of it, it is difficult to figure out which brother is the worst. Partly because they all look like carbon copies of each other. At times even I get confused which of the three brothers I am talking to. Their father, Mr Jai Pratap Bhusiya, also looks exactly like his sons, simply an older model. It is almost as if the Bhusiya women have a factory where they have perfected a mould which makes succeeding generations of Bhusiyas look exactly alike. If you were to meet a member of the family in the street you would be able to say immediately, 'There goes a Bhusiya,' just as you would be able to identify a black buffalo in a herd of cows.
If only the Bhusiya women were as ugly as their men I wouldn't be in this situation. The main reason I began working in this house was because of Pinky Bhusiya, the only sister of the three brothers. She has skin like honey and a body like a BMW. All sleek curves outside and smooth upholstery inside. I saw her in the temple complex one day and foolishly laid a thousand-rupee bet with Jaggu, the flower-seller, that I would start an affair with her within sixty days.
Working as a servant was way beneath the dignity of a university graduate like me, but that was the only way to gain entry into the Bhusiya household. Luckily, the Bhusiyas were in need of a servant. As a matter of fact, every rich family in the capital is in need of one. Good servants are as hard to find these days as spares for the Daewoo Matiz. The fact that I lived on the temple compound was enough to convince the Bhusiyas that I was honest and God-fearing, and they employed me on a salary of three thousand a mon
th.
In hindsight, it was the biggest mistake of my life. A high-flying ex-mobile-phone thief, used to dealing in Nokias and Samsungs, was always going to struggle with Pril dishwasher and Rin soap.
And the Bhusiyas didn't help matters either. They had seemed law-abiding, religious types, who came to the temple every Monday and donated large sums to Lord Shiva. It was only after I started working for them that I discovered they were first-rate crooks and cheats. Uncouth, uncivilized and insensitive, they constantly reprimanded me for some act of omission or commission.
I could have tolerated their boorishness, but what I couldn't stand was the bossiness of the Bhusiya women. They acted as if they owned me. Mr R. P. Bhusiya's wife would send me off to get a DVD from the video parlour and Mr S. P. Bhusiya's wife would demand that I get her dry-cleaning at the same time. Worst of all, Pinky Bhusiya remained completely immune to my charms. I had thought a girl like her would be easy to entice. The way she dressed, she seemed neither too hep nor too staid. Neither too worldly-wise and canny, nor totally timid. I enacted several hero-type roles to attract Pinky's attention, from the sensitive aashiq to the dignified servant with a heart of gold. I tried to impress her with my wide knowledge of mobile phones and my deep understanding of national politics, but nothing seemed to work. She treated me just like a servant, angry one day, amiable another, but never seeing me as a man. All she was interested in were her silly girlfriends and her CD player. Even the bathrooms in the house were so constructed that there was no possibility of peeping in. Within a month I realized that it was a waste of time.