The Rat Eater

by Anand Ranganathan

  Naming is distancing, naming is owning, naming is disowning, naming is belonging, naming is abandoning, naming is deriding, naming is defeating. And naming is defining. We are sanitised, we are globalised, we are immunised and we have given ourselves a number to dial in case of an emergency...

  100. There’s a government notification which requires that the three digits should be displayed prominently in all public places across India. These include skeletons and police stations where the sun goes down and there is darkness.

  Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can carry on with skeletons as witnesses. In the grand scheme of things, you are only as alive as long as you feel for others, share their grief, lend a hand, spare a thought and remember that loved ones will refer to your body as ‘it’ even before rigor mortis sets in. The rat eater has only just started talking. It is about you, everything you hold dear and everything about which you know nothing. Ready to jump without nets? Brahmandam. Growing into deep silence to reinvent yourself as a revolutionary, a karma yogi?

  In the meantime, before you laugh at India’s police, stand straight. Order yourself a Manhattan—darkness at noon. Huh?

  We are all rat eaters—make no mistake. Even the one that got away, is, in the final analysis, a rat eater. The cuckoo that flew over the nest also had a defined trajectory.

  2

  1966—A Brave New World

  Amma thumped the tarpaulin-sheathed wickerwork basket on Bela’s head with such force, the poor girl nearly collapsed on her knees.

  ‘Hold it. Steady,’ she said, clamping Bela’s upper arms. ‘Yes, good.’

  The commotion upset Amma’s husband and father to her nine girls. ‘Arey Laxmi,’ he said, mopping the hollow of his armpits with his gamchha. ‘What are you shouting about this early, hain?’

  ‘This early, Mala-ke-Baba?’ said Amma, shoring up her enormous belly with meshed fingers. ‘Look at me, all bloated up and still off to work.’

  Amma did not wait for her husband’s retort and hurried out of the shack, driving away damp strands of hair from her face with exaggerated breaths. One by one, five of her girls tumbled out with baskets on their heads. They formed a line and waited, giggling, murmuring, nudging and bumping each other with their elbows and shoulders. The banter would have carried on unabated were it not for the spray of mynahs that exploded from the kikar under whose sparse canopy the girls had lined up. The basket-laden heads moved hither and thither in delight, with the youngest and the shortest craning their necks to steal a better view of the melting and forming patterns.

  ‘Enough.’

  Amma turned around slowly, moving her feet in tiny shuffles like a danseuse, and looked at the girls with deliberately enlarged eyes. A hush descended. The girls were stared into getting on with the detail of the drill. Soon, the jingle-jangle of cattle collars filled the air. The alarm had sounded.

  But Amma went down on her haunches instead, a smooth capsize. Arms extended, elbows resting on her knees, hands wilted at the wrists, she waited.

  An uneven chant of huffing and puffing broke the dusty stillness and made Amma turn her head. A thin man, ribs showing through shifting skin, a plough bearing down on his shoulder, bounced past, swinging his free arm as help. Amma’s eyes followed him. Slowly, the blur of dust dissipated, some of it resettled and the man was gone, but Amma was searching for him, her gaze wistful.

  She raised herself up, pushing hard at her knees with her palms, and walked past the line, adjusting a basket here, rectifying a posture there. The sun, pitiless already, was turning the sky from blue to silver. ‘So soon,’ thought Amma, looking up and then at the mile-long dirt road that would take them to the village. So long, the road, she said to herself, twitching her elbows to better position the load.

  Work. Cruel and merciless.

  Amma snatched a basket that lay upturned on the thatched roof. Crowning herself with it, she asked the girls gently, ‘Chalain?’

  Meanwhile, at the other end of the mile-long road, another household was waking up. Multicoloured morning sun poured through the stained-glass ventilators lighting up all the fifteen rooms of the Thakur Haveli, gently nudging the sleeping residents to wakefulness. Badey Thakur craned his neck to investigate, then threw his head back on the pillow like a deadweight. He turned this way and that and proceeded to get up from the only available side of his single bed.

  Badey Thakur slept alone. An otherwise violent and terrifying man, the one cardinal virtue of Gandhiji he had chosen to imbibe was to see the sexual act as a means of procreation. Nothing more, nothing less. In his entire life of fifty years, Badey Thakur had performed the said act seven times, resulting in four sons, one daughter and two miscarriages. Abstinence conferred on him a saint-like status. The villagers anointed him as their own mahatma, and his every word, his every decree soon became sacrosanct, a paththar ki lakeer.

  Badey Thakur’s wife, like Bapu’s before her, accepted her husband’s decision with grace. She too slept on a single bed and in a separate room so as to avoid any kind of temptation, worried that Kamdev, the unrepentant God of carnal jugglery, was forever lurking behind curtains and bedposts.

  Man, though, is largely an animal, and much as Badey Thakur and Badi Thakurayin pressed the virtues of sexual restraint, their exhortations were largely ignored by the villagers who proceeded to do what they did best behind closed doors. Fame spread, not the message, and so the axe fell on the nearest and dearest. Inwardly reluctant men and women of the Thakur household outwardly volunteered to sleep in single beds once their quota of five children had been exhausted. The haveli turned rife with unrequited sexual energy, which found its release in the terrifying repression and atrocities towards the lower castes of the village. They were trampled beneath the angry Thakur feet, their backs bore the bloody gashes of the angry Thakur whips and they drowned in the angry sea of unused Thakur semen.

  Badey Thakur now got up from the bed and slapped his morning erection to a cowering withdrawal. He staggered out of his room holding one end of his dhoti and shouted: ‘Arey, Thakurayin?’

  ‘In a moment,’ said Badi Thakurayin. A muffled shout from afar made her instinctively quicken her pace. The ghoonghat slipped down her head, the haveli keys jangled by her waist, the saucer and cup trembled in her hand, as she rushed to keep appointment with her lord. The couple almost collided in the corridor that opened on to the front veranda. Badey Thakur lost no time.

  ‘Where is my chai? And my newspaper and my mug of water.’

  ‘I-I am sorry. I was held up in the kitchen,’ said Badi Thakurayin, slipping her ghoonghat back on as she passed her husband his tea.

  ‘Held up in the kitchen. What were you doing there? Scheming to ruin my day? Now get lost.’

  ‘Ji.’

  ‘And wait.’

  ‘Ji?’

  ‘Have the latrines been cleaned?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘But they are, I am sure. That musahurin comes early to do them—Laxmi is her name.’

  ‘I don’t care what her name is. Heaven help you if I find any smell in there. Now go and check whether the latrine has been cleaned.’

  ‘J-ji.’

  The morning sweet nothings over, Badi Thakurayin strode quickly down the long corridor, moving in and out of the jagged planks of sunshine seeping through the archways that ran all along its length. She entered the central veranda and stopped under the neem tree, which was draped with an assortment of sacred threads that criss-crossed round its girth.

  ‘Now what.’

  While contemplating her next action, Badi Thakurayin tore a branch and ran her enclosed palm all along the stem. Having chewed one end adequately, she spat out the froth and looked in the direction of the many rooms along the quadrangular balcony.

  ‘Arey, Sushma? Subhadra? Mandakini?’ she cried. ‘Where are all of you? Don’t know why I put up with this. One of these days, I’ll pick my jewellery up and disappear, clean latrine or no cl
ean latrine.’

  A door opened, revealing a cheerful woman as yet unaffected by the cruelties of the day.

  ‘Arey, bhabhiji? Good morning.’

  Badi Thakurayin was not in the mood for a friendly chat.

  ‘Bhabhiji ki chachi. Yes, that’s right—you just stand there yawning and stretching while your bhabhi runs around like a slave.’

  ‘Kyaa bhabhi ji, drop it na. Achha tell me—what is to be done? You just have to say.’

  ‘Then go and find out if that musahurin Laxmi has cleaned the latrine.’

  The incredulous look on Choti Thakurayin’s face betrayed annoyance. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘But bhabhi, I have just got up and…and Chotey Thakur might ask for a cup of tea, and...’

  Badi Thakurayin was seasoned at such talk. ‘See? Didn’t I tell you? No respect—none.’

  ‘Uff bhabhi. Achha na, you win. Only for you, my sweetest, dearest bhabhi.’

  ‘Spoken like a true princess. Now go.’

  Resigned, Choti Thakurayin gently closed the door behind her, lobbed the key bunch tied to her pallu over her shoulder and commenced her trek round the haveli, climbing up a hundred stairs, pushing open and pulling shut heavy doors, all the while mumbling protests that only she could hear or understand. She came finally to the end of the tour at the last door, the one that opened on to the back alley. She pushed it open and peered out.

  ‘Arey is anyone here. Laxmi? Laxm...there you are. What are you doing standing near Kusum chachi’s house, mui?’

  Laxmi—Mai to her children—was busy with her morning duties along with her staff of five. The shouting made her turn around. She let go of her hand shovel and straightened.

  ‘Arey, Choti Thakurayin? Coming in a minute, please wait.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, Choti Thakurayin, I am just...’

  ‘Hurry up, mui. I can’t wait for you all day.’

  ‘Ji. Come now, Mala, Sarla, Bimla. Pick your baskets up. Only Badey Thakur’s house to go. Careful, Mala. Cover your mouth with the dupatta—like this. Where is…What took you so long, Bela, you stupid girl?’

  Bela, all of seven, burst into tears. ‘Mai, that Kania—he threw a rock at me and I lost my footing-and-and, everything from the basket fell on the road. Mai, the smell…it was terrible.’

  ‘Bas bas, don’t make trouble for your mother, you hear? I have enough as it is—nine months heavy and then having to take care of you lot and in this heat. Now come along. The last thing I want is Choti Thakurayin mouthing me off—that’ll really make my…Oh! Ai-ma. Mala, here, just take my basket. It’s coming, I am sure of it—today itself, I am telling you.’

  ‘What...what’s happening, Mai, what?’

  ‘Your brother, or ooh-maa…s-sister, is coming today, that’s what’s happening...Now don’t trouble me. Give me back my basket.’

  The caravan of manual scavengers wound its way and came to rest by the unwelcoming sight of Choti Thakurayin. The line formed, and this time, Mai was in it.

  ‘What took you so long, mui?’

  ‘Forgive me, Choti Thakurayin. That third house from the end—there, you see? We had to wait a while as Thakurji hadn’t finished his visit. Some food poisoning from chicken, it seems.’

  ‘Did I ask you? Did I? Listen, you. I am not interested in your stories of waiting in line for Thakurji’s prasad.’

  Mai was swaying under the weight of her basket.

  ‘I promise it won’t happen again, Choti Thakurayin. I should have brought along Ganga too. But she had to go to a Harijan basti to get the day’s water. Very sor…Ooh. Ma!…Aiyaah.’

  ‘Shut up, mui; you and your lies. And why are you screaming your head off?’

  ‘Nothing-g, Choti Th-thak-urayin-n...Ooh. It’s just that I think…I’m going…into labour…my water’s just…ai-maah!’

  ‘Keep your voice down, you’ll wake everyone up! So you are in labour. Is that my problem? Another rat on the way. Is this your fifth? Sixth? Must be eighth?’

  ‘T-tenth, Ch-choti Thakurayin.’

  ‘Tenth! Hey Bhagwaan. What is it with you people. One doesn’t come out fully and the next starts to grow in the same womb. Now stop wailing—you are not the first woman to be giving birth. Hold it, hold the rat till you have done our latrine.’

  ‘Y-yes, of-coa-course, Choti Thakurayin…Maala, Sarla…G-go-on…empty the can-canisters…B-e-l-a…h-here…take this phenyl and wash the trench up, munni.’

  The girls set to work under Mai’s eagle eye, moving expertly around her like little soldiers, emptying the canisters, splashing fistfuls of raakh inside the cans to wipe them clean, then pouring phenyl in the trenches. Choti Thakurayin ordered them to be more generous with the noxious liquid. The painful, smelly minutes ticked by. At long last, but not before two of the girls had to climb down into the trenches with handle-less brooms and fill their little baskets to the brim, the army lined up one more time, looking up at their mother with a hint of pride.

  Amma parted her trembling lips with great difficulty. ‘T-h-e-r-e, Choti Thakurayin…d-done.’

  ‘Sure? As it should be? Let me not come over and find any stench.’

  ‘No, n-no, n-o sm-ell. Come, see f-for yourself.’

  ‘Hm, no need. Good. How much do we pay you for this?’

  Amma compressed her lips a few times before she could muster enough strength to answer.

  ‘T-ten paise, Th-thakurayin.’

  ‘That much? And even then you rats come late. Here…take this five—that’ll teach you to come on time. Now go.’

  ‘J-ji, Choti Thaku-rayin. Come Maala, Bimla, everyone.’

  And the convoy set sail again: tired, defeated and humiliated. It was the Indian file of scavengers, owners of skills passed down from generation to generation, with a guaranteed job they had no worry of losing. What was lower?

  The sun beat down on their heads while the tar took care of their soles. Slowly, silently, they walked on. After a while Mala, the lead, turned her head. ‘Mai? Can we stop for a minute? Choti Thakurayin threw the coin in my basket. Let me fish it out.’

  ‘L-leave it, Mala. That bitch. Leave her paanch paise in that Thakur shit. Don’t touch it; we don’t want it. Ai-mah…ooh...a-animals! Listen, I can’t walk any l-longer. W-water…Where’s your father…’

  ‘Baba should be in the fields by now, Mai…’

  ‘Call him. Run. I t-think it’s coming. I have to sit now. M-Maala...ai-maa. Mala, hurry, call your father. Get him-m.’

  ‘Yes, Mai.’

  ‘It’s coming. Oh G-God, no. No-u-u...S-Sar-l-a, listen munni, we don’t have a choice…dispensary is too far...Da-dai, dai will take too long to come. You sisters will have to do it.’

  ‘Oh no, Mai.’

  ‘Yes-s...till Mala gets back, one of you g-get some water. Go!’

  ‘But, Mai, we don’t have a can, and there’s only the Thakur well nearby. What are we going to do, Mai? I am so scared.’

  ‘Listen, S-Sarla. Bimla. You don’t be scared, you f-fools. It’s n-nothing. Haven’t you seen gou-mata giving birth to her calf? Haan? It’s n-nothing...now go, get me some water.’

  ‘But Mai, there are only some puddles…near there, can you see?’

  ‘Then go…fi-fill your mouths with water…from those p-puddles…c-come back and spill it on me…water…I need some water…ai-ma!’

  ‘Yes, Mai. Come on, Bimla, hurry.’

  ‘Ai-maah! Diee...let me diee.’

  Meanwhile, a fair distance away, Mala’s little legs hopped and skipped through the steep incline of wild grass that demarcated each plot of land, the abrasive edges of the grass stalks slashing her limbs, unnoticed. She spotted her father without much difficulty. There he was, surfing the barren earth, his legs perched on the plough mouldboard and his hands holding the reins tight for dear life.

  ‘Baba...Baba!’

  Baba let go of the reins and jumped off the contraption; the yoked beasts continued thei
r run.

  ‘Arey, Mala? What happened. Is everything alright?’

  ‘Stop working at once Baba! Mai is in trouble...she’s delivering the baby on the road near that tree. Baba, please hurry, Mai may die. Oh God! Mai will die Baba...come Baba. There’s no water a-a-and we are too far from the house...we cannot call the dai. Baba...m-m-my Mai...my Mai is surely going to die Baba. Oh no! Baba please hurry right now. She’s lying in the middle of the road there Baba...there’s no water there...Baba help!’

  ‘Oh my God. Slow down, slow down, Mala. Where?’

  Mala started to cry. ‘Near that bargad. Hurry.’

  ‘Yes yes, let’s go.’

  Baba doubled up his lungi and gazed into the distance. The bullocks had come to rest dutifully by the boundary of his field and were foraging the sliver of green turf next to the water channel. He caught hold of Mala’s wrist and hurried down the slope, dragging his daughter who could barely keep up with his giant strides. Soon, the two stood next to the wailing mother, staring at her, not knowing what else they could do.

  ‘Laxmi? Arey, Mala-ki-Amma? What is happening? Are you...’

  ‘B-baby is happ-eningg, you f-fool. Maa...A-ae!’

  ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’

  ‘Shut up. Shut up! It is you. You have done this. You have killed me. You are responsible, Mala-ke-Baba.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Mala-ki-Amma, please don’t. Calm down. You need to calm down.’

  ‘Don’t say one word. One word. Who called him? Mala, who called him!?’

  ‘You did, Mai…Mai, please calm down.’

  ‘Mala-ke-Baba? Arey, Mala-ke-Babaa...are you there…?’