The Rat Eater

by Anand Ranganathan

  ‘Come on yaar, you know it’s not like that. We have been...’

  Akhil knew he was losing it but he couldn’t stop. ‘And what does he have that I don’t? Oh yes, he has Aparajita. My Aparajita.’

  ‘Akh...’

  ‘The Aparajita who made ten promises and seven vows behind the college chapel. The Aparajita who herself was vanquished by the rules of this society.’

  ‘…’

  ‘It’s funny how Aparajita means the one who cannot be vanquished. It really should be the one who bloody choked.’

  How far is too far. How much more can you stretch a man’s endurance before you break it into a million pieces, before the thrill of I-can’t-care-less grips you.

  ‘Look, I am sorry, Api. I don’t know what came over me. This is stupid...’

  ‘No, Akhil, it is my fault. I somehow imagined time would have covered up all those terrible...’

  ‘Guess I turned out to be a little more difficult to cover up than time had imagined.’

  ‘Coming to Mumbai was a mistake…’

  ‘No, don’t say that, Api, don’t. Don’t make that face, Api, don’t cry now. I had promised myself I would behave, that I would try and wipe off the past, but looks like I couldn’t do it. I tried—could you at least not grant me that? Fifteen years of loneliness, of silence...’

  ‘Akhil…’

  ‘Fifteen years of hate, anger, sadness, disgust, I kept it to myself.’

  ‘My Akhil…’

  ‘Could you not overlook my crime, just this once? I mean it when I say that I am very happy for you, and of course for your bastard husband. I really mean it.’

  ‘I know you do.’

  ‘So forgive me.’

  ‘Of course, sweetheart.’

  ‘And don’t call me that.’

  ‘Th-ha. Okay.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Api looked at him adoringly.

  ‘Do you realise, Api, that all this while my Padmini has been listening quietly to our conversation?’

  ‘No never, no Padmini, please! She is the root of all our troubles.’

  ‘Women usually are.’

  ‘That’s not how you thought when you wrote that poem in my honour, did you, Devdas ji?’

  ‘Which one?’

  Api smiled. ‘You mean you wrote more than one?’

  ‘Well, how else can one do justice to your immense beauty?’

  ‘Shaawd-upp.’

  ‘Ya, I remember. Goddamn cheesy it was, too.’

  Api protested. ‘Hey, I thought it was beautiful.’

  ‘You did? You should have said so at the time.’

  ‘Well, you know how girls were back in those days—stupid, timid, petite…’

  ‘Two outta three ain’t bad.’

  ‘Very funny. You remember that you wrote a poem, or you remember the poem itself?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Akhil shook his head mockingly and cleared his throat. ‘Aps, Aps, Aps. For my nights that gently sleep…’

  ‘No way. No bloody way.’

  ‘…Are awakened by the light of your morning

  And my eyes that gently weep

  Are opened by your whispers that say nothing

  Is it your smile or your frown that kills me

  That I cannot decide

  Is it my pleasure or my pain when I see you

  That I cannot hide

  I can’t recall the time you were gone

  Is it a week, a month, a year

  I can’t forget your last words

  To yearn, to ache, is to fear

  There was that night, there was that rain

  There were your arms, there was your grip

  There were your locks, twisting in the wind

  There was your smell, there was your lip.

  And the night came again, so did the rain

  But the arms were gone, so was the grip

  And the locks, those locks, away they sailed

  But your smell remains, as does your lip.’

  Akhil looked triumphantly at Api. ‘What? What are you looking at? You thought I’d forgotten it, did you? I wrote it. What is astonishing is that you remember it. Or do you?’

  ‘Why would I forget it...how could I have forgotten it?’

  ‘I don’t know—too many reasons.’

  ‘Never enough.’

  ‘Gratified.’

  ‘…the horror—the horror.’

  Akhil stole a glance at Api. ‘What? What horror?’

  ‘No, Professor saab, I meant the horror—the horror that you remembered it.’

  ‘What is so horrible about that?’

  ‘No, it is horror in a nice sort of way—like astonishing, oh-my-God oh-my-God. Understood, budhoo?’

  Akhil looked a little lost.

  Api smiled. ‘Heart of Darkness...Conrad...No?’

  ‘Don’t know what you are on about.’

  ‘No, the phrase “the horror, the horror”, taken from Conrad.’

  Akhil wore the expression of a Tamil boy lost in a Latin class. He ducked his head out and noticed they were on Pedder Road.

  Api was laughing. ‘You mean…good lordy. You mean it has only ever been sulphuric acid and ammonia and benzene and salt and pepper?’

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Come-awnn. You are talking to a lecturer in English, my test-tube loving primate—and you tell me you haven’t read a single word that wasn’t your silly chemistry?’

  ‘Well, you are talking to an assistant professor in chemistry, my vilaayti mem—ever heard of Grignard Reagent? No?’

  ‘Ulysses...No?’

  ‘Diels-Alder Reaction...No?’

  ‘Catch-22...No?’

  ‘Swern Oxidation...No?’

  ‘Slaughterhouse-Five...No?’

  ‘Wittig Reaction...No?’

  ‘The Great Gatsby...No?’

  ‘Schotten-Baumann Reaction...No?’

  ‘Animal Farm...No?’

  ‘Yamaguchi Esterification...No?’

  ‘Lolita...No?’

  ‘Wolff-Kishner Reduction...No?’

  ‘The Grapes of Wrath...No?’

  ‘Reformatsky Reaction...No?’

  ‘Under the Volcano...No?’

  ‘Ullmann Reaction...No?’

  ‘I, Claudius...No?’

  ‘Fukuyama Coupling...No?’

  ‘A Clockwork Orange...No?’

  ‘Rosenmund-von Braun Reaction...No?’

  ‘To the Lighthouse...No?’

  ‘Rosenmund Reduction...No?’

  ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man...No?’

  ‘Baker-Venkataraman Rearrangement...No?’

  ‘Deliverance...No?’

  ‘Clemmensen Reduction...No?’

  ‘An American Tragedy...No?’

  ‘Cope Elimination...No?’

  ‘As I Lay Dying...No?’

  ‘Dess-Martin Oxidation...No?’

  ‘The Joke...No?’

  ‘Mitsunobu Reaction...No?’

  ‘Native Son...No?’

  ‘Arbuzov Reaction...No?’

  ‘The Good Soldier...No?’

  ‘Doebner Modification...No?’

  ‘Henderson the Rain King...No?’

  ‘Eschweiler-Clarke Reaction...No?’

  ‘On the Road...No?’

  ‘Heck Reaction...No?’

  ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice...No?’

  ‘Favorskii Reaction...No?’

  ‘Appointment In Samarra...No?’

  ‘Finnegans Wake...No?’

  ‘A Passage to India...No?’

  ‘Friedel-Crafts Acylation...No?’

  ‘The Alexandria Quartet...No?’

  ‘Grubbs Reaction...No?’

  ‘The Way of All Flesh...No?’

  ‘Hofmann Elimination...No?’

  ‘Light In August...No?’

  ‘Cannizzaro Oxidation Reduction...No?’

  ‘The Wings of
the Dove...No?’

  ‘Horner-Wadsworth-Emmons Reaction...No?’

  ‘Tender Is the Night...No?’

  ‘Hunsdiecker Reaction...No?’

  ‘All the King’s Men...No?’

  ‘Meerwein-Ponndorf-Verley Reduction...No?’

  ‘The Bridge of San Luis Rey...No?’

  ‘Michael Addition...No?’

  ‘Go Tell It On the Mountain...No?’

  ‘Iwanow Reaction...No?’

  ‘Lord of the Flies...No?’

  ‘Kochi Reaction...No?’

  ‘A Dance to the Music of Time...No?’

  ‘Nozaki-Hiyama Coupling...No?’

  ‘A Bend In The River...No?’

  ‘Oppenauer Oxidation...No?’

  ‘Death Comes for the Archbishop...No?’

  ‘Overman Rearrangement...No?’

  ‘Ragtime...No?’

  ‘Mannich Reaction...No?’

  ‘Angle of Repose...No?’

  ‘Passerini Reaction...No?’

  ‘The Catcher In the Rye...No?’

  ‘Pechmann Condensation...No?’

  ‘Of Human Bondage...No?’

  ‘Wurtz Reaction...No?’

  ‘A Farewell to Arms...No?’

  ‘Sharpless Epoxidation...No?’

  ‘Lord Jim...No?’

  ‘Sandmeyer Reaction...No?’

  ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie...No?’

  ‘Wenker Synthesis...No?’

  ‘Kim...No?’

  ‘Staudinger Cycloaddition...No?’

  ‘Winesberg, Ohio...No?’

  ‘Tamao-Kumada Oxidation...No?’

  ‘Sophie’s Choice...No?’

  ‘Woodward cis-Hydroxylation...No?’

  Can’t trust her. Wears short skirts, smokes, drinks. Goes out with boys. Comes home at odd hours. No character. She was also seen buying tampons. Why would an unmarried girl buy tampons? Also beer. Pretends to listen to Indian classical music so she can fool us. Outside she does Bollywood dance. Don’t trust but verify. It is our aadhaar.

  He is a good man. Always obeys his parents. Only social drinker. No bad habits. Had some girlfriends. It’s normal. After all, what is there? He only exchanges books and music with them. At least it proves he is not a homosexual or a transgender. Thank God. At the right time we can find a nice girl for him. From a good family. Trust but verify.

  Indians don’t have sex. Especially the men. Beef outside is okay, not in the house. Foreign cows are even better. Foreigners like the Kama Sutra because they begin from a very young age. In South India, we have Syama Sastri—music, music, divine music. Love? What has love got to do with anything? What has love got to do with marriage? What has marriage to do with sex? What has anything got to do with anything in a culture where every relationship has an accepted name? Wife, daughter, mother, sister, cousin sister, cleaning lady, pati, aunty. Woman? Okay, how about lady? No? Okay—cook and caretaker.

  Beware of the single, unattached woman. Something must be wrong with her. How can she be good-looking, educated and single? Has the three-body problem ever been solved? One can understand if she was ugly or had buck teeth. Maybe she has a thyroid problem. Must recommend her to a good specialist—he will sort her out.

  In a society where it is difficult to tell the difference between misogyny and patriarchy, the best trick in the book is to blame the woman. In a country where millions of women have spent entire lives protecting the reputation of the family, who gets to throw the first stone at Magdalene There is not a single woman in any part of the world who has not been a witness to or been a victim of violence and sexual harassment—from rape to thrashing, from starvation to ostracising. How long can we take this? How long can a woman remain unwoman so society can accept her? Intellect, in the absence of social choices, is falsely primed but when a personal decision has to be made—like picking a life partner—multitudinous variables kick in. Blackmail works.

  When it suits us, women are worshipped and revered. When it suits us, women are indulged in, admired, and even treated as equals. When it suits us, we praise women who destroy their bodies and souls because suffering builds a woman’s character. When it suits us, she is playing victim. When it suits us, it doesn’t suit us. And when it doesn’t suit us, she must be a prostitute. Not a devadasi. Yallamma! A prostitute.

  When it suits us, we’ll even borrow a pinch of clay from where whores live to shape a Goddess.

  When it suits us.

  How can you love when you have not been loved? How can you occupy your own space when you have been occupied by others? How can you even begin to feel like a child, a daughter, a young woman, a lover in a country where the first time most women encounter their sexuality is either through abuse or disease? How can you even begin to understand that every relationship has a place, a time and a border, when every space is violated and turned upside down?

  Akhil and Aparajita fell in love. Serves them right. Only in English do people ‘fall’ in love. In Hindi, they don’t. In Hindi we say, ‘Mujhe tumse pyar ho gaya hai’ and not ‘Main pyar mein gir gaya’. See? And therein lies our culture. Equal-equal, same-same. Everything can be said behind the temple. The arangetram is on the stage, but the classes, the shrutibhedam is at home. In the afternoons. When you grow up, you will understand what women mean when they say, ‘In the end he will come back to his family’. You will understand after you get married why that cleaning lady was asked to leave. She jumped on the master of the house. And she was “pet sey”. So she was shipped off to some back-of-the-beyond hamlet with a little money never to be heard of again. That’s how we treat our women. That’s how Indian women treat other Indian women. Generally. That’s how women opposed to such practices also learn to keep silent. Not all, but most. Choice is a luxury.

  You have to be cultured to understand that violence against women is part of human history. Historically, armies have killed the men and raped the women. That is why in some cultures you can have four wives. Because all the men are dead and who will keep the production neé progeny going?

  That is the heart of the matter. That is how victors write history. That is how the strong in a family tell stories. There will always be a loose woman in every family. You see, India is a great civilisation. We live in many centuries. Our women understand this. That is why there is no place like India. For women. And that is why there is no place for women in India. Everything depends on what you are dealt.

  Have you ever fallen in love? Did you tell him? Or did you just keep your feelings to yourself because you were confused and kept muttering: ‘Is rishte ko kya naam doon?’

  Or you want to let him slip by only to see him after fifteen years? Yeah, we can arrange that, too. What’s the matter with you—you have no heart?

  Darpok!

  Kai rishton kay naam nahi hotey—the very universe that frightens you makes you think like this. It is okay to be different. It is okay to be of a different level of culture. It is okay to be childlike and philosophical at the same time. These are all but manifestations of the atman. Of that, there is only one. Atman wearing skirts is also acceptable as is the one wearing pink-striped shoes.

  8

  1984—Nineteen Eighty-Four

  Now imagine you are stubbing a cigarette,’ shouted someone amid the cacophony that engulfed a first-floor room in Allnutt North.

  ‘Y-yes, sir,’ mumbled both Akhil and Ajay, addressing second- and third-year students of St Stephen’s College, New Delhi.

  ‘Good. Now imagine you are rubbing your back with a towel held stretched between your hands,’ barked another as a cigarette switched toes among the seniors.

  ‘Sir, like this?’ asked Ajay.

  ‘Haan ban-cho, like that. And don’t question your senior—ever.’

  ‘S-sorry sir, didn’t mean...’ apologised the petrified fuchha.

  Akhil, meanwhile, had continued to stub the imaginary cigarette, his performance now reminiscent of a disinterested factory worker tucking his 400th Dunlop tube into a cy
cle tyre.

  ‘Now,’ snarled one communist-looking senior, ‘Now, yes,’ struggling to make sense amid peals of thigh-slapping laughter. His friend, also on laughing gas, took over. ‘Yes, now wipe and stub at the same time,’ he demanded. ‘Wipe and stub, wipe and stub.’

  Akhil and Ajay followed the sacrosanct decree in the throes of guffawing and convulsing. The belly dancers wiped and stubbed, wiped and stubbed, with stoic expressions on their faces, not daring to look directly at their commandants, but stealing glances at each other as if to say, ‘Saalon. Our turn will come, too, you’ll see.’

  The unusual dance lasted a few more minutes until one of the seniors took pity on his friends, who by now resembled Hare Krishna hippies hallucinating before their maharishi. ‘Okay, bas, bas,’ said the kind man. ‘Chhod do saalon ko, yaar,’ proposed another. Akhil and Ajay looked at this God incarnate and thanked him with their watery eyes.

  ‘Haan yaar, enough of these two,’ said a third. ‘Bastards don’t know even one dirty song, not one. How will they survive until the freshers’ night, man?’

  The reference was to the celebratory night to be held a fortnight later, which formally marked an end to ragging. For Akhil and Ajay, this night seemed a good hundred years into the future.

  ‘Thank you, sirs. Really, really, thank you,’ they blurted and started for the door.

  One lord rose and hailed them back. ‘Not so fast, saalon,’ he said. ‘You need to visit room A-8. A bastard called Kha-khao lives there. Taekwondo champion. Chinky. Once ate a dog with butter naan. What was the name?’

  ‘Kha–, Kha-khao, sir,’ said Ajay, about to faint.

  ‘Yes, Kha-khao. So you two, you go to Kha-khao and get his intro. Other intros will follow after you have got his.’

  By intro, this peer of the realm, meant Introduction—that prized possession of a senior’s name, the harbinger of relief from ragging.

  ‘Y-yes, sir,’ stammered Akhil.

  ‘Then run, babes, run. I want you knocking at Kha-khao’s door in two minutes flat. Now shoot.’

  Akhil and Ajay bolted like the proverbial horse with a jalapeno embedded in its posterior. In preparation for what was to follow, the moon slipped under a grey cloud, just as the two lambs, desperately short of breath, knocked at the slaughterhouse door.

  ‘Who is it, bey?’ came a terrifying voice from inside.

  ‘Sir, Akhil and Ajay,’ bleated the lambs, knees jangling.