The Rat Eater

by Anand Ranganathan

  Kalki smiled. ‘We get you alright, Badey Thakur. No wonder people here call you a great man.’

  ‘Haha…here we are.’

  ‘Yes.’

  There they were. The Thakur well. It seemed like yesterday.

  Badey Thakur beamed. ‘See for yourself. Full 20 feet across.’

  ‘Indeed, Badey Thakur. Can we—if you don’t mind—climb up the parapet?’

  Badey Thakur hesitated. ‘Er…you are a Thakur? Bania? Baaman?’

  ‘Ji, baaman, Badey Thakur.’

  ‘Well, then, by all means. We have to keep the purity and the sanctity of the place. You understand, I hope.’

  Kalki nodded. ‘Completely, Badey Thakur. The purity—at all costs.’

  ‘Snatch the rope of that ghoomra and take all the samples you want.’

  Kalki put one foot on the parapet. ‘Ji. Come, Chander…Oh. That is very deep, Badey Thakur. I’ll get vertigo just by looking down.’

  ‘A good 80 feet, Akhilji. Arey, I have seen it when it was only 40 feet deep. Those harami kolawaaley set their factory up 2 miles from here, and ever since then we have had to dig further down every year. They suck out most of the ground water, you see.’

  ‘Indeed, Badey Thakur. Would you mind coming up the parapet—just so that you can certify the…’

  Badey Thakur was not one to step back from a challenge. ‘Why not? There’s still some ghee tel left in these legs, kyon.’

  ‘Ji, Badey Thakur. Come. Here, take my hand.’

  ‘Thank you, Akhilji…A-aah.’

  ‘Deep, isn’t it, Badey Thakur.’

  Badey Thakur took a step back. ‘Hahah…well, you were right about the vertigo. Perhaps you better begin your sample collection while I get down and…’

  Kalki put a friendly hand on Badey Thakur’s shoulder. ‘What’s the hurry, Badey Thakur? Won’t you like to stay for some entertainment?’

  ‘Entertainment? What are you saying, Akhilji, I don’t understand…’

  Kalki hissed the word. ‘Entertainment, Badey Thakur.’

  Silence overpowered even the trees and the birds.

  ‘What entertainment. Again, I do not…’

  ‘Perhaps I should make it clearer. Here, have a look down. What do you see?’

  ‘What do I see? I see a well, that’s what I see. And now, I’d like to get down if it…’

  Kalki grabbed Badey Thakur by his neck. ‘But look again—in there. Can you see Baldev? Your Baldev. No?’

  Badey Thakur tried to wrench his neck away but the grip was firm. The blistered hands that for thousands of years had scrubbed and washed and scavenged and polished and massaged and fanned and scraped and served and toiled for him, those hands had finally made a grip, and the grip was firm.

  Kalki dragged Badey Thakur by his neck to the edge and forced his head down. ‘Still, nothing, Badey Thakur? Look. Look closely. Baldev is calling for you. He is calling your name.’

  Badey Thakur stammered. ‘B-B-Baldev. My s-son Baldev? I-I don’t know what you…’

  ‘No? Chander? Would you please care to show Badey Thakur?’

  Chander took a step forward. ‘Yes of course, Kalki. It would be my pleasure.’

  Badey Thakur froze. ‘Kal-Kalki? What Kalki? I thought you said Akhil. Kalki? Oh my God. Hey Ram…’

  Kalki smiled. ‘That’s right, Badey Thakur. Good you remembered God at the right time. It always helps.’

  ‘Wha…what, what are you going to do? Are you mad? Wha…get me down immediately!’

  ‘As you say, Badey Thakur. Your wish is our command—as it has been for centuries.’

  Badey Thakur thrashed his arms wildly. ‘Get me dow…’

  ‘There you go, you bastard !’

  There was a moment of silence, a moment that lasted as long as the well was deep, and then the luxurious, almost elastic, detonation of the water, followed soon by that noisy, splashy gulp, and then the silence again.

  Chander looked into the void. ‘He is gone, Kalki.’

  ‘And not a soul to see him go.’

  ‘Except a mad dog and an Englishman.’

  ‘Hah…’

  Chander looked at Kalki. ‘You ready, Kallu?’

  ‘Wait. I have a little promise to keep. Won’t be a minute. Give me your mobile.’

  ‘We have all the time, all the time in the world.’

  Kalki pressed a few buttons on Chander’s mobile.

  ‘It’s ringing,’ he said.

  There was a click and then some static. Sweat was pouring down Kalki’s face. He opened his mouth but, unsure, smothered it with his palm.

  ‘H-hello. Is that…is that you, Akhil?’

  ‘Hi, Api. Me again.’

  ‘Where the hell are you? The p–, the whole damn force is on the lookout!’

  ‘That’s alright.’

  ‘What do you mean “that’s alright”? AB went public at a press conference this morning, although I think he hasn’t revealed everything; just that all those murders are connected.’

  Kalki shuffled on his feet. ‘Good for him.’

  ‘Come back to me, please come back to your Api. Hel-hello? Are you there. Hello?’

  ‘Listen, Api, I haven’t much time.’

  ‘Wha-what’s going on?’

  ‘I called to keep my end of the promise. Tell AB I can be found in Batia. Also tell him that he will find this, other man, I had told you about. Tell him he can find us inside the Thakur well, in Batia.’

  ‘Thakur well? Akhil, please tell me what’s going on. Are you alright? Why don’t you come back here—to me? Come back to me, Aks!’

  Kalki was shaking all over. ‘There isn’t enough charge left on the phone, Api. I want to tell you how much I have loved you, how much I still love you. Forgive me for giving you so much pain. So much pain. So much pain that you stopped feeling it. So much pain. Forgive me, Api…’

  ‘No, Akhil, don’t say all this. Come back to me, just come back to me. Come back, my Akhil…’

  ‘I will, Api, but not this time round. I hope you’ll understan…’

  ‘H…hello? Akhil? Hello. Damn it, signal. Hello, Akhil? Hel…’

  Kalki stared at the phone, then shook it and waved it in the air. ‘Api? Hello. Ap, Api?’

  Chander laughed. ‘The signal, Kallu?’

  ‘Hah, bastard, here too…Well, Chander, come here, saaley. I love you, man, and I am sorry for everything…’

  Chander held Kalki so tight he couldn’t breathe. ‘Don’t say a word, saaley…Me first, Kallu.’

  Kalki stopped Chander with his open palm. ‘No man. It’s always the Englishman first.’

  ‘And the dog follows, hah.’

  Kalki held Chander by his hair. ‘Alright then, Chander, once more, forgive me.’

  Chander smiled. ‘I forgive you.’

  Kalki let himself go.

  Chander closed his eyes and waited for the familiar sound.

  It came. It went.

  Chander, eyes still shut, waited a good minute. Then, calmly, he too jumped in.

  What is gravity if not birth? What is density if not death?

  To escape, does one soar or plummet?

  From now on, we will not use terms like gutter rat—a term that originated because of the plague in London. But we have no plague. Why should we? We bathe every day, unlike foreigners, who do only dry-cleaning. That’s why they need so much scent. Perfume.

  We hereby declare that all foreign words are cancelled. Foreign hands, too. Legs they can show and we can keep.

  Words have a long history, a geography, a culture, a usage, a space, an anointment, a status, a sound, an identity.

  Words have a density.

  Musahur sounds almost like French. Monsieur Mousahoor, autograph, s’il vouz plait? He could have done that. Passed off as a perfume that you sprinkle at will. Donned robes and worn shoes that reeked of new money. It is so easy to be true, yet we spend entire lifetimes chasing neon lights. It is so expensive, yet we turn into paupers chasing untr
uths.

  Akhil was a thinker and he was interested in something else. In enzymes. In bacteria. In chemistry. In cells that multiply to cause a disease that humanity cannot entirely fathom. He had dreamed of placing India at the cutting edge of science and technology. Of fighting water-borne diseases and food-borne killers that flourish in filth, of fighting tuberculosis, malaria, dengue—my diseases, he had said. Faith. Yes, faith in the propensity of human beings to dare to dream of a disease-free world. How difficult is that to imagine? Instead, he encountered filth of another kind—filth that has kept India naked and begging and dirty and sick. Filth that walks on two feet trying to skirt around filth.

  ‘I will come back, Api, but not this time around,’ he had said. And now he sinks to the bottom of the well like a stone. It all depends on the angle that life provides you. Some stones skip on water, others sink.

  Let’s be honest. The omens weren’t good. Someone had spat at his emerging head, remember? But there’s always a next time for everything. Maybe next time, he will be born in the holy land of Bethlehem. Or Benaras. Maybe next time, they will have a globe in the Ramakrishna Mission School. Maybe next time, he will buy Agatha Christies to read them. Maybe next time, he will also be able to play the clarinet. And speak French or Italian or Swedish. And not be called a bhangi. Or a Chamaar. Or a musahur. Only monsieur. Maybe next time.

  How many janmas to the next platform, please?

  To the glory of life after death. For you crushed this one under your foot like an ant.

  After all, God doesn’t give with both hands. But Monsieur Mousahoor had gambled. He knew health is wealth. That is why he always wore a clean pair of socks. Signature.

  He knew all railway platforms except one. Platform number Gangotri. That is a little far. Next life, for sure, with all the good karma he accumulated in this one. Maybe that well in which he currently travels is really a wormhole. Maybe he will emerge on the other side of it, into a life of joy and splendour. Maybe.

  To the glory of life after death. For you whipped all the joy out of this one.

  This is the problem of coming up too fast in life. In one life, you can only go to school. In the next one you can also be born as a mongoose because you never know which karma is performing. The only way out for him in this life was doob maro, doob maro. But even that sounds better in French: Il veut péter plus haut que son cul.

  Slow down. One life at a time, my friend. Easy does it. Don’t jump platforms.

  To the glory of life after death. For you slashed at my throat before the blood of freedom could nourish my brain.

  But tell me, please. Please! Why was he born at all? Why did he live? Do bhangis and betis, jamadars and silkworms, have karma? Do they?

  To the glory of life after death. For you promised me heaven on earth but pushed me into a manhole instead.

  He never lived, so how can he die?

  To the glory of life after death. Oh, this unbearable lightness.

  Epilogue: 2005–A House for Mr Biswas

  What should be the suburb is really the heart of the city.

  Lutyens’ Bungalow Zone: an area of a few square miles, inaccessible to the native as recently as sixty years ago is now the most sought after property in the country. Bribes are paid, transfers are made, friends are stabbed, enemies are pampered, seats are bartered, ministries are swapped, and at the end of it all, the victorious can move into a ninety-year-old bungalow with twenty-four-hour power and water supply, with twenty-foot-high ceilings, with a gravel path approach, with a lawn to die for.

  Meanwhile, in the suburbs of Delhi, dwell fourteen million humans of the same colour and features. They work hard, they sleep less, they travel on buses, they disappear down manholes, they die in road accidents, they pay bribes to the power and the water people, they wake up every morning with a tin bucket in hand and rush to the only tap in their crumbling tenements, they survive another day, another week, another month. Then, exhausted, they come on the weekends to the heart of the city with their children and their parents and lie on the cool green grass by India Gate. They remove their socks and dip their two feet in the boat-club pool and wiggle their toes. They look around and see roads that are protected from the sun’s fury by hundred-year-old jamun tress, neem trees, imli trees. They see the roads merging at roundabouts as big as the parks where they live. They see in those roundabouts the seasonal flowers in full bloom, the art deco fountains bursting with energy, they see that no one can enter the roundabout gardens as they are cordoned with spiked chains and iron railings. Then they get a little adventurous and start to stroll about one of the tree-lined avenues. ‘Look, that must be the home minister’s house’, they point to their kids. ‘And look there. That is 7 Race Course Road, the prime minister’s residence.’ But their sightseeing is interrupted rudely by a lathi-wielding constable who looks up and down them and asks them to get lost.

  The heart is still inaccessible to the native, and a thousand years from now, when archaeologists stumble upon the mythical city of Delhi, the most well-preserved ruins they shall find would be of Lutyens’ Pompeii. The tumblers and the vases of great sultanates and dynasties will once again be on show.

  The departing British handed over to the native something magical—his own land. The native received that land with watery eyes and a lump in his throat and now that he had the government sanction and the constitutional right to walk on the soft lawns, smell the flowers, collect the jamuns, drive on the boulevards. Now that he was free, he quickly made it his and only his. And over the years, many of the Lutyens’ bungalows have become imposing shrines of refuge, away from the heat and the dust of the matrubhoomi, with the accompanying green acreage giving way to swimming pools paved with Italian marble. And those obtrusive colonnaded porticos, a reminder of the whimsical draughtsmanship of a scornful white man, have been torn down and replaced with mock Mughal-Greek-Tudor architecture, all to the delight and satisfaction of the victorious.

  There they sit, but you cannot see them—fenced away as they are by stitched-up cane—but there they are, perched on a rattan in their manicured lawns, with their sprinklers whirring gloriously, providing a welcoming mist to their golden mornings, with their dogs already up and running, retrieving Frisbees and Indian Expresses and Jansattas and...oh, look: There he comes, the cummerbund-ed servant with the frilly turban, and he brings the first flush on a silver tray, and the silver teapot is teacosied in a velvet wrap, and the wrap is embroidered with silver zari, and the perfectly shaped sugar cubes are arranged in a silver bowl, and at hand is a pair of silver tongs to pick up the cubes, and rich, frothy milk sloshes gently in a silver beaker, and to absorb the ugly cup rings, between the silver cup and the silver saucer, is wedged a ruffled blotting paper, and silver spoons are in abundance.

  And the lord? He snaps the pages of the newspaper and doesn’t even bother to look up and acknowledge all that silver.

  There they sit and from there they rule. And when they die, their next of kin miraculously get the same bungalow to live in for the next fifty years.

  And it was in such a bungalow, over such a lawn, amidst such flowers, under such trees, surrounded by such servants, that the recently appointed police commissioner of Delhi, Ajay Biswas IPS, was pacing up and down, shouting, ‘Arey Gokul, oye Ramkhilawan. Where the hell are you buggers, dammit?’

  The servant heard his sahib’s call and threw away his bidi. ‘Aaya saab.’

  Ajay boomed. ‘Damn it, Gokul. Have you filled the vases up? And where’s memsaab?’

  ‘S-she’s upstairs, saab.’

  ‘Well, call her and…wait. I’ll get her, you get the living room ready.’

  Ajay hurried over to the foot of the stairway that led to the upper floors.

  ‘Aparajita?’ he shouted. ‘Arey, where the devil have you disappeared?’

  Api emerged from a room tying her hair into a bun. ‘Why are you shouting, bhai? Relax.’

  ‘What relax, yaar? It is seven-thirty already, and…’
r />   ‘You know the Dilliwaalas. Call them at seven and they start trickling in at nine.’

  Ajay was insistent. ‘Arey, go na please. See if Parwati has fried those prawn papads.’

  ‘Uff. Alright.’

  Ajay turned his attention to the goings-on in the living room. He accosted someone dusting a Degas ballerina. ‘Arey, Gokul. Has Ramkhilawan put the marquee up on the lawns?’

  ‘Pata nahin, saab.’

  ‘Well, find out. And get some angithis fired up there. Now go. And before you go, where is Pillai?’

  The servant scratched his head. ‘Must be in the kitchen, saab.’

  ‘You goddamn Indies. “Must be”, “pata nahin”, “think so”. Bloody, when are you people ever sure, hain?’

  The servant nodded, having not understood a word. ‘Ji, saab.’

  Ajay decided it was Pillai’s turn for a dressing down. He started for the kitchen.

  ‘Pillai! You were supposed to…’

  The piercing ring of the doorbell stopped Ajay in his tracks. He heaved a sigh and ran a hand through his mane before opening the door.

  ‘Oh, hello Paul saab, hello Mrs Paul. Please, come in, come in.’

  ‘Hello, commissioner saab…Splendid bungalow, yaar.’

  ‘Thank you. I hope you didn’t have much trouble finding the place.’

  ‘Arey no no, not at all. I recently got my lal-batti installed with that GPS-she-PS, bhai. Now I keep telling the missus: chalo let’s get lost just for the heck of it.’

  Ajay faked a laugh. ‘Do come in. Arey, Mrs Paul, hand me your shawl. No Jeeves here, unfortunately.’

  Mrs Paul gathered her shawl and handed it over grudgingly. ‘Jeeves, er, was your earlier butler? Christian, was he? We used to have one years ago, called Samuel…’

  ‘Arey missus, you bhi na. Always joking-shoaking. Don’t mind her, Ajay saab.’

  Ajay guided them to the living room with tender pushes and prods. ‘Come, come. Aparajita will be with us in a minute. Keeping an eye on the food front. Meanwhile, what can I get you?’

  ‘Only Johnny boy will do tonight, commissioner saab, kyon?’

  ‘Of course, Paul saab. And for you, Mrs Paul?’

  ‘I will have some red wine, if you have it. If not, then some Jaljeera.’