It had been a long time since there was such pleasant chit-chat between the couple. Because of the kid’s sudden entry into their lives, they ended up talking about the old days.
3
SINCE THE GOATHERD on the trail had got his nanny goat to suckle her, the kid’s belly was full. Around midnight the old woman started feeling sleepy. Folding a gunny bag into a small square and spreading it on the ground like a mattress, she laid the kid on it and covered her with an upside-down basket. Bewildered by the darkness inside the basket, the kid cried a little, but didn’t come out. Since the basket was coated with dung, she couldn’t find even a small opening anywhere. The basket’s edge sat flush on the gunny bag. Concerned that the kid might not have any air to breathe, the old woman brought a stick of firewood, placed it on one side and raised the edge on it. Now there was enough room for air to circulate.
The kid slept right below the old woman’s cot. The old woman got up every now and then, lifted the basket, and looked at the kid. Curled up on the gunny bag mattress, the little thing lay fast asleep.
A couple of hours after midnight, when the woman opened the basket to check, the kid struggled to her feet and cried out. Contracting her body a bit, she peed. ‘Poonachi, how will you sleep if your bed is damp?’ the old woman asked as she hurriedly pulled the kid out. But once she was out, Poonachi circled the old woman’s legs, bleating plaintively; sucking on an ankle, she tried to feed.
‘Is your stomach troubling you, Poonachi?’ the old woman asked and picked up the kid. She went to the hut where the goats were tied up for the night. The nanny goat which had recently delivered her litter was lying on the ground, chewing the cud. The old woman roused her. Thinking that she was about to get something to eat, the goat stood up eagerly and tugged at the woman’s waist.
As if they had been waiting for that moment, three kids came running and attacked the nanny goat’s udder. Two kids grabbed hold of a teat each. The third tried hard to push the others aside with its snout to also grab a teat. Their bodies trembled as they suckled fiercely. Holding Poonachi in her hand, the old woman didn’t know what to do. She thought of waking the old man. He had fallen into a deep slumber just moments earlier. Otherwise, given the din the kids were making, he would have got up by now and yelled at them.
Forcefully pushing aside the kid who sat beside the nanny goat with the teat on the near side in its mouth, she brought Poonachi’s mouth closer. Poonachi’s nostrils must have sensed the odour of milk. Immediately, she tried to catch the teat in her mouth. Because the goat’s own kids had suckled on it, the teat had become swollen and was too big for Poonachi’s mouth. So she caught a tip between her lips and tugged at it. The milk tasted even better than when she had been suckled earlier that day, and Poonachi went at it avidly.
She didn’t have the energy to butt the udder. The old woman didn’t release her hold either. Had Poonachi stood on the ground, the udder would have been beyond her reach. Just when she had wet her belly to some extent, the realisation that an infant’s tender mouth was pressed around her teat dawned on the goat. Kicking her legs, she changed her position. Even then, her kids pushed their heads at her udder and continued to suckle.
‘Oh, you caught on to her quickly, eh?’ the old woman said as she patted the goat on her head. Then, holding a hind leg of the goat with one hand, she let Poonachi, whom she was holding in her other hand, suckle the goat. The nanny goat knew the feeding style of her kids. She tried to protect her udder from the intruder by jumping and sliding around.
Every now and then, when his body became overheated, the old man would ask for goat’s milk. His wife would tie up the kids and squeeze a tumbler of milk from the goat’s udder early in the morning before letting them out to feed. The old man would receive the tumbler of raw milk in his hand and pour it into his mouth. On some days, he would ask her to boil it. She would drop a bit of palm jaggery in the boiled milk and give it to him. The milk and the eats made from it didn’t agree with the old woman. She drank it rarely, and reluctantly.
For the nanny goat, it was a new experience to suckle a kid other than her own. She had to fight to protect her udder. In the ensuing mêlée, Poonachi’s belly got half-filled. Stroking the tiny stomach, the old woman said, ‘Right. You’ve had enough for now. Go to sleep. We’ll take care of it in the morning,’ and put her back under the basket. Now that Poonachi had got a taste of milk, she couldn’t control her craving. Instead of lying down under the cover of the basket, she butted it again and again, and tried to suckle, until she finally became exhausted and lay down to sleep.
The same thing happened over the next few days. Sometimes the old man came along to assist his wife. With one of them holding the goat’s neck in a firm grip and the other holding its legs together, they would get Poonachi to suckle. The goat didn’t at all wish to suckle this kid. She would try to break free and run. But the old woman wouldn’t give up. The moment she woke the goat to suckle Poonachi, all her three kids would come running. Pushing them away was hard. When all three of them butted the goat’s udder, inserting Poonachi in the middle was difficult too. She couldn’t put them inside a basket either. If she tried to get Poonachi to suckle while the kids were away nibbling grass in the pasture, the goat would raise her voice and call out to her kids. Wherever they might be, the kids would come leaping and running as soon as they heard their mother’s call.
Somehow, on most days, Poonachi got enough milk to fill half, or at least a quarter, of her stomach. At this rate, how would she ever recover and grow up healthy? If only she could manage for a month, she could start eating grass and leaves. The old woman worried about it all the time. For his part, the old man would tell her, ‘She comes from a line that can deliver a litter of seven. Some fellow turned up from nowhere like God and gifted her to me. Don’t treat her like an orphan.’ Whenever she was unable to get the goat to suckle Poonachi, she would fling random abuse at him: ‘The old wretch has brought this kitten home only to take the life out of me.’
But there was a problem in getting even the small quantity of milk that kept Poonachi alive. The nanny goat had learnt the skill of making its udder go dry at will. If they tried to get Poonachi to suckle when her kids were not around, no milk would flow from her teats. If she let Poonachi in when the kids were suckling, the teat simply would not yield another drop. The goat would contract her body and retract the teat. While suckling her own kids, she would tilt her head upward, close her eyes, drool at the mouth and stand still as she happily chewed the cud. The old woman would watch as the goat splayed her legs and suckled her kids at her softened udder. Shaking their tails, which were no bigger than the old woman’s little finger, the kids would keep at it. Only after her udder was completely empty would she part from her kids and walk away.
‘Come on, woman, who told you not to suckle your own kids? Do it like a queen, who can stop you? This Poonachi is a living creature too. The poor thing is starving, can’t you see? What do you lose if you feed her a little milk so that she can survive? Your kids are foraging in the pasture, aren’t they? This Poonachi is not going to take away your abundance, is she? Don’t you have even a little bit of compassion?’ the old woman would lament.
The goat would stare at her as if she didn’t understand a thing. ‘You can feign a dry udder whenever you want, but you don’t understand what I am saying? I know you’re just pretending,’ the old woman would say.
In spite of all the coaxing, the old woman’s attempts to get the deceitful goat – Kalli – to suckle Poonachi were of no avail. Poonachi couldn’t get even a small fraction of the nourishment she needed. The old woman was afraid that at this rate, her guts would shrivel up and she would meet a horrible end. She didn’t really believe that Poonachi was of a line that delivered a litter of seven every time. But a man had gifted her to them like a boon from God. He had trusted them to look after her. When passing that way after a few months, if he suddenly remembered Poonachi and came by to look her up, what would they tell
him? Could they bring themselves to say that she had died of starvation? If they couldn’t fill the belly of such a tiny creature, what was the point of living?
Though she didn’t need to go to the market fair that week, the old woman set out nevertheless. Her main task was to buy a feeding tube with which she could get some nourishing liquid into the kid. She found a feeding bottle and two tubes. If one were to tear, she could use the other.
Once she returned from the market, she took the pot in which cooked millet had been left to soak overnight and drained the water from it, then poured the water into the bottle and fixed the feeding tube around its mouth. Keeping Poonachi on her lap, she crammed the feeding tube into the kid’s mouth. At first, the kid was perplexed. Once some milk-like liquid had trickled in, she grabbed the tube with her mouth and began to suckle. It wasn’t milk, only bland-tasting rice water. After swallowing a couple of mouthfuls, she pulled away from the tube.
The old woman wouldn’t let her go. She fed Poonachi little by little and was satisfied only when she saw that her belly was swollen and full. Poonachi found it hard to walk with her bloated belly. She stood in the same spot for some time, then lay down. From then on, she was fed the water from cooked millet rice or paste three or four times a day. Occasionally, she was able to get a few squirts of milk from the nanny goat. For Poonachi, the milk was a rare treat.
Since she grew up on rice water, Poonachi’s belly was always bloated. The hair on her body began to look matted. She had to survive this phase somehow, that was all that mattered. Her health would pick up, though it might take a few months. Once she was old enough to forage for food on her own, she would gradually recover. What she needed now was some fluid to keep her alive, and rice water was adequate for that.
Poonachi practised taking feeble steps towards the front yard and the goat shed. But Kalli’s kids simply couldn’t stand the sight of her. Fed on a plentiful diet of mother’s milk, their hips had become hard and plump, endowing them with a natural swagger. They jumped and leapt about all the time.
Climbing the tall mortar that stood in the front yard and jumping off it was their favourite sport. They also enjoyed playfully butting one another with their hornless heads. Now and again, the old woman would scold them and bring them to order. But their cavorting continued without restraint. As Poonachi walked past them looking like a lifeless doll, they would come running and sniff her all over. They would butt her with their bald heads and knock her down. Poonachi would cry in a feeble voice. The more she cried, the more high-spirited they became. They would raise a foreleg and rest it on her back. They thought up many kinds of games to torment Poonachi.
Even as Poonachi trembled and contracted her body in fear, the kids would run towards her, leapfrog over her body and stand on the other side – this was one game. As the three of them jumped over her, one after the other, a whirring sound assailed her ears. Poonachi would tremble and shrink in fear, and let out a high-pitched wail.
Sometimes, when Poonachi was stretched out either in the front yard or on the gunny bag under the old woman’s cot, the kids would approach her with feigned affection and lie down next to her, with their heads resting on her body. Poonachi would feel suffocated. She would try very hard to get up and move away. But where could she find the strength to lift those big heads and push them aside? Her only hope was that they would recognise her distress and get up on their own. Whenever she saw them, she would become petrified and seek refuge between the old woman’s legs. The old woman would chase them away and protect her.
The goats were far better behaved than the kids. If Poonachi went near Kalli, she would bring her head down and smell the kid, then give her a slight push. She had long, curved horns – not that they were of much use. She could only butt with her bald head, her way of saying, ‘Go away!’
The other nanny goat would look protectively at Poonachi. When she rubbed her face against Poonachi, it felt as if her own mother was caressing her. Even if Poonachi lay down next to her, she would do nothing to discourage the kid. Only when Poonachi reached for her udder, not realising that she was pregnant, did she get annoyed. She would lift a hind leg and move away; she would also warn Poonachi with a mild grunt: ‘Don’t try such tricks with me.’
And so, Poonachi stayed alive by drinking rice water three times a day and occasionally a little milk. She was confined inside the basket at night. During the day she lay around in the shed, in the front yard, or inside the hut. When the old woman took the goats out for grazing, she carried Poonachi in her arms. In the fields, she would walk between the old woman’s legs. This was how Poonachi grew up day by day. Fifteen days had passed since she had first arrived.
One day, another old woman, a relative, came to visit. She stayed overnight in the couple’s shed. The women sat talking late into the night about the old days. The old man placed his cot near the goats’ hut. Both women brought their cots to the front yard and stretched out on them. It was a night of the waning crescent moon and pitch black. Their chit-chat was nowhere near winding down. Many stories of a bygone time came up. Both of them fell asleep, open-mouthed, in the course of their conversation.
That night the old woman forgot all about Poonachi. She didn’t put the kid inside the basket. Poonachi called out a few times, but the old woman didn’t hear her. Poonachi had no idea where to sleep. She wondered whether she should go to the hut and sleep next to the nanny goat. If the goat rolled over in the dark, Poonachi could be trapped and crushed under her body. It had almost happened a few times. She was also afraid to walk from the front yard into the dark night. So she lay down on a bed of dung dirt under the old woman’s cot. The rice water was very sour that day. Poonachi had liked the taste very much. When fresh, it tasted as bland as plain water. Tonight, she had drunk a lot more than she normally did. Her belly was tight as a fist.
As if in a dream, she felt something seize her throat. Involuntarily, she let out a loud cry. It was the loudest she had cried yet. The old woman got up from her cot, shouting ‘Dhooyi, dhooyi!’ She picked up the stick she had placed near the cot and ran in the direction of the sound. The moon had just appeared in the sky. In the dim light, she saw a strange creature running away with Poonachi in its grip. After that one scream, Poonachi’s throat had choked up. She realised that her neck was caught between two rows of sharp teeth. She couldn’t make out a thing.
The old woman raised her arm and hurled the stick in her hand. It smashed into the creature’s back, bounced off and fell away. Staggering from the unexpected blow, the creature lost its hold on Poonachi, and she fell to the ground and rolled over two or three times. The creature could not locate her immediately. By then, the old woman had come menacingly close, shouting ‘dhooyi, dhooyi’. The creature decided to flee for dear life. Since there was no prey in its mouth, it ran away at great speed.
Hearing no sound, the old woman stopped in her tracks. Unable to rise to her feet, Poonachi cried in a feeble voice. Though it sounded no louder than a blade of grass being ripped, the old woman heard it. She came to the spot and groped in the dark for Poonachi. Meanwhile, the crescent moon had climbed a little higher and there was some light. The old woman scooped up Poonachi from the ground and brought her to the shed. The old man and the guest had woken up too and asked her, ‘What happened? What happened?’ After thrusting Poonachi into the old man’s hands, the old woman ran inside the house. The lamp she had lit on the night Poonachi came home still had the wick in it. When she came out with it, the old man had Poonachi on his lap and was stroking her fondly. In the lamplight, they saw the tooth marks embedded on either side of Poonachi’s neck. While the marks were light on one side, they had sunk deep on the other and blood was pouring out of the wound.
Near the place where she washed utensils, the old woman had planted a shrub of coatbuttons, a medicinal plant. She ran there, plucked a few leaves, crushed them and applied the extract on the wound. To Poonachi, who was numb from shock and pain, the burning sensation produced by the leaf
extract brought some clarity. Unable to bear the pain, she screamed aloud. Their guest asked the old man, ‘Do you think the kid will pull through?’
‘I go to sleep every night only after putting her in the basket. Today I dozed off, lost in the pleasure of our conversation. They talk about the highs of toddy and liquor, but those are not highs at all. Real intoxication comes from talking. The moment it crosses a limit, we forget everything,’ the old woman lamented.
‘You did run and catch hold of her somehow. But did you find out who or what came to snatch her?’ her husband asked.
4
POONACHI HERSELF WAS clueless about the creature that had tried to snatch her away. The way she had been grabbed by the neck, with her body suspended in the air, felt like something out of a dream. It couldn’t have been a dog. A dog was incapable of sneaking in at night and snatching anything. It could have been a jackal. But a jackal was unlikely to grab such a tiny kid. There were three other kids, bigger and fleshier than Poonachi, lying in the hut. The jackal would have targeted them. And a domestic cat hunts no bigger prey than a rat. This must have been a wildcat. Some villagers had seen wildcats roaming near the fields. Unable to find any prey, some of them might have strayed into the farmlands. Once they grabbed a goat and got a taste of the meat, no one would be able to control them.
There was a time when the couple had kept a dog. The last one they had owned was really smart. Its vigilant eyes wouldn’t let even a fly or an ant trespass inside the shed. But the dog ate as much food as a grown man. It was a struggle trying to feed two mouths, how could they afford a third?
When the rainfall decreased and the yield went down too, year after year, having an additional mouth to feed had to be a burden. But Poonachi escaped somehow. An eagle had tried to grab her the other day, and now this wildcat.
The Story of a Goat Page 2