Kalli cried all through that night. Already pregnant with her next litter, she had no milk to give these days. Nevertheless, she kept her three kids constantly under her protective care. She would look at Peethan and Porumi and cry, as if to ask: ‘Where is Kaduvayan?’ They would bleat back at her in response.
Kaduvayan’s absence might well have pleased Peethan. Kaduvayan was a champion at drawing attention to himself. Peethan was happy to lie around, chewing the cud. ‘I am the only one for you, always,’ he informed his mother.
Though Kaduvayan had gone away with a different herd, the night seemed a very happy one to Poonachi. But all that happiness went up in smoke the next day.
Well before they reached the pasture, Kaduvayan had already arrived. He took scarcely any notice of his former playmates. It didn’t seem as if any food had gone into his belly either. Had he at least drunk some water? He followed Pretty Nose everywhere, and she led him on nicely. Today she had firmly covered her vagina with her thick tail. Kaduvayan got behind her and tried to push the tail away with his snout, but she wouldn’t give in to his desire. He did not budge from her side, constantly hovering around her. The moment she lifted her tail, he leapt forward and mounted her. She did not resist. It made Poonachi angry. Why did this Pretty Nose stand there passively? Why should she bear the weight of Kaduvayan’s huge body?
The old man saw them too. ‘All right. This is the last time, as you’ll see,’ he laughed.
11
WITHIN A FEW minutes, a man had turned up from somewhere. He was nearly the same age as the old man and much taller than him. He carried a pair of wooden scissor sticks as well as a big water-gourd shell.
‘Come, boatman. It’s well past sunrise. I was wondering why there was no sign of you yet.’
Meanwhile, four or five goatherds had also come over. ‘I had to finish my previous job before coming here, didn’t I?’ said the boatman as he placed the water-gourd shell on the ground. The men extended their bowls to him, and he poured some toddy for each of them from the shell. Curious to find out what was happening, Poonachi walked over to them.
‘Why does this kid look like a baby donkey with matted hair?’ said the boatman.
‘We are raising her on our own. Any kid who doesn’t have her parents’ attention is bound to be shabby,’ replied the old man. Poonachi rushed to hide behind him.
‘All right. Catch the kid and bring him here,’ said the boatman. ‘Bu-ku-koo, bu-ku-koo,’ the old man tried calling Kaduvayan. It didn’t seem as though Kaduvayan heard his call. Two young goatherds began to walk in measured steps towards him. Pretty Nose became frightened on seeing them approach. Thinking that she was the one in danger, Kaduvayan bristled, raised his head and charged towards them. ‘Ah, he is going to protect her, it seems,’ laughed one of the goatherds as he stepped forward and planted himself in front of Kaduvayan.
Another man, who was following behind, reached out and caught hold of one of Kaduvayan’s hind legs and lifted it up. Unable to stand on three legs, Kaduvayan stumbled and fell sideways on the ground. ‘A big dick but a dented belly,’ laughed the man in front of him. The next moment, Kudavayan found himself being pulled along by the rope around his neck. He had no option but to follow them. He looked back often and kept bleating so that Pretty Nose could hear him. Too stunned to think of responding to his call, she stood stock still for a few moments. Then she came running after him, crying pitifully. It’s a miracle that there’s a creature who cries so earnestly for this Kaduvayan, thought Poonachi.
The goatherd ran towards Pretty Nose and chased her away. She joined the herd and merged with it, turning back occasionally to look at Kaduvayan,
They took Kaduvayan and laid him in front of the boatman. One man held down his head and forelegs. Another held his hind legs pressed to the ground. But Kaduvayan lifted his torso and leapt up.
‘He looks like a kid who is mad after meat,’ said the boatman.
‘He pounced on a female just yesterday. We can’t control him anymore. That’s why I sent for you,’ said the old man.
The boatman went up to Kaduvayan and pulled out his testicles from between his hind legs. The youth who was holding the hind legs up laughed. Opening out the scissor sticks, the boatman placed the testicles between the two arms and pressed down. Something snapped with a loud crack. ‘Beyyyyaaaa!’ Kaduvayan let out a single long cry. The goats in the pasture stopped grazing and looked up. Even the sheep raised their heads and looked back with their ears stiffening. Everything was over in barely a moment. With tears pouring from his eyes, Kaduvayan collapsed to the ground. Now there was no need for anyone to hold him down.
‘All that wild behaviour can go on only while these are intact,’ said a youth.
‘How will I ever be at peace after doing such terrible things?’ rued the boatman.
‘Men who slit other people’s throats are living without a care. Why do you worry so much?’ asked the old man.
By then, they had captured and brought Peethan. The boatman put the water-gourd shell to his lips and drank a little. ‘My sin is bigger than the sin of homicide,’ he said. Soon the fields resounded with Peethan’s heart-rending cry. Next, three rams were brought one after another. The boatman did his work like a seasoned expert. By now the fields had grown used to the cries. Nobody even looked up. The goatherds lifted the male kids who had fallen on the ground and made them stand up. Unable to join his legs together, Kaduvayan kept them splayed wide. His testicles had swollen up. He cried fitfully till he wore himself out. All the male kids did the same. Peethan couldn’t even cry. His body was still shaking. None of them was quite aware of what had happened to them.
The boatman drank up all the toddy left in the water-gourd shell. When he looked up, his eyes fell on the five kids standing there in agony, tears streaming from their eyes. He slapped his chest with both hands and burst out crying. ‘Sinner! I am a sinner and a wretch!’
The old man walked over to the boatman and scolded him: ‘What’s the matter? You’re not new to the job, are you?’ He poured a measure of grain into a towel. The owners of the other kids added their share of grain. The boatman paid no attention. He wailed and wept aloud, slapping the ground and his chest by turns. Kneeling before the row of kids standing in front of him like gods, he paid obeisance to them with folded hands. A stream of gibberish issued from his mouth, as if he were pleading abjectly with them. Then he stood up like a man unhinged and walked back the way he had come. One of the young men ran after him with the bundle of grain. With the bundle swaying back and forth over his shoulder like a large abscess, he walked away in silence.
That night the old man spoke scarcely a word to his wife. The old woman tried everything she could to make him talk.
‘So, you suddenly choose to turn into a dumb owl. On the days you are all smiles and eager to talk, I have to speak to you. When you become mute, I should also shut my mouth,’ she said accusingly.
Poonachi was sad that day. Kaduvayan and Peethan did not fold their legs and lie down for even a minute. They stood in the same position all night. Every now and then, they would whimper or cry out suddenly. Poonachi went near Kaduvayan and sniffed his legs. There was no response from him.
The old man had had a difficult time herding them from the pasture to the house that evening. Just putting one foot forward was enough to make them cry out in pain. They kept crying by turns as they walked home. The old man, for his part, drove them patiently. The mother goats were also weary. Kalli, the female goat, went near Kaduvayan and sniffed him as if in greeting. He was in no position to respond.
It seemed as though a profound silence had engulfed them from all sides. Poonachi didn’t sleep a wink that night. Every now and then she would go and stand near them for a brief while. They stood immobile, however, like a pair of stone figurines.
At dawn the next day, the old woman fetched water in a big, wide-mouthed vessel she called a kundaan and splashed mugs of water on Kaduvayan and Peethaan’s groin with great f
orce. They jerked back in fear and then stood passively. The touch of water on their wounds must have been soothing. The old woman splashed two or three kundaans of water on the kids’ wounds. Then she brought some cattle dung and smeared it on their testicles.
‘Why chase after those female kids and go through all this trouble? You couldn’t keep quiet, it seems. And even if you wanted to, the blood coursing through your veins wouldn’t have let you. So now you have no choice but to suffer,’ the old woman said to no goat in particular as she treated their wounds. She offered the kids some cotton seed from her hand. Kaduvayan wouldn’t even sniff them. The old woman didn’t give up. She opened his mouth and pushed some inside. As he chewed on them slowly, the taste came through and Kaduvayan ended up munching on some more. Neither of the kids came to the pasture for the next four days. They kept standing in the goat hut all day. Poonachi felt dejected. The whole pasture seemed to be deserted. She lay in the shade, trying to figure out why it had come to this. She couldn’t think of anything.
When the herd went home after grazing on the fifth day, both Kaduvayan and Peethan were lying down and chomping on some leaves. On seeing Poonachi and the others, they emitted gentle cries. Poonachi felt cheerful again. The kids came with the others for grazing from the next day onwards. Poonachi ran to Kaduvayan and tried to play with him by dashing and colliding against him. He didn’t do anything to her. Nor did he ever go chasing after the female kids in other herds. He kept to himself and the grass he was eating. Just like Peethan, who had always been like that. Now he was even more subdued. Poonachi’s eyes drifted occasionally to the space between their legs. She saw the testicles which had once hung there like big palm fruit gradually shrivel, shrink and wither away. Nevertheless, Poonachi was happy that they were subdued and well behaved, and no longer writhing in pain.
12
THE FOLLOWING MONTH, Poonachi went on a pilgrimage and learnt about the outside world for the first time. Until then, the old couple’s thatched shed, the field around it, the village and the pasture had been her whole world. The journey made her understand that the world was much bigger. The old woman’s daughter had come to take her mother for the annual festival at the Mesagaran temple in her village. The couple followed the custom of taking their goats with them when they went to the festival every year. Before they set out for their daughter’s village, the old man took the buffalo calf to the market fair and sold it. They were happy that they had some money to give to their daughter.
They set out after daybreak, with a large container of food for the journey. Poonachi had initially thought that they were headed towards a new pasture. But they kept walking. On that first day, they grazed beside a lake and went to sleep on a set of boulders nearby. They had to identify a spot to halt for the night while there was still daylight. Since their eyes had grown dim with age, they were used to going to bed before nightfall. The wind carried the coolness of the water in the lake and spread it on the boulders. They slept blissfully.
The next day they entered a plantation of palm trees, and walked through it all day. An endless sequence of palm trees, row upon row. The rustle of palm fronds in the breeze. Dried up palm fruit. It was a big sandy plain. The goats filled their bellies by chewing the leaves on the palm stalks and gorging on creepers that the old man pulled down towards them. They had never seen creepers like these in the pasture. Some were very tasty.
Each time the goats ran off in different directions, it was a task for the couple to gather them in one place again and drive them forward. But Poonachi never left the old woman’s side. As they walked, she would sometimes trip and fall between the old woman’s legs. Even then the old woman did not scold her.
‘Poonachi kannu, watch your step. If you crash into my legs and knock me down, who will take care of you? When you have a litter of seven someday, won’t you need someone to look after you?’ she said affectionately. Poonachi felt terribly shy.
Oothan and Uzhumban gave the couple a lot of trouble. We should have brought them with a rope around their necks, the old woman said. Just carrying the bundle of food was taxing for her. They hurried on, anxious to reach their daughter’s village before they ran out of food, or it got spoilt. By their reckoning, they would reach their destination by the evening of the fourth day. At noon on the third day, they reached a wooded hillside. It was a long hill range. A forest filled with tall trees sprawled across the range. They let the goats graze in the foothills. If they walked in a circle along the edge of the forest, they would come to a trail going east by the time they were halfway around. It was a short-cut to the village.
After grazing, the goats drank water from a pond nearby and lay down to rest in the shade. The old man and his wife stretched out for a brief while under a tree. Poonachi lay near the old woman’s feet, chewing the cud.
Just then, Oothan and Uzhumban left their mother’s side and ran away into the forest. They wanted to play without any interference. Poonachi, who was just waking up, saw them fleeing. Immediately she felt an urge to do the same. She ran behind them. Every tree here had a trunk so big that if five or six men wrapped their arms around it together, it still wouldn’t be contained in their embrace. If someone were to hide behind one of these trees, it wouldn’t be easy to find him. Oothan tried, but Uzhumban charged around furiously and found him. Poonachi joined the game. Both of them wanted to make Poonachi ‘it’. She accepted their decision and played ‘it’ in the first two rounds.
Both Uzhumban and Oothan ran off and hid. She found Uzhumban by his tail which was sticking out from behind the cover of a tree. But Uzhumban wouldn’t concede defeat. She had to come face to face to find him; approaching from the back didn’t count because it wasn’t fair, Uzhumban argued. Oothan backed him up. Unable to put up with their cheating, Poonachi said, ‘To hell with you and your game!’ and climbed a little higher. Unripe seed pods lay strewn on the ground under some trees. She tried biting into a couple of them. They tasted really good. So she wandered further, picking up pods at every tree and eating them along the way.
The forest and the trees seemed miraculous to Poonachi. She saw hare, field rats and snakes that ran away petrified on noticing her. Though afraid, she was also curious. It was a strange feeling, as though she had arrived in her real home. She walked up to a few trees and rubbed her body against a trunk. Only when darkness began to spread slowly among the trees did she wonder if she had walked too far. At once, she began to climb down. But she had lost sight of the track she had made on the way up. In spite of running in several directions and looking all over, she could not find the right way back. She tried crying out. She thought she would hear the old woman’s voice raised in answer to her call. But all she heard was the chatter of unfamiliar birds. After a brief while, she fell silent.
Poonachi understood the extent of her intelligence on that day. Darkness fell and all the routes were closed. Left with no other option, she had to spend the night on the hill. Where could she stay? Could she lie down alone, surrounded by the darkness? She was scared. Just then she saw a big pond close by. Water hyacinth covered its whole expanse. She had never before drunk water that tasted so sweet. She wanted to get into the water and swim for a while. But the hyacinth covering the still water made her afraid. She suppressed her wish. Like a hand extending from the edge of the pond, she saw a rock protruding over the water. Wide at the bottom, it became progressively narrow and ended in a sharp point at the top. It looked like the right spot for her. Planting her hooves on the rock, she climbed to the top. No one could get up there. It gave her a sense of security.
At first, Poonachi was consumed by fear. The wind lashed against the trees and ran howling through the forest. Sometimes the trees stood utterly still. She had never before seen the kind of dense, pitch-black darkness that gathered over the pond. She lay clinging to the ground like a rock lizard. After a long while, the moon appeared in the sky, directly overhead, and illuminated the watery expanse of the pond. The forest seemed to come alive suddenly.
A few birds rose in the moonlight and flew away. A short while later, a large pack of animals came roaring to the pond, across from the slanted rock on which Poonachi lay. The wild boars looked like silhouettes. They entered the pond, shattering the silence, drinking the water and swimming around in it. Stuck to the rock, Poonachi watched the spectacle. Her eyes welled up for some reason, and she sighed. Her heart was hopelessly eager to jump into the pond, to swim in it and enjoy herself. She knew, however, that she was destined to remain an onlooker. She consoled herself that it was her fate to at least witness such sights. She saw cavorting young ones climbing onto huge adult boars and jumping into the water. They were all vague and indistinct as shadows. What gave them life were the sounds that rose in the air.
It was a very long time before the boars left. Poonachi thought she would like to stay on inside this forest. There were giant trees everywhere. Plants and creepers grew in abundance. There were ponds to drink from as well as to swim in, rocks on which she could lie down and stretch out. She could keep going in any direction as if through endless space. Would any beasts strike her down, like the wildcat that came and snatched her when she was a baby? Why don’t I live here until something like that happens? All kinds of strange ideas occurred to her.
The day dawned slowly. Now the scene at the pond looked different. Flowers stood upright in the water. A flock of birds hovered above in the sky. She got up lazily, put her snout in the pond and sipped some water. It was nectar. She wanted to keep sipping it forever.
Once she left the spot, she remembered the couple, who were probably searching for her everywhere, and became perturbed. What must they be thinking? Let them look for her. Let them wander around. Let them give up their search and go on their way.
The Story of a Goat Page 6