Just as the old woman had calculated, Poonachi went into labour one rainy evening. Mild in the beginning, the pain intensified rapidly. She kept lying down and getting up, unable to settle in one place. The old woman came in and put something inside the basket. Poonachi didn’t even feel like checking what it might be. She cried out in anguish. Since it was her first pregnancy, the old woman knew that delivery was going to be difficult. But such severe pain? Something must be wrong with Poonachi, she thought.
She waited patiently until darkness fell and everything was quiet and still. Then she untied Poonachi’s rope. Poonachi went out of the hut and lay down at the entrance. Then she got up. She lay down under the old woman’s cot. She got up. She lay down beside the pile of dry leaves that the old man had heaped in a corner. She got up. She went and lay down next to Kalli, who nuzzled and consoled her with a gentle bleat. Poonachi got up. She lay down between Oothan and his mother. Sensing her agony, they looked at her with sympathy and compassion. She got up. There was no help for it. Regardless of whether she cried, rolled around, lay down or got up, she alone had to deliver the kids. Others could bring her no relief.
Made nervous by Poonachi’s restlessness, the old woman told her husband, ‘Go to the village and bring the midwife. I can’t bear to watch her suffering like this. Maybe some kid in there has turned upside down.’
‘You don’t even have the patience to wait a while. As if she was your own daughter or something,’ the old man muttered to himself as he prepared to leave.
The old woman guessed the route he had taken from the sound of the dogs barking. Stroking Poonachi’s head fondly, she spoke consoling words to her: ‘Just hold on for some time. The midwife will be here soon.’
The old man seemed to have broadcast the saga of Poonachi’s labour pains to everyone along the way. Five or six women turned up at the couple’s shed. With the sound of people talking and shouting animatedly, the front yard turned lively. Some of them recalled past incidents in their homes which involved severe labour pains. Their presence was a huge comfort to the old woman. She lit a big earthen lamp and kept it in a safe spot in the front yard where it wouldn’t be put out by the wind. She decided that moving around so much wasn’t doing Poonachi any good, so she tied her to a leg of the cot. Now Poonachi kept lying down and getting up in the same spot.
‘Here we are, chatting about what’s gone by, while that poor thing is still suffering,’ a woman said.
‘Yes, we learn about fever and headache only when they affect us personally,’ another woman agreed.
‘Ada, only the egg-laying hen knows the pain of an inflamed asshole,’ a different woman added.
Amid the banter, the sound of the old man approaching from a distance could be heard. It seemed the midwife was coming with him. The midwife was said to be lucky with his hands. Regardless of the kind of problem a goat might have, he would resolve it in no time. After rubbing castor oil on his hands, he would insert his hand inside the goat’s vagina and, without hurting the mother or the kids, he would pull the babies out, one after another. His arrival gave the old woman confidence. As the two men approached closer and closer, Poonachi’s cries grew louder. The old woman ran to her to find out what had happened.
Poonachi, who had been on her feet until then, was lying on her back with her hind legs splayed, straining hard and pushing. The old woman brought the lamp’s flame closer to her. The first kid slid out and dropped like a ball of flour, with a thin covering of mucus. The old woman picked it up, wiped away the mucus and let it breathe.
‘There is a time for everything. No point in being in a hurry,’ someone said.
17
AT THE SAME speed with which the first kid was pushed out, other kids followed, one after another. Four kids in all. Poonachi slowly tried to get up. The old woman extended a hand and lifted her up. Once she was on her feet, Poonachi licked her kids all over, first to remove the mucus covering, then to wipe the wetness from their skin. Each kid was as fat as a grub worm.
‘Hey, if there were four kids in her belly, they had to be tiny,’ someone said.
The midwife came to the front yard and saw the kids. He lifted Poonachi’s tail and looked at her vagina. ‘There are more kids inside,’ he said. ‘What!’ The villagers around him were shocked. But it wasn’t a shock for the old man and his wife. After all, Bakasuran had told him that she would yield seven kids in a litter.
The midwife was not an ordinary person. He came from a line of midwives. He must have been less than fifty years of age. Nevertheless, he was quite experienced, having assisted his father in performing deliveries from an early age. The couple believed his words must be true. However, Poonachi was busy licking her four kids, as though it was all over and done with. Any onlooker would have thought the midwife’s prediction wrong. It seemed that the heaviness of Poonachi’s belly had reduced and her stomach was empty again. But in the next few minutes she experienced another series of spasms and wanted to lie down again.
As she stretched out, she glanced at the kids crawling on the ground near her. The next moment, without realising it, she gave a push. Two kids slid out, one after another. Poonachi stood up again, on her own. One of the women who had crowded around Poonachi said, ‘How strange is this? She is pushing them out like turds.’ Poonachi licked the two new kids all over. The midwife touched and pressed her belly with his fingers. He examined her uterus. It was still sticky. ‘That’s it,’ he said. The old woman was wiping the mucus covering on the body of each kid. Poonachi kept licking the kids continuously to dry their skin.
Six kids, of whom four were bucks and two were does. Four of them were pitch black like Poonachi; the other two were brown. It was a joyful sight, the kids wriggling and crying by the lamplight. The old woman lifted the lamp along with the boom and looked at each kid under the light. The eyes of the black kids glittered. Everyone came close and gawked at them, then they sat in the backyard and resumed chatting. ‘Six kids, you have to look after them well,’ the midwife told the old woman and prepared to leave.
All at once Poonachi lay down again; again, a push. Another kid slid out and dropped to the ground. Following this, her umbilical cord began to unravel. Thus proven wrong, the midwife was struck dumb for a few minutes. Since the umbilical cord was hanging out, it was certain that there would be no more kids in the litter. He was hesitant to say it, though. ‘Seven?’ Everyone else was as stunned as the midwife.
‘Bakasuran really was the embodiment of truth,’ the old man told himself. Now, finally, the old woman believed that her husband had told her the truth, not a story.
The seventh kid looked exactly like Poonachi. She was of the same size, shape and colour that Poonachi had been when the old man came home on that distant evening and placed her in his wife’s hands. Poonachi may have been the seventh kid in her mother’s litter, the old woman thought.
‘You’ve had such a stroke of luck,’ a woman said. She spoke for everyone present there, the jealousy apparent in her voice.
‘Even Mesagaran can’t predict the luck of rainfall or offspring,’ the midwife said. His words were a way of coping with the failure of his verdict.
Poonachi licked her last kid all over. Her tongue was dry. The old woman lit the mud stove and boiled water on it. She took a measure of pearl millet from the vat and soaked it in water. When the water became lukewarm, she took it off the stove and replaced it with the millet. She washed and scrubbed down Poonachi with warm water. Then she cleaned and rinsed all the bloodstains on Poonachi’s body.
As he was about to leave, the midwife said, ‘Seven kids in a litter is a miracle. Go immediately and inform the government. If you go tomorrow, they will ask questions. How can a goat birth seven kids? What chicanery have you been up to? Where did you steal them from? No matter what you say, they will call you a liar and put you in jail.’
‘It’s true, ‘pa. Leave right now. These days, even if you fart, you have to register it with the government,’ a woman said.
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‘We might even have a law which says you can only fart twice in a day,’ another woman said.
Approaching the servants of the regime was always a big problem for the old man. He was frightened and nervous even of an employee from the lowest rung of the ladder. He couldn’t possibly ask his wife to go in his place this time, so he pleaded with the midwife to accompany him. The authorities would believe the midwife’s testimony. Once the two men set out, the visitors followed them out. The old woman, Poonachi and the kids were the only ones left.
Now each of the kids tried to slowly get up and stand on its feet. The old woman was afraid that, in the dark of the night, some predator might sneak in like the wildcat that had come to grab Poonachi. She had to be alert. Feeling the weight of responsibility on her shoulders, she busied herself with work. She spread the cooked millet on a winnowing pan and let it cool. Then she took the vessel containing water that had been drained from the cooked millet and placed it on the hot coals in the stove. If all the kids got up and started walking, how was she going to find them in the dark? She felt bewildered.
She held the winnowing pan with the cooked millet in front of Poonachi. The moment she smelled it, Poonachi felt ravenously hungry. The old woman had trouble holding the pan steady as she gobbled up the warm millet. A whole measure was devoured in no time at all. Then the old woman brought the millet water from the stove. After drinking it, Poonachi’s deflated belly seemed to swell once again. She felt stronger. The umbilical cord which had been hanging out of her uterus slid down and dropped by itself. The old woman picked it up, put it in a basket, and covered it with a lid. When the old man returned, she would ask him to hang it from a pala tree. Then milk would flow generously from Poonachi’s udder.
The kids kept getting up, falling down and stumbling. She picked them up, one by one, carried them to Poonachi and put their mouths to a teat. The moment an infant’s mouth touched her teat, Poonachi’s whole body tingled. Unable to bear the sensation, she kicked out with her leg. ‘You tingle even when you’re feeding your own kid, do you?’ the old woman scolded.
Poonachi pressed her feet gently on the ground and stood up. As each kid got hold of a teat and suckled, the tingling sensation subsided. After the kids had suckled a few mouthfuls, their mouths got tired and they refused to suckle anymore. By the time she got all the seven kids, one by one, to suckle, the old woman was exhausted.
Can this Poonachi suckle all the seven kids? What if she runs short of milk? When each kid runs in a different direction, how will I catch them and keep them in one place? The old woman’s mind was filled with questions.
She put all the kids in a big basket and closed it. Immediately, Poonachi started crying. The old woman opened the basket and kept it in front of Poonachi. ‘Um … um … um,’ she called out to her kids and they answered back. Just when the old woman was wondering where to put the kids so that she could keep an eye on them, she heard her husband’s footsteps in the front yard.
He reported that the official for ear-piercing had been informed. ‘How dare you come to my house?’ the official had yelled when they had asked to meet him. He had slammed the door shut and gone off inside. Later, after they had explained the matter courteously to his wife, she had relayed it to him and brought him back. When they told him about the seven kids, he simply couldn’t believe it. ‘Seven, is it? Really?’ he asked them many times. Even after the midwife confirmed it, the official refused to believe them.
‘Seven kids, huh?’ he said. ‘This is a miracle even for the government. The higher authorities must be informed.’ He told them he would come to see the kids the following morning and made a note in his calendar.
18
THE COUPLE COULDN’T sleep that night. ‘Get some shut-eye,’ they kept telling each other, but neither of them slept a wink. Once every short while, the old woman gave Poonachi something to eat. She made the kids suckle two or three times. They talked endlessly about Poonachi’s feed and about milk for the kids. They also talked about how they had happened to witness a miracle in their lifetime. They reminded each other that they should never open their mouths about Bakasuran to anyone. Why had he chosen them to receive the gift of Poonachi?
The old woman could not see him as a demon at all. ‘Lord Mesagaran himself must have come in the form of that giant,’ she said.
‘Maybe,’ her husband replied.
The day broke. They could now see the kids properly in the morning light. Of the seven kids, four were bucks, two black and two brown. All three does, including the youngest of the seven, were black. The five black kids looked exactly the same. The old woman tried to distinguish between the bucks and the does, but it wasn’t easy. Later, while she was milking Semmi, she thought she could get her to suckle some of Poonachi’s kids. They wouldn’t have any problem with milk today. The kids only needed to wet their bellies and they would fall sleep. She could try to get Semmi to suckle them a couple of days from now.
As the news spread, everyone in the village came by to look at the kids. Each of the visitors picked them up and fondled them, sometimes roughly. Fortunately, as soon as news spread about the arrival of the ear-piercing official, all the visitors slipped away one by one.
When the sun had risen to a man’s height above the horizon, the official arrived on horseback. A huge crowd followed him. Seeing the horse and the crowd of people, the goats were frightened and cried out, tugging at their ropes and rolling on the ground. The old man and his wife were gripped by a terrible fear too. The enquiry began.
‘What’s your name?’ asked the official. The old man and his wife told him.
‘Bring the tokens,’ the official said.
The old woman rushed into the shed and, after a brief search, fetched the tokens from inside a pot where they were stashed. The tokens, which were round and bore the official seal of the government, had turned black from lying inside the pot for a long time. The numbers engraved on them were not legible.
‘Are they genuine?’ asked the junior official who had accompanied his superior.
‘Yes, sir,’ the old woman said. The official scraped the surface of the tokens and examined them closely.
‘You should preserve them properly,’ he said. Then the high-level inquiry started.
‘Is it true that there were seven kids?’ the official asked while staring at the sky.
‘They are here in the basket. Take a look, sir,’ the old woman said, showing him the basket.
‘Answer the question. Is it true?’
‘It’s true, sir.’
‘Count them and verify that there are seven,’ the official told an assistant who was standing next to him. The assistant put his hand inside the basket and counted the kids one by one. ‘Seven, sir. It’s true,’ he said. The official noted this down in the register.
‘When did the incident happen?’
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘When did the incident take place?’
The assistant came over to the old woman and said, ‘When did the goat deliver the litter? That’s what he is asking, ‘ma.’
‘Last night,’ the old woman said.
‘At what time?’ The official’s gaze bumped against the roof of the shed and halted there.
‘After eating my meal, I pulled out my cot, thinking that I’d go to sleep. That’s when Poonachi started to cry. Then, within about three hours, the delivery happened, sir,’ the old woman explained.
The midwife stepped forward and said, ‘You can put it down as nine o’ clock, sir.’
The official allotted numbers for all the seven kids. Because their ears were still soft, he said he would return in a week to carry out the ear-piercing. Information had been provided to the higher authorities and if someone came to inquire, they should tell him exactly what they had said to him, he cautioned. When the officer was about to leave, someone came running up to him. It seemed he was the informer whose job it was to send a report to the government.
He asked the of
ficial, ‘Do you think there is some cheating involved in this miracle?’
‘I doubt there is anything of that kind. At any rate, we will know the truth only after we conduct a top-level inquiry,’ the official replied.
The informer came to the old man and his wife and asked them, ‘They say it happened in the normal way, is it true?’
‘Of course it’s true. Do you want to see?’ the old woman said.
‘How did it happen?’
‘We can only ask Mesagaran.’
‘When the seven kids were delivered, what was your state of mind?’
‘I didn’t birth those seven kids, did I, thambi? It was the goat that did.’
‘That’s right. What was your state of mind then?’
‘What does that mean – state of mind?’
‘I am asking: what did you think at the time?’
‘I prayed that the delivery should happen without any loss of life, that the mother and kids should come out of it without any injury or defect.’
‘I don’t mean that, ‘ma. I am asking you: how did you feel?’
Just then the old man intervened: ‘We felt very happy, thambi. Will that do?’
‘Hmm. That’s just what I was asking. What are you going to do from now on?’
‘We will bring up the kids.’
‘How will you bring them up?’
‘By giving them milk and feeding them, of course.’
‘How will you give milk to so many kids? You can appeal to the government to sanction a grant for this purpose, can’t you?’
‘Won’t the government get angry, thambi?’
‘No, no, they won’t. If you ask the government nicely, they will never get angry.’
‘All right, thambi. It will be good for us if the government gives some assistance like you said. But when they offer help, won’t they also take the kids away?’
The Story of a Goat Page 9