‘No, they won’t. One last question: what would you like to say through this interview?’
‘What should we like to say?’
‘Something like: “We are raising goats that can deliver seven kids at one go. Everyone should raise these types of goats. Only then will the country develop rapidly and become a superpower.” Shall we say that you are asking everyone to raise goats?’
‘All right. We can say that.’
Over the next few days, government informers claiming to be from this village or that kept arriving to visit them.
They always started: ‘Tell us about yourself.’
News of the miracle of the seven kids spread through the territories under the government. There were many people who wished to see them. They started heading there with bundles of food for the journey. Some brought a portrait artist with them. They sat among the kids and asked him to draw a portrait. Poonachi grew very tired from having to frequently turn this way and that, and standing on her feet for long hours. She didn’t know why so many people came swarming to the hut.
She couldn’t even suckle her kids. When the visitors picked up the kids and fondled them, it seemed as if they might strangle them to death. Some had brought children with them. They hugged the kids tight and pressed them to their bodies. To Poonachi they seemed like ogres who had come to murder her kids.
One day, when he was fed up of answering questions from visitors and showing them around, the old man said to his wife, ‘Shall we give Poonachi to the government?’
She replied, ‘No need for that. From tomorrow, we will charge a penny per person for seeing the miracle. This is what they do at the Mesagaran temple: whenever there is a crowd, they charge a small amount.’
‘That’s right. If it’s free, people will come in droves. If there is a charge, they’ll run away,’ the old man said.
The next morning, the old man built a thatched barrier all around the hut that housed Poonachi and her kids. A few hours after daybreak, a crowd turned up. When they were told that there was a charge for seeing the kids, many of them backed out. A few paid the charge reluctantly, came into the hut, and looked at the kids. Four days later, there was no sign nor sound of strangers in the hut’s vicinity.
19
POONACHI AND THE old woman had to toil hard to bring up the seven kids. No matter how much she ate, it wasn’t enough for Poonachi; all the nourishment was being drained out through her udder. Her kids were suckling constantly. She stood with her legs wide apart almost all the time. The old woman roamed everywhere, picked up all kinds of feed and offered them to Poonachi. Raising the kids kept her busy day and night. It was no easy task to get Semmi to suckle the kids. She cried and fled whenever anyone approached her. Semmi had once suckled Poonachi; now she had to suckle Poonachi’s kids.
The old man would hold Semmi’s head, pry her mouth open, put his hand inside and firmly hold down her tongue and lower jaw with his fingers. Unable to break free, Semmi would stand still. Holding her hind legs wide apart, the old woman would let the kids through to suckle. She had divided them into two groups: four of them for Poonachi to suckle, and the remaining three for Semmi. It was a tussle every day, in the morning and evening. Just as she had done with Poonachi, she fed the kids rice water through a feeding tube. She also made them drink oilcake water. The kids crawled and played around in the front yard. Everyone had to tread cautiously. If someone were to step on one of them, even lightly, it would mean the end of that little thing.
One night, the old woman said, ‘Taking care of this miracle is ruining our lives.’
‘A miracle if we are far away, a nuisance from up close,’ the old man said with a sigh.
‘Yes, why did that Bakasuran give us this wretched creature? Why impose a load on people who can’t carry it?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it too. It makes no sense.’
‘Maybe he was a messenger sent by Mesagaran to tell us something?’
‘Are we so important that God would want to send us a message?’
‘True.’
‘We could have given the kids away and kept only the two does.’
‘We didn’t think of that, did we? Even we poor folk want to keep these luckless kids with us. No matter how much you give to this heart, it will never be enough.’
‘Say that again.’
‘No matter how much you give to this heart, it will never be enough.’
‘Did he give us Poonachi just to make us understand this?’
‘What do we gain by such understanding?’
‘True.’
‘Should he make us suffer so much, just to get us to understand? If we had known this earlier, we could have passed her on to someone else and moved on. Why do we need to understand anything?’
‘If she delivers seven the next time, we’ll give them away.’
‘Should we keep this cursed thing till the next litter?’
‘We have to. She is an asset that someone has left in our care. Come what may, we should never sell the principal. If Bakasuran comes back in a year or two and wants to know how well we are looking after her, what will we tell him?’
‘We’ll tell him that we sold her and spent the money.’
‘But we don’t have the heart to do it.’
‘We are not his bonded slaves, are we?’
Their conversation went on in this vein for some more time, but they were unable to come to a decision. They had faced difficulties all their lives. Nothing could end their suffering. Even the rain was playing hide-and-seek with them. What could they do? How could poor people like them eke out a living?
Poonachi had grown even thinner. There was a dent in her stomach. She had sunken eyes. She didn’t even have the strength to open her mouth and bleat. Whenever her kids reached for her udder now, she kicked out with her legs and started running. She rarely stood still for them. Left with no alternative, the kids started nibbling grass.
Meanwhile, Semmi became pregnant. Oothan was sold. Kalli delivered a small litter of two kids. Looking at the two kids, each suckling from a teat, and the mother goat standing with her eyes closed, chewing the cud, Poonachi was envious. Such good fortune had never come her way.
She wondered sometimes whether her teats had actually been torn off because of all the grabbing and pulling by her kids. Her udder was so inflamed she imagined that blood, not milk, dripped from her teats.
Somehow her kids managed to grow. Poonachi would look wistfully at them as they jumped about and played in the front yard. While all the other goats in the pasture were either white or brown, her brood moved as a separate group, leaping about as though darkness itself was on the move. She loved the idea of a pasture filled with the lives she had birthed. After two or three more deliveries, the whole place would be teeming with her progeny, she thought proudly. But she also wondered whether she would be able to endure the ordeal of more deliveries.
There was a huge demand for all the three does from the litter. Owners of large pens came to meet the old man and convey their interest. Some women approached the old woman, served up some sweet talk and then placed a request with her as they were leaving: ‘You have to give one of the three does to me.’ However, everyone was aware that they couldn’t raise these kids on their own.
Since the does came from a line that delivered seven kids in a litter, the number of goats in the owner’s pen would go up very fast. But there were many affluent men in the old man’s community, the Asuras, who owned a large number of goats and had servants to graze them. They would have no difficulty in arranging milk for the kids or looking after them.
The old man and his wife were in a quandary, unable to decide who they should give the kids to.
One night the old man said, ‘In a month, it will be time for the festival in our daughter’s village. How can we travel if we have to drive these kids along?’
The old woman thought it over. Last year’s journey had turned out to be an ordeal. Poonachi getting trapped insi
de the forest, Uzhumban’s death, and the hardships they had suffered because of those incidents were still fresh in her mind. But they couldn’t call off their visit to their daughter’s house. If they went during the festival season, she could be of help to her daughter. They could also give her whatever they could spare of the cash they had in hand.
The couple sat up talking most of the night and finally came to a decision.
Semmi was expected to deliver in a month or so. It would be difficult to take her along. Once she delivered, they couldn’t travel with her infant kids either. So they decided to sell her. Poonachi’s buck kids weren’t strong enough yet. If they grazed for two or three months more, they would find buyers. But there was a high demand for the does right now. They could sell all three.
Once they had come to a decision, the old man asked his wife, ‘These kids belong to a special line. Shall we gift one to our daughter?’
The old woman was reluctant. ‘Won’t she feel bad if we give them away to everyone in the village without giving any to our own daughter? What will her husband and his family think of us?’ the old man persisted.
But the old woman firmly rejected the idea. Her daughter worked tirelessly day and night, and had little children to bring up. The family owned goats and cattle as well. Though they had very little land, the work was endless. How then could she look after a litter of seven kids? The old woman didn’t want her daughter to suffer the way she had. She reassured her husband that, in case their daughter expressed any grievance, she would talk to her and manage the situation.
What sense did it make for ordinary folk to own a miracle? Protecting and preserving it was beyond their capabilities. They could see and listen to a miracle, take pleasure in telling others about it, but they couldn’t keep it at home and look after it. The problems faced by women in particular were endless. How many lives could her daughter possibly look after? The old woman thought she could explain this to her when they met, and get her to understand.
20
THERE WAS ONLY a month left until their departure for their daughter’s village, so the old man figured it would be wise to spread the word right away. He would sell the kids to whoever offered the best price. Since there was heavy competition, they decided not to distinguish between acquaintances and strangers. The villagers would be displeased, so would their acquaintances in the surrounding areas. But it wasn’t as though the couple owed them anything. Though everyone wanted a kid, none of them had offered the old man or his wife any help in the past. They’d had to rely on themselves for everything.
While selling an ordinary goat like Semmi involved a visit to the market fair, the old man’s strategy was different for the kids. News that he planned to sell the three female kids started in the pasture and spread to the village; from there, it reached everywhere, as fast as the news about Poonachi delivering seven kids had spread at the time. Ten people came by their shed every day. Most of them made it clear that they would buy the kids only if they were given away for free.
‘Why, this kid looks like a toddy pot with a head on top, and you’re asking such a high price for her,’ one fellow said.
‘She may deliver seven kids, yes, but will they be goat kids?’ another fellow said.
The old man replied patiently to everyone. ‘We can’t feed them properly,’ he said. ‘If you give them enough food to fill their bellies, each kid will grow as big as a calf.’
Most of the men who approached him were traders. The old man was wise to their ways. When they wanted to buy something, they would bring down the price as much as possible. Four or five of them would come, one after another, and do it in concert; they would be happy if one of them was able to buy it cheap. They would stick out their bottom lip and leave without a word. They would provoke fear in the seller’s mind that the item might never be sold.
The old man understood their tactics. Come what may, he was determined not to sell to a trader. But he kept this to himself. He treated the traders with courtesy. Whenever they threatened him, he acted as though he was afraid. He pretended to be anxious that the kids might never be sold. He provided the traders with variously inflated figures for the expenses he had incurred to raise the kids. He told them he had spent a lot of money on just giving them milk. He whined that he had purchased and provided good feed to the mother goat to make her milk flow. If he was not going to recover even the money he had spent, what was the point of selling the kids, he asked them, weeping in dismay.
The traders were flummoxed. The goatherds were not given to acting, they knew, and wondered whether the old man was telling them the truth after all. The price quoted by him was indeed very high. The old man knew from experience that this was the only way he could get them to increase their offer. Afterwards, he clammed up and assumed a posture of arrogance. He stood with his face tilted upward, his expression giving nothing away. He asked those who wanted to inspect the kids to come directly to the pasture.
Nothing happened in the first fifteen days after the news had spread through the village and in the vicinity. Now, there were only fifteen days left. The old man was afraid that he might be forced to sell the kids at whatever price he was offered. To worsen his mood, the old woman berated him day in and day out. His strategy was beyond her understanding. She called him ‘a greedy monster’ and accused him of ‘sucking the life out of her by his failure to sell the kids’. As if to prove her right, the traders’ visits became less frequent. They were pretending to have lost interest, only to move in for the kill later.
One day, when the old man was seriously wondering whether his approach had been wrong after all, at the hour of dusk when the goats had finished grazing and were about to return home, a man from a distant country appeared in the pasture. His speech and behaviour indicated that he came from an affluent household. The stranger looked the old man up and down, the long loincloth and bare body. Then he looked at the kids. With their bellies full at that hour, they were playing around, butting heads and leaping over one another. The stranger didn’t go near them, but he exhaled a sigh, which seemed to indicate a wistful regret that these kids were not growing up in better circumstances. He looked at Poonachi with sympathy.
Then he asked the old man directly, ‘Why don’t you quote a combined price for the mother and kids?’
‘No. Only the three female kids are for sale,’ the old man retorted angrily.
‘What’s your price?’ the visitor asked.
The old man quoted his price for the three kids.
‘All right, you’ll get that price. Why don’t you give me the four bucks too, along with the does? I’ll pay the same price for each buck kid as I am paying for each doe,’ he said.
Only then did the old man realise that the stranger was not some trader who had come to size up the situation. He had come with an objective and a plan. The old man started paying attention to the visitor’s words. He had thought that even to sell the buck kids for a normal price, he would have to graze them for two or three months more. Instead, if he was getting the same price for the bucks as for the does, why argue? He decided not to hold the man off with the usual excuse that he would have to consult his wife.
‘Take all seven kids together,’ he told the visitor.
With his eyes resting on Poonachi, the visitor asked, ‘What price are you quoting for the mother?’
‘Look at you! You’re trying to steal my prime asset. Even if you offer us slabs of gold, my wife would never part with the mother,’ the old man said.
But he wasn’t really sure. In light of the immense hardships she had suffered while trying to bring up the kids, she might even agree to sell Poonachi, the old man thought. If Poonachi delivered another litter, it would be even more difficult to bring up the kids. So he told the stranger, ‘I’ll have a word with my wife and let you know.’
The stranger followed close behind the old man, but stopped when they were still some distance away from the couple’s home. He asked the old man to call him after he ha
d talked to his wife, and said he would wait there until then. What a civilised person he is, the old man thought. On reaching home, he told his wife about the stranger’s proposal even before he had tethered the goats. The old woman found it astonishing too. But she wouldn’t agree to sell Poonachi.
‘Let’s wait for another litter,’ she said. This resolve to hold fast to their possessions despite endless difficulties was unique to those who lived off the land. ‘Let’s wait,’ they would say. ‘Let’s hold on for a few more days.’ And they would keep putting off any decision on the matter. This tendency was strong in the old woman too, but she agreed to sell the bucks.
The old man wondered if he should have quoted a higher price.
‘Go on! There is no limit to your greed. If we let this deal slip, where can we find a buyer? Call him and say, “You’re like God to us. Take these kids with you.” No matter how much you give to this heart, it will never be enough.’
‘Yes, yes. I forgot. No matter how much you give to this heart, it will never be enough,’ the old man laughed.
The buyer read the signal from a wave of the old man’s hand and came over. When he was told that the mother was not for sale, he didn’t exert any pressure on them. Once the old man had calculated the amount, he paid with a high denomination currency note. The old man didn’t have the money to give him the change. ‘Keep it,’ the buyer told the old man. He could have bought another kid with that amount. The old woman was anxious to return the money. She took all the coins from her pot and brought them to him.
The man said, ‘When she delivers the next litter, send word to me. I’ll buy one or two kids. Consider this an advance for that purchase and keep it with you.’
His smile made her realise that he meant every word he said. Just then, a cart arrived, drawn by a pair of buffaloes. There were two men in it. They seemed to be servants accompanying the stranger. They got down, caught hold of the kids and put them in the cart. Then they tethered each kid to a peg.
The Story of a Goat Page 10