The Story of a Goat

by Perumal Murugan

  Poonachi was beset by a ravenous hunger. She was constantly famished. The green fronds were not enough. She ate the bark off trees. With great effort, she chewed and swallowed sticks and twigs. She couldn’t even fill her belly with water. The old woman trudged to some distant place and came back carrying a pot of water. From the pot, she would measure out a little water and give it to Poonachi.

  Poonachi’s other problem was the load in her belly. The kids weren’t getting enough nourishment. They lay inside her, wriggling like worms. Each kid kicked in a different direction. Poonachi’s spine and ribs showed as lines on her body; her lower abdomen hung down like a bag.

  Poonachi didn’t have the strength to carry her stomach and walk. She couldn’t stand for even a few minutes. There was no option but to lie down often, but getting up was very hard. She had to push her body forward, kneel with her forelegs bent, lift her hindquarters and get up. Since her forelegs lacked the strength to support her, they would buckle and fold. After getting up halfway, she would drop suddenly to the floor. Unable to bear its own weight, her stomach would dash against the ground and Poonachi could feel her kids squirming and crying. By the time she got up, she felt as if she had been to the brink of death and back.

  One day, after lying down for a while, Poonachi wanted to get up. Her legs had turned numb and wooden. She had to stretch to set them right. If she couldn’t even unfold them from a bent position, what could she do? She tried several times to lift herself up. She could raise her body slightly, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. She hadn’t stood up for so long that they had become immobile. Poonachi cried feebly. She couldn’t even raise her voice now. It was as weak as it had been when she was an infant.

  When the old woman’s eyes happened to fall on Poonachi, she realised that she was crying. She ran to her and assisted her by lifting and holding up her lower body. Poonachi could not plant her numb legs firmly on the ground. The old woman massaged her limbs until life returned to them.

  After that incident, whether it was day or night, the old woman remained vigilant. Every now and then, she would lift Poonachi and make her stand. Soon it came to pass that Poonachi could not get up without the old woman’s help. The old woman too became despondent and fearful, wondering how Poonachi was going to deliver her litter and what they were going to do with the kids. There were very few palm fronds left on the tree. Now they were forced to snip the sprouts. All the fences in the fields had dried up and collapsed. There was only bare soil everywhere. Would they have to eat dirt from now on?

  The old woman took out the millet grain that she had planned to give Poonachi after the delivery. She ground a fistful and cooked some gruel with the flour. These were the very last bits of grain in the house. The couple drank a mouthful each and went to sleep.

  The old woman’s belly had shrunk and her body was weak. When she lay down, she fell asleep at once. She had laid her cot right next to Poonachi. Before she lay down to sleep, she lifted Poonachi and got her to stand up. Poonachi’s legs trembled as if they were going to snap and collapse any minute. Still, she made an attempt to stand. She wished each day that the load in her belly would reduce. How were these kids growing inside her merely on pieces of palm frond? The weight was unbearable.

  Wanting to lie down, she bent her forelegs slowly and planted her knees on the ground. Suddenly her body slid to the ground, lacking even its usual strength. She felt her consciousness disconnecting from her body. She rested her head on a side post of the hut. She needed support of some kind. Thoughts raced chaotically through her mind.

  She had no memory of the time she had spent in Bakasuran’s arms. She knew about it only through the old man’s ebullient description of their meeting. The scene embedded in her mind as her first memory was that of the old woman cooing ‘Poonachi, Poonachi’ and putting her on her lap. Though she suffered for want of milk, those days were quite pleasant. Enraptured by her memories, Poonachi fell asleep. Different faces came to her in her dreams. Poovan appeared most often. The face of every kid she had ever birthed appeared too. The obese shape of the old ram that had tried to mount her in the big pen crept in like a shadow and engulfed her. The figure of Bakasuran formed inside her and grew. He was as tall as a palm tree. His arms hung down like thin sticks. He placed Poonachi on the tip of his finger, lifted her up, and gently moved the finger in circles. Poonachi felt giddy. Circling faster and faster, he flung her into space. Poonachi rose up in the air and fell upside down towards the ground. Her heart was racing. Her face would be smashed to bits like a coconut when she hit the earth. That would be the end of her. Right now. Poonachi opened her eyes suddenly.

  It was dark all around. Her head was resting on the side post of the hut. She shook her head. It hadn’t hit the ground yet. It was still intact. She felt dizzy. It seemed as if her whole body had become numb, as if she had been lying down for a long time. Captivated by her dreams, she had lost track of time. Perhaps the old woman would come and lift her up. What had happened to her?

  She looked at the cot, her eyes now accustomed to the darkness. The old woman lay inert. Poonachi tried to raise her voice and call out to her. The night was bereft of sound. The chatter of birds had died down a long time ago. There were no cries of goats or cattle, no chirping of insects or beetles either. Everything seemed to have frozen still.

  Poonachi tried to raise her voice. A feeble sound emerged from her throat. She kept trying. It didn’t look like the old woman was going to get up. She couldn’t move her own body at all. Nothing seemed to be moving inside her belly, either. Was there no movement, or was she incapable of sensing it? Her body turned hard as a stone and sank into the dirt. Only her consciousness was still alive. She rested her head again on the side post. It refused to stay up, and kept sliding down. She tried with all her strength to settle back on the post. After that, she had no idea what happened.

  When the old woman woke up in a panic and checked, Poonachi seemed to be asleep with her head drooping to one side. The old woman ran to her urgently and touched her.

  What lay there was not Poonachi, but a stone idol.

  Afterword*

  The Dormant Seed

  HOW LONG CAN an untold story rest in deep slumber within the dormant seed? I am fearful of writing about humans; even more fearful of writing about gods. I can write about demons, perhaps. I am even used to a bit of the demonic life. I could use it as a relish for now. All right, then, let me write about animals.

  There are only five species of animals with which I am deeply familiar. Of them, dogs and cats are meant for poetry. It is forbidden to write about cows or pigs. That leaves only goats and sheep. Goats are problem-free, harmless and, what’s more, energetic. A story needs narrative pace. Therefore, I chose to write about goats.

  I didn’t take very long to write this novel. Three months went by like a second. In that moment, pushing aside all the confusions, dilemmas and sorrows I had experienced so far, a great joy filled my being. The reason was Poonachi, the black goat. It was a major challenge to create her on the page and the chief impediment was the diffidence that had come to reside in me. I believed that Poonachi would be able to break it. Having finished the novel, I feel now that my faith in her was not unjustified.

  The number of people to whom I must express my gratitude is large. First on that list are my friend and Madurai high court lawyer G.R. Swaminathan, and his wife, Mrs Kamakshi Swaminathan. There is much that I have received from them. One day, I wrote in my diary, ‘The unfortunate lesson that I’ve learnt from my experience of living all these years is that people are not that good or straight.’ That same day, I met Swaminathan for the first time. In the two years that I’ve spent in his company, my opinion has changed completely. That you can go beyond ideological differences and bind people together with love is an important lesson that I learnt from him. The other person who had an equal impact on me and encouraged me to face everything with a smiling face was Mrs Kamakshi Swaminathan. I take great pleasure in dedicating this
novel, which in a way can be considered my first work of prose fiction, to these two extraordinary individuals.

  When I shared the title of the novel with my friend, Srinivasan Natarajan, he gave me his vote of confidence and cheered me on. I appreciate his hard work and enthusiasm in designing the covers of the various re-issues of my novels and thank him with all my heart.

  My grateful thanks to everyone.

  Perumal Murugan

  Namakkal

  24 December 2016

  * Preface to the original Tamil edition of The Story of a Goat, published in December 2016.

  Translator’s Note

  IT IS A LITERARY translator’s lot, as well as privilege, to work with texts that cover a range of milieus, time periods and genres. The one thing common to all these texts is that the worlds they describe are inhabited mostly by humans. In contrast, the world of animals is normally a staple of children’s literature. I haven’t had the opportunity – or, truth be told, the inclination – to engage, as a translator, with works of creative fiction for children. The Story of a Goat features animals that think and feel, but it is not a novel meant for children. In fact, it may be the first Tamil novel about animals written for adult readers. George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) and Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog (1925) are two famous examples of this genre and readers who are familiar with the genre would not be far off the mark if they expect The Story of a Goat to be an intensely political work like these two texts.

  We live in dark times where our most intimate human feelings, as they have evolved through the ages, are under siege. We are compelled to protect and assert their primacy in order to stay human and sane. In The Story of a Goat, Murugan has done a marvellous job of creating a narrative that takes a feeble goat through a range of basic human emotions and urges. As we track the destiny of this orphan goat, shaped by a force-field of humans and animals, we realise that the author’s real theme is our own fears and longings, primordial urges and survival tactics. Through a feat of storytelling that is both masterly and nuanced, Murugan makes us reflect on our own responses to hegemony and enslavement, selflessness and appetite, resistance and resignation, living and dying. This novel is not just the story of a goat. Through his exploration of the life journey of an animal, Murugan leads us deep into ‘an intimate history of humanity’ and the irreducible human essence that we must fight to preserve.

  Starting life as a foundling and going through the ordeal of being a miracle, Poonachi experiences both the promise and the structural violence embedded in the life of a female. In Murugan’s tale, she turns into a stone idol at the moment of her death, harking back to a hoary tradition in the folk culture of Tamil Nadu whereby the memory of an innocent girl destroyed by the random and ever-present violence of the world is worshipped as a deity. And this may well be the key to reading this novel as an adult literary text for our times.

  As a translator, it was a novel experience for me to work with a narrative in which the feelings and experiences of animals, and the countless manifestations of their physicality, are tracked and described with subtlety and flair. I hope a close reading of the text will lead the reader to discover and recognise herself in and through Poonachi’s world and the tribulations of her brief, pain-filled existence.

  N. Kalyan Raman

  Chennai

  25 December 2017