Our Favourite Indian Stories (36 page)

After that I just fled from the house. Hadn't I become a stranger there? He might guess that I, who had always liked to walk along the edge of the sea must have been washed away by the high tide. I felt that the man who could not pay even the next month's rent might start hating the girl responsible for his misfortune. And then her beauty might suddenly turn into a deformity.

The beach was quite dark though streaks of light had appeared in the east. It was the darkness that had the colour of smouldering funeral ashes. Darkness that had the smell of clay which could be used for making statues. Did that house, one hundred and fifty years old, bid me a silent farewell when I walked away along the edge of the Arabian Sea with its countless mouths spewing froth and foam like rabid dogs? Except for the house, I did not feel any affection, at that moment, for any one sleeping in it.

I told myself: life so far has been just a dream. This flight alone is reality. This flight from the man I had loved once and from the respectable prison of marital life. Ignoring the grip of my fingers, the tip of the white
sari
I wore rose with arrogance against my onward rush, like the billowing sail of a boat. Solitude seemed to shroud me with the lightness of a cloud. I had known its touch from the days of my girlhood. My legs lost their balance each time the sea-wind blew. My feet sank into the wet sand which was full of crab holes. In those moments, the newly sprouted grief in my heart bound me to the world.

The cold sea froze my ankles. When the birds start crying in the yard, I thought, or when the sun reaches the central quadrangle, two persons, dead-alive, will rub their eyes, rise and look around in the house which I have left behind. With heavy footsteps, they will run to and fro and search for me in each one of those rooms.

The sun's rays will again fall on the statues along the edge of the central courtyard. And they will come alive. The man struck with old age and the seventeen-year-old girl will change into statues. They will be mere statues in the sex-act too. Statues, with the dilated nostrils of a race horse.

I suddenly felt that the sea had the smell of corpses. I ran forward like a kite about to take flight, swinging my arms so that my limbs would not freeze in the wind. Through the corner of my right eye, at that moment I saw the sun rising in the east.

Translated by
C. K. Mohammed Ummer

Thakazhi Sivasankaran Pillai

The temple occupied the highest spot in the countryside. But even there the deity now stood in water up to its neck. There was water everywhere. The people of the countryside had all gone to look for dry places. If a house owned a boat, one person stayed back to guard the possessions. In the three-roomed upper storey of the temple there were sixty-seven children, and three hundred and fifty-six older people, dogs, cats, goats and fowls huddled together in peaceful co-existence.

Chenna-
pariah
had been standing in water for one whole night and day. He had no boat-and his master had fled for his life three days ago. When the water first began to peep into the house, he had already built a loft with sticks and coconut leaves woven together. He spent two days on it hoping that the food would quickly subside. Also, there were four or five clusters of bananas and a hayrack. He feared that some smart chap would carry it off if he left the house. And so he remained.

Now there was knee-deep water above the floorboard of the loft. Two rows of the coconut leaf thatch on the roof were already under water. From inside, Chennan called out, but who was there to hear him? A pregnant
pariah
woman, four small children, a cat and dog—these were his dependents. He was sure that within twelve hours the water would flow over the roof, and that would be the end of them all. For three days there had been no end to the rain. He broke open one row of the thatched roof and looked in all directions. There was a large boat paddling northward. He called out to the boatman in the loudest voice he could summon. Luckily, they understood the situation and turned the boat towards the hut. One by one Chennan pulled his woman, his children, the cat and the dog out through the opening. By that time the boat had drawn close. The children were climbing into it when Chennan heard a cry. 'Hai Chennacha...'— someone called out from the west, and Chennan turned towards the voice. It was Kunjeppan from Madiathara crying out from him housetop. Chennan hustled his wife into the boat. Taking the opportunity, the cat leapt in. Nobody remembered the dog. At the moment he was sniffing around on the west side of the house, examining things on his own. The boat moved forward and its distance from the hut widened.

The dog returned to the spot where he expected the family to be and saw the boat already far away. It seemed to be flying away. He began to howl in alarm. He produced a succession of sounds like a helpless human being in distress— but who was there to hear him? He ran on all four sides of the roof, and smelling it, howled on. A frog perched on the hut heard the cry. Frightened, it jumped with a plop into the water. The dog stood staring in fear at the spot in the water ruffled by the frog's jump.

He wanted food and went searching for it all round the hut. A frog urinated into his nostrils and slipped off into the water. The restless dog sneezed and coughed. With one of his front paws he cleaned his face. The rain started pouring again, and the dog crouched under its fury. Meanwhile, his master had landed safely at Ambalapuzha. It was night. A huge crocodile floated by slowly, almost brushing the hut. The dog howled in fear, tail down, but the crocodile passed along without noticing him.

The wretched animal sat on top of the hut. Looking up at the dark sky he howled. His sad cry must have been heard far and wide.

The kindly God of sound Vayu, bore the cry to other shores. Some people heard it and perhaps murmured to themselves, 'Ayyo, a dog is left desolate on the housetop-what a shame!' Perhaps his master was having a meal on the shore to which he had gone. Perhaps now the master must have remembered the animal as he ate. The dog's howl, long and whining, began to grow feeble. He heard a voice chanting verses from the
Ramayana
, pricked up his ears and became silent for sometime. Then, as if his heart would break, he started howling again.

In the deep silence of that dark night the chanting of the
Ramayana
filled the air. The dog again pricked up his ears and listened intently. He stood motionless. The sweet tones of the chanting mingled with the cold unabating wind. The only other sound that could be heard was that of the wind. He found his tender nose had become red and swollen.

In the afternoon two men passed along in a small boat. The dog barked and wagged its tail hopefully. He tried to make them understand his plight in as human a way as possible. He stood in the water, poised to jump into the boat.

'Hey, there stands a dog.' shouted one man. As if he understood the compassion in the voice the dog wagged its tail in gratitude.

'Let him be,' said the other man.

The dog prayed with his eyes and tried twice to jump into the boat; but the boat moved further and further away. As the dog started howling again, one boatman turned his head and looked back.
'Ayyo
-no that was not the boatman calling, it was the human groan of the dog.' The anguished, exhausted cry mingled with the shrieking of the wind and was heard once again above the ripple of the waves on the water.

The dog stood gazing at the boat till it was out of sight. As if hating the world and saying goodbye to it, he mounted the top of the hut. Perhaps he was saying to himself that he would never love man again. He lapped up some cold water. He looked at the birds flying overhead, and at a watersnake gambolling in the waves. Through the opening from which Channan had pulled out his family, the watersnake got in. The dog watched. Goaded by the fear of death and gnawing hunger he barked loudly. Anyone could have understood him now, for the language he uttered was universal.

Storm and rain started again. The roof was becoming unsteady because of the continuous lapping of the waves from somewhere nearby. The dog heard human voices again. 'From where is the dog crying? Haven't the owners abandoned the hut?' There, near the banana tree, the dog saw a boat moored. It was filled with bunches of bananas, straw, coconuts. He turned towards the boatmen and barked angrily, edging close to the water. One of the men in the boat reached up to the banana tree.

The other warned: 'Be careful; it looks as though that dog will jump.'

He did jump, so that the man let go his hold and fell into the water. The other man helped him back into the boat. Meanwhile, the dog swam out of the water and perched again on top of the hut. The robbers cut every single cluster of banana.

Hearing the dog's furious bark they said, 'Wait and we'll show you.'

They piled more straw into their boat. Finally, one man climbed on to the top of the hut. The dog fastened its teeth on the man's leg and bit off a mouthful of flesh. Crying in agony the man jumped back into the boat, while the other man administered a resounding blow on the dog's head with his oar. The dog cried in a faint voice-
myawoo, mayawoo
. Soon, even that sound could not be heard. The man who was bitten lay in the boat and cried out loud, the other bidding him be quiet lest they attracted notice. For a long time the dog kept on barking at the receding boat. By then it was midnight. A large dead cow came floating by and got caught near the hut. The dog came near it and looked at it, but did not dare climb down. Slowly the carcass grew disentangled and moved downstream. The dog sprang on to it. Tail wagging, he dug his teeth into the carcass and gorged himself on the plentiful flesh.

Abruptly, the dog disappeared as the carcass went under for a while. After that one could only hear the howl of the storm, the croaking of frogs, and the sound of the waves on the river. The dog was silent: his heart-rending cries and moans were no longer heard. Rotten carcasses floated down the river, crows pecking at them undisturbed. There was desolation everywhere and nothing to prevent thieves from plying their trade.

After a time the hut collapsed. There was nothing to be seen now in that endless expanse of water. Till his death the dog had guarded his master's possessions. The crocodiles had him now, and the hut also was finished.

The water began to recede. Chennan came swimming towards his hut to find out what had happened to his dog. Underneath a coconut palm he saw the dead body of a dog gently swayed by the ripples. With his fingers, Chennan turned the carcass over and looked at it. He wondered if it was his dog. The ear had been bitten off; the skin had rotted and that made it difficult to tell its colour.

Translated by
Samuel Mathai

Chaduranga

Sitting in front of the fire I pulled out a burning faggot, shaking out the embers and scraping them together mechanically. I placed on them a brass dish filled with castor-oil. In the boiling oil I seemed to see Ayya's face dancing and shaking...(a hide and seek vision).

Every Monday it was his habit to sit for his oil-massage and hot bath. Indeed, Ayya's oil-bath was famous in the neighbourhood. When they saw him erect and strong in spite of the grey in his thick moustache and in the hair on the chest, they used to say that this oil-bath was what kept him strong and erect.

My arms used to nearly drop of exhaustion when I gave Ayya his elaborate oil-massage. He would say 'My bodyaches just vanish when your hands rub me.' He would look at me in a very special way through oil-filled eyes and say, 'Our Awwa's arms were not strong.' I used to stop him saying, 'Why should we discuss a dead woman.' It had always struck me that it was no joke for a weak woman like my mother to have lived with this hefty mountain of a man for over twenty years.

My hands felt as if they were rubbing a stone when I rubbed him. The water had to be steaming hot and as I poured it on him-shoulder, thigh, head-my hands would be steaming. He would then lie down covered with four
kalkunke
blankets. I had to keep the blankets pressed on him for at least half an hour. When he rose, the bed would be wringing wet...

The castor berries put out to dry in the yard began popping in the sun and I woke up from my reverie. Even as I took the oil dish off the cinders, memories of Ayya troubled me. Pulling out a faggot from the roof beam, I walked out. The castor berries were slowly opening out as I squatted in the yard and pounded them with the acrca strip.

When Ayya was alive she used to say, 'The daughter has grown up chest-high. Should you not get her married?' Ayya would answer lightly 'Yes... yes... let the right bridegroom come.' So many prospective grooms were suggested, including Ayya's brother but Ayya did not approve. Why, Ayya was sturdy even now and if he wanted to marry, who could refuse?... No, Ayya would not hear of it. He fell that to ask for another woman was to lost all respect; and if any one hinted at another marriage he would stare at them and ask them gruffly to shut up. They would fall silent in fear. Even I felt afraid of him except at the time of his oil-bath. Sometimes, when he sat with a
beedi
in his mouth, staring at the wall in heavy silence, I would wonder 'Is this really my Ayya?' .... I had studied his nature well. If he wanted something of me, he would be a pretty parrot babbling innocently. At other times he would be a silent brooding ascetic.

Getting up and going into the kitchen I brought out a wooden plank. Placing the pounded castor berries on it she put all her weight on the plank and ground them. As the skin of the berries was being rubbed out, she felt something was being rubbed out within...

Sankranti
came. It was a day of great joy for my Ayya. He would get up as dawn was breaking. He could drive his cattle to the pond, scrub them clean, bring them back, spread hay in front of them and tie them up in the cattle shed. He would mix colours-red, blue, yellow-in oil or milk and paint the horns of his cattle. He would then stick pretty buntings and decorate the horns as well as the silver caps on the horn ends. My work on that day would be to apply turmeric and
kumkum
on the foreheads of all the cows and bullocks and garland them, do
arathi
to them and light
agarbathies
. Later I could feed every cow and bullock with morsels of
kichadi
mixed with
payasa
and then bananas. In the evening, the cattle were made to jump through the flames. At that time Ayya would be like a man inspired, moving here and there, as if possessed. A hundred times would he ask me 'Is the decoration all right?' (But why was he not equally anxious to see his daughter beautifully dressed and decorated, I wondered. Everybody should admire his decorated cattle, but if any one as much as even looked at me, why did cinders come out from his eyes?) In the evening they spread bundles of hay and dry grass near the Doddakere lane and lit the fire. The flames rose waist high. All the other cattle took fright and ran away, Ayya's thousand rupee pair jumped over the flames. And how Ayya cried out: 'Ho...Ho...Besh...Besh...' Ayya's joy on that day was to be seen in order to be believed.