We squatted on the ground by the cow dung. The stench wasn’t anything unusual, but it didn’t help my hunger. The man reading the newspaper moved away, uneasily, wriggling his butt. I sensed he was uncomfortable on the side of the bench closest to us. I shifted closer to the cow dung.
I sipped my tea. It poured into my stomach like acid. I was hungry and my stomach felt bloated with gas. I heard the dripping of the tea into the bottom of my stomach. At least, have the tea, I told myself. It’ll do you good.
Our tea was served in green and pink plastic cups. I got green and Karuppu got pink. Everyone else at the tea shop got glasses. I was the one holding the manlier of the two colours; Karuppu held the colour meant for girls. I smiled but didn’t say anything.
Opposite us, there was a large banner with a large face. The face had a moustache that seemed impenetrable, and a big smile below it. I counted twenty teeth just in the front. I wondered how many he’d have if he opened his mouth. To the right of his face, there were about fifteen or twenty smaller faces. They were arranged like coconuts. I couldn’t read but I figured it had something to do with the elections.
When I was done, I walked to the tap on the right wall of the shop and washed my cup. Karuppu did the same. There were movie posters on the wall, peeling off and dirty. I recognized two or three actors, but most of them had died before I was born. We plopped the cups on top of the tap. It seemed as though the tap wore a cap. I picked up my goat-skin bag and slung it over my shoulder.
“Keep the money on the bench,” the tea shop guy said, washing the tea glasses.
I placed two ten-rupee coins on the bench. The man with the newspaper frowned. I’d come too close. I twirled my moustache as I walked away from the shop.
My moustache was six hairs thick. Karuppu’s moustache was about four hairs thick and grew on the edges of his mouth. It was smaller than mine, but the hair on his chin and jaws made it seem, from the side, like he was older than me. I glanced at him, still twirling my moustache. I saw him swing the basket over his head.
“Take it off,” I said.
“Why? Basket on head means no sun.”
“There’s full shade on this side. See, the market is full of roofs only. No sun at all. You just want to play the fool. Just listen to your elders.”
“Listen to your elders means? You’re not older than me… Four months and all doesn’t count. I’ll listen when someone is really older than me.”
“If you continue to do nonsense, the landlord will beat till we are pissing. Why should I be beaten for your nonsense?”
“Nothing! Don’t lie—last week also when my father got deer from the forest he fully ate and gave my father sixty rupees. Anyone else from the foothills get sixty rupees working in the village?”
I slapped the basket off. I slapped him again on his head. Karuppu winced. I walked away. I was cool. He picked up a few black stones and threw them at me. They hit my back. The stones were hot and sharp against my skin. One of them produced a scratch. When sweat touched the fresh wound, I winced. He began to laugh. I turned around and threw some stones back at Karuppu. I felt my fingers and legs ripen with anger, yet somehow I felt a cool feeling of play on the surface of my skin. I ran towards him and pounced.
“Ey!” a voice said.
Both of us froze. I bowed down halfway addressing the ground as I spoke.
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep all of your playing within your settlement. When you come into the village, just do your work and leave. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, go that side. Walk on the edge of the road. Don’t make the main road dirty. You people don’t even wear footwear. I don’t know what you’ve stepped on.”
Karuppu and I went to that side of the road. There was no roof or shade here. I felt bad for asking Karuppu to take off the basket. The sun shined on our heads. The sand felt like daggers. We walked towards the landlord’s home in silence, half-hopping, attempting to dodge the heat of the ground since we didn’t wear footwear.
*
There were trees till the eye could see. Everywhere was the same. Thick poles of black stood, ribbed with cracks and bruises. Above, branches entangled and intertwined, like hair. There was no sun on the earth. Mangoes hung from the branches in bunches of nine or ten. At the top of the mango it was olive. The peel transfused to scarlet in the middle, and a whisper of teal spoke before the violet tip.
A crow poked through the top of a fruit. A sour aroma filled the air. The flesh was a murky yellow. Three more crows flapped noisily and settled nearby. They tore into the fruit, and juice flowed lazily from the punctures. I gazed at the crows. My stomach grunted. I swear I heard Karuppu’s stomach growling too. The last thing I’d eaten was a fat rat last afternoon. I hoped, like Karuppu said, that the landlord was generous and that he would give us forty rupees. We would get three idlis each for forty.
After the crows ate, the fruit was deflated, like a balloon forgotten after a festival. Then, fruit flies gathered at the banks of the small streams of mango juice. They nibbled so slowly that it seemed they would never finish eating. Crows, greedy, came back for the fruit flies, waiting in silence on the black branches.
“What are you looking at?” the landlord said. “Are you the snake-catchers?”
His voice was loud. The crows exploded in every direction.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Don’t come into the house. Set your trap, or whatever it is, outside the compound. When you are done, we will keep a bucket of water. You will wash away your foot marks and things before you leave.”
I recognized him from the banner in the tea shop. He was a stout man. Most of his weight was in his belly. Every time he moved, the rest of his body followed his belly. He’s a mango himself, I thought. I’d imagined him much bigger and taller, his moustache big and solid, from the banner near the teashop. His moustache was quite normal. It was made of thirteen or fourteen hairs. In comparison to Karuppu and me, given our age, that wasn’t much. And below the moustache, the landlord never smiled, so I couldn’t count his teeth.
He nodded and went back into his house. The house was large and white. It had a terracotta roof. When I looked into the house, I saw the floor in the centre showered with sunlight.
When you build shelter, you cover all of it, I thought. Stupid fellows, I thought.
The house was bound by a large concrete wall. The compound left space for a large back and front yard. In the front yard there were two white cars. To the right of the cars, there were a lot of cages. There were roosters in some of these cages, covered in bandages and plasters. In the other cages, which were open, there were hounds. They slept, one on top of another. They seemed like a grand slobber of jaggery. They woke up with a start every time a mango fell. They barked about and drooled for a while, and went back to sleep, seeming like a heap of jaggery once again.
“Let’s steal those roosters,” Karuppu said. “We can see them fight at night, it’ll be full jolly only!”
“Shut up and do you work,” I said, staring at the dogs. They were all the same shade of brown. They had rolls of fat hanging from their faces and necks, and their bodies seemed as though wrapped in cloth. I looked at my chest. I found my ribs protruding, and on top, in the centre, about six sprigs of hair stuck out, curly and limp.
“Look,” Karuppu said.
On the mud there were some shallow lines. The lines began with a curve on the left, eventually became straight, and curved again on the right. They looked like my ribs.
“These fellows thought this was a cobra,” Karuppu laughed.
“Don’t shout,” I said. “Do you see those dogs? They’ll come and bite you in your underwear, then you won’t have your cobra anymore! Just shut up. Talk in whispers. We’ll catch the snake and leave.”
“It’s a dumb rat snake! I don’t need any basket for this. I’ll catch it with my hands!”
“Karuppu!” I shouted through my teeth. I whispered, sounding almost like a snake. “Come back!”
Karuppu walked into the grove, following the tracks. He walked half crouching, with slow deliberate steps. He kept his feet wide apart, making sure he didn’t touch the traces. I squatted with my hands over my head. My heart flew to my mouth. Then, it sank into my stomach and perhaps got digested. I swallowed lots of spit. I was over come with thoughts of the hounds mauling me, mangling my grunting stomach, and pulling at my arms with their fangs. I thought of what the elders of our community advised: landlords come down with a hundred canes upon just one spine. I thought of how my spine protruded, curving on my back, like the rail line that ran outside the village.
My stomach grunted again. I wished I could get something to eat. I looked at all the mangoes. The scent slept heavily on the air. If you got close you felt the taste on your tongue. I saw the crows perched on the branches, bobbing and adjusting their heads, scouting for the right fruit to eat.
Karuppu was wading through the leaves. He placed his feet between leaf piles. Then, in the crack of a second, all the crows that sat on the tree to the right of Karuppu, flew into the air, cawing, flapping, cacophonous. Karuppu turned around and looked at me. He smiled. In his eyes, there was the glint of a small ray of sun that escaped the canopy.
I slapped my forehead.
“Take the basket,” I shouted through my teeth again.
Karuppu dashed straight ahead and dived into the leaves. I couldn’t see him any longer through the trees and leaves. There was a rustle from that spot. He stood up, holding a rat-snake about two metres long.
My stomach roared fervently. I put one hand against my stomach, and pulled out a gunny sack from the goat-skin bag. Karuppu walked back. I looked into the grove. Each tree held at least five-hundred mangoes. I couldn’t count the number of trees there were.
“Did you see any rats there?” I asked Karuppu. “Or small birds?”
“This fellow fully would have eaten all,” he said looking at the snake. “Look how big; like python. Now, cobra makes sense.”
“This is only your second catch. Why such immaturity? What if he bit you?”
“This is not cobra. If he’ll bite: I’ll go back to settlement.”
I held the gunny sack open. Karuppu held the snake by the tail and stretched it to its full length. It hung limp in between his hands. His hands were too short for the snake.
“Put inside fast,” I said.
He let go of the tail and swayed the snake around like a rope. The snake, startled, whipped its body, and its tail went into the edge of Karuppu’s left eye like a needle. Karuppu dropped the snake. He clutched the left side of his face, cursing. The snake dropped on the ground and whipped itself again. Its face landed on Karuppu’s ankle. Karuppu shook his ankle. The snake lodged its sharp array of teeth in his foot. Karuppu kicked the snake up in the air. I looked up. The snake wiggled black against the sun. I opened the gunny sack. It fell inside, tail first. I moved the sack around so that its head would fall in too.
Karuppu screamed. His face mushed into a frown, all his muscles crushing, flexed, as though someone was stepping on his head. A slim line of blood started at each of the dots and fell to the ground. The bite mark looked like a curved comb.
The hounds bellowed. They ran out of the compound, drooling on the mud. When they looked at us, they halted and jumped and ran about in circles. The landlord walked out. He stood at the compound.
“What have you people done?” He screamed. More crows flew from the canopies.
“Nothing, sir,” I said. “We caught snake. He gotten hurt. We go and get medicine.”
“Is there any blood?”
“Yes, sir. There is blood. Please pay, we’ll go away soon.”
“Oh God! You first spill your blood in my house and now you want to go away? Let him go! You sit here and clean the blood. We don’t want your dirty blood here. I’ll ask Vengaiah to keep the water. I don’t want even the dogs knowing you’ve been here!”
“Sir, I need to go with him. He is badly bitten.”
“I don’t care.”
“It’s only a rat-snake,” Karuppu said. “Just tie cloth around. I’ll go to the settlement.”
I pulled out a veshti and tore it in half. I wrapped it around Karuppu’s foot. I did four rounds of the cloth and tied both ends very tightly. A small spot of red began to grow and bloom on the white cloth.
“Vengaiah!” The landlord screamed. “Come here quickly! Vengaiah!”
Karuppu walked away on the sand, limping. The veshti was dirtied already by the crimson mud. I watched him till I couldn’t see him anymore. When he disappeared behind the horizon, I imagined how his mother would scream and wail when she saw his foot.
*
How to clean mud, I thought. I squatted by the drops of blood. The drops were now congealed and looked like beads. I sprinkled some water over the spot. The water was cool. It felt nice in the heat. I used my hands as a broom. I looked at the spot. It was still crimson. I repeated the process again.
“Is your friend okay?” A voice said from the gate. I looked up to find a boy. He seemed more or less my age. Maybe, he’s some relative, I thought. It seemed to me from the way he spoke Tamil that he had swallowed his tongue, or perhaps that it was thicker than normal. His tongue folded every time he said ‘r’ or the tongue kissed the roof of his mouth when he said ‘t’ and ‘n.’ The way he spoke seemed very foreign to me.
“I don’t know, sir,” I said, looking at the ground. He walked a little closer.
“It’s fascinating how you dress. Is that all you wear? Something to cover your groyne?”
“Yes, sir. Work easy like this. Suits weather,” I said, wiping the mud faster. I wanted to go away soon.
“That’s very interesting … So what are you people called?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“So you don’t know what you are called … Where do you live? What’s that place called?”
“I don’t know, sir. Just call it the settlement, or sometimes the place. Only for usage,” I said. I wanted to eat something. I wanted to go away.
“I have heard very illuminating things about your eating habits, so leave that. I’m interested in your God. In college, we study tribal religion, and the notion of art in deviant cultures. Do you have religion, or a God, or anything of the sort?”
I didn’t understand a lot of what he said. He seemed interested. His face looked pleasant with a smile. Either way, if I answer him, he’ll go away I thought.
“Yes, sir, we have God,” I said, stopping my work.
“So what is the name of your God? Do you have any rituals or myths or legends surrounding it?”
“No sir, we don’t have any name. We call God, God. And we don’t have any mythologies. All know God is the father of my grandfather’s great grandfather’s father. This we are sure, sir.”
“Right. So how did this God come about? Did he not have a father?”
“No, sir he didn’t have father. See, sir, when Rama went to bring Sita, Lakshman was ill. So Rama ordered Hanuman to bring the Sanjeevani.”
“Yes, yes, I am very aware.”
“Hanuman was flying, looking for the herb. He stopped at our hill. Then he was looking for this sanjeevani herb, but in mistake he ate the neem tree leaves. So lots of bitterness! Hanuman stopped by a stone and began vomit. He vomited for many nights and many days on the stone. This stone, now full with Hanuman’s vomit became our God. And slowly, all sorts of creatures, tigers, leopards, trees, shrubs, deer, birds, and all of life itself came … Just as life came: my grandfather’s great grandfather’s father also came. This is how our God came into existence, sir.”
The boy seemed very pleased. He smiled and sauntered about looking at the sky and the grove and the dogs. I continued to water the spot where Karuppu had bled. If I finish fast, I could leave, I thought.
“This is very interesting,” the boy said. “You know it is like this: in river maps there are mighty rivers. From these mighty rivers, tiny tributaries flow away, having their own lives, reaching their own places, fostering their own forests. This is sort of like that. There’s one big mighty myth, and small offshoots and tributaries flow away from the big one.”
“But in mountain and forests, it is tributaries that flow into the mighty river. It is the tributaries that give the mighty rivers their might.”
*
The sun was far west and half drowned in the black canopies. I was done cleaning the blood. I was splashing water around the compound. I traced everywhere we had taken a step and dropped water with my hand on the footprints. The water was luke-warm now from all the sun. I felt weak and my body bent over my knees. There was a stinging pain at the bottom of my back. My feet hurt. If only I had eaten, even just another rat, all this wouldn’t be making me jittery, as though I had seen something very scary.
I thought of the teashop and how we were served in plastic cups. I thought of us washing our own cups. I thought of the landlord’s son speaking of our God. I thought of where we stayed in the forest, and the hill, and the boulders, and the birds, and the animals. I remembered Karuppu bleeding, and I thought of how he’d have walked back to the settlement through all the foliage, limping. I thought of how there was no difference between the crimson of the sand and the bleeding. I thought of the harvesting. I wondered if the landlord had so many teeth since he ate so many mangoes.
Leave all that! I was overcome with hunger. It began at the base of my abdomen like a thorn, and slowly spread to my upper thighs and lungs, acidic, burning everything in the way. I watched the crows pierce into the mangoes as I poured the water on the footprints.
I arrived at the gate after a full round around the house. There was a five rupee coin placed on the compound wall. It glinted pink in the sunset sun. I placed the empty bucket outside the gate and picked up the coin. I walked over to my goat-skin bag, slung it over my shoulder, and walked out of the grove. My feet felt heavy so I couldn’t help but drag them.
When I was outside, I looked at the grove, so vast and large, like an ocean. Each tree held so many mangoes. I picked up a stone, and threw it at a mango. The stone ripped through the stem. The mango fell on the copper leaves. The hounds bellowed from inside the grove. My eyes were still. I looked at the cottage through the trees. I imagined fangs sinking into my dark skin. I thought of a hundred canes coming down on my spine. Like my eyes, the cottage was motionless, so I climbed over the fence. At night, electricity ran through the fence to keep monkeys, pigs, and thieves away. I crawled past the fence towards the mango, placing my limbs only where there were no leaves. My jaws stung when I saw the fallen mango. I put the mango to my molars and tore open the peel. A sweet aroma swallowed me. I took a bite that filled my mouth. My mouth was so full that even chewing was difficult. Saliva and golden juice dripped from the sides of my lips.
Vikram Mervyn writes prose. He has been or is scheduled to be published in the Hakara Journal, The Sunflower Collective, Hammock Mag, and Cat People edited by Devapriya Roy. Other than lazing about, Vikram spends his time watching films, reading, and hunting down obscure music.