I don’t know what you feel, or whose side you are on but I have told my story, sister, I haven’t lied to you, a man cannot lie when he has the taste of death on his tongue, I want you to write this all down and put it in the papers and tell the truth to the whole world. Let everyone read about what happened here and let them burn with anger. And yes, you can note this too, my name is Ramalingam, I live on the same street where the tragedy took place, I have studied up to the eighth standard.
12. Some Humanitarian Gestures
And since desperate times called for desperate measures, the extremely perturbed Inspector General of Police Mahadevan took certain liberties with his decisions. With the cosy benefit of hindsight, we could take shelter in blaming his haste but it must be borne in mind that on that particular day and under those pressing circumstances, Inspector General Mahadevan was left with no choice but to trust his instincts. When everything was in disorder, the atmosphere lent itself to rapid action. His first act was to get the suspects untied from the coconut trees which finally allowed the existing male survivors in Kilvenmani the freedom to be taken into proper police custody. His second act was to quickly dismiss the doctors who had been pressed into action at the behest of Inspector Rajavel. He ruled out a post-mortem or any procedure that involved taking the dead to a hospital. He reasoned that this was a modest humanitarian kindness that he could bestow on the victims. Nobody found the nerve to disagree, and the doctors were herded back to the hospital. Pleased that he had performed a gallant act of charity, he got the requisite courage to face his higher authorities.
Inspector Rajavel, in spite of his overwhelming deference to obedience, was unhappy with IG Mahadevan’s decision to bid goodbye to the doctors. This country policeman had been proud of the huge team at his disposal, and, naturally, he looked upon such downsizing as a personal affront. He was glad that at least the photographer, the firemen and the five-member village panchayat – made up of two untouchables (Thangavelu and Arumugam, a Paraiyar and Pallar), two Naidus and a Nadar for the neutrality – had been allowed to stay and identify the bodies.
Next, IG Mahadevan decided that the dead would not be returned to their relatives. This was his third charitable act of the day. He beamed with pride that he had solved the problem of handing over incomplete body parts of the unidentified victims. He was no longer rankled by questions: ‘What if there was a mix-up of the dead children? What if husbands mourned for other men’s wives? Would everybody at least get a complete corpse? What if the mass funeral fuelled a retaliation?’ As he had anticipated, the Communists argued for the right of the relatives to perform the last rites of the dead, but he was clear that he would neither allow dismembered corpses to create confusion among the bereaved, nor allow the angry comrades to hold the state to ransom.
The Communists struggled to enter the village but the police cordon was rigid and impenetrable, and their leadership in Madras was mired in confusion and could not give them further orders on whether to break the bandobust or watch passively. Comrade Meenakshisundaram threatened direst repercussions against the police publicly, but used a local journalist friend to negotiate with them on his behalf, and as a consequence of his two-pronged approach, he and Comrade Sukumaran were let inside to meet IG Mahadevan. They exchanged pleasantries without any awkwardness despite being aware that the occasion was highly inappropriate. The Communists had a one-point demand: ‘Give us our people’, but the police chief was in no mood to oblige. He patiently cited law and order problems, medical formalities, historical precedents, legal obstacles and investigation procedures, but to no avail. Clearly, such cold logic and persuasive techniques did not curry favour with the Communist leaders, who stuck to their stand.
‘I know you know this but do you think it is my personal decision? As a police officer, I want to let you know that we have been given shooting orders. How can anybody guarantee that their funerals would be peaceful? Who can assure us that there will not be another blood bath?’ IG Mahadevan said.
‘But the bodies belong to us.’
IG Mahadevan stayed silent for a long time. ‘I don’t disagree,’ he said, and, pointing towards the burnt hut, remarked that it was easier to pluck hair off a hen’s egg than to find matching pairs of legs, arms, a torso and a head for each of the dead from the heap of corpses.
‘No hands. No legs. No names. That’s our problem. Our people were murdered, and we need their bodies. They died defending our red flag and they will be buried under our red flag. Give them to us,’ Sukumaran demanded.
IG Mahadevan did not relent. ‘They might be dead meat, but we cannot ration them, comrade,’ he said.
Before he could retort, Comrade Sukumaran was escorted away. Comrade Meenakshisundaram followed him out, shouting anti-police slogans.
Born without eyes, the fire had used its feet to move. Lacking the forgiveness of water, it had burnt them with blindness and bitterness. So, that morning, the cheri did not carry the roses-and-marigolds smell of death. Only the coppery sick-sweet smell of charred flesh: a smell like nothing else, a smell that was almost a taste, a smell that was meant to be smuggled to the grave. Through the smoke clouds that hung heavier than mist, the police van returned to Kilvenmani to fetch the dead. The living had been taken away to the hospital, or taken into custody. Subban was the first to be loaded in, followed by ten-year-old Jothi. The gravedigger and his granddaughter. Kunjammal and Poomayil, wife and sister of Thangavelu, the only two others who were identified. Then, as if out of deference, the dead mother cradling the dead child. Then the men and the women and the children and the disjointed limbs and torsos and legs that were stumps and standalone skulls and unclassifiable chunks of charred flesh. Stick men and stick women and stick children: dark and devoured by fire. The remains of two babies muddled into a mess, so they were not on the list of dead. Such death diminished the pain of procedure. There was no time wasted applying the rule of nines, no necessity to extract dying declarations.
Inspector Rajavel was worried about the business of death certificates: should he get one made out for every dead body? How could those certificates carry names when only four corpses had been identified? Should they be numbered instead? The official count of the dead stood at forty-two. (The other two dead were habeas corpses. The police did not account for their deaths. Sankar: a one-year-old baby whose mother had thrown him outside the burning hut in the belief that he would be left to live but was caught by a gunman on his rifle bayonet, hacked into pieces and fed to the fire. Less spectacularly, a baby girl who had burned, leaving behind no distinct trace.)
Destination of the dead: Paappaan Sudukaadu, Nagapattinam. A cremation ground named after Brahmins but used for untouchables. The police van, meant for paved roads, takes the forty-two (plus two, silent) corpses through the main roads, through the caste-Hindu roads, through the banned roads, through the debarred roads. Having accompanied them on their final ride, Inspector Rajavel supervises the burning. In one common pyre, the bodies are piled one on top of another: as haphazard as they had been found, as haphazard as firewood. The cremation ground is infected with sufficient police presence to keep away the Communists who might launch a strike, retaliate and seize the bodies. None of the relatives is allowed to the funeral, not even the fourteen men with gunshot injuries who are held in custody at the government hospital, who refuse to eat unless they are allowed to visit the dead. Local villagers are roughed up. Schoolchildren turn up to have one last look at the dead but they do not leave.
The cremation is no electric-powered paradise. The charcoal-like corpses are set alight. The firewood is not sufficient, and, in a final act of defiance, the bodies refuse to burn. Inspector Rajavel is angry with the disobedient, stubborn corpses. He calls up the district collector, gets his permission to buy and bring in another load of firewood. The fresh supply of fuel and the efficiency of kerosene ensure that the dead disappear into ashes.
With the air of a man who has charmed a dead snake, Inspector Rajavel prepares to prep
are a catalogue of remains that will constitute evidence.
All that is left is a few bones. His efforts, however, have enabled him to be in possession of red paper shells, cartridge covers, shot-wads: signs of a shooting spree. Charred bamboo splinters represent a ghostly village of missing roofs, gutted mud-walled huts and half-burnt homes where only the grinding stone has withstood the fury of fire. A collection of pots and pans too, almost as if they were the remnants of a long-ago civilization.
And there is the seized material from the suspects: a Webley & Scott, a Stevens Arms Company firearm with 12-bore single barrel breech-loading capacity, and other, country-made shotguns.
A pile of paperwork awaits him. To link the crime with the guns, these suspect firearms have to be sent to the forensic laboratories. There is work with the doctors, work with the reporters.
He meets with Jameson – proprietor and photographer of the Eastern Studios – the man called in to capture this Christmas Day massacre. Like a Buddha in the backyard, the photographer has provided still-life renderings of destruction: thirty-five burnt huts, forty-something charred bodies heaped in mounds, dust that clouds the landscape. Inspector Rajavel refrains from looking at the pictures of the victims. In these hard times, he derives strength from facts and figures bonded by facts and figures, not photographs that flicker like ghosts.
Constable Muthupandi has brought in the measurements of Ramayya’s hut: the courtyard was seven feet by eleven feet, it led into a front room eleven feet long and an inside room that was eight feet long and nine feet wide. The walls were five feet and six inches tall. The roof has been completely burnt, the door and its frame have been charred, but the monkey door-bolt has stayed intact. From the inside room, the policemen have collected pieces of singed clothes. Then, Constable Nayagan lays out the metallic remains: two toe-rings, a talisman, and a silver fig leaf that covered some child’s shame.
Everything is carefully sealed in a bag.
Every one of them knows that evidence will never be enough.
part four
BURIAL GROUND
13. A Survival Guide
Everything would die its natural death. The visit of the politicians would fade out and journalists would stop being eager and this news would disappear from the headlines and fact-finding missions would be bored of report writing, and life in Kilvenmani would moodily limp back to normal. Even the men in uniform would stop being bothered. But, for the time being, that is all in the future. The men who have survived are nursing their wounds in the hospital, or in hiding, or huddling in jail. Every man in Kilvenmani over the age of seventeen has a case slapped on him. Back to work, the police are doing their duty. Most of the men are implicated in the Pakkirisami Pillai single murder case; the police, in love with variety, generously give everyone multiple sections of the Indian Penal Code.
Life, weighed down by death, weary of destruction, goes on.
So many women of the village have been wiped out, there is no one to sing the dirges of death. Men are not allowed to see their loved ones’ corpses; they take their mothers sisters wives daughters sons for dead because they have not been seen since that night. They secretly hope someone survived, they pray that those presumed dead send word. When someone appears after staying two days in a stranger’s house in another village, Kilvenmani erupts in joy.
People are worried that those escaping death might have been captured alive. They think of Comrade Chinnapillai whose body has never been found, they remember their young women who were kidnapped and carried away and raped and killed and buried in some coconut grove. Until everyone alive turns up, the list of dead is not confirmed.
They are outraged by these inconceivable deaths: the young did not deserve to die and the old left them without any warning. Now burdened with mourning, it is beyond the means of the living to try and make meaning out of the randomness of death.
Remember that there lived, once-upon-a-time, in-a-tiny-village, an Old Woman who made her debut in the very beginning of this novel? You were promised that if you were patient enough, you would hear her speak and watch her move through these pages. Now, it’s time for you to know her on a first-name basis. Meet Maayi. Before you make up your mind as to whether you want to greet her by shaking hands or falling at her feet or doing a combination of the above that takes into account your combined cultural sensitivies, remember that she is a busy woman. Once married to the village’s witch doctor, it has now fallen upon her to hold her people together.
Before we rewrite history and relegate her man to the margins, a word about him. In the tiny villages where he was known, a certain religious hysteria surfaced whenever his name was mentioned.
It began when he tamed a notorious, anklet-wearing vampire. It was rumoured that this bloodsucker walked backwards and that those who saw the fire burn in her eye sockets dropped dead. But he had convinced her to go away. He had made the meanest ghouls promise him that they would move to other graveyards. He offered arrack to angry spirits. He sorted out every squabble between husbands and wives, brothers and cousins, shopkeepers and neighbours. Mute children, left at his doorstep by dejected parents, returned home talkative brats. Men went straight to him when they fumbled and failed their wives night after night. Possessed women were brought to him to have their devils driven away. He gave them sacred ash, healing their frenzy with nothing but neem leaves and his honest eyes. It worked as effectively as his peacock oil concoction for epilepsy.
The Gypsy Goddess Page 12
