Wild Animals Prohibited

by Subimal Misra

  The final remnants of

  the enormous red-blue crystal chandelier

  spanning the hall in the deserted zamindar's house –

  Cobwebs … only cobwebs everywhere –

  A deserted, haunted house very damp … the shuffle and flutter

  of owls … in that faraway darkness

  Granular houses, g r a n u l a r h o u s e s v i s i b l e –

  The heat of late February bears down … a cuckoo calls from the neem tree … at the rail-line nearby, quite often there are incidents of suicide … in the evening,

  after her bath, Rumi puts a string of bel-flowers

  in her hair. From the morgue on Bhawani Dutta Lane, a monstrous purple

  light streams out, without letup –

  from where, about a month ago, rats had chewed on a few dead bodies

  Their night turned eleven then. The national anthem played over someone's radio. And

  lying over that national anthem

  they fuck one another madly,

  successively, continuously, o n a n d o n

  _________________

  Bhabanidutta Lane-er Morgue Theke, 1975

  Come, See India

  [In homage to Kamalkumar Majumdar]

  As the girl offers her withered breast to the emaciated, lifeless baby with skinny arms and legs, which by all appearances look like a mouse from afar, and boils vegetable peels in an earthen pot chipped at the edges, the other child, every one of whose ribs is visible and can be counted one-two-three, sits near the stove like a prodigal son, eyes and face fixed on the pot with singular attention, his nose exploding as he takes in the aroma of the cooking, the entire day's hunger in his belly like a raging fire, eyes too lying in wait for the pot to be set down, then, right then, a drop of rain falls on the Mongolian-style moustache of a bhadralok in freshly laundered clothes, who has a James Bondesque attaché case and wears a multi-coloured shirt with a floral design, and the man, in the artful composure becoming his big-babu bearing, casts his eyes once towards the sky and, in search of safe shelter, arrives at that very spot on the pavement, underneath the mezzanine verandah. The girl is a beggar, a few broken pots, a bundle wrapped in a rag and two skinny children comprise her world, which is here, in this deserted spot under the mezzanine verandah, now in disarray. At the sound of loud knocking on the door, all four persons inside the room are startled at once. Putting out the kerosene stove in a single blow, the young boy manages to squeeze himself under the taktaposh, where torn kanthas, broken tin cans and so on are piled up. There is the sound of a staff banging on the door. The old door trembles ominously. As the old father, whose eyes have lost their sight and sequence, rises slowly and holds opens the door, four or five ruffians barge into the room. The one with the revolver in his hand screams out: 'Where's Gour, the fucking son of a pig!' Now a dusty gale has begun. Dark swollen clouds gather in the sky. The rain is about to descend. The girl, with a child on either side, is busy as usual with boiling vegetable peels where her corner of domestic bliss used to be. She was once a young wife. She wears her favourite green sari (which isn't at all grand and yet very dear). Her arms are full of red and blue glass bangles, a broad streak of sindoor fills the parting of her forehead. Three or four iron bangles on the left arm (gifted to her when she was pregnant). Long black hair flows like waves down both sides of the parting. At this moment the mass of hair is tousled over her back, very wet, she has just bathed … Hussain Ali performs acrobatics before the assembled crowd. He hops onto the makeshift stage for the magic show, his lungi billows and flutters in the wind. From a pocket in his flowing robe he takes out three Japanese dolls, from another pocket, a revolver. He arranges the dolls one by one on the table, and pointing the revolver at the crowd, he starts to explain, with accompanying gestures and gesticulations: 'Just watch, people, see how an enemy ought to be punished.' As he speaks, Hussain Ali dangles and twirls the pistol under their noses, he keeps twirling it, and after a while he aims and fires. The dolls' chests are pierced and when drops of fresh blood pour out, the rapt public claps in amazement and delight as they learn with greedy eyes the trick to punishing an enemy. A boy and girl run up, they are still laughing gleefully as they enter the spot beneath the mezzanine verandah. On both sides of them, there are people who have taken shelter from the rain. They gape at the ripening young girl, at her gleeful laugh – they see everything. But they, the girl and the boy, don't pay any attention. The girl says: 'How I love to get wet in the rain. Come on, darling, let's get wet again.' As she speaks, she grabs the boy's shirt at the chest and brings her eyes near his face. Outside, the rain grows heavier. The tram lines become submerged. More people cram into the narrow shade under the mezzanine verandah where the beggar girl, two kids and her beloved domestic world are. Hussain Ali performs the skull trick now. He is in his element. Placing a huge skull atop a shining brass plate, he explains to the assembled populace: 'Babus, take a look, witness this, the skull speaks in the voice of a living man and answers questions.' After the announcement he ceremoniously salaams the public and chants out the questions:

  – Oh skull, are you human?

  – By the grace of the compassionate Lord.

  – Why are you here?

  – The will of the compassionate Lord brought me.

  – Why was your head severed?

  – Everything in the universe is by the will of the compassionate Lord

  – Who do you have in the world – father, mother, brother, friend?

  – No one but the compassionate Lord.

  The rain grows even fiercer. The streets get flooded. The shade beneath the mezzanine verandah fills up. It is crammed with people – a tie-clad, shiny office-babu with sparkling spectacles; a bald-headed, middle-aged, sad-faced government clerk, umbrella in hand; a dandy ruffian with long sideburns and long hair coiffured like the hero of Bobby; a peanut seller with a basket on his head; a ghugni-wallah with ghugni heaped on a huge platter over a lit kerosene stove. The beggar girl's cooking is now totally disrupted. Her world is wet with the spray of rain. Somehow she manages to crouch in a corner, watching over her worldly possessions – the bundle wrapped in rags, a couple of broken earthen pots, a battered metal tumbler and two children. Here, in this locality on the fringes of the city, there is only empty desolation. On one side of the narrow pot-holed road are large tin sheds, the rear ends of factories. On the other side a vast wetland of segmented water-bodies hidden beneath water hyacinths, with their purple flowers blooming in all their fragrance, and a veritable jungle overgrown with clumps of kaalkesunda, assheoda and wild kalomi. Every now and then a cycle-rickshaw goes past with a clanging sound. Lorries drive by noisily, raising a storm of dust. On one side of the deserted wetland lies Gour's corpse, cut into pieces and stuffed into a gunny sack, dirty with mud and slime. It lies there, rotting away. Just a hand sticking out of a tear in the sack; the liquefying hand, its fist clenched tight, guarded by two dogs and three vultures. The city is inundated with rain. The people crammed together in the spot beneath the mezzanine verandah are wet with the spray blown in by the wind. 'Beggars even here,' some of them remark. 'They're making Calcutta unfit for habitation day by day.' 'Why don't you drive them away – here people are unable to stand and she sits regally with her household sprawled out!' The girl finally snaps testily, 'Where will I go?' 'A beggar by race and feisty too – a bloody nawab's daughter!' 'They've occupied all the roads and pavements, as if it's their bloody father's property.' A pretty-faced woman, her left hand still holding a pair of folded go-go goggles, can't find a place to stand. Her low-cut blouse and exposed back get drenched in the spray from the wind. The Bobby-haired boy with long sideburns boy moves up to the beggar girl, 'Hey, you whore – get up from here, make place for the bhadramahila to stand.' 'Where will I go?' 'Throw her out, mister, these shits don't heed straight talk.' Gour's arms, legs, head and torso, cut into pieces and stuffed into a sack, rot beside the desolate wetland, guarded by two dogs and three vultures. The body
rots away. The clenched fist rots and poisons the atmosphere. The whole city becomes poisoned. Stench pervades the air. Hussain Ali stands atop a table and performs tricks – the trick of punishing the enemy by piercing him with bullets, and the skull trick. The girl refuses to vacate her space. Nonetheless, she is pulled out and dragged away. Now she is knee-deep in water, on her left side the baby in her bosom, the other boy's hand held tight in her right hand, the cloth bundle of her world on her head. The rain pours down lustily, over her, over her children, over her world placed on her head. The flood of water flows like a river. All the roads are submerged. Directionless in the pouring rain and raging flood, with a child on either side and her world on her head, she looks on.

  Then

  The colours of the poster printed with the hammer

  and sickle are washed away in the rain…

  Robi Thakur's song plays on the radio:

  You nurture me with tender care in your abode

  lory be to you, O Lord

  Glory be to you, O Lord

  And

  Gour's cut-up corpse stuffed into a sack rots

  beside the desolate wetland

  Hussain Ali's magic show comes into its own

  brilliantly featuring the skull the punishment

  of enemies

  _________________

  Ashun, Bharat-borsho Dekhe Jaan, 1975

  The Road to the Mill Jetty

  3 July 1978, remembering the first anniversary

  of Gambhiraprasad Shaw's martyrdom

  'Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry Of wonderful times to come.' —Bertolt Brecht

  The third month was almost over, yet out of laziness the old calendar with Ma Durga's image hadn't been removed from the wall.

  It's still as good as new, do you say? Hey, why won't you smoke a cigarette?

  I've quit.

  Or are you trying to save money? That's wonderful, only people like you can retain two pennies. We've puffed everything away…

  The neon lights on the station platform had been lit. The 6:20 local train was about to leave.

  The signal.

  Bright green. A person dressed in blue walked alongside the train. At the entrance to the party office, a dusty picture of Lenin occupied the wall. It had hung merely as a picture for half a century. The train left the platform.

  The station building, the ticket office and tea stalls were left behind rapidly. By the time it went past the control room, the brilliance of the bleached white neon lights on either side suddenly died like counterfeit revolutionaries. A procession of the hungry marched to the block development office. Vehicles came to a standstill. The curious public thronged both sides of the road.

  Met Babulal's wife yesterday. Soliciting at the Bowbazar crossing, wearing a cheap silk sari and lipstick. Do you remember Babulal? The one who … at the time of the lockout … at the gate on the road to the mill jetty … the owner's hoodlums …

  Comrades, shout the slogans out loud! Everyone call out together!

  The procession concluded at the block development office. The road beside led to the mill jetty. Why are you on strike? Because we haven't got our bonus. What are your demands? Dearness allowance must be paid at central government rates. And you, Gambhiraprasad of East Champaran, do you too want only bonus and dearness allowance at central rates? No! I want my state! We shall till all the land in the country. We shall run all the factories. We shall carry out all kinds of production. And all the fruit … we ourselves shall… The minister with the picture of Lenin hanging above his head turned grave. A careful watch must be kept over the situation. The law in their own hands … No one, not any more.

  _________________

  Mill-er Jettir Diker Rasta, 1978

  Spot Eczematous

  Reader, the eczema on your vital spot –

  Whose itch at any and every time

  You discern, and which does not form pus or

  Bleed, just – scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch

  Oh, what joy, what joy –

  Don't go trying to heal it by applying

  Ointments and such, for modern medical scientists

  Believe this is a kind of bodily disease

  Whose origins lie in the mind;

  It's only what we think,

  Not an itch of the skin.

  Once there was a bad man and his soul was small and soft but fleshy. He put it in a paper bag and shoved it under a pillow. A crafty girl stole it one day and, not knowing what the fleshy thing was, threw it beside a drain. There was a sly crow there. It picked the paper bag with its beak and flew off in search of a secure place. When it sat on the branch of a peepal tree on the bank of Gobarjhuri lake and pecked at it, the paper bag slipped off its beak, soul and all. And incredible as it sounds, under the peepal tree was a cow grazing. Thinking it was edible, it swallowed the bag in a trice. The cow belonged to a farmer in the village. After a few days, the farmer sold the cow. Astute readers should bear in mind that the farmer was not that poor and had not sold the cow even when he was in need – which would have been the formula for a marketable leftist story, in keeping with the pattern handed down by the masters. The trader saw that the cow was old and hobbling, it wouldn't live very long, he didn't think anyone would want to buy it. He straightaway gave it over to the slaughterhouse. This story begins where a beef roll – the present form of the cow – was sold, and taking a bite of it was –

  Of course, the story can be narrated in another way too. Anindya was an independent citizen of this independent country. He was twenty-two years old. Anindya was not quite unemployed, like most of the revolution-by-rote boys in our country, he was more or less well off. His father was a middle-ranking officer, his brother worked in a bank, they lived in a flat in Ballygunge, they liked Worcestershire sauce, his sister's marriage to an England-returned engineer was almost fixed, etc, etc. One day, at three minutes to twelve, as he sat in a shop in Chandni Chowk eating a beef roll – was the cheapest meat in the market and could satisfy one's hunger yet cost only a little money, a tingling ache began inside his stomach after a few bites, which suddenly increased and became so bad he began to see everything – this very world – upside down. He saw the girl with whom he played love-and-lovers in the darkness of the lake – who liked to be fondled to satisfy her urges – standing in the balcony, hastily plucking out lice from her hair, crushing them between two fingernails before popping them into her mouth. Seeing him, she said with a laugh, Who knew lice was so fine to eat! Anindya was worried when he saw this. A nineteen or twenty-year-old, half-aristocratic, beautiful girl plucking and eating lice in broad daylight and in full public view. He thumped his head to try and clear his thoughts, rubbed his head and trained his eyes on her once more to be sure he was not hallucinating. But he saw the same thing – gazing at him with a smiling face, the girl in bell-bottoms sank her nails into her hair, pulled out lice and put them inside her mouth, her eyes brimming over with whoops of joy. Anindya couldn't figure out what he ought to do. Eventually, scratching his head, he said: Don't you get any other food to eat in this free country, beautiful? Why are you eating lice? The girl was unruffled. She said: Do you know what I once saw? A beggar on the pavement searched for and pulled out lice from his matted hair and popped them into his mouth. It struck me right then that lice has great potential to become the food of the proletariat. I tried eating it myself. It was fine! I want to introduce this dish to society. If those people can eat lice and survive, why can't we? We too are humans like them – what do you say? And the girl pulled Anindya close to her bosom. Ever since he ate that beef roll, it was as if everything inside Anindya's stomach was topsy-turvy. But how was he to know that a bad man's soul had entered his system and caused him to see and feel as he did? He brought his face close to the girl's. She said, You'll see, after a few days I'll be speaking on the radio about lice fried rice. I'll be writing in newspapers. In about six months, I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get lice-based dishes introduced in resta
urants as the food of the proletariat. As soon as Anindya heard this, he began to feel queasy. So far he had been trying to keep it down, but he could no longer control it, and Owack! Owack!– he retched out a mouthful of vomit on the girl. In this planet of ours, of the 2,850,000,000 inhabitants, only 1,600,000 get an adequate quantity of food – which means that the number of people in the world who go to sleep every night on an empty stomach is double the population of India. The vomit trickled down the girl's bell-bots, tummy, buttocks and thighs. It had a sour, wet smell, and the most surprising thing of all was that he saw himself – yes, he, Anindya – bending down and licking up that foul stuff from her tummy and buttocks with his tongue, without any hesitation, just like a cow licks its newborn calf. Anindya watched himself in amazement, he observed how quickly and effortlessly he licked up his own vomit, with his own tongue, from the fleshy buttocks. He applied himself to the jiggling, bouncy, bell-bottomed buttocks with an easy, adept yet casual posture. The girl did not mind such trifling matters, she knew that boys, after all, did do these things. In fact, there were many who wanted to put their hands in the lower parts after a mere five-minute acquaintance. She pulled Anindya by the hair and kissed him: Do you know, nowadays I teach sex to kids – oriental-style sex education. It is a matter of great sadness that this heroine of ours does not half-lie in bed with a pillow pressed to her chest, writing love letters on sky-blue letter paper, that she does not tell the hero in a nasal tone, Hey, don't be naughty – I'm ticklish! Anindya felt as if his life was about to come to an end. He was unable to say anything, try as he might. He went into the room with the girl. He tried to look around and gather something of what she had been up to. The room was quite large, with dark curtains on all four sides, which kept the sunlight at bay. As soon as she entered the room, she began to teach a boy half her age, on whose upper lip a wisp of moustache had appeared-or-not appeared, about sex positions. Anindya watched helplessly as, in front of him, the girl, that girl of his with whom every once in a while he engaged in banter in the darkness of the lake, of whose body almost every fold, curve and bulge was known to him, conveyed ways and means to a boy half her age. He sat sweating in that room with its dark, drawn curtains. Every now and then his stomach rumbled. He saw how expertly the girl taught the lad about secret crevices and folds. She looked at him and chuckled. Sex too is an art that has to be learnt, my boy. And the oriental style is one of the most acclaimed things in the world, which the whole Western world praises so effusively … In some parts of Tamil Nadu, even now, when one borrows money, there is a custom of keeping one's wife with the moneylender as surety. Until the money is returned, the wife stays in the moneylender's harem. If she has children then, the responsibility of looking after them devolves on the recipient of the loan, but the wife has to remain at the moneylender's service constantly. Anindya couldn't figure out what to say as he saw these scandalous happenings before his eyes. He decided that, come what may, he would bite the girl right here – he wasn't really into art-fart where these things were concerned. Anindya thought about it and decided. He stood up, just as the girl looked into his eyes and suspected something. At once she stood erect, then she swiftly extended her arm and lifted him up bodily. She, the girl, bared the blouse that covered her breasts and inserted him, the one who had borne the name Anindya till just a little while ago, altogether inside her blouse, and as she did so, she said: My purse stays here, my youthfulness is here, I'm keeping you as well. How overpowered he was! Anindya looked – how big he was, here was his adult body and yet how effortlessly he had slipped into the girl's blouse. He was stuck in the cleavage between her two breasts, it was simply unbelievable. He would never have believed it had it not happened to him. A chit of a girl had supposedly chucked all of a boy like him into her blouse, as if he were a purse, and she supposedly kept her purse like that, kept her youthfulness, and now kept him too. Being so casually close to her purse and youthfulness, he was assailed by a milky smell and was overcome with nausea. He couldn't help himself and thus, for a second time, he vomited violently inside her blouse. As he vomited near the artfully preserved youthfulness, Anindya realized that all this while some kind of bad poison had been working in his system, which was now being ejected, making him feel light in body, bringing back the correct point of view. Whatever he had been doing, whatever he had been seeing – was all wrong, completely wrong. Anindya wiped his lips, he looked through the lens of his spectacles. His habitual condition returned. He regained his normal perspective. He saw that the girl had not been picking and eating lice. She had been eating a bar of Cadbury's milk chocolate. He, Anindya, decent boy that he was, could never have vomited here and there like that, at least not when he was sober. Perhaps a flying crow or something like that had dirtied the girl's posterior. The word 'shat' simply won't do here. That pains our refined sensibilities. In fact, people of fine tastes and refined mind never even shit. And the matter of teaching sex had been perceived, at the very least, in an incorrect way as a result of an incorrect perspective. Because girls could only do so much for youngsters – be affectionate. Whereas the whole subject of sex was taboo which, whether it was legal or illegal, had to be done in secret. And if something had to be brought out into the public arena in broad daylight, that could only be what one wore, no more than that. Never. Anindya felt at peace. His vision was all right. Society-world, justice-morality hadn't yet gone to the dogs. In the interregnum, it was just that a bad man's soul had entered him and made him see things falsely.