‘Seldom has deep philosophy mixed so effortlessly with the language of the street. The Rat Eater is penned from the gut, with the ink of blood and bile. It is, at once, angry and kind, real and imagined, heavy and light. The Rat Eater just might be the undefinable defining novel India has been searching for.’
—R. Jagannathan, writer and editorial director, Swarajya
‘Part mystery, part rebuke, The Rat Eater is an experimental, pacy, honest, modern novel by two immensely admirable writers.’
—Manu Joseph, author and columnist
‘The Rat Eater breaks new ground through its Dalit protagonist, in that he breaks the shackles and the glass ceiling and rises to shine in an unwelcoming India rather than play victim to his circumstances. It brought back memories of my own childhood when hunting field rats was a sport for us. The book simmers with real tension and realism, capturing the rawness of the human struggle against bigotry and barbarism.’
—Chandra Bhan Prasad, Dalit writer and activist
‘The Rat Eater shakes the reader up. Its philosophies draw you in. A dark murder mystery, this is an important novel.’
—Amish, author and columnist
‘The Rat Eater is a brilliantly written, fast-paced, satirical, sometimes philosophical, but ultimately a brutally straightforward book. Heaven and hell, they are all here, with passages that seem to be sculpted in time. It weaves a tapestry of society, politics and the unforgettable history of our country, with flashbacks that are told in a pinch-and-zoom manner to reveal in detail the nooks and crevices of a creaking system. This book is a must-read, and it is to be read again and again.’
—Keshav, artist and illustrator
‘The Rat Eater is at once a thrilling and chilling read that goes from the paan-stained expletives of corrupt cops, living in loopholes framed by the local thana, to the exulted juxtaposition of Greek philosophy with schools of Indic thought. This book is full of shit, entire hierarchies full of it, from caste to class in rank and file, and a reminder that you are standing right in it. We are looped into endless cycles of birth and death such that salvation, when it comes, must hang on the incarnation of the breaking out. The line between the fiction and the non-fiction of our lives blurs in this book. And should you choose to be silent, it seems to say, then you contribute every day to manipulations that lower the highest truths into sullied trenches. A must-read’.
—Gayatri Jayaraman, author and editor
The Rat Eater
A Note on the Authors
Anand Ranganathan is the author of The Land of the Wilted Rose and For Love and Honour. A graduate of St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and Pembroke College, Cambridge, he is a scientist based in Delhi.
Chitra Subramaniam is the founder of CSD-consulting, Switzerland, working at the crossroads of public health, media and development. An award-winning journalist and author, she is one of India’s best-known media personalities.
The Rat Eater
Anand Ranganathan
Chitra Subramaniam
BLOOMSBURY INDIA
Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd
Second Floor, LSC Building No. 4, DDA Complex, Pocket C – 6 & 7,
Vasant Kunj New Delhi 110070
BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY INDIA and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in India 2019
This edition published in 2019
Copyright © Anand Ranganathan and Chitra Subramaniam 2019
Anand Ranganathan and Chitra Subramaniam have asserted their right under the Indian Copyright Act to be identified as the Authors of this work
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the publishers
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes
ISBN: TPB: 978-9-3890-0016-0; eBook: 978-9-3890-0018-4
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It is, now, the hope of death that keeps me alive.
—Mirza Ghalib
Let me walk you through the light and the darkness, through the joy and the sorrow, through the pain and the pleasure, through the beginning and the end; let me walk you through the real and the imagined. And then I will ask you which is which.
Contents
1 2004—Darkness at Noon
2 1966—A Brave New World
3 2004—A Guest of Honour
4 1976—Invisible Man
5 2004—The Naked and the Dead
6 1977—Midnight’s Children
7 2004—The Heart of the Matter
8 1984—Nineteen Eighty-Four
9 2003—Such a Long Journey
10 1985—The House of Mirth
11 2003—On the Road
12 2004—A Handful of Dust
13 1987—A Room with a View
14 2004—Darkness Visible
15 1990—The Death of the Heart
16 2004—Under the Net
17 2004—The Sound and the Fury
18 2004—The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Epilogue: 2005—A House for Mr Biswas
Acknowledgements
1
2004—Darkness at Noon
The policeman spat before he entered; you don’t shit where you eat.
Right foot in and he stumbled on a mooda. He kicked it in anger, staring blankly at the few hula-hoops the mooda completed before it settled on its base, a scooter tyre. His pupils dilated in reaction to the near darkness of the room. Shapes appeared. Tucked away in one corner was the interrogation table over which dangled a battered tin cone. A woman sat under it. The policeman noticed her as his eyes swept the room—the sharp features, the fair skin, the missing sindoor.
He swaggered toward the table and the woman, and dragged a chair out. The woman recorded the arrival with a shudder, bile clambering up her throat.
The policeman flicked free two buttons of his khaki shirt, unshackling his belly, which seemed at once grateful in the way it poured forth and thrust complainingly at the remaining buttons. The woman lifted her eyes only to hurriedly look down again. Unmindful, the policeman withdrew a burlap pouch from the pocket of his vest and pulled at the strings. He stole a pinch of tobacco, placed it carefully in the centre of his left palm and began rubbing it in small concentric motions with his thumb, all the while staring at the woman who kept her eyes firmly on her shiny slippers and her orange-nail-polished toes.
Grinding over, the policeman patted the tobacco with a flurry of quick slaps, making the chaff mushroom and glitter as brown tinsel under the cone. The woman coughed.
The policeman gathered the tobacco with his thumb and the first two fingers of his other hand, tucking it between his teeth and his overhanging lower lip. As the sting worked its way through his lacerated gums, he opened his eyes, lids laden, and dusted the leftover tobacco with a clap. Quite deliberately, he began making cattle-herding noises
, at times hissing like a snake, in an effort to pull together the goo that had started to seep from the corners of his mouth.
It was time, decided the policeman. But he noticed that he was sweating profusely, his shirt bearing salt-encrusted patches round his armpits and just above the belt where the ever-increasing dampness was beginning to resemble a contour plot. Sweat beads were jostling for space on his forehead. He jerked his handkerchief free from the pocket of his pants with a flourish and mopped his forehead. One bead of sweat escaped and snaked its way down to the tip of his nose. He noticed this first as a mild and drifting wet sensation and then by focusing his eyes on the hanging drop. In time, the drop ripened—other, smaller droplets now supplementing it—and then began to wobble, threatening to detach. He flicked at it with sluggish pleasure. The pearl exploded into tiny droplets, some peppering the woman’s face, forcing her finally to look up. The policeman was waiting with lust and intent.
‘What is your relationship with Dev?’ began Deputy Superintendent of Police Mohan Kumar Sharma.
‘What?’
‘What is your relationship with Dev, that ban-cho lying in the corner there.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You deaf?’
‘…’
‘Teri ban…What-are-you-to-him?’
‘To whom?’
‘To Dev.’
‘Friend.’
‘What?’
‘Friend.’
‘Louder!’
‘Friend.’
‘Friend?’
‘Friend.’
‘Just friend? We don’t believe you.’
‘Please, sir, it is true.’
‘What is?’
‘That he is just my friend.’
‘Not a lover?’
‘No, sir, please.’
‘No?’
DSP Sharma clenched and unclenched his fist, curling his fingers in slowly. ‘Where does he stay?’
‘Who?’
‘Dev, you—’
‘I don’t know, s-sir.’
‘Really? Tell me, what were you doing behind those bushes?’
‘Please, sir, I beg you. It wasn’t like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like that.’
‘Then tell me.’
DSP Sharma paused, heard his breathing for a second or two, then slapped his open palm on the table. ‘Tell me!’
‘W-we got off early from college, so we thought we’d spend some time together and compare notes.’
‘You were comparing notes?’
For the first time, the woman showed resolve. She brought her trembling hands together and placed them up on the table, fingertip touching fingertip. Realising her bravado, she withdrew them hurriedly to the comfort of her agitating thighs.
‘Stop that. You were at it, weren’t you? Weren’t you? Haan?’
‘No, sir, please, I am from a respectable vegetarian family.’
‘Respectable? My foot respectable!’
‘Sir, I beg you, please.’
‘You couldn’t smell it?’
‘Believe me, sir, I promise. We didn’t even look behind the bench.’
‘You have never been near a dead body?’
‘No, sir, I haven’t.’
‘The smell of a dead body. I mean, will it smell like dhoop? Couldn’t you have guessed?’
‘Really, sir, there was no smell coming from the plast...’
‘But just now you said you didn’t even...’
There was panic in the woman’s eyes, delirium in the policeman’s. ‘Haan?’
Gasping, the woman dug her toenail into the tender underside of her other foot. ‘S-sorry, sir, I am getting a little confused n-now. I-I’ll tell you exactly what we saw.’
‘Listen, you bitch. I’ll hang both of you from a lamp post right outside your house—saali, messing with me.’
‘Sir, please, honest-to-’
‘Start.’
‘Y-yes, sir. The park was deserted. We had just sat down on the bench when we noticed a black bag behind us. We decided to ignore it and just sat there co-com-comparing notes of the p-practical…’
DSP Sharma lifted his buttock so his palm could slip into his back pocket. Like a surgeon who removes a tricky piece of shrapnel and then stares at it in awe, DSP Sharma pulled out a discoloured and heavily chewed toothpick. Flagging it, he gestured for the woman to continue.
‘We didn’t notice any smell, sir, God promise. Some fifteen minutes later, we thought we should leave. Right at that moment, three men appeared from nowhere, sir, and they jumped over us, knocking us down flat. Before we knew what was happening, we found ourselves here, locked up—no food, no water, no phone, nothing, sir. Wa-wa-one, one of the three was him, sir—behind you—but he wasn’t wearing his uniform then.’
Toothpick firmly in the company of his teeth, only moving side to side, DSP Sharma swivelled his upper half and looked beyond the limit of the cone of light. He couldn’t see much more than a gloomy outline but addressed it nonetheless. ‘Oye, Jatinder, you were there? Ban-cho, you didn’t mention it.’
The shadow emerged in the form of Sub-Inspector Jatinder, who adjusted his sweat-drenched potbelly and stood to attention, just. ‘Yes, sir, I was in the team. I was told to wear plain clothes and hide near the body and wait in case the murderer returned.’
DSP Sharma cupped his nose in disbelief. ‘Why would he come back, bewakoof!’
‘Point, sir, very sorry. But I couldn’t reach you at that time and inspector saab was adamant that I stay put.’
‘Who, that Gokhale?’
‘Yes sir, Inspector Gokhale.’
‘For how long were you hiding in the bushes?’
‘Full three hours, sir—no food, no water, no phone...’
‘Yes yes, now what about these two?’
‘We found them snuggling up on the bench, sir—real tight.’
Sub-Inspector Jatinder demonstrated by giving himself a hug that would have made a boa constrictor proud.
‘Snuggling up? She says they were comparing notes.’
‘Jhooth, sir, they were holding hands. It looked to me he was trying to pass on a mobile phone.’
‘Wait a minute; you saw a phone?’
‘No, sir, I think it was a phone, the way it caught the sun. I am sure they threw it away the moment we jumped on them.’
DSP Sharma plucked the toothpick from his mouth in a flash. ‘But you did retrieve a phone from the spot afterwards?’
‘No, sir, we couldn’t. We’ll resume the search shortly.’
DSP Sharma punched the cone brutally, the mystery of its many dents now solved. ‘So let me get this straight. You brought these two here just because they were holding hands on a bench? No knife, no mobile, no blood on them…’
The swinging cone made the sub-inspector appear and disappear in the hyper-agitating arc of light; now his belly, now his face.
‘You brought them because they were holding hands. Bastard, Jatinder, are you mad! Gadhe ki aulad.’
‘But, sir, I am convinced...’
‘Shut up.’
The sub-inspector kept his head down, his mind now idling, waiting for the storm to pass.
‘Ban-cho, SP saab will be here any minute; is this all I have for him? Do you even know who was in that plastic bag? Jatinder, what are we going to do?’
The sub-inspector raised his head—‘Sir, I have an idea.’
‘Chup.’
—only to pull it back quickly within the folds of his crumpled and greased collar.
‘Anyway, what is it?’
The childlike vivacity returned. ‘Sir, we can request SP saab to apply for a seven-day judicial for these two. Meanwhile, let me run upstairs and get that mobile phone we recovered from Lakhan Kitla’s body yesterday. Place it in Dev’s pants for SP saab to get an underworld angle.’
The toothpick, which had once again found its way to DSP Sharma’s mouth, slumped off his lower lip. He caught it in mid-air and repl
aced it in his mouth. ‘Saala.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘One minute, what about the SIM card? Why, you ass? What if it comes out in front of magistrate saab that Dev here has no underworld connection?’
‘Er, sir, we can make sure the hearing goes to cell number two. Our Tilak has some fitting with Srivastav saab—the magistrate.’
‘Oye Jatinder, you seem to have thought of everything, hain.’
‘Victory in this investigation is only because of your efforts, sir.’
‘Haan, haan. Now come close and pay attention.’
Realising his folly, DSP Sharma gestured quickly with his free hand for the sub-inspector to retreat a few steps.
‘Ban-cho, Jatinder, do you ever take a bath? Scent toh laga liya kar, gandu.’
‘Sir?’
‘Uff. Take this Dev fellow to the water cooler and give him a nice cold wash. Scrub all those belt and buckle marks, you understand? Get Tilak in the next room, give him a few tight ones on the face, two on the ear, you know the sort. Struggle has to be established.’
‘Tilak, sir?’
‘Why, are you volunteering?’
‘No no, sir, I...’
‘Then shut up and do as I tell you. We need to...’
The sub-inspector’s ears stood up. ‘Sir, ahem, careful now, here he comes, I can hear him coming.’
‘What, who?’
‘SP Kharbanda is behind you.’
‘Who? Ban-cho, am I deaf to...’
‘SP saab is behi… Hello, good evening, sir.’
The chirping, churning sounds of creamed and polished shoes ceased abruptly as the bulk they were carrying came to a standstill. ‘Good evening, good evening. And you are?’
‘Sub-Inspector Jatinder, sir.’
‘Yes yes…’ SP Kharbanda dismissed the reply from his attention even before it was uttered. Such must power be—real, visible and shoe-chirping. His attention was fixed rather at his direct subordinate and not some lowly sub-inspector. He got hold of the backrest of the chair DSP Sharma was perched on and shook it branch and root. ‘Arey DSP saab, so angry with me that you won’t even turn and look at me, hain?’
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