The Rat Eater

by Anand Ranganathan

  But the remainder of the journey was worse. From the window I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Such cleanliness, such neatness, crystal-clear air, roads as though they’d been laid only yesterday, just for us, and hour upon hour of the same. I thought this is all wrong, a place can’t be this clean. It was terrible. I couldn’t bear to look but I did. Like a child, I kept opening and closing my eyes. Couldn’t stomach it, had to see it. Fields upon fields of precisely levelled crops and perfectly round hay wheels; houses that were not like the houses we have but exactly how we’d draw a house. I had never felt so sad ever in my life. Not a single car or a lorry switched their lanes all of a sudden. Not one. No weaving, no ‘cutting’, no honking. What kind of people were they, those drivers, inside those cars and buses? Where would they be letting off all that pent-up anger? Or was it that they never got angry, never did anything wrong, never broke rules? Surely there were divorces, shoot-outs, mental asylums, psychiatrists, prisons, in England? It was perfect and that was my problem. But my feelings were not being echoed around the bus, I could see. Cries of ‘Did you see that?’ ‘Look. Look there, yaar’, ‘We can never dream of becoming like this, man’. And I thought, ‘Thank God for that.’ I wanted to run back; most of them seemed delighted to have run away.

  We reached Cambridge, a full five minutes earlier than what our driver had promised at the start. One by one, the parents and their sons and daughters were dropped off at various colleges. Bhishma and I got down at Pembroke (his college, too). It was still drizzling. We entered through a carved wooden gateway that Bhishma said was built in 1347. At the porter’s lodge he introduced me to Mr Powell, who then showed me my pigeonhole. Three inches wide, ten inches high, and about ten deep. My contact with the rest of the world. Pleasantries with the porters done, and your holdall safely tucked under my arm, Bhishma then escorted me to where my room was. Along the way, those lawns! Then came the dining hall. I had a quick peek and noticed its wooden tables and benches just like we have in Stephen’s, down to the raised floor for the faculty. Then, more faultless lawns, followed by an archway and what looked like a botanical garden, complete with a small artificial pond. How could they concentrate on studies at this place? This was all a bad idea, I kept thinking. I’ll fail.

  My room turned out to be on the third floor, right on top. A wooden staircase led up to it. Along the way, on the walls, were drawn hands, forefinger pointing to the direction—upwards and still more. I noticed the room had my name printed neatly on the door. Akhil Sukumar. I loved this small gesture, done I am sure as a matter of routine.

  We went in. Boy, it was small. Twelve by ten feet at best, and on one side the roof was slanted so that one had to bend down, or sideways, to reach the corner at that end. Thoughtfully, that was where the single bed was arranged. But it doesn’t work all the time. Just yesterday I woke up and banged my head properly. One cupboard, a table, a chair and—you’ll love this—a note from the senior tutor explaining that ‘…The walls are not to be disfigured by sticking posters onto them. Poster clips and plastic slit rods are provided for displaying one’s preferences. Thank you.’ One’s preferences. Bhishma took leave and promised to drop by at night to take me out for dinner. Soon, I was alone. And I thought of you at that moment. Then I went to the only window of my room.

  The view: It is a normal-sized window—opens outside. No jaali as no mosquitoes here (sorry, no use for the kachuachap that you had packed in). And what a view. It really is magnificent. On my toes, standing up, I can just about see the top of King’s College Chapel. Back on my heels, the Old Cavendish building comes into view. Sitting down, I can see the soot-blackened walls of the Pembroke Street buildings. I think whoever built this room was mindful of how tiny it is, and so decided to make amends by placing the window right where it presently is. A few inches up, or to the right, and you can’t see King’s at all or the Cavendish. It is placed exactly where looking through it one forgets the constrained space of this room. And this is where I am at present—sitting, window open, writing to you, my sweetest Api.

  And if I close the window, I feel I am in a vacuum desiccator. The silence in the room becomes deafening. For the first time in my life I am able to hear the sound of silence—a weak beeping din inside your ears, continues till you want it; open the window and it’s gone. All very unsettling, Api, and there’s not even the whirr of the ceiling fan. There’s nothing except this constant beeping in your head. Something would have to be done or I’ll go mad. As if being lonely thousands of miles away wasn’t enough; like with those Godrej shaving cream and razors back home—buy one loneliness, get one complete silence absolutely free.

  And the smell. Well, this is turning out to be a detailed description of my Chinese tortures, but now of the smell. There is none. No smell whatsoever. Open window, closed window—doesn’t matter. It is therapeutic just to recall some of the smells we are so used to. Now let me see: the smell of aaloo-puri, of rust, of coconut-oiled heads, of the suitcase cover-cloth, of shit, of urine, of overboiled chai, of the damp store room, of the aata-glue in the post-office, of sweat, of mixed fruit juice, of water (of the water cooler). And here? Nothing. Nothing smells. I keep the window open most of the time but nothing wafts in. My nose is dying—send me some agarbattis.

  Cats. Let me tell you about cats. Every college keeps one. I came across our Pembroke cat, called Jess, one afternoon by the college library. Believe me, Api, when I tell you—at least three times the size of our Indian cats. There it was—jet black, steel-blue eyes, and a collar with a bell attached to it. When I stared at her she responded with half-opened eyes and a measuring up sort of look. She didn’t cower or look away like our cats would have. This put me off. I showed my full set of teeth and made a forward motion. Something like this would have made our cat leap back and skittle away with a few protesting meows. Jess did nothing of the kind—she simply looked away, as though she was bored. This was humiliating. Not to be outdone by a silly cat, I then gestured an assault, with my fingers spread open and curled. And you know that I am safe because I am writing this letter and you are reading it, but I tell you, Api, had I not pulled sideways at the very last moment, Jess would have gorged out my Adam’s apple in a second. The monster jumped at me, and through the air with such immense speed that the whole instant was—still is—like a great black blur. I have since learnt my lesson: I see Jess prowling or sniffing the path and I turn away and go by another route. Damn. Even the cats here are different. They don’t leave the college premises. They meander across the lawns, something that only fellows of the college are allowed to do. They walk away from the food when they feel they are done, sometimes leaving it half-eaten. They basically just sit and survey. That, Api, is the story of the English cat. I am sure it’s all white under that black fur.

  But everyone else, beside that wretched Jess, is afraid of me. Here are a few samples. Miss Treblecock: ‘Mr Sukumar, I am terribly afraid I have not been able to make a cheque yet for the…’. Or Mrs Thornton, the senior tutor’s secretary: ‘Akhil, I’m afraid the meeting we had planned for you hasn’t…’. Even my tutor, Professor Fleming: ‘Akhil, I’m afraid that next week’s supervision…’.

  Now about the appearances. Everyone on the streets here is so well dressed, the women especially. Neat and careful and clean and spotless—not like the goras we see in Connaught Place or Sarojini Nagar. None of those tattered chappals here, those garish multicoloured vests and grimy bermudas, the filthy ghagraas, that unkempt naga sadhu hairstyles—none of that. This came as a shock to me. Perhaps their appearance back in India was deliberate, intentional—an effort to gel in, a holiday tamasha, a ‘look’. Discarded all at the airport lounge or on the flight back. All scrubbed off and the real person emerges.

  Lesson number one, etiquette. Early-morning breakfast. Mr Sukumar, in queue for his portion of scrambled eggs and baked beans and toast. He says: ‘Yes, I want two portions of scrambled eggs. And give me one portion of baked beans. Also, give me two slices of toast
ed bread and one coffee. How much?’ And pat comes the reply from across the counter: ‘Never mind how much. Just, can you put a ‘please’ and a ‘thanks’ at the end of every sentence that you just said, please?’ And so Mr Sukumar refines his order and has to do all of that ‘please’, ‘thank you’ business.

  Next: Lesson number two, the civil code. 1900 hours, Market Square, opposite the Guild Hall. Fruit and vegetable stalls. No shouting or hawking. Mr Sukumar eyes a nice ripe mango. Goes all misty-eyed and says: ‘How much is that mango?’ Quickly remembers lesson number one and tries again: ‘Can I have this mango, please?’ and again, ‘How much, miss, for this mango, please?’ The answer that comes out from across is Lesson number two. ‘Oii. Waiit fough ya turn, you buggaah—caanchew see (the nose twitches upwards and to the right at this point; the glare is fixed and the eyes contort) I am serving somebodiee? Wheyaa-u fawm ’en?’ ‘Oh, I am sorry’ is all the hurriedly retreating Mr Sukumar can muster.

  They are asking me to change, Api, all of them. They are selling me a quiet and peaceful and orderly marketplace when the only marketplace I have ever seen is noisy and riotous, with rotten vegetables strewn everywhere, with vendors shouting their throats out, with people haggling, with ladies snapping off bhindi tips, with motionless cows and howling dogs, with blank men and worried women and wailing kids, with potholes breeding larvae and mother mosquitoes buzzing lovingly above them. But at the end of the day, everyone is satisfied. That’s the marketplace I know. What makes them think theirs is the only kind of marketplace there should be?

  Just the other day, I remarked on this to my tutor. He took it the wrong way, like most of them do. He said: ‘Oh, poor you. Well, it’s a mess, India is—but it’s getting there, getting there.’ They have notions about us. They think we are poor—not just monetarily but poor in every sense. Monetary poverty to them translates into poverty of the body and its soul—mental depravation. Lack of money retards. How can I tell them that no one has sucked up all this filth, this grime, this smell—sucked it up in a syringe millilitre by millilitre and punctured my skull and pushed all of it in? My mind is not my poverty. I am not poor because of the poverty of my mind. And so I want to tell them that I can thrive in my hell. Not survive or simply exist, but thrive. This chaotic hell that surrounds me is just a piece of my clothing. I cannot escape from wearing it but I let it not affect me. But I remained silent.

  I don’t know why I am telling you all this. I started out writing a letter and have ended up scribbling nonsense, and now it looks like an entry in my diary. This is what loneliness does to you, I suppose. Loneliness and isolation. And here I am, duly sandwiched. The thoughts get all jumbled up. One cannot pry them apart like Dusshasan’s limbs, one cannot demarcate their destinations—a letter or a diary. I think I’ll stop now. I am exhausted.

  How I wish you were here with me. How I wish we were together. I could have shared all these things with you in person. But then my sanyas wouldn’t have been a proper sanyas. This—our penultimate act in Ramlila.

  I miss you and long to be with you for ever and ever, my sweet darling.

  Akhil

  PS: A maddeningly prolonged stare at one of the ten problems (drawn below) that I need to solve for tomorrow’s tutorial has made me see the veiled implication of this reaction:

  Two unequal bodies, in this case a square and a hexagon, when joined at the hip and heated, become one.

  How ‘adi’ is ‘vasi’? Do naphthalene balls tell stories? Does paper have odour? Do trees have eyes? What do they see and whom do they tell what they see? Trees will live longer than you. So will the paper you stored, the letters you saved, the photographs you have hung on the walls of your mind. The stories you never heard, couldn’t tell, didn’t know, collectively forgave, independently cursed, long as life, short as destiny. You will live beyond you if you don’t know who you are.

  Invisible laughter, visible grief. Or the other way around—everyone knows so no one does?

  And then there were none.

  Can’t leave the house. So much responsibility, so many things. Things. Locks and keys of empty souls, almirahs full of valuables brimming with grief. Family papers, court cases, property fights, venom and hate, greed and arrangements. Blocks that don’t fit into a circle, like a chair with three legs or none. Can’t leave the house or the house doesn’t leave you? When do you leave your body—any ideas? Before you are dead, during or after? When do you kill others so you can pack your suitcases?

  And then there were none.

  Storage space is never sufficient. Clutter gives confidence, empty spaces question. Fill, fill, landfill. What is more unsettling—the end of a sentence or the beginning of one, and what if both didn’t exist or one couldn’t without the other? Innards hanging out.

  Empty spaces question. Empty spaces between things that is—more important than the ones between us. Between you and me, between me and myself, between us and our loved ones. Remembered by what you inherit, not what you make of yourself. Complicated, dissected, distributed and agreed. What matters is the arrangement. And in a certain order known to man but unknown to the universe.

  And then there were none.

  So who begins the story? Your story, my story, our story, their story. The winners or the losers? Who records history—family history, a country’s history? History. How long is respectable, how short is the bastard? How real is the arrangement, how false is the deviation? Where is the limit? Is that a cliff or a trough, a road or a destiny?

  Who knows. Who doesn’t.

  Who knows! Who doesn’t!

  Who knows? Who doesn’t?

  Is the knower also the seeker or is the seeker and the sought the same? The search is ceaseless. Waves and wounds, waves and wounds, but why is the ocean calm? The kshirasagara is still. This is frustrating. Where is the shipwreck of my soul?

  And then there were none.

  Who am I? What am I? I am blind and I can see that I am blind. A blindness so bright it blinds. Behind our eyes we bear a loneliness that is our own. We move indifferent and apart, even from the sadness in our hearts. Refuge, subterfuge.

  Subterfugees. Living in a subterfugee camp.

  The minute we are born, we are in a queue, a number. Take a ticket and stand in line. How long my time is—no one knows. So I require, I acquire, I desire. In preparation and desperation for a liberation I neither understand nor know. Or want. Want-less line, wicked destiny.

  And then there were none.

  How far back is reasonable memory? How far back do you go? What is the point? Of course, there is. History is important. The history of the important. The history of important things, the history of dates, the dates of important acquisitions, captured for the important, by the important. That’s what matters. Keep what is important and destroy the rest.

  And then there were none.

  How many times have you walked into a house, your house, wondering what is precious and what is not? That chair, those pictures and those hundreds of letters, one from every city in the world. Of people long dead, of relationships long over—of nothingness that fills our minds and hearts. There is a name for it, as there is one for everything that cannot be quantified. Sixteen kilos of kindness and seven of hate, 8,000 photographs of arrivals and departures in airports and cradles, graveyards and stations. Life looking for a place, steels trunks staring at you, steel almirahs laughing at you. They know your secrets, the ones you keep locked in the inner compartments. Is it a kutti Godrej or a jabba Godrej? The turning of the lock brings memories—good and bad—of smells, of distance. What is the distance smell can measure and retain? Marathon or steeplechase?

  For how long does a severed head retain the last image of a fast-approaching guillotine?

  2007 was a good year—the rains were good, the grapes were not sour, the bottles had special labels. Random is a number.

  And then there were none.

  Walk into your house and collect everything, the physical possessions and the menta
l. Collect them and stuff them in a house-sized cardboard box. Clasp its flap and drag your memories down the steps—thud, thud, thud, thud—drag them to the lawn at the back of the house where the sun is shining and the cat snoozes under a parasol. Make a fire to stuff the ashes down your throat. Swallow the poison. It is yours. Bonfire, bon appétit. Burn everything—the papers, the letters, the diaries, the photographs. This fire has no smoke, but this room has a view for those who dare to see that what burns in your heart doesn’t have to burn you. Punctuations never end life, only sentences. The souls don’t turn to ash.

  Walk or else there will be none.

  There will never be a record of the ‘adi’ for a ‘vasi’ because there were none. The recorder of time and turner of destinies does not own a watch. He too is naked. Or is it a she?

  Walk away. Now and naked.

  14

  2004—Darkness Visible

  The evening sun put on such a show of flaming shades across the sky that one could be forgiven for thinking it was Hawaii, not Mumbai. But the heat and the dust stopped that drift abruptly.

  Aparajita now regretted having ventured out to the suburbs on a post-lunch whim. Four miserable hours later, she stood outside the giant steel and concrete ogre that was the National Social Sciences Institute, waltzing forwards and backwards but not able to find that precise moment of self-belief and fortitude someone new to a city seeks to cross a busy street. She gave up and hailed an auto. Two crawled over. Aparajita settled on the autowallah combing his hennaed beard.