Authors: Suketu Mehta
In the broad street behind the factory, the road is sloppy with blood. I see another bullock being dragged by a gang of men. A rope has been dragged through its nostrils, and they are trying to topple it over. They tie up its front and rear feet and push. The beast goes over, but somehow it struggles and gets up again. With a jerk, the bull is splayed out again. One of the men holds its mouth closed. Another comes up with a foot-long sharpened blade. The spectators crowd around; it is still early on the first day. There are lots of very young children. The bull struggles a bit, there is a deep rumble from the depths of its being, and then the blade is drawn with one swift motion across a vein. A torrent of blood gushes out, they pull its head and body in opposite directions, and the whole neck is open to the street, blood streaming out in bucketfuls, all over the clothes of the professionals.
The fresh blood has an unreal color about it, as if it is paint; it is not the deep red of a few moments later but a light, bright pinkish-red. A bucket of water is brought and splashed into the bull’s exposed throat, to keep the blood from clotting. The head and the body struggle separately. They leave it there for a few moments for the blood to drain out, then commence cutting the carcass. When a sack in its stomach is cut, it releases gobs of warm dung, mixing with the blood and the entrails. Next to it, another bull’s carcass, its skin cut away, suddenly releases a stream of yellow liquid; fifteen minutes after it has lost its head, the torso is pissing.
As the fur and the skin and the flesh are cut away in layers, the animals’ bodies reveal treasures in multiple vivid colors: the brownish-red of the liver; the elegant white-and-red stripes of the inside of the rib cage; the brown, white, black of the fur; the crystal of the eyes; the pure cream of the intestines, unfurled. I see the marvelous arrangement of the cow’s body within and without, the complex cornucopia of its insides, the fine differentiation of the organs, each admirably suited to its purpose. All this had been working in tandem a minute before, and now each part is freed from the yoke of the mind and acts independently, twitching, pissing, growing, hardening. Now they will go their separate ways. After one cow is slaughtered, the children pull at the white fat inside its body; it stretches like an elastic sheet. A man pokes the open eye of the dead animal; its mouth suddenly opens in reflex, showing a line of teeth. The man repeats his gesture; the mouth opens again.
One thing surprises me: Of the thousands of animals, live and dead, in these streets, there is no sound. No bleating of the terrified goats, no bellowing of the cattle. The killing takes place right next to the live beasts; a massive bullock goes on chewing grass while another is brought to its side right next to it. Similarly with the goats. Don’t the animals sense something, the stink of slaughter all around them? Aside from a slight trembling that I see in one goat, and a curious silence, there is no reaction. They look, if anything, depressed. One bull allows itself to be brought to its side and lies there waiting for the knife with its eyes open. When the blade is drawn across its throat, it doesn’t even struggle.
Grinning children run barefoot through the streets deep with blood, holding the freshly cut heads, all the eyes open. There are groups of municipal garbage collectors who take away the waste entrails, the dungfilled stomach sacs. Huge dumps are filled with these carcasses. A man
stands inside a municipal garbage container, cutting a big animal’s insides, disposing of the remains right inside the container around his feet. Cats and dogs are having a feast on the leftovers. At the corner there are the knife sellers, and a man on a bicycle with a knife-sharpening wheel attached. As he pedals, the wheel spins; as he holds the blade at an angle to the wheel, a stream of sparks flows in one direction.
The Muslims of this area are sensualists. On festival days and at weddings, the older folks take a napkin, anoint it with attar, put a pellet of opium on the tip, and stick it inside their ear. Then they can be high all evening. On the streets outside, the children of the Bihari slums, dressed in their best—like one little boy in a brown suit with a black bow tie stitched on—are being given rides in small hand-turned Ferris wheels. Men are playing games on the sidewalk. A ring is tossed over a group of toys and gadgets; if your ring lands and completely encircles, say, a deck of playing cards, the deck is yours. The narrow streets are slippery with blood and shit, the filthiest time of the year in the filthiest part of the city. On the road leading to the factory I notice a dead squashed rat, covered with flies. An open manhole reveals huge red cockroaches ringing the tunnel. The animal hides are stacked and put in front of mosques, for charity. Men walk about with reddened shirts; they look as if they’ve been playing Holi.
According to the laws, cattle are supposed to be slaughtered only in the Deonar abattoir. A truckful of policemen looks on as the bulls are slaughtered in front of their eyes. The cattle that I see are all bullocks, though the doctor says that, since the cow is cheaper and more delicate, they prefer that meat, and some are smuggled in against the laws and slaughtered here. “It is against the feelings of the other community,” he says. “If they find out, in one hour there would be a riot.”
There is none of the usual western avoidance of the fact of death behind the dressed-up food on the plate; the animal is brought in live, and you see the before and after. You see exactly which part of the animal’s insides a cut of meat comes from. You see the beast struggle to stay upright as it’s brought down; you see its eyes open wide as the men sit on its body; you see the desperate gasping and trembling of the body after the blood has left it. Before this, I have seen killing only on the Discovery Channel. But now here it is: in full view, in the open street, in the broad day. When I see my first cow slaughtered I feel sick inside; I want to go and stop it. I have been a vegetarian for some eleven years now. But I cannot tear myself
away. I climb over a handcart, to get a better view. I look at my blue denim shirt as the man hacks at the bull’s carcass with an ax. A bright red droplet of blood has landed on the blue and stands there, solid. I am afraid to touch it. After a while it turns black, and then it is harmless, just another black speck.
The freshly killed meat is supposed to taste better than the flesh killed in distant countries, many months or years ago. Hunters must get this charge, but it is nothing like this; the rifle confers the privilege of distance. This is the most direct form of hunting, where you plunge the knife straight into the neck of the struggling animal and rip its body apart with your own hands. The men are all eager, happy to participate in the killing and the carving up. The laborers in Ishaq’s factory are in a good mood. This is the beginning of a three-day holiday, a holiday in the city, for there isn’t enough time to go back to the village. All day long, there is just the killing and the feasting. All the poor will be fed, and fed well, on fresh meat; three-fourths will be distributed to them. The bullock meat is tough, and most of it is made into seekh kababs and mincemeat. The goat meat is more tender. The chickens in their cages in the market are safe for the next few days.
It is hot, baking hot, and the meat lies in the open streets. After the carcasses are cut, they are left on the street or in the gutters where they have fallen. Then they are dragged over the surface of the road on their way to people’s homes or to the Gulf countries, where a lot of the meat is exported. I don’t see a freezer anywhere. By midmorning, a lot of this will be in people’s stomachs, the one animal going into the other. In the workshop, I see a man wring out a long tube from a goat’s inside; a shower of hard black droplets of dung falls out into a bucket. Then he chops up the edible parts of the goat and throws them into the same bucket, where they mix again with the dung.
There will be feasting for three continuous days. “In the evening of the third day,” says the doctor, “we go out to a hotel and eat vegetarian food.”
Inside his factory, Ishaq shows off his pet goat. He is feeding the goat mutton. He laughs. “It will eat anything.” Its diet over the last year included tea and cigarettes. He has developed feelings for the goat. On the day after tomorrow he will slaughter it.
I see children leading baby goats—kids—through the lanes, petting them, feeding them lettuce leaves. A worker in Ishaq’s factory, dressed in
white just before he steps into the washing pit to kill a goat whose horns have been painted green, says these animals are lucky, because they are being killed for religion—“they are happy”—whereas all the others are killed just for food. That’s why they aren’t making any sounds, he says. He goes into the pit and hacks at the goat’s throat, and the blood pours out on his white clothes, making him red all over.
In his village, the doctor says, he has killed goats dear to him. “It is best to sacrifice a goat that you have raised from infancy, that you have developed love for.” At the moment of sacrifice, he says, the religious sentiment overpowers the reluctance to kill the one you love. “Not what they do here: buy the animal the day before, that they don’t even know, so the only sacrifice is of your money. All this blood you see today—Allah doesn’t like that.” They are eating mutton right now, Shahbuddin and Ishaq, dipping chunks of pav into the meat. It is liver. Some people prize the liver, others the heart, others the thick soup that is made of cattle hooves, which is supposed to give strength to the eater; the doctor prefers the muscle of a cow’s udder.
Shahbuddin says, “If animals could speak a human language, then very few would be cut.” He is trying to defend the practice. He believes he has a soft heart, he says, and so these things affect him. But his religion believes that every single thing on earth was created by Allah for the enjoyment of man, and so if animals weren’t meant to be slaughtered and eaten, what are they here for? “If someone can prove to me that animals aren’t created for the use of human beings, I’ll give it up.” He asks me: Some people believe it’s okay to kill a chicken but not a goat. Why is that? I answer that it’s because the goat has a greater capacity for pain. But to an ant, responds Shahbuddin, its pain is as great and its life has the same value as that of an elephant. “But you may ask me why I won’t eat meat that’s not halal. You may say that the meat is the same; what’s the difference if one has a prayer said over it?” He is willing to admit doubt into his belief system. At any rate, he is thinking about the slaughter going on outside, and ever so gently he is addressing my unasked questions.
Ishaq and Shahbuddin—whose clinic is just down the road from Ishaq’s shop—are originally from Azamgarh, in Uttar Pradesh, which is famous
for its criminals, such as the D-Company lieutenant Abu Salem, who was born there. I am talking to them about an article on Azamgarh that appeared recently in the paper. It mentioned its reputation as the money-laundering capital of India. “We ourselves did it!” chorus Shahbuddin and Ishaq. Shahbuddin’s grandfather was a big hawala operator. Money would be given to him in rupees; he would phone Saudi Arabia and, through a code, instruct the operator there to disburse a sum of rials to the receiving party. “In any crime anywhere in the world, if investigated thoroughly, the name of Azamgarh will come in somewhere,” declares the doctor. In Azamgarh, says Ishaq, the panwallahs do a side trade in guns. You can buy an AK-47, smuggled from Nepal, from a pan stand for 65,000 rupees. “Why do people keep AK-47s?” I ask him.
“Just. As a hobby,” he explains.
Madanpura, too, is famous for its gangs. “They’ve distributed the business,” notes Dr. Shahbuddin. “Someone is in property, someone in killing, someone in kidnapping.” The kids around here will murder for 5,000 rupees. They do it out of poverty, but they take the money and flaunt it in the beer bars, throwing it at the girls. After the murder there’s no life left for them. They are hunted by the police. They might even be hunted by the very people who have commissioned the murder.
“Any man who is doing these inhuman things is deceiving himself,” Asad bin Saif of the peace group had told me about the Hindus of the Sena who had killed during the riots. It was interesting how he had put it: “deceiving himself” rather than “deceiving God” or “deceiving humanity.” There is a gulf between the human heart and murder, and I was intent on seeing the bridges men build for themselves over that gulf. I had met the rioters and the encounter specialists, and I now sought out the professional murderers of the gangwar, men who deceive themselves every day of their lives.
O
NE AFTERNOON
, I sit down in a dhaba, a cheap eatery, in Madanpura and order Pepsis for myself, Ishaq, and Anees, a fair-complexioned, enthusiastic young man who grew up with Ishaq. Anees tells me about the war in the underworld that has so far, in 1998, officially claimed two hundred lives. He is “company touch”—not officially in the D-Company but associated with them, available for small works. He has a friend who is a
shooter in the Dawood gang, a professional murderer. I ask Anees if I might meet him. He agrees but says it will have to be in a public place, which he will not tell me about beforehand.
A couple of days later I am met in Ishaq’s shop and walked into the Venus Café, below the Maratha Mandir cinema hall. It is a modern, brightly lit place, open to the street, filled with couples waiting for their movie to start. With Anees this time is a small thin man with a mustache, whose name is given to me as Mohsin. Anees leans forward. “He’s done two murders.”
“Seven and a half!” Mohsin immediately says, offended. “Seven and a half!”
“Seven and a half.” Anees corrects himself.
We order coffee and juice. There is a party of young English girls at a booth behind us, travelers from the station next door. They may be waiting for a night train out of Bombay. They are not molested in this café, or even commented upon. This is not Delhi. Behind us Ishaq and another boy sit on the single bench, facing our backs, like the coachmen on the back of a carriage.
Mohsin is another of Ishaq’s childhood friends. Ishaq has seen him after a decade, and later tells me, “We used to mock him when he was a kid.” He could be anybody, the lift man, the peon in my uncle’s office, any one of the people walking on the sidewalk as I pass in my car. But he has a murderer’s eyes, dark, glinting. He meets my eyes, and if I lower them to look at my notebook to write something he touches my hand lightly with his. I have to look him in the eyes.