The Gypsy Goddess (15 page)

9.
A Minor Witness

I was the first to come and tell everybody: Poomayil akka's appa was beaten up at the tea stall. I saw the fighting and ran away as fast as I could. When I was back home, I told them what I saw. All the men went there to help. Even Thaatha wanted to go and see what he could do. It would have taken him half a day to wobble all the way to the tea stall. So he was asked to stay. Even I was asked to stay. They asked us to look after the women and children.

Then the police vans came to our village. We knew that from the wailing sound of the sirens. My amma said the police only meant trouble for everybody. Seenu said the police had come there only to protect the
mirasdars
. She corrected him. That is what all the mothers do. She said that the police now wanted to catch our men, which is why the men of our village were not to be seen. They had run away. Only a few old men were left behind.

After having food, we came and sat in the open. The elders talked endlessly. They spoke of what had happened
earlier in the day. They said the end was near. They also said this was not the end. They kept talking and it became dark and I fell asleep.

We heard whistles. They said rowdies were coming. Before I could see them it started raining stones. We ducked our heads. We ran towards the edge of our street. Some of our men had come back in the dark and they began picking up bricks. Everyone joined in. Seeing them, I too began picking up stones. The men kept throwing stones. Natarajan started throwing the stones he had picked up. Guru joined him. I did not throw stones because my chittappa was watching. He could tell on me to my appa, who would believe his younger brother more than his son. So, I sat down quietly and watched the other boys act like men. Then we heard the gunshots. The old men ran into the fields. The women ran inside their homes.

Paappa akka, Ramayya maama's wife, was calling everyone to their house. Big with child, she walked with one hand on her stomach, afraid that it would fall off. She stood at the doorway and asked all of us to step inside. Vasuki was tugging at her sari asking to be carried. Most of the women and children got inside.

Virammal akka, with her little son under one arm, pulled Guru and Natarajan into Paappa akka's house. She called them naughty monkeys. She told Natarajan that he was not even three feet tall and so he could not join
the fighting. She told Guru that if he got out they would put a spear into him and he would never be able to see his sweetheart again. I was looking away all this time and she came to me. She asked me to run and fetch my sister and come back to her. She asked me not to go home. She asked me not to wander off. She asked me to come back in a blink.

I went to find my sister. I called her name.

I looked for her everywhere. I looked out until I could not see.

They were coming closer and closer. I stood there lost. Then Anjalai came and grabbed my hand from nowhere. We began to run. I could not go back to Paappa akka's home with her. Everybody was running there. I carried her and ran into the fields. We hid ourselves behind the crops, from where the dark night could be touched.

They started shooting. They were moving in. They were shouting. They set fire to the roof of the huts. They took the straw from one burning thatched roof to set fire to another. Then all the burning huts lit up the village. We saw fleeing figures. We heard bamboo splinters blast.

Then everything happened at once. We heard the screaming. The loud screams filled up the land. My little sister and I were crouching like monkeys. I held her tight to stop her running. She sat still. She did not know what was going on. I put my hand on her mouth so that she would not
join the screaming. The screams stopped sometime later.

Then I came outside holding my sister. We ran towards our home. The sky was yellow and black with fire and smoke. I heard an old woman crying. When I got closer, I could make out that it was Maayi paati. She was with another woman. They were hiding behind a hut. They sat in such a way that only their faces could be seen above their knees. I understood they were without clothes. I took my father's
lungis
and gave it to them. They covered themselves. They came into our hut. We were all coughing. Maayi paati said that those who had come to attack us had gone away. So we went and sat outside.

A police van came again at the middle of the night. It went away after some time.

They did not come to us. We did not go to them. Maayi paati kept on crying. None of us could sleep.

The sun switched sides. Some men from our village came back with the light. The police tied them up.

Then the
thannikkaarar
, the watermen, came with their red lorries full of water. They said the fire could not be seen but things were still burning. We could not watch them work. We were not allowed near them.

From the policemen's chatter I thought they were counting. I heard them say five, ten, twelve, twenty-five, thirty-eight. That many heads they said. I was not sure. I don't know what happened after that.

We were taken away. I heard Appa was at the big hospital in Nagapattinam.

I did not know what happened to Chittappa.

I did not see the others.

10.
Mischief by Fire

The streets are alight

and the marauding mob of landlords is at arm's length and those who have stayed behind in Kilvenmani apprehend its onward approach through shrill synchronized whistles piercing the cold night air and rapid gunshots being aimed at moving targets and the crackling noises of their homes bursting into flames and the screams of their women caught in the clutches of these attackers

and so they seek shelter in Paappa and Ramayya's hut because there is nowhere safer to go and because they believe in the strength and safety of their numbers and in staying together and so united they stand as they squeeze themselves inside and lock the door

and the mob soon arrives on its rampaging feet and tries to forcibly gain entrance and fails and in a fury sets the hut ablaze

and now escape involves the only available exit and the men by the door struggle to unlock it and they stumble out
but they are hacked to death or pushed back inside

and in desperation a mother throws her one-year-old son out of the burning hut but the boy is caught by the leering mobsters and chopped into pieces and thrown back in and in that precise yet fleeting moment of loss and rage everyone realizes that they would die if their death meant saving a loved one and that they would die if their death meant staying together and that they would die anyway because it would not be as disastrous as living long enough to share this sight and so alone and together they prepare to resign themselves to the fact that they have mounted their collective funeral pyre

and the hut is fatally bolted for the final time from the outside by the mob leaving the dead the dying and the living dead in the crushed space to face the fire that is a merciless man-eating angry god who demands that everyone submits to suffering

and in no time at all the wails and the howls can be heard six villages away

but the cries are to no avail and in a matter of minutes the black smoke envelops them so they can no longer cry for help because their vocal cords have scorched and closed and suddenly inhalation itself is injury

and now the fire spreads with fondness and familiarity and the old men and the women and the children are bathed in blisters making touch their greatest trauma and long-ago
tattoos of loved ones' names show up on their arms but they are almost already dead as they continue to burn and soon their blood begins to boil and ooze out of every pore sometimes tearing skin to force its way out in a hurry to feel fresh air and the blood begins to brown and then blacken

and at some point seeing becomes impossible because life has elapsed and so they no longer scare each other and instead they mourn in silence inside the torched hut as their muscles lose mass and begin to flex of their own free will arching joints into pyramids and the dying dance after their death as they are formed and deformed and their tongue-lolling soot-coated smiles only mean that pain is always followed by paralysis

and facial features disappear and flesh now starts splitting and shin bones show and hair singes with a strange smell and the flames hastily lick away at every last juicy bit as the bones learn to burst like dead wood and some of the singing bones spring to life and crack along the grain as if maintaining the beats of a secret and long-forgotten dirge because life has become extinct and there is no time for tears because death holds no terror

and so their lives go up in smoke but all of them are too dead to notice this vital fact of existence

and instead they burn all night fuelled by their own fat until the firemen come in the morning to wake them up by dousing their remains with cold water so that

the police can pick up the pieces to match the mangled body parts and attempt an accurate headcount of the dead who have grown shorter in stature in one fiery night that left them as indistinct as roasted rats making individual identification impossible

and satisfy other official formalities like the flash photography from four different angles that shall record the coal-black colour of charred skin against calcined bones free of soft tissue and images of flesh hanging loose from corpses whose thighs end in abrupt stumps

and transport to the cremation grounds these fire-frozen dead with their fingers hooked into angry claws and the skin on their hands ready to come apart

and provide to the hungry press a picture-perfect portrait of a dead family where the cracks on the small child's skull resemble a spider's web and his brain spilling out is all pink and soft and squishy and nearby his mother kneels with another infant clutched to her breast in one tight embrace and it appears that all three of them have been stilled into this posture as if they were begging for life and look half-burnt as though the hasty fire stopped to show some mercy.

11.
In Police Custody

It is not that night's incidents alone, madam, you see this problem had been raging for three months and more, they were asking us to remove the flag, replace our red flag with their yellow flag, and you know this was not just polite please-do-it or can-you-do-it
panrengala? panna mudiyuma
? asking, they were threatening us
konnu poduvomda thevdiyamavaney
we will kill you whoresons and then they were beating us up, I don't even want to go there, madam, and on top of that they started depriving us of jobs so there was nothing to do, nothing for the stomach and yes, this is how it went, so we went looking for work, it was not easy at all, this constant worry and fear but we were determined we would not be shaken up by these rowdies and as I was saying we would not give up the red flag under any circumstance you see because we had sworn to that effect and this
satthiya vaakku
was an issue of honour of our village and all the elders and all the little ones and everybody, man woman child, had agreed to this decision
right under this banyan tree,
ingadhaan
, right here, right where we both are standing now, you see the village decided so there was no turning back and I'm not just saying that but we were ready to face anything, come what may and now you see, you see what has happened
ayyo ayyayyo
… what was I saying? Yes, we took the risk, what did we know then, would we expect this no no no this is not no not what we had in mind, we just knew that it was going to be quite a tough time really for us, no premonition that they would do exactly what they said they will do, burn Kilvenmani, anyway so for our safety everyone in our village would gather here, right here, daily at six or so in the evening, I could say after we had food and all and we took turns staying awake and feeling the pinch of black sky and it was sad, you know it had become a routine with us and it was like a village meeting, day after day we were hearing news of homes being burnt in other villages or news of girls being raped or somebody we knew being beaten up or killed
enneramum ithe pechuthaan
this was the only talk all the time… where was I? Yes, that day, that evening also the whole village had gathered and we were all tired like there was no tomorrow and talking of what happened in the afternoon and we were talking about the tractor that had come in from the south pulling a yellow-green trailer with a hundred, hundred and twenty, rowdy men really ruffian type rowdies you know the type who are used to just beating
up people and yes these men got down and entered Muthusamy's tea stall, you know that one right? It's difficult to miss when you come here, it's the one that's right next to the barber's shop and where you would have seen all of us sitting on a normal day, anyway that's where the trouble started, these rowdies were there and one of the bastards Perumal Naidu from Irinjiyur, yes, Gopalakrishna Naidu's own village, picked a fight with Muniyan, you know him oh yes, madam, you were interviewing him earlier, he is our
thalaivar
, our village headman, yes, he's in the Communist Party also, everyone from here is in the party, see that is why it is important, this Perumal Naidu deliberately picks a fight with Muniyan because he knows this village will learn a lesson only when the leader is attacked and you see, how does he attack him, he says, hey, why are you standing so close to me? Get lost will you and our poor Muniyan he is fifty years old, he is the older generation you see, they have been used to so much bullying, he did not know what to do when a twenty-year-old boy talked to him in this filthy way, if it was me I would have hit that whoreson then and there and broken his jaw, but Muniyan is not that type, he is the type who will say, how can you come to my village and disrespect me like this, as if this politeness is going to work, and of course, they don't understand this nice, polished talk do they? No, they do not, in fact it only made them angrier… what was I going on about? Okay,
back to the tea stall, this man Perumal was causing trouble and from what I heard he threw caste slurs around, insulted Muniyan and that fat pig Perumal,
avan summa pesikita irupaan
, he took a log of firewood and hit Muniyan, Muniyan was bleeding, and seeing that, Kanchi rushed to help and they hit him too then these rowdies beat up everyone in the tea stall, no one could say anything, or do anything, people are always stilled by sudden attacks aren't they, you will agree with me, and seeing that everyone there was mute the rowdies tied up two people, our people and took them to the landlord's place, the sun would have fallen and risen over our heads in the meanwhile, before we got to know about it, but
antha neram paarthu
that little boy, Nandan, had gone to the tea stall on an errand to buy betel leaves for his thaatha, so he saw what was going on
avanukku thalaiyum puriyala kaalum puriyala
he fled the place not being able to make head or tail of what was going on, and he came running, we asked him
ennada aachu
and he said he saw rowdies, our men being beaten, he was breathless
paavam chinna payyan
, we told him to stay back, we told four or five men to stay with the women and children to take care of them just in case some other trouble visited our village,
paarunga naanga apdi kavanama irundhom
, but all our precautions were going to be of no use, well, as I was saying, we had to go there as quickly as we could, we were all worried, at that time, we never knew what would be
coming later that ill-fated day,
yaaru ninaichu paarthirupaanga
, at that time what mattered the most was running to the tea stall, we all went there, almost all of the men, we always move as one mass you see, it is for our safety, and there we saw our Muniyan and Muthusamy tied up, being dragged away, our blood was boiling, these two men were not just that or this, they were our village headman and party president, and their hands were tied behind their backs by those Naidu whoresons,
engalukku eppadi irukkum
, we were outraged, full of dread, we kept watching, they were taken to the landlord's house, even you can predict, madam, what would have happened, they were beaten up mercilessly, locked up in the chicken coop, all this was making my hair stand on end I don't even want to continue this, hmm, what to say, I was not the only one who was so angry, all of us were, there was still daylight left, and that's what the sun does, doesn't it, while there's light, there's a certain courage, so we went ahead to attack them,
cha
it's not only the light you know, have you watched people when they are returning from work,
oru veri irukkum
, there's this mood to fight, that's how it was with us, we were all tired and dried up and raw and we went right there banging his door, ready to face come what may, we were beaten up, it rained blows on us,
semathiya adichaanuva
, we didn't take it lying down, we hit back bloody hard as we could, those whoresons were
outnumbered,
adakki vaasichanunga
, and yes, we brought our Muniyan and Muthusamy with us through the back door, they were alive at least, that's what we thought, but you know, we felt that enough was enough with these sister-fuckers forgive my language, madam, we decided to file a complaint immediately, a complaint means we had to go to Thevur police station, we went there, there was no time to be spared, we were there asking them to come and catch the rowdies but the police would not shake their butts, you know what they were saying, your leaders are here, they are alive, nothing has happened to them,
ethukkuda thulrenga
, yes, those bastards had that audacity, they did nothing, they sent us back, you may not hear about these things in the city, amma, but here, the police are nothing but dogs, you would see that for yourself if you lived among us, I wish you came and wrote about them also, that's what I think, don't mistake me, one can fill a whole book with the atrocities done by the police, you should come again, oh yes, I understand, I know you are here to help, I will continue with my story, I was telling you about the police, what they did to us that day, no nothing, no action, after two hours some eight policemen turned up in their fancy screaming vans, those dogs did not come to the scene of crime, they did not go to the tea stall, they did not come to our homes, but those whoresons visited the criminal Ramanuja Naidu who had locked our leaders in a chicken
coop,
avanukku moravaasal senjaanunga
, they never asked us if there was a problem, why we had filed a complaint or any routine duty that the police should do, they were sitting inside his house busy licking his ass, we were waiting outside, and look who comes there, Gopalakrishna Naidu's ash-coloured pleasure car pulls over,
kannum kaadhum vecha mathiriye ellaam nadakkuthu
, the sight of him meant something was going absolutely wrong but that was not the time for thinking, for me, when I saw that self-fellating whoreson I wanted to attack him, we were enraged, what stopped us was not fear, we stopped ourselves because we knew that if five of us killed him today he would kill fifty of us the following day, he is a ruthless fucker, sorry, but you know what I think now, if we had killed him then and there, such a big misfortune would not have befallen us, we missed that golden chance, and look what we got in return, you know there are times when you hear things but you don't believe it at all, that's how it was, Naidu was making a direct threat, telling the police he was going to burn Kilvenmani, he was going to attack the
cheri
if we continued our antics and he left and we dismissed it, it was not like he was doing it right then, right there, you know what I mean, to us it just looked like the day was drawing to a close, I think all this must have happened between six or seven at night and about eight or so, we were just waiting to get back and get some sleep, and did we sleep, did we even go to our homes,
enna nadandhuchu
, now the whole world knows, does it change anything, no, will it bring back our dead, no, sorry, I don't mean to upset you, you are only doing your job, sister, but you see that day dangles in front of my eyes all the time, I know it scene by scene, it is more clear to me than this moment, it is more real to me than the two of us here, talking, I feel as if all I need to do is to thrust my hand out and I will catch some mother-fucker from that mob, that's what I did that day, I'd never seen this whoreson before, he was one of rowdies who had been sent to our village, he was asking us, ‘which are the streets we should beat up, which are the streets we should burn', you see this mob did not know that we were the residents of the very village that they were heading to, when they saw the group of us returning from the caste-Hindu streets where the landlords lived they possibly thought we were another mob like them, sent to burn down the village, that's how random this bloodlust was, but because we were thirty of us we could act, so I caught the man who asked us this question and we dealt with them suitably, we were giving them a good fight, we were fierce,
oru veri, veriladhaan irundhom
, we were hitting back and holding them at bay, thankfully for us, the party had been contacted about the tea-stall incident by then, so when Thevur Kannan came there with our comrades from the nearby villages this mob ran away at the sight of him, but that was not the end of those devious
sister-fuckers, you cannot imagine the levels to which they would stoop, there was one whoreson, may his dick be riddled with worms, he was talking with us, claiming that his name is Pandian, a fellow Communist, one of Thevur Kannan's men, but even as he talked he axed Sellamuthu with his billhook and then we realized that he is not from our party, that he is not Thevur Kannan's man, Kannan identified him as an agent from Irukkai, so we caught him and tied him up, we gave him what he deserved,
avan thola urichirukkanum aana neram illa
, and then we went back to our village, this night most of our men have gone away as usual to escape the police and it is just like any other
Margazhi
night, the cold winds are cruel and howl as they always do and we are all huddled together, even an old jute sack is a luxury in this month, our children sleep like mice with their heads inside old cardboard cartons so that the cold does not bite their little noses but this night they are hiding their faces in their mothers' saris afraid of the stories that they have been hearing from us and only the older boys, by older I mean the ones who are wearing underwear, help us collect bricks and stones and that's how we arm ourselves because we are afraid that we might be attacked again and we, I mean the men, sister, we hide behind the coconut trees because we have spotted in the distance that the mob had regrouped, there were many, many of them now and they were coming back again and we know that
first they have to climb over the bunds and then they have to cross the crops and so we were lying in wait and a hundred of them approached from all the four directions and they moved in step to the sound of whistles you see, that is how coordinated they were, and right at the beginning of the tar road they started shooting at us and we kept at throwing our stones but it was simply no match for their guns, in fact our stone-throwing worked against us, you know, as every time a stone was thrown they used their torches to look for moving shadows and they too threw stones at us and many of us got hit, some ran away, some bled, some fell down, I remember that night clearly, in front of my eyes, Muniyan who is standing nearby throws a stone but a big brick lands on his head and from his body blood flows as if it were sweat and I don't know what to do,
kaiyyum odala kaalum odala
, I want to run away, I want to scream, but I stay, I hold him, I make him lean against a mud wall and then slowly I take him to safety, to shelter, to get a respite from the stones and the shooting, and, in this snatch of silence on our side we hear them say, there is no one in this village, let us enter, and their mob enters and they start setting fire to the homes and in the light of these fires they see us leaving and they shout at us saying he's running away, he's running there and he's the man who killed two of our men and we don't know what to do and there is nothing for us to do and so we only throw stone upon futile stone at them but they have