The Legends of Khasak

  Abida had always been lonely. This girl, timid and apprehensive, sorrow hidden in the pallor of her cheeks, had found no playmate while a child and no young man when she came of age. When the wind had taken away the heat of sunlight, she would wander along the big ridge across the paddies, or sit by the lotus pond watching the water birds. Often Thitthi Bi would ask her, ‘Have you no friend, my child?’ and Abida would reply, ‘None, Umma.’ And Thitthi Bi would bless her, ‘The Holy Sheikh be your companion!’

  But there was someone to love, someone to serve and care for—her Attha. She would warm the gruel around midnight and wait for Attha. Now it was Maimoona who warmed the gruel, and on many nights Attha went to bed without seeing his daughter. Yet Abida stayed awake in her corridor until Maimoona’s crooning gave way to the fitful snores of her Attha.

  Abida would attempt an overture at times, tentative and ingratiating, ‘Tell me a story.’

  ‘The story of your mother’s lover,’ Maimoona would ask, ‘the one who killed her?’

  It was on such occasions that Abida slipped out of the house without catching anyone’s attention, gliding like a spirit. Once she escaped and went into the grove of Arasu trees. She sat down beneath a tree and asked, ‘Holy Sheikh, are you with me?’ Suddenly the brook turned a deeper blue, and there was a rain of flowers.

  ‘Yah Rahman,’ she said. Her inward ear listened intently. In that ecstasy she became a child once again. She heard the horse’s trot in the wind.

  ‘Horse-spirit, horse-spirit,’ she said, ‘will you give me a ride across the sky?’ She mounted the horse-spirit, and together they raced in the wind, past forests and over seas. Then she saw her mother, young and radiant once again, but at Abida’s touch, she began to shrivel and moulder. Abida found herself in the doomed house on the hill. Outside, her uncle sat on a rock holding up his palms to the warmth of the setting sun.

  ‘Horse-spirit, horse-spirit!’ Abida called out. She could hear the hooves no more, she was alone beneath the tree. The east wind blew in giant sighs through the grove of Arasus.

  ‘Maimoona,’ Allah-Pitcha once reasoned with his daughter, ‘I don’t think it is wise to send Abida out as a servant. She’s no longer a girl.’

  ‘Who’s sending her?’ Maimoona taunted, ‘She likes to flirt around.’

  The next day Abida did not go to the school. As the day grew warmer, Thanka the jaggery woman came to laze about and gossip. Abida could hear them whisper and giggle.

  ‘Who’s there in the corridor?’ Maimoona asked, leaning back and speaking into the window.

  ‘It’s me,’ Abida responded.

  ‘Didn’t you go to sweep the school?’

  No reply came from Abida.

  ‘Aren’t you going?’ Still Abida was silent.

  ‘You had better go,’ Maimoona said. ‘Do you expect the Diving Fowl to fly home with your food?’

  It was Sunday. Quietly, Abida slipped out and took the footway towards the seedling house. She found Ravi, broom in hand, sweeping. Quickly she seized the broom.

  ‘Not you, Saar!’ she said.

  ‘True,’ Ravi laughed, ‘I can’t sweep half as well ...’

  ‘Yaa Allah!’ she said. It was that day, without her realizing how, that she told him her story.

  ‘You are not alone, Abida,’ Ravi said, ‘I too am a motherless child.’

  ‘Rabbil Aalemeen!’

  Abida stooped to sweep. Ravi was standing close. ‘Abida,’ he said to her.

  ‘Yes, Saar?’

  ‘You don’t look too well.’

  He laid a caring hand over her forehead.

  ‘You have a fever, my little girl.’

  She smiled in gratitude. ‘Ah, yes,’ she said, ‘it keeps coming and going.’

  ‘Go home and lie down.’

  As she walked home she wept without restraint. Suddenly she stopped; it was no good going home in that state. She turned towards the brook to wash her face and cool her feet. Appu-Kili was there, stalking the big green dragonflies. He was overjoyed to see her.

  ‘Came to see me?’

  ‘Of course, what else would I come here for, my Parrot?’

  Strangely, Abida realized that she had spoken the truth and touched a mysterious springhead of solace.

  Meanwhile Appu-Kili had caught a dragonfly and with nimble fingers slipped a lasso round its tail. Abida looked at the dragonfly, into its eyes of a thousand crystals. The eyes shone dully with the chronicles of the dead. If dragonflies were memories of the dead, as they believed in Khasak, whose then was this memory? Perhaps it was her mother’s pining images of sin and regret and drowning. The crystal eyes fell on her.

  ‘My Parrot,’ Abida said, ‘why do you hold the ancient one in your lasso? Let him go his way.’

  Appu-Kili began to cry. Quickly she said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.’

  The tears stopped, the cretin’s smile spread over his face, big and beatific. ‘No ask me leave him?’

  ‘Oh no!’

  Appu-Kili undid a cloth wrap and laid it before her, ‘Take it.’ Champaka flowers. She folded her thattan and gathered the flowers in it. She walked home with a Champaka in each of her earrings, and placed the thattan filled with flowers before Maimoona.

  Thanka was still there, whispering and giggling. Maimoona took the flowers, adorned her earrings with them, and gave generous fistfuls to Thanka. Abida walked away into her dingy corridor. Maimoona said, within Abida’s hearing, ‘Wearing flowers, that bag of bones!’

  Abida bore the venom of those words. She tried to soothe it with a prayer. She took up the broom and tried to sweep the corridor, but couldn’t. She leant the broom against the wall. There was a bowl of souring gruel, she took a spoonful, but it tasted foul and she did not eat any more.

  Abida walked out again. Maimoona did not ask her where she was going. Abida went back to the grove of Arasus. The place was deserted. In the enchantment of the grove she became a dragonfly; whose memory was she? Perhaps a memory of her own sorrows of another birth. From the grove she walked to the brook, she plucked the two Champakas from her ears and tore the petals into fragments and gently dropped them into the water.

  Appu-Kili was still amid the screw pines. He saw Abida drop the petals into the water, and was saddened.

  ‘Achchi,’ he said, ‘what you doing with fovers?’

  ‘O my Parrot, I was playing.’

  He came over and stood near her. ‘You aa bootiful,’ he said, soothingly. ‘I marry you.’

  ‘Of course, my Parrot.’

  ‘Get you more fovers.’

  Appu-Kili went back to the screw pines. Again, Abida was alone beside the brook. She sat down on the soft carpet of Krishna Kantis, the blue-flowered grass. The brook flowed on with the remnants of many things.

  The village said that Maimoona was becoming more beautiful. She walked through Khasak as she always had, she sat in her shop for long hours with Thanka.

  One day Abida came and stood before them. She was no longer afraid. She said, ‘Let Attha come home. I’ll tell him.’

  For a brief moment Maimoona went pale, but soon she was her normal self.

  Pouting, she said. ‘What are you going to tell?’

  ‘That the Khazi comes here ...’

  Thanka was the one who flared up, ‘Ah ha! Can’t the Khazi come here to ward off spirits?’

  ‘I’ll tell ...’

  ‘Let’s see you do that, little slut!’ Thanka said in a tearing rage. Then to Maimoona, ‘Nip this in the bud ...’

  ‘Thanka, it’s nothing ...’ Maimoona said.

  At midnight Khasak woke up to screams and the sounds of a chase; Abida was running towards the mullah’s house, blood flowing from the gash in her forehead, with Chukkru, brandishing a log of firewood, in hot pursuit.

  Quickly Thitthi Bi took the girl in and closed the door.

  ‘What has come over you, old sinner?’ Thitthi Bi barred his way.

  The Diving Fowl gasped for breath in anger and exhaustion. br />
  ‘Open the door, Thitthi Bi-Akka,’ he panted, ‘bring her out!’

  Chukkru stood in the yard, incensed.

  Now the mullah stepped down into the yard, drew his knife out of its scabbard in the broad canvas belt, and held it up.

  ‘Take this,’ the mullah said, ‘and this too,’ he said touching his head with the knife, ‘it’s greyed, cut it off, and then have your way.’

  The Diving Fowl threw away the log of firewood and walked home downcast. The mullah went to the closed door and said, ‘Abida, my child, don’t go back, sleep here.’

  The next morning the houri walked again, fresh roses in her earrings ... Abida slept the whole day, and got up at sundown.

  ‘Umma,’ Abida said, ‘Let me go up to the brook. I’ll feel better after a dip.’

  The fading sunlight was turning crimson. Abida recalled the many remnants the stream contained, she remembered the froth and eddy of the water as it bore them away. She crossed the brook and began her walk over the ridge. Far beyond Khasak, she saw the train race towards the mountain pass like a serpent with a flaming jewel on its forehead. Now the black palmyras were lost in the oncoming night. The village of Kalikavu was far away.

  Many miles from Khasak, in that red and darkening twilight, the Diving Fowl perched on the wall round a well. The well was ancient, bounded on all sides by the four wings of the old manor. The Diving Fowl sat there and contemplated the plunge. Deep down lay the water, luminous in the dark, like a diviner’s crystal. There was a song he had composed years ago, a lullaby for the motherless Abida. As he divined the gleaming ripples below, the song came back to him. From his perch, Chukkru sang it in his rusted and dissonant voice:

  ‘O my old fish

  With the fat old head!

  Bring my crying daughter

  A big glowing pearl.’

  He dived into the well, and deeper, into the well within the well. The water was like many crystal doors and silken curtains. Chukkru made his way past crystal and silk, and moved towards the mystery that had lured him all his life. As Chukkru journeyed on, the last of the crystal doors closed behind him.

  The Tiger

  The Khazi stood over Chukkru’s grave and stomped on its sodden cover; he stood in the desolate graveyard and listened to the secret noontide noises. Then he turned and walked out over the ridge towards the hut that stood on a patch of chalkstone and brittle grass. He paused at the gate and called out, ‘Anyone in?’

  This was the hut Neeli shared with her four sisters and their husbands. The men were tree-fellers who were often away for days together. The wives worked in the fields of Khasak.

  Neeli stayed back to keep house, while the only other inmate, Appu-Kili, was at school, or off on his moody wanderings.

  Neeli peeped out at the caller. The Khazi raised a hand and spoke in the sonorous tone of the dervish, ‘The blessings of the Sheikh I bring hither!’

  Neeli mumbled a welcome which was lost in a flow of sibilants. The Khazi came in and sat down on the mat Neeli had spread for him on the floor.

  ‘Your son?’ the Khazi enquired with a measure of anxiety.

  ‘At school, O Khazi. Studying!’

  ‘Good tidings!’

  ‘My son ...’ she sobbed as the delusion of his schooling disintegrated into stark reality.

  ‘Your son is possessed. Within him dwell great demons, poothams.’

  ‘Truly, O Khazi?’

  ‘And you too are possessed.’

  Neeli leaned against the wall, dismayed.

  ‘Have no fear,’ the Khazi said, ‘I shall lure them out with spells and banish them for ever!’

  It was in this solitary hut that Appu-Kili was born twenty years ago, the child of five mothers. Nachi, Kochi, Pechi, Kali and Neeli were sisters. The first four had married, but brought forth no children. Neeli, who had no husband, delivered when she was sixteen. The three older brothers-in-law wanted her out, but Kuttappu, Kali’s husband, said that mother and child would stay, and since he was prone to much violence, the rest of them gave in. Mother and child stayed. The child bore a striking resemblance to Kuttappu, which Kali and Neeli said was perhaps due to the name they had given him—Appu was one half of Kuttappu. Soon the four barren women overcame their embarrassment and built gorgeous fantasies of motherhood around little Appu. When the child began to speak it was an eerie mixture of lisps and gutturals. The barren women said that no other child had done this before.

  ‘He talks,’ they said, ‘he talks like the parrot of the Puranas. He is our Kili!’

  Thus was Appu born again as Appu-Kili. The five mothers passed him from lap to lap, and soon began to talk like him in those lisps and gutturals. They talked to him endlessly about charming and insane things.

  Kuttappu was a migrant, he had moved into Khasak which was the village of his wife, Kali; such migrations were ridiculed as they followed women’s trails. But ridicule did not sit well on a man like Kuttappu whose massive musculature was topped with bloodshot eyes and pendulous, sensual lips. Back home in his own mountain village, generations of ancestors had lived and flourished snaring and trading in tigers. Kuttappu gave up that trade because he loved the great cats and abhorred their skinning as regicide. He walked with a slouch, the gait of the striped king; Khasak called him Kuttappu-Nari, Kuttappu the Tiger.

  Appu-Kili was growing, but not all of him. When he was ten his arms and legs gave up growing and stayed on in their grotesque childhood. The torso grew, and so did the head, and across the pendulous lips settled a timeless smile. Kuttappu and the sterile women brawled with those who dared suggest that there was something wrong with the child. ‘He’ll be all right when he grows up,’ they said, ‘our little prince, our five-hued parrot!’

  Neeli alone sorrowed and hid her sorrow from her sisters.

  A few days after his visit to Neeli, the Khazi was seated in Aliyar’s teashop recounting his duel with a djinn outside Palghat town.

  ‘You all know the tile factory built by the evangelists beside the river, the factory which turns people into Christians, don’t you? Well, then you know where the Muslim keeps the sherbet shop? There, behind the shack, where you go down to the river along the unlit path, yes, there! A djinn, most frightful. Any one of you here would have died of fright. But at the tip of my tongue was a great spell, I cast it, and ...’

  From a corner rose a voice, ‘Khazi, good-for-nothing! Wayside magic man!’

  It was Kuttappu the Tiger.

  ‘Magician, vagrant!’ the Tiger ranted, ‘blow away the djinns to your heart’s content, but keep your breath off our child!’

  The Tiger stormed out of the teashop. The story of the djinn was lost, the Khazi was a little unnerved by the burst of blasphemy, and his listeners were puzzled by the Tiger’s frenzy.

  It lasted the whole day. At sundown the Tiger drank deep and slept.

  The sun was high when Kuttappu awoke the next day. The rage was gone, and in its place dawned cold reason. The Khazi was the Sheikh’s anointed. Who should come to Kuttappu’s rescue if the Sheikh chose to strike? Kuttappu sought Neeli’s advice and comradeship. But Neeli was unusually cold, disinclined to talk. Dejected and dazed, the Tiger went to Kuttadan, the oracle of the lower castes. Kuttadan sat before the idol of his goddess and went into a brief trance. Opening his eyes again he said, ‘O Tiger, we cannot ...’ His goddess strictly forbade any quarrel between Hindu and Muslim gods; these gods were the natives of Khasak.

  ‘We cannot set up the gods against themselves,’ Kuttadan said, ‘we cannot let them brawl.’

  Kuttappu pleaded with Kuttadan, it was a matter of life and death; but nothing would make the oracle change his mind.

  Kuttappu came away like a sleepwalker, and soon lost all knowledge of where his steps were taking him, until he was startled wide awake on Chetali’s foothills! Who had brought him this way, whose was the unseen hand, the unseen leash? There was not a soul within sight or hearing. The Tiger’s head swam, and the most casual object or movement s
truck him with lurid terror—a flurry of dead leaves, a scrabbling rat, a wheeling flight of butterflies. Kuttappu turned and began a slow descent when suddenly a bird chirped and he broke into a run.

  He reached the plains, not his home. For reasons he himself did not know, he set out towards Koomankavu. The long walk became a jog, then mortal flight. But Koomankavu was no refuge, as he still sensed the menace of the mountain. He went into a den where they sold illicit alcohol, and came out restored. He found himself on the road to Palghat town. The road was a thin spine of macadam with ploughed-up sides, yet it had the State’s majesty and freedom and the illicit drink was a merciless intoxicant. In a burst of delusion and power Kuttappu threw a challenge, ‘Come on, Pootham of Chetali, haunt my backside if you dare!’ To make sure the Sheikh got his challenge right, Kuttappu lifted his mundu and bared his behind.

  He caught up with a convoy of bullock carts returning to the bazars of Palghat. A Muslim beside whose cart Kuttappu walked asked him, ‘Why are you baring your backside?’

  The Tiger fell in step with the bullock, and asked the cartman if he had a beedi to spare. He walked inhaling the pungent tobacco and scratching the bullock’s back, and was in no hurry to reply. The cartman repeated, ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘May I ask for a ride?’

  ‘Get in.’

  Kuttappu made himself comfortable, and told him, ‘A pootham is after me.’

  ‘What has the pootham got against you?’

  ‘He is a Muslim demon.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any difference,’ the cartman said. ‘The government has laid this road for honest users like you and me, it isn’t for haunting. Let us see if this pootham dare touch you on the government’s freeway.’

  ‘You can’t possibly stop him ...’

  ‘This is a wager, I will quit this trade if the demon breaks the rule of the road!’

  ‘What trade?’

  ‘Plying bullock carts.’

  The convoy trundled on slowly. It was late afternoon when they reached Palghat town. Kuttappu took leave of the cartman and let himself loose in the town. On the maidan of the old Sultan’s fort a meeting was in progress. The Red Flag fluttered over the speakers who were debating things that concerned the Tiger as well—work and wages. He sat down on the grass among the listeners, but soon lost interest, because his was the more fearsome struggle. He rose and walked away in search of the scalding drink; a couple of draughts more, and Kuttappu was spoiling for a fight. The pendulum now moved towards heroism. Kuttappu vowed to return and desecrate the Sheikh’s battlements that very night. He hitched a lift in an ancient lorry, which dropped him near Koomankavu. Kuttappu started his walk back to Khasak. He composed an instant song on the road, ‘Come pootham, get me if you can, Ta Ra Na Na!’