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 struck 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!’
It was midnight. The moon dimly lit the pathways; there was no mistaking the evil silhouette far away, the peak of Chetali! Suddenly its contours began to change. To Kuttappu it looked like an old Muslim dervish in a gigantic balaclava. The power of the illicit elixir wore away. Now the clip-clop of the chasing cavalry was loud and clear! The Tiger sweated. The djinns of the Sheikh were right behind him. The Tiger tried to cry for help, but his voice sank. The djinns were coming! Where was Khasak? Home? Kuttappu-Nari hurtled through the moonlight in blind and calamitous flight.