The Mouse (Eli) by Ashokamitran

Ashokamitran

Translated from the Tamil by Saravanan. K 

This is an English translation of “Eli”, a short story written by Ashokamitran. This is 41^st  English translation in Tamil Classic short stories published in this blog. 

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Ganesan was terribly annoyed with the repetition of the same act. That day too, the womenfolk in his house cleaned up everything completely, leaving no leftover food in the kitchen after dinner. It was not that they were not aware of anything that was going on there. Elder sister was fifty years old. Wife was to complete her forty years of age. Daughter was going to complete thirteen years. Not a piece of dosai,or pappador tiny meat of coconut was available. ‘What else then could be kept in the mouse trap? Hell with everyone!’  Ganesan went to bed. 

He could have slept no more than half an hour. He heard the sound of the bamboo pole moving. ‘The mouse is somewhere near the bamboo pole’. Just past two minutes, now the bamboo pole rocked more. ‘The mouse is now climbing on the pole’. Now the sound of large brass plate hitting the wall was heard. “The mouse has got onto the loft’. A swooshing sound. ‘The mouse was on its way upon the heap of old newspapers’.A sudden sound of a knock. ‘The mouse has jumped off from the loft to the cupboard’.  The empty tin boxes kept at the top of cupboard rustled with each other.‘The mouse has gone to the almirah fixed on a nail on the wall’. A brief silence. A big banging sound of something being pushed down as if to compensate the silence that preceded. Ganesan and his wife got up, switched on the light and examined the area. The mouse had pushed away the lid of an oil jar. 

Ganesan looked at his wife, gnashing his teeth as she was closing the jar with its lid, covered it with a basket, upside down upon it. “Nothing I say goes into your ears to leave some leftovers and to my dismay I don’t know why do you keep everything here spotlessly clean?” he asked, disparagingly. 

“What else do you expect me to keep as left over? Can we keep Rasam for the mouse? Or will you keep the Uppma in hook of mouse trap?” she retorted. 

“Stop your teasing” Ganesan told her. 

“I didn’t tease you. If it is Dosaior Adai, we can keep in the trap. But you know…we are making dosaiand adai every day at home right. Aren’t we?

“Then let the mouse tumble everything and ruin it.” 

His wife didn’t speak anything. She took out a dried onion from the vegetable bag, gave it to him and told, “You may try it”. 

“Tell me when did the mouse come here to eat this onion?”

Though the onion he had thrown at her might have hurt her, she said nothing and went to bed. 

Ganesan couldn’t sleep. In those two small rooms in which even ten persons wouldn’t be able to either sleep by their side nor eat together, four or five rats were playing around with full-fledged freedom, biting, tearing the cloths, opening the lids of boxes, scooping out the pulp from tomatoes, drinking oils, and unfailingly stealing away the wicks from the lamps kept in front the God. 

Ganesan put on his shirt with quarter of an Ana in his shirt pocket, closed the door and hit the street.  

All the hotels were closed. Only the shops selling beedaand betal leaves were kept opened. ‘Just a vada…even a half of it will be enough…’ 

Unluckily, no leftovers of vada anywhere. Breads, buns, biscuits and bananas were only available. Experimentation with all these stuff in different times in the past was already completed. But the mice were grown insouciant in attitude towards it. ‘Any food stuff roasted in oil- like vada, Bakkoda, or pappad-were found useful earlier. We can’t make all those items at home daily as the cost of dal and oils is unbearably high. Can we? Rice Uppma, Rava Uppma, then Pongal. Then the cycle will be reverse- First Pongal, rava Uppma and then Rice uppma- this is how one could get food at home’. Even the words Pongal and Uppma had made him sulk. Possibly, the mouse would also feel the same. Wouldn’t it?

The mouse must have been lucky that day as Ganesan had decided to return home. A public meeting was going on at a distance in the ground. The crowd wouldn’t consist of more than thirty or forty persons. Despite that thin attendance, the speaker was enthusiastically giving his speech, waving his hands fervently. ‘I could listen to him for a while. Couldn’t I?’ Ganesan walked towards the crowd. The speaker was throwing warnings to Nixon. Then to China. Then to Britain. Then to Russia. Then to Pakistan. At last he warned Indira Gandhi and leaders in Tamil Nadu. ‘Even if one hundredth of these warnings had reached the pedigree of those rodents, they would have taken refuge into the Bay of Bengal. Why don’t these rats understand Tamil language?’ 

Something he came across there was found to be more useful than the speech for Ganesan. Just a distance away from the meeting venue, so many persons were standing around a push cart. Hot snacks items were being fried with the help of a stove grouted in the cart. Within seconds they were kept on the place after scooping them out of boiling groundnut oil with the slotted ladle, they were sold out. 

Ganesan was also standing near that shop. About twenty chillies coated in flour were frying like submarines in the oil. One of them standing there was demanding, “Make vada…make vada”

But the chilly Bajji was again fried. Ganesan too joined them yelling, “Make Vada…” But there was a pressing demand for bajjis. One person came in his car and instructed, “pack eight bajjis” and went to pee in dark. Ganesan once again insisted, “Put Vada this time” 

Once the chilly bajjis were taken out, they were shared immediately in minutes of time. They were bundled up in two, four and sometimes in ten. 

“You have asked for vada. Haven’t you? How manyvadas do you need?” 

Ganesan was hesitant to tell him that he needed only one. “Two enough” he told. 

“Let me make it after this” 

However, only chilly got the preference again and went into oil. The one who was demanding vada for long became restless and neared the point of getting into a big scuffle with the vendor. “It is getting ready soon. See…he is also waiting for it” 

It was rather a painful waiting for Ganesan. Now there was a big crowd around the push cart. Everyone was waiting for their turn to savour the snacks. They might have thought that he was eagerly waiting to relish vada. What would they think if they did come to know that the vada he was demanding was for a rat? The very thought of it pained him.

Once the vadaswere taken out, Ganesan was served with first lot with two vadas in a piece of old Malai Murasu newspaper. The oil was hot; it spread on the paper till his palm got oily. Two vadaswith good aroma. The pulses used in the vada were protruding from its crispy surface in white. 

Ganesan was walking towards his home. Unable to hold the vadasas they were very hot, he kept changing it from one hand to another. Both his hands and papers were fully soaked in oil. Poor push cart vendor…he didn’t know that the vada was for rat. Ganesan wouldn’t have been that embarrassed had they been made at his home. The whole episode was painful for him anyway. 

Without making shirt dirty, it was nearly impossible for him to take out the key from his pocket. He kept he vadasdown, rubbed his hands soaked in oil on his rear anklet and calf and wiped it. Went into the house, hooked a vada to the clasp in the mouse trap. He ate the remaining one by himself. A fifty-year-old man would have some definite repercussions if he ate vada at ten in the night. He reconciled that it was a recourse to something due for him. He lay down and slept. 

It was in the morning, Ganesan developed a discomfort in his stomach. The mouse had got caught in the trap, kept on screeching all the way through the night. He wasn’t aware of it. His wife only informed him about it. 

Now he had to dispose of the rat somewhere. He left the house carrying the mouse trap. The rat tried slipping its nose out through the small hole in the trap. It wasn’t clear from the size of the nose if it was big one or a small one. But would the size, no matter it was small or big, be a matter of concern when it had strength to push the flour box down, roll the oil jars, nip the dirty cloths and tear off vegetables? 

Ganesan didn’t prefer the street gutter this time for its disposal, and went to the ground instead. ‘The rat would take at least one week to find out the way back to the house. In case this rat is gone, another one might come…’   

Ganesan wanted the boys who were playing over there to move aside. But they were waiting for him to open the mouse trap. He kept the trap on the floor and gently pressed down the lever of its lid. The rat jumped out and ran away. 

It was neither big nor small in size. As it wasn’t familiar with open ground, it started running haphazard. One of those boys threw a stone at it. Ganesan requested him not to do that. It was at that time a crow came flying from somewhere, pecked the rat once and flew away. The rat tumbled, lay on its back, hopped. It hastened its speed and hopped faster. The crow took a circle above and descended fast. There was no place for the rodent to hide. The crow picked it up and flew away. Ganesan was sad at seeing it. 

On seeing one more thing, his sadness had got indeed increased. While returning home carrying the mouse trap, he looked into the trap. The vadahe fixed on to the hook in the previous night hadn’t been eaten up yet. 

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Translated from the Tamil by Saravanan. K 

Source: “Eli”, a short story written by Ashokamitran.