This is an English translation of “Eli”, a short story written by Ashokamitran. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.
***
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. The 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 dosa, or papad, or tiny piece
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 a 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 the
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 for 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 you keep everything here spotlessly clean?” he asked
disparagingly.
“What else do you expect me to keep as leftovers? Can we
keep Rasam for the mouse? Or will you keep the Uppma in
the hook of the mouse trap?” she retorted.
“Stop your teasing,” Ganesan told her.
“I didn’t tease you. If it is Dosai or Adai, we can
keep it in the trap. But you know…we are making dosai and adai every
day at home, right? Aren’t we?
“Then let the mouse tumble everything and ruin it.”
His wife didn’t say anything. She took out a dried onion from
the vegetable bag, gave it to him, and told him, “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 of the God.
Ganesan put on his shirt with a quarter of an Ana in his
shirt pocket, closed the door, and hit the street.
All the hotels were closed. Only the shops selling beeda
and betal leaves were kept open. ‘Just a vada… Even half
of it will be enough…’
Unluckily, no leftovers of vada anywhere. Breads, buns,
biscuits, and bananas were the only things available. Experimentation with all
these stuff at different times in the past was already completed. But the mice
were grown insouciant in attitude towards it. ‘Any foodstuff roasted in
oil—like vada, bakkoda, or pappad—was 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, and then Pongal. Then the cycle will be
reversed—first Pongal, rava upma, and then rice upma—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 in the Bay of Bengal. Why don’t these rats
understand the 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 pushcart. Hot snack items were being fried
with the help of a stove grouted in the cart. Within seconds they were kept in
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
chilies 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 the 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 many
vadas do you need?”
Ganesan was hesitant to tell him that he needed only one.
“Two is 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 painful waiting for Ganesan. Now there was a
big crowd around the pushcart. 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 vadas were taken out, Ganesan was
served with the 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 vadas with a 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 vadas, as they were very hot, he kept changing them from one
hand to another. Both his hands and papers were fully soaked in oil. Poor
pushcart vendor…he didn’t know that the vada was for a 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 the shirt dirty, it was nearly impossible for
him to take out the key from his pocket. He kept the vadas down,
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 when Ganesan developed a discomfort in
his stomach. The mouse had got caught in the trap and 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 a big one
or a small one. But would the size, no matter if it was small or big, be a matter
of concern when it had the 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 mousetrap. 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 haphazardly. One of those boys threw a
stone at it. Ganesan requested that he 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, and 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 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.
***
