Translated from the Malayalam by Ananthu Sunil
Suniyannan had told me already that Nair Saab’s house was at the third turn from Ayyankali Junction.
We had set out before the sun was even up, and that too on an empty stomach. Turning away from Ayyankali Junction, the road became unpaved and went straight ahead until it ended at a giant pond with stone steps on all four sides. On the far side of the pond was a naalukettu, a traditional manor house, almost a century old. That was where Nair Saab lived.
Suniyannan, endowed with a crescent-shaped bald patch on the crown of his head and strands spouting from his ears like black worms, became my acquaintance only two days ago, the day I transferred to the dog squad. He had taken upon himself the responsibility of showing me around and introducing me to our superiors and colleagues. This was followed by a lecture on the different dogs in the squad. A real decent guy from what I have seen so far. It was during one of his long talks that he mentioned going to meet Nair Saab. I was reminded of an old Mammootty film when I heard the name.
‘Well, that’s exactly how he looks too, like Mammootty playing Nair Saab in that film. There was a time when he would single-handedly train each and every dog in the squad. Commissioners, even S.Ps, revered him. This movie you mentioned? He got the name because of his likeness to Mammootty’s looks and mannerisms in the movie.’
Although he had retired years ago, even now, all new recruits visited him to take his blessings, Suniyannan said. Six months ago, Nair Saab had a stroke which left him paralysed on one side. He has been confined to his house since then. Still, Suniyannan advised me not to break tradition.
‘What a stalwart of a man he was once! Now you should take a look at him. Well, he was more or less distraught for some years. The one son he had ended up marrying some girl he was studying with. How did he take that? He kicked them both out of the house, of course. What else should parents do when kids pull off these stunts? But I think he ended up letting it go when he was taken ill. Anyway, the son and wife live in the house with him now.’
It seemed that Suniyannan was also devastated by how things had turned out. Animatedly, he narrated the many adventures of Nair Saab’s time in service. I too felt a growing respect for Saab. Show the utmost respect when you interact with him, Suniyannan warned me over and over. Answer only what is asked, and precisely. He was terribly hot-tempered. Listening to all this, a fear had crept inside me. And so, as we parked the bike beside the man-high wall of the naalukettu and got off, my knees were shaking. We had just set foot inside the compound when…
‘Bhow!’
The barking of a dog. It was followed by an uproar, a pack of dogs barking all at once. Each one was locked inside individual cages. Even so, I lost my wits and seized Suniyannan’s arm. The dogs, already tugging at their chain leashes and raring to jump out of their cages, saw this and became more frenzied, bared their long canines and barked even louder.
‘Don’t be scared, man.’ Suniyannan calmed me down. ‘They are all well trained. People bring them here for caretaking.’
A woman who seemed to be in her sixties came out of the house. She looked us over. Then, she waved her arms around like a witch casting a spell and clapped her hands twice. In a flash, the dogs all went quiet and settled down with their noses to the ground. Pin-drop silence. I was convinced then that Suniyannan’s words of praise for their impeccable discipline were absolutely true.
‘I have to clap my hands to quiet them down, you see. With sir on the other hand, well, just the sight of his shadow and they wouldn’t move a muscle.’
What did this ferocious deity look like, who cast such a terrifying shadow? Piecing together bits and pieces from Suniyannan’s tales, I envisioned a tall, brawny figure with a handlebar moustache.
‘What brings you here, Sunil?’ the woman asked.
‘Nothing really, Savithri Amma. This one here is our new admission. Shouldn’t he meet sir and get his blessings?’
‘Mm. Come,’ she said as she walked back inside. I assumed that she was Nair Saab’s wife.
Suniyannan led me to the shade of a mango tree nearby, where a row of chairs was arranged. With familiar ease, he settled comfortably down on one of the chairs. I looked around. A well-maintained house that had all the grace of a proud ancestry. An orchard that stretched beyond my eye’s reach with numerous mango and jackfruit trees. The pond at one end of it, and at the other, a tangle of trees and vines that was probably a sacred grove, the sarppakkavu. Towering walls surrounded the property on all sides. And the guardian of this fortress and its treasures lay bedridden inside.
I felt a desire to take a walk around the premises. But I noticed something. Each dog in its cage had its eyes fixed upon us all this while. Rottweiler, Alsatian, Doberman … all premier breeds. If I went for a stroll, would they start raising hell again? Looking only from the corner of my eye, I counted them. Twenty-five. Savithri Amma came back just as I finished my count.
‘He’s having his legs massaged with kuzhambu. Let that get done. We’re going with Ayurveda. Sir doesn’t like English medicine.’
‘Mm,’ Suniyannan said.
‘What made you come to the dog squad?’
The question was addressed to me, but Suniyannan replied before I could even open my mouth.
‘Out of interest, of course. Isn’t that right, boy?’
Does he alone get to decide that?
Honestly, I must say I had no interest at all in transferring to the dog squad. My Appa was a dog catcher. A fortune seeker who migrated from Tamil Nadu to Kerala. Growing up without a mom, Appa was the one who took care of all my needs. He has travelled all across Kerala catching dogs. His work involved trapping them in nets and carting them, bagged up in gunny sacks, to the local vets. But when too many dogs were caught for the vets to handle, they turned their backs. And if the dogs already caught were let out again, would the public take that kindly?
Appa kept a stock of poison with him for such situations. He would mix it with rice and fish gravy and feed it to the dogs. Within an hour, they would die foaming and frothing at the mouth. Appa would dig a large pit and bury the dead ones all together. On such evenings, he would gulp down gallons of booze and sit staring at the sky, weeping for hours.
Dogs take their revenge through dreams. And the dogs that Appa killed chose to prey on me. First, they would slide their snouts all over my sleeping body. Then they would sink their canines slowly into my flesh. I would feel the fangs of a hundred dogs ripping into every atom of my body. I have lost count of the number of nights I bore the agony, not even daring to open my eyes out of sheer dread!
When the morning finally arrived, rather than thinking that it was all a dream, I would believe that the dogs were using some wicked spell to restore me to my usual self. This went on and on, and then, one day, Appa passed away. In the other world, hundreds of dogs would have jumped up with a start that day, waiting to get hold of him. This was the fear that tormented me on subsequent nights. Something else happened with Appa’s demise. I was left with no one else in this world. Balan Master, my Malayalam teacher at school, took over as my guardian. He arranged a small job that I could manage alongside my studies. He stood by me till I finished my degree.
I wrote the government exams and joined the police. An old classmate, Kishore, was a sub-inspector there. He knew my past and circumstances well, and very soon, it was news all over the department. The dog catcher’s son has been shipped to the dog squad. What use in telling anyone that dogs continued to haunt me in my dreams?
I took charge without complaint; the job was a lifeline after all. Anyway, I didn’t bother telling the woman or Suniyannan any of this.
‘Sir is getting weaker and weaker nowadays,’ Savithri Amma said glumly. ‘He needs a hand to even stand on his feet.’
‘So unfortunate,’ Suniyannan said, sighing. ‘Is there anyone to help him?’ ‘There’s that girl.’ Savithri Amma’s brow wrinkled. ‘Well, better than employing some stranger, no?’
Suniyannan did not respond.
Suddenly, the dogs started barking again, two or three of them darting back and forth in their cages as though possessed.
New guests?
I leaned over to take a look. There was no one. The dogs quietened down as soon as Savithri Amma clapped her hands again. A pup that looked only a few months old was slowly walking to the front yard from the back of the compound. The dogs in the cages looked at the pup with venom. They continued expressing their hate, now through hisses and snarls, not daring to breach the boundaries of the discipline ingrained in them. The poor pup, on the other hand, was too young to understand such boundaries.
Savithri Amma was also staring at it. Soon it went on its way, away from their glares. That was when I noticed that its body was full of wounds. Most of them looked fresh. ‘Back from begging around some shithole. Disgusting mutt…’ Savithri Amma snarled. ‘So that one is from here too?’ Suniyannan asked, surprised.
I was also curious. All the other dogs here were in cages. How come this one dog was wandering around freely?
‘Well, its father used to live here…’ Savithri Amma said. Then, as though recalling some old memory, she fell silent.
‘It was quite a smart dog at first,’ she said eventually. ‘Quick to pick up things. Sort of a leader to all these dogs. Sir was fond of it too.’
‘That’s true,’ Suniyannan said. ‘Sir develops a special fondness for some.’ ‘But then, something changed in its behaviour suddenly,’ Savithri Amma continued. ‘Grumbly-growly when being fed, wishy-washy when let out for training. No vigour at all when barking. Sometimes it would just stand at the gate and stare outside. When I go check, wondering if it’s some visitor, there’s no one around. Sir told me right then to keep an eye on it.’
‘And?’
‘One day I opened the cage to feed it, and just like that, it broke the leash and took off.’
‘Oh no!’ Suniyannan put his hand to his head.
‘Can you imagine how humiliated sir felt?’
A pale reflection of the humiliation that day had spread on Savithri Amma’s face.
‘What would we say to the people who handed it over to us? How many dogs has he disciplined? This was the first time something like this had happened.’
‘That’s true,’ Suniyannan said, nodding.
‘Its owners knew sir well, so they did not raise an issue. But that wouldn’t wash away the disgrace, would it? He was considering going after it. But he was not in the right state of mind for all that then. It was around then that the boy here pulled off that stunt.’ Savithri Amma let out a long sigh.
‘That was not the end of it,’ she said, after a pause. ‘One day, months later, I was opening the gate. And there it was, standing in front of me, with a teeny little pup beside it. Born from some street mongrel surely, right? It looked nothing like the day it had run away. You only hear people say skin and bones. Well, the dog was exactly that.’
‘Couldn’t stand living on an empty stomach anymore I guess,’ Suniyannan said. ‘Exactly. I wanted to give it a good thrashing and chase it away. But sir said that’s not what it deserves.’
What did Nair Saab say? The question loomed in Suniyannan’s face and mine. ‘Kill it, he ordered,’ Savithri Amma continued. ‘There are other dogs here that follow commands, no? They were told to rip it apart. A slow death, oozing blood and spittle. Hell it was.’
Imagine yourself casually poking a toy into your body. But then it turns out that it is not a toy but a knife, and it sinks deep into your flesh. How would that feel? That was the sensation that coursed through me then. I glanced at Suniyannan, unable to take in what I had just heard.
Nair Saab, the patron saint of countless dogs, had done this?
‘Well, how else can you treat the disobedient ones?’ Suniyannan said.
I was baffled seeing Suniyannan take her side so nonchalantly. I looked at the cages again.
Did the dogs also understand all this?
They displayed their canines and grinned as though relishing the memory of tearing one of their own apart.
Brutes!
‘His decisions are cut and dry, aren’t they? And that’s what has helped discipline the dogs in the dog squad,’ Suniyannan said. ‘There was a dog named Jimmy once… a real troublemaker. Sir tried his best to set him straight. But some dogs behave just like their tails – they never straighten. It got so cocky that once it chewed one of sir’s boots into tatters. One kick was all it took! It flew straight into the canal behind. Did a single one of them dare pull that stunt again?’
As though roused by his own story, Suniyannan shook himself.
‘Would anyone dare question him? Such was the power he held at the time, wasn’t it?’ Suniyannan’s voice trembled with reverence.
‘Mm,’ Savithri Amma agreed. ‘We decided to let the pup live here. But its nature is of a stray dog. Showing the true colours of its kind. Put it in the cage and it will sneak out somehow, and go scrounging about. Prefers gobbling up trash instead of the meat we give it twice a day. Why not kill this one too? I asked sir, but he said no.’
I looked at her uneasily.
‘Each time it commits some mischief, we set the other dogs on it. But never as far as to kill it. This way, it will be a good lesson for the others too, won’t it?’ ‘For sure,’ Suniyannan agreed with her again.
I was dumbfounded. None of this added up with what I had heard so far about the great Nair Saab!
How much would Nair Saab’s dogs have endured to have their natural instincts completely wiped out? I was amazed the dogs had not tried to take revenge on him for all of this.
‘It has come so close to death so many times and it is yet to learn manners,’ Savithri Amma said. ‘All the exits have been closed off and yet it finds some new crack or cranny to slip through and go wandering about. It’s only because sir has grown weak… I am not as able as I used to be either.’
I looked the dogs in the cages over carefully for injuries they might have incurred in the course of reaching the pinnacle of discipline. Disgruntled with my pitying look, they glared back.
‘You know there’s a little child here,’ Savithri Amma said. ‘He plays around with that scoundrel every chance he gets.’
‘The son’s child?’ Suniyannan asked.
Savithri Amma nodded. ‘He has his mother’s skin, let’s hope he at least picks up the good culture from our side,’ she said.
‘Oh, that he will, surely,’ Suniyannan said with a vulgar laugh that showed his gums and all his teeth.
Nodding towards the inside of the house, Savithri Amma said aloud, ‘Been three months since mother and child have come to live here. Have not even completed the necessary rituals yet. And she talks about wanting to go and do a PhD, while sir is lying here like this. That too, consider the subject she’s studied – Malayalam!’
Making a scornful face, she continued, ‘Was I not a graduate in my time? I could have landed a hundred jobs if I wanted to. But I had the common sense to know that it is not required in an esteemed household like this.’
She spoke with her face towards the house, as though she was talking to someone neither of us could see.
‘I’ve managed to keep it all under control so far. Gave her the responsibility of taking care of sir. That way, there’s no bickering about wanting this and that.’ ‘That’s good.’ Suniyannan agreed with her again.
Neither of them spoke for a while. I was thinking about that little pup, and looked around for it.
Has it set out on another stroll, chasing after enticing smells left behind by distant ancestors? Has it become the representative for all of dogkind, intent on attaining martyrdom with a body full of scars?
‘Aren’t you done with the massaging, girl?’ Savithri Amma called out loudly. We heard an assenting murmur, its sound just loud enough as though the distance to our ears had been measured.
‘Then open that window.’
As soon as Savithri Amma said this, the window of a room on the ground floor opened slowly without the slightest sound, in the most disciplined manner.
‘Come.’
Without waiting for my response, Suniyannan led me by my hand towards the window.
Inside, the room looked as though it had been carefully designed never to let in any light, the darkness was absolute. Even so, there was a faint glow that had dared to cross the threshold. Its journey ended at the legs of the bed. There, the shape of a young woman became visible as a faint shadow.
Suddenly, a giant leg landed on the windowsill with a thud, as though someone had flung it there with all their might.
Nair Saab!
The ray of light and the young woman’s shadow were cut in half.
‘Take your blessings,’ Suniyannan said.
I looked at Nair Saab’s leg. Knots of hair, black, white and bronzed, covered it. It was not all hair that had sprouted from his leg. It was also fur, shed by all the dogs he had kicked to death, that clung to his skin. Perhaps it was because of the strange connection I shared with dogs through my dreams, anyways, I began to hear eerie sounds, the howling of a hundred dogs writhing in agony. Nestled in the cool shade of the girl’s shadow, they bemoaned their fate.
I stood without moving a muscle, staring blankly into the room. A bewildered Suniyannan nudged me at the back, his face blanched. Nevertheless, I remained frozen to the spot as seconds passed us by.
The leg on the windowpane was pulled away with the same vigour with which it had appeared. As the moans of the dogs beside his legs grew louder, I saw the frail fingers of the young woman reaching for the window latch. The panes slowly turned inwards and shut. All sounds subsided. Total silence.
Suniyannan and Savithri Amma were staring at me, shock and humiliation etched on their faces.
As though realising that something was amiss, the dogs in their cages all started howling.
‘We’ll be on our way then,’ Suniyannan said with a faint laugh, somehow managing to speak in his fluster.
As we got closer and closer to the gate, Suniyannan’s rage began bubbling out of him. He began shouting the vilest obscenities at me. He started the bike before I could sit properly. A little ahead of us, by the side of the wall, the little pup was watching us intently.
Should I get down and take it with me? Atonement for all that Appa and I had done to its ancestors. But the very next moment, I realised that its presence was needed more right here. It squeezed patiently through a small tunnel in the ground and returned to the compound, as though to remind its kin of the world that lay beyond the walls.
The barks of twenty-five dogs soon reached us from behind, each competing with the rest. I pricked up my ears for the clapping of hands that had the power to strike them mute in an instant.
PICTURE CREDITS:
Photo by Lukas Medvedevas on Unsplash
Also read, A Daughter’s Echo by Kiran Prasad Rajanahall, translated from the Kannada by Sahana Prasad, and published by The Antonym.
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