Indra Sinha - Animal's People

Chants the voice of the madwoman, “Parut un cheval d’une couleur pâle. Celui qui le montait se nommait la mort, et l’hadès le suivait, pour exterminer les hommes par l’épée, par la famine, par la peste, et par les bêtes sauvages de la terre.” It’s a pale horse, on him’s death with hell twoup behind, come they’ve so men may be extermined by war, famine and plagues, their bodies devoured by the wild beasts of the earth. My eyes are streaming, it is hard to keep them open, there seems to be smoke drifting, voices are shouting, “Run, run for your lives! The factory is on fire!” I look behind, there’s a glow in the sky, clouds of smoke are billowing upward. “Run run,” the voices cry, “the gas has come.” “Run! Save yourselves!” “That night has come again!” Now I know why the ground is heaving, the little light from the door of our tower shows the earth alive with snakes and other small creatures, rushing desperate to escape the flames.

Inside with the dog’s Ma dressed in nun’s getup, clutched to her chest is Sanjo’s book, but she’s not reading, who knows its every word by heart. Seeing me she cries in a loud voice, “Come Animal, we’ve work to do.”

My eyes are burning so badly I can hardly see her. “Ma, you must run.” Hardly can speak. “Quick, to safety.”

“There’s no safety,” says she. “It’s the Apokalis.” She moves to the door and stoops to go out. “Come, the people need our help.”

Alas, knowing what must be happening in the lanes of the Nutcracker, I cannot move. Never will I forget this moment, filled with dread I’m, it’s like my four feet have grown roots. Ma is standing in the doorway, waiting for me, curls of smoke are entering our tower.

“Come Animal.” Still I do not move. Ma smiles at me and says, “Goodbye, my dear child. Always I have loved you and I always will, yes, until after the end of time itself. We’ll meet in paradise.”

“Wait!” I cry, but she’s turned and gone.

Jara gives me a reproachful look, then follows Ma, looking back over her shoulder as if to say, goodbye then, for never in this life shall we see each other again. And I, who am anyway doomed, who’ve already lost friends, love and hope, watch the last two beings I love go out into that cloud of death and have no courage to go with them. No courage have I, but I have shame. Shame drives me forward a few steps, then the poison smoke is in my face, I’m retching, tears are running down my cheeks, Ma and Jara are faint figures heading into the thickest haze, from which now fewer and fewer figures are emerging.

Then I’m jostling panic-stricken people in alleys where so thick is the fog that lamps are reduced to pinpricks. In my head is the nightmare of Pandit Somraj who every night of his dreams sees Nafisubi Ali’s child crying under a street light as in a brown light dying figures stumble past.

Running I’m, running, I don’t know where, just to clutch onto one more hour, I do not want to let go even of these last burning moments, O lord how sweet it is, how tempting, is life.

Grey of morning comes jolting, my eyes can hardly open, there’s a bad taste in my mouth, my lungs are painful, but the datura fire in my belly, that is now raging out of control, bending and warping the world, hard to accept what I am seeing, country scenes, trees, fields rushing past, amazed to be alive I’m on a truck full of people lying in huddles, their eyes raw and swollen, ahead a man is throwing up over the side, the rushing air sends drops flying back a foul spray comes blittering on my face, my own stomach’s declared war on me, tearing itself apart it’s, ripping me from the inside, air’s gone purplish sun’s risen in a ball of orange and purple light, violent, swollen and strange.

“Let me off, where are you taking me?”

“Lie still brother, they’re taking you to hospital in Diwanabad.”

“No!” My gut’s in hideous pain, but I am filled with revulsion for human life and human society, I want no more of it.

There is a line of forest on the hills.

“Let me down.”

“What will you do here? There’s nothing here.”

“Fuck you let me down.”

The ground is weaving patterns under my feet, playing tricks on me’s this earth, hot like burning coals, the hills are dancing, in the shimmer black birds with forked tails are darting. With some part of my mind I recall that this is the eighth day of Nautapa, then shame hits, plus despair. All whom I loved are gone, lost to me forever, distant is that city of disaster, its streets and alleys I knew so well, a far off and hopeless place, I will not go back, I won’t, never will I return, if I am dying let me die here in the open like a beast, or else let me live here, far from people, never again do I want to look on a human face. I’ve kicked off my kakadus. I’ll live as an animal, alone and free as an animal should, no master I’ll have, no work, no duty but survival.

“Survive, will you?” The datura speaks, sitting coiled inside my gut, “you have eaten thirteen of my dark golis, O Animal, now you shall see what you shall see.” The flames climb in my throat but can’t exit, full of nothing I’m nothing full of flames, in my ear the datura sings a song:

thou art an animal fierce and free

in all the world is none like thee

in fire’s forge thy back did bend

my bitter fire be thy end

“Vas te faire foutre!” Hopeless, friendless, alone, ill I may be, but I’ll not be bullied. “Fuck off!” I’m trying to speak, but my voice is a chirring cricket that hops from my tongue and is lost.

It is late afternoon when I enter the first trees, thorns, dry grasses, twigs snapping under my feet, howra hoora cries of birds, japing greenly go thus trees through, oh I’ll discover my true state, die or live, animal returning to its truly home, four feet have I my eyes are stars my nose is snakes that lick their nostrils, dream lipless dreams, the sun above is like a mouth roaring out flames, the skin of my back is frying, a rod of fire is my throat, each breath is a fire-eater’s gush of flame, Farouq you thought you were so great to walk across a bed of coals, try a stroll in my gut. Naked, I lie on my belly drink from a ditch and bite the sonofabitch sun, I feel like my own father whom I have never known.

Down inside me voices are speaking making no sense seems the plant season so rare it floats, pimpish stuff in there, pimpish, leave where it’s, ça fait un peu boui-boui, this is our kingdom

Shady is the forest but under its trees is no relief. I am searching for other living things, none do I see, coloured like the back of a shrike’s the forest, browns and fawns, grasses dry, dry thorns, dry trunks, its leaves are suffering in the heat’s fierce fetch, not just in me’s this agony but in the world. Where are you, animals, let me introduce myself? I stop and listen, nothing’s there but stirring of leaves. This ground is strange to me, gone beedi wrappers, orange peels, plastic, here are bent grasses, twigs in patterns and piles mixed with old leaves on the forest floor, shapes that curl and spiral like twists of a stair are seeds. Here’s one beetle-winged, I am looking for signs left by hoof, paw, belly of snake, nothing can I find. My nose discerns only the scent of parched earth, my only fellow beings are these silent sufferers rooted in dust waiting for rain.

“Silent, say you?” sniggers the datura, “then wait for night O Animal. Let night come, you shall hear what you shall hear.”

“What, are you still here?” The sickness is squirming in my guts like a snake. “I do not think that you will kill me. I am stronger than you, I will defeat you.” The datura gives such a buffet of pain I go staggering my legs and arms give way I am biting the bitter soil.