Indra Sinha - Animal's People

A ball of fire is rising between my eyes, whose twin’s spitting flame in my gut, it’s the heat of coming death, voices in my head are chattering, arguing, beyond is that other voice, which sounds deep inside, yet seems to come from outside and everywhere. I am climbing through a forest which grows greener the higher I go. Of water is no sign yet I sense it all around, I can hear the trees suckling through greedy tubes plus gurglings in the guts of unseen creatures. Why do they avoid me? “Come out,” I cry. “Come out and tell me, am I a man?”

“WHAT IS A MAN?” The voice roars right in my ear like a thunderclap, it flattens me. Torn in pieces I’m, parts of me break off and float away. My misty thoughts go spinning and become the moon. The glare in my eye’s my eye turning into the sun, my breath’s a hot wind, riding it is a tiny god drunk with his own power whose body is covered with sores, from my middle parts come gusts of air, out of my head slides the universe.

“Who are you?” I’ve asked, who’s lying head pressed to the earth hearing a million things, stamping of ants, worms chewing grit, millipede legs whirring like drums in a parade, my stomach heaves, up comes nothing.

Now if I open my eyes there are trees and dry grasses and thirsty plants and sun, but if I close my eyes creatures of all shapes and colours are floating and drifting. The dream animals come near, one by one they approach, they don’t look friendly, but even before my open eyes the world is changing, never till now have I seen trees clothed in feathers, why is grass growing from the backs of my hands? Under my four feet as I walk the earth comes into being. I do not know which way to go, do not need to know, for by turning my head from side to side the seven directions come into existence and whichever way I turn it is the way and I walk into it.

“Fuck you then!” I shout, “I’ll live alone!”

Now all of this happens in the first hour of the third day, I mean the first hour of daylight, while I’m yelling like this the sun is trying to rise. After this I’ve lost every trace of time, voices and creatures are gone, all I remember is being alone, naked, looking for water in that burning jungle. Weak I’m, hardly can I drag myself forward. “Stop moving and you’ll die,” drawls a new voice in my head, like it doesn’t give a fuck. Hard it’s to keep moving, one moment the world’s on fire, the next I’ve begun shivering, frozen in the blaze of sun.

“Not the world, it’s you who’re burning,” this voice informs me. Then, as the world spins in a wreck of colours and shapes, they’ve all joined in, all my voices, old, familiar and new, in a chorus full of hate.

your torment never can be eased

for your soul it’s that’s diseased

tu n’est pas animal mais bête

your crimes we never shall forget

and all the friends that you betrayed

will come to curse your sorry shade

A man and a woman dressed in Khaufpuri fashion appear among the trees, they approach me, smile kindly and say, “Poor child, you have had a horrible life. Curse the day that Kampani left us dead in the road drowned in our own blood, we are your parents, we have come to take you home.”

I find Nisha sitting on a rock weeping and she says, “Animal, I have been looking for you all over, it’s you I love after all not Zafar dead and gone, you shall have your desire for it’s mine too, so do whatever you want, go ahead Animal, fuck me, stick your big cock in me.”

Elli comes to me and says, “Animal climb up in one of these trees and I will undress so you can see my cunt and watch me touch myself and when you come down I’ll straighten your back and make you into a human.”

Farouq appears before me bringing a suit and tie, says he, “I’m sorry for all the bad things I did mate next year I’ll lie down flat on the hot coals so you can walk over my body and save your four paws from burning.”

Zafar’s there beside me, walking among the trees, carrying the world on his back, he smiles at me and says, “Let me carry you too, Animal, your feet are sore, by the way I forgive all you did, because you did it out of love.”

The buffalo says, “Here I am far from my two Italian greyhounds to offer you a big important job with the Kampani with plenty of salary plus you can ride in my car.”

Evening brings Pandit Somraj walking towards me through the trees. He’s holding two birds, one per hand, squeezing them to make them sing, says he, “No music in this world you cannot learn.”

With night comes Ma, carrying a corpse, its head she has bitten off, is stuffing its guts in her mouth, “Are you hungry Animal, are you thirsty?”

“Fuck off! All of you! Leave me alone!”

The moon rises. By its light I reject all gods including god, all deities, avatars, godlings, I spit in the mother’s milk of holy men, babas, sadhus, gurus, rishis, sufis, seers, priests, rulers of heaven and earth, I shit in the mouths of presidents, prime ministers, chief ministers, politicians, governors, magistrates, generals, colonels, policemen, kampanis, lawyers, jarnaliss, fat-wallet bastards, owners of cocks bigger than mine if any, also smaller, I curse all merchants, chai-wallahs, sellers of cloth, fruit and vegetables, pill-peddlers, magicians, pimps, doctors, sleight-of-hand conmen, beggars, keepers of dancing bears, hunger strikers, Khaufpuris, non-Khaufpuris, the living, the dead.

I am a small burning, freezing creature, naked and alone in a vast world, in a wilderness where is neither food nor water and not a single friendly soul. But I’ll not be bullied. If this self of mine doesn’t belong in this world, I’ll be my own world, I’ll be a world complete in myself. My back shall be ice-capped mountains, my arse mount Meru, my eyes shall be the sun and moon, the gusts of my bowels the four winds, my body shall be the earth, lice its living things, but why stop there? I’ll be my own Milky Way, comets shall whizz from my nose, when I shake myself pearls of sweat shall fly off and become galaxies, what am I but a complete miniature universe stumbling around inside this larger one, little does this tree realise that the small thing bumbling at its roots, scraping at its bark, clawing a way into its branches, is a fully fledged cosmos.

I, the universe that was once called Animal, sit in the tree and survey the moonlit jungles of my kingdom.

“Now I am truly alone.”

Oh how strange this thing feels, so curious to touch, I’d forgotten how it grows in the hand, swells to fill my fist. Close the fingers round its stem, aim it at the stars, pump it like a shotgun to blast the night with living galaxies.

That night I died. I crawled down from that tree to find somewhere to finish. Fever was crackling in me, I was dry as a sucked-out, shrivelled orange, the lizard was waiting.

here is the sun

lewd irish nun

Of death I remember nothing.

My first knowledge of the afterlife is light sliding in between huge rocks. I am in a place where giant slabs rear from the earth and lean one on another. Fever’s gone, hunger and thirst are no more, body feels light as a stalk. I know what’s happened. I’ve died and am now a ghost. Is this heaven or is it hell? No fire’s here, in the shade of the rocks it’s cool. High, far above my head swallows are nesting. So weak I’m, newly born into this new life, hardly can I crawl to the entrance.

The outside world has changed. Gone is the burning heat of the Nautapa. A cool air’s leaning up through the forest, each leaf on every tree is clear and sharp in a green cloud light. Across the valley trees on another hillside are churning in an invisible storm. I’m lying on my side, looking up into the sky, which is dark, above me large birds are circling. Not all the potatoes did I eat, this is what comes into my mind, together with the thought that the birds are coming down, soon their wings will cancel the light. Zafar’s voice says, “What an ingenious equation.” I look for Zafar but everything’s dark. Later I become aware that I am still lying in the entrance to the cave, my face is wet. There’s a sound of roaring and rushing. It’s water. Rain is falling out there in the world softening the shapes of the forest, the lines of trees on the hillsides, all are misted in grey rain blowing across and water is dripping down from the rocks and pouring in white chutes down the slopes, the water is in my hands and my face and in my eyes, washing them clean, it’s in my mouth, tasting like no mere miracle. Again Zafar’s voice speaks to me, “If there is heaven on earth, it is this.” So that’s how I know I am in paradise. I drink and drink and drink till my stomach’s hard as a melon.