Rao Raja - The Cat and Shakespeare

Children below were playing hide-and-seek among the rice bags. The ration shop was also their play-ground. While the mothers waited, the children played among the bags. Govindan Nair wanted to go down and play with the children, but there was this Ummathur file and the seventeen sacks lost. Who had stolen the sacks? Was it a gang of poor men or was it merchants’ marauders? Stroking the cat, his pen in his mouth, Govindan Nair was contemplating. When he thinks in this manner it means he wants to do something mechanical. He always carried a penknife with him, for sharpening pencils and such other things (including rose twigs). He usually took this out, pulled out the blade and started rubbing it up and down the edge of the table. Just where he worked on his files, he had written, or rather carved, many names — his own, the name of his boss, and Usha’s (I was surprised once when I went to visit him to find Usha’s name there, but it was there). Sharpening the knife, he started humming to himself.

‘Hey nonny, nonny, nonny. ’

Govindan Nair: What a kind thought, Abraham. Whoever it is that had the idea. I was just thinking this morning. There are so many rats at home. There are so many rats in the office. You remember the Sidpur file? It might have been the rats. Big ones like bandicoots, they be. And then, at home. There are so many. Even they seem to have famine. A country at war has rations. A rationed country has little food. When there is little grain to eat, the rats become courageous. They will bite off anything. Even the nose of a man. ( He looks around him and speaks to John. ) So, I say, thank you for having had such a kind thought, Mr John. ( Everybody bursts out laughing again. The boss also sneezes .) Thank you, Mr John, for this wonderful gift. A cat, sir, a cat. Now, now let me make a speech in the manner of Hamlet.

To be or not to be. No, no. ( He looks at the cat. )

A kitten sans cat, kitten being the

diminutive for cat. Vide Prescott

of the great grammatical fame.

A kitten sans cat, that is the

question. ( He turns the cage round and round .)

To live is not difficult,

sir, for flesh is the form of

existence, and man in his journey to

the ultimate knows that

to yield to the flesh is to

grow grain. To yield to the pipe

is to blow flame. Asthma is

the trouble that Polonius reveals

for fool; he hid behind the curtain

asthmatic.

John: And what happened to him?

G.N.: Sir, Lady, by now I pierce ( he makes as if he pierces something with the right arm ) the veil, and the asthmatic falls. ( A thud .)

John: Murder, murder.

G.N.: Rank murder.

Rank murder and dark desolation

for Ophelia.

Syed Sahib: Go, get thee to a nunnery.

John: Why, Abraham, that’s the place for you. Isn’t that so?

Syed Sahib: To the nunnery, maid ( looking at the cat ).

G.N.: To the rank growth I go,

Hey nonny, nonny

To the slipping world I go,

Hey nonny, nonny.

I tell you what, sir. In the kingdom of Denmark there’s one blessed thing. Whatever they are they are not mad. ( Lets the cat out of the cage. It leaps on a desk, familiar, affectionate, but distant. It licks its front paw .) The kingdom of Denmark is just like a ration office.

John: How so, Mr Nair? That’s a great idea — Shakespearean, I should say.

G.N.: Shakespeare knew every mystery of the ration shop. Here however we haven’t to murder a brother to marry his wife. Here we marry whom we like. The ration card marries. You are married even when there is no wife. You are married without looking at horoscopes. The dead are not buried in ration shops. There will be no grave scene. Ophelia will die but she will have no skull left for Hamlet, a future Hamlet, to see. We slip, sir, from sleep to wake from wake to sleep. We marry the wife in dream, and we wake up king of Denmark. We marry Ophelia in dream and wake up having a Polonius to bury. We live in continual mystery. In fact I ask you, John, my friend (sharpening his knife on the table), when one commits murder in a dream, is that murder or not?

John (very clever): That’s jurisprudence. I’m only a clerk. Y.P. John is only a clerk.

G.N.: I ask you, what is dream? Are you sure you are not in dream ( laughing )? An asthmatic cough, with the cry of children under the creak of balance, and the cat, a Persian cat on the table of Ration Office No. 66. Is it dream or is it real?

John: Every bit is real, but the whole is not. So it is not a dream.

G.N.: In the dream the whole is real.

Abraham: The boss is worried about that Ummathur file.

G.N.: Are you sure the wagon did not go to Coimbatore? Or did it go to Cannore? Both have C in them. Even when awake we make such an error. The reason, sir, why I ask you ‘are you in dream or in waking state?’ is simple. In dream the dead appear.

John: That is so. ( The cat comes and lies before Nair. It seems to be listening carefully to what Nair is saying .)

G.N.: In ration offices, as we all know, the dead have numbers. Killing be no murder.

John (addressing himself to Abraham): What ho, Horatio.

Now, Govindan Nair walked straight over to John’s table. Perhaps he just wanted to consult a file.

‘John,’ he said, while the mother cat stood behind him.

‘Yes, Mister,’ said John, very sure of himself.

‘John, this is a cat,’ he said, lifting up the cat and placing it on John’s table. The whole office stopped work. Even Bhoothalinga seemed involved in this silence.

‘What’s that?’ cried Abraham, and came over to John’s table.

‘Oh, I am only talking to him about the cat.’

‘What cat?’ said Syed, his hand on Govindan Nair’s shoulders.

‘Why, man, cat. There’s cat only. All cats belong to one species — cat. Call it cat or call it mar jara which is Sanskrit or better still poochi which is Malayalam, it’s the same — isn’t that so, John?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said John, rising up from his seat.

‘So, gentlemen, I wanted to know how much zoology our friend knew. What is a Persian cat called in Latin? In fact what is the Latin name for a cat?’

‘Felinus,’ said Abraham, remembering his church instructions.

‘Then felinus persiana would be a Persian cat,’ said Govindan Nair, who knew of course everything.

‘Yes,’ said Abraham dubiously.

‘And man?’’

‘Humanus.’

‘And I?’ he said.

‘Ego.’

‘Make me a Latin sentence, Abraham. Ego esse humanus malabario et lux esse felinus persiana, or some such thing.’

‘I don’t know that much Latin,’ said Abraham.

The curious thing was that the boss did not call. The cat continued to raise her tail and bunch herself to be caressed. Govindan Nair still held the penknife in the other hand as if it were his pencil. Man must hold something with his hands, otherwise how could he know what he is about? If you carry a penknife like a pencil in your hand you are a clerk. Is there any doubt about it? ‘Speaking biologically,’ Govindan Nair used to say, ‘a hundred generations of clerks will secrete lead from their bowels and clerks’ fingers will bear capillaries like those in the new office pencils. You write morning, noon, and night. You could even write in your dreams.’

‘What is clerk in Latin?’

‘Clericus is Latin itself.’

‘Ha, ha,’ said Govindan Nair. Seeing the whole office around him, and the boss silent — it was a hot morning — he added: ‘Define the cat, Mr John.’

‘Mr Govindan Nair, a cat is a feline being.’

‘What are its characteristics?’ Govindan Nair started making a firm and rapid movement with his knife (back and forth), as if he were sharpening the pencil on the beautiful skin of the cat.