Benyamin - Goat Days

If I am asked about the most beautiful sight I ever saw in the desert, I must answer: the sunset. The sun seems like a tortoise diving down into the sand. Slowly, it sinks into the sandy jungle. I often wished that Sainu was with me to watch the sunset. Although I said that I tried to keep memories of my home, homeland and Sainu at bay, she appeared in my thoughts on such occasions. My heart would then throb. One of the greatest sorrows in the world is to not have someone to share a beautiful sight. I drew my eyes away from sunset and lay on my back on the cot. Like an orphan’s corpse …

That night I went to sleep under a star-studded sky. But when I woke up the air was filled with dust though there was no sign of a wind. Dust had sneaked in from somewhere and filled the air. I felt like laughing when I looked at my body. Like a comedian in some movie, my whole body was covered in scales of dust. I looked at the goats; they too were painted in the colour of dust. The buckets in the masara, the iron fence, the camels, the arbab’s tent, the vehicle, my cot, the bundles of hay — dust covered everything. It brought to mind film scenes showing snowfall in cold countries.

I shook my head and dust enough for a brick kiln fell out of my hair. And when I tried to run my fingers through my hair, it was so matted with sand and dirt that my fingers couldn’t get inside. My hair was already shoulder length. My beard had also grown. I took the big sheep-shearing scissors and manically cut away at my hair and beard. I got a wild itch from the unwashed hair and beard sometimes. I already had blisters from the dirty hair in my armpits and pubic area and had become revolting to look at. Lice, bugs and some other small insects from the goats’ bodies had settled there. They itched severely when I sweated at night. My body had become a pest reserve. Lice and bugs formed a crust on my skin. The goats were cleaner than I was.

Hadn’t I promised to tell you the story of Pochakkari Ramani? And I will now. Apart from Pochakkari Ramani, I gave a name to each goat in the masara that I recognized to help me scold them and to make cuddling easier. People from my locality like Aravu Ravuthar, Marymaimuna, Indipokkar, Njandu Raghavan, Parippu Vijayan, Chakki, Ammini, Kausu, Raufat, Pinki, Ammu, Razia and Thahira, and public figures like Jagathy, Mohanlal and even EMS himself were a part of my masara. Each of them was dear to me in one way or another. Have you ever looked carefully at a goat’s face? It is quite similar to a human’s. I named the goats not only by looking at their faces but also relating their names to some character traits, their gait, the sounds they made, by incidents that reminded me of them. Just as how one gets a nickname back home.

I have told you about the billy goat who attacked me and broke my hand. I called him Aravu Ravuthar after the rowdiest person in our village. One day, my uppah was crossing a stream on a narrow bridge. Ravuthar approached from the other side. The bridge was so narrow that only one person could walk on it, that too barely. Unmindful that my uppah had already crossed half the bridge, Ravuthar walked up to him and asked him to retreat. Uppah didn’t want to. Ravuthar warned him once, and when my uppah didn’t move even after the second warning, he didn’t bother to repeat himself, he just leapt and head-butted uppah on his chest! Uppah fell down into the stream some twelve feet below. His elbow hit a granite rock and he broke his arm. Although he was taken to Alappuzha District Hospital immediately for treatment, his hand remained weak and crooked. Thus did my uppah get the nickname short-arm Abdu. I named the goat Aravu Ravuthar without much difficulty because he butted me in the same manner as I imagine the original Aravu Ravuthar must have attacked my uppah. Also, my hand broke just like my uppah’s did.

So there were many strange and personal reasons for each name I gave the goats. The logic of the names might be lost on others but they made perfect sense to me.

The name Marymaimuna too had such a story. Mary was the first heroine of my love story. My first love affair began when I was studying in the fifth standard. She was the most intelligent and beautiful girl I ever knew, and a wonderful singer. There were no boundaries for the dreams I had about her. Somehow, my ummah found out. That tactical deceiver — my elder ikka Abdu — who managed to get me to tell him my secret must have told her. Bouncing her big breasts, my ummah laughed on hearing about it.

‘By the sound of her name she seems to be a Christian,’ Ummah frowned between peals of laughter.

‘No, Ummah, she belongs to our religion,’ I broke in excitedly.

‘A Mary in our religion?’ Ummah laughed aloud.

It was only then that I actually gave her religion some thought — that she might not belong to our religion at all. ‘She’s not Mary, Ummah,’ I told her a name that came to my mind, ‘she’s Marymaimuna.’

‘All right. I am coming to your school. I want to see the girl with that name,’ Ummah continued laughing.

My ummah couldn’t come to school to see my Marymaimuna. I stopped going to school before she could. That was the year my father died.

It was a name that I had completely forgotten. Marymaimuna. But when I saw a particularly beautiful goat in the masara, in tremendous waves all those memories rushed back to me. To me, that goat had the same beauty as Marymaimuna!

Would you believe me if I told you that in my masara we had goats that laughed like Jagathy, walked like Mohanlal, stammered like EMS? Only a few goats were permanent residents in the masara: the female goats that produced babies constantly and gave enough milk, and some virile male goats. All the remaining ones were dispatched to the market at some point or the other. The most interesting thing was that when one with a particular name went away, that name did not die out. After some time, a goat with similar qualities appeared. Then I repeated the names: Jagathy, Mohanlal, Njandu Raghavan, Kausu, Ammini … I think that, for both men and goats, births are but reincarnations from generation to generation.

I started calling the goat whom I approached first when I was deputed to milk Pochakkari Ramani. It was the goat whose udders I touched for the first time. That name’s relevance lies in an incident that happened when I was young. One of my uncles, Pokkar mama, used to visit our house frequently. Whenever he came to visit us, he took me out for a walk in the afternoon. Before we stepped out, he would say to my ummah, ‘Atha, give me twenty-five paise to buy him sweets.’ And every time, Ummah gave him twenty-five paise, but I never got any sweets. Not only that, Pokkar mama only took me to the field nearby. We would wait there for the women to come and cut grass. Ramani was one of the many women who came to cut grass. It was Mama’s routine to pay Ramani the money he got from ummah to buy me sweets so that he could fondle her breasts.

I too developed a desire to fondle her breasts! ‘You can also fondle my breasts if you bring me twenty-five paise,’ Pochakkari Ramani said. She gave me a knock on my head and chased me away when I told her that I didn’t have any money. At home I was afraid to ask for money. I would only get a beating. Still, I had to fondle those breasts. So I pinched twenty-five paise from Ummah’s rice box. Thus, one day, to my delight, I too got to fondle the fodder girl Ramani’s breasts and enjoy the experience. But Ummah, who kept an account of every paisa, caught my theft. I divulged the truth when she questioned me. Pokkar mama’s visits to our house stopped after that incident and he got the nickname ‘breast mama’. Pochakkari Ramani eventually became a well-known prostitute in our locality!