Goat Days (8 page)

You would think it is not difficult to take the goats for a walk. That we only needed to gently guide them from time to time. In movies you might have seen them moving in groups, walking close to one another. There would be a leader to lead them. Where the leader went, the rest followed. The goat that is very familiar with us would be made the leader and it would then be that goat’s responsibility to lead the rest of the goats and lambs. I named the three head goats in the masara Lalitha, Ragini and Padmini.

But in reality it is nearly impossible to manage goats. They walk and bound off in all directions. If one went left, the other would go right. I had to simultaneously herd some fifty to a hundred goats at one go. These goats have a mind of their own. I think I explained their habits sometime earlier. Although they have, like sheep, been living with humans for about six thousand years, we did not have such a hard time
domesticating any other animal, and we haven’t still succeeded entirely. Among them, the he-goats were impossible to control. A full-grown one would be almost as big as me. When they are let loose among females to mate, they lose all control. The vigour of the he-goat in heat—running through anything and everything—is certainly a spectacle worth watching.

One day, while taking them for a walk, I hit one of them just once from behind. It turned back, like a cross elephant and snorted with all its might. I saw fumes coming out of its nostrils. The next moment, it charged at me, and without giving me a chance to evade, hit me right on the chest. It felt like as if a one-tonne mallet had hit me. I only remember flying off for some ten metres, like a villain hit by the hero in a Hindi film. I fell unconscious and don’t know how long I lay there like that. Then, when I opened my eyes, the arbab was in front of me. All the arbab did was pour some hot water on my face. Then he called me himar and shouted something.

Somehow, I scrambled up and looked around—the goats were scattered in a perimeter of nearly five kilometres. I became conscious of a terrible pain in my left hand. An immense unbearable pain. The hand was swollen. I told the arbab that my hand felt broken. He
removed his belt and hit me, and shouted at me to run and fetch all the goats quickly. The arbab warned me that it would be my end if even one of them was lost.

I ran through the desert, literally carrying my throbbing hand. The goats were enjoying their unexpected freedom to the full, revealing all their wild characteristics. It was like a nation in slavery waking to revolt suddenly. Absolute chaos. When I somehow brought a goat to a side, the one already there would have run off. When I ran after the second, the first would have wandered off again. After a few tries I realized that it was impossible to gather all of them at one go. I began to run to the masara with the few I managed to collect, lock them up and rush back to the desert. Then, with the five or ten that I managed to gather, I would return to the masara again. The first goat would be about two kilometres away from the masara, and the rest scattered at about five kilometres from there. I am not sure how many times I had to cover the distance between the masara and the desert. I only remember that I was dead tired. And when I stopped to have some water, the arbab hit me hard, snatched the cup of water from me and flung it away. I rushed back into the desert again, thirsty, panting, my tongue parched.

Looking up at the sky with anguish, I whimpered the name of Allah all through that exercise. I could see goats scattered till the horizon. How was I going to get there? My feet were swollen, pain pierced my hand relentlessly and my thirst was severe. Screaming and shrieking, I ran after the goats. There was not even a hint of a wind, all was still in the sky and there was the blazing sun.

It was afternoon when I brought all the goats back into the masara. Later, I would often wonder how I survived for such a long time in that scorching heat without even a drop of water and with no rest at all. The two factors that helped me through that phase were my desire to live and my infinite faith in Allah. After bringing in the last goat, I fell on the cot, thoroughly exhausted.

The arbab came and sat near me and dripped some water into my mouth. ‘Water … water …’ I mumbled over and over again. Even in my half-conscious state I heard the arbab saying you people are profligates, profligates who do not know how to use water carefully. Then I lost consciousness.

It was night by the time I woke up. My hand was even more swollen and the pain was too severe to bear. I was sure it was broken. And my chest hurt from
the pounding from the he-goat. My throat felt like it would crack from the thirst. I walked unsteadily to the water tank and drank to my heart’s content. Then I went to the arbab’s tent. Scolding me for sleeping for so long, he threw two or three khubus at me. I was very hungry. Dipping them in water, I greedily finished the khubus. I couldn’t sleep a wink that night because of the pain. I went crying to the arbab’s tent several times. I begged him to take me to any hospital. But the arbab didn’t pay any attention. As dawn broke, he came to my cot with a vessel and asked me to hurry up and milk the goats. I showed him my hand. I got a smack on my head as a reply.

The pain on my chest hadn’t eased and my hand was inflamed by then. I limped to the masara in that state. How could I milk the goats with just one hand? My usual practice with well-behaved goats had been to place the vessel on the floor and milk them with both the hands; the impish ones needed a rub on their back. What could I do with only one hand? If a goat jumped, it would kick the little milk I managed collect. Blindly, praying to Allah, I entered the masara. The first goat I saw was the one I had named Pochakkari Ramani. How I gave it that name is a story I shall tell you later.

I looked into Ramani’s eyes and told her, ‘Ramani, I cannot move my hand at all. It is the work of one of your partners. But the arbab must drink milk in the morning. It doesn’t matter to him if my hand is broken or if the sky has fallen. He must drink milk, and I must get it to him. If you cooperate, I will escape the beatings of the arbab. My fate is in your hands today.’

To tell you the truth, I have often felt that goats can understand things better than some humans. Anyhow, that day, Ramani stood still for me. Somehow, I got enough milk for the arbab and placed it in front of his tent. I cursed him in my mind: Drink pig, drink till you are full!

After gulping down the milk the arbab came to me and asked me to hurry up and milk the goats for the young ones. I simply wasn’t capable of that. I openly told the arbab, ‘I can’t! Can’t! Can’t!’ I think I was screaming by then. The arbab saw this side of me for the first time. He was really shocked. I went and lay face down on the cot, expecting belt lashes on my back. At the most, the arbab would kill me. Let him. This torment would end. What fear remains for one who is willing to accept death? Allah, I had promised to you and to your law that I would never commit suicide.
I hope you will have no objection if I leave myself to be killed by the arbab. I am not fated to see my son. It is okay, I am not sad. Let me die at the hands of the arbab. I cannot take this suffering any more.

But the arbab did not come near me as I had expected. Already the goats had become restless and were jumping around. They were used to a schedule. If their routine was disrupted they got jumpy. Let everything go to hell. What do I care? I lay still.

When the elder arbab arrived, I did not get up. The two arbabs talked to each other. After that the day-arbab came towards me, took my arm and examined it. He massaged it through the swelling. Consumed by pain, I screamed loudly and begged the arbab to take me to a hospital. But he took his vehicle and went somewhere, as if he hadn’t heard me at all. I stretched out on the cot. He came back after some time with some herbs in his hand. Mashing them in a vessel, he applied it on the swelling, and then, like in olden times, took some sticks and fixed them tightly around my hand with a cloth bandage. I showed him the puffiness on my chest. There too he applied the herbs. All through the ordeal, I kept begging the arbab to take me to a hospital. All that the arbab said was ‘It is okay, you will get well soon.’ I did not trust
him. I was afraid that my hand would worsen, rot and would have to be amputated.

The arbab brought me two or three khubus. Dipping them in water, I swallowed them. ‘It is already pretty late, quickly take the goats for a walk,’ the arbab ordered. I couldn’t say no. I ran to the masara, holding my broken hand.

By about noon, I could feel the pain slowly ease and fade away. It almost disappeared completely by night. Within just a couple of days, the swelling was gone, both on the chest and the hand. About ten days later, the bandage was removed. All those days, I milked the goats and took them for walks, with only one good hand. To my amazement, during that period, the goats never kicked or charged at me, or even toppled the milk pail.

Maybe goats understood me better than the arbabs ever did. They must have realized that I would never hurt them even if they charged at me. However, I kept a safe distance from the he-goats. I evaded them if they came towards me, or I protected myself with my staff. I never got attacked by a goat after that horrible incident.

Let me tell you something that I have not divulged so far in this story. Would you believe me if I told
you that my childhood ambition was to become a goatherd? Maybe, it was a wish born out of seeing the movie
Ramanan
. My ummah loved
Ramanan
. To wander about from one land to another. To saunter with flocks of goats through meadows and hillsides. To pitch one’s tent every day in a new place. To sit by the fire guarding goats on winter nights. Shepherding was for me what dreams were made of.

When I finally got the chance to live the life of a shepherd, I realized how painfully distant it was from my dreams. We shouldn’t dream about the unfamiliar and about what only looks good from afar. When such dreams become reality, they are often impossible to come to terms with.

I lived on an alien planet inhabited by some goats, my arbab and me. The only interruptions to the monotony of my life were the visits of the water truck twice a week, the hay truck once a week and the wheat trailer once a month. These vehicles were the only means by which I could connect with the outside universe. The drivers were usually Pathans from Pakistan. If I established a connection with those people, I could contact the external world. I could at least inform them that I existed. They could be the means for my eventual escape from here. A faint flicker of hope that I would have such a chance to slip away slumbered somewhere in the corner of my mind. But the arbab used to send me off to the desert early on the days when they came with instructions to return with the goats only after they left. On most days, I didn’t even have to help them fill the tank and unload bundles of hay and grass, and sacks of wheat.
Still, my heart would flutter with inexpressible joy whenever those vehicles reached the masara. I’d be elated, as if some loved ones had come to visit us. I would chat with the goats more than usual. But when those vehicles, raising dust, faded away, I felt like the world itself had run away from me. Then a heart-draining fatigue would come over me.

Unexpectedly, one day, a trailer came without any helper to unload. The arbab called me back from the desert. The driver was a Pakistani. I saw a man who wasn’t either of my arbabs up close after a very long time. Since I had been denied normal human smells I felt that even his sweat had a scent. Out of the sheer happiness of seeing a man, I even touched him once. I felt a shiver of satisfaction passing through me.

While unloading the material, I explained to him all my sorrows in all the languages that I knew and begged him to somehow save me from the hell I was in. However, I saw only icy coldness in his face. He didn’t even acknowledge me. The anguish I felt! When the arbab had called me to the trailer, I had run to him with so much hope, deserting the goats. It was an optimistic dash towards the light of life. But the driver’s cold look drained me of all hope. I looked at him pathetically whenever he placed the bundles
of hay and grass on my head and tried to attract his attention with some gesture. I begged him to save me. Once I deliberately dropped the hay bundle and bent down and touched his feet. Even then, he wouldn’t look at me. I felt sad. My heart broke.

After unloading the goods, the Pakistani drove away without even smiling at me. My optimism dimmed. How much I cursed him! Nobody in the world would have ever cursed a stranger like that or hated one like that. To get rid of some of that anger, I hit my own chest twice as I walked back to the desert to gather the goats.

Today I can understand the vulnerability of the driver who must have known the arbab for years. One cannot say what the arbab would have done if he had tried to talk to me. One time, the arbab jumped out with his gun when the driver of the wheat trailer tried to talk to me. I remember the arbab felling the driver of the water truck with his rifle butt for trying to talk to me. How many goats like me must have got trapped in this masara before? Maybe the miserable outcome of trying to save one of them must have been fresh in the Pakistani’s mind. Maybe he, sitting in his vehicle, was crying his heart out for forsaking me so heartlessly. Even if that wasn’t the case, I preferred to believe
so. I tried to convince my heart so. It was only thus that I managed to swim across many of my sorrows. Merciful Allah, I am fated to walk through these harsh days that you have ordained for me. Forgive me for hating and cursing that innocent man for that.

In the beginning, everything in the masara had a nauseating stench. The smell emanating from goats’ urine, the stench of the droppings, the reek of grass and hay that got wet with the urine. If I had ever experienced a similar stink before, it was in a circus tent.

Even the goats’ milk had that stench. Whenever I dipped khubus into the milk to eat, the smell would drill into my nostrils. How many times I vomited in the first days. But slowly, it retreated from me. Or I forgot about it. Later, although I tried many times, I could never experience it. It became so much a part of me I could not believe that such a stench had ever existed. Not only that, I was able to discern the difference in the many smells that originated from the goats. The he-goats had a special smell and the sheep another. There were hundreds of types of sheep, each with a distinct smell. Pregnant goats had a certain smell; goats about to give birth had another. Based
on that smell, I was even able to calculate a goat’s date of delivery. The newborns had a particular smell different from that of older lambs. Goats in heat had a different smell. The smell of the camels was distinct from all the rest. There are two types of camels—those with one hump and those with two. Each type smelled different. There was only one animal in that masara without any smell, and that was me.

One day, I developed a craving to write a letter to Sainu. I didn’t bother about how it would reach her. I had to write. I had to. During the brief interval after the khubus-and-water lunch, I dragged out my bag from under the cot. The letter pad and pen I had brought from Bombay were inside it. I took them out. The pen began to write faintly only after a lot of scribbling. I was writing a letter for the first time. I had no idea how to write one. Still, I gathered all my thoughts and began to write.

My very dear Sainu,

I have reached safely. I couldn’t even write a letter because I was very busy with work. I know you must be worried. Don’t worry. Your ikka is comfortable here. I am in a big firm that produces milk and wool. It is a good job. We don’t need to do anything. The
machines take care of everything. I supervise the work around here. My arbab likes me very much. He likes my work, and often gives me presents. I stay in a very expensive place. Sitting on my cot, I can see everything that’s around us. It is so beautiful. Ah, the food. How many new and unseen items the arbab brings for me! I started writing this letter after eating khubus with chicken curry and mutton masala, and a glass of pure milk. Indeed, I wonder if I have become fat even within these few days! Now it is afternoon—rest time. I need to get back to work after some time. Till then, I can sleep in this pleasant breeze.

Some of our local people are here with me: Ravuthar, Raghavan, Vijayan, Pokkar, and so on. I do not interact with them much—the arbab doesn’t like it. The arbab has a houri of a daughter. Every evening, she and I go for a stroll. She insists that I must go with her. Her name is Marymaimuna.

This is my news. I hope you and Ummah are fine.

I shall write again when I get time.

Your own ikka,
Najeeb

I folded the paper. Closed my eyes. Wept for some time. The truth was not in that letter, but in my tears. Nobody read the truth.