Adam
S. HAREESH
adam
Translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
Foreword
Adam
Death Notice
Murder at the Culvert
Magic Tail
Kavyamela
Alone
Lord of the Hunt
Maoist
Night Watch
Follow Penguin
Copyright
Advance Praise for the Book
‘S. Hareesh, in these astonishing stories, takes an honest joy in human villainy and reveals a painful and comical truth—exuberant violence, determined greed and pure spite are the stuff of our relations with each other, with animals and with the world at large’—Anjum Hasan, author
‘An inspired translation of a brilliant constellation of stories, rooted in language and landscape, within a narrative arc that is vast and universal. S. Hareesh’s imagination evades the limitations of Anthropocene consciousness to give us a master class in the craft of storytelling’—Namita Gokhale, author, and director, Jaipur Literature Festival
‘Hareesh’s writing carries, always, the unexpected, the uncanny. In this collection of short fiction, we encounter worlds within worlds, stories within stories—a gloriously tangled web of lives that intersect in hilariously unsavoury, yet always human, ways. From dogs and their “masters”, old lifelong enemies who can’t, quite literally, live without each other, a traveller who walks down a road on an endless night, men with magic tails, bulls that break free, we are borne away by a telling that’s informed by the wild, the oral, the unruly. Through this, Hareesh dissects for us, in scathing, often laugh-out-loud ways, the facades adopted by masculinity, civility, caste. In these stories, humans are human in such achingly real ways that what’s also conjured is the unbelievable, the farcical, the beasts’—Janice Pariat, author
Foreword
Readers of my work in English would only be familiar with Moustache. Before writing the novel, I published three collections of short stories in Malayalam. Adam is the second of those.
The collection has a special place in my heart for several reasons. After my first book came out, I had to stay away from writing for a number of years—years when I thought I might never write again. The stories in this collection helped me come out of that state of mind. They also mark a turning point for the writer that I am today in terms of my writing style, language and choice of subjects.
The nine stories in this collection reflect the language and lifestyle of the land where I was born and grew up. I am of the opinion that our writing is affected by the people we meet and the books we read. In that sense, this collection owes a debt of gratitude to those around me and the stories I have read so far.
I am very pleased that Jayasree Kalathil, my dear friend and the translator of Moustache, has translated these stories too. Jayasree’s excellence in her craft needs no reiteration from me. Readers of literature translated into English have ample evidence in front of them.
Adam was read quite widely in Malayalam, going into ten reprints and receiving the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for short story in 2016. I am grateful to Penguin Random House and editor Elizabeth Kuruvilla for their enthusiasm about the book and the opportunity to bring it to a wider audience. I can only hope that it will be received well and read widely.
Neendoor
S. Hareesh
adam
On 26 December 1970, ex-serviceman N.K. Kuruppu rushed home with a puppy of a special breed. It was evident from the speed of the car in which he was travelling that he was impatient to meet his son, born the night before after procrastinating for many years. Kuruppu had always been an impatient man, even when he was in the army. When he would come home on leave, young men loitering at the junction would watch his taxi zip down the road from the train station and, thinking of his wife waiting for him, exclaim: ‘Look at him go! He has already removed his underpants and slung them over his shoulder!’
A sense of lethargy now pervaded the junction, still recovering from the festivities of Christmas. The chai shop and the barber shop were closed. Two middle-aged men and a few young men stood in front of one of the two paan shops which was open. One of the young men was feeling pleased with himself for having engraved the words ‘May a thousand flowers bloom’ on the back wall of the public urinal, a feat he had accomplished after several months of careful planning.
All of them caught a glimpse of the puppy’s head as the car sped past them. Still, unwilling to trust their own eyes, they followed the car, walking briskly down the road. The Kuruppu they knew was not the type to love a human child, let alone the child of a dog. He was the type of soldier who was feared and respected even by his enemies. During the war, he had single-handedly captured two Pakistani tanks. One evening, a month before his retirement, he had set out for a stroll along the India–Pakistan border. Walking briskly, he had lost track of time, and in the spreading darkness, accidentally crossed over to enemy territory. The next thing he knew, he was surrounded by a group of Pakistani soldiers.
‘Hands up!’ they said, pointing their guns at him. They were planning to kill the infidel when the Pakistani major said: ‘Wait! Let’s have a look at the pig’s face.’
Kuruppu shook with fear as several torches were shone in his face.
‘Oh! It’s Kuruppu sir!’ The major knocked his knees and saluted him. ‘Take him back immediately!’ he ordered, and apologized profusely to Kuruppu. The soldiers lit the way with their torches and took him safely back to the border.
However, the handful of local ex-servicemen—they were a rare breed in those parts—secretly bad-mouthed him. They said he had no involvement with the military other than running the army canteen, and that the well-developed muscles on his shoulders were the result of kneading dough for the soldiers’ chapattis. They implied that he was not eligible for the ration of alcohol that the army made available to all ex-servicemen. But Kuruppu was far superior to these people, both in ancestral wealth and bodily strength. He spoke better English and Hindi, and had developed salubrious relationships with more people in prestigious positions than they ever could. He took care not to speak much to anyone, and to suffuse the conversation with belligerence and disdain when he did. Acrimony was his natural disposition.
A skinny young boy from the neighbourhood came to look at the puppy. ‘Da, patti,’ he said, and poked it in the face with a stick. The puppy barked, making everyone step back in shock, then grabbed the stick with its teeth and looked cruelly at the boy.
‘Her name is not “patti”!’ Kuruppu gave the boy a hard tap on his head, and sent him off with a warning never to enter his compound again.
As the days went by, more and more people came to look at the puppy that had, by now, been christened ‘Noor’. The relatives who came to see Kuruppu’s newborn son showed more interest in the puppy that was the colour of polished mahogany, and spent hours watching her rest in her cage. Their experience with dogs, other than the local mongrels, was limited to the occasional Pomeranian, or in trying to imagine, on their way to the city, the breed of dog that produced the lion-like roars emanating from the palatial houses hidden behind high perimeter walls.
‘This is a German Shepherd,’ Kuruppu heard someone declare as he stood watching his wife and son from a safe distance, as demanded by customs of childbirth-related pollution. He did not feel the urge to pick his son up and hold him against his chest, and smell the top of his head. He was the type of old-fashioned man who thought such deeds unsavoury. He rarely even spoke to his wife in the presence of others.
‘No, no! It’s an Alsatian pup. You can tell by the black markings on its face,’ said Kora sir, the lifelong president of the public library.
Kuruppu wanted to tell them that the puppy was, in fact, a Belgian Malinois, a breed classified as distinct from the Belgian Shepherd by the veterinarian Adolphe Reul around eighty years ago, and that there was only one other dog of the same breed in India. But what was the point in trying to enlighten a bunch of ignoramuses who did not even know that German Shepherds and Alsatians were, in fact, one and the same!
More things that would amaze Kuruppu’s compatriots were yet to happen. A man named Beeran—they called him Beeranikka—cycled eight miles every day to deliver goat meat to Kuruppu’s house. Very few among them had sampled goat meat as it was usually only available where there was a sizeable population of ‘Kakkas’, as Muslims were called locally. Only two Kakkas were seen in the area—one a trader who came to buy dried areca nut and the other a man who bought and sold old brass vessels. People called them ‘Mothalali’ as though they were big-time businessmen, purely because they wore wide leather belts that had pockets stuffed with currency notes around their waists. Beeranikka cooked the goat meat with turmeric powder on a fire outside the kitchen, under Kuruppu’s watchful eyes. Noor could only digest tender goat meat. Kuruppu’s mother, although not fond of dogs, made her wheat porridge cooked in milk. Noor ignored everyone except Kuruppu, and ate only what he gave her.
Meanwhile, Vasuvasari, the carpenter, dragged his left leg ballooned with elephantiasis to Kuruppu’s house to build a kennel in the front yard. It was half the size of a bedroom. He had been out of work for two or three months, so he took his sweet time finishing the job, painstakingly turning the legs and sanding them to perfection as though he had forgotten that he was building a kennel for a dog.
‘I wish I had been born as a dog in Kuruppu’s house,’ he told all and sundry at his job sites and at the arrack shop. The arrack vendor had dumped the day-old tapioca and fish curry in a plate outside the shop. A skinny mongrel was lapping it up, holding the plate down with its front paw. Vasuvasari, an incorrigible joker, bowed to it, calling it ‘Guru’.
‘He’s the one who taught us carpenters our work,’ he said. ‘Look how he’s holding down the plate with his paw to stop it from moving. Just like we carpenters sit on top of the wood we work on.’ He stole a meaningful look at the shop owner’s wife.
One morning, following the advice of the veterinary doctor who visited once a month to examine the puppy, Kuruppu set out with Noor in a taxi with national permit. By then she was a year and a half old. For a month afterwards, in the silence devoid of her regal bark, people gossiped about what had become of her. Even the local thief, Satyanesan, began to feel bad about the time he had tested Noor’s mettle by chucking a boiled egg with a needle hidden inside in front of her.
When the car passed St Aloysius Church on Old Port Road in Mangalapuram, Noor looked at a two-storeyed house on the right and barked. She had been silent ever since they had left home. Filled with pride, Kuruppu lovingly scratched the back of her neck. In Tumkur, Noor was mated with India’s first Malinois dog, the six-year-old Malswama, and on their way back Kuruppu stopped at that house. Noor walked right in as though it was her own house, and lay down under the bed. As she watched with interest, the normally stern-faced Kuruppu talked non-stop in English with Polly Mathew, the blonde-haired woman whose house it was, helped her make omelettes in the kitchen, and had energetic sex with her in broad daylight on the sofa. Eighteen months ago, it was after a meeting just like this one that Polly had given Noor to Kuruppu. She had come back from the Philippines the day before.
Now, a naked Polly walked up to Noor and picked her up. ‘Her mother had two pups,’ she said, sitting back on the sofa holding Noor in her lap. ‘They looked exactly the same. My hand was shaking when I was making my selection. One was to live in splendour in America, and the other here in India, in this land of beggars . . .’
‘This is also the land of strong men . . .’ Kuruppu said, fondling the hair on his chest.
When Noor had her pups—four of them, all male—they too looked exactly the same. Still, Kuruppu felt that one of them was somewhat haughtier than the others. He was the first to open his eyes, and pushing the others out of the way, first at his mother’s teats. Kuruppu resolved to keep him.
A friend of a friend of Kuruppu’s, Dr Kamalesh, came from Ernakulam to fetch one of the others. The doctor was younger than Kuruppu had imagined, and his car seemed to leave a trail of fragrance and coolness behind. Kuruppu gave him a notebook in which he had written down the details of what to feed the puppy for the next two years. He also gave him the telephone number of a dog trainer in Madras. He had given the puppy a name he had come across in the morning newspaper—Candy.
Another pup was adopted by Roy, the nephew of Isaac Thomas, the district president of the Karshaka Congress. Roy had already found a name for him—Jordan, the country in which he worked. Roy tried to hand Kuruppu an envelope with some money in it, but he refused it with dignity.
Kuruppu named his favourite pup Arthur. He had a separate kennel made for him, and fed him special food and medicines to protect him against childhood problems. In the evenings, he let him loose in the compound and watched his antics with a heart brimming with pride and joy.
The retired deputy superintendent of police, Gangadharan, went to Thiruvananthapuram at Kuruppu’s request on a secret mission. Within a week, a veterinarian, a good-looking man dressed in a white shirt and black pants, arrived at the junction asking for directions to Kuruppu’s house. He sat in the front seat of a police jeep whose engine was revving as though it was an impatient beast kicking up dust. Two sub-inspectors sat behind him in a respectful manner, and behind them, two ordinary policemen in half-pants stood on the running board, hanging on to the bars. One of them made eye contact with the paan shop owner who quickly pulled the wooden shutters down and withdrew into the darkness of the shop.
After examining the unnamed puppy, the doctor and his entourage went ahead to camp in a house owned by Kuruppu in a coconut grove by the side of a lake. An old Mappila, well known for preparing wedding feasts in Christian households, had been at work in the kitchen for the last three days. He had prepared chicken cooked in a roasted coconut gravy, fried catfish, snakehead murrel curried with plenty of chillies and tamarind, and acchar with vinegar. More policemen arrived the next day, and they handed a letter of appreciation to Kuruppu, signed by the district police chief and sealed with the elephant insignia of the state of Kerala. Finally, after posing for a group photo with Kuruppu, they went away with the puppy. The next morning, the Malayala Manorama newspaper carried an item about the puppy with the title ‘Victor Dons the Khaki’. The reporter had mistakenly identified the breed as Alsatian. Still, the article said the puppy would strengthen Kerala’s police dog squad, and concluded with the information that it was Kuruppu, an ex-serviceman, who had donated the puppy in the service of the country. Someone cut out the news item and pasted it on the wall of the arrack shop where it would remain for years to come.