Hearing these words, Javed became convinced that if he were to stay here any longer he would sprout a tail, a tail that would wag at the woman’s bidding. He looked fearfully towards the platform where the woman stood. The whore wearing dark glasses from Mai Jeeva’s brothel moved her body in such a way that all of Javed’s plans fell, like a ripe fruit from a tree. Again, she cooed, ‘Come, my love, come on now.’
Javed ran. By the time he leapt across the sewer and reached the bazaar he heard loud laughter, terrifying in its horrendousness. He shivered.
When he reached home, a voice writhed out from the chaotic jumble of his thoughts and reassured him thus: ‘Javed, you have been saved from a very great sin. You should be thankful to God.’
THE RAT OF SHAHDOLE
Salima was twenty-one years old when she got married. Five years later, she still had no baby. Her mother and mother-in-law were extremely worried, particularly her mother who fretted that Najeeb, Salima’s husband, might bring home a second wife. Several doctors were consulted, but nothing happened.
Salima herself was quite concerned, too. After all, there are few girls who, soon after marriage, don’t expect a baby. Salima sought her mother’s advice and did her best to follow her instructions but, still, nothing happened.
One day a friend, who had been declared barren, came to meet her. Salima was amazed; her friend had a bonny baby in her lap. Salima asked her, ‘Fatima, how did you get this baby?’
Fatima, who was five years older, smiled and said, ‘It is with the blessings of Shahdole sahab1. A woman told me, if you truly want a baby, go to the shrine of Shahdole sahab and make a vow. Make a pledge that if a child is born to me, I shall bring him here and offer him to you.’
Fatima then went on to say that if such a vow is made at the shrine of Shahdole sahab, then the first-born has a head that is very small. Salima didn’t quite fancy the idea of a baby with a tiny head. Moreover, the very thought of abandoning her first-born was unbearable.
She wondered at mothers who could do such a thing. A mother doesn’t abandon her baby at the garbage heap if the child is born with a tiny head or a flat nose or bleary eyes. Yet she desperately wanted a baby and, so, she eventually agreed to her friend’s coaxing.
Salima was a native of Gujarat, where the hospice of Shahdole sahab was located. She went to her husband and said, ‘Fatima is urging me to go to the shrine of Shahdole sahab. I want to go there, with your permission.’ Salima’s husband had no objection. He said, ‘Go, by all means, but come back quickly.’
And so Salima set off with Fatima.
The shrine of Shahdole was not a typical, ornate, marble encrusted mausoleum. In fact, it was quite a nice place and Salima liked it very much. Yet when she looked around, and in the milling crowd spotted the rats of Shahdole — with snot dribbling from their noses — a shiver ran down her spine.
She came face to face with a young girl, nubile and brimful with youth, yet behaving in the oddest possible way. Her behaviour could make the soberest of men smile. Salima looked at her and, for a minute, laughed — but her laughter was followed almost immediately by tears. She began to wonder about the girl and what the future held for her. She knew the owners of the shrine would sooner or later sell her off. Her buyer would travel all over the country, making her dance like a monkey to earn money.
The girl had an inordinately small head. But Salima thought — a small head need not spell a small fate. The rat-girl, however, had a beautiful body. Every limb, every part of her body was near perfect. Looking at her, it seemed as though her mental faculties had been deliberately snuffed out. She moved and talked like a wound-up doll. Salima felt as though she had been turned into one.
Yet Salima still went ahead, and at the urging of her friend Fatima, prayed to the saint to grant her a baby that she would offer the saint in lieu.
Salima returned home. She continued seeing doctors and taking their counsel. Within two months, she was delighted to discover that she was pregnant. A beautiful baby boy was born to her in due course. There had been a lunar eclipse during her pregnancy and so the child was born with a small black mole on its right cheek, but the mole didn’t make the baby look ugly at all.
Fatima came to see the baby and announced that the infant should be given away to Shahdole sahab right away. Salima had agreed to this, yet now she looked for ways to buy some time. The mother in her could not come to terms with the decision to dump her darling baby at the saint’s doorstep.
She had been told that whosoever asks Shahdole sahab for a baby has one with a tiny head; yet her child had a normal-sized head. Fatima admonished her, ‘Don’t look for excuses! Your child belongs to the saint; you have no right over it. If you go back on your solemn word, mark my words, some terrible calamity shall befall you and you shall regret it for the rest of your life.’
Poor, heart-broken Salima travelled all the way to the hospice and handed over her bonny baby with the black mole on its cheek to the caretakers of the shrine.
She came home and cried so much that she fell ill. For one whole year, she swung between life and death. She just could not forget her baby boy. The black mole on his right cheek, which she had kissed so often, haunted her memories. She had loved it so; it looked so endearing there on his cheek.
All through her illness, her boy did not leave her thoughts even for a minute. Strange dreams tormented her. The saint of Shahdole would appear before her, looking distraught. With his sharp teeth, he would tear off pieces of her flesh. Agonised beyond endurance, she would scream out loud and tell her husband, ‘Help! Save me! See — see that rat, he is eating away my flesh!’
Sometimes, her over-wrought brain would imagine that her boy was about to enter a rat’s hole. She is pulling, pulling at his tail with all her might. But the big rats inside the hole have caught her baby’s snout in a vice-like grip. And she can never pull him out!
And, sometimes, that girl — the one she had seen at the shrine of Shahdole sahab, the one who had been in the full bloom of youth — would appear before her. Looking at the girl, Salima would begin to laugh; but just as quickly, she would start crying. And she would cry so much that her husband, Najeeb, would be at his wit’s end worrying how to stem her tears.
Salima saw rats everywhere — on the bed, in the kitchen, inside the bathroom, running on top of the sofa, even deep within her heart and inside her ears. So much so, that sometimes she felt she too had turned into a rat. That snot was dribbling down her nose. And that, in the milling crowd that surged around the shrine of Shahdole sahab, she too is going about holding her tiny head on her frail shoulders and behaving in such an odd manner that all those who see her are holding their sides and doubling up with laughter at her odd antics. Truly, Salima was in a pathetic state.
Wherever she looked, she saw black moles. The universe, for her, had turned into a giant cheek and the sun had broken into fragments and got pasted on its surface like black moles. Eventually, her fever broke and she became somewhat better. Najeeb sighed with relief. He knew well enough what ailed his wife. He was a man with a grave disposition. He wasn’t the slightest bit put out by his son being given away as a pledge. In fact, he considered the child to be not his but the saint’s.
When Salima recovered and the storms raging in her mind and heart abated somewhat, Najeeb said to her, ‘My dearest, forget the baby. He wasn’t yours; he was an offering to the saint.’