Tooth and Nail, Fur and Scale Read online

  ‘I’m almost done, Chacha. You can have the rest of mine,’ said Mahi.

  ‘This isn’t for us,’ said his uncle, skewering it on the spit.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It’s for someone else. You’ll see.’

  They made pallets from dry grass, and Mahi lay down to sleep. His uncle scarfed down his leftovers while the other rabbit finished cooking, and then, removing it from the spit, he put the meat right in the middle of the clearing.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Mahi asked.

  ‘Listen,’ said his uncle, kneeling next to his pallet. ‘If you stay up long enough, you’ll see some interesting things tonight.’

  Mahi’s eyes widened and his hands were suddenly clammy.

  ‘But you have to be careful not to make a noise. Act as if you’re asleep.’ He flashed Mahi a smile, and lay down. Soon, Mahi heard him snoring.

  He had almost fallen asleep himself when he saw the first creature enter the clearing. The thing had the proportions of a healthy child. Its body was covered in thick brown fur—even the face and the stomach. It moved on two legs and had two stubby arms in which it carried something. Tiptoeing up to the cooked rabbit on the grass, the beast gave it a cautious sniff. Then it dropped the load in its arms, went on its knees and, with its nose an inch above the meat, inhaled deeply.

  As if on cue, about a dozen of its kin tottered into the clearing, bouncing excitedly on their hairy feet. They crouched around the meat, and Mahi felt his heartbeat quicken. There was no way that little rabbit was going to be enough for all of them!

  But they remained there, hardly moving. Mahi watched, at first with fear, then curiosity and, finally, with dwindling interest, before sleep took him and he watched them no more.

  His uncle shook him awake, grinning from ear to ear. ‘Did you see them?’ he asked.

  Mahi squinted against the daylight for a moment and then, remembering where he was, sat up with a start.

  ‘There—there were so many of them!’ he said. ‘What were they?’

  ‘They’re called Astomi.’

  ‘They ate the—’ He glanced at the spot around which they’d gathered last night, and was shocked to see the rabbit still there, cold and stale. ‘They were gathered around the meat! I thought they—’

  ‘They don’t eat.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘They get their sustenance from smell, not food!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My father told me they don’t even have mouths. They live on the smells of roots and flowers and wild fruit.’

  ‘But last night—’

  ‘The Astomi don’t cook their own meat—probably because the meat might rot, and then its smell would become dangerous. Strong odours are poisonous to them.’

  ‘So you cooked some for them?’

  ‘They love rabbit. Not so crazy about fish.’

  ‘And they kept the other animals away!’

  His uncle nodded and ruffled Mahi’s hair. Then he walked over to where his pack lay, and reached inside it.

  ‘They left us gifts too,’ he said and chucked something at Mahi, who caught it with both hands.

  The apple was perfectly ripe, and when Mahi sank his teeth into it, sweetness exploded in his mouth.

  But the best part, he thought, was that it smelled delicious.

  ASTOMI

  According to Megasthenes, a Greek historian who lived in the 4th century BC, the tribe of creatures called Astomi lived near the mouth of River Ganga. The Astomi were short, hairy humanoids who had no mouths and didn’t need to eat anything to survive. Instead, they derived nourishment from the smell of roots, flowers and wild apples, which they carried on their long journeys across the mountains. Just as poisonous food can be dangerous to us, very strong smells could be fatal to Astomi, so they presumably steered clear of rotten vegetable matter and Indian public toilets.

  So if you’re ever trekking in the hills of Uttarakhand and spot an Astomi, have pity on the poor thing and spray on some deodorant, will you?

  NO BEDTIME FOR THE FEARLESS

  ‘Sridhu!’ said Amma, striding up to Sri and snatching the phone from his hand. ‘I told you to go to bed!’

  Sri crossed his arms over his chest. ‘So I am in bed, right?’

  Amma almost burst a vein. Her knuckles were white around the phone, which showed Sri’s character falling into a pool of lava and dying with a long blood-curdling scream. ‘Game Over!’ said a thrilling voice.

  ‘Don’t get smart with me, Sridhar. Not today.’

  ‘I’m not getting—’

  ‘Quiet! If your father was here, you’d be getting a lot worse than an early bedtime.’

  ‘Yeah, he’d have shouted for a bit and then told me to go to bed.’

  ‘What the—what on earth do you want me to do, Sridhu? Why are you like this?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘That’s the third time a child’s mother has come home with a complaint about you! What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘It’s just like I told you. That boy was being a little snot. I was teaching him—’

  ‘When have we ever laid a hand on you, Sridhu? Why do you think you can go around hitting people?’

  ‘I don’t think I can go around hitting people. Just little snots like Ankush Katyal.’

  Amma looked confused for a moment, then took a deep breath and walked over to his cupboard. ‘Get out of that uniform,’ she said, throwing him a pair of pyjamas. ‘And get into bed. You have ten minutes to go to sleep, or I’m going to have to take some tough decisions.’ She began rearranging his cupboard again—folding his T-shirts and shorts, hanging up his shirts and trousers . . .

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like sending you to Army School.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘I’m serious. Anyway, it’s only a matter of time before one of these kids’ moms goes to the headmistress and—’

  ‘I said, go ahead.’

  ‘Okay. If Army School is what it takes to knock some discipline into you—’

  ‘Oh, please. You couldn’t even let me stay at summer camp for the full week! Army School, it seems.’

  Amma slammed the cupboard shut and began walking out of the door.

  ‘I’m going to stay up as long as I want!’ said Sri. ‘And the next time a whiny geek decides to talk big, I’m still going to put him in his—’

  Sri had thought he’d heard his mother scream before. Scream at him to change out of his uniform, scream at him to put his dishes away after dinner, scream at him to make his bed, scream at him because some weaklings dragged their mothers to his house to handle their business for them. He now realized he was dead wrong.

  ‘Sridhar!’ screeched Amma, and Sri’s hands clapped themselves over his ears. ‘Go to bed this instant, or he WILL come for you!’

  Sri felt his tongue freeze. Goosebumps erupted all along his arms.

  ‘He doesn’t care how old you are,’ said Amma, advancing on him, her hands held out like grasping claws. ‘He doesn’t care how big you’ve grown!’ She gripped both his arms, pinning them to his sides. Her fingers felt like cold steel. ‘He only cares about how fat you’ve got! He only cares about how much meat he can get off of you!’

  Her face was red, and he saw that it was scored with deep, long lines that he had never noticed before. The tears came without warning, and he scrunched up his face to keep them in.

  ‘And don’t even think of fighting back! He isn’t one of the scrawny kids you pick on at school!’ Her voice was a low growl now, a menacing whisper in his ear. ‘He’ll stuff you right in with the other bad children in his sack, and drag you to his kitchen!

  ‘And you know what happens there, don’t you, Sridhar Raghavan? You know how it is, with the knives and the grater and the iron mallet! You know how it is with the cauldron of castor oil and the burning flames underneath!’

  Sri was crying freely now. That voice wasn’t his mother’s! That face wasn’t his mother’s! This was some
—some crazed witch who—

  She released him suddenly and, before he knew it, she was at the door, switching off the light to his room. Then she stood there, silhouetted against the doorway, and spoke in a voice almost too low to hear.

  ‘Go to sleep.’

  Sri lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, which slowly brightened as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He was feeling cold even though it was 35 degrees. The tears had dried on his face, leaving dark trails stippled with white salt. The moon, gliding across the sky, had appeared at his window.

  What was that! he thought at long last. Has she finally lost it?

  But that wasn’t the question, was it? Amma might have gone crazy, and that was one thing—but the real issue was that what she had said had made him feel small and cold and helpless.

  ‘I’m not scared!’ Sri told himself. ‘I’m NOT scared of him!’

  Really? asked the tingling in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘No! You know why? Because he doesn’t exist!’

  Really?

  Of course, Sri wanted to say. Of course there’s no poochandi! It’s just a myth! A way to keep snivelling kids quiet and put them to bed early!

  Then why were you afraid of him?

  ‘I was small then! I was weak! But now I’m big.’

  Now you’re fat! Fat and meaty!

  ‘Shut up!’ said Sri, but not too loud, and ducked under his sheets.

  At first, he thought it was some kind of a machine. Like a lawnmower or an electric drill. But it kept shutting down and starting up, getting closer as it did.

  ‘I’m NOT scared!’ said Sri, throwing off the sheets and jumping out of bed. ‘Bring it on, you dirty beggar! I’ll show you who’s—’

  He froze. Outside the window, beyond the small yard where his mother grew her potted plants, the grey street was spotlit by the yellow of the streetlamps. Moving between the cones of light, avoiding their revealing touch, was a squat and uneven shadow. The rhythm of its ungainly waddle corresponded to the sound—that low drone that Sri now realized could be a deep and throaty voice. It reminded him of Tibetan monks, chanting in the great halls of their monasteries, and of a big cat’s warning growl.

  And once he listened closely, he began to hear variations in the drone, as if every time it was a different word—or a different phrase—that the creature was uttering.

  Sri sighed with relief when the creature and its weird singing passed his house and moved on. He hadn’t noticed that he had ducked low, so that just his eyes were above the windowsill, so that . . . that thing wouldn’t see him looking. His heart had been fluttering madly, his hairs standing on end, and cold sweat had completely drenched his shirt.

  ‘I’m not scared,’ he said, but his voice was a whimper. ‘I’m not scared!’ he insisted, shaking his head vigorously as if to throw the feeling off. He went to the bathroom and washed his face, then stared at his angry reflection in the mirror.

  Going to his cupboard, he dug out the faded old overcoat—several sizes too big for him—that he had used for a Sherlock costume at his school’s last cosplay contest. It fit him better now than it had earlier that year, but its hem still dragged along the floor and the sleeves had to be rolled up several times.

  Then he put on the white sneakers that he wore to school every day (regardless of what the uniform demanded) over bare feet, and tiptoed to his mother’s room. She had gone to bed without bothering to change, and the sheets were all messy and bunched up under her, like she had been writhing in her sleep.

  He felt around for the phone under her pillow, between the sheets, on the bedside table—and finally found it on the dresser. Then he stopped by the kitchen to grab a couple of packs of Parle-G from the counter.

  By the time he got out of the main door, the creature’s voice had faded. He climbed over the gate—the ridiculously rattly-tattly old gate that only he knew how to scale without making a sound—and took off in the direction he had seen it go.

  At the T-junction, he looked either way and decided that he would go left, because that way led out of the residential area and to the main road. It was a muggy night, and the dogs were lazy. He had brought the biscuits to distract them if they decided they wanted to defend their territory against his intrusion, but it didn’t look like he would need them. He jogged along on tiptoe, and just as his sides were beginning to hurt, he heard the droning voice again!

  Sri jumped behind the row of parked cars along the left side of the road and followed the sound. Even at a crouch, he could move faster than its source. Finally, he caught sight of the creature as it was turning into an alleyway to the right, between a halwai and a stationery store.

  He streaked across the road and waited against the shutters of the sweet shop. The alley was dark and narrow, and the only things he could see in there were jagged silhouettes and reflections in puddles. He was sure there would be rats.

  But then, he was following something much more dangerous—and he wasn’t scared! With a deep breath, he plunged into the darkness.

  The creature’s voice reverberated in the cramped space, and seemed to fill Sri’s head. In the sporadic silences, he heard something else—a soft squealing. First, it sounded like puppies, but as he got closer, it sounded more and more human.

  Children! thought Sri. It’s kidnapped the children!

  By the time they came out of the alley into a comparatively well-lit street, they were closer, and he noticed that the creature kept glancing over its shoulder, as if it was expecting pursuers.

  It looked like a man who had been compressed from above until he was three-and-a-half feet tall. Its skin was dark grey with streaks of white ash all over, and it had a big head—or maybe it was a normal-sized head that looked huge because of the wild bush of matted hair that sprang from it in every direction. If fact, Sri couldn’t see any real facial features through that hair, apart from the prominent ridge of its brow, which cast a deep shadow over its eyes. Its arms were long and bony, and ended in slender fingers with enormous knuckles. Various threads were wrapped around its upper arms, wrists and neck, and faintly clattering baubles dangled from them. It held a staff in one hand with a damroo1 tied near the top, and shook it above its head every time it bellowed. With the other hand, it held on to a large, heavy sack that was slung over its shoulder.

  Sri swallowed, and licked the insides of his mouth to work up some saliva. His teeth were bone dry. He could hear the kids squealing more clearly now, and saw the bulges in the sack rearranging themselves frantically.

  He followed them down streets that he had ridden through on his bicycle in the daytime, and then through lanes and by-lanes that he would never have entered left to himself. Soon, they were passing through areas that he didn’t know too well (though he recognized a mechanic’s garage that his father had once taken him to and an electronics store that he had been to with his uncle). He had to start straining his eyes to keep track of the landmarks and the turns they were taking.

  They’d reached the boundary wall of his colony, and the creature ducked through a tiny gap in it that Sri hadn’t noticed before. Past the wall was a small thicket, through which passed a drain that surfaced near one of the entrances of the neighbourhood, stinking it up. Beyond the woods were the cantonment area and a very orderly cemetery where they only put dead soldiers.

  Sri took a deep breath and squeezed through the break in the wall. A tiny path curved between the trees, among which he seemed to have lost his quarry. He could turn back now, he thought, as he listened to the shrill of the cicadas. He could turn back and he wouldn’t feel the smaller for it. Not many boys he knew would have come this far. In the face of the danger in front of him, his mother’s antics earlier that night felt childish. Weird, but harmless.

  But he could still hear the whimpering from the sack.

  A little movie montage flashed in his head . . . of him finding the sack—without the monster watching—untying it, freeing the children, and then cut to a Republic Day parade, with t
he President of India putting a medal around his neck. And then, he thought, even the snottiest little snot will look up to me, and regret that they’d ever talked back to the bravest boy in school!

  So he went on, hands stretched out in front of him, feeling for brambles and branches. The path below was damp earth—his steps hardly made a sound. From time to time, he would see the fiend behind the trees. It had stopped making that ominous sound once it was in the woods, though the squealing from the sack continued.

  When the moonlight all but stopped filtering through the trees, Sri looked up and noticed that the canopy was much higher than he remembered. It struck him too that the foliage around the path wasn’t dry and thorny any more—it was lush, the leaves a much deeper shade of green. He noticed the trees beyond them—a few feet wide at the base, creepers thronging them, vines falling from their branches thick and knotted. An owl hooted from a high perch and fireflies flickered through the bushes, and for a moment the woods seemed more fantastic than the thing he was following. He walked on, looking around, wondering how this forest could be tucked away in the middle of the urban sprawl—

  When a branch cracked under his feet, he was just glad he didn’t scream.

  Immediately, he ducked into the leafy bushes off the path, hoping that there wouldn’t be thorns—and just in time. He saw the creature’s staff appear down the trail, its body turning slowly so that the damroo made a rhythmic tak-tak-tak.

  ‘Who goes there?’ the poochandi rumbled. ‘Who is abroad at this hour, in our woods?’

  Sri almost wet his pants when the staff thrashed the bush near him, but he still did not scream. He saw the monster peeping into the bushes across the path, and saw it turn its face to the treetops. A stark ray of moonlight illuminated its face, and the eyes in the shadow of its brow caught it like a cat’s eye, shining bright orange.

  Every instinct told Sri to run, but he stayed put. A few years later, when he’d think back to this moment, he would cite it as the bravest one in his life.

  And just like that, the creature turned its back on him—the bulges in the sack now immobile, silent—and set off down the path at a much faster pace.