In every town there lies a house that
does not find any takers. Kalavai, a small town near
Vellore, was no exception. The one bedroom house near the Girls' Higher
Secondary School, Kalavai has been lying vacant ever since Sankaran moved in
nine years back. Sankaran did not know much about cats, or for that matter
about any animals other than algebra. He was a mathematics teacher with the state government
schools and he belonged to the rare category of teachers, who were passionate
about teaching. He taught for the Class XI and XII students in the Government
Girls' Higher Secondary School, Vellore. Apart from the trigonometric
functions and sundries, his world contained only two others - his wife, Chitra
and daughter, Savithri. Ever since their wedding, there has been only little interaction
between the couple and their relatives. The trend continued even after the
vivacious Savithri came into their lives. The girl was gifted with an immense
memory power that helped her excel at the school exams. She was in Class VI,
when Sankaran was transferred to Kalavai. Normally, the teachers getting
shifted out of Vellore to the nearby smaller towns did not shift base. They did daily up-down trips from Vellore to their small town
postings. Sankaran too could
have done that with Kalavai. But he did not.
Savithri almost in tears, said 'Don't leave us pa...be here'. 'I
will be here whenever you want to see me.' 'Don't lie! Only on Saturday-Sunday
you will come home. Don't go.' Chitra and Sankaran looked at each other. 'Five
days will fly like that Savi..' Chitra pitched in. 'Okay...let us also go with
father ma. I will join in your new school pa’. It took a while for the parents
to comfort the kid and put her to sleep. ‘Even I am not okay... Can't you try
and cancel your transfer order? Or why can't you travel daily as everyone else does?' ‘Take care of Savi... it's a matter of just
one year. Now sleep'. Sankaran's philosophy was that a teacher should be
accessible to the students any time even after the school hours. Though most of
the students were not particularly fond of meeting their mathematics teachers
after the school hours, most of the parents felt otherwise. Sankaran did not
want to disappoint any such parent in Kalavai. So he had found himself a tiny
house on rent, less than 500m from the Girls' Higher Secondary School, in Kalavai.
He was the very first human occupant
of the house. Kalavai school's principal had helped Sankaran with finding the
house. The house had been lying vacant ever since it was completed about four
years back. 'The brothers had some... misunderstanding soon after the
construction got over. I have sorted it out now. Thyagarajan is the eldest one,
you handover the monthly rent to him. He is a perfect gentleman, working with
the EB.' During the year, the vacant house had already seen three litters of kittens.
The last two were from the same mother. Unlike the earlier feline, who had
given birth to three cute kittens in the bathroom, this queen had delivered her
four kids in the pristine kitchen sink that she had turned tastefully into a
cozy Moses basket. But cruelly, only one of the four kittens survived beyond a
fortnight. After some four months, her second litter of three shiny black kittens
presented themselves to the world in that kitchen sink. That was when the principal
succeeded in settling the family dispute to help Sankaran.
Sankaran's family was with him in
Kalavai to set up the place for him. Some of us do not like cats. But Sankaran
did not particularly hate cats. But as a very normal part of the house cleaning
routine, he had to remove those three tiny, lovable, week-old kittens from the
kitchen sink. 'I will leave them in a safe place. The mother cat will come and take
care of her babies..' 'Ok pa..', Savithri replied weakly. 'Good girl! Chitra,
you both be here.' Chitra too was not feeling fine. More than the actual act of
separating the babies from a mother, what troubled Chitra was the colour of all
the three kittens - black. Sankaran carefully placed those lovely things in a textile
shop carry bag and carried it till he reached the unused pump house amidst the
coconut groves, almost a kilometre away. Then he left those three black kittens
at the pump house. He took care to cover them with the piece of old cloth that
he carried along. Before leaving the place, he lovingly glanced at them and smiled. The tiny
ones were too tiny to even realise what was happening to them; they were no
more at their home. They were not aware it would be their last day; they were not
aware they would be eaten up alive.
By the time the queen returned to her home after
a good meal, the pump house was left only with the dried up blood of the jet-black kittens. A few dogs and crows loitered around the pump house.
Over the next two days while Chitra
and Savithri got the house ready for Sankaran, the queen rummaged the entire place
for her babies. She roamed as though she was possessed. She even kept a watch
on Savithri for a while. But after long hours of maddening and frustrating search around the house,
she just fell asleep in the unused cupboard of the Class VI room of the Girls'
Higher Secondary School, Kalavai.
Surprisingly, none of the parents in
Kalavai wanted extra maths classes for their kids. During the initial couple of
days the loneliness almost drove Sankaran mad. Gradually, he got used to it. After
the school hours, it was only a routine of news papers, old magazines, cooking
and eating and sleeping alone for Sankaran. Though, on a few occasions he
caught up with his neighbour for a small chat. The heaven is where the home is.
The weekends in Vellore were heaven for Sankaran. Every Friday, he took the
first bus that started after 5:00 PM to Vellore. Monday mornings, after an
early breakfast and with a heavy heart, he would take an early bus to Kalavai
and directly reach the school. Monday evening onwards he kept counting the hours
till Friday evening. Friday nights, he was back in his heaven again. It was one
of those Monday evenings when he reached his house from the school. The very
moment he entered the house, he heard the noise of rolling vessels. He rightly guessed
it was a cat. It was the very same cat.
The queen was trying to reestablish
its home in the kitchen, in a corner of the loft this time. She finished off
the eggs, milk and other likeable leftovers in the kitchen. Sitting in a corner
of the loft she made weird noises in the nights. She would tear off the pillows
and towels when Sankaran was busy in the school. She would push around the utensils
every single day, probably she loved the noise of the rolling vessels. She also loved training her claws on newsprint and she
developed immense affinity for the low quality vernacular daily. Very soon she
upgraded to clothes and tore off a piece from Sankaran's trousers. She also
scattered her fur all over the tiny house. The queen always made her way
through the narrow ventilator above the kitchen loft. The locked kitchen
windows did not matter to her. Sankaran's loneliness and boredom started to
transform into fatigue and frustration. He was at his wit’s end. It was the
first time in his life he experienced utter helplessness, that too because of a female cat.
After another weekend in heaven,
Sankaran was all alone at his house that Monday evening. Sankaran could feel a
strong stench. Very soon the odour turned unbearable. It was about nine in the
night when he peeped over the loft to see dried and decomposed leftovers of a
chicken. Little feathers were all over the loft and big, black ants were making a
beeline to the bits of tissues. The smell and the sight made the maths
teacher almost slip off the chair that he had climbed to have a look at the
loft. Bastard! he told himself. Over the next few hours, he scrubbed
the loft and before falling asleep he sealed the ventilator completely with a worn
out gunny bag. From the next day onwards, he kept the window open only while he
cooked. The queen tried to get back her home over the next few days, but she
was not strong enough to clear the gunny bag. The maths teacher had a peaceful time thereafter.
But Sankara's relief did not last long. It was a Thursday evening. The next
day, by the same time, he would be in his heaven in Vellore. Sankaran was sitting
with his newspaper outside his house, under the filament bulb light, when his
neighbour called him over for a chat. They had an unusually long chat touching
up politics, cinema, cricket, weather and other usual stuff. By the time they concluded that
no one could ever redeem India it was eight. Sankaran planned to prepare rasam
that night. But when he entered his house after the chat, he heard the same
sound of rolling vessels. You bitch! he told himself. We don't know what exactly went on in
his mind that moment, but suddenly he closed the main door of his house and
rushed into the kitchen and frenetically closed the kitchen door too. The queen
that was in the sink area was stunned; she deftly jumped over to the loft via
the window grill in no time. Not knowing what to do Sankaran shouted at the
queen, who was trembling in a corner of the loft. The maths teacher chose the
best of abuses. Soon, after a quick glance of the kitchen he undecidedly picked
up the old broom that was lying below the sink - the very same sink that was once the
bed for the kittens. He caught the broom at the cleaning end
and started waving at the queen with the broom's tin sheet rolled handle. The
queen was into its eighth week of pregnancy. Sankaran was not aware of that. Even if he had known that, probably it would not have mattered to him that day. The cat had been keeping herself busy with lots of food and ample rest.
It was to be her third litter during the year. With four, ready-to-be-born kittens
in her womb, she was not been able to jump around freely to escape getting
thrashed by the metal handle of the broom that almost reached her corner in the
loft. Come down bitch! Sankaran screamed. The broom's next swipe almost grazed the queen. She jumped from the loft towards the kitchen door, hoping that it
would open. But it did not. Sankaran immediately charged at her from the sink
side. The queen hurriedly crossed over to the window side and quickly got back
to her corner in the loft. The cat-and-man chase continued for quite some time
before Sankaran stopped to have some water. He felt hungry.
He renewed his attack with a
new vigour. Soon, he climbed over the kitchen slab and shooed at the queen
sitting on the other extreme of the loft. The cat's energy was draining out
and she could not think of any way to escape the trap. With just the broom,
Sankaran too could not succeed in doing what he wanted to do. The chase was
always following the same sequence of loft-door-window-loft. It was well past
ten in the night when Sankaran got that idea. With his feet on the sink slab, looking
right into the beautiful, green eyes of the queen, he grabbed a steel tumbler from
the shelf and threw at the queen. Sitting at the other extreme of the loft, she
was shivering with fear, her heart was racing. The tumbler missile missed her by a
whisker. The maths teacher was never into cricket. Next was a copper-bottom
vessel that Sankaran usually used to make rasam. He bent down and
grabbed it and almost when he had thrown it right at the queen’s abdomen, it
happened. The cat jumped on the door, quickly flew towards the window and
undecidedly pounced on Sankaran, who was still starring at the corner of the loft with the killer vessel in his hand. Though she was not sure of what she was doing, the pregnant cat was
fast, strong and accurate.
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