A Rat’s Death

I’m reading an anthology of Urdu stories written by different authors and translated into English by Rakshanda Jalil. These are stories taken from the rural backyards of India. I wish to focus on just one of them here today merely because I love it for its aesthetic intensity.

A Rat’s Death by Zakia Mashhadi is the story of an impecunious man named Dhena who is a Musahar. Musahar is a Dalit community whose very name means ‘rat eater.’ Their main occupation is catching rats which they eat too because of inescapable destitution.

One day Dhena is tempted by the offer made by Mishrji, a political broker. Go to the city and take part in a political rally and “You will get eight rupees, and also sherbet and puris with sabzi.” Puris and sabzi with sherbet to boot is a banquet for Dhena for whom even salt in his rat meat is a luxury. Dhena is scared of the city’s largeness and rush and pomp. But the reward is too tempting.

The city people who eat puri-sabzi consider people like Dhena as mere trash. What do they know about people who are forced to eat anything from rats to snakes and cows to camels? “And the funny thing is that those who eat goats hate those who eat cows. And those who eat cows refer to those they hate as pig-eaters!”

If Dhena could get puri-sabzi he wouldn’t eat rats. The simple truth is that people like Dhena are deprived of even roti with a little chutney or rice with some roasted chilly. Deprived by whom? By those who ridicule them for eating rats!

You create a system which favours a few at the cost of the most. And among the majority there will again be other hierarchies: like those who eat puri-sabzi versus those who eat rats. And then one day those who eat puri-sabzi will want a big crowd for their political rally.  Then they will give some roti-sabzi to the rat eaters to get them to come and shout Inquilab Zindabad. Dhena didn’t know what ‘inquilab’ meant. Maybe it meant “Puri-sabzi, sherbet, or simply a fat rat.”

Dhena is there now in the rally shouting “jindabad-jindabad” without waiting to hear ‘Inquilab’. He is hungry. He thinks ‘jindabad’ will bring him the promised puri-sabzi. But what it actually brings is a stampede. The police had begun their lathi-charge.

Other people who were also brought to shout ‘jindabad’ knew what to do when the lathi-charge started. “They had been brought for such processions many times in the past. Stuffed in jeeps, they had even been taken to drop little pieces of paper into boxes.” What the author refers to is the act of vote fixing which is common in many parts of North India.

People like Dhena are no better than donkeys, the narrator tells us. Donkeys carry loads of mud and rubble while Dhenas carry political leaders. Now in the city for the sake of some politicians, Dhena feels like a rat that had emerged from its burrow. And lost its way.

Dhena loses his life eventually to the stampede.

His corpse lies in the government hospital for three days. Unclaimed. Nobody knows whose body it is. Dhena’s people are still waiting in his wretched village, waiting for Dhena to come with eight rupees and some leftover puris.

After the stipulated period of waiting for relatives to come and claim the dead body, Dhena’s body is handed over to Sarju Dom, one who buries such bodies. He is paid Rs60 for the job. He thinks why waste that amount on firewood for cremation when the Mother Gomti [river] will carry away the corpse free of charge. Late in the night, he pushes his cart with Dhena’s body in it up the bridge and then pushes the corpse down into the river. But a mistake happens and the body gets caught in the girders of the bridge.

The journalists get a good story for the day though they also know there are many more dead bodies offering better stories in other parts of the country. The English news reporters, especially, know that this kind of a corpse carries no value for their readers. They have better stories waiting elsewhere where “some were busy pulling down the places of worship of others and slitting each other’s throats in order to usher in Ram Rajya in the fair land of Hinduism that is akin to paradise.” 

PS. All quotes are from the story.