Milk Teeth

(A story set in 1980s Coastal Karnataka)

I. The Monster
On that day, like every day for the last six years, Sathya walked back to his cell without a sound. The spitting was half-hearted now, the word rakshasa no longer spoken, just understood.

He walked with a slump, a broken spine, a broken spirit. No protests. No flinches when a lathi struck his shin. No response when a fellow inmate pissed in his dinner plate. He simply placed the plate outside the cell and waited.

The guard, whispered as he did every evening, ‘Three children. One of them your own.’

II. The Daughter
Anuradha dropped her surname the year she turned twelve. No one asked her to. But every time the teacher called out her full name at the attendance, she felt the air around her dry up a little.

Her mother never spoke about him. Not even once. Not until years later, when they were making semige, steamed rice strings, for a visiting uncle. Her mother, elbow-deep in rice flour, muttered, ‘He would wash the onions even after peeling them. Waste of water.’ That was all.

Anuradha hated him. Hated how he’d burned down her name. Her childhood. Her life.
But sometimes, in dreams that left her chest aching, she remembered a low humming. A lap. His voice saying, ‘Putta, look – the moon is following us.’

She would wake up feeling ashamed.

III. The Forgetting
It began with Arjun, her younger brother. He forgot how to draw the number eight. Then he called a mango the sky. Then he started biting his fingernails until they bled.

The village vaidya gave him turmeric water and mentioned a dosha, an imbalance. An aunt blamed the eclipse. An astrologer suggested an expensive homa to appease the gods.

Sathya watched in silence. He had seen this before.

In the late sixties, Sathya had worked under a field parasitologist, documenting waterborne infections in the forest belt near Agumbe. Tribal children in certain hamlets developed similar symptoms: slow aphasia, disorientation, seizures. A rare parasite, transmitted through stagnant, iron-rich water. Dormant for years. Targeted the developing brain. Adults were carriers, but never afflicted.

The research never got published – too small a sample – and the funding dried up. Sathya kept the notes.

When Arjun’s eyes began to roll back mid-sentence, when he growled in sleep in a voice not his own, Sathya opened the old files. And he knew. The canal. The only water source. Shared by the whole village.

He knew.

And no one would believe him.

IV.The Letters
He wrote letters. Over a hundred. To the District Health Officer. The Medical Board in Mangalore. The MLA’s office.

He once walked two days to the city with Arjun on his back in a sling made from a torn saree. The hospital turned him away. No referral. No bribe.

He contacted his old professor, now retired in Mysore. The man said, ‘You’re a teacher now. Don’t play scientist.’

At home, Sathya mixed red dye with lime and poured it into the canal. It bled into the village like a wound. People panicked. For a day. Then they laughed. Called it a prank. Washed their clothes in it. Drew water again.

Sathya went from house to house.

‘Don’t let them drink from the canal. Don’t share cups. They’re already infected.’

They shut their doors.

He watched one more child – Deeksha, from Class II – begin to forget her mother’s name. Then it was Patela’s son Prakasha who bit a dog’s ear off during a seizure.

And one night, Arjun bit his own tongue in half.

V. The Unmaking
He sat outside their home that night, a lantern beside him, Arjun asleep on his lap. Anuradha stood at the doorway. She was eleven. Holding her schoolbag like a shield. He looked at her and said nothing. She did not come closer.

The next morning, his wife prepared semige, soft and white. Poured sweet coconut milk over it. He fed Arjun first. Then kissed the boy’s forehead.

He whispered, ‘Today we float. Like lotus leaves.’

He carried Arjun to the canal. He walked back and collected Deeksha and Prakasha – their parents were already tired, confused, desperate.

He held each child under the water. Slowly. Gently. As if baptising them into silence.

VI. The Offering
He returned before dawn. He tied the three children by their ankles to the pipal tree by the ghat. He painted their mouths with ash. Placed three red earthen pots beneath them.

On a wooden plank, he carved in Kannada,

The curse of these three souls is upon this canal.

The village awoke to screams. No one touched the bodies. Not the priest. Not the police.
The canal was emptied. The tree declared unholy.

Within weeks, wells were dug. Pots were scrubbed. No one drank from the canal again.

VII. The Trial
The courtroom was thick with incense and anger. Sathya stood perfectly still like a piece of furniture. Anuradha sat at the back. Staring at the floor. Her mother wept like something inside her had broken loose. When the photos were shown, Anuradha did not flinch. But when the tree’s rope was displayed as evidence, still stained, she whispered, ‘You killed my brother. Rakshasa.’

Sathya didn’t defend himself. Didn’t even look up.

VIII. The Silence
In prison, he barely spoke. But he wrote. On matchboxes. Soap wrappers. Inside the sleeves of torn books. One guard collected them. Among them, were these words:
I wrote. I warned. I begged. I dyed the water red. There was no door left to knock. So I shut the one inside me.
I didn’t kill them. I killed what was inside them.
Let them think me a monster. If they call me saviour, they’ll drink again.
If my daughter ever reads this, tell her to keep hating me. I can bear anything but her forgiveness.

One day as he walked into his cell, he was stabbed with a rusted spoon. No cremation. No ritual. Just ash swept into the drain.

IX. The Return
Anuradha grew into a woman of Science. Charts. Data. She worked in water sanitation. For the government. One day, an old colleague forwarded her a scanned report:

“Outbreak patterns traced to a blocked canal in coastal Karnataka.
Symptoms match neuro-dormant parasitic strain.
Containment: Outbreak halted due to village-wide taboo and behavioural shift post-tragedy.”

She read it three times.

The photos were faded. But she saw the pipal tree. The red pots. A carved board in Kannada. She found his notes. Uploaded anonymously. And the final message:
If my daughter ever reads this, tell her to keep hating me.

X. Milk Teeth

She returned home that day. The canal was dry now. Overgrown. Ants made homes where water once moved. Children played in the schoolyard nearby. She sat on a stone step. Looked at the tree stump. From her handbag, she pulled out a small plastic container.
Inside it, Arjun’s milk tooth. Yellowed. Fragile. Almost weightless. She placed it on the stump and left.

She didn’t cry. Didn’t speak. Didn’t forgive.