A Village of Liars

Every day I see a dead dog. None of them look the same. Some dogs melt in the sun, slowly, dragging a heavy sweep of blood down the road. Others swell and turn over, exposing the soft undersides of their bellies, smooth like free-drifting balloons. And sometimes the dog is run over – spewing his insides a little farther than the spot where his carcass lies clean and still, like a skin rug; beauty and blood separated by a patch of concrete.

But all dead dogs smell the same: of death. It is the heaviest, of all smells. To the inexperienced nose, the smell of a dead dog and a dead man are the same. Let me tell you, there is a wail in the smell of a dead man; it darts towards your throat. When you smell a dead man, you cannot swallow; that’s how you know.

My father, like the men who came before him, spent a lot of time with dead men. And like the men who came before him, he began to lose things. The first to go was his sense of smell. I did not realise then but that too was suffering. Everyone I knew had something getting to them. And everyone, I thought, lost something – their shame, teeth, wives or sense of justice. Losing one’s sense of smell seemed like a lesser loss, perhaps even a gift in the case of my father. It was between that and his hunger. But Ma told me his suffering was because of the company he had around him. I found the dead more agreeable than the living. She told me it was because I had never been haunted.

Kakoo’s ghost keeps me company as I write this. Most nights, he is benign. And on an even greater number of nights, he does not even visit. Those nights are the heaviest ones. On rare occasions, the nights where I get no sleep – he howls. He laughs and howls. The voice in my head is replaced by his racket. These nights are the lightest.

Kakoo was my father’s brother, unlike my father in every way, and was my best and only friend. He turned the bones of the cattle corpses he burnt into figurines, ivory and smooth, with his coarse, inky fingers.

Before Kakoo died, he had dreams of flying. His limbs were dark as an oil slick and glowed in the moonlight. All of us tried to pull him back to the ground, but he slipped away into the night. In another, he was a bird king – human with an eagle head – on whose command hundreds of tiny birds bored their claws into his skin and lifted him off. In these dreams he could not return. Kakoo, who had never been out of the village, made me promise – if he were ever to fly away, I would look after Rani, his mongrel bitch.

Rani was endearingly ugly, gluttonous, and fabulously stupid. Once, overcome by a threatening bout of playfulness, she bit off Kakoo’s third finger. He wasn’t angry, not even a speck. He laughed and called Rani his bride. Rani beat her skinny tail against him. The night Kakoo died, Rani barked until dawn. In the morning, she wasn’t there.

I will start from the beginning: I remember how it ended; no one remembers how it began. I believe it began when Sulekha took a lover. Ma believes it began when Kakoo was born.

I will start from the beginning … before Kakoo, before Sulekha and her lover. Before it all began, we were a village of liars.

We have always been a village of liars.

*

Kakoo was brave, and had strong shoulders. When I was little, he would hoist me up on his shoulders and tread to the deepest parts of the pond that were dark and thick with dead leaves. I would grab onto his hair when he disappeared underwater, for minutes at a time. He would emerge with peculiar things: a fish with wings, a silver crab, an albino crow. All beautiful and dead.

Over the years, his shoulders slouched, his hair thinned, and the pond’s darkness rubbed onto his skin. Some of his blackness rubbed onto my skin. Kakoo was the darkest man in the village. I was the second darkest.

I was a coward. I never went into the pond alone. Beneath the inky surface, Kakoo told me, the bottom shone like moon light. I did not believe him. Besides, I could not let the pond water stain my skin. Lightening it would require drinking cups and cups of raw milk, which we could not afford.

One day, Kakoo pushed me into the water despite my protests. Under the surface of rotting leaves, the water was surprisingly clear. At the bottom shone a ring of golden light. I grabbed at it. As I emerged on the other bank, there was Sulekha – the fairest girl in the village.

I lost my ring, she said. I opened my palm. She smiled.

Sulekha spent the afternoons by the riverside. She was amused, by Kakoo’s eccentricity, or maybe by my assumed innocence, I do not know which. Perhaps it was the absurdity of it all – a fair girl, and a very black pond. Some of my blackness must have rubbed into her skin for when her father came asking for Kakoo his eyes were murder-red.

*

Every village has a pond. Dark and inky. On one side stay the fair, feeding on a diet of milk and cream (milk in summer and cream in winters, Sulekha told me). On the other stay the dark. In some stories the pond is a (rocky) mountain, or a (treacherous) river, even a (thorny) forest. Do not get confused. It keeps the black from rubbing against the fair. Rumour has it, even the dogs on the other side are milky white.

Rani was muddy, and loved being chained. She was tied with a thin rope to a silver nail Kakoo found in the pond. Rani happily paced around her semicircle of confinement, stopping only to look at Kakoo with star-struck eyes. It had to take a crazy bitch to love him, Ma would say.

Every village needs a pond, and a man to hate. In some stories the man is a woman, old and scheming, or young and tempting. Do not get confused. At night this man helps the village sleep, in the day he helps them find their sense of justice, their state of order.

The night Kakoo died, Justice walked into the village and sat in her silver throne, which she had abandoned for decades. From then on, every nail dropped turned its tip towards the earth, sweets never perished, and milk was fattier.

*

The night Kakoo died, the moon was full, almost slack-jawed when his body slowly slid under the thick layer of leaves on the surface. The pond churned and grew denser. The moon’s shadow trembled above the leaves. His body never emerged. Never floated back up.

That night Sulekha’s father’s eyes were murder-red. He asked, where is the sonofabitch. There, I said. One truth.

Idonotknow, I could have said. Noitwasme, I could have said. One lie, One truth.

Of all the things I could have said, none mattered. To go on living we need to believe in things – the certainty of our hate, our place in the right side of history, and the undeniable corruption of those we hate. Every village needs a man to hate.

*

Every day I see a dead dog. Open-mouthed, frozen mid gasp, the abruptness matched by the icy stillness of the eyes, looking nowhere. My eyes look for Rani, the balding bitch, Kakoo’s queen. Why would I expect her to be dead? I cannot imagine her to live without Kakoo.

Rani was named after someone; I tell myself. Some woman whom Kakoo loved. Rani the lover, and Rani the mongrel – Kakoo’s two great loves. My betrayal matched by a great romance, I tell myself.

*

The night Kakoo was born was a full moon night. Kakoo was born light-skinned. Moon-white, glowing. Born on the wrong side of the pond they said. He was born smiling, legs first. Spindly legs. That night he did not attempt to run.

Kakoo did not believe in trying to escape your fate. He did not believe in the village laws that predicted your fate. Village laws that predicted the non-believer’s ruin. The village laws prevailed.

*

Kakoo sits beside me tonight with his beautiful howling laughter. Some people would be miserable in death. I know I would be. Kakoo is not.

Suchatrutheryouare, he laughs. Suchatrutherfromalyingvillage. Whatawonder.

I do not mind him. He is welcome, missed when gone.

But at first, I had protested. Why won’t you leave me alone, I had asked. What’s the fun in that, he had said. Would you be happy if I died, I had asked. What’s the fun in that, he had said.

I really thought you would be different, Kakoo says. I AM IAM IAMIAM, I want to say. Every man needs to believe a lie to go on living, I want to say. Kakoo is not here to listen.