BackThe Unsullied
When I drove in to work, past the slum, I felt immediately dirty, as if I had stepped barefoot on something soft and rotting...
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Have you seen a dog trying to make up its mind? On the one hand, there is the chocolate biscuit in your hand. She leans forward, whimpering. But on the other, there is this sinister neighbourhood, slippery grey cement and smelling of fear, crowded with feeble animals. You stand at the door that leads to the vet and his sharp needles, his bright lights and squeals of pain. She rushes back, pulling against the leash so hard she might choke. You may coax all you will: Eventually, there is no recourse but to grab the bitch by the neck and drag her in.
This is how it is with humans too. For a short, blissful spell, we are spared decisions, we pass our days mewling and suckling. But soon enough, we are reduced to the animal state, full of greed and fear, tugging this way and that, forever convinced the better option lies beyond our grasp, and entirely incapable of making up our minds.
And this is why epiphanies are important, epiphanies and memory. Together, they give us the character and the will; they are the two firm hands that grab our collars, haul us up and put us firmly on one way rather than the other.
I am grateful I received mine when I was still young enough to do something about it. Until then, by virtue of never having the courage to welcome change, nor the nerve to reject it outright, I had carved for myself a life of middling comfort. At thirty-five, I had worked for a large, and largely benevolent, corporation for almost fifteen years—the work was so familiar, I could finish an assignment in a day, or spread it over weeks, as the situation required. When I had nothing to do, I would spend the day calculating my retirement benefits. Some of my colleagues and I had formed a walking club: We would descend to the basement, where the summer sun couldn’t reach us, and walk in circles around the parked cars, the looming SUVs and shiny hatchbacks, each a much celebrated milestone in their owners’ slowly passing lives.
Most months, it was too hot to go out, but even in the winter, we preferred the basement, because there was nothing outside the office, no park or any such flowery thing, but just a dusty road and then an empty plot of land, no doubt earmarked for another office or a mall, but currently occupied by a slum.
On dull days, or when we rose from our chairs to exercise our backs, we often looked out at the settlement below us. There was always something to remark upon. Once, there was a wedding party: The women came out in their brightest colours, the men arranged a few chairs in a crooked crescent, the children ran out and danced and fell and fought.
Some of the office housekeeping staff lived there: I would see them running out on their lunch breaks. They were doing well, evidently, for the blue tarpaulin roofs that first covered their heads began to give way, one after another, to rough cement constructions. I once remarked that the little settlement was a minuscule version of the city. At its heart were two cement houses, double-storeyed, with windows and balconies, their walls painted green and pink. Men leaned against railings in their vests, looking down, chatting. Large water tanks crowned their roofs. The scale of construction contracted sharply as you shifted your gaze the fifty-odd uneven feet to the slum’s furthest edge—to shacks of bare brick and mounds of rubble, to a semi-disembowelled sofa leaking foam, on which old men sometimes sat and smoked.
They were doing well, these people. They had jobs, in our offices, and they had their own enterprise, little stalls selling mud pots and axes. They even had livestock!
It was an animal husbandry that comprised largely of pigs. And what a sight those pigs were. Pigs? I should call them boars—with their long, wide snouts, and stiff black hair, and cunning little eyes. If you saw one coming at you in the night, you would scream (one of our colleagues did. He was straddled upon his bike and a boar came out of the dark. Screaming, he fell, and his bike too, and broke his arm).
The bigger ones could easily have killed a man, and perhaps they would have, too, had they thought of it. Human flesh was, after all, plentiful. But perhaps they did not lack for food, because they would eat anything, rotten peels and cigarette butts, any kind of weed that ever managed to grow in the dust, dead things.
They would eat—well, this brings me to my epiphany. They would eat—ugh, the thought of it, again, makes me sick, and I shall have to wash my hands once I have written it down. Spat it out.
So, this is how it was: I was standing by the window, watching the happenings below. It was a hot afternoon, and slow; people would not leave their homes without good reason, neither would the pigs. The plot was, by and large, empty of life and incident, which is why, I suppose, my eye was drawn to the little boy, trotting across it on the diagonal, and then, when he reached what I suppose he deemed a suitable spot, lowering his shorts and squatting down.
I was about to return to my desk, but as I was leaving, I saw something that fixed me where I was. A pig was advancing upon the boy. It was, yes, it was almost as if the pig was stalking him, and all the while the boy sat, happily occupied in his labours, chin cupped neatly in both hands.
I suppose I might have feared for the boy’s safety, perhaps the idea of alerting someone—but who?—passed my mind, but there was no time to act, hardly any to think, before the filthy black beast had reached the child, and it became clear it wasn’t after his soft skin but rather his… droppings.
I raised a hand to my mouth, fearing I might retch. The boy sprang up and fell forward, clutching at his shorts. The pig began to gobble. I closed my eyes.
I hurried back to my desk and began rustling through a file, tapping at the keyboard, but the image would not fade. A pantry boy walked by, distributing chocolates. Someone had bought a new car. I took a dark globe, but I couldn’t eat it. A rotten taste filled my mouth. I left the chocolate on my desk when I went home.
My appetite had not returned at dinner. I packed the food away in the fridge, and watched television until I fell asleep. I dreamt of worms.
The next morning, my stomach was growling, but when I tried to swallow a spoonful of mulchy muesli, it heaved. I sucked sour juice from a Tetra Pak, pulling it in sharp jets from the straw straight down my throat.
When I drove in to work, past the slum, I felt immediately dirty, as if I had stepped barefoot on something soft and rotting. At my desk, I had to take off my shoes and socks and rub at my feet to make sure they were dry. Even then, the feeling persisted. The skin between my toes itched. I went to the bathroom and washed my feet in the sink.
But the way back to my desk led past a large window, and I caught another glimpse of the ground below. I had to swivel and return to the bathroom, and wash again. This time, I kept my eyes on the floor as I hurried back. I brushed roughly past a colleague who tried to say Good Morning.
It was not a good morning. By lunchtime, I was dizzy with hunger, but the vegetables were limp, the dal was sludge, the dahi fell from my spoon in white glops.
I managed to swallow two dry rotis with water. The rest of my food, I emptied into the dustbin, where it made a sopping, sticky mess.
I almost ran to the basement. Here, finally, I stood and looked around me, at the dry concrete floor, the white lights and the metal cars. Swift and sleeping dragons, they seemed to me, ready to breathe fire and soar at their masters’ command. I thought, then, how much more powerful these were, these cars, than any of my slow, gossipy colleagues—how ironic it was, how wrong, that these sleek, revving engines should be subjugated to so much coarse and pudgy waste.
I did not resume work that day; I went home.
“Yes-yes, I have," she replied, with her usual, assertive disregard for the truth.
“Just look at this," I pointed at a sludge of vegetable remains clogging the sink. “Filthy!"
“I was cleaning the house, dusting!"
“Dusting! As if that would take any of your precious time, the way you dust! Let’s see what you’ve dusted, let us…"
I rummaged for a clean cloth and made her follow me out of the kitchen into the house. I ran the white duster along the edges of tables, in the crooks of cabinets, and held it out for her, marked with black. “Well?" I asked. “Is this the dusting that occupies you all day?"
She looked away and muttered.
“What?"
She said nothing.
“Take this now, finish it properly."
She held out a hand for the duster, sulkily, and turned towards a chair. But now, I was in a rage. “Move yourself and clean the room. Properly. Dust the corners, dust behind the shelves, dust inside the books! Don’t just wave your cloth in the air as if you’re dancing. Pull out the drawers, reach up and below, get on your knees, bring out the stool, and clean every bit of the dust!" My voice must have risen as I spoke; when I stopped, my throat hurt.
The maid’s eyes grew red with tears, but I was beyond pity. “What are you waiting for? Should I be falling at your feet?"
She turned from me with a sob and ran towards the door. “Don’t come back," I shouted after her, “don’t show your face here again!"
I banged the door and locked it. Then I stood there a while, listening to the sound of her tea, bubbling aloud in the kitchen. I listened until the boiling fell still, and its bubbling was replaced by the tinny trembling of the empty pan.
I shook my head to clear it, and I remembered the filth in the sink. I strode in and ran both taps, full throttle. The thick slime just circled the drain. When I stopped the water, the slime settled, mid-whirl. I could not have touched it.
Then I remembered the battery acid I kept in reserve for the inverter. I rummaged through cupboards, grabbed the bottle and returned to the kitchen, where I poured a generous measure into the sink.
There was a hiss and then a shot of white smoke, like in a magic trick. The air filled with the smell of burning and hospitals. The sludge disappeared.
I think I sighed with satisfaction. The breath that left me was pure and comforted, a baby’s burp. I had a long bath, and then I ate three boiled eggs, unsalted. With the last one, I poured myself a small glass of cold white wine, to celebrate the return of my appetite. I watched the news for a while, then I brushed my teeth and got into bed.
When I closed my eyes, again that rotting image came to me, but now I was prepared. I let the scene build, the boy, the pig, the dirt, each in its place. I let the pig grunt, I let the boy squeak.
Then I burst upon them a grand sulphuric cloud, a cleansing white that spread across the slum, and when it lifted, it revealed a ground burnt of all debris, the loose plastic and dead vegetables all gone, the cheap, torn wood all gone, the brick crumbled. I imagined myself watching as the air cleared, looking down upon an unsullied vista of bare ground and metal frames. Perhaps it was interspersed, here and there, with the smooth white bones of big black boars… but these, too, would soon be dust.
I turned upon my side, and fell fast asleep. Tomorrow would be a better day.
Parvati Sharma is the author of ‘The Dead Camel And Other Stories Of Love’, ‘Close To Home’, and, most recently, a book for children called ‘The Story Of Babur’. She lives in Delhi.
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