The Cock Is the Culprit by Unni R

Author:Unni R. [R., Unni]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789354927430
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2022-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

Ambiguity

Though no one could be blamed for the fact that the menace was unabated even after all the cocks had been butchered, the whisper that someone was hiding something crept all around.

In a meeting urgently called one morning, Chaakku raised a doubt that he considered crucial.

‘What if it isn’t a cock that’s hooting?’

That was a suspicion that none of them had harboured even in their dreams.

‘Couldn’t this be a human being?’

Before they could consider the possibility, he continued, ‘The only creature on earth that protests through sarcasm is the human being.’

‘But, saar,’ protested someone, ‘how can a human being make such a racket?’

‘Well, around the time I came to settle here after my marriage, I saw Vaasu the low-born uproot a thorny palm as tall as two full-grown men and run away with it! If someone who was less than four-and-a-half feet tall and thin as a rake could do that, this can happen too!’

Vaasu the velan was actually long gone. Both his daughters were good students and had done well in life. They were now employed far away, and their mother had followed them. They came back occasionally when their mother felt like seeing their old home again. She—Cheetheyi was her name—would visit some houses, but only through the backyard. The girls had told her sternly not to do so, but she would do just that. The last time she returned, the brahmin family in the Tekkedath Mana had given her food that was left over from lunch: some sambar and pulissery. The older girl had stopped the car when they were on their way back and flung it right back into the yard of the Mana. The younger girl had sworn never to come back there, and Cheetheyi had started to weep. The local asaan, the teacher who had taught the girls the alphabet on sand, was watching the confusion, and asked them, enna happened? Nothing, they said, and drove off. Since then, none of them had visited. No one knew if Cheetheyi was alive or dead.

‘So … you mean …?’

‘Yes … exactly …’ Chaakku shifted in his chair and continued, ‘We have to carry out another investigation.’

No relative of either Vaasu’s or Cheetheyi’s was around anywhere there. Then who, the others asked.

Chaakku found a solution for that. ‘Let’s make all the men here imitate a cock crowing.’

To those who doubted deep inside whether this wasn’t absurd but were still silent, Chaakku offered this: ‘Don’t investigations make use of information about the size of the gap between teeth and the details of blood groups? What may sound like foolishness to us may actually help the investigation.’

Though many did not agree with this in the beginning, they began to yield, feeling that it was after all for a good cause—for the country. The believers who had been given permission to pray in the church two days a week announced that they wouldn’t be available for the crowing demonstration; they walked out en masse. Despite many attempts to allay fears and assuage tempers, they did not relent.

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