Ganesan was angry , for two days in a row. He cursed the women of the house. They had left not a morsel behind, having completely cleaned up the kitchen before they retired for the night. They weren't naive women who could not understand his intent. His wife was about 40 years old and his sister was pushing 50 ; the daughter would soon be 13. There was not one left over crumb of anything; dosai, appalam, or coconut scrap. Where would he find the bait for the rat ?. Exasperated, he cursed them once more before going to bed.
It was not long before he was woken up. There was the distinct sound of the slanted bamboo pole that they use to hoist the clothes to dry. He could sense the rat circling around the foot of the pole. Oh, the sound grew louder, the rat must be climbing up using it as its ladder. The rat must have successfully climbed up to the storage partition overhead for the sound of the brass vessels against the walls could be heard. The rustling sound indicated the rat wading through the stacks of old newspaper. There was a sudden thump; the rat had jumped to the top of the wooden bureau; the rattling of the empty tins lying on top of the bureau was unmistakable. The rat then jumped from the bureau to the shelf nailed to the wall. There was silence for a while which was ominous. The suspense soon ended; there was a big sound of something pushed to the floor. Ganesan and his wife got up and switched the lights on. It was the dislodged lid of the oil jar and it had rolled down.
With eyes refusing open, his wife put the lid back and covered the jar with a basket. Ganesan was gritting his teeth all the while.
"If only we had some left-overs; what to do if everything is swept so clean?"
"What will I leave behind ? The Rasam or the Upma? Can you use upma as a bait in the rat trap?"
"Then , what is your big idea ?"
"I have none. If there is Dosai or Adai, we can leave a piece for the bait; as if we make dosai and adai daily at our home", she was equally pungent.
"Then let them have a field day"
His wife rummaged the vegetable basket and brought up a clove of a dried up shallot.
"Try this, she said".
"When did the rats ever grow fond of shallots?", he threw it down with disdain.
It must have hurt her, but she went back to sleep without a reply.
Ganesan could not bring himself to lie down and sleep. In a small hall of the house where 10 people cannot be made to sit or lie down, four or five rats are daily running riot, They tear up clothes, bite into tomatoes, drink up the oil left in the decanter, dislodge the lids on the tins and even spirit away the wick in the lamp in the recess on the wall where they keep the gods they worship.
Ganesan put on a shirt and slid a 25 paise coin in its pocket. He locked the door and left the house.
All the hotels had then been closed. Only the liquor shops and some small shops selling Betel leaves and nuts were open. All he wanted was a vadai, even a small piece of it would do.
Nowhere he could find that vadai; just the same bread, biscuit, banana that had been tried many times before without avail. Nothing seemed to be work except for those items fried in oil, be it Pakoda, papad or vadai. At such prices oil and pulses are selling, who is able to cook with these items in homes daily? Certainly not they. It has always been Rice Upma, Ravai Upma and Pongal followed by Ravai Upma, Pongal and Rice Upma and then followed by Pongal, Ravi Upma.... Ganesan was sick of Upma and Pongal; it must be likewise for the rats.
"Lucky bastards", Ganesan muttered to himself thinking of the rats and his misfortune. There was a political meeting in progress in a maidan at a distance. There were not more than 30 or 40 people around the podium. Ganesan wondered if he could stand there for a while and listen. The speaker was impressive. He was full of warnings. He warned Nixon, warned China, warned Britain, warned Pakistan and at the end even warned Indira Gandhi. If even just 1% of the warnings could reach the rats, they would have all run away and drowned themselves in the Bay of Bengal. Why don't the rats understand Tamil?
More than the speech something else there proved more useful to Ganesan. There was a push cart which had people milling around. The push-cart had a stove embedded in the center on which oil was on the boil and a variety of deep fried snacks were being dished out . People wouldn't wait for the fries to be scooped up in those long-handled porous ladles; they were snapped up briskly.
Ganesan took a place near the cart and stood there watching. There were about twenty Chilli Bajjis floating on the boiling oil like submarines. Somebody from the crowd was asking for Vadai. Ganesan also joined the call for vadai but the next round was also reserved for Chilli Bajjis for their demand was high. A car drove in; the man who got down from it ordered for a parcel of 6 Bajjis and walk in to the dark to ease himself. " At least for the next round switch over to Vadai", it was Ganesan call to the push cart vendor.
In the mean time, the original vadai enthusiast had become impatient and started to complain. The Vendor asked him to wait as just like him there was another person who as also waiting for the Vadai, as if it was some kind of a mitigating circumstance.
Ganesan felt a bit odd. Even when the push cart vendor asked him , "how many?" , he could not bring himself to say , "just one". He blurted out 'Two". While everybody was waiting for their turn to eat, he was waiting for a bait for the rats. If they were to know his real purpose....?
Ganesan was the first to be handed over the vadais, in a scrap of a local evening paper. The vadais were hot , crisp but oily. He couldn't hold them in his palms without shifting them from one hand to another.
When the reached home, it was impossible to take the keys of the house from the shirt pocket without soiling his shirt. He had to keep the vadais down and rub the oil on his legs, calf muscles and around the ankles.
He went in and laid the bait with one vadai and ate the other one. He knew it was not quite proper for a 50 year man to have deep-fried snacks late at night but took the discomfort that would follow as a repentence, so to say . He soon fell asleep.
It was dawn. The ill effect of last night vadai on his stomoch was unmistadkable. The rat's shrieks and moans from the trap had not woken him up at all as his wife told him later.
He left home carrying the trap in his hand. Though the rat was pressing its face to the wires of the trap, it couldn't be seen whether it was a small or a big rat. Does it make any difference , if it could knock flour tins down, roll lids off jars, tear into clothes and gnaw at vegetables.
Now the problem was to let the rat out in some distance.Not into the same gutter like last time, let me try the maidan, he thought to himself. It would take at least a month for it to find its way back. Who knows ? If not this rat some other rat is definitely going to take its place.
The urchins had gathered around him by now waiting excitedly for him to let the rat out. They were too much of a pester; he wished they kept the distance. Ganesan gently pressed open the wooden handle of the spring-loaded door of the trap.
The rat scurried haphazardly into the open. It was neither big or small. The boys were shrieking and one of them threw a stone at it. Ganesan tried to stop him. In the meantime, a crow suddenly swooped down on the rat and tossed it on its back. The rat ran faster but with a limp. Next time around the crow scooped up the rat in one fell sweep.
Ganesan felt sad for its fate. He looked into the trap and found the vadai in tact. It made him sadder still.
Translation by V, Ramanan
