I’m a savage when it comes to eating chicken, don’t take my word for it, take my wife’s. Whenever I come home from America during holiday season, a tasty big rooster all fried up, is a must in the house. I’ve gotten sick and tired of eating the white lagoon chicken in America, which in all honesty doesn’t taste good, and lacks any pleasing aromatic.
But take it from me- The domestic roosters around here aren’t at all like that. It’s almost an art even just eating them. They’ll cry out loud. It’s said that there are two types of Roosters-one preaches communism and the other- Gospel. Whatever may it be, once it gets to the dinner table, there’s no place for Marx or Engels.
My housekeeper boy tells me it’s catching them that’s the hardest. Whereas the neutral minded driver of mine- Nanappan, says that you need to possess a special kind of skill to catch them. He then goes on to tell me that the first step is to lure them in, just like the pattern that party officials use to bring new members into their party. The trick is not to hurry things, it’ll take some time, but slowly after a while give them the taste of a sword. Teach them to kill people. Once you teach them to kill people, they are well on their way. It’s the part of removal of the skin that’s like even harder.
My housekeeper boy raised his voice by saying that he needn’t remove the skin as it will remove that on its own. Nanappan then slowly voiced his opinion that even though those communist roosters scream loudly, not one of them have a bit of sense in them, and that there’s no need to hunt for them, you just need to taunt them, and they will lose their mind and come rushing to you, and at that moment, just grab them by their neck. Then there are some that even after death, goes on preaching about caste and the Tiananmen square, but even they will, once surrendered, shred their own skin, after a period of introspection regarding the sheer nothingness they’ve achieved with their life. These were, according to Nanappan, the bunch of tricks that one needs to hold up his sleeve whilst catching Roosters.
I wasn’t particularly aware of the political and socialistic challenges that faced Roosters. When Nanappan said that he had a lot to say about the Roosters who do protests all day, I was thinking that Nanappan was talking about the differences among Roosters when it came to their colour, or even their caste, but this whole new aspect of things came as quite a surprise to me.
Nanappan then sarcastically pointed out that it was courtesy of me being a non resident, that had led me to think of things the way I did. He continued on that the Non residents’ words weren’t even given any level of consideration by the local communists. He then made a comparison of a non resident to a rich spoilt broiler chicken which wouldn’t know how to cry for help even on its death bed. If it knew how to cry for help, then maybe people would fear it a bit.
Nanappan then went on- ” It is true, Yes Yes I agree, it is from the money earned from your hard work, that we are able to rule here with utmost power. That is just how communism works. Every rooster who is a ‘Sakhav’ is supposed to obilge to these formalities.”
I was getting more and more excited from listening to Nanappan speak. Then we set out to find the perfect rooster in the nearby Chicken shop. On reaching the shop, I sat outside in a bench, and Nanappan took to smoking. I gave Nanappan a Rothmans cigarette, which Nanappan initially rejected but then reconsidered and came back to take it out of my hands and gave it to the chicken shop owner Anthrapan. Anthrapan took two buffs of it, and then threw it away. I was kinda pissed, as that cigarette brand was something I had specifically asked for and bought while shopping in the duty paid shop in the airport. People have changed a lot.
Just as Nanappan was telling me that communism had brought in a lot of changes in the common people, a guy came carrying roosters which had its legs tied together. I inadvertently smiled on seeing those big splendid roosters. I felt like they were smiling back at me. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them.
I felt now that Nanappan’s communist theory of chicken was maybe more accurate than I thought. Seeing the artistic way in which roosters were caught made my memory go back to my days in Poland and Russia, and made me wonder if they used to catch Roosters there like how it is done here.
Nanappan then interrupted my thought process when he said that Roosters are misunderstood creatures, and that the sounds that come out of their mouth, are actually “Sindabad” declarations. These traits are much like that of a typical communist follower.
Even when we tell you that the individual does not matter, and that it is the organisation that comes first, all we really want is to scream and hear “Sindabad” all over. And the Roosters which accompany us won’t leave us, as they are domestically raised. They have never had an easy day in life, every day they had to fight off predators to survive. They are not like the Roosters which grow up in farms conveniently under light, shade and security.
I asked myself if there even was a difference between a Communist Rooster and a Communist human. Maybe Nanappan was right after all. They are both the same. There’s no difference.
I looked carefully at the Communist Rooster. I felt as if the rooster was talking to me. No, I actually heard it. It told me to buy him. And so I did. I had to pay double the price for it, but I still bought it. Nanappan gave me praise for making the purchase, saying that even though it cost double the price, the fact that it was a communist rooster makes it absolutely worth it.
The communist chicken was starting preparations to make its way into my stomach.
Our next obstacle was to dress the chicken. My Wife wasn’t particularly a fan of pulling out the chicken skin herself. We thought it’d be better to find some other chicken shop to dress the chicken, and so we left. There was a queue outside the chicken shop, and they were all staring as I was carrying an alive chicken. They were probably wondering as to why I was there with a chicken in my hand. But then again, people must have understood that the chicken in my hand was no ordinary chicken, and they may have even made conclusions which may lead them to the fact that I might’ve been there to sell the communist chicken.
After waiting in the queue for a while, finally my turn came up. I humbly asked the chicken shop owner to dress the chicken in the domestic way. I then thought of explaining my intention for doing so, to the shop owner and the people who had gathered there in the shop to buy chicken. I started explaining that there was a difference in the meat of a chicken whose skin is pulled off and a chicken whose feathers are pulled off. There is a difference in taste between the two. I explained that the reason I come home every once in a while from America, is so that I won’t forget the domestic way of dressing a chicken.
Nanappan gave me an eye signal basically telling me to shut up. I noticed a shift in the attitude of the people in the shop when I mentioned America. I noticed the shop owner giving me the sharpest look, all the time holding that knife in his hands. I felt these people’s eyes turning red right before my eyes. I felt now that it was time to bring out my special lifeline, and so I pulled out a hundred Rupee note from my pocket and gave it to the shop owner. He smiled so bright that I felt it was magic. The Shop owner took the communist rooster in his hand, and said that a few proceedings should be done before killing it.
If it was broiler or communist or domestic, the same proceedings would apply. If a broiler is killed, it’s remains are packed and thrown into the corporation sector, and in the case of domestic one, it is mostly buried. That is not the case here, though. This is killing based on payment- a planned murder. That too the murder of systematic and opinionised Communist chicken. When you’ve paid a sum for the murder, the taste is something special, it stays with you for a few more hours than a normal kill. That is the speciality when it’s domestic.
Before killing, there is the procedure of giving water. The rope on the feet of the chicken was untied and it was given the opportunity to drink as much water as it would please. Everything was going to plan up until now, but the communist chicken had found its escape route and had no intention of wasting it. And so, the communist chicken ran, it jumped over obstacles and sped to the road. The Shop owner didn’t know what had happened. He hadn’t ever seen a chicken do that, and to be fair to him, he had only seen and killed white lagoons before, and God knows a communist chicken was no white lagoon. Me, Nanappan, and the shop owner set off behind the sprinting communist chicken.
The people standing in queue who had come to buy chicken were getting iritated now. But seeing three idiots run after a chicken really must have made their day. We followed the communist chicken all the way to the road, but we were stopped dead in our tracks when a “Pandi Lorry” came speeding through. We got our fair share of vibrant words from the Lorry driver. Just as our attention turned to the Lorry driver, by some miraculous turn of events, the communist chicken, with the style and conviction of a movie star, leapt on to the back of the Lorry. We just stood and watched as the Lorry moved further and further away. I looked at the chicken shop owner’s face and he looked at mine in disbelief. Nanappan said that it was the work of them Maoists. They wanted that communist chicken to be alongside them, and so they kidnapped him.
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