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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