there a thin, curved, lethally sharp steel knife, capable of sliding into flesh as easily as into a ripe mango. Did I know about it? my uncle had written to ask. Had she ever mentioned it to me? Why did she sleep with it under her pillow? The question haunted me still, and I would never know the answer.
* * *
Now my days became even busier, divided between hospital, Veer, school, and factory. The only constant, when I did come home, was the sight of Charu’s expectant face somewhere in the vicinity: perhaps the postman had come when no-one was looking and left a letter under a flower pot; perhaps he had intercepted me on the road and given me a letter. More often than not, nothing of the sort happened. Since early August many days had passed without letters. Every afternoon Charu paced about waiting for the postman, and gave up only when she heard the shouts of other cowherds calling their animals back from deep forests at sunset. I would see her soaked, rose-patterned umbrella bob up and down as she too ran down the squelchy slope towards the stream to rustle up her herd. Summer or winter, she wore the same plastic slippers, and in the monsoon, when she returned home, she had to spend a quarter of an hour sitting on the stairs to her house, sprinkling salt over her wet feet and calves to remove the leeches that had attached themselves to her skin. By this time she had a drooping, tired air: every day began hopeful and ended with the same dull disappointment.
It was not an easy time for her. That same month Ama sold Pinki to the butcher. “I wouldn’t have to sell your precious goat, if you didn’t cost me so much,” she had said when Charu pleaded with her. Ama had to finance the feasts for the prospective grooms; and there was the money she had to pay the Ohjha. “These goats are not pets,” she reasoned. “Why do you think I keep them?” All their goats were destined for the slaughterhouse, and were sold to a butcher in the market when they reached the right size. Charu had gone through these partings before. She should have got used to it, but the pain was as new, as unendurable each time. The day the butcher came to take her goat away, she stayed inside their house, curled up in a corner with a pillow over her head, holding onto the bell she had put on Pinki’s neck when the goat was a kid that delighted in leaping about, spinning in mid-air before hitting earth again. I saw the scrawny butcher from my window after the money had changed hands, tugging at Pinki’s rope, cajoling her to move in the direction of the bazaar. He tried oak leaves as enticement and when that failed he hit her rump with a stick. Pinki dug in her heels and pitted all her strength against his. He could not budge her. When all his attempts failed, Ama sent Puran to help the butcher. At such times she was relieved at Puran’s feeble mind: he had never made the connection between the occasional disappearance of goats and the kind man who fed them fresh leaves. Upon Puran’s arrival Pinki baa-ed with relief. I watched them walk out of sight, the goat obedient now, trotting behind Puran as if it were being taken out to graze like every other day.
The next afternoon, eating lunch with Veer, I found myself pushing away the mutton curry, bile rising within me. When I told him what had happened, he looked at me with an amused smile. Had I not eaten meat all my life and known where it came from?
“This was different,” I said. “I knew the goat that had been taken away by the butcher yesterday. It had a name and a personality.” Everything had changed after what I had seen: the way the goat trusted Puran and the butcher, the way it was betrayed. I’d never eat meat again, I said. Veer pinched my cheek. “You need toughening up. You’re too easily upset.”
Slaughtering animals was something he had been made to do by one of the uncles to whom he was sometimes farmed out for the school holidays. “The uncle thought me a coward,” Veer said. “And he was right. I couldn’t stomach the slightest cruelty to anything. I’d run away and hide when there were fights. I