Anita Desai perambulated Juhu beach early one morning. The only others on the beach were fishermen who awoke before her, and had to travel far out into the sea in order to get a decent catch, but nevertheless found time to leer at and say dirty things to her, as men will do who are denied a proper education, notwithstanding Desai’s and others’ naive attempts to paint this culture of lowlifes as something charming in their simplicity. A song of Desai’s own creation, “O Fisherman, Fisherman”, clung to her fat lips the whole time.
“I love fishermen,” said Desai, blowing kisses to what she thought were her admirers. Her hair had grown white from excessive bleaching, but had lately started showing the greyness of old age. “They are so quaint and charming. I have always held that being a villager by the sea is the noblest, most spiritually fulfilling life there can be— oh! let me stop and admire these flowers. Let’s see, there are chrysanthemums, rhododendrons, honeysuckles, hibiscuses, hyacinths, spider lilies, and oh! don’t they just have just the loveliest names?” It mattered little to her that the flowers she had named could no sooner begin to coexist than they could survive on a beach in Maharashtra. She, like most writers of little imagination, loved naming flowers.
The strangulated cry of a young boy filled her ears; and this sudden irruption into her reverie caused her to clasp her breasts involuntarily.
“What was that?” Some distance away a group of fishermen were vapulating a young boy, precisely the one whose voice Anita Desai had heard a few moments before. “My word! Those sexy fishermen are beating up Hari! Hari!” She called out his name repeatedly, running with still-clasped breasts toward the scene of the abuse. “Why are you sexy fishermen beating up that poor brainless little orphan?”
“Because, madam, you fucking bitch,” said one fisherman, “this little rodent here is a thief. We caught him picking flesh off fishbones which had been discarded on the beach by birds long ago. We had to teach him a lesson.” The fisherman was deferential, but in his crude tongue, the only extant term of address for women like Anita Desai translated loosely to “madam, you fucking bitch”. That isn’t to suggest that other forms of address were in fact used for Anita Desai in politer tongues. “The only thing keeping us from impaling this son of an alcoholic right here and now is that you, madam, you fucking bitch, made the government confer upon him the status of protected individual by writing that stupid story of yours, which completely mischaracterized us and our lives. Madam, you fucking bitch, you really are a fucking bitch, and I wish I could clobber you senseless, and toss you into the mouths of hungry sharks one bloody limb at a time.”
Anita Desai smiled in her typical saint-like way. It was the smile of one who thought she knew all, and sympathized with people who needed no sympathy. It was, in short, a condescending smile.
“I understand that poverty has driven you to do things that are meet only to an animal. Don’t worry, justice is on its way. And it is so turned on.” She reached out and touched the fisherman’s face.
“Hands off me, bitch!” The fisherman kicked Anita Desai in the stomach, and she lay passed out in the sand for the rest of the day, baking like an English muffin in the sun.
“There is nothing romantic about the sun,” said Anita Desai when she awoke, brown as a potato and severely burnt in several places. Her saintliness had been sapped from her by the six hours she had spent in the harsh sun. “The sun hates India.” It was true, but a non sequitur. Then she remembered what she had been doing prior to the events that had led to her passing out.
“My god, Hari!” She ran to the spot where the fisherman had been paddling Hari, holding him up in the air by the seat of his pants, and saw that the carnage had been committed, and that the sexy fishermen had moved on. There were fish bones and blood on the beach, but no sign of that unfortunate protagonist of a meaningless tale.
Elsewhere, Hari, now older and no longer the innocent child that Anita Desai had mistakenly believed him to be at the time of writing The Village by the Sea, was presently being subjected to unspeakable acts of torture and violence. He wanted to die so badly that he had begun looking forward to every fresh punch the tireless fishermen threw at him. His arms and ribs were broken in at least seven places, and his nose was bleeding. His legs had become so numb that he couldn’t feel the rough gravel under his feet.
“This is for you, bitch!” A large fisherman sat on Hari, crushing his pelvis and rupturing his intestines. Another slapped him so hard that his neck broke, and his head hung limply to one side, eyes goggling at his torturers with a curious mixture of incomprehension and appetency. He wanted to have this over with so that he could join his mother and sisters, who had drowned stupidly in the sea while bowing as low as they could before their sacred rock.
Hari died at six the next morning, when all the fishermen together bodyslammed what remained of him. Anita Desai heard of this over breakfast, her complexion back to normal, as she munched on handfuls of Marie Gold cookies with her tea.
It was the bird watcher, Sayyid Ahmed, wanted in several states for the most heinous crimes, who brought her the news.
“O Great One!” He bowed low. “Hari, that bastard child you wrote about three years ago, died a violent death this morning.”
Anita Desai choked on a bolus the size of a baseball that had formed in her mouth from no fewer than thirteen cookies, and began to weep—partly from choking, and partly from grief.
“He will be remembered by his people as a martyr.”
Sayyid Ahmed was confused.
“What people? Hari was the last of them. The fishermen you were drooling over were from the other village, the one where the inhabitants do no useful work, and depended for their food and labor on the halfwits of Thul. They killed Hari brutally—so brutally that when I went down there with my camera earlier, there was nothing left of him. Nothing. A hospital could not have done a better job of cleaning up after a death.”
Anita Desai was not a little shocked.
“But those fishermen seemed such nice people!”
“You ignorant bitch.” Sayyid Ahmed was either excessively deferential or appropriately rude to Anita Desai, but never anything in between. “You ignorant slut. It’s your arrogance that has made you so fat. I mean, look at that ass. How do you live with yourself?”
Anita Desai began to cry. Big, fat tears rolled down her ugly face as Sayyid Ahmed left in a huff.
Out of her grief emerged words—poorly chosen words, true—pretentious words, but words nonetheless—and she began writing another work. This one was about a hapless bird watcher who needed the salutary ministrations of a compassionate matronly writer to overcome his demons. She predicted that Sayyid Ahmed would be dead within six months.
At the end of the day, satisfied that she had stumbled upon something big, Anita Desai ripped off her sari, revealing the tiger-skin bikini she always wore underneath, and joined her brethren in the other village to feast on Hari’s remains.
“I love fishermen,” said Desai, blowing kisses to what she thought were her admirers. Her hair had grown white from excessive bleaching, but had lately started showing the greyness of old age. “They are so quaint and charming. I have always held that being a villager by the sea is the noblest, most spiritually fulfilling life there can be— oh! let me stop and admire these flowers. Let’s see, there are chrysanthemums, rhododendrons, honeysuckles, hibiscuses, hyacinths, spider lilies, and oh! don’t they just have just the loveliest names?” It mattered little to her that the flowers she had named could no sooner begin to coexist than they could survive on a beach in Maharashtra. She, like most writers of little imagination, loved naming flowers.
The strangulated cry of a young boy filled her ears; and this sudden irruption into her reverie caused her to clasp her breasts involuntarily.
“What was that?” Some distance away a group of fishermen were vapulating a young boy, precisely the one whose voice Anita Desai had heard a few moments before. “My word! Those sexy fishermen are beating up Hari! Hari!” She called out his name repeatedly, running with still-clasped breasts toward the scene of the abuse. “Why are you sexy fishermen beating up that poor brainless little orphan?”
“Because, madam, you fucking bitch,” said one fisherman, “this little rodent here is a thief. We caught him picking flesh off fishbones which had been discarded on the beach by birds long ago. We had to teach him a lesson.” The fisherman was deferential, but in his crude tongue, the only extant term of address for women like Anita Desai translated loosely to “madam, you fucking bitch”. That isn’t to suggest that other forms of address were in fact used for Anita Desai in politer tongues. “The only thing keeping us from impaling this son of an alcoholic right here and now is that you, madam, you fucking bitch, made the government confer upon him the status of protected individual by writing that stupid story of yours, which completely mischaracterized us and our lives. Madam, you fucking bitch, you really are a fucking bitch, and I wish I could clobber you senseless, and toss you into the mouths of hungry sharks one bloody limb at a time.”
Anita Desai smiled in her typical saint-like way. It was the smile of one who thought she knew all, and sympathized with people who needed no sympathy. It was, in short, a condescending smile.
“I understand that poverty has driven you to do things that are meet only to an animal. Don’t worry, justice is on its way. And it is so turned on.” She reached out and touched the fisherman’s face.
“Hands off me, bitch!” The fisherman kicked Anita Desai in the stomach, and she lay passed out in the sand for the rest of the day, baking like an English muffin in the sun.
“There is nothing romantic about the sun,” said Anita Desai when she awoke, brown as a potato and severely burnt in several places. Her saintliness had been sapped from her by the six hours she had spent in the harsh sun. “The sun hates India.” It was true, but a non sequitur. Then she remembered what she had been doing prior to the events that had led to her passing out.
“My god, Hari!” She ran to the spot where the fisherman had been paddling Hari, holding him up in the air by the seat of his pants, and saw that the carnage had been committed, and that the sexy fishermen had moved on. There were fish bones and blood on the beach, but no sign of that unfortunate protagonist of a meaningless tale.
Elsewhere, Hari, now older and no longer the innocent child that Anita Desai had mistakenly believed him to be at the time of writing The Village by the Sea, was presently being subjected to unspeakable acts of torture and violence. He wanted to die so badly that he had begun looking forward to every fresh punch the tireless fishermen threw at him. His arms and ribs were broken in at least seven places, and his nose was bleeding. His legs had become so numb that he couldn’t feel the rough gravel under his feet.
“This is for you, bitch!” A large fisherman sat on Hari, crushing his pelvis and rupturing his intestines. Another slapped him so hard that his neck broke, and his head hung limply to one side, eyes goggling at his torturers with a curious mixture of incomprehension and appetency. He wanted to have this over with so that he could join his mother and sisters, who had drowned stupidly in the sea while bowing as low as they could before their sacred rock.
Hari died at six the next morning, when all the fishermen together bodyslammed what remained of him. Anita Desai heard of this over breakfast, her complexion back to normal, as she munched on handfuls of Marie Gold cookies with her tea.
It was the bird watcher, Sayyid Ahmed, wanted in several states for the most heinous crimes, who brought her the news.
“O Great One!” He bowed low. “Hari, that bastard child you wrote about three years ago, died a violent death this morning.”
Anita Desai choked on a bolus the size of a baseball that had formed in her mouth from no fewer than thirteen cookies, and began to weep—partly from choking, and partly from grief.
“He will be remembered by his people as a martyr.”
Sayyid Ahmed was confused.
“What people? Hari was the last of them. The fishermen you were drooling over were from the other village, the one where the inhabitants do no useful work, and depended for their food and labor on the halfwits of Thul. They killed Hari brutally—so brutally that when I went down there with my camera earlier, there was nothing left of him. Nothing. A hospital could not have done a better job of cleaning up after a death.”
Anita Desai was not a little shocked.
“But those fishermen seemed such nice people!”
“You ignorant bitch.” Sayyid Ahmed was either excessively deferential or appropriately rude to Anita Desai, but never anything in between. “You ignorant slut. It’s your arrogance that has made you so fat. I mean, look at that ass. How do you live with yourself?”
Anita Desai began to cry. Big, fat tears rolled down her ugly face as Sayyid Ahmed left in a huff.
Out of her grief emerged words—poorly chosen words, true—pretentious words, but words nonetheless—and she began writing another work. This one was about a hapless bird watcher who needed the salutary ministrations of a compassionate matronly writer to overcome his demons. She predicted that Sayyid Ahmed would be dead within six months.
At the end of the day, satisfied that she had stumbled upon something big, Anita Desai ripped off her sari, revealing the tiger-skin bikini she always wore underneath, and joined her brethren in the other village to feast on Hari’s remains.
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