Saturday 31 March 2012

The strange adventures of Ellie



 'The strange adventures of Ellie' 

Unicef/ IETS
Translated into Kannada and Hindi for first-generation rural learners
16 pages
Paperback
2006


My original story in English: 



The strange adventures of Ellie

By Aditi De


I take a big bite of the holige. Its golden crust splits. The sweet jaggery filling spills out. I smile. So do my eight little children. They nibble, tear at the holige, then fight for the best bits. It is delicious!

“Taste this mouth-watering bisibele bhaat!” squeaks my oldest child.

“What about the ragi roti? It’s much yummier than the yellow plastic box we had for dinner last night. Much better than that heap of rotten mangoes last week,” says her brother.  

I agree. I gnaw at the remains of the other oily sweets that fate has sent our way. So does my cousin, and his cousins. And all their offspring, wagging their tails, their keen eyes shining in the dark. We’ve had a good life at Doddahalli so far.

But wait a minute. You don’t know me, do you? I’m Ellie, the black Indian rat. I’m the brightest of my family in Doddahalli, our home for the past ten months. Amma always said so as she groomed me with her mouth and paws, so that my coat shone. I can sense trouble from far away. So, I can always run away in time. 

Let’s return to my story. It was after sundown today that a noisy truck arrived. Huffing and honking, it dumped goodies all over us. We don’t mind, except that it is tough to share fine food with our neighbours in this garbage dump. Like those greedy cockroaches. Or the mosquitoes that live in the stinking sewage pool next door. Or even the summer flies that buzz overhead.

In Doddahalli, we never ever have to go out in search of food. These kind villagers bring us all we want to our doorstep.  

Two days later, I hear weeping from the headman’s house. My brother and I stir out of the pile of wood under the dump.

“What’s this fuss all about?” he asks me. “Why can’t they sleep all day and stir out at night, like us?”

“It’s best to keep a safe distance from these human beings. You remember what our Ajja told us. No matter how kind they seem, they don’t really like our company,” I say.

The headman’s sister begins to wail even more loudly. Everyone in Doddahalli can hear her now. Her husband tells the village doctor gruffly, “Our son has been down with fever for the past five days. Today, he has rashes all over his body. We’ve called the tantric from the village close by to cure him. It’s a long trip in a jutka for him. He refuses to take a bus.”

By the time the tantric arrives, seven more children have fallen ill. They have high fever, and vomit often. They cry as they clutch at their stomachs. Could they have overeaten at a feast?

The tantric draws diagrams at the doorstep of the sick children. He sacrifices a chicken and two goats to calm the village goddess. He goes into a trance, swaying, chanting mantras under his breath. He collects money from the villagers, then vanishes.  

Three days later, twenty children and two adults are ill. Doctors, young and old, are invited in from towns around Doddahalli. Some give injections from giant syringes. Others prescribe tablets that cost more money than the jowar crop brings in.   

As we dart among the villagers at night, my brother and I hear words we don’t understand. Typhus. Plague. Salmonella.

We hear an angry father yelling at the headman, “Do you want us all to die before you summon help?”

His neigbour, tucking the end of her pallav into the waist of her sari, shrieks, “Is our village cursed? Haven’t we prayed enough to all the gods and goddesses at the local shrine?”

The headman tries to remain calm. But he seems scared, too. He gets into his bullock cart and sets out for the district headquarters. He promises to bring back help.

He does. That evening, when the farmers return from the fields, they gather under the gulmohur tree to meet a stranger.

The visitor to Doddahalli booms into the mike, “Listen to me, friends. I’ve come here to help you. I’m a medical officer. Now that your children are getting better…”

“Why should we listen to you?” says the Doddahalli mithaiwala.

“Because I know why your children fell ill,” says the medical officer calmly. “Do you want this to happen again?”

“Never again!” says the carpenter, grimly. “Tell us what to do…”

“Get rid of the rats!” says the medical officer. “They are vectors…”

“Vec… what?” asks the blacksmith.

“A vector carries diseases and infects others. Remember how over 500 people died of plague in Surat in 1995?” explains the officer. “So, we have to wage a war against the rats. Even the fleas in their fur can infect us with typhus germs. We have to get rid of all the garbage in Doddahalli. And make sure they have no food to eat. Then, they will have to go away…”

“Tell us more about these rats, our enemies!” demands the tailor fiercely, waving his huge scissors in the air.

The medical officer continues, “Rats multiply very fast. They can have upto 12 litters a year, with three to nine pups in each litter. They can swim underwater for half a minute, tread water for three days…”

The grocer interrupts, “I once saw a rat fall from the top of a palm, where it was gnawing at a huge coconut. Before my eyes, it fell to the ground, and ran away to safety.”   

The officer clears his throat. He says, “Listen to these odd facts, which are true. A rat’s teeth grow five inches a year. If a rat doesn’t chew, it will probably die. Because his  unfiled teeth might then curve into an arc, cutting through the roof of his mouth. This dreadful creature can gnaw through wood, cable wires, lead pipes, even concrete. Rats are our enemies…!”

“Down with rats! We have to hunt them down!” yells the carpenter.

“Let’s drive them out of town!” says the officer.   

My brother and I look at each other. We think of all the stories our Ajja told us. Of how we are so much more intelligent than mice that men rarely catch us in rat-traps.

“Ajja said we were first born in India, Asia and southeast Asian islands before the Ice Age,” my brother nods. “We have such a sense of adventure that we soon sailed to other continents by finding homes on ships. It’s so easy for us to climb up to the mast, to run along roofs, even to scale pipes.”

“Ajja told us how the first rats were launched into space in 1950, 11 years before any men went up so high in the skies,” adds my sister, as she feeds her six newborn babies. “We’re years ahead of them.”

“We’re so much cleaner than people,” my fifth son pipes up. “They bathe only once a day. We groom and bathe ourselves from head to toe at least six times in 24 hours. Don’t they know that? We can’t help it if we dribble urine all day long, can we? We’re just made that way…”

“What will these Doddahalli people do next?” I wonder.

Soon, we know. At the crack of dawn, we wake up to terrifying sounds. Of monster machines that screech and squawk. With terrifying sounds, one pulls up at the next garbage dump. It scoops up a huge pile of it ~ old rags and papers, rotting vegetable peels, chicken bones, stale rice and dhal. The long metal arm dumps all of it into the rear of the truck. Once full, it pulls away.

My cousin, whose family lives on that heap, emits a high-pitched shriek as soon as the truck looms in sight. Too shrill for the human ear, it warns all twenty-nine of them of trouble.

“Where can we find food now?” his ten children ask my cousin in panic.

“Let’s join Ellie and his family,” says my cousin. “He’d make us most welcome. After all, we’re cousins.”

In a few seconds, they shift base to our dump. We welcome them. We groom them, touch whiskers. We nibble at corn cobs, akki rotti and moulding chutney. Why don’t these  Doddahalli people want such good food?

We’re gobbling down anna-saaru when my cousin says, “When I was a child last year, my Appa said there’s even a temple to rats in Rajasthan.”

“Is that true?” asks my nephew, pushing aside a rotten leaf that has got into his half-eaten bonda. He gnaws on a used banana leaf as a side dish.

“The story came down to me from my grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather’s… Oh, rat’s whiskers, it doesn’t really matter who! Trust me,” adds my cousin, still gorging on vegetable korma and curd rice mixed with rice husks. “The temple to Karni Mata is at Deshnoke, near Bikaner in Rajasthan. It was built around the 15th century. At one point, it had about 20,000 rats swarming all over it. Every corner teems with eyes and tails…”

My cousin’s cousin adds, twirling his whiskers importantly, “And if a visitor kills a rat underfoot by accident, he or she has to pay the price. By presenting the temple with a life-sized golden rat. So I’ve heard…”

We all glow with pride at the thought. But the glow begins to fade the next morning. Doddahalli seems to be at war with us.

All the roads are swept clean thrice a day. Those monster machines on wheels come to our homes again and again, sweeping clean every trace of temple refuse, rotting garbage, half-eaten food and plastic bottles. In four days, our homes vanish.

Where will we find food? My cousin and I put our heads together. We find some rice pellets where the dump once was. I nibble at one. It tastes really odd. Not at all like sambhar-bhaat. “Wait! Let me see if this new food is safe for us,” I warn my large family. I already feel a little queasy.

But before I can stop them, my hungry children have gobbled down dozens of them. Two days later, my cousin’s two sons are dead. His mate’s coat turns a dull grey.

My cousin and I scavenge for food all over Doddahalli. But we don’t find a single kitchen with any food for us. Not even a scrap of meat or vegetable. And the same white pellets appear in the corners of every room. What could they be?

Four nights later, I’ve lost three sons and two daughters. 

Then, I hear the headman tell the medical officer, who’s still camping in the village, “I think my wife’s idea was great. Those rice pellets mixed with oils of neem, eucalyptus, pine and lemongrass worked. We’ve found dead rats all over the sites of the former garbage dumps…”

So, that’s what these nasty humans beings tricked us with. I understand at last.

My cousin and I gather the survivors in our families. And we set out in search of another village, with kinder folks in it, we hope. And many garbage dumps, so that we can have an easy life. In the rat community, we don’t really enjoy hunting for our dinner, you know.

Here’s a secret. If only you’ll let me know where there’s plenty of dirt and rot, we’ll return to spend our lives there. That’s a promise from Ellie and all of my family. You won’t forget, will you?


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