Zero Degree Read online

  Sornamuthu Pillai had to undergo surgery on his male organ. The nurse who attended him during the surgery noticed something strange; the organ bore a tattoo, green letters which formed the word SOLLAI. The nurse could hardly contain her curiosity. Finally, on the day of his discharge, reasoning that he was, after all, a very old man, she drummed up the courage to ask him, hesitantly: “I saw something written on your… please don’t take this the wrong way, but… can you tell me what it means?”

  “Phoo, is that all you’ve been worrying about?” he replied. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but… just kindly touch it with your hand, and you’ll see.” She did, and when the huge organ swelled, the tattoo read SORNAMUTHU PILLAI.

  Similarly, New York Karuppan had a tattoo on his organ that read WENDY. When a woman shyly asked him, “Is Wendy the name of your girlfriend?” he too asked her to touch it, and when it swelled to its full size it read WELCOME TO NEW YORK, HAVE A NICE DAY.

  But Ninth-Century-A.D.-Dead-Brain’s dick is so big I could write the entire text of 0° on it. The organ had been growing for so many centuries, and the foreskin had become so thick and gnarled, that it now resembled a wild creeper vine. People who saw him for the first time took him for a mendicant roaming the jungle with a knotted vine wrapped around his shoulders. Nobody suspected it was his dick. Still, many tales and fanciful stories were told about him among the young men, though none of them had seen him. To relate all of these tales would take up more space than available in this volume, so I shall give you the following as a sample.

  This story is about a girl who became particularly terrified after hearing the stories about Ninth-Century-A.D.-Dead-Brain. She was phallophobic, and therefore had sworn she would never get married. Her mother, of course, was worried, and kept pestering her daughter to marry. Unable to put up with her nagging, the girl agreed, but with a condition.

  “The groom should not have that.” “What di? What shouldn’t he have?”

  “That only, Amma, that only! Don’t ask me anything more, I feel shy!”

  N.C.A.D.D.-Brain, who had never been married in his several centuries of life, who had never even had sex, whose long search for an Aryan yoni had proven unsuccessful, came to know about this girl and presented himself to the mother hoping that this match, at least, might work out. The mother looked at the tall strong savage, with his untamed beard and the thick vine around his shoulders. She told him about the girl’s condition. “I know, madam; I do not have that,” N.C.A.D.D.-Brain lied coolly.

  “So you may say, but I need to check for myself,” said the mother, and felt below his waist, between his thighs. She could feel his balls, but not that.

  On the nuptial night, even though the mother had checked between the groom’s thighs, the daughter was still scared. “Mummy, mummy,” she begged, “please come and lie beside me!” Knowing about her daughter’s phobia, the mother lay next to the girl on the nuptial bed; worn out after the long wedding ceremony, she fell asleep almost immediately. The girl, not completely rid of her fears, was tossing and turning in bed. N.C.A.D.D.-Brain, of course, could not even shut his eyes. He lay staring at the ceiling, cursing his fate. But his organ was not bothered about his distress. Feeling the warmth of the women next to it, it began to slither over the thighs of the girl, who screamed that she was being attacked by a snake. At the sound of her scream the mother woke up to find a huge warm serpent resting on her thighs as well, and began to thrash away at it. It wasn’t until much later that they understood the true nature of that serpent.

  Ninth-Century-A.D.-Dead-Brain, having thus been beaten by both the mother and the daughter, was frustrated in his efforts. He spent some time in the literary scene before meeting Kulla Chithan, who became his dear friend. Kulla Chithan is an expert in black magic who wanders the forest in search of rare herbs and plays with skulls in the funeral ghat. He once gave Ninth-Century-A.D.-Dead-Brain a rare palm-leaf manuscript on which was written the secret of charming women, which read as follows:

  Grind together bones from the funeral pyre and the juice of the musumusukai, pour it into the egg of a black hen that has been pierced at the top and had the white removed from it, wrap the egg in a cloth, and bury it in a cobra’s burrow for forty-five days. Then remove it, break off the shell, add the meat of a male dog, then on a copper plate etch the mystical diagrams shown; chant the words for nine days while fanning the mixture with the smoke of burning neem leaves; then on the ninth day, go to the east end of town and put the mixture in your mouth.

  Next, dry roast Bauhinia recemosa, copper sulphate, cinnamon sticks, Peucedanum vulgaris, cardomomum, thyme seed, Aconitum, galangal, and Morinda tinctoria on hot coal on the bark of a plantain tree. Then add the juice of wild cilantro boiled in buffalo’s urine, cactus stem, Calotropis bark, and Moringa indica bark that have been soaked in a female goat’s urine for nine nights and ground together. Next add powdered snake skin, and put the decoction aside. Take equal quantities of cumin seed, poppy seed, onion seed, balloon vine root, yellow-berried nightshade root, and spiral ginger, powder them, add to this Mexican poppy seed and Indian coral tree seed, roast all this on a peacock tail, and grind. Smoke a monitor lizard out of the bush with frankincense, cut off its tongue, and mix it with the above-mentioned powders. Eat a bit of the mixture each day for 45 days after chanting “Ohm Baghadeva Bhavani Chamundi.” The lips and tongue will turn black. The body will acquire the fragrance of white dead nettle. The eyes will cool down and the limbs will turn cold. Next, boil the bark of kulamban, pomegranate, Indian coral tree, theeneeli, thurunji, podanganari, and Cissus quadrangularis in a mixture of hen’s blood and monkey’s blood, and strain. Then take a wasp that has just built its nest and is about to go into hibernation, and add it to the mixture. Grind all this together, calcinate it in open sunlight, grind again, add the tongue of an albino crow, make balls of it, and eat a ball each day for 45 days.

  Dead-Brain followed the instructions written on the old palm leaf Kulla Chithan had given him. And his body did change, his eyes did cool down, and his body did take the fragrance of white dead nettle. Now that he was equipped with the spell to charm women, he started to wink at every woman who happened to pass him. Unfortunately, before long, he happened to wink at a plainclothes policewoman and she threw him in jail and beat him up.

  Dead-Brain, having thus been cheated by Kulla Chithan, next sought the help of an astrologer, who told him to write the words Aryan Yoni a hundred and eight times for a sure victory. Ninth-Century-A.D-Dead-Brain began to write.

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni

  Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni Aryan Yoni*

  * Those lady readers who took the time to count the above to check if the words have been correctly written a hundred and eight times may stop reading the book at this point and go do some useful work.

  10

  THEIR EYES WERE blindfolded. Candles were brought in, and used to burn off the hair from their heads and their groins. The entire camp stank of singed hair.

  The flame licked their genitals, and they yelled in pain. Those who yelled loudest were scorched longer. They screamed as if the earth under them was quaking. Bits
of burnt flesh dropped from their charred genitals. The stench of roasted flesh filled the air. Their howls were just long strings of vowels, with no recognizable words. Next they were burned on their chests, cheeks, necks, armpits, thighs, stomachs, the soles of their feet, their chins and buttocks. After the candle game came the chili powder, sprinkled from a plastic canister with nine holes. Then they were laid out on long benches, on their stomachs. Spoons were brought in and used to check if their buttocks were well-cooked. For those whose meat was not sufficiently well-done, Thayumanavan ordered that the candles be brought out again. Once the flesh was well-cooked, spoonfuls of it were fed to the other prisoners. Those that refused to eat it had hot metal rods rammed up their anuses.

  Though the flesh had roasted and fallen off the bones in many places, he was still alive.

  “Water, water,” he pleaded.

  “He wants water,” said Thayumanavan, “attend to him.”

  They made him stand and tied him up again. A sepoy raised a ladle of hot oil up to his face. He who had begged for water now cried out loud, and clenched his teeth so hard he bit off his tongue. A hot metal rod was pressed to his cheek; unable to bear the pain, he opened his mouth wide to yell, and then they poured in the hot oil.

  “Idiot! He asked for water, why did you give him oil?” demanded

  Thayumanavan.

  “There’s a water shortage in the country,” replied the sepoy.

  “Fine,” said Thayumanavan, “but be careful. Don’t let his cholesterol level shoot up.”

  The sepoys fell to the ground rolling with laughter. Some even had tears in their eyes.

  “Comrades, where is your sense of humor?” asked Thayumanavan. “What are you, a bunch of machines?” He turned to a short, fat prisoner. “Aren’t you supposed to be a writer? How can you claim to be a post-modernist if you don’t understand satire? You’re still stuck in the age of Greek tragedy.

  “So make them laugh already!” he commanded the sepoys.

  The prisoners were laid on the benches and bound. The sepoys brought in crabs and cockroaches and let them crawl about over their bodies.

  After a while their knots were loosened. They were served shit on tin plates. “Eat with your hands,” yelled Thayumanavan. “Have you ever seen pigs eat shit? The way they slurp it up, saluck-paluck? Eat it like that. Relish it!”

  Some of them ate it, and threw up. Those who could not eat it, or who refused to eat it, were taken aside, and bound to benches again. On Thayumanavan’s orders their front teeth were knocked out with a hammer.

  A few had their molars extracted with pliers. Then they were untied. Some of them fainted from loss of blood. “Comrades,” Thayumanavan said to those who were still screaming, “you need more tolerance. Now kneel on the floor.” Poisonous caterpillars were strewn on the ground in front of them. “Eat,” he commanded. Those who would not eat the caterpillars had their fingernails torn off.

  Boars were brought in with their legs bound. Some of the prisoners were untied and ordered to fuck the pigs. Then they had to hug the pigs and sing:

  Kannathil muththamittal—ullam than

  Kalverri kolluthadee

  Unnai thazhuvidalo—Kannamma

  Unmaththu magudhadee

  When I kiss your cheek

  My heart brims with wine

  When I hug you, Kannamma,

  I am drunk on you

  Thayumanavan separated those that could not sing in tune. “I’ve thought up some new games especially for you,” he said. “Come along.”

  11

  I THINK IT WOULD BE good for you to see a psychiatrist, said a Lady Reader.

  Lady Reader, if there was a psychiatrist who could do me any good, then he would also be able to eradicate starvation, famine, corruption, exploitation, megalomania, and jealousy, he said, vexed.

  Don’t be angry. I’m only saying this because I care about you, said the Lady Reader.

  It’s not surprising, in any case. I could see it coming on for some time, said another Lady Reader.

  This is what had happened: The Honorable Tamil Writer had stopped saying hello to Muniyandi.

  I’m fed up with writing in Tamil. I want to write in whatever language I choose: French, Spanish, Swahili, Arabic, Hebrew, Yiddish, Masai, Zulu, Soddo, Luganda, Kimbindhu, Looba, Kigongo, Ngutha, Lingatha, Yombo…

  You are unfit to even stand on this Tamil soil. You should be exiled.

  Word’ll kill. Word’ll win.

  Muniyandi, your word’ll kill.

  Word’ll kill, yell, sell, kill, will, well

  Pill, till, call, cull, pull, pill, mill, well, wheel

  Vaal, vaal, vaal, vaal, vaal, vaal, vaal, vaal, vaal Vaal, vaal, vaal, vaal, vaal, vaal, vaal, vaal, vaal

  Nine swords were spiked into a huge lump of earth and bound with a wire at the hilts. Badri lal placed the lump on top of a pole, then placed the other end of the pole onto an upturned wrist, and lifted it high. As someone else pulled the wire away, Badrilal threw the pole and the lump of earth and the swords into the air, then immediately lay flat on the ground, as the nine swords showered down and stuck into the ground in a circle around him.

  This was Muniyandi’s favorite street circus act. But on that day a sword accidentally pierced Badrilal’s chest. Since then, Muniyandi has avoided street circuses.

  What was it that killed Muniyandi? Was it the word, or the sword, or Fate?

  He has stated that it was words that killed him. But there are several other competing theories about how Muniyandi met his end. A Lady Reader claims that, after some stupid fight with The Honorable Tamil Writer, he ran away to Africa, swearing he would never set foot on Tamil soil again, and joined a drama troupe in Rwanda. She says he wrote letters to her continuously for eighteen months. What happened after that? There was no news from him for a while. Then, after another nine months, she received a letter from a girlfriend of his from Burundi. Read it for yourself, she said, and handed it to me.

  What’s this name, Lady Reader? It’s weird-sounding.

  The letter was surprisingly weird, too.

  Muniyandi joined our drama troupe in 1989. There were nine of us, including him. Muniyandi learned our language easily. On account of the growing ethnic tensions, we were conducting street plays amongst the Tutsi and Hutu people. Sister, it now seems as though all that was useless. It’s depressing to realize that nothing more can be done. We made our escape after hiding among the scattered dead for days. Countless rotting corpses, human bodies with the eyes dug out, the tongues chopped off, limbs amputated, riddled with bullets. Sister, I can’t find any reason to go on living. I have lost all faith. Including Muniyandi, five of our troupe members were killed; only four are left now. Eighteen lakhs of us have crossed the borders into Tanzania, Zaire, or Burundi as refugees.

  We learned so much from Muniyandi. He came from a land so far away and taught us about experimental theatrical forms, like forum theatre and invisible theatre, from regions afar.

  He was an extremely funny man. He was the clown of our troupe. I would say the most important thing we learned from him was the concept of satyagraha—non-violent protest—although he didn’t believe in it himself. I don’t know much about your country; perhaps you dull people don’t have enough revolutionary spirit to have any use for satyagraham, and perhaps Muniyandi’s opinion made sense in that context. But I think it’s a concept our people need.

  Muni has told us a lot about your country. I heard that you get married to a person who you don’t know, who you’ve never even met. Still, in spite of hearing so much about it, I can’t think of your nation as much more than a shape on the map of the world. (Have you noticed that the shape of your country resembles the shape of our continent?) To really know a country, you must dive into it, drown in it. Like Muni dove in. But, unlucky soul, the spot he dove into was the mouth of a frothing volcano. When the e
ruption died down, Muni’s flesh, bones and muscles, now charred and cooked, flowed down along with the lava. How can I search in the lava? Even as I write this, my eyes flood with tears. It’s absurd, sister—he, born in a distant land, comes here to melt in the lava. I could find nothing of him in those ashes… I started off telling you about something different, and here I am lamenting about his loss. Ah yes! The non-violence we learned from him. But he always spoke of sathyagraham with disgust. Maybe it did not suit your country…

  Once I told him, Muni, you are so docile.

  Yes, he agreed, we have been trained to be docile by the Britons.

  We have been trained for the past hundred and eighty years.

  From this I can get some idea about you Indians. But I don’t think the impact of nine hundred people shot down in a war is as great as a single woman fasting to death. I don’t know, I could be wrong. I am no good at sociology or politics; I’m an actress, an actress with a toy gun inciting my audience to protest. It was Muniyandi who asked me, Do you even know how to shoot a real gun? I never expected to encounter guns. But I watched as countless bullets flew in front of my face; those bullets chewed through 5,40,000 lives.

  That was all nine months ago. Sister, I got your address from Muniyandi’s diary. I am not even sure this letter will reach you. I’m writing to you anyway. I’m fed up; I don’t really care if it reaches you or not. Even now, when I think of the way Muniyandi used to clown, I laugh. He used to cook dog meat here. We would be scared and angry: Isn’t dog meat poisonous? Won’t we die barking like dogs if we eat dog meat? There are so many here who have died barking like that! But Muni used to joke that such a death would befall us only if the dog ate us, not if we ate the dog. (By the way: is it true that dog meat is the staple food in the country just next to yours?) He would butcher and skin the dog, clean its meat, and cook it too. Sometimes he would try to scare us with the skinned dog head. A skinned dog’s head! He would perform a Yoruba dance while holding it. I took a photograph of him dancing. I still have that photo safe with me.