A Mouse’s Saga

Of all the mice in this world, she was the prettiest.

A beautiful, elegant mouse.

Fur soft like a warm blanket made of silk. A nose, neither too sharp, nor too blunt, but perfectly angled. Eyes that glittered with living fire. Ears that can hear perfectly the slightest tread of a foot or even a needle dropping. Fine moustache adorning her nose like a crown on a head.

And to add beauty to this beauty, a beautiful tail.

Ah! That tail! How elegantly it sways when our lovely mouse heroine scurries tearing the curtain of night!

Her beauty wasn’t just superficial! No!

A lightning brain that could detect the hint of a ray of light and send her scurrying; a form that could thread gaps that even the thinnest of threads could not; wit that could calculate paths that even the wind couldn’t; courage that could freeze her with fear in the face of danger; refinement in finding the choicest morsels piled on the mound of garbage like a lotus bud on an open pond; miserliness that ensures she doesn’t lose out on the vitamins even in her own excreta… I can talk about her wondrous qualities forever!

Who would not fight tooth and nail, perhaps even tooth and tail, to gain the favour of such a wondrous beauty! There is no language with enough words that can describe the battles that were joined in the hidden depths of this earth to attain her beauty. There is no saga that can capture their glory.

Mice have no need to build ships. If they had, they would have launched ten thousand ships and defeated Helen of Troy’s renown. Great wars, glorious deeds, numerous ultrasonic ballads, screeching mice songs, spires of mice towers, all this and more were made before one warrior, a sole great glorious warrior won her heart.

What strength was his! How virile was his masculinity! How can one describe the craft of love that he practiced on her gentle body! He was a fierce warrior who could have stood his ground against a thousand mice, ten thousand cats, and even ten thousand more men. But in how tender his embrace! How softly did he crawl on her delicate body! Vatsyayana could have learned a thing or two from observing this mouse coitus.

But then, he was still a man.

And like numerous men before him from the dawn of civilization, having won the most superior amongst all mice women, he still went after inferior mistresses. She, like many women before him, plugged her cunt and heart, preventing any other man from penetrating her vulnerability. However, she was not so weak as to pine for he who left. If he was the noble Krishnadevaraya of mice, she was their fearless Mangamma. If he had won her after a thousand glorious battles, she had fought a million battles on her own and carried many a scar on her back. Her own hole, tufts of cotton, plastic wrapping, and paper to sleep in peace, trade routes in and out of the hole, a granary that could withstand days of siege, moats that would deter the most determined of enemies, and teeth that would rip apart any who were dared cross the moats – hers was a secure and flourishing kingdom. She moved every last one of her blind pups to this new kingdom in her own mouth.

Pause.

Let our epic mouse be for a bit.

Our heroine’s story is set in a human settlement away from the city. And because it was away from the city, it had much wealth. Clean air, clean water, much light, trees, plants, shrubs, creepers, weeds, birds, butterflies, dragonflies, bats, snakes, lizards, chameleons, scorpions – the list is endless. A distance that was too far for undesired kin, a wide expanse in which to converse with desired kin, power cuts that kept the conversation going, small groceries that sold just enough for a household, the absence of supermarkets that sold more than a small household’s needs – it had many such comforts too.

Enamoured by these comforts, lured by this wealth, a human family with human children built their human home here.

When dawn rose with bleary eyes, the father would be in office, mother with her chores; the elder brother practicing his football; the younger his studies. Genies of the lamp that fit neatly into the boxes and popped out to grant the wishes demanded by family and tradition. Guinea pigs blinded by the light of life, running ceaselessly in the wheels of work, wealth, and the rules of culture. Bonded daemons that measure their lives by the scale of the neighbour.

Our brave mouse queen who has defeated many a cat, owl, and even rats. The blind guinea pig human genie family. Perhaps they could have never met. But fate, because she wanted a good laugh and a cry, brought the daemon family and our elegant mouse together like a clown slipping on a banana peel.

The banana was peeled by the daemon father. The daemon that failed to clear out the half-eaten banana was the elder brother. The daemon that missed sweeping the peel was the younger brother. We can’t, with an honest heart, find fault with the overworked daemon mother who just slept a little longer than usual.

Our mouse queen’s nose would have detected the faintest of scents even miles away. How would she have missed a juicy half banana in her very home? There was only one flaw in the grace with which she swallowed the fruit. In her joy at having relished such a bounty, she peed a little and pooped a little.

The next day, daemon younger brother grimaced when he stepped on the poop. The father scowled, growled, and glowered. A slap for the elder brother who was practicing football in the hall. A tumbler flung at the overworked mother who just slept a little longer than usual. A thwack on the back of the younger brother who was wiping his dirty foot right where the poop had been. He was generous in the distribution of his rage. Dragging the younger brother by his ear, the father washed the poop off his feet.

But his rage clung on like a hard stain. Broomsticks! An old ladle! Slippers! A rolled-up newspaper! Terrible and cruel were the weapons that he armed his human horde with. War would soon be at the door of our heroine’s country.

Our mouse mother, unaware of the terrible storm of war gathering, was lying belly up, feeding her
mice prince and princess with her own breast milk. The uncrowned princes and princesses suckled blindly. Their thin tummies stretched to show how much they drank.

No magic carpet did the daemon father have to cross the seven mountains and seven oceans beyond which lay hidden the life of our mouse queen in the beating hearts of her mice children. Neither was our heroine stupid enough to build her home in a place that could have been reached by a magic carpet that can cross the seven mountains and seven oceans. Defeated by her cunning stratagem of resting in the light of day, the human host rested in the kitchen barracks. Their rest was aided by a timely power cut.

A lone candle fighting bravely against the vast invading darkness. The human daemon army around that candle.

Daemon father grinds his teeth in unsated rage. Daemon brother, eldest, flips an imaginary ball in fantasy skies. Daemon brother, younger, scratches his studious head. Revolted by the idea of shattering the mouse’s skull, “Poor thing. Let’s trap and release it, my lord”, thus pleaded daemon mother. His honour, terrible chief justice, daemon father was just about to hold the impudent defense lawyer in contempt of court when…

Like a lightning of dark, an arrow of the wind… like the moments that dissolve in romance, beyond the hall and to the kitchen our beloved mouse sprang. And that was that!

“Fear! Foes! Fire! Spears shall be shaken! Shields shall be splintered! A sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now, ride now, ride! Ride for ruin and the world’s ending! Death! Death! Death! Forth human daemons!”

With a thundering cry, the daemon father roused his troops. The other reluctant daemons grabbed their discarded terrible and cruel weapons. Battle was joined. Our wise mouse queen had literally digested the entirety of Sun Tzu’s Art of War last week. So, she swiftly subdued the enemy without fighting. Her victory, she won by bravely retreating through the kitchen drain.

What could the defeated human horde, which had a moment ago built castles of victory in the
empty air, do?

“It is the battle that is lost, not the war!”

Daemon father boosted the sinking morale of his troops and led them away. Mother, who had absolutely no interest in the war, the battle, the raging daemon in the father, strongly considered fleeing this war torn, strife ridden country with the smaller daemons. But unlike our brave mouse, she lacked the courage to bravely turn tail and run from the terrifying bulwark of home, family, and society. The genies returned in fear to their lamps and prepared themselves to boldly face another day of fear.

But what a night did dawn for our mouse empress! What a beautiful, magical night! Her children opened their eyes and made sweet music demanding solid food. Before she could thrill in this magical development, there was more magic for her.

Spoils of the war!

In their hurry to beat retreat, the daemon human family hadn’t cleared the kitchen properly. A massive piece of idli, delicious curry leaf chutney on the side and a half-eaten apple for dessert. She crowed a victorious screech as she carried it all away back to her palace.

The insult of the defeat had kept daemon father up. A chronic general uneasiness that had lasted forever kept mother up. This affront of a screech added to the discomfort of the disturbed human sleep.

Just as dawn’s fingers gently shut the eyes of our well-fed lustrous mouse queen, a brainwave flashed in the devious mind of daemon father. Cunning can get him the victory that battle didn’t. Like a mouse shooting from the trap when opened, he shot out of his office and bought a mousetrap. So what if he had no magic carpet? So what if he couldn’t cross seven mountains and seven seas? He will lure the evil mouse across seven seas and seven oceans into his vulpine trap. “Even as we snack on the dainties you make, we will trap that murine witch.”, he peddled daemon mother’s plan back to her as his own. Mother, used to this snake oil peddling, merely resigned herself to make the aforementioned dainties.

With half faith, they placed a half coconut piece in the trap. The daemon brothers received a piece of coconut each even though they had already been trapped in the family box.

In that corner of the kitchen where all the sounds of the day go to sleep, a resounding clang.
Daemon father, who was fighting throngs of mice in his dreams, broke through their flanks.

Our captured mouse queen passed that fretful night in a prison of confusion. Darkness, a strangling suffocation, her own shrinking breath, the choking dazzle of the morning light, and beyond all this, fear for her children… her tiny beating heart almost exploded.

The daemon father planned to drown her in a bucket. The brother daemons who had only witnessed television violence were eager to see it live. But mother was firmly against this plan. Not because of a strained mercy that dropped like water from the corporation tap. It was the revulsion of seeing a life die slowly before one’s eyes. On rare occasions, daemon mother’s rulings prevailed over the father. This was one of them.

Outwardly daemon father started his car with the pretense of releasing our heroine somewhere distant. But his concealed plan of killing the mouse away from the mother’s eyes did not materialize. Partly because of the difficulties in such a plan. Where would he find a water body to drown the mouse in? Yes, he could have crushed the mouse under the wheels of his car, but who can hold her down? Stretching beyond these logistical difficulties, that mercy of revulsion that plagued daemon mother infected him too. Cunningly hiding his helplessness and the undesirable mercy, he convinced himself that he was too noble to kill an unarmed foe and released our glorious mouse.

Hawks, kites, stray dogs, feral cats, vehicles that sped ceaselessly, trees, plants, weeds, stones, rocks, roads that bent the simple straight path, the terrifying din of advancing human civilisation – many were the perils that stood in the way of our glorious mouse. But her home filled with food, warmth, water, and her multiplying brood tugged her forward. The atoms in her neural pathways lit up and showed her the long way home. By the time the full moon shone in the sky, she was united with her dear children. The maddening motherly affection cured her pups of their fear but infected them now with the plague of hunger. Mouse matriarch, however, was not still fully free from fear. She decided to shift her babies once again in the cloak of darkness.

Fatigue from football, stupor from studies, vanquished by victory; night lulled the brother and father daemons unto sleep by various means. The mother who couldn’t sleep due to the chronic general uneasiness that had lasted forever, went to the kitchen to get water right at the moment when our mouse Moses was finishing her exodus. Neither mother moved. Only the pup in the mouse’s mouth stirred unhappy at its joy ride being interrupted. The mercy of revulsion that clung to the daemon mother vanished the moment she realized she was dealing with not a single mouse, but a plague of them. By the time she gulped her water and went back to sleep, she was determined to poison this whole family. Our mouse Moses, unaware of this, celebrated a happy housewarming with her children.

The soaked urad dal glittered and overflowed, foaming like an ocean of milk in the morning sun. To the left of the mixie, the two brothers. To the right, the father. Mother, a tortoise Vishnu, held the mixie down. Churning this ocean of milk yielded no treasures. Au contraire, chopped onions, curry leaves, salt, and slivers of coconut – many were the treasures it consumed.

The brothers, as twin Avins, carried aloft the vadai batter. Like the five-headed serpent’s hood unfurling slowly, batter dropped from the mother’s fingers into the cauldron of bubbling oil. Two vadais each for father, elder brother, and younger brother. Unpoisoned. One for the mother. Not a drop of poison in it either. Half a vadai for the mouse queen and her uncrowned heirs. Elegantly did daemon mother sprinkle poison on this half.

“Death by masal vadai! A one-time death unlike us who have to die every day by your mother’s cooking! What a lucky mouse!” Daemon father recycled stale jokes. The brothers forced laughter. Mother forced down her bubbling anger and swallowed it with her lone vadai.

Hunting for sleep by the feeble light of her mobile, daemon mother stumbled upon some information about the poison she had carefully sprinkled.

Bromadiolone.

A slaughtering demon that drinks up Vitamin K from inside the body, loosens the blood that holds the flesh together, churns it like an ocean of milk and floods it everywhere. Unable to withstand the onslaught of the very blood that nurtured them, heart, liver, lungs, brain, all explode. This is not a merciful killer that kills in minutes. It drinks the life force slowly, relishing in the pain, driving the mind and body insane…

“What horror! An entire family of mice dying horrible deaths!” No such compassion of horror inflicted daemon mother. Instead, her usual mercy of revulsion churned her stomach and got stuck in her throat like the Mandara mountain. She returned to the kitchen.
Our clever mouse queen was well aware of the churning of the urad dal during the day. The scent of the vadais, the sizzle of their frying; all delighted her brain more than any delightful epic of yore. Her heart was an ocean churned by the gods and demons of desire. She had victoriously captured the vadai. She did not yet know that her victory had no feast but for crows and vultures.

It didn’t take long for daemon mother to realise that water and poison had both flown under her bridge. Water had always flown under the bridge of her helpless life. But poison flowing under it irked her. In the ever-churning sleepless night, this new irk emerged like a glittering pot of nectar to ruin her rest.

Our warrior male, who must have sung the lament for the soon-to-happen massacre, was fighting with another male over a new mistress. He, who had with relish, devoured the beauty of our queen, will tomorrow devour her poisoned flesh and die. Unaware of this fate, he performed glorious feats of war.

Clean air, clean water, much light, trees, plants, shrubs, creepers, weeds, birds, butterflies, dragonflies, bats, snakes, lizards, chameleons, scorpions – all were engrossed in their own works. Small groceries that sold just enough for a household had already tallied their accounts and shut shop. Supermarkets persisted in their absence.

The tribe of our beloved mouse filled their guts with the poisoned vadai and slept peacefully in their new home. Daemon father and brothers who devoured the unpoisoned vadais slept without stirring.

Only the mother who elegantly sprinkled poison on the vadai stared unblinking at the unforgiving roof.

Mice about to be massacred, humans about to live, supermarkets that persisted in their absence, small groceries that had shut shop, scorpions, chameleons, lizards, snakes, bats, dragonflies, butterflies,
birds, weeds, creepers, shrubs, plants, trees, much light, clean water, clean air…

the spinning magical top that is the world, devoured and dissolved it all, still spinning into the rayless void.