Badal had choreographed many fierce duels in his time. Take for instance the battle between his chestnut-brown pheasant and a gray rooster of foreign breed that his opponent bought at a high price. The gray bird jostled nobly but in the end Badal’s pheasant spattered its entrails. During the few minutes Badal’s birds took to draw enemy blood, he remained squatted near the boundary line of the mud arena. We saw his eyes twitch and his palms shake. On some occasions his gangly arms contorted in a most unnatural way, giving wind to rumors that he was not made of flesh and blood but something more pliant and enduring, like rubber.
The Mayurakshi River had brought an obsidian idol of Rudradeb, a terrifying, fire-eyed avatar of Lord Shiva, to our little town centuries ago. Watching Badal during the cockfights was like watching the black idol break into a mad, celestial dance. Rudradeb vaulting on his sharp trident as the eye of a raging storm. Rudradeb breathing fire across the skies, the flames illuminating his spinning form and flowing hair. Once we caught Badal levitating in a photo taken during the annual cockfight and WhatsApped it to one another, several times around, changing captions. Good Morning. God is watching. At its peak, the image touched thousands of people, most of whom will die without knowing the town where it was birthed. Badal’s win in the mud arena felt inevitable to us. His forefathers had planted the species of berry tree Rudradeb is known to visit. It was bearing fruits for him, as we saw with our own eyes. Badal threaded the fruits’ seeds to wear around his wrists and the good deity blessed his barnyard, where he taught game fowls to fight. That is why we wore the excitement of the clash our town remembers as the Supreme Battle like a brand new puja dress.
In the Supreme Battle, Badal’s trained cockerel was to fight an out-of-town game fowl. The contest was beyond the regular scheme of things. Outsiders did not ask to participate in our rituals every day. So, when an elite breeder from Calcutta challenged Badal, our ardor for the annual cockfight catapulted high. Badal always went around saying that the cockpit was a temple too and we believed him. We were certain he would win.
We are simple believing men. A middle-aged docile man winning all the tough fights gives off a whiff of something. Divine fragrance or foul play. With Badal, we generally agreed it was the former. He was a good man after all. He came from the caste of businessmen, but his father had died, leaving the family in debt. Badal worked hard as a clerk in a bank to pay off his father’s dues and earn his own bread. He drank in moderation — always around people, never alone; he did not smoke, did not remarry after his wife ran away with another man.
The morning after her elopement we had gathered in front of Badal’s house,a one-story yellow building fitted with a flat asbestos roof. As nondescript as it gets around here. We swore to seek vengeance on his behalf. We said, Badal, let us catch the whore alive and put a rope around her neck. We suggested he report his wife’s lover, a young man from our town, to the police. Maybe we could also loot the lout’s house and castigate his old mother. But Badal shut us up. He said he would wait for his woman to return. If she returned to him, the two of them would sort things between themselves. It was my fault she left, he said. Husband-wife had not talked openly for a long time, because he hated quarrels and she was never satisfied. We were stunned to see that Badal lacked the common man’s hunger for retribution, which again stirred up rumors of his being made not of flesh and blood, but something more pliant and enduring, like rubber.
Who knows, maybe that’s why things beyond anyone’s control — like the cockfights — fell in place for him year after year. It was Rudradeb’s consolation prize or reward. And we did not want to prod Badal too much. If the Storm God was on his side, then we would rather not draw His wrath. Nobody wants to clash against His forces. Who has the stamina to make it through a conflict with Him? Not we. We are ordinary people who want no harm for ourselves.
In the Rahr plains that stretch for miles and miles along the Mayurakshi River, the greatest cockfights take place soon after the winter solstice. We show our gratitude to the stormy and severe Rudradeb for the harvest. Back in our father’s time, in the 1960s or so, the Indian government put a ban on the ritual. The sport was stopped for a year and the Mayurakshi swelled. The flood swept away half our town. What can anyone do after that? We stopped asking questions and resumed what was right, beating drums and cymbals. You may have heard of birds fighting over prized food items like bananas or grains in other lands, but ours fight for nothing. The cocks tear each other apart for Rudradeb’s pleasure. The poor creatures perhaps think that their owners will set them free once they defeat a strong opponent. The truth though is that the winning bird is dropped into the ring again and again until it dies. It is sacrificed for the harvest.
The fight we remember as the Supreme Battle also took place after the solstice. Badal had trained a young golden-brown morog for the event. Some people buy trained roosters last minute to drop in the ring but not Badal. He prepared the birds himself, so he could keep the earnings from the bets placed on them without shame or guilt. While rearing gamecocks in his barnyard, he marveled at the ease with which his handpicked birds wielded the razor blades strapped to their limbs. His birds were lightsome vessels of blood and beauty whom he taught to master simple, repetitive thrusts to take down opponents. The formidable and luscious movements of his birds drove spectators at the cockfights — some of them children on the high perch of their father’s shoulders — to a cringing admiration. Each fight won him big money — five figure sums — and this made him both our pride and, to be honest, a bit of an eyesore. Who likes to compete with a chosen man and lose? So, we were not surprised when we heard that some townspeople had tipped off the police about the Supreme Battle. The police were going to come and nab all the participants at the fight, including Badal. And if not the police, then the Animal Cruelty Prevention people from Calcutta would come, stage a sit-in, and make it impossible for us to hold the event. However, Badal, too, had his connections. The Left Front had lost the last two elections and was desperate to expand its base among us. Badal left it to the comrades to coax the temple’s head priest. In the end, what do we hear? The Supreme Battle was going to be held in the temple premises, in the open patch across Rudradeb’s sky-blue chamber, under the watch of His obsidian idol, beyond the reach of blind law and God-fearing activists.
There were more than three dozen birds whose lives were on the line that day, but Badal cared for only one — the princely golden-brown morog he had named Sultan. An aseel game fowl, the season’s reigning champion from Calcutta, travelled a hundred kilometers on the pothole riddled highway to meet Badal’s Sultan inside the fenced ring. The fowl’s owner brought a photographer with a drone camera to film the head-on encounter. You see, the city people are not as open-minded as us. The breeder from Calcutta did not believe that Badal was fated to win and came prepared to record a divine man’s humiliation.
A day before the fight we watered the rutted track to the temple, so that the cars coming from the city did not end up shrouded in dust. By noon on the day of the Battle, handcarts were selling ice cream and cola outside the temple. Dhaakis were beating drums. Woodwind tunes we heard at weddings and funerals played on CDs. Some of us smeared vermillion on our foreheads and wore jasmine garlands. We ignited coconut husks in earthen pots, as we do during Rudradeb’s yearly homecoming. In this atmosphere of high energy and intoxication, the headman fired a rifle in the air and the fights began. We settled down, leaving it to the Gods to tell us the good from the bad. We cheered every time handlers flung a beaten cock out of the pit to be buried alive or slaughtered for Him to wolf down at dinner.
The clash between Badal’s Sultan and the Calcutta guy’s aseel fowl had appeared to be full of grace. A divine māyā concealed the true character of things. The hours Badal spent training the bird to aim its razor-strapped limb at a rival’s neck in the run-up to the clash had been anything but dignified. Even purchasing Sultan had been an ordeal for him. He had to plead with a local neta who breeds the best fighter cocks in these parts. Badal always went to that man, even though the predatory breeder charged the most exorbitant price. On this occasion, the man told Badal that the bird he’d set his heart on was not ready to be shoved into the ring. Badal must wait another season but Badal would not listen to anyone. He did the rounds of the breeder’s house day and night, trying to convince him of the importance of hacking off the bird’s comb and wattle as early as possible. In the end, seeing no other way, Badal threatened the man to end their collaboration and the breeder gave in. We suspect the man was simply making Badal sweat because he wanted to up the bird’s rate.
The moment Badal set his brand-new purchase in his barnyard he saw that it was a skilled runner. Sultan was ready to pick fights with other males and getting it to scrap in the ring was not difficult. Badal need only push another proud rooster in its way, and Sultan would parry the bird with great passion. All the same, when left alone, Sultan refused to move, even to nibble, if grains were scattered a few steps away from where it had cooped up. The bird’s foul temper became an issue. It would not exert itself past whatever limit it had decided on for a particular day.
Badal started taking half days off from work to come home to Sultan. We saw him wade into the pond carrying the bird in a bamboo cage. He would free Sultan in the middle of the pond, forcing it to take a lengthy swim back to the bank to boost its energy. He would throw pariah dogs on the bird’s trail. The bird had to keep running to flee the predator, but as with everything else, Sultan would take a lead and then halt, suddenly idle. You could see it standing motionless bang in the middle of the road like a dumb child. It had understood that whether or not it ran for its life, it would be saved. That even if it foolishly put itself in front of rolling wheels, Badal would pull it aside. It was right. Badal was as fond of Sultan as we were of our sons before they learned to walk, talk, or do anything outrageous. He fed Sultan almonds and pistachios, notwithstanding their soaring price. As a father, he was indulgent and difficult in equal measures. Sometimes we saw him flash his phone’s sharp torchlight into the bird’s eyes well into the night, to keep it on the edge, forever belligerent.
Then, ten days before the Supreme Battle, Sultan could no longer be spotted in the barnyard and we thought that the bird had been stolen — after all, it had become a prized possession in everyone’s eyes. But a photo of Badal forcing the bird into a dark hole surfaced in our group chats and we knew. It was the final phase of Sultan’s training. Badal was keeping it isolated, angering it, so it would fight and fight. This, too, is what our life is sometimes. Left alone we make enemies in our head. So, it would be with Sultan, we knew.
The day of the Supreme Battle, Sultan was not fed. Badal carried it to the ring perched on his head. Though it had been kept aloof and hungry, Sultan looked so buoyant. We were left with no doubt that the Storm God was on His mount. Badal’s bird would defeat the city game fowl and wear the crown in no time.
When the rifle fired and brass bells chimed, we huddled close. We could not wait to see Sultan in action. Even as other birds put on a good show, we kept stealing glances at the regal morog that was waiting its turn on the sidelines. Badal was saving it for the end. He wanted Sultan to first watch others, its inferiors, command the stage. The other fighter birds were leaping over one another’s heads, pecking at their opponents’ blades while Sultan, with its legs tied up, lusted for its turn. This went on for hours.
The golden-brown bird was lowered into the arena after sundown. Halogen lights and string bulbs lit the temple premises. There began pushing and pulling among our ranks to video record the proceedings — the children on their father’s shoulders had the best view and were handed the cellphones. We envied the view of the drone hovering over our heads.
From the outset, it was clear to us that Sultan would not collapse until it was the last one standing in the ring. It fought three other winners before meeting the city champion, the aseel game fowl. Both birds looked exhausted under the floodlights. Yet, they powered on, danced in the air, damaged each other’s wings, gouged out feathers. The cool evening breeze coming from the river whipped up their feathers, like cotton beaten out by a master quilt maker. The fight was over a tad quicker than we had expected. Sultan emerged the winner — who can beat one blessed by Rudradeb under His nose in His courtyard? We patted the Calcutta breeder’s back to console him, though we thought him foolish now for bringing a bird all the way to get it ruthlessly killed.
The dead bird was Badal’s prize and it was up to him to dispose of the body or offer the meat as sacrifice, but before taking a call on the carcass, he rushed to give Sultan a victory lap. He leaned over to lift the bird. He was deciding between having Sultan perch on his arm and balance on his head. In that split second of indecision, Sultan tried to make its will known with quick, repetitive stabs. When its wings stopped flapping, Badal saw what it had done. Blood was flowing out of his neck, like Ganges water from Lord Shiva’s tangled bun, and Badal contracted into a ball and fell. Sultan had sliced its father’s jugular vein. Horrified, we — all the townspeople, other trainers, even the city breeder — ran to be close to Badal. We could see that he was made of blood. He was one of us and there would be no miracles.
Meanwhile, across the ring, the prize distribution ceremony began. From the podium the headman called Badal and Sultan to claim the crown. Here, someone knelt and pressed a coarse gamcha on Badal’s cut. The rest of us brought out our cameras. The razor earlier tied to Sultan’s toe had sunk deep into its owner’s flesh. Ordinary folks like us do not know what to do in such moments. A quick-thinking boy did call the hospital, but that was twenty kilometers away and it would be a while before help came. The ring was bloodier now than it had been all through the cockfights. As we waited for the ambulance, we panned our cameras this way and that to capture whatever we could of a happening that was the measure of our deepest fears.
Badal slowly stood up with the coarse fabric pressed to his neck. It was a wonder that he could come to his feet after losing so much blood. We were still gawking at him when he snatched someone’s smartphone and began to film us. We took a few steps back from him. He pursued us, limping on his unnaturally twisted legs. It was the walk of the dead. We saw him turn on the front-facing camera and he himself spun a full one-eighty degrees, so we fell behind him. Sultan was waiting at a remove. Badal bent to lift it up and this time the bird peacefully climbed his shoulder.
With his bloodied hand Badal clicked a photo of us with him, and though we were stunned, we managed to applaud his feat. He then threw the phone back at us, trusting us to spread his marvelous image, grow his following day and night. When he closed his eyes, it was with a contented smile, as though this last scuffle, his imminent death, too, had been part of his plan. As though when he first saw the bird, he knew this was how it was going to end; as though he had trained and remade Sultan to overpower him — for that must be what it means to create, have a thing made that undoes its maker. And he needed us to acknowledge that the good deity had chosen him to show gratitude for our produce, that he had willingly exerted, exhausted, and sacrificed himself for us.
+++