River Town Chronicles Read Online Free PDF

“pure” by confining their work to account books and sacred rites.

A T HUMP IN THE N IGHT

    T HE MONSOON RAINS FINALLY SUBSIDED and more pleasant weather arrived. We were now able to sleep soundly without having to move our charpois around the room at night and rearrange buckets and pans to catch the rainwater. (Incidentally, buffalo manure is a good fix for a leaky roof). But lately, night time brought other concerns that kept us awake. Pat began poking me in the ribs as soon as the lights went out. “Did you hear that? Listen!” “I don’t hear anything. Go to sleep.” This continued for several nights in a row, until I couldn’t deny that I too heard a strange sound, but couldn’t tell where it was coming from. “It must be the wind,” I thought out loud. “That’s impossible. There isn’t any wind.” “Maybe it’s the monkeys up on the roof,” I suggested. “No. It’s coming from inside the house.” This dialog continued for several nights as soon as the lights went out. There was no mistaking the sound. It was a squishy “thump” sound, like a balloon filled with water being dropped from somewhere above. Determined to solve the mystery, the next night I placed a flashlight next to the charpoi. I turned out the lights, got into bed and waited for the “thump.” It didn’t take long. I turned on the flashlight and saw something scurry across the floor. I flashed the light on the wall above and saw three sets of beady eyes staring at me from inside a basket of sugar hanging from a peg about six feet up the wall. “Thump.” A rat, a large well fed rat, jumped out of the basket and hit the floor with a squish before heading in the direction of the drain that ran along the courtyard wall. “Holy cow. Did you see that?” Pat screamed. “That’s impossible,” I said, trying to refute what I had just seen with my own eyes. “Rats, can’t climb six feet straight up a vertical wall.” “Yeah, well these rats can,” Pat assured me.
    The next morning I explained the rat problem to Ram Swarup. I told him that we didn’t like the rats and wanted to get rid of them. He said they didn’t bother him. “They are sacred, just like the monkeys.” I insisted that we needed to do something about the rats and he suggested that I talk with the sweet shop walla across the lane. “He has a rat trap.” I went to the sweet shop walla and asked to borrow the trap. “Of course. Here, take it.”
    That afternoon I baited the trap and placed it in the middle of the room. Then Pat and I and the children went shopping in the bazaar. When we returned to our house later that afternoon, we were greeted by a half dozen snarling rats trapped in the sweet shop walla’s cage. They were huge rats, the size of squirrels, with long tails and soft, plump bodies. They had obviously roamed unmolested in our part of town. I took the cage over to the sweet shop to display what I had caught in the trap. Six less rats in River Town, I proudly thought to myself. “Here. Give the trap to me. I’ll get rid of the rats,” said the shopkeeper. I was happy to hand them over, since I wasn’t quite sure how to dispose of them. Drown them, I though, would be best. I returned home and both Pat and I were relieved that our rat problem was solved, or at least their numbers reduced.
    That night we went to bed more confident than the night before. I turned out the lights. “Thump.” Then another “Thump.” “They’re back.” Pat whispered. The next morning I went back to the sweet shop to borrow the trap again. “There are more of them,” I said. “By the way, what did you do with the ones I caught yesterday?.” “Oh, I took them down the lane and let them go,” he responded. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the rats