Book Title: A Fistful of Salt: Selected Stories
Author: N. Prabhakaran
Translator: Jayasree Kalathil
Publisher: Harper Perennial India
Number of Pages: 232
ISBN: 9309961074
Date Published: Nov. 12, 2026
Book Excerpt
The Mahout of a Rogue Elephant
(pages 1-4)
And I killed you, all those times. The world told me again and again, shouting, sometimes, with a thousand tongues, that you are an ithilkanni, a parasitic mistletoe. That wounding voice made my blood boil. I yearned for a kill. And I killed you. I remember the last killing clearly. A girl named Aruna who wrote poetry in English. One night, in a hotel in town, she slept with the young lecturer who taught Shakespeare and Keats. When the seed planted in her began to grow, Death threw a net and the young lecturer got caught in it. The college cancelled classes that day. I stood frozen, listening to the hollow voice of the principal expressing ‘deep sorrow’. You said: All those young women standing with their heads bowed who knew her are laughing.
Everyone went away, and I was alone under the shade of the casuarina trees. You said, again: That girl, Aruna, is crying. Like a warhorse, I ran. I was panting like a mad dog when I reached the gates of the women’s hostel. I did not see the stunned faces of the warden or the other women. I saw only Aruna, sobbing with her face pressed into the pillow. I made her sit up and told her: Do not cry, I am here for you.
Her eyes widened, became large circles of fear. Her quivering lips shaped the words:
‘Lunatic … Lunatic!’
In that moment, you left me. Your weight was released from me. I shuddered. Particles of fear ran through my veins like greedy rats. I was afraid that I would lose my strength and collapse. My twig-like legs carried me and I ran away.
At the dining table in the men’s hostel, faces surrounded me.
Ridiculing…
Sympathizing…
‘Lunatic!’
‘Poor thing!’
Sitting alone, I cried. You had turned me mad.
My fingernails dug into your neck. Your eyes bulged out of their sockets. When you fell, I trampled you underfoot. Laughed out loud watching your skull explode. Roared in demented pleasure.
And yet, I realize now, you did not die. You are the one who has given me the courage, in this transparent moment, to remember you, these others. I saw you last night, not for the first time. But it seemed that way.
It was in the illumination of the headlights of a lorry coming uphill.
Scared of death, you were scrambling on your thin legs to the side of the road. As you passed me by on your way back from the factory in the city, my nose was assaulted with the stench of fermented toddy. I saw as I walked, letting my eyes wander in the darkness in front of me:
Wives waiting with kanji in old earthenware pots. Children sleeping on torn mats on the floor.
‘Where’s the salt in this, bitch.’
‘Feed this to your other fellow, whore.’
I heard your curses. When will you, your wives, your children ever know happiness?
I feel like crying.
I cannot cry. There is a wire mesh before my eyes.
I must not cry. If I cry, old, black crows will come flying, peck at my head, neck and face. Ask me in a deafening voice, ‘Who are they to you?’
My mothers, fathers, sisters, little brothers.
You poor things!
You believe rocks that wear masks, that have damp lips. You think there is a spring under the rocks. Fight with one another about the colour of the rocks. Some of you die, banging your heads on those rocks.
Check out our latest book reviews
My eyes water.
I forget that crows with sickle-sharp beaks will come flying in.
You … you are the one making me cry. If I hang around here, you will make me cry again. You will have me do other things.
I won’t let you off.
I will drown you in a crowd.
In their laughter, Bargainings, Speeches, Arguments…
Who is it that tied the weight of this earth to my legs?
In the corner of the sky shaded with darkness, egrets fly in flocks.
Behind them are crows.
I am scared. Those crows will peck away at the egrets’ necks. Make them fall a thousand feet into the black muck of fields or into the dark, unbearable silence of rubber woods.
The exodus by the roadside has increased. People rushing back home. I am but a dot in this flow. The difference is that I do not have a destination.
Excerpted with permission from “A Fistful of Salt: Selected Stories” by N. Prabhakaran & Jayasree Kalathil, published by Harper Perennial India
.){kind=link}