as the cartons of survival rations diminished, i reduced myintake till i was following instructions exactly, holding myself toonly two biscuits every eight hours. i was continuously hungry.
i thought about food obsessively. the less i had to eat, thelarger became the portions i dreamed of. my fantasy mealsgrew to be the size of india. a ganges of dhal soup. hotchapattis the size of rajasthan. bowls of rice as big as uttarpradesh. sambars to flood all of tamil nadu. ice cream heapedas high as the himalayas. my dreaming became quite expert:
all ingredients for my dishes were always in fresh and plentifulsupply; the oven or frying pan was always at just the righttemperature; the proportion of things was always bang on;nothing was ever burnt or undercooked, nothing too hot or toocold. every meal was simply perfect – only just beyond thereach of my hands.
by degrees the range of my appetite increased. whereas atfirst i gutted fish and peeled their skin fastidiously, soon i nomore than rinsed off their slimy slipperiness before biting intothem, delighted to have such a treat between my teeth. i recallflying fish as being quite tasty, their flesh rosy white andtender. dorado had a firmer texture and a stronger taste. ibegan to pick at fish heads rather than toss them to richardparker or use them as bait. it was a great discovery when ifound that a fresh-tasting fluid could be sucked out not onlyfrom the eyes of larger fish but also from their vertebrae.
turtles – which previously i had roughly opened up with theknife and tossed onto the floor of the boat for richard parker,like a bowl of hot soup – became my favourite dish.
it seems impossible to imagine that there was a time when ilooked upon a live sea turtle as a ten-course meal of greatdelicacy, a blessed respite from fish. yet so it was. in the veinsof turtles coursed a sweet lassi that had to be drunk as soonas it spurted from their necks, because it coagulated in lessthan a minute. the best poriyals and kootus in the land couldnot rival turtle flesh, either cured brown or fresh deep red. nocardamom payasam i ever tasted was as sweet or as rich ascreamy turtle eggs or cured turtle fat. a chopped-up mixture ofheart, lungs, liver, flesh and cleaned-out intestines sprinkled withfish parts, the whole soaked in a yolk-and-serum gravy, madean unsurpassable, finger-licking thali. by the end of my journeyi was eating everything a turtle had to offer. in the algae thatcovered the shells of some hawks-bills i sometimes found smallcrabs and barnacles. whatever i found in a turtle's stomachbecame my turn to eat. i whiled away many a pleasant hourgnawing at a flipper joint or splitting open bones and lickingout their marrow. and my fingers were forever picking away atbits of dry fat and dry flesh that clung to the inner sides ofshells, rummaging for food in the automatic way of monkeys.
turtle shells were very handy. i couldn't have done withoutthem. they served not only as shields, but as cutting boardsfor fish and as bowls for mixing food. and when the elementshad destroyed the blankets beyond repair, i used the shells toprotect myself from the sun by propping them against eachother and lying beneath them.
it was frightening, the extent to which a full belly made fora good mood. the one would follow the other measure formeasure: so much food and water,so much good mood. it was such a terribly fickle existence.
i was at the mercy of turtle meat for smiles.
by the time the last of the biscuits had disappeared, anythingwas good to eat, no matter the taste. i could put anything inmy mouth, chew it and swallow it – delicious, foul or plain –so long as it wasn't salty. my body developed a revulsion forsalt that i still experience to this day.
i tried once to eat richard parker's feces. it happened earlyon, when my system hadn't learned yet to live with hungerand my imagination was still wildly searching for solutions. ihad delivered fresh solar-still water to his bucket not longbefore. after draining it in one go, he had disappeared belowthe tarpaulin and i had returned to attending to some smallmatter in the locker. as i always did in those early days, iglanced below the tarpaulin every so often to make sure hewasn't up to something. well, this one time, lo, he was. hewas crouched, his back was rounded and his rear legs werespread. his tail was raised, pushing up against the tarpaulin.
the position was tell-tale. right away i had food in mind, notanimal hygiene. i decided there was little danger. he wasturned the other way and his head was out of sight. if irespected his peace and quiet, he might not even notice me. igrabbed a bailing cup and stretched my arm forward. my cuparrived in the nick of time. at the second it was in position atthe base of his tail, richard parker's anus distended, and outof it, like a bubble-gum balloon, came a black sphere ofexcrement. it fell into my cup with a clink, and no doubt i willbe considered to have abandoned the last vestiges ofhumanness by those who do not understand the degree of mysuffering when i say that it sounded to my ears like the musicof a five-rupee coin dropped into a beggar's cup. a smilecracked my lips and made them bleed. i felt deep gratitudetowards richard parker. i pulled back the cup. i took the turdin my fingers. it was very warm, but the smell was not strong.
in size it was like a big ball of gulab jamun, but with none ofthe softness. in fact, it was as hard as a rock. load a musketwith it and you could have shot a rhino.
i returned the ball to the cup and added a little water. icovered it and set it aside. my mouth watered as i waited.
when i couldn't stand the wait any longer, i popped the ballinto my mouth. i couldn't eat it. the taste was acrid, but itwasn't that. it was rather my mouth's conclusion, immediateand obvious: there's nothing to be had here. it was truly wastematter, with no nutrients in it. i spat it out and was bitter atthe loss of precious water. i took the gaff and went aboutcollecting the rest of richard parker's feces. they went straightto the fish.
after just a few weeks my body began to deteriorate. myfeet and ankles started to swell and i was finding it very tiringto stand.
