Fighter Cock by Sidharth Singh Satirizes The Culture of Patriarchy; An Excerpt

Fighter Cock by Sidharth Singh satirizes the culture of patriarchy and its obsolete fixation on bloodlines. An Excerpt:

At times such as these, when things seemed to have gone up shit creek, when he was forlorn, there were only two things that could comfort him. The first was the open road, which absorbed everything—his thoughts, his anger, his confusion; it all went into the asphalt with each passing kilometre, with each roll of hot rubber on its hard surface. The road had no answers but it took away all the questions, which, to him, was therapeutic. The only other thing that comforted him during times of duress was the radiating warmth of a beautiful woman. So it came as no surprise to Sheru when his jeep led him beyond Bombeli, straight into the bare-brick jungle of Nair basti, to the irresistible pull of the feminine vortex that was Kanya Kumari.

When Kanya emerged to greet him on the verandah of Nair House, her heart skipped a beat. Though she had thought Sheru to be reasonably attractive, she now found herself swooning, unable to articulate anything comprehensible under the hypnotic gaze of his hazel eyes and the rugged seduction of his gelled brown hair. She was instantly transported to infantile memories of the alpha hunk surfing big waves in the Old Spice commercial; of watching late-night reruns of Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns with her father, in the cosy warmth of her childhood home in London. Here was ‘the man with no name’ incarnate, standing at her doorstep, unmasked and dangerous, asking her to join him for a drive in his jeep, which was the closest thing to a Mustang he could find around these parts.

She sat next to him in his beat-up jeep. He had removed the hood and dropped the windscreen on to the bonnet. They were engulfed in streaming currents of warm, late-afternoon air, which made their hair dance and effortlessly carried the pregnant cloud of possibilities that hung over them as they cut through the tarmac in silence. Since this was an extension of Sheru’s no-destination drive, they first arrived at the summit of Eagle’s Peak. Instantly, he swung the jeep around without a word and drove in the opposite direction, towards Vulture’s Peak, where they had first spoken to each other. But Sheru wasn’t ready to talk just yet. He raced back downhill and turned east towards the Bhukkad foothills, driving roughly over old hunting tracks. The tracks led them to the edge of the reservoir adjoining the small dam and the Harnadi feeder canal. Sheru stopped the jeep and gazed at the waters that merged with the infinite horizon. Kanya thought that he had finally settled down, and started to speak, but before she could utter a word, Sheru reversed the jeep violently and drove back on to the old hunting tracks, until they found themselves at the edge of the impenetrable Dhuandhaar forest. It had been an hour of relentless driving in complete silence. The only semblance of communication coming from Sheru was through the angry growl of the engine and the clunky gearshift. Kanya waited for him to speak, but Sheru simply started to reverse the jeep again. She finally put her hand on his, looked at him lovingly and said, ‘If you want to talk, I know the perfect place inside this forest. Nobody except me has ventured in there.’ Sheru took a deep breath and looked at her, then said, ‘Okay.’ They drove into the forest as the sun was setting.

Kanya navigated as Sheru drove through a treacherous stretch of wild undergrowth that brought them into a large clearing, surrounded by pristine teak forest. Driving a short distance, they arrived at a sandbank that bordered an emerald-green freshwater pool, fed by a waterfall that cascaded down a low granite cliff. Sheru brought the jeep to a halt near the sandbank and stared at the water, mesmerized by its virginal beauty. Kanya climbed out of the jeep, took off her kolhapuris and sat on the sand. She turned to him with a disarming smile and said, ‘You must remove your shoes and feel the sand on your feet.’ Sheru did as he was told and felt tickled as his bare feet touched the soft sand. He let out a childlike laugh that belied his rugged disposition, and he realized that it had been a lifetime since he had experienced a moment of such innocent joy. He sat close to her, facing the water, and they talked.

Excerpted with permission from Fighter Cock by Sidharth Singh published by Penguin Random House India.

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