Years ago we took up for rent a portion of an old house. The house-owner, an ex-policeman, occupied half the building and let out the other half to us.
He had a rooster and two hens with a dozen chicks. The very first day this rooster, a two-footer, chased me all over the place. I had never seen a stronger and bolder domestic cock before. He had steel-like beaks and firm wiry legs of iron. His eyes, blood red buttons, were full of self-confidence. A picture of pride he was indeed. When he walked tall he would make you, a human being, feel like a pigmy.
At the crack of dawn he would stand on the compound wall and let out a series of full-throated cock-a-doodle-doo cries, flapping his wings, exhibiting his rippling biceps. He was not a cock but an alarm clock.
He was jealous about his two hen-spouses. Of the two, one brown and the other white, he liked the white one more. Now and then he would scratch the earth with his paws and scoop out a fat worm and invite his favourite white hen-wife to have it, issuing a peculiar gurgling noise of fondness from his throat. I named him Rascal.
Rascal always guarded the house, especially the backyard, like a dog. He had his own mentally drawn boundaries which no one except members of his master’s family could cross. You could cross the Pakistan border, not this ‘cockistan’ border.
I did not know why, but Rascal was forever polite to women and girls. They were allowed to go near his spouses and chick-children. When men and boys tried to do it, they had to face his wrath.
The house-owner’s wife was very fond and proud of Rascal. “Look at him, he is not an ordinary cock, he is right from Lord Muruga’s flag,” she boasted often.
Now, Velan, a buffalo-herd living next door, himself a rascal, had an eye on Rascal. He offered to buy him for ₹50 (in 1970). The house-owner’s wife spurned it with contempt. “I will not part with him even for a thousand,” she declared.
Tales of valour
Rascal had to his credit his own stories of bravery. On one occasion a stray dog tried to steal a chick. Rascal chased him to the end of the world, raining painful pecks from his razor sharp bills. On another occasion a kite came swooping down to grab one of the chicks but there appeared on the scene from nowhere our enraged rooster exhibiting his bristled neck flumes and wing biceps. The kite flew away.
When things were going well like this, one monsoon morning the usual cock-a- doodle-doo from the rooster was not heard. When the house-owner’s wife went to the backyard, there was no sign of Rascal. She ran helter-skelter in panic. She woke up everyone and started wailing. The neighbours came running. They naturally thought someone in our house died. Even though Rascal harassed me unendingly I missed him.
The prime suspect was Velan, who had wanted to buy Rascal badly. “Do something, you are an ex-policeman. File a complaint and get his house searched,” she pressed her husband.
The retired police writer took up the matter seriously. A police jeep arrived on the scene. Two robust men in uniform stormed into Velan’s house, where they found the rooster under a bamboo basket, its legs and beaks tied, in a jute bag.
The Rescued Rascal got a tearful reception from the house-owner’s wife. She hugged the bird like a mother who had found a long-lost child. But it took a week to heal Rascal’s injured pride. For days he did not crow at dawn. He remained huddled up in the hen-house, brooding over his humiliation at villain Velan’s hand.
We waited patiently. One morning I heard a cock-a-doodle-doo. He was there standing majestically on the wall, silhouetted against the sky, neck stretched and beaks open, and crowing.
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