The driver stopped the tuktuk on a dusty and deserted road. There were a few shops all with wooden doors, some closed and some open. He motioned in the direction of one set of weathered doors that were open to expose a screen door. Something inside of me made me hesitate, but for some reason, my body went through the motions of getting off of the tuktuk. Before I started to walk toward the door, I told the kids to stay in the tuktuk and wait for me. Leo agreed that they would wait for me on the tuktuk.
I walked cautiously toward the door and about mid-way between the door and the tuktuk, I turned back one more time to confirm with the driver that I was going in the right direction. He motioned for me to go forward. At that moment, my instincts were screaming “Danger! Danger!” but for some reason, I continued to walk toward the door. In hindsight, I think I continued on because I didn’t want to offend the driver. It is silly, but something so absurd as not wanting to offend a total stranger made me defy my internal alarm and walk into a situation that my instincts were telling me to avoid.
I approached the door that was slightly ajar. Through the screen door, I couldn’t make out much because the inside of the shop was dark. I got a little closer to try and get a better look at the interior of the shop. As I squinted to help my eyes adjust to the dim interior, a meaty hand reached out from inside and three fingers curled around the frame of the screen door. The fingers were thick like sausages and grimy, like they hadn’t been washed in a long time. Underneath each fingernail was caked with something dried and brown. The door let out a long squeak as the fingers pulled the screen door open.
Again, my instincts were telling me to turn back, and again, I proceeded. It was the smell that hit me first. Meat – raw butchered meat, some possibly past its due, on its way to being rancid but not yet fully rotten. Considered edible to some, but by no means fresh. This is a smell that only someone who has shopped in wet markets or butchers in warm climates that eat lamb or goat would know.
As my eyes fully adjusted to the dim shop, I could see where the smell came from. A dim bulb dangled by a wire in the middle of the small room that was around 3 square meters. The light from the bulb barely illuminated the room, casting strange shadows throughout the room in sizes disproportionate to reality.
Apart from the screen door at the front of the shop, there was no other ventilation. The walls were whitewashed at some point in time, but now they were dingy with stains of blood and bits of dangling meat. On one side of the room, there were two round butcher blocks, the surfaces soiled with dried blood and remnants of previous carcasses. A large meat cleaver was cleft into one of the wooden blocks, in a fashion no less dramatic than you would imagine in a horror movie.
The fingers that opened the door for me belonged to the proprietor of the shop, a pudgy man dressed in a filthy t-shirt stained with blood. He had been sitting behind the door in a plastic chair, possibly resting or looking outside. I could imagine that he sat there all day long until a customer came in. After years of stewing in it, he probably didn’t even notice the stench anymore.
The man stood up from the plastic chair and looked at me. I managed an awkward smile and meekly asked, “Chicken?” I’m not sure if he understood me or not, but he walked over to the table with the two butcher blocks and pointed to a metal bowl with several pieces of chicken in it. I couldn’t tell which parts of the chicken were in the bowl but I did see a claw attached to a scrawny leg. It couldn’t have been more than one kg of chicken. I admit the whole grisly scene frightened and disgusted me and for sure, the chicken looked unappetizing. I don’t know why but instead of thanking him and leaving, I stupidly asked him, “Is there more?”
He walked around a table toward the back corner of the shop and opened a small door to a wooden crate. From where I was standing, I could see some feathers and beaks – live chickens. I don’t have anything against butchering live chickens for food. The last time we bought live chickens and had them butchered was near Amboseli National Park in Kenya, and it took almost an hour for the butcher to kill the chickens and defeather them. There was no way that I was going to wait an hour in this shop.
Sensing my hesitation, the pudgy man walked to another table. It was covered with what looked like a rough blanket. Like a magician performing a trick, he pulled the blanket open with panache to expose the remains of a sheep or goat. The smell, oh the smell. The heavy musky scent permeated the air and filled my nostrils at once. I nearly gagged, but it would have been rude to vomit in his shop.
Anyway, I was distracted by watching the flies. The motion of exposing the carcass disturbed the flies that had been resting on the surface of the blanket caked with dried blood. They flew up in unison and performed a frenzied dance before landing on the exposed bloody carcass to feast again.
At that moment, AY burst through the door. Behind her entered a stream of sunlight reminding me of the world outside of this dark shop. She stopped in the doorway and before her eyes could adjust to the grisly surroundings, the smell hit her first and she gasped.
Both the butcher and I stood frozen in place. Just our eyes shifted to look at her.
“You were taking a long time so I came to see if you needed help,” she stammered.
In a calm and even tone, I told her, “Everything is ok, please go and wait in the tuktuk.”
With her eyes, she asked me if everything was ok. I gave her a reassuring nod and she turned around and disappeared back into the sunlight.
I turned my attention back to the butcher and the meat. I pointed at the metal bowl of chicken parts he had shown me earlier and motioned that I would take it. He made one last effort to entice me with the sheep or goat meat that had been covered by the blanket. I shook my head and pointed again at the chicken parts.
He poured the contents of the bowl into a plastic bag that was barely large enough to contain the meat. He tied a knot with the two ears of the bag and I could see bits of meat and blood residue left all over the bag from his filthy hands. I was already anticipating that he would hand me the bag so I quickly scanned the shop for a clean plastic bag. I grabbed one from a sack hanging on a rusty nail on the wall and held it open for the butcher to deposit the bag with chicken inside. I hoped his hands would not inadvertently touch mine.
I tried to ask him how much I owed him, but I couldn’t understand his reply. I gave him a 100 rupee note from my wallet and waited for him to give me change. Just then, the tuktuk driver pushed the screen door open and walked in. The butcher and he had a short conversation. The driver turned to me and told me that the chicken meat was only 40 rupees. The driver and the butcher had another short conversation and in broken English, the driver told me what I understood to mean that the butcher couldn’t make change so he would pay for the chicken first and then I could pay him back when I paid for the ride. I nodded my head in agreement.
The butcher handed the 100 rupee note back to me, bits of meat and blood were smeared on the bill from where his hand had touched it. I held onto the money instead of putting it back into my wallet.
I thanked the butcher, exited his shop and re-entered the warm embrace of the day with the tuk tuk driver following after me. In one hand, I held the bag of chicken meat. With my thumb and index finger on the other hand, I pinched the 100 rupee note.
Leo and the kids had grown impatient waiting for me and they asked what took so long? As we headed toward home, I proceeded to tell them in great detail exactly what had happened inside the shop. AY corroborated the details of the shop interior, the smell and the appearance of the butcher.
Many times after that strange and frightening incident, the kids have asked me to tell the story of the “Butcher of Udaiper” over and over again. Just like when watching a horror movie, observers like to comment, during my narration, the kids also like to exclaim how dumb and reckless I was to ignore my instincts and put myself in a situation so obviously dangerous where I could have been hacked to death on the spot. Sometimes, they like to play around with the story line and imagine that the tuktuk driver, in cahoots with the butcher, lured us there with nefarious intentions or that the butcher held all of his victims prisoner in that grisly shop before he killed them. In reality, the situation turned out to be innocuous and apart from the unpleasantness of the shop, the story was born from my perception of the butcher and his shop, not from any real danger.
Although it is solid material for a horror story, the reality is more sad than scary. Dealing with meat has traditionally been the work of the Dalit caste, the lowest and most disadvantaged group within the caste system in India. Actually, the Dalits are considered so low that they aren’t even included in the traditional four-level caste hierarchy with Brahmin (priests and teachers) at the top, followed by Ksatriyas (rulers and warriors), Vaishyas (artisans and business people, farmers) and Shudras (laborers). Dalits are the fifth group that are considered so low and unworthy that they fall outside of the caste system as outcasts, into a fifth group commonly known as the untouchables. Within each of the four castes plus Dalits, there are thousands of sub-castes that dictate virtually all aspects of life including whom one can marry, what one can do for a living and where one can live.
The caste system is a system of social stratification that is at least 3000 years old. It is completely ingrained in India’s culture and way of life and permeates all aspects of life. There are different version explaining the origins of the caste system. There is the theological-based story that the Varnas (caste system) was created from Brahma’s, the Hindu god of creation, body. The Brahmins were created from his head (or his navel in some versions), the Ksatriyas from his arms, the Vaishyas from his thighs and the Shudras from his feet.
The generally accepted historical explanation has to the with the arrival of the Aryans from Central Asia in 1800 BC to 1500 BC. The Aryans migrated into the Indus Valley and brought with them, Sanskrit, Vedic religion and the caste system. It is no surprise that the Aryans were positioned at the top of the system as the Brahmins. Over the centuries, the beliefs, customs and cultures of the local people and various invaders were incorporated, producing a powerful religion called Hinduism that encompassed all aspects of life.
Dalits have traditionally performed jobs on the lowest rung of the economic, social and religious ladder. They clean latrines and sewers, work with animal skins, clean up after funerals, and work as butchers. It is likely that the butcher who I met was Badhik, a marginalized and disadvantaged subcaste belonging to Dalit. Badhik mainly work as butchers, leather tanners or agricultural laborers.
Over the next few days during our stay in Udaipur, my thoughts occasionally wandered to the butcher. Was it really as grisly as I thought or was it just a figment of my imagination. I wondered what the kids would have done in that situation. Would they have sensed danger or simply felt that it was an unpleasant shop? I wish I had thought to take a photo while I was inside the shop so i would have something concrete to go on. But that never even crossed my mind
