On an evening in December while on the streets of Kolkata,
Alok meets a strange man who tells him he is half-man,
half-werewolf. Despite finding the man untrustworthy, Alok
listened to his
stories and becomes fascinated. Alok is a history
professor and as he listens he becomes more and more
enthralled. The stranger, as Alok calls him comes and goes as
he please sharing only what he wants. Then one day he asks
Alok to transcribe some information his mother left him.
This is when Alok reads the full story and history of the
stranger's beginnings. It's a twisted and terrifying tale of
violence and assaults. When the stranger comes for the
transcript he offers to take Alok away with him and Alok
agrees knowing he may never return. The story becomes even
more twisted and ends shockingly.
THE DEVOURERS is certainly different than anything I have read
recently. The story is not one you would expect and the way
of life described shocks as much as it intrigues. The
writing demands your attention and you can't stop reading.
Usually authors try to make werewolves nice; only hunting
little
bunnies and deer. Indra Das does not try to make them cute and
cuddly, a change for sure, but disturbing in a probably the
way it really would be if werewolves were real kind of way.
What a breath of fresh air.
For readers of Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, China
Miéville, and David Mitchell comes a striking debut novel
by
a storyteller of keen insight and captivating
imagination.
On a cool evening in Kolkata, India, beneath a full moon,
as
the whirling rhythms of traveling musicians fill the
night,
college professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger
with
a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story.
Tantalized
by the man’s unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to
hear
its completion. So Alok agrees, at the stranger’s behest,
to
transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered
parchments, and once-living skins.
From these documents spills the chronicle of a race of
people at once more than human yet kin to beasts, ruled
by
instincts and desires blood-deep and ages-old. The tale
features a rough wanderer in seventeenth-century Mughal
India who finds himself irrevocably drawn to a defiant
woman—and destined to be torn asunder by two clashing
worlds. With every passing chapter of beauty and
brutality,
Alok’s interest in the stranger grows and evolves into
something darker and more urgent.
Shifting dreamlike between present and past withintoxicating language, visceral action, compelling
characters, and stark emotion, The Devourers
offers a
reading experience quite unlike any other novel.
Excerpt
My part in this story began the winter before winters
started getting warmer, on a full-moon night so bright
you could see your own shadow on an unlit rooftop. It was
under that moon—slightly smudged by December mist
clinging to the streets of Kolkata—that I met a man who
told me he was half-werewolf. He said this to me as if it
were no different than being half-Bengali, half-Punjabi,
half-Parsi. Half-werewolf under a full moon. Not the most
subtle kind of irony, but a necessary one, if I’m to
value the veracity of my recollections.
To set the stage, I must tell you where I was.
Think of a field breathing the cool of night time into
the soles of your shoes. A large tent in front of you—
cloth, canvas and bamboo—lit from within. Electric lamps
surrounding a wooden stage that creaks under the bare
feet of bright-robed minstrels. This tent is where the
rural bards of Bengal, the bauls, gather every winter to
make music for city people. It’s raw music, at times both
shrill and hoarse, stained with hashish smoke and the
self- proclaimed madness of their sect. A celebration of
what’s been lost, under the vigil of orange-eyed street
lights.
I am there, that night.
Outside in the cold, in Shaktigarh Math, a city park. I
watch the bauls and their audience through the fabric of
the tent. Shadows flit across as they clap and cheer. The
crowd extends outside, faces lit by cigarettes and
spliffs. Hand-rolled cigarette between my fingers, grass
under my shoes. A stranger walks up and stands beside me.
The street dogs are gathering by the field, their eyes
hungry. It’s one in the morning.
‘Afraid to go inside?’ the stranger asks. ‘They may be
mad, but they won’t bite.’
He’s talking about the bauls. I laugh dutifully. I’m
afraid he wants a smoke, having seen my tin of
cigarettes. I don’t want to share, having rolled them
very carefully. I tell him I prefer the night air to the
tent, not thinking to bring up the fact that there’s no
smoking allowed within. I ask what he’s doing outside.
‘The music’s a little too shrill for my ears. I can
appreciate it just fine from here.’ His voice is gentle,
his words unhurried.
He takes out his own hash joint. I glance sideways at him
as he lights up. The flame illuminates a slender face,
its glow running along hairless skin and brushing against
the lines of shadow that hug his high cheekbones. I’m
disarmed by his androgynous beauty before he even tells
his secret.
‘I’m a werewolf,’ he says. Smoke flares out of his mouth
in curls that wreath his long black hair, giving him
silver-blue locks for a passing second. I don’t see him
throw away the match, but his foot moves to rub it into
the soil. He’s wearing wicker sandals. Dark flecks of
dirt hide under unclipped nails on the ends of his long
toes. Apparently the cold doesn’t bother him enough for
socks or shoes.
Now I wish I could tell you this man looks wolfish, that
he has a hint of green glinting in his eyes, that his
eyebrows meet right above his nose, that his palms have a
scattering of hair that tickles my own palms as we shake
hands, that his sideburns are thick and shaggy and
silvered as the bark of a snow-dusted birch at grey dawn.
But I’m not here to make things up.
‘Need a light?’ he asks, and I’m startled to find a new
flame between his fingers, the hiss of the struck match
reaching my ears like an afterthought. Afraid that I’ve
been caught staring at his dirty toes and beautiful face,
I nod, even though there’s a lighter in my breast pocket.
He touches the flame to my cigarette.
‘You heard right,’ he says, tossing the match. ‘Well, I’m
actually half-werewolf. But you heard right.’
‘I didn’t ask if I’d heard right.’
‘You were thinking it, though,’ he says with a smile.
‘I wasn’t, actually. I can hear just fine,’ I assure him.
He keeps smiling. I get embarrassed.
‘Thanks for the light,’ I say with a cough. My lungs burn
from too enthusiastic a first drag. ‘I suppose I
shouldn’t be boasting about my hearing. Wolves have great
hearing, right?’
‘I’m not a wolf. And yes, they do.’
‘There aren’t any wolves near Kolkata. Are there? They’re
probably extinct in India.’
‘Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not
there,’ he says. I observe that his fingernails are as
long as his toenails, and as dirty. Little black sickles
hiding under them. I nod, light-headed from the nicotine
rush.
‘I’ve seen jackals in the golf greens at Tolly Club.’
He doesn’t say anything. I feel compelled to keep
talking.
‘My parents have a house. Like a weekend getaway. Outside
the city, in Baniban. The caretakers there used to scare
me when I was a boy, with stories about wildcats from the
woods stealing their chickens. Now that you mention it,
there might have been a wolf visit. I never really
believed any of those stories. They scared me, though. I
never even saw any of those animals. Except a snake,
once.’ A true story. I still remember the serpent’s grey
coils lying there by the flowerpots, beaten to death by
the help. They said it was venomous, though I certainly
couldn’t tell.
‘You’re not afraid of talking to strangers. I like that,’
he says, swaying slightly now to the rising call of the
bauls’ voices.
I feel shy now, which is absurd. ‘What’s your other half,
then? Human? Aren’t all werewolves half-human?’ I ask
him.
He picks a bit of tobacco out of his teeth, which I don’t
think I’ve ever seen a smoker actually do. Spittle clicks
between his fingertips and his tongue. ‘Family history
can be a tedious business. Though family isn’t quite the
right word.’
And that’s all he says. For someone who clearly wants to
talk to me, he says very little.
‘When did you find out you were a . . . a half-werewolf
?’
He shrugs. ‘I’ve been one all my life. Before we were
called werewolves, really.’
‘What’s it like?’ I ask, the questions flowing from my
smoke- soured mouth. I can’t think of anything more
awkward at this moment than to stand beside this man and
not respond to what he’s just said to me.
‘You’ve seen the movies. I am master of my fortune. The
moon is my mistress.’
‘And cliché is your cabaret?’ I ask. Intoxicated
disbelief dulls me into self-deprecation. I analyse my
words, which seem nonsensical. I look around, checking to
make sure the others standing around us in the field are
still there, to run my eyes over the streaks of their
shadows. The rhythm of the music snarls to the throb of
light and shadow behind the walls of the tent.
He doesn’t growl at me. ‘Are you an English professor, by
any chance?’
‘No. But close. I am a professor. Of history, actually.
Started teaching a couple of years ago.’
His shapely eyebrows rise. ‘History? Tales. The weaving
of words. A favourite discipline of mine. I congratulate
you on your choice of profession, young though you seem
for such an endeavour. To tell stories of the past to
children who walk into the future is a task both noble
and taxing.’ I feel a mix of resentment and pleasure from
being called young by someone who looks younger than me.
‘Well, they’re not exactly children, they’re college
students—’
‘If only we had better storytellers, perhaps they would
learn more willingly from the past,’ he says.
‘Maybe.’
‘Am I speaking in clichés again, professor?’
A white kitten, its wide eyes rimmed with rheum, looks up
at me as it crawls around us. It starts at the violent
sound of sticks shattering against each other. I see
children mock-fighting with surprising malice nearby,
their screams jarring and bodies lithe against the mist.
The kitten stumbles and uses my ankle as cover. The
street dogs skirt the edges of the field, pack instinct
glittering in their eyes as they surround us. Muzzles
peel back in tentative grimaces. Their teeth look yellow
under the street lights. They watch the kitten.
‘You like cats?’ the stranger asks, looking at the
kitten, which gingerly licks my fingers with a dry and
scratchy tongue as I pick it up. Its little heart putters
against my palm. I can feel its warm body shaking.
Ash flutters from my cigarette as I tap it, brief lives
twinkling and fading to grey by our feet. I take care not
to burn the kitten.
‘Let me guess,’ I say. ‘I’ve had the blood of the wolf
within me all along. You’ve come to initiate me into the
ways of our tribe, to run with my brothers and sisters to
the lunar ebb and flow. I’m the chosen one. The saviour
of our people. And the time of our uprising has come.
We’re going to rule the world,’ I say, my sarcasm blunted
by how serious I sound. I surprise myself with the
eagerness with which I tell this story of possibilities
to the stranger. The dogs have come closer, ignoring even
the threat of so many humans to get closer to the kitten
in my hands.
The stranger grins at me. It’s the first time he seems
animalistic.
‘I want to tell you a story. Let’s go inside.’
‘Won’t it hurt your ears?’
He takes one deep drag before licking the burnt-out roach
and making it disappear into one of his pockets. I
realize that my cigarette has whittled away to the end,
its heat tickling my cold fingers.
The stranger strides towards the tent, through the
scattered people smoking, past the food stalls with their
cheaply wired fluorescents ticking to the patter of night
insects. The sizzle of batter in oil and babble of voices
only aggravates the sense that I am treading on the tune
the bauls are playing—everything here seems to be part of
their music, as if the field itself were one stage, and
all of us musicians. I toss the cigarette butt and follow
the stranger. The dogs begin to follow as well, but stop.
I can see more of them running around the field.
Repositioning. I hold the kitten close to my chest and go
inside.
The tent is a different universe. The hot smell of
electric lamps tempered by the chill, the sweaty damp of
the crowd, the claustrophobic buzz of being inside an
enclosed fire hazard. Minstrels’ feet thump on the stage
like drumbeats, twins to the sharper pulse of their dugi
drums and tremulous drone of the one- stringed ektara.
Their saffron robes are ribbons of sound, twirling around
their bark burned bodies as they dance, their madness set
aflame by their own music.
My ears itch. Their voices are very loud. The stranger
doesn’t even grimace. Some of the spectators squat on the
ground, some sit on folding chairs set in haphazard rows.
We sit at the back of the tent. I can feel the cold metal
of the chair through my pants.
The kitten compresses itself into a ball in my lap, its
trembling eased somewhat. Its head darts to and fro. The
stranger is looking at the bauls, swaying his head,
tapping his feet, curling his toes.
‘The story?’ I ask.
‘Listen. Don’t say anything. I’m going to tell you a
story.’
‘I know, I just said—’
He hisses, startling me into silence. The kitten almost
leaps out of my lap. I clench my fingers around it,
stroking its fur.
‘Listen,’ he repeats. He is not looking at me. ‘I am
going to tell you a story, and it is true. To set the
stage, I must tell you where I was,’ he says, his words
winding their way through the overwhelming sound of the
music, which seems to rise with each passing second. The
light inside the tent is gauzy. The interior moves in
slow arcs as dizziness sets in. I close my eyes.
Darkness, touched with blossoms of light beyond my
eyelids. His voice, soothing, guiding me as the dark
becomes deeper.
The kitten is purring, vibrating against my hands. I can
hear the scrabble of swift paws outside the tent, the
anxious snarls of the dogs.
It is very dark, as the stranger tells the story.
To set the stage, I must tell you where I was, he says.
It is very dark. I listen.
Think of a field. A swamp, rather. This is a long time
ago. Kolkata. Calcutta, or what will be Calcutta. Maybe
it is this very field, this very ground. It is different
then, overgrown and marshy, the hum and tickle of insects
like a grainy blanket over this winter night. It is
cloudy, the moonlight diffuse as it sparkles on the
stretches of water hiding under the reeds. The darkness
is oppressive. There is no blush of electricity on the
horizon, no vast cities for the sky to reflect. Somewhere
beyond the dark, there are three villages: Kalikata,
Sutanati, Gobindapur. They belong to the British East
India Company. They are building a fort known as William.
Things are changing, a new century nears. It will be the
eighteenth, by the Christian calendar.
The campfire is an oasis of light. The bauls gather
around, flames glistening on their dark swamp-damp skins,
twinkling in their beards. They sing to ward off the
encroaching darkness, their words lifting with the wood
sparks towards the stars. They sing, unheeding of
signatures on paper, of land exchanges and politics, of
the white traders and their tensions with the Nawab and
the Mughal Empire. Here in the firelight, they make music
and tell stories to each other. To the land. To Bengal.
To Hindustan, which does not belong to them, nor to the
British, nor the Mughals. They know there are things in
the wilderness that neither Mughal nor white man has in
his documents of ownership. Things to be found in
stories. But then again, they also claim to be mad.
I watch the bauls. I can see the others in the gloom,
crouched amidst the reeds, circling slowly. More approach
from afar, their claws sinking into the mud. I can hear
them, though. The rustle of their spined fur, the
twisting of rushes against their backs.
A howl slices the dark. The bauls falter but continue
singing, holding tight to their instruments and gnarled
staves. I can hear the mosquitoes whining around them,
alighting on knuckles popping against skin, gorging,
dying in the heat of the fire. There is a young woman
amidst this group of travelling bauls. She looks out into
the darkness, the words of their song dissolving on her
tongue. Her hair is so black it melts into the night. I
remember the taste of her lips, moist but cool from the
night air. She keeps her eyes beyond the borders of the
fire, searching a wilderness stirred into sentience by
the noises of insect and animal, cricket and cockroach,
moth and mosquito, snake and mongoose, fox and field rat,
jackal and wildcat. Her bright patchwork cloak is wrapped
tight around her body, marking her out. She is tired,
short and unarmed, and stands no chance of surviving the
attack. Not that the others do either. I can smell her
terror like sweat against the gritty spice of woodsmoke.
The wet soil of the marsh is cold between my toes. The
insects catch in my fur, wrestling it, tickling like the
reeds and plants around me.
The woman knows we are here, beyond their firelight. She
knows because I told her myself, as a young man with long
hair and kind eyes, tiger pelt on my back. Your party
will never reach Sutanati and the banks of the river. You
are being hunted. You have a day to run away, for we are
patient, and draw out the hunt for pleasure and sport, I
said to her in her sleep, while my own kin were unaware.
I am a shape-shifter, after all, and not without my
abilities.
She heard me, and saw me, though she slept while I
whispered in her ear. She smelled my musk of swamp and
blood, shit and piss and rank fur, hair and smooth human
skin. She saw the lamps of my green eyes, and the pools
of my brown eyes. I saw her face twitch as I spoke. She
smelled of the stale sweat of travel, of the rich green
of sleeping on grass, of the slick of oil on her lips
from the roti and sabzi she had eaten before sleeping. I
kissed her once. A chill ran across my neck as I did,
because she reminds me so much of someone gone.
I look in the stranger’s eyes to see if they are still
brown. ‘I don’t feel well,’ I say. Shhhh. The susurrus of
reeds in the breeze. The music of the bauls is unearthly
now, their howls and shrieks like banshee wails. The
lights are swaying, cutting white trails in the air. The
kitten is coiled in my lap. The scrabble of paws,
outside.
The stranger shakes his head. You don’t interrupt the
storyteller, he says with a gentle smile. I can feel the
swamp outside, the city gone, the beasts gathering for
the hunt in the misty wilderness. My fingers tighten
around the kitten. The tent is an oasis of light, hot
smell of electric lamps. Woodsmoke. Wilderness
encroaches.
Close your eyes.
She heard me in her sleep, this baul woman with dirt in
her hair, her lips sticky with just a little oil. It is
clear that she remembers my warning, but she has not run
away. Perhaps one of the bauls is her father, or mother,
or sibling, or friend, or lover. It does not matter. She
will not leave them behind. She begins to sing with them
now, her scared voice strained. She remembers my smell,
senses it now beyond the fire, in the tangle of the dark.
More of us come from the horizons. The scent of cow’s
blood, a slaughter on their muzzles. They have eaten. But
their hunt is not over. Their eyes weave trails as they
run, leaping fireflies tracking their loping gait. They
flank the group of humans, cutting off escape.
The full moon watches through the clouds, eager for
massacre. With a bark of exhaled air, the clatter of tusk
on fang, we spring. The bauls’ song is loud, and
beautiful in its imperfection. It is their last. I run
with my pack. My tribe. The bauls are surrounded. They
sing till the very last moment.
The first kill is silent as our running, a glistening
whisper of crimson in the air. The last is louder than
the baying of a wolf, and rings like the bauls’ mad song
across the marshes of what is not yet Kolkata. I can hear
the howl as I run with this human in my arms, into the
darkness, away from the shadows of slaughter. The howl
curdles into a roar, enveloping the scream of the last
dying minstrel.
But she is alive, against me, shivering against my dew-
dappled fur. She is alive.
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