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Penguin Books Ltd - Suniti Namjoshi

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63 pages

English

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In Suki, fabulist Suniti Namjoshi weaves a delightful tapestry from threads of longing, loss, memory, metaphor, and contemplation. The whole picture is a stunning evocation of the love and friendship shared between S and her Super Cat, Suki, a lilac Burmese. Suki suggests that she could be a goddess, and S her high priestess. S declines, but as they discuss the merits of vegetarianism, or the meaning of happiness, or morality, or just daily life, it soon becomes clear that the bond between them is a deep and complex one. The days of Suki s life are figured as leaves, which fall vividly but irrevocably into time s stream and are recollected with a wild tenderness by grieving S, who learns through the disciplines of meditation how to lose what is most loved. This beautiful narrative, both memoir and elegy, offers solace and celebration to everyone who has felt the trust that passes between a person and a beloved creature.

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Romance

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Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	19 décembre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789351186762
Langue	English

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Suniti Namjoshi

SUKI
Contents
Dedication
Deaf Eurydice
Part I: A Memoir

1: A Fearful Wight
2: Days
3 Rules and Commandments
4: A Moral Animal
5: The Spaceship
6: Darwin
7: Analogies
8: The Summit of her Ambition
9: Renaissance Entity
Part II: The Vipassana Trek

10: The Menagerie
11: Gambolling on the Grass
12: The Mouse Hole
13: Fleas
14: An Indian Story
15: Clever Monkey
16: The Story Fest
17: The Return
Follow Penguin
Copyright
For Gill and Martin who also loved Suki
Deaf Eurydice
For Suki d. 27 July 1997
Sometimes the murmur of longing is so tentative, and the thought of a caress so tangential, that the senses strain to hear what, after all, cannot be said. And it s then that
the temptation arises: to write a lie on the water, scribblings on sand, or to descry from the way the leaves moved and the light fell what shadows portend. This is twilight time, Orpheus time, Demeter time, when they call the long dead, and deaf Eurydice struggles to hear and hearing nothing, falls behind till her footfall makes no imprint save on the mind.
Part I

A MEMOIR
1
A Fearful Wight

I want to write down everything I can remember about Suki. Not to immortalize her (or myself). Books about cats are popular so she might gain a brief immortality, but brief immortality ? The vipassana teacher says one must have detachment. Vipassana is a form of Buddhist meditation - it means clear seeing . According to the teacher one is unhappy because one does not have what one wants. And one is unhappy because one loses what one was happy with. He says all the Hindu sages say so. Also the Buddha. Well, yes, but...
I realized how much I mattered to Suki (and therefore she to me?) when we came back from America. The Buddhist teacher tells a story about a great king who was a great vipassana meditator. He asked his queen who she loved best in the world. She was supposed to say, You, Sire, but she was also a great meditator, so she told the truth and said she loved herself. And the king - because he was a good chap and a great vipassana meditator - replied, I was thinking much the same thing myself, and wasn t cross with her at all.
So given these caveats and provisos Suki and I loved each other. Suki was lodged in a cattery when we went to America for a few weeks to teach a course or two and earn some money. The people who ran the cattery were kind: they sent me a photograph of her, and they cuddled her every day. They had peacocks in the garden, and heaters in every cell. We called it Suki s Hotel. But when I returned from America and brought Suki home, she looked like a creature who had regained paradise long after all hope had been lost. I half explained to Suki that cats do not understand paradise, or she overheard me thinking it. The following day, when she was a little recovered, she snapped at me. It doesn t much matter whether cats understand the Christian paradise or any other paradise. It doesn t even matter whether I agree with you that this is definitely a post-lapsarian universe and that you and I are living in a fallen world. Just don t do it again. Then she burrowed her face in my arm. I missed you, she said. And I you, I replied.
But the day after that when she was lying under the lilies, she murmured, You only love me because you re not afraid of me.
There may be some truth in that, I answered.
I had realized some time ago that I was a fearful wight -a frightened creature, like Chaucer s Cressida. Frightening things, e.g. floods, fires, giant crevasses, force nine gales, earthquakes that measured 7.9 on the Richter scale, all these things frightened me - to a reasonable extent; but people terrified me. I don t know if Suki realized that. She was also a fearful wight . The rages she flew into - especially at the vet s - and the murderous growls that issued from her throat were a sign of that. And she was a courageous wight too. Once she took on five cats while I was away. The cats had come with the new tenants next door. Fortunately, they moved away soon. My poor Suki. I found pieces of her fur on the grass.
True, we were both fearful; but when the fear didn t make us run away fast or paralyse us like rabbits caught in the headlights, it galvanize us into action. The idea was to look so confident and capable - capable of almost anything - that no one would dare mess with us. Once, after strapping her into a pretty red harness and attaching a lead, I took Suki for a walk. She terrorized all the dogs she could see. I m not sure how she did it. She was only tiny. I think she strained at the lead and growled from deep within her throat, Meat for the leopard! Meat for the panther! I eat stupid dogs!
I don t know if Suki was afraid of people. Of course she was. Consider what used to happen regularly at the vet s. Or consider the small boy who had been given Suki when she was still a kitten. He adored Suki and his elders adored him, and so he treated Suki as if she were his teddy bear or personal rag doll. In consequence he terrified Suki. When I came to live with them, I stopped all that. I pointed out that she was not, in fact, a toy animal, and they were entirely reasonable: they agreed that she was not. Well, perhaps not the boy - perhaps one needs to grow up before one can tell the difference between a plaything and a person.
Anyway, I was thinking all this and Suki was dozing or thinking whatever she was thinking, when she sat up and yawned and blinked at me in a solemn and friendly fashion. A little conversation, I thought. She s ready for a few seconds of conversation.
You know, she said lazily, I think you care about me because you are not threatened by me.
I squared up to that. And you? Do you love me because you are not afraid of me?
I thought I had phrased the question cleverly. She would probably have to say she was not afraid of me and that (therefore) she loved me. She could deny both, of course - fear as well as love - but the syntax made it harder. She beat me though. All she said was, I am not afraid of you.
You ought to be! I retorted. I m about ten or twenty or thirty times bigger than you!
How do you figure that? she asked, as though it was merely a matter of scientific interest.
Weight, I replied.

Let s face it, I told her one day. The reason we get on is because we re a pair of murderous animals and we acknowledge it. I had lapsed - once again - from being vegetarian and was trying to think profound and moral thoughts about the food chain.
Suki wasn t having any of it. I don t spend my time committing murder, she told me. I spend it sleeping.
Well, that s a waste of time!
When I sleep, I dream.
What do you dream about?
About life, she replied in a superior fashion. Dreams are a reflection of life, like the landscapes reflected in a lake. In my dreams I am ten times bigger than you, but I don t bully you or pick you up by the scruff of the neck. Well, I only do it when you re being naughty, and anyway, I support you underneath. On the whole I m nice to you and look after you and keep you out of mischief.
Oh, don t be absurd, Suki, I replied. How can I be naughty ? That s just a misunderstanding...
Precisely, she smiled.
I didn t want to quarrel with her. It was a day early in spring, the sun was shining and the grape hyacinths glowed like points of purple light. Listen, Suki! I had a dream in which the two of us were equal.
I m as equal as you are - at least in my own mind, she said slyly.
No, I mean really equal.
What? The same size?
I hadn t meant that, but I said, Yes, the same size.
Then what happened?
Well, there we were, me and my cat walking -
If we were equals, then I wasn t your cat, Suki interrupted.
Well, all right. There we were, me and my sister, walking -
I m not your sister! Suki interrupted.
I think of you as my sister, I said humbly.
Well, all right, Suki relented.
There we were walking down the road on our way to London to seek our fortune.
If I had really been as big as you, Suki muttered, the two of us would have taken up half the road. Or a circus trainer would have come along and tried to kidnap me.
You re ridiculous. And you make up the most absurd things.
I learnt it from you, she said. You told me that that s what being a writer means.
I said no such thing!
Anyway I don t want to seek my fortune. I like it down here.
What will you do for money? I asked nastily.
Cats don t need money, she replied loftily.
I was feeling cross enough to want to make her face brutal reality. The truth is, I told her, cats don t have money. You re dependent on me to feed you.
Yes, she replied equally nastily, and what does that say about life and death and the nature of the universe?
Then we didn t talk to each other for a whole hour, then we got bored and started talking again.

I have friends among my own kind, you know, Suki informed me one day. It s not as though I m dependent on you.
Oh yeah? Your own kind beat you up.
I beat em back, Suki said proudly. And anyway, you don t let me make friends with them. You re too possessive.
Who came running into the house the other day and dived into my arms?
That was different. I was running away from two ferocious dogs, a wolf and a bear.
A wolf and a bear? Are you sure half a dozen lions weren t also involved?
Yeah, half a dozen lions. You get the picture.
And which of these creatures were you planning to make friends with?
Not those creatures, fellow cats, Suki said impatiently.
Very well, I said somewhat huffily. The next time you summon me into the garden to shoo away someone, I won t come.
You haven t understood anything, Suki replied sorrowfully. I was trying to explain that I m not actually a misogynist or a misanthropist or a Disliker of Other Denizens of the Galaxy.
Dogs! I snapped. You hate all dogs.

I have done my very best to be fair to the species. Do you remember the time you sat in t