The Beached Whale

by VRINDA BALIGA

Two morning joggers see it first.

The looming eighty-foot-long cetacean, flopped on the sand, the waves lapping weakly against its glistening skin as though paying obeisance to a fallen lord.

For a few surreal moments, it seems to them they’ve entered a different eon, that some ancient leviathan has emerged from the sea. Then, gathering their wits, they approach it slowly, uncertainly.

It doesn’t take long from there. Phones and cameras. OB vans and television crews. In a world that’s ever on the lookout for the next high, the next novelty, the next diversion, the next social media update, the next viral video, the stranded whale ticks all the boxes. By the time the conservationists arrive, the whale is already trending on social media. Selfies float around of people touching, stroking the whale, some even straddling it like it were a hunting trophy. Never mind that it is still alive.

Sathasivan wakes in the middle of the night, his throat dry and itchy. The ceiling fan has stopped; it’s the absence of white noise that has awoken him. Yet another of the crippling power cuts that have plagued the city all summer.  He swats ineffectually at the buzzing near his right ear. He left the windows open, but all they seem to have let in are the mosquitoes; there is no hint of a breeze. With a groan, he sits up, swings his feet slowly to the ground. His head feels heavy.  He takes a drink of water from the bottle on the bedside stand.

Stepping out onto the balcony, he looks down upon the parched city. Even at this time of night, the air settles upon it like a hot, heavy blanket. Far below, water tankers scurry surreptitiously down the streets like little dung beetles hauling their dubious cargo. Illegal, every last one of them. They come into the city at night, side-stepping the law, bearing water from farm wells, irrigation canals, agricultural ponds, bore wells, sucking the countryside dry to slake the thirst of the city. Ten floors below, he can see a tanker regurgitating its contents into the storage tanks of his own apartment building.

Tomorrow there will be water. Maybe even for an hour, if they’re lucky.

The monsoon has failed for three consecutive years. The first year or two, the city remained aloof of the crisis, barely glancing at intermittent reports that slipped in through the gaps of the standard news coverage of election rallies and international relations and corruption scandals and celebrity news. Incidents of wild animals straying into human territory. A leopard killing cattle. A herd of elephants wreaking havoc in villages and fields. Children being swallowed up by bore wells that have run dry and been abandoned, young children small enough to slip through their narrow gullets—a four-year-old left unattended by his farm laborer parents, a six-year-old playing catch with friends, a three-year-old straying away from her hut. Nobody asked why there were so many bore wells being abandoned. Nobody asked what had brought the animals out from the safety of the jungle. As long as the images—those ubiquitous, almost clichéd images of women walking miles with pots balanced on their heads, of children missing school to forage for water, of farmers lamenting their failed crops, of cattle sold at throwaway prices for lack of fodder and water, of villages lying abandoned and desolate, emptied of the people they can no longer support—remained safely on the other side of the television screen, this was a faraway problem of some distant others. The city imagined itself an oasis, even if its surroundings were turning into a desert.

But, slowly, steadily, the crisis spread its tentacles. The scarcity flowed out of forests and villages towards the towns; reservoirs hit dead storage, hydroelectric power projects failed, power outages hit industries. It seeped into the city through the neighborhoods of the poor, marking its presence in the long queues of pots and buckets at the hand pumps. But soon, its rising tide had reached the middle class. Quarrels at communal water taps spread to residents’ WhatsApp groups in apartment complexes, as 24-7 water supply dwindled to six hours, then two each in the morning and evening, then two in all, then one, then half an hour. Real estate shriveled in value like the crops in drought-hit fields as dire reports started pouring in of the city running dry. 

Now, in its fourth year, the crisis has long conquered the high walls of ivory towers, breached the levee of the television screen, and poured into the living rooms of the privileged.

In river deltas, migratory birds arrive, travelling thousands of miles, bound by habit and instinct, only to find their nesting grounds parched and bare. They perch atop straggly trees, dazed and befuddled, unequipped by nature to cope with this eventuality. And in high-rise buildings across the city, people perch in their dried-up apartments, similarly encumbered, unable to decide where to go, unable to understand how their gated communities have failed to keep this particular crisis out, unable to comprehend how the problems of others have come to be their own. 

Despite the heat, Sathasivan shivers. The heaviness in his head is a sure sign of a fever coming on. That’s the last thing he needs right now. He rummages in the medicine cabinet. The blister pack of Crocin has only one tablet left. He swallows it down with a glassful of water, making a mental note to get a fresh strip from the pharmacy the next day. Returning to bed, he glances at the bedside clock. 3:30 a.m. The water, when they manage to get enough through the illicit tankers, is released at seven in the morning. Three and a half hours to go. His phone blinks in the dark. Out of habit, he picks it up and peers at the screen. Just a notification from a news app. Yet another report on the whale. He first saw the story the previous day and clicked on a few related links. By now, some user analytics algorithm has locked onto his fleeting interest and his news feed is full of updates about the stranded whale. He lies back in bed and idly flips through the news report.

“Speculation is still rife about what could have caused this adult blue whale to strand itself,” it reads. The accompanying picture shows the whale now left fully exposed on the sand by the low tide. Rescuers pour buckets of water over its body even as the crowds in the background jostle for a better look. “The use of sonar in the recent naval training exercises may be a likely cause—”

He opens a link and the words give way to a satellite map with the whale’s location pinpointed by a red marker. His own city lies hundreds of miles away from the whale in the real world, but a mere pinch and swipe on the smart phone screen brings him to it. In the satellite image from far above, the city’s face looks as ordinary as that of any other. Zoom in, though, and the wrinkles come into focus, then the ugly blemishes, the scarred, blistered skin, and finally the cancerous cells. 

There is no marker on the map here, yet it is another leviathan, this city, battered by the sun, cooking in its own juices, craving water.

Sathasivan wakes to the insistent sound of drilling. He sits up with a start and a sharp pain shoots through his temple. His forehead is hot to the touch, his body stiff. Groaning, he glances at the time. 10 o’clock. All thoughts of discomfort vanish from his mind as he rushes to the kitchen and turns on the tap. The thin trickle dries up in seconds. He has missed the water.

By late afternoon, Sathasivan has a raging fever and a splitting headache. He has shut all the windows against the swirling dust, and the television is on, yet it feels like the drilling bit outside is boring a hole right through his brain. Bore well drilling rigs, like the one stationed beside his building, are all over the city. Like incompetent nurses, they jab at the earth, looking for that elusive vein of water to tap into. Five hundred feet, eight hundred feet, twelve hundred feet they go, and still come up dry.

On the television, a debate rages with six talking heads shouting over one another.

“. . . It’s a disgrace. Water is a basic necessity . . .”

“. . . so-called global city . . .”

“. . . right to life . . .”

“. . . maybe, in the next elections we should elect the rain-gods to power . . .”

“. . . at this rate . . . will have to be evacuated . . .”

Sathasivan picks up the remote and surfs channels. With the windows closed, the air in the room is stifling. The only drinking water in the house is filled in two plastic water bottles lined up on the coffee table. He feels a wave of dizziness wash over him. He should have gone out for the paracetamol tablets in the morning; instead he allowed the noise and dust and the searing heat to discourage him from stepping outside. Perhaps, later in the evening when the heat outside is not so bad . . .

He pauses at an international news channel.

“The attempt to re-float the whale and lead it into deeper waters, I’m told, will begin in a short while. Time, as we know, is of the essence for any chance of survival—”

The power goes off and the television screen sputters out. Sighing, he lies back on the cushion and closes his eyes, letting his thoughts wander.

A fish out of water. An idiom literally translated to reality. But this stranded whale is no fish flapping weakly on the deck of a fishing boat, fighting for oxygen as it slowly asphyxiates to death. If there is one thing the whale does not lack, it is oxygen. 

“The whale is a mammal whose ancestors once walked on land. When it made the water its home, it carried with it some of its ancient traits. The need for air, for one. Like a human swimmer, a whale has to surface once in a while for air. Hard to believe, but, without air, this majestic creature of the sea can drown in water just like you and me.” Words from a lifetime ago come suddenly to mind, transporting him back to Ramdas Sir’s classroom in the village school. Sathasivan smiles weakly at the memory. High-spirited, ever-curious, indomitable Ramdas Sir. Despite the crusty principal who was always upbraiding him for teaching his students things that were “out of syllabus,” he had persisted in bringing dinosaurs and mammoths, galaxies and black holes into his classes and seen them come alive in the minds of his students.

And today, long after the contents of his school textbooks have been wiped clean from Sathasivan’s memory, it’s those very “extraneous” things that Ramdas Sir had spoken about, the bits and pieces of trivia he’d hoarded, the stories he’d told in a sunny classroom six decades ago, that remain fresh as ever.

And with them come other memories—the schoolhouse, the green paddy fields surrounding it, the long dirt track down which his friends and he raced each other to the river, his home with the courtyard shaded by the mango trees, the papaya, the neem, the jackfruit.

“This is where all the opportunity is,” he had told Lata, when he had brought her to the city after their marriage. “The city is the future.”

They had exchanged the open fields for this 1,800-square-foot unit, ten floors above the ground, squeezed in amongst a thousand other units like itself, traded generations’ worth of friendships for neighbors who were strangers.

Why did the whale approach land? Was it heeding a vaguely remembered call from its ancient ancestry? Did it think it was coming home? But sides can’t be changed on a whim. By now the sea has already staked its claim on the creature, left its indelible mark on its anatomy. It is not the oxygen in the water that the whale needs, but the water itself—the buoyancy of seawater to bear its weight. On land, it is its own enemy; with every passing minute its organs are slowly being crushed under their own weight.

It begins to get dark. Sathasivan finds himself getting drowsy. Water, he remembers with a start. He is down to the last bottle. He has to get water. And tablets too. A little later, he tells himself, feeling too weak to get up. When he feels a little better . . .

A whale rests by shutting down only one hemisphere of its brain at a time, he recalls vaguely as he drifts off to sleep; the other remains alert to remind it to come up for breath, to keep it from drowning in its sleep.

It is well past midnight when he wakes. Struggling past layers of fevered haze, he finally breaks the surface of consciousness. His head is in a vice of pain and it takes an effort to sit up. The power is back on, but he has no strength to get up and turn on the lights. The light from the television casts an eerie, flickering glow across the walls.

“. . . failed attempt to re-float the stranded whale . . .”

He takes a drink of water. Only half a bottle remains.

“. . . released in deep water, it returned to the shore of its own volition . . .”

He should call someone, ask for help. Perhaps one of the neighbors could spare him some water. But whom can he call at this hour? He doesn’t know many people in the building. Not well enough, at least, that he can take the liberty to call them at such a late hour. He has always kept to himself, left it to Lata to build friendships and connections in the building. Lata would have known whom to call. But Lata is gone now. He is all alone.

“. . . cannot last another day on land. The kinder thing to do, rescuers say, is to put it out of its misery . . .”

He lies back on the couch, overcome by exhaustion. Ramdas Sir once read a story in class about a solitary sea monster that mistakes the sound of the foghorn from a distant lighthouse for one of its own kind. It emerges from the depths in hope and longing, only to find a cold brick structure, unresponsive to its fervent overtures.

Perhaps the whale stranding itself is no accident after all. Perhaps it’s an act of mourning, a willful act of suicide, a sentient decision of a being who has had enough. Whales are known to do such things. Entire pods will strand themselves just so they can be with a single stricken member, together in life and death. Why not, then, this solitary one, unable to come to terms with a life of loneliness?

He tosses on the couch, drifting in and out of fever-ravaged sleep. Sometimes there are voices from the television whispering in comforting companionship, sometimes there is only silence. Are they minutes that crawl past? Or hours? Or days? He has lost all track of time.

He dreams of the city slowly getting crushed to death under its own weight. He dreams of skimming pebbles across the waters of the river in his village. He can hear the splashes, taste them on his lips, feel his childhood enter his body. He imagines tears flowing down his cheeks, but when he feels his eyes, they are dry. The last bottle is empty. He should seek help. But instead, he feels a strange solidarity with the doomed whale. How is a whale killed? With a bullet to the head? An injection? He doesn’t know. Whatever it is, it will be a mercy all the same. An easier way to go. The voices lull him back to sleep.

When he wakes up again, he is drenched in sweat. He doesn’t know how long he has been lying there, but sometime over the last few hours, the fever seems to have broken. His throat is parched and his lips cracked. He pulls himself weakly to his feet. Supporting himself against the wall, he goes to the kitchen. He turns on the tap and, again, a miracle—water emerges in a copious flow. He drinks greedily from the tap. Ravenous, he hunts about in the kitchen cabinets and finds a packet of glucose biscuits. He eats, taking gulps of water in between. A semblance of strength returns. Enough to gather his wits and connect the pipe from the tap to the steel drum under the sink.  

Joy wells up in him as the drum fills slowly with water.

Back in the living room, a somber-faced news anchor is discussing the possibility of the monsoon failing this year too.

Sathasivan pays no attention. He stands leaning against the sink, one hand on the tap, feeling the vibration of water coming through. When the drum is three-fourths full, the water stops. It doesn’t matter. For now, this is enough. A three-fourths-full drum is enough.

The whale is no longer on the news. On a faraway beach, it lies in the sun as officials figure out what to do with its carcass. It is ignored by the joggers now, no longer a novelty. As it lies rotting, gases are building up within, collecting, accumulating, looking for an outlet. Eventually, when a sanitation worker tries to insert a hook into its belly to haul the carcass away for disposal, its belly will suddenly, unexpectedly, explode, spewing blood and rotting flesh all over the sand in a final mark of protest.