The only thing Kannappa loved more than all the gold and women and possessions he had appropriated was his daughter Meenamma. The bandit had returned home one evening to find her gone. She had left without warning or word. And she had taken with her all the gold, nishkaas, precious stones and metals in his coffers. But, for the first time in his life, Kannappa cared nothing for the wealth that had been stolen from him. His devastation had everything to do with the fact that his daughter had left him.
A few of his men had spotted the girl riding out of Chottanikkara, but no one knew where she was headed. They had noticed the heavy sacks strapped to her horse, but had not realised that she was riding away with their leader’s fortune, or even that she was fleeing. Kannappa had searched every village in the region, season after season, begging the very villagers he had once terrorised for any news of his daughter. But she had vanished, and for all his power there was nothing he could do to track her down. Broken, he disbanded his private army of murderers and thieves, gave away the fields and other possessions he owned to the villagers.
He dismantled his mansion and built in its place a small hut for himself. He lived the austere life of a penitent, eschewing all the luxuries that he had once craved, making all manner of sacrifices to the gods, asking only for the return of his daughter. But if the gods had heard him they made no sign of having done so.
The villagers of Chottanikkara had been wary at first, and kept their distance from him. They refused to believe that Kannappa had changed, that the bandit who terrorised them for so long was truly reformed and repenting his sins. They suspected it was an act, a trap that Kannappa would spring when it suited him. However, their perception of him had changed one day. While foraging in the wilderness near his hut, Kannappa had chanced upon a few frightened villagers cowering in the branches of a jamun tree, about to be eaten by a demon that had left the marubhoomi in search of prey.
It was late in the evening; the twilight was almost gone. The iron weapons the villagers were never without lay at the foot of the tree, where they had dropped them in their haste to climb to safety. Without a moment’s hesitation, Kannappa had lunged at the demon with the iron axe he had been using to cut firewood. He had driven it away, eventually, but not before being gravely injured and losing a great amount of blood. The villagers had taken him into their homes and nursed him back to health. Moved by Kannappa’s act of selflessness, the inhabitants of Chottanikkara were finally convinced that he had changed for good, and accepted him as one of their own.
She thought of all this as she looked upon the man she called Father.
“You have grown so frail,” she said, reaching out to touch his face. “Please eat some of this fish with me.” Kannappa said nothing. He looked at her fondly, put his fingers over her hand and held it for a few moments before he let go.
As she sat down to eat, he set himself down beside her and began fanning her with palm fronds.
“So what was it last night?” he asked.
“A brahmarakshasa,” she said through a full mouth. The fish was delicious. Kannappa had cooked a long silver aiykoora that he had garnished with pepper, shredded coconut and cumin. She had not realised how hungry she was until she ate the first mouthful. She stuffed another piece into her mouth, topping it with a handful of crisp spinach and warm lentils.
“He was strong, Kannappa. Intelligent, too, for he was a priest when he was alive.” Devi stopped herself from telling him about the demon’s dying words. She did not want to worry him.
Her father snorted. “But not smart enough to stay in the marubhoomi. They never learn, do they, these demons?” he said. “We have forbidden them to come into our land, yet they do not listen...You hunt them down, Devi, show them they are not welcome in our lands, yet they keep coming, one after the other, each more reckless and foolish and stubborn than the one before it. Why do they not heed our warning?”
Devi smiled sadly. “I suppose we will never be rid of them because they were once like us...men and women who had hopes and dreams. But when they died prematurely and violently, they could not go peacefully into the next cycle of their lives, but had to return to this one as abominations filled with evil. We know they can’t stay away because they lust for what we have, and they also want to exact revenge for the injustices done to them when they were still among the living. They desire not only our flesh and blood but are driven by forces beyond their comprehension, which will allow them no rest, no peace, until they are dispatched once and for all. And their nature being what they are, they will kill and maim, they cannot help themselves.”
“These demons are not too different from me, then,” Kannappa muttered uneasily. The lines on his face were growing more prominent, as he spoke. “I was like them too. I took what I wanted, I killed and ruined lives, revelled in the power I held over people. I was a demon too. Just as abhorred, just as feared, just as savage.”
His eyes went to the face of Meenamma he had drawn on the wall above the cot. It had been there ever since Devi could remember, before she was even born. She had always woken up looking at it, the face of Kannappa’s daughter, the girl who would have been her sister. Meenamma’s face was painted with charcoal. Kannappa would often darken the portrait with moist soot from the kitchen stove so his daughter’s face would never fade from the walls of his hut.
“She never did like that I was a bandit. She used to plead with me to stop. But I never listened. Then, she left me,” he whispered, his eyes welling up with tears of pain and regret.
The face on the wall was that of a young girl with a small face, wide-set eyes and smiling mouth, a likeness of Meenamma on the day she disappeared from his life.
“You are not like them, the demons,” Devi said, clasping his hand. “You changed. You could feel the one thing that the demons will never feel, and that is remorse. You could do the one thing the demons will never do, no matter how many chances they are given, and that is reform. You have atoned for your sins. You chose to change. They will never change, not like you did. That is why they need someone like me. To bind them, to slay and expel them, because they will never stop on their own.”
Kannappa touched her cheek. “What would I do without you, Devi?” he said. “You always know what to say. You know what words will comfort this unhappy old man.”
“Gruel,” Devi said suddenly. She grinned as her father stared at her in confusion. “Gruel,” she repeated calmly. Then she pointed to the wood stove behind him. Kannappa turned to see that the gruel was boiling over in the earthen pot, running down its sides. “Gruel!” he leapt to his feet. By the time he had hobbled to the stove, most of the gruel had spilled to the floor. “You imp! You did not warn me on purpose so I would not have to eat it,” he grumbled under his breath.
“Perhaps,” Devi said. “Now, as I was saying, Father, let’s share the fish and rice.” She heaped his banana leaf with food.
He began to pick at it awkwardly. “Eat now, old man,” she scolded. “You need the strength more than I do.”
“You are one wild thing,” her father muttered with a smile. “Just as impish as the day I found you.”
“Perhaps you should have left me in the wild when you had the chance. To be raised by wolves and elephants and leopards,” she said.
“Perhaps, I should have, Devi. You would have fit right in with them,” he said, laughing.
It pleased Devi to hear her father laugh. As she watched him eat, she felt grateful that he had chosen to be her father.
Excerpted with permission from The Demon Hunter of Chottanikkara: A Supernatural Thriller, SV Sujatha, Aleph Book Company.