Girls! The Chicken Chronicles

Chapter Eleven

©2009 by Alice Walker

I am almost too excited to write to you this morning. Here’s why. We have been in India, in the state of Kerala, for almost four days. During that time, I had not seen a single chicken. Driving for two hours yesterday in order to take a boat through the backwaters of the state I almost despaired. Not a single chicken in all that time. What could be the meaning of this? It is true we saw three elephants; all in chains. This was very hard to bear. At one stop by the side of the road where a man was working with “his” elephant, we were invited to come close. I went up to the elephant, very old, very present, as elephants tend to be, and very patient. As they also have to be. I placed my hand on his side and it seemed to me I felt his entire being. Pulsing, throbbing, roiling with life, with thoughts, with emotions. It almost undid me, to tell you the truth. How could such a majestic being still be led about in chains, by a smiling human who asked for a donation? On the other hand, there’s widespread malnutrition in India, hunger, particularly among children, as there is in many parts of the world. Perhaps this “smiling” man is trying to feed his family. There were more elephants along the way and we bowed to them. But not one chicken. Where were they, we wondered?

Could it be they are all rounded up somewhere and raised as chickens are raised in America? In cages, without sufficient space or light? Fed abominable food and given drugs to make them grow faster than they are intended? Were they in coops behind each house? These were my wonderments.

On the boat, as we cruised waters that have looked the same for thousands of years, we were glad to encounter ducks, hundreds of them, at many turns in the river and along the edges of the spectacular lakes. These were fat and sleek, happily chomping on water hyacinths that threaten to take over the heavily boat traveled waterways. In fact, seeing the water hyacinth everywhere, even in the town of Cochin, which is also threaded with waterways, I thought of you. Would you like the taste of this plant? Would it be good for you? Should I try to sneak a bit of it back in my bags for you to taste? Would immigration nab me for bringing it in? Etc. Once my sweetheart smuggled fresh collard greens to me in Mexico, but it was a harrowing adventure we would not like to repeat!

I fell asleep thinking of the absence of your kin, and woke also with this on my mind.

And then, this morning, just as I was thinking of writing to you, I looked across from where our boat had moored for the night and there they were, your Indian cousins! First, I saw a father, a rooster, black with a red comb; then a mother, grayish and serious, with many tiny chicks. Then I began to see the rest of the community. They were all scratching away under the coconut trees and running along the edges of the raised paths that neatly separate the canals, lakes and rivers from the rice paddies that stretch into the horizon.

And so I write to you this morning with a light heart. There are free chickens here, as there are also free chickens in Hawaii, where I would so like to take you! But perhaps no free elephants. Which reminds me of what I think you’d like about elephants. You’d like their feet and how so much edible stuff appears to gather in the crevices between cuticles and toenails.

With love,

Mommy

P.S. More good news! According to a new friend who grew up in Southern India* there are indeed free elephants, in the jungles, still roaming about in herds; there are also “rogue” elephants that terrorize the humans who try to enslave them. Perhaps fate will deliver a meeting or at least a viewing of these militants before I return home.

*Arundhati Roy