The Hen Obstetrician

My youngest sister is six years my junior, much petted and much loved, a source of joy to all and mild annoyance to me. Salomi had always been a child with an insatiable curiosity and a desire to learn. After her first few days at playschool, she had startled the family one night by reciting the entire English alphabet song in her sleep. She also had a predilection for certain foods- raw tomatoes, carrots, peas that magically disappeared when she insisted on helping mother de-shell them and eggs.

One summer, when Salomi was probably no less than three, we were idling away our vacation at my grandmother’s house in Vayalur. Grandmother raised poultry, a few goats, and some assorted cows and their calves. The house invariably became a little zoo every summer when we added our blessed number to the domestic Durrellian arrangement.

Every evening it was standard practice to count the eggs that the hens had laid after gathering them into their sleeping pens – large overturned baskets. The hens had their favourite spots inside the house which my aunt was familiar with. The egg gathering was a fifteen-minute task before preparations for dinner began. However, on the day in question, only two of the spots yielded eggs. The third spot remained empty. Puzzled, my aunt constituted a search party. As the oldest child in the family, naturally I was the general. Methodically, I deployed the search party of four - Salomi being excused because she was too endearing – to various nooks and crannies of the store room, the indoor kitchen, and the spare room. I entered the latter, lifted mats and luggage, searched under the one bed in the room and turned around to leave in utter dismay, when I spied something viscous of uncertain yellow-translucence trickling down the grinding stone in the furthest corner of the room. I approached it with great trepidation and saw a spot of blood on it and was almost finished yelling for my aunt and mother, when I turned to see little Salomi looking sadly at the mortar and smelling very funny. Like a bad egg.

Aunt and mother entered the room and further investigation revealed that it was indeed a broken egg, the missing egg, for close by lay the shell, prematurely shattered. It was at that moment one of my cousins ran in to inform that the black hen was missing. Confusion loomed at large, until my mother looked at Salomi who remained uncharacteristically quiet. Annoying older sister that I was, I cried out in a moment of divine inspiration – “It is Salomi”. My mother brushed aside my accusing finger (Salomi was darn cute as a child, remember), and summoned her forward to tell us what had transpired. Slowly, the truth came out.

Salomi while playing in the room looked up to see the black hen settle comfortably on the grinding stone. Moments later, something white and shiny appeared under its posterior, growing gradually larger. Remembering her lessons from playschool (cows give milk, hens give eggs, older sisters give away hand-me-downs) Salomi was curious and before she knew it, reached out for the tempting orb like Eve reaching for the apple. The hen, in utter shock of being offered obstetric services, fled in trauma. Its painful cackling scared poor Salomi out of her wits and she dropped the egg, wondering why it turned gooey instead of deliciously ready to eat as mother used to serve it during dinner.

The hen was never found. Salomi grew up to be a lawyer.