Mooot Point

The knock wasn’t urgent, but it was deliberate. Three short raps. A pause. Then a thud, heavier this time. Mr. Chandu paused mid-sip of his morning tea, the rim of the steel tumbler grazing his lip.

Another knock, this one with the authority of someone who was not used to waiting.

He slipped his feet into sandals, muttering something about government men and lost directions, and shuffled toward the door.

The moment he cracked it open, they spilled in. Four of them, all draped in oddly uniform shades of cowhide—light, tanned, with dark patches at the elbows. The man in front was round in the middle, his paunch taut like a drum beneath his shirt, which he hadn’t bothered to button past the third. His moustache curled at both ends, more alive than any expression on his face.

“No time to waste,” the man barked. “Start inside. That way.”

He gestured, and the two behind him filed in like they had rehearsed it.

“Excuse me?” Chandu’s voice cracked slightly.

“Where’s your toilet?”

“In the back but—what is this?”

“New installation. Government orders.” The man twirled the end of his moustache once, twice, like a habit more than a thought. “Old model’s incompatible with the Reader. Won’t pick up anything.”

“Incompatible with what?”

“The bowl. It won’t scan your... emissions.”

Chandu stared.

“You can’t just barge in and break—this isn’t legal.”

The man stopped mid-twirl and smiled, a dry, humourless curve. “Are you legal?”

That silenced Chandu. For a moment. Then he darted to the side cabinet, rummaging through a worn folder, papers folded and refolded until they held memory. He pulled out a stamped sheet, slightly damp at one corner.

“Now I am,” he said, holding it out.

The man barely glanced at it before pulling out a fresh document from his back pocket. “So is this,” he said, handing it over.

It was thinner than Chandu’s, glossier. New Law Number 783/B: Mandatory Biometric Surveillance of Digestive Output in Residential Zones for Compliance with the Sacred Dietary Act, 2050.

“This is insane,” Chandu muttered.

“Not insane,” the man corrected, already halfway to the bathroom. “Sacred. Every morning before your... deposit, place your chin over the rim. The scan is retina-linked. Bowl knows who you are.”

“And then?”

“Then it checks. You’ve been eating what you’re told to eat, no?”

He didn’t wait for the answer. A crash followed. Chandu winced.

Something porcelain had shattered.

***

It happened just as the milkman was turning the corner. Same knock pattern. This time louder, less rehearsed.

Three men again, though the paunch was larger now and the moustache glossier—oiled into perfect curls. Their uniforms looked newer too, shinier patches of cowhide stitched with what looked suspiciously like embroidery.

Mr. Chandu had just stepped out into the corridor with a packet of detergent when he heard his name.

“Chandu Kumar, under Section 9 of the Sacred Diet Act, you are being detained.”

He blinked. “For what?”

“You know what,” the moustache man said.

“No, I really don’t—”

“Non-compliant matter detected.”

One of them grabbed his arm. Chandu twisted away. “What matter?”

“Bovine.”

That one word changed everything.

Neighbours emerged from behind half-shut windows and balcony grill. A few came down to the landing. Someone laughed. Someone else recorded.

“I didn’t eat anything—”

“We don't need a confession. We’ve got your data.”

They clasped the cuffs around his wrists. They were a dull metal, warm from use.

“You’re making a mistake.”

The moustache twitched. “Could be. But it’s not ours.”

As they led him down the stairs, Chandu caught a glimpse of his own door still swinging open, the Reader blinking quietly in the shadows of the bathroom, waiting for the next face.

***

By the time the warrant reached his desk, he’d already heard the rumours.

V. Ghoshal creator of the Act —had dismissed them with a scoff, muttered something about planted stories by anti-national stomachs. But now he sat, shirt unbuttoned as always, moustache stiff and suspiciously still, staring at the thin slip of paper.

Mandatory random sampling, it said. Signed off by the Oversight Unit, with a red stamp that couldn’t be intercepted.

He called for his aide. No answer.

Outside, someone knocked. Just once.

He opened the door himself.

Same cowhide uniforms. Fewer smiles now.

“It’s routine,” said the younger one, the one, “It’ll only take a moment.”

They led him to his own Reader-fitted commode, recently installed, never used.

He leaned in, chin over the rim, nostrils flaring. The bowl blinked. Once. Twice. Then a flat green light.

Three days later, the results came in.

Trace elements: bovine. Consistent with illicit ingestion.

He sat very still in the examination chamber, surrounded by silence and soft humming machines.

“I haven’t had meat in years,” he said aloud, though no one had asked.

The lab technician shrugged without looking up. “You should see the cows. Half of them are mad. It spreads through these dung bars. Sometimes urine. One lick of the wrong brick, and—”

“Mad cow?” Ghoshal asked.

“Yes sir.”

His moustache drooped a little.

He didn’t speak on the way back. The sun was setting behind the building as the entourage arrived, same knock, same cuffs.

“But it’s not my fault,” he said as they led him away. “It’s the cows. They were contaminated.”

The man in front looked at him, eyes soft with something close to sympathy.

“Doesn’t matter.”

Ghoshal stared. “I made the law.”

The cuffs clicked shut.

“Exactly,” the man said. “Which is why…” He paused, moustache twitching ever so slightly. “It’s all a mooot point now.”

***

Bowl No. 418

Long after the trial—if it could be called that—the Reader in Mr. Chandu’s flat whirred in silence. The bathroom tiles cracked slowly around it, as if recoiling from something they couldn’t name.

No one sealed the room. No one needed to. A fresh tenant moved in two weeks later.

She ignored the device at first. Too many buttons. Too many lights. The manual sat unread in the kitchen drawer, under spoons that had bent slightly from overuse.

On the third morning, the bowl blinked to life as she approached.

Welcome, Citizen.

She froze.

It scanned her anyway.

Diet Compliant. Digestive Health: Moderate. Bowel Integrity: Undetermined.

She flushed, more out of reflex than relief.

In the flat above, another bowl lit up. Then another in the building opposite.

By nightfall, the city glowed from within—bathrooms pulsing quietly like hearts, each one watching, recording, deciding.

Somewhere far away, in a quiet compound where grass refused to grow, a lone cow stood by a fence. It blinked once. Mooed. Then walked in slow, deliberate circles.