The village square is by a road that splits into three. It’s 7 a.m. on Saturday, the weekly market day in Konganapuram village about 30 km from Tamil Nadu’s Salem city. People are criss-crossing the road dragging reluctant goats, some have bags from where chickens peek out, and others are just doggedly making their way into the market to shop.

Stepping on sodden hay, shimmying past butting goats and jostling men cradling ducks, I reach a little open space where I see men holding roosters tied to strings. As the crowd surges, I see a man stooping to pick up a rooster and spread out its glistening wings. Then in one swift move, the rooster is turned upside down and its feet inspected before it is set down again. Some move ahead to the next seller, while others make small talk with the owner. “How about a fight?” they ask.

The owner agrees and leads the rooster to a makeshift ‘cockpit’ where another seller is already there with his rooster. The handlers have done the routine a thousand times: pick up the roosters and with a flourish, bring them beak to beak. The roosters are ready with their hackles bristling. The handlers step back, give a hard thump to the saddle and in one flawless motion, throw the roosters up in the air. The fowls, flapping their wings, lunge at each other. They collide mid-air, and then clawing each other, hit the ground. And in a flash they are at each other again. The handlers immediately separate the birds. A decision is made, the money changes hands, the buyer cradles his rooster, and walks away.

Sankaran pockets ₹1,500 and picks up the string tied to his last rooster. “Is that a good price?” I ask. “No,” he says. “Last Saturday I sold one for ₹3,500. But today, I was late and the rich buyers are gone.”

Buying the best

The market opens at 2 a.m. and in the darkness with the sound of roosters crowing, deals that sometimes touch ₹10,000 are closed.

Buyers from Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have already picked the best of the lot. A first-timer to the market, Badsha has come from Andhra’s Kadappa district and has bought two birds. His friend, a breeder in Andhra Pradesh, told him about the market. I peer into the beady eyes of the fowl he is holding. Soon it will be hurtling on a rickety bus to a new home.

A cock fight in progress   | Photo Credit: E. Lakshmi Narayanan

“Why Salem?” I ask Badsha. It’s the training, Salem roosters are well-trained, he says.

I bump into Kanaham, the only woman I can spot in this testosterone-filled enclosure. She has a rooster in her arms and tells me that she has already sold two for ₹3,000.

A buyer goes through the drill of checking for flaws like damaged wings or broken nails. He shakes his head and returns the rooster. “It’s old,” he says. The fowl, by now bored by the clamour, has his eyes half-shut. Kamalam ignores the man and tells me, “They are all middlemen. They will buy the roosters cheap and sell them in other States for as much as ₹10,000.” I ask her why he said it was ‘old’. She points to the spur, which is almost like a claw; then shows me another rooster led by her cousin, which has a soft nub for a spur. “As the rooster grows, so does the spur, till it nearly reaches the shape of another nail. But, she says, although her rooster is more than a year old, he is agile and strong. The man comes back, and now offers her ₹1,000. She refuses to budge and the man leaves.

Karthik from Coimbatore has arrived with his friend. He tells me he is a middleman. He will make a profit of at least ₹10,000 this week, he says, his huge bracelet glistening a burnished gold.

Thangaraj, who has bought two roosters this morning, is a marketing executive by day. His passion for rearing roosters takes up most of his free time, he says. He invites us to his home in Koranappati village, where rearing roosters is a family business in most homes.

Training begins

Once the chicks hatch, the trainer’s eagle eyes spot the most agile birds among the lot.

The chick has to have speed, the ability to jump high, and a mean streak running through its veins. And, within six months, as soon as the cockerel begins to crow, the training begins.

A typical day begins with taking the roosters to a nearby waterbody for a swim. Paddling strengthens the shanks and the underside of the rooster’s feet, which the bird uses to push its adversary. If the rooster’s spur is long and curved, then the force of the kick can tear the opponent’s breast apart. Punters, of course, do more: they tie a blade to the spur.

After the swim, the handlers arrange mock fights three times a day. The birds are fed soaked pearl millets, maize, broken almonds, and pistachio. Just before a match, the roosters are force-fed egg whites, believed to give the plumage a sheen and the rooster more strength.

These birds belong to the sturdy Aseel breed of chicken, which originated from Pakistan’s Sindh area, but they have become so nativised that they are now called Salem roosters. They are named according to the colour of their feathers.

The pure black ones with shimmering sickle feathers are called kaham (crow); the ones in various shades of midnight blue are called mayil (peacock). If looked after well, the birds can live up to 10 years.

So what happens when these birds are mortally wounded? Says Karunakaran, a breeder: “Salem mangoes sell for ₹100 a kilo and Salem rooster at ₹550. If you once taste this chicken curry, nothing else will ever come close.”