Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

"The paper? No."

Chatterjee unfolded the newspaper that had been lying near the sugar bowl. He handed it to me.

The lead story was datelined New York. The previous evening there had been a power failure, the worst since the 1965 total blackout. Almost as if on cue, looting erupted throughout the ghettos and poorer sections of the city. Thousands of people had taken part in seemingly mindless vandalism and theft. Mobs had gathered to cheer while entire families smashed store windows and ran off with television sets, clothing, and anything portable. Hundreds had been arrested, but the mayor's office and police spokesmen admitted that the police had been powerless in the face of the scope of the problem.

There were reprints of American editorials. Liberals saw it as a resurgence of social protest and decried the discrimination, poverty, and hunger that had provoked it. Conservative columnists acidly pointed out that hungry people don't steal stereo systems first and called for a crackdown in law enforcement. All of the reasoned editorials sounded hollow in light of the perverse randomness of the event. It was as if only a thin wall of electric lighting protected the great cities of the world from total barbarism.

I handed the paper to Amrita. "That's a hell of a thing, Mr. Chatterjee. Your point is well made. I certainly didn't want to sound self-righteous about Calcutta's problems."

Chatterjee smiled and steepled his fingers again. His glasses reflected gray glare and the dark shadow of my head. He nodded slightly. "As long as you understand that it is an urban problem, Mr. Luczak. A problem exacerbated by the degree of poverty here and by the nature of the immigrants who have flooded our city. Calcutta has been literally invaded by uneducated foreigners. Our problems are real but are not something unique to us."

I nodded silently.

"I don't agree," said Amrita.

Both Chatterjee and I turned in surprise. Amrita set the paper down with a quick flick of her wrist. "I don't agree at all, Mr. Chatterjee," she said. "I feel it is a cultural problem — one unique in many ways to India if not just to Calcutta."

"Oh?" said Chatterjee. He tapped his fingers together. Despite his smiling aplomb, it was obvious that he was surprised and irritated at being contradicted by a woman. "How do you mean, Mrs. Luczak?"

"Well, since it seems to be the time to illustrate hypotheses through the use of anecdotes," she said softly, "let me share two incidents that I observed yesterday."

"By all means." Chatterjee's smile held the tense undertones of a grimace.

"Yesterday I was having breakfast in the garden café of the Oberoi," she began. "Victoria and I were alone at our table, but there were many others in the restaurant. Several Air India pilots were at the next table. A few feet from us, an Untouchable woman was cutting the grass with hand clippers —"

"Please," said Chatterjee, and the grimace was visible now on the smooth features. "We prefer to say Scheduled Class person."

Amrita smiled. "Yes, I'm aware of that," she said. "Scheduled Class or Harijan, 'Beloved of God.' I grew up with the conventions. But they are mere euphemisms, as I'm sure you are well aware, Mr. Chatterjee. She was 'Scheduled Class' because she was born out of caste and will die there. Her children will almost certainly spend their lives performing the same menial jobs as she. She is Untouchable."

Chatterjee's smile was frozen but he did not interrupt again.

"At any rate, she was squatting, cutting grass a blade at a time, moving across the yard in what would be, for me at least, a very painful duck walk. No one took notice of her. She was as invisible as the weeds she was trimming.

"During the night, an electric line had fallen from the portico. It dropped across the courtyard lawn, but no one had thought to repair it or to shut off the current. Waiters ducked it on their way to the pool area. The Untouchable woman encountered it in her clipping and went to move it out of her way. It was not insulated.

"When she touched it, she was knocked backwards violently; but she could not let go of the wire. The pain must have been very great, but she let out only one terrible cry. She was literally writhing on the ground, being electrocuted before our eyes.

"I say 'our,' Mr. Chatterjee. The waiters stood by with their arms folded and watched. Workmen on a platform near the woman looked down without expression. One of the pilots near me made a small joke and turned back to his coffee.

"I'm not a quick-thinking person, Mr. Chatterjee. All of my life I've tended to let other people carry out even the simplest actions for me. I used to beg my sister to purchase train tickets for us. Even today, when Bobby and I order a pizza to be delivered, I insist on his placing the telephone call. But when half a minute had elapsed and it became obvious that the men in the courtyard — and there were at least a dozen — were not going to prevent this poor woman from being electrocuted, I acted. It did not take much thought or courage. There was a broom near the door. I used the wooden handle to move the wire from her hand."

I stared at my wife. Amrita had mentioned none of this to me. Chatterjee was nodding in a distracted way, but I found my voice first. "Was she badly hurt?"

"Evidently not," said Amrita. "There was talk of sending her to hospital, but fifteen minutes later she was cutting the grass once again."

"Yes, yes," said Chatterjee. "That is quite interesting but should not be taken out of context —"

"The second incident occurred only an hour or so after that," Amrita continued smoothly. "A friend and I were shopping for saris near the Elite Cinema. Traffic was backed up for blocks. An aged cow was standing in the middle of the street. People shouted and honked but no one tried to move it. Suddenly the cow began urinating, pouring a powerful stream into the street. There was a girl on the sidewalk near us — a very pretty girl, about fifteen years old, wearing a crisp white blouse and red kerchief. This girl immediately ran into the street, thrust her palm into the stream of urine, and splashed some on her forehead."

Leaves rustled in the silence. Chatterjee glanced at his wife and looked back at Amrita. His fingertips were tapping silently against each other. "That is the second incident?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Surely, Mrs. Luczak, even though you have been out of your country — India — since your childhood, you must remember the respect we bestow upon cows as symbols of our religion?"

"Yes."

"And you must know that not all people in India have the Westerner's . . . ah . . . horror at the idea of class differences."

"Yes."

"And did you know that urine . . . especially human urine . . . is thought by many here to have strong spiritual and medicinal properties? Did you know that our current Prime Minister, Mr. Moraji Desai, drinks several ounces of his own urine each morning?"

"Yes, I know that."

"Then, in all honesty, Mrs. Luczak, I do not see what your 'incidents' reveal except perhaps culture shock and a revulsion at your former culture's traditions."

Amrita shook her head. "Not just culture shock, Mr. Chatterjee. As a mathematician I tend to view different cultures rather abstractly, as adjoining sets with certain common elements. Or, if you will, as a series of human experiments as to how to live, think, and behave toward one another. Perhaps because of my own background, because I moved around so much as a child, I've felt a sense of some objectivity toward different cultures I've visited and lived in."

"Yes?"

"And, Mr. Chatterjee, I find some elements in India's set of cultural mind-sets that few other cultures have — or, if they did possess them, have not chosen to retain. I find in my own country here an ingrained racism that is probably beyond current comparison. I find here that the nonviolent philosophy which I was raised in — and feel most comfortable with — continues to be shattered by deliberate and callous acts of savagery by its proponents. And the fact that your prime minister drinks several glasses of his own urine each day, Mr. Chatterjee, does not commend the practice to me. Nor to most of the world. My father often reminded me that when the Mahatma went from village to village, the first thing he would preach would not be human brotherhood or anti-British stratagems or nonviolence, but the basics — the absolute basics — of human hygiene.