Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Rounded logs were brought to the site by barge and hauled up the steps of the ghat to form a track of four parallel rollers, ten feet across. A hundred and fifty feet above, where the track turned right from the broad steps into a narrower lane, logs were interlaid to create a gentle guiding curve. From here on, the linga would have to be carried diagonally, and it was necessary to work out an exact and elaborate drill to shift its position.

Long before birdsong on the appointed day, conches began to sound their pompous, plaintive, enchanted calls. The linga was bathed once more, and wrapped first in silk-cotton and then in jute matting. Over the thick brown jute huge ropes were attached, from which branched lesser ropes of varying length. Tens of thousands of marigold flowers were strewn on or stuck into the matting, and it was covered with rose petals. The small drum, the damaru of Shiva, began to sound its high, mesmerizing beat, and the priests kept up a continuous chant that rose for hours through a loudspeaker above the undulating clamour of the crowd.

At noon, in the great heat of the day, the period of greatest austerities, two hundred barefooted, barebacked young initiates of a great Shaivite akhara, five each on either side of the rollers on each of twenty steps, straining forward with the ropes biting into their shoulders, began to move the great linga. The logs creaked, the linga rolled slowly, uncomplainingly upwards, and from the chanting, singing, praying, chattering crowd rose a great gasp of awe.

The doms left their work at the cremation ghat to gaze with wonder at the linga moving slowly away, and the corpses burned on, unattended.

Only the dispossessed pujari and a small group of devotees cried out in distress.

Step by step the linga rolled upwards, pulled in controlled jerks from above. It was even pushed from below by a few men with crowbars. Every so often they inserted wedges beneath it so that the men hauling the linga could rest for a while.

The steep, irregular steps of the ghat burned the soles of their feet, the sun burned down on them from above, and they gasped with effort and from thirst. But their rhythm remained steady, and after an hour the linga had risen seventy feet above the Ganga.

The Raja of Marh, high on the steps, looked downwards with satisfaction and broke out into loud, joyous cries, almost roars, of ‘Har har Mahadeva!’ He was dressed in full white silken court dress despite the heat, his bulk was thickly beaded with pearls and sweat, and he carried a great golden trident in his right hand.

The young Rajkumar of Marh, an arrogant sneer on his face resembling that of his father, shouted ‘Faster! Faster!’ in a kind of possession. He thumped the young novitiates on their backs, excited beyond measure by the blood on their shoulders that had begun to ooze out from under the ropes.

The men tried to move faster. Their movement became more ragged.

The ropes on their shoulders, slippery with sweat and blood, had begun to lose some of their purchase.

At the curve where the steps narrowed into a lane, the linga had to be turned sideways. From here on, the Ganga would be seen no more.

On the outer side of the bend, a rope snapped, and a man staggered. The jerk caused a ripple of unequal stresses, and the linga shifted a little. Another rope ripped, and another, and the linga began to jolt. And now a wave of panic smashed through the formation.

‘Insert the wedges — insert the wedges!’

‘Don’t let go—’

‘Stay there — wait — don’t kill us—’

‘Get out — get out — we can’t hold it—’

‘Stand down — stand down a step — slacken the tension—’

‘Pull the rope—’

‘Release the ropes — you’ll be dragged down—’

‘Har har Mahadeva—’

‘Run — run for your lives—’

‘The wedges — the wedges—’

Another rope snapped, and another, as the linga shifted downwards very slightly, first this way, then that. The cries of the men in front as their bodies were snapped backwards on to the steps were interspersed with the quieter but still more dreadful sounds of the shifting and sliding of the monolith, and the creaking of the rollers beneath. The men below scrambled out of the way. The men above dropped their ropes in a bloodstained tangle, pulled their shocked and injured fellows to one side, and stared down at the orange linga, into the matting of which the marigold flowers had by now been completely crushed. The drumbeat halted. The crowd scattered, screaming in terror. The steps of the ghat below the linga were suddenly deserted, and, far below, the doms too fled from the ghat — as well as the relatives of the burning dead.

The linga protested against the hastily inserted wedges. But for half a minute, if it moved at all, the movement was infinitesimal.

Then it shifted. A wedge gave way. It shifted again and the other wedges slipped and it began slowly to roll down the way it had come.

Down the rollers rolled the great linga, past the next step, and the next, and the next, gathering speed as it rolled. The tree-trunks cracked under the impact of its weight, it veered to left and right, but it kept rolling on, down, down, swifter and swifter towards the Ganga, crushing the pujari who now stood in its downward path with his arms upraised, smashing into the burning pyres of the cremation ghat, and sinking into the water of the Ganga at last, down its submerged stone steps, and on to its muddy bed.

The Shiva-linga rested on the bed of the Ganga once more, the turbid waters passing over it, its bloodstains slowly washed away.

Dearest Kalpana,

This is written in haste because Varun is coming to Delhi at the end of February or so to attend the IAS interview, and we hope you and your father can put him up for a few days. It is like a dream come true, though only one out of five boys interviewed for the civil service is taken in. We can only hope and pray, such things are entirely in His hands. But Varun has squeezed through the first hurdle, since thousands of boys sit the written exams for the IAS and IFS and so few are asked to go to Delhi.

When the letter came intimating Varun of the interview, Arun refused to believe this, and used some strong language at the breakfast table, with Aparna there and the servants, who, I believe, understand every word. He said there must be some mistake, but it was true all right. I was not there, being in Brahmpur around the time of Lata and Haresh’s joyful news, but when Varun sent me a letter, I went to the expense of even booking a trunk call through to Calcutta from Pran’s house to congratulate my darling boy, and I made Varun tell me all the details and reactions, which he could because Arun and Meenakshi were not at home, they had gone out to a party as is quite usual. He sounded quite surprised, but I told him that in life one only gets what one deserves. Now D.V. he will surprise us in the interview once again. It is all up to you, dearest Kalpana, to make sure that he eats well, and is not nervous and is on his best behaviour and dressed to the nines. Also that he avoids bad company and alcohol, which I am sorry to say he is a little susceptible to. I know you will take care of him, he is so much in need of boosting up.

I am not writing any more news because I am in haste and also have given you the joyous news of Lata and Haresh in the previous letter to which I have yet had no answer or congratulations, but you must be busy, I know, with your father’s hip operation. I hope he is now fully recovered. It must be hard for him, he is so impatient with illness, and now he is himself experiencing it. And you must also take care of yourself. Health is truly the most precious possession.