Shashi Tharoor - The Great Indian Novel

If you can treat both triumph and disaster

As impostors (but someone’s said this before)

You will have acted like a true master.’

Arjun turned, and his eyes were bright:

His jaw was firm, for he’d seen the light.

‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘Thanks, dear Krishna!

For playing vicar to my weak parishioner.

I was silly to be so irresolute.

Instead of thinking of the Spirit

And acting without heed to merit,

I’d wept and whined like a broken flute.

That’s all over now! I’m ready to act –

Let’s get the Opposition into an electoral pact!’

118

They did; as in Hastinapur before the Siege, the various Opposition factions got together in a People’s Front. They were joined soon enough by the rats (and the Rams) deserting Priya Duryodhani’s sinking ship, as well as by those of her erstwhile supporters, like Ashwathaman, whom she had mistreated and jailed during the Siege. The electoral battle raged intensely. Even I rose from my bed to deliver speeches in the hoarse voice of wisdom that age and late passion had given me.

Everyone took sides: there were few abstainers. Only the bureaucracy hesitated. This was, of course, in the fitness of things. Bureaucracy is, Ganapathi, simultaneously the most crippling of Indian diseases and the highest of Indian art-forms. No other country has elevated to such a pinnacle of refinement the quintuplication of procedures and the slow unfolding of delays. It is almost a philosophical statement about Indian society: everything has its place and takes its time, and must go through the ritual process of passing through a number of hands, each of which has an allotted function to perform in the endless chain. Every official act in our country has five more stages to it than anywhere else and takes five times more people to fulfil; but in the process it keeps five more sets of the potentially unemployed off the streets. The bureaucratic ethos dictated our administrators’ roles in the campaign as well. They stayed in their offices and waited for the outcome.

Nakul and Sahadev, like their peers, took no part in the political conflict. Both had been requested by Krishna, for reasons very similar to the Mahaguru’s in respect of Vidur all those years ago, to remain in their functions, but unlike Vidur our bureaucratic twins had not leapt to submit their resignations. Nakul, if truth be told, was still far from certain his resignation was warranted; he was cynical, or sophisticated, enough to think things could be worse. Sahadev’s honest rejection of the government’s domestic policies fell afoul of his diffidence. (Our diplomatic corps, Ganapathi, is full of sincere people who feel they are so out of touch with the masses they can only speak for them abroad.) Both agreed, therefore, with alacrity to stay cool in their jobs as the electoral flames blazed and crackled around them.

As for Bhim, there was a rumour at one stage that he might be tempted to intervene; but everyone urged against it, even Yudhishtir, and he remained in his military cantonment, keeping a baleful eye on the Kaurava campaign. I suspect, though, that he managed at least one leave. One morning when popular wrath against the excesses of the Siege was at its highest, Duhshasan was found tied to a tree not far from Delhi’s most famous red-light area. His pyjama trousers were down to his ankles, and the remainder of his elegant kurta-sherwani ensemble hung in tatters from his drooping shoulders. His bare behind was criss-crossed with the livid stripes of swelling red weals. He had, apparently, been mercilessly flogged just before dawn with a wet knotted sari whose pallav had then been flung derisively on to his genitals, to provide him with a shred of incongruous modesty.

The Duryodhani camp emitted muted howls of outrage. The Prime Minister even spoke darkly of assassination attempts by the forces of violence and anarchy upon her supporters. But Duhshasan himself proved singularly unwilling to press charges, or even to identify his aggressor. Nothing similar recurred, and the episode was soon forgotten. It left its only trace in the smile of Draupadi Mokrasi, the smile of a woman who knows she will not easily be tampered with again.

On election night I had another dream.

This was a dream of Arjun: of Arjun, perhaps, on his Himalayan wanderings during those months of self-imposed exile that had brought him his mentor and his wife. And in my dream Arjun sat on a rock, clad in the loincloth of penitence, his hair long and matted with neglect, his ribs prominent with starvation, his eyes red with ascetic wakefulness. Prayer and self-denial on the mountaintop, Ganapathi: how many of our legends have not portrayed this scene, as a hero seeks an ultimate boon from the gods?

But in my dream, no god appeared to disturb Arjun’s meditation. Instead, an animal shimmered across his consciousness, a Himalayan deer, dancing playfully before him as if offering herself to the starving man. The Arjun of my dream picked up his bow and shot the deer, but before he could pick up his trophy, a strange apparition interposed itself — a primitive hunter, dressed in bearskins, also bearing a bow. Before an astonished Arjun, the hunter picked up the deer, heaving it lightly on to his immense shoulders. Arjun protested, laying claim to his animal: in the clear wordlessness of the dream, the hunter spurned his imprecations. Arjun, enraged, shot his arrows, but the hunter contemptuously side-stepped them, and when the young hero flung himself bodily on the intruder, he found himself spinning back in my dream to crash senseless on to the ground. The hunter laughed. Arjun awoke, returned to his prayers, and invoked the name of the god to whom he had been offering his austerities: Shiva. And then, in the kind of transformation only a miracle or a dream can bring about, the hunter turned into the god. Shiva himself, most powerful of the gods, blue-skinned Shiva clad in gold instead of bearskin, with his hunter’s bow metamorphosed into a trident.

Arjun prostrated himself in my dream, begging forgiveness for having fought with no less a being than Shiva in his ignorance. And the god, victorious, pleased with the ascetic privations of his supplicant, forgave him and asked him to seek his boon. Arjun raised his head, all the power of his spirit shining through his gaze, and asked for the one favour Shiva had never before been called upon to grant — the use of Pashupata, the ultimate weapon, the absolute.

The god tried not to show his surprise: no one had dared to ask for such a potent instrument of destruction before, one which required no launchpad or silo, no control-panel or delivery-system, but could be imagined by the mind, primed with a thought, triggered by a word, and which flew to its target with the speed of divinity, inexorable, invincible, irresistible.

And Arjun said: ‘I know all this, but still I ask, O Shiva, for this weapon.’

And Shiva replied, his third eye opening, ‘It is yours.’

in my dream, Ganapathi, the very Himalayas shook with the gesture, the mountain ranges trembled as the knowledge of Pashupata descended to mortal hands, whole forests swayed like leaves, the wind howled, tremors passed through the earth. The figure of Shiva ascended to the heavens, atop a blazing golden chariot, emanating shafts of fire, dispersing singed clouds, and as the circle of flame made a halo for the chariot, Arjun rose to mount it. The stars shone in the lustre of the day, meteors fell and shot their sparks in fiery trails across the sky, the planets were illuminated, flaming spheres of transcendence, and still Arjun rose with the chariot, his unblinking gaze fixed on a spot on earth far below him. And just one word resounded like the echo of a thousand thunderclaps through the firmament: ‘Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!’