Shashi Tharoor - The Great Indian Novel

‘I have never forsaken any person or creature who has been faithful to me,’ Yudhishtir said. ‘I will not start now. Goodbye.’

And as he looked down at the little dog, it transformed itself, in my dream, into the resplendent Dharma, god of justice and righteousness. Yudhishtir’s true father.

‘You have passed the test, my son,’ Dharma proclaimed. ‘Come with me to claim History’s reward.’

The three of them boarded Kaalam’s cloudy chariot and floated serenely to History’s court. There Yudhishtir had his first shock: for seated on a golden throne, fanned by nubile attendants, sat his late tormentor, Priya Duryodhani.

‘I don’t understand,’ he stammered when he had caught his breath. ‘This tyrant, this destroyer of people and institutions, this persecutor of truth and democracy, seated like this on a golden throne? I do not wish to see her face! Take me to where my brothers are, where Draupadi is.’

‘History’s judgements are not so easily made, my son,’ Dharma replied. ‘To some, Duryodhani is a revered figure, a saviour of India, a Joan of Arc burned at the democratic stake by the ignorant and the prejudiced. Abandon your old bitterness here, Yudhishtir. There are no enmities at History’s court.’

‘Where are my brothers?’ Yudhishtir asked stubbornly. ‘And my pure and long-suffering wife? Why don’t I see them here, where Duryodhani holds court?’

‘They are in a separate place, my son,’ said Dharma. ‘If that is where you wish to go, I shall take you.’

He led Yudhishtir down a rough and pitted pathway, over rubble and broken glass. The pair picked their way through brambles and strings of barbed wire, past rotting vegetation and smouldering pyres. Yudhishtir braved the smoke, the increasing heat, the stench of animal decomposition. Mosquitoes buzzed about his ears. His feet struck rock and sometimes bone. But still, in my dream, he trudged unwaveringly on.

Dharma stopped suddenly. ‘Here we are,’ he said, though they seemed to have arrived nowhere in particular. The darkness closed in round Yudhishtir like the clammy hands of a cadaver. Despite the intense heat, he shivered.

And then a wail rose around him from the darkness, a cry joined by another and yet another, until Yudhishtir’s mind and mine seemed nothing but the echo-chamber for a plaintive, continuous lament. As it went on he could make out the voices begging pitifully for his help — Bhim’s, Arjun’s, the twins’, even Draupadi’s. .

‘What is the meaning of this?’ he burst out. ‘Why are my brothers and my wife here, in this foul blackness, while Duryodhani enjoys the luxuries of posthumous adulation? Have I gone mad, or has the world ceased to mean anything?’

‘You are quite sane, my son,’ Dharma said calmly. ‘And you can prove your sanity by leaving this noxious place with me. I only brought you here because you asked for it. You do not belong here, Yudhishtir.’

‘But nor do they!’ Yudhishtir expostulated. ‘What wrong have they done that they should suffer like this? Go — I shall stay with them, and share their unmerited suffering.’

At these words, the darkness lifted, the filth and the stench disappeared. Yudhishtir’s brow was cooled by a gentle breeze and his senses calmed by a fragrant aroma of freshly flowering blossoms, as his eyes opened to a refulgent assembly of personages from our story.

Yes, Ganapathi, they were all there in my dream: gentle Draupadi and genteel Drewpad, boisterous Bhim and blustery Sir Richard, grim Gandhari and grimacing Shikhandin; the Karnistanis and the Kauravas; the British and the brutish; pale Pandu embracing his wives; blind Dhritarashtra and blond Georgina. And they were smiling, and laughing, and clapping. ‘You have passed your last test, Yudhishtir!’ Dharma proclaimed. ‘It was all an illusion, my son. You will no more be condemned to an eternity of misery than Duryodhani will enjoy perpetual contentment. Everyone must have at least a glimpse of the other world; the fortunate man samples hell first, the better to enjoy the taste of paradise that follows. All those you see around you have passed through these portals before; tomorrow you will stand amongst them to greet a new entrant as he comes in. And the illusions will go on.’

‘The tests you put me through,’ Yudhishtir asked, frowning. ‘Has everyone here gone through them?’

‘Yes, but very few have passed them as you have,’ Dharma said.

‘And what were they meant to prove?’

‘Prove?’ Dharma seemed vaguely puzzled. ‘Only the eternal importance of dharma.’

‘To what end? If it makes no difference to all these people, who all have their place here. .’

‘Everyone,’ Dharma said, ‘finds his place in history, even those who have failed to observe dharma. But it is essential to recognize virtue and righteousness, and to praise him who, like yourself, has consistently upheld dharma.’

‘Why?’ Yudhishtir asked.

‘What do you mean,’ Dharma replied irritably, ‘ “why”?’

‘I mean why?’ Yudhishtir replied, addressing everyone gathered before him. ‘What purpose has it served? Has my righteousness helped either me, my wife, my family or my country? Does justice prevail in India, or in its history? What has adherence to dharma achieved in our own story?’

‘This is sacrilege,’ his preceptor breathed. ‘If there is one great Indian principle that has been handed down through the ages, it is that of the paramount importance of practising dharma at any price. Life itself is worthless without dharma. Only dharma is eternal.’

‘India is eternal,’ Yudhishtir said. ‘But the dharma appropriate for it at different stages of its evolution has varied. I am sorry, but if there is one thing that is true today, it is that there are no classical verities valid for all time. I believed differently, and have paid the price of being defeated, humiliated, and reduced to irrelevance. It is too late for me to do anything about it: I have had my turn. But for too many generations now we have allowed ourselves to believe India had all the answers, if only it applied them correctly. Now I realize that we don’t even know all the questions.’

‘What are you saying?’ Dharma asked, and Yudhishtir saw to his astonishment that the resplendent deva beside him was changing slowly back into a dog.

‘No more certitudes,’ he called out desperately to the receding figure. ‘Accept doubt and diversity. Let each man live by his own code of conduct, so long as he has one. Derive your standards from the world around you and not from a heritage whose relevance must be constantly tested. Reject equally the sterility of ideologies and the passionate prescriptions of those who think themselves infallible. Uphold decency, worship humanity, affirm the basic values of our people — those which do not change — and leave the rest alone. Admit that there is more than one Truth, more than one Right, more than one dharma. .’

I woke up to the echo of a vain and frantic barking.

I woke up, Ganapathi, to today’s India. To our land of computers and corruption, of myths and politicians and box-wallahs with moulded plastic briefcases. To an India beset with uncertainties, muddling chaotically through to the twenty-first century.

Your eyebrows and nose, Ganapathi, twist themselves into an elephantine question-mark. Have I, you seem to be asking, come to the end of my story? How forgetful you are: it was just the other day that I told you stories never end, they just continue somewhere else. In the hills and the plains, the hearths and the hearts, of India.

But my last dream, Ganapathi, leaves me with a far more severe problem. If it means anything, anything at all, it means that I have told my story so far from a completely mistaken perspective. I have thought about it, Ganapathi, and I realize I have no choice. I must retell it.