Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

‘I cannot,’ he said. ‘I was born and my mother held me up and said I was born for vengeance. I cannot flee.’

‘You know nothing about freedom,’ she said. ‘And even less about dharma.’

‘Still you must tell me.’

She sank to her knees. ‘Go find a mountaintop,’ she said. She leaned close to him and beckoned him forward and whispered in his ear for a long time.

‘Everything will become red,’ he said when she finished. ‘I will come back to you when it is finished.’

She shook her head. ‘I think I may be gone by the time you are finished.’

He knelt and took a fold of her dress and touched it to his forehead. Thank you, Mother.

‘And when Sanjay left the room, walking very quickly, the Begum Sumroo drooped her head onto her knees and wept,’ said Sandeep. His voice was cracked a little now from telling the story for so long, and his face was thin. ‘Begum Sumroo wept, and after a while her attendants crept back into the room, and one of her favourites scuttled up to her and laid her head on the Begum’s knee. Then the Begum began to stroke the girl’s head, and the skin on her hand was covered with fine wrinkles. The Begum Sumroo’s hair was white, her eyes were deep black, her face was lined and she had lost very many of her teeth. Her house was gold and very beautiful, and the birds flew over it and it was surrounded by mango trees and guava trees. This was the Begum Sumroo.’

‘The wicked Begum Sumroo,’ said the other monks.

‘Yes,’ said Sandeep. ‘And everything will become red.’

When Sanjay left the Begum’s house, he found Sunil waiting outside, and together they walked to the north; they went to Hansi, where in the ruins of the town — and it was ruined again — they found, scattered and sitting each alone in meditation, the remnants of Jahaj Jung’s unruly army. Sanjay spoke to them in the name of his father, George Thomas, and spoke to them of destiny and revenge; by now these soldiers were naked and bearded and matted, each of them was a monk. But when Sanjay spoke to them their radiant eyes filled with tears, and slowly passion entered their bodies, and anger filled their hearts, and they shook themselves wildly, and they left behind their huge delightful solitudes and said, we will come with you. So Sanjay, accompanied by Sunil and forty-seven ragged soldiers, walked to the hills of the north. They went first from the crowded plains into the abundant wilderness of the terai, and then up onto the slopes, where scattered villages hung precariously on the sharp ridges, but they left even this behind and came to the bare valleys of ice and rock, the crevasses and gorges through which the wind came like a blow. Here they stopped before a nameless peak, knotted and ugly, the sheets of rock coloured black and silver by icy water.

Sunil started up the slope, but Sanjay held his elbow and drew him back, pointing to a dark rift in the side of the mountain.

‘It was to be a mountaintop, I thought,’ said Sunil.

‘A top is too open for what we must do,’ said Sanjay. ‘We will do it down there.’

It was a cave: the entrance was a narrow slit, which opened into a huge cavern, into depths of darkness so deep that their voices were lost without echo.

‘It is here that we will do it,’ said Sanjay. ‘Sunil, wait outside and guard the door. Cover the entrance with rocks and bushes so that we might not be disturbed. And you, my friends, we are setting off on a great adventure. We will do this ourselves, but also for our compatriots. We will suffer, but for a great cause. In the end, we will triumph and our enemies will vanish from the battle-field. We will be invincible.’

Bowing, Sunil left, and Sanjay and his companions walked a little further into the cave, until they were completely in the dark, in the heart of the hill, their torches unable to dispel the illusion that they were falling endlessly through space.

‘Come, my brothers,’ said Sanjay. ‘Let us start.’

They sat in a circle, and in the middle they lit a small fire with sandalwood they had carried up from the plains. As the fragrant smoke curled up into the darkness they chanted together, ‘Death, come to me, come to me, Death.’ Then, when they had repeated this a thousand and one times, each of them, without stopping, drew a heavy sabre. Sanjay, his motion reflected around the circle, laid his left hand on the hard stone in front of him, raised the blade, and with a single blow took off his little finger. The shock wrenched him so that he dropped the sabre and faltered in the chanting, but really it never stopped, and when he grew used to the pain Sanjay picked up the little curl of flesh and tossed it into the fire with all the others. The flame flickered for a moment and then began to burn even more fiercely, and the smell of it filled Sanjay’s head. He held his hand to his chest and continued to chant. When it was time to take off the ring finger Sanjay managed without difficulty, but when it was the thumb he had to remember every insult he had ever suffered, not only from the English but every small hurt and pain of rejection and lost love that had ever lingered in him, every tiny bit of past misery to be able to bring the metal down on himself again. Now it seemed the fire was roaring inside his head, and through the tears in his eyes he could see dark shapes dancing on the smoke, and when he cut his elbow he shouted his agony and the cave replied with murmurs in a thousand languages and the chanting was shaking his body. Once he saw a face in front of him, one of his companions, one of Jahaj Jung’s wild men, now panicked and shouting, this is madness, madness, let us go, but he shook him off and felt on the floor for the sabre, and found only bone and foul rot. There was a spinning whirlwind filling the darkness with laughter and he saw clearly but seemed to be alone in the cave, then he felt faces pressing on him, eyes and tongues and teeth of men and tigers and dogs, all noise and roaring, everything in the world screaming, but he was possessed by an enormous strength and he plucked off his toes one by one laughing and the fire bellowed like a living thing. There was a smell so heavy and wet with rot that he felt it slide up his nostrils. Then he heard a voice, what do you want, what do you want, but he did not reply because he wanted everything, and knew what he had to do for it. So he felt around him blindly, and found the sabre, hefted it in his hand, feeling his own unbelievable power, and then he awkwardly but surely held it to one side of his head, saying death come to me, and moved with such decision and quickness that he thought he had failed until he felt his head bounce on the floor like a ball and his body far away jetting blood.

He was alone. The cave was empty and he was sitting cross-legged, and for a moment he believed he had dreamt it all, but then he saw, where the fire had been, Yama kneeling, his head lowered, bleeding and bruised about his body. Yama raised his great black head, and said, panting, ‘You burn the three worlds with your depravities. What is it you want?’

Sanjay was still feeling for his body, which seemed intact to him.

‘Yes, it is all there,’ said Yama. ‘All except the first finger, which was the first horrible offering. I was brought here against my will. What is it you want?’

‘So I’ve beaten you after all,’ said Sanjay.

‘What is it you want, little man?’

‘I wish never to die. I wish to be hard as stone. I wish to be stronger than their machines.’

At this Yama looked at Sanjay, and the anger on his face slowly vanished, and was replaced by a feeling quite unrecognizable.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ said Sanjay.

‘Don’t do this.’

‘Listen, you miserable bag of wind, you creature who call yourself a god. Don’t tell me what to do. You have betrayed us. We lose because they are better. We lose because we live in a world of dreams, we lose because we are as women, as children. They win because they understand necessity. But I will beat them. I will surpass them.’