Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

‘Don’t.’

‘Give it to me. I said you must give it to me. Must I do it again?’ Sanjay looked for his sword.

‘No,’ said Yama, his face wet with tears. ‘You have it already. You have become it.’

Sanjay rose to his feet, raised his hands above his head.

‘But,’ said Yama, ‘you must give me one last offering, to seal the bargain. You will be everything you want. You will never die. But you must give me, now, the thing that is most holy to you. Think about it carefully. You must give me that about yourself which is most precious to you. If you lie about what it is, your head will burst into a thousand pieces, and you will die now. But if you are able to do it you will have what you want.’

And Sanjay staggered two steps towards Yama, and they could not look away from each other.

‘My son,’ said Yama. ‘My son.’

But Sanjay reached up, opened his mouth and jammed his fist inside, caught his tongue which squirmed away, held it roughly and pulled, tore it out by the roots and flung it at Yama wet with blood. This time the pain was too great and Sanjay fell unconscious to the ground.

He was naked when he came to himself again. He pushed himself up into a more complete darkness than he had ever known, and as he crawled he pushed aside things that clattered aridly. He groped about until he found a small round object, and felt its smooth and dry contours this way and that, traced a hole in it, another one, and then when he touched a regular sharpness that he knew to be teeth, he flung the skull away with a grunt. It was not until he had gone another few feet that the implications of the skull struck him, that he considered the meaning of the other bones that he was pushing through: how long had it been? They could be dead, all of them, but how could they be bones? But now he felt, all over his skin, not a ray of light but an area of lesser darkness, a direction of fresh air, and this trail he followed until he came to a wall of debris, an irregular avalanche of stone and mud. He began to work through it, and noticed with satisfaction that he was picking aside boulders that would have fatigued a team of oxen, and that his fingers were strong enough to find an implacable grip on even the smoothest of rocks.

He came through finally with an enormous blow of his fist that shattered a rock and released a huge diamond-burst of sunlight that blinded him. When he could see again the mountain hurt him with its colours, the sky was unbearable to look at, and he couldn’t remember ever the incalculable complexity of the textures of the world. And standing in front of a rude hut, with an expression of terror on his face, was a portly old man who bore a quite startling resemblance to Sunil. Sanjay tried to speak, and made instead a gurgling sound somewhere at the base of his throat, and at this the other’s countenance lifted, and joyfully he stepped forward: ‘O my Sanjay, it is really you.’

Of course it’s me, you fool, Sanjay wanted to say, but instead he opened his mouth and pointed to his tongue, or the absence of it, and as he did so, he noticed for the first time that he had a thick white beard, that his skin was smooth and unblemished as a baby’s, that it was whiter than the snow. He touched himself, not believing the beard, frightened and yet pleased at the same time by the resilience of his body, by the weight he felt in his heels, but even these compensations were diminished by the fact he knew already. He turned and looked back into the cave.

‘O my poor Sanjay,’ said Sunil. ‘No one else is coming. The others are all dead. Only one came out, a long time after you had gone in, and he was mad and he said all the rest were dead and worse. He said that and ran and fell down the mountain, and I thought he was dead, but he got up and ran again, screaming. And I thought to follow him but I stayed, and a week later a caravan came up and told me he had died insane that following day. They are all gone. But I have stayed. I had not the slightest doubt that you would come back, that you would achieve the goal you sought.’

Sanjay looked around wildly, then knelt and traced on the rock, ‘How long?’

‘My friend, my friend,’ said Sunil. ‘It has been thirty-two years, two months, and three days.’

And Sandeep said, quietly:

HERE ENDS THE FOURTH BOOK,

THE BOOK OF REVENGE AND MADNESS.

NOW BEGINS THE LAST BOOK,

THE BOOK OF THE RETURN.

‘HERE YOU GO AGAIN,’ Yama said, ‘exercising your national talent for fissipariousness.’

There had been an altercation exactly at the centre of the maidan, suppressed sharply by the police but simmering still in the murmurs that swept through the crowd. It had started over seating, over who had the god-given right to occupy a particular small patch of land. Then the shoving-match between two people had taken on party lines. Which, Abhay told me, meant that the affair now had religious, ethnic, caste, class, and socio-economic overtones.

‘No need to tell me that,’ I wrote back. ‘I know.’

‘Yes,’ Yama said. ‘Of course you know.’

I looked at him curiously. There was no sarcasm in his voice, only sadness. Even more curious, I had to dredge up, with no little effort, a bitterness for my retort: ‘All the better for you if we fight. More turnover.’

But his head was sunk between his massive shoulders, and he made no reply to me at all.

Saira was standing by the window, looking out, a wistful expression on her face. ‘Why do we fight all the time?’ she said. Then, when all of us looked at her, she laughed and shrugged. ‘Sorry. Stupid question.’

‘Listen, young Saira,’ I wrote on a note, ‘forget about fighting, never mind about tensions and lock-outs and hartals and terrorists and missile treaties, no, let’s have a feast. Let’s have the biggest feast the world has ever seen. Let’s eat and eat and eat until we’re merry.’

‘A feast, a hog, a festival of food,’ she said, her eyes shining, and she straightened up and stood straight. ‘A khana all you wanna.’

Abhay laughed suddenly, and when he spoke there was a joy in his voice, simple and small and complete. ‘A celebration of appetite,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Saira said. ‘Well, let’s get to it.’

‘Hold on, hold on,’ Mrinalini said. ‘There’s a dash of story left for tonight, just a bit.’

THEN CAME ANOTHER WAVE of invaders. Some of these invaders believed that their purity was lessened by the beliefs of others, and so they destroyed much: theirs was a faith with a sword. They lived as rulers but their children were born in the country, and they became of the country. The faith itself changed, and, as before, the different peoples lived together. But the struggles for power became larger and larger, and the winners gained unprecedented empires. After a great victory, there were emperors in Delhi, and there was peace for a while, but then the struggles started again. Everywhere, there was struggle. Kingdoms fell, and emperors died or became poets. Over the seas, something else stirred, another people, but no one had the ears to listen to that sound, because they believed they lived in the heart of the world. Ignorance is the destroyer.

Then the English came.

WE WERE EATING, sitting on the ground in a circle, happy and laughing. Abhay sat on my right, Saira on my left, and Ashok and Mrinalini opposite. Saira’s mother and father sat with us too, and all the children, submerged gladly in food and smells and the plenty of it all. Veg. and Non-veg., rajma and parathas, fish and rice, tandoori and fried, North and South and Gujarati and Calcutta curds, we had it all, and Abhay had revealed, suddenly, an unexpected talent for chutney-making. I was savouring his mango chutney, and from outside, over the walls, came the sound of music and the shouts of hawkers, many of them selling toys for toddlers and rare fruit and unusual delicacies. Our maidan, despite everything, was now full of squalling new babies and dreamy-eyed mothers-to-be.