Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

The sea at Bombay Harbour was choppy, and Sanjay came to the quay in a launch; it was raining, and whole sheets of water seemed to be falling from the sky to explode against the buildings. Sanjay made his way out of the dock-yard as quickly as possible, leaving his luggage behind, and after making his way through the pack of shivering tanga-wallahs at the gate, he walked down the flooded streets. The shops were shuttered, and there was no one on the roads, so that when Sanjay took off his coat and dropped it into the swiftly-flowing gutter there was nobody to notice, not even when he took off his shoes, his pants, and everything else; finally he walked naked through the city. He walked all night, and the next morning he was in the country-side; the rain had washed away the last vestiges of black from his hair, and when the few villagers out at their fields saw him they assumed he was a sadhu, who else would be walking naked in a monsoon storm. Sanjay walked on, and the rain continued unabated, and then he became aware that somebody was walking beside him; it was a farmer in a white turban, a thin man with wiry muscles drawn like cord, skin blackened by a lifetime in the sun, a face grown patient from a thousand seasons of planting and cropping.

‘You again,’ Sanjay said. ‘Yama, I despise you still.’

‘I am your friend.’

‘You are nobody’s friend.’

‘I am yours.’

‘I don’t need you.’

‘But we meet again and again.’

‘Yes,’ Sanjay said. ‘I know I will be reborn, that there is no escape from you. I know my life well and I know that I have not found liberation. I will have to come back to you. But remember, when I die, I do not give up to you, I renounce this world. This world in which nothing is clear, where there is horror at every turn, I am sick of it. I know I will be reborn into it. Since you say you are my friend, I will ask you a question. Does it get better?’

‘The world is the world. It is you that makes the horror.’

‘A fine way of saying that it gets worse. All right, I ask you another question. If I must be reborn, I prefer not to be aware, to be always divided against myself, to be a monster; I have no doubt cursed myself through my actions, but have I done enough so that I will be reborn as an animal?’

‘Why do you think life as an animal is a curse? It is rather a privilege.’

Sanjay stopped short. ‘I am to be a human again?’

Yama shrugged, and a gust of moisture splashed across Sanjay’s face.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You have called me a friend of your own will, from your own mouth. By your tongue you owe me a favour. I ask that I be reborn not as a human. I demand that I be an animal. God, for the first time I ask you for something, and you cannot refuse.’

‘I cannot,’ Yama said. ‘You shall be what you choose.’

They walked on, and now they were among mountains, among steep black cliffs of rock, and there was a river ahead, a stream that was swelled by the rains into a roaring current.

‘I leave you now,’ Yama said. ‘We will meet again.’

‘I have no doubt of it,’ Sanjay said. When he looked back all he could see were thick banks of mist, and so he walked on alone; he followed the sound of the river until he found a flat rock poised above the gorge, and there was a tree that grew over the rock, its branches hanging in space. Sanjay sat there, cross-legged, and the rain fell on him and the water fell on him from the leaves above, and as he took breath in and out the sound of the water grew so loud in his ears that it receded into a kind of silence, and in this pool of silence he gazed until he saw his childhood, his friends, his parents, and then he saw his youth, how he knew passion, and he saw all this and then he gave it, he let it go, and he felt it leave like a spark from the top of his head; and then he thought about his enemies, the ones he hated, and how he despised them, and he gave that too and it flew away from him; he remembered his crimes, the people he had murdered, and his offences clung to him but finally with a sigh he let it all go; and one by one all the things that tied him to life dissolved and vanished and he felt his soul floating unfettered and close to the white frontier of death but still there was something, it held him back like a thin chain; and suddenly he remembered the student’s face from London, the thin boy whose name he had asked, and he cried into the water, you children of the future, you young men and women who will set us free, may you be happy, may you be faultless, may you be as soft as a rose petal, and as hard as thunder, may you be fearless, may you be forgiving, may you be clever and may you have unmoved faith, may you be Hindustani and Indian and English and everything else at the same time, may you be neither this nor that, may you be better than us, I bless you, may you be happy; and then he felt the last cord break, the last spark of desire leaving him, it was the hardest but the bond of pride then vanished and he was free.

The pale body under the tree leaned forward, and then it slipped to the side and toppled down the slope into the spray of the river, and the water took it speedily down the curving course, and it turned over once and then it was gone.

Sandeep paused and looked around at the monks, at Shanker who sat listening with his chin on a knee. Then he continued:

‘In the forest my teacher told me this story. She looked into her cupped hands and told me this tale. When she finished she looked up at me, laughed, and threw the water over her face and shoulders.

‘“It is time to go,” she said.

‘“Where?”

‘“Home.”

‘“Into the world?”

‘“Yes,” she said. “Where there are more stories. Farewell. And thank you.”

‘“Thank you,” I called to her, but she had picked up her deer-skin and was gone, and I waited in the forest for a while but I never saw her again. I believe she went home. So I have come from the forest, and I have told you this story.’

Shanker rose to his feet, and all the sadhus followed him, and they all bowed to Sandeep. He pressed his hands together in humility, and he said, ‘Thank you for listening to me. This was the story of Sikander and Sanjay, and those who listen to it attentively and with faith will be delivered from doubt, and after they have heard it they will be changed forever, they will be something else.’ He shook hands with Shanker. ‘I will go now.’

‘Where will you go?’ Shanker said.

‘I will go into the mountains,’ he said. ‘And I will meditate, and I will listen. This was after all only part of the story. Perhaps the rest will come to me.’

So Sandeep walked away from Shanker’s ashram, into the green terai, and the sadhus watched until he was only a little dot of white against the mountain, and then evening came, and the fires were lit.

HERE ENDS

THE BOOK OF THE RETURN,

THE LAST BOOK.

THE STORY OF SIKANDER AND SANJAY IS OVER.

WHEN I FINISHED I leaned back from the keyboard and lay back on the bed and I was feeling tired, but calm and somehow clean, as if I had been absolved of something; Saira sat cross-legged next to me, a hand on my shoulder. It was strange, but I was not afraid anymore, and when Abhay started to speak the vehemence in his voice startled me.

‘What, that’s it? Get up. There’s more you have to tell us. Go on.’

I shook my head, and held up a hand: no more.

‘Are you afraid? Have you given up?’ He came close and squatted next to me, his eyes angry. ‘Do you want that fool Yama to win after all? You’re a story-teller. Have you grown weak? Has your imagination run dry? The Book of the Return is not over. Get up and do your duty.’