Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

On the twenty-ninth day, Ashok sat before his desk and pulled the cover off a peculiar black machine, which I was to later realize was a typewriter. Then, however, I watched curiously from a corner as he fed paper into it and proceeded to let his fingers fly over the keys, like a musician playing some strange species of instrument related vaguely to the tabla: Thik-thik, thik-thik, and the paper rolled up and curled over, revealing to me, even at that distance, a series of letters from the language I had paid so much to master. Intrigued, I lowered myself to the ground and walked over to the machine, causing Ashok to jump up from his chair and back away. Fascinated, I hopped up onto the table and circled the black machine, running my fingers over the keys with their embossed, golden letters. I touched a key lightly and waited expectantly. Nothing happened, and I tried again. Smiling, Ashok edged closer and reached out with his right hand, index finger rigid, and stabbed at a key, and an i appeared on the paper. Without thinking, delighted by this strange toy, I pressed a key and an a magically appeared next to the i; intoxicated, I let my fingers dance over the keys, watching the following hieroglyphic manifest itself on the sheet: ‘iamparasher.’ Ashok watched this exhibition with growing uneasiness; clearly, my actions were too deliberate for a monkey. I learned much too fast. Bending over, he peered at the sheet of paper. Meanwhile, I was engaged in a frenzied search for the secret of spaces between letters, pressing keys and rocking back and forth in excitement. Finally, I sat back and tried to remember the manner of the movements of Ashok’s hands over the keys. I looked up at him, and motioned at the machine, gesturing at him to type something again. He grew pale, but I was too excited to stop now. He leaned forward, and typed: ‘What are you?’ I hesitated now, but I had already stepped into the dangerous swirling waters of human intercourse, tempted once again by a certain kind of knowledge and the thrill of the unknown. There was no turning back. I leaned forward.

‘i am parasher.’

When Ashok, his face pale, ran out of the room, I slumped to the hard wooden surface of the desk, suddenly exhausted. Drawing my knees up to my chest, I let my mind drift, filled with an aching nostalgia and afraid of what I would discover in the next few minutes, afraid of the bewildering depredations and convolutions that are the children of Kala, of Time. I let my mind fix itself on one image, and clung to it — red and white, red and white, three thousand pennants flutter at the ends of bamboo lances with twinkling, razor-sharp steel heads; the creaking of leather, the thunder of hooves; three thousand impossibly proud men dressed in yellow, the colour of renunciation and death; the earth throws up dust to salute their passing, and in front of them, dressed in the chain mail of a Rajput, the one they called ‘Sikander,’ after the rendered-into-story memory of a maniacal Greek who wandered the breadth of continents with his armies, looking for some unspeakable dream in the blood and mire of a thousand battle-fields; even the images we cling to give birth to other stories, there are only histories that generate other histories, and I am simultaneously seduced by and terrified by these multiplicities; I worship these thirty-three million three hundred and thirty-three thousand and three hundred and thirty-three gods, but I curse them for the abundance of their dance; I am forced to make sense out of this elaborate richness, and I revel in it but long for the animal simplicities of life pointed securely in one direction and uncomplicated by the past, but it is already too late, for Mrinalini and Ashok and a dark, thin face I seem to remember hover over me, filled with apprehension and awe and fear.

‘Who are you, Parasher?’

I pushed myself up, and typed:

‘who is he’

‘My son, Abhay. But who are you?’

Abhay’s eyes were filled with a terror I have seen before — it is the fear of madness, of insanity made palpable, of impossible events, the existence of which threaten to crack one’s mind in two like a rotten pomegranate. He was very close to breaking, walking around me, rubbing his head. I hurriedly typed:

‘do not fear me. i am sanjay, born of a good brahmin family. i delivered myself to yama in the year nineteen hundred and eleven, or, in the english way, eighteen hundred and eighty-nine after Christ. for the bad karma i accumulated during that life, no doubt, i have been reborn in this guise, and was awakened by the injury i suffered. i wish you no harm. i am very tired. i am no evil spirit. please help me to the bed.’

I lay exhausted on the bed, unable to shut my eyes, fascinated, you see, by the thought of the world that lay beyond the house. I gestured at Ashok to bring me the machine; as soon as it was set beside me on the white sheets I typed feverishly:

‘where am i. what is this world. what year is this.’

The rest of the afternoon, as you may imagine, passed quickly as Ashok and Mrinalini, in hushed tones, told me of the wonders of this time, filling me with dread and amazement as they painted a picture of a world overflowing with the delights of a heaven and the terrors of a hell. Abhay listened silently, tensely watching his parents speak to an animal; he frequently looked away and around the room, as if to locate himself within a suddenly hostile universe. Finally, shadows stretched across the brick outside, and I lay stunned, my mind refusing to comprehend any more, refusing, now, to understand the very words that they spoke; drained, I was about to tell them to stop when a thin, piping voice interrupted:

‘Misra Uncleji, my kite-string broke and my kite is stuck on the peepul tree and could you…’

The speaker, a girl of about nine or ten, dressed in a loose white kurta and black salwars, stepped through the doorway and stopped short, her face breaking into a delighted smile.

‘A monkey! Is he yours, Abhay Bhai?’

‘No,’ snapped Abhay. ‘He’s not mine.’

‘Come on, Saira,’ Ashok said, trying to divert her, but Saira’s interest had been aroused, and she was clearly a very intelligent girl with a very determined mien. Side-stepping Ashok, she stepped up to the bed, alert eyes instantly taking in the typewriter and the bandages.

‘Is he hurt? I…’

She stopped suddenly, but I was unwillingly fascinated by the ball of kite-string she carried in her left hand. I reached out and touched the dangling, ragged end of the string; it dawned upon me gradually that a blanket of silence had descended upon the house — I could no longer hear the chirping of birds or the distant, hollow sound of cricket balls being struck; I let my eyes wander from the string and noticed, vaguely, the goose-bumps on Saira’s forearm; I looked up at the doorway and knew then, stomach convulsing, knew, for the air outside had turned a deep blue with swirling currents of black, knew, for I felt my chest explode in pain, knew, for out of the densening air a huge green figure coalesced to stand in the doorway, knew then that Yama had come for me again. Yama, with the green skin and the jet-black hair, with the unmoving flashing dark eyes and the curling moustache, he of the invincible strength and the fearsome aspect, he who rides the terrible black buffalo, Yama, who walks in all three worlds and is feared by all.

‘Sanjay,’ said Yama, stepping in, banal as always, ‘we meet again.’

I was silent, and noticed that the others in the room were looking at me curiously. Saira turned away and bent over the typewriter, reading my side of the strange conversation that had taken place earlier.

‘They can’t see me,’ remarked Yama. ‘Only you. The child felt something for a moment.’