Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

So I thought I would never see her again, but as you know, some years ago she summoned me, and I thought of the danger of going to your house, of the suspicions of plotting and treason floating in the air like poison, but I tried to remember her face and could only bring back the ache it caused me, and I thought 1 must go, even if it’s only to see her again, once again before I die.

I came to your house in the early morning, to sit at her feet, and she was as beautiful as ever, only now she looked like a radiant young girl, eager and flushed; now there was no longer that ache. She smiled at me and said, ‘You were there when Bejagarh fell, when that man tore off my dupatta? Yes? And you called him Jahaj Jung? Is he that one? The warrior from the seas? The one with the cannon? The conqueror of cities?’ And I said, ‘Yes, it was him, for some reason, in disguise, or at least incognito.’ And she said, ‘As long as it was him. Listen, Uday Singh. I have decided. I have been insulted, but that was in my fate. My karma is bad, so I must live. But if I must have children by a firangi, let it be that one. If I must have sons, let them be fathered by Jahaj Jung. Go to him. Find him, wherever he is. Tell him I said, if I must have sons, let it be you.’

I looked at her happy face, and I thought of the terrible anger that must have driven her into this madness; I cursed this age, when the cow of morality stands tottering on one leg, when the only love that stands between men and women is passion, when the only virtue is greed, where honour is forgotten, but I said, ‘I will tell him.’ I said this because then and now I would have done anything for her, because like all those who have seen her I too loved her.

What was it? Her beauty? That was there, but perhaps it was too fragile; was it her grace? That was there, but even that is an artificial, temporary thing, which excites only need; what was it? I will tell you: You and I, Ram Mohan Sahib, and the others, have loved her for her innocence, for that genuine thing, like a child’s, which makes it seem that she comes to us from some earlier age, from a time when the use of power had not made us cynical, when there was no distance between what was said and what was felt, when all actions had consequences. Now there are only causes and results, but I said, ‘Yes, I will tell him,’ and I rose to go, and she smiled, saying, ‘Tell him that he was the first to raise the veil.’ I understood.

I bowed and left the same way I had come, and contrived to be released from my duties, even at the risk of being suspected of plotting; the same day, I rode out on my strongest horses, money stitched into my coat, my bamboo lance couched firmly beside my stirrup, repeating to myself, ‘If I must have sons, let it be you.’

After several weeks of chasing rumours, of frustration in small villages and towns and nameless hamlets frequented by bandits, I found him. I found him in an abandoned town, to the north and somewhat to the west of Delhi, amidst walls shattered by the patient weight of trees, among crumbling wells; and when I found him he was dressed in women’s clothes, and in the process of having his face painted by a cluster of giggling houris, while nearby, three badmashes — the sort, you understand, who carry a dagger in their belts, a smaller one in the top of a boot, a still smaller one behind the shoulder, and a tiny blade up a sleeve, and another one or two secreted elsewhere — three scoundrels heaped flowers before an image of a woman made of wood and mud and chanted:

HRING, O destroyer of time!

SHRING, 0 terrific one!

KRING, You who are beneficent!

Possessor of all the arts,

You are Kamala,

Destroyer of the pride of the Kali Age ,

Who are kind to him of the matted hair ,

Devourer of Him who devours

Mother of Time

You are brilliant as the fires of the final dissolution ,

Spouse of Him of the matted hair .

O You of formidable countenance,

Ocean of the nectar of compassion,

Merciful ,

Vessel of mercy ,

Whose mercy is without limit ,

Who are attainable alone by Your mercy

Who are fire ,

Tawny ,

Black of hue ,

You who increase the joy of the Lord of creation ,

You who are the mad mother of the world ,

Night of darkness ,

In the form of desire ,

Yet liberator from the bonds of desire .

But before greeting Thomas, I went and sat by a couple of his men, including an old Sikh, and asked, ‘What is he doing? I am an old friend of his, Uday Singh. What is this?’ And the Sikh said, yes, they had heard him speaking of me; they told me that at Bejagarh they had, while following Thomas, plunged over a cliff and into a moat, and after the drop, the escape, they had ridden aimlessly this way and that, surviving on what little they had, drifting after the ragged figure of Jahaj Jung. Finally, as if by chance, they had come to the town of Sardhana, where Thomas had sought an audience with his old acquaintance, Zeb-ul-Nissa, now known universally as the Begum Sumroo. At her court, Thomas and his little crew had caused no little trepidation — it was not entirely the fact that each of them was armed as if he intended to carry on a war single-handed, no, not that; it wasn’t, either, their obvious hunger, that wild bright-eyed tattered look of starvation; no, it was, rather, the way they moved together, fluid, yet always guarding each other’s flanks, it was their casual display of that wordless understanding that exists between those born from the same mother, it was the lack of back-slapping and loud laughter and boisterous speech that frightened the courtiers and, indeed, Begum Sumroo.

Understanding that it is not advisable to keep a pack of wolves in one’s house, she said to Thomas, forget whatever has happened, whatever makes you sad, what you and your brave fellows need is a kingdom, a place to plant your flag, a place, as they say, to call your own; there is, a little to the west of here, a place called Hansi. Once it was a thriving town, fat with produce and craft, but of late the wars have rolled over it again and again, and since we no longer pay heed to the ancient rules of war (we live in evil times), crops are destroyed and innocents are murdered, and towns are emptied, and Hansi is a ruin now, full of ghosts and memories. But the ground is still fertile, she said, the people are still farmers; go and rebuild this town, and police the region around it — execute thieves, levy taxes, and grow old and fat, in short, construct a kingdom. Thomas, who until now had seemed to be in the grips of some mild drug, now looked up, and we each of us saw this new fantasy take hold of him, saw the intoxication of the dream clear his eyes, straighten his back, and he smiled back at us and said, what of it, laddies.

When we finally saw the town (the two men said), spied this little dump of mud and rotting wood, we let out a great whoop of joy and broke into a gallop, coming down through that slope there and beside that thicket, into what once must have been the main street of Hansi; we went through it, jumping the horses over and through the remains of the town, when we suddenly saw a man, a small, naked man with long muscles and tangled hair like straw, and skin covered with red mud. He stood erect on one of the few remaining roofs, hands fisted and arms held curving out by his sides, head thrown back, eyes rolled back; we speeded on towards him, Thomas ahead of all of us, shouting run, old man, we are here, flee, you fool, and a few of us levelled our lances, when suddenly, very close by, a sound like blood, like death itself, shook us, and trembled our horses, sending them twisting and falling, out of control; pray to your gods, whoever they might be, brother (the men said), that if you have never heard the roaring of lions at close hand, your ears might never be hammered by this noise: no matter what you might have lived through (and we live in inauspicious times), no matter what battles you have seen, no matter what hopes you have felt turning dead within your breast, this sound will make you a child again, will terrify you, will fill your pants full of piss.