Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

Yama is a happy god. Ruins seed the ground, the harvest is tendrils that burst out of the soil, through the soles of our feet. They occupy us without our knowledge.

Kites float in sluggish circles for thousands of years, alert for the faintest ribbon of dust below. Everything is the eater and the eaten, rocks throb, expand, contract, until they burst. Snakes abandon their below-surface treasures to husk off their skins under the sun, leaving the figures of former selves, fragile histories that begin to disintegrate as soon as they are formed.

The passing of the powerful causes noise, but rain deadens even this sound. Rivers swell, and the bloated carcasses of lions bob up like children’s toys, softened and ready for the surgeon-skill of the vulture. Monuments are silted over, windows are plugged with clay and ash, when the waters recede the farmers reap good crops.

Above, those who cannot see the spirits are the dead. The gravity of the cold sometimes-glimpsed glow of the cities on the ocean’s floor, the hiss of the guardians, impels us. Even the deniers are driven: in each mouthful they ingest a hundred years, a million deaths. What is sacred cannot be history, but memory (the grimace of the monkey, the shark’s yawn) is divine.

When Sanjay gained consciousness, there were two holes in his head, spaced evenly on his forehead above his eyes, and people began to tell him secrets; later, he decided that perhaps it was the fact that the holes somehow suggested an extra pair of eyes, that it was this that compelled confessions, or perhaps it was his constantly pained expression, which suggested a precocious wisdom (which, of course, meant piety, holiness) but actually resulted from a perpetual case of double-vision, of seeing everything twice. Perhaps it was also the manner in which he had been injured. When Ram Mohan told him that he had fallen onto Shiva’s trident, he had wondered if his uncle was making some elaborate metaphor, but this was entirely and literally a fact: the injuries were from two metal points protruding from the ground; upon investigation, and excavation, what was revealed was first a trident with the middle prong snapped off at the root, and then the god himself, dancing. When Sanjay was alone, he wondered how long Shiva had hidden under the soil, his right hand raised: ten years, a hundred, a thousand? But now he had emerged, and the manner of his coming made Sanjay famous, as the boy who brought the god, and so there was a stream of visitors who came to sympathize and marvel at his survival, at his resistance to the twin assault on his brain.

The first visitor that Sanjay remembered, that he was conscious enough to recognize, was Hercules — this was the first time, in all the years Hercules had been a neighbour of the Parashers, that Sikander’s father had deigned to visit the Brahmin household; and when he came, he arrived in the full glory of his uniform, resplendent in red and green, trailed by his two sons. Sanjay recalled, much later, the fastidious, finicky curve of the wrist with which Hercules flicked the tails of his coat out of the way as he sat gingerly in the only Angrez-style chair in the Parasher household, that and his arched-eyebrowed stare at the paintings on the wall and the colourful design on the bedspread. He looked also, long and carefully, at Sanjay’s father, who flinched a little under the scrutiny but stood his ground, standing at the foot of the small bed, unwilling to leave his son with the soldier, but finally Hercules leaned down to Sikander, who whispered to Arun, and the three — Arun and Sikander and Chotta — backed out of the room. As they left, Hercules spoke a few words in broken Urdu, stumbling over the consonants often enough to bring a slight twitch of amusement to Arun’s face, at which Hercules resolutely turned to English, speaking perhaps just a little louder than necessary. Hearing the sounds of English, Sanjay tried to raise his head, fighting off the nausea that resulted from the duplication of the world in his head, from the doubling — presently of Hercules — that would plague him for much of his life.

‘My sons were undoubtedly involved in the inception of your present condition, my boy,’ Hercules was saying; he leaned forward and clasped Sanjay’s hand, ‘but one might state with some certainty that it was also your unhappy country which assaulted you, since it was one of those old, false gods who have oppressed and humiliated your simple people since time immemorial who thrust his way out of the soil to thrust his weapon into your brow.’

‘Wait a minute,’ one of the sadhus said. ‘Wait just a minute here.’

‘You have a doubt?’ Sandeep said.

‘I do, I do. We can assume with certainty that at this point in his development Sanjay doesn’t speak English, no?’

‘We don’t have to assume. I asked my story-teller in the forest the same question, and she said that Sanjay knew no English.’

‘Then how is it that he seems to know what Hercules is saying? Why is it that we hear what Hercules is saying?’

‘Because Sanjay hears it.’

‘But you just said…’

‘Sanjay hears it, and it is his blessing, or power, that even though he doesn’t understand what is being said, he hears each word, each sound, as a crystal-clear, separate entity. You might say that he is cursed with the inability to hear noise, that he is gifted with the ability, or, rather, the imperative task, of really listening to language. So when he heard Hercules speak, he heard not the confused jumble of clatter that most of us hear when we listen to a foreign tongue, but a set of distinct, polished, complete objects, devoid of meaning but possessed of inherent completeness or beauty, and so, later, he was able to remember these things, or words. On learning the meanings attached to these symbols, years later, he was able, then, to discern what Hercules had said that afternoon, or what he had said apart from what he had uttered.’

‘That’s all very well, but a little too clever, if you ask me,’ the sadhu grumbled. ‘But I suppose we must give our story-tellers a little room to work in.’

‘Clever is hardly the word I’d use,’ Sandeep said. ‘It is structurally necessary — if Sikander is the brave, and Chotta can drink poison, then it is necessary that Sanjay be able to listen to language.’

‘It is?’ said the sadhu. ‘To me it makes no sense.’

‘Listen,’ Sandeep said. ‘In fact there is even more to Sanjay, because he knows what he has never been taught…’

‘That’s completely acceptable,’ the sadhu said. ‘We all know about Mozart and his symphonies at four and a half, but this other stuff, you know…’

‘Can we get back to the story?’ another sadhu said, a young man with the nervous habit of tapping the sole of his foot with a bent forefinger. ‘I want to know what Hercules wants.’

‘All right, all right,’ Sandeep said. ‘Listen.…

‘One might state with some certainty that it was also your unhappy country which assaulted you, since it was one of those old gods who have oppressed and humiliated your simple people since time immemorial who thrust his way out of the soil to aim his broken trident at your brow,’ Hercules said. ‘Ah, boy, it is a pity that you cannot understand, yet, the manner in which your accident may be an act of providence, in that your story, in Reverend Sarthey’s capable hands, will be an instrument, a persuasive balm, which will bring about an agreeable effect on the Christians of Europe, loosening purse strings and setting in motion political action designed to rectify the Company’s unfortunate policies towards the great work of bringing the Word to your countrymen. The good reverend will take that horrifying demonic effigy, with its serpent necklace and tiger-cloth and cavorting pose, and will travel with it throughout England, from village to little town, exhibiting the depths of degradation that characterizes the so-called theology of the Hindoo, that collection of libertinism, oppression, superstition and folly that masquerades as a religion; he will tell your story, pointing to you as a symbol, and so you must not despair. Your suffering has a purpose, a meaning — through your injury you have exposed the rot that hides below the surface of what is called civilization here, the demons that live just below a patina of effete conversation and decadent arts. You are chosen. Rejoice.’