Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

SADHU

I’ll really have to die someday.

TRANSLATOR

He wants to know why you aren’t scared of dying.

SADHU

That’d be silly.

TRANSLATOR

He says that’s not a satisfactory answer.

SADHU

What sort of answer would he like?

TRANSLATOR

He says you should tell him exactly what mystic path you followed to reach this sublime state of indifference. And he wishes you would stop asking questions. Really, this is incredible, I think you’ve got him hooked.

SADHU

Mystic path?

TRANSLATOR

Mystic path. Literal translation.

SADHU

When I feel like shitting, I shit; when I feel like eating, I eat.

TRANSLATOR

I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like this — he doesn’t know whether to be upset or horribly fascinated. You’re very good at this. He says that shitting when you feel like shitting is irresponsible, you should have some discipline in your life, instead of lounging about naked under a big tree. He says people who shit when they feel like shitting never do anything with their lives.

SADHU

Ask him how often he shits.

TRANSLATOR

You want to ask Sikander of Macedon how often he shits, in public?

SADHU

I said it, didn’t I?

TRANSLATOR

You know, you’re starting to get on my nerves with this answering-questions-with-questions dodge. All right, I’ll ask him. I think he’s speechless. I think he’s upset.

SADHU

O-ho. I thought he looked constipated the moment I saw him.

TRANSLATOR

What? What? You want me to tell him that?

SADHU

Why not? Tell him that’s probably why he’s impelled to invade other nations and massacre tribes and all of that — any student of yoga will tell you that mistreating the body leads to mental disaster. Yogic science has shown that people who hold it in are inescapably driven to behaviour like running about slashing at people, besieging towns, and frivolous acts of bravery.

TRANSLATOR

Now you’ve done it. He has those fits when he gets angry, see, he’s rolling about on the ground. Last time he did that he put a city of eighty thousand to the torch, no survivors.

SADHU

He’d be a lot better off if he shat more often. I wonder what his per week rate is.

TRANSLATOR

I’m not going to ask him, understand? He’ll kill you and all your friends and probably all the rest of Sindh too. I refuse on the grounds of conscience. It’s my job but I refuse for the well-being of all the population of this country.

SADHU

There’s a yogic cure for constipation. Every morning, you take… TRANSLATOR

TRANSLATOR

Shut up. Shut up. You’ve caused enough trouble for one day.

SADHU

You’d be remembered as the man who saved the world from Sikander the butcher. Get this fellow shitting right and he’d probably go home, quiet as a lamb.

TRANSLATOR

No, no. You’re lucky, he’s decided killing you would be bad for his campaign at this moment, he’d look cruel, and then nobody would surrender. He’s having his chroniclers strike this conversation from the record. Now history will state that Sikander the Great met some strange naked men under a tree, that’s all.

SADHU

Well, well. Good luck, friend.

TRANSLATOR

Good luck to you too, or is that what one wishes people like you? Now I’m asking questions.

SADHU

Why don’t you write this down, or at least the gist of it? Then this history will remember you as the originator of the world’s only all-comprehensive theory of imperial conquest: the constipation hypothesis, or the shit-glory affinity.

TRANSLATOR

No, thanks. Even if I hated my children, I would wish other curses on them, not ridicule.

SADHU

You’d save the world from a lot of tight-assed murderers.

TRANSLATOR

No. No.

SADHU

You’ll see. All the truly great liberators will admit this theory into their ruminations and calculations.

TRANSLATOR

No.

SADHU

And so the world dies, from a surfeit of surly sphincters. It is, after all, so very simple.

And so, that’s how it went, and your father and I, we thought it one of our better efforts, but the Company man said that Sikander would have asked more penetrating questions about philosophy and metaphysics, so we had to take it out, our metaphysic of shit. And a very sorry day it was, when we had to do this, it seemed to take the centre out of our dramatic construction, or should I say, all the horseshit out of our Sikander.’ Ram Mohan laughed, then shouted, ‘Oh, you are truly magnificent and noble, sweet Gajnath,’ for at that moment the animal blared out a huge, resounding, richly-odoured, indisputably-elephantine fart. Sanjay laughed in silent accompaniment to Ram Mohan’s long cackle and the raucous guffaws of the servants and soldiers and attendants, but then he glanced ahead, and the angry man’s face was very white under his wide black hat, and his mouth was drawn up tight like a purse with its strings pulled taut, the pink lips puckered, and in the middle of all the laughing, all the new smells of the countryside, the bantering of the soldiers and the maid-servants, Gajnath’s easy rolling grace, all the anticipation of the river and the road ahead, amongst all of this a very cold fear took hold of Sanjay, and he comprehended completely and without doubt that something very bad was about to happen.

But, as always, the sun came up, and the road now wound through fields and groves of trees, and behind Gajnath horses and camels and people on foot trailed out for two and a half miles; horsemen rode up and down importantly, their turban-tails floating behind them, metal clinking reassuringly, and Sanjay’s dread receded. Sikander and Chotta rode back with their officers and tossed up half a dozen mangos, foraged from a grove of trees by the road; Sikander had the reins now, and he was turning the horse confidently and sharply, causing his greybeard to laugh with delight.

‘Who knows where these came from, whose orchard?’ Ram Mohan said. ‘But on the other hand, it is the road, and in difficult circumstances dharma permits the eating of unknown food. Eat, eat.’

They rolled the small green mangos between their palms, pulping them, then opened a small slit in one corner with their teeth; the cool, unbelievably sweet golden juice spurted into their mouths, thickened by long delicious strands. Gajnath slowed and extended his trunk above his head.

‘He wants one,’ his mahout said. ‘Gajnath requests a mango. He is partial to them.’

Sanjay handed one forward, and Gajnath took it from his mahout’s hand as delicately as a musician accepting a piece of paan from an admirer; a moment later, he put his questing, sniffing instrument above his forehead again.

‘Gajnath wants more,’ Sanjay scribbled on a slate.

‘Gajnath the magnificent,’ his uncle said.

‘Gajnath always wants more,’ his mahout said, rubbing a hand over the cracked grey skin between the two flapping ears; as if in gratitude, Gajnath quickened his pace, bringing them closer to the palanquins again. The three firangis had wrapped strips of white cloth around their faces, and rode with their heads down; leaning on the front of the howdah, Sanjay watched them slump further and lower in their saddles, and now as the heat mounted the shouting and chatter subsided, so there was only the repetitious creak of leather, the shuffling of feet through mud and dust, the officious blowing of horses and the wheezing of the elephants; the sky was a huge dome above, high, hard and totally blue. Now Sanjay’s neck seemed to grow limp, and his head lolled; he felt his uncle pull him back, and he tried to utter a protest, no, I want to watch the road, watch them, but the dark was good (Had Ram Mohan drawn the curtains on the howdah?), and Gajnath rocked him, up, down and around, is this the sea, mother, will I dream, can I? The dream came, a ship, a black, viscous sea, water lapping, endless days, eternal sky, and a feeling of resignation, the same quietness hour after hour, years passing; Sanjay awoke abruptly, eagerly, glad to discover again Gajnath’s tireless stride, to find Ram Mohan’s familiar wheezing as he slept with his head against the side of the howdah. Sanjay moved a sequined curtain aside, then squinted against the glare; the horses were plodding, necks craning low, but far ahead there was a glint of red, lost now and then in the green. Sanjay settled down to wait, impatient now, because he had seen the tents being folded and loaded onto camels, and had been told that a party of servants would leave early, in the darkness of the early morning, and knew that hot food awaited, a chance to stretch cramped limbs, and of course an opportunity to examine, at close hand, the behaviour and appurtenances of the firangis. His earlier feeling returned now, undiminished, but now the apprehension was spiced with the anticipation of an encounter with the unknown: he promised himself he would listen carefully to the language of the firangis, would note its inflections and tones, and that he would badger Sikander and Chotta to teach him the meanings of the words that he remembered distinctly, di-gra-did, si-vil-iz-a-shun, prau-gres, di-cay . Happily, he knelt and poked his head out between the curtains, then shook his uncle awake, handing him a note. Ram Mohan cleared his throat, then called, ‘Come on, Gajnath, faster, faster, Sanjay says they have mangos waiting for us at the tents, and sherbet, and barfi.’