Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

‘No,’ I said, shame-faced. ‘I was just going to tell it, straightforwardly, you see.’

‘Don’t you know this yet? Straight-forwardness is the curse of your age, Sanjay. Be wily, be twisty, be elaborate. Forsake grim shortness and hustle. Let us luxuriate in your curlicues. Besides, you need a frame story for its peace, its quiet. You’re too involved in the tale, your audience is harried by the world. No, a calm story-teller must tell the story to an audience of educated, discriminating listeners, in a setting of sylvan beauty and silence. Thus the story is perfect in itself, complete and whole. So it has always been, so it must be.’

‘If you say so,’ I said.

‘I do, and who am I?’

‘Hanuman, the most cunning of the dialecticians, the perfect aesthete.’

‘And don’t you forget it,’ Hanuman said. ‘I’m listening.’ He rocketed up suddenly, into the rafters, round and around, laughing. Then he crouched in the corner between two beams, his red eyes twinkling at me, an enormous smile on his face.

‘Enough,’ Yama said. ‘Begin.’

I looked around. Mrinalini was seated just outside the door, ready to read out the typed sheets to my little allies in the court-yard. Ashok and Abhay sat next to each other, behind the desk. Saira sat next to me, on the bed, holding sheets of paper and spare rolls of ribbon. I could hear the birds outside, in their thousands, and see the leaves on the hedge outside the window, turned gold by the setting sun.

‘All right. Listen…’

WHEN THE BLACK MONSOON CLOUDS began to appear on the horizon, Sandeep walked out of the forests at the foot-hills of the Himalayas and went, pausing often to breathe in the cooling air, to the ashram of Shanker. Here, he was received courteously by Shanker and the other sadhus, who brought good food and clear water. After he had eaten and enquired after the progress of their meditations, Sandeep sat back and said:

‘I have heard a tale.’

Shanker rose to his feet and brought soothing tea and a cushion to Sandeep. Finally, when all were seated in a little circle around Sandeep, Shanker said, softly:

‘We are eager to hear it, sir. Tell us.’

And Sandeep said:

‘Listen…’

In my wanderings through the dense green forests of the foot-hills, I happened upon a clearing where soft grass grew under foot and sunlight hung in golden bars through the branches above. Weary, I sat on a smooth, black slab of stone and opened my bundle; as I raised my last apple to my lips I saw a form on the other side of the clearing, a dark form lost in the patchy shadows and in the green, black and brown of the trees behind. I rose to my feet and walked over, my feet sighing against the dense grass.

‘Namaste, ji,’ I said, folding my hands in greeting, for it was a thin, wiry, dark-skinned woman, dressed in bark, seated cross-legged on a deerskin, head bent over so that her shaggy black hair hung down to brush her shins. She was peering, unblinking, into her cupped hands.

‘Namaste, ji,’ I repeated, with no response forthcoming. I knelt down and saw that she was staring, with a wild intensity, into a little water that she held in the bowl made by her palms. Her face was emaciated. I looked around and noticed the grass growing over the edges of the deerskin, the dead leaves caught in the dark hair and the fingernails that had grown till they curled around, twisted and fantastic. Remembering, then, our first poet, who too had stared at a mystery in cupped hands and found poetry, I resolved to stay in the clearing and serve this woman who meditated upon water, probably seeing things I could not imagine. For a long time, I do not know how long, I attended to her needs, picking the twigs out of her hair and carefully cutting her nails with a sharp knife, while she sat like a statue, never once blinking or looking away from the secret in her hands. Every day, I laid wild fruit and a cup of fresh water by her side. About once a week, I woke to find the rough earthen cup empty and the fruit gone. I suppose I should have felt fear, but looking at her face, weathered and lined, not young or beautiful, I could feel only warmth. I could not imagine that she could do me any harm; I was, after all, her shishya, her disciple. One day, I knew, she would look up at me and smile.

The seasons passed, and still I stayed, and soon I grew so used to the routine of foraging, cutting grass and cleaning up that I expected nothing from her, no explanations, no gratitude, no smiles. In that clearing, in that world of sunlight and rain and night sounds, I felt that I should pass the rest of my days, perhaps the rest of time, serving my silent mistress. The wind moaned through the branches, and I felt as if we had both vanished into the light and dark of the forest, melting away until we were nothing but two particles in the huge surge of life that swirled around us, ebbing and flowing according to the rising of the sun and the rhythm of the rain.

So, one morning I came back to the clearing with a handful of ripe tamarind and two chikus. Putting the fruit on the deerskin, I picked up the cup and was about to walk away when I heard:

‘Thank you.’

The voice was husky and deep. I sank to my haunches and peered through the thick black strands that hung down like a curtain. The cupped hands slowly rose and the water splashed over her face and chest; she looked up at me, then, large dark eyes twinkling, and smiled, smiled a happy child’s smile that revealed a large gap between her front upper teeth.

‘Thank you very much,’ she said. I nodded, unable to speak. ‘Have you been here for very long?’

I nodded again, and then burst out with all the questions that had accumulated over the long silent days. She shook her head, and would not tell me her name or where she came from. She did tell me, however, that she had fled from the world of men and women, disgusted with its inconstancy and the ephemeral nature of its pleasures. Fleeing, one day she had found herself in that clearing and had resolved to find the solution, the reason, the secret, or die. She had seated herself on the deerskin and had settled her gaze on something distant, neither near nor far, and had disciplined her breathing till she felt how it fuelled her body at each moment. Much, much later, a monsoon storm whipped around her, roaring and snapping, and she heard a voice cry out of the maelstrom —‘Your will is too harsh; your austerities burn the inhabitants of all three worlds; what is it you want?’ And she replied —‘There is no completeness; nothing endures, nothing lives; there is only change, unreasoning, unreasonable; only birth and death repeating the same story each time, yet different; why?’ The voice laughed —‘Why, you know already; look in your hands.’ As she looked down into her hands, rain-water dripping from her forehead made a little pool that she held carefully, and in the pool she saw love, birth and death, poets and warriors, books and armies, the wheel turning, turning. When she awoke out of the dream, she saw me putting fruit at her side. When I would not be satisfied with this explanation, she laughed a little and told me of what she had seen, making, you see, a story of it. This is what she told me. Like Valmiki and Vyasa, who are our elders, incomparable and dazzling, she spoke of honour among men, and of true love long remembered, as in the stories of kings and demons that are told to children by old people, but do not think that this story is untrue, because it is itihasa — thus it was; let this story appear among you, as it happened long ago, and it will clear your heart and cleanse your soul, but beware, for it is no story for those with weak stomachs and nervous hearts — it has in it the heights of passion and the depths of loneliness, the tender wounds of love-making and the hideously cheerful, grinning death-faces of the battle-field. Remember, the players and the play, the song and the singers are the same, there is no difference, remember and listen. Listen.…