Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

‘Bring sandalwood.’

Ram Mohan pushed himself up from a half-reclining position, next to Sanjay. ‘What?‘

But Sanjay knew already, somehow, what she wanted; some muscle or nerve, some single clear stream of emotion that stretched from his groin to the base of his neck tightened and convulsed.

‘To make a pyre,’ she said.

The word spread through the camp like a quick wind; within minutes the tent was crowded with maid-servants who crouched on their haunches, staring at the slim figure in the middle.

‘Bring wood,’ she said again. When nobody moved she got to her feet, quickly and energetically, and walked between them, calling them by name, pleading, and no one moved. She then kicked them, raging, reminding them of the years they had eaten her salt, but they only wrapped their arms around their legs and lowered their heads to their knees, and finally she turned to Ram Mohan.

‘No,’ he said.

‘I have been insulted,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘You know everything,’ she said. ‘I only do what I should have done long ago.’

‘Not this. This is a crime.’

‘I am a Rajput. Padmini did it, with all her princesses. The scriptures advise it.’

‘What scriptures?’ he said, face red. ‘Which ones? The ones that do are lies and inventions.’ Ram Mohan went on for some ten minutes, quoting commentators and citing precedents, demolishing the authority of every text which could possibly support what she planned, ending with, ‘For a Hindu, all scriptures are without meaning anyway, and tradition itself is against it.’

‘Very good,’ she said. ‘Then I choose it, I alone. Bring wood.’

‘Think of your sons,’ he said.

Sanjay looked at her sons, and saw that Sikander was weeping; Chotta was staring at his mother with a stunned look on his face, but Sikander was gazing up blindly at the roof, at the place on the cloth where the sun appeared as a clouded glow, and was crying. His mother said quickly:

‘My sons are Rajputs. They will understand. Bring wood.’

‘No,’ Ram Mohan said.

Slowly, she stepped forward, four or five strides, hesitated, then reached out to him and put a hand on his shoulder; feeling Ram Mohan shudder, Sanjay looked at him for a moment, then back at her. She suddenly seemed younger, and a blush spread from her shoulders; she took her hand from Ram Mohan, and stood with her arms folded across her chest, like some girl in a painting. Abruptly, Ram Mohan struggled to his feet and left the tent.

They built the pyre — a platform of short lengths of wood stacked some three feet high and soaked with ghee — by the water. In the tent, Sanjay and Sikander and Chotta watched the maids dress her; they draped her in the red of a bride, and put thick gold bracelets on her arms. She seemed relaxed, and raised her arms away from herself often, in order to admire the gold against her skin.

‘Bring me some kheer, will you?’ she said, now soft and smiling at the servants. A black-skinned khansamah came, his fat legs shaking, bearing a common kitchen pot and an old iron spoon. While she ate the sweet rice-pudding, a crowd of thousands gathered outside, from the surrounding villages and fields: their murmuring swept over the tent like a breaking wave, and Sanjay’s vision oscillated crazily, doubled by his old injury and multiplied by dizziness and sweat. ‘Come sit by me,’ she said. ‘All of you.’

She had used a Lucknow attar of jasmine, and the light smell lifted Sanjay’s head, ridding it of the soft hum from outside. He blinked and looked around: Sikander was still crying, Chotta was looking at his mother’s face, his mouth open.

‘Don’t cry,’ she said. ‘Remember who you are. Always remember who you are.’ She looked at Sanjay. ‘And you. You with your dreams.’ She spooned a mouthful. ‘Come. It’s time to go.’

She leaned on Chotta’s shoulder, and he put an arm around her; Sikander and Sanjay walked behind. Outside, the crowd fell silent, and only the flags fluttered and the river moved slowly in the sunlight.

‘Will you chant something?’ she said to Ram Mohan.

‘What?’

‘Whatever is supposed to be said.’

‘I don’t know what is supposed to be said.’

‘Chant anything.’

‘All right. It is the only thing I can do.’

‘From the first moment,’ she said, stepping up to him, ‘from the first moment, you forgave everything I was and did. And this, this is nothing, because you will be here always.’ She turned to her sons, ‘Remember. Death is nothing.’ In three quick steps she crossed from the ground to the top of the pyre, and a single huge shout lifted from the crowd, leaving a silence hard as stone. She sat, still licking the iron spoon. ‘It is very sweet,’ she said, smiling, and then she put the spoon in her lap, folded her hands in front of her, and slowly her eyelids sank. She took a deep breath.

‘You are the eldest son,’ Ram Mohan said to Sikander, and from an earthen pot lifted a piece of wood, blackened and flickering at one end. Sikander looked down at the torch, then at the sky, always away from his mother. ‘Now,’ Ram Mohan said, ‘please.’ But Sikander let his arms fall to his sides, and sobbed helplessly, his chest rising and falling. With a shout (what did he say?), Chotta spun and snatched the torch from Sikander, paused for a single lost moment (how long?), then bent to the wood, reaching, and with a single gasp it ignited all over. Sanjay ran, but found his hand grasped by Sikander, five nails pressing into his skin (he felt it break, instantly, in five separate places).

‘Look,’ Sikander said, turning his head away. ‘Look.’

For one quick convulsion of muscles Sanjay fought, but as always he was unable to budge Sikander, and then Ram Mohan began to chant, and Sanjay looked, and the flames had risen, she sat not moving, her head high, a dark figure. With his hand still in Sikander’s (he feels his blood trickle), Sanjay looked, and Ram Mohan had begun to chant an ancient song in Sanskrit,

Dhritarasthra uvacha —

Dharmakshetre kurukshetre samaveta yuyutsavah

Mamakah pandavasraiva kim akurvata Sanjay…

Dhritarashtra said —

Gathered on the dharma plain of Kurukshetra

O Sanjay, what did my sons and the sons of Pandu do?

while on the burning wood, a blue vapour races over the dark outlines of the naked body (all coverings burnt away?), and then the wood collapses and they are all driven back by a shower of glowing-red, stinging embers, all except Chotta, who stands alone, welcoming the wounds, and Sikander, still holding his friend, still looking away, follows the sun, which roars and consumes, and nothing can be seen, Ram Mohan breaks and cannot sing, and Sanjay shuts his eyes, but still sees the pyre, clearly and not in imagination, the precise flames, the faces of those watching, the arrangement of utensils on the ground, the flick of a woman’s chunni in the wind, an old man, bearded, unfamiliar, walking around the pyre, and Sanjay understands that whatever he does he cannot refuse to see, and he opens his eyes, looks fully into the fire, remembers that she asked for a chant, and quite naturally and without thinking begins to sing,

Nainam chindanti sastrani nainam dahati pavakah

Nacainam kledayanty apo na sosayati marutah…

Weapons do not cut it, fire does not burn it ,

Water does not moisten it, wind does not dry it .

They waited for three days and nights for the remains of the holocaust to cool; on the last of these nights, when the grey ashes could almost be touched, Sanjay talked to the old man who had appeared beside the pyre. This old man, who was invisible to everybody but Sanjay, came and sat beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. The old man had straight hair held by a circular band over his forehead, a clipped beard, eyes half-closed as if in meditation, dark skin, a shawl with a flower pattern draped over one shoulder.