Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

‘I am Yama,’ the old man said. ‘The Lord of Death.’

Sanjay looked at him, and the old man’s face was calm and refined, his demeanour that of an aesthete.

‘There will be more of this, won’t there?’ Sanjay said.

‘Yes,’ the old man said, and just then Sanjay fluttered his left eye (the wind lifted the ashes), and for a moment the other disappeared, his voice lost. ’… sab lal ho jayega — everything will become red.’

‘More of this,’ Sanjay said, and began tearing a strip off his dhoti.

‘Wait,’ said the old man, reaching out to him. ‘Listen, you must listen…’

But Sanjay had already closed his left eye, and he then wrapped the cloth around his head so that it was firmly held shut: the old man disappeared.

‘You go to hell,’ Sanjay said.

After the ashes were thrown into the water, they stayed by the river, the whole party seemingly paralysed, no one willing or able to give the order to move one way or another. Sikander and Chotta rode all over the plain, leaving early and returning in the late evening, exhausted and blackened by dust; Ram Mohan sat by the river, his feet in the water, refusing umbrellas and cushions; and Sanjay spent the days with Gajnath. On the sixth morning Hercules came rushing back across the river, pale and incredulous, accompanied by the woman and Sarthi. As Hercules raged through the camp, kicking and shouting and interrogating, Ram Mohan said to Sikander and Chotta and Sanjay, ‘Wait. I wish to tell you a story.’

He told them a story: Once a woman named Janvi was captured as a citadel fell, and a man called Jahaj Jung — who loved her — escaped from the burning city; Janvi’s captor, Hercules, made a marriage with her, but by sheer force of will she produced only daughters, and one day she sent to Jahaj Jung, asking for sons; he sent back shining laddoos, and all who touched them became a part of the story, and Janvi and her neighbour Shanti Devi ate the laddoos; and when the sons were born a cobra held them.

‘And so each of you was born,’ Ram Mohan said. ‘Born, she said, for revenge. But all of us who touched are your fathers, you are made for much more than that, and you are made of the dust from marching feet, the tears of men, spittle, hope.’

Hercules marched up to them, flanked by soldiers. ‘Arrest that man,’ he said. ‘Aiding and abetting and materially enabling a suicide.’

The soldiers lifted Ram Mohan up and walked him towards the camp, and Hercules wiped tears from his face.

‘There is much work to be done, sir,’ Sarthi said, ‘much work indeed.’

‘Yes,’ Hercules said.

* * *

Sandeep paused and rubbed his eyes. ‘They put irons on Ram Mohan,’ he said, ‘on his arms and legs and put him in the back of a baggage cart. When they stopped after the first day’s journey he was dead, sitting with his head resting on his knees.’ Sandeep rose to his feet, gathering the folds of a loose shawl about his shoulders. ‘In the first two months after Janvi’s death, the Company annexed two small territories and one major one. Six rajas and two nawabs signed treaties with the Company, allowing the British to maintain garrisons within their territories and acceding certain rights, pertaining to politics and economics, in perpetuity. In the six months after Janvi’s death, three hundred and four women were burnt to death on the pyres of their husbands. Some climbed onto the pyres of their own accord, proud and unheeding of all entreaties; others were forced screaming into the flames by their relatives. All these deaths were widely written about in newspapers in India and in Europe. They became the focal point of many sermons and editorials, and the campaign to allow missionaries into India gained momentum.’ Sandeep swirled the shawl about him and stepped away into the darkness, then turned back. He called:

HERE ENDS THE SECOND BOOK,

THE BOOK OF LEARNING AND DESOLATION.

SIKANDER’S CHILDHOOD IS PAST.

NOW BEGINS THE THIRD BOOK,

THE BOOK OF BLOOD AND JOURNEYS.

NOW THERE WAS a fierce debate raging on the maidan, sparked off somehow in the middle of the story-telling. The antagonists were the retired head of the Sanskrit Department at Janakpur University and a visiting biologist from Calcutta, and the question of course was consciousness and the body and the nature of the mind. Emotions were running high, and voices even higher, and Ganesha and Hanuman were laying wagers.

‘Easy win, monkey,’ Ganesha said. The old fellow’s education is so much deeper.’

‘Ah, yes, but the Bengali’s reading is so much wider,’ Hanuman said. ‘He has an M.A. in colonial literature.’

‘True, true, but that will apply only peripherally, if at all.’

‘Wait and see,’ Hanuman said. ‘Wait and see.’

Now there was a noise at the door, and a man entered the room, bearing a box. He was a large, fat man with a round face and thinning hair oiled straight back, and the box he held in front of him was covered with iridescent paper, blue and green and gold.

‘Gulati uncle,’ Saira squeaked, jumping up.

He opened the box for her, and inside there were rows and arrays of sweets, gulab jamuns and jalebis and barfi. Over her lowered head he nodded at me. ‘Myself Gulati,’ he said. ‘Proprietor of Gulati Sweet Emporium. Sweets for the story-teller. Please try.’

‘You know,’ Saira said, biting down into a gulab jamun. ‘You’re not supposed to be in here.’

‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘Only to bring a small token of my appreciation, I came. Enjoy.’

As he manoeuvred his bulk past the chairs and to the door, Abhay scowled at Saira. ‘How did he get in here, past all your security?’

‘He probably bribed everyone with Gulati sweets,’ Saira said. ‘Who can resist?’

‘Now he’ll go and tell everyone he’s official sweet supplier to the miraculous monkey,’ Abhay said. ‘What a greasy fatso.’

‘You, Abhay bhaiya,’ Saira said, gulab jamun juice running down her chin, ‘have developed the deplorable habit of not believing anybody or anything.’

‘Don’t be rude to your elders, Saira,’ her mother said, gesturing with a jalebi.

‘It’s true,’ Saira said. ‘It’s a very bad habit.’

Meanwhile, I was trying a bit of the barfi, and I found it to be a very truthful barfi, full of the sincere and light essence of almond, and satisfying to both intellect and heart. I pushed the box towards Abhay. He shook his head.

Ashok and Mrinalini were at their place by the typewriter. ‘We’re ready,’ Mrinalini said, wiping her fingers.

‘Tell them to be quiet outside,’ Yama said. ‘Minds and bodies both. Or they’ll have to deal with me.’

THE YEARS PASSED, and city nations collided with each other, and out of this churning came empires, with their monuments and epic poetry and sciences of assassination and power. There were some battles that passed into time, and others that became memory and gathered the dreams of whole peoples about them, like a speck of dust accumulates a pearl about itself, and these accumulated stories became the stories of stories, the stories of a nation made up of many nations, the collective dream of many peoples who were one people.

Even as the emperors and kings studied the land and sent out their spies, marshalled their armies, there were those who farmed the rich land, others who made things, served people, and then those who created the beautiful, in stone and wood, in words, in cloth. Traders traversed the seas, and took out and sent in, and gold filled their coffers. There were, as always, the rich and the poor, the suffering and the murderous, the kind and the patient and the bilious, but it was all in the wonderful richness of the world, the wheel turning, and in the end these men and women lived lives of wholeness. There was time enough for the philosophers to argue, and pandits everywhere debated the compulsions of ritual and the limits of reason, the existence of an after-life and the necessity of karma in moral action. And there were pandits who were women, and women who ruled families and more. There were women of the world who plied their trade, but they were renowned for their skill in the sixty-four arts, and famous for their wit. It was an innocent time when dharma was forgotten sometimes but still sought after, when the curse of a poor farmer could lower the head of a king, when the pride of a courtesan could turn back a river.