Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

Says Aag: he sighs for me, my beloved, and consuming each other, we will light the universe .

What do you think?’

‘A middling effort,’ Sikander said, ‘and an ominous name. Find another, Sanju.’

‘It is fixed,’ Sanjay said.

‘You’ve become very obstinate,’ Sikander said.

‘It is a time for strength,’ Sanjay said, and then his voice rose, ‘in case you haven’t noticed.’ Even as he said it, the anger apparent in his tone, he regretted it, but in the months following the deaths Sikander had become, inexplicably, gentle and slow-moving and pliable, as if his grief had only sapped his passions, detached him somehow. So even now he just shook his head and smiled.

‘Don’t quarrel, fiery Aag-Sanjay. I came to tell you I am going. I am to go to Calcutta to learn the printer’s trade, letters and ink.’

Immediately, Sanjay was full of anger: ‘You? Calcutta? Printing?’ Another thought struck him. ‘Printing in English?’

‘I suppose,’ Sikander said. ‘The press belongs to a friend of Hercules.’

‘But what do you know of words?’ Sanjay said. ‘You’re a damn Rajput, fit for horses and sweat. Brass-head!’

‘O Brahmin cow-shit-poet, be not jealous,’ and Sikander reached out and tugged at Sanjay’s top-knot; in the next moment they were wrestling. Sanjay tried his best, but for all his arm-flapping and straining he was face-down in a moment, caught in some exotic wrestling grip which paralysed him at the edge of agony.

‘Oh, let me up, bastard,’ he said. ‘My eye-band’s coming off.’

‘Who is the strongest of the strong?’ Sikander said.

‘You, you,’ Sanjay squealed. ‘The Great Sikander, warrior, emperor.’

Sikander stepped off him, and Sanjay worked at the knot on his eye-band, tightening it; every day, he moved the band from one eye to the other, taking care never to have both open at the same time — it was better to see nothing than to encounter things one could not control.

‘Why not just come with me? I’ll talk to Hercules,’ Sikander said.

Sanjay stopped in mid-tie, mouth open at the audacity, the possibilities of the possibility, then he shook his head. ‘No, they’d never let me. Even when I wake up in the mornings, she’s always there looking at me. Only this morning my father said, “Now you’re all we have.”’

‘You’re such a player with words,’ Sikander said. ‘Talk them into it. Give them reasons, dazzle them with lucidity. Debate.’

But words are no match for love, Sanjay discovered; his mother wept and his father began to cough and spit incessantly, holding his chest. That night, Sanjay read by the light of the moon and a surreptitious candle; he was reading a half-paisa Urdu pamphlet published from Calcutta on coarse yellow paper, full of salacious couplets and gossip about the most famous courtesans of Lucknow, Renu and Banno, and scurrilous, punning stories about the English that referred to their principals only in sobriquets: ‘It is reliably heard that the most revered RED ONE is given to joy-driving in his phaeton with the wife of the BIG FISH…’ Hearing his mother stir in the next room, Sanjay waved out the light and tucked the pamphlet under his mattress in a single motion, unwilling to face her smothering concern about the perilous state of his eyesight. Everything was still again, but Sanjay lay quietly on his back, thinking about the vibrant streets of Calcutta, the loaded carts, the traders, the painters and the poets, and somehow through this laughing throng moved the gold-bangled and scented figure of Renu of Lucknow, whose beauty maddened nawabs and stripped young men-about-town of their fortunes. Renu laughed, her anklets jingled, and Sanjay turned on his side and began to move slowly against a round pillow, uncomfortable against its unwieldy, bulky softness and yet unable to stop. Renu whirled through the crowd but still it was possible to see the delicate sheen of moisture on her neck, and Sanjay was sitting upright, rigid, the pulse expanding painfully in his chest, both eyes open and the band lost somewhere in the darkness. He groped with both hands, trying to remember the quality of the sound he had heard, or thought he had heard — had it been a voice, a whisper that somehow had the clarity and suddenness of a shout, or was it just a bird calling, or the movement of wood at night? A door threw a silver rectangle of light across the floor, and outside lay a court-yard with a tulsi plant at the centre, and Sanjay knew whatever had spoken waited there. He squeezed his palms against his eyes, feeling the liquid below the skin, and then lay again on his side, pulling a sheet over himself, over his head, but now each moment came slow and brought with it a new rush of curiosity.

Finally he stood up and walked slowly to the door, holding his left eye shut; the court-yard was paved with bricks, was surrounded by white arches and walls, and the tulsi moved slightly. Finally Sanjay let his hand drop away, opened his eye, and a beautiful young man dressed in a long white dhoti smiled at him, his eyes lined darkly, jewels on his arms, chest bare in an unfamiliar fashion.

‘Who are you?’ Sanjay said.

‘I knew you would come,’ the young man said.

‘Are you Yama?’ Sanjay said.

‘I knew you would come to me. I am Kala.’

Sanjay clapped his eye shut, and now there was only the yard and its plant; he moved back into the room, then out. Slowly, he doubled his vision and let Kala form again: ‘What do you want from me?’

Kala shrugged, his lips full and his hips curving forward to the waistline. ‘To give you our love.’

‘If you want worship from me,’ Sanjay said, ‘you’ll have none. No gifts, nothing. For none of you, not you, not that fool Yama.’

‘We don’t…’

‘I’ll give you nothing,’ Sanjay said, ‘because you give us nothing, you cannot save us, you cannot protect us.’

‘We ask nothing from you,’ Kala said. ‘But remember the stories you have been told, see that we are also your fathers, participants in your birth, and so we love you.…

‘Go,’ Sanjay screamed, his voice echoing in the court-yard. ‘Go from my house. I expel you. I forbid you entry. GO.’

‘I will go,’ Kala said, and he was very lovely in the moonlight, with his black hair falling over his face, and his smell of jasmine water. ‘I go, all the world is my home. Stay here in yours, look after your father and mother, grow to be a house-holder in the heart of your city.’

‘May you suffer as you make us suffer, Kala,’ Sanjay said, the tears starting from his eyes. ‘I curse you. I will defeat you.’

‘I am already and always beaten, my love,’ Kala said, with a gentle inclination of his head and a dancer’s folding of the hands, and then he was gone.

‘What is it?’ Sanjay’s father said. ‘What is it?’ He rushed out of the house, closely followed by his wife. Shanti Devi stumbled over to Sanjay, pressed his shoulders with her hands and wiped his face with the end of her sari.

‘What is it, son?’ she said. ‘Who were you shouting at? A bad dream?’

‘I heard a voice in the darkness,’ Sanjay said. ‘It was no dream, it was a real voice.’

‘Rama protect us.’

‘It was a voice, and it told me I must go. It said to me I must go to the city and learn printing, and that is where my destiny lies, where they want me to go.’

‘They?’ said Arun.

‘The gods.’

‘Who knows what it was?’ Shanti Devi said. ‘A ghoul, a witch. And what is this printing-shinting, is this a job fit for you? For a Brahmin? For our son?’

‘No, forget all that,’ Sanjay said. ‘I must go. They have told me.’

‘If we try to stop you, you will go,’ Arun said. ‘Now you think it is your fate.’