Red Earth and Pouring Rain (31 page)

‘Power has nothing to do with it,’ Janvi said, her voice rising. ‘You say no to them.’

‘The powerful are the twice-born,’ Ram Mohan said, very softly, ‘and the powerful take everything.’ Janvi glanced at him,
startled, and then lowered her head.

‘They are very powerful now,’ Arun said. ‘For everything, the Raja looks to him. Their agents, the men of the Company, control
every article of trade that we send out, every commodity that comes in. On everything they have a monopoly. And so the Raja
looks to him. And this man comes now to my house, and tells me he wants the Vedas, that he needs the Geeta, that I must give
it to him. Will he listen to you?’

‘No,’ Janvi said. ‘And I would say nothing to him.’

‘Then we must find something to give him.’

‘He already has my daughters. And he wants my sons. How much must we give him?’

‘The question is how much taking he can be satisfied with,’ Arun said. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Our son is like this, and he comes to our house demanding things,’ Shanti Devi said. ‘What kind of man is this?’

Sanjay had been concentrating his strength again, and this time he managed two whole, difficult syllables: ‘Ve-dah… Ve-dah…’;
he wanted to advise them to effect an exchange —the sacred books (if they must be given) for the sacred books of the firangi,
one language for the other, secret for secret, a dialogue, but his injuries —raw, leaking —stifled the suggestion, and so
what emerged was mistaken for a precocious desire for theological learning.

‘I’ll teach you,’ Ram Mohan said. ‘I’ll teach you everything.’

‘You’ll teach him everything,’ Arun said. ‘Yes, in this room, among the women, everything is fine, but out there, in the court,
he will be on my back. What will I do? I’ll have to give him what he wants. And I don’t even know where to get a copy of any
of the Vedas.’

‘Fight him,’ Janvi said.

‘How?’

‘Oh, make something up, can’t you?’ Shanti Devi said, wiping her face with the end of her sari. ‘You’re good at that.’

‘Tell him we’ve sent for it,’ Ram Mohan said.

‘Yes, I’ll tell him that,’ Arun said. ‘But finally we’ll have to give him something, at least something.’

‘I remember,’ Ram Mohan said. ‘I can recite most of it, some of it, at least something.’

‘You can?’

‘I learned it from my father, and it was the one thing I could do well.’

‘So you’ll recite. Who’ll write down?’

At this Sanjay let forth an incensed growl, and thrashed his limbs about on the bed; the others watched him, a little frightened,
till Ram Mohan clapped a hand to his mouth and said, ‘Of course, child, of course, you will write down. Who else but you?’
He turned to the others. ‘Who else? He has known how to write without being taught, and Sanskrit without a single lesson.
How and why, we used to ask, and perhaps it was only for this. I will recite and he will write down.’

And so Sanjay wrote it down, but before that could happen, there
was the matter of his initiation, because of course the Veda could be studied only by one twice-born; so even before he could
get up from the bed his head was shaved, and Sikander and Chotta carried his cot about the court-yard, where he ritually begged
alms from assembled Brahmins and relatives, and then he was wrapped in a deer-skin, enclosed in heat, darkness.

At first he lay quiet, rather enjoying the soft, finely-grained texture of the skin, but soon he noticed a faint luminosity
skipping in and out of sight, dancing at the edges of vision; he turned his head slightly and it disappeared, only to re-form
at the other periphery. This time, he carefully avoided looking at it directly, and soon it resolved itself, the borders shifting
and hardening until he could make out the shape of a gigantic fish, its size signalled by the lazy back and forth of its body
and slow movements; it seemed to be drawing closer, and he felt the beginnings of panic when suddenly its contours fell in
on themselves, closing and expanding, and then it was a boar, white, bristly and pawing, and now Sanjay fought to get the
hide off his head, coming out sputtering, scrambling, into the harsh sunlight which he welcomed even as his eyes teared, his
relatives gathering round, Ram Mohan clucking, running his hand over the smooth bald skin, touching even the thin pearly membrane
on Sanjay’s forehead, soothing with a delicate touch.

When he calmed, Ram Mohan carried him to the sacred fire, cradling him against a chest loosened by age, and hurried the priests
through the ceremony, finally dropping the seven-stranded loop over his neck and under a shoulder (the Brahmins chanting),
saying, ‘Now you enter this world, now the world is yours,’ and Sanjay started at a sudden sputtering blaze of the fire caused
by the ghee dropping from the priests’ fingers; through the momentary sparks and the heat-warped air, he saw Chotta and Sikander,
faces rapt, sweating slightly, fixed on the flame, on the crumbling of the wood, the complex evolving patterns of ember and
blaze (like quick cities seen from afar), calculating, it seemed, the possibilities of demolition by fire: What do the gods
eat? What is lost? What is purified?

He shines forth at dawn like the sunlight
,

transmuting the sacrifice in the manner of priests

unfolding their meditations
.

Agni, the God who knows well all the generations, visits

the Gods as a messenger, most efficacious
.

With this verse, Ram Mohan began his dictation of the Vedas, at first checking Sanjay’s transcription often, but finding,
with no little satisfaction, that his scribe demonstrated preternatural accuracy, he concentrated on recalling what he could
of the scriptures, scraps from the Rig and the Yajur, fragments from the Sama, a sloka or two from the Katha Upanishad; a
word or a phrase from the Vedas would remind him of a verse by Kalidasa, and so, more for the edification of his nephew than
the benefit of the Englishman, he would recite a couplet or two about sweeping rain and the elephant-walk of the beloved.

Sanjay, head bent over the palm-leaf, flicking the wrist on his pen-hand, invented elaborate flourishes and ritualistic reachings
for ink, curlicued stylistic embellishments to the characters, all to gain time for the faintest chance for reflection, of
comprehension: Yajnavalkya? Svetaketu? Who were these young men? Nachiketas? But there was barely time to put down one line
before Ram Mohan was ready with the next (with a smile of satisfaction), and at the end of the morning, Sikander and Chotta
would appear to hover impatiently, tiring quickly of the verbiage.

The session’s work, however, was not officially over until Sanjay’s end Sikander’s mothers appeared, bringing paan, attar,
and other refreshments; then the boys escaped, the brothers supporting Sanjay between them as he tottered along, his balance
still shaky, his progress (when alone) often impeded by his tendency to bump into things —in deciphering his double-world,
he often made mistakes about placing the phantom image, about deciding what was real and what was not. In their games, he
was usually the rich merchant, and they the robbers, or he the powerful but stationary king, and they the dashing cavalrymen;
it was on one of these afternoons, the afternoon after Sanjay had transcribed the story of Nachiketas, that he was set to
be the guard at a treasury, while they played the adventurers questing for the key. He sat under a tree, in the grove some
distance from their homes, next to a nullah where animals knelt and scraped at the dry bed for water; he sat on a mound —which
represented the entrance to the underground passage-way, walls encrusted with precious jewels, naga-kings hissing
—wishing that his double-vision rendered, as a compensation, widened perspective, instead of two versions of the same visual
event placed side-by-side. An ability to see both coming and going, forward and back, would have proved a vital asset in the
games with Sikander and Chotta, who moved slowly and silently, floating over the crisp leaves and brittle branches of summer,
appearing suddenly to aim a blow at the back of Sanjay’s neck (‘Oy, Sanjay, are you deaf as well as cross-eyed?’ ‘You’d never
make a sentry at my father’s regiment, buttons-instead-of-eyes!’).

Sanjay started then, because Sikander and Chotta appeared, unexpectedly, where he could see them; noiseless, as usual, but
undoubtedly, plainly visible when a good ten feet off. Sanjay rose to his knees, hands signalling I-see-you, but the others
covered the intervening ground in a quick-flash instant (how do they do that?), thrust a forearm each under his shoulders,
and lifted him off the ground, into the bushes. He started to struggle, but a warning, painful pinch stilled him, just in
time to hear a steady shuffling through the trees, a familiar rhythm to it, attempted stealthiness with an unmistakable clumsiness
underneath; a gait is like a man or a woman’s script —attempts at masquerade fail because the disguise is usually so exaggerated,
and who can hide that arrogance, that assumption of strength that demands of things to move aside when the foot is put down,
that assumes all roads will be smoothened? —it was, of course, Hercules. But Hercules was skulking now, his furtive-ness emphasized
by his obvious eagerness, by the haste with which he angled through the bushes. He passed the boys by, and Sanjay saw Sikander
and Chotta look curiously at each other, clearly puzzled by the jackal-in-the-bush demeanour of their father. Without a word,
a decision was made —they pulled Sanjay to his feet, placed him between them, behind Sikander and in front of Chotta, and
began to follow Hercules.

Sanjay had, for as long as he could remember, understood that Sikander and Chotta had somehow learnt the techniques of being
invisible (or had they been born with the skill?), but on this day he watched them exercise their art —they placed their feet
wide-toed and ball first, quickly and surely, but without suddenness, so that a dry leaf, instead of cracking and crackling,
only moved and bent, and obligingly bore the weight. Sometimes Sikander and Chotta seemed to delight in following their quarry
so closely that it seemed impossible that he not see
them —and he did look back, often, with the quick uptilted nose of a sniffing feline —but when it seemed that he must see
them, they froze, and were somehow camouflaged by the shadow and sunlight, the golden grass and earth. Sikander’s right hand,
held behind him and below the waist, signalled stops and starts, safety and urgency; they passed from a maidan to a cluster
of huts, and here Hercules straightened up, pulled at his lapels, extracted a kerchief and wrapped it, brigand-fashion, around
his face, and resumed his usual, stately walk; now Sikander and Chotta modified their strategy —they strolled along, keeping
Hercules barely in sight, stopping to look at fruit baskets and chat-seller’s wares.

Sanjay realized, with a quick rush of excitement at having penetrated a forbidden zone, that they were in a settlement of
low-caste people; he looked about himself with the eager curiosity of a foreigner, half-expecting and wanting to be shocked,
but all around them were the business and affairs of ordinary, familiar life —food, chores, children, animals, the washing
of clothes, and perhaps the only extraordinary thing was a difference in the tie of a turban, or a particular way of wearing
a dhoti. The presence of three unknown boys seemed to provoke no hostility, but rather a blank, level stare that said precisely
nothing; Sanjay was beginning to be disappointed that nothing more strange had happened when Hercules turned left down a lane.
The boys turned the corner just in time to see him ducking into a door, and tugging aside a ragged red curtain hanging over
the lintel; there were some children playing by the open drain that ran along the side of the lane, pulling a little wooden
cart to and fro.

‘If we could get up on the roof,’ Chotta said.

‘Right,’ Sikander said.

Sanjay pawed at Sikander’s arm, shaking his head, but the two brothers were already stepping down the lane, jumping over the
cart as it rattled along; they edged over close to the hut, stood with their backs to it, watching the game, and the moment
no eyes were turned their way, they dashed off to the rear, pulling Sanjay along. Behind the hut, a cow raised its head to
look at them, then swung back down to its feed; Sikander and Chotta found a chink in the mud wall, wedged their feet into
it, and pulled themselves up to the thatch above. They reached down for Sanjay.

‘Come,’ Sikander said.

Sanjay shook his head.

‘Come on, pumpkin-head,’ Chotta whispered. ‘You won’t break again.’

‘Come on, Sanju,’ Sikander said. ‘I’ll hold on to you this time.’

Sanjay turned away, pulse quickened; the cow watched, its mouth moving.

‘Sanju,’ Sikander said, ‘don’t you want to know?’

He lifted both hands up to them, and they pulled him up effortlessly (he felt his feet leave the ground, ankles extend); they
worked their way around the edge of the sloping roof, and Sanjay resolutely turned his face to the comfortable, musty smell
of the thatch, and clamped a grip on Sikander’s kurta.

‘Here,’ Sikander said, moving aside handfuls of coarse straw, and Sanjay reached in beside him, glad to be doing something.
‘Quietly, quietly.’ The stuff came away in easy tufts, slightly moist, and then they were through: a small ragged hole, an
obscuring beam, and, beyond, very white in the grey interior light (outside, the sun blazed), at first an unnameable moving
construction, a twisting rectangular patch and two spheres, speckled, then the image twisted on itself, resolved (altitude
is dizzying), and became a back ridged by shoulder blades, and below, two contracting and expanding buttocks, a quick moment
of vertigo, a strong dislocation, longing, longing, it can crush your bones, and below, Hercules moved faster (ragged rhythm)
between the dark splayed thighs, and above his right shoulder a dark face, a woman,
heavy
face, passive, impassive, eyes marking the colourful figures on the shelf, the icons, images, then turning slightly to look
at an empty corner (only dust floating like stars), time passed, time, and Hercules grunted, his fingers in her hair, pulling,
twisting her face to his (her lip drawing back, pain), grunted again, long rattling sigh.