Red Earth and Pouring Rain (40 page)

‘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.

‘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.

THE BOOK OF BLOODAND JOURNEYS

now

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.’