Red Earth and Pouring Rain (82 page)

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe you should go home.’

When I said good-bye to Amanda in Bombay she said, I’ll see you soon, in a few months, and I said yes. But I really didn’t
know, I felt lost, all I knew was that I had to go home too. We had come down from Matheran with an awkwardness between us,
and in the taxi on the way to the airport we had talked about movies. Now as we stood in the airport I was telling her that
I would come back to the States, that we would be together again.

‘I’ll see you soon,’ I said.

‘Are you angry with me?’

‘No.’ I truly wasn’t, not with her, and as we hugged, and as she walked away through the immigration gates I felt a huge sadness,
and, I suppose, anger, but it was never at her. Later that day I got onto a slow train going north, it was the only train
on which I could get a reservation, and then I was very angry with the slowness of the train, at how it stopped at every little
town, I was angry at the crowds of people who got on and off at every station. I watched the landscape change slowly as the
train scraped interminably up the country, and I was angry at lots of things. There was an unreasonable sadness inside me,
a bitterness I could find no focus for, but I could taste it in the grit inside my mouth, it seemed to go right through me.

There was the house I remembered, the little white house on the edge of the maidan, and when the door opened my mother put
her hand to her mouth and screamed, and then she hugged me. My father hurried up and hugged me and then insisted on carrying
my bags in. We talked while my mother fed me, and she scolded me because she didn’t have
my favorite vegetables in the house. That night, I wasn’t able to sleep, I turned and tossed till early in the morning, and
then I fell into a doze that seemed to give me a headache. I woke up with my head hurting, and of course when I tried to shower
there was no water. I was sweating, it was hot. While I ate I looked up and saw a white-faced monkey on the roof, I knew him
well, he had been stealing things from my parents for years. Later that afternoon I sat with them and tried to tell them about
America, my mother kept asking, but what is it like? I tried to tell her, but it all seemed hollow, as if I was saying nothing.
Then I saw the monkey again, on the roof. He was pulling my jeans from the line. By the time I got up to the roof, he was
in a tree, and I bounced a piece of brick off his behind, and he went off across the tree-tops, taking my jeans. I came down
from the roof, and I knew I had to do something. Through that day I had this sensation that if I didn’t do something the heat
and the anger, the burning would burst my head apart. So I sat in the darkness and waited for him. I thought of machines,
of rockets powering upwards, and the house I was in seemed small and defenceless, somehow primitive. In my lap I had a rifle,
and I worked its bolt back and forth. The metal was good and smooth to touch. Snick-CLACK. I sat and waited for the monkey.
I knew he would come.

After

I AM SITTING
in a church. The roof curves high above, and the light is clear, the names —Indian and English —of men gleam from the walls
in gold. This is the St. James Church in Delhi. It is very quiet, and the rush of the cars and trucks on the road outside
is stilled. In front of the altar, even with the ground, is a great stone slab, marked:

HERE REST THE

REMAINS OF THE LATE

COLONEL JAMES SKINNER C.B.

WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE,

AT HANSI

4th DECEMBER 1841

THE BODY WAS DISINTERRED,

REMOVED FROM HANSI AND BURIED UNDER

THIS ON THE 19th JANUARY 1842

I don’t know why they moved him. When I walk around the church, on the wall I find the reason.

THIS CHURCH WAS ERECTED AT THE

SOLE EXPENSE OF THE LATE

COLONEL JAMES SKINNER C.B.

IN FULFILMENT OF A VOW

MADE WHILE LYING WOUNDED

ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE

IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

OF THE MEMORY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE

AND IS TESTIMONY

OF HIS SINCERE FAITH IN THE TRUTH

OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

I say to Sikander, my name is Abhay, I knew someone who knew you, and I ask, where are your mosque and your temple, but he
cannot reply from under his stone. I try to pray, but I cannot, and I walk outside into the bright sunlight. I don’t know
why I came, to this church, to this place, but somehow I had to come, to greet what lies buried there and everywhere. I am
also asking for help, I suppose, because my friend Saira is wounded and near death.

When I had finished telling my story of returning from foreign lands, the noise was rising outside. There were shouts and
calls, loud arguments, the frightening roar of crowds, of conflict. Since then I have tried to find out what the fight was
about, and I have discovered that there were dozens of factions, a hundred ideologies, all struggling with each other, there
were politics old and deep, alliances and betrayals, defeats and triumphs, revenge and friendship, the old story, you’ve heard
it before, but there was one new thing, one new idea that overwhelmed everything else, and this was simply that there should
be only one idea, one voice, one thing, one, one, one. So as I finished my story, and as Sanjay lay with his head in Yama’s
lap, a fight broke out, we heard the clamour from inside. Saira was holding Sanjay’s hand, and when it began he started, a
look of pain on his face, and without a pause Saira leapt off the bed and ran outside. I sprinted after her but she was fast,
and not hesitating she ran into the roiling crowd, amongst the men and women pushing and beating at each other, and she called,
‘Stop! Stop it. Stop it right now’ There was a light about her, an energy that stilled those who saw her, and as she ran into
the middle of the maidan the crowd cleared around her and I think she would have succeeded, she would have stopped it all,
but dropping out of the sky there was already a black point, a singularity, a bomb. Nobody knows whose it was, what party
affiliations it had, whether it believed in this or that, but it came down, perfect and sleek and technologically advanced
and clicking, and when it burst it did what no one has been able to do ever,
it stilled every voice and its roar became the owner of the world. Saira was still running and I don’t believe she ever saw
it. It wounded her, only her, it hurt her in ways I can’t bring myself to describe. She is alive but she is wounded.

We took her to hospital, and the good doctors struggled to save her. Finally it was decided that she should be taken to Delhi,
to the All-India Medical Institute, and before we left I came back to my house, her blood still on my clothes. I found my
father and mother still sitting with Sanjay, whose chest heaved up and down, his eyes were almost closed. He had been waiting,
I think, only for news of her. He had said he would not speak again, but when I told him he broke his vow and told me something.
I whispered to him, and then he put his hand in mine, and with a trembling, feathery finger he traced the words on my wrist,
Help her.

‘How?’ I said.

He said: ‘Tell a story.’

Why, how, my questions were still bursting out when his finger shook one last time on my wrist, and I may have imagined the
word that it wrote on my pulse, I cannot be sure, but he said, Brother, and then he died. I held his body, small it was, in
my arms and I wept. Then I asked my father, what does one do with the body of this animal? He shook his head. Finally we walked
through the dark streets of the town, through the curfew, unseen, and then into the country. We found a river —its name I
do not know, I could not find it again —and I lowered Sanjay into the water, and the steady current beating against my thighs
carried him away quietly.

I am now in the hospital room, watching Saira. My parents and hers keep anxious vigil, and the serious young doctors of the
Institute are fighting hard to save her. I trust them, and I like them, but I remember what Sanjay told me, and I know there
is more to be done. Her little face is framed by bandages, and her hands lie still on top of the sheets. I tell my elders
that I will be back, and then I walk out, out of the room and out of the building, into the street. There are people walking
about the gates, cars and scooters passing by. I take a deep breath. I am mad, perhaps I will be arrested. Will I wander barefoot
in the streets of Delhi, will you exile me from this city I love? Will you listen to me? Will you
stone me, will you imprison me? I cannot care, I must tell a story. Listen. I am about to tell a story. I will tell you about
wives, and good doctors, soldiers, poets, tribesmen, loafers and goondas, untrustworthy characters, loan-takers, dashing pilots,
fast horses, card-players, socialites, actresses, politicians, I will tell you about underground deals, black money, great
loves, cross-country runs, farmers and their crops, fisheries and city councils, religious leaders and, of course, cavalrymen.
I will tell you a story that will grow like a lotus vine, that will twist in on itself and expand ceaselessly, till all of
you are a part of it, and the gods come to listen, till we are all talking in a musical hubbub that contains the past, every
moment of the present, and all the future. And the great music of that primeval sound will reach Saira’s ears, and she will
rise from her bed, she will shake off her bandages and she will jump down to stand with her hands on her hips, and she will
say, laughing, what’s the matter, yaar, why so long-face, want to play a game of cricket? And we will all walk to the maidan
holding hands, and as we walk you and I will look from side to side and we will see them all, we will see that everyone is
there, all our fathers and mothers and their enemies, all together now, and in the crowd a bottomless basket of laddoos will
pass around, and we will all eat our fill. We will play till the sun sets, feeling fine and free and running about. Then we
will sit in circles and circles, saying, bless us, Ganesha; be with us, friend Hanuman; Yama, you old fraud, you can listen
if you want; and saying this we will start all over again.

“Richly inventive and confident… filled with passages of surprising magic.”

—Michael Frank,
Los Angeles Times

“A considerable accomplishment… . Mr. Chandra marries his storytelling prowess to a profound understanding of India’s ageless
and ever-changing society… . At the core of the book are two novellas of rare narrative strength.”

—Shashi Tharoor,
New York Times Book Review

“Chandra’s gift is the elaborate, pleasurable narrative line, the sort of fiction you could stay up and read all night.”

—John Sutherland,
Seattle Times

“At the heart of each story is a mystery that keeps you reading… . Chandra is a storyteller of the grand old school.”

—Chitra Banerjee Divakurini,
San Francisco Chronicle

“Displays as light a satirical touch as if it were Edith Wharton let loose on Malabar Hill, the Great Neck of Bombay… . Chandra
knows how to catch a whole era of expectation and loss in a single phrase.”

—John Weir,
Newsday

“Breathtaking… . When Midnight’s Children first appeared on the scene, it became necessary to reevaluate stories from and
about India. With Vikram Chandra’s collection —his second book —it is time to take stock again.”

—Farrukh Dhondy,
The Observer
(London)

“Wonderfully complex and entertaining… . A delight to read. This collection reminds one of the fundamental pleasures of fiction:
the enjoyment of surrendering to the engaging imagination of a superior writer.”

—Mark Bautz,
Washington Times

Greeted with thunderous critical acclaim throughout the world, Vikram Chandra’s extraordinary first novel brings to life the
epic sweep of India’s history —and a memorable road trip across modern America
.

T
he
New York Times Book Review
described it as “huge, magical, cinematic,” and critics around the world proclaimed it the year’s most astonishing debut.
Vikram Chandra’s
Red Earth and Pouring Rain
is an unforgettable reading experience, a contemporary
Thousand and One Nights
—with an eighteenth-century warrior-poet (now reincarnated as a typewriting monkey) and an Indian student home from college
in America switching off as our Scheherazades: Ranging from bloody battles in colonial India to college anomie in California,
from Hindu gods to MTV, Chandra’s novel is engrossing, enthralling, impossible to put down —a remarkable meditation on quests
and homecomings, good and evil, storytelling and redemption.

“A dazzling feat of imagination, technique, and wordplay.” —
Entertainment Weekly

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