River of Gods (34 page)

LAST BALL OF OVER, Krishan palms.

"Their square short leg was fight on top of that one,"
Parvati says. The ladies halt in their talk of state, mildly
perturbed. But once again she feels outbatted, a Deep Fine Leg
watching the ball scurry towards the boundary. She has tried so hard,
learned the language and the rules and still they are beyond her; the
war, government strategy, the Ranas, international power politics.
She persists: "Husainy's up next, he'll take Trevelyan's pace
delivery like it's being served to him on a thali."

Her words are less than the jet contrails evaporating in the yellow
air above Sampurnanand Stadium. Parvati flips up zoom on her palmer,
scans the ranked faces across the pitch. She thumbs WHERE ARE YOU? A
message comes back: TO RIGHT OF SIGHT SCREENS. THE BIG WHITE THINGS.
She swings her screen over the brown, sweating faces. There. Waving
smally, so as not to disturb the players. That would not be cricket.

She can see him. He cannot see her. Fine features, naturally pale
skin darkened by his work in the sun on the roof of Diljit Rana
Apartments. Clean-shaven; it is only when she contrasts Krishan with
the exuberance of moustaches around him that Parvati realises that
has always been an important thing for her in a man. Nandha is a
shaving man, too. Hair lightly oiled, springing from its chemical
confinement, spilling over his forehead. Teeth, when he shouts in
delight at some male pleasure from the rules, good and even and
present. His shirt is clean and white and fresh, his trousers, as she
notices when he stands up to applaud a good two runs, are simple and
well ironed. Parvati feels no shame at watching Krishan anonymously.
The first lesson she learned from the women of Kotkhai was that men
are their most true and most beautiful when they are least conscious
of themselves.

A crack of willow. The crowd surges to its feet. A boundary. The
scoreboard clicks over. The Begum Khan is saying now that the Ranas
have made N. K. Jivanjee look quite the fool since the Awadhi
incursion sent him and his silly rath yatra flying back to Allahabad
like Ravana fleeing to Lanka.

I SPY YOU, whispers the palmer. The screen shows her Krishan's
smiling face. She tilts her parasol in unobtrusive greeting. Behind
her the ladies have fallen to chatter of the Dawar's party and why
Shaheen Badoor Khan had not stayed for the entertainment. Begum Khan
pleads that he is a very busy man, doubly so in this time of Bhatat's
need. Parvati hears the hooks in their voices. She turns to the game.
Now that Krishan has opened up cricket's mysteries, she can see that
there is much subtlety and wit in it. A Test Match is not so
different from
Town and Country
.

MAZUMDAR WILL TAKE JARDINE, Krishan messages. Jardine walks lazily
back from the crease, examining the ball, working at it with his
thumb, polishing it. He lines up. The fielders tighten up in their
strangely titled positions. Mazumdar, two stripes of anti-dazzle
cream beneath his eyes like a tiger's stripes, prepares to receive
the delivery. Jardine bowls. The ball bounces, hits a scuff in the
grass, bounces high, bounces sweet. Everyone in Sampurnanand Stadium
can see how high, how sweet; can see Mazumdar judge it, weight it,
shift his position, bring his bat back, get underneath it, send it
soaring up, out into the yellow sky. It is a magnificent stroke, a
daring stroke, a brilliant stroke. The crowd roars. A six! A six! It
must be. All the gods demand it. Fielders run, eyes on heaven. None
will ever catch it. This ball is going up, up, out.

Keep your eye on the ball,
Krishan had told Parvati when it
was spades and apricots on the roof garden. Parvati Nandha keeps her
eye on the ball as it reaches the top of its arc and gravity
overcomes velocity and if falls to earth, towards the crowd, a red
bindi, a red eye, a red sun. An aerial assault. A missile from
Krishan, seeking out the heart. The ball falls and the spectators
rise but none before Parvati. She surges up and the ball drops into
her upheld right hand. She cries out at the sting, then yells "Jai
Bharat!" mad on the moment. The crowd cheers, she is marooned in
sound. "Jai Bharat!" The noise redoubles. Then, as Krishan
showed her, she hooks back her sari and flings the ball out across
the boundary. An English fielder catches it, nods a salute, and skims
it to the bowler. But it is six, six, glorious six to Mazumdat and
Bharat. I kept my eye on the ball. I kept my hand soft, moved with
it. She turns to show off her pride and achievement to her ladies and
finds their faces rigid with contempt.

Parvati only allows herself to stop when she is outside the ground
but even then she can still hear the muttering and feel the burn of
shame on her face. A fool a fool a country fool, carried away with
the mob, getting up and making an exhibition of herself like someone
with no manners, no class at all. She had shown them up. Look at the
Cantonment lady who throws the ball like a man! Jai Bharat!

Her palmer has been vibrating, message after message after message.
She does not want to see them. She does not want even to look back
for fear he might have come after her. She heads across the
landscaped area to the road. Taxis. There must be taxis, any time on
a match day. She stands by the cracked roadside, parasol raised as
the phatphats and city cabs slide past. Where are you going who are
you driving this time of day? Can't you see a lady is hailing you?

Hope-to-be lady. Never-was lady. Never-can-be lady.

A moped cab swings through the traffic to the curb. The driver is a
buck-toothed youth with a straggle of down for a moustache.

"Parvati!" The voice is behind her. This is worse than
death. She climbs into the back and the driver accelerates away, past
the startled, staring figure in the pressed black trousers and the
sharply ironed pure white shirt. Returning to the empty apartment,
shaking with shame and wanting to die, Parvati finds the doors
unlocked and her mother with her travelling baggage encamped in the
kitchen.

The dam is a long, low curve of bulldozed earth, huge as a horizon,
one end invisible from the other, anchored in the gentle contours of
the Ganga valley. The Bharati Air Force tilt-jet comes in over Kunda
Khadar from the east. It passes low over the waving jawans, turns
above the lake. The aeai strike-copters flock closer than Shaheen
Badoor Khan finds comfortable. They fly as birds fly, daring
manoeuvres no human pilot could attempt, by instinct and embodiment.
The tilt-jet banks, the aeaicraft dart and swoop to cover and Shaheen
Badoor Khan finds himself looking down into a wide, shallow bowl of
algae-stained water rimmed by dirty, sandy gravel as far as the eye
can see, white and toxic as salt. A silty sump not even a cow would
drink. Across the aisle Sajida Rana shakes her head and whispers,
"Magnificent."

If they had listened, if they had not rushed in the soldiers, heads
full of Jai Bharat! Shaheen Badoor Khan thinks.
The people want a
war
, Sajida Rana had said at the cabinet meeting. The people
shall have one, now.

The Prime Ministerial jet lands on a hastily cleared field on the
edge of a village ten kays on the Bharati side of the dam. The
aeaicraft flock above it like kites over a Tower of Silence. The
occupation force has made its divisional headquarters here.
Mechanised units dig in to the east, robots sow a minefield. Shaheen
Badoor Khan in his city suit blinks behind his label shades in the
hard light and notes the villagers standing at the edges of their
requisitioned and ruined fields. In her tailored combats Sajida Rana
is already striding purposefully towards the receiving line of
officers and guards and V. S. Chowdhury. She wants to be Number One
pin-up on the barrack-room walls; Mama Bharat, up there with Nina
Chandra. The officers namaste and escort Prime Minister and prime
counsellor through the dust to the hummers. Sajida Rana strides out,
Minister Chowdhury trotting alongside as he attempts to brief her.
Little yipping dog, Shaheen Badoor Khan thinks. As he climbs into the
sweatbox of the hummer's passenger compartment he glances back at the
tilt-jet, perched on its wheels and engines as if fearful of
contamination. The pilot is a black-visored tick plugged into the
plane's head. Beneath the sensor-tipped nose the long barrel of an
autocannon is like the proboscis of some insect that lives by sucking
the juices from another. A dainty killer.

Shaheen Badoor Khan sees the banana club, the blind smile of the old
woman, identifying her guests by pheromone; the dark alcoves where
the voices mingled and laughed and the bodies relaxed into each
other. The alien, beautiful creature, swimming out of the dark and
the dhol beat like a nautch dancer.

The hummer smells of Magic Pine air freshener. Shaheen Badoor Khan
unfolds blinking into the light that glares from the concrete road
surface. They are on the dam-top road. The air is rank with dead soil
and stagnant water. Magic Pine is almost preferable. A thin piss of
yellow water trickles from the spill-way flume. That is Mother Ganga.

Jawans form up a hasty honour guard. Shaheen Badoor Khan notes the
SAM robots and the nervous glances between the lower level officers.
Ten hours ago this was the Republic of Awadh and the soldiers wore
green, white, and orange triple yin-yangs on their otherwise
identical chameleon camous. Easy mortar range from those ghost
villages revealed in their architectural nakedness by the dwindling
water level. A single sniper, even. Sajida Rana strides on, her
hand-tooled boots clicking on the roadbed. The troops are ranked up
beyond the dais. Someone is testing the PA with a series of feedback
shrieks. The news channel camerapersons spot the Prime Minister in
combats and charge her. Military Police draw lathis and brush them
aside. Shaheen Badoor Khan waits at the foot of the steps as Prime
Minister, Defence Secretary, and Divisional Commander mount the dais.
He knows what Sajida Rana will say. He put the final lacquer on it
himself this morning in the limo to the military airfield. The
general susurrus of men gathered together under a hot sun ebbs as
they see their commander-in-chief take the microphone. Shaheen Badoor
Khan nods in silent pleasure as she holds the silence.

"Jai Bharat!"

An unscripted moment. Shaheen Badoor Khan's heart freezes in his
throat. The men know it, too. The silence hangs, then erupts. Two
thousand voices thunder it back.
Jai Bharat!
Sajida Rana gives
the call and response three times. Then she delivers the message of
her speech. It is not for the soldiers standing easy on the dam top
road, sloped at their weapons in the APCs. It is for the cameras and
the mikes and the network news editors. Sought a peaceful resolution.
Bharat not a nation craves war. Tigress roused. Sheathe her claws.
Hoped for diplomatic solution. Still achieve a negotiated peace with
honour. Noble offer to our enemies. Water should always have been
shared. No one nation. Ganga our common life-vein.

The soldiers don't shift. They don't shuffle. They stand in their
battle gear in the tremendous heat with their heavy weapons and take
this stuff and cheer at the cheer points and hush down when Sajida
Rana quiets them with her eyes and hands, and when she leaves them on
a final killer: "And finally, I bring you another major triumph.
Gentlemen, Bharat three hundred and eighty seven for seven!"
they erupt and the chanting starts.
Jai Bharat! Jai Bharat!
Sajida Rana takes their applause and strides off while it is still
fresh and ringing.

"Not bad, eh, Khan?"

"Mazumdar just went for one hundred and seventeen," Shaheen
Badoor Khan says, falling in behind his leader. The hummer convoy
whisks them back to the forward command headquarters. This was always
going to be an in and out operation. General Staff had counselled in
every way against it but Sajida Rana insisted. The offer of
conciliation must be made from a posture of might that would not
demean the Rana government. The analysts had studied the satellite
data and cywar intelligence and given an hour of reasonable
confidence before the Awadhis could muster a retaliation. The hummers
and APCs rip back along the corrugated country dirt roads. Their dust
plumes must be visible from orbit. The aeaicraft flock in behind like
a hunt of raptors. Sentries nervously eye the sky as they hurry Prime
Minister Rana and her chief advisor to the powering-up tilt-jet. The
hatch seals, Shaheen Badoor Khan belts up, and the ship bounds into
the air, leaving his stomach down there on the flattened, scorched
crops. The pilot climbs at full throttle a hair under stall angle.
Shaheen Badoor Khan was not born to fly. He feels every lurch and
drop like a little death. His fists grip white on the armrests. Then
the tilt-jet flips over into horizontal flight.

"Well that was a bit dramatic, wasn't it?" Sajida Rana
says, unfastening her seat belt. "Bloody army never forgets
who's the woman here. Jai Bharat! Still, that went well. I did think
the cricket score finished it off nicely."

"If you say you, Ma'am."

"I do say so." Sajida Rana writhes in her clinging combats.
"Bloody uncomfortable things. I don't know how anyone ever does
any serious fighting in them. So, your analysis?"

"It will be frank."

"Is it ever anything else?"

"I think the occupation of the dam is foolhardy. The plan called
. . ."

"The plan was good as far as it went, but it had no balls."

"Prime Minister, with respect."

"This is diplomacy, I know. But fuck it, I am not going to let
N. K. Jivanjee play the Hindutva martyr. We're Ranas, for God's
sake." She lets the little touch of theatre ebb, then asks, "Our
position is still salvageable?"

"Salvageable, but international pressure will be a factor when
it hits the news channels. It might give the British their excuse to
renew calls for an international conference."