The PuppetMaster (4 page)

He looked at the scenery.

I was excited now. Chamuk Garuda Chandragupta, shortened wisely to C.G., was one of the greatest Vedic scholars in Uttar Pradesh. He was also my teacher’s closest friend and a renowned professor at Benares Hindu University. I had attended his lectures numerous times and considered him both a mentor and a friend. If these two had looked at something together and become excited, then it wouldn’t take much for me to follow.

The great language had pulled me into it eight years earlier when I was a third year undergrad at the University of California, Berkeley. I had been plodding through an upper division phonetics course when a perceptive instructor tossed me a small, ragged primer on the grammar. That tattered little book was all it took. I opened the cover, saw the graceful curves of script and the romance began. During that semester I taught myself to form letters and read a few lines. In the two years that followed I signed up for every course the university had to offer—undergraduate, graduate, and then my Masters. Eventually I became adept enough to translate scripture, plays, and my favorite, classical poetry. The university hired me as an assistant professor.

But Life, as I have said, has a way of altering in tiny, unanticipated ways.

I was now eight thousand miles away, shrouded in linguistic solitude, and had pushed that previous life where I wanted it, behind me and lost to memory.

The autorick bounced sharply as we rounded a corner, smacking my elbow against the door handle. Grasping the back of the driver’s seat, I said, “This is not fair to keep me guessing like this, Master. What is going on?”

“I will explain more when we arrive, my boy, and there you may see for yourself, but” He rubbed his hands together. “C.G. and I believe we may have uncovered a small addendum to the Atharva Veda.”

Now, for the average person this might not generate a great deal of exhilaration. For most, the question might arise: What the hell is an addendum to the Atharva Veda? And even more likely, why should I care? Like a botanist presenting a new species of orchid from a Central American hillside, or an astronomer announcing that an asteroid is actually a small moon, the typical person wouldn't flush with a great deal of excitement. But for a linguist? For those of us who lived our lives for such discoveries? We would salivate like Pavlov's dogs.

Sanskrit has deep roots and more branches than an acre of trees, and though no longer a living language, it is still a powerful tool for historians, philologists, anthropologists, even physicians. As the elder sister to Greek and Latin, it has many times more researchable text than those two combined. Any new finding would mean instant notoriety for the discoverers, even if only as a footnote in some arcane publication. It would be akin to discovering an additional chapter of Ulysses’ return to Ithaca, an authentic piece left innocently behind in an old footlocker.

As we moved towards the outskirts of the city and the gardens of Sarnath where Buddha spoke his first sermons, the words of my housekeeper, not the Gautama, drifted back to me. ‘It is not the journey, but what you will find on your journey that will be of danger to you.’ It was then that the reality hit me. At the end of this unbelievably bumpy ride I was going to enter a cave. Suddenly my mouth contained less water than the Punjabi Desert.

Five

Dust. Like a vast convection oven the scorching breeze blew fine powder in layers about our rickshaw. Peering vertically through a tear in the fabric I saw shimmering blue, to the sides only muted orange. It settled into the leaves of the trees, the curves of corrugated roofs, and all the banana stalks that hung like carcasses along the way. The creases of our skin were lined with sweat . . . and dust.

There were two reasons the city was on a knife’s edge that July—lack of rain and the gnawing fear of another bombing. The bombings had brought dread to those who entered crowded places, especially on the rail lines; the drought had them questioning the sanity of the gods. Rice fields had dried up, cattle had succumbed to thirst, and it seemed as if the entire province was being scorched into oblivion. People drifted like zombies, stared at the sky and shook their heads. When will the rains return? Then they looked at each other guardedly and asked, ‘when will another bombing happen?’

I did my best to ignore it, lived alone, invested in a good ceiling fan, and drank lots of bottled water.

Forty minutes later our driver veered off the highway onto a secondary road of crushed rock, the change immediately taxing his skills. He snapped the handles to and fro in a futile attempt to slalom through the debris, then began tapping the gas and brakes to avoid obstacles and still maintain velocity. All of this had the affect of tossing us around like marbles in the back. I gripped a roof strut and peered through the windshield. Ahead, perhaps three kilometers distance, a high fence rose out of the flatness; chain link and circlets of razor wire stretched ominously across the horizon.

We had been motoring for two nearly hours, and I decided we had to be nearing our destination. I hoped so. The thought of uncoiling my body and stretching my wretched joints returned. My knee smacked sharply against the metal frame reminding me that we weren’t there yet, and that seventy-five inches of body length was at least ten more than recommended by the manufacturers of autorickshaws.

“Devi?”

“Yes, Bhim?” He seemed less affected by our washing machine motion.

“Did I hear you say this place is in a mine?”

“No, not technically speaking. It is not within their cursed fence. The entrance to our cave is close by this mining production, you see, but outside the land this evil company has stolen and offended with their steel devices. The property we enter is owned by Mr. L. Robert Muktendra, who is a family friend. He was the first to discover the entrance two weeks ago. It was this good man who phoned C.G., who then himself came by my house last Tuesday evening with papers authorizing us solely to study what is inside.”

This was the way Masterji communicated--when he wasn’t grumbling. His English was spiked with dizzying rises and drops, lots of head bobbing and endearing little interjections like ‘you see,’ ‘very well’, and ‘precisely so.’ When he was grumpy it all condensed to terse little jabs. Inevitably there was some reference to an associate or family friend. This led me to believe that my teacher knew every person of importance in the district and most of the less notable ones as well. And being a pundit of Sanskrit, they all respected. Immensely. In that part of the world it was like averaging twenty points a game in the NBA, holding the same distinction and requiring just as much training.

“And this cave? It is large, right?” I was really hoping for an affirmative on this.

“Precisely so, you will only need to crawl a dozen or so meters from the entrance and then a short climb down.” He was grinning, and I wasn’t sure whether I’d received the answer I wanted.

“How far?”

The reply was another grin that curled mischievously below the colossal nose. Then I recalled that he’d never been inside the cave himself. He was enjoying a fine chuckle at my expense

It wasn’t that I was claustrophobic exactly, or had an unfounded fear of the dark, but a combination of small, black spaces was not my cup of chai, especially if I happened to be trapped or lost inside one. Unfortunately, that notion had entered a few times during the ride.

My mouth had gone dry again. I reached for my canteen and checked my flashlight to make sure it was still functioning after bouncing across half the province. Another swig of water, another check of the bulb, and I was feeling more or less better.

I peered ahead again. The road was leading straight toward a very out-of-place looking steel gate. At that point it seemed to turn ninety-degree in both directions along the base of the fence. Inside the mining yard white-roofed sheds reflected waves of heat. Conveyors, crushers, and a lot of machinery I didn’t recognize, zigzagged like erector set pieces. Dump trucks stood idle near the fence, and further in, there was a mound of fresh tailings and a gaping rectangle carved into a low hillside. Meter gauge tracks curved like talons into the cavity and vanished down the shaft. The entire scene had an eerie resemblance to the Morlock cave in The Time Machine--the original one with Rod Harris and Yvette Mimeau. One glance at that opening and my vision began to swim. Beads of sweat that weren’t attributable to the midday heat broke across my forehead.

We drew nearer and I saw signs on the fence. Not large. They didn’t, I suppose, need to be. IHI Imperial Holding International, Lucknow, India. No Entry. Six languages and a lot of sharp wire told you to turn around and drive away slowly.

To the left of the entrance there was a squat cinder-block structure with tangle of utility cables angling into it, and as we motored closer, two guards stepped out and shifted casually to either side. They were uniformed, carried binoculars, clipboards, walkie-talkies, and some serious looking assault weapons. This only added to the whole evil Morlock thing in my opinion. Instantly I wondered how they could strut around with all that mass and not melt into the dirt.

I watched them watching us. They weren’t Indian. They looked more like British marines who played beach volleyball for amusement.

In my previous life I’d gone through a lot of physical training. My parents were products of an affluent Southern California life-style, runners and extreme sports enthusiasts. From my earliest years I had been pressed gently but firmly into every form of sport, martial arts, kempo karate, and even Brazilian grappling. I surfed, skied, played Ultimate Frisbee, and eventually came to appreciate any activity that didn’t rely on teammates. Even though it swam up from the past I was trying to forget, I could still measure up physique with a glance. These two, standing in the heat, with handcuffs and heavy weaponry, were highly trained professionals. I didn’t need to see it in their eyes or resumes; I could tell by the lightness in their step.

As we approached the gate, one of them un-shouldered his weapon, very relaxed, and drew it to the front. The other flipped through pages on his clipboard. I grinned. It looked as if he was searching through an invitation list. As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Our driver, at Devi’s behest, veered right ten feet before the gate and with a quick exchange of a scowl from Masterji and indifferent nods from the guards, we continued down the road.

“What was that? Those guys looked like Gurkhas preparing for an attack on their fortress. What do they mine in that place? Diamonds and platinum?”

“Yes, yes, precisely so. The local papers and government says it is bauxite, but you know how imprecise these things can be.”

I looked back and saw nothing but dust from our tires.

A half a mile further, two hundred meters beyond the corner of the fence, we swerved left and jolted to a stop on a patch of parched grass. Behind us a cloud of orange rose into the air over the razor wire. I peeled myself out of the sardine can, slapped some sensation back into my legs, and looked around. The vastness of the Gangetic Plain stretched in ancient grandeur from east to west. If you ignore the fence and the rickshaw, we are in the middle of nowhere, very hot, very dry, Uttar Pradesh nowhere.

Devi was now in a positively bubbly mood. He had taken a keen liking to our driver, Rajneesh Sukkha, who, he proclaimed with a tap of the cane on the man’s shoulder, had ferried us quite well to our destination. The two of them were joking like old buddies, and of course Masterji knew Rajneesh’s family. He invited the young driver to join us on the hike to the cave, but not inside. Master, probably from Chandragupta’s descriptions, knew of a banyan tree near the entrance. There our driver could rest and wait for our return. We would picnic, and if our driver would be so kind as to carry the cloth bundle, he could share its contents. Precisely so. This sounded better to Rajneesh than waiting in the blistering box that he spent most of his waking hours in. So, off we went looking like three chummy companions, Devi twirling his cane, Rajneesh toting the sack on his head, and I following along in nervous silence.

Six

The entrance wasn’t visible from the front, and, I quickly learned, barely so from the side. The ground rose from our parking place, angled up over a quarter mile of dust and rubble, then curved upward into crags and boulders at the base of a tall cone of weathered rock. As we picked our way upward, Master began plunging his cane into the crevices with the energy of someone gigging frogs. Unexpectedly, he halted and announced, “Very well then, here it is.” I didn’t see anything. Behind us the Ganges glistened like a ribbon in the shimmering plain. Ox and women trudged through drying rice fields, vultures and hawks circled above. In front, the rock vaulted like a pillar. Clearly we weren’t climbing that.

I helped Rajneesh open the bundle under the tree, while Masterji marched tenaciously to the left and disappeared. I followed him over a spur of jagged stones, and when I descended the opposite side I saw what had been impossible to see from the front. Two fingers of slag, side by side, concealed a narrow opening, and only by standing directly in front could one see the entrance. It was less than twice the width of my body, and immediately that scrawny entrance had me more nervous than Orpheus at the gates of Hades. I couldn’t have worked up enough spit to wet a dime.

My phobia, though rather inconvenient at times, is not Jungian or involve any aversion to re-entering the womb. It has nothing to do with the tragedy that compelled me to Varanasi, either. No, my older brother is to blame for this one. On an evening when I was four he locked me in a closet. My parents were away, and he, being somewhat careless back then, conveniently forgot his obligations as baby-sitter as he watched the Chicago Bulls squeak by the L.A. Lakers in what I later learned was a classic finish at the buzzer. I pounded on the door for an hour and got so scared I wet my pants. The result is a small panic whenever I enter unlit pantries, walk-in closets, or East Indian caves.