When Sanjay gained consciousness, there were two holes in his head, spaced evenly on his forehead above his eyes, and people began to tell him secrets; later, he decided that perhaps it was the fact that the holes somehow suggested an extra pair of eyes, that it was this that compelled confessions, or perhaps it was his constantly pained expression, which suggested a precocious wisdom (which, of course, meant piety, holiness) but actually resulted from a perpetual case of double-vision, of seeing everything twice. Perhaps it was also the manner in which he had been injured. When Ram Mohan told him that he had fallen onto Shiva’s trident, he had wondered if his uncle was making some elaborate metaphor, but this was entirely and literally a fact: the injuries were from two metal points protruding from the ground; upon investigation, and excavation, what was revealed was first a trident with the middle prong snapped off at the root, and then the god himself, dancing. When Sanjay was alone, he wondered how long Shiva had hidden under the soil, his right hand raised: ten years, a hundred, a thousand? But now he had emerged, and the manner of his coming made Sanjay famous, as the boy who brought the god, and so there was a stream of visitors who came to sympathize and marvel at his survival, at his resistance to the twin assault on his brain.
The first visitor that Sanjay remembered, that he was conscious enough to recognize, was Hercules —this was the first time, in all the years Hercules had been a neighbour of the Parashers, that Sikander’s father had deigned to visit the Brahmin household; and when he came, he arrived in the full glory of his uniform, resplendent in red and green, trailed by his two sons. Sanjay recalled, much later, the fastidious, finicky curve of the wrist with which Hercules flicked the tails of his coat out of the way as he sat gingerly in the only Angrez-style chair in the Parasher household, that and his arched-eyebrowed stare at the paintings on the wall and the colourful design on the bedspread. He looked also, long and carefully, at Sanjay’s father, who flinched a little under the scrutiny but stood his ground, standing at the foot of the small bed, unwilling to leave his son with the soldier, but finally Hercules leaned down to Sikander, who whispered to Arun, and the three —Arun and Sikander and Chotta —backed out of the room. As they left, Hercules spoke a few words in broken Urdu, stumbling over the consonants often enough to bring a slight twitch of amusement to Arun’s face, at which Hercules resolutely turned to English, speaking perhaps just a little louder than necessary. Hearing the sounds of English, Sanjay tried to raise his head, fighting off the nausea that resulted from the duplication of the world in his head, from the doubling —presently of Hercules —that would plague him for much of his life.
‘My sons were undoubtedly involved in the inception of your present condition, my boy,’ Hercules was saying; he leaned forward and clasped Sanjay’s hand, ‘but one might state with some certainty that it was also your unhappy country which assaulted you, since it was one of those old, false gods who have oppressed and humiliated your simple people since time immemorial who thrust his way out of the soil to thrust his weapon into your brow.’
‘Wait a minute,’ one of the sadhus said. ‘Wait just a minute here.’
‘You have a doubt?’ Sandeep said.
‘I do, I do. We can assume with certainty that at this point in his development Sanjay doesn’t speak English, no?’
‘We don’t have to assume. I asked my story-teller in the forest the same question, and she said that Sanjay knew no English.’
‘Then how is it that he seems to know what Hercules is saying? Why is it that we hear what Hercules is saying?’
‘Because Sanjay hears it.’
‘But you just said…’
‘Sanjay hears it, and it is his blessing, or power, that even though he doesn’t understand what is being said, he hears each word, each sound, as a crystal-clear, separate entity. You might say that he is cursed with the inability to hear noise, that he is gifted with the ability, or, rather, the imperative task, of really listening to language. So when he heard Hercules speak, he heard not the confused jumble of clatter that most of us hear when we listen to a foreign tongue, but a set of distinct, polished, complete objects, devoid of meaning but possessed of inherent completeness or beauty, and so, later, he was able to remember these things, or words. On learning the meanings attached to these symbols, years later, he was able, then, to discern what Hercules had said that afternoon, or what he had said apart from what he had uttered.’
‘That’s all very well, but a little too clever, if you ask me,’ the sadhu grumbled. ‘But I suppose we must give our story-tellers a little room to work in.’
‘Clever is hardly the word I’d use,’ Sandeep said. ‘It is structurally necessary —if Sikander is the brave, and Chotta can drink poison, then it is necessary that Sanjay be able to listen to language.’
‘It is?’ said the sadhu. ‘To me it makes no sense.’
‘Listen,’ Sandeep said. ‘In fact there is even more to Sanjay, because he knows what he has never been taught…’
‘That’s completely acceptable,’ the sadhu said. ‘We all know about Mozart and his symphonies at four and a half, but this other stuff, you know…’
‘Can we get back to the story?’ another sadhu said, a young man with the nervous habit of tapping the sole of his foot with a bent forefinger. ‘I want to know what Hercules wants.’
‘All right, all right,’ Sandeep said. ‘Listen .…
‘One might state with some certainty that it was also your unhappy country which assaulted you, since it was one of those old gods who have oppressed and humiliated your simple people since time immemorial who thrust his way out of the soil to aim his broken trident at your brow,’ Hercules said. ‘Ah, boy, it is a pity that you cannot understand, yet, the manner in which your accident may be an act of providence, in that your story, in Reverend Sarthey’s capable hands, will be an instrument, a persuasive balm, which will bring about an agreeable effect on the Christians of Europe, loosening purse strings and setting in motion political action designed to rectify the Company’s unfortunate policies towards the great work of bringing the Word to your countrymen. The good reverend will take that horrifying demonic effigy, with its serpent necklace and tiger-cloth and cavorting pose, and will travel with it throughout England, from village to little town, exhibiting the depths of degradation that characterizes the so-called theology of the Hindoo, that collection of libertinism, oppression, superstition and folly that masquerades as a religion; he will tell your story, pointing to you as a symbol, and so you must not despair. Your suffering has a purpose, a meaning —through your injury you have exposed the rot that hides below the surface of what is called civilization here, the demons that live just below a patina of effete conversation and decadent arts. You are chosen. Rejoice.’
Abruptly, Hercules snapped out of his chair, and left the room (when he drew back the curtain at the door, the light filled Sanjay’s head with painful, luminous circles); Sanjay let his head loll back, exhausted, and listened to the voices outside —Hercules’, Sikander’s, his father’s —listened, frustrated by the distance and the intervening, muffling cloth, but still catching some of the guarded tension of the conversation in the voices, by the rhythms and the pitch. He shut his eyes to listen better, and sensed, further away, the presence of his mother (shuffling steps, nasal and slightly-liquid breathing), his uncle Ram Mohan (a click of bone against bone at a joint, frequent swallowing), and Sikander’s mother (something almost unheard; what was it?); they entered through the door which led deeper into the house, huddling together, pushing aside the red curtain.
‘Has he gone?’ Sikander’s mother whispered. ‘Has he?’
‘I can hear him outside,’ Ram Mohan said.
‘What did he want with you?’ Sanjay’s mother said to him, running a palm over his cheek. He squinted, trying to fuse the two parallel images of her, and tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. ‘Oh, child. Oh, child.’
Sanjay grunted, a ball of muscle moving up and down his throat, trying to bring
the words up, and he could see the words, the forms they would take, and feel them, the emotional weight each would carry, but for all the gasping concentration he could bring to bear on it, his tongue flopped about his mouth, reptilian and trapped, uncontrollable. He gathered himself and tried again —the others watched, mournful but encouraging —and drool ran down his chin. He swallowed (Ram Mohan reached forward to wipe), compressed his lips, focussed every last iota of his being at the front of his face (lips and nose, eyes and chin), then released, and one word emerged: ‘Mmmmm-Mah.’ His mother, kneeling beside the bed, let her head droop until it was leaning on his chest and wept, her shoulders shaking (but above, the other image hovers, miming her), and then Sanjay’s father entered, followed by Sikander and Chotta.
‘He wants me to give him the Vedas,’ Arun said, flinging his hands about. ‘That’s what he really came for, the Vedas and the Geeta.’
‘What do you mean, give him the Vedas?’ Ram Mohan said. ‘How can you just give anybody the Vedas?’
‘That’s what he said. There’s a man staying in his house, some Englishman with red hair, some Sartha or Partha or something like that…’
‘Sarthi,’ Janvi said.
‘That’s the one,’ Arun said. ‘And he’s supposed to be a scholar or teacher or something, isn’t that what he said, Sikander?’
‘That’s right, Uncle,’ Sikander said. ‘He told me to translate. And he said that Sarthi was a scholar who wanted to study the Vedas —only he called them the Beds —so Uncle here should give them to him.’
‘Don’t you give anything to him,’ Janvi said.
‘But how?’ Arun said. ‘Oh, he came very politely, in sympathy with our child and all that, and when he spoke to me it was a request all right, but he knew and I knew that I was expected to give them what he wanted. “If you would be kind enough to supply my friend with the necessary… ,” he said; no, Sikander? And how he looked at me. Standing with legs apart in my house as if he knew who was really master. How will we say no?’
‘The Vedas are for the twice-born,’ Janvi said. ‘They are not twice-born.’
‘In truth whoever has the power to take the Vedas takes them, never mind twice-born or thrice,’ Arun said.
‘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!’).