Then the English came.
now
WE WERE EATING, sitting on the ground in a circle, happy and laughing. Abhay sat on my right, Saira on my left, and Ashok and Mrinalini opposite. Saira’s mother and father sat with us too, and all the children, submerged gladly in food and smells and the plenty of it all. Veg. and Non-veg., rajma and parathas, fish and rice, tandoori and fried, North and South and Gujarati and Calcutta curds, we had it all, and Abhay had revealed, suddenly, an unexpected talent for chutney-making. I was savouring his mango chutney, and from outside, over the walls, came the sound of music and the shouts of hawkers, many of them selling toys for toddlers and rare fruit and unusual delicacies. Our maidan, despite everything, was now full of squalling new babies and dreamy-eyed mothers-to-be.
‘Where’s that Ganesha?’ said Hanuman, stretched out lazily on one of the rafters, scratching his belly.
‘Supervising in the kitchen,’ Yama said. ‘Something special, I expect.’
It was something special, all right, but nothing unusual. Rather ordinary, actually. I knew because I had asked for it. I jumped up, motioned to the others to keep eating, and went behind the house, where under the peepul trees three halwais had been cooking non-stop since the early morning. Beside each of the three huge karhais were baskets piled high with glistening, golden but quite ordinary bundi-ka-laddoos.
‘Took a while, but they’re doing it correctly now,’ Ganesha said. The three halwais had red faces and sweaty elbows. They had grown testy at first with Ganesha’s instructions, passed to them by me on notes. But now they were staring pridefully at the perfect laddoos. ‘A good laddoo,’ Ganesha said, ‘is not a simple thing.’
So we called everybody out of the house, and I sat by the baskets and handed them all their laddoos. They queued for them in a long snaking line and I gave to them all.
Then Abhay and Saira came and stood in front of me, their laddoos cupped uneaten in their palms.
‘Where’s yours?’ Saira said.
I took one. Hanuman sat on the wall, Ganesha beside me, and Yama leaned against the peepul tree.
‘To life,’ Abhay said, raising his laddoo.
‘And to death,’ I mouthed, raising mine, but I don’t know if he understood me.
And then we ate our laddoos, watched over by the gods.
Afterwards we sent the leftover laddoos out to be distributed on the maidan. I sat on the roof and watched the sun set over the city, and the jostling crowd below. I could see them all eating, the leafy platters of laddoos passing from hand to hand. I could see all their faces, eager and laughing in that golden light. The birds swirled madly overhead, rising and dipping in dark waves. There was the sound of music from all directions, and under it all, the murmur of voices, as deep and endless as the sea.
‘It’s time to start,’ Abhay said.
I nodded, and started towards the staircase, and then suddenly I grew dizzy and had to sit down again.
‘What’s wrong?’ Abhay said.
I shut my eyes, opened them, and wrote: I am very tired.
He squatted beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Perhaps we could take a break today, a holiday from telling.’
No. Not now. I don’t have time. There’s not much left.
‘I’m sure the judges will let you off for this evening. Considering the circumstances.’
No, that’s not what I mean. Stories change you as you tell them, this story could go on forever but I’m no longer frightened of silence. I have told you of how I defeated death. But Yama is no longer my enemy. I must continue, not to keep his noose away but simply to finish. We are almost finished, and we must finish so we can start again. Let’s finish. Hurry. I’m tired. I’m alive but my strength is almost gone. Let me tell while I can. Listen…
In London, a Battle Between Immortals.
WHEN SANJAY AND SUNIL CAME OFF THE MOUNTAIN, the snows were melting and the rivers crashed along the gorges with a leaping carelessness. Sometimes the whole side of a cliff would tremble and shear away into the boiling water, leaving a brown dust sliding across the surface. Sanjay walked quickly down the slopes, eager for the coming encounter with a new world, but Sunil hung back, wary, it seemed, of a time in which they were suddenly old men. Their lives were gone, vanished, and Sunil told him of everything that had gone over the years: his shining son was dead, faded and silent; his parents were dead, of disappointment and loneliness; the Begum Sumroo was dead, of peaceful old age and a wish for rest after a life too rich to be called happy; Sorkar and Chottun and Kokhun were dead, Sorkar of a fever which left him deliriously and happily speaking a tongue which nobody at his village bedside understood; the Reverend Sarthey and Markline were dead, Sarthey in his sleep with a contented smile on his face, Markline after a bursting vessel jetted blood through his nostrils and flung him about on the floor of a castle in Scotland; Sanjay’s two teachers of poetry were dead, both the Pandit and the Englishman killed by heartbreak when Hart was exiled as an undesirable from Lucknow by the English resident; they were all dead.
‘It is incredible to me that death takes us all,’ said Sunil. ‘Really it finishes all of us. I never really understood that. But we are strange and alive.’
But Sanjay walked even more strongly, hearing this chant of death; he laughed at the trees fighting vainly against the wind and the cutting water, at the birds and their tip-headed looks of terror and their constant struggle. He laughed, and he felt completely alone and invincible. He felt purpose and velocity, like an arrow almost at its target.
In Delhi Sanjay sat in Chandni Chowk, and a crowd gathered around him, staring quietly. He was now used to this, it had happened in every village and at every well. They stopped to look at his white skin, which despite all the walking took no sun, at his black eyes, at the certainty which sat on him like a venomous cloud. He does not speak, they whispered to each other. But he had a seriousness which was extraordinary enough, especially as he sat in the bazaar street and watched the English drive by. A carriage came past, full of holiday cheer and picnic baskets, going gaily towards the Red Fort. A few minutes later another rolled by, and this time Sanjay rose and walked after it, the crowd after him. They stopped in front of the Fort. The carriage had gone in through the gate, and now Sanjay looked around for Sunil. But Sunil had anticipated, and was already in conversation with a Marwari bania, a well-dressed man wearing a gold-lined turban and a fine kurta; he held a perfumed kerchief to his lips as he spoke.
‘Where are they going?’ said Sunil.
‘They are going to look at the emperor,’ the bania said.
‘You mean they are going for an audience with the emperor?’
‘No, they are going to look at the emperor.’
‘Look?’
‘Yes. They walk in, they go to the private apartments. He sits on an ordinary chair. They walk in and look at him, emperor of Hindustan. They smile. He nods at them. They do not bow because they are English. I think he tries to write poetry. They remark upon the ragged state of the curtains, the meanness of his robe. He is called the Emperor of Hindustan but his writ runs not even in his own city’ He paused. The Emperor of Hindustan is a tourist attraction. The Emperor of Hindustan is also a fine poet.’ He laughed.
The bania turned to look at Sanjay before he walked away, and Sanjay recognized with surprise a resolution equal to his own, and understood then that all the cuts he had taken in the cave were matched and even bested by the daily insults that others had felt outside. Another carriage passed, and an English lady peered out at Sanjay through a pair of lorgnettes, and Sanjay knew what she would tell at home: an almost naked, pale man with white hair and wild eyes, my dear, a holy man! Sanjay spat after the carriage, and the crowd murmured, grinning, and the guards at the gate of the Fort, leaning on their spears, laughed quietly. Sanjay took a piece of paper from Sunil and wrote.
Sunil held up his hand for silence. He pointed at Sanjay: ‘Hear: everything will become red. Everything will become red.’
Sikander and Chotta were still alive. They were famous, and they lived in adjoining houses, mansions, off Chandni Chowk; they were renowned, and there were tales of their exploits. They and their regiment had tamed the country around Delhi, had made it safe for the people. As they had made it safe they had mastered it for their masters the English; and so the yellow horsemen were feared for their speed and their suddenness. Sanjay heard all these stories as he walked to the houses, and it was as if all the dreams of their childhood had somehow become true, and had become bitter in becoming real. As he knew they would, the houses had gardens that backed up against each other, and between the gardens was a high wall, worn down in one place where someone climbed over often. Sanjay stood below looking at the smoothness where the stone had been rubbed black, and as he turned it all seemed so familiar that he looked around for a huge knot, a ball of entanglement beyond unravelling. But there was no knot, and no stories being told under the mango tree, and so he sat and waited.
When it was dusk, when the birds were quiet, a head appeared on the other side of the wall. It paused for a moment, and then a body swung over: it was Chotta. Sanjay recognized the cast of the shoulders, the way the head was held, but everything else had changed. Chotta was a pinched old man who came straight at Sanjay with both fists, and when Sanjay held him away he struggled wildly, his eyes rolling white.
‘Chotta, Chotta,’ Sunil said. ‘Look at who it is, look at us.’
But Chotta heard nothing in his hysteria, and finally Sanjay made a noise in his throat, a sort of grunt, and this sound drifted them through memory, so that suddenly they were boys mock-fighting, the game was combat, but —unbelievably —Sanjay was the stronger.
‘You?’ said Chotta, his hands held between Sanjay’s. ‘Is it you?’
Sanjay nodded as Sunil laughed, it is, it is. Now Chotta was turning Sanjay around, trying to see him in the darkness, and Sanjay was overcome with pity: the skin on Chotta’s hands was loose, his breath was sour with age, his hair had fallen back from his forehead. They sat on the ground, and Sunil recited Sanjay’s journey, told about the cave in the mountains, the great adventure, the benediction won from death; as he talked Sanjay heard the laboriousness of despair in the slow in-and-out of Chotta’s breath, the fatigue of years, the accents of bitterness. When Sunil had finished, Chotta laughed: ‘Either you are mad, or I am. Things like you don’t happen anymore. You are monstrous, or this world is.’ He held Sanjay’s hands, weighing their strength. Sanjay was feeling the fragility of the old man’s bones under his.
‘Do you want to know what has become of us?’ Chotta said. ‘Listen. Listen. The story must begin with Sikander again, as it started at the beginning. I have followed him for a long time, and even now when I tell my own story it is really his. Don’t look so surprised, yes, I have been the faithful brother, the dutiful, but did you really think I never thought about this? Don’t I know that I am a peripheral player? It has been sufficient for me. I have watched. I have seen a succession of wars, and the English are now the undisputed masters of India. There is no army that can face them. We have helped them become this, Sikander and I. We have served them faithfully, we have put down rebellions, we have caught thieves, we have intimidated opponents. We are very famous, and we are hated. But you have hated us too. Sikander remembers, long ago, that you told him you would come for him. He told me, fear Sanjay’s anger above all, and so many beds are made for him every night, and none may know where he sleeps. But you might say, still, you have money, you have land, you are loved by your masters. No. No. Do you know what we are? They are wise, and they tell us there is a new species on this earth. It is not this or that, it belongs not here or there, it is nothing. In the beginning, when we were born, Sanjay, we were just what we were, the sons of our mothers and fathers, but now we are something else. But time has passed and the years have made us a new animal: chi-chi, half-and-half, black-and-white. Do you know what this means, black-and-white? It means that we are white, so according to the English king’s law, we cannot own land here. Ah, you are white, you are honoured? No, it seems we are not white enough, we are a little black, so we cannot get certain medals, this appointment is beyond us, that promotion of course cannot be sanctioned. We are this new thing that nobody wants, Sanjay. I have followed my brother for this.
‘He, he has patience. He tells me to be content. He tells me we must not demand too much of life. He cooks, he makes chutneys, he spends hours looking for a particular taste, a tang. He has become wise. Now he writes books. He has written a survey of the tribes of Hindustan, Sanjay, a book that describes and classifies. Once or twice a year he is invited to a big Englishman’s house, and he gets a new uniform made, and takes them gifts. He is very happy when they call him Colonel. What do you think, Sanjay? Should I be happy? But I think I must be unhappy. This is what I thought. I thought, if my brother is happy, and Sanjay gone, at least one of us should cling to unhappiness. I am tired of this happiness, this content. It seems hideous to me, Sanjay, and I cannot tell why. Shouldn’t we be angry? Is it time for rage, Sanjay?’
Sanjay wrote: ‘Come with me. We will make war. We will expel forever this thing that has come into us, and everything will be as before.’
‘But what about him?’
‘We will ask him to come with us.’
‘He’ll never do it.’
‘Why?’
Chotta smiled. ‘Because he’s a Rajput.’
Sanjay smiled back at him, and they both laughed, and a sudden and painful wave of emptiness, lifting to Sanjay’s throat —Gul Jahaan, Gul Jahaan —caught him by surprise, so that he scrawled fiercely: ‘If he is obstinate, we shall know what to do.’
Chotta leaned forward and put a hand on his knee. ‘He is my brother. Let me see what I can do. I will talk to him, not telling him you are here, not yet. Let me say this and that, let me ask, let me see what he says. Meanwhile, you stay here. Our spies are everywhere but here.’ He got to his feet. ‘I will send food.’ As he walked away he called over his shoulder: ‘He is also yours.’
Sanjay motioned: ‘What?’
‘Your brother.’
* * *
So Sanjay made his revolution from a garden which was not of his youth; the trees were the same, the sky brilliant beyond, and every evening Chotta came out to sit with him, but nothing was the same. Every day Chotta brought news of Sikander, and Sanjay’s curiosity grew slowly stronger. Sikander, it seemed, was now a scholar: he had written a survey of tribes, an academic text which was presented to the English resident. To fulfil his battle-field vow he had built a temple, a mosque and a church, a large church in the centre of Delhi, but it was the image of Sikander bent over a desk, bi-focalled, an erudite quill in hand, which angered Sanjay. What has he become?
‘But you’ve become so strong,’ said Chotta. ‘Look at that too.’ He was now given to asking Sanjay for little exhibitions of strength, which made him giggle. ‘Here: this nail.’
Sanjay twisted the thing into a horseshoe, and Chotta laughed with pleasure. Sanjay scratched into the mud: ‘Have you talked to him about war?’
‘I did,’ said Chotta. ‘He said: war destroys the victor.’
‘Does he want the English here?’
‘He says, “I have eaten their salt.”’
‘Do they not insult him?’
‘He says, “I am a Rajput and I have eaten their salt.”’
‘They betray him every day.’
‘He makes pickles, and chutneys. In the mornings vegetable-sellers come to his back door and he buys fruit. He collects recipes. He stirs things in his kitchen. When I talk to him of war he looks surprised, as if I were talking about something new’
‘He’s gotten old.’
‘Perhaps he has.’
‘Does he ever come here?’
‘Into the gardens? No, this is my place. I wander here. I have eight wives, Sanjay, and many children, but I come here and I am lonely. When I was a boy and I was lonely I thought, whe
n I am married I will be lonely no more. But now it is so bad with them and with everyone else that it drives me here to be alone. I am lonely so much I cry at night and I don’t know who it is that I long for. Why am I lonely, Sanjay?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Nobody knows. I have the impression that it is incurable, that I caught it long ago.’
‘It will pass.’
‘I think never.’
Sanjay too felt the loneliness, but he gloried in it; it made him feel like an enormous bird coursing through the skies, glittering and jagged. And all the people who came into the garden, traders and soldiers and maids and ministers, all of them came to him with the kind of awe that one gives to something so strange that one is no longer scared by it. They listened to him while he preached the death of the English, their removal from the soil of Hindustan, their dishonour and their coming disgrace, but it was really him that they were interested in, his enormous strength and the white brilliance of his skin. So in his old age, suspended in a frozen youth, Sanjay achieved a secretive nation-wide fame, and fulfilled, in a manner, his most cherished dream of childhood.
Late one night in summer, Sanjay heard Chotta walking towards the garden; Sanjay could never sleep now and his darkness was filled with plans and calculations. At night, Sanjay noticed no difference except the change in temperature and the lessening of noise, and so he strategised in the darkness; he was trying to bring about a simultaneous taking to arms all over Hindustan, an orchestrated turning to battle, and he knew it would take years, decades, but he was no longer frightened of time. So he was awake when Chotta came to the garden sometime after midnight, but he was unprepared for the questions that were brought to him.