The Great Indian Novel (62 page)

As for Bhim, there was a rumour at one stage that he might be tempted to intervene; but everyone urged against it, even Yudhishtir, and he remained in his military cantonment, keeping a baleful eye on the Kaurava campaign. I suspect, though, that he managed at least one leave. One morning when popular wrath against the excesses of the Siege was at its highest, Duhshasan was found tied to a tree not far from Delhi’s most famous red-light area. His pyjama trousers were down to his ankles, and the remainder of his elegant
kurta-sherwani
ensemble hung in tatters from his drooping shoulders. His bare behind was criss-crossed with the livid stripes of swelling red weals. He had, apparently, been mercilessly flogged just before dawn with a wet knotted sari whose
pallav
had then been flung derisively on to his genitals, to provide him with a shred of incongruous modesty.

The Duryodhani camp emitted muted howls of outrage. The Prime Minister even spoke darkly of assassination attempts by the forces of violence and anarchy upon her supporters. But Duhshasan himself proved singularly unwilling to press charges, or even to identify his aggressor. Nothing similar recurred, and the episode was soon forgotten. It left its only trace in the smile of Draupadi Mokrasi, the smile of a woman who knows she will not easily be tampered with again.

On election night I had another dream.

This was a dream of Arjun: of Arjun, perhaps, on his Himalayan wanderings during those months of self-imposed exile that had brought him his mentor and his wife. And in my dream Arjun sat on a rock, clad in the loincloth of penitence, his hair long and matted with neglect, his ribs prominent with starvation, his eyes red with ascetic wakefulness. Prayer and self-denial on the mountaintop, Ganapathi: how many of our legends have not portrayed this scene, as a hero seeks an ultimate boon from the gods?

But in my dream, no god appeared to disturb Arjun’s meditation. Instead, an animal shimmered across his consciousness, a Himalayan deer, dancing playfully before him as if offering herself to the starving man. The Arjun of my dream picked up his bow and shot the deer, but before he could pick up his trophy, a strange apparition interposed itself - a primitive hunter, dressed in bearskins, also bearing a bow. Before an astonished Arjun, the hunter picked up the deer, heaving it lightly on to his immense shoulders. Arjun protested, laying claim to his animal: in the clear wordlessness of the dream, the hunter spurned his imprecations. Arjun, enraged, shot his arrows, but the hunter contemptuously side-stepped them, and when the young hero flung himself bodily on the intruder, he found himself spinning back in my dream to crash senseless on to the ground. The hunter laughed. Arjun awoke, returned to his prayers, and invoked the name of the god to whom he had been offering his austerities: Shiva. And then, in the kind of transformation only a miracle or a dream can bring about, the hunter turned into the god. Shiva himself, most powerful of the gods, blue-skinned Shiva clad in gold instead of bearskin, with his hunter’s bow metamorphosed into a trident.

Arjun prostrated himself in my dream, begging forgiveness for having fought with no less a being than Shiva in his ignorance. And the god, victorious, pleased with the ascetic privations of his supplicant, forgave him and asked him to seek his boon. Arjun raised his head, all the power of his spirit shining through his gaze, and asked for the one favour Shiva had never before been called upon to grant - the use of Pashupata, the ultimate weapon, the absolute.

The god tried not to show his surprise: no one had dared to ask for such a potent instrument of destruction before, one which required no launchpad or silo, no control-panel or delivery-system, but could be imagined by the mind, primed with a thought, triggered by a word, and which flew to its target with the speed of divinity, inexorable, invincible, irresistible.

And Arjun said: ‘I know all this, but still I ask, O Shiva, for this weapon.’

And Shiva replied, his third eye opening, ‘It is yours.’

in my dream, Ganapathi, the very Himalayas shook with the gesture, the mountain ranges trembled as the knowledge of Pashupata descended to mortal hands, whole forests swayed like leaves, the wind howled, tremors passed through the earth. The figure of Shiva ascended to the heavens, atop a blazing golden chariot, emanating shafts of fire, dispersing singed clouds, and as the circle of flame made a halo for the chariot, Arjun rose to mount it. The stars shone in the lustre of the day, meteors fell and shot their sparks in fiery trails across the sky, the planets were illuminated, flaming spheres of transcendence, and still Arjun rose with the chariot, his unblinking gaze fixed on a spot on earth far below him. And just one word resounded like the echo of a thousand thunderclaps through the firmament: ‘Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!’

Sahadev pushed his way through the milling crowd outside the newspaper office. The noise was deafening: shouts, exhortations, muttering, even prayers, rose from the throng. The election results were filtering in, and this was the place to get them as they came. No one believed the radio any more.

Now there, Ganapathi, lay a sad irony. Despite being controlled by the government, Akashvani - the voice from the sky - was also the voice of millions of radio-receivers, transistors and loudspeakers blaring forth from puja
pandals
and tea-shops. Its ubiquitousness reflected the indispensability of radio in a country where most people cannot read, its content - despite the often heavy hand of bureaucracy on its programmes - the range of the nation’s concerns. From the anodyne cadences of its newsreaders to the requests for film-songs from Jhumri Tilaiya and other bastions of the country’s cow-belt, All-India Radio mirrored the triumphs and trivialities that engaged the nation. But its moderation also meant mediocrity, and during the Siege it came to mean mendacity as well. It is Priya Duryodhani’s legacy, Ganapathi, that today when an Indian wants real news, he switches on the BBC; for detailed analyses, he turns to the newspapers; for entertainment, he goes to the movies. The rest of the time, he listens to Akashvani.

A small peon in khaki shirt and white pyjamas, standing on the top rung of a rickety ladder, was putting up the letters on the display board with excruciating slowness. ‘D - H - A - N - I.’ That made Priya Duryodhani. What next? People at the front of the crowd were yelling to the man to let them know the news first, orally, before he put up the remaining letters. He remained impervious to their pleas. Perhaps he couldn’t hear them above the din. He had the aluminium letter-boards he needed to hang up: maybe he wasn’t sure what they meant himself. It was possible that he knew just enough of the English alphabet to put up the headlines on the ‘Spot News’ board every day without understanding what the newspaper was announcing through him.

‘W,’ Nakul said next to him. ‘W for Wins.’

‘D,’ Sahadev replied as the letter went up.

‘Declares Victory?’ Nakul asked. All-India Radio had been announcing substantial wins for Duryodhani’s party in some states.

D. E. Then, as the crowd seemed to hold its collective breath, F.

An immense cry of exultation rose from the crowd.

‘Could be “Defeats Opponent,”’ Nakul ventured. ‘You know, in her constituency.’

‘No way,
bhai-sahib.’
Sahadev was grinning from ear to ear: he had suddenly realized what he had wanted all along. ‘He doesn’t have enough letters with him for that.’

The crowd was already roaring its approbation. Scattered cheers rent the air. People were slapping each other’s backs in delight. E. A. T. Then, finally, the khaki-skirted
meghdoot
speeding up his pace as the task neared completion, E and D. DEFEATED. Priya Duryodhani had been defeated.

‘Janata Front!’ somebody shouted. ‘
Zindabad!’
Came the answering roar: ‘Janata Front,
Zindabad!’
The chant picked up variety, and rhythm. ‘Drona,
Zindabad!
Yudhishtir,
Zindabad!
Janata Front,
Zindabad!’

‘I knew it, I knew it,’ Sahadev found himself squeezing Nakul’s shoulders in triumph. ‘Oh, I’m so glad I took my home-leave now, Nakul. This is great! It’s simply great!’

Nakul still seemed to be absorbing the news. Around them, the chant was vociferous; some energetic youths had begun dancing an impromptu
bhangra.
Members of the crowd were flinging coins and rupee notes at the peon who had put up the headline. The little man in the khaki skirt was catching them in dexterous ecstasy.

‘I was wrong,’ Nakul said slowly, abandoning the plural for perhaps the first time. ‘It’s all over.’

‘No it isn’t, brother,’ his twin contradicted him with uncharacteristic confidence. ‘It’s only just begun.’

They were both wrong. Something had passed whose shadow would always remain, and something had begun that would not endure. For it is my fate, Ganapathi, to have to record not a climactic triumph but a moment of bathos. The Indian people gave themselves the privilege of replacing a determined, collected tyrant with an indeterminate collection of tyros.

I was partially responsible, but only partially. When the elections were over there was a general desire to avoid a contest among the victorious constituents of the Janata Front. It was resolved that Drona and I, the Messiah and the Methuselah, would jointly designate the nation’s new Prime Minister, who would then be ‘elected’ unanimously by the Janata legislators. At the time this seemed a sensible way of avoiding unseemly conflict at the start of the new regime. Only later did I realize the irony of beginning the era of the restoration of democracy with so undemocratic a procedure.

And it was not just ironic. In our ageless wisdom Drona and I had failed to realize what most college students know: that if you begin an examination by avoiding the most difficult question it raises, it is that very question that will eventually guarantee your failure.

The two of us spoke individually with the leaders of each of the political parties that made up the Front. There were several of them, each with his claims to overall leadership: political parties, after all, Ganapathi, grow in our nation like mushrooms, split like amoeba, and are as original and productive as mules. Most of these leaders had at one time or another been in the Kaurava Party, but had left - or been pushed out - at various stages of the party’s takeover by Priya Duryodhani. Drona and I surveyed the unprepossessing alternatives and decided to go for the only one among them whose honesty and sincerity was as unquestionable as his seniority: Yudhishtir.

I made the suggestion knowing only too well how little these very qualities suited my grandson for kingship. Drona agreed because, typically, he was more anxious to make a moral choice than a political one. Yet we were political enough to make a gesture of appeasement to the many who disagreed with the conservatism of the new Prime Minister: almost immediately after announcing our view that Yudhishtir would be the Front’s consensual choice for the nation’s leadership, we asked the populist Ashwathaman to preside over the Front’s party organization

There was, Ganapathi, one brief shining moment of hope, when the Front’s leaders, the euphoria of their unprecedented victory still mollifying their egos, gathered together before that symbol of the nation’s enduring greatness, the Taj Mahal, and swore a collective oath to Uphold India’s glory and its traditional values. Draupadi was present that day, as an honoured guest, and her skin glowed with a health and inner beauty that it had lacked for many years. She smiled then, dazzling onlookers with the strength and whiteness of her teeth. Even I could not guess how weak the roots were under that sparkling display of oral confidence.

It seemed strangely appropriate, Ganapathi, that the Front had chosen the Taj for this public reaffirmation of their democratic purpose. The Taj Mahal is the motif for India on countless tourist posters and has probably had more camera shutters clicked at it than any other edifice on the face of this earth. Yet how easily one forgets that this unequalled monument of love is in fact a tomb, the burial place of a woman who suffered thirteen times the pain of childbirth and died in agony at the fourteenth attempt. Perhaps that makes it all the worthier a symbol of our India - this land of beauty and grandeur amidst suffering and death.