The Great Indian Novel

by Shashi Tharoor

  Yet such were the assumptions and actions of ordinary men in those days, Ganapathi (I will not add the obligatory ‘and women’ because for the most part they did not perpetrate the madness, they were caught up in it, they were the victims of it). And those of us who saw it as madness, who saw it destroy everything we had lived and struggled for, were powerless to stop it. We tried, each in our own way, where we could, but found it too strong for us. Like Gangaji, we walked rather than wept, preached and prayed rather than giving up in despair. But each time we opened our eyes it was to a new anguish, a new despair, which ground its heel into the already unbearable torment of our nation’s suffering.

  If only - if only we had said no to Drewpad, and not obliged people to flee! It is flight that makes men vulnerable, it is flight that makes them violent; it is the loss of that precious contact with one’s world and one’s earth, that pulling up of roots and friendships and memories, that creates the dangerous instability of identity which makes men prey to others, and to their own worst fears and hatreds. Those of us whose spirits are moored in a sense of place, whose minds can still climb up the leafy branches of family trees with roots plunged deep into the soil, who from those branches can wave to other friends, neighbours, cousins, rivals similarly perched on theirs, who can recognize the countryside around and name the seeds from which the surrounding fruit had grown - we do not murder other people’s children, burn their homes or slaughter their cattle. But those who have been deprived of such security are prompted by their anxiety and bitterness into the roles of either perpetrators or victims - yes, both, because it is often the man who has lost everything who is also the most convenient target, for he is faceless, homeless, placeless, and his lack of identity invites and seems to mitigate attack. After all, no one mourns a nobody.

  But we cannot blame only Drewpad. He had a job to do, and that job was to exit, pursued by a bear; if the bear was of his own creation rather than the cause of his departure, it was a bear none the less, and we, as its hereditary keepers, remained responsible for its appetites. Gangaji recognized this, and took upon himself the tragedy of the nation. He saw the violence across the land as a total repudiation of what he had taught. All his later life he had seemed ageless; suddenly he looked old.

  It was at this stage that he turned to that unfortunate nocturnal experiment which was to cause so much needless controversy amongst his later biographers. In his despair, in his dejection over the state of the country, and in his resultant ageing, he seemed to have lost that incredible physical self-sufficiency that had let him stride up the steps of Buckingham Palace in the English winter in his dhoti. He now trembled as he stood up, needing to lean on both his stick and Sarah-behn; and at night he was given to terrible fits of shivering. Perhaps that was what sparked it off - an old man feeling the cold at night - but Gangaji attributed no such simple motive to the decision that he, with characteristic lack of embarrassment, announced to his entourage one morning.

  ‘Many of you,’ he said, with that combination of simplicity and shrewdness that was uniquely his, ‘will notice a change in my sleeping arrangements from tonight. Sarah-behn will sleep in my room from now on - and in my bed.’ He paused, seemingly oblivious to the consternation his words had engendered. ‘Some of you may wonder what I am doing. What has happened, you may ask, to that terrible vow of old Bhishma, and the principles of celibacy he has enjoined on all of us? Do not fear, my children. Sarah-behn is like a younger sister to me. But I have asked her to join me in an experiment that will be the ultimate test of my training and self-restraint. She will lie with me, unclad, and cradle me in her arms, and I shall not be aroused. In that non-arousal I hope to satisfy myself that I have remained pure and disciplined. And not merely that. It is my prayer that this test will help me to rediscover the moral and physical strength that alone will enable me to defeat the evil designs of that man Karna.’

  The Mahaguru, at his venerable age - an age when most normal men should have been dandling great-grandchildren on their arthritic knees - thinking, and speaking, of testing his capacity for arousal! It was, to many, downright indecent, and the thought of their saintly sage wrapped up in the commodious pink flesh of the formidable Sarah-behn was more than most of his followers could bear. Various whispered explanations were discussed, from the obvious one of senility - that this was simply eccentricity compounded by age - to the more esoteric one of Shunammitism, that Gangaji was decadently seeking his rejuvenation through the ministrations of a younger woman. There was no consensus on the matter, but there was rapid agreement on one thing: the story had to be kept from the press. A tight blanket of loyal self-censorship descended on all of us, covering our own discomfort and our leader’s nakedness.

  But inevitably, word leaked out about Gangaji’s latest experiments in self- perfection. And while it never circulated verifiably enough to appear in print, it attracted a fair amount of both vicious gossip and sincere curiosity. I think it was in the latter category that the eminent American psychoanalyst, who had questioned the Mahaguru periodically since Budge Budge, came up to him and asked in all earnestness:

  ‘Could it be that your inability to become the Father of a united India drives you to seek maternal solace in British arms?’

  68

  Dhritarashtra was the one man who was equal to the situation. His affliction, of course, spared him the worst scenes of horror and devastation. Not for him the walks through burning villages; not for him the sight of a corpse-laden train, steaming into the station with every man, woman and child in it butchered in the very vehicle of their escape by the people from whom they were fleeing. Instead, Dhritarashtra busied himself in the committees and meetings that planned the end of the empire and the birth of the nations that would replace it. He frequented the conference-rooms and situation-rooms from where what could be controlled of the country was controlled. And he developed a relationship with Lady Drewpad that curiously - and usefully - made him all the more welcome in the Viceroy’s antechamber.

  They made a strange pair, those two - the blond patrician and the blind politician, engaged in animated conversation in the rose garden as the world turned itself upside-down around them. Sometimes they would walk, and I saw the deepening lines on Dhritarashtra’s face soften as her words soothed his spirit, heard her infectious laughter dissolve the perennial frown on his prominent forehead, sensed her gently take his hand to lead him over the unfamiliar steps into her life.

  Georgina Drewpad, amatory adventuress of libellous renown, might not have had the most impeccable credentials of all our vicereines - women who themselves, thanks to their marriages, had slipped into the history of our country on their backs - but she changed India, and India changed her. She eased the tragic tension that might otherwise have destroyed our first Prime Minister, and restored to him the faith and the will he needed to take on the burden that would soon be his. And despite the almost insuperable handicap of being married to a man shallower than the River Punpun in drought, vainer than a priapic peacock in heat and less sensitive than a Kaziranga rhinoceros in the summer, Georgina revealed a remarkable capacity for constructive caring. When she was not with Dhritarashtra - and sometimes even when she was - she was busy coordinating charity collections for the victims of the violence, visiting the injured in hospitals and touring the slums in her official jeep to bring succour to women whose God-given maladies (from cholera to kala-azar) had been neglected in the face of the overwhelming man-made calamity around them.

  But some things, about both people and places, do not change. No woman who had given and taken the currency of love as had Georgina Drewpad could have remained indefinitely untouched by the blind temptations of foreign exchange. No country whose colonists’ imagination had created an Adela Quested and a Daphne Manners could have denied its seed to the most yielding of its vicereines.

  And so it happened; on the soft capacious bed of the Vicereine’s private suite, within four posts of fragrant sandalwood, cushioned by the finest down
ever stuffed by colonized fingers, my blind son of India took possession of all that Britannia had to offer him. And as the passion and the coolness of their coupling, the touch and the withdrawal of their contact, the tenderness and the rage of their caresses, mounted into a dizzying, tearing burst of final release, the fireworks burst white, saffron and green in Dhritarashtra’s mind. Midnight exploded into dawn. He was free.

  69

  So it was over, and we had won. India had conquered Great Britain; Gangaji’s khadi-clad coolies, his homespun hordes, had triumphed over the brass-and-braid brigades of the greatest empire the world had ever known. You cannot imagine, Ganapathi, and I mean that literally, you cannot imagine the excitement, the exhilaration, the exultation of that midnight moment when the nationalist tricolour rode up the flagpole and Dhritarashtra, his voice breaking with emotion, announced to the nation in the most enduring of his visual metaphors:

  ‘At the hour of darkness, as the world slumbers, India awakes to the dawn of freedom.’

  When the clock struck twelve that night it struck for the hopes in all our hearts. The cheers that resounded from the massed ranks of the legislators in the Constituent Assembly found their echo in the crowds on every city street, in every village panchayat, atop every lorry, aboard every train. They were cheers, Ganapathi, of the kind that greets the end of a Ram-Lila performance at a maidan, when the demon has been slain and the giant effigy of Ravana, the alien king who has crossed the sea to usurp and ravish India’s innocence, is ceremonially set alight. That is when you shout in an affirmation of triumph, truth and teleology; you cheer the fact that you knew what would happen, and you cheer the fact that its happening has confirmed your faith in the world.

  But one man was not cheering that night. Gangaji sat on the cold floor of a darkened room, sunk into his white wrap, his lower lip extended in a gloomy pout, his long arms listless by his side. Almost alone among his colleagues, the Mahaguru saw no cause for celebration. Instead of the cheers of rejoicing, Ganapathi, he heard the cries of the women ripped open in the internecine frenzy; instead of the slogans of triumph, he heard the shouts of crazed assaulters flailing their weapons at helpless victims; instead of the dawn of Dhritarashtra’s promise, he saw only the long dark night of honor that was breaking his nation in two. The bright lights of the gaily coloured bulbs strung across all the celebratory shamianas of Delhi could not illuminate that darkness, Ganapathi, nor could they shine in his eyes as brightly as the blazing thatched homes of the poor peasants. He had preached brotherhood, and love, and comradeship in struggle, the strength of non-violence and the power of soul-force. Yet it was as if he had never lived at all, never preached a word.

  He saw the shadow fall across him before he saw the haggard man framed in the doorway. He looked up at the tall awkward figure without curiosity.

  ‘Yes?’ Sarah-behn asked.

  ‘Do you remember me, Bhishma?’ the visitor asked in a ragged choking voice. Something stirred in Gangaji’s eyes.

  ‘Who are you?’ Sarah-behn asked.

  The visitor coughed redly into a stained handkerchief. He looked in wonder at his own blood, his indeterminate features twisting in pain. ‘I now call myself Shikhandin. Shikhandin the Godless. Bhishma will understand.’ The lips parted in a crooked smile. ‘He knew me as Amba, princess and bride. Did you not, Bhishma?’

  Gangaji looked at him in widening comprehension, but said nothing.

  ‘I have been through much to get here, Bhishma.’ The voice was unsteady, and one hand was holding in the side of his stomach as if to keep the guts from falling out. ‘The butcher who unmade my womanhood hasn’t left me much time. But some things are easier for a man. Just travelling here, walking through the streets of this flaming city, entering this compound - Amba could not have done it.’

  Sarah-behn was staring in horrified fascination at the gaunt figure with the indeterminate voice. But she, like the few others in the room, did not - could not - move. And Gangaji sat calmly looking at the unnatural apparition, an ineffable peace lightening his face.

  ‘What a wreck you are, Bhishma!’ the voice went on. ‘What a life you’ve led. Spouting on and on about our great traditions and basic values, but I don’t see the old wife you ought to be honouring in your dotage. Advising everyone about their sex life, marrying people off, letting them call you the Father of the Nation, but where is the son you need to light your funeral pyre, the son of your own loins? I’ve been looking everywhere, Bhishma, but he’s nowhere to be found!’ The visitor spat redly on the floor. ‘You make me sick, Bhishma. Your life has been a waste, unproductive, barren. You are nothing but an impotent old walrus sucking other reptiles’ eggs, an infertile old fool seeking solace like a calf from the udders of foreign cows, a man who is less than a woman. The tragedy of this country springs from you - as nothing else could after that stupid oath of which you are so pathetically proud. Bhishma, the pyre has already been lit for you in the flames that are burning your country. You have lived long enough!’

  The twisted figure bent sideways in pain, then straightened itself with a visible effort of will. ‘They say, Bhishma, that you will go only when you no longer wish to live,’ Amba/Shikhandin coughed. ‘Look at the mess you’ve made.’ A hand swept out to the world beyond. ‘You don’t still want to live, do you?’

  Gangaji looked steadily at his nemesis and slowly, wearily, emotionlessly shook his head.

  ‘I thought so.’ The hand swept back. It was holding a gun.

  Sarah-behn screamed.

  Three bullets spat out in quick succession. The screaming did not stop; it was joined by other screams, which dissolved into wails and sobs. For a second it seemed that the occupants of the room were all frozen in shock, and that all that moved were the waves of grief from the screaming women. Then everyone sprang into motion. Sarah-behn ran to Gangaji. Two or three of his male followers seized Shikhandin, who did not resist. The assassin leaned on his captors like a bride reluctant to leave her father’s home, but there was defiance in his weakness, and his arms were pinioned behind his back. Shikhandin looked with bitter satisfaction at the Mahaguru, lying crumpled on the floor, life oozing from his wounds.

  ‘Gangaji.’ It was Sarah-behn, frantic with grief and fighting to conceal it, beside herself and beside him. ‘Don’t worry. The doctors are coming. Everything will be all right.’

  The Mahaguru smiled with effort, as though at the absurdity of the proposition.

  Or at least I imagine he did: that is the way in which I have heard the story. For I was not there, Ganapathi. I, who had spent so many of Gangaji’s waking hours with him, who had trudged by his side through the indigo fields of Motihari and the mango groves before Chaurasta, I could not reclaim that place as he lay mortally wounded amidst his followers.

  I have had nightmares about that moment since, and in my nightmares the Mahaguru fell, pierced not by bullets but by arrows, sharp shafts that cut deeply into his body and his being. ‘Let Ganga Datta die in a manner befitting his life,’ I heard an ethereal voice saying, perhaps his own, and then a hundred hands were raised to lift the Mahaguru from the floor where he had fallen and carry him gently to his deathbed. And when they placed him on it I realized in my nightmare that it was a bed of a hundred arrows, all planted firmly in the stony ground, their sharp triangular heads embedded in Gangaji’s back, his lifeblood pouring from each in a crimson flow that merged and mingled with the darker trickle from his assassin’s weapon, till it was impossible to tell which he was dying from, the injury inflicted by the killer or the unremitting incisions of the bed of arrows on which he was lying - the bed which was all that a torn and jagged nation could offer its foremost saint to rest on.

  In the helpless horror of my nightmare I watched his life ebb away, unable to move an arm, lift a finger, raise a voice to change anything that was happening. Yet Gangaji was in no torment. He bore his fatal impalement calmly, as another campaigner for justice and peace had accepted the catharsis of crucifixion. And when he
called for that final sip of water which is the dying Hindu’s last prerogative on earth, a lustrous youth stepped forward to shoot another arrow into the ground by the Mahaguru’s head. The arrow sprang from his bow as if released from an unbearable tension, flew through the air and imbedded itself quivering in the earth.

  From that spot, Ganapathi, gushed the best and the worst of all the water of India, its crystals clear with the sparkle of love and truth and hope, its flow muddied by the waste and the offal that are also flung into the holiest of our rivers. This water spurted up near Gangaji, bathing and soothing and inflaming his wounds, and dropping in thirst-quenching rivulets on to his parted lips.

  As Gangaji drank, my nightmare faded into received memory, and the Mahaguru was back in the arms of his sobbing Scottish sister on that cold unforgiving floor, with Shikhandin’s bullets bleeding the life out of him.

  ‘Thirsty,’ he uttered in a fading voice.

  A boy brought him a tumbler. ‘I am Arjun, Pandu’s son,’ he said softly. I was just arriving when I heard the shots. Look, I have brought some water for you. Pure Ganga-jal, from Hastinapur. Please drink it.’

  The Mahaguru, Ganga Datta, bent forward gratefully for a sip, placing a weak hand of benediction on the youth’s head. Then he turned his cow-eyes of infinite sadness to his constant companion.

  ‘I . . . have . . . failed,’ he whispered. And then he was gone, and the light, as Dhritarashtra was to say, went out of our lives.

  70

  No obituaries, Ganapathi. You won’t get those from me. Anyone who wants eulogies can look them up in the local library - ‘generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked the earth’ (Einstein), ‘the noblest Roman of them all’ (Sir Richard), ‘a great loss to the Hindu community’ (Mohammed Ali Karna). What I feel about Gangaji can’t be put into words, and in a sense everything I have been telling you, and everything we are living today, is the Mahaguru’s funeral oration.