The Great Indian Novel

by Shashi Tharoor

  ‘I still can’t believe Duryodhani would be involved in anything like this,’ Yudhishtir said.

  We can,’ said Nakul candidly.

  ‘I’ll never understand that girl,’ said Vidur with a tired shake of the head. ‘If it weren’t for a very strong instinct to the contrary, I’d have had it out with her directly. But something tells me it would be better if she did not know I am aware of what is going on - I can be more useful to you all in this way. I hope I’m right.’

  ‘I’m sure you are, Uncle Vidur,’ Yudhishtir said dutifully.

  ‘Oh - and there’s one more thing. Someone will be waiting for you at Varanavata - someone from whom I don’t think you ought to be separated at this time.’

  ‘Mother?’ Arjun asked.

  Vidur nodded. ‘Be good to her, boys. She’s been through a lot.’

  81

  The news of the death of Karnistan’s eponymous founder reached Dhritarash- tra during his morning massage, when he had his major cables read to him.

  ‘How did it happen?’ He asked his half-brother, who had interrupted the uninspired elocution of a particularly truculent dispatch from London to give him the news. The Prime Minister lay on his front, wearing shorts and his ever-present dark glasses, as a burly pahelwan dissolved the knots of tension on his neck with the subtle pressure of his expert thumbs.

  ‘Well, he hadn’t been too well for some time now,’ Vidur replied. ‘You remember, that golden skin of his had begun to take on a decidedly yellowish tinge by the time Partition occurred. And there were moments when one almost felt one could look through that translucent half-moon on his forehead to the twisted mess inside.’ Vidur stopped, embarrassed by his own imagination. ‘But anyway, the actual climax was rather bathetic. Seems his official vehicle got stuck in the mud somewhere on an inspection tour. Karna barked at the driver, which only made the poor fool more nervous, so nervous he revved the engine too strongly and got the wheel embedded even more deeply in the mud. The Khalifa-e-Mashriq was apparently beside himself with rage. Leapt out of the car screaming imprecations at the hapless driver. Said he’d pull the wheel out of the mud himself with his bare hands.’

  ‘Good God,’ Dhritarashtra murmured, feeling other bare hands - stronger than Karna’s - relax his shoulder-blades with long, deep strokes. ‘And did he try?’

  ‘Apparently. When the driver tried to help him Karna sent him back to his seat. It seems there were people around, but no one dared approach the Khalifa in this mood.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘He apparently actually tugged at the wheel, which didn’t budge, of course. And then he did something rather peculiar - I mean even more peculiar.’ ‘Oh?’

  ‘He shook his fist at the sun.’

  ‘Strange.’

  ‘And almost immediately, so the story goes, keeled over and died,’ Vidur completed the tale. ‘With his hands still locked hopelessly on the wheel of his car.’

  Dhritarashtra was silent for a moment as the muscular masseur kneaded life into the unexercised flesh of his thighs. ‘I can’t say I ever liked the man very much,’ he said at last. ‘With his overweening ambition, the glaring pseudo- religious chip on his highly un-Islamic shoulder, his willingness to destroy a country in order to have his own way, he wasn’t exactly what you would call likeable. And yet . . . I wonder sometimes: if we had given him his due in the Kaurava Party, might he not today be remembered as one of the finest Indians of us all?’

  He winced as the masseur’s palms slapped his slackening waist more vigorously than usual. But Dhritarashtra did not take that as a political comment. He knew the masseur held the country’s highest security clearance, shared only with a dozen members of the Cabinet and a handful of the top civil service. The pahelwan had been engaged with the most impeccable of credentials - a recommendation from me.

  We historians, you see, Ganapathi, had to have our sources.

  Far away, in a nondescript hotel room in charmless Varanavata, Kunti Devi Yadav, relict of the much lamented Pandu, heard the news on a tinny radio and wept. She wept for the son she had never known, and for the fate that had deprived her of that knowledge. She wept, too, for lost innocence and acquired guilt: the innocence she had surrendered in the arms of Hyperion Helios, and the dreadful guilt that only a mother who has survived a child can know. A mother who, in this case, was obliged to mourn her son alone, and in silence.

  Kunti wept. She walked unsteadily to the barred window of her hotel room. And then, in a completely incongruous gesture, she pushed her braceleted arm out of the window, and shook her fist at the sun.

  The Fourteenth Book:

  The Rigged Veda

  82

  ‘Delighted to receive you, noble sirs.’ The hotelier’s brace of gold teeth gleamed in a beaming smile. ‘My good name is Purochan Lal. I am very much honoured to welcome you to my humble hostelry. Will you be staying long?’

  ‘A few days,’ Yudhishtir replied non-committally. ‘We have not decided yet.’ He cast a look around the premises, unimpressed.

  ‘Naturally, naturally.’ Purochan Lal was scrapingly obsequious. ‘It is only fit and proper that you should take your time to pronounce on the merits of our fair city. Er, town.’

  ‘Can you show us to the room of our mother? She is expecting us.’

  ‘Your mother? Most certainly.’ Purochan Lal walked behind a rudimentary counter to a well-thumbed register. ‘And what is her good name, please?’

  ‘Kunti Devi. She must have arrived - oh, about a day ago. From Has-tinapur.’

  ‘Srimati Kunti Devi! But of course!’ Purochan Lal seemed almost excited. ‘You are saying she is your mother? You are her son?’

  ‘Yudhishtir,’ the eldest confirmed. ‘And these are my brothers Bhim, Arjun, Nakul and Sahadev.’

  ‘We are pleased to meet you,’ said Nakul gravely. Arjun nodded. Bhim beamed.

  ‘But what an unexpected honour!’ The hotelier rubbed his hands in a combination of reverence and glee. ‘The five sons of the meritorious Pandu! Our late great Chakravarti, scourge of the British!’ He leaned over the counter in conspiratorial confession. ‘I was myself a member of the Onward Organissa-tion,’ he announced in a sibilant whisper. ‘Your wiss is my command.’

  Yudhishtir looked embarrassed at the unexpected reception. ‘Our only wiss, I mean wish, is to be taken up to our rooms,’ he said. ‘We are very tired, and we want to see our mother soon, if it’s no trouble.’

  ‘Trouble? No trouble at all. It is my pleasure to be of service to Chakravar-tissons. My only sorrow is that my rooms are so unworthy of such distinguished visitors. Hai, hai.’ He shook his head in mournful self-reproach. Then, suddenly, his regretful face lit up. ‘But wait! I have an idea. My new house is almost ready. It is not far from here, and my family do not plan to occupy it till after Diwali. Why not you live there instead?’

  ‘Really, we wouldn’t dream of giving you such trouble,’ Yudhishtir said. ‘I’m sure we’ll be perfectly comfortable here.’

  ‘What talk is this? I am already telling you it is no trouble at all,’ Purochan Lal replied. ‘I insist. It will be honour for me and my family to have you sleep under our roof. I must go and fetch the keys. But no, first I must take you to your mother. Then you all wash and be comfortable, and within one or two hours, I shall ready the new house for you.’ He smiled and bowed and rubbed his hands again, as the three older Pandavas looked at each other and shrugged. ‘You will accept? You will stay in my house? I am truly honoured. Please follow me.’

  Early the next morning, the Home Secretary in Delhi grimly studied the smudged carbon delivered to him by his staff in the cable interception service. ‘CONTACT ESTABLISHED STOP FIVE FULLY TRUSTING STOP MOVING TO PRE-TREATED HOUSE TOMORROW STOP PREPARATIONS MADE AS DISCUSSED STOP PLEASE ADVISE WHEN TO START STOP KINDLY CONTINUE REMIT FUNDS WITHOUT STOP STOP PUROCHAN LAL.’ The cable had been sent from Varanavata the previous evening. It was addressed to Priya Duryodhani.

  Vidur had to buy time.r />
  He pulled a writing-pad toward him and rapidly drafted three cables in his quick, sloping hand. Thank God his most reliable man in Varanavata was the postmaster.

  ‘FOR PUROCHAN LALL STOP MESSAGE RECEIVED STOP DO NOT DO ANYTHING TILL EYE TELL YOU TO START STOP CONTINUE YOUR PREPARATIONS AND DO NOT STOP STOP PLEASE DRAFT CABLES MORE CAREFULLY AND DO NOT END SENTENCES WITH STOP STOP STOP YOU SEE HOW CONFUSING THIS IS STOP FUNDS ARE MY RESPONSIBILITY AND THEY WILL NOT STOP STOP ESPECIALLY IF YOU STOP STOP STOP STOP.’

  He signed that one Priya Duryodhani.

  The next cable was to the postmaster, ‘DO NOT DELIVER TO PUROCHAN LAL ANY CABLE OTHER THAN THOSE BEGINNING WITH WORDS QUOTE FOR PUROCHAN LALL UNQUOTE.’ He signed his full name and title, and made sure he assigned the instruction an official reference number.

  His last cable was the most difficult one to compose.

  FOR YUDHISHTIR CARE GPO VARANAVATA STOP YOUR LATEST ASTROLOGICAL FORECAST STOP BE WARY TROJAN HOUSE STOP GUARD AGAINST HEADLESS PARSON STOP DONT LET ON COLON NO IMMEDIATE REARRANGED GARDEN STOP AM SENDING RABBIT TO HELP BURROW STOP TRAVEL BROADENS THE HORIZONS STOP LET STARS LIGHT YOUR PATH STOP UNCLE VIDUR.’

  He re-examined the text with a critical eye. ‘Trojan house’ was a fairly obvious allusion. Had Yudhishtir done enough crosswords to deduce that ‘headless parson’ was ‘arson’ and ‘garden’ could be ‘rearranged’ as ‘danger’? He hoped so. If the superfluous punctuation and the Confucianisms of the rest of the message proved more opaque, he could not help it: there was no way he could risk being more explicit. But the meaning could be guessed at, and it was only intended to place the Pandavas on guard until his man got to Varanavata.

  It was time to send for the Rabbit.

  83

  ‘What’s this about a rearranged garden?’ Bhim asked. ‘Danger,’ Arjun said shortly.

  ‘I don’t see what’s dangerous about this garden,’ Bhim looked around him contemptuously at the few scraggly bushes around the perimeter of the lawn. ‘In fact it’s not much of a garden at all, if you ask me.’

  ‘Am sending rabbit to help burrow,’ Yudhishtir mused.

  ‘Burrow - that’s a hole in the ground,’ Arjun said reflectively. ‘Rabbits make them. I think Uncle Vidur is suggesting either that someone will help us find a safe hiding place, or . . .’

  ‘. . . will help us dig our way to one,’ Yudhishtir agreed. ‘Did I hear you say dig?’ Bhim asked. ‘In this garden? Forget it. You’d be lucky to get a cactus to grow here.’

  ‘Travel broadens the horizons?’ Yudhishtir asked.

  ‘I suppose that means prepare to escape. And “let stars light your path” must refer to escaping at night.’

  ‘Look, what are you two on about?’ Bhim, who had caught only the occasional word of their exchange, asked belligerently. ‘Sitting here talking about gardens, and digging, and looking at the stars in the night, as if we’ve got nothing more important to do! When are you going to tell Ma and me about the cable that came from Uncle Vidur?’

  ‘Just as soon as we’ve worked out what it means, Bhim-bhai,’ Arjun said mischievously. ‘Here - why don’t you look it over and have a try?’

  Bhim took the pink form with its lines of erratically stuck strips of white paper and frowned at its contents. He raised his finger as if to scratch his head and then, realizing how the gesture might stereotype him, put it down again.

  ‘Well?’ asked Yudhishtir.

  ‘It’s in code, of course,’ replied Bhim.

  ‘Ten out of ten so far,’ said Yudhishtir. ‘But what does it all mean?’

  ‘Roughly . . . We should watch out for a Trojan horse - “house” here’s just a misprint, everyone knows what a Trojan horse is. I don’t suppose he means a large wooden creature full of soldiers, but someone slipped into our company - I know! The servant maid!’

  ‘The maidservant! How clever of you, Bhim!’ Arjun marvelled. ‘You mean toothless, sixty-year-old Parvati is really a sinister secret agent in disguise? I’d never have worked that out by myself.’

  But Bhim was too engrossed in the rest of the text to catch his younger brother’s mocking tone.’ “Guard against headless parson.” That’s more difficult. There must be a parish-priest type about who’s dangerous.’

  ‘And headless?’

  The question threw Bhim for a moment, but he recovered quickly. ‘Certainly, you know, when he loses his head. A sort of violent, schizophrenic type. Goes crazy on full-moon nights and runs about with an axe. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Right, Bhim. So we’ll be on our guard against Parvati and a lunatic priest. What else?’

  ‘It says, “Don’t let on colon”. What part of the body is the colon, Yudhishtir?’

  ‘It’s the large intestine,’ replied his polymath elder brother, ‘from the caecum to the rectum.’

  ‘It’s also the monetary unit of El Salvador and Costa Rica,’ Arjun added helpfully.

  Bhim shot him a suspicious look. ‘Are you trying to be funny, Arjun? Because this cable’s got nothing to do with El. . . El Alamein and Costa Brava, or wherever. All this means is we’ve got to make sure the crazy parson never gets near our large intestines.’

  ‘Keep away from our caecums, we’ll say when he approaches.’

  ‘”No immediate,” Uncle Vidur says. An immediate no.’

  ‘That’s all very well, saying no and all, but Bhim, if this parson’s that crazy do you think he’ll listen?’

  ‘Perhaps you have a point there,’ Bhim admitted. ‘Wait - maybe that’s where the rearranged garden comes in. If we rearrange the garden, perhaps this priest will not go for our colons.’ Bhim looked around him again. ‘But I’ll say this again: there’s not much garden to rearrange.’

  This might have gone on for ever, Ganapathi, were it not for a fortuitous interruption - the arrival outside of their mother. Kunti Devi, dressed in a simple cotton sari, walked to her sons with a frown on her face.

  ‘Tell me, boys,’ she asked with the directness for which she was known, ‘do you feel there is something strange about the house?’

  Yudhishtir and Arjun exchanged glances. ‘In what way, Mother?’ the elder asked.

  ‘The smell,’ their mother replied. ‘I can’t explain it, but there’s something odd about the smell from the walls and floors of this house.’

  ‘I thought so too,’ Yudhishtir admitted, ‘but knowing it was a new house, not yet occupied, I thought it might just be fresh paint.’

  ‘There’s no paint on the floors,’ Kunti said, ‘but they smell the same.’

  Yudhishtir looked again at the cable in his hand, and at Arjun. ‘I’ll go and set, Mother,’ Arjun said quietly.

  ‘Don’t just see, sniff!’ Bhim bellowed after him.

  ‘What are you boys discussing? Is that a telegram?’

  ‘It’s a telegram from Uncle Vidur,’ Bhim announced. ‘It’s in code. I was just explaining it to them.’

  ‘Really? From Uncle Vidur?’ Kunti seemed disturbed. ‘What does he say?’

  ‘Just to be careful about certain things,’ Yudhishtir said cautiously. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Mother.’

  ‘No,’ said Bhim reassuringly. ‘I can handle any number of schizophrenic priests and Trojan maidservants for you, Ma.’

  Kunti’s startled reaction might have merited a few clarifications, but at that moment Arjun stepped out of the house wearing a grave look.

  ‘I think I know what it is,’ he said as he approached them.

  ‘The smell? What?’

  ‘Lac,’ Arjun replied.

  ‘What do you mean, lakh?’ Bhim asked. ‘That’s not a smell, it’s an amount.’

  ‘I didn’t say lakh, Bhim, but lac. The word’s from the same root, but this one’s a resin, produced by coccid insects on the twigs of trees. It’s transparent, so you can apply it anywhere and it won’t hide the wood or whatever surface there is beneath, though it will give it the reddish look we all noticed. Of course, its smell takes some time to disappear, as Ma
has just found out.’

  ‘So that’s all,’ Kunti smiled, relieved. ‘Well, I’d better go and see about some tea for all of us.’

  ‘Wait, Ma.’ Arjun paused. ‘Keep the stove well away from the wall and the floor, and don’t stub your cigarettes out anywhere but in an ashtray. You see, there is one property of lac I haven’t mentioned yet. It’s highly inflammable. We’re living inside a petrol-can.’

  84

  ‘Your report?’ Vidur asked, leaning back in his chair.

  ‘I went as instructed,’ (said the Rabbit)

  ‘Quite promptly – as is always my habit.

  The five whom you said

  Might even be dead

  Had a chance – and I told them to grab it.

  ‘Your cables had worked very well.

  Purochan was confused as hell.

  With your “start” and your “stop”

  You had him on the hop –

  So into our little net he fell.

  ‘Obeying your telegrams, he’d waited.

  His trap was all ready and baited.

  Your nephews had no reason

  To suspect him of treason;

  Their extinction seemed virtually fated.

  ‘It just was a question of time

  Before Purochan committed the crime.

  A touch of the torch

  To the lac-covered porch

  Was all it would take to fry ‘em.

  ‘Of course, he had started to wonder

  If Duryodhani had made a blunder,

  As day after day

  He was asked to delay

  The deed that would cast them asunder.

  ‘Thank you, sir, for your delaying tactics:

  Without them, we’d have been in a real fix.

  But you gave us the time

  To outsmart the slime

  With our spades, hoes, shovels and picks.

  ‘As soon as I’d established contact

  And confirmed that your nephews were intact,