White Man Falling

by Mike Stocks

  Bobby doesn’t seem to know.

  DDR leaps into damage-limitation mode, getting his fleet of magnificent vehicles on the road within half an hour, with him in the lead car in a foul temper. The impressive convoy sets out to meet the bus on the road, honking splenetically and almost without cease for the entire journey as though to express DDR’s feelings. He intends to transfer Swami into a Mercedes as soon as is humanly possible, for it is surely unthinkable that Swami should arrive in Mullaipuram in a bus.

  The convoy intercepts the bus just outside a village about three hours from Mullaipuram. It is then, greeting Swami respectfully, that DDR comprehends the godsend that he has been granted… The guru and the guru’s daughter are alone in the bus! He travels in the vehicle of the common people, and yet he is apart from them! He is both humble and magnificent… What a guru this guru is, DDR rejoices, nobody could come up with a better guru than this one, everything this guru does is gold dust!

  He soon has things organized. Swami and Kamala remain in the bus, the driver and the conductor have a substantial amount of money pressed into their palms – it is their proximity to the guru which explains this good fortune, they agree later – and the bus starts on the next leg of its soon-to-be-fabled journey, only now it follows an escort of three Mercedes-Benz and a Toyota Land Cruiser and a lurching van packed with sundry flunkeys and bodyguards. Has there ever been a public bus journey like this one throughout the whole of India, even in North India, where all kinds of peculiar things are reputed to occur? What a bus ride – and Swami and Kamala haven’t even bought a ticket.

  * * *

  “Oh,” Swami says, as they approach the bus station in Mullaipuram.

  This is the first word he has spoken in days. It is the last word he says for a week or more. It is emitted somewhere in the middle of a groaning sigh. So it is not true that the guru never speaks, as some like to claim, but it’s certainly true that he doesn’t speak much; only the extent of the anarchy going on at Mullaipuram Bus Station can explain his garrulous moment.

  Who knows, perhaps people will denounce him as a fraud in a week or a year, but today half the town is here, ready to greet their illustrious son. They all agree that he who was once their highly regarded and overwhelmingly beloved and super-intensely cherished Sub-Inspector (retired) R.M. Swaminathan is now their much simpler, their far greater, their very own Swamiji… The convoy and the bus are barely crawling, the police can hardly maintain a clear path for them, and the people are in a state of wild excitement.

  “Swamijiiiiii! Swamijiiiii!”

  He makes his one-handed namaskaram to all and sundry in a respectful but weary manner, as the crowds beat on the panels of the bus and hurl blossom and sweets through the bars of the open windows.

  “Appa!” Kamala cries – she had no idea it would be like this.

  It is fully five minutes before the driver succeeds in parking his bus in the allotted bay without running anyone over, and the police have to beat some people almost senseless to clear a path so that DDR is able to board the bus and escort Swami and Kamala outside and to the waiting Mercedes; on that short walk, Swami is garlanded more times than is physically supportable by a host of local worthies whom he hardly registers, from politicians and priests to businessmen and a film boss. Two of DDR’s men have to carry the offerings for him.

  Swami and Kamala and DDR sit in the back of the most accessorized Mercedes, DDR beaming. Ayyo-yo-yo! Kamala is marvelling; she has rarely been in an Ambassador taxi before, never mind a Mercedes. She is in a state of shock at all these people, and at all this adoration and anarchy for her father. Her hands go gliding over the luxurious fixtures of the car.

  “Very good,” DDR is saying, “crowd is massive! Swamiji guru, you are not realizing the effect you are having! You are all humility. If I do not help you, what would happen? They are loving you so much that they would tear your arms and legs off.”

  The convoy travels at a crawling pace through Mullaipuram’s hysteria, while garlands rain down on the Mercedes like some kind of supernatural hailstorm. Swami looks out of the window, his attention pitched in a very curious place, a distant contrary place of amazement and apathy. Onlookers are shrieking and shouting and crying. He isn’t really taking in what DDR is saying. He is resigned to his fate.

  “…not possible to go to your little bungalow today,” DDR is saying.

  “But – we want to go home now,” Kamala says, plaintively.

  “Daughter, I understand, but look out of the window, Daughter! It is like this at your dwelling place also, there are thousands of people swarming there waiting for the guru. If we arrive there it will be complete chaos, they will rip your Appa apart out of their overwhelming adoration for him, we will never get you inside, and if we get you in we will never keep all these people out.”

  “But – we – I want to see my Amma and my sisters,” Kamala protests, her eyes filling with tears.

  “Yes Daughter, I know, don’t worry, you are very good girl, but your respected Amma and sisters are not there.”

  “Where are they? Saar, where are they? Appa, where is Amma?”

  “Please don’t be worried Daughter, no no, no need for tears!” DDR laughs uneasily, as Swami’s slow and undemanding gaze sweeps from his anxious daughter to DDR, and then out towards the throng they are pressing through. “Daughter, Swamiji, your family members will be waiting for you at my house. Really, I was having to rescue them. Please understand the practicalities of this business, you have been away, you don’t know how Mullaipuram is now, it is crazy for the guru Swamiji. Life is not the same any more for the guru and his family.”

  “Appa?” Kamala pleads. She wants to go home; she wants to lie on the cement floor with her head in Jodhi’s lap as Amma scolds them from the kitchen; she wants to sew a furry pencil case and show it to her father, gaining the approbation of his slow smiling nod, while Leela says that the pencil case is the most horrible pencil case in Tamil Nadu, and possibly in the whole of South India. But what can Swami do? It is obvious – even to a fellow who can go hours on end without a single thought troubling his holy numbskull head – that Number 14/B is not a viable option.

  “Everything I am arranging,” DDR reassures them, “please don’t be worrying yourselves about any detail, already I have arranged for your family to be picked up, probably they are at my house already. It is secluded secure place, you will all be safe and private there. Very big place, please don’t be anxious, I will provide best accommodation! Maybe in a few days you can go to your little house,” DDR lies blithely.

  Regardless of whether Swami is an aspect of the godhead or not – there seem to be indicators on both sides of the premise – has it got to the point of no return, this perception that he is? Can he go back to his ordinary life one day, and be a nobody again, even a laughing stock? If he tried, who would believe him now?

  * * *

  Amma, Jodhi, Pushpa and Leela are waiting outside Mullaipuram Mansions with thirty or forty other people of much more impressive standing – friends and acquaintances of DDR’s who have been arriving at his house throughout the last few hours in order to be in on the action.

  “Here he is, my daughters,” Amma whispers to her brood, resplendent in her finest sari, as the cars come sweeping up the dirt drive, “imagine how he must feel!” She blinks some tears away.

  “Amma, definitely Appa is in one of the big cars?” Leela whispers fearfully; she just wants to see her daddy. Like Amma, she is whispering because she feels self-conscious in this fine place with all these VIPs braying and milling around. Jodhi and Pushpa hold her hand, all family tensions being put on hold for this special time and momentous occasion.

  Servants leap to the back doors of all three Mercedes and open them. A variety of impressive-looking personages are getting out of the cars.

  Out of the first Mercedes emerges D.D. Rajendran, in his off-white Nehru suit, smiling broadly – “Friends… the guru Swamiji, he is here!” – and some North
Indian dignitary can’t help shouting “Wah wah!” – and everyone strains forwards to see the guru come out. There is something of an anti-climax as DDR turns around and finds himself helping Kamala out after him. She looks around her, warily, and sees her three sisters surging to greet her. Amma remains behind, conscious of her dignity. The girls embrace.

  “Come and see Amma,” Jodhi whispers.

  “But Appa—”

  “I will help him out.”

  So while all eyes await the imminent discharge of Swami from the Mercedes, Kamala goes up to Amma and touches her feet in the traditional way, and then embraces her, crying, while nobody notices or cares.

  Swami still sits in the back of the car, not shifting. His mind is in its own faraway world at this moment. An image has come to him from nowhere, and this delays him somewhat. It would perhaps be instructive to record the profundity of this experience in its every detail, alluding to the measureless interior landscapes he is traversing and the cosmic connections he is making – except that he is wondering whether he has left his pen in the desk at Highlands.

  Such natural theatrical genius, D.D. Rajendran marvels, as he waits by the open door for the guru to emerge, and as the small crowd gets ever more anxious and anticipatory.

  Then, here are my daughters, comes to Swami, and he sticks a foot out of the car.

  The crowd has been hushed by the delay. It murmurs and sways. DDR stands back and gazes at his creation, as Jodhi tugs Swami upright.

  Swami feels the love of his daughters flow over him like warm fragrant water. Jodhi, Pushpa and Leela touch his feet respectfully, then cling on to him, trying not to weep but not succeeding very well, as they steer him across to Amma, who by now is very much at the back of the crowd. As for that crowd, the murmuring and swaying starts to develop into muttering and exclaiming and adaa-daa-daaing somewhat, and a fair portion of its individual members are gearing up to manoeuvre themselves into advantageous spots, from where they will be able to access the guru; but at the same time, there is something fiercely powerful about the family reunion, and as Swami limps over to his wife, people hold back.

  Before she looks at him, she touches his feet. It is only in the act of rising up that their gazes meet. Here is my wife. They hold each other’s gaze for a long while, and Amma says “Husband” without hearing herself do it.

  “Swamiji,” DDR is now saying, at his side, “Swamiji, many distinguished visitors are coming here to welcome you.”

  It is not that Swami has much interest in being rude or in asserting his own autonomy; it is more that what happens is what happens. He puts his hand on Kamala’s shoulder as usual, and Jodhi takes hold of his hanging arm tightly, and they shuffle round and begin walking into the house.

  “Swamiji…”

  Amma, with her arms around Pushpa and Leela, walks close behind them, head bowed.

  “Swamiji,” says DDR, following up, “I am thinking you will like very much to be introduced to K.S. Ramachandran – he is the Junior Fisheries Minister from Chennai; the Chief Minister has sent him here to see you.”

  The family go through the open front door, trailed by D.D. Rajendran and some of his anxious associates.

  “Shall I escort you to reception room for meeting the many prestigious admirers?” DDR tries, increasingly dismayed that this event is not panning out as he had intended. Poor old DDR, he doesn’t understand yet that non-cooperation is a vital bit of kit in Swami’s feckless, lucky arsenal. Nobody wants a doormat for a guru.

  “Saar,” Kamala says, “Appa needs a wash and a nap now, please show us a family room.”

  Swami and his women abandon the notables to their own devices, even the Junior Fisheries Minister, who has been sent here by the Chief Minister to suss out how much mileage there may be in visiting the guru during these early days of his fame.

  * * *

  Swami is alone with his wife and daughters in one of the rooms DDR has allocated them. He sits in an armchair, with Leela sitting on his lap. Amma and the other girls are at his feet, cross-legged on the floor.

  “Pushpa did not get very finest marks in geography test,” Amma is saying.

  “It was trick question Appa, about Narmada dam.”

  “Appa, you are slightly little bit less cuddly,” Leela says.

  “Leela, don’t tell Appa he used to be fat.”

  “I don’t want to be in this big house, I want to go home, when will we go home, Amma?”

  “What are you talking about, Kamala? How can we take your beloved Appa to our little house? Police are guarding it to make sure the devotees aren’t stripping it bare!”

  “But we can’t stay here for ever, Amma.”

  “Yes yes, God will do everything,” Amma points out, gesturing towards her husband in a vaguely complacent fashion; she could get used to staying here for ever.

  “When are they bringing more tea?” Jodhi complains. “They said they would be bringing the tea.”

  “Did you ever see a room like this one?” Pushpa says, gazing around; it is far larger then the bungalow. The huge bed at one end is twice as big as Number 14/B’s kitchen, and all four of its legs once belonged to a fierce wild elephant shot by the Maharaja of Mysore in 1907, after the animal had been rendered safe, drunk and incontinent with three gallons of toddy. Rugs, handwoven for years on end by the nimble fingers of infant Afghanis, are scattered over the marble floor. There are antique chests and teak cupboards, idols carved from sandalwood and ivory, and at the end where the family is gathered is a group of western-style armchairs and settees, and a vast eastern-style recliner. French windows lead to a private terrace.

  “Appa, you are not smiling much, but you are feeling happy,” Jodhi says.

  How should Swami respond? His speech is no better than before he died, and his inclination to employ it has become almost non-existent. After coming back from death, he doesn’t care any more if he can’t express himself. People seem to understand this, no one seems to expect him to say anything anyway – in fact, the less he says, the more they are in awe of him. He is content to exist in peacefulness, with his family all around him, talking their nonsense.

  After a while the family decides to take a nap. The elephant-limbed bed would fit four of them, the recliner would fit three, each of the two settees could take two sisters at least… They go to sleep on the floor, all together on a rug, Pushpa hanging on to a corner of Jodhi’s chudidhar, Kamala’s fingers trembling as she dreams inexplicably about playing the piano on top of a skyscraper in New York, Amma snorting cacophonously while she dribbles onto DDR’s $14,000 antique rug, and Leela burbling her oddities – “give me a blue dust and I’ll go,” she announces.

  At some point Swami wakes up without waking up, feeling Leela’s knees twitching against the backs of his thighs. His wife and daughters are all around him, in their dream world. On the other side of the room the white man is asleep in the vast bed. Oh, there you are, goes Swami, and there is a Yes I’m here from the sleeping white man.

  10

  Maybe there is some cosmic logic playing out in the way that Swami has ended up at D.D. Rajendran’s house. Although the banyan tree in the garden is neither so vast nor so ancient nor so steeped in God as the one in Chennai, in the grounds of the Theosophical Society, near the bank of the Adyar river, yet it is certainly very large and very old and full of God. Many many years ago, when Mullaipuram was little more than a stronghold next to a rock, and had no burgeoning brash developments pressing out in all directions, no soft-drinks factories (quarter-owned by DDR) sapping the water table and ruining the farmers thereabouts, this banyan tree belonged to nobody and everybody and all the villages around. Untold thousands of home-made religious rituals have been undertaken in the presence of its spirits. Murtis of Mariamman and many other local deities – some of them forgotten now – used to be lodged in the crevices of its trunk and in crannies of its gnarls, placed in the whorls at its base. Long-dead mothers brought their babies here to ask for protection and pros
perity; long-dead priests performed pujas for worshippers who brought their upturned coconut halves, flames flickering within on a wick stuck into a daub of clarified butter.

  About ten years ago in Mullaipuram there was sporadic outrage and a badly organized protest when the compound of DDR’s half-built house mysteriously outgrew the limits indicated in the building plans, to incorporate this sacred tree of everybody and nobody into its grounds; a couple of people ended up in hospital after a terse dialogue with some of DDR’s least verbally gifted associates. One of them sustained a broken cheekbone that didn’t get set properly, and even now he is still known as Banyan Balu. But maybe the appropriation of this natural temple into the gardens of DDR’s house is in the best long-term interests of the tree and of all the spirits it shelters. Mullaipuram’s ever-growing outskirts are not noted for their sensitive touch; they blindly envelop everything in their way, whether beautiful or ugly, covering it all with low-rise blocks of flats, new roads, warehouses and factories and ostentatious company headquarters and stinking shanty settlements. And maybe, as has been noted, there is a deeper logic in these things, beyond our easy comprehension – because, by and large, any serious guru requires a damn good tree.

  As soon as Swami sets eyes on it, just before sunrise the following morning during a solitary amble, when his daughters are sleeping and his wife is preparing to do her morning darshan in a puja room, he feels a terrific charge of recognition and acceptance. This tree, it’s been waiting for a man like him. He threads himself through its natural pillars – the branches of the banyan tree grow up and out and round and then down, down into the earth, where they root, so that the whole structure is like nature’s pillared temple. All manner of exotic ill-kept hounds from DDR’s collection are following him, sniffing and trailing him but not harassing him. He circles the tree several times.

  The nightwatchman on his patrols stands and watches in the dissipating gloom of the dawn, his hands in an unseen respectful namaskaram, as the guru finishes his perambulations and sits down at last at the base of the tree, half-obscured by the pillars of branches diving into the earth. The story the nightwatchman will relate later, to the gardeners, to his wife, to a delivery man, to his six-month-old baby, to himself in his prayers, is only slightly garbled and enhanced by the time it gets to DDR’s ears much later still; the guru glided round the tree with a supernatural grace in a clockwise direction, almost as if he were approaching the inner sanctum of a temple, while all the dogs in the garden fell silent and watched.