Book of Destruction

by P Sachidanandan

  Anand

  The Book of Destruction

  Translated from the Malayalam by

  Chetana Sachidanandan

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  About the Author

  The Gardener

  The Hotelier and the Traveller

  The Tailor

  Copyright Page

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE BOOK OF DESTRUCTION

  Anand is an engineer by profession who has lived and worked in many parts of India. His first novel, Aalkkoottam, was published in 1970. He has since published a number of novels, short stories and studies of philosophical and social interest. His work has received the Sahitya Akademi, Vayalar and various other awards and recognitions. The English translation of his novel Govardhante Yatrakal, published by Penguin as Govardhan’s Travels, won the Vodafone Crossword Award.

  Chetana Sachidanandan is a biologist who works in Delhi. She writes poetry and essays and this is her first foray into translation.

  The Gardener

  Like someone barging into your house without so much as a knock on the door, and smashing things around—that was how he manifested before me that day. Although just then he was physically incapable of anything as energetic as that. And, anyway, storming in would certainly not be his style, at least from what I can recall about him from our brief acquaintance, now almost forty-five years ago. This time too, if you ask me, I can’t say he exhibited any such inclination during his very brief appearance that lasted not more than a few minutes. But sometimes there is an expressive force that lies hidden in certain encounters or even gestures, the stormy trail of which can be perceived only after they are past us. Stormy were the days that followed for me, when everything, as far as this person was concerned, was over.

  Seshadri, for that was his name, must have been in his thirties when I first met him. After an acquaintance that lasted perhaps a month or two, he had disappeared under near-mysterious circumstances, which was perhaps the reason I had remembered him for so long. I can’t say he had played any important part in my life then or that he had influenced me in any memorable manner. But today, in his eighties, old and weak, when he bid me goodbye forever, I stood there scared and perplexed. Some people make their presence felt through their disappearance. Seshadri’s presence was felt by what he left behind each time. Forty-five years ago it was an unsolved puzzle, and now, a lingering and biting fear.

  Seshadri is gone, he is dead. His death, however—though I suppose one should not say so—is no solace. The person that he was has passed into other domains, and I now understand how such domains can assume disturbing and scary proportions.

  I am not deliberately trying to pique your curiosity with my long introduction, as is often the way with writers. Things being the way they are, I could not but relate them this way. Let me then come to the story without further ado.

  I was in the hospital visiting a friend who was recuperating from surgery. As I was walking down the corridor afterwards, suddenly I heard a voice calling my name. I looked around but could not see anyone except the two attendants who had just passed me with a patient on a stretcher-trolley. They pulled the brakes and looked back at me, inviting my attention. I caught up with them and saw the patient on the stretcher-trolley trying to raise his head. He asked me in a weak voice, ‘Do you recognize me?’

  I did not. How could I? Forty-five long years stretched between the man on the trolley and me. I had no recollection of his face. To add to it he was laid out on the stretcher, covered neck down with a hospital-issue green sheet. But it seemed he not only recognized me but even remembered my name.

  ‘Do you remember me?’ he repeated the question, gasping for breath as if he had been running to cover the forty-five years separating us. He pushed out a weak arm from under the sheet and extended it towards me. ‘I am Seshadri,’ he continued between gasps, ‘… at Rajhara? Mehta Construction Company …?’

  In a moment I crossed the long bridge and reached him. I couldn’t really remember his face, but the name clicked. Grasping that weak hand in mine I murmured, ‘Yes, yes.’ I could see the satisfaction spread on his wrinkled face and reach his grey eyes. The remaining tufts of his hair were grey too and his features faded. Though I could not find a picture of the Seshadri I had known in my memories, something told me that this man and that one did not have much in common, at least physically.

  ‘These people are in a hurry,’ he said indicating the attendants by the trolley. ‘They are taking me for some tests. Please come to my room in the evening. Please, today itself.’

  He gave me the number of his room. The trolley moved away. I stood there for a moment, dazed and confused.

  I could not, however, meet him that day. Errands I had to run in the city delayed me and by the time I returned it was pretty late. Deciding that I would see him in the morning, I retired to bed. Sleep did not bless me immediately. Seshadri kept invading my thoughts again and again for reasons not clear to me.

  Those days, I was working in a mountainous region called Rajhara in the present state of Chhattisgarh. I was employed in one Mehta Construction Company that had a large contract for the construction of a plant meant for mining, crushing, screening and transporting iron ore from Rajhara to the Bhilai Steel Plant, which was also under construction then. They had a tight schedule and the work went on by day and by night. Days rolled by without our noticing.

  The contract was only for a period of three years. But the company had constructed a large colony of its own, which had living quarters for workers and engineers, guest houses, offices, workshops, a market and even a park and garden for the families. A man called Seshu had appeared one day as the mali to take care of gardening, planting trees, etc. He was a find of the resident director of the company, Chandulal Gandhi, and a favourite of his. That was why his appearance was particularly noticed by us.

  It was winter and I would see Seshu at work early in the morning as I waited on the veranda for my hot water for bathing to get ready, a cup of tea in hand. There was one main garden in the centre of our colony and then there were the smaller private gardens of the bungalows: of the resident director, the chief engineer and the guest house. Seshu could be spotted in any of these places clad in a dhoti and a loose shirt, armed with his tools. He would often be squatting near the flower beds, engaged in the finer work of weeding, tending and watering the plants. He would be on duty long before the other gardeners started trickling in. Later in the day, he would direct them in planting trees along the colony roads. As for landscaping, in his zealousness he often expanded his efforts to beyond the company-allotted land into the wooded area around. He held the view that landscaping was not a job that could be done on a limited, small plot. Once he told me that he had a larger plan in his mind to dovetail the plot cleared for the construction work with the natural forest that lay beyond.

  Seshu’s interests, however, were not confined to gardening. Equipped with a little knowledge of everything, he was soon to be found in the workshops, machine yards, stores and on worksites. Chandulal Gandhi had let him loose everywhere, people used to joke. Yet, it was his role as a mali that attracted me.

  I have observed in my association with various occupations that malis have certain special characteristics and even a world view of their own, developed perhaps from their closeness to the soil, plants and flowers. While sitting near the beds and tending the plants they talk incessantly with anyone who might come along, and if no one is around they talk with the plants or even to themselves. Seshu was no different. Though it was difficult to find time, I would sometimes enter into his conversations with the plants, from the wings.

  In our direct conversations he educated me on plants, imparting titbits
of information that I never had. He would interweave stories and myths with facts. Sometimes he would slip into real botany—plant classifications, species, genus, family, etc. One day he told me about Mendel and Linnaeus. ‘Do you know, sir, Linnaeus, in his mad craze for classification, used to argue with his wife about the scientific arrangement of clothes in the cupboard?’ All in chaste Banaras-style Hindi.

  One evening, he came to my quarters. I was lying on the cot reading a book. I got up and offered a chair to the unexpected visitor. To my surprise, he started talking in English—the clear, chiselled English used by professors in their lectures. One may say, perhaps with a slight Tamil accent. Suddenly he asked me in Tamil whether I was a Malayali. From thereon he carried on in part-Tamil, part-Malayalam for some time. Then fell back to English. He told me his real name was Seshadri and that he was an Iyengar from Tiruvayyar, near Tanjavur, where the saint Tyagaraja had lived. I noticed that when he spoke he unknowingly brushed the sacred thread under his shirt. I was still reeling at the thought of an English-educated Iyengar working as a mali in that wretched place. But by then he had abandoned his line of thought and had started asking me about myself. I don’t remember what I said. He closed the day’s programme with that and bid me goodbye.

  What he told me the next time he came was even more unbelievable. Seshadri told me that till recently he had been teaching English literature at Banaras Hindu University. He had got fed up with the politics and student agitations there and resigned from the job. It was quite difficult to believe all that, but my mind was by then too exhausted trying to distinguish between the truth and imagination and had given in to his stories.

  From then on Seshadri would drop in every now and then. He helped fill the intellectual vacuum I felt in that desolate place where I had no one to talk to other than the engineers and the workers. We talked about books, history, politics—everything under the sun. Whatever the topic, I realized that Seshadri had some knowledge of it and also a view of his own. I remember once when we were discussing the freedom struggle of the country, he offered the opinion that the communists who could never come out of the shadow of the Soviet Union as well as M.N. Roy who broke with them had both equally betrayed the Quit India movement.

  On Sundays we went for long walks in the forest, venturing beyond the project roads on to the tracks and trails used by the local tribal people. Since the boulders and rock outcrops were heavily laden with iron and the surface soil cover was thin, the top of the hills did not have much vegetation. Trees grew on the slopes and in the valleys where the surface soil washed down from the top had accumulated. The trees growing on iron were hard like the metal, I would joke, and he would always be ready with a quick response.

  Fast was the rise of Seshu in the company. He told me that he had divulged his Brahmin origins only to me. It was true; everyone else took him for a professional mali from upper Uttar Pradesh or Bihar. But the managers soon realized that he was educated and possessed the acumen to carry out more skilled jobs than those of a mali. He was appointed a work assistant, then a supervisor. The company was only too happy to exploit his abilities to the maximum.

  It was then that it happened. The company was in need of some additional workforce. In those days of the Five-Year Plans and intense construction activity, labourers used to be recruited through local agents and brought in large numbers from the rural areas of Rajasthan, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh to the worksites. Seshu convinced the management that he had contacts in Orissa and could easily bring nearly a thousand workers from there. The management saw no reason to distrust him. Seshu, accompanied by Abhayshankar Kulkarni, an accounts assistant, was immediately deputed to proceed to Orissa to fetch the labourers. Kulkarni was naturally entrusted with enough money in cash for the purpose. One fine morning the duo set off for Durg, the railhead of the worksite. A month passed and there was no sign of either Kulkarni or Seshu. The management began to get worried. They informed the police and dispatched their own people in different directions to investigate. But nothing more was heard of Seshu or Kulkarni. I left the company the year after and moved on to other assignments.

  The forty-five-year-old part of Seshadri’s story ends here. The latter part has now resurrected in the form of an emaciated frail man laid out on a stretcher in this Delhi hospital, hailing me in corridors. I do not know why an inexplicable element of fear crept into my mind when I stepped into that part and contemplated meeting him the next day.

  Many giant companies have come up in the past decades, dominating the construction arena, but my information was that the Mehta Company still survived, perhaps in the role of a subcontractor to the big sharks, thus avoiding being swallowed by them. The chances of anyone there who would still remember the Seshu episode is, however, remote. Stories of deception and fraud are in any case not unknown in business. And I myself have long since left the service and the profession and am a free bird now. Seshadri does not have to justify his conduct to anyone any more. What this man might have to say about the whole incident, therefore, is only of idle interest.

  Thus assuaging my unease I arrived at the hospital the next day. I went straight to his room, which I found was in the pay ward with all modern amenities. Seshadri was not there. He had been taken out for an emergency operation, I was told. I felt guilty for not having met him the previous day, and so I made haste to the operation theatre. He had already been taken inside. I was told that it was a major operation and would take about three hours.

  I returned to the hospital after finishing some chores in the city, well before the three hours were up. A patient coming out after a major operation might not be in a condition to talk, but I decided to wait, as some urgency inside me insisted I do. Wasn’t there a similar urgency in the words of that fossilized man when he had asked me to meet him in his room without fail the previous day?

  I spent my time in the waiting room reading newspapers and occasionally dozing. The controlled chaos among the staff indicated that everything was not right. The three hours stretched to four and then to five. Finally a doctor came out of the operation theatre and called my name. I went to him.

  He opened the conversation with, ‘What is your relationship with Mr Iyengar, sir?’

  ‘He is not related to me,’ I replied. ‘An acquaintance, that is all. I had known him for a brief period, some forty-five years ago. What is the matter, doctor?’

  ‘Strange man,’ the doctor said, as if to himself. He turned to me. ‘I am sorry sir, the operation was not successful. We could not save him.’

  ‘My God,’ I muttered.

  The doctor looked at me for a few moments. He was perhaps debating whether I needed comforting or not. After exchanging glances with the nurse who stood by his side, he spoke. ‘Well,’ he hesitated, ‘in any case he had left instructions, before being taken into surgery, for donating his organs as well as the body for medical studies.’

  He was telling me indirectly that I need not worry about the cremation of the body.

  ‘Do you want to see the body of your friend?’ the doctor inquired.

  I did not reply.

  ‘They will be bringing it out soon,’ he said, making the decision for me. ‘Mr Iyengar has left a written message for you. He specifically told me to pass it on to you in case he did not survive the surgery. Sister Meera John here will bring it to you, once we are done in there.’

  The doctor went back inside. Eventually Seshadri’s body was rolled out on the trolley. The attendants peeled the sheet back from his face for me. Then they covered it again and took the body to the mortuary. It must have been an empty shell after removing the organs according to his instructions.

  I sat on a bench waiting for Sister Meera John. I don’t know how long I waited. I was in a state of confusion. Too many things had happened all at once. I felt I was in a daze. Why should a man, already fossilized in my memory, resurrect in this fashion? The face that had been revealed to me when they lifted the sheet did not mean anything to me. The face of Se
shadri whom I had known so long ago had disappeared from my mind and it could not be replaced by the one that emerged from under the sheet. This one was as good as a new one, and I could not even say for sure if it was him. Seshadri was just a name in my mind, a name and some related events, to which I could now clip a new face, that was all.

  Some people are remembered by their faces. When you see them, your mind tells you that you have seen them somewhere. Some people are remembered through the events in which they played a role. This man, Seshadri, was destined to take a place in my mind in the following days, not through his face or our little shared history, but through certain other things lying entirely outside the norm.

  At last Sister Meera John made her appearance. She gestured and I followed her to her room. We did not exchange a single word. Once there, she silently indicated a chair and I sat down.

  Then, suddenly, she repeated the doctor’s words, ‘Strange man!’ and took a deep breath. ‘He came all alone. Said he had no one to call his own. Got himself admitted after the initial examination. He carried enough cash with him for the admission. “You can return the balance if I survive, otherwise just consider it a donation to the hospital,” he said. Other than the clothes he had on he carried nothing. Gave no addresses or names to get in touch in case of an emergency. It was then that he spotted you in the corridor while being taken to the clinic. An anchor at last for a drifting boat, that’s the impression I got. You mentioned a brief acquaintance from half a century ago. Did you even recognize him?’

  ‘No, not really. I had forgotten his face and even his features,’ I admitted a bit sheepishly.

  ‘But he recognized you.’

  ‘What were his chances of survival, sister?’ I asked.

  ‘Twenty per cent.’

  ‘Did he know that?’