Book of Destruction

by P Sachidanandan

  ‘The doctor had told him. Don’t you want to know his ailment?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You too are strange!’

  We sat looking at each other’s face for a few moments.

  When I lowered my eyes, I saw the pendant she was wearing on a chain around her neck. It was not a cross, as I would have expected, at least not the usual one. It looked like a cross, but somewhat upside down.

  Catching my glance, she pushed it under her blouse. Noticing the smile on my face she said, ‘We are not supposed to exhibit these things outside, you know.’

  ‘But it is not a cross. What is it, sister? Looked like an anchor. You called me that—an anchor for Iyengar.’ I made a weak attempt at humour.

  With a shake of the head she dismissed my questions. She then switched over to Malayalam, like Seshadri had done when he had first met me in my room, and asked, ‘Don’t you want to see the letter he left for you? He had no pen or paper with him. Borrowed from me. Sat through the night, writing. He waited for you till late, up to eleven I think.’

  ‘My God!’ I said again.

  ‘Only then did he decide to write. The operation was scheduled for the morning, so I pressed him to make haste.’

  She pulled out an envelope from the drawer of her table. It was stapled at the end.

  ‘“Pass it on only in case I die”, that was what he said.’

  I took the envelope. The instructions were repeated on the envelope. My name followed by ‘to be handed over only if I die’ within brackets.

  Sister Meera John rose from her chair. She said, ‘It is certainly not my concern, what is inside. I will, however, tell you one thing. Though physically in poor health, Mr Iyengar’s mental faculties were in perfect condition. Perfect memory; oh well, how can I say that. I don’t know his history to say if he remembered things right.’

  She chuckled and I returned a smile.

  I opened the envelope only after I reached home, late in the evening, as something kept pulling me back from it. But I had to do it before I retired. I was alone at home. I switched off all the lights and fans in the other rooms and sat on my revolving chair by the side of the writing table with the table lamp on. I found that the note inside the envelope was somewhat long.

  ‘These words are coming to you from the other side of death, for I certainly would not have given this note to you had I survived. Nor would I have opened the can of worms I am about to before you’—that was how it started. No form of address, no pleasantries. Chaste English. Fine penmanship.

  ‘Like everyone else in the Mehta Company, you too must have assumed that I am a trickster,’ he continued. ‘Yes, I am a liar and a killer too. I cannot help these things. I belong to a cult centuries old, founded on the principles of deception and destruction. These have not changed even today. Nor will they, in the future.’

  I was taken aback by this straight plunge, but gathered courage to continue reading. Needless to say, that was just the beginning.

  ‘You must have heard of thugs,’ he continued. ‘You must certainly have studied in your history classes that the British suppressed the thugs and eliminated thuggee from its roots a century and a half ago. But I will tell you that no one can eliminate the philosophy of destruction. The phenomenon of destruction is as old as that of creation. I will add that behind all civilizations, religions and ideologies lies the idea of destruction. The beautiful green foliage and flowers of love and compassion that you see blooming over the ground … they are all sustained by the nourishment their roots obtain from the underground, by stealth. But why only religions and ideologies? Every living being on this earth relies on deception and killing for its sustenance. Lift the veils of hypocrisy lying over your thoughts, and you will have to come to terms with this fact. Thuggee was not invented by anyone, nor can it be eliminated by anyone. Though not being practised as widely as before, or, to be more precise, not in the same fashion as it used to be, we have kept it alive and not allowed its roots to rot or its stem to wilt. The philosophy is alive, and the practitioners sworn to relentless and unerring destruction, active.

  ‘I can see you wondering how I, an Iyengar Brahmin, became a thug. Let me interrupt to assert that I am an Iyengar Brahmin. A liar and swindler I certainly am, but all that I told you about me was true. A true Brahmin from Tanjavur, I had once been a teacher at Banaras Hindu University. After I left Rajhara, I also taught at Aligarh Muslim University and did a variety of jobs. But let me not digress. I was saying that our cult transcends castes and religions. It is not limited by languages or regional identities. Sure, we are not many in number. But we have a presence everywhere; from the Pathans to the Tamilians, Gujaratis to Assamese, Hindus to Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains and Buddhists, and among Brahmins and Dalits. There are thugs among ministers, bureaucrats, doctors, architects, academicians, students, intellectuals, historians, writers, dancers, scientists, policemen, industrialists, traders, workers, saints, city-dwellers and nomads. You can wonder, but you would never know, whether your neighbour is a thug or not. Only a thug can know another thug. Did you know that the resident director of Mehta Company, Chandulal Gandhi, was a thug?

  ‘Don’t ever look down on thugs. Ours is a glorious profession handed down from the remotest past to a select worthy among men chosen by Devi Bhavani as well as Allah the Great. Its nobility can be judged by the fact that it unites men of every creed and colour. You have to be a thug to understand what is meant by brotherhood and fraternity. All those who respect the philosophy of destruction become brothers irrespective of their caste, religion, ideology and profession. A Muslim Pathan thug can very easily recognize a Tamil Brahmin thug. I will of course not tell you how. The methods are elucidated in The Book of Destruction.

  ‘Thugs are the only ones who have preserved crime in its purity, cleansing it of the impurities of emotions and enmity. Killing for us is an act of sadhana, to be carried out with a completely detached and clean mind. Our victims are usually not known to us. If they are innocent of any act that might call for retribution, so much the better. In fact, the ideal victims are those who are innocent and unknown. Goddess Bhavani demands purity—purity of the killed as well as of the killer.

  ‘You might have heard that our method is to strangle with a roomal. After the execution, we accept with grace and respect whatever the victim had in his or her possession, even if it is a single paisa. If there is no money in their possession, we take their clothes with humility. It is also our offering to Devi Bhavani and Allah the Great. We are bound by our faith to, at least once a year, present our offerings obtained from the killings and robberies to them. Our teachings dictate that robbery is to be preceded by the killing, and the killing must be by strangling. After the killing it is essential that we dispose of the body of the victim by burying it in the ground.’

  Gruesome though it was, I was unable to put the pages aside. Seshadri continued his march of horror, as if he hadn’t said enough already:

  ‘Now I am going to tell you something which may horrify you. In Mehta Company you were my marked victim for the year. I had decided it the day you started showing interest in my gardening work. The omens were perfect and I knew you were the one Devi Bhavani had thrown in my way. Her commands became more evident when I was able to win your friendship and confidence in a few easy steps. To let off a bunij—that is what we call a victim—thrown in our way by the Devi, or to fail to recognize the omens she sends us is a sin in our philosophy.

  ‘There are different ways to win over a victim. In your case I understood that the role of an intellectual was the best. I was able to get very close to you through our discussions on literature. We used to, if you remember, go deep into the forest on our “walks”. The pit for burial too was ready. But the omens that came at the last minute were not favourable. I had to release you.

  ‘It was then that Kulkarni, the accounts clerk, so conveniently fell into my hands. Omens and signs progressed favourably and the presence of the Devi became more and
more apparent to me. The accounts clerk in place of the engineer. What is written cannot be erased.

  ‘Why am I telling you all this, you wonder. You are not a member of our brotherhood. I have also no thoughts of converting you into a thug. Your picture in my mind has always been that of a bunij. One cannot elude what is ordained and what is ordained cannot be avoided. Why did you manifest before me out of nowhere this morning as I was being taken to the clinic on a stretcher? Why did the surgeon schedule my emergency operation for tomorrow? Why was I fated to die in the course of the surgery? Why did you fail to turn up till eleven o’clock at night? Why did every scheme turn upside down at the stroke of eleven and why was I compelled to write this letter to you? The role granted to you has to be played out fully. And the role assigned to me, that of imparting to you what is normally not imparted, also has to be played out.

  ‘You are now a living victim. And I, a dead hunter. If you are reading these two sentences it is because this letter has reached you. If this letter has reached you, it is because I am dead. Therefore, understand that this dialogue is taking place (because of the fact that it is taking place) between a dead thug and his living bunij. That makes it very special and important.

  ‘The answer to the question “Why this dialogue?” is also that it is fated. Since a context like this has not arisen before, I would say that it carries a special mission, a mission assigned by time and circumstances. The history of crime is now passing through an unusual and critical period. It has become necessary to subject its theory and practice to an intelligent discussion and analysis. It is but appropriate that the discussion be initiated by a hunter with his prey. It further becomes ideal when the hunter is dead and the bunij is alive. Death stands between us to prevent the dialogue from getting polluted by emotions or feelings.

  ‘This dialogue is, however, not going to remain restricted between a hunter and his victim. If you look at it from a different angle, it is also between two hunters. A nurse here who recognized you told me that you, who used to be just an engineer, have, in these past forty-five years, while I had been relentlessly hunting for you, turned into a novelist. Congratulations! This has given me a bigger reason for starting this dialogue with you. For, as a fiction writer, you too are familiar with the art of deluding and fooling your victims, the readers. If we use the roomal, you use the web of words, granted to you by your Devi, Saraswati. This dialogue thus transforms into one between a dead hunter and a living hunter. To be more precise, between a thug-hunter, who never contaminates his hunt with emotions, and a writer-hunter who invariably does. There is one more difference between us. You lie proclaiming that they are lies. You trap your victims with traps advertised as traps. They submit to you knowing that they are being seduced. They experience ecstasy and rapture when you force yourself upon them. The whole experience is turned into an emotional feast. On your own side, you go a step further, making it an act of self-gratification, by mixing lying with lies and deceiving with deception. This is corruption of the highest order and for us thugs, a sin.

  ‘Our lies are straight lies. Our deceptions are plain deceptions. Neither we who destroy nor the victims who are destroyed feel any kind of exhilaration through the act. We would not board the vehicle of emotions even by mistake. It is not the excitement of the act nor the material gain to be had from it that motivates us, but the philosophy. Our acts are not decided by us. The ideology and the methodology do that.

  ‘I don’t want you to repeat the mistakes your predecessors have made in understanding us or, rather, not understanding us. Remove the tinted glasses of prejudice you wear before you look at us. While you and your victims fall into a bliss of mutual deception, the torments of our victims lead to their actual liberation. They might not be conscious of it in those final moments of pain. But when the time comes, the liberated souls of our victims will definitely thank us. It will be revealed to them that we were just instruments in the larger scheme of things and that their own sufferings were the unavoidable pangs to be endured during the execution of an ideology and methodology, no doubt bearing the stamp of Nature. It is the grand design of Mother Nature, and hence, doubtlessly, the violence that connects us with our victims is not base but noble. When the victim realizes the underlying nobility of the act, the pain will cease. Deception will cease to be deception, and the lie will cease to be the lie. The agony of the present will enhance the beauty of the future; and so, one day, the present too will become beautiful, in retrospect. You and your victims are sadly denied these beautiful moments. For your aesthetics are different. But now, as a living victim, you are privileged to experience that ecstasy without having to pass through the pain your fellow victims suffered. You will appreciate: we do not allow a victim to learn that he is a victim until the moment the roomal falls around his neck. It is unfortunate that in those critical moments his pain drowns everything. But then, as I said, the pleasure is only delayed, reserved for future realization.

  ‘In one sense our philosophy is futuristic. We do not dwell on that which has happened because whatever has already happened has begun to rot and what is rotten is impure. Moreover, we always have our eyes set on that ultimate state of destruction of the world when all that has been created will be returned to the elements. Books of literature ceaselessly dig through the past only to bring forth newer and newer versions of it. Revolutionaries seek to rewrite the past even before the blood of revolution has dried on the ground. Thugs hurry to bury the body of their bunij the moment he stops moving. In fact, they do not even lay their hands on a bunij before his pit is ready.

  ‘This letter is the key given to you by your thug to open The Book of Destruction. Just as the bodies of the destroyed are buried the instant they die, the pages of The Book of Destruction disappear the moment they are read. The questions you might wish to ask, arising out of this dialogue that you are privileged to be having, will not reach me for I am on the other side of death. Futuristic as the philosophy is, the questions have to travel from you to someone else, not back to me. This dialogue cannot be stopped by you—you are ordained to take it further.

  ‘After reading this letter you will not be able to write about anything else. What you will discuss with others after receiving this letter will not be the same as what you would have discussed in the event of not receiving it. At the same time, it will not be a relay race—one person passing on to another what he has received from someone else. I don’t need to tell you this because you are a fiction writer. You know that ideas are not inert material to be simply transferred from one person to another; they carry with them the giver’s fingerprints, his angst and his concerns, as they are passed on. So henceforth your works will contain the fears and concerns this letter has passed on to you. You will convey them to your victims, the readers, as I have conveyed them to you, my living victim. Like the storm I have unleashed in your mind, you too will unleash one in your readers’ minds. There will, however, be one difference. The secrecy I had maintained in my relationship with my victims, you will not keep with yours. That would, however, not take away the fear from your dialogue with them. Raise the fear, build it up systematically, that is the message of the time. I am sure in the coming years you will fulfil your obligations with alacrity.

  ‘And, mind you, I have not told you anything new in this letter of mine. I have not told you anything that does not exist or has not existed or, if I may say so, is not already known to everyone. You cannot say that you are unaware of the killing elements saturating the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you consume. Is it not happening with the knowledge and consent of all? Poison is as much a part of life now as it was before. Violence has become common, transparent and acceptable in every activity around you, whether it is politics, industry, trade, struggles, revolution, culture, art or literature. And that is the reason for my writing this letter to you. There is a growing transparency in the act of destruction in the world these days. This is a matter of concern to us thugs as the philosophy o
f thuggee does not allow transparency. It is this crisis faced by thuggee that has commissioned me to undertake this dialogue with you.

  ‘You have, of course, read in your history textbooks that at one time our cult was so widespread that even the remotest corner of the country was not free of us. Yet we used to be extremely esoteric in our practices, because of the circumstances. Saints and thinkers alike were bent upon painting the face of life in the colours of love and devotion, obscuring the violence and destruction that are deeply woven into it. The persistent distortion of reality and the propaganda against destruction made it difficult to practise our faith in the open. We had to hide behind masks, deny responsibility and even justify our actions with arguments we ourselves did not approve of. The foreign rulers who came to loot our country declared war upon us for their own reasons. We could not match their firepower and had to retreat entirely underground for survival. The belief that thuggee had been eliminated became prevalent.

  ‘An entirely new kind of violence has taken over the world in the last half century or so, since we left the Mehta Company, as you would not have failed to notice. Destruction, having left the larger arena of huge armies and nations at war, has passed into the hands of individuals and small, individualized groups. While the industry of weapons of mass destruction continues to thrive, the most noticeable acts of destruction today are being carried out by those with small arms, explosives, mines and booby traps. Intriguingly, these attacks planned and executed at the level of individuals are aimed at individuals who are not in any way relevant to the cause that is proclaimed. The faceless multitude in the streets is the new target. Destruction, while being executed by individuals, thus continues to remain uncontaminated by individual enmity and emotions, exhibiting the purity of mind and spirit our philosophy demands. Further, we see destruction turning into a continuous and endemic phenomenon, rather different from huge wars visiting only once in a while. Destruction has become an everyday and everywhere business, ever present in the streets, offices, factories and courtyards.