River of Fire

by Qurratulain Hyder

  Gautam washed off his make-up in the tank, gave some water to the myna and picked up the cage. On the way back to the ashram it occurred to him that all was not lost. This was his final term. On convocation day his father would come proudly to fetch him. The Acharya would repeat the formal words of farewell—Do your duty and speak the truth. He would go home, put kohl in his eyes, wear silks and leather sandals and jauntily stick a comb made of porcupine quills in his hair. And he would drive around town in his own chariot, as behoved a young man of substance. He would visit Saket and find out if the Chief Minister would send his daughter’s proposal of marriage to his rich and important father, the High Priest of Shravasti . . .

  1 Illusion—the supreme con-woman.

  6. Sudarshan Yakshini— Tree Sprite, Good to Behold

  Myna was his new friend. He told her, “Look, Myna, Champak was angry with me for some reason the last time I met her outside the convent. I didn’t know it was going to be our last meeting. What shall I do?”

  Myna hopped about in the cage and kept quiet.

  “All right. Let’s draw her—would you like to see her again? I’ll make a picture of her for you.” He collected his painting material and made the usual preparations. He ground red brick into fine red powder and mixed indigo with water to make blue paint. He prepared yellow and orange from turmeric and saffron. He collected the required herbs from the forest, boiled them according to prescription in order to make green, white and other hues. He tried to remember what Champak looked like.

  He spread a piece of white Chinese silk on a slab of stone and took out his paint brushes made of squirrel’s tail. He began by making an outline—a pair of fish-eyes. Then he stopped and wondered: Meaning has no definite station. One meaning can be attained through various symbols and the symbols can be understood as different stations. They do not circumvent the meaning. A picture is not merely colours, it is the soul of the artist. Viewers can discern significance from a mere hint—the eye can only see colours which exist on the surface, just as poetry is merely an expression of the poet’s inner voice. And sensibility has no precise definition.

  The absolute has no form. It is beyond comprehension, it is not even an intellectual concept. Brahma Ishwar was a being who could be compared to a Form. And light was the source of that form. Its real form, Swarup, was the form of various other things, Viswarup.

  Gautam put down his brushes uneasily. Thought can only be thought. A real person is life itself, not a symbol of life. One’s attraction towards them is based on emotion. Then how do I present pure thought? I cannot remain dispassionate or even neutral. Dhyan is the real art of the artist and it cannot remain intact or whole. Pure form, the concept of a thing which is itself, is inherent in the thing—it is the real dhyan. How is the personalness of a thing to be ignored?

  For the next few days he made and destroyed paintings, moulded figurines in red clay and dashed them to pieces. At last he completed the high relief of The Girl with the Kadam Bough—the plump, slender-waisted, broad-hipped girl who was bending the twig of the exotic tree, just as he had seen Champak do a few weeks ago.

  Theorists judged it harshly. No one praised him for what he had done. Gautam made no comment. He had given up the path of philosophy, and couldn’t tell them what pure aesthetic experience actually was, how it was gained and communicated. Who was he to resolve the conflict of Rup and Arup, Bhava and Abhava? He merely wished to somehow capture in clay and stone the mystery of the human form. Pure aesthetic experience was unconnected joy, it was like lightning, indivisible, and it appeared by itself. Just as the concept of the artist was inherent in the concept of Viswakarma who was omniscient, and whose swarup was the symbol of the whole universe, the beholder existed in the atma or the self, Viswarup, rupam priti rup . . .

  The picture of the world was merely the Self which had been painted on the canvas of the Self. This was that pure existence, pure perception, pure life, the studio of the heart which contained all pictures, all imagination, where all images became one, where the same light kept passing through myriad-coloured glasses and all that which had been made with beauty and truth was a complete art-piece and a path, both for the creator and the beholder. And those who knew could understand.

  He called The Girl with the Kadamba Bough, “Sudarshan Yakshini—Tree Sprite, Good to Behold”. The figure was still somewhat archaic, not streamlined as sculpture was to become in later centuries. But in The Girl with the Kadam Bough a fusion and balance of lines and poise had been achieved. It was earthy and emanated strength. Gautam was very happy that he could make such a figurine, and decided to make some more. One afternoon he lifted the myna’s cage and travelled excitedly to Shravasti to talk to his friend Aklesh about his work. Now he would like to make some free-standing statues and wanted to discuss new techniques with his artist friends.

  Aklesh lived in the centre of town. When Gautam arrived there he found his friend’s studio crowded with fellow craftsmen and artists. He placed the cage in the window and sensed the tension in the air. As if something terrible had happened. No one spoke to him. There was a knock on the door. A wild-looking bearded artist came in, panting. “Friends,” he said hoarsely, “pick up your paintings and run for your lives.” He sat down to regain his breath. “War has broken out. The upstart Chandragupta’s army has occupied our country. This land shall be ruined in a few days. Your time is over, brother Gautam. Death will finally cancel all conflicts of Rup and Arup, Bhava and Abhava.

  “The new imperial army from Magadh has arrived. Prime Minister Chanakya does not want any weak feudatories around, so Rajan and all his men were put to death.”

  “All of them?” Gautam felt too weak to finish his question.

  “It’s the Law of the Fish. I hear some young ladies swam across the river somehow, and escaped to the territory of the Panchalas. A contingent of the Imperial Army has been dispatched in their pursuit.” The man got up to go.

  “Where are you off to?” Gautam asked him feebly.

  “To the wars. You, of course, will not fight because, I am told, you have recently become a believer in this newfangled Jain-Buddhist business of non-violence.”

  “Shall we get ourselves killed meekly in the name of Ahimsa?” Aklesh asked Gautam, the theorist, agitatedly.

  Gautam crossed the room and roared. “Tell me why some killing is good and some bad? I am not interested in King Nanda, Vishnu Sharma and Chandragupta. Why must they drag me into their conflict . . . ?” Nobody heard him because they were running out through the front door. Soon the room was empty. He rushed out too.

  A dreadful din rose from the bazaar down below. The city had been suddenly attacked by hordes of war-elephants and heavy chariots. The next moment the market square had turned into a battlefield. Gautam called out to his friends. His voice was drowned in the trumpeting of elephants, the swish of arrows and the clanking of swords. He stood horrified for a while on the veranda, watching the terrible scene. The corpses of his artist-friends lay sprawled on the main street.

  Gautam walked down the steps slowly. He removed a sword from the clutches of a dead warrior and began to fight.

  Outside the city, a cool wind sang peacefully in the rose-apple trees of Jetvan Vihara. Nature remains indifferent to human affairs.

  Gautam fought in front of Aklesh’s house and killed a few Magadhan foot soldiers till he was struck down by a spear and fainted. When he regained consciousness, dawn was breaking over a smouldering city. Lanes were strewn with the dead and the dying. Smoke rose from a building in front of him. He felt extreme pain in his bleeding hands and looked at them. His fingers had been mutilated.

  Sujata supplied milk to many people in the city. Today she had come to give milk to the wounded. None of her customers was alive. She came to the chowk facing the burnt-down Elephant House. The high priest and his wife had been killed in the fire. Aklesh’s studio was close by and Sujata heard a myna crying, “Come back, come back.” It was eerie. A tiny bird had survived the mas
sacre. The milkmaid went up and saw the ornate cage in the window. Then she found Gautam lying crumpled on the steps. He was still breathing.

  “I would like to go to my ashram,” he said weakly to her after she had dressed his wounds.

  “The gurukul is deserted, sir. Everybody has fled. I am a lowly milkmaid, but you won’t lose caste if you stay in my house till you get well. You can’t go anywhere in this condition. We’ll treat you with our herbs and things.”

  He accompanied the milkmaid to her village and stayed with her till his wounds healed. Sujata served him with the devotion of a bondswoman. The situation alarmed him. He could take her as his dasi but did not. One morning he said to her, “Let’s go and see what happened to my little thatch. Palaces fall but humble dwellings survive, you know.” He went to the silent hermitage and found his Sudarshan Yakshini lying upside down upon a heap of rubble. Luckily, she was intact. With the help of Sujata’s brother he placed the slab on the milk-cart and carried it all the way to Shravasti. They stopped in front of the ruin of his Elephant House. He had dreamt of bringing Champak here in a wedding chariot. He lifted the statue and placed it in a corner of the entrance hall. The statue stared at him with its vacant fish-eyes. Well, dear lady, now I go forth in the world to find you. I have a feeling you are alive and I may still locate you somewhere. Till then, beware of the red ants which may crawl over your legs the way they did when you stood under the Kadamba tree! He wiped a tear from his eye.

  Sujata asked him, “Is that a goddess you worship, sir?”

  “Yes,” he lied, for he no longer believed in gods and godesses. “Yes, she is Aryani, Goddess of the Woods. But she is afraid of human beings and likes to live in desolate places.” Sujata made a dutiful namaskar before the statue of Champak. They came out of the burnt-down house.

  On a moonless night he bade farewell to Sujata, picked up the myna’s cage and crossed the Saryu in a ferry boat.

  7. Birdman of the Crossways

  Gautam became a tramp in his search for Champak and Nirmala. The country was in a shambles. War-weary people gladly gave him alms and sought his blessings. He showed them his stumped hands and declaimed—“Fingers reveal the mudras of the Dance of Shiva. They play the lute and the flute. They paint. They also make spears and arrows and swords. May the gods give you no harvest and no progeny if you go on making spears . . .”

  Once he said this to a Mauryan general’s wife who had come out of her house to give him alms. She was horrified by his curse and banged the door shut in his face.

  I may soon become famous as a crank, he thought gloomily. Everybody seems to love wars. They just don’t learn, don’t regret or repent. So what shall I do now? That seemed to be his eternal problem.

  He trekked from place to place and sat down at the crossroads, hoping to find Champak and Nirmala among the passersby. He came to be known as the Birdman of the Crossways. The myna continued to call out, “Come back, come back,” till she grew old and tired. She had failed in her mission. She became very quiet and kept her beak in her feathers. One day she died. Gautam grieved for her. His last link with Champak was broken.

  Chandragupta Maurya, the monarch with the insignia of the royal peacock, became the first Samrat, emperor, of the chaturant state of Bharat. He was not one of those “descended from the sun or the moon” because his mother was an Untouchable. He was brought up by shepherds and trained by Vishnu Gupta at Taxila where he had been considered the young man most likely to succeed. A self-made man, Alexander had invaded the north-west and Chandragupta had got up an army and driven out the Greeks from the land of the Five Rivers, Punjab, as the Persians were to call it in later eras. Chandragupta had also defeated old King Nanda of Pataliputra. His army had occupied smaller kingdoms and Sakyamuni, the Buddha, had said: Victory breeds hatred because the vanquished sleep in sorrow, and only that person is peaceful who is above victory and defeat and happiness.

  Chandragupta Maurya’s prime minister, Vishnu Sharma, alias Chanakya, had begun putting his theories into practice: the only thing to be avoided in politics was making a mistake. He set up separate departments of minerals and irrigation and commerce and revenue, foreign affairs and defence, grazing lands and slaughter houses. Unsuccessful Brahmins and witty barbers, astrologers and courtesans gladly joined the newly established intelligence service. Spies dressed as sadhus loitered about. They visited the houses of prostitutes and gamblers and kept in touch with what the populace was saying in the bazaars. Manu had said that subjects did not feel insecure where black-faced, red-eyed Dand walked the earth.

  Rapid changes were taking place around the vagabond Gautam. New fashions and hair-styles were coming into vogue. In the spoken language words were appearing in a new form. Commerce was flourishing. Gautam couldn’t trade in anything except his learning but he was not supposed to charge any fee from his students. And he avoided the company of thinkers and sophists. He continued living on alms and looked for Champak in Buddhist nunneries, market-squares and new garrison towns of the victorious Mauryan army. She seemed to have vanished.

  During his wanderings he came across a number of Persian horsemen. They had fled Iran after Alexander’s invasion and lived in the land of the Five Rivers for many years. One of them, whom he met on the highway near the town of Ahichhatra, spoke a kind of polyglot language. Gautam could only roughly understand what the Parsi with the curly beard and tall black hat told him.

  “We have come to Hind from Iranshahr to seek our livelihood.”

  “Where is Hind?” asked Gautam.

  “This country in which you live!” the Persian answered, surprised. Then he said, “See, your literary language and ours are almost identical, except that we use H for S. Your saptah is our haptah—sometimes the words are almost the same, like your namo is our namaz.

  “Yeah,” Gautam was bored. He had heard all that before from Hari Shankar. “Affinity in languages does not keep people from fighting and hating one another.” Wearily he changed the topic, as he observed the Persian’s long coat, pyjamas and leather boots. “What a lot of things you carry on your body!” he commented.

  “Yes, it’s rather hot out here. We’ll discard these clothes when we get to Pataliputra. You know, a great deal of building activity is going on there. We are architects from burntdown Persepolis, but we’re sure to get jobs in Pataliputra!” said the displaced Parsi from Pars, and rode away.

  The same evening Gautam noticed a touring theatrical company pitching its tents in an open space near Ahichhatra. He had exhausted himself walking and begging. He realised that he had done nothing else all his life. The country was full of men and women crippled in the recent war. They had become beggars. Will I end up as one of them? He went straight to a stagehand and said, “I would like to see your manager.” The lad took him to a glamorous woman who sat on a cot, dying her soles with red alta. She was Ambika, chief actress and owner of the company. She looked up and eyed him with unabashed interest. She was a woman of the world, and a connoisseur of male flesh.

  Gautam switched on his charm. “I am an unemployed actor, lost everything in the war . . . ,” he whined. “Can I join your company, madam? See, I used to paint and carve. But then”—dramatically he spread his maimed hands in front of her—“I can act all right.”

  Despite being a seasoned courtesan and a hard-headed business-woman, Ambika fell in love with him. He became the chief actor and her paramour. He thought he was cast in the mould of heroes. He was very conscious of his power over women and grew vainer by the day. But he was too outspoken, and his curse on the Mauryan general’s wife had probably been reported. Ambika was worried. Once or twice he made a reference to the policies of the new Prime Minister Vishnu Sharma, alias Chanakya, alias Kautilya, in a satire he had put together. “Don’t attack the powers that be in your plays, you may get into trouble,” she warned him. He didn’t care.

  Then Ambika said to him, “I hear you are a fine dancer. Teach me, too.”

  “Teach you? Do you still requi
re anything to be taught—the All-Knowing Woman?” he growled sarcastically. He had become a bitter, cynical person who liked to hurt her. She looked crestfallen. He felt sorry for her. Poor girl, she has given me a career. She looks after me and serves me as though I were a prince, not a vagrant, and I taunt her all the time for no reason. She is not responsible for my misfortunes. In a mellower tone he asked, “Who told you that I could dance?”

  “Some actors from Kashi who dropped by the other day. One of them said he had seen you perform the Shiva Nritya in a royal festival in Shravasti, shortly before the war.”

  “Who was he? Where is he? Can I meet him?” Gautam asked anxiously. This actor might know Champak’s whereabouts.

  “I have no idea,” Ambika replied evenly. “They left on their tour.” She was used to the changing moods of this temperamental, restless man, her demon lover.

  “Gautam,” she said calmly, after a pause, “we have done enough travelling in the provinces. Let’s go to Pataliputra.”

  “Yes, let’s,” he responded, indifferently.

  8. The Theatre in Pataliputra

  All roads led to the brand new auditorium with the sloping roof—a theatrical company from Ahichhatra had arrived in the Mauryan capital. There were rumours that they might even give a royal command performance. They were splendid. Stories about the company’s legendary hero had already reached the city. The actor Gautam Nilambar, they said, was too good to be true. Tall, dark and handsome, an excellent singer and a fine thespian—in short, absolutely devastating. Women adored him—for women have this habit of confusing a fellow’s good looks with his talents. They have a weakness for celebrities, poets, musicians, actors.

  The hall was sold out for the first night. Quite a few Greeks were present among the audience, eagerly looking forward to seeing the latest Indian play. They had stayed back in India after Alexander left the country and followed Chandragupta to Pataliputra. The mandap was full of women of all ages and classes, princesses, housewives, young maidens—they had all flocked there in their palanquins or on foot to see the famous heartthrob.