The Solitude of Emperors

by David Davidar

  ‘It’s quite a spectacle,’ I said.

  ‘That it is, ready to climb it?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I replied.

  ‘Hope you have a head for heights,’ he remarked as he parked the scooter. From the road we descended to a plateau on which there was an observation tower, with glassed-in windows, urinals off to one side and a few shops. This was the point from which anyone who wished to climb the Tower of God would need to set off. In addition to the facilities for tourists and pilgrims, there was the police picket that Professor Menon had told us about. The three policemen on duty seemed bored, and after giving us a cursory glance went back to playing cards. The mist that had filled the valley the previous day had hidden all this from view.

  ‘How long do you think the police will stay?’ I asked as we approached the shops.

  ‘I guess they’ll be here for a while, not that these clowns could stop anyone.’ Noah smiled, waved to the policemen, and we walked on. I saw militant slogans daubed on the surrounding rocks and even on the observation tower in praise of Lord Shiva and demanding the return of the shrine to him. Unlike similar establishments surrounding places of pilgrimage, the stalls here were free of gaudy pictures of gods and goddesses, cheap statues and devotional bric-a-brac. I remarked on this and Noah said, ‘That was the Collector’s idea. He laid down orders prohibiting the sale of religious artefacts until further notice so, ironically, the shrine, which has been secular for hundreds of years, is even more secular today. Come on, da, let’s have some secular tea,’ he said with a laugh; ‘we have quite a climb ahead of us.’

  Finishing our tea, we were lounging around chatting when Noah happened to look up. Fists of cloud were beginning to uncurl in the sky, and he got up. ‘If we’re going to get to the shrine, we’d better start right away. The steps leading to the Tower will be impassable if it starts to drizzle.’ He explained that it would take us at least an hour to get to the summit, the Tower was farther away than it looked. First, we would have to climb down from where we were sitting to level ground, then we would need to trek through a stretch of jungle that would get us to the Shiva temple, and it was only after that the climb up the Tower proper would begin.

  After paying for our tea, we walked down a steep flight of steps to the path that led to the Tower. We crossed a bridge that spanned a clear mountain stream and then the path began to rise. On either side there were broad-leaved plants with white, bell-shaped flowers. I was reaching out to pluck one when Noah snapped, ‘Don’t, they’re poisonous.’ I drew back hastily, and after that we walked in silence until we reached a windswept ridge spined with a few hardy trees. Beyond lay a stretch of open land, and then the path led into what looked like impenetrable forest. The brightness of the day had dimmed considerably and a grey mist had begun to sift through the trees.

  Within minutes of entering the forest I became jumpy. It was difficult to see the path in the gloom, and I remembered Professor Menon’s tales from the previous evening about the wild animals that early pilgrims had had to avoid. Common sense told me that there was no threat but I had never been in a forest before, which I suppose accounted for my nerves. As we walked further into the woods, the light grew murkier. Everywhere around us there were furtive rustlings and chitterings, as if an array of unseen creatures was watching our progress and telegraphing it ahead to some nameless horror which lay in wait. I was telling myself to stop being so jittery when a terrifying cry erupted from the gloom. I almost tripped and fell, and frantically asked Noah what it was. His reply was a laugh. ‘Nothing to be worried about in these woods my friend,’ he said. ‘The creature that made that noise won’t eat you—it’s a smallish bird called a scimitar babbler. It’s very shy, very rare, you’ll be lucky to see one.’

  ‘So, no wild animals here?’

  ‘If you’d lived a hundred years ago, maybe. Now the only nuisance is marauding monkeys, all spoiled rotten by the pilgrims and pujaris at the Shiva temple.’

  As if in response to Noah’s remark, there was a crashing in the trees and a rhesus monkey appeared on a nearby branch. He regarded us with bright-eyed interest. ‘Don’t do anything, don’t make any threatening moves. When he realizes you don’t have any food for him he’ll leave you alone.’

  Presently the forest began to thin, and we came to a clearing in which the temple to Shiva stood. It was a modest building, with none of the elaborate carvings of gods and demons or gopurams that adorned most Tamil temples, but the mist and the great forest that surrounded it imbued it with an air of grandeur and holiness that no human hand could have created. Involuntarily I bowed and put my hands together in a respectful namaskaram, almost expecting this gesture of devotion to be accepted by an enormous multi-armed figure stalking out of the gloom, a weapon in every hand and a rudraksh mala around his neck. But no such apparition emerged, and the only sign of life about the place was an old woman weaving marigold garlands in a stone quadrangle in front of the temple. She would pick up the flowers from a large basket that glowed orange in the poor light and skilfully thread them on to a string she held in her other hand. She looked up, but her eyes milky with cataracts didn’t appear to see us. Noah greeted the old woman politely, and we passed on, leaving the temple behind.

  In a short while we’d reached the base of the Tower of God, which, up close, looked even more impressive than it had appeared from the road. Steps were cut into it, and for the safety of pilgrims and visitors there was a guard rail, two strips of braided steel wire threaded through spikes hammered into the living rock.

  Rubbish littered our passage—food wrappers, tins and bottles, broken chappals—and we had to pick our way carefully through the junk until we reached the steps. The profusion of rubbish was the one thing I had seen thus far that was common to other places of worship I had visited but I realized that nowhere on the approach to the Tower of God or the Shiva temple had I encountered the clotted masses of people—devotees, and those who preyed on them, freelance priests and other peddlers of salvation, hawkers, thieves and pick-pockets, and most of all the rows of beggars, screaming at the faithful and God to give them alms, salvation and a cure for the various afflictions they suffered from—who infested the other temples. Even as I thought this, I knew why they were missing: it was simply too cold for the poor and the ill-clothed to visit Meham in the winter; in the summer the scene would be altogether different. The forest and the tower of stone would be submerged in a noisy surge of humanity, which, in its urge to supplicate God, wiped out the very silence that was at the heart of the divine mystery. But perhaps that was only the way I saw it; others probably needed crowds of like-minded people to reinforce their own faith and maybe God himself needed the masses as much as he needed to walk alone.

  I was about to set foot on the lowest step when Noah stopped me. He told me to be very careful, to test my footing on each step before moving on to the next; if I found myself slipping, I was to grab the rail. Apparently, it had only been installed quite recently, when three pilgrims had fallen to their deaths. ‘Not that it was something that had never happened before. Every so often an old or infirm pilgrim would disappear, but nobody minded much, it was considered auspicious to die while you were climbing the Tower of God—granted you instant nirvana. But these three were a bunch of bloody NRIs from Vancouver or New Jersey, or one of those places, and there was an outcry, reports in the media and talk of suing someone, anyone, so the district administration had to do something.’

  They had also become a lot stricter about enforcing the policy of not letting anyone on to the Tower of God during bad weather. Even now we had to proceed carefully, as some of the steps, especially those in shadow, retained some moisture from the rain of a few days earlier. Once I nearly slipped on a patch of moss, but regained my balance in an instant, without needing to clutch at the guard rail, which seemed dangerously flimsy to me. We emerged from the mist into brilliant sunshine, and no longer had to worry about our footing but I found myself in trouble for an altogether differen
t reason. Although we had climbed just over half the 108 steps, my thighs, unaccustomed to the steep gradient, were screaming in agony. I said to Noah that I would have to rest, so we sat down on the steps. ‘Don’t look down,’ Noah said, ‘if you are not used to heights.’

  The rest did me some good, but the pain returned almost immediately when we resumed climbing. Noah seemed as fresh as ever, so I grimly ignored the pain, planting one foot after the other, counting each step, determined to hang on because I knew that if we stopped again I would be able to climb no further. 101, 102, 103, 104, 105… and to my surprise we were on level ground. I had got the count wrong and relief had come sooner than I had expected. We were on a ledge that was cemented over; there were a couple of benches for pilgrims to rest on and a tall earthenware pitcher of water covered by an aluminium saucer on which there was a long-handled dipper. I eased my aching body on to one of the benches and watched as Noah drank some water. It was cold on the exposed ledge, but I was sweating from my exertions. I sat there for a while letting the breeze dry me off, then drank some water and, feeling quite refreshed, was ready for the final stage of the climb. It had taken us slightly over an hour to get to this point and I wondered at the fortitude of some of the more decrepit pilgrims who attempted the journey. From where we sat a concrete walkway sloped upward to the shrine and its outbuildings, but Noah wanted to take me along a different route. He explained that the benches and the walkway were new, and that a few years ago the final approach to the shrine wound around the contours of the rock formation. He suggested we follow the old route, it was much more scenic; besides, there was something he wanted to show me. We took a narrow path that followed the curve of the Tower and led us into a field of blue so intense that it seemed as though a patch of sky had fallen and draped itself over the hard grey stone. This part of the monolith was partially sheltered from the wind and had been taken over by long ropes of morning glory that hung over the precipice, blazing with flowers. As I took in the scene I saw in my mind’s eye the old gardener feeding the flowers into the fire and telling me the only way to get rid of morning glory was to burn it. Some things, I thought, had no place in civilized homes and gardens, they were simply too overpowering and needed the quiet, wild places of the world in order to flourish.

  A single strand of rail along which the vines had twined themselves was all that stood between us and the drop; when I realized this, I stepped back hastily. Noah said, ‘That was wise. It’s a good thing you don’t have vertigo.’

  The path wound around the rock and eventually led into the courtyard of the shrine. Here another surprise awaited me—the air had a subtle fragrance to it. At first I couldn’t place it, and then I saw where it was coming from. In the middle of the courtyard was a trellis embedded into the concrete almost entirely covered by a luxuriant jasmine creeper spattered with tiny white flowers. At the base of the structure thick ropes of jasmine were heaped, most of them brown and faded. Noah explained that offerings to the saint took the form of jasmine garlands, in keeping with the legend of his death and miraculous transformation. The scent of old flowers accompanied us into the shrine.

  Freshly lime-washed, it glowed bone-white in the high clear light. There was no furniture of any kind within—no pews, no table and no altar. There was a small raised platform where an altar would normally have been, and on it, mounted in a block of granite, was the miraculous cross behind an iron railing on which pilgrims had twisted prayer ribbons and attached handwritten messages.

  ‘Ah, here’s the professor,’ Noah said from behind me, and I turned to see our host of the evening before, dressed in a blue sweater and white trousers. He greeted us warmly and suggested we go for lunch. As we walked out of the shrine, I was surprised at how large the summit of the Tower of God actually was. It must easily have been a couple of hundred metres across, and contained besides the shrine itself a low building towards which we were heading and another narrow two-storeyed building, which housed the living quarters of the custodian and others who stayed here.

  As we approached the dining hall, I noticed vast cauldrons being washed in one corner of the courtyard. I asked Professor Menon whether many pilgrims visited the shrine and whether they were all fed. He said this was not the pilgrim season, it was too cold, but they were preparing for the saint’s Feast Day, which fell on 5 January. They were expecting at least a hundred visitors then, especially if the weather held up. My mind flashed back to the conversation we’d had the previous evening, about when Rajan would try to enter the shrine. Something told me he wouldn’t make his attempt during Republic Day—he wouldn’t cool his heels in Meham for three weeks, would he? But if he made his move during Feast Day, there would be media in attendance, even if it comprised only local stringers, and there would be enough people to witness his triumph. And he would need to triumph this time; it wouldn’t help his cause if, having thrown down the gauntlet, he was to fail again.

  ‘Will you be able to attend the festival?’ the professor was asking.

  ‘I certainly intend to,’ I said grimly. I told them my suspicions and the professor nodded. ‘Yes, of course, it makes sense, I should have thought of that.’

  ‘But why not take over the shrine in the spring, at Easter or one of the other major Christian festivals when there will be thousands more people from all over the country?’ Noah asked.

  The professor thought for a moment, then said, ‘I think it would be much more difficult. You’ve seen the crush of pilgrims who arrive for Easter service at the shrine, not to mention the thousands of tourists who come hoping to see the cross start to bleed. It would be too tough to control. Rajan would prefer to deal with a more manageable crowd. No, I think Vijay is right, it will probably be Feast Day.’

  ‘Should we tell Brother Ahimas?’

  ‘I don’t see why not, but I doubt he’ll want to do anything. We’ll just have to alert the police and the Collector.’

  ~

  Brother Ahimas was just the way I had imagined him to be. He was a man of medium height with long flowing white hair, an untrimmed beard and dark eyes that fairly shone with compassion. He unsettled me. His direct, open gaze and the saintliness he projected made me feel uncomfortably aware of myself. He greeted Noah affectionately, and then turned to me. Noah introduced me as a friend of his from Bombay, whereupon, unprompted, I launched into a hurried explanation of how I had ended up in Meham: the riots in Bombay, the attack, the aftermath, my work at the magazine, the assignment I was on. All through my nervous chatter, Brother Ahimas kept his disconcerting gaze fixed on me. When I eventually ran out of things to say, he remarked gently, ‘You have endured much at a very young age, thambi, but by God’s grace you have survived. Come, let’s have lunch, we can talk some more.’ He took my arm and led the way to the lunch hall, followed by Menon and Noah.

  There were three people eating in the big room. Brother Ahimas greeted them, walked over to a corner, settled down on a mat and invited us to sit. Volunteers served us a meal of sambhar, avial and rice on banana leaves. The custodian said grace and we began to eat. The food was simple but it was well prepared, and I quickly finished what was on my leaf and accepted another helping before I realized that none of the others had finished. I waited somewhat awkwardly for them to catch up with me, and wondered who might broach the subject of Rajan. When it became clear that Noah and the professor were not going to bring it up, I decided to plunge in. ‘Aiyah, I think the shrine is in great danger; the people who attacked it earlier this month are going to try again on Feast Day. They might try to pass themselves off as pilgrims,’ I said, adding as much detail as I could. The custodian heard me out in silence, and then said, ‘Thambi, the shrine has been under attack many times in the past, but it still stands. For as long as it is God’s will, no harm will come to it, and if God wills otherwise, it is only bricks and stone that will be destroyed.’

  ‘But aiyah, what of those who make the pilgrimage? This shrine must be defended for their sake, don’t you think?’<
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  ‘It is said, thambi, that when the saint first came here, it was a wild and inhospitable place, but he didn’t mind, he had been led here by God. In his time there was no building, no shrine; his message was spoken under the Nilgiri skies, and no matter what happens I have no doubt that the saint’s message will live on.’

  I couldn’t argue with that sentiment, and as neither Professor Menon nor Noah seemed inclined to say anything, it seemed pointless to continue. ‘Come now, you must eat, your food is growing cold,’ the custodian said gently. I finished hurriedly, and we went out into the mild afternoon sun. For an old man, Brother Ahimas was very fit. He walked briskly to the outer edge of the Tower of God, where a low ridge provided a natural barrier. All around us the mountains padded away into the distance, an army of giants turned to stone. Under the luminous plane of the sky, the forests that clothed their lower slopes glowed green, and it was easy to imagine that we were looking at a wilderness untouched by man and consecrated by God. Far below us, dimly glimpsed through the haze, we could see a line of greenery that marked the passage of a river.

  Why was it, I wondered unhappily, that even the earth’s paradises were not spared from destruction? Was this God’s own hand at work, tearing apart the perfection he had created? It made no sense at all.

  ‘You’re lucky, my friends,’ Brother Ahimas said. ‘This place is usually wreathed in cloud, but it’s been an exceptionally clear day. I usually say my prayers here at dawn, and this morning I understood, as if for the first time, that we are truly blessed to live in this holy land. Long before the rest of the world emerged from the darkness of ignorance and apostasy, when other races were still worshipping the Gods of war and vengeance, the great sages and rishis of Hinduism understood that they were false Gods, and the only true God to be found within every one of us was the God of compassion.’ He paused for a while, gazing out over the mountains. My mind went back to Mr Sorabjee’s manuscript and the story in it about Emperor Akbar’s debating hall of faith, the Ibadat Khana, and I thought Brother Ahimas would have fitted right in with the other religious savants who adorned it. He broke the silence. ‘We have been able to find God in fire, water, air and stone, so why is it that we don’t seem to be able to find Him in our hearts? The monuments we raise up in His name grow grander and grander but when will we realize that they have no value in His eyes if we fill them with hate and violence?’