The Solitude of Emperors

by David Davidar

  ‘I don’t know why he bothered with all that eyewash about Republic Day…’ I said.

  ‘Yes, it’s curious that he has begun to broadcast his plans, but it gets even more intriguing. One of my friends at Meham police station told me that Rajan arrived at the station and was closeted with Shanmugam, the inspector, for over an hour. When he left, my friend learned—you know how it’s impossible to keep things secret in a small-town police station—that Rajan had given the inspector one lakh in cash for himself, and another lakh to be shared between the policemen in the station; to further sweeten the bribe he promised to get the inspector’s son into Presidency College. But here’s where it gets really bizarre: the only thing he wanted the inspector to do was what he would have done anyway if he wasn’t an ivory-skulled, corrupt little prick.’

  ‘Don’t seem to like the inspector much, do you?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I guess he’s no better or worse than anyone else, it’s just that he arrested an old friend of mine—remember I told you about Arumugam, the flower thief—just because he had to fill some arrest quota for the month. Sure, Arumugam is a repeat offender, but he’s so old now the only thing he could possibly steal is milk from his goat.’

  Lies again, I thought. But I managed to control myself with the thought that in the light of the greater threat that loomed, Noah could be a liar, a thief, none of it mattered, I couldn’t afford to lose him…

  ‘So here’s the really weird thing,’ Noah was saying. ‘Rajan wanted Shanmugam to arrest him as soon as the demonstration got under way, even rough him up a little. I would have thought he’d want to evade arrest until he had breached the shrine.’

  ‘True,’ I said. ‘You can see why he’d want to be beaten up or arrested, he’d become an instant martyr to the fundamentalist cause, but what good would that do if the shrine was left undisturbed? No, we’re missing something. Perhaps we should go and see the inspector ourselves.’

  ‘I doubt he’d tell us what Rajan was planning,’ Noah responded, ‘even if he knew, and I doubt he knows very much.’

  ‘Then the only thing we can do is make sure security around the shrine is so tight that not even a cockroach can get in.’

  ‘The police here certainly don’t have enough manpower to achieve that, even if they were willing; only the army could do that.’

  ‘So let’s get the army,’ I said. ‘The Brigadier was telling me earlier today that for the army to get involved in civilian law and order, the head of the district administration would need to speak to the General in Madras—’

  ‘And you’re going to get all these high-powered people to jump to do your bidding on the basis of your piddling little suspicions? Come on, be realistic, da.’

  ‘So would you rather do nothing?’ I said irritably.

  ‘There might be nothing we need to do. Rajan will have his little demonstration, get arrested, become a hero to the fundoos; the shrine will continue to flourish, Meham will revert to its sleepy everyday state, you will go back to Bombay, get laid, lose your youthful idealism, and life will go on…’

  ‘But what if I’m right? You know Rajan, you know the man is not just talk. He wants to do this, not just for the sake of his brand of politics, but to settle a personal score.’

  ‘You mean the tamasha at the bank?’

  I nodded and said, ‘The Brigadier didn’t think the matter was so serious that it would have stayed with him all these years.’

  ‘The Brigadier is an old fool with his head stuck so far up his arse that if it went any deeper he could see through his mouth. No, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and what’s more, he didn’t see what I did. That manager was a bastard, a conniving, slimy, casteist son of a bitch, even though he was some sort of Pentecostalist. He was one of the congregation that prayed ineffectually over my mum and I saw more of him than I liked at one time. Anyway, he wanted to get one of his jati into the bank, so he threw this poor bugger out, had him charged at the police station with theft. I think he might even have had to serve a little time before he disappeared to Bombay, but the whole thing stank, da, and when you’re nineteen, twenty, every humiliation, every setback cuts deeper than anything that can happen to you in later life. I have no doubt Rajan remembers every minute of his shame as clearly as if it had happened to him yesterday. I could tell you what happened to me at that age without forgetting a single detail. If he could have taken it out on that bank manager, I’m sure he would have, except the fucker died of a heart attack about ten years ago. But the man was a great supporter of the shrine, made donations to it and prayed there all the time, hoping his sins would wash off, no doubt, so I think Rajan would get a lot of satisfaction if he did decide to take it over.’

  ‘There, you’ve said it yourself,’ I said quickly.

  ‘I said if,’ he said. ‘All I think he’s going to do is give everyone a good scare… and that will be that.’

  ‘And if you are wrong, would you want any harm to come to Brother Ahimas, the professor, all those inoffensive pilgrims?’

  ‘Listen, da, don’t drag me into it, OK.’

  ‘Even if your friends are affected…’

  ‘You’re not listening to me, Vijay.’

  Oh, but I am, I thought to myself. I am listening to you and I wonder why you are determined not to get involved, no matter what. Is it because of something in your past that you haven’t told me, or is it because this is the way you are? I thought about everything that he had said, everything that others had told me about him, and I still couldn’t get an accurate fix on him. What is the key to your mystery, Noah? I wondered, but this was hardly the time to probe, so I changed tack.

  ‘Look, if you don’t want to get involved directly, maybe you could just help me with a couple of things…’

  Mr Khanna’s driver still hadn’t returned, and I didn’t want to be at the mercy of local taxi drivers as I crisscrossed the district, especially now there wasn’t much time left. It would be good to have a local around, not only to help me get to the various officials I wanted to meet, but to lend weight to my arguments should that become necessary. Noah may not have been the perfect back-up but he was the only one I had. With these thoughts running through my head, I said to him, ‘You’re from here. I promised Menon I would call on the Collector and the inspector, and it would be great if you could accompany me to see them.’

  ‘What are you going to tell these people? That you suspect Rajan is about to do all sorts of awful things? Don’t forget he’s a bit of a hero in this town. And you don’t want me with you, da; they will throw you out if they see my face.’

  ‘Look, Noah, I’m a stranger here and we don’t have much time. If you don’t want to come in with me that’s OK, but at least take me to their offices. You know your way around.’

  ‘And what are you going to say to them that the Brigadier hasn’t already said? Just trot out your suspicious? Don’t forget nothing has actually happened so far besides that demonstration that fizzled out.’

  ‘That’s why the Rajans of the world always win—we wring our hands once something happens, we don’t do anything beforehand. You saw all the pious proclamations after the Babri Masjid was destroyed. What if people had actually done something to prevent it from being destroyed?’

  ‘Hey, you’re the hero.’

  ‘Noah, all I’m asking for is one day of your time, nothing more…’

  There was a long pause, and then he said, ‘You’re one stubborn fucker, I’ll give you that. I’ve got some work planned for tomorrow, so we’ll go the day after, there’s enough time. But let’s agree here and now that that will be the end of it. I will take you to see these guys, nothing more.’

  As I was leaving I pointed to the threatening sky and asked if he thought the weather might come to the rescue. He laughed and said, ‘Don’t bank on it. An acquaintance of mine, a retired weatherman who lives nearby, once said to me that you can always rely on the weather to let you down, it’s the only thing that’s more unrelia
ble than humankind.’

  ~

  I am no great believer in karma or predestination, shaped as I was in my early years by a father who was for the most part a rationalist and an empiricist. But as I think back to my time in Meham, I wonder if I had any choice at all in the way events unfolded. Take something as simple as my decision to read Mr Sorabjee’s manuscript once more that evening. Why did I decide to do that? I had already read it once, and although I wanted to read it again in one go, to have a better sense of its narrative flow, I can’t fully explain why I decided to reread it that very evening. I’m sure I could have found something else to read in Mr Khanna’s study to pass the time if I had looked hard enough (he did not own a television, and the records that were stacked next to the old-fashioned Philips radiogram did not interest me) but after a cursory glance at the bookshelves, I picked up the envelope in which I had deposited Mr Sorabjee’s manuscript, extracted the pages and began reading. When I came to the end of the chapter on Gandhi, I found I had missed something on my first pass—a concluding chapter that gave its name to the book and had somehow got stuck in the envelope.

  THE SOLITUDE OF EMPERORS

  We do not know what to do with one of our most precious resources, solitude, and so we fill it with clutter. Perhaps this is not entirely our fault, for it is within our deepest solitude that the bogeys that we are otherwise able to ignore and the cold fires of madness lurk. Solitude, true solitude, can drive us insane, so sensibly we turn our backs on it and pursue the superficial concerns of our daily lives. And perhaps that is how life is meant to be for the vast mass of us, the followers and wannabes who will never be. Perhaps that is what the one who created us proposed all along, it was never his intention that every one of us would amount to something or make a difference, if that were so it would disrupt the natural order of things, which would be intolerable. But those who are driven enough or bold enough or mad enough or exalted enough to look without flinching into the emptiness within will find in it insights vouchsafed only to the select few.

  The great ones were not afraid of solitude. All leaders of men know that loneliness is a condition of their existence, but only the greatest of them are able to transcend mere isolation to find the solitude in which the worlds of the Gods and men intersect. It was here that the emperors discovered their most potent ideas, ideas that helped shape the moral imagination of nations in hitherto unheard-of ways, it was here that they encountered their destiny. But it wasn’t easy, even for them, to go beyond the ordinary, to find that place where, though men, they became the equal of God. Nobody will ever know the true nature of the solitude of emperors and that is understandable for if it were easy to comprehend then it would no longer be extraordinary. But as the lives of the emperors have been endlessly fascinating to those who would know them, attempts have been made to probe the source of their genius, some more successful than others. I have drawn on all the accounts I have been able to find to present my own view of where and how the three men I have brought together in this narrative found the ideas that enabled them to transform the world they lived in.

  With hindsight we can see that they were always destined to become supreme rulers of men, but even for them the greatness that lay within took long years of preparation to access. They filled their lives with study, struggle and dogged endeavour. They consulted with wise men, consorted with the great cultural experts of their time, immersed themselves in timeless scriptures and works of philosophy. They went to war, they dealt in peace. And even as they engaged with the affairs of men, deep inside they were preparing to walk with the Gods. And, one day, often without warning, they were ready to take the greatest decision of their lives.

  Accounts of the life of the Emperor Ashoka, as well as his own edicts, tell us about the anguish he felt as he walked the battlefield in Kalinga, alone among the dead, the wounded and the vanquished. His exultation gave way to deep sorrow and it was in this state that he was granted the vision of what he must do next. All those years of war and anger, all those years of dipping into Buddhism, and now, in an instant, he was sure about the future.

  Emperor Akbar’s epiphany came during a great hunt that had been organized for him on the banks of the Jhelum River. A crack marksman, the thirty-six-year-old ruler and his party waited at a strategic point as the animals were driven towards them. At the point when the carnage should have begun, not a shot was fired, the emperor seemed to have fallen into a trance. When he finally came out of it, he ordered the hunt to be abandoned.

  Some historians think he might have suffered an epileptic fit, but whatever the nature of the seizure, from that point onwards his interest in religion deepened and expanded. Hitherto his deliberations about God and faith had been largely limited to Islam, but now he opened up his meditations to include the ideas of holy men of all faiths. And in due course he took the ultimate step—of founding a faith that included them all. His journey to this moment of transformation had been long, and so when the time was right, he was ready.

  The Mahatma’s preparation for his moment of transformation was equally intense. Indeed, Gandhiji says himself that he had several moments of revelation, and all of these have been extensively discussed and documented so we shall only examine the most famous of them—when he was thrown out of his first-class railway carriage at Pietermaritzburg railway station on the way to Pretoria. By his own admission, Gandhi was a timid man up until that point. However he was gradually evolving, for every time he was faced with a crisis, either moral, spiritual or physical, it toughened him and imperceptibly helped change him into the man he would become.

  Every one of these incidents in his early life—his visit to a brothel with a school friend in Gujarat, his unavailability when his father was dying, his refusal to copy at school, a small act of dissimulation that he confessed to his father about, his attempt to use his connections to the Raj’s political agent in Kathiawad to obtain a favour for his brother that resulted in him being thrown out of the agent’s office—all these along with his abiding interest in religion, including his interaction with various esoteric sects while still a student in England, prepared him for the day his thinking would irrevocably change course and he would experience the ‘tremendous convulsion of the human spirit’ (in the words of C.F. Andrews) that would reorder his priorities for ever.

  Our examination of the turning point in his life need not detain us too long. He was travelling from Durban to Pretoria to represent a client in an important legal matter. At Pietermaritzburg he was thrown out of his compartment by a white railway official although he held a first-class ticket. The train left without him and Gandhi spent the night at the station, cold and miserable, wondering whether he should take the next ship to India or whether he should stand and fight. He decided to make a stand, and this is where in his deepest solitude he found the inspiration to do what he had to do. From that moment onward, in his words, ‘The only tyrant I [would] accept in this world [was] the still voice within.’

  ~

  The new emperor we await will need to combine the renunciation of Ashoka, the syncretic abilities of Akbar and the truth of Gandhi, but these qualities alone will not be enough. He will need to add something more to the mix, something that is uniquely his own, for the problems of our time are more complex than anything the world has seen before. I wish I could tell you, my young friends, what it is that you should be looking for in this new leader, what traits will set him apart from the pygmies who masquerade as our leaders today but in truth I do not know. All I know is that when he arrives in our midst he will have a vision so breathtakingly clear and innovative that it may not even be recognized immediately, something every genius ahead of his time has had to contend with.

  The new emperor will come, just as surely as his predecessors walked the earth, but I did not set out to write this tract merely to suggest that we passively wait for his (or her) advent. No, a thousand times no. It is the duty of each one of us, the young and the young at heart, to find a way to ma
ke a difference even as we keep an eye out for the great one who will inevitably rise up among us to sweep away the forces of darkness.

  I began this chapter by saying that most of us, especially the young, wilfully squander our most precious resource, solitude. But it doesn’t need to be that way. There will always be those who are doomed to live their lives with about as much wisdom and meaning as dull-witted bandicoots, but I have no doubt that there are also many of you who would like to be different. And you can raise yourselves up by looking into the solitude that dwells within each of you to discover strength and direction just as the great ones did. Don’t assume it will be easy to find—it will require discipline, courage and fortitude—but I am not suggesting you engage in years of penance and monastic rigour as the mighty sages and rishis did, your place is in the world and not out of it. Indeed, if anything, you will need to live more fully than most so that the space within your hearts and souls is enriched and vibrant.

  I exhort you therefore to go out and mingle and learn. Inhale the genius of this country. Do not discount anything, the transcendent poetry of the Sufi and Bhakti poets, the architecture of Hampi and Fatehpur Sikri and Mount Abu, the teachings of Ramana Maharshi and the Shirdi Sai Baba. Let the plaintive wail of the shehnai fill your senses, the plangent notes of the sarod and the sitar slice through the dullness of your waking life. Watch rhododendrons moult on a Himalayan slope, surf the breakers at the point where three seas mingle in Kanyakumari, hunt in the Western Ghats with the hamadryad, the only snake on the planet that is fast and deadly enough to prey on other snakes, walk the shadowy forests of Arunachal with the clouded leopard, the least known great cat in the world. Celebrate the colours of Holi, the lights of Deepavali, the food of Ramzan and the gifts of Christmas. Eat meen moily in Cochin, kebabs in Lucknow, dhansak in Cumballa Hill and dhokla in Ahmedabad. No other place in the world can boast the width and depth of history, art, spirituality, food and music that this country has to offer, and it is all yours for the taking. And there is no call to limit yourself to this country; there is nothing to stop you from roaming more widely through the literature and music and art and philosophy and scripture of the West and the East to feed the wellsprings of your creativity and quietude.