The Solitude of Emperors

by David Davidar

  At the same time, do not neglect to absorb the poverty and violence and savagery and injustice of this country of extremes. Experience the despair of the coalminer in Dhanbad, where the very land is on fire, understand the hopelessness of the marginal cotton farmer in Andhra Pradesh, mourn with the widow of the Sikh garage owner who witnessed her husband being burnt alive in the Delhi riots of 1984. Let their pain become yours.

  You might wonder why you should listen to this old Bombayite hectoring you so let me tell you a story, about how and why I decided to give up my comfortable life to dedicate myself to the work I have done for over twenty years now. In 1969 I had gone to Ahmedabad on a business trip when riots broke out, and I was stranded in my hotel. On the evening of the day after the riots had been ‘brought under control’ I was walking through one of the shopping districts when I came upon a narrow street where over a dozen people had been killed. The bodies had been taken away and policemen were lounging around, but something I saw that day led me to abandon my plans of a quiet retirement and start the magazine I edit to this day. At the far end of the lane was a heap of discarded footwear: cheap plastic chappals, rope sandals, badly torn and mended shoes. At first I didn’t comprehend what I was looking at, and then it struck me—this pile of rubbish had belonged to the victims, who had discarded them in the hope that they would gain some extra speed and agility to save themselves. As I stood looking at the poignant memorial to those who had lost their lives, I saw with pitiless clarity that I could never hope to spend my remaining years sipping Blue Riband gin and tonic on the lawns of the Bombay Gym as I waited for the day I would make my last journey to the Towers of Silence. I had at some level always been concerned about sectarian violence and the direction the country was taking, but as I hadn’t been affected by it personally I had seen no need to do anything about it beyond sending the occasional cheque to some rehabilitation effort or other. That day everything came together, and I knew exactly what I should do. I started The Indian Secularist a year later, and only wish I’d had my epiphany a few decades earlier.

  And so, my young friends, I say to you: immerse yourself in the beauty and terror of this great country, enrich and deepen your hearts and your minds. Let every disappointment instruct you, let every triumph strengthen you. And all the while, even as you are part of the world, learn to walk alone. If you keep at it long enough, the day will come when you are able to look within yourself to find out what you need to do to answer those who seek to diminish our nation.

  What we might be called upon to do might not change the lives of millions of people as the great emperors did, and as we hope our emperor in waiting will do, but we should do it anyway—every little bit helps. I’m sure all of you know the story of the squirrels that helped Rama cross the sea to do battle with Ravana; all you need to propel you forward is the courage, conviction, passion and energy that only people of your age and innocence are abundantly gifted with. In the battle you will need to fight, your religion does not matter; your caste does not matter; your position in society does not matter; do not worry if you are a misfit, or haven’t been applauded as a ‘winner’—some of the greatest heroes of all time were written off as no-hopers, charlatans and discards by myopic arbiters of society.

  You should know that big decisions are hard to take. You will be tempted to do nothing when the time comes, or to pass the responsibility to someone else or to take advantage of the situation for your own benefit, but stepping up to do the right thing no matter how difficult is always the most rewarding course of action. It is something that you will remember with pride for the rest of your life.

  There are a thousand causes you can potentially commit to in this country, but as the subject of this book is the misuse of religion I will limit my appeal to this area. I cannot tell you what you should do, you will find that out for yourself, but I can tell you that the only qualification you need is an unwavering commitment to tolerance, and the only commandment worth keeping is the one that maintains that men and women of every faith are equal in the eyes of God and this nation. An ancient commandment, a fundamental right and perhaps a naive and overly idealistic sentiment, but no less powerful for all that. You have no time to lose—the forces arrayed against you and yours are arming at a furious pace—and as you wait for your own champion to arrive, you must continue to fight in whatever way you can to restore sanity and decency to our nation, you emperors of the everyday.

  ~

  This was extraordinary, I remember thinking; it was almost as though Mr Sorabjee was personally urging me to get involved, to do my best to help stop the impending tragedy. Feeling vindicated, I went to the study where the telephone was to call my employer. I wanted more than anything else to hear his calm, measured voice. I wanted to describe everything that had taken place until now and see if he had any advice for me, but to my chagrin the telephone was dead. The butler had warned me that this was a fairly regular occurrence, the phone lines often went down and it could take days for them to be fixed. Cursing my luck, I slammed the useless phone down on its receiver, went back to my bedroom and reread the last chapter. Its power was undiminished; it served to strengthen my resolve.

  13

  Seven Steps to a Tragedy

  1. The storm I had been hoping for never materialized. It did rain all the next day but it was nothing more than a gentle easing down of moisture that barely wet the leaves. By nightfall the rain had stopped and the mist rolled in. If it stayed misty it would be helpful, but I remembered Noah telling me it was rare for the mist to last more than a couple of days, especially at the Tower of God where strong winds blew all year around. I wandered aimlessly around the house, reading the last chapter of Mr Sorabjee’s book every so often until it was imprinted on my mind. I tried the phone regularly, but it remained stubbornly dead.

  The taxi that had been hired before the phone went down arrived on time the following day, and I was at the bottom of the hill on which the cemetery was located by seven thirty, the time we had arranged to meet, but there was no sign of Noah. I didn’t think it was wise for the car to attempt the deeply rutted road, so I instructed the driver to wait and set off on foot. It was still very dark, there was no sign of the sun, and I wished I had brought a torch with me. I hoped there were no snakes around, and then I remembered that they didn’t like the cold. As I made my way up the hill, I was filled with foreboding about the next day as I thought about Rajan, the young boy growing up in this bleak environment. Had he already been dreaming of the violence he would wreak upon the world, or had that come later, a straightforward reaction to the injustice that had been meted out to him? And was he really a killer? I had charged him with murder during my interview and he hadn’t denied it, but did that automatically make him guilty? I knew that even if he was involved in some way with the riots it was probably true that he hadn’t killed anyone himself, merely orchestrated it. How evil did that make him?

  ~

  2. When I got to the cemetery I could hardly see my way to the gate because the mist pooled thickly, streaming between the trees and the great bulk of the church. None of the dogs was around, but where was Noah? Now that I knew he didn’t live in the parsonage I wondered what he did in inclement weather. On one of my visits I had seen a disused gatehouse with part of the roof and a wall missing—perhaps I would find him there. I moved forward cautiously, calling out his name. There was no response but I spotted a weak glow in the direction of the peepul tree and decided to investigate that first.

  I came out of the mist into the flickering light cast by a small fire and stopped short, arrested by what I saw. Noah squatted beside a patch of freshly turned earth, dressed only in a T-shirt and jeans despite the cold and the wet. His T-shirt was bloody. Next to him was the great bulk of Godless. At my approach the dog cocked its eyebrows at me but made no other movement or sound. His eyes shut, the headphones of a Walkman clamped to his ears and a lit joint in his hand, Noah seemed totally at ease. He took a long pull at the joint, slowly r
eleased the smoke, then suddenly began to sing loudly. The composition of the macabre scene altered in that instant.

  I began backing slowly out of the light under the watchful gaze of Godless, my mind empty of everything but the thought that I should get out of the cemetery immediately. I was finally seeing Noah for what he was, a man who could commit murder. I had no idea who his victim was, but I wasn’t waiting around to find out.

  Godless’s barking crashed into the space vacated by the tuneless melody of his master, Noah opened his eyes, lazily surveyed the scene, and said, ‘Sorry, Vijay, had some business to take care of. We’re in no hurry, right?’

  His voice was relaxed. Wordlessly, I gestured at his bloody clothes, the rusty shovel that lay at his feet. He looked at me uncomprehendingly for a moment, then took the headphones off and said, ‘I found one of Godless’s bitches near the bridge a couple of hours ago—some lorry driver had run her over. Thought I’d give her a decent burial. Not one of his regulars, I’ve seen her around occasionally, but what the hell?’

  I wondered what he had been doing wandering around in the early hours of the morning, but my relief at his explanation was so great I brushed the thought aside. It was a minor detail, perhaps Godless had led him to the corpse. I edged back into the light.

  ‘Do you know the Tibetans believe dying people enter something they call a bardo state just before they pass on? That’s when their Book of the Dead is read out to them, to prepare them for their journey,’ Noah said. ‘Poor bitch, all she’s going to get is Roger Daltrey singing ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ and her unfaithful paramour standing watch. And the bugger had to be bribed with bones to stay…’ The big dog seemed to know Noah was talking about him, and his tail thumped on the ground.

  ‘I thought you’d killed somebody,’ I said.

  ‘Not the first time I’ve felt like it, but hey I’ve become a pacifist in my old age, da.’

  ‘We should get going, Noah,’ I said, trying to get the day back on track.

  ‘OK, give me a moment. Get lost, Godless, your vigil is over,’ he said, batting the dog on the rump. The dog trotted off and Noah said to me, ‘Do you like The Who?’

  When I admitted I didn’t know their music he said enthusiastically, ‘Bloody great music to listen to when the mist rolls in. Or the Doors. It makes your melancholy so fucking deep, especially if you’re smoking first-rate dope, that you come close to touching the void. One of these days I’ll want to experience it so much that I’ll get carried away and jump—falling, falling, falling into eternity… Wouldn’t that be a great way to go?’

  ‘You don’t really mean that, do you?’

  ‘Course not. It takes great courage or great despair or the great stupidity of youth to be able to kill oneself, and I don’t have any of those… but look, I know you want to get going, so I’ll stop blathering and go get changed.’

  He walked off into the mist, and I sat down beside the fire, surrounded by the shadowed faces on the tombstones looking down on me like an attentive audience, all sorts of thoughts teeming in my head. I had brought the last chapter of Mr Sorabjee’s book with me to pass on to Noah, hoping that he would be struck by what my mentor had to say. But would that do the trick with someone like him?

  Noah returned, having swapped his bloody T-shirt for his favourite Jimi Hendrix one. He asked me whether we had an appointment to see the Collector, and I admitted that we hadn’t; I had been told just to turn up and take my chances. It was the sort of small-town behaviour I should have been anticipating. He shrugged and said, ‘No hurry then,’ and sat down beside me, lit the stove and put the kettle on. When the tea was made, we both sat in silence for a while watching the play of the fire on the mist. What a strange man he was, I thought, a man who would carry a stray dog for miles to give it a farewell, yet a man without faith.

  As if reading my thoughts, he said to me, ‘You must think I’m pretty weird, huh, hanging out in the cemetery and all?’

  ‘Well, I have wondered…’

  ‘Listen, da, you’ll be gone in a couple of days, and I doubt we’ll ever see each other again, but you’re an OK guy, Vijay, so I’m going to tell you something nobody knows about me. Just keep it to yourself is all I ask. As you know, my mother died when I was ten, and I’ve told you that screwed me up pretty badly, made me junk religion and all, but what I didn’t tell you was that for many months I’d come and hang around in this cemetery, every opportunity I got. She’s buried here and I would tend her grave, put fresh flowers on it, that kind of stuff. I would also talk to her as though she were still around, tell her my problems. She was always in my head, so it was easy to do. I read later that this is quite a common reaction when you lose a parent, especially when you’re very young, but I didn’t grow out of it. I kept coming back to the cemetery for as long as I lived here and gradually got used to hanging out with the dead—not just my mother, others too, they seemed to fit quite naturally into my scene. Later, I got friendly with some Todas, they’re the original inhabitants of the Nilgiris, and they believe their dead make their home in a place just like ours until they are reborn. It’s right here in the mountains and there’s a constant criss-crossing of spirits and living people between their respective worlds so it all made a strange kind of sense. Anyhow, as I became more and more reclusive, it was convenient to chat to the people who were buried here—it was less taxing than having to deal with the living. It’s not that crazy when you think about it, most religious traditions believe the dead hang around for a bit before they move on to the next life. Even scientists agree that we are basically recycled from people and things that existed centuries ago, and until that happens everything that has passed on decomposes into a sort of free-floating state, so who is to say that the dead don’t exist here as naturally as you or I…’

  There didn’t seem a whole lot to say to this latest revelation. I must be getting used to him, I thought, because I didn’t even find it particularly crazy. Perhaps if I managed to persuade him to become more involved in the business of the shrine, he could enlist the services of the ‘unrecycled’ dead to scare Rajan off.

  ~

  3. We finally got to Ooty at half past one. The mist had thinned by the time we set out, but our progress was slow because visibility was still poor, especially on the hairpin bends where we couldn’t see more than a foot ahead of us. To make matters worse, our taxi broke down just short of town, and we wasted over an hour while the driver sorted out the problem.

  I was disappointed by Ooty. Charing Cross, the main intersection, was chaotic and dirty, and it set the tone for the rest of the place. The mist erased much of the grime and the squalor, but the town bore scant resemblance to the enchantment promised in the tourist brochures.

  The Collector’s office was an old colonial building set on an elevation above the town. Groups of men loitered in the compound, the usual crowd of supplicants, hangers-on and minor functionaries that could be found around virtually every seat of government or bureaucracy in the country. We had formulated a rough and ready plan of action in the car—I would reprise my role as a Times of India reporter who was holidaying in the Nilgiris and had decided on the spur of the moment to write a story about the controversy surrounding the Tower of God.

  At reception we were told that the Collector was out touring the district but was expected back at around 3.30 in the afternoon. Noah was all for leaving but I insisted we stay. More than ever it seemed important to me to meet this powerful official, if only to impress on him the urgency of the situation; and if he heard it from a Times of India reporter perhaps he would have no option but to take it seriously. After we had waited for an hour in a crowded room that stank of unwashed bodies and wet wool, I suggested we have a coffee and return closer to the hour the Collector was expected. We stopped at a roadside restaurant, and then wandered through the misty streets before returning to the Collectorate. This time we were told the Collector wasn’t expected back at all that day, but when I began waving my journalistic credent
ials around I was told I could meet the ranking bureaucrat in the building.

  After another half an hour of waiting in a small antechamber on hard folding chairs, I was summoned to an office which the electric tube-lights did little to brighten. A portable heater in which a single heating filament glowed was the only source of warmth. My interview with the official, whose precise rank I never found out, was brief. I asked him whether I could get a message to his superior about the trouble that was expected in Meham, but it was obvious within minutes that he didn’t share my concern. He said that the Meham police station had already informed them about the demonstration and had made arrangements to ensure that everything went off peacefully. He said he would tell the Collector about my visit but beyond that wasn’t prepared to do anything. I left the office feeling dispirited and, collecting Noah from the waiting room, made my way out of the building. To my annoyance, he was whistling.

  As we walked towards the taxi, I noticed a small knot of men bearing hand-lettered placards and shouting slogans protesting against a lockout of tea estate workers at an estate in Kotagiri. That might work, I thought, but when I suggested to Noah that we should think of organizing our own demonstration to counter Rajan’s, he wasn’t enthusiastic. When I pointed out that there had been a peace march the last time the shrine was besieged, he said, ‘We’ll never get permission from the authorities. And there’s not a whole lot you can do to stop Rajan from inside a prison cell in Meham.’