The Great Indian Novel (27 page)

You should not be, my son. No great man ever achieved greatness by sincerity of purpose alone. If Gangaji believed in Truth, it was
his
Truth he believed in; and by extension the actions he undertook were founded on the same belief. Pandu, for whatever reason, represented a challenge to his unremitting quest for this Truth. ‘Trust me, my son,’ Ganga had said to him at the start of the Mango March, but Pandu had not followed; and once the agitation was called off, trust had died between the two princes of Hastinapur. The Mahaguru had chosen Dhritarashtra as his heir, and who was to gainsay his choice? Pandu could have accepted it and continued to serve the cause, following the Mahaguru and his own blind brother. He chose the path of dissent instead: the way (as the Mahaguru saw it) of untruth.

The righteous reaction was to eliminate the dissenter. Not by having him hit on the head in the dark by hired thugs, nor by cheating at the elections; Gangaji would never countenance such means to attain his ends. But dharma enjoins firmness in defence of righteousness, Ganapathi. (There is nothing particularly new, or even cynical, about that. Our own traditions prescribe such action - not just in the Machiavellian handbook for royal survivors, the
Arthashastra,
but in our epic political treatise the
Shantiparvan
of my namesake Vyasa.) The moral pressure (and mind you, the Mahaguru never thought of it as anything else) - the moral pressure he placed on Pandu to bring about my pale son’s capitulation was merely the political equivalent of the flattened tyres of Raja Salva early in our story. No violence done, no blood spilled - but oh, Ganapathi, what hurt and humiliation, what sadness and suffering can be caused in the defence of Truth!

I cannot bear to think much longer of my pale pained son, Ganapathi. I do not wish to prolong his stumbling saga through the various stages of this narrative. Let us pay the price of chronological inexactitude to follow the rest of his story now, so that I may relinquish this heavy burden of historical memory, strained by the additional weights of paternity and helplessness. Come, Ganapathi: we shall leave the others frozen in their places in time as we unravel Pandu’s destiny in the only form that suits its bathos.

To tell the tale of Pandu
Will not detain us long;
His slogan was a ‘can do!’
And on his lips a song.

Oh, pour some draughts of red wine
Into history’s bloody jars;
Learn there’s just a thin line
‘Twixt tragedy and farce.

When Pandu, hale and hearty
Was declared too sick to lead
He upped and quit the party
To protest the dirty deed.

‘Goodbye to all my dear friends –
I say this with a lump –
Your means justify another’s ends;
I was pushed, I did not jump.

‘Your cause and mine are noble:
To make our people free.
But one fact is simply global:
One can’t do this easily.

‘To speak, and write, and walk and fast
Will never break our shackles;
But those who still live in the past
Well, they just raise my hackles.

‘We’ve been good too long, we never fail
To play by Britain’s rules;
When we break the law, we go to jail
And bow our heads like fools.

‘The time has come, I say tonight
To cast aside our veil;
To stand like men, to arm, to fight –
To think of blood, not bail.

Tonight non-violent Pandu dies!
No more shall I be weak;
From now I toil and exercise
To be strong as Indian teak.

‘Away with Tolstoy, Ruskin, Buddha:
Their ideas just make little men littler.
No more “truth-force”, only
yuddha
–
It’s time to learn from that chap Hitler.’

So saying, our angry hero
Became the country’s first Fascist;
Admiring Roma’s latest Nero
He practised how to clench his fist.

Our Aryan brothers, full of go-go
Have revitalized the German nation.
As India’s SS, I announce the OO —
Short for Onward Organization.

‘Onward, my friends! our cause must march,
In discipline we must never slacken.
Our military shorts we must always starch,
For Britain’s foes will need our backing.’

Then Poland fell, and the Nazi Panzer
Overrode Chamberlain’s ‘Peace with honour’
‘Let’s join Hitler’s extravaganza –
Britain will soon have our jackboots on her!’

So saying, Pandu bought a ticket
(First-class, appearances must be kept)
To Berlin; ‘The rest of you can stick it –
Pandu acts while the Kauravas slept!’

But when our hero began his trip
(He’d got as far as the aerodrome)
The Brits, who’d briefly lost their grip
Declared war on Berlin, and on Rome.

Standing at the excess-baggage counter
(He’d packed too much for the winter season)
Pandu’s plans began to flounder
When he was arrested – for intending treason.

Handcuffed, the OO’s home-grown Führer
Was carted off to the central jail;
For him there’d be no judge or juror –
The Raj didn’t want him out on bail.

And there a lesser man might languish,
Rotting away behind prison bars;
His mind and spirit prey to anguish
As he mourns his lot, and curses his stars.

But our Pandu was made of sterner stuff!
He was never one to stand and gape.
Now that the Brits were playing rough
He resolved to make his own escape.

Each day he plotted his great jailbreak:
– Shall I saw? or dig? or provoke battle?
Can I get a knife in a chocolate cake?
Or pretend to faint, and flee the hospital?

His plans might well have been doomed to failure
Had the fates not played into his hands;
For a man assigned to be his jailor
Turned out to be one of the OO’s fans.

‘Honoured to meet you, Panduji, sir,’
He whispered when they were first alone.
‘As I shake your hand, I must aver
I think of you as our Saint Joan.

‘We men in khaki have had to fret and fume
At the namby-pambiness of the Kaurava Party.
Bharatmata would surely be led to its doom
Were it not for the OO and its
Chakravarti.’

(The OO, Ganapathi – here I must explain –
Took its terminology from the Indian
dharti:
Its men-scouts were
sainiks,
its HQ Ujjain,
And its Supreme Leader a Chakravarti.)

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ Pandu replied,
‘We need men of spirit in jobs like yours.
But while I’m locked up, strong men have died
For the nation’s illnesses need the OO’s cures.’

He fixed his captor with an unblinking stare.
‘It’s time for you to serve the cause.
I can’t stay here when they need me there –
You must help me get out, to fight our wars.’

The jailor shuffled from foot to foot,
Looking determined and chagrined in turn.
‘From the top of my cap to the toe of my boot,
I’ve always merited the wages I earn.

‘Now you want me to be untrue to my salt.
That’s a difficult decision to make.
You know how I’ll be condemned for my fault
And the spiral my career will take.

‘I admire you, Chakravarti – this is no homily –
I wish I could help you to flee;
But I must think of my job, my wife and family
And I must do my painful duty.’

‘Yes, you must do your duty,’ said Pandu quickly,
‘But where does your duty lie?
When the nation, oppressed, was never so sickly
Can a true man just stand and sigh?’

He could see his words had won him a pause
In the train of the jailor’s thought;
The uniformed patriot guarding the laws
Was torn ‘tween the must and the ought.

‘And then, of course, there’s something, son,
Which you might well have overlooked;
When freedom comes, and the OO’s won
The rewards won’t be overbooked.

‘At that time, then, where’d you rather stand?
Among the heroes of Bharatiya Swaraj?
Or will you be counted with the shameful band
Who betrayed the foes of the Raj?’

‘Forgive me, Chakravarti,’ the jailor wept,
‘For having hesitated at all.
I don’t have the keys, but I know where they’re kept,
And I can get you over the wall.’

Though the alarm bells were rung, and every port watched,
By eagle-eyed British police,
Pandu evaded them all –
this
flight wasn’t botched
For they couldn’t spot the wolf through the fleece.

Yes, it was Pandu’s disguise that got him past
The checkpost – as Begum Jahan,
The fat,
burqa-ed
wife (ah, I see you’re aghast)
Of a fiercely possessive Pathan.

You may disapprove of our hero’s disguise
– How could a leader dress like a fool? –
But there’s no denying it evaded the eyes
Of policemen right up to Kabul.

From neutral Afghanistan, dressed well again
In battledress from the bazaar
Chakravarti booked himself on to a plane
To Berlin (cabling Adolf to send him a car).

There was a slight hitch, I’ve got to admit
For our brilliant
swadeshi
Caesar,
Busy ensuring his fatigues would fit,
Had forgotten he needed a visa.

Oh, the terrible ways of bureaucracy!
The airline wouldn’t take him on board –
The avatar of Indian autocracy
Explained, shouted, ranted, implored;

But ‘Sorry, sir, that’s a strict regulation,’
Said the manager (not sorry at all),
‘Try the embassy of the German nation –
And would you mind not blocking the hall?’

Defeated, at last, with one more plane missed,
Pandu went off to apply,
‘Mr Consul-General – I must insist
I can’t wait for Berlin’s reply.

‘Do you know who I am? Herr Hitler’s best friend
In the Indian sub-continent;
From Kanyakumari to London’s West End
I’m known for my Fascistic bent.’

(All this, Ganapathi, if truth be told
Was cunning deceit by my son;
He was really no Nazi, my decent cuckold,
But a patriot in search of a gun.

Oh, he’d flirted, it’s true, with Fascist ideas,
But those didn’t count in the end;
As he’d said to his wives, ‘It’s simply, my dears,
That my enemy’s enemy’s my friend.’)

‘
Sehr
gut,
mein
Herr,’
the Consul said,
‘In that case I’ll give you your visa.
Good luck – and when you see the nation’s head
Don’t forget to salute the old geezer.’

He remembered; first day, Pandu snapped a salute,
Palm out, in the Nazi style,
It caught the Führer right in the snoot,
And made him see stars for a while.

‘Heil – ouch! Oh, hell,’ Chakravarti said,
As the Führer winced in pain,
‘I’m sorry – I wish I were dead –’
‘You will be, if this happens again.’

An inauspicious start! – but that’s how it was
For our fighter in exile throughout;
His valiant efforts to work for the cause
Were hamstrung within and without.

‘Radio broadcasts – that’s what you can do,’
Said the Germans, when he asked for tanks;
So instead of invading, our disappointed Pandu
Made speeches to the other ranks.

Every Sunday and Thursday, on
Deutsche
Welle,
Chakravarti broadcast to the East;
But his stirring exhortations to march on Delhi
Came through like the yelps of a beast.

‘What’s this?’ men would say, twiddling knobs on their sets,
As an awful squawk assaulted their ears,
And whine followed squeal like the screech of ten jets,
All braking while changing their gears.