The Great Indian Novel (29 page)

‘Oh, Madri!’ He took her in his arms
And kissed her long and wetly,
Till, attritioned by her charms,
His will collapsed completely.

‘No – Pandu – don’t!’ his loved one cried,
As his hands explored her buttons;
‘Remember the doctor – when you nearly died –
Let’th kith, but not be gluttonth!’

‘Twas of no avail, he was possessed
By a need he could not define;
After years of restraint, now obsessed
To unite with his concubine.

‘I want you!’ his hiss was urgent
As he peeled off layers of clothes;
In the cold seat, his passion emergent
Repulsed his wife’s feeble ‘No’s.

Poor Madri! Denial was not in her nature,
‘No’ was not a word she liked to speak;
Indeed (at the risk of caricature)
Her flesh was willing, and her spirit weak.

And Pandu was in no mood to be denied;
His hands moved with a probing persistence.
He caressed her: ‘I want you!’ he cried,
‘You’re the only joy left in my existence!’

In love and heat, Madri conceded defeat.
And yielded to her husband’s great ardour.
Soon, despite her fears and the tilt of the seat,
She was gasping, ‘Oh, yeth! Harder! Harder!’

‘Oh, yes!’ he breathed back in pneumatic bliss.
‘Onward! That’s my immortal credo!’
But then his lips, after a pulsating kiss,
Turned blue, and exhaled a croaking ‘O . . . O . . .

Tracers exploded outside in the sky
Shooting incandescent streamers of light
Across the window where our lovers lie
Entwined ‘tween the silence and night.

‘Thank you,’ Madri sighed in orgasmic relief,
‘You were wonderful – wath it good for you, too?’
Then, looking at him, almost beyond belief:
‘P. . . Pandu! What hath happened to you?

‘Why are you tho limp? Why lie you tho thtill?
My huthband, my lord, king of the OO?
Pleathe rithe – pleathe thmile – oh tell me you will –
Oh my God! You’re not . . .! Oh . . .! Oh no . . .!’

She screamed; and it was as if her heart-wrenching cry
Had carried her spirit to where his had flown:
Soaring up and across the illuminated sky
To its celestial home, where no one is alone.

For in that terrible cry of desolation
Was embodied a plea no god could deny;
Her intense refusal to accept her isolation
Carried its message to the forces on high.

Two powerful beams of terrestrial light
Criss-crossed on the wings of Pandu’s Zero;
Revealing to Madri a last vivid sight
On her breast, the beatific head of her hero.

Then she knew; and she smiled, in the stillness that followed.
The shell that was coming made scarcely a ripple.
She lifted his head, kissed him, slightly swallowed;
Then lowered him gently, his mouth to her nipple.

When the shell hit she could have sworn she felt
A life-seeking tug at her soft swollen breast;
A split-second, perhaps, and then came a pelt
Of death-dealing shrapnel that tore open her chest.

For another split second the plane hung on there
Spotlit in the beams of the gunners below;
Then it burst into a flaming ball in the air
Burning crimson, consuming my son – and widow.

As Pandu plummeted to the fiery fate
That all Hindus know as we leave this world,
Madri, his devoted (though second) mate
Kept the proud banner of Sati unfurled:

She attained eternity – an all-too-rare case –
In the glorious blaze of a purifying fire.
Finding, in the flames of the plane, her place
On her husband’s aluminium funeral pyre.

That must have made Pandu happy, Ganapathi. With all his deep delving into the scriptures, his theological sanctions for procreative cuckoldry, he must have savoured the satisfaction of going like that - burning with his dutiful wife in fulfilment of the classic ideals of marital love. It must have gladdened his atrophied heart.

When the news reached us here, it affected all of us deeply, even Dhritarash- tra, whose place at the head of his generation it made more secure. My blind son issued a touching little statement about his ‘immeasurable sadness’ and the ‘incalculable loss to the grieving nation’. He pledged to ‘keep the flame of my brother Pandu’s deep-seated patriotism aglow’. Ah, Dhritarashtra, for ever those visual metaphors.

And what of Gangaji? The Mahaguru was moved enough to sit in silence and spin for hours, talking to nobody, immersed in reflection. He presented the cloth that emerged from that session to Pandu’s surviving widow, Kunti. But it was practically unusable - the woof was all warped, or was it that the weft was not right? - which showed that for once Gangaji’s mind had not been on what he was doing. Pandu’s loss diminished us all.

The Tenth Book:
Darkness at Dawn

B
ut there was no time to grieve. We all had more vital business at hand. Neither the nation nor the party had been standing still during Pandu’s years of exile. Now it was the moment to reap the bitter harvest that had been sown since our digression began. In other words, Ganapathi, this is flashback time.

We had left the others frozen in their places when we embarked upon Pandu’s story - frozen in the aftermath of his resignation from the Kaurava presidency. Let us examine this curious tableau again. There is the Mahaguru, studiously bent over his spinning wheel, assiduous journalists at his feet; Dhritarashtra, white stick held slightly aloft, fist clenching its knob with index finger pointing towards Delhi or destiny or both; Karna, the half-moon throbbing on his forehead, declaiming in a three-piece suit to a group of Muslim notables in stuffed armchairs; the five Pandava youths, agilely imbibing their lessons from their bearded preceptor; and Duryodhani, sitting on the ground at the foot of the darkened bedside of her mother Gandhari the Grim, determinedly arranging her
khadi-clad
dolls in the shadows as the woman in the blindfold sinks inexorably into another world.

‘What are you doing, Priva Duryodhani?’

‘I am playing with my dolls, Mother.’

‘What - what are you playing with them, my child?’

‘I am playing family, Mother. This doll is all tied up. It is going to jail. This doll is not feeling well. It is lying down. This other doll is left to fight the nasty British all by herself. She is strong and brave and she knows she is all alone, she will always be alone, but she will win in the end . . .’

No, Ganapathi, let us leave them there and unfreeze another section of the tableau. The five Pandavas and Drona.

But wait! There are
six
boys surrounding the saffron-clad sage. Yes, the five sons of Pandu have been joined by Ashwathaman, Drona’s son. They are together as knowledge is poured into them like milk and honey: the science of history and the mysteries of science; physics and the traditional martial arts; geography and geometry; ethics and arithmetic; the
vedas;
classical music and folk dance; rhetoric and oratory. And then, Drona’s own ‘special skills’.

These are special indeed, these skills. Drona has given the lads a glimpse of his abilities by his deft removal of their ball from the well. But there is so much more: unerring accuracy with ropes, strings, catapults, bows; the ability to find targets with stones arrows, and (in due course) bullets; the preparation of cocktails to which Molotov would not have been ashamed to lend his name; the uncanny knack of blocking roads, starting avalanches, demolishing bridges, just by knowing where to place a small amount of explosive. Not all of this is in the course-description that Gangaji has approved for his ward’s children; but, ‘There are many kinds of nationalism,’ says Jayaprakash Drona, ‘and I believe you must be well-versed in all of them.’

Some, perhaps, better versed than others? As the special skills sessions increase in range and complexity, the time and individual attention Drona is able to devote to each student becomes ‘crucial to their speed and skill. Ashwathaman, who sleeps in his father’s room, gets extra lessons: ciphers and codes, powerful yogic
asanas,
breathing exercises. Arjun, catching on, knocks one night on his teacher’s door. ‘Dronaji, may I too sleep at your feet, that I may learn better from you at all times?’ The sage, pleased at his student’s devotion, accedes to the request. Arjun soon becomes as proficient as Ashwath- aman.

And what proficiency! Ganapathi, you will not believe it when I tell you of the range and subtlety of Drona’s training, from dialectics to diuretics. Of his methods, by which what was taught was only as important as how it was taught. Of his convictions, whose singular angularities would be retained in different ways by each of his charges.

Take, for instance, the time he summoned his wards and pointed out a picture on the wall, one he had torn from a magazine, an ordinary picture of a rather porcine English politician.

‘Imagine you are all members of an élite group of hardened revolutionaries,’ he told them. ‘Your target is that man.’ He jabbed his finger towards the florid face looking smugly down upon them from the wall. ‘You each have your favourite weapon at hand - gun, grenade, rock, bow and arrow, it doesn’t matter. Your mission is to get him. Is that clear?’

They chorused their comprehension.

Step forward, Yudhishtir,’ Drona declared. ‘Take up your weapon. Look at your target. What do you see?’

‘I see my target,’ Yudhishtir replied.

‘Is that all you see?’

‘I see an imperialist political figure,’ Yudhishtir replied, trying to guess what was required of him. ‘Born thirtieth of November 1874. Prominent family. President of the Board of Trade at thirty-four, Home Secretary at thirty-six, First Lord of the Admiralty, Colonial Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer . . .’

‘Go back to your place, Yudhishtir,’ Drona interjected, expressionless. ‘Nakul, you. What do you see?’

‘An overweight, over-the-hill and overrated politician, a teller of bad after- dinner jokes, a gasbag . . .’

‘Bhim?’

‘A fat man who seems to enjoy a good cigar. But I’ll kill him if you tell me

to.’

‘Sahadev?’

‘A representative of the worst of British colonialism, a die-hard enemy of our people, an oppressor who conceals his racialist tyranny beneath a cloud of rhetoric about upholding freedom - the freedom of those with his colour of skin.’

‘Ashwathaman? Do you see all this too?’

‘Certainly, my father. And more.’

‘And Arjun? What about you, Arjun?’

Arjun stepped forward, his eyes narrowing upon the picture. ‘I see my target,’ he said.

‘What else?’

‘Nothing else. My mission is to hit this target. I see nothing else.’

‘His background? His biography? His position?’

‘I need know none of that. I see my target. I see his head. Nothing else matters.’

Drona sighed audibly. ‘Take aim, then, Arjun. Shoot.’

Arjun aimed his imaginary weapon, his clear eyes never wavering from his target, and a gust of wind burst into the room, ripping the picture off the wall, sending it flying in a scudding spiral into Drona’s hands.

‘I shall make you,’ Drona breathed, ‘the finest Indian of them all.’

But there is one sour note. After one set of school examinations Arjun comes back with thunderclouds on his brow. He has come first; but for all his private tuition he is only joint first. And the child who has tied with him is from a lowly government school.

‘His name is Ekalavya,’ Arjun announces.

‘Ekalavya? But that is the son of one of the maidservants in the palace!’ Bhim, who knows all the maidservants, exclaims.

The twins rush off to investigate, and return with a dark, dust-smeared little boy in a frayed shirt. He bends to touch Drona’s feet.

‘Stood first, eh? And who taught you what you know?’

‘Why, you - sir.’

‘Me? You are not one of my students, boy.’

‘Sir . . . I stood, sir, outside the door, while you were teaching the others. And I listened, sir.’

‘An eavesdropper, eh, boy? And a free-loader. You know what a freeloader is, boy?’

‘Yes, sir. It’s . . . it’s American, sir. Someone who doesn’t pay for what he gets. I’m . . . very sorry, sir.’

‘That’s right, boy. And that’s what you are. A free-loader. You have been learning from my lessons, and you haven’t paid my fee.’

‘Your . . . your fee, sir? I’ll gladly pay what I can.’

‘What you can, boy? And how much is that, I pray?’

‘Sir, not very much, sir. My mother is a maidservant here.’

‘A maidservant’s son presumes to call himself my pupil? Very well, I shall name my fee. Do you promise to pay it?’

‘If I can, sir, of course,’ says the boy, still looking down at Drona’s rough calloused feet and horny nails.

‘No conditions, boy. It is a fee you can pay. Will you promise to pay it?’

The boy’s voice is soft and trembly under the intimidating line of questioning. ‘Of course, sir,’ he whispers. Yudhishtir looks troubled, but says nothing.

‘Good. My fee, Ekalavya, is the thumb of your right hand.’

There is a collective gasp from the twins and Bhim. Yudhishtir starts forward, then stops, restrained by the hand of a frowning Ashwathaman. Only Arjun looks supremely untroubled, even at peace.

‘The . . . the . . . th . . . thumb of my
hand,
sir?’ asks the bewildered boy. ‘I . . . I don’t understand.’

‘Don’t understand?’ Drona bellows. ‘You come first in class, boy, and you don’t understand? You promised me my fee, if you can pay it. And I want the thumb of your right hand.’

‘B . . . but without my th . . . thumb, sir, I won’t be able to write again!’ The boy looks despairingly around the room, and finally at Drona, who stands impassively, his arms folded across his chest. ‘Oh, pl . . . please, sir not that! Ask me for anything else!’ The tears smart at his eyes, but he fights them back. ‘Pl . . . please sir, what have I done to deserve this punishment?’

‘You know perfectly well what you have done. You have intruded where you do not belong. And this is no punishment - it is my fee.’

The boy throws himself at Drona’s feet. ‘Please, revered teacher, please forgive me,’ he blurts out. ‘If I do not do well and make a success of my studies, who will look after my poor mother when she becomes too old to work? Please do not demand this of me.’

Drona looks down at the boy sprawled before him. ‘That is no concern of mine,’ he says brutally. ‘Will you pay my fee?’

The boy looks disbelievingly up at him, then slowly raises himself from the floor. He stands, and for the first time he is looking the sage in the eye.

‘I cannot pay it,’ he says.

‘Cannot pay it? You call yourself my pupil, and dare to refuse me my fee?’

The boy does not shift his gaze. ‘Yes,’ he affirms.

Drona advances upon him, bringing his face so close to the boy’s that the hairs of his beard graze Ekalavya’s nose. ‘If you do not pay your guru the fee he seeks, you are unworthy of what he has taught you,’ he snarls, his spittle flecking the boy’s forehead.