Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 134, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 817 & 818, September/October 2009

Sleepers by Radhika Jha

“Perhaps no Indian since Ruskin Bond has used the English language so beautifully,” The Statesman said of Radhika Jha. In publishing the Delhi-born author in Passport to Crime we are breaking a convention that this department is reserved for stories in translation. But despite its having been written in English, the following tale is so thoroughly steeped in the culture of India that it seemed to us to find a natural home in our Passport series. Ms. Jha studied at Amherst College and the University of Chicago, and worked in Paris. She now lives in Tokyo with her husband and two children.

My first posting as a servant of the state was to Mangladi. It was a peaceful little place, lying half forgotten on the border of Karnataka and Kerala. No VIPs ever passed through it. But VIPs mattered little to me. My interest lay in making sure that things were done in the proper way and order was maintained. The key to maintaining order was good governance. And that is what I concentrated on.

I had few illusions about my job. My fellow citizens were a ramshackle, superstitious bunch. But I believed that a rational, enlightened state could eventually wean them away from their dark and chaotic ways. Then India would become the great country it was meant to be and take its rightful place as a leader of nations.

Mangladi taught me otherwise.

On the thirteenth of May, nineteen seventy-eight, I was on a routine inspection of flood-control systems and irrigation canals in the coastal part of the district, in preparation for the rains. It was the last day of the tour and I was looking forward to my return to civilization. It had been a long, hot day. A complicated land dispute in a neighbouring village forced me to decide on an unscheduled night halt in a village I had previously never visited. The name of the village was Purandaru.

An assiduous reader of files, I knew that the village had not been visited in the last ten years. As far as the state was concerned, the village didn’t exist except as a part of the larger theoretical village, Daaru, which was itself not a real village but a group of ten hamlets housing different castes. I found out the name of the village by asking a man chopping coconuts on its outskirts that evening. Luckily the files had thought fit to mention that the village possessed a disused forest bungalow at its edge and I decided to put up there for the night.

It was close to sunset when I entered the village. There was a great deal of activity on the streets. The villagers, it seemed, were out in full force. That in itself was unusual for that time of day. And they all seemed very busy. They hurried past without acknowledging me, barely suppressed excitement visible on their faces. Even the little children of the village hardly blinked when they realised there was a sahib in their midst. The women were out, too, flocks of them, all wearing their finest saris with flowers in their freshly oiled hair. I assumed the reason for it was a visiting theatre party that would perform the Mah-abh-arata or Ramayana, interspersed with film songs and bawdy skits through the night.

So the sahib’s arrival had been eclipsed by a two-bit traveling theatre! I smiled to myself. Then I noticed that the women were all wearing their mangalsutras and bangles, had sindoor in their hair, and were carrying trays laden with coconuts, fruits, and flowers and topped with freshly made garlands. And I realised that more likely, there was a community function that night — a puja to honour the local deity. But unlike their menfolk, there was nothing joyous in the way the women moved, and I saw in their faces none of the eager anticipation that heralds a night of celebrating the Goddess. Instead their faces were curiously blank. And their shining finery was dimmed by neglect. Dust streaked the clothes that the women and children were wearing, and some even had bits of food clinging to the brightly coloured cloth.

The village bore signs of dreadful neglect, too. The thatch of the houses was untidily repaired and certainly not capable of facing the onslaught of the coming monsoon. And I was ready to bet that the flood tanks and irrigation canals were in a similar state. I had already noticed with disapproval that half the fields surrounding the village were lying fallow. The remainder, including the fields to which the rice seedlings would be transplanted, were badly prepared, the furrows crooked and ending abruptly, with bald bits of land like islands in an unruly sea. Leaves had not been swept off the state highway into the village, many of the drains were choked, and garbage lay everywhere. Even inside the courtyards of the houses, it lay piled in unsightly heaps or was just left where it had fallen to decompose at leisure.

At last, a dirty little girl noticed me and began to tug at her mother’s hand. The mother stopped, twisted the poor child’s arm, and began to hit her. There wasn’t much strength in the blows, but the arm must have hurt. The child looked up at its mother dully, not a single cry escaping its lips. The mother continued to hit the child, unable to stop, while the others either stood around or continued on their way.

For a few moments I watched the little tableau in horror. Then I acted. I strode up to the woman and caught hold of her hand. “Get ahold of yourself. Can’t you see you’ll hurt her?” I shouted. Immediately her hand went slack and she stared up at me wearily, her eyes ringed in darkness. I let go. Then she took her daughter’s hand and went on her way as if nothing had happened. Mystified, I caught hold of a villager.

“What is happening here?” I asked. He shied away from me like a startled horse. I grabbed him before he could run away and repeated the question. He looked down at his feet and muttered something incomprehensible, then literally tore himself out of my grasp and dashed away.

I wondered whether I had chanced upon the local madman. But when the next two men I asked behaved in much the same way I decided that there was something seriously wrong with Purandaru and that I would have to stay put for as long as it took to unravel. Next I noticed a man sitting before his house chewing a piece of sugarcane. He seemed to be deliberately ignoring the bustle around him. I walked up to him and asked for the forest bungalow. He turned swollen, bloodshot eyes on me and gave me precise directions on how to get there. Encouraged by the normality of the man, though he had the eyes of an alcoholic, I ventured another question.

“What is the occasion? Why is everyone in such a hurry?”

In the middle I cleverly inserted an unspoken third question: Why was he not part of it?

His eyes flashed, hatred animating them for a moment. “The same occasion as it is every night.” he replied laconically, ignoring the important third question.

“What do you mean?” I asked warily.

“They have all-night prayers, these Hindus. And so the rest of us can’t sleep,” he told me, generously including me in the “us.”

“The rest of you?”

“Us Christians, of course.” He looked at me as if I were stupid. Suddenly he seemed to realise that I was a stranger. His eyes became calculating. I quickly thanked him for his trouble and continued on my way. The caretaker at the forest bungalow should be able to tell me what I needed to know. Tomorrow I would visit the headman.

As I walked through the village, I noted the islands of silence in the midst of all that activity, darkened windows and tight-shut doors. At last I came to the center of the village and saw a tall, splendid church, pristine and stately, in the midst of a colourful chaos. Right next to the church, on what must have been a cricket field, was the hub of activity.

People were running in every direction, fetching, carrying, and calling to each other. Children and dogs chased each other between and around the grownups’ legs, dashing away before they got a clout on the head or a kick in the side. Cows solemnly munched used banana-leaf plates and other rubbish. Loudspeakers crackled, and an insistent voice rattled off the program of events, interrupting itself every now and then to shout urgent instructions at the people running across the field. Here and there, like eyes in the night, I saw sadhus, solitary and arrogant in their orange robes.

The crowd was thickest by the squat little temple at the other end of the field. A makeshift stage protruded from between the red and gold canvas walls of a half-erected tent. A third of the way across the field, a much larger tent in pink, blue, and yellow pastels, looking somewhere between a pastry and a castle, was being decorated with tinsel streamers and Christmas lights. Behind the tent, like abandoned weapons, enormous cauldrons lay upside down or on their sides on the fire-scarred earth. A pack of dogs clustered around them, eating the remains of a meal. All around the edge of the field were smaller tents made of bits of tin, plastic, and rags. In these sat a variety of hard-faced traders, selling everything from bindis to household implements. A Ferris wheel and a merry-go-round at one corner of the field to the right of the temple blared their own version of popular film music and drew ragged children like a magnet. Already the noise emanating from the field was cacophonous, and the bhajans hadn’t even started. Knowing the noise would only grow with the advance of the night, I couldn’t help pitying the Christians.

Then I heard the church bells, their low, sweet sound sweeping over the field. I looked up and saw them silhouetted against the red sky. The sound transported me back to my school years with the Jesuit fathers at St. George’s in Patna. There, each day was ushered in by the bells and the same sound bid the day goodnight. I wondered suddenly whether they were what had awakened my love of Western classical music. But even as I was thinking this, the bells interfered, becoming noisier and more frenzied, shedding their music with every toll.

A white-haired old man walking beside me began to curse loudly and fluently in a rich baritone. My shocked expression made him hasten to explain as soon as the bells had grown silent, “They do it all day on the hour, sometimes on the half-hour even, just to torment us.”

I stared at him in sheer astonishment. “What do you mean?”

But before I could make him answer, the bhajans came on from the other end of the field, so loud that all further conversation became impossible.

I decided to add a visit to the church to my agenda for the morrow.

The houses ended and the road dwindled into a simple forest track, surrounded on both sides by trees. I arrived at last at the bungalow. It looked as if it had been abandoned years ago. A huge spider’s web substituted for hinges, uniting the gate to the gatepost. There was no bulb in the lamppost. Leaves and broken branches were strewn across the drive. In the fading light I could see that a carpet of dust covered the porch, making it glow palely. To my not very great surprise, my car, which I had left at the entrance to the village in order to enter its narrow mud streets on foot, was nowhere in sight. Neither was my driver or any representative of the local administration. I shouted for the chowkidar, but only silence answered.

Logic told me that no government property was ever abandoned without it being laid out in writing. I tried again, shouting for the caretaker this time. A gust of hot wind answered, bringing with it snatches of an old film song. I pushed open the gate, breaking the cobweb. Bits of it clung to my shirt and I brushed them off superstitiously. It was bad luck to break a cobweb. I went to the front door and banged on it loudly. There was no response. I waited and tried again, but had no better luck. Desperate, I went around to the back of the bungalow in search of the transistor radio.

Hacking away at the undergrowth with my cane to make sure there were no snakes, I came eventually to the servant’s quarters and banged on the servant’s door. After a rather long wait, I heard scuffling and footsteps. The door opened and a bleary face looked out.

“I am the assistant district magistrate and I want a room prepared for me at once,” I told the man icily.

He didn’t move, disbelief spreading slowly across his features.

“My car broke down, so I walked,” I found myself saying shamefacedly. “It will be here shortly.”

“But I am not the caretaker, sir, I am only the chowkidar.” He began to shut the door.

“I don’t care who you are,” I snapped, losing patience, “just get out here now.”

He understood that tone of voice. His face cleared. “Of course, sir. One moment, please.” He retreated and emerged a few minutes later in a lungi and a crumpled white undershirt. I wrinkled my nose in distaste. He smelled of sleep.

I made him follow me to the front of the house.

“So you are the chowkidar?” I said finally.

“Yes, sir.”

“And where is the caretaker of the rest house?”

“He is not here sir.”

“What do you mean, he is not here? Is he not a government servant.”

“He went back to his village, sir.”

“And did he take permission?” Of course, I knew the answer but felt impelled to ask it anyway.

“I don’t know, sahib.”

“And you let him leave, you said nothing?”

He stared at me stone-faced. Suddenly I became conscious of how big and strong he was. I couldn’t afford to make him angry, not without the full paraphernalia of the state.

I thought quickly, “All right then, you come and show me my room and then you can get me some tea.”

At first he seemed reluctant to move, then the stubborn look retreated. He bobbed his head and disappeared. He came back a scant five minutes later with the keys. This time he was wearing his forest-green chowkidar’s shirt.

Like the outside, the room he showed me was covered in dust. Cobwebs hung like exotic ferns from the walls. I was tempted at that point to return to the village and ask the Christian to whom I had first spoken to give me a bed for the night. Then the weight of my office settled upon me. I squared my shoulders and prepared resolutely to face night in the forest bungalow.

“Send someone to clean this room immediately,” I ordered. “I will have tea on the verandah in the meanwhile.”

I walked onto the verandah, carefully dusted a chair, and sat down. I looked at the unkempt, leaf-strewn garden and wondered how long this state of affairs had existed. More importantly, I wondered how long it would take me to sort out whatever had caused it and leave the village behind me forever. I had already conceived a grave dislike of Purandaru.

A slovenly woman brought me tea in a cracked cup with old tea stains decorating the cracks. I was tempted to order her to clean the cup and make me some fresh tea, but knew from experience just how far one could push illiterate villagers before they rebelled and refused to follow orders. So I took the cup from her and pretended to be blind to its filthy exterior. At least what was inside had been boiled to annihilation. Right after her came the same chowkidar with an even filthier duster. He began to swat at the furniture as though he were driving away flies, creating veritable clouds of dust everywhere. I began to cough instantly.

“Stop.” I commanded. “Forget the dusting. Just get me clean sheets.”

He looked confused.

“Sheets.” I said, miming the gestures of making up a bed.

His grey face brightened for a second, then dulled again. “No sheets,” he muttered, staring at the floor.

“What do you mean, no sheets?”

“No keys,” he said, mimicking the sound of keys jangling. By this I understood that the caretaker had either hidden the keys or gone off with them.

“All right, then, what about dinner?”

“Dinner?” He looked even vaguer than before.

“Yes. Dinner. Food,” I said, thinking that maybe he didn’t understand my North Indian accent.

“Oh, food.” He nodded. “Glucose biscuits?”

“No, I don’t want biscuits with my tea. I want to know what you can give me for dinner tonight,” I replied, enunciating each word carefully.

“Yes, yes.” He pointed at the darkening sky to show he’d understood. “Only biscuits for dinner,” he said in English.

My mind went into semi-paralysis at the idea of biscuits for an assistant district magistrate’s dinner. “I don’t think I can eat biscuits for dinner,” I said as calmly as I could. “I need proper food. Rice, sambar, vegetables.”

“Yes, yes, sir. But no food in market many days now,” he replied in Hindi, obviously feeling I hadn’t understood him.

“What do you mean?”

“Ration shop shut. Many, many days, sir.”

“The ration-shop man is a government employee, he cannot shut his shop whenever he feels like it!” I exclaimed.

“The shop is closed for many days now,” he repeated, sounding distressed.

“Then tell him to go and open it,” I snapped.

“I cannot sir, he is at the puja.”

I began to feel seriously concerned about the state of the village.

“Is everyone at the puja, then?”

“Yes, sir, it will begin at sunset. Big puja tonight.” He switched back to pidgin English, obviously feeling it was easier to play dumb in.

“But why is there no food in the guest house? Surely you know that you are expected to be able to provide food for an officer at a moment’s notice,” I said impatiently in Kannada.

He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “But we are always getting advance notice, sir.” His stance implied that I couldn’t be a real government sahib for I had come alone and unannounced, without even my official car with its red light.

I cursed myself for having let go of my car. I’d grown so used to being surrounded by the trappings of my position that I had forgotten what it was like to be without them. I felt absurd, a soldier without weapons.

“What about your food? You can bring me a little of that, surely?” I could hear a conciliatory note creep into my voice.

“No food. I have to go,” he said firmly.

“What do you mean you have to go? Surely you will eat first.”

“No. I go to the temple.”

“I’ll wait till you return.”

“I come back in the morning. We all do.”

“Then let your wife come back and serve me.”

He looked shocked. “But she must be there, too. Everyone must be there tonight.”

I grew tired of trying to reason with an illiterate. “I forbid you to go anywhere. Or I will have you sacked.”

His eyes widened in horror. “Sir, the pujari, the village. I cannot!”

“I don’t want to hear those words,” I told him sternly, feeling the situation come under control at last. “If you go to that stupid feast, I will make sure no child of yours ever gets a government job.”

“Sir,” the poor man fell to his knees, all traces of defiance gone, “please, sir, have pity. Don’t punish my children. I am a poor man.”

I relented a little. “All right, but get me something to eat.”

He burst into a torrent of impassioned Kannada, “Sir, I have to go, please. I beg you, let me go, the pujari will be very angry. Big devipuja tonight.”

“No.” I frowned fiercely, hoping I looked angrier than the pujari. “This is your job.”

“But the devi can only be brought back today. Sir, I must go.”

“I don’t care about your devi. I want my food.”

He gave me a look that told me exactly what he thought of my blasphemous point of view. Then, cleverly, he changed tactics. “But everyone in the village will be there. They will know that I have not come.”

“So what? They all saw me walk through the village. They will know that you are doing your job and looking after your sahib.”

His face became a mask. “But sir, I am just the chowkidar, it is not my job to look after you.”

Anger burnt away any inhibitions I might have had on the use and abuse of power. “And I can get you thrown out of your job tonight,” I snapped.

To my horror, the man lunged at my legs and buried his face in my trousers. I tried to detach them, but he only held on tighter. “Please, I have to go, sir. Or they will say I am a bad Hindu, sir.”

I tried to detach him from my legs and console him at the same time. “You don’t become a bad Hindu just because you miss one visit to the temple. And you can go tomorrow, after I am gone.”

For a second his arms loosened their pincer-like grip. Then they tightened again. “I have to go, sir, I have to.” The man began to whimper. “Or they will say that I have become one of them. And then, sir, I don’t know what they will do to me, sir. I am a good Hindu, I don’t want to become Christian, sir. What will my father say? And my children, sir, I will never see them again.”

I stared at him. For a second, time seemed to stop. Then my heart began to beat very fast. I tried to think intelligently. “Here, stop crying, you can go if you want to.” The mewling stopped. “But tell me first what is going on in this village.”

The man sat up and rubbed his face with the end of his filthy lungi. “I will tell you everything,” he said eagerly, his face transformed.

As I waited on the verandah for the chowkidar to change into his dhoti, I thought of what the files had to say on Purandaru.

It was a fairly typical Kannada village. The villagers grew rice and vegetables and fruit — mainly mango and coconut. Beetel nut trees provided them with a stable cash income. Their ponds were full of fish. The reason the name had stuck in my memory was because of a curious letter written nearly two years ago by someone who claimed to be the pujari of the temple, begging the government to send them a teacher for their school. The letter claimed that the government-appointed schoolmaster had not visited the school for over three months and no replacement had been sent, either.

I’d called the superintendent of schools and told him about the letter, explaining that there was no follow-up letter from our side in the file. He couldn’t remember the case but promised to look into the matter. A few weeks later, at the inauguration of his wife’s school, I brought up the case again. “Did you check what action had been taken, then?”

“Just the usual, sir,” he’d replied, not meeting my eyes, “villagers trying to use the state to settle personal vendettas. I checked the files. The teacher had been attending their school every day.”

“Oh. All right, send me a copy of our reply — I’ll need it for the files.”

And Purandaru had slipped from my mind.

But the village pujari, I now knew, hadn’t been trying to settle scores.

“Because the government teacher never came, we had no choice but to put our children into their school,” the chowkidar said, not looking at me.

“What school?”

“The Christian school, by the church. The Christian pujari teaches in English there.”

“But what does that have to do with the devipuja?” I asked impatiently.

The chowkidar’s face filled with shame. “It is because some of us sent our children to that school, that the devi became angry and left us.”

“That’s ridiculous!” I exploded. “You call yourself a government servant and believe such rubbish. Devis can’t walk away. They aren’t human.”

He waited patiently for my anger to dissipate. “Last year our crops failed. First she took away the rain, then the fish died, so we lost our only other source of food. If the rains don’t come this year then we will all die.”

“What rubbish, the rain was fine last year.”

“But not here.”

“That’s impossible.” I spluttered, then came to an abrupt halt remembering reading about a similar case that had taken place twenty years ago.

“Then, when the fish in the pond died too, we had to do something. We went to the pundit and he advised us to do a devimaha yagna.

“At first we were reluctant. Maha yagnas cost a lot and no one had very much left. But in the end, Rajamma convinced us.”

“Who is Rajamma?” I asked.

“She is a widow, sir, with one son, Raju, who is a little mad. He is a very good boy, though, and loved by the devi. He would sit with the devi all day sometimes, singing to her. He was also very friendly with the Christian priest. Since Rajamma worked all day, Raju would often go to the school.”

“So what does Raju have to do with the church?” I asked impatiently.

“Well, after the priest got the bells for his church Raju disappeared. Someone said they saw the priest taking Raju away in his car. Then the ration-shop owner saw Raju in the convent school, sir, in the town.”

Rumours. Every village was a hotbed of them. “Then what happened?”

“Rajamma went to the local oracle and begged him to ask the devi where her son was. He told her that Raju had indeed become a Christian. But not of his free will. He had been bewitched. Rajamma was very sad. So our pundit told her that he would do a special puja to the devi to free the boy and bring him back to his senses. All the villagers were asked to attend the puja. Rajamma sold her land and used the money to pay for it. The puja took all night. The pundit hired loudspeakers. A special group of sadhus came to sing bhajans all night.”

“And did Raju come back?” I asked sarcastically. He was probably a shoe-shiner in Bombay by now.

“Yes, sir.”

“What?”

“He came back, sir, but he couldn’t say where he had been, sir. He hasn’t spoken since he came back. It was the devi’s price for returning him. After that, the village decided to do a puja for her. The priest hired a group of singers and they came and made their home in the coconut grove behind the temple. He hired painters from Kavallur and while they painted, temple musicians also brought in from Kavallur sang. Then he called the Brahmin cooks from Kuknalim and while the statue of the devi was herself washed and repainted, they sang and recited shlokas and cooked.”

I couldn’t follow his logic but I’d heard enough. Things would come to a boiling point soon if nothing was done. “How long has this been going on?” I interrupted him.

“How long since what has been going on?”

“Since the all-night jagrans began?”

He looked vague. “I don’t remember, maybe a month? Two weeks? It’s hard to tell, it’s been so long.” He yawned.

“So long since what?”

“Since we slept,” he said matter-of-factly.

He stopped and wiped a tear from his eye. “Each night we have gathered at the temple and prayed and sung to the devi till dawn, begging her to come back. But still she does not come. Our children are weak from lack of sleep, our eyes are dry, and we cannot cry. Our feet ache and our throats are raw from calling to her. But still she does not come, sir.”

“Why don’t you stop and let the pundit take over? Maybe the devi will listen to him better than she listens to you. He is, after all, a professional.”

The irony missed its mark. “Oh no, sir, a single voice is not strong enough to call back the devi once she has gone away, even though our priest is a great man. It’s the bells, sir.” All of a sudden his face became unrecognizable. “If you could only stop the bells of the church,” he cried, “then I am sure the devi will come back.”

“Why? What is wrong with the bells?”

“They ring all day so we cannot sleep, stealing our Shakti so we cannot pray properly to the devi. We fear that already the devi may be too far away.”

I remained silent, appalled at the complexity of the problem before me.

“Sir, can you not speak to the priest, tell him that the government has ordered the removal of the bells?” the chowkidar asked.

“Of course not.” I cut him off before the idea could take hold. If the villagers came to see me in a group, the state would get dragged in, the media would find out and splash it all over the front page, and the problem would become political. Only blood would resolve it then. “I will meet your pujari and theirs together and order them to stop this madness right now,” I announced.

The chowkidar’s eyes grew huge. He clutched my feet wildly. “No sir, please sir. They will kill me if they know that I have told you. Please, sir.”

I looked down at the man. His shirt back was covered in sweat and he was trembling. “All right, all right. I won’t say anything. Take me with you, I need to eat at least,” I lied.

“Then you will come back to the rest house and sleep?” he asked worriedly.

“Yes. Yes. I promise. Shall we go?”

Night transformed the road to the village, turning it into a pale silver stream slicing through a dense unified mass of black that rustled and shivered like a creature alive but asleep, dreaming strange and restless dreams. Soon we were part of a group of ragged, wild-eyed men and women shuffling along slowly towards the temple. They walked carefully, as if the mere task of putting one foot before the other was fraught with danger. An exhausted silence hung over all of them. Only when we came into the lighted part of the village did they become animated, pulling their shawl-like upper garments over their heads and sinking their necks into their chests.

We came up to the church. In the moonlight it glowed serenely. Someone spat. “He used our money — collected from all the children in his school, our village children, sir, Hindu and Christian, to buy those bells,” a plump man who had the look of a barber explained. The others mumbled their assent. All of a sudden their shuffling feet became infused with a spurt of energy and we entered the field in a rush.

The cricket ground was ablaze in halogen lights. Bhajans bursting from speakers tied to the coconut trees waged a not entirely successful war on film music coming out of the radios of the many vendors of bindis and cheap face powder. Odorous clouds of sweat, rancid ghee, incense and rotting food, urine and freshly frying ghee rushed to greet us. Yet the field itself was unnaturally free of people.

The others melted away with breathtaking suddenness, leaving only the chowkidar, who guided me to the little tent in front of the temple that I had seen earlier in the day. We entered the tent and were confronted by a living wall of flesh. Miraculously, a crack appeared in it as soon as we stepped inside, one that was just wide enough for a single man to pass through. The chowkidar urged me forward. “Sir, what is the matter? They are waiting for you,” he whispered.

At last, years of practice in the exercise of power came to my rescue. For though I had no desire whatsoever to go to the front of that smelly, crowded tent, I knew that as the sole representative of the state I had no choice. God and the government had to share the same stage, or else we civil servants would never be able to function. The robes of power are seldom of one’s choosing, yet never, till that night, had they felt so uncomfortable.

There was a murmur of approval as I took my place in the front. I tried to make myself tall, feeling like an ant with his back to a cyclone. Something demonic had been set in motion. I could feel it making its way through the crowd, boring into my back. Would I be able to control it? Or was it too late already? I stared straight ahead and tried to seem absorbed in the proceedings.

The stage itself looked rather demure, with orange and white flowers hanging down the sides and garlanding the walls, and four deepa stambhas, multi-wicked floor lamps, at the four corners. In the center, in front of the red and gold curtain, was a single silver microphone. Behind it, in a curtained alcove, priests could be heard chanting. The heat was terrible. The smoke from the burning deepams stung my eyes, making them water. The smell of flowers and incense and ghee was quite overpowering. My lungs began to crave fresh air. Fearing I’d be overcome, I put a hand out and leaned on the edge of the stage.

The chanting stopped and a man appeared in front of the curtain. He was not tall, but of an ascetic thinness that bordered on the skeletal. He walked languidly to the front of the stage. Yet he carried with him such an aura of tightly controlled energy that he seemed to grow as he approached the front. His face was practically devoid of flesh. Thin blue veins crisscrossed his forehead. Empty skin stretched tightly between jaw and cheekbone. But his most striking feature was his eyes. Protruding and practically lidless, with beady black pupils that swam in a large surface of startling blue-white, his eyes seemed to see what no one else could. He came up to the microphone and stared into the assembly, picking out faces from the crowd. A tremor ran through them. I felt it too and knew with absolute certainty that I was looking at the village pujari, the selfsame one who had had the courage to write to us.

He was no ordinary village pujari, looking after the daily rituals of the temple, weddings, and deaths, and minding his business. I understood why the chowkidar was so afraid of him. There seemed nothing this man with the staring eyes didn’t know about the unseen. Even when his eyes weren’t upon you, his emaciated form was like some awful reminder of the essential weakness of the flesh. But more even than his thinness it was his skin that seemed to attest to his inner purity, for it glowed like burnished copper, more alive than a flame. Never in my life had I seen skin like that! As if he was aware of the magic of his skin, the priest was naked to his waist except for the sacred thread glowing whitely on his chest and the rudraksha beads around his neck. The saffron lungi he was wearing added more fire to the colour of his skin, so that he seemed to burn in eternal penance for the weakness of us lesser mortals.

The pujari waited till the shuffling and whispering in the hall died down. It seemed to me to take an absurdly short time. Then he began to speak.

“I see you are all here. That is good.” His voice was a delight to listen to, cultured and beautifully modulated, yet rich in the drama of emotion. No actor could have spoken like that.

“Today is the thirteenth day of our worship and Amma still won’t come to us. Do you know why that is?” A collective moan arose, like the wind of loss, from the assembly.

He shut his eyes and listened to it with satisfaction. His flesh quivered like the surface of a lake touched by the barest hint of a breeze.

“I will never forget,” he began. “Today I saw her so clearly...” He paused, a sob in his voice. Then, just when the tension grew almost unbearable, he opened his eyes and let us feel the full effect of them. “...more clearly than I can see you with whom I have lived and eaten all my life and who are before me now.” His eyes shifted to an indeterminate spot above our heads. “She was just there, at the edge of the village, outlined against the bamboo groves. She didn’t look at me, her eyes were focussed on something far away that I could not see. I went closer. She ignored me. I wanted to cry, she was in such a terrible condition. She looked like a widow who had lost her way in the forest for many nights. Her beautiful red sari, the one I put on her with my own hands, was gone.” He lifted his hands as he said this, their emptiness emphasizing his message. “And the white widow’s sari she now wears was streaked with grey and brown and torn in places. I could see evil-looking thorns clinging to the cloth in other places. Her lotus feet were so torn that they resembled the half-eaten remains of a tiger’s meal. Her long black hair was caked with the dust and dead leaves of the forest. An earring was missing, and her belt had fallen off. Her bangles lay broken at her feet and her crown hung drunkenly down the side of her head, caught on her matted locks. Her face, her beautiful moonlike face, was lifeless and wan. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and her lips were dull and cracked. Her bride’s bindi was gone and there was no sindoor in the parting of her hair and dead flowers lay across her shrivelled breasts.

“ ‘Amma, what has happened to you?’ I cried, falling at her feet. ‘Why are you like this?’

“ ‘My children have forgotten me. They do not remember me anymore,’ she replied sadly.

“ ‘That is not true, maa. They made a mistake, but now they have seen the error of their ways, they are calling to you, Amma. Can you not hear them?’

“She said nothing and started to walk away from me towards the forest.

“ ‘Oh, fish-eyed one, why do you persist in ignoring your children?’ I called after her. ‘Have they not done enough yet? Are you not satisfied with their repentance? What more must your children do?’ In my despair I fell to the ground. At last she turned her head and looked at me. Her hair caught on a bamboo frond and revealed her other ear. I thought I would die of shame. For Amma’s beautiful shell-shaped ear was bleeding. As I watched, the blood poured down like rain and soaked her white sari.

“ ‘Oh, Amma, what has happened?’ I cried in alarm.

“ ‘You have done this to me,’ she replied. ‘Save me.’

“And she vanished.”

The priest stopped. People in the audience were sobbing loudly, some crying out, “No, oh no,” their bodies swaying back and forth.

“What can we do for Amma?” they cried in unison.

He surveyed them in silence and a satisfied smile spread his thin lips. “We must continue to pray.” Suddenly the heat and the smoke and the smell of so many bodies became too much for me. I turned and tried to push my way through the wall of bodies, heedless of the angry shouts that arose.

I must have fainted, because the next thing I knew I was sitting on the floor at the edge of the hall, close to the entrance. I was a child again and someone was cradling my head in his lap, fanning me.

“Big brother,” he said respectfully, the moment he saw my eyes open, “are you feeling better? Can I get you some water?”

“How? What ha-happened?” I tried to sit up.

“Hush, lie still, give them time to forget you,” he whispered as he fanned my face. His voice was unemphatic, with a curious lack of inflection.

“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to get a look at the man’s face. But the darkness made it impossible to see anything more than the whites of his eyes.

“Big brother, you have upset them. They’re in a funny mood tonight, I can feel it.”

I could feel the truth underpinning his words, and so I obeyed him, wondering where my unknown benefactor belonged in the political mosaic of the village. I sat up suddenly, remembering who I was. His lips lifted briefly in acknowledgement, but his eyes never left the stage. The stillness of his body as he watched the proceedings, and the utter concentration that stillness implied, both impressed and disturbed me.

Suddenly the hall was plunged in darkness and, as if that were the cue they’d been waiting for, six priests appeared from behind the curtain that hid the sanctum sanctorum from the eyes of the spectators. They walked solemnly to the front of the stage. One carried a shallow tin box and a broom. The second and third carried the wood and the oil respectively. The fourth, fifth, and sixth ones were musicians who began immediately to play while the fire was prepared. Behind the curtain, meanwhile, lamps were lit and a shadow play began. One pair of shadows with elongated arms bathed the idol. Others waved elaborately carved silver fly-whisks. Another pair lifted two multi-pronged lamps and moved them in slow circles to the rhythm of the music, throwing grotesque many-armed shadows on the curtain. I glanced at my companion. His chest heaved with emotion; his eyes, moist and shining, were glued to the stage.

After the fire was lit and the music ceased, the village pujari reappeared and took possession of the mike. “The evening’s program will be the same as yesterday’s. The only change is that today the abhisek will be followed by the kirtanam and then the distribution of prasadam,” he said.

A few groans escaped the crowd, and the woman in front of us clutched her children.

“Impressive, isn’t he, our pujari?” the man asked.

I said nothing.

“You don’t agree?”

“It is not my place to agree or disagree,” I said carefully.

On stage the pujari continued to speak. “I would like to add that we have been forced to do this because some of the sub-cooks did not arrive on time. This is what happens when some of you do not take your responsibilities seriously. Everyone suffers — especially the children, who are the devi’s favorites and most likely to get her to respond to their call. If the children don’t get their food on time, the devi will be angry.” A collective moan went through the crowd.

“After prasadam, there will be the special pujas for those who have requested them and those who have been polluted by the touch of the enemies. I will call out their names and they can come and collect their baskets of offerings. Then the singing will resume and I want you all to be there. Tonight is ekadasi and the devi is most susceptible to your call. No one is to go to sleep.” He stared threateningly at several people. “Especially you, Chinnakutty,” he called. “I will be watching you.” His eyes pierced the black mass of bodies in the center of the tent. “And you, Gauriamma, no taking your children home early.”

I looked around to see who he was talking to and saw a woman with unhealthy, greyish skin and wide, staring eyes. She hung her head and clutched four scared-looking children to her.

“Poor children, can’t he see he’s making them suffer? They’re dying of fatigue,” the man beside me muttered.

My ears pricked up. “Has this been going on for long?”

He looked at me intently. “Eighteen days, if we count today,” came the prompt reply. “I wonder how much longer the village will last.”

I felt greatly encouraged. Here was someone intelligent and educated who could help me understand what was happening and perhaps help me put a stop to it.

The hypnotic voice of the pundit continued to flow through the public-address system. “I hope you have all left your donations in the donation box at the side of the hall. If you haven’t done so, please do it now. There are some of you who came too late to do so. I know who you are.” He paused and looked searchingly at the audience. “There has been a marked drop in the collections as well as the food. I was angry at the selfishness of some of us but I realise that it must be the will of the devi that we purify our minds further. From now on, only rice payasam will be served.” A ripple went through the audience and many hung their heads.

A sudden flurry of activity drew my eyes to the stage again. More pundits, this time dressed like sadhus, in saffron, and beating on drums and cymbals of all sizes, and blowing on horns and conches, swarmed all over the stage. They all looked fierce and devoted. The curtains flew back, revealing the idol at last. A sigh of relief rose up from the crowd. For there in the inner sanctum of the temple, bathed in a warm halo of light, was the devi herself.

I am not by nature superstitious. An agnostic father and an atheist mother had made me a worshiper of the rational world. But a shiver ran through me all the same, for in spite of what I had been brought up to believe, I felt the devi come alive. I felt it as surely as did every person in that room. I saw her hair move in the gentle lotus-perfumed breeze that suddenly invaded the room, and I felt an inexplicable lightening of my heart, a silent invasion of joy in that dark, hot, smelly space. A joyous shout burst from my throat and I felt spontaneous tears wet my cheeks. I wiped them surreptitiously, glancing at the man self-consciously. To my relief there were tears rolling down his cheeks, too.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she? It is hard not to be moved,” I said.

He turned his head and dashed away his tears. “Idol worship is not a good thing,” he growled thickly. “Come, let us go outside.”

I should have felt grateful. The man had saved me from becoming as superstitious as the villagers. Instead, I felt resentful, as if I had been unjustly rebuked.

The man stood up and gave me his hand. Somewhat reluctantly I let him help me up and together we crept out of the tent into the deserted cricket ground.

A slight wind that smelled of the sea blew across the field, carrying the garbage with it. As I sucked the cooler air into my lungs, rationality took possession of me once more. The rains were coming. Would my car make it out of the village? Had it even arrived? What had happened to it?

The wind woke a dog lying asleep on a garbage heap. The dog opened his mouth wide and howled. An answering screech rent the peace of the night. The dog leapt high in the air and ran away.

“What was that?” I asked my companion.

He looked unperturbed. There came another shriek, but this time the static that followed made the cause of the sound clearly discernible. The loudspeakers had just been switched on.

“Are you hungry?” my companion asked.

Of course I was hungry, but I wanted to know who my mysterious benefactor was first. “Not very,” I lied. “Tell me first, who are you? How is it you know English?”

The man laughed, showing even white teeth. “First eat. You must be hungry.”

“No, I’m fine. I can eat later,” I told him impatiently.

“My mother always said one shouldn’t talk on an empty stomach.”

I had to agree. The smell of the temple food cooking exclusively in clarified butter was making my stomach rumble. I gave in. “What about you? Will you eat with me?”

He shook his head. “Later. I will wait for you by that tree over there.”

I ducked into the tent. A slovenly cook filled a leaf plate with lemon rice and watery curds. The filth was unbelievable. But I was too hungry to care. I helped myself to some chillies and walked out. The cooks watched me leave without stopping their work. Even they seemed to know who I was, which is why they let me eat before the Gods.

When I stepped out of the tent the man was waiting for me beneath the tree, exactly where he said he’d be. He stood up and formally offered me a seat on a branch that curved like a swing just a few feet from the ground. Then he sat down on the floor before me.

“So who are you? What do you do here?” I asked immediately.

His answer astonished me. “I came to meet you,” he said.

“Why? Are you a government employee, or a member of the panchayat?” I tried to read the expression on his face, but either by chance or by design it was once more in shadow, whereas the lights strung on top of the huge tent practically blinded me.

“You are from the government, of the government,” he corrected himself. “It is rare for a government official, even a minor one, to visit a village as tiny as this. What has brought someone as important as yourself here?”

The man had a natural authority that made one want to answer, but I held back, remembering my position. “Word gets around quickly, does it not? Tell me, how is it that a man of your talents is content to remain here?”

“Because I know the world is nothing but a big village.” He laughed briefly, his eyes never leaving my face for an instant. I found his gaze distinctly unsettling but couldn’t pull my own away. “The people here are quite easy to manage. Except when they have been scared by something quite out of the ordinary. Like your sudden arrival, for example. That’s why I had to come.”

“How do you know English so well?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.

“I wanted to be a bureaucrat like you,” he answered bluntly.

“Why didn’t you?” I asked when I’d recovered from my surprise.

“You believe that life can be planned?” he asked.

Unprepared, I gave a stupid reply. “Of course it can. If one is careful and prudent.”

“Careful. Prudent.” He smiled in a way that made me feel young and foolish. “What lovely words. So vague and so comforting. And what if you were born in a pit? What would you plan then?”

“I would plan to climb out of the pit,” I replied patiently.

“You think I haven’t tried?” my companion asked, his voice becoming thin with suppressed emotion.

“How do I know when you refuse to tell me anything about yourself?” I replied. The opening I had been waiting for had finally arrived.

“I come from a Brahmin village hidden in a fold of the high Himalayas. My father was the village priest. He looked after the temple of the goddess Chamundi. In those days there was no road to get to the village and one had to walk the last ten kilometers up a narrow footpath. So no government teacher ever came to our school. So my father was the teacher, too. He was a very good teacher and after the children of the village were finished with him many went on to get government jobs.

“Though my father was highly educated himself and could teach all subjects, his great love was our sacred texts. He knew Sanskrit, as do I. I can still remember the glow on his face as he sat down on his mat in the morning and began to recite his prayers. So though the village was poor and he was highly educated, he was content to remain there as its priest. He fed himself on the respect the villagers showered on him. Not being able to afford a dowry, he married a thin, half-starved daughter of a high-caste but poor Brahmin with five girls. I was their first child and they were so proud of the fact that I was a boy that it took them almost three years to realize that I had been born deaf.

“After me, there came a girl and then another and another and another. My father was furious. Who would say his beloved mantras for him when he died and was laid on the funeral pyre? How would his soul reach heaven? Who would perform the rites that protected his soul while it wandered for one year and thirteen days before it reached heaven?

“I grew up to be strong and quick. I was never ill. My mother kept me beside her as much as she could, out of the way of my father. I helped her cook and clean and tend the animals. She loved me dearly, I could feel it in the way she held me close, the way she looked at me when my father was not there. But my father, he could hardly bear to look at me. All he could think of was the shame I’d brought on him. He felt certain the entire village was laughing at him, schoolteacher, pundit, the most learned man in the village, yet with an illiterate deaf-mute of a son. The older I got, and the stronger my body became, the more he hated me. I remember watching him shout at me. I couldn’t hear him, but I felt the words hit me and I’d cry even before he touched me.

“Then, when I was nine, my mother had another son. My father was overjoyed. Then, when my little brother was three a snake bit him and my father couldn’t get him to the hospital in time, so he died. After that my father went mad. He took out his sorrow on me. I was a big boy by then and I hit him back, just once. But that was enough for him. He beat me with an iron rod till I was bleeding so badly that my mother and the other villagers had to drag him off me. The week after that we boarded a bus and then a train. In Lucknow he left me in a small wayside tea stall. I never saw him again.”

“How... how awful,” I gasped, scarcely able to believe my ears.

He continued as if he hadn’t heard. “To begin with, I was overjoyed. It was like being thrust into a beautiful dream. Only when I grew hungry did I realize that I was alone; that I’d been abandoned.”

The memory of abandonment was like a wound on his face. “I don’t know how I managed not to get killed that first day. I couldn’t hear the cars honking at me to get out of the way. Eventually, a scooter hit me and I awoke in the hospital. As they couldn’t find my parents, they shifted me to the government boys’ home. There we were kept in cells like animals, woken up in the morning, fed something disgusting, and then made to sit idle for hours in a classroom with steel bars on the doors and windows. A man would occasionally look inside and shout at us if we made too much noise. The boys, well, I won’t describe what I went through there, but it was horrible.

“Only my own nightmare was worse. I knew people communicated with each other in some mysterious way that was related to the mouth. But when I opened my mouth, whatever sounds I made seemed to provoke reactions similar to those of my father. I thought words were shadow equivalents of the expressions on a person’s face. I felt them stir inside me too. I would open my mouth, think of the feeling, and make a sound. But then the person’s face would turn away and I would know that I had failed to communicate. I tried again and again, growing more and more violent as the desperation built up inside me. At last they decided that I was too dangerous to be kept with the other boys. I was given to the Christian missionaries in Lucknow.”

“The Christian fathers!” I exclaimed. Suddenly a terrible suspicion struck me. “You’re not...”

He smiled grimly and nodded. “I was little better than an animal when they found me. I trusted no one. I did not even know my name. I didn’t, and still don’t, know the name of my village. I can never go back to where I came from. The fathers called me John. They taught me to lipread, to write and speak.”

I couldn’t contain myself any longer and turned to face him fully. “You’re... you’re the priest?”

“At last you’ve guessed it,” he said sarcastically. “After all the hints I gave you, I’d have thought you’d catch on much faster. Why else can I speak English as well as you?”

“I... I never thought, never expected to find...” I stammered, uncomfortably aware that he was lipreading and wondering what else he could see in my body language.

“A priest here? Why not? I wanted to talk to a real sahib. And I knew you’d be brought here first.”

“I was coming to meet you tomorrow,” I explained quickly, guiltily.

He frowned. “Tomorrow? Tomorrow may have been too late. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you to learn if you were really a better person than me.”

“Why should I be better than you?”

“Because you rule this great country. I only take care of its soul,” he replied, not sparing the irony.

“From all I hear, you are the Pied Piper of this village,” I said drily. “You’ve taken away all the children.”

He gave me a strange look, not unmixed with respect. “I am no Pied Piper. I never told the government to refuse to educate its people.”

We were fencing with each other, I realized suddenly, and to my surprise, I found that I was enjoying it. “You hate the Hindus, don’t you? Because of your father.”

He laughed cynically. “My father was nothing. An unthinking animal with pretty words in his mouth. What did he know about God when he knew nothing of morality?” He looked towards the tent and his face twisted with bitterness. “Why should I hate these people? They are not people, they are a single undefined mass. They ooze over the earth unthinkingly. They can be stamped upon, and they won’t react, because they have no mind, only feelings. And feelings without a mind to direct them are powerless. But touch their symbols and they go wild with rage. My only regret is that my father’s Hindu blood is in me and will one day betray me.”

“Touch any group’s symbols and they will riot,” I said coldly. Then something made me add, “And yet, I will bet that Hindus are by far the most tolerant group. Take this, your own district. Christians and Muslims live happily in a Hindu majority state. There has never been a riot here.”

“Because Christians and Muslims know better than to try to wake the sleepers.”

“Or is it because Hindus tolerate you that you persist with your intolerable arrogance!” I snapped.

He just looked at me. Then his face split in a smile that had nothing spontaneous in it. All at once I had a premonition of disaster.

The priest stood up. “All right, let’s find out how tolerant these people of yours are,” he said, and ran towards the temple.

“Hey you! Stop!” I shouted after him. “What are you going to do?” I was talking to the wind. He kept running. I ran after him. People were streaming out of the tent. I pushed my way through them. They didn’t even react. Their eyes were dull and they fell away at the touch of my hand, their bodies crumpling like paper.

I rushed into the empty tent. It was dark and silent. The priest was nowhere to be seen. Then I heard the sound of feet on wooden floorboards. The priest was on the stage. I rushed up to the front of the tent and clambered onto the stage. In front of me, the devi was unveiled and smiled intimately at me, her glassy eyes serene, reflecting the scores of tiny lamps beneath her. I couldn’t help staring at that face. Like a lake in the middle of a firestorm, I thought, deeply moved in spite of myself. Suddenly I sensed a presence behind me.

The priest stood there, his arms filled with garbage.

“Why...” Then a terrible thought struck. “Why have you brought that here?”

He grinned sardonically. “Wait and see.”

“What are you going to do?” My voice was a terrified squeak.

He leapt forward, pushing me aside. I fell heavily to the floor and lay there stunned. He put one foot upon my neck and kept me pinned to the floor. I didn’t need to look at him to know what he was doing. I could hear him whistling tunelessly. In the tiny pocket of my brain where my rationality had gone into hiding, I wondered how he had taught himself to whistle. Suddenly a hand was pulling me up. “Come on, get up. Take a look at what you’ve done,” he whispered.

I turned towards the devi. Horror welled up in my heart. Around her the curtains were on fire, bathing her in an ugly orange light. Her face was covered with clumps of half-eaten rice and vegetables, plastic bags, peels, and something brown and lumpy which I didn’t dare name. Her golden crown was ripped and fluttered like a moth in the current of air caused by the flames. Her sari had more brown stuff and food and leaf plates clinging to it, and her feet were completely hidden by more garbage. The lamps were upturned, and the prasada of rice and laddoos was scattered amongst the flowers at her feet.

I turned to the priest. “You bastard,” I screamed.

“Clean it up,” he ordered, laughing maniacally. “I’ll call the others to help you.”

He reached up and began to ring the temple bells. My fist wavered between his face and my duty. I stepped towards the desecrated idol. But it was too late. I heard the sound of many running feet, and shouts. The villagers were running towards their beloved temple.

The priest stopped laughing. He grabbed my hand. “Come on, we must get out of here.”

“No, you clean this up before they come. I’ll help. It’s not right.” I brushed the filth off the devi’s clothes, leaving streaks of brown behind in the wake of my fingers.

He pulled me away. “They’ll kill you if they find you here. They won’t stop to ask questions.”

I looked through the gap in the back of the tent. The crowd had grown as the news had spread and now they were a huge mass, a black wall of destruction, unstoppable as a tidal wave.

He pulled me down the steps alongside the wings of the stage and we stumbled through the garbage dump from where he had collected his offerings for the devi. As soon as we were through, we began running, him in the lead. We leapt over the low wall that separated the temple from the churchyard, we ran across the graveyard, dodging tombstones, and around the corner of the building to the front of the church. The priest struggled with the heavy wooden doors and I waited tensely beside him.

At last he got the door open and we dashed inside. He locked and bolted the door after us.

“It won’t hold long,” I said grimly, feeling vaguely satisfied at the idea.

“You’re right.” He frowned and was silent for a moment. Then he looked up and smiled. “Follow me,” he ordered, pointing to some stairs at the side of the altar.

I hesitated. “Is that the other way out of this church?”

His eyebrows went up. “Out? There’s nowhere we can hide in this village. They’ll hunt us down like rats. We’re safer here.”

“My God!” The dire nature of our predicament dawned upon me. “Do you have a phone in here? I can call police headquarters.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “What would a deaf man do with a phone?”

I felt embarrassed and looked away. The silence was broken by the sound of fists banging on the door.

“Come on,” he said brusquely. “We can’t wait here any longer. I know a place where we can hide.” He dashed to the stairs and began climbing. I followed him, panting a little, for the stairs were steep. Only then did I realise what we were climbing towards. The breath caught in my throat, for he was leading me into a trap. The steps led up the church tower. Once we were up there we’d be stuck. I hesitated. He turned around as if he’d read my mind. “Don’t worry, I know what I am doing.” Such was the power of the man that I believed him.

The stairs opened onto a little platform. Directly above us, within touching distance, were the bells. Below us, the entire village and the surrounding countryside spread out like a black mantle gashed with colour. Beneath us, in the bright light of the floodlights, were the crazy reds and purples and pinks of the temple and fairground. Faintly visible around it in the reflected light were the white and burnt orange of nearby roofs and walls. Beyond them, the countryside was draped in the mantle of night. From where we stood, I could clearly see spreading across the fairground, like a tattered cloak, the villagers who had stood aside so docilely for me to pass through a bare three hours earlier. Their anger was palpable, made more fearsome by its silence and its apparent lack of emotion. They moved across the field like a wave, crowned by a bright saffron dot brandishing a trident. Suddenly, from the cook’s tent, torches appeared and rushed to join the main body of people massed at the entrance of the maidan. As the torches joined them, the others cheered once and then they swarmed forward. Every once in a while I heard a voice calling to the devi, calling to Mahadev, swearing to bring victory or die. The words seemed to belong to no one, they simply rose out of the mass of bodies streaming down the main street to the church doors.

“They’re not going to stop till they’ve burnt you precious church down,” I told the priest.

“But I’ll have won my bet,” he crowed.

“What bet? What are you talking about? You’re sick!” I cried.

He didn’t answer, he just looked at me and I felt every word that had passed between us come alive.

A cool wind cut through the heat and dried the sweat on my body, making me feel suddenly cold. “Please, you’ve made your point, now put a stop to this madness.”

I looked down at the villagers massed at the foot of the church.

The priest reached up and grabbed the ropes that hung from the crossbeam supporting the bells down the middle of the tower. He began to pull on them.

“What, what are you doing?” I shouted, terrified. “They’ll be up here in a second.”

When he didn’t answer, I tried to grab the ropes away from him. But he was physically at least one and a half times my size and twice as strong. He shrugged me off as if I were a blade of grass. I landed with a thud on the paving stones. For a second I felt nothing. Then I felt a burning in the base of my spine and my legs felt numb. I lay there and stared impotently up into the huge mouths of the bells.

At first the bells didn’t seem to respond. Then, slowly, they began to move, just a few inches this way and that to start with, the arc increasing a little bit with each rotation. But still the movement had not reached the cavernous center and no sound emerged. The priest looked up at them and pulled harder. Suddenly the bells found their rhythm and began to swing backwards and forwards, ringing out across the countryside, calling out for help, and at the same time singing out their anger and defiance.

I struggled up into a semi-crouch and looked down over the edge of the parapet. Men and women were massed around the church doors for at least a quarter of a mile down the road. Their flaming torches illuminated their upturned faces. They were all looking at the bells, fear and wonder on their faces.

Then all I could feel were the bells. Like a million tiny arrows passing through my body, the sound of the bells drowned out all other sensation. I looked at the priest. He was clinging to the ropes, swinging on them with all the transparent delight of a little boy. His eyes were shut, an expression of blissful concentration on his face. He was far away from this world, in a world of his own where nothing could touch him. And I was all alone.

I looked down. The crowd seemed to have thinned. They’ve gone away, I thought bitterly, the bells have scared them away. Or maybe word had gone around that I was in the tower with the priest and regretted the unhappy coincidence that had brought me to this place. Then I realised that the villagers hadn’t gone away. They had only retreated to the edge of the circle of light and were getting ready to beat down the front doors of the church with a wooden battering ram.

The breeze grew stronger, whipping through my hair and my fear-soaked shirt. Suddenly I smelt it, that first whiff of dampness mixed with dust that is the messenger of the rain.

“They’re going to break down the doors of your church,” I shouted to the priest.

“Don’t worry, my people will be here soon,” he shouted back through the freshening wind. “They won’t let the church burn.” He pulled at the ropes even more fiercely as he said this. The wooden platform on which we stood shook with the force of it. I looked up at the bells. They were swinging wildly back and forth, the beam on which they hung creaking ominously.

“Stop! The beam will break and the bells will crush us,” I yelled.

Suddenly I heard a tremendous crash. I looked down. The battering ram had begun its work.

“You see, they’ll be in here very soon,” I told the priest with gloomy delight.

“So will my people,” the priest answered.

“Your people are cowards,” I spat.

But the priest didn’t respond, he was swinging on the ropes, his eyes closed, lips moving wordlessly in prayer.

Another crash shook the building, this time accompanied by the breaking of glass. I leaned over the parapet. On the ground below, they were cheering weakly, scenting victory. Another cry to the devi rent the air and they moved back for the third and last strike.

Suddenly the sky was rent by roll upon roll of thunder. But so intent were the people on the ground on what they were about to accomplish that they paid no attention. My ears seemed to be the only ones that were listening to God’s warning.

“Did you hear that thunder?” I shouted at the priest. “That’s God’s way of telling you to stop this madness now, before it’s too late. If you won’t listen to me, at least listen to him.”

The priest’s rapt expression never changed. His eyes were glazed. “I heard them,” he muttered blissfully. “I heard the bells.”

“That wasn’t bells you heard, that was thunder,” I cried.

He looked at me pityingly. “You don’t understand. God has given me His reward,” he said. “This was meant to be.”

I stared at him with revulsion. “Go down and apologise before it’s too late,” I begged, “or you will have blood spilt in God’s house tonight.”

“I did nothing wrong,” he said calmly. “You did this.”

“This is the work of your hate,” I said. “And it’s going to get us killed.”

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said in reply. “You set this off.”

I hung my head. Somewhere inside me a voice whispered that the priest was right. Violence needed a spectator, someone who was outside it and could appreciate its horror. Then my ears distinguished thin cries, women’s voices screaming in warning, coming from the back of the crowd. A bolt of lightning flooded the village in momentary daylight and I saw an armed group of villagers running down the main street of the village towards the church. They had torches and farming implements as weapons and they too were silent.

The group by the church split down the center, half of them turning to face the oncoming group and the other half continuing to slam the battering ram into the church doors.

I lunged at the priest and pulled him to the parapet. “Look, the bloodshed is about to begin. Look!” I screamed into his face.

But the priest pulled away from me and grabbed the ropes again. The bells began to toll, and his face took on the same rapt, faraway look.

In the next instant, two completely separate events merged. The church door split wide open and two warring groups, one Hindu and one Christian, melted into each other with a roar. And in the bell tower, the priest knelt down and began to pray, thanking God for his personal miracle.

I tore my eyes away from the spectacle of the mad priest and watched in horror as below us the bloodshed continued. “No, no, no,” I moaned. “Please God, no.” But even as I did so, a part of me was already seeing how it would look in cold, permanent ink, in the words of the report I would have to file later, and was removing my mind to that safe place in the future. Suddenly I felt something cold and wet on my cheeks. I reached up to wipe them away, thinking they were tears. But there were too many of them. Then I became aware of the drops hitting my head and shoulders as well. I looked up. The bells had stilled. Their rounded surfaces were dark grey, slick and shining like the skin of wild elephants. The rain cast a blanket of silence over the sounds of battle. I watched it fall on those hot sweating bodies, on the still-warm stilled ones, on the shining grey blades and sharpened sticks and the red-brown mud. All I could hear was the sound of the rain, the hiss of the raindrops falling on leaves and the wind that whipped them off the leaves.

I don’t know how long I stood there, too afraid to go down. Finally the rain petered out. The few survivors dropped their weapons and took to helping the wounded and getting them onto their feet.

I heard the priest move. I looked around. “It’s over,” I told him.

He got to his feet at last and peered over the parapet expressionlessly.

“There! Are you happy with your work?” I cried.

He stared at the carnage below us and to my horror, his mouth split into a huge yawn. It closed slowly. Then he turned and, without looking at me, began to descend the stairs. “What are you doing?” I called after him. “Where are you going?”

We reached the bottom of the stairs and stumbled into a nightmare. The battle had spilled into the church. Small, evil-smelling bonfires revealed the remains of burnt individuals. Others lay in pools of blood on the stone floor, many missing arms, legs, heads. The priest wove drunkenly through the bodies. Some were still alive and calling weakly for help. He stumbled down the aisle, splashing through puddles of blood, ignoring the calls for help.

“My God, what have you done, what have you done?” I moaned, unable to tear my eyes away from those astonished dying faces. Then I followed him down the aisle.

Near the door I caught up with him and forced him to turn around. “Where are you going?” I asked.

He looked at me as if I were a stupid child. “To sleep,” he replied casually. “To sleep, of course.”

Copyright © 2009 Radhika Jha