The Great Indian Novel

The Tenth Book: Darkness at Dawn

56

But 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.

Ekalavya stands his ground, but swallows, his dark face burning darker in his dismay. ‘I. I’m sorry, sir, but I cannot destroy my life and my mother’s to pay your fee,’ he says faintly but firmly.

‘Get out!’ Drona barks. ‘Get out, worthless brat! And if I catch you anywhere near my classes again, I shall exact my fee myself!’

The boy steps back, looks wildly around him, and trips hastily out of the room. Drona’s uproarious laughter follows him mockingly down the stairs.

Later, when the class resumes, Yudhishtir raises his hand. ‘If the boy had readily agreed to the fee you asked of him, guruji, would you have taken it?’

Drona laughs shortly, waving the question away. ‘Study,’ he says, ‘study your epics, young man.’

Next time, Arjun stands first in the examinations — alone.

I see you are troubled, Ganapathi. I have been inflicting too many moral dilemmas on you of late, haven’t I? But there is no point turning your nose into a question-mark, Ganapathi; I am not going to resolve all your problems for you. Was Drona playing an elaborate game that none of the others was sophisticated enough to understand, or was he just doing to poor Ekalavya what Heaslop had done to him? Had the poor boy been less of a literalist and gladly stuck out his thumb as a gesture of devotion and subservience, would Drona have hacked it off with a knife or laughingly invited the lad to join his class? I do not know, Ganapathi, and the ashes of the only man who does have long since flowed down the Ganges into the sea.

57

But enough of such speculation; we have left too many of our dramatis personae inconveniently frozen in various parts of our tableau. There is Karna, for instance, declaiming to his party elders; let us approach him and hear what he is saying.

‘Gentlemen, the facts are plain. We entered these elections — the first under the new Government of India Act — as the self-proclaimed spokesmen of India’s Muslims. We contested in reserved constituencies, putting up Muslim candidates for seats only Muslims could vote for. And yet, at the end of the day, when the votes were counted, we discovered that Kaurava Muslims — followers of the underclad Mahaguru — have won more Muslim seats than we have. It is galling, but it is reality, and we must accept it.

‘The question obviously arises, what next? There are those amongst us who feel that all we can do is to sulk in our tents. I am not able to prescribe such a bitter pill myself. We contested the elections in search of power, and power is what we must continue to seek if we are to justify our existence as a party. There are many routes to power; in my view we must first attempt the most obvious one. We must ask to join the Kauravas in a coalition government — at least in the one province where we have done well enough to stake a claim to doing so.’

The Muslim grandees around him nod, some vigorously, some with evident scepticism. Let the lights dim on their bobbing hennaed heads, Ganapathi, and let us turn the spot, and our attention, to our Kaurava friends who, too, have emerged from our tableau and are conversing animatedly.

‘But why should we?’ The voice is Dhritarashtra’s. ‘We have an absolute majority in the Northern Province ourselves — we don’t need a coalition with anybody, let alone Karna’s puffed-up little group of bigoted nobodies.’

‘Tactically,’ says a quiet voice, ‘and forgive me for speaking, gentlemen, since I do not, indeed, cannot belong to your party’ — it is, of course, Vidur the civil servant — ‘it would be a wise step. The British would be taken aback by a coalition of the two strongest opposing political forces in the country.’ And then he spoils his argument with bureaucratic propriety by adding: ‘But you, of course, have a political choice to make.’

‘Precisely,’ says the mellifluous Mohammed Rafi, a Northern Province Kaurava — and a Muslim whose aristocratic pedigree is as impeccable as his exquisitely tailored sherwani. ‘We have a political choice to make, and with all respect to Vidur-bhai, he cannot be expected to see things the same way. If we enter into a coalition with the Muslim Group, what are Kaurava Muslims like myself going to say to our supporters when they ask us to explain our supping with the Shaitaan we have just been denouncing? We have declared that the Kaurava Party is the only true national party, that we represent all groups and interests, including naturally those of Muslims. Having been elected on the strength of those beliefs, how can you ask us to cede ministerial portfolios that Kaurava Muslims might have expected, to the very people who allege we do not represent Muslims? If the Kaurava Party dispenses with our claims so lightly for mere tactical considerations, it will only confirm the Muslim Group argument that we are stooges of the Hindus, with no real power of our own in the party. No, I agree with Dhritarashtra. Let us put principles before tactics, my friends.’

This is probably news to Dhritarashtra, whose argument has not been noticeably long on principle, but he assents vigorously. The discussion continues, and it is clear that Mohammed Rafi has made a telling point. ‘We must not,’ an elder statesman concedes, ‘win the partnership of Karna’s Group and lose the faith of our own Muslim comrades.’

‘Hear, hear,’ murmur some; ‘Well said, V. V.,’ echo others. At last Gangaji ends the debate. ‘There will be no coalition,’ he announces in a voice wearied by conciliation.

The spotlight shifts, for the curtain-ringer.

‘The bastards!’ Karna’s voice itself seems to wear gloves, but there is no mistaking the knuckledusters underneath. ‘Well, gentlemen, that is that, then. I said to you there are other routes to the acquisition of power: we shall now proceed to carve out a few of them. As far as the Kauravas are concerned, gentlemen, it is war.’

58

War — Pandu’s war — the successor to the ‘war to end all wars’ — erupted in Europe, and as German bombs exploded over Poland, the blast buffeted us in India.

‘Well, what’s the form, then, Sir Richard?’ asked the Viceroy at his daily meeting with his cherubic Principal Private Secretary. ‘Don the glad rags and deliver a proclamation from the steps of the viceregal palace, or does the rule- book prescribe something different?’

‘We don’t have many precedents for a declaration of war, Your Excellency,’ his aide admitted. ‘I could have one of our chaps look it up, but I imagine you can pretty much make up the drill as you go along.’

‘What did we do the last time?’ the Viceroy asked, idly toying with a thirteenth-century miniature Siva lingam that served as a paperweight.

‘The last time? Do you mean the fifth Afghan war, or the seventeenth campaign against the Waziris? I think we went in rather less for protocol than for powder in those engagements. In the British Indian tradition, when you wanted to declare war you tended to do it with a cannon. Unless, of course, you weren’t planning a war at all but a sort of extended picnic, like Sir Francis Younghusband, who went out one morning with five horses and a Christmas hamper and came back having annexed Tibet. It was rather embarrassing at the time, because nobody really wanted Tibet, but Sir Francis shrugged and explained that when he rode into Lhasa the local warlords got up and surrendered and he had no choice but to accept their tribute. He’d really intended just to see the tourist spots and to get a few good pictures of the Potala Palace, but one of his rifles went off accidentally and when he then saw all the notables on their knees cowering he couldn’t really disappoint them by not conquering them. I think his punishment for taking Tibet was to have to work out what to do with the place. But to return to your question, I’m afraid there was no formal declaration of war there either, Your Excellency.’

‘Sir Richard,’ the Viceroy smiled amiably, his hand straying from the lingam to a jewel-encrusted dagger from Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s collection that was now used to slit open confidential envelopes, rather than throats, ‘I don’t mean any of those wars, of course. The last one in Europe we were mixed up in. The Great War.’

Ah.’ The Principal Private Secretary reflected briefly. ‘I think we heard about that one in India a few weeks after it had started in the old continent. And by then there wasn’t much point in a formal declaration. Of course, the Great War never touched this part of the world very greatly. Except for all the Indian soldiers we sent off to fight in France and Mesopotamia.’

‘This one may, Sir Richard. Touch this part of the world, I mean. The Japanese are in alliance with the Germans and may attack our possessions in the Far East. India is still a long way from their forces, but distances in today’s world mean a good deal less than they did twenty-five years ago. No, this time, when war is declared in India, it could really mean something for this country and her people. India may have to fight to preserve her freedom.’

‘I’m not sure all our Kaurava friends will see it quite like that.’ Sir Richard smiled humourlessly. ‘Mr Datta and his khadi-clad companions seem to think that’s what they’re doing already — with us on the wrong side of the argument.’

‘Quite.’ The Viceroy nodded. ‘But I think they’d draw a distinction between the two kinds of fight. The Mahaguru and his friends are “fighting” — if that’s the word for their non-violent agitations — for, in the celebrated phrase, the rights of Englishmen. It’s democracy they want. I hardly think they’ll consider the Nazis a model of swaraj, except for the fringe in the Onward Organization, and we can lock that bunch up soon enough. Don’t forget that Ganga Datta was on our side the last time round, quite actively in fact — the Ambulance Association in Hastinapur, was it not?’

‘I haven’t forgotten, Your Excellency.’ Sir Richard, who tended to think of Hastinapur as a personal heirloom, harrumphed. ‘But a lot of water, and some blood, has flowed under the bridge since those days. I’ve made something of a special study of Mr Ganga Datta over the years, and I’m not convinced for a minute by his pontifical pacifism. Today the sainted Mahaguru is just as opposed to British interests as his fellow vegetarian in Berlin.’

The Viceroy put down the dagger and gave his seniormost advisor a sharp look. ‘I do believe your prejudices are showing, Sir Richard,’ he said mildly. India’s non-violent saint-statesman lending moral support to Germany’s jackbooted stormtroopers? No, I think Ganga Datta and most of the Kauravas, certainly Dhritarashtra and his socialist followers, will be happy enough to go along with a declaration of war on Nazi Germany. They’ve been quite critical of the Nazis in their public pronouncements on international affairs. The point is, how do we go about it? It’s easy enough to declare war, but do we, ah, consult them first, and in what manner? There were no elected Indian ministries to think about at the time of the last war. Now there are.’

‘I don’t see how it’s any of their business,’ Sir Richard, defeated, scowled.

‘Come, come, Sir Richard. We propose to declare war on behalf of India and we don’t think it’s the business of the Indian leaders we have?’

‘Precisely, sir.’ Sir Richard’s eyes glowed redly above his pink cheeks. ‘You, the Viceroy of India, will be declaring war on behalf of His Majesty the King- Emperor, whose representative you are in this country, upon those who are his enemies. India only comes into the picture at all because it is one of the King-Emperor’s possessions. It has no independent quarrel with Herr Hitler and his friends. I know you don’t agree with my view that Ganga Datta and his ilk would support Attila the Hun if it would help drive the Raj out of Delhi, but leaving the political reliability of the Indians aside, the point is that the only reason for India to be at war with Germany is that she is ruled by Britain. Britain is at war with Germany. British India must follow suit. The Indians governing their provinces — under the supervision, in any case, of British Governors appointed by the Crown — have nothing to do with it at all. Defence isn’t even their business; it’s ours.’ He raised an eyebrow at his sovereign’s representative. ‘Quod erat demonstrandum, Your Excellency.’

‘Nec scire fas est omnia,’ the Viceroy riposted. ‘None the less why not consult them anyway? It should buck up that po-faced lot the Kauravas have in office.’

‘All the more reason not to, sir.’ The Principal Private Secretary was emphatic. ‘They’re insufferable enough as it is. Why should we give them the additional satisfaction of being consulted, when it is our nation that is under attack, our homes under threat, our armies and aircraft under fire? Personally, sir, I’d think it humiliating to have to seek the consent of the loincloth brigade before we placed His Majesty’s subjects here on a war-footing. In my view, it’s neither politically appropriate nor constitutionally necessary.’

‘Perhaps you’ve got a point there,’ the Viceroy conceded, rubbing a reflective chin.

‘With respect, indeed, sir. And think what propaganda the Kauravas would make of it. The all-powerful Viceroy has to ask them before he can declare war on another European state! It would be disastrous for our credibility with the man-in-the-street, Your Excellency.’

‘Hmm. I think you may be right there, Sir Richard. It’s just that I don’t think they’ll take it very well. And the last thing I need here at the beginning of a war is a new set of political convulsions on my hands.’

‘Don’t worry about a thing, sir. As Virgil put it, “Experto credite”.’

‘I hope you’re right, Sir Richard. As Horace reminds us, “Nescit vox missa reverti”.’

Horace was, of course, right — words once published cannot be taken back. When the declaration of war was made without the slightest semblance of consultation with the elected Kaurava ministries in the states, the Mahaguru’s followers resigned their offices en bloc. An appointed official had no moral authority, they announced, to declare war on behalf of a nation whose elected representatives had not been consulted. The Kaurava Party, Dhritarashtra added, might conceivably have endorsed a request to join the Viceroy in a declaration of war, not so much out of a desire to come to Britain’s aid in her hour of peril, but simply because of the nationalist movement’s dislike of international Fascism. But the callous disregard by the colonial authorities of the legitimacy of the democratic process — a process, Dhritarashtra pointed out, by which Britain pretended to set such great store and in whose defence it was supposedly fighting — had made such an endorsement impossible. The Kaurava Party could not possibly remain in office in these circumstances, and it would urge all Indians not to cooperate with the war effort.

Vidur tried to advise his compatriots and relatives against such precipitate action: ‘Make your point by all means, but for God’s sake don’t resign,’ he pleaded with his sightless half-brother.

‘You do not understand politics, Vidur,’ Dhritarashtra told him.

‘Perhaps not, but I understand administration,’ my youngest son responded. ‘And one of the first rules of administration is, do not give up your seat until you know how much standing-room there is.’

But they did not listen to him, Ganapathi. A sheaf of identical resignation letters were wired to Delhi. As always, there was one governmental institution that never failed to do well out of a political crisis: the Post Office.

There were thunderclouds on the Viceroy’s brow the next morning, but Sir Richard persisted in seeing the silver lining.

‘Jolly good thing, this, if you’ll pardon me, Your Excellency,’ he beamed, his jowls quivering with satisfaction. ‘With one stroke, or rather the absence of one, we have cut the dhoti-wallahs down to size and got rid of a number of dangerous troublemakers from vital positions of power. Imagine Kaurava seditionists and anti-colonials in control of the Ministries of Supply, Food and Agriculture, Power and Electricity in the major provinces at a time of war and national peril — it could have proved disastrous.’

‘Indeed?’ The black clouds seemed to lighten a little on the viceregal forehead.

‘Instead,’ the Principal Private Secretary affirmed, ‘we can run these departments ourselves with tried and tested officials, or even’ — and he glowed at the ingenuity of the thought — ‘even place other parties in office from amongst the minorities in the legislatures. They will be beholden to us, and since the Kauravas have forfeited their responsibility we can hardly be blamed for turning to other elected Indians to do their job for them, can we? This will, in turn, weaken the Kauravas’ base of support, because they will no longer have any patronage to dole out, no more jobs for the boys, no more opportunities to operate the levers of power. And we will, therefore, have a weaker nationalist party to contend with in the years to come, after the war. Oh yes, Your Excellency, I see a lot of good coming out of your excellent decision not to consult the Kauravas.’

The Viceroy let the implications of his advisor’s last sentence pass. He was not yet convinced he wanted the paternity of his unilateral announcement ascribed to him. ‘I hope Whitehall sees it that way, Sir Richard,’ he replied, absently fingering the lingam and then drawing his hand away as if scalded by its procreative symbolism. ‘And I trust you will draft a suitable note on the matter to ensure that they do.’

59

He did; and Whitehall did; and as events unfolded it appeared that Virgil was right too, and it was advisable to trust the man of experience. For the Kauravas sat at home while the provincial legislatures carried on without them, gaining neither the advantages of being in office within the country nor those of leading a glorious crusade in exile as Pandu was doing. In due course, other parties and alliances staked their claims to form ministries in some of the provinces, and when it suited them, the British admitted these claims. The Muslim Group of Mohammed Ali Karna, which had failed to win a majority in any of the provinces, formed minority governments in three where the Kaurava ministries had resigned. They set about systematically increasing their following through every means at their disposal. One story quoted Karna as saying: ‘We shall win the hearts and minds of the people, however much it costs us.’

Thwarted, frustrated, excluded, the Kaurava Party chafed in its self-imposed irrelevance. Then, in a desperate and not entirely well-thought-out bid to regain the political limelight, the party met under Gangaji’s chairmanship and proclaimed a new campaign of civil disobedience. The message to the British was simple and direct: ‘Quit India.’

Oh, Ganapathi, how those two magic words captured the imagination of the country! The new slogan was soon over all the walls; it was chalked, scrawled, painted on notice-boards, on railway sidings, on cinema posters. Little newspaperboys added it sotto voce to their sales cries: ‘Times of India. Quit India. Times of India. Quit India.’ The magic refrain was taken up by chanting crowds of students, office-goers, political workers, hoarsely orchestrated by the Kaurava Party and its vociferous cheerleaders: ‘Quit — India. Quit! India. Quit? India!’ The words beat a staccato tattoo on British ears; they were the heartbeat of a national awakening, the drum roll of a people on the march.

It lasted twenty-four hours. Oh, there may have been sporadic resistance in some places for a little longer, but the organized movement to get the British to Quit India was snuffed out within a day of its proclamation. The Raj had been watching the Kauravas closely, very closely. It arrested the principal leaders within hours of the Quit India call, in one notorious case arresting a dilatory Working Committee member as he was coming out of the meeting-hall. (I had gone to the bathroom when the others dispersed, Ganapathi, if you must know.) By the next afternoon the lower-level organizers — the men who actually got the crowds out on to the pavements, who told them where to march and led them in their sloganeering — were behind bars. It was all over before it began.

At least the non-violent campaign was, Jayaprakash Drona, tutor to the Pandavas, abandoned his charges to wage a one-man battle against the Raj. He blew up two bridges and derailed one goods train before the long arm of the law caught him squarely on the tip of the jaw. He was interned in a maximum-security prison and the only significant result of his bravado was that the education of my five grandsons suffered.

60

So, Ganapathi, as Pandu strove and struggled in Berlin and Singapore, Gangaji and his Kaurava followers languished in prison while two very different individuals moved closer to realizing their ultimate ambitions of thwarting the Mahaguru.

Mohammed Ali Karna, with three provincial governments dancing to his tune and unchallenged as the most prominent Indian out of captivity, glowed with the lustre of quasi-divinity in which his followers had cloaked him. His name could no longer be taken in vain by lesser mortals: he was now referred to almost exclusively by the honorific ‘Khalifa-e-Mashriq’, or Caliph of the East, a choice of cognomen which ignored — indeed, blandly denied — his secular Anglicization. And as the Muslim Group consolidated its hold on, and its taste for, power, a vocal section of its adherents began openly calling for the creation of a new political entity where they could rule unchallenged, a state carved out of India’s Muslim-majority areas. This Islamic Utopia would be called Karnistan — the Hacked-off Land: simultaneously a tribute to its eponymous founder and an advertisement for its proponents’ physical political intent. The party’s younger hotheads had already devised a flag for their state. It would carry, on a field of Mohammedan green, a representation of the half-moon that throbbed on their caliph’s burnished forehead.

Yet there were already signs, if only we had known how to recognize them: signs that Karna, at his peak, had peaked. His long face began to look increasingly pallid at the post-sundown cocktails and receptions which celebrated and reinforced his prominence. As the darkness gathered Karna would withdraw even more into himself, until all that remained was the vividness of his birthmark against the pallor of his skin. Sometimes he would withdraw altogether, slipping out of the reception rooms where his awed followers gathered in respectfully distant clusters. It was thus that I found him once, shivering in an unlit garden while the hubbub of conversation continued on the terrace behind.

‘It is late, isn’t it?’ I ventured conversationally.

‘It is dark, Vyas,’ Karna replied.

‘You don’t like the dark?’

My question seemed to ignite a dying ember in him. ‘I hate the dark,’ he replied with sudden vehemence. ‘I hate the blackness of night. Even as a child, it was the sun I yearned for. The sun, enveloping me in its glow, setting me ablaze with its light. When the sun is up there I am warm, I am safe. But as dusk drops and the light fades, I feel the shadows creeping up behind my shoulder. A chill enters my bones; I find myself shivering. The nameless demons of the dark keep sleep from my eyes, Vyas. I can only rest with the light on.’ He seemed to pull himself together with a physical effort. ‘But let the morning come, let the flames of the sun touch my skin and scorch the dreadful memory of night from my brain, and I am myself again.’ He shook his head, as if realizing just in time whom it was that he was confiding in. The dapper lips twisted in deliberate irony. ‘Good night, Vyas,’ he said self- mockingly, inclining his head as he walked away, away from the starless night sky and into the well-lit acclaim that awaited him indoors.

If the khalifa-e-Mashriq constituted a growing threat to what Gangaji stood for politically, a slight, embittered figure was beginning, unknown to all of us, to cast an equally dangerous shadow on the Mahaguru’s person. Amba, the slim, doe-eyed princess whose nuptial bliss the Regent of Hastinapur had once so thoughtlessly blighted, was almost ready to exact her revenge.

She was no longer the lissom beauty of Salva’s fancy. Long years of neglect and frustration, of vainly seeking familial, royal and finally criminal help to redress her plight, had altered the soft lines of her face and body to reflect the hardness of her hate-filled heart. Yes, Ganapathi, the very twist of her mouth mirrored the warping of her soul. Only her eyes shone with the spirit of corrosive determination that had extinguished every other spark of her being.

For decades she had been obsessed with one thought only: how to get her own back on Gangaji. When all those she approached, from hesitant rajas to reluctant hit-men, proved unwilling or unable to take on her mortal enemy, Amba turned from human help to divine doxology. She meditated, prayed, arranged for a succession of priestly rituals of increasing obscurity and malevolence. She took up Tantrism, participating in rites where blood and semen spurted into yellowing skulls as acolytes screamed their frenzied invocations of the powers of Shakti. She practised austerities, sitting motionless for days in mortifying postures, her mind concentrating solely on her overwhelming clamour for retribution. At last — and she knew not in what state of consciousness this occurred, whether she was awake or dreaming or on that translucent plane where all experience is intensely, unverifiably personal — a dark figure appeared before her, erect above her half-closed eyes, bearing a trident and a look of infinite wisdom.

‘What you want shall come to pass,’ said an ethereal voice that echoed round the spaces of her mind. ‘But know this: under the boon conferred by his father, Ganga Datta will only leave this world when he no longer wishes to remain in it. When such a moment comes, he can be destroyed — but only by a man made unlike all other men.’

And then the voice was gone, leaving only the vibrations of its message in her mind, so that when Amba opened her eyes and saw the haze swirling around her it was as if she had been touched by the intangible, as if she had been possessed by the ineffable, as if she had been filled up by an absence.

She remained as she was for many hours after that, savouring the texture of the experience through all her senses, giving herself up to the meaning of that moment. Finally, she knew, and she rose to her feet with a terrible purpose etched into her will.

Amba would have her revenge at last. But it would not be as Amba, the betrayed beauty of Bhumipur, that she would exact it.

In a small disreputable clinic in the back-streets of Bombay, behind the quarter where the transvestites flaunt their gender at perspiring clients, beyond the dark betel-stained stairways ascended by pairs of swaying hermaphrodites, Amba stood naked before a sharp-toothed figure in a grimy white coat.

She spoke to the surgeon in a voice hoarse with strain.

‘Take from me these milkless breasts, doctor, seal this unseeded womb. Make me a man, doctor. A man made unlike all other men.’

61

The war was over. The destruction, the fire-bombing, the rocket blitzes, the lingering deaths on the battlefields, all ended with a bullet in a Berlin bunker and a thousand suns exploding over Japan. But in India, Ganapathi, the violence was just about to begin.

It was clear that this was one victory which would cost Britain as much as defeat. The old Empire had been brought to its knees by the effort of self- preservation, like a householder crippled in his successful resistance to a burglar. At the moment of victory, as he was sharing his triumph with his allies, the Prime Minister who symbolized John Bull’s indomitable will was unseated by an electorate that wanted eggs rather than empire and valued indoor gas over imperial glory. When Labour came to power it was evident even to the purblind members of the Society for the Preservation of the Imperial Connection (SPIC) and its marginally more progressive rival the Society for the Promotion of an Anglophile Nationalism (SPAN) that the days of the Raj were numbered. Wearied by war, Britain no longer had the stomach for colonial conflict. His Majesty’s grasp on the reins of his Indian Empire was now noticeably feeble.

Freed from their disastrous incarceration, the leaders of the Kaurava Party blinked at the sunlight of a new reality. They discovered a nation whose nationalism had been left directionless too long, and a rival organization unrecognizably stronger than it had ever been, newly wise in the ways of power, tested by office and already flexing muscles developed while the Kauravas’ were atrophying in jail. Suddenly, the Independence stakes were a two-horse race, with the two horses aiming for different finishing-posts.

Elections were called: the democratic way out of the dilemma. The Kauravas did well, but not as well as before. It was not possible to make up for six years away from the field in six weeks of energetic campaigning. The Mahaguru’s men still won a majority of the provinces, but the Muslim Group emphatically carried most of the Muslim seats. In all but one of the provinces where their co-religionists were in a majority, they triumphantly assumed the reins of office — and demanded separation.

At the twilight hour, the Raj realized what it had done. Divide et impera had worked too well. A device to maintain the integrity of British India had made it impossible for that integrity to be maintained without the British.

In a gesture so counter-productive it might almost have been an act of expiation, the Raj clumsily gave the warring factions a last chance of unity. It decided to prosecute Pandu’s traitors, the soldiers who had discarded their Britannic epaulettes for the swastikas of the OO’s Swatantra Sena. Pandu himself was gone, though there were still die-hards who insisted he had not died in the plane crash and was lurking underground on some tropical island waiting to re-emerge at the right time. In either case, the Supreme Leader was not available to be tried, and the Raj had to find scapegoats amongst his lieutenants. In a desire to appear even-handed amongst the main communities, the British chose to place three Panduites on trial in Delhi’s historic Red Fort: a Hindu, a Muslim and a Sikh.

The result was a national outcry that spanned the communal divide. Whatever the defects and the derelictions of Pandu’s unfortunate followers, they had not been disloyal to their motherland. Each of the three defendants became a symbol of his community’s proud commitment to independence from alien rule. Neither the Muslim Group nor the Kaurava Party had any choice but to rise to the trio’s defence. For the first time in their long careers Mohammed Ali Karna and Dhritarashtra accepted the same brief. The OO trials were the last issue on which the two parties took the same stand. Pandu brought them together in death as he could not have done in life.

But the moment passed. The defence of three patriots was no longer enough to guarantee a common definition of patriotism. The rival lawyers for the same cause hardly spoke to each other. Karna began to lose interest when he discovered that his Muslim guinea-pig was no fan of Karnistan (indeed, Ganapathi, he was to stay on in India and die a minister). The ferment across the country made the result of the trial almost irrelevant. The men were convicted, but their sentences were never carried out, because by the time the trial was over it was apparent that the ultimate treason to the British Raj was being contemplated in its own capital. London, under Labour, was determined to liquidate its Indian Empire.

By this stage, Ganapathi, the vultures had scented the dying emanations and were already beating their wings for pieces of the corpse. Karna made it clear he had no desire to content himself with a few provincial satrapies. He wanted a country: he wanted Karnistan. When it briefly seemed that the sentimental British were unwilling to contemplate the break-up of the dominion they had so assiduously built, he exhorted his followers to ‘Direct Action’. Several thousand cadavers, burning vehicles, gutted homes, looted shops and rivulets of blood later, everyone except the Mahaguru began thinking about the unthinkable: the division of the motherland.

Gangaji refused to be reconciled to the new reality. He walked in vain from riot-spot to riot-spot, trying to put out the conflagration through expressions of reason and grief But the old magic was gone. Where he was effective it was in very specific areas for very limited periods of time; against the scale and magnitude of the carnage that was sweeping across the country, he was broadly ineffectual. It was almost as if the Mahaguru and his message had only touched a corner of the national consciousness, a corner reserved for the higher attributes of conscience and historical memory, but one unrelated to the dictates of reality or the needs and constraints of the present.

History was catching up with itself, and it was running out of breath.

62

As the communal strife — the American news-magazines and the British tabloids were already calling it a ‘civil war’ — swept across the country, the British government decided to bring matters to a head. In fact, to a different head: they changed the Viceroy, appointing a new representative with a mandate to negotiate an orderly transfer of power.

Viscount Drewpad was the right man to give away a kingdom. Tall, dapper, always elegantly dressed, he wore his lack of learning lightly, cultivating a casual patter that impressed anyone he spent less than five minutes with — which was almost everybody. It helped, of course, that in their ruling classes the British valued height more than depth. It helped even more that he was related in at least three ways to the royal family, whose patronymic (like his) had been changed from the German during the unpleasantness of 1914.

‘In-jyah! How exciting!’ exclaimed his wife Georgina when he straightened his collar before one of three bedroom mirrors and gave her the news. ‘Aren’t you rather young to be ruling a continent?’

‘I won’t be ruling it, dear, just giving it away,’ her husband replied, patting cologne on to his cheek. ‘And, besides, I think they’ve chosen me because I’m young. We’re the glamour brigade, you see, marching forth to the skirl of bagpipes. They can’t send an old dodderer who’d make it look as if we were only leaving India because we haven’t the strength to carry on.’

‘Why are we leaving India, then?’

‘Because we haven’t the strength to carry on.’ Lord Drewpad picked up a small pair of silver scissors and delicately trimmed the black moustache which, along with his tweezered eyebrows, framed an aquiline nose like the two bars of the capital letter ‘I’. ‘But there are ways and means of pulling out. We’re going to do it in style.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Georgina. ‘India,’ she said dreamily. ‘You took me there on our honeymoon.’

Lord Drewpad adjusted a cuff and turned to give her an affectionate look. ‘And I wasn’t the only one to, ah, take you there either,’ he pointed out. ‘Now, that sort of thing won’t do, Georgina. You’ll have to remember we’ll be far more visible this time.’

‘Bertie, you’ve got a wicked mind!’ Georgina trilled girlishly. Over the years she had bounced on some of the best mattresses in England, with her husband’s amused consent. Now. . ‘The beds i’ the East are soft,’ she quoted mischievously.

‘If you must think of Shakespeare, choose The Taming of the Shrew,’ her husband retorted, combing a recalcitrant curl back into place. ‘Look, Georgina, we have appearances to maintain. I mean, when we’re in India we won’t be just anybody. We’ll be there in a symbolic capacity.’

‘Oh, really?’ Georgina gurgled. ‘And what will we be symbolizing?’

‘Surrender,’ replied Lord Drewpad, putting down the comb and squinting critically at the mirror.

‘Oh, I don’t mind symbolizing that at all,’ said his wife, lying back languorously on her bed.

‘Now, Georgina, none of that,’ her husband warned her waggishly. ‘Remember, withdrawal is the larger theme of our presence.’ He lifted his chin so that the light fell more clearly on it. The shaved skin was still smooth, complementing the first-person-first emblem of the prominent I on the middle of his face. He nodded to himself in approval.

‘Tell me about it, dear,’ his wife went on. ‘What does it all mean?’

‘In a nutshell, headlines in the papers, footage in the newsreels, tea with the holy Mahaguru in Delhi, a cavalry escort in turbans and braid, and an army of servants,’ Lord Drewpad replied, practising a toothy grin into the mirror. Dissatisfied the first time, he bared his teeth again, more successfully. ‘Jolly good, what?’

‘And the work?’ Lady Drewpad asked. ‘Will there be a lot?’

‘Good God, they’re not sending me out there to work, Georgina,’ the Viceroy-designate grimaced. ‘There are plenty of civil servants to do that. They re sending me there to give the Raj a great big grand farewell-party. With colour, and music, and lights and costume, and enough pomp and circumstance for the natives to remember us by for a long, long time.’

‘Is that what the Labour government wants you to do, Bertie?’ Georgina could not keep the astonishment from her voice.

‘Well, not exactly,’ Lord Drewpad admitted, critically examining his fingernails. ‘I have an idea they’d probably prefer me to set an example in self- restraint for the ration-ridden populace at home. But once I’m in India, there’s not much they can do about it. You see, the Viceroy doesn’t live off the British taxpayer. Indian revenues are considerable, and I intend us to enjoy them considerably.’

Lady Drewpad sighed in anticipatory wistfulness. It all sounds delightful,’ she murmured.

‘Hmm,’ her husband agreed, busying himself with an emery-board. ‘And the thing is, we’ll be making everybody happy at the same time. The government here, because they want the problem off their hands. The British in India, because after a long time they’ll have a Viceroy — and Vicereine — who will dazzle the natives with an unstinting display of imperial glory. And the Indians, because they know they’ll be getting their country back at the end of it all.’

‘Are you sure the Indians won’t mind? All the pomp and ceremony, I mean.’

‘Mind? Don’t be silly.’ Lord Drewpad put his fingers out, nodded approbation, and put away the nail-file. ‘Do you know,’ he said in the tone of erudition he habitually used to convey his nuggets of half-knowledge, ‘that the very word “ceremony” comes from India, from the Sanskrit karman, a religious action or rite? What we shall be performing in India is nothing more, and nothing less, than the last rites of our Indian Empire.’ He swivelled on a slippered heel, flashing a dazzling smile: three mirrors smiled back at him. ‘Let this be my epitaph: “Alone amongst his peers, he did not hesitate to stand on ceremony”.’

‘Sounds marvellous.’ Georgina purred contentedly. ‘But for now, are you finished, dear? Will you put out the light?’

Her husband took one last self-satisfied look at his reflection. ‘Yes, I think I’ve done my exercises for the day,’ he said, allowing himself a yawn. ‘Time for bed. Good night, dear.’

He switched off the lamp with a fragrant hand, plunging the room into darkness, while five thousand miles away in the country he was to rule, the flames of communal frenzy burned brightly across the land.

63

The Drewpad viceroyalty was conducted just as Georgina had been promised — in the light of chandeliers and flashbulbs, beneath the glitter of diamond tiaras and shimmering gold braid, and to the tune of the bagpipes of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. The last representatives of His Majesty the King-Emperor were not lacking in company: 913 servants in cummerbunds and scarlet livery attended to their individual needs, from perfumed bathwater to choice chicken breasts for their dogs; 500 horsemen guarded their corporeal persons; 368 gardeners trimmed and watered their manicured lawns (assisted by 50 youths whose sole job was to run about scaring away the crows). On the first day in his new palace Drewpad, in silk sash and gold aiguillettes, his beribboned breast awash with medals and orders he had not had to fire a shot in order to obtain, ambulated in stately fashion down miles of red-carpeted corridor, his satin-gowned consort on his arm, to be sworn in as Viceroy in a ceremony only marginally less elaborate than a coronation. Within hours he embarked with Indian leaders on the negotiations whose breathtaking pace was to characterize his in-candescently brief tenure.

‘Five minutes?’ protested a bewildered Dhritarashtra, his stick tripping over the threshold, as he was ushered out of his first meeting with the new Viceroy. ‘Is that all he’s prepared to listen?’

‘That’s about as far as his attention-span seems to stretch,’ confirmed Mohammed Rafi, Gangaji’s latest choice as President of the Kaurava Party. ‘Something tells me we’re not going to have an easy time with this man — or indeed much time at all.’

‘I have no intention of giving them room to argue,’ the new Viceroy explained to his Vicereine in the relative privacy of her capacious dressing- room, while she divested herself gradually of several lakhs of rupees’ worth of antique jewellery. (He had himself earlier been meticulously undressed, from epaulette to silver boot-buckle, by a winsome aide-de-camp. In the course of a meteoric cavalry career Drewpad had become, in the American phrase, somewhat AC/DC, a proclivity reflected in his choice of A D Cs — and in his indulgence of his wife’s extra-curricular romps.) ‘That’s one mistake my predecessors made — to talk endlessly with these Indian politicians in the hope of arriving at some sort of conclusion. Absolutely hopeless business, of course.’

‘But if you don’t talk to them, how will you ever solve the problem?’ asked Lady Drewpad, tilting her head to remove a heavy earring.

‘Oh, I’ll talk to them all right,’ her husband responded airily. ‘But I won’t listen to them. All I want to hear from you lot, I’ll tell them, is a yes or a no. We’ve had enough of reconciling different plans for the transfer of power with both groups haggling over each clause.’

‘But what if you can’t get the different sides to agree?’

‘Not important.’ Lord Drewpad shrugged. ‘We’ll try and charm the blighters into being reasonable, but if they persist in their bloody-mindedness we’ll tell them where to get off. Darling, put that on again, will you?’ He inclined his head towards the diamond tiara which had crowned her golden curls. ‘I want to look at you like that for a moment.’

She smiled, flattered, and turned to face him. On a sudden impulse, she slipped her blue silk peignoir off her shoulders. There she stood, Ganapathi, as Britannia had first come to us: naked, with outstretched hands, about to place our crown on her head.

Drewpad took her elegant fingers in his own. ‘How I wish I could present you to all India like this,’ he said. ‘My jewel, in a crown.’

She laughed, and tossed her coiffeured head. ‘It might stop them talking, for a while.’

‘And then their next words might just be, “Yes”. Several times.’ Drewpad bent to kiss her hands. ‘You’re an essential part of my plans, darling. We’ve got to charm these humourless fellows into being more accommodating. You’re my secret weapon.’

64

In another high-ceilinged but considerably darker room in distant Hastinapur, with a small kerosene lantern flickering yellowly in a distant corner, Gandhari the Grim lay dying.

‘Has he come?’ The voice was strained and feeble, and Priya Duryodhani, hunched near her mother at the head of the bed, had to lean closer to hear it.

‘Not yet, Mother.’ She looked towards the curtained doorway without hope, knowing she would have heard the tap of her father’s stick long before he appeared at the entrance to their room. ‘Word has been sent. He will be coming soon.’

The faded face seemed to sink deeper into the pillow. I was reminded then of that other night, so many years ago, when Dhritarashtra’s daughter had fought her way into the world.

‘Don’t strain yourself, Gandhari,’ I said gently. ‘He must have been detained. You know how things are these days.’

‘These days?’ The pale dry lips, highlighted by the bandage that still concealed her eyes, parted slightly in a bitter smile.

I said nothing. It had been no different in earlier days. The light from the lantern flitted briefly across the shadows.

‘Water.’ There was a sudden urgency in the voice. Duryodhani reached for the brass pitcher on a bedside table and poured the lukewarm liquid into a tumbler. Gandhari tried to raise herself, then gave up the effort. Her daughter’s hand quickly interposed itself, half-raising Gandhari’s head, while the other tilted the tumbler towards her mother’s parched mouth. A little water dribbled down Gandhari’s chin.

‘Good boy.’ Gandhari was holding her daughter’s free hand in a tight grip. ‘My son. You are all — all I had.’ The words were coming out in gasps now. ‘Alone. Always alone. In. . the. . darkness.’

We were both still, Duryodhani motionless in her mother’s grasp and I, destiny’s observer, unable to move from my place in the shadows at the foot of the bed. And in the stillness I realized that nature too was quiet. There was an unnatural silence outside. The crickets had stopped their incessant chirping, the mynahs were no longer twittering in the trees, the hundred and one sounds that always came in from the garden at this time of day had mysteriously died. It was as if all creation was holding its breath.

‘Darkness!’ Gandhari screamed in one convulsive gasp. Her hand left Duryodhani’s and seemed to reach for the bandage across her eyes; but before it could touch that slender satin shroud it fell back lifelessly across her breast.

‘Mother!’ Duryodhani sobbed, burying her face in the folds of Gandhari’s garment. It was the only time I would ever see her weep. ‘Mother, don’t leave me, don’t leave me alone!’ The tumbler fell from her hand, clattering against the marble floor. A trail of water flowed slowly from it in a winding rivulet towards the doorway.

A cane tapped its way down the corridor and came to a stop. The curtain was pushed aside.

‘Don’t cry so, my child,’ said a gentle voice. ‘See, your tears have wet my feet.’

‘Papa!’ Duryodhani turned her tear-stained face to her father, and her cry was heart-rending. ‘She was waiting for you!’

‘I’m. sorry.’ Dhritarashtra took a hesitant step forward. ‘Won’t you come to me, my child?’

For a moment the stillness continued; then a solitary koyal cooed in a tree outside, and Duryodhani was on her feet, running towards her father, who dropped his cane and caught her in an all-enveloping embrace. .

I stepped soundlessly forward to where Gandhari lay, neglected in death as in life. Tenderly, in a gesture that I could not explain, I crossed her palms across her chest. Then, ignored by her husband and daughter lost in mutual consolation, I eased that terrible bandage off her face.

Her eyes were open.

Gandhari was gone, but her dark, devastated pupils spoke of greater suffering and solitude than most of us can endure in a lifetime of light. But she was right, Ganapathi. There are some realities it is better not to see.

I placed my hand on her forehead and very gently closed her eyes. Then, for the last time, I slipped her bandage back into place.

‘Goodbye, Gandhari,’ I said.