The Great Indian Novel

The Thirteenth Book: Passages Through India

78

As Draupadi Mokrasi grew up, my five grandsons the Pandavas stepped out into the world. They shared a rare heritage and an unusual education, and inevitably proved unable to shake off another inheritance: they all decided to follow their father and their teacher into politics.

Drona did not last long in government. His style was a little too idiosyncratic and his attitude to administration a little too personal for him to have been able to make a success of it. Not long after ensuring the rapid repatriation of the Englishmen in the civil service, he resigned, stating that he preferred to devote himself to ‘constructive work’ in the countryside rather than in a paper-laden office. His five students and his son immediately offered to join him. ‘Look,’ said their mentor candidly, ‘I’m not sure I want to inflict my plans on you. For Ashwathaman, of course, it’s a different matter — he’s my son. But the rest of you, princes of Hastinapur, wandering with me seeking social change in the villages — I don’t think it’s going to work. For one thing, you’ve never wandered around before. Ashwathaman and I have.’

‘We thought you said that we were all equal in your eyes as your students,’ Nakul said. He used the first person plural as a matter of habit, because he more often than not spoke for Sahadev as well.

‘Of course,’ replied Drona. ‘But education is one thing, experience another. Ashwathaman and I have had the experience. You haven’t. You’d be miserable.’

‘I think you should leave it to us to judge that, Dronaji,’ Yudhishtir said quietly. ‘We wish to go with you. Will you deny us that privilege?’

‘All right, all right,’ said Drona crossly, though he was, as you can probably imagine, Ganapathi, quite pleased by his protégés’ devotion. ‘Come along, then. But don’t tell me later I didn’t warn you.’

The five went together to take leave of Kunti. She was seated in the living- room, half-smoked Turkish cigarettes overflowing from a near-by ashtray whose silver matched the tint of the hair at her temples. Her Banaras sari, Bombay nails, Bangalore sandals and Bareilly bangles all advertised her fabled elegance — an elegance betrayed only by the strain at the corners of her red eyes and by the quick darting puffs she took through her ivory cigarette- holder.

‘Don’t tell me,’ she said as Yudhishtir stepped forward from the little group to address her. ‘Let me guess. You all remembered it’s my birthday and you have a surprise present for me.’

‘But your birthday’s next month, Mother,’ Nakul said.

‘How clever of you to remember, Sahadev,’ Kunti trilled cuttingly. ‘So it can’t be that, then. I knew! You’re all taking me to the cinema.’

Yudhishtir shifted uneasily from foot to foot. ‘No, Mother,’ he said.

‘No? Then it must be something nicer. I’ve got it! For the first time in so many years you have decided you want to spend your afternoon with me. Talking. Or playing a board game, perhaps. Have I guessed right? Scrabble? Monopoly?’ She laughed hollowly. ‘Monopoly! That would make a change from solitaire.’

Yudhishtir shuffled again, looking unhappily at the others. ‘No, Mother,’ he repeated weakly.

‘No, Mother? But how can that be? You couldn’t possibly be standing here to tell me, could you, that you have decided to leave me alone in this house and go off with that smelly wretch Drona and that scruffy son of his to do “constructive work”, whatever that means, in the dirty villages?’ She looked levelly at Yudhishtir, but her hand pulled the cigarette-holder in and out of her mouth with-the jerky speed of a wound-up marionette. ‘No, that’s simply not possible.’

‘You knew all along, Mother,’ Yudhishtir said.

Kunti ignored him. ‘I’ll tell you why it’s not possible,’ she went on. ‘It’s not possible that my five grown and nearly grown sons could be so thoughtless, so selfish, so ungrateful, as to repay all my years of devotion to them by walking out on me like that. Just like their thoughtless, selfish, ungrateful father. Leaving me,’ she added bitterly, ‘alone.’

‘Mother,’ Yudhishtir said gently, ‘you know we have never disobeyed you, in anything. If you forbid us to go we shall stay.’

‘Forbid you?’ Kunti turned her face away so that they would not see the tears come smarting to her eyes. ‘And then have you hulks moping around the house looking at me as if I have sentenced you all to death? No, Yudhishtir, don’t try and make it easy for yourself. I shall not forbid you. Go, if you want to. All of you. Go.’

They looked hesitantly at each other. ‘Mother, you will be all right, won’t you?’ Bhim asked.

‘Oh, I’ll be all right,’ Kunti replied, the sun reflecting off the moistness of her pupils. ‘As all right as I have ever been.’ She ran the back of a hand across her eyes. ‘There — that does it: I’ve smudged my eyeliner. It’s not even as if the five of you are worth it. What sort of company have you been for me, anyway? It’d be just the same whether you were here or not.’

‘Mother, I promise you,’ Yudhishtir said earnestly, ‘that we shall come back to you whenever you need us. And that we will never, ever disregard a single instruction you give. We swear never to disobey anything you say, however big or small the issue.’

The promise took on a new dimension: it was the corollary and the condition of their autonomy. Solemnly, in an instinctual ritual of affirmation that seemed to belong to another world, they each echoed the promise. It thus acquired a reality of its own, which would come back to haunt them years later.

Kunti, touched, looked up at her eldest son.

‘Will you give us your blessing, Mother?’ Yudhishtir asked. ‘Before we go?’

‘Yes,’ she said at last, wrenching the word from her heart. ‘God bless you, my sons, in whatever you do.’ She found she could not stop the tears from coming. ‘Now go. I hate you seeing me like this. For my sake, all of you, go!’

They went, slowly filing out of her presence, and when the room was empty at last she raised her tear-soaked face to the window and spoke bitterly to herself, and to the rays of the sun that streamed in to mock her misery with their brightness.

‘Why me, Lord, every time? Why must I be abandoned by every man to whom I give myself? Even by the sons I bore with such pain?’

There was, of course, no answer. But the celestial breeze that swept into the room and dried the tears upon her cheek also left the echo of an answer in her mind. ‘It is,’ the echo whispered, ‘it is your karma, Kunti.’

But then it could as easily have been her imagination.

79

‘Ah, Kanika, is it you? You walk so softly I cannot always tell.’

‘Yes, Prime Minister. In fact I have left my sandals outside the door. After all the months of being cribb’d, cabin’d and confin’d in the shoes England obliges me to wear, I find even sandals too much of an imposition when I am home.’

The visitor’s padding footsteps neared him and Dhritarashtra recognized the familiar aromatic combination of Mennen after-shave (‘if they are willing to name a cologne after me, I may as well use it’) mingled with onion-and-red-chilli samandi, the favourite breakfast chutney of his High Commissioner in London. ‘Prime Minister, it is good to see you,’ V. Kanika Menon breathed powerfully as the two men embraced.

‘As your American friends say, likewise.’ Menon laughed: he had no American friends. The usual consequence of contact between him and ‘those of the American persuasion,’ as he liked to describe them, was apoplexy — on the part of the Americans. Kanika invariably remained his cool, acerbic self throughout these encounters, while everyone else present felt they had just been through a wringer and had come out still wet. Dhritarashtra was probably his only friend in the world.

‘How are things across the black water?’ the Prime Minister asked as his guest made himself comfortable.

‘Tolerable, though Albion remains as perfidious as ever,’ Kanika replied. ‘But let me not waste your time on petty routine. I have been debriefed — I believe that is the current expression, though I am always tempted, when I hear it, to make sure I still have my undershorts on — by the mandarins of the External Affairs Ministry.’ He shook his head expressively, a gesture wasted on his friend: how easily one forgets Dhritarashtra’s blindness, he thought. ‘I have often wondered, Prime Minister, where you pick up some of these characters. All terribly solemn fellows in elaborate three-piece suits and better accents than I am accustomed to hearing when I am summoned to Whitehall. But ask them for a decision and it’s as if you had suggested a dirty weekend. Send them a cable and they will contrive brilliantly to lose it amongst themselves. I cannot recall a single transaction with them that has not taken weeks rather than days. Are you sure, Prime Minister, that some of them haven’t misread the name of their enterprise as the Ministry of Eternal Affairs?’

Dhritarashtra laughed. ‘You are incorrigible, Kanika. No wonder your Russian friends think so poorly of our boys in South Block. The ideas you must put into their head!’

‘Me?’ Kanika Menon put all his injured innocence into his voice, regretfully shelving the expressive gestures for which he was famous on the international rhetorical circuit. ‘I have no Russian friends, Prime Minister, you know that. Several acquaintances, perhaps. And they don’t need me to tell them about our ministry. You know what the Russian ambassador said to me the other evening?’ Menon assumed a booming voice and the accent of a Volga boatman. ‘Come here, Menon, and I will tell you what they are saying in the Kremlin about your Indian diplomacy,’ he quoted. ‘They say it is like the love- making of an Indian elephant: it is conducted at a very high level, accompanied by much bellowing, and the results are not known for three years.’

‘Oh, Kanika,’ laughed the Prime Minister helplessly, ‘I don’t know what I do without you in Delhi most of the year. But I am glad you have taken this little holiday. You are just what the doctor ordered.’

‘Problems?’ Kanika asked, instantly sympathetic.

‘Well, of a fashion,’ Dhritarashtra replied. ‘No, not really. Well, let me put it this way: some of our people in the Kaurava Party think there is a problem.’

‘You are speaking, Prime Minister, in riddles. You will have to make allowances for your uninformed cousin from the country.’

‘I don’t think you know Jayaprakash Drona,’ Dhritarashtra said. It was more of a statement than a question: Kanika had spent the years of the struggle for freedom running the Indian Home Rule League in London, where Dhritarashtra had met him. His personal knowledge of Indian politicians was largely based on whether they had travelled his way during his long self-exile. Drona had not.

‘You mean the saintly anarchist? Only by reputation.’

‘Well, that’s something,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘A good reputation?’

‘More or less,’ Kanika responded cautiously. ‘Nationalist, idealist, willing to lay himself on the line, or so the American military attaché said to me at the time of the Quit India business.’

‘Really? I wouldn’t have thought the Americans took much notice of the Quit India movement.’

‘Oh, they did. The moment it was announced. I think they saw Gangaji’s choice of a slogan as a definite tilt towards America. “Quit” is very American, you know. Though the Yankees are more used to hearing it applied to them in the Latin world. I was a little surprised myself: the British stopped using “quit” in that sense about the time of Spenser.’

Dhritarashtra laughed. ‘And did you confirm the American’s analysis for him?’

‘Of course not. I told him we were still three hundred years behind in our use of the English language.’

‘Disappointing,’ Dhritarashtra said lightly. ‘I wonder when we’ll ever make a diplomat out of you? Anyway, so you know about Drona. If you have been following developments at home as you are supposed to, I suppose you also know he quit the Council of Ministers some time ago and went off into the villages, accompanied by Pandu’s five sons and his own.’

‘I seem dimly to recall something along those lines,’ Kanika replied, as fastidious about not splitting his infinitives as he was about infinitely splitting hairs. ‘As you can probably guess, it failed to make much of an impact in the imperialist press, and I read the Indian papers, when they get to me five weeks late, only for the domestic cricket scores. But why on earth did Drona do this?’

‘To work for the political transformation of rural India,’ Dhritarashtra sighed. ‘And no, you wouldn’t have seen much about it in the Indian newspapers even if you had looked beyond the sports page, because their reporters never venture out into the countryside. The Indian press purveys news of, by and for the urban élite. Drona doesn’t belong to any of those categories.’

‘Oh, the jute-bag press will notice him all right, the moment his rustic crusade impinges on their owners’ interests,’ Kanika replied sardonically. ‘My personal recipe for getting the attention of the Indian press is to attack the jute industry. Gangaji did it, and he was front-page material for the rest of his life. Mind you, he did a few other things too, but you can’t overlook the fact that the largest shareholders in at least half a dozen of the country’s leading newspapers are jute barons. But I digress. You were telling me about Drona, who, I presume, has so far left jute alone.’

‘Oh, yes. But he has made some inroads in other areas, with his young followers. Raising the villagers’ consciousness of their democratic rights. Ensuring that tenants on large farms get their due, and clamouring for land reform. Exposing corruption and maladministration in the police and the village councils.’

‘And this worries you?’

‘It delights me!’ Dhritarashtra was emphatic. ‘Kanika, these are the sorts of things that I have spoken and written about all my life, the kinds of things that the Kaurava movement was, as far as I am concerned, all about. You know my views — we were Socialists in London together. How could you ask such a question?’

‘Because you seem troubled. And because you implied there may be a problem about Drona.’

‘Of course. I’m sorry, Kanika. It’s just that — that this whole business is so terribly unworthy, if you know what I mean. Some people have been advising me that Drona and his young followers are becoming too popular. They feel I ought to be doing something to — make life a little difficult for them. Cut them down to size.’ Dhritarashtra exhaled his anguish. ‘I just can’t bring myself to, Kanika. I need your advice.’

Kanika was silent for a moment, as if weighing two answers in the balance. ‘In questions of political judgement, Prime Minister, I am something of a traditionalist,’ he said at last. ‘I go back to the lessons of the Arthashastra, from which Machiavelli plagiarized so effectively, and the Shantiparvan of Vyasa. I hope you won’t mind what I am going to tell you, but for what it’s worth, it comes sanctified by the centuries:

It’s never that easy to be a king

And rule a populace;

For popularity’s a fickle thing

Which might easily gobble us.

A king must always make it clear

That in his realm he’s boss;

Nobody else, though near and dear,

May inflict on him a loss.

A king must always show his might

Even ‘gainst kith and kin;

It doesn’t matter if he’s right

But he must be seen to win.

There’s not much point in being strong

If no one see’s your strength;

A tiger shows power all along

His striped and muscular length

Any weakness must be concealed

As a tortoise hides his head;

A king must never be revealed

Quaking under his bed.

Stealth and discretion are the means

To employ in making plans;

A clever king, though, never leans

In trust on another man’s.

Pretend! Conceal! Find out! Mistrust!

These are the vital things;

Maintain a cheerful outer crust

But permit no rival kings.

Keep your intentions to yourself

Don’t reveal them on your face;

Purchase silence with your pelf

And pack a knife (in case).

Give orders only when you’re sure

Of their effective execution;

Make certain you are seen as pure

— Innocent of persecution.

Eradicate the slightest threat!

Don’t forget the thinnest thorn

Embedded in your flesh, might yet

Fester; and this I warn:

A small spark can start a forest fire –

No enemy’s too minor –

Before the danger gets too dire

Don’t make the fine points finer

There never is a genuine need

To issue an ultimatum;

Before a rival does the deed –

Simply eliminate him.

Do it sharp, and do it quick!

But never let him catch on.

(To be safe, keep a big stout stick

And always sleep with the latch on.)

Dissimulate! When angry, smile;

Speak soft; then strike to kill;

Then weep — oh, never show your bile –

And mourn your victim still.

Amass all the wealth you can;

Cash, jewels, humans too;

Resources are needed for every plan,

And any means will do.

Remember it’s said a crooked stick

Serves just as well as a straight one

When it’s fruit from a tree you wish to pick

(An early plum, or a late one).

So employ your own crooked men

To gather information;

From the market and the gambling den

Let them take the pulse of the nation.

Regarding enemies, I only wish

You’d learn from the fisherman’s book;

He traps and slits and strips his fish.

And burns what he doesn’t cook.

That’s the only way to treat all those

Who pose a threat to you;

They may genuflect, and touch your toes –

But don’t let them get to you.

Think of the future; it’s time to start

To anticipate the threat;

If you don’t grow callouses on your heart

You might just bleed to death.’

Dhritarashtra sighed. ‘Thank you, Kanika. I know you’re speaking with my best interests at heart, but that’s simply not me. I can’t do it.’

‘You asked for my advice,’ Kanika Menon shrugged. ‘I gave you the only advice I could.’

‘I know,’ Dhritarashtra said. ‘Now let’s try and forget I ever asked you, shall we?’

‘Certainly,’ his visitor said, the sharp, hawk-like face a mask. ‘It’ll go no further.’

But it already had. Just beyond the half-open door leading to the Prime Minister’s private study, Dhritarashtra’s dark-eyed daughter put down the book she had been pretending to read and smiled a quiet smile of satisfaction She was glad her idealistic father had some less idealistic friends. Dhritarashtra might forget Kanika’s advice, but Priya Duryodhani would remember every word of the acerbic High Commissioner’s brutal counsel.

And she would not hesitate to act on it.

80

The government jeep seemed to hesitate before turning into the small village lane. When it gradually eased its way past the corner and entered the dust- track, its gear-grinding reluctance proved amply justified. There was scarcely enough space between the walls of the mud houses on either side for it to progress smoothly, and the road-surface available would not lightly have been classified by the Automobile Association as motorable. But once the turn was past, it was almost easier to continue than to retreat. The jeep bumped and jolted its way down, scattering shrieking children and squawking chickens in all directions like seeds flung by a tipsy farmer.

At last it drew to a noisy halt before an open space where a throng of villagers had gathered in front of a red-and-white banner proclaiming ‘Land Reform Rally’ in Hindi and English. A bearded speaker was declaiming to the crowd without the benefit of either text or microphone. The wayward breeze carried some of his phrases erratically towards sections of the crowd, which punctuated his eloquence with the occasional ragged cheer. The arrival of the jeep lost him the fringes of his audience: from where they stood the intruding vehicle had a clear advantage in audibility.

A rumpled figure emerged from the jeep and stood outside it, squinting at the scene with his hand to his brow like a sailor looking for land. A generous layer of dust had settled on his face and hair and streaked his unfortunate choice of garment, a cream-coloured cotton suit. In his hand he held a battered black briefcase.

‘Uncle Vidur!’ a youthful voice rang out above the speculative murmurs of the crowd. ‘Uncle Vidur!’ its twin echoed.

A tall, distinguished-looking young man in a cotton shirt and trousers detached himself from the knot of people near the platform and made his way after the two younger boys to the jeep. ‘Uncle Vidur,’ Yudhishtir said. ‘What a pleasure to see you! What brings you here?’

‘You,’ Vidur said shortly. He was clearly in no mood for pleasantries. ‘Where are the others? I have to talk to you all urgently.’

‘Dronaji’s on the platform and Bhim is pretty much holding it up for him — one of the supports gave way: we think it was sawed through by one of the landlords’ people last night. Oh, and Arjun is up there somewhere keeping an eye on the crowd; we’ve had a couple of ugly incidents recently. But if you’ll wait just a few minutes, Uncle Vidur, the rally’s almost coming to an end.’

Vidur looked dubiously at the crowd. ‘Oh, all right,’ he said at last. ‘But try and signal to him to finish fairly quickly. I haven’t a great deal of time.’

Up on the platform Jayaprakash Drona was building up to an impassioned climax. ‘We hear a great deal of socialist talk from New Delhi,’ he declared. ‘The government tells us it is reserving the “commanding heights of the economy” for the people — for the public sector. And what are these “commanding heights”? Iron and steel, to build big ships in which none of us will ever sail. Power, to light the homes of the rich who have electricity. Banking and finance, for those who have money to put into them.’ (Answering echoes from the throng.) ‘But what about the land, the earth, the soil which each of you and four fifths of your countrymen till to feed yourselves, your families, and the ration-card-wallahs in the cities? No one in Delhi is talking about land!’ (Angry shouts.) ‘While the bureaucrats and ministers stand on their “commanding heights”, the common peasant of India is trodden into the demanding depths — of starvation and ruin! They do not care about ruthless exploitation by the landlords in the villages, because they are too busy in the cities. Busy worshipping at what our Prime Minister, Dhritarashtra, a man for whom I have great respect,’ (ironic cheers from a section of the crowd), ‘no, seriously, a man whom I greatly respect, called the “new temples” of modern India — the gleaming new factories his government has erected. Why “new temples”? Because Dhritarashtra hopes that our people will abandon their old temples, their real temples, to pray at the altar of his new machinery.’ (Shouts of outrage.) ‘I know this is difficult for you to believe, but that is what our Prime Minister wants. Well, he is not going to get it for a while, because his ministers dutifully echo his views, and then they make the new temples just like the old ones: they go to inaugurate a steel factory or a chemical laboratory, and they break a coconut and perform a puja outside.’ (Appreciative laughter.) ‘So I say to you all, it is time we forgot about the new temples and spent a bit of time thinking about the people who go to the old ones.’ (Hear, hear.) ‘You!’ (Roar of applause.) ‘This government has got to be pressed into implementing the land reforms the Kaurava Party has promised since before Independence. The honest peasant must be rewarded for the sweat of his brow! Land to the tiller! Down with landlord exploitation! Long live the humble Indian farmer!’ (And echo answered, ‘Zindabad!’)

The speaker descended from his platform, and the crowd dispersed slowly, like ants abandoning a crumb. Drona walked with rapid strides to the visitor.

‘Well, how did you like that?’ the sage of the sansculottes asked, wiping the sweat from his brow as he greeted Vidur.

‘Not bad,’ the civil servant responded, ‘except that I thought you were a little hard on poor Dhritarashtra there. After all, he believes in precisely the same things — land reform, tillers’ rights, and so on. But he can’t just wade in and change everything overnight. He’s got a party, and a country, to run.’

‘Well, he’d better realize soon that these people are his country,’ Drona retorted. ‘But it’s clear you haven’t come all this way to discuss politics. Or’ — he looked shrewdly at the bureaucrat — ‘have you?’

‘Good Lord no,’ Vidur replied hastily. ‘Look, isn’t there some place we can talk?’ He looked around him at the small circle of villagers who had gathered around them and were staring at Vidur with unashamed curiosity.

Drona grinned. ‘You shouldn’t dress like that, Vidur, if you want privacy in an Indian village,’ he remarked mischievously. ‘Come — there is a place we can all go to, if you’ll promise to take off your shoes. The Shiva Mandir is normally closed at this hour, but the priest has given me a key to the back gate of the temple. We can sit under the shade of a large banyan by the side of a somewhat fungal tank, and talk to your heart’s content in the courtyard of the Lord.’ He regarded the jeep with interest. ‘Is this your vahana? “Government of India, Central Bureau of Intelligence”,’ he read from the licence plate. ‘Is that what you’re doing these days?’

‘The CBI is one of the departments that report to me, yes,’ replied Vidur, whose success over Manimir had elevated him to the rank of Secretary of the Home Ministry. ‘And that’s why I want to talk to you. Can we get a move on?’

The six of them — Ashwathaman was away organizing the next day’s rally at a near-by village — sat around their unexpected visitor, shoeless, at the temple tank, as he explained the reason for his unexpected visit.

‘I’m afraid things are no longer safe for you,’ he said, addressing himself directly to Yudhishtir. ‘Someone — someone powerful, and I think it could be Priya Duryodhani — has given instructions that the five of you should be attacked, possibly killed.’ He saw astonished questions rising to their lips, and raised a hand. ‘Don’t ask me how I know, or why I can’t do anything about it. In time, perhaps, I can get Dhritarashtra or even Duryodhani herself to put an end to this madness and take back these insane instructions if she has anything to do with them, but right now they’ve already gone out and I was terrified they’d be acted upon before I could warn you. You’re particularly vulnerable in this highly visible campaign of Drona’s — it would be very easy to organize a riot or a violent disturbance in which you could be harmed.’

‘Let’s see who will try to harm us,’ said Bhim with typical bravado. ‘I will take on anyone and his father.’

Don’t be silly, Bhim,’ Vidur said unkindly. ‘You can’t take on a bullet in the back or an expertly thrown knife from a crowd. I wouldn’t have come all this way, at some personal inconvenience, if I hadn’t believed the situation was more than even the five of you could cope with.’

‘Of course, Uncle Vidur,’ said Yudhishtir. ‘Please go on.’

‘I want the five of you to come with me immediately, in the jeep. It will be a bit of a squeeze, but the journey won’t be long. I have a boat waiting on the banks of the Ganga a little way from here, just beyond the next village. A man will be waiting on the other side who will escort you to the town of Varanavata. It’s a bit off the beaten track, but large enough for you to get lost in the crowd. Lie low for a while there, until this thing blows over. I can get messages to you through the local postmaster, but since it is an open wire they may be somewhat elliptical.’

‘We will decipher them, Uncle Vidur,’ Yudhishtir said quietly. ‘What about Dronaji?’

‘Yes,’ said the saffron-clad firebrand, ‘what about me?’

‘You’re quite safe, for the moment,’ Vidur replied. ‘Oddly enough, the threat seems directed only at the five of them, which suggests it may be personal rather than political — or at least more personal than political.’

‘I still can’t believe Duryodhani would be involved in anything like this,’ Yudhishtir said.

We can,’ said Nakul candidly.

‘I’ll never understand that girl,’ said Vidur with a tired shake of the head. ‘If it weren’t for a very strong instinct to the contrary, I’d have had it out with her directly. But something tells me it would be better if she did not know I am aware of what is going on — I can be more useful to you all in this way. I hope I’m right.’

‘I’m sure you are, Uncle Vidur,’ Yudhishtir said dutifully.

‘Oh — and there’s one more thing. Someone will be waiting for you at Varanavata — someone from whom I don’t think you ought to be separated at this time.’

‘Mother?’ Arjun asked.

Vidur nodded. ‘Be good to her, boys. She’s been through a lot.’

81

The news of the death of Karnistan’s eponymous founder reached Dhritarash- tra during his morning massage, when he had his major cables read to him.

‘How did it happen?’ He asked his half-brother, who had interrupted the uninspired elocution of a particularly truculent dispatch from London to give him the news. The Prime Minister lay on his front, wearing shorts and his ever-present dark glasses, as a burly pahelwan dissolved the knots of tension on his neck with the subtle pressure of his expert thumbs.

‘Well, he hadn’t been too well for some time now,’ Vidur replied. ‘You remember, that golden skin of his had begun to take on a decidedly yellowish tinge by the time Partition occurred. And there were moments when one almost felt one could look through that translucent half-moon on his forehead to the twisted mess inside.’ Vidur stopped, embarrassed by his own imagination. ‘But anyway, the actual climax was rather bathetic. Seems his official vehicle got stuck in the mud somewhere on an inspection tour. Karna barked at the driver, which only made the poor fool more nervous, so nervous he revved the engine too strongly and got the wheel embedded even more deeply in the mud. The Khalifa-e-Mashriq was apparently beside himself with rage. Leapt out of the car screaming imprecations at the hapless driver. Said he’d pull the wheel out of the mud himself with his bare hands.’

‘Good God,’ Dhritarashtra murmured, feeling other bare hands — stronger than Karna’s — relax his shoulder-blades with long, deep strokes. ‘And did he try?’

‘Apparently. When the driver tried to help him Karna sent him back to his seat. It seems there were people around, but no one dared approach the Khalifa in this mood.’

‘And then?’

‘He apparently actually tugged at the wheel, which didn’t budge, of course. And then he did something rather peculiar — I mean even more peculiar.’ ‘Oh?’

‘He shook his fist at the sun.’

‘Strange.’

‘And almost immediately, so the story goes, keeled over and died,’ Vidur completed the tale. ‘With his hands still locked hopelessly on the wheel of his car.’

Dhritarashtra was silent for a moment as the muscular masseur kneaded life into the unexercised flesh of his thighs. ‘I can’t say I ever liked the man very much,’ he said at last. ‘With his overweening ambition, the glaring pseudo- religious chip on his highly un-Islamic shoulder, his willingness to destroy a country in order to have his own way, he wasn’t exactly what you would call likeable. And yet. . I wonder sometimes: if we had given him his due in the Kaurava Party, might he not today be remembered as one of the finest Indians of us all?’

He winced as the masseur’s palms slapped his slackening waist more vigorously than usual. But Dhritarashtra did not take that as a political comment. He knew the masseur held the country’s highest security clearance, shared only with a dozen members of the Cabinet and a handful of the top civil service. The pahelwan had been engaged with the most impeccable of credentials — a recommendation from me.

We historians, you see, Ganapathi, had to have our sources.

Far away, in a nondescript hotel room in charmless Varanavata, Kunti Devi Yadav, relict of the much lamented Pandu, heard the news on a tinny radio and wept. She wept for the son she had never known, and for the fate that had deprived her of that knowledge. She wept, too, for lost innocence and acquired guilt: the innocence she had surrendered in the arms of Hyperion Helios, and the dreadful guilt that only a mother who has survived a child can know. A mother who, in this case, was obliged to mourn her son alone, and in silence.

Kunti wept. She walked unsteadily to the barred window of her hotel room. And then, in a completely incongruous gesture, she pushed her braceleted arm out of the window, and shook her fist at the sun.