SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis – Excerpt#4
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4
Blood pounded in Kamsa’s head with the ferocity of a kettle-drum. His vision blurred for a moment and once again he saw the same horrendous vision that had met him moments ago: The sabha hall was filled with fierce kshatriyas and mighty yoddhas, all determined to destroy him and his kin. To wipe out his entire race from the face of the earth. He recognized many of the faces as new aspects of old foes, reborn in this age for the express purpose of decimating and committing genocide upon his true blood-kin. He had met them before, in another city, another age. A place named Ayodhya, where twice before he had bravely attempted to strike a blow for his people’s cause, and had tasted the bitter fruit of their deceitful thwarting of his noble efforts. He had been in possession of a different form himself in that age and place, and been known by another name. It eluded him now, but he knew that his given name in this life simply meant ‘amsa’ of ‘K’, K being the first vowel of that ancient name and amsa being a partial rebirth, similar to an avatar. This was but the newest round of battle in an age-old conflict with the greatest enemy of his kind.
He glanced in the direction of their leader, the one who sat on the Andhaka throne bearing the raj-mukut, the crown of beaten gold that was placed upon the head of the people’s chosen leader, for the Andhaka Yadava nation was a republic in the truest sense of the word.
The being seated there glared down at him with a look of pure fury. He bore the familiar aspect and human garb of Chief-King Ugrasena, he even moved and spoke like him, shouting stern commands that he foolishly expected Kamsa to obey. Kamsa was not fooled by this clever disguise and performance. That old man seated upon the Andhaka throne was not his true sire; that honour fell to a noble being named Drumila, a powerful daitya from the netherworld. Unable to take birth in this age in his true form, he had disguised himself as the chief-king of the Andhakas, Ugrasena, and in this fleshly diguise, he had deceived Ugrasena’s wife Padmavati in younger days, siring a male-child upon her. Kamsa was that child, and he felt the rich, noble blood of his true father raging in his veins now as he did at such times, and he ignored the blathering objections and orders of Ugrasena, a feeble old man who possessed neither the will nor the strength to do what had to be done: Exterminate all enemy. Kill them where you find them, by any means possible. Yet, somewhere within Ugrasena’s incompetent form, there remained a vestige of Drumila and it was to this smriti truth that Kamsa bowed and conceded lordship.
“Fear not, father!” Kamsa said aloud, as the stunned assemblage still reeling from the shock of his bold intrusion and even bolder act of heroism turned to stare at him. “I have slain the enemy in our midst. No more will his deception veil our senses from the true nature of his evil mission!”
He saw Ugrasena blink several times as he absorbed this shouted missive. Beside him, Kamsa’s mother Padmavati, once legendary for her beauty, now a wasted shadow of her former self, covered her face and seemed to weep. Tears of joy, surely, Kamsa told himself. She must be overjoyed at my speed and boldness. His true father Drumila did not respond as Kamsa had expected either: he did not loudly hail his son’s achievement to the assembly or come to Kamsa and press him to his breast in that fierce embrace that Kamsa had craved for so often during his growing years and received so rarely. But that was only to be expected as well; in his human disguise as Ugrasena, Drumila must needs conceal his true feelings for his son. No matter. Kamsa knew his parents were proud of him and that was enough.
He executed a deep bow in the direction of the throne, and raised his head smiling.
The smile faded as he saw the crowd encircling the spot where Vasudeva had stood only moments ago, part to reveal something quite extraordinary.
Vasudeva stood as he had before, facing him. The stupid cowherd that he was, he had neither flinched nor taken evasive nor defensive action when Kamsa had flung the spear. Not that anyone could deflect or dodge a throw by Kamsa easily; but at least the man might have made an attempt. To simply stand there facing death was an act so contemptful it made Kamsa want to spit his mouthful of tobacco on the polished floor in disgust. Of course, such steadfastness might be misconstrued as heroism, a yoddha facing certain oncoming death without so much as flinching. But Kamsa knew better. The man was a coward and so unexpected and stunning was Kamsa’s action that he had no time to react. He simply stood there as the spear, flung by Kamsa with force enough to punch through armour, bone, flesh, gristle, sinew, spine, and emerge out the man’s back – he had done precisely that to other men a hundred times before and knew exactly the force, trajectory and impact of his throw – sped towards him to end his life.
The spear still stood there.
In mid air.
Before Vasudeva.
Kamsa stared, blinking several times to make sure his eyes were not still obscured by the blood from his last skirmish with some cowherds who had strayed across the demarcated border into Andhaka territory. Well, technically, they hadn’t strayed, but the heads of their cattle were pointed towards Andhaka territory, so it was obvious they intended to cross over. He had slaughtered the cowherds, and their kine, down to the last suckling calf and mother of both species. Their blood had spattered on his face, obscuring his vision, and it had taken considerable scrubbing to remove the stubborn spatters. Damn enemy blood. Burned like acid too.
But no amount of blinking or rubbing of his face made the sight vanish or change.
His spear stayed there, floating in mid air, inches from Vasudeva’s chest, its deadly barbed tip pointed precisely at the point where the breastbone met the ribcage, that soft yielding centre spot where the spear would have punched through with minimal resistance, bursting through the heart and emerging out the rear of the Sura’s body.
It just hung there, suspended by no visible means. Floating in mid air. Not floating exactly, for it did not so much as move an inch, merely hung there as if deeply imbedded in some solid object.
But I heard it strike! It hit bone and flesh and cartilege with that typical wet crunching sound they always make at this distance and force.
Then again, he was so accustomed to hearing that sound that it was possible he had simply remembered it from previous occasions. The outburst from the onlookers that exploded the instant he flung the spear had drowned out everything else, after all.
He strode towards the Sura chief-king, people stepping back or moving away, wide-eyed, to give him a wide berth.
He saw a man standing beside Vasudeva stand his ground staunchly, alongwith several others he recognized as the Sura’s clan-brothers and allied chieftains. They stared fiercely at Kamsa with the look he had seen so often before. He saw fists clench empty air, muscles tighten, jaws lock, and knew that they were prepared to take him on with their bare hands if need be. They did not worry him; he could take them on single-handedly, even if Haddi-Hathi was not there to back him up, which he was.
Kamsa stared at the spear. He walked slowly around it. He examined it from all angles.
He could not fathom how the trick had been done. The spear simply stood there, embedded solidly in…in thin air!
He took hold of the spear and grasped it. He felt a shock as it failed to budge.
He yanked down upon it, hard.
Nothing.
He pulled it to the left, then to the right, then pushed upwards. His biceps and powerful shoulder muscles bulged, and he knew that were this a lever he was pushing upon, he could have moved a boulder weighing a ton with this much effort.
Yet the spear just stayed there, as immobile as an iron rod moulded into solid rock.
It was impossible.
He looked at Vasudeva. The Sura chief-king’s face was hard, ready for anything, yet not cruel and mocking as Kamsa had expected. Not the gloating glee that a triumphant enemy ought to have displayed at such a moment.
“How!” Kamsa screamed. “By what sorcery did you do this?”
Vasudeva looked at him for a moment with eyes that seemed almost cow-like to Kamsa’s raging senses. The kettle-drums played out their mad rhythm in his blood, pounding his brain with unending waves of agony.
Then, to the sound of a shocked Aaah from the watching assemblage, Vasudeva reached out, took hold of the spear, which came free of its invisible hold as easily as if he had simply picked it up from a wall-stand. Several spectators clasped palms together and cried out “Sadhu! Sadhu!” in reverential tones – for what had happened was no less than a miracle.
And to Kamsa’s continued disbelief and amazement, the Sura chief-king held out the spear upon raised palms, the action of a man surrendering rather than opposing.
“It was not I,” Vasudeva said quietly. “But the great Lord Vishnu who did this. For it is clear that he desires our people to be at peace. Accept this as proof of his grace and a sign of his protection over all those who work to achieve Shanti upon Prithvi-loka.”
The fantastic adventures of the Hindu God Krishna have entertained and inspired people for millennia. Playful cowherd, mischievous lover, feared demon-slayer, the legendary exploits of this super-being in human form rival the most rousing fantasy epics. Now, the author of the Ramayana Series®, the hugely successful epic retelling of the ancient Sanskrit poem, works his magic once again with the tales of Krishna. All the pomp, splendor and majesty of ancient India come alive in this extraordinary eight-book series.
SLAYER OF KAMSA
The Krishna Coriolis: Book 1
Click here to request a signed copy (limited availability)
The Harper mass market edition will be in Indian bookstores October 2010!
SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis – Excerpt#3
Start at the beginning! Click here to go to Excerpt#1.
3
Devaki shrieked as her brother threw the spear at her betrothed. Her planned union with Vasudeva had yet to be formally solemnized yet she already thought of him as her husband-in-waiting. There was no man she would be happier to unite with in matrimony than the chief-king of the Sura Yadavas. The fact that their joining would only help further the cause of peaceful alliance between the two neighbouring nations was incidental to her. She had always been a woman led by her instinct and spirit, and she knew that she would love Vasudeva deeply, indeed had come to feel great affection and admiration for him already after only a few meetings, and that mattered more to her than politics and statecraft.
She had watched with rising horror as her unruly brother stormed into the sabha hall, then proceeded to slight, dishonour, and variously embarrass her royal dynasty as well as their entire clan by his behaviour. To come thus armed and armoured was bad enough, but to bring a war elephant – especially that brutalized and perverted beast for whom she simultaneously felt pity and disgust – was a terrible act, a flagrant slap in the face of their royal guests. When Kamsa had stared at Vasudeva with that peculiar expression, she had thought that perhaps, for once, sanity and sense had percolated into that dense brain.
When Kamsa had turned, plucked out a barbed spear from the side-saddle of Haddhi-Hathi and flung it with vehement force at her husband-to-be, it shocked the life out of her and she could hardly help shrieking her dismay.
To her further amazement, Vasudeva made no move to twist, turn, dodge, avoid, or otherwise avoid the trajectory of the missile.
The spears Kamsa favoured were brutal things. Metal heads barbed in an asymmetrical pattern of recurved points, any one of which were sufficient to rip to shreds a person’s flesh and organs, and impossible to remove without further damaging the wounded individual. His aim with these inhumane missiles was so renowned, she had once seen him fling a spear at a grama chieftain in a dense milling crowd and strike the grama chieftain in the throat without touching anyone else to either side.
This time too, his aim seemed perfect. The spear was out of his hands and at Vasudeva’s chest, poised to shatter the Sura chief-king’s unprotected breastbone and destroy his heart, killing him instantly.
Her shriek was echoed by an outburst of like screams and shouts of dismay, male as well as female, from across the crowded sabha hall. The distance from Kamsa’s hand to Vasudeva’s chest was barely twenty yards, and the spear flew that distance in a fraction of a moment, yet in later years, as the legend grew, it would be said by some that the spear had slowed in mid air as if travelling through water or against a powerful headwind, rather than simply across empty stillness.
If such a phenomenon truly occurred or if it was merely a product of the active imagination of those watching, she would never know for certain. For no sooner had the spear flown than a man rushed forward, blocking Devaki’s view. It was Akrur, a close friend and ally of Vasudeva and a chief scriptor of the peace alliance between the Sura and Andhaka nations. Later she would learn that he had attempted to fling himself into the path of the onrushing spear, to take the death that was meant for Vasudeva, but at that instant, all she knew was that his body blocked her view and, as if galvanized by Akrur’s action and the violence that had abruptly exploded into a peaceful event, everybody else began moving as well, further obscuring her ability to see.
She saw only bodies and moving heads, none belonging to Vasudeva. But even above the cacophony of shouts and exclamations that had erupted, she heard one sound clearly. The sound of the spear striking flesh and bone came to her like a half-remembered nightmare that would plague the deep watches of restless sleep for many moon-months to come. This sound she would remember because, with her vision obscured, she sincerely believed that it was the sound of her brother’s ill-intentioned spear shattering the bone and flesh of her beloved betrothed; the sound of widowhood even before her nuptials could be completed. It would haunt her until another, far more terrible sound replaced it for sheer nightmarish horror. But that other sound still lay in the future. For now, the sound of metal flung at great velocity shattering bone and splintering it like matchwood, flesh and fluid resounding wetly from the impact, were a horror beyond all imagining. She shrieked again, and would have flung herself forward, directly at her brother, whom unfortunately, she retained a clear view of, and who stood in the centre of the hall, like one of the many stone pillars marching in even rows to either side, like a general flanked by marching cohorts.
In that instant of panic and terror, she saw him turn his head at the sound of her voice. For it was his name she was shrieking. “Kamsa!” His eyes found her in the melee and locked on her briefly. The malice and glee she saw therein, the sheer lascivious delight at what he had just done, was in such start contrast to the awestruck expression he had exhibited only moments earlier, that she could not help thinking, as she had a thousand times over the years, My brother is no mortal man, he is a rakshasa reborn in mortal form. For even if a mortal man had done such an act, for whatever the reason, surely he could not have such an expression on his face, a look that was more demoniac than anything the most imaginative artists and sculptors could conjure up when recreating scenes from the legendary wars against the rakshasas in the Last Asura Wars or that even more legendary battle of Lanka waged by the great King Rama Chandra of Ayodhya. Kamsa could have modelled for those artists and sculptors yet none would have possessed sufficient skill or art to capture the sheer malevolence of the look his face bore at this moment.
Then the moment passed, and he turned back to look in Vasudeva’s direction, no doubt to gloat over the new murder he had just added to his epic tally. And Devaki wished at that moment she had a spear of her own within reach, for she would have surely flung it at this instant, and to hell with filial loyalty and feminine propriety. Just because Andhaka women were no longer permitted to go to battle did not mean they were good only for the bhojanshalya and bedchamber. A daughter of raj-kshatriyas, she had been trained and schooled in the arts of war as thoroughly as her brother. Better, probably, for she had not been banished from Guru sdiekdckcid’s ashram as a child as Kamsa had been for incorrigible behaviour. But of course, there were no weapons here and even at the peak of outrage, Devaki could not simply murder her own brother, however just her motive under dharma.
But in her mind, she flung a barb of retaliation no less deadly and far more portentous: Someday, my brother, your reign of brutality will end. And mine shall be the hand that flings the spear that ends it. This I swear here and now, by Kali-Maa, avenger of the oppressed.
Then she pushed her way through the crowd, desperate to go to Vasudeva’s side, if only to offer her lap for his head in his last moment. The crowd did not resist her for everyone there knew what she was to the Sura chief-king and they stepped aside willingly to let her through. She reached the circle that surrounded Vasudeva and looked upon a heart-stopping sight.
Click here to read more excerpts!
The fantastic adventures of the Hindu God Krishna have entertained and inspired people for millennia. Playful cowherd, mischievous lover, feared demon-slayer, the legendary exploits of this super-being in human form rival the most rousing fantasy epics. Now, the author of the Ramayana Series®, the hugely successful epic retelling of the ancient Sanskrit poem, works his magic once again with the tales of Krishna. All the pomp, splendor and majesty of ancient India come alive in this extraordinary eight-book series.
SLAYER OF KAMSA
The Krishna Coriolis: Book 1
Click here to request a signed copy (limited availability)
The Harper mass market edition will be in Indian bookstores October 2010!
SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis – Excerpt#2
Start at the beginning! Click here to go to Excerpt#1.
2
The massive oak doors of the banquet hall flew open as if struck by a battering ram. They swivelled inwards on smoothly oiled tracks and crashed against the stone walls, swatting aside the guards milling about the entrance. Vasudeva glanced up from his meal just in time to see a young soldier’s foot caught by the lower bolt of one door, dragged to the wall, then crushed against the relentless stone with a bone-crunching impact that left the poor fellow’s face white.
The other guards, milling about jovially until now, caught up in the festive atmosphere, responded belatedly joining their lances and challenging the rude entrants. The armored bull elephant that trundled into the banquet hall paid no heed to their shouted challenges. It was armored in the fashion of Andhaka Hathi-Yodhhas, the dreaded war elephants of the Andhaka clan, its head couched in a formidably moulded headpiece bristling with spikes that made it resemble some demon out of myth, its tusks capped with brass horns tapering to spearlike protrusions, and rows of ugly spikes decorating its sides.
Vasudeva had seen the havoc that these Hathi-Yodhhas left in their wake during close combat. His heart lurched at the thought of what destruction even a single such monster could wreak in a confined, crowded space such as this hall. The dried brownish smears on the elephant’s armourplating left no doubt that its aggressive appearance was not merely for decoration. This particular Hathi-Yodhha had seen active combat this very day and had taken lives in that action. Vasudeva prayed silently that they were not Sura lives, then felt mean and small for having thought so. All life was precious, all humanity united in brotherhood. No matter whose blood lay dried upon the armourplate of this Hathi-Yodhha, it was a death he would not have wished upon anyone.
Supremely confident in its strength and tonnage, the hathi trundled forward without heed for the puny sipahis waving their spears before it. Its flailing trunk, pierced with studs, knocked three of the sipahis carelessly to the floor, then it proceeded to pound their prostrate forms with its leaden feet. The sipahis convulsed and screamed, the screams cut abruptly short as the massive grey feet smashed their heads with practised ease, spilling their lives onto the polished marble floor. Gasps and exclamations of protest met this callous life-taking.
The Hathi-Yodhha swung its massive head from side to side, checking for more challengers before covering the last few yards into the centre of the banquet hall. The surviving gate-guards, brave though they were, shuffled aside hastily, their faces blanching at the fate of their companions. Even the lot of them combined could hardly expect to face a battle-ready war elephant, and this, as they well knew, was no ordinary war elephant. This was the feared and hated Haddi-Hathi himself, named for the pleasure he was rumored to take in crushing human bone. It only made things worse that the elephant, like its rider, was on their side. Theoretically speaking at least.
In fact, Vasudeva thought grimly, they had more to fear from their kinsman mounted on the elephant’s back than from the hathi itself.
That heavily muscled figure, clad in blood-spattered brass armor to make himself resemble an outgrowth of the elephant rather than a separate being, was none other than the universally feared and hated master of Haddi-Hathi, Prince Kamsa himself, evidently returned from a new campaign of reaving and ravaging. Vasudeva glanced around to see his aides-de-camp, indeed his entire entourage of clansmen, all reaching instinctively for their swords and maces. They found no weapons: the party had divested itself of its metal implements at the gates of the keep before entering at dawn in accordance with the terms of the treaty. But even so, their faces and clenched fists betrayed their rage at the sight of the man mounted atop the elephant. That man–nay, that beast, for he was more truly an animal than the creature astride which he sat–had left his bloody handprint upon the spotless reputation of every last one of the Sura houses represented here.
Over the last few years, none of these proud clanschief families had escaped the rapacious raids and ruthless violence of Prince Kamsa and his Marauders. Vasudeva raised his hands to quell the muttered noises of provocation rising from his party, feeling the desire for justful revenge that swelled in their proud warrior hearts. He himself, as king and chief justice of the Suras, had grown heartsick at hearing the numberless atrocities committed by the prince of the Andhakas and his White-clad mercenaries. Their exploits far exceeded any conceivable desire for revenge or simple war-lust; their’s was a campaign of brute destructiveness.
The list of war crimes, in utter violation of all Arya warrior codes, streamed past his memory’s eye like a herd of sheep impatient to return to the stockade before duskfall: women kin violated, homes and herds put to the torch, entire families wiped out overnight…yes, the White Prince had much to answer for. But that reckoning would not be here, or now. King Vasudeva kept his hands raised to either side, and his clansmen subsided reluctantly, their faces still dark with angry blood.
Atop the blood-marked elephant, Prince Kamsa’s proud, handsome face turned from side to side, his piercing gray-blue eyes sweeping the length of the banquet hall, briefly and contemptuously scanning the faces of his many enemies assembled here. He lingered briefly on the women, dressed in colourful and enticing festive garb. The leering grin that twisted his face betrayed his utter lack of respect for any regal protocol.
Even Vasudeva felt his jaw clench as the prince stared with rude intensity at an attractive woman amidst the throng of richly clad nobility only two tables down. That was Lady Pritha, Vasudeva’s own sister, who had travelled here from her home at Hastinapura. Her husband Pandu had been unable to attend due to his ill health, but Pritha’s presence was official and was more than sufficient to prove the solidarity of the great Kuru nation. The unbecoming stare that Prince Kamsa directed at her, a leer actually, was offensive in the extreme.
Vasudeva’s own hands clenched into fists as he struggled to restrain his own warring emotions. What manner of beast was this man, that he would storm thus into his own keep’s banquet hall in bloody armor, dash down his own loyal kin-soldiers, insult a noblewoman under the protection of his father’s hospitality? Often had he heard the tales whispered along the length of the Yamuna among the many clans and sub-clans of the Yadava nation. It was said that Kamsa was a rakshasa begot upon his mother Padmavati by a demon who assumed the form of his father Ugrasena. Vasudeva was a man of rationality and science not given to superstition. Yet, looking at those almost translucent greyish blue eyes that glared at the gathered nobles and chieftains with such unbridled hostility, he could almost believe the gossip. Rage and violence exuded from Kamsa like heatwaves from a boiling kettle.
Then Kamsa’s gaze sought out and settled upon Vasudeva himself. And his entire aspect changed so suddenly, it was almost as if he had seen something quite different from merely the king of the Suras.
As if he’s seeing some terrible foe rather than just me, standing here over-dressed in my ceremonial robes, Vasudeva thought. Kamsa took a step back, then another, and Vasudeva thought he saw something akin to…fear?…cross the prince’s otherwise handsome face. Kamsa’s magnificently wrought arms rippled with muscle beneath the chainmail armour he wore.
Vasudeva was caught off guard by the look on Kamsa’s face. What had the feared reaver of the great and powerful Andhaka clan to fear from a simple peace-loving man like Vasudeva?
The stunned silence in the hall gave way to surprised whispering as the assemblage took note of Kamsa’s strange reaction to seeing Vasudeva. At the same moment the Haddhi-Hathi raised his trunk and issued a bleating call that oddly echoed Kamsa’s own mixture of awe and terror. The sound served to snap the Andhaka Prince out of his reverie.
At once, his face changed. The fearful, awe-struck expression dissipated and was replaced instantly by a mask of such inscrutable blankness that it was beyond mere anger or even fury. This expression Vasudeva was much more familiar with. It was the mask a warrior wore when he prepared to launch an attack on the battlefield, severing his normal human self from the battle machine he was about to become.
But it was that glimpse into Kamsa’s naked inner self that caught Vasudeva’s attention. Yes, that look had been unmistakably an expression of fear. He was still pondering the meaning of that expression when Kamsa issued a loud curse, raised a barbed spear, and flung it with a roar of fury–directly at Vasudeva’s breast.
Click here to continue reading excerpts!
The fantastic adventures of the Hindu God Krishna have entertained and inspired people for millennia. Playful cowherd, mischievous lover, feared demon-slayer, the legendary exploits of this super-being in human form rival the most rousing fantasy epics. Now, the author of the Ramayana Series®, the hugely successful epic retelling of the ancient Sanskrit poem, works his magic once again with the tales of Krishna. All the pomp, splendor and majesty of ancient India come alive in this extraordinary eight-book series.
SLAYER OF KAMSA
The Krishna Coriolis: Book 1
Click here to request a signed copy (limited availability)
The Harper mass market edition will be in Indian bookstores September 2010!
SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis – Excerpt#1
KAAND 1
1
King Vasudeva raised aloft the ceremonial sceptre of the Sura nation. The rod, shaped to resemble a cowherd’s crook, was impressively cast in solid gold, studded with precious gems at the curve of the handle. It caught a bar of morning sunlight streaming in from a slatted window high upon the vaulting walls of the Andhaka palace and gleamed. Beside him, King Ugrasena of Andhaka also raised his own rajtaru. The Andhaka sceptre was no less impressive than that of the Suras.
Both rajtarus–the Sanskrit word literally meant kingsrods–refracted the strengthening sunlight, sending shards and slivers flashing to the farthest corners of the great hall. A calico tomcat curled in the south corner closed his eyes to slits and bared his teeth, peering against the blinding gleam of the rajtarus. The well-fed palace cat’s expression resembled nothing so much as a satiated grin.
The watching assemblage crowding the sabha hall to the limit of its capacity, each lord and lady resplendent in their finery, blinked, then caught their breaths. The sight of the two lieges standing on the throne dais, their traditional rajtarus raised and glittering in the sunlight, presented a startling tableau. To some of the older clanschiefs in the great hall, it was a sight they had never believed they would witness as long as they lived: two ancient enemies, sovereigns of two of the wealthiest herding nations in the great land of Aryavarta, standing together with sceptres, not swords, aloft! Could it be true? Surely it was merely maya? That sight–nay, that vision–could not be real, could it? After generations of cross-border blood feuds, broken only by intermittent outbreaks of war, after so much bloodshed and bitter enmity, after so many failed peace summits and parleys, after so much bloody history had stained the pure soil of both nations, polluting the sacred river Yamuna with the offal of vengeful violence, could peace finally be at hand?
Most of the assemblage, as well as the enormous throng crowding the palace grounds without, doubted it severely. Suspicious frowns creased the faces of many clanschiefs, ministers and merchant lords. Only a few hopeful souls smiled beatifically and fingered their rudraksh-bead rosaries, silently chanting slokas to ensure the fruition of this historic pact.
There were few such personages; the golden age of brahmanism had long since ebbed, and the long-dreaded age of Kali-Yuga was imminent, the dark prophesied age of Iron and Death. Most doubted that this historic pact, wrought after months of anxiety and expectation, would last, or that it would be honoured at all. Yet even the most sceptical of ministers, the most cynical of generals, even the hardened veterans who had somehow survived through the first violent decades of this dark age, prayed as fervently as their brahmin brethren. For while few believed, all hoped. All desired. If it could somehow be brought to pass, if the Devas truly saw fit to grant them this release, then they would accept peace, nay, embrace it, with all the warmth and welcome they could muster.
So, when both kings brought their rajtarus together in an inverted V, touching the gem-studded crooks lightly together, every citizen, high and low, watched with bated breath. Even the calico tomcat, stretching himself in preparation for a foray into the royal bhojanshalya–he smelled the unmistakable, delectable fragrance of sweetwater fish being grilled in the palace bhojanshalyas–paused and turned his head, smelling the sour sweat of hesitant hopes and anxious prayers in the close air. The rhythmic martial count of the dhol-drums underscored the whole scene, omnipresent in the background, like a giant unified heartbeat, marking the four-by-four count to which all Arya ceremonies were performed.
King Vasudeva’s soft tenor blended with King Ugrasena’s aging gruffness as both kings recited the ceremonial sloka aloud, each line cued to them by whispering pundits seated behind the dais. The sacred flame, symbol of the firelord Agni, flared up brightly as a purohit, one of the many ceremonial priests who oversaw the arcana of traditional rites and customs, tossed a ladle of ghee onto the chaukat. The flames shot up almost to the raised sceptres, licking briefly at the point of their unity. Sunlight above, fire below. It was an impressive and auspicious moment, brilliantly and meticulously conceived and staged by the purohits of both nations. To the dwindling brahmins of Aryavarta, such occasions grew more precious with each passing decade, as the world turned away from the old ways and traditions. For the duration of this ceremony, the pomp and grandeur of Aryavarta, literally the Noble and Proud, would shine as brightly as a beacon fed by the light of brahman shakti itself. The chanting of the two kings rose to a peak, ending with a final sloka that seemed to echo from the very stone walls of the sabha hall. This last bit of theatrical magic was wrought by the brahmins again, strategically positioned at the far walls of the hall, joining in with the chanting of the kings at the penultimate quartet, raising their voices–to match the raised voices of the well-rehearsed kings–until it seemed that the world entire spoke the sacred Sanskrit verses.
||yadrcchya copapannah svarga-dvaram apavrtam||
||sukhinah ksatriya partha labhante yuddham idrsam||
The chanting died away, the omnipresent drumbeats fading away at precisely that instant. Into the sudden silence that followed, the watching assemblage could hear the cracking and snapping of the sacred flame as the purohit fed it incessantly with ladlespoons of the sanctified ghee. The faces of the kings had grown warm from the heat of the flames, a few beads of sweat standing out on the clean-shaven good looks of the young King Vasudeva and the tips of the grey-shot beard of aging King Ugrasena.
Moving in perfect unison, they lowered their rajtarus until the inverted V assumed its correct shape. The crooks of the sceptres dipped directly into the flames themselves, and the purohit ceased his ghee-tossing to allow the sacred fire to quell itself somewhat lest the kings lose the skin from their arms. The beads of perspiration swelled and then rolled down their over-heated faces as both monarchs kept the crooks of their rajtarus held in the fire just long enough to let the heat travel up to their bare hands.
Finally, the royal purohit gave the word quietly enough so that only the kings could catch it, and both lieges broke their stances, stepping around the fire. They exchanged sceptres, each handing over his proof of kingship at the exact same time as he accepted the other’s royal seal. This was handled with surprising ease, considering that both rajtarus were blistering hot by now. The watching assemblage could hardly know that both kings had had their hands anointed with a special colourless herbal paste prior to their ceremony, or that the near-invisible paste obscured the transmission of heat quite effectively.
The sight of the red-hot rajtarus being exchanged and then held aloft, to allow every individual in the hall a chance to see this momentous event, seared itself into the minds of all present. The painstakingly staged ceremony had served its purpose. Then, with obvious relief, and great smiles cracking their tense faces, the two kings embraced.
The crowd released its breath. Upon the fortified palace battlements, waiting courtiers blew long and hard on their conch shell trumpets. The low mournful calling of the conches filled the air for hundreds of yojanas, echoed from end to end of both kingdoms, calling the most welcome news in over two centuries. Peace. Shanti. Outside the Andhaka palace walls, the waiting crowd, now swelled to several tens of thousands, broke into a ragged roar that almost drowned out the conches. Royal criers rode out through the avenues and streets, pausing at corners to shout out the news in Sanskrit then in commonspeak, officially confirming the details of the peace pact. Stone pillars, carved and ready for weeks, were hastily but ceremoniously erected at strategic spots in the capital city and at crossroads along the national kingsroad, setting down the same details for posterity–or at least as long as stone and wind and rain would allow, which would probably be a millennium or two.
Sadly, the peace pact itself would not last a fraction of that time.
Click here to read the next excerpt from SLAYER OF KAMSA
The fantastic adventures of the Hindu God Krishna have entertained and inspired people for millennia. Playful cowherd, mischievous lover, feared demon-slayer, the legendary exploits of this super-being in human form rival the most rousing fantasy epics. Now, the author of the Ramayana Series®, the hugely successful epic retelling of the ancient Sanskrit poem, works his magic once again with the tales of Krishna. All the pomp, splendor and majesty of ancient India come alive in this extraordinary eight-book series.
SLAYER OF KAMSA
The Krishna Coriolis: Book 1
Click here to request a signed copy (limited availability)
The Harper mass market edition will be in Indian bookstores October 2010!
SLAYER OF KAMSA excerpts start next this week
Excerpts from SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis will be posted here next this week onwards. Not sure of the exact date. Excerpts will start from Wednesday 1st September onwards! There will also be a special contest based on a few simple questions related to the excerpts – the prizes will be free signed copies of the book! Be here or beware! (Lol.)
Okay, here goes! Excerpts from Slayer of Kamsa will run for the next several days, starting tomorrow morning 8 a.m. Indian Standard Time (IST). As the chapters are short, I’ll be posting two chapters each day for a week! The chapters will go up each day at 8 a.m. IST. After the excerpts are done, I’ll run a simple contest as usual, and winners will get free signed copies of the book delivered by courier, no strings attached. 
A BLOOD RED SAREE – Book 1 of The Kali Quartet
This is an earlier post (from May) which I’m reproducing here as this is going to be my next major publication after TEN KINGS. As I write these words, at least two major publishers are in negotiations with my agents to purchase publishing rights to The Kali Quartet. It will be at least a week or two, possibly even several weeks, before I’m able to confirm which publisher and roughly when the first book, A BLOOD RED SAREE, will be released. But for the moment, I thought these brief notes would help keep you informed about this, perhaps my most ambitious contemporary fiction series ever.
Some of you have been writing in asking me about The Kali Quartet. Some have assumed it’s another mythological epic like my Ramayana Series. I thought I would set your minds at rest and tell you a little about this upcoming project.
For one thing, The Kali Quartet has nothing to do with the Ramayana Series or mythology. The ‘Kali’ reference is just that, a reference. The story is completely contemporary.
So without further ado, here’s a short note on The Kali Quartet and the first book in the four-ology, A BLOOD RED SAREE.
The Kali Quartet by Ashok Banker
A BLOOD RED SAREE
THE BURNING SAFFRON SKY
THE AGE OF KALI
THE COLOUR OF RAIN
A Blood Red Saree
- Synopsis
Three abused women unite under the guidance of a mysterious American benefactor to battle a powerful conglomerate profiting from the trafficking of women and children.
An international conglomerate of financial masterminds is secretly funding human trafficking and passing off the multi-billion dollar profits as a legitimate international investment opportunity.
Can three ordinary women stop this barbaric conspiracy of profit? They are not alone in their fight for justice. A powerful caucus of wealthy high-placed women in Washington DC led by the First Lady herself meet in the White House to pledge to end this despicable business. With financial aid and secret information from these anonymous benefactors, the three women form a Trimurti, a sacred troika.
Now, the battle is on as each of them uses her considerable skills and determination to attack on a number of fronts: legal, financial, and when all else fails, through violent confrontation.
One will not survive, the other two will face brutal opposition and immense challenges. Like three aspects of the Eternal Goddess KALI herself, they risk their lives and loves in a struggle to the death.
Each volume of THE KALI QUARTET is complete in itself, while forming a section of the larger story. Read consecutively, this is one epic thriller in four volumes.
- Series Synopsis
Sheila Ray: daughter of a disgraced dead police officer, she’s finally put her traumatic childhood behind her to establish the first successful women’s gym in Kolkata. When she protects a pair of persecuted lesbian Olympic women boxers from a vengeful politician, she finds herself literally under fire and on the run both from the powerful forces running the Maoist insurgency in India, as well as the Government and police.
Nachiketa Shroff: her ex-husband and his family’s attempt to kill her for not bringing a dowry for her arranged marriage put her in a wheelchair for life; after using the law to destroy them financially, she now runs her own NGO offering free legal representation to battered Indian women. But when her office burns down, destroying a decade’s work and almost killing her (again), she knows it’s time to step up the activism and go after the people at the top of the pyramid of exploitation.
Anita B: The first Indian woman private investigator, unabashed lesbian and LTBG activist, she returns home to Kerala to attend the funeral of her childhood best friend and runs smack into a cobra’s nest of trouble. Not only was her friend murdered for opposing the development of a major five star tourist resort but Anita’s own misogynist brothers are part of a ring of child traffickers using a Christian mission and orphanage as a cover.
Three women, each of whom has been abused by men in different ways and has built a life and reputation designed to help other women from similar abuse, are unwittingly drawn into a web of international human traffickers. Working alone at first, each discovers a different face of the hydra-headed monster that is modern-day slavery. Their individual quests for justice and survival lead them up to the top of the pyramid of power, where they discover a terrible secret. An international conglomerate of financial masterminds – bankers, insurance executives, fund managers – who are secretly funding illegitimate activities such as the enslaving of women and children in the third world, drug trafficking and even terrorism, and then whitewashing the multi-billion dollar profits under the guise of a legitimate international investment opportunity!
The stakes are phenomenally high, the parties involved are the Who’s Who of the financial and political world, and their resources immensely powerful. What can three women do to stop this barbaric conspiracy of profit?
But they are not alone in their fight for justice. An equally powerful caucus of wealthy high-placed women in Washington, DC, led by the First Lady herself, meet in the White House to pledge to end this despicable business. With financial aid and secret information from these anonymous benefactors, the three women are able to form a Trimurti, a sacred troika, and unite together.
Now, the battle is on as each of them uses her considerable skills and determination to fight the forces of unbridled profit by attacking on a number of fronts: legal, financial, and when all else fails, through violent confrontation.
Like three aspects of the Eternal Goddess KALI herself, they risk their lives and loves in a struggle to the finish. One will not survive, the other two will face brutal opposition and immense challenges. But at the end, they will triumph and succeed in substantially crippling the enterprise and as importantly, exposing it to the world at large.
TEN KINGS: The historic battle that founded the Bharata nation
The 7th Mandala of the Rig Veda (quoted above) tells us of a great and terrible war called Dasarajna: The Battle of Ten Kings. In that legendary conflict, ten major tribal chiefs (kings) of the ancient world sought to displace and destroy Raja Sudas of the Bharata tribe.
The ten kings were supported by numerous individual champions and smaller forces, and were instigated by the great seer Vishwamitra. Many of them were allies of Raja Sudas and traded with the Bharatas and were friendly with them. But that fateful day, they turned against Sudas and his small but strong tribe of Bharatas, surrounded them with forces so superior that Sudas could have no chance of survival.
Their intention was to destroy Sudas and the Bharatas, take them as dasyas (slaves) and divide the Bharata lands and possessions as spoils of war. One day, out of the blue, their great army assembled on the banks of the Parusni river (present day Ravi in the Punjab region) and challenged Raja Sudas.
Vastly outnumbered, outmatched, and outplanned, Sudas should logically have surrendered. But he knew he had done nothing wrong, and being a righteous king, with the support of his people who loved him and respected his leadership, kindness and generosity, he chose to fight.
He was also supported by the spiritual mentorship of his guru, the legendary Vashishta.
And so, upon a stormy day by the banks of the Ravi, the battle was fought.
Legend tells us that in fact, Sudas might well have been Raja Bharat himself, son of Dushyant and Shakuntala, grandson of Vishwamitra.
The Rig Veda tells us that against all odds, Raja Sudas of the Bharatas (hence Bharata-Raja) fought that day against the Ten Kings…and won. The battle was impossible, the victory a miracle. The Rig Veda also tells us that the devas themselves watched from above as the battle progressed, and due to the moral superiority of Raja Sudas, Lord Indra chose to support the Bharatas.
Not only did Sudas and the Bharatas win, they routed the enemy in a massacre that was aided by nature itself, when the river and weather came to their aid. Was it Indra himself or merely a brilliant battle strategy by Raja Sudas? Either way, the Bharatas won the day. And as a result they became the dominant tribe of the Indian sub-continent.
Later, Raja Sudas’s descendants split into the Puru and Kuru lines, and waged another great war for Arya supremacy: the Mahabharata yuddh.
In a way, DASARAJNA (Battle of Ten Kings) was the turning point in the itihasa of the sub-continent.
Because it was by winning that war that King Sudas Bharata established his tribe as the ruling tribe of this part of the world.
And it is in his honour that all people of the sub-continent came to be known in time as Bharatas.
That story has never been before been told in all its glorious detail. Indeed, while the Rig Veda tells us some details of the war and its aftermath, very little is known about why the war began, how it became inevitable, and so on.
It’s a rousing tale filled with intrigues, conspiracies, back-stabbing, fierce erotic encounters, brutal court politics, family conflicts, and race against time in the hours before the battle. All the enemies and allies who will face one another on the battlefield are seen in the first half of the novel, playing their shrewd politics and pretenses in the court of Raja Sudas, pretending to be his allies, his friends, his neighbours, well-wishers, advisers, while secretly plotting and preparing to go to war against him. The reason they do this is because they intend to destroy his kingdom from within first – and if that fails, their armies are already assembled and waiting at the boundary of his kingdom, ready to invade. And as the story progresses and Sudas stands firm to his principles – his dharma – they all desert him, one by one, and go to join the other side, until finally Ten Kings stand against him, outnumbering his force more than ten times.
Leading and instigating them is Anu, the longtime arch-enemy of Sudas and the Bharatas, and Anu’s spiritual adviser, none other than the legendary brahmarishi Vishwamitra (of Ramayana fame). Vishwamitra has an old history of enmity with Sudas’ own adviser, Vashishta, and has an axe to grind by instigating this attack on Sudas and the Bharatas.
DASARAJNA is based on events described in the Rig Veda and confirmed by historians and archaelogists as being a true story. It is the seminal tale of the great battle that established the Bharata nation in the sub-continent which is present day India.
TEN KINGS will be published in English and Indian languages by Amaryllis Books, an imprint of Manjul Publishing, in early 2011.
Why I Write – Maureen Tkacik
Maureen Tkacik (also known as Moe Tkacik) is a writer and journalist based in New York. She’s worked at the Wall Street Journal, Jezebel and freelanced as well. I liked this essay by her in Columbia Journalism Review about her experiences in journalism and how journalism has changed. It’s not strictly a ‘Why’ I write piece but it sort of fits into the general theme. Here’s a quote:
What I sensed was that while the laws of supply and demand governed everything on earth, the easy money was in demand—manufacturing it, manipulating it, sending it forth to multiply, etc. As a rule of thumb (and with some notable exceptions), the profit margins you could achieve selling a good or service were directly correlated to the total idiocy and/or moral bankruptcy of the demand you drummed up for it.
This was easier to grasp if you were in the business of peddling heroin, Internet stocks, or celebrity gossip; journalists, on the other hand, were at a conspicuous disadvantage when it came to understanding their role in this equation. In the past, newspapers had made respectable margins selling a non-inane product largely because people had little choice but to herald their sublets and white sales alongside the journalists’ tales of human suffering/corporate corruption/government ineptitude. The times were prosperous enough that much of the print media even chose to abstain from taking a share of the demand-creation campaigns of liquor and tobacco brands in the seventies and eighties. Indeed, journalism, it went without saying, was about delivering important information about the world—information people (and democracy!) needed, whether they knew it or not. That journalism’s ability to deliver that information—to fill that need—ultimately depended, to an unsettling degree, on the ability to create artificial demand for a lot of stuff that people didn’t actually need—luxury condos, ergonomically correct airplane seats, the latest celebrity-endorsed scent—was an afterthought at best, at least in the newsroom.
Read the full essay by Maureen (Moe) Tkacik at Columbia Journalism Review.
Read a feature article by her at Vanity Fair.
Read a feature article by her at The New York Times.
Read a feature article by her at The Investigative Fund.
Check out her blog.
On Writing First Person Point of View: The Rumpus tells you how
The Rumpus has become my go-to literary website every morning. I always seem to find something of interest there (and I don’t mean the explicitly pornographic websites that advertise on the site – yes, I’m not kidding). It’s a literary Work-in-Progress. I also enjoy Stephen Elliott’s ruminative email updates each morning in my mailbox, which often include brief mentions of his sexual leisure activities – hints of his girlfriend coming over with ‘needles and ropes’ and stuff like that, what drug to take today, and so on. I guess it’s true what they say, we’re attracted to read about or watch people who are nothing like us in real life, at least it applies to me. I can read about or watch films about people whose lives are nothing like my own and I feel I understand them better than I would, say, movies or books about authors who mostly sit around and read and write and watch movies or spend time with their families.
Anyway, today’s pick from The Rumpus is this excellent essay by Rob Roberge on Point of View in writing. It doesn’t say anything I didn’t already know, but it says it simply and clearly and explains it well. Here’s an excerpt:
when a writer has chosen to tell a narrative in first-person, they’ve made a choice that offers them plenty of opportunities, among them:
Immediacy.
The intensity, drive and wonderful rhythms and word choices of human speech,
The chance to exploit and explore a single voice and no fear of shifting Point of View at the wrong time (since they’ve chosen to tell the story in only one POV)
Among the obstacles inherent in first-person?:
You’re trapped with that single voice and you’ve offered yourself no variation in POV—so it better be a compelling one in every single word choice (though this is true of second and third-person, as well). But you run the risk of a redundant voice.
When a reader sees the opening line is in first-person, there is a tacit contract with the reader (often an unconscious one, understood simply from hours, days and years of exposure to narrative) that the text will be contained to that single POV. This, of course, assumes it’s not a multiple first-person narrative, like As I Lay Dying, or a novel that will shift—nearly always unsuccessfully—from first-person to third-person at some point, as in Hemingway’s problematic (primarily because of its lack of focus caused by the shift between first and third-person) To Have and Have Not.
As a result of the reader knowing the POV will stay in the mind of your first-person narrator, there is the accompanying tacit contract—that no scene will occur without the narrator being present to observe/participate in the scene.
Swimming With Your Clothes On – travel article on Ujjain, 1999
This article first appeared on Rediff.com’s Travel Section in 1999. I’m reproducing the entire text unedited, unaltered, alongwith the original pictures used by Rediff. You can also read the same article here on Rediff.com.
Swimming With Your Clothes On
… An unusual holiday in Ujjain
by Ashok Banker
One Monday evening, bang in the middle of the telecast of the television serial Om Namay Shiva, the power went off across most of Ujjain.
Now, in any other city in India, this might have been cause for disappointment, even anger, amongst devout fans of Dheeraj Kumar’s kitschy relgious opus. But in Ujjain, it caused a minor riot. The unfortunate Government employee responsible for starting the customary load shedding at that pious hour was caught and thrashed. The power was turned back on, just in time for the closing credits of that day’s episode. Ever since then, even though load shedding is a commonplace occurence in the city, the power has never gone off on Monday nights.
This shouldn’t surprise you. After all, Ujjain houses Mahakaleshwar Mandir, the residence of one of the 12 sacred shivlings of India. It’s one of the holiest cities in our country. Historically rich in memories, it was the capital city of King Vikramaditya (it was called Ujjaininagri then), he of the Vikram Aur Betaal fame.
As a child, one of my favourite books was a collection of the Vikram Aur Betaal tales. I would read those stories very very slowly, wishing I could make the book last all my life. It saw me through one summer vacation. So when I discovered the same stories in Chandamama magazine, and later in Amar Chitra Katha comics, it was like second and third servings of a favourite dessert. In comparison, the television serial was a disappointment with its shoddy effects and even shoddier production.
But coming to Ujjain itself was an even bigger disappointment. Here was the tree, the very tree off of which King Vikram had taken the Betaal to try to complete his daunting task. But where was that mystery, that moody sense of mounting terror, the eerie atmosphere of the comic books and the stories? In the harsh light of a 1999 day, even the Betaal Pachisi Mandir is much like any other temple.
Of course, to the devout that probably sounds like blasphemy. No such intention, I assure you. In fact, to a cynical urbanite, Ujjain is admirable in its preservation of small town values. There’s little doubt that the sense of piety infects the populace beyong the temple walls too. Although I remember reading someplace that Madhya Pradesh has the highest rape rate in the country, and one of the five highest crime rates, it’s difficult to believe that these statistics apply to Ujjain. A small, rustic city, where bicycles, scooters, mopeds and the ubiquitous autorickshaws and tempos fill the streets with their honking and trilling, this simple town is more boring than anything else.
There’s not much to do in Ujjain, as my family and I soon found. Although my wife had relatives living in Sales Tax Colony — one of the better areas of the town — my children, addicted to cricket, satellite television, laser disc movies, caramel popcorn, video game parlours and the like, found life hard going even for two short weeks. But then, if you go to Ujjain expecting the luxuries and choices of big city living, you’re in the wrong place.
Sure, there are movie halls. There’s Regal, Ganesh, Kamal — one of the largest theatres in M P. All the latest Hindi films hit Ujjain screens at the same time as the rest of the country. In fact, Ujjain probably has more movie theatres per 1,000 persons than any other place in India, barring Bombay of course.
We saw Janam Samjha Karo, Anari No 1 and Silsila Hai Pyaar Ka, films I would never have been caught dead watching back in Bombay, but which were the most “happening” entertainment events in Ujjain at the time. I would have gone for an English movie instead, but the only ones running were the obscure soft porn films and a B-grade dubbed horror movie, renamed Bhoot. No thank you. Surprisingly, ticket rates are now almost on par with big city prices — Rs 40 for balcony, almost double of what they were just two years ago. But then again, it’s the only entertainment in town.
When we heard that the old bageecha had been remodelled as a ‘Park’, the children leaped up with anticipation. Since few people in Ujjain own cars (not a single one in Sales Tax Colony, although some people have their own dish antennas), the only means of travel is by autorickshaw (about Rs 25 for a five km journey, if you negotiate sternly), or tempo (Rs 1 to Rs 5, but shared with as many as two dozen other people at times), or by foot.
On the way, slogging it along in Ujjain’s searing dry April heat (in May, the loo blows in the afternoons, making it impossible to step out of doors), you’re often tempted to stop at one of the numerous sugarcane juice stalls and sip a sugary sweet glass. But the big city fear of jaundice, hepatitis and assorted diseases makes you decline without much of a struggle.
The park turns out to be just what it says, a park. Yes, there’s a little menagerie with a few monkeys, rabbits, maynahs, deer and goats. You can go for a boat ride on a pond filled with scummy dirty green water that must smell exactly like the swamps through which Vikram had to wade. Or you can ride the four or five unambitious rides that are the park’s star attractions. A small train ride, a merry go round, a few lurching hippo slot rides, even a little video game parlour.
My wife’s cousin proudly displays the proudest innovation of all: a Taran Taal. Taran as in swimming, and taal as in pond. So, literally swimming pond. But this turns out to be virtually an Olympic-sized swimming pool, complete with professional coaches. Getting the timings right takes some calculations — there’s one hour for women only, one hour for men only, and one hour for ‘whole family’. This is probably essential because most of the women don’t own swimming costumes and often wade into the water dressed in petticoats with stockings, or blouses and churidars and other assorted combinations that are quite a sight (my wife tells me).
The swimming coaches at Taran Taal play it ultra-safe: they tie a rope to your waist and keep you on leash as you swim, to avoid any chance of drowning. Someone should inform David Hasselholf: they might want to try this out on Baywatch!
Freegunj, the main market in downtown Ujjain, is stuffed with readymade garments made in the factories of Ludhiana and Delhi regions. You can get the same garments back in Bombay for at least three times the Ujjain price tag. We return home with more clothes than we came with!
The only bookshops in Ujjain are little religious bookstalls near the temples. Don’t even dare to ask for Shobha De’s latest here! For that kind of fancy purchase, you’d have to make the one-and-a-half-hour drive to nearby Indore. In fact, that’s just what the financially comfortable residents of Ujjain do. Especially when there’s a wedding in the family or a special occasion. Anything you ask for, the answer comes pat: “You’ll get in Indore only, bhaiya.”
If you’re a non-vegetarian, this doesn’t sound very funny. Forget maacher jhol or chicken a la Kiev, it’s difficult to get non-vegetarian fare at all in Ujjain. The best restaurant in town, which also happens to be the best hotel in town, Ashrey, is strictly vegetarian. The two or three non-veg restaurants — Suraana Palace and the more downmarket Dhaaba — are painfully slow on service, the airconditioning often goes off (except on Monday nights of course) and you’re lucky if they have even half the items listed on the menu.
But if you’re vegetarian, food’s cheap and good and plentiful. And if you happen to fasting — as most pilgrims and tourists visiting Ujjain often are — the falahaar or fasting fare is eminently edible. The sabudana dosas are crunchy and delicious, the falahari wafers (they use rock salt instead of regular salt) are nice and snacky, as are most of the other items. Or you can try MP’s famous Malwa cuisine, notably the daal-vati (baked lumps of dough soaked in daal), the churma ke laddoo, or the bafla (baked dough dipped in ghee).
Just don’t make the mistake of drinking the water. Ujjain’s water supply is horrendous — like most other civic amenities. In fact, the common reply to most complaints — bad roads, no streetlights, no public transport, load shedding–is likely to be “It will be seen to before Kumbh”. That of course means that the problem will be rectified in time for the Kumbh Mela. Since that legendary event takes place once in 12 years, it’s a long time to wait for a pothole to be filled or for a glass of clean drinking water! But what else do you expect in a town where even Government staffers routinely arrive for work at 1130 am when their workday begins at 10 am!
The other thing you should never do in Ujjain is have an accident or get seriously ill. The only full-fledged hospital is the Birla Hospital, and that only came up recently. Before that, if you had a serious medical emergency, you would have to…yes, that’s right…go to Indore, bhaiya.
On the other hand, most people in Ujjain are well-educated. Ujjain University turns out truckloads of MAs and PhDs annually, and every second person seems to be sitting for an IAS, IPS, or ICS exam. You meet women who are doing computer courses, even business management — yes, there’s a special business management school too. In fact, the most sought after profession is civil services.
If you’re interested in politics, you’ll find any number of like-minded souls here. But never make the mistake of calling our prime minister “Atal Bihari”. It must be “Atalji” and nothing less. That’s how loyal they are to Mr Vajpayee. Is it any surprise then that the most loved party is BJP? Or that the city most glamourized happens to be Delhi?
The only other thing that Ujjainites revere is films. Everybody sees every single new film released. If they can’t make it to the theatres — or even if they’ve done so — they watch pirated prints on cable, the entire family crowding into one room, sitting glued to the screen for the entire duration. And if you miss even the cable telecast — shame on you — then you hire a VCR and colour TV for Rs 100 and hire a video cassette. Laser disc? DVD? VCD? What are those?
A similar anecdote to the one about the disrupted episode of Om Namay Shiva: While my family and I were in Ujjain, the film star Amrish Puri was rumoured to be visiting. A surprisingly large crowd collected in record time at the hotel he was rumoured to be staying at, Hotel Ashrey.
When it was learned that the rumour was just a rumour and Mr Puri wasn’t coming, the disappointed film fans (grown men and women, most of them) grew rowdy with disappointment and smashed a few windowpanes, upset a few tables and chairs, then went home. Imagine what they would do if Shah Rukh Khan had failed to turn up?!
Racism and Science Fiction by Samuel R. Delany – and Why I Don’t Write SF by Ashok K. Banker
With five days to go in my twenty-fourth year, on March 25, 1967, my sixth science fiction novel, Babel-17, won a Nebula Award (a tie, actually) from the Science Fiction Writers of America. That same day the first copies of my eighth, The Einstein Intersection, became available at my publishers’ office. (Because of publishing schedules, my seventh, Empire Star, had preceded the sixth into print the previous spring.) At home on my desk at the back of an apartment I shared on St. Mark’s Place, my ninth, Nova, was a little more than three months from completion.
On February 10, a month and a half before the March awards, in its partially completed state Nova had been purchased by Doubleday & Co. Three months after the awards banquet, in June, when it was done, with that first Nebula under my belt, I submitted Nova for serialization to the famous sf editor of Analog Magazine, John W. Campbell, Jr. Campbell rejected it, with a note and phone call to my agent explaining that he didn’t feel his readership would be able to relate to a black main character. That was one of my first direct encounters, as a professional writer, with the slippery and always commercialized form of liberal American prejudice: Campbell had nothing against my being black, you understand. (There reputedly exists a letter from him to horror writer Dean Koontz, from only a year or two later, in which Campbell argues in all seriousness that a technologically advanced black civilization is a social and a biological impossibility. . . .). No, perish the thought! Surely there was not a prejudiced bone in his body! It’s just that I had, by pure happenstance, chosen to write about someone whose mother was from Senegal (and whose father was from Norway), and it was the poor benighted readers, out there in America’s heartland, who, in 1967, would be too upset. . . .
It was all handled as though I’d just happened to have dressed my main character in a purple brocade dinner jacket. (In the phone call Campbell made it fairly clear that this was his only reason for rejecting the book. Otherwise, he rather liked it. . . .) Purple brocade just wasn’t big with the buyers that season. Sorry. . ..
Today if something like that happened, I would probably give the information to those people who feel it their job to make such things as widely known as possible. At the time, however, I swallowed it—a mark of both how the times, and I, have changed. I told myself I was too busy writing. The most profitable trajectory for a successful science fiction novel in those days was for an sf book to start life as a magazine serial, move on to hardcover publication, and finally be reprinted as a mass market paperback. If you were writing a novel a year (or, say, three novels every two years, which was then almost what I was averaging), that was the only way to push your annual income up, at the time, from four to five figures—and the low five figures at that. That was the point I began to realize I probably was not going to be able to make the kind of living (modest enough!) that, only a few months before, at the Awards Banquet, I’d let myself envision. The things I saw myself writing in the future, I already knew, were going to be more rather than less controversial. The percentage of purple brocade was only going to go up.
The essay titled ‘Racism and Science Fiction’ by legendary SF grandmaster Samuel R. Delaney is posted in full at the New York Review of Science Fiction.
Now of course, brown is the new black, with the overtly racist SF community as blatantly bigotted and misrepresented as always. This year’s Nebula Awards has, as a novel nomination, an author whose bigotry, racism and sexist bias is exceeded only by his dominatrix attitude towards the Amazon pages of his published books – he and his ‘friends’ have been known to brutally attack readers who post mixed or negative review of his books, use their clout with Amazon (one of them works for the online megastore) to have such reviews removed at once, and to write bad reviews of other authors’ books on the website. This near-maniacal control freak attitude extends to other book review sites such as Goodreads, Shelfari, etc. A high profile SF author (one of the many, let me add, who are notracist, bigotted or sexist unlike the certain someone I’m referring to) told me personally that he saw the author in question take out a baseball bat from the boot of his car before going into a previous Nebula Awards ceremony. He intended to use the bat on another SF author of a minority background who was also nominated and who had written a disparaging review of his book earlier that year. It took some talking to dissuade him from carrying the bat into the convention center. He has been known to make speeches and write blog posts recommending that all SF written by non-white non-Christian writers should be labelled accordingly ‘for readers to identify for their convenience’ and even has a label he feels is appropriate for such non-Caucasian American (and non-American) authors. The term he’d like them to use for their work is ‘Global SF’ or ‘World SF’.
There are other stories. Too many of them to list here. Including several of my own. They are the reason why I don’t write Science Fiction (despite people who think I do, usually without having actually read any of my books) and never will. I even go to the extent of loudly and clearly disassociating myself with the genre and criticizing it at every chance I get. It’s a shame to see many good books and great writers sidelined by the mainstream press and the majority of book readers only because of the famous bigotry and bias of a small but powerful caucus of authors, publishers, editors and other SF publishing professionals who are committed to maintaining the ‘whiteness’ of American SF against all odds. I call them the Kuku Klux Klan, because they’re basically nuts to think that in this day and age, readers will want to buy books only written by white (male) authors, agented by white agents, edited by white editors, published by white publishers. Disagree with that? Well, do a casual survey – or a serious one – of how many women professionals there are in the top positions in SF publishing, how many minority groups are represented – how much of the ‘world’ really is reflected in SF’s worlds. Muslim editors? African American publishing VPs? Buddhist agents, authors, editors? Hindu authors (I’m not one, by the way, though I’m often mistaken for a Hindu as well as an SF author). No? Golly gee. I wonder why that should be?
No wonder SF is a dying genre. And the Nebulas are awards that, in my opinion, don’t deserve to be graced by authors as brilliant as Samuel R. Delany. It’s all a Whitewash.
“Something Funny Is Going On In Indian Television”…and it’s still going on!
Recently, I came across a news feature article by me about Corruption in Indian Television which appeared in Indian Express back in 1999. It’s always amusing to read one’s old work, especially the workmanlike journalism I did for a living back then. The article isn’t terribly well written (nor is it terribly badly written either) and could do with better editing, but it’s one of the rare ones that actually spoke out openly about the corruption, nepotism and sexual favours in Indian television channels. Here’s a quote:
Ravi Ojha, director of the original Wagle Ki Duniya and who is currently directing the detective serial Saboot, suffered for long because of many channels’ “most favoured producers” policy. But for this, Ojha would have long since made the transition to independent producer. He says he even met Karuna Samtani, former Head of Programming at Zee with a project. “She said she liked the serial very much, but after that, she made herself unavailable. I just couldn’t get access to her again.” His complaint, echoed by individual talent across the industry, is that “the culture now in channels is very superficial. The people in charge have noknowledge of the medium or even respect for it. The bigger producers are no different. All they want to do is make the money and run. They don’t care how they achieve that,” says Ojha.
This lack of work ethic he feels leads to corruption and other “short-cuts” because neither the current crop of channel executives nor large producers really care about creating exciting television programmes. “Most of them treat the medium as a poor country cousin of cinema! Nobody is willing to spend money on research or on developing good projects, nurturing new talent. In fact, when they talk about finding new talent, it’s a joke. There’s so much good talent but if you try to bring it to their attention, they don’t care. So they continue working with the same producers, who also have grown indifferent and say ‘We’ll give them 10 good episodes, and after that thok denge and we’ll make some money’.”
How have things changed since then?
Well, they’ve gotten worse. The situation, which was ad hoc and restricted to corrupt individuals who were either a minority or a majority depending on which channel you pointed to, has now become institutionalized and endemic. Corruption definitely continues to this day, with touts getting serials the green light for a fee, channel heads and executives taking kickbacks despite their hefty pay packets, sexual favours demanded and given freely – the Channel Head referred to in the article is still a Channel Head, but of a different channel today, and is so notorious for his womanizing ways, that he even bets with other male employees on who will bed a certain woman actor/producer/director/staffer first. There are new forms of corruption too – favoured producers get long-running contracts for serials despite wavering ratings, for a substantial equity share as well as cash kickbacks for channel executive producers. And most of all, the very system of TRPs itself is a scam: a few thousand houses in a tiny neighbourhood are selected, managed and overseen by agencies working directly for sponsors are used as a basis to determine what tens of crores of viewers across the country must be watching. It would probably be more scientific to ask your maid which serial she likes best and to keep that one on air – and one channel head does precisely this and is even proud enough to tom-tom the fact, because she believes that by listening to her ‘bai’ she’s being audience-friendly. The correct term for that is class bias, of course.
As for the many serials covering ‘issues’, the fact is they’re guilty of promoting, glorifying and even glamorizing those very issues and problems. And profiteering from the misery of the real life victims of those genuine problems. But that’s another story. The sad thing is, journalists today either don’t have the guts to write about and expose these things today, or their publications and channels are equally well paid not to do so. That’s another thing that’s changed in the past 12 years.
Click here to read the full news feature at the Indian Express website.
Mother’s Day – short story
Mother’s Day
An Anita B Story
Early on a Friday morning in December, Shubra Basu, 37, mother of Rabin, 14, and Shanti, 10, opened the front door of her flat in Andheri, Bombay, and slipped out.
She shut the door behind her, using her key to turn the latch so that the sound of the door shutting would be virtually inaudible. Then she took one last look at the door of the brand new flat she and her family had shifted into barely two months earlier, the flat her husband Avijit Basu and she had scrounged and saved up to buy over 16 years of marriage.
Finally, she turned away from the door, a tiny sob escaping her, hefting the VIP suitcase from her left hand to her right. She went down the stairs, walked quickly out the compound of the co-operative housing society. A row of yellow-and-black taxicabs were parked at the corner taxi stand. She got into the first one and told him her destination. As the seafacing seven-story building fell away behind her, she felt a great weight lifting off her chest. She was really doing it. She was leaving her family for good. It was a terrible moment. It was a wonderful moment. It was the worst moment and best moment of her life.
She was never seen again after that morning.
The yellow-and-black Mumbai taxi, license number MH-31904, picked her up outside the building, and took her to Dadar Khodadad Circle. From there, nobody has a clue where she went. That was seven years and eight months ago, plus a few days. She’s never been seen since then by anybody who knew her.
Seven years and eight months. That’s a hell of a long time to go missing. It’s also a hell of a long time to wait before you start looking for someone. Especially if that someone happens to be your wife, and the mother of your children. Which is why, when I met Avijit Basu at a fast food restaurant not too far from where I live, the first question I asked was: “Why did you wait you so long?”
Before I tell you what he said, a couple of words about me. I’m Anita B. I’m 30-something, I drink too much, have never been married. I’ve learned that pumping iron is no replacement for dealing directly with life’s problems, but it helps get me through the night. I’m colour-challenged, which, in case you’re not up to speed on politically correct talk, means I’m dark-skinned. Like a Keralite, which I also am.
I don’t have a private-detective’s license and don’t consider myself one. I do favours for people, and I charge them whatever I think it’s worth by way of my time and effort. I haven’t been working at this long—just a couple of years—but I’ve had a couple of good cases, and even got my name and picture in Mid-day. It was right next to the picture of the Mid-day Mate on Page 5, which should tell you something. I’m medium height, medium looking (except for the taut muscle tone, I guess), I keep my hair short, never touch make-up, love jewellery although in my line of work it’s not a good idea to wear too much, and I guess the closest celeb I compare to physically is the singer Toni Braxton, or maybe Rahul Bose without a dick.
I live in a tiny one-room place at Nepean Sea Road, Bombay. The address on the visiting card looks real fancy, but it’s basically a store room-cum-servant’s quarters. The owner rented it out because she’s a widow with virtually no income except for a piddly monthly cheque from Unit Trust, and in any case she can’t afford a servant, so the room was lying vacant anyway. The rent is low, the address is impressive, and as long I ignore the ratcheting-gnashing noises from the lift shaft, I can pretend I’m comfortable. I have a phone line which I share with my landlady and I used to have an answering service until I failed to pay their bill three months in a row. Now, the old hag answers the phone for me, and though she always grumbles about doing it, I think she enjoys being a part of my sleazy crime-infested lifestyle. And just for the record, the B in Anita B stands for Bitch. Or whatever you find most offensive, and it’s none of your business anyway, buster.
“I was scared,” he said.
“You were scared you wouldn’t be able to find her?”
“No, no,” he said, shaking his head like one of those little dolls with a spring-neck that goes on bobbing for hours if you even brush it accidentally. “I was scared I would find her.”
I blinked at him. “Let me get this straight, Mr Basu. You waited almost eight years to start searching for your wife because you were scared you would find her? Excuse me, but in that case, why are you doing so now?”
I took a sip of my coffee. It was too hot, too sweet and too thin.
He looked down at his own untouched cup of coffee. “I blame myself.”
I didn’t say anything to that. After a moment, he went on: “Shubra wasn’t happy. She hadn’t been happy for a long time before she left. When she disappeared, it was as if some part of me had expected it….Do you know that feeling of deja vu…Not deja vu exactly, but that sense
that you knew this was going to happen…had dreamed about it, maybe…dreaded it? Am I making any sense?”
I nodded briefly.
“And there were these signs. She’d been telling me she was leaving for a long time before she actually flew the coop. I just didn’t see it until it was too late.”
A bunch of teenagers came clattering up the stairs and went past us in a flurry of short skirts, tight jeans and loud, raucous chatter. A second later, an explosion of laughter behind me. I didn’t need to turn around: I’d seen the teenage birthday party decorations at the far end of the fast-food place when I’d entered. Above the noise, I said, “What signs?”
He paused, looking down at his still-wrapped fish burger and large fries. “Does it matter?” He glanced up at me, and I could see the embarrassment in his eyes. They were nice brown eyes. “I mean, what difference could it possibly make after all these years? The thing is, I think she was unhappy for a long time before she went. And then she left.”
“Mr Basu. I don’t know what’s important and not important unless you tell me. Besides, if it sheds light on her motive for leaving in the first place, I think it damn well matters.”
He considered that. Then still without looking up, said: “She wouldn’t let me into her bed.” So softly I had to lean forward to hear it over the sounds of teenage party-in-progress mayhem and Backstreet Boys music.
“You had separate beds?” I’d seen only one large bed in their bedroom, and two bunk beds in the kids room.
“No, no. What I mean is, she stopped letting me…you know…”
“Have sex with her?” I volunteered.
He glanced up again, those brown eyes fluttering nervously. “We stopped making love.”
“Whatever.” I slurped my coffee. “So she was never in the mood during those last days? Weeks? Months?”
“About a year, actually. And it wasn’t just a question of not being in the mood. It was as if I…repelled her. She would shove me away, say ‘No! No!’ And there was real disgust in her voice. I couldn’t understand it. One time…” He paused, running a hand through his hair and looking around sheepishly. “One time, I touched her while she was sleeping…you know, put my hand on her—” he brushed a hand against the general vicinity of his chest. “And she screamed. She went berserk, getting up, punching me, abusing, hitting. I’d never seen her like that before. And then—.”
“Yes?”
He licked his lips. Looked down at his untouched burger. Toyed with a french fry, dipped it in ketchup, half-heartedly raised it to his mouth but didn’t actually eat it.
“Mr Basu, I can understand that you’re uncomfortable talking about things like this. But like I said before—”
He wiped his mouth with the napkin. Though he hadn’t eaten a morsel.
“She hurt me,” he said.
I leaned forward. “Are you telling me she raped you?”
He looked away. He was a good-looking man, I saw that now for the first time. Not in a macho, mannequin way, but plain good-looking. “Yes. And sodomized.”
I blinked at that. But wasn’t sure how to ask the obvious question.
He saved me the trouble. “With a candle.”
I looked at him dead straight. I wanted to know this was for real, he wasn’t just jerking my flush-chain, putting me on. He looked sincere, those brown eyes filled with real pain, real shame. And this was Mcdonald’s. Who takes an investigator you’ve hired to find your wife to Mcdonald’s, then lies to her about, of all the possible things on earth, how your wife raped and sodomized you before she ran out on you? With a candle?
A pair of young girls passed us, heading for the stairs. They were in a hurry, calling out something about being late for the movie. The first one was dressed in jeans so tight, I wondered how she could breathe. The second one was in a miniskirt that I could easily have mistaken for a short blouse. She had large breasts and in her hurry to get past, she lurched and almost fell on Avijit. Her breasts brushed his cheek, and her rear end grazed the back of his left hand.
She passed by without even excusing herself and was gone. He didn’t react, didn’t even give her a second glance. He hardly seemed aware that she had touched him.
Without taking my eyes off him, I raised my Styrofoam cup to my lips.
Nothing came. The coffee was over. And so was this conversation.
“What did I tell you about thinking too much, sweetie?” said Mrs Matondkar, my landlady. She was sitting in her rocking chair as usual, eating channa. “Thinking too much is bad for you. It keeps you from doing. And in your line of work, all you have to do is do, not think.”
After that impressive speech, she picked up another handful of channa from the steel katori beside her, rubbed it between her palms to separate the shells from the channa nuts, then proceeded to pop the channa one by one into her mouth. How she managed to chew them without teeth—she was 73 and almost totally toothless—was beyond my understanding. But she seemed to relish them, rocking back and forth on that chair in rhythm to her methodical mastication.
“Shut up,” I said, although she wasn’t saying anything just then. I had a headache that morning. I usually had a headache most mornings. Maybe drinking and watching too much television the night before had something to do with it. But what good is urban life if you can’t belt down a few big ones and burn your eyes out watching late-night cable movies?
I swallowed an analgesic pill and tried to wash it down with a sip of Mrs Matondkar’s oversweetened tea. The tea was scalding and I coughed, spraying the room, and was forced to chew the tablet down quickly. It tasted horrible.
She clicked her tongue sympathetically from across the room. That tongue-clicking enfuriated me even more than the rhythmic squeaking of her rocking chair.
“Shut up,” I mumbled again, slurping the tea greedily from the saucer.
Most of it had slipped into the saucer anyway. When I finished it all, I felt a little better.
“What you should do,” she said slowly, like a schoolteacher instructing a kindergarten class in the alphabet for the first time, “is spend as many days trying to find her as possible. When he says ‘achcha, bas, that’s enough’, then you stop, settle your bill, and forget about it. As long as you do your job and get paid, what more you want? Why? Am I telling sense or not, girl?”
She was telling too much sense. That was what irritated me.
“You don’t understand,” I told her. “It isn’t as simple as that.”
“But it is, girl,” she went on in that irritating, explanatory way. “It is very extremely simple. He wants to hire your services, you are in need of the money. Do your best, and whatever happens, happens.”
“There’s a question of individual rights involved here. His wife obviously left because she wasn’t happy. It wouldn’t be fair of me to lead him to her after all these years. If she wanted to be found, she would have contacted him years ago. Or she would have contacted someone or the other, her mother, sister, anyone. The fact that she didn’t means that she wants to be left alone. Who the hell am I to intrude on her life now?”
“Achcha, okay, baba.” She took another handful of channa and rubbed it. The flakes fell like black snow into the katori. “So you do one thing. You try to find her. If you succeed, you speak to her personally. Tell her the situation. If she is willing to meet her husband, fine. You direct him to her and your job is done. If she says No, Please, I don’t want to see that man ever again, he was such a bad man to me I cannot bear to live with him again and suchlike, then fine. You go back to him and tell him you were not able to find her, so what can you do? Take your money and go home.”
I thought about that. It had a certain charm to it, especially the part about taking the money and going home without leading Basu to his estranged wife. But what really made me think was something else she had said in the course of that dissertation.
“What was that you said? About not wanting to see that man again? Because he was such a bad man to her? What did you mean by that?”
She munched channa thoughtfully. “You only said it, no? Why would she leave if she was happy? Must be something in the marriage that made her go away like that. Something very bad.”
I stood up, still holding the empty saucer. I put it down on the table, my fingers sticking to it. “Thank you for the tea, Mrs Matondkar. If anyone calls, I’ll be back late tonight.”
“Arre, at least tell me what you’re going to do? What you have decided finally?”
I walked over to her rocking chair, over by the window she sat by and looked out of all day to pass her time. I picked up a couple of shelled channa from her open palm. They tasted like besin-ka-atta in my mouth.
“I’m not going to try to find her at all,” I said.
She sighed, shaking her head disapprovingly.
“I’m going to find out why she left in the first place.” I turned to go. “If I can find that out, I think I’ll find out everything that matters. Wish me luck.”
Instead of doing that, she raised one thigh and issued a slow, musical fart. I grinned at her and left. It was as close as she ever came to giving me her blessing.
P.K. Sunil was one of those completely self-centred, work-involved men who either don’t have the mental capacity to concern themselves with anything apart from their own careers or don’t want to make the effort.
Smugly contented, slightly over-weight, and giving off a pulsating aura that beeped “look at me, ain’t I cool?” at regular intervals, he sat before a console of some kind of computer-aided-design set-up and made me watch him for almost twenty minutes. He had a swivel chair with wheels that he used to slide deftly from one end of the console to the other. Typing on a keyboard with machine gun speed, then sliding over to roll a designer’s mouse-ball carefully, then working a lever on a Betacam Player to rewind the film a frame at a time, he took obvious pleasure in his efficiency and speed. So, when he finally completed doing whatever it was he was doing for those twenty minutes and froze the image on the multiple monitor screens, he clapped his hands together once sharply, nodded brusquely and swivelled around to face me. It was about time; I was sick of staring at his ponytail.
“Not in here,” he said.
His eyes pointed threateningly at the pack of cigarettes I was holding in my left hand. I had been toying with them for a while, afraid he had forgotten I was waiting behind him and was going to go on all afternoon.
“Oh, these,” I said casually. “Actually, I quit a couple of months ago, but once in a while…you know.”
He didn’t respond, didn’t blink, didn’t even nod. Friendly bastard.
I put the pack away and pulled out a picture of Shubra Basu, taken a few months before she had disappeared.
“Her hair was shorter when she was with me,” he said. “It suited her better. She had a fleshy…” he touched his cheeks. “But then she started to grow her hair long, and we dropped out of touch completely.”
He made it sound as if one thing was directly related to the other.
“How closely did you know her, Mr Sunil?”
“She wasn’t happy with him,” he said unexpectedly. He looked at me as if for confirmation. “She used to tell me she was thinking of getting a divorce.”
“Did she say why?”
He rolled his chair over to the A/c, took hold of the remote control that hung suspended, and made some adjustments. The room seemed to grow even more frigid than before. My lungs screamed for a cigarette. “He was not right for her,” he said. “I told her before they got married only. But…” he shrugged.
“You and Shubra started this business together, didn’t you? You met in college and found you had a common interest in electronics. Started tinkering around with technology together, won some prizes. Then, when you passed out, you set up this business as partners, right?”
He didn’t nod, agree or disagree. Inscrutable as an American in a bad Indian English novel.
“We wanted to go to California together,” he said. “Start our own company. Like the two Steves started Apple. A free, non-conformist culture. Like a computer commune. Shubra was from a very conservative Bengali family. Her grandfather was a founding member of the Communist Party of India (undivided). She had grown up very repressed and controlled. In college, she blossomed, found herself. She became a different person. Technology was her way of escaping their feudal tyranny. Asserting her own identity.”
This was getting a little too idealogical for me.
“So you’re saying that she found her salvation through microchips and keyboards? And became a kind of, what, techno-hippie?”
He looked at me coldly.
“Metaphorically speaking,” I added, controlling an irrepressible urge to wink. He was so stiff I wanted to tell him to bend over and touch his toes so I could extract the long pole he obviously had up his ass.
“She married Avijit because she couldn’t resolve her feelings for me,” he said abruptly.
“What feelings did she have for you?”
He looked at me as if I was a computer glitch he wanted to remove from a program.
“She was in love with me. We were both in love with each other. We were going to be together, setting up the company, building our future together. But she began to get scared of the commitment. Shubra couldn’t commit, that was her problem.”
“So you think she married Avijit just to avoid making a commitment to you? Isn’t that self-contradictory?”
He glowered at me. I could almost feel the temperature fall further—15. 14. 13.
“We were soul-mates, sex was only one part of the whole template. Shubra and I were more perfectly matched than any other couple I’ve ever met.”
“Yet she ditched you for a Bengali brahmin as conservative as her own parents, didn’t she? How do you explain that, Mr Sunil?”
He was silent. The airconditioning hummed subvocally behind us. The soundproofing was effective enough to make the singing of blood in my veins audible. It sounded like a sad, old ghazal.
I figured the answer to that last question wasn’t coming. Not from him at least. And I needed a cigarette the way a Kamatipura prostitute needs an AIDS check-up.
Nishi Saigal lived in the kind of Pali Hill bungalow that you usually see only in a scene from a big-budget Hindi film: a long winding driveway rising higher and higher until you turn the last curve and come upon a breathtakingly beautiful log-and-stone cabin that seems to belong to a Swiss mountain retreat rather than a Bombay residence. The lawn before the bungalow was immaculately manicured, gleaming crewcut green in the late afternoon sunlight. An underground garage housed more expensive cars than I could count at a glance, let alone name. I felt like a character in a displaced Barbara Taylor Bradford novel, a mistress arriving home after a much-needed summer break.
“Have you had lunch?” she asked as I was shown into a living room that looked like a photograph out of those interior decor magazines. She was dressed in something long, flowing, off-white and designer-looking, and looked anxious and distracted. “You must excuse the mess, I’ve been so busy with the elections.”
I didn’t know what mess she was talking about, unless it was my hairstyle. But the bit about the elections I deduced was a reference to her husband, the ex-filmstar-turned-MP who was apparently standing again for election.
“Well, I had some breakfast,” I said, remembering Mrs Matondkar’s channa and chai. “But I haven’t got around to lunch yet. I’m running a bit late.” That also took care of my apology for arriving an hour and ten minutes late, I hoped.
She gave instructions to a very healthy-looking albino maid who reappeared barely five minutes later with a platter of salads, sandwiches and assorted cold cuts that looked like an entire section of a five-star hotel Sunday buffet.
“Please,” she said, indicating the food as we sat down at the ornate marble-topped table. “I know it’s not much, but help yourself.”
I munched on what looked like a roast-beef sandwich and tasted like one too. “I believe you and Shubra were good friends.”
She gestured vaguely. “Our children studied together from playschool onwards. Do you have children, Miss Anita? Well, then you wouldn’t understand. But yes, of course, we were friends too. We became friends over time. Although I have to say, our natures were quite different.”
She managed a short, choked laugh. “Quite different.” She added cryptically: “No. 4 and No. 7 usually don’t mix.”
“Excuse me?”
“Numerology. My hobby. Do you read the Tarot? I do. It’s fascinating.”
I put down the sandwich and took a sip of the iced tea. I could get used to this kind of life.
“Tell me, how intimate was your friendship?”
She glanced out at the lawn, visible through the large floor-to-ceiling french windows which dominated one entire wall of the living room. A servant was exercising the three pedigreed Alsatians, who were dancing in and out of the arcs of the lawn sprinklers. Sunlight gleamed on the wet grass. One of the dogs shook the water off himself, sending up a shower of glittering drops. I could smell the scent of grass, wet earth and wet dog even though the house was centrally airconditioned and the french windows were shut.
“We didn’t discuss politics,” she replied, frowning. “And she didn’t like to talk much about her husband either.”
“No, I meant other matters.” I dabbed at my mouth with the monogrammed napkin and looked at her in what I hoped was a secretive feminine way. “You know what I mean, women’s talk. Bedroom matters. That kind of thing.”
She stared at me so intently and for so long, it started to get uncomfortable. I was about to take another bite of the sandwich, and maybe try some of the cold cuts with a little salad on the side, but she suddenly snapped her head around, barked: “Anjali, clear the table.”
I watched as the food, including the plate with my half-eaten sandwich was carried away by the albino maid and a young dark-skinned boy with wall eyes and an infectious grin. I shot him a wink and he blushed, almost dropping the salad bowl.
After this little display of Pavlovian conditioning—obviously intended to show me her displeasure at being asked such an impertinent question—Nishi Saigal made a show of looking at her watch several times and said, “You really must excuse me, I have so much election work to take care of. In fact, I would have left in the morning and not come back till night, but somehow today—.”
Mrs Nishi Saigal then proceeded to call in a dozen-odd local Maharashtrian boys and began to interview each of them in turn as possible candidates to go on a door-to-door search of the constituency to check voter’s lists. She even told Anjali, the albino maid, to organize water and tea for them in the kitchen before they were sent out, conspicuously not asking me.
I tolerated about ten minutes more of this bullshit, then I moved in.
I raised my voice and asked with deliberate clarity, speaking in Hindi to make sure all and sundry heard and understood:
“So Mrs Saigal, you do admit you were having an affair with Avijit Basu?”
Pin drop silence. You could hear the depreciation mounting on all the valuables in the bungalow. The volunteers looked at me, then at Nishi Saigal, then back at me, back at her, en masse, like a bunch of extras in a bad Hindi film—or in any Hindi film, let’s face it, they’re all bad.
“Please, if you don’t mind, you will leave at once,” said Nishi Saigal.
I looked at her face and had the satisfaction of seeing her attractive, milk-white Punjabi complexion turn scarlet. She was standing and pointing in the direction of the doorway, just in case I didn’t understand English.
I ignored both the verbal and the visual message and continued in Hindi: “Because that’s what the whole neighbourhood says, including another close friend. And your reaction a few minutes ago when I asked you a question confirmed it. You and Avijit Basu were having a sexual affair for over a year. Right until the time his wife disappeared, wasn’t it?”
She was going from scarlet to purple now. She snatched up an object, and I thought it was a piece of statuary she was about to fling at me. But it turned out to be an extravagantly designed telephone which she used to call the security. Then she folded her arms on her not-so-ample chest and struggled to keep her emotions under control.
I went on. My audience was relishing every word.
“But after his wife left, Avijit suddenly stopped the affair, didn’t he? He wouldn’t take your calls, changed his phone numbers, and when you sent your driver or your maid to his house with a personal message, he would reply with a cold, computer-printed message that the affair was over and you should leave him alone. When you persisted, unable to get over your obsession with him, he sent you a letter threatening to go to the police—or the press. I think that last one was what really did it for you, wasn’t it? And that’s when you began your campaign of hate-gossip against Avijit Basu. You began spreading rumours that his wife left him because he was impotent, alcoholic, neurotic, a wife-abuser, and God knows what else.”
The security arrived. Two well-built Punjabi guards in such smart, crackling uniforms, I almost felt obliged to salute them. Nishi Saigal pointed at me, her finger trembling with rage. I raised my hands and smiled to show them I wasn’t going to be any trouble. I walked up the short stairs to the upper lever of the duplex.
“Now that,” I told the impassive security guards as we emerged into the brilliant afternoon sunshine, “was what I call a one-sided conversation.”
But it didn’t matter. Because I had already gathered my facts before visiting Nishi Saigal. And because her reactions alone had been enough to confirm all my suspicions.
Mrs Matondkar chewed sugarcane strips as she mulled over the events of the day. “So this woman, she gave up her full career, even though she was so talented. And she became an ordinary housewife, while her husband pursued his career. And what happens? He goes and has an affair with some other man’s wife. How will she feel after a thing like that? Men, always such cheaters.”
I sipped my cola. I would have preferred it spiked with some rum, but Mrs Matondkar didn’t favour my drinking or smoking in her presence. She probably wouldn’t have been able to tell if I slipped out to my room and added a dollop to the cola, but it had never even occurred to me to trick her that way. One of my many flaws: Honesty.
“Actually,” I corrected her, “it was worse than that. She had enjoyed a great sexual awakening in her college years. A kind of hippie sexual liberation. And as you said, she was talented. Probably brilliantly suited for technological work. So when she married Avijit Basu, she probably expected a husband who would share some things in common with her—Bengali language, culture, history—but allow her the freedom she wanted. To follow the career she wanted. To explore her sexuality and invidivuality further. And to raise a family.” I took another sip. “But as things turned out, she only got one out of three.”
“So I told you first only. She was unhappy, that was why she went away.”
“I agree. She was unhappy. My interviews with relatives, friends, neighbours all suggest that after he began to find success, Avijit began drinking harder, behaving more arrogant and chauvinistic, and began taking her role as a mother and house-wife more and more for granted. She must have felt stifled.”
“So now you know the full story. End of case.”
I smiled. “Not at all. In fact, it’s only the beginning. I already started with the premise that Shubra was unhappy. All I’ve learned in the past few days is why. But I still don’t know what actually happened to her.”
“She went away. You told me. She left her purse also in the taxi, that’s why the Union still had the record, no?”
“Yes. And I found that strange. The last thing you’d expect a woman to leave in a cab when running away from home and family is her handbag.”
“She was upset, confused, it happens. Now she must be in some far away place, living a new life, on her terms. Not being a servant to that man.”
I nodded. Everything Mrs Matondkar said was undeniably true. It leaped out at me from every interview I conducted, every little fact I added to the growing pile. Even eight years later, everybody who knew Shubra Basu agreed on one thing: She was trapped in an unhappy marriage. And she was not the kind of woman to sit and take it indefinitely. So she had left. There was only one problem with that whole line of argument.
“The children,” I said to Mrs Matondkar. “How do you explain the children then? All right, so she was frustrated at not being able to explore her career, so she was sexually frustrated as well. Her husband had changed from the likeable, apparently liberal man she had married into a chauvinistic, self-centred, philandering bastard. Her friends knew about his affair with a beautiful ex-film star, and that must have been humiliating. But she loved her children madly. Why would she leave them behind?”
Mrs Matondkar chewed thoughtfully on a small strip of ganna, then removed the chewed-up residue from her mouth. She dropped into her lap, where a small pile had collected. “She could take them with her, no?”
“She could have filed for divorce and custody.”
“And she would have won this divorce?”
“Probably not. He was the only earning member, she had no income. But if she had made the effort, in a few years, she could have succeeded. It’s not impossible today.”
“Yes, but this was not today. This was eight years ago. You know the divorce laws. The court always favours the husband, the man. Is that right?”
That was right.
“But it still doesn’t explain why she would have abandoned her kids and left. That kind of selfishness I can understand in a man, but not in a woman. I don’t think Shubra Basu would have deserted her children for her own sake. They were already 14 and 10 years old. All she had to do was wait a few more years, and they would have been out of the house and on their own. Then she could have done what she wanted with the rest of her life.”
Mrs Matondkar nodded, rocking steadily to and fro. The evening light from the window behind her made her look like a painting of an artist’s mother. Whistler, was it? Except that Whistler’s mother was never so over-weight.
“But still she went, no?” she said said at last. “So probably she could not bear to wait even so long.”
“Just tell me this, Mrs Matondkar. Do you agree with what I just said or not? If you were in Shubra Basu’s place eight years ago, wouldn’t you have waited a few more years rather than walk out there and then? After all, he was unfaithful and a dominating husband, but he wasn’t beating her up or abusing her. What would you have done? Abandoned your children to pursue your own dreams or wait a few more years?”
She chewed the last piece of sugar cane. When she took it out at last, it was as dried out as straw. She spat little flecks of cane into her left hand, then licked the stickiness of her lips.
Finally, she looked up at me and nodded: “I would have waited.”
My thought exactly.
Taxi driver Aftab Husain was a thin, elderly man with a patient look. Clean-shaven and balding, he faintly resembled the Hindi film character actor A K Hangal. His right hand shook visibly, probably the result of a silent stroke he wasn’t even aware of having had. I didn’t enlighten him on the symptoms of strokes and their consequences on the nervous system.
Instead I showed him a picture of Shubra Basu that Avijit had given me, and asked:
“Eight years ago, you drove this woman from Carter Road, Bandra, and took her to Dadar TT. She left her purse in the back seat, and afterwards, you took the purse to the Union. Do you remember?”
He frowned, scratching his high, balding forehead. “Pata nahin, memsaab. Bahut log bahut kuch chhod jaate hai. Sabki pata kaun rakhta.”
“Not like this one, Husainbhai. This lady left her purse in the back seat. The Taxi Union said when you handed in the purse, it had a lot of cash and credit cards in it. You very honestly turned it all over to the Union.”
A light dawned in his eyes. He replied in Hindi: “Achha. That one. Yes, yes, I remember that now. She was carrying a very heavy suitcase, I think,” he said at last. “I remember because I helped take it out of the dicky, and it was very heavy.” He shook his head. “That’s all, memsaab.
That and the wallet.”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “You mean, purse. Ladies purse.”
“No, memsaab,” he said, his hand trembling as he let it rest on the top of his meter. “It was a wallet, a man’s wallet.”
I looked at him. “What do you mean, a man’s wallet? How could it be a man’s wallet?”
He shrugged. “That’s why I first thought that maybe it was left by someone else. But she was my first bhada of the day, my bonee. I clean my taxi every morning before I start work, so I knew it must have been her’s only. It was a big leather wallet.”
With a sudden burst of excitement, I kissed Aftab Husain on his bald forehead.
“Thank you!” I said happily. “Thank you so much!”
Avijit smiled politely when I arrived and asked me if I’d like some iced tea.
I looked at him silently for a moment, examining his face closely, the cut of his hair, the nape of his neck, the shape of his body in the oversized black cotton shirt and faded blue jeans. He began to blink in embarrassment, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.
“Take off your clothes,” I said.
He froze.
“I want to have sex with you,” I told him casually. “I’ve wanted you since the first day we met, Avijit. I can’t resist you any longer.” I sounded like a Silhouette Romance, even though I’ve probably only read two in my entire life. I’m usually more the horror-and-crime novel type, but in the situation the purple prose sounded appropriate.
“Don’t tease me any longer,” I went on. “Please. Just take me. Ravish me. Make me your’s right now. I can’t wait another minute!”
I began unbuttoning my own shirt. “All right,” I said. “I’ll start first.” I worked open all the buttons, reached behind and snapped open my bra strap. I bared my bosom to him, as Victoria Holt would have said.
“It’s all your’s, Avi. Take me now!”
He stood up, face burning red with embarrassment and anger. “Put your clothes on,” he said. “Are you mad? What’s wrong with you, Anita?”
I went over to him, caught him by the wrists and pinned both hands behind him, slamming him against the wall. A cluster of cartoon characters jumped off the magnetized writing board. Keeping his wrists behind his back with one hand, I used the other hand to unbutton his black shirt quickly. Weight-lifting does give me a certain amount of muscular strength. Avijit struggled ineffectively to break out of my grasp.
“Stop it!” he said, genuinely alarmed now.
“Please, my love! Don’t resist me! I must have you now or die!” I was beginning to enjoy my performance now. Perhaps I had a future in acting?
I had most of his buttons open now. I tore the rest off, yanking the shirt aside to the left and to the right, exposing his chest completely.
And then I stopped abruptly.
And stared down at his exposed torso.
Avijit Basu’s breasts were small, almost flat. The nipples were large and full, engorged with the physical stimulation of our struggle, but if you wore a thick double-pocketed cotton shirt like he was wearing now, you wouldn’t be able to see them. And if he wound a strip of thick cloth around his breasts when he went out, they would be effectively invisible.
But damn it, why am I still calling him Avijit? For that matter, why am I still calling him “him”?
“Sit down, Shubra,” I said gently to her. “We have a lot to talk about.”
“How did you find out?” she asked.
“A mean, selfish bastard of a man doesn’t turn into the best father in the world overnight, Shubra. Avijit changed too much. You could take on his outward persona, the two of you almost looked similar, and being Bengali and having just moved into this new flat, your neighbours hadn’t had time to look at either of you closely. Except for the weight, of course. A couple of them commented on that. But they assumed it was because of the grief at the wife abandoning him. Other than those things, you did a pretty marvellous job of posing as your husband for the last eight years. I have to congratulate you, it was the perfect crime.”
“What do you mean, crime? What crime did I commit? Avijit may have been a good man when I first met him, but he changed so much in those sixteen years we were married. He couldn’t make the business work, couldn’t cope with his sexual urges, his eating and drinking, couldn’t be patient enough with the children. He was a complete mess. And instead of trying to make it better, he kept making it worse and worse. By drinking even more. By sleeping around. By boasting about it in front of the children—can you imagine that? He used to boast at parties right before the children that he had slept with X, Y, and Z.”
“Even then, Shubra, you had no right to murder him. You could have got a divorce, custody—.”
“What are you talking about?” The puzzlement in her eyes was genuine.
She had no idea what I was referring to. “What do you mean, murder? Who said I murdered him?”
I caught my breath. “You didn’t? But then…I mean…why else would you…why this whole charade then? Wasn’t that his body you carried away in the big suitcase? The one you took to Dadar TT?”
She nodded. “Yes. I put it on a bus to Valsad, Gujarat. I waited till they put it on top of the bus, tied down all the luggage, and watched till the bus left to make sure they didn’t suspect anything. I don’t know what happened after that, but I suppose they didn’t discover the body until they reached Valsad, found nobody claiming the suitcase and finally turned it over to the State Bus Authorities, who must have kept it until it began to stink.”
“But if you didn’t kill him, then how did he die?”
She sipped some tea. “He had a massive heart attack in the middle of the night. Died instantly. I sat up for two hours, trying to decide what to do. Finally, I thought of putting him in a suitcase and dumping it on a state bus.”
She was leaving something out, I could tell. “But what brought on the heart attack, Shubra? Come on, you might as well tell me the whole thing.”
She paused, looking around at the house, the life she had built for herself. A very good life. Definitely not the kind of life she would have had if Avijit Basu had continued living, and if she had stayed on as his wife.
“He tried to hit me,” she said slowly. “He had become brutal lately. Wanting sex even when I wasn’t inclined. Trying to do all kinds of things, sadistic things. He was so shameless, he would even try to lift my dress up in front of the children. And once, I caught him watching Shanti bathe, and he had an erection.”
I nodded. I had some idea of the depths to which human beings can sink once they allow themselves.
“That night, he tried to force himself on me. I resisted. He hit me. I hit him back. It became a fight. Then he picked up something to hit me with, and I knew he was drunk and crazy enough to kill me right there and then. So I…I threatened him.”
“With what?” I asked, gently, touching her arm.
“There was a pair of scissors on my bedside table. I only meant to scare him away, but he was out of control. He grew even more angry when I threatened him with the scissors. He tried to hit me again, but I slashed him a few times with the scissors and that’s when he began to have the heart attack. He collapsed on the bed and began to have convulsions. I realized what was happening, his doctor had told him some months ago to lose weight and stop drinking. The number of the doctor was right there by the phone. I knew I should have given a heart patient an analgesic immediately to help reduce the clotting. But I didn’t do anything. I just stood there and watched him die. It took half an hour.”
She was silent for a few moments. I put the glass of tea down. I wasn’t very thirsty any more.
“So, you were scared that you would be arrested for attempted murder? And that you would lose the children?”
“Everything,” she said, tears in her eyes now. “I would lose everything, don’t you see? Because no matter what they say, it’s still a fucking man’s world, let’s face it, Anita. That’s why, to stay with my children, I had to become a man. Literally. That’s why I did it all.”
I nodded. I coudn’t argue with that one.
She wiped her eyes, got over her emotional outburst and looked at me intently.
“So what will you do now?” she asked. “Go to the police?”
“What’s the point?” I replied. “He’s dead. He was a mean, selfish bastard, everybody agrees on that. You, on the other hand, are a really fine mother to your children. Mother and father, both rolled into one. You’ve done a great job bringing them up. You’ve built a career, a man’s career in a man’s world. I don’t hate you, Shubra, if that’s what you’re thinking, I admire you. The answer is no, I’m not going to go to the police or anyone else. I’d never forgive myself if I were to do anything to hurt you after all you’ve gone through already.”
She hugged me then. Took me to herself and held me so tight, I could feel her heart beating against mine. Then she kissed me on the cheek, as only a woman can kiss another woman.
(c) 1990-2010 Ashok Banker. All rights reserved.
Devi Darshan – short story
Devi Darshan illustration by Dominic Harmon
Devi Darshan illustration by Dominic Harmon
Devi Darshan
by Ashok Banker
He took a wrong turn on P.M. Road and found himself face to face with it.
“Hai Ram,” he said, touching his forehead in the Hindu genuflectory gesture similar to crossing oneself. And took a step back. Then another. It was a small temple. A shrine really. Perhaps seven feet high and five feet broad. Built, like most temples in India, at the base of a tree. Two tiny marble archs framed the front portal. An elaborately carved bunting ran around the top of the roughly squareish structure. The top sloped upwards in a much sharper dome than was usual, concluding in a spire-like tip that was almost Christian in its sternness. But that was blasphemous, to invoke comparison with those heathen invaders. More likely, it was the Chrisitan architects themselves who had been inspired by such early Hindu constructions as this, and hence the apparent similarity.
He took a step forward, still unable to believe he had fulfilled his life’s greatest quest so unexpectedly. He looked around, reassuring himself that he was still in downtown Bombay, in this narrow alley just off Sir Phirozeshah Mehta Road, the heart of the city’s business district. Barely five metres away, traffic rushed past on the crowded boulevard, carrying home commuters at the end of another hectic weekday. Car horns blared, London-style BEST buses roared and farted, Hindi pop music blasted from a street vendor’s stall: any 4 tapes, Rs 100 only. The city breathed and lived, sinned and fornicated, worked and pleasured around him. But here, in the presence of the least known of India’s 5,000 gods, he felt coccooned, secluded. It was as if a glass door had been lowered slowly into place, separating him from the street behind, from the city. Sealing him off. As if he had stepped momentarily out of Bombay, and into another realm.
He smiled nervously, brushing aside these imaginative thoughts. It was due to the excitement of the discovery, he told himself. And the general sensory overload of the past week, the exhaustion of coping with India after a lifetime spent in the relative luxury of Connecticut, USA. The anxiety of being home again, yet not being able to truly accept this filthy, overcrowded, polluted island as the place that had birthed him and his lineage. He stepped forward, toward the shrine and examined it more closely. The portal itself consisted of two intricately designed gold-plated doors, with a central latch and bolt. The deity lay behind those doors, naturally. And from the distinctive markings on the pillars and the sides of the shrine, it was clearly a temple of the Fisher Queen. He had seen the markings and design often enough on ancient texts to be sure. And thirty one years of searching had only sharpened his senses further.
Overcoming the initial sense of anxiety – probably a reaction to finding what he had sought for over three decades – he made himself walk carefully around the perimeter of the shrine, confirming his first recognition through a dozen different detials. The tiny fresco carved on the bunting, depicting an oceanic scene: a boat setting sail from shore, women and children waving goodbye. The boat drifting on an empty ocean, the fishermen pulling up empty nets. The men praying to the Fisher Queen, she who ruled over all life on the ocean. The Goddess rising up from the deep, terrible and towering as a kraken, glowing with the haloed light that Hindu Gods had in common with their Christian counterparts. Then the fishermen hauling in huge catches, returning home rich with the bounty of the Devi. Then a marking to indicate the passage of time, generations actually.
The fresco continued around the third and fourth sides of the shrine, taking him around the tree itself, stepping carefully in the dull gloom of the alley to avoid tripping over the overgrown roots of the banyan tree, rising out of the concret of the street itself like the coils of a gargantuan sea-serpeant. The last part of the fresco depicted the rise to riches and power of the tiny fishing hamlet on the West coast, one of the seven village-islands that made up the original seven islands of Bombay. And then the tragic, inevitable fall from grace as the villagers failed to honour their patron goddess, and she wreaked a terrible vengeance on them, destroying the village-island itself and washing all its denizens into the ocean, back to the womb of their creator. He was back at the front portal again. And by now, eager to see the Devi. To do puja. Offer his penitent homage. But all that faced him were the bolted doors. He looked around again, although there was nobody there. Slapped at some insect, probably a mosquito, that nibbled briefly at his ear. This was puzzling, and frustrating. What purpose did the doors serve? It was true, most Hindu temples were barred at night. But that was to keep out bandits who sought to plunder the day’s charitable takings And at least one junior acolyte of the main pujari always slept on the premises in the event of an untimely worshipper’s visit.
Harry looked around once again, making sure that there really was nobody around. No pujari, temple priest, or even a sadhu performing sanyas. After all, this was the shrine of the Mumba Naag Devi, the sacred Sea Goddess or Fisher Queen, or Serpeant Mother, to use just a few of her many names. There should have been lines of devout worshippers, brahmins to supervise the maintenance and upkeep of the shrine, flower and incense vendors to sell the paraphernalia needed to pay homage, old women squatting on the ground to watch your shoes and slippers for a rupee while you performed your puja, altar boys in their dhotis and brahmin threads to prepare and offer you the puja thali as you stepped up to the altar, a whole support system earning a living and providing services to the followers of the Devi. Especially in these confusing millennial times, when India seemed to be swept by a religous resurgence of epic proportions, every temple thronged by mile-long queues, raking in millions in charity, feeding small townships of brahmins.
But there was nobody here. Not a soul in sight. Just a dead-end wall at the far end, marked with obscene grafitti, a Bombay Municipal Corporation rubbish bin overflowing with aromatic refuse, a few discarded cans of Pepsi, a Domino’s Pizza Box (12 inches, with the plastic packet of Sesaparila seeds still Scotch-taped to the top, a shrivelled-up used condom, a pile of corrugated cardboard boxes that had once contained some household durable. And this amazing shrine. It didn’t make sense. It just didn’t. His hands were reaching out. Toward the portal gates. Just a few inches more, and he could unlatch them himself, and take darshan of the deity. He was a devout Hindu, a brahmin no less, and despite his life spent across the ocean, still a stout devotee of the Goddess. What else was this shrine built for, if not for people like himself?
“Baba?”
The voice startled him, almost caused him to pitch forward, fall into the shrine. He tottered, stumbled forward, then regained his balance.
He turned around, and at first saw nobody.
“Ikde, baba. Khalee bagaa.” Here, son. Look down. Then he saw her, squatting in the familiar posture of Maharashtrian women since time immemorial, on her haunches on the pavement. A round tokri of woven-straw before her, filled with some produce. A street vendor. Had she been there when he entered the alley? Through his examination of the shrine’s markings? How could he have failed to notice her earlier? Well, of course. She was crouched down beside the corrugated cardboard boxes. Sitting almost stone-still, probably chawing her tobacco, waiting for customers to stop and purchase her wares. He had overlooked her completely.
“Ikde ye, baba. Bugh, mee kai sangeetho.” Come here, son. Listen to me.
He went toward her. As he approached, he could see her more clearly in the light streaming from the P M Road side of the alley. She was ancient, older than her voice suggested, face wrinkled in that parchment-like map of ages that was peculiar to Konkan women. And she was chawing on tobacco, like they all did. He glanced into her tokri as he reached her. The basket had probably contained a load of seafood at first. Now, the only remnant was a pair of bombeel. Bombay Duck. A flat ocean fish that could skinned, rolled in breadcrumbs and fried to a crisp, then eaten like an omlette, bones and all. Deliciciously crunchy. He preferred pompfret. Or bangda even.
“Tuzha naav kai?” she asked in Marathi. What’s your name? “Hari Prasad Rathod,” he replied. Not adding: But everybody back in Connecticut calls me Harry.
She nodded slowly. Her glass bangles jangled on her forearms. An old tattoo, almost faded now, marked the backs of her hands. She poked a finger in the direction of the shrine. “Tumhi devicha darshanla aale?” You came to worship the goddess?
“Ho,” he said, surprised at how naturally his native language rolled off his tongue, even if it was a single word. Yes. She took out a small aluminium canister, the kind most Maharashtrians of a certain class carried, and began to make herself another wad of tobacco, supari and lime. She patted the mixture together in her left palm, using her right thumb to rub it together with practised ease. Harry had seen even Bombay policemen, semi-automatic machine guns slung over their shoulders, taking time out to mix this traditional Marathi mixture. It had taken city authorities crores of rupees and decades of advertising to convince people not to spit the blood-red betel-and-tobacco juice at every available wall. Even now, he could see the telltale stains on the wall beside the old woman, spread out in a map-like pattern similar to the Galapagos Islands.
“Bassa,” she said, indicating the ground in front of her. Sit.
Harry suppressed a smile. The old woman probably had bad eye-sight. To expect him to squat on his haunches on the street, like a cart-puller or a peon!
He spoke to the old woman in Marathi, framing his words carefully. Surprisingly, the words, grammar, syntax all rolled easily off his tongue and palette. Thirty one years since he had spoken more than a sentence, and yet he spoke as fluently as if it was yesterday. Like riding a bicycle.
“This shrine,” he said. “Why isn’t there any pujari or pundit here? Is there a particular day or time for worshippers to come for darshan of the devi?”
She finished making her wad of timepass, raised her palm, transferring the entire mass from hand to mouth, using her thumb to stuff it into her left cheek.
He asked his question again, rephrasing it marginally in case she hadn’t understood it the first time.
“You have been away,” she said in Marathi. But in the old dialect, the fisher-people’s tongue, Koli. “Across the ocean. A brahmin should not cross the ocean, you know that.”
He was surprised to find himself feeling embarrassed at the admonition.
“Ho, bai,” he admitted. Yes, mother. “I was a child when my father took me. He had a good opportunity, we had to go.” He felt the curious need to explain further, to justify. “We live a good life there. Honest, hard work. Follow all the rituals and traditions, just like at home. Even in America, we live like Mumba Devi’s children.”
She nodded. Her cheek was swollen from the tambaccu, her lips barely moving to form the words. But he could understand every syllable. She picked up the two fish from her tokri, wrapping them in newspaper, tied the bundle with twine from a roll mounted on a stick. She handed him the bundle.
“This is one thing you could not have found on foreign shores,” she said. “Here. Taste Mumba Devi’s bounty. Taste it and remember who you are, where you belong.”
He hesitated. But felt a peculiar pressure to take the fish. Without allowing himself time to object, he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the first currency note he touched. It was a 100-Rs note. He handed it to the old woman. It disappeared into the folds of her choli, the fisherwoman’s traditional low-cut cotton blouse. He took the bundle of fish, finding it heavier than expected. He saw that it contained a pair of pomfret, not bombeel. He must have been mistaken earlier when he thought he saw Bombay Duck. The old woman was rising to her feet, raising the tokri to her head, arranging the coiled pad of cloth on her skull. He helped her place the tokri on her head and watched her shuffled down the alley. The wrong way.
“Bai,” he said uncertainly. “That way is a dead-end.”
He turned to indicate the street, PM Road, down the other way. “That’s the way to go out.” He barely turned his head for an instant.
When he turned back she was gone.
* * *
Aarti sounded concerned on the phone. “But, Harry, you don’t speak Koli.”
“That’s the point, Art,” he replied, excited. “My parents used to speak it. I must have retained memories. Just enough to converse with the old fisher-woman.”
“Johnny’s getting tired of managing the store all day,” she said. “Labour Day weekend’s coming up. He wants to go with the rock-climbing group. He asked if you’d be back by then.” “He’s spoilt,” Harry said. “Just because you and I have managed the store on our own till now, he thinks he’s too good for it. It’s decent work, Art. Do him good to spend a few hours at the register. Maybe he can learn a bit about the business while he’s at it.”
“I thought we talked about this. He’s going to college next year. He’s already applied to Boston, you know that.”
Harry didn’t want to talk about his children. “Okay, okay. I’ll be back in time for Labour weekend. He can go on his rock-climbing campout. But, Art, listen. Those fish the old woman gave me were the best. Finger-lickin’ good! I wish you were here to share them with me.”
She snorted. “You mean you wish I was there to fry them for you. How did you manage to cook them up anyway? Sunita-Bua must have done it.”
“What, you think I can’t fry a couple of fish? Sunita-Maasi’s maid ground the masala, and I did the rest. Both Sunita and Kishore said the same thing, that it was the best pomfret they’d ever had.” Aarti sniffed. He realized suddenly that she was feeling neglected.
For twenty five years she had cooked every meal for him after all. After all, he thought without even being aware of the inherent chauvinism in the thought, a desi wife’s self-esteem takes much of its strength from her prowess in the kitchen–even more than in the bedroom.
“Of course,” he added hastily, “not as tasty as the way you cook them. But the masalas here, Art. Even the top-of-the-line imports in Connecticut just don’t have the same flavour.” She sounded a little mollified. But he had to promise to return by Labour Day weekend twice more. She wa s missing him. Even though he knew that as a good desi housewife, she couldn’t come right out and say it. Three decades in America still couldn’t erase deeply ingrained customs.
* * *
He had a few minor chores to take care of the next day, looking up old schoolfriends, a dearly loved teacher, other old faces from the distant past. And of course, the property matter for which he’d come down in the first place. It was just a broken-down shack and a few acres of infertile land. But it was ocean-front property, on Kashid Beach in Alibag. And Sunita and Kishore said that droves of rich Malabar Hill-types were buying property in Alibag and building cottages and bungalows for weekend holidays. If he put it up for sale through a good downtown real estate agent, he’d get a good price. Enough to pay off the rest of the mortgage on the new house back in Connecticut, and to put Johnny through college. Maybe even a little left over to upgrade from the Ford pick-up to the GM van Aarti had been eyeing so wistfully. The trip out to Alibag and back took half a day each way, what with the ferry service being so irregular, and the ocean being choppy at this time of year. And then the long, bone-banging ride by auto-rickshaw to the village.
Before leaving India 43 years ago, he had lived in Bombay city, in the same house where his sister Sunita and her husband Kishore still stayed. During the 9 short years of his life before migrating to the US of A, he had visited his village perhaps twice in all, once when he was barely an infant.
So he had grown up with an idealized, romantic image of his family’s village, and was disappointed to find Pepsi billboards by the roadside, empty packs of Lays and Kellogs Chocos clogging the monsoon-swollen gutters, and satellite dishes sprouting from the roofs of ugly, concrete-block bungalows. But as the auto-rickshaw bumped its way past these modern outgrowths into the more remote heart of district, he found the vista closer to his memory:
Red-tiled sloping roofs and mud-and-brick houses for the upper castes, thatched huts and cowdung-cake walls and roofs for the lower castes; an open patch lined with coconut and palm trees where children played gilli-danda, marbles, and yes, of course, cricket too. But even that colonial game seemed homegrown somehow, the brown-stained bat and tattered rubber ball seeming more Maharashtrian Indian than English in this rustic setting. The property was a mess. It took all of the first day just to get it cleaned up. But afterwards, when he sat on the verandah of the old cottage and looked out at the Arabian Ocean, at the sunlight glinting off the fish-rich nets of the village boats out in Kashid Bay, he smiled in satisfaction. Perhaps he wouldn’t sell after all.
For a brief moment, a vision of himself and the kids, still small enough to be dependent on him and Aarti, frolicking on the white-blonde sandy beach, flashed in his mind. But of course, that was impossible now. The kids were grown and on their way out. If only he had come back sooner. Why hadn’t he? He had certainly wanted to badly enough. But there had always been the store, sucking up his days from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., weekends and holidays too in those early years of the first mortgage. Sammy’s illness, his long, expensive hospitalization, and subsequent death. The gap of six years before he and Aarti dared to try again. Then Sanaya, and then Johnny. The post-Gulf War recession. Etc, etc, etc. And the years had just rolled by.
In the vision he had glimpsed, Sammy had been there too, a little ‘un about the same age as Johnny–which was patently impossible–leaping through the surf in pursuit of a large coconut husk-ball. Dream on, you foolish dreamer. Destiny sniggers in the wings.
Later that same evening, he was walking on the beach, the soughing surf and gentle salty breeze relaxing him more thoroughly than the palm liquor he’d drunk a little of in the village earlier, when he saw the woman.
She was walking away from him, hand on one hip, a bundle poised on her other hip. She seemed younger, more shapely, but he had no doubt it was her. She paused at the top of a dune and looked back. In the serendipitous light of the setting sun, he was certain she smiled at him. A very sexy, inviting smile.
Then she went over the dune and disappeared from sight. He sprinted as fast as he could over the sand, his lungi, unfamiliar folds of cloth between his legs, slowing him down. And the weight of time, all those 52 years, the majority of them spent standing behind the counter of the superstore. Age turns desire to molasses in the veins.
When he reached the top of the dune, there was no sign of anyone for several hundred metres in either direction.
* * *
He was drinking with the village headman, Surpanch Joshi, late that night, munching on koliwada-style batter-fried prawns that brought out the full flavour of the potent palm liquor–and broke out a sweat on his forehead. He told the Surpanch about the shrine in the alley off P.M. Road. The Surpanch had never heard of P.M. Road, and showed only passing interest in Harry’s description of the little temple with its elaborate fresco but when he reached the part about the old woman, he stopped short.
He turned large, red-streaked eyes on Harry. His long, lustrous moustaches–oiled every morning with shark-fin oil–twitched visibly as he stared at the Non Resident Indian. “You must not speak of her to me,” he said, glancing around nervously. “Or to anyone. Her words are for you only.”
Harry frowned. “But she was just an old woman, a fisherwoman. It’s just that she knew the old dialect. So I thought perhaps–”
“No, no,” the Surpanch replied, flapping his hand vigorously in a fly-away gesture. “Say not a word more. It is only for you, her darshan. She chose to appear to you.”
Harry couldn’t understand head or tail of this. He tried to tell the Surpanch about the other young woman he’d seen earlier in the evening on the beach.
“I thought maybe she’s a relative. There’s a strong family resemblance.”
But the Surpanch was rising, apologizing profusely, making some excuse about having to rise early the next morning. He thrust the bottle of feni into Harry’s hand, and added an earthern container of curried fish and rice, for dinner. And all but pushed Harry out the door of his house.
* * *
That night, after he finished the bottle of feni, Harry had a dream. Well, not quite a dream, because he was awake when it happened, but he had drunk enough to doubt if maybe he was asleep dreaming he was awake when it happened.
He was sitting on the verandah on the old khaat, the wooden cot. He had finished the alcohol, and knew he should eat something, but lacked the will to get up and go inside to fetch the pot of rice and curry. The kerosene lantern had gone out a while ago, and he didn’t have the energy to re-fuel and relight that either. So he was sitting in the dark. With a little light coming from the crescent moon low in the Western sky. Even the crickets had stopped chirrupping, so he knew it was late. When she spoke, he thought for a moment it was Art. That he was back home in Connecticut, in the old clapboard house with noisy plumbing and the squeaky fourth stair. That he had passed out on the old recliner in the living room after watching a ball game. And Aarti was trying to wake him up to go to bed.
Because that’s what she was saying to him: “Come to bed.” Just like Aarti, Art, his wife, the only woman he had ever slept with in his entire life.
But she was speaking in the village dialect. Which Aarti didn’t know, had never known. Because Aarti’s people had come from a village in the ghats, the ridge mountains North of Bombay, where they spoke a different Marathi from this ancient dialect. Then he listened more closely as she said it again. And realized she wasn’t actually saying ‘come to bed’. She was saying those words, so yes that was a literal translation. But what she really meant was the other meaning of ‘come to bed’. And her tone left no room for doubt, soft and sibillant, undulating a coiled desire in his groin. He found himself on his feet and stared down for a moment, unable to understand how he had stood up so fast. His feet began to take him toward the voice. Into the darkness of the hut’s inner room where the light of the moon didn’t penetrate at all. Toward the coconut-husk mat on the floor where someone sat who was not Aarti, nor any other woman he knew. The scent of freshly applied coconut oil came to him, and he sensed rather than saw her hands moving, winding and braiding her long black hair, lustrous with oil. The scent of mogra, nightqueen blossom, which she had sprinkled across the mat. It was used for bridal beds on the first night. Suhaag raat.
And below these two powerful, evocatively familiar scents, as redolent of memories as a flashback in a film, was the smell of something older, stronger, so firmly embedded in her flesh that even the potent mogra and sweet-smelling coconut oil could not hide. The smell of the ocean, of millennia spent in the arms of the brine-king, the pungent aroma of his salty seed, fish and plant, moss and crab, the broth of creation itself whence all life had originated. Her father and lover. Her ruler. He moved a step closer, unable to resist the lure of that powerful and ancient aroma, more irresistible than any synthetic perfume, and felt his erection rise strong and true, drawn to the source of the smell: Her yoni. Splayed between parted thighs, inviting, waiting. He felt the aching grow intolerable, the pounding in his head threatening to drown out all reason and consciousness, and had all but succumbed to her power.
When she touched him. Reached out and placed her palm on his bare thigh, beneath the hitched-up lungi. Causing his flesh to tremble terribly, melting with desire.
And said: I have waited for you for so long, why didn’t you come home to me sooner, my son?
And he turned and ran from the cottage. Ran, ran out into the aangan of the house, toward the partly cleared pathway to the beach, still rough and tangled. Through bamboo and banana-leaf, papaya tree and palm trunk. Stumbling, slapped, colliding, falling, yet getting up and running on, ignoring pain, bruises, scratches.
He spent the night on the steps of the village temple. Beneath the watchful gaze of Hanuman, the Monkey-God, protector of the brave and strong.
* * *
Harry returned to Bombay the next day. The estate agent had called to leave two messages. He had a buyer for the Alibag property, offering a good price.
“You should sell, bhaiya,” Sunita said. “The rates have never been this high ever.”
“Yes, yes,” Harry replied, promising to call the agent and discuss the offer. And seemed to be thinking about it. But in fact he was deciding whether to take a slow BEST bus or a fast overcrowded local train to get to P.M. Road. Finally, he took a quick expensive taxi.
He got out in front of the old brownstone which housed the department store. Walking along the pavement, avoiding the electronic vendors with their wares stacked enticing on plywood-shelved stalls. The video porn vendor selling VCDs which all seemed to have the word ‘Night’ in the title, as in ‘Night Eyes’, ‘Night Moves’, ‘Night And The Maiden’, ‘Night of Nights’, the cellphone stall right in front of the stationery store, the music store.
He stopped.
He must have gone past it. It was between the stationery store and the electronics showroom. He remembered looking at a window display of Oxford Notebooks and Parker Pens and then turning left, and coming face to face with it.
He went back a few metres. The stationery show window was still there. Displaying the complete range of Faber-Castell colours, pastels, crayons, pencils, paints. He walked forward again, looking left, certain the alley was right here. And came to the music store.
Staring at a poster of a new Hindi film, featuring that wolfish-looking new male star everybody was raving about, he felt a moment of overwhelming panic.
He regained control of himself and retraced his steps, going all the way around the block and returning to the exact same spot. Then he went the other way around, the D.N. Road side. And met with the same results.
He crossed the street to get a different perspective and paced up and down the length of P.M. Road, all the way from Smoker’s Corner Bookstall at the Fort Market end to the Citibank ATM at the D.N. Road end.
There was no dead-end alley at all. Every lane crossing P.M. Road led to another lane, in the Manhattan-like grid-like pattern of downtown Bombay. The store owners he asked, the street vendors, the restaurant manager, the traffic cop at the signal, even the magazine vendor at the corner, everybody agreed that there was no dead-end lane leading off Sir Phirozeshah Mehta Road, had never been such a lane, couldn’t possibly be one for obvious reasons. On his fourth circuit, he stopped asking about the dead-end lane and tried asking about the temple of the Devi instead. This time, he met with strange looks, irritated reactions, hostile stares, even an outright stream of Hindi abuse, colourfully inventive phrases and insults he’d never heard before. Finally, an old watch-maker, his eyepiece still clutched in one eye, shook his head grimly. “Meri baat mano, bhai, apne ghar chale jaao. Uss Devi ki talaash mein arbo mard barbaad ho gaye.” Take my advice, brother, go home. Countless men like you have ruined their lives questing for that Goddess.
Harry tried to probe further, but the old man wouldn’t say another word. When he came back on his fifth circuit, the shop was closed, although he thought he could make out a glimmer of light from beneath the rolldown shutters.
Brother, go home.
He couldn’t go home. Not just yet. Home was 3,000 kilometres away and there were questions he wanted answered first. He went instead to the place where all men go when they fail to find what they seek. A bar.
* * *
When he staggered home in the early hours of the next morning, the lights were on in his sister’s house. Sunita was sobbing on the sofa in the living room. Kishore was sitting with his head in his hands, staring at the black television set. They looked up at the sight of Harry, swaying drunkenly in the doorway.
“Kai zaala?” he asked, understanding that something was seriously wrong. What happened?
It was Johnny.
“Janardan was locking up for the night,” Aarti said on the phone, reverting to their son’s Hindu name in this moment of ultimate crisis. “These three men came in, the police say they were probably some kind of naval cadets, Japanese or something. They had some kind of argument, I don’t know about what, I was in the backroom at the time, taking inventory. I think they asked him to empty out the cash register. He did that. Gave them every cent. Didn’t talk back or make any sudden movements, just like you taught him when he was small.”
She paused. “He did everything right, Hari,” she cried. Yes, yes, yes, he cried silently, maudlin with booze and shock, waiting for the punchline to this awful unfunny cosmic joke. “But they shot him anyway.”
She began to lose it, sniffing uncontrollably. “T…t…twice in the head, once in the chest.”
He leaned slowly against the wall, the cracked plaster flaking and powdering his right shoulder. Like dandruff.
* * *
The ferry was closed. A storm was expected, the operators at Gateway said. A cyclone, headed toward Gujarat. Perhaps after a few days, the service would resume. A large sign posted beneath the monument, at the jetty, announced that the motorboat launches were officially barred from taking passengers until further notice, by order of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. Water swirled well over the jetty, right up to the top of the pier, washing over toward the monument itself.
As he argued with the sullen launch operators standing in the shadow of the Gateway, he heard a guide explaining to a group of tourists that this was apparently the worst storm in the region in 28 years.
“No, you don’t understand,” Harry said. “I have to go today. Now. Quickly. Laukar!” He struck his palm with the edge of the other hand, karate-chop style. “Laukar!”
Finally, he found an operator willing to take him for a fee that was probably more than the resale value of the rickety old launch. Harry didn’t bargain. He paid the man cash up front, keeping half of the agreed sum in abeyance till they crossed. The ocean was furious, raging with an intensity Harry had never seen outside of films and television. The clusters of yachts, playthings of rich Bombayites, rocked violently in the bay like plastic ducks in a bathtub into which Homer Simpson had just dropped anchor. He was the only passenger on board: even the villagers huddled in the shelter of the Gateway had watched him leap aboard without asking to come along. They preferred to squat five days on the street until the storm cleared and regular services began. As fisherfolk, they understood and feared the sea’s wratch more than anything else.
He clung to the railing at first, staring out at the foggy, rain-smeared horizon, an ageing, slightly overweight Cortez awaiting first sight of land. The launch was buffeted by waves that reared over his head. Spray drenched him from head to toe; he had to keep wiping his eyes to be able to see clearly. The owner was pilotting the launch himself. Two workers had come aboard with him, reluctantly. But as they passed the stolid grey eminence of INS Vikrant, aircraft carrier-turned-museum, they began a heated argument with their employer. It ended with both of them leaping overboard at the point closest to the neck of land jutting out from the naval pier and swimming out vigorously, as if their lives depended on it. Which it did, Harry realized.
As the launch pulled him out of sight, he saw one of them clamber slowly onto shore and throw himself face down, the other one probably following right after; but they might as easily have been caught in the riptide and taken out to sea. Obviously, they feared the voyage more than that risk. Harry watched the skyline of South Bombay disappear into the foggy obscurity. The simplistic block of the new Taj Hotel faded into the swirling spray and rain like the last frame of an Impressionistic Italian film. After they left the Elephanta Island buoy behind, the ocean grew worse. The sky, already clouded over with curdled grey madness, darkened as suddenly as if a light had been dimmed. Thunder boomed frighteningly close; lightning crackled somewhere high up, blanketed in the clouds. The wooden bones of the battered launch moaned and screamed as the ocean intensified its assault. Harry gripped the railing hard enough to numb his hands. The water flailing across his face and body was cold now, Atlantic-cold, as frigid as a splash of exposed water on a winter’s day in Wisconsin.
A succession of giant waves reared toward him, approaching with grim determination. One, two, three…a dozen more followed. Until he lost count, and measured time only by the steady throbbing of his pulse in his throat, the desperate chug-chugging of the diesel engine, the frantically shouted prayers of the petrified Muslim owner at the wheel, the roaring of the ocean, and the Dolby-enhanced boom-crack of thunder. Lightning illuminated the night, limning his hands with ghastly fluorescence. He felt old, at the end of his tether.
And that was when he saw it. Her.
It was a wave, yet another in the countless succession that battered the boat. But unlike the others, it reared up to above his eye-level…and stayed.
It took his beleagured senses a moment or two to realize that the wave had not struck, was not going to lash him with icy spray. He raised his head slowly.
And looked full into the face of the Devi. She was the wave and the wave was her. Undululating, twisting sinuously, her form merged with the ocean, half-morphed somewhere between woman and water, eyes flashing green as burning jade, hair black and streaming the length of her body like a dark fin. And he smelt her once more. Not the same mixture of mogra, oil and ocean he had smelt that night in the cottage. There was no attempt to anoint herself with perfume now, just a raw sewage-strong stench that he knew at once was her true odour. She was grinning at him, yellow, cracked teeth bared in a shark-like grimace.
He heard her speak, although she did not use words. She spoke with the wind and the rain and the waves and the thunder and the mouths of fish teeming in the waters around her.
Are you pleased with what you have wrought, Hari Prasad Rathod? You see the price of spurning me? You should have accepted my embrace that night. Now, you suffer the pain of a father bereaved yet again.
He felt his anger rise like bile in his throat. Screamed back at her across the raging cyclone. In an all-too human voice. “How dare you harm my son! I was your loyal devotee all my life. Prayed to you even when I could not find your shrine. Long after others of my tribe had forgotten you or turned to other gods. And this is how you repay my loyalty and penitence?”
Her eyes burned brighter with anger, turning from green to blue.
It was necessary, to prove to you my power. Even halfway across the circle of waters, you and your seed still belong to me. If you had accepted my embrace, I would have showered you with blessings unimaginable. But you spurned me. Me, the Daughter of the Ocean! You had to pay the price.
He laughed then. Knowing that he had overestimated her from the very beginning.
“Just a girl,” he said bitterly. “Countless millennia old, but still a girl in your own mind, unable to accept rejection.”
The ocean roared and thundered, enfuriated by his scorn. A wave lashed the railing with a razor-sharp finger, sending a chip of wood into his shoulder with the force of a knife-throw. He ignored the pain and the tiny trickle of blood seeping down his kurta. It was just a small splinter.
“I know how alone you are,” he said. “How abandoned you feel by my race. Nobody has paid homage to you for years, perhaps almost a whole generation. Yet when I came across your bed of brine to seek you out, you caused my own son to suffer? How cruel and thoughtless of you, my goddess. I command you to restore my son at once. Return him to his former healthful state this very instant.”
The howl of wind that followed was almost petulant.
Why should I help you? What do I care if your son dies?
“Because I am the last believer. If my son dies, I will leave this land and never think or speak of you again. But if he lives, I will worship you forever. I will see to it that your glory reaches across to other shores. I will devote my life to your service.”
And in return all you wish is the life of your son back?
“Of course not,” he said, smiling in pride, knowing he had won. “I have other wishes. But first you must promise never to harm my loved ones. Next time, I will not relent as easily, my Devi.”
There was a long break, and the storm seemed to pause briefly, as if frozen momentarily by a finger on a remote control unit. Out the corner of his eye, Harry sensed the launch owner emerge from the pilot-house, stare incredulously at the sight before him–his passenger talking to a Goddess in a wave–and return hastily to his steering again, muttering an audible appeal to his own god for sanity and safe return.
“Very well,” she said, speaking in the same voice she had used that first day as an old fishmonger, the same weary accent. “But you must pledge that your seed and the seed of your seed will always be mine.”
Harry was prepared for this. “Yes,” he replied calmly. “I swear allegiance.”
And the storm vanished, leaving them in a clear blue ocean beneath an azure, sunlit sky.
* * *
He returned to Connecticut a week later, bearing bags of gifts. Johnny and Aarti were both at the airport to recieve him, Johnny looking just the way he’d looked when Harry had left. Harry hugged his son with caution, afraid to hug too hard. “Feeling okay?” he asked, rubbing his son’s shoulders through the windcheater.
“Never better,” Johnny replied.
Aarti turned limpid, luminous eyes up at him. “The doctors said it was nothing short of a miracle. Complete recovery and regression. Never seen anything like it before.”
He kissed her on the forehead, then directly on the lips, surprising her and causing Johnny to raise his eyebrows. In all the years they had been together, they had never kissed on the lips in public.
She looked surprised, but pleasantly so.
“There will be some changes,” he said to her quietly as they walked to the truck. Johnny was ahead, carrying Harry’s overstuffed bags with the ease of a wrestler carrying a welterweight. He tossed them into the back of the Ford. Harry and Aarti stopped. He felt her eyes on him, questioning, wondering. He hoped she couldn’t smell the ocean on his breath, in his pores, the roots of his hair. He could smell nothing else.
“What kind of changes?” she asked, staring wide-eyed at him now. Then, softer, almost unsurely: “You seem different. The trip was good for you.”
“Yes,” he said. And felt the onset of unexpected tears. “It was very, very good for me. For all of us.”
She glanced at him, surprised at the sudden release of emotion.
He grinned, blinking away the tears.
“Come,” he said to both of them, throwing out his hands. “Let’s go home. I’m famished. What’s for dinner?”
“Fish,” Johnny replied, starting the car.
Flesh Songs – short story
Another oldie-goldie from the archives, this one featuring a series character Sheila Ray who first appeared in my 1993 crime thriller The Iron Bra, and returns in A Blood Red Saree, the first book in The Kali Quartet, which is being offered for publication only outside India.
Flesh Songs
by Ashok Banker
A Sheila Ray story
The police gave her a bitch of a time. They wanted answers. She didn’t like the questions, and the way they asked them.
There were a half dozen of them in the lock-up, constables and a couple of sub-inspectors. One man stood behind her and when she didn’t answer, he boxed her ears like a man in a band clashing cymbals together.
She’d been expecting it, had clenched her jaw tight and her lungs emptied of air, but it still drew trickles of blood that dripped from her earlobes. Later, they handcuffed her hands over her head, tied her feet together and someone punch-jabbed her kidneys from behind. Flashes of red lightning exploded behind her eyelids. She knew she would piss blood for days.
Then one of them mauled her breasts, and that got them started. A constable with a gut like a sumo wrestler started to unbutton his khaki shorts. The others whistled and egged him on in guttural Marathi. The sub-inspectors didn’t give a damn.
She turned her face away. She had no doubt what would happen next: Either she would play along and they would use her brutally, leaving her bleeding and mauled. Or she would fight them, as she knew she would, and they would punch, gouge, claw and flay her within an inch of death. They wouldn’t kill her–not deliberately, at least–because while a gang-rape in custody was one thing, murder was a tad more difficult to brush away. Just a tad.
But it never went that far. Just then the door slammed open for a new arrival. A khaki uniform again, but the epaulets and sleeve-stripes were way beyond any of the ranks already in the interrogation room.
It was the Assistant Commissioner, Crime Branch, D Ward. At the sight of his rank, all the other cops scrambled to attention. The hawaldar mauling her breasts, his other hand unbuttoning his shorts, muttered a familiar abuse and stepped away from her. The ACP scanned the room. He didn’t seem to care about what had happened, or what had been about to happen. He gave a terse order, turned and left the room, leaving the doors open.
~
When she was brought in, dressed again, he offered her coffee. Her clothes were ripped and without the tampon, she could feel the wetness oozing through her panty and soaking her jeans. Everything hurt. She sat in the high-backed wooden chair and waited.
“Sheila Ray,” he said, reading from a file. “Ashok Ray’s daughter.” He glanced up at her, as if trying to compare his memory of Ashok Ray with this battered slut who sat before him.
“Your father was a very good policeman,” he said.
She waited for him to get to the point. She had to pee– again. Though they had let her pee before bringing her to the ACP, she had been unable to relax enough to let her sphincter open.
Now, she felt like she would burst at any moment.
He sipped coffee. She drank down the glass of water before picking up hers, Indian style. Her hand didn’t tremble, but her forearm was so taut, she had difficulty bending the elbow and relaxing the muscles enough to hoist the cup to her lips. Her lips blazed where she had been bitten by the fat hawaldar.
“A child has been kidnapped,” he said at last. “An important man’s child.” He named an industrialist, a name she had read in the newspapers in connection with a billion dollar power project, an Indo-US joint venture.
Her forearm was so taut she had difficulty bending the elbow and relaxing the muscles enough to hoist the cup to her lips. She had lived with a venture capitalist once, for two brief months: satin sheets and Baskin Robbins, a laptop or Palm-held always within reach, room service and lots and lots of sex, especially when the Nasdaq closed high, at 6 a.m. Indian Time. She remembered the name from those days, from pink-sheeted financial papers and glossy American magazines with pompous single-word names.
The ACP explained the deal. The kidnapper had been caught and killed in a police encounter when he tried to retrieve the ransom. They knew the address where the child was being held. An apartment in a chawl, a windowless two-room apartment with only one door. But somebody was there with her, an accomplice. And he would kill her if they tried to break in. They needed someone who could talk him out.
She didn’t ask the obvious question. The coffee was too sweet and too strong, made with chicory, South Indian style. She drank it all down. She hadn’t eaten a morsel for a day and a night, had no idea when she might eat again, and the sugar, milk and caffeine would bolster her for a couple of hours.
He answered the unspoken question. “You know the man, the accomplice.” He had left his coffee too long on the desk and when he sipped it, a skin of cream came onto his lip, hanging like cobwebs. He exclaimed in irritation and dabbed it away with a tissue from a box on the desk, rubbing hard.
“His name is Bhasker,” he went on after he had wiped away the cream. He now had flecks of tissue on his lips, but didn’t know it. It was evident what he expected her to do. He didn’t specify what she would get in exchange; they both knew what it would be. She had done this before.
She said she would need one thing before she agreed to do it.
“What?” he asked suspiciously.
“A sanitary pad,” she said.
His clean-shaven face twitched reflexively. She realized then that he didn’t have a moustache.
~
The chawl was one of the many vast, sprawling Government-built monstrosities that festered like leprosy sores across the suburbs, built to provide accommodation to relocated slum dwellers and homeless paupers, back in the Eighties when saving the poor was still fashionable in Bombay high society and political circles.
The slum dwellers and homeless, brought in garbage trucks by the hundreds of thousands, had stayed long enough to sell the tenements for hard cash. In less than six months, they had all moved back into the inner city, raising new plastic-and-tinfoil lean-tos and huts to replace the old. After three tries and three changes of Government, the project had been shelved. Now, the tenement structures were worse than slums.
She made her way around a paved area occupied by dozens of little children, some nearly infants, others almost teenagers, squatting for their daily business. Some younger ones squatted on the highway, boldly sticking out their tongues at the passing truckers and motorists who slowed or swerved to avoid them. This was the route to the international airport. A happy sight to greet foreigners arriving in the city for the first time.
The chawl was dark, filthy and stank of the usual assortment of Bombay chawl smells: all the fluids and solids the human body could possibly produce lay on the stairs and in the hallways. The apartment she was seeking–kholi, they called it here–was on the third floor.
On the top step, a gangly young boy with a large goiter lump on his neck, sat studying a school textbook. It was probably the best light in the place to read. She had to step over him and she glanced down at the book. It was a history book, opened to a page on Clive of India.
She ignored the Marathi women sitting on the floor in the hallway, churning a grinding stone in tandem as they jawed tobacco and occasionally spat out onto the veranda.
Like most Government-built tenements, the building was a giant cube, with verandas running around the perimeter of every floor. The tenements were grouped in a cube within the cube, clustered right next to each other as close as cells in a hive.
This meant that no room could have access to light and fresh air, and the ones on the extreme inside didn’t even have ventilation, except for a central chute down the length of the structure that was used as a refuse dump. Windows that opened into this central tube had to be kept closed to keep out the stench and the rats. It was worse than not having any windows at all.
She found the number she wanted and knocked on the door, softly. There was no response.
Further down the hallway, the sound of a tape recorder playing a Hindi film song blared through an open door, and a baby’s crying was punctuated by the angry voices of a man and a woman.
The song was an oldie by Mukesh, a dead singer with a nasal voice that made the soul twist in delicious agony. He sang about time and how it changed everything, even the face of love. The same song was also playing somewhere else, more softly. Radio then, not tape. In yet another kholi, a TV tuned to MTV was blaring out a nauseatingly familiar Indipop hit, a direct rip-off of “In The Summertime”.
She focussed on the low, mournful lyrics, shutting out the louder music and the other chawl sounds. Seeking a small, momentary envelope of privacy, Mukesh’s spine-creeping voice and the tortured songs of her own silent flesh.
From within the apartment, she heard voices. A man’s low tones. And a little girl’s whining complaint. They were muffled by another door. She knocked again, much harder.
“Bhasker,” she said, putting her mouth to the metal-framed mail slot… “Mee aahe, Sheila.” It’s me, Sheila.
There was absolute silence from inside. The Mukesh song ended and a radio deejay’s low silky voice spoke inaudibly for a moment. Then, as another song began–Geeta Bali, not her favorite, but an oldie at least–she heard the faint scuff of cautious feet as they approached the door.
“Kashasaati Sheila,” he said softly in Marathi. “Tuzha aiicha janam diwas kai?” If you’re Sheila, then tell me your mother’s birthday.
A memory flashed like a television screen switched on and then off: Her mother in a brand new red saree, laughing, for once unconcerned about her teeth showing, Sheila’s father on her left, Bhasker on her right. “Thirty-first August, Nineteen Forty Six,” she said.
There was a pause, as if he experienced a flash of memory too. Then he said quietly, switching to Hindi. “Sapnon mein bhi nahi socha tha ke tumko bhejenge.” You’re the last person I expected them to send.
She glanced at her watch. She had less than half an hour left. “Open the door,” she said. “I have a deal for you.”
She heard the child cry from inside the apartment. It sounded muffled, as if she had been gagged.
He opened the door.
~
They sat on the floor in a room that was completely bare, but clean. A ridiculously small fan–each span barely six inches long–spun like a dirty CD on the ceiling.
The girl was in the corner, gagged and tied, eyes bulging with curiosity but otherwise unharmed.
There was nobody else in the place. A peculiar odor hung in the air, something undefinable but vaguely familiar. It seemed to come from the direction of the little toilet, so she paid it no attention.
“It’s a set-up,” he said. “We were assigned to guard the girl from a kidnapping attempt. The ACP told me to take her away and keep her in a safe place for two days, where nobody would think to look for her.”
He gestured at the empty room. “This was my kholi, until I shifted to the police quarters in Worli after the promotion.”
She noticed the sub-inspector’s stripes on the sleeve of his uniform. “We brought her here on Monday morning, and were told to wait for further instructions. The next thing I knew, Vardhe and Sahu had some argument about how much ransom to demand, and then they shot it out. Vardhe’s body is still in the toilet. Then Sahu said he was going to collect the ransom and we would split it 70-30 when he returned, and he never came back.”
He glanced at the girl and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He looked older and wearier than she remembered, his hair shockingly more grey. Plus he had lost a lot of weight.
“I never intended to take the ransom, but I thought I’d have it out with him when he came and then take the girl over to HQ and explain everything…”
She spread her palms.
He nodded. “I know, I know. They won’t believe a word. Because the ACP set us all up. He lured Sahu and Vardhe with the promise of money, and me…” he paused, flicking at a fly that was trying to sit on his ear, “with me, he knew money wouldn’t work, so he used duty to get me to help. I was an idiot not to see through him in the first place.”
His face had a keening, desperate look, and he gazed at her as if he felt she had the answer to everything in her head and might tell him at any moment.
“So what to do now?” he asked.
She stood up. “Get up,” she said. “They’ll be here any minute. To kill all three of us. That’s the plan, obviously. Let’s go.”
He blinked and stared. “All three of us?”
His eyes went to the child.
“She’s a witness,” she said. “Besides, they’ve got what they wanted, the money. No point keeping her alive.”
An expression of utter darkness came over his face, like a cloud blotting out an already weak yellow sun. “But then why send you?” he asked. “Why not just come and kill me.”
She sighed. “I was supposed to kill you and save the girl. In exchange for my being released of all charges.” She showed him the blade hidden in the lining of her jeans. He blanched, and looked up at her face. She smiled and shook her head.
He started towards the front door. She stopped him. “This way,” she said, and led him to the toilet.
~
It took them several minutes to break through the bathroom ventilator. And even then, it would be a tight squeeze for Bhasker’s wide shoulders. She hammered at the crumbly concrete on the sides, trying to widen the hole. Then she heard them banging on the front door. Bhasker flinched, his sweat-washed face quivering. He stood astride the body of the dead inspector, Vardhe, his shoes squishing in the sticky pool of dried blood.
“Okay,” she said. “You go first, I’ll hand you the child.”
“No,” he said, pointing at the hole. “No room for me. You go. I’ll hand her up to you.”
She hesitated. The sounds at the front door stopped, replaced by ominous silence.
“Go!” he urged.
She went. The girl whimpered in fear as Bhasker handed her up, and when she saw the three-floor drop, she moaned softly, and started to cry. Sheila went out the hole backwards, the girl followed and clung to her neck, almost choking her.
Gunshots rang out at the front door. They were shooting the lock. But there was still one more door, the one to the inner room, to get through.
Bhasker called out to her as she was about to dip out of sight. “The blade,” he said.
She hesitated again, knowing what he meant to do, then pulled it out with one hand and threw it at him. It stuck in the thigh of the corpse, and the last sight she had of Bhasker was as he bent to pull it out. She climbed down the water pipe, praying it would hold her weight and the kid’s, and gunshots rang out at the door of the inner room.
She hid in a latrine on the ground floor, keeping the child quiet for the two hours it took them to search the chawl. She narrowly missed being found at least thrice. Finally, they assumed she had escaped–there were many entrances and approaches–and went away.
~
The industrialist was grateful but somehow resentful, as if he had already accepted his daughter’s death and couldn’t deal with the fact that she was alive. Or maybe it was just the fact that she was covered in excrement that prevented him from hugging her on sight.
But he paid a hefty reward. Sitting in an office on the ground floor of the bungalow–the girl had been taken away by servants to be bathed and cleaned and sterilized and fumigated presumably–he counted out crisp new bundles of 500-rupee notes. She shoved them carelessly into her duffel bag and zipped it up.
“It’s all politics,” he said, evidently feeling the need for some explanation. “To do with bureaucratic corruption. I didn’t pay the right people the bribes they wanted at the right time, so they thought they could shake me down this way. It’s all politics in the end, everything is politics.”
“I know,” she said, sliding out the gun she had deliberately not shown Bhasker. “So is this.”
She shot him twice in the head, and then once more in the groin. That was for not hugging his daughter.
~
The ACP banged his knee against a chair in the darkness and cursed in English. She had deliberately set the chair in the way. He fumbled for the light and switched it on, putting on the desk-lamp instead of the overhead tubelight by mistake, then stood there, swaying drunkenly.
She had heard about his drinking problem: He liked to drink Scotch in five star hotels. In exchange, he turned a blind eye to certain irregularities–like prostituition. Once in a while, he made use of those same irregularities himself; she had heard it all from an old friend who was now a prostitute.
When he saw her and the gun, he jerked back, startled. The chair caught him in the backs of his knees and he sat down heavily, grunting.
“Bitch,” he said. “Took all my money.”
She shook her head. “He paid me the money, as a reward for bringing the girl back.”
He snorted, letting her know how much he believed of that.
“Anyway,” he said. “You did good job with Bhasker. He looked like someone had tried to cut his throat three times to find the vein.”
“Artery,” she corrected automatically, then was silent, trying to picture Bhasker’s last seconds in that toilet with the rotting corpse, trying to slice through his own neck, having to do it again, and then yet again, hands growing slick and slippery with his own blood, collapsing to the floor as the corrupt cops came in with their guns ready to shoot anything that moved.
He was wagging a finger at her admonishingly. “But you were not supposed to kill Singh. That was not part of your brief. Now there is going to be big trouble for you.”
She raised the gun. It gleamed faintly in the dull yellow light of the desk lamp.
He started to laugh. “You will shoot me? You bitch, the day you shoot an Assistant Commissioner of Police, your life will be worth two-kaudi. You understand? Two pennies!”
She shot him in the teeth. His mouth shattered and turned red, half his face disappearing. He slumped in the chair, his shattered head falling onto the desk. Perfect.
She wiped the gun clean of her prints, put it in his right hand, fired it once into the wall as if his first shot had gone drunkenly awry–now he had the powder burns on his hand–and then dropped the bagful of cash beside him. There was no need for a suicide note: The industrialist’s visiting card was inside the bag. The afternoon tabloids had already speculated on a possible ‘inside link’ in the police department to the kidnapping.
“You’re the do-kaudi ka bastard,” she said as she walked away. “But this time you earned your two pennies.”
~
She drove all that night, the next day, and the next night, stopping only to relieve herself by the roadside and to snatch occasional naps in the back seat. She knew no search would be made for the stolen car for at least a week, if ever, but to be on the safe side, she switched license plates at a trucker’s diner–a dhaaba–outside the Rajasthan border.
When she reached Pokharan, the tiny desert village where the Indian Government had tested their nuclear devices, she stopped and slept for two straight days in the car.
A month later, she was in Delhi, and heard from a local blackmarketeer that she was accused of the kidnapping as well as the murder. Luckily, the Delhi police had bigger fish to fry, what with protests over nuclear testing and the national and state elections. She wasn’t afraid of being recognized.
Sometimes, when she soaked in the whirlpool tub in the Delhi Regency’s Princess Suite, sipping cold beer, and listening to old sad Mukesh songs on the brand new CD player, drifting in that dream-state between sleep and sobriety, she thought, not of Bhasker, although that last sight of him bending to pick up the blade in the toilet was mixed up in the memory too, but of the industrialist’s daughter.
And then, for some reason, she remembered the goiter-neck boy she had passed on the chawl staircase. She wondered which of those two would grow up less twisted, better able to resist the seductive warped lusts of the body, those luring siren songs of the flesh.
She was betting on the goiter-neck. He had less to lose to begin with anyway.
(c) Ashok Banker 1990-2010. All rights reserved.
My Sister, The Moon – short story
MY SISTER, THE MOON
by Ashok Banker
She woke and found herself sprawled across a strange bed in a strange house beside a strange, naked man.
The man was asleep, snoring slightly, and she rose to her elbows and stared at him for a moment.
She had no recollection of ever having seen him before in her life.
As she was dressing, he stirred and turned over. His eyes opened as she was zipping up her churidhar. “Going so soon?” he asked sleepily. “At least stay till morning.”
She went over to the window and yanked open the curtains. “It is morning.”
He blinked at the blinding glare of the April sunshine, sitting up in bed. He swung his feet over the side and stood up, stark naked, gripping her forearm as she turned to leave. He smelt of sour alcohol, sweat and maleness.
“Let me go,” she said, scared now.
“Why? Do you have to rush home to your husband? Or maybe you have to go make breakfast for your children before they leave for school!”
His hoarse laughter followed her all the way down the stairs. She stopped running only when she was out of sight of the building. She never looked back even when she was in a taxi and speeding away.
* * *
Nitin came into the kitchen as she was making eggs for the children, an omlette for Neeta, half fries for Siddesh.
“Morning,” he said, kissing her on the back of the neck. She stiffened, keenly aware that she hadn’t had time to have a shower. She turned to him, her lips trembling with fear, words and tears combining in a terrible mixture that would spill out at any moment. “Nitin,” she began. “I don’t know how to explain–.”
“Explain what?” he asked, nosing around in the fruit basket for an apple. “By the way, how was the kitty party?”
She blinked, the omlette turning brown on the tava before her. “The kitty party?”
He rinsed the apple under the kitchen tap and bit into it. “Yeah. Your weekly night playing cards with your friends. How was it? Hope you didn’t bet our house and lose it!”
She stared at him blankly. “No,” she said shortly. “No, I didn’t.”
He chucked her under the chin. “Hey, I was only joking. What are you so serious about today?” He offered her the apple. She looked at it. She could smell the sweet fruity fragrance, it smelled so fresh and pure and natural.
Virginal, perfect. She turned her head away. “Haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”
He looked over her shoulder, sniffing. “Watch it.”
She looked down and saw that she had burnt Siddesh’s omlette.
* * *
She went out for lunch with Leela. They ate at the new Mexican place on Linking Road, the one with the waiters dressed in cowboy outfits. After all the small talk was over and Leela had tried her best to keep the conversation going, she struggled in silence to eat. But finally, the weight on her mind grew unbearable and she put the spoon down and looked at her friend.
“What is it?” Leela asked curiously. “What’s wrong, Shalini?”
She told her.
Leela put her spoon down too, the food forgotten. “Oh my God,” she said, repeating it half a dozen times. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
Afterwards, they parked the car at Carter Road and looked out at the sea. It was hot and she had to keep pressing the accelerator from time to time for the A/C to work properly. But at least they had privacy.
“So you’re telling me that you woke up this morning in bed with a strange man? And you had slept the night with him? And this wasn’t the first time? My God, Shalu, how could you do such a thing? Who is this guy anyway?”
“No, you don’t understand,” she explained, staring straight out at the sunlight dancing off the surface of the glass-topped ocean. “It’s not the same man. Each time it’s a different one.”
She felt Leela staring at her in horror.
“How many were there altogether, Shalu?” Leela asked this in a low, almost reverential tone.
“I don’t know. I don’t really remember. Eight or nine, I think. Maybe more. I never remember anything between the time I leave the house and the time I wake up in bed with these men. Nothing in between.”
“It must be some kind of fugue,” Leela said.
“What?”
“Fugue. It’s a kind of memory loss where the person doesn’t even realize she or he’s lost a memory. Like a lapse. Or a jump in time. You should see a doctor, Shalu.”
“No,” she said vehemently, surprised at the loudness of her own voice. “No, Leela,” she continued in a quieter voice. “I can’t tell anyone else until I know what’s happening to me.”
“But that’s the whole point. You need help, professional help.”
“No, you don’t understand.” She looked at Leela and saw the strange mixture of concern and awe in her friend’s eyes. “I don’t think I’m sick, mentally or otherwise. I think I’m…”
“Yes?”
She looked down, embarrassed to say the word aloud in the bright gaudy light of day. “I think I’m possessed.”
* * *
The room was dark and damp. The aroma of incense was so strong, it insinuated itself into Shalini’s sinus, and made her feel she was about to sneeze. The smoke from the incense burner and agarbattis cast wraiths of shadow against the dim indirect lighting. Like ghosts mating in thin air.
“She wants you to sit,” Leela explained in a low voice. She had warned Shalini before coming to speak as softly as possible inside the house. Shalini sat on the low wooden stool and looked up into the shadowy face of Bhakti Maa. She could barely make out a wizened but once-beautiful visage half concealed by thick, lustrous white hair. A heavy bead necklace, large gleaming earrings.
Strange marks on her face, neck, and bared shoulders. And a sense of immense calm and strength. Bhakti Maa bent slightly and took Shalini’s hands in her own. Shalini felt the lined, leathery surface of the old woman’s hands rasping against her smooth palms and goosebumps broke out on her forearms and legs.
Bhakti Maa’s hands were ice cold and strong like a man’s.
“Should I tell her my problem?” she asked, after a long moment had passed and no word had been uttered by either of them. Leela whispered to her that Bhakti Maa didn’t need to be told. She was now absorbing all Shalini’s thoughts, emotions, memories through her hands. Shalini wanted to ask another question, but just then Bhakti Maa intoned an unintelligible chant in what sounded like Sanskrit. Leela said, “She says you have a sister. This sister walks beside you unseen through your life. She is always with you.”
“I’m an only child,” Shalini replied. “I have no sister.”
Bhakti Maa spoke again, Leela translated. “This is your spirit sister. Your shadow self. Just as the Mother Earth is always accompanied by her sister the Moon, so also you are always with your shadow.”
“Ask her about the fugues, the memory lapses. Why do they happen? How do I make them stop?”
Leela spoke again. With a little frisson of shock, Shalini realized that they were not speaking Sanskrit, just plain Hindi. It was Bhakti Maa’s accent that made it seem so alien and unintelligible.
“They happen when your sister self takes over your body. You are two women sharing one body. Sometimes, your sister wishes to do things you would not approve of, so she puts you to sleep, so to speak, and does as she desires.”
Shalini’s palms were screaming with sensation. It felt like she had plunged her hands in a bucket of ice water. Or blazing coals. She couldn’t tell which.
“How do I make it stop? Can she exorcize me?”
“She says you are not possessed. This is not some rogue demon who has taken your body by force. Your sister has always been with you, since birth. You are inseparable.”
“But it has to stop!” Shalini cried out, on the verge of tears now. “I have a husband, children. I can’t go on sleeping with strange men! How do I make it stop?”
Bhakti Maa was silent for a long time. Then she released Shalini’s hands and laid her palms on Shalini’s chest. The sensation was electrifying. It was like being struck by two electric pads, the kind used by Emergency Medical units to shock heart patients back to life.
When she awoke, she was walking down the stairs of the old building, guided by Leela.
“What happened?” she asked as they emerged from the ancient brownstone building into the slanting light of evening. Traffic flowed endlessly down Mohammedali Road, an endless chrome river.
“You went to sleep,” Leela said quietly as they got into the car. “Your sister took over.”
Shalini waited until Leela had manoeuvred the Maruti 800 out of the narrow, pedestrian-packed lane and onto the main road. “What did she say? This so-called sister of mine?”
Leela glanced at her sharply. “You must not mock it. These are great, powerful forces. Some women would consider you blessed for having such a spirit shadow always by your side. It is akin to having the Devi with you.”
“They can have it for all I care. It’s not a blessing to me, it’s a curse.”
Shalini heard the bitterness in her own voice, the frustration, the guilt and shame.
“Shalini, you must understand. This is you, as much a part of yourself as your mind, your heart, your soul. Nothing can change it. Or make it go away.”
“It’s bullshit, Leela!” Her voice was loud enough to carry above the sound of blaring horns at a traffic signal. “You were right earlier. I’m sick. I need to see a doctor, a psychiatrist.”
“Shalini, don’t you see? That’s why you yourself said you were possessed, not sick. You sensed it. When you were unconscious, your sister spoke to us. She told us about how she had often put you to sleep during your childhood. Like the time when you found yourself on the top of the tamarind tree in your grandmother’s garden with no recollection of how you got up there? Or the time when you found yourself naked in the forest and there were signs that a wolf had been nearby without harming you? Or the time–.”
“Shut up!” she screamed. A scooter rider beside the car looked at them, astonished. She noticed, inanely, that the man wasn’t wearing his helmet. “Shut up! That’s all lies. Nothing like that ever happened. She just made that all up, the old witch!”
“No, Shalini,” Leela said gently. “You can ask your grandmother to confirm it. I’m sure she’ll corroborate the stories.”
Shalini put her hands over her ears and refused to listen further.
When she got home, she called up her family doctor and asked him for a reference to a good psychiatrist.
* * *
The psychiatrist smiled at her across his polished wooden desk. “Well, Mrs Sharma. The good news is that you’re a normal, healthy woman. This is a natural phase of maturation that takes place in every woman’s life. With the proper adjustments, there is no reason why you cannot enjoy the same quality of life that you have been experiencing thus far.”
“What are you saying?” she asked, puzzled.
He nodded sagely, as if speaking to a small child who had asked where babies came from. “Menopause is not an end. It is the beginning of a glorious new phase of womanhood.”
“Menopause?” Shalini repeated. “But I’m only–.”
“Yes, yes,” he agreed. “It is unusual. But there’s no mistaking the signs. Of course, you already have two beautiful children, so you should not feel any lack.”
“How do you know they’re beautiful?” she asked, reaching in her handbag for her wallet. “You’ve never even met my children.”
He smiled broadly. “From looking at you, Mrs Sharma. Like breeds like.”
His smile seemed like a leer. She all but threw his fee at him and walked out quickly through the reception of the clinic, her heels clacking embarassingly loudly.
* * *
Nitin was so understanding. He put his arms around her and grinned widely.
“Okay. It’s about time you caught up. And I thought I was the only one growing old.”
“I’m not old, Nitin,” she said irritably. “I’m just past child-bearing age, that’s all.”
“Yeah? Well, so am I!” He lowered his face to the nape of her neck and began nuzzling her seductively. “But not too old to feel the urge to procreate!”
“That’s not procreating,” she said, enjoying his attention. “That’s just plain masthi!”
Later, as they lay entwined in bed, the house silent and still in the deep arms of the night, she experienced a great urge to wake him and tell him about the other expert opinion she had sought.
The non-medical, non-scientific one: Bhakti Maa’s explanation.
But that would mean telling him about the fugues, and what happened during them. And she was still not ready to confess that much. Perhaps she would never be.
She woke again later that night and thought she had heard someone call her name. She rose from the bed and went to the balcony. The curtains were billowing inwards, pushed by a gentle sea breeze. She could smell jasmine and night queen on the soft air. Her nightgown felt smooth and sensuous against her bare thighs. She went out onto the balcony and looked down. In the garden just below their first floor flat, she thought she saw a shadow move in the darkness. Then a cloud passed and she saw it was just the shadow of the moon.
She looked up and was awed. The vastness, the silvery brightness, the dazzling glow. Its full, pregnant form hovered above her, washing her in a waterfall of light. Celestial glory glowed on her skin, awakening every pore.
She turned and looked at the bed. And saw herself, lying asleep beside Nitin.
In her husband’s bed, in his arms.
It was her, lying there asleep. And yet she was here too. In the moonlight.
She went out of the house and down the stairs silently. She ran down the deserted street, her nightgown flapping behind her. She went in search of her naked desires. In search of her forbidden fruit. She went with no care of what lay behind her or ahead. Of her children asleep in their beds. Or her husband.
She went where the moonlight led her, down strange paths and even stranger turns.
Back in her house, in her bed, the woman who was also Shalini slept on.
Blissful, unaware, at peace. As the night grew older, the lines on her face faded and her features settled into a gentle, placid restfulness. The moonlight crept across the room until it bathed her in its wash. She stirred as it caressed her, sighing softly, then turned over and slept without waking until morning.
(c) Ashok Banker 1990-2010. All rights reserved.
Another Infinite Jest: The Late David Foster Wallace on writing and television viewing
This is a terrific (and quite longish) essay by the late David Foster Wallace, best known for his epic novel Infinite Jest. The title is E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction and it’s a long, rambling but always fascinating and informative look at writers as voyeurs – of life, other people, themselves, popular culture such as television – and as the subjects of other people’s vicarious attention. Wallace himself in real life was said (in several interviews) to be quite unlike the bandanna-wearing rough-and-ready Jon Boviish persona seen in his author photographs, and was in fact extremely bookish, soft-spoken and even diffident at times. I can’t comment on that obviously but I was a long-time reader of his fiction even before he produced the massive 1079-page brick of a book that would prove to be his magnum opus and enjoyed reading his fiction and essays.
In reading him I found the same pleasure I found in reading other 80s and 90s ‘Brat Pack’ novelists such as Martin Amis (Money being the apogee of that particular cycle of his work), Jay McInerny (Story of My Life, Bright Lights Big City), Tama Janowitz (Slaves of New York), and Bret Easton Ellis (The Informers, Glamorama). A micro-realist look at the trashy lives of white upwardly mobile urban decadents, replete with blinding alcohol-and-drug binges, disco-hopping, mindless sexual athletics, and all the other detritus that made the boom years of the late 80s and early 90s such fun to read about, if not quite important enough to be the stuff of great literature. Except that I always felt Wallace was far worthier, talent-wise, than the others named above, and still do. This essay shows you why. Far from the vapid vacuity of some his Brat Pack contemporaries, Wallace displayed the heart of a classic moral novelist transplanted within the bionic body of a Brat Packer RoboWriter. A kind of Don DeLillo of the Wall Street set.
This is a pdf file online so it may take a few minutes to load in your browser. Trust me, it’s worth the wait. (You may also try right-clicking and downloading it to your comp.) Some of the references may not work for you, but as an inveterate watcher of U.S. television shows – I’m actually watching several of the shows mentioned again now on DVD – I could relate to it quite well. And even if you don’t know a single show mentioned, the insights into writing and pop culture are still worth gleaning. Enjoy! Here’s a brief excerpt:
Click here to read the essay, or right-click to download it to your comp.
In this cup, the ocean – short story
Another blast from the past, one of my older short stories – not the oldest, those date back to the early 1970s! Also one of my all-time faves. –Ashok
In this cup, the ocean
by Ashok Banker
She found it in on the topmost shelf of his book cupboard, behind a collection of Satyajit Ray’s Feluda novels. It was wrapped inside a brown paper envelope, the pages inside neither punched nor filed as he usually did with all his work.
On the title page it said simply, Screenplay for feature film, and below the address line he had written in his small patient hand: Show to Girish.
The sight of his handwriting made her blink and she swiped at her eyes unconsciously, forgetting the book-dust on her hands. Cobwebs caught in her hair and her cheeks turned grimy.
As she washed her hands at the basin, it occurred to her: This is his dust. Some part of Alok is in this dust too. She had read somewhere that matter does not get destroyed, it is recycled and it recirculates.
The writer had gone on to give an example. If we were to pour a cup of water into the ocean, then return after several years, the molecules of water we had poured would have mingled with the molecules of ocean water, would have exchanged what the writer called molecular memory. So in fact, there would be more molecules of our original cup of water than before.
It was a puzzling concept and she had put the book aside, uncomprehending. Alok had looked at her in irritation and said, “At least try to exercise your mind, no?”
But she had gone out of the room and started watching an Antakshari programme on television instead. Now, she pulled her hands out of the stream of water from the tap and looked at them closely, searching for scientific evidence of Alok.
All she saw were the hands of an aging woman. The hands of a widow.
She tried to read the screenplay later that night, when everything was quiet. She no longer watched television–had not switched on the set in seven months, since….since Alok.
But when she turned the title page, she was confronted with a blank page with only one sentence on it: To my wife, Revathi, for everything.
The line was typewritten on the old portable Remington he always used, the one with the broken r. So all the r’s were written in by hand. Just two in this sentence, evathi and eve ything.
But just those two little alphabets, written in his careful rounded hand, so small, so perfect, broke her heart.
The tears came and for the first time in months, she made no attempt to stop them, just let them flow. They flowed. Enough to fill a cup to pour into the ocean, she thought irrationally.
A few days later, she met Sunanda on Market Road, near the station. They proferred everyday pleasantries, exchanged information on people, the usual things.
Sunanda looked unlike her usual self, so Revathi asked: “Everything okay at home?”
She sighed, a long melodramatic sigh, adjusted her pallo, and said, “You know him.”
“Is he drinking again?”
“No, not that. The film.”
Revathi frowned. “Which one?”
Sunanda touched her arm gently. “You don’t know about this one. It’s the first one he’s doing without….”
She left the sentence unfinished.
Revathi finished it for her: “Without Alok.”
Sunanda nodded.
“Is he having some problem with it? Finance?”
“No. In fact, you won’t believe it, but this time they came to him, they called him, NFDC. They asked why he hadn’t approached them with a film this year.”
“So then what’s the problem?”
“He doesn’t have a good script.”
Revathi looked at her. Sunanda’s eyes were lined with kajal, she used too much of it, but it set off her light green eyes nicely. “He’s looking for a script?”
Sunanda sighed again. “He hired some writer, a novelist, to write a script. Worked on it for three months. But it turned out useless. He’s very frustrated now. He has the go-ahead, the budget sanction, the actors’ dates, everything. He’s afraid NFDC will change its mind, cancel the project. And,” she swallowed, adjusting her pallo again. “We need this film, Revathi. He hasn’t had any income for nearly one year. Rohit is going to start college next month, and…You know how it is.”
Revathi said: “I have a script.”
Sunanda looked at her. “You’ve been writing?”
“No, no, no,” she said impatiently. “It’s one of his. Alok’s. He must have written it before…Before he went to hospital for that last operation. He never told me about it. I found it yesterday.”
Sunanda’s eyes lit up. “Revathi, that’s wonderful. Wait till I tell Girish. He’ll be thrilled!”
Revathi was about to say something, then realized she didn’t need to say anything.
Girish called her the day after he read it.
“Didi,” he said. He had always called her didi, ever since he and Alok and she had met in college together. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Is it what you were looking for?”
“Didi, it’s wonderful. His best yet.”
He talked to her for close to half an hour, telling her about how much he missed Alok, how these brash young scriptwriters–”telewriters” he called them derisively–weren’t a patch on the old guard.
He droned on about the excessive influence of Hollywood, how Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had ruined cinema, brought it down to the level of children’s entertainment, how Subhash Ghai in a recent interview had said that he made movies for 13-year-olds. They were familiar arguments, she had heard them all, argued hotly over drinks on the verandah of their flat or in the little garden behind Girish’s row house.
She could almost hear Alok’s gruff gravel pitching itself against Girish’s sharp, grating tenor. She felt something stir in her breast, a little sparrow of joy. It was fate, she thought. That she had decided to clean that book cupboard that day, and that Girish had been unable to find another scriptwriter all these months.
She swiped at her face, remembering the cobwebs, wishing they were still there, that she hadn’t washed them off.
The film commenced shooting in July. Ironically, the script was set in the monsoons. So the timing was perfect. It rained on the first day of shooting, and the scene called for rain. Girish told the unit to stay where they were, told the rain machines to shut down and move away, and shot the scene in natural rain.
Revathi was tempted to step out into the shower, to let it fall on her face, her arms, drench her from head to toe, the way she and Alok had always done on the first day of the rains. But there were too many people around, and she was too old for such behaviour. Widows must behave with dignity, her mother’s voice rang in her ears.
That night, she poured herself an inch of whisky from a half bottle that still remained of Alok’s stock. Two fingers actually. Just the way she had poured it for 27 years. She raised it in the air, to his photograph on the wall, garlanded and ash-smeared. “Salut!” she said. And drank it all down in one huge gulp. He had hated saying Cheers, had always preferred the more Russian toast.
She coughed violently, and thumped her own chest. “Revathi,” she scolded. “How many times have I told you? Sip it, savour it! But you never learn.”
When the film was completed, she was invited to several previews and screenings. For some reason, she didn’t go. She couldn’t explain it either to herself or to Girish, Sunanda, or even Ravi, the Chairman of NFDC, who called her personally to invite her for the official preview. She made excuses each time, citing her health, arthritis, anything. But deep within her, she knew it was too much.
It was the same thing that had prevented her from reading the script. Like those two r’s on the dedication page. There would be a hundred tiny details that she was certain would be there in the film, transmuted from the script to the screen with loving care by Girish. And each of those details, little moments, silences, bits of dialogue, characterizations, would speak of Alok, yell his name, and she would break down there in the preview theatre, in front of everyone, and go to pieces.
So she avoided the screenings.
The film released. She was in the library, searching for a good book to borrow. The choice was between a Loveswept romance and a new literary award-winning novel by an Indian author. Alok would have insisted she take the literary novel of course.
Finally she took the Loveswept. She needed to relax. Alok would have disapproved loudly.
When she reached home, Girish and Sunanda were waiting for her. With a large box of mithai in Sunanda’s hands. The moment she got out of the auto-rikshaw, they came running up and Sunanda put a huge ladoo in her mouth.
“Arre?” she said, laughing. “Kya hua? Rohit passed his C.A. entrance or what?”
Girish put an envelope in her hands. It was very thin. She looked at it. “What is this?” But she already knew what it was: a cheque. The final payment for the script.
“It’s a hit,” he said. And his eyes filled with tears. “It’s a very big hit, didi. My first hit. After 9 films!” And then he bent to touch her feet, catching her by surprise.
“No, don’t,” she said. And began to cry too. They all stood there in the lobby of her cooperative housing society and cried as the bhajiwallahs and building residents came and went, staring at them curiously.
She received many more cheques. Girish had ensured himself and Alok a portion of the profits of the film. Now that the film was a hit, the royalties came in.
Suddenly, she had more money than she had ever seen before in such a short span. Not rich, far from that. But comfortable.
But what would she do with all this money? What use could she possibly have for so much excess cash? “Don’t be silly,” her mother said, when she talked of giving it away to charity. “Charity begins at home. Go on a holiday. You need a vacation from yourself.”
For once, she realized, her mother was right. She needed a vacation from herself, from Revathi.
It was a year and a half since Alok’s death. It was time. She went to Kodaikanal. For no other reason than the fact that it was one place she and Alok had never gone together. She needed to make a fresh start, to avoid bumping into memories at every corner.
It rained a lot while she was there, and she could hardly move out of the little hotel.
But the view was lovely and she had carried a lot of books. She kept a diary during the trip and enjoyed it so much, it made her remember how she had wanted to write short stories for magazines, once upon a time, a long long time ago.
In Mysore, she began a short story. It wasn’t very good, in her opinion. But it gave her a sense of satisfaction, of pleasure.
In Kerala she rode an elephant, something she hadn’t done since she was a little girl. A group of children ran alongside the elephant, shouting to her, teasing the mahout, singing songs that seemed to make perfect sense even though she knew not a word of Malayalam.
She laughed and enjoyed the warmth of the sunlight on her back and arms. She realized she no longer regretted not having had children. She had come to terms with it at last. She wrote long letters to her mother, surprising herself with her effusiveness and confidence. She realized that her father had always been afraid of her mother, that was why he had kept away from her, spending more time with her brothers instead.
She realized also that for all her crustiness her mother was brittle on the outside, soft on the inside, like a sweet kachori. She wondered why she had never seen all these things before. She took up the short story again, and suddenly she saw its weaknesses–and how to correct them. She resolved to type it out when she went back to Bombay, and to send it out to a woman’s magazine.
When she returned home, the flat seemed strange. It had changed somehow. She walked through the rooms several times, looking around quizically, trying to understand. Had someone shifted the furniture around? Had the architecture itself changed–impossible! Then she understood. The house hadn’t changed at all. It was she who had changed.
She sent the short story. It came back a month later with a warm letter from the magazine’s editor. They couldn’t publish this one, but if she had other stories, they would be happy to see them. She wrote very well, they said.
In fact, she had written two more.
She sent them off the very same day. And got an acceptance for one a few weeks later. When the issue with her story in it was published, she stood there at the magazine stall, staring at her name printed in small bold italics and felt a shiver of excitement. She was a writer!
She made changes around the flat. She invited her mother over and fussed over her like a daughter-in-law over a mother-in-law.
Her mother was grouchy but pleased. “In your old age, you’re getting new josh,” she said wryly. “What are you putting in your tea these days?”
They went out for lunch together to a restaurant. Something she had never done with her mother in her entire life, not just the two of them alone.
She read out her short stories to her mother–who didn’t approve of the modern relationships she described of course, but admitted gruffly: “Theek hai, for the modern zamaana, it’s not bad.”
One day in late August, three years after Alok’s death, she filled a cup with water from the washbasin and took it down to the sea. It was difficult walking all the way with the cup in her hands, trying not to spill any, but she managed. She kept a hand over the top to prevent it from spilling.
When she reached the sea, the tide was out. She walked far out on the cold wet sand until she reached the foamy lip. She stood for a moment, looking out at the storm-swept sea, the monsoon-fogged sky.
Then she walked out into the waves, just a little way, enough to wet the bottom of her saree but it didn’t matter. She felt like she was putting Ganpathi out to sea, although it was years since she had kept a Ganpathi at home. Alok had never approved. Perhaps this year she would keep one. Yes. She would.
She stopped when the water was knee-deep. She raised the cup to the sky for a moment, unsure of what to do.
Then she upended it, letting the water flow out. It glimmered against the luminescent monsoon light, like mercury. Quicksilver. Shining. Diamond-bright.
“Goodbye, Alok,” she said. But the words never came out. They danced in her mind, like fireflies, then darted away.
It rained on the way home. She enjoyed the water on her face, her arms, her breasts. It was cool, refreshing, invigorating.
She went home and bathed and changed.
When she had finished dinner, she took out the brown paper envelope. The same one in which she had found it originally.
She took out the script, now neatly typed out and filed. And she began to read it. This time, she didn’t cry when she turned to the dedication page. She went past it and read on all the way to the end.
(c) Ashok Banker 1989-2010. All rights reserved.
Six-gun Vixen and the Dead Coon Trashgang – short story
Another blast from the past – again, a comment by a reader prompted me to pull out this old short story from my ‘unpublished’ pile and post it here. It’s a world I’d love to return to again for more stories or even a full novel, a post-apocalyptic Wild West where ‘Indians’ really are Indians (as against Native Americans) and ‘six-gun’ really means six guns! - Ashok
Six-gun Vixen and the Dead Coon Trashgang
by Ashok Banker
Dead Gulch lived up to its name. A two-bit hick town that was little more than a dirt track flanked by a couple dozen woodshacks. My beast growled low and mean as I started through and then reared up in yet another fool attempt to unseat me. I had to dig those rusty spurs in long and hard, twisting the boot heel like I was squishing a scorpion. My Halfie let out that familiar nerve-gnashing howl and settled down real quick.
I knew the twin wounds in his flanks must be pretty ugly by now, but felt no remorse. From time to time I had to remind him who was boss or he’d eat you alive. Still, I’d rather ride a Halfie than a regular horse anyday. When the going got tough, at least you could count on the Halfie to do his own fighting, while the plain ole fillies and stallions just whinned and neighed and flashed their big white eyes. Speaking of which, it had been awhile since my Halfie had eaten anything, he was probably hungry enough to eat a horse by now! Probably the reason for his friskyness. I’d have to get some grub into him soon or he’d be munching on the first available animal in sight – or human.
The first couple of shacks claimed to be a Store and an Undertaker. A pair of old fogeys were sitting on the stoop of the Store, jawing baccy. One of them spat a mouthload of blood-red juice in my direction as I rode by. It hit the dirt and rolled into a neat little spitball. I felt my Halfie clench the bit between his jaws and jerk his head briefly; he was that hungry, poor sumbitch.
The Undertaker was a short thin type so pale he could have passed for one of his own clients. His black suit was frayed and threadbare at the seams. Even death didn’t profit none in Dead Gulch.
The third place was a saloon and I turned in there. My throat was parched drier than an old whore’s cunny and I’d forgotten what real whisky tasted like. I’d sipped a little snakejuice with some injuns back by the mesa but even that was a while back.
There were a bunch of horses tied up outside the saloon and a sullen-looking kid sitting by them, not caring that his left shoe was in my way and liable to be stomped on. His eyes widened at the sight of my Halfie and he stood up, swearing in Mexican.
“Watch it, pedro,” I said, dismounting. “He’s a live un.”
“My name is Juan,” he said with that puffed-up pride some kids develop when they’re forced to fend for theirselves. “And I have seen many Halfbreeds before.”
I handed him the reins, making sure to keep my hands well away from the beast’s chomping jaws.
“Yeah, well, you ain’t seen this one before. He’s a cross between a Texican red wolf alpha and an Arabian mare. Ate his own afterbirth, then started on his ma. By the time they dragged him off, she was down to the bone.”
Juan’s eyes goggled and he stepped back a couple of steps from my Halfie. I figured he’d treat the beast with a bit more respect now. If he didn’t, well, he’d end up as dinner and solve my feeding problem.
The saloon was a dusty smoke-filled place that was busier than I’d expected. The sleepy ghost-town feel of the main street belied the jumping-jack bustle in here. There was a poker game going back by the bar, and a dozen or so other tables were occupied by maybe twenty or more menfolk, every last one with a shot glass or beer-mug in hand. A couple of dull-eyed floozies lounged on barstools, their waist-high slits and flabby thighs advertising vacancies. A stairway led up to areas unknown. A piano was tinkling off to one side, played by a fey fellow in a hat half as tall as himself. Right up front was the bar. A long gleaming wood-and-glass showcase of liquor that made my mouth water with whisky-need. Damn, but those bottles looked good.
The minute I walked in, conversation died. The piano tinkled on for a couple seconds before the pansy thought to turn his head and cottoned on to the new entrant. The poker gang froze, their hands held in front of their faces like ladies at church fanning themselves.
The bartender, a big-bellied fellow with an ugly lightning-shaped scar on his bald scalp, reached below the counter and brought out a double-barrelled shotgun. He held it loosely, letting the barrel swing casually in my direction as I approached. The whores sidled away, their mouths scrunching up in disgust.
“We don’t let colored in here,” said the bartender. His name was Big Jim, I figured, because that’s what the sign on the front said, _Big Jim’s Saloon_.
“I ain’t colored,” I said. “I’m Indian. Not the kind from around here, the other kind. From India, you know. The country that Columbus first set out to find when he accidentally tripped over this floating pile o’ crap.”
Big Jim pumped the action of the shotgun and pointed it right at my head. “We don’t allow no other kind neither. That includes Chinamen and your breed, whatever you are. We don’t take kindly to foreigners here.”
“Especially no foreigner _wimmen_,” hissed one of the whores, looking me up and down like she’d like to strip me and flog me right here and now.
“Unless she’s a whore,” said an old coot across the saloon. “With a hankering for white cock and no charge for it either!”
That brought a big laugh from the house.
“Red,” said a fat man with a reedy high voice near me. “You’d fuck a nun’s nose on Easter Sunday and still go to church, you would!”
“Hell,” Red replied. “I’d fuck anything that moves as long as it’s female and doesn’t have more than six limbs, though if it’s got a purty face on it, I’d make ‘ception there too!”
That brought the house down. My eyes swept the room quickly. I gauged the mood of the place and figured that about half or more didn’t really give a hoot if I drank there, and all of those were curious to see if I put out. The rest were indifferent. They didn’t give a shit whether I got fucked or killed. I was just colored foreign cunt to them. Not human.
None of them looked like being any real trouble.
Except for the man over at the poker table. And Big Jim.
“Shut up, Red,” he said now, raising his gravelly voice to be heard about the drunken ruckus. “All of you shut up.” The laughter subsided somewhat. “I ain’t allowing no coloreds in here, be they hos or any other kind of wimmen. Now, you git, you brownskin. Git out of here. And if you’ve half a coon’s brain in that there skull, you’ll git back on your mule or whatever fool critter you rode in on and keep going till you’re out of town. We don’t need your kind here in Dead Gulch, you here me?”
My hands were at my hiop, where I always keep them. Ready for action. Although he was so big and slow, I could have taken him even if I had a whisky bottle in my right hand and the other hand up my ass.
“Whatsa matter, cunt, din you hear the man? Get your brown ass out of here now, or there’ll be hell to pay.”
This came from the poker table, from the man sitting facing me directly. He had a high pile of colored chips sitting before him and a shiny five starred badge pinned on his shirt, so I figured him for the town sheriff.
“Is that like an official warning, sheriff,” I asked innocently. “Or are you just saying it to air your bad breath?”
This time the silence was so acute you could hear the piano player sniggering in the corner, then cutting himself off abruptly with a sibillant self-admonishment: “Wilbur, _behave_ yourself!” That man had some strings loose in his under-damper.
The sheriff shoved back his chair and rose slowly to his feet. The four other men at the table rose too. Two of them backed away quickly, the better dressed ones, but the other two turned to face me, and they both had deputy’s badges on.
Big Jim’s face split into a wide grin. He lowered the shotgun slightly to aim at my chest now. I think he liked the view better; I’m what they call well-built in the chest department.
“Honey, you should of left while the going was good. Now, we’re going to see if your insides are as brown as that leather you call skin.”
He should have been shooting instead of shooting his mouth off. I took him with my first shot off the right. With my second right hand I took a deputy. My left hands took down the sheriff and the deputy. And my third pair of hands stayed on the rest of the patrons, but never needed to fire a shot.
It was over in about two seconds.
The only four shots fired were mine.
The silence continued so long, I could hear my hands rustling against the back of my shirt as they sidled back into their specially tailored pouches. I slid my Colts back into their holsters with a practised swivel, followed by my Remingtons next, but left the little pair of hands, the ones perched high on my back, pointing the Derringers at the rest of the crowd. You never knew who might be inclined to imitate the folly of his fellow men.
Nobody objected when I took the bottle on the bar, caught the cork between my teeth and pulled it out with a sucking pop. The whisky gurgled happily into my shot glass and then down my hatch. It burned real good on the way down. By the third shot, I began to feel almost human again. Figuratively speaking.
I turned and faced the rest of the room, leaning against the bar.
“Anybody else have a problem with Indians here?” I asked. “Or wimmen? Or any other kind?”
There was a loud rustling of clothes and clanking of glasses and bottles as everybody turned back to their drinking and cards without another word. The piano player was gaping at me as he scratched his high hat.
“Wilbur,” I said. “Play something.”
He saluted, almost knocking the hat off, and began to play some redneck shit. I didn’t care. All this whiteskin crap sounded the same anyway. I turned back to the bar and continued drinking. The mirror was good enough to give me fair warning if anybody tried to act funny behind my back. I guessed Big Jim had it installed for just that reason.
The whores were looking sideways at me as I drank. One of them sidled up to me real slow, acting coy-like. Same one made that bitchy coment about _wimmen_ when Big Jim had his big shotgun pointed at me.
“Goodness me,” she said. “You’re one of those Mixed Breeds, aren’t you? Six hands! And they all move like lightning, don’t they, Mona?”
Mona didn’t reply. She was busy rifling through Big Jim’s pockets behind the bar. When she finished, she started on the cash counter.
The bitchy whore reache dout cautiously and touched my back, around about the place where I stored my topmost pair of hands.
“Jesus, if I hadn’t seen it with my own bare eyes, I’d never of known they was there. How do you keep them tucked away so discreet-like?”
I turned and looked at her. “I have slits in my back. They go all the way into my flesh, to my ribcage. The hands fit right into them, so I can massage my own heart if I want to when I feel like it. You want to see it for yourself?”
She blanched. Then she swore and turned away. I saw her going over to the poker table and starting on the sheriff’s pockets. Nice friendly town.
The old fogey they called Red came over to the bar. He walked with a kind of limp that I knew wasn’t a limp.
“I hope you didn’t take no offense to my comment about fucking a thing with six limbs or more,” he said. “Seeing as how you got eight of them. Or eight that I can see!”
“No offense taken,” I said. “Especially from a man with an extra foot.”
His eyes grew wide. He drew closer, lowering his voice to a whisper. Nobody else heard us; they were all too busy trying hard to look busy.
“I was born with it,” he said. “My pa always said it was because my ma lay with one of your kind before she begat me. Beat her to death over it one day. Then threw my ass out of the house.”
I nodded. I had heard a hundred stories like it. But I spoke to him kindly: “Time’s coming, old man. When our kind won’t have to hide or pretend anymore. Not just half-breeds. But all manner of folk that happen to be different. Including Indians, both the kind over here and the ones in my country, Chinamen, and every other color in this world. Finally, beneath the paraphernalia, we’re all the same, aren’t we? Flesh and blood, bone and soul.”
He looked at me intently for a long time.
“You’re different, ain’t you?” he said at last.
I offered him a drink in lieu of a response. He hesitated, then shrugged and took it.
“You shot all the law in this town,” he said. “Not that it was very lawful-lik to tell you the truth. And ain’t nobody goin’ to mourn Big Jim either, except that he knew how to mix up a great evil-smelling batch of stuff to cure hangovers on Sunday mornings.”
He paused, scratching the swelling on his right leg, which was actually his third leg tied tight to the side beneath the cuff of the trousers to look like a club foot.
He went on.
“But the Dead Coon Trashgang will be out in force now. Sheriff Dolan had a kind of working arrangement with them, so they sort of stayed under control. But now that he’s gone, they’ll be free to do as they please. Which is no skin off your nose, but it means the few half-decent folks in this shitty town will be hard-pressed to stay alive and in one piece.”
I thought about that for a while. For about the time it took me to finish the bottle. He waited patiently while I drank, barely finishing his first. I figured him for one of those temperate folk.
When I had enough whisky in my belly to make me feel like life was worth living again, I said: “So you’d like me to take out these Dead Coons or whatever they call themselves? Is that what you’re saying? Rid the town of some trouble-making varmints?”
He nodded. “Seeing as how handy your are with a gun and all.” He frowned. “With six of them actually. What do you call yourself anyway?”
I opened a fresh bottle. “Six-gun Vixen.”
He smiled at that. “That’s rich, that’s mighty rich. Six-gun, hey? Well, you got six of them all right!” he guffawed, slapping his thigh with pleasure.
“And what’s in it for me if I do clear up this Trashgang for you folks?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. He was still shivering with laughter over that last one. He lapped his double thigh again and launched into another series of guffaws. “Six-gun Vixen! Mighty rich! Six-gun! Haw Haw Haw Haw!”
I drank some bourbon and waited. The saloon had gone back to normal-like, almost. A few men had dragged the dead lawmen out back, leaving large scarlet trails in the sawdust-strewn floor. Nobody seemed to miss ‘em much, I noticed.
When the old fogey had finished having his funnies, he resumed.
“Well,” he said, wiping the tears from his eyes and looking like he could be set off with a feather. “Seeing as how you’re so handy with a gun – with all six o’ them, matterfact!” He coughed and managed to control himself. “Mayhaps the town’s merchantfolk would be able to rustle up some kind of compensation for your cleaning up them varmints.”
“How much?” I asked, glancing around. This bunch didn’t look like they had two whole dollars between them, but then again, who was I to argue with people if they wanted to throw their money away? Besides, maybe these dead coons were bad enough for honest folks to want to pay to be rid of them.
He worked his jaw for a moment. “Seven silver ones. One for each o’em. Leastaways, there was seven last we heard. Could be more by now, they multiply like vermin.”
I sipped a little more bourbon. “Gold ones,” I said. “And one for each one I kill, seven or more.”
He sputtered. That wasn’t very funny, evidently.
“You’re out of your head! That’s half a year’s earnings for this town!”
“Way I see it, old-timer, is if you don’t flush out these dead coons or whatever, you won’t have any earnings. So you put it to your people and ask them which is better, paying up my fee or paying the piper. Either way, it’s the same to me. I ride on tomorrow, coons or no coons. And oh yeah, I’d need at least three of those gold ones up front. Way I see it I already did you people a favour by offing those no-good lawmen. Them was free, so I’ll adjust it against any coons I kill. But you tell those merchants that’s my final offer. Take it or leave it.”
He blustered and fumed a bit. Then he went away for a spell, leaving the saloon. I watched him shuffle out on that folded leg of his and didn’t think he’d be coming back. Before I was halfway through the second bottle, there he was by my side again. He seemed sulky now.
“Awright,” he said, grumbling. “But they’re only paying two up front. Rest on delivery. And they want the job done today. Before the coons learn about the dead lawmen and come calling. Means you got to sundown to bust the gang.”
I took the large gold sovereigns he gave me and examined them both, first with my teeth and then with my eyes. They had Lincoln on the front and good old Sam Eagle on the back, and they was both real. One thing about Dead Gulch: at least their gold was good.
“So what are these Dead Coons anyway? And where can I find them?”
“Down by the old mill house. By the river.” After a moment he added: “They’re nightbirds. Better get the job done before sundown, or you won’t get out o’ there alive, six-guns or no six-guns.”
The millhouse looked abandoned from the rise, and as I rode down toward it, not a soul moved nearby. The river was little more than a piss-trickle, and the area looked blasted and seared by more than just desert sun.
“Easy, boy,” I said, controlling my beast’s nervousness as he smelt the familiar stench of his most natural rival. He had eaten well. A calf I’d bought from one of the steadlers Red introduced me to. I’d taken first blood, biting the neck of the calf with one quick motion and shutting my eyes in something near ecstasy as I tasted hot, living blood and quivering flesh. It had taken all my self-control to keep from finishing the whole steer meself. But I’d left more than three-fourths for Halfie and he’d gorged himself fat and sated. I could feel him grumbling as he carried my weight beneath this blazing afternoon heat. He’d hoped to rest a good two days and nights. And he would, just as soon as I finished with this little business here.
As I reached the outskirts of the property, I got off and whispered to him to be silent. I moved real quiet, not letting even my spurs jangle. I should of tied him up but he might get attacked and wouldn’t be able to defend himself. So I left him loose, even though I was taking a chance that way. There was nothing to stop him from taking to the hoof and hightailing it. But I didn’t think he’d do it. Not with that steer’s worth o’ meat inside his belly.
Boards creaked underfoot as I walked up the back stoop. I sniffed and caught the odor of a hundred different things, all mixed up together like a bag of sweaty rattlesnakers. There was wolverine in there, and dead flesh, and milk, and–
Milk?
What in Ram Hill wree a bunch of vampires doing with milk?
I shrugged that one aside and stepped slowly over a warped board. The place was in pretty bad shape. If these deadcoons or whatever they called theirselves had a human familiar who cared for them by day, he wasn’t doing his job. There was all sorts of nasty stains and spills around. I stepped carefully to avoid getting my boots all gummy: nothing sticks like dried vampire blood, except maybe an elephant-zombie’s eye-mucus. Trust me, I know.
The door was ajar. Which was an invitation to disaster. No bunch of fangers leaves their door unlocked unless they _want_ you to hie on in. I flicked up my hairy ears as far as they’d go, which is about four inches over the top o’ my head, and listened real carefully. My wolf-sharp hearing was good enough to pick up an iguana crunching on a sand-beetle a mile away. I heard nothing else except the dry wind blowing sandy dust against the walls of the shack, a sandsnake scrabbling with a rat somewhere in the dirt behind me, my Halfie’s stomach groaning as it processed that bucketload of meat, a rusty hinge creaking in the wind. The house sounded empty, but it also sounded like it was meant to sound empty. Like it was waiting for me to step in and WHAM!
I went in anyway. I’d been WHAMMED! Before. At least this time there was gold for my pains.
The first room was a kitchen, since I’d come into the place ass-backwards. It looked like a slaughter-house. Either the gang had laid out a buffet right here or there had been one ugly bust-up in here. Severed limbs and other assorted organs, in-ternal as well as ex-, lay in stinking pools of decay. This was where most of the smells I had caught were coming from. I flicked my eyes across the place, figuring that maybe a dozen or more bodies had bought their tickets to the great abattoir in the sky right here. Mostly human, but some halfies mixed in too.
The second room was so much worse, I had to stop and take a moment. Not to refer to my pocket Gita, but because this was a bit rich, even for my omnivorous digestion. I’ve seen some bad scenes in my time and will probably see several more before I eventually become part of one meself, but this was… well, it was plain ugly. This wasn’t the remains of a fight. It was the debris after a massacre. Judging by the entrails and stuff lying splattered all around, humans had mixed it in pretty good with a bunch of Halfies of different breeds, and not all on a single occasion either. This was an ongoing campaign that had taken place over several encounters in as many days.
The only thing I couldn’t tell for sure was who had massacred who. As for the why, that’s one question I never ask, for fear I might actually get an honest answer. I don’t know about Humans, but we Halfies don’t gel with the concept of killing for killing’s sake, or for any other reason except feeding. Like the motto above a Halfie Slaughterhouse in the Kansas outback: ‘We Waste No Part of the Humanimal.’
Standing there in that large empty room, I felt like I could be in that Slaughterhouse again, except that these hunks of flesh and stuff were way past saleable. There were more maggots and flesh flies around than in most graveyards.
Barely a second after I’d stopped, I heard a whisper of sound from further inside the house. I moved in, my hands at the ready, two guns already out and cocked. The whisper came again, and I knew without a doubt now: There was somebody here. Somebody alive.
I came through a hallway with three doors leading off it. I went to the middle door and went through it. I was real careful and full-alert, ready for anything. I didn’t want to add to the body count in this slaughterhouse. So when I saw a figure move in the shadows by the far wall, I shot first and thought later.
The echoes died down like the wind in a gulley before a storm. My Halfie snickered outside, recognizing the sound of my Colts. A scorpion perched on the windowsill fell onto its back, dislodged by the reverberations of my double discharge.
I was across the room before the scorpion hit the floor, my Colts pointed straight ahead, the Derringers at the sides, and the Remingtons watching my back.
There was a bloody pile of bones and rags that might have once been a living thing, slumped against the wall. Two fist-sized splatters of blood low-down on the wall marked the results of my gunmanship.
I used my boot to kick the thing over onto its back, ready in case it was playin’ possum.
It was a kid. That was the first thing I saw and the thing that got me straightaway like a horse-kick to the temple. A kid.
I holstered the Colts and scrunched down. The kid was still stirring as I pulled off the rags wrapped around its face and arms. The stench that it gave off was worse than the ones in the other rooms; dead rotten flesh is ugly, but live rotting flesh is gut-cutting.
It made a mewling sort of sound and I knew then that it was catbreed, a werecat of some sort. Too mixed to be tell the species, but a cat for sure. No mistaking those whispers, furry ears and the feline eyes.
And it was female and fully grown, I realized with a shock. A mature adult, but so scrawny she looked no bigger than a kid.
By sniffing the hormonal soup of its sweat and groin secretions, I could also tell she was dying. Not just from my shots — those had been the last nails in a coffin long closed – but from hunger and thirst. She was starved.
Its eyes…her eyes…were opening and closing slowly, as if the life-light was flickering like a lantern on a windy prairie. I started to get up to go outside and get my water canteen, but then her dusty lids flickered open and I swear I was looking down into the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen, ‘fore or since. They were green as jade, like a carving of a little Chinese laughing buddha I’d once seen in Hunan city, but flecked with gold speckles. Green and gold, sparkling, and if they could sparkle so bright now, I don’t know how good they’d of looked in the right light. Like gemstones, I guess. Flawless gemstones.
She would have been a purty thing, if she’d lived and taken some decent nourishment. But from the looks of those wounds and the way her breath was starting to wheeze, her living days were done. She looked up at me, and for a moment I thought she was going to snarl or lash out one last time ‘fore dying, like catbreed mostly do. She could see I was wolfbreed and we’re natural sworn enemies, species-wise.
But she didn’t do none of that. Instead, she sort of stared at me as if memorizing my face. Somehow, I could tell by the way she looked at me that she wasn’t afraid of me none. Should have been: I had just shot her guts out and a chunk of her liver and I still had six guns ready to blow more holes in her wasted carcass. But there was a sense of connection. I swear I could almost feel her thinking that she was so glad I was female. That’s what I saw in those eyes.
“Cubs,” she said. Just that single word. And rolled her eyes downwards, as if pointing. I looked, but there was nothing there except floorboads. “Cubs,” she said again, and coughed a low, feeble cougar-like cough. And died.
Slimy brackish blood oozed out of her mouth like a large snail, spreading over her chest, which was barely covered by a holey poncho. And I saw the bumps on her chest and the tiny circles of wetness around about the place where her nipples were.
That’s when I remembered the milk-smell. The only one I couldn’t figure out in this place of death and decay. She was lactating. Which meant there were young uns nearby. Cubs, she had said.
I found the trapdoor right beneath my feet. Cleverly concealed beneath a layer of grime and sawdust. She had died guarding the way to her cubs. I don’t know how long she had been up here, but it was too long. She’d probably been checking on the cubs from time to time, and from their condition, I’d say she had been giving them milk until they were all but drinking her blood. Mayhap she had given them some of that too: catbreed were said to do it when unable to feed their cubs otherwise. But these were no vampires, deadcoons, they were plain ordinary catbreed cubs.
There were eight in the original litter. Two were dead a long time, three more had died recently. Painfully, from the rictus of pain their little cat mouths were screwed up into. The three surviving ones were the toughest of the lot, but even they had turned to biting one another and themselves out of sheer desperation. Still, they snarled as I leaped down the trapdoor onto the dirt-floor of the cellar. One of them got to his haunches and showed me his little cat fangs, protecting his little brother and sister. He was the first-born, I could tell. We first-borns tend to recognize one another.
He was a tough little tyke. It took him a while to accept the fact that his mother was dead; he kept licking at her whiskers and face as if trying to wake her up, or wash her. Catbreed are big on washing each other up. His smallest sibling, the other male, was a scrawny bunch o’ bones, and he seemed heartbroken at his mother’s stillness. He sniffed the ichor that had oozed out of her jaws and lay down, mewling. I didn’t think he’d make it. Their little sister was quiet and calm. She was weak from hunger and was conserving her strength. Her little belly, swollen with gases, heaved and fell, fighting the good fight to keep breathing and stay alive. She panted silently as I picked her up in one hand, then scratched me a deep short gash on the back of my hand.
I smiled at her. She had her mama’s eyes.
When I rode back into town, the late afternoon sun was just starting to slant across the deserted street. I had made just one stop, at the same farmer’s place where I’d bought the steer for lunch. He wasn’t around, but there was a cow on the place, and I got enough milk out of her to give the cubs the best goddamn meal they’d had for weeks. The little male puked his out after a few licks, and I could see a little blackish red in the puke: he was hurt inside and wouldn’t last the night. But the other two looked at me like I was their longlost aunt Matty come home for Christmas with a whole wagonload of goodies.
I knew there was something odd about the fact that there was nobody in sight on the main street – hell, the only street, and that shoulda warned me; but I figured that Dead Gulch was one of those towns that are big on siestas.
I went to the saloon, thinking there had to be someone there. And I was right.
The whole town was there, waiting.
And this time they were ready for me.
They had the old man Red trussed up real good against the bar, spread-eagled with ropes going around him and around the bar. He was bloodied up and his extra foot had been exposed and was flailing helplessly. Rope bites had bit through his skin and though I couldn’t see much blood or harm, his eyes were rolled up and he seemed to be in a bad way.
That was what got me. I wasn’t expecting it, and when I looked in over the swinging half-doors of the saloon and saw him trussed up that way, I just walked straight on in without a second thought.
Right into the ambush.
There were two of them beside the door, waiting. I don’t know what they hit me with, but it felt like a ton of iron. I staggered, my guns starting to come out, but the other one hit me on the side of the head and I just crashed out clean.
When I came to I was the one tied up on the bar, and Red was washing off the pig’s blood with a sponge and bucket. I knew it was pig’s blood now ‘cause I could smell it. If I’d just trusted my animal sense instead of my fool human instincts, I’d have known that straight off. He and the other boys looked mighty pleased about their little circus act.
“Ah,” he said, seeing I was stirring. “The boys here thought that they’d done bashed your brains to mush.” He chuckled. “I told them that Halfbreeds like you only have half a brain to start with. And since you’ve got foreign blood mixed up too, you prolly don’t know how to use even the half-brain you got!”
There were guffaws and grins all around at that. The saloon was back to normal again. Everyone drinking and carousing as before; even the piano player was tinkling, his high hat swaying as he tapped out the beat. The whole siesta-time charade had been just for my benefit. I didn’t feel to appreciative though. My head bled like a leaking coconut, and the ropes really were cutting into my flesh real cruel-like. The pain in my head kept rhythm with Up On Old Smokey.
Red got up and came over to me. Crouching, he half-squatted and leered in my face. “Took these back,” he said, showing me the gold coins he ha dtaken from my pocket while I was out cold. “Figured you wouldn’t be needing them no more.”
He pocketed them.
I tried to ignore the throbbing in my skull. “You sent me there to flush out the rest of the catbreed. You had lost too many men already trying to get rid of them, so you figured I stood a better chance, being a Halfie myself.”
He grinned, turning to look at his back-up players.
“Hey, boys, looks like she might have a little sense in her skull after all. Maybe a little rubbed off from the humans she spread her legs for, hey?!”
They roared raucously in response.
“But you’re a Halfie too,” I said. “Your leg–.”
He struck me so hard and sudden, I didn’t have time to even clench my stomach muscles. It felt like the front of my stomach met my spine. Spread out like I was, it took me moments before I could start breathing again.
“I’m no Halfbreed,” he said, his eyes flashing with an anger and vigor that belied his age. He pointed to his leg, now strapped up and tucked out of sight inside his trousers again. “This is a birth defect, you hear? A birth defect!”
I didn’t say anything. I was too busy trying to hold in my digested lunch.
He took out a long ugly knife. A Bowie. The serrated edge gleamed like it had been polished for hours. He hadn’t been using it to carve woodchips, for sure.
“You creatures are a curse on the land,” he said. “Sent by the Lord to remind us of our sins.”
I sighed. Another Bible thumper. I should have known when I first laid eyes on him; he had that fanatic gleam in his eyes. And a love of violence. The two made a combination deadlier than a poison-filled rattle and fangs.
“But now the time of the plague is done. The day of redemption draws nigh.”
He was loud enough to be heard across the room. Everybody kept on with their business, like they’d heard him make this speech a hundred times afore; but as he went on, they chipped in with “Hear ye, hear ye,” and “Amen,” at just the right moments, never stopped their card games and whisky swigging and whore-nuzzling. This was prolly what passed for Sunday school in Dead Gulch.
“We, the promised children, shall take the land back from the cursed ones. Death to the mutants and halfbreeds and all other filthy verminous abominations!”
“Amen!”
“We shall cleanse the land with their blood, and feed their carcasses to the jackals and vultures and hogs, and shall wipe their damned kind off the face of the earth.”
“Amen!”
“And then the Lord shall look down on us and say, ‘This is good,’ and he shall reward us with life eternal and paradise on Earth again. Eden shall be our land, and we the children of Adam will rise again to take our rightful place among the angels of the Lord.”
“Amen!”
I had a feeling he’d mixed up his Bible lesson somewhat, but it didn’t seem like a good time to correct him. I was busy trying to work on the ropes that bound me. His men had taken away all six of my guns, but they forgot that a Vixen’s greatest weapons are her fangs and claws. I kept my claws retracted mostly; the guns were quicker and cleaner most of the time. But I protracted them now and began to saw through my ropes discreetly. Fortunately, Red was shielding me from the eyes of the others, and he himself had his back to me as he played preacher-preacher. Some of the men were getting that glaze-eyed look I’d seen before, and that less from the whisky than from the preachin’. I figured that he was rousing them up to something. With me hogtied up here, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what that might be.
He droned on some more about the Apocalypase and the Day of the Slaughter and stuff like that, until I got tired of listening.
But I heard him loud and clear when he called for them tob bring in the cubs.
The men were slow-witted from the religious spell he’d put them under and he had to repeat himself.
Red hit one of them upside the face. “Bring them in,” he said again.
I stopped sawing as the room grew quiet. I had left the cubs in a haybarn at the farmer’s place, a mile or so out of town, so they could digest their milk and sleep on a full stomach for a bit. But of course, the farmer was one of them. They all were taken up by Red’s madness.
My blood ran cold when one of the towheads that had ambushed me came in with the cubs in his paws.
I had a rough time as a yearling. A really rough time. Nothing I’d care to talk of under suchlike circumstances, but let’s just say that I got mad if I saw anyone mishandling young uns. Spittin’, cursin’, slicin’, bitin’, fightin’ mad. Even killin’ mad at times.
When I saw what these human bastards were going to do to the cus, I felt the anger rise up in me like bile in a pig’s gullet.
Old Red had the Bowie to the little male’s belly when I slashed through the last of my ropes and broke free. He looked up as I leaped to my feet and I saw his eyes flash that same grin he’d first greeted me with. He hadn’t just been sayin’ it; he really was the sort who would fuck anything with legs, two or more or less, except that he was also the sort that would kill it once he was done having his way with it.
He grinned widely and raised his right hand so’s I could see clearly.
And then he impaled the cub on the point of his Bowie, digging it in with a manic, religious glee.
Half a dozen men had their guns out and were on their feet. This time, it wasn’t just the Sheriff and Big Jim and those slow-witted deputies: Red had been right about one thing, they had been the only things keeping the Deadcoons safe in town. Except that the real Deadcoons were right here in this saloon, walking on two legs, and the citizens Sheriff Dolan and his badge had been protecting were the catbreed clan out there in the millhouse – if you can call turning the occasional blind eye to a massacre or two _protection_.
I could have taken all of them with just my fangs and claws, but I’d have a dozen bullets in me before I was halfway across the room. And though we Wolfbreed do heal fast, we can be killed.
But Red had twisted that Bowie in that little half-starved tyke, and it was dying right there in the sawdust, and he had the other two lined up for slaughter as well, like some crazy sacrifices to his cause. And I would rather die than stand by and see three cubs get butchered. Bad enough, I had shot their mother dead. True, it was this human bastard that had tricked me into going out there but it was my bullets that orphaned them.
We stood there for a second or two in a mexican stand-off. Then Red called it. I could see from the look on his face that he wanted to put more than just his Bowie inside me, and maybe all the other men in the saloon were also hankering for a taste of the same apple pie. But I was free now and conscious, and there was only one way this stand-off could end.
“Shoot her,” he said quietly. Smart enough to know they couldn’t take me alive or in one big enough piece. And turned his attention to the next cub, the female. She mewled softly as the Bowie rose above her big as a guillotine to her scrawny little neck.
The sound of the saloon picture window exploding was deafening. You never heard glass crash that loud before. Because when my Halfie came throug, he didn’t just charge in, he roared. And you have to hear a well-fed healthy wolf-horse mixbreed roar to know what it’s like. Blood curdles instantly at the sound, and then turns to cheese.
He burst through the window at my whistle, which I’d given out the moment I burst free of the ropes. Landing straight on a large card table. The table legs collapsed under his weight, and the four men sitting there were pinned like flies under a swat. The sound of their thigh bones crunching was like gravel under hooves. My Halfie was in full fighting mode, his claws lashing and slashing in four directions at once, decapitating two man with a single swipe, turning the faces of another three to red mush in an instant.
Before he hit the floor, I was on my way. Leaping in an arc that took me from one end of the saloon to the other. As I went, lunging and leaping like an acrobat in a show – or a wolf in the middle of a horse herd – I cut open bellies and slit throats with vicous force. I had six hands to do it with and my Halfie had four and between the two of us, we were like fire and brimstone to that group of misguided drunken Bible thumpers.
Reaching the far end, I rolled over, and when I came up on my feet, I had all my six guns back in my fists. They’d slung them onto the piano, and as I took them, my claws slicked the piano player’s tall hat into shreds. He howled and fell to the floor, cowering and wetting his pants.
Then I snarled at Red, who was still holding the Bowie raised over the female cub, stunned into inaction by the suddenness of the violence we had wreaked on his world.
“You were right, Red,” I snarled. “The Day of Slaughter is at hand.”
And I filled him with bullets before he could even start to turn around. He went down in a blur of blood and gristle.
It didn’t take more than another minute or so to clean up the rest of the place.
By the time my Halfie and I were done, there were only two humans left alive in Dead Gulch: The pianoplayer. And Juan, the little horse-minder.
He was sitting on the porch outside when I emerged with the two cubs in two of my hands. He was sitting like it was just another sunny day and he was just minding the horses as always. But I saw from the way he flicked his brown eyes up at me and then down again that the killing inside had rattled him and he feared for his life too. I didn’t blame him; I had just wiped out the entire population of Dead Gulch.
“Don’t fret, son,” I told him as I calmed my Halfie down. “I don’t have nothin’ to do with hurtin’ young un, and I don’t parlay with those that do neither.”
I got on to my Halfie who groaned with satisfaction, still chewing on someone’s leg. I realized it was Red’s. It had a double joint and two feet. That beast will anything anytime.
I flicked the horse boy one of the gold coins I’d taken from Red. He’d had a little cache. Not a lot, but more than he’d let on at first when pretending to negotiate ‘on behalf of’ the townsfolk.
“Here you go, Pedro,” I said. “Take a horse and ride on somewhere else where the people ain’t prejudiced. World’s got enough killing and hatin’ in it without adding more.” I added for good measure: “Go east, young man. It’s where the real world’s at.”
He pocketed the coin and spat a mouthful of baccy on the dusty street. “My name is Juan,” he called out to my back as I rode off. “I’ll be seeing you again someday, Six-gun.”
I grinned as I rode out of town, the two cubs peeking out of the pockets of my saddlebag. Juan. Sounded like a good name to give a spirited catbreed first-born. Now all I had to do was think of one for the female. Juanita maybe. Yeah, why the hell not.
Any darn handle would be better than Six-gun Vixen.
In the Shadow of Her Wings – short story
A recent comment by a reader on the Readerswrite Page about this short story made me pull it out of the archives, dust it off and post it here again as a fresh entry. Not much dusting really – I haven’t changed a word or added a comma. For those of you who haven’t read it yet. I don’t write much short fiction, and even fewer genre-specific short fiction, so this one’s a rarity. — Ashok
In The Shadow of Her Wings
by Ashok Banker
Dravid expected Kali border security to be much tighter than it was. All he got was a body search that was routinely thorough, and a few old-fashioned tests and checks. It reminded him of a visit he had made as a young rightwing Hindu activist to an Indian nuclear weapon testing facility back in 1998, after the Pokhran atomic tests. His briefings had been correct in this respect: Kali did not seem to have much use for 21st century safe-care.
The Border guards finished with him in a few minutes then led him down into the basement of the Border Post and on through a concrete corridor that was at least a kilometre long in his estimation. Although there were far too many turns to be certain: It could be twice as long, or half. He was surprised at the absence of defenses. After all the build-up, it was an anti-climactic letdown. Could the disputed area truly be this easy to infilterate? A single platoon of Black Cat commandoes armed with nominal safe-care weaponry could take this border post and entrance in a few minutes, he estimated. The dozen-odd border guards he had seen above ground had borne no visible weapons. Ridiculously easy.
Then he remembered the first and longest of his briefings.
Shalinitai, the renegade Kaliite-turned-consultant to the Disputed Territories Task Force (DTTF) had commented on this very fact during her lecture on Kali’s political history: “Do not be fooled by Kali’s apparent lack of defenses. Like the Goddess after whom it is named, the disputed region that aspires to nation status under the name of Kali is armed with something far more dangerous than physical weaponry. She is armed with the power of the spirit. The power of faith.”
Dravid had resisted the urge to yawn. He had heard this kind of “empty-hand-spirit-power” mania too many times to even give it credence by mocking it. He had also seen any number of similarly deluded cults and spiritual blindfaithers walk like fools into the trajectory of safe-care weapons, only to have their very real physical bodies torn to shreds by unspiritual projectiles and explosives that needed no faith in invisible deities to perform their lethal function. Faith might move mountains; but lasers cut flesh. And without flesh to sustain it, there was nothing left to harbour faith.
Sensing his bored skepticism, the renegade had paused and sighed softly. Almost resigned to his indifference, she had added, “Kali exists only because the people support its existence and because India is still a democracy. That is a far more formidable defence than any safe-care arsenal.”
This he found more acceptable. It was a political argument, one of the classic cornerstones of every nationwide cult that was allowed to fester in the armpit of a republic under the guise of freedom of faith and right to political dissension. There had been an adversarial gleam in her dark eyes as if challenging him to challenge this statement. But Dravid was too much of a cynic to waste time on political arguments either. As far as he was concerned, they could dispense with the briefings and motivational lectures. He didn’t need the comfort of political conviction to help him do his job.
Assassination was murder no matter what the justification. The only motivation he needed was the paycheck. As if sensing this from his lack of risibility, Shalinitai had paused in her briefing. Deviating unexpectedly from her subject, she had poured herself a glass of plain water and said,
“You will find no resistance when you go to assassinate Durga Maa. It will be the easiest assassination you have ever committed.”
Dravid had waited for the punchline he knew was coming. Moral lectures always had a punchline.
“It’s living with the knowledge of your act that will make the rest of your life unbearable,” she said.
He hadn’t smiled. He hadn’t needed to. She knew the smile was there, behind his inscrutable face. He read the awareness in her eyes and sought the inevitable frustration she must feel after having made her strongest argument and failed. There was none. Only a faint glimmer of sympathy.
“I pity your task, assassin,” she had said. He hadn’t smiled at that either. He had been pitied before too. It was one of the most predictable responses, apart from self-righteous rage.
The corridor curved one final time and ended abruptly in the entrance to a very narrow stairwell. Dravid drew his large frame in to accomodate the inconveniently low ceilings and close walls. As they climbed, their footfalls echoed jarringly in the confined space. The short lithe, smaller-built female guards moved easily upwards, setting a hard pace for him to match. He had visited enough ancient Indian fortresses to understand the principle: Invaders would be forced to attack in single file, crouched awkwardly low. A single guard could defend the stairwell, and the piled bodies of the wounded and dead would make progress even more tortuous.
It was a virtually unimpregnable defense – a thousand years ago. He glimpsed tiny slits in the wall and ceilings, and recalled similar apertures all along the corridor. He had taken them for air vents at first but now understood that they were in fact guard posts. The corridor was lit from above, illuminating him and the guards as they climbed endlessly, but effectively concealing the watching guards stationed behind the walls.
Dravid wasn’t impressed. Medieval subterfuge and manual defenses were no match for modern safe-care. A single safe-care biogas capsule, delivered by any number of methods into the corridor, could wipe out the entire garrison of unseen defenders. The self-consuming bio-gases would take barely three seconds to render the air safe again and that would be the end of Kali’s stupidly outdated defense system. He had climbed more than a thousand steps and was suffering from the bent posture and elbow-and-shoulder-bruising closeness of the concrete walls when the stairwell finally widened and rose high enough for him to straighten up. The alcove resembled a small circular chamber in a stone tower, again of obviously medieval design.
It was ironic in a way, he thought as the guards led him through a series of corridors and transitional chambers. Whatever little he had seen of Kali so far was clearly modelled on the architecture of medieval India. Yet Kali itself went to great pains to insist it was not part of India. Not according to the 700,000-odd renegades who had taken refuge in this tiny pocket of disputed territory, defying Indian national laws and international sanctions to declare its independence as a sovereign nation in its own right.
To these cultist fanatics, this little area of Central India bordering the legitimate Indian states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa was the nation of Kali, a concept as fiercely independent as the concept of Israel had become after the Nazi pogroms of World War II, almost three quarters of a century earlier. The world’s only all-woman nation. To the Indian Government, though, this was simply Disputed Territory, just as areas of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir had once been designated before the ReMerger with Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal ten years ago. United India could not afford to sanction a Kali, let alone acknowledge its legimitacy. That was why he was here now. To end the problem by rooting out the source.
Destroy the brood-mother and the species dies out.
The guards fell back, surprising him. He could not conceive of a reason why he should be allowed to proceed unescorted. Yet when he turned to look at them questioningly, the one who had led the detail, a short, darkskinned muscular woman with scar tissue obscuring her left cheek and neck, pointed unmistakeably down the corridor. He was to proceed alone.
Dravid shrugged, amused at yet another ludicruously amateurish security lapse, and walked on. He had gone several hundred paces before he realized what was odd about this particular corridor. His footfalls made no echoes. The reason for this became clear when he reached the end of the corridor, another circular chamber.
A slit in the wall revealed not the darkness of the subterranean passage or the diffused top lighting. Instead it exposed a slice of brilliant blue sky. He was undoubtedly in a tower. He realized with a start that this was the very same edifice that he had seen on various sat-images during his briefings. One of several hundred such towers positioned at regular intervals along the border of the besieged territory, ringing the entire disputed territory like giant stone sentinels. They were believed to be guardian outposts constructed to watch over the Line of Control that demarcated Kali’s disputed landspace from the surrounding Indian territory.
“Envoy Dravid,” said the woman who was waiting in the sunlit tower chamber. “Please be seated.” She indicated a thin woven mat on the ground, identical to the one on which she was seated cross-legged in the yogic lotus posture. Dravid scanned the room and surrounding area and couldn’t believe his luck. No guards, no weapons, no defenses. In short, no Safe Care at all.
Dravid was unable to believe that his mission could be this easy to accomplish. He looked at the woman who was watching him calmly.
“I am Durga Maa,” she said. “The one you seek to assassinate. Tell me, Envoy, would you like to kill me at once, or would you like to maintain the pretence of a diplomatic debate for awhile?”
Dravid blinked rapidly.
She smiled. “I suggest that we get the assassination over with first. That way, your mind will be free to discuss the larger issues at stake here, without distraction.”
And she opened her arms in the universal Hindu gesture of greeting. “Sva-swagatam, Mrityudaata.” Welcome, Angel of Death.
Even if was a trap, as every meg of data in his mental archives said it must be, Dravid could not let the opportunity pass. His not to question why. His but to kill and fly. He hesitated only long enough to run one final scan-check. The result was the same as the previous three times. It was an ID-OK, confirmed through half a dozen cross-checks including a perfect DNA match. This woman seated before him was Durga Maa, the founder and leader of Kali. She was his target.
He used his thumbnail to circumscribe a tiny crescent-shaped incision in his left wrist and withdrew the reinforced silicon needle from his forearm. It was barely ten millimetres in diameter and he had to grip firmly. He drew it across his palm, wiping it clean of the tiny flecks of blood and gristle that coated it. Tinted to resemble a prominent vein, it was a translucent green that caught the sunlight as he moved across the chamber. He was at full alert now, his keenly honed senses prepared for any resistance or ambush. There was none. She smiled as he inserted the lethal tip of the needle between her ribs. Her breast was yielding and warm against his hand.
He pressed hard, brutally, and the entire 9-inch length entered her chest, sliding in easily. He pictured it puncturing her left lower chamber, spilling precious life-fluid. In her eyes, he watched the look of serenity flicker and fade. “Kali be with you,” she said. And then she was gone, her body slumped sideways, legs still locked in the yogic position. He kicked at her thighs, releasing their grip, and she sprawled out more naturally. Darkness pooled beneath her body.
He stood and looked around, unable to believe it had been this easy. He felt a qualm of unease. Her attitude, the knowledge that he was to assassinate her, her serene acceptance of her death, these were not things he was equipped to deal with. Even with the most fanatical of cult leaders, there was always the final struggle for survival, the organism’s instinct for self-preservation. But she had been truly ready. He pushed these thoughts from his head. The most difficult part still lay ahead. Escape. He had analyzed the possible options and they were all negative-rated. The least likely to fail (12.67%) was by blasting a hole in the wall of this tower and speed-climbing down the outside. But that was assuming the guards were armed and prepared for violent retaliation, which they didn’t seem to be. A circular stairway ran around the perimeter of the chamber.
Dravid went down the stone stairs quickly and silently, alert for the first sign of armed response. He descended to the next level, and found himself in an almost identical chamber. It was as sparsely furnished, with the same chick mats on the floor.
And a woman.
He stopped short at the sight of the woman. She was younger than Durga Maa, but premature greyness made her seem older at first glance. She was dressed similarly but not precisely the same way. He found no match for her in his records. She was also very beautiful.
She looked up as if she had been expecting him and indicated a bowl of steaming tea and two earthen cups. “Greetings, Envoy Dravid. With the demise of our beloved sister, I am now Durga Maa. Would you like to kill me at once, or will you partake of some refreshment first?”
And she opened her arms in that same gesture of acceptance.
Dravid thought it was a ploy at first. A delaying tactic intended to stall him until the guards arrived. But his internal systems showed nobody else approaching within a hundred-metre radius. No safe-care weaponry in the chamber. Nothing capable of doing him any physical harm. His system announced an ID match for the woman seated before him. With a rising sense of unease, Dravid checked and rechecked the scan results until he could no longer doubt them.
Somehow, in the space of a few seconds, she had changed her DNA structure internally, although her physical appearance remained the same. To all intents and purposes, she had become exactly what she claimed she was: Durga Maa, leader of Kali, down to the smallest twisted strand of genetic composition.
She poured tea for him. “You cannot comprehend how two women could possess the same identity. It is a scientific impossibility, you think.” She held the clay cup out to him. He made no move to take it. He was still running checks and rechecks to examine every variant possible, tapping into the orbital systems to access greater processing power and other archives. She set the cup down before the mat intended for him. “You are right,” she said. “Science cannot explain it. But faith can. There is only one Durga Maa – at a given point in time. But on her demise, her entire personality and being, what we like to call her aatma, passes to a successor. That is I.”
“Aatma,” he repeated scornfully. “You mean, soul?”
She poured tea for herself. Her movements were delicate, assured, and very pleasing to watch. She had a fine bone structure that would have been considered beautiful among North Indians, but far too Aryan and brahminical to South Indian eyes. “It does exist,” she said. “No matter that science cannot prove it does. I now possess Durga Maa’s soul, which makes me Durga Maa.” She gestured at herself.
“This physical shell is immaterial. It is the person within that matters. I am the avatar of Kali, just as Durga Maa herself was while she lived.”
Dravid chuckled softly. “Avatars and aatma. What is this? A TriNet Fiction? Save the spiritual rant for blindfaithers.”
She held the bowl up in both hands, Asian style. “You are sceptical,” she said. sipping tea. “It is to be expected. But I can establish this as a scientific fact which your technology can verify beyond doubt.”
She set the tea down on the floor and spread her arms in the same universal gesture of acceptance. “Assassinate me too. And see for yourself.”
He hesitated for barely a fraction of a second. Then decided he had nothing to lose. This time, he used the instrument at hand, smashing the tea cup and drawing the jagged clay edge across her jugular, severing it on the first try. He watched her bleed to death, spraying her life across the stone floor. The beam of sunlight shining through the jetting arc turned vermillion briefly.
Because he was curious and because it was the easiest option, he proceeded to the next lower level. There was another woman waiting in another chamber. This one was much older, with the wizened semi-oriental features of a North-Eastern Indian. A Mizo or a Naga. Descendant of the head-hunting tribes of the Indo-Burmese hills that had been converted to Christianity by relentless American Baptist missionaries a few generations ago. She did not speak as much the earlier one. But his scans showed once again that impossible change in DNA even while her physical appearance remained the same. He killed her with vicious efficiency, snapping her neck with a fierce twist of his powerful arms. This time, he observed the change after death closely.
His scans showed a change to another DNA structure. Not a change, he realized. A reversion to the woman’s original identity before she became the avatar of the Goddess. A rage swept through him, replacing the initial sense of bewilderment. This could not be happening. It was not part of the plan. It was a scientific impossibility. He took the stairs with athletic speed, reaching the next level an instant before the change occurred, and through the ‘eyes’ of his system he watched the conversion in progress, the very molecular structure of the ribonucleic strands altering. Then he killed the fourth avatar – for want of a better term – before she could even speak. She had a mole on her left eyebrow and the darkened skin and sallow features of a Malayalee. There was coconut oil on her hair and it smeared on his fingers as he held her skull and smashed it against the stone wall repeatedly. This went on for several more levels. Chasing the ‘aatma’ as it flew from woman to woman. Assassinating each new avatar of Durga Maa as she was genetically rebirthed.
By the twenty-third level, he found himself tiring. His clothes and body were soiled with blood and gristle as well as traces of each woman’s individual identity. Tea, coconut oil, sweater yarn, pooja threads, rangoli powder…. His systems showed that the tower was precisely one hundred stories high. Seventy seven more levels to go. And the sat scans had analyzed his first batch of data transmission: One hundred such towers ringed the perimeter of the disputed territory, each with a hundred levels. Assuming that each housed a successor, that meant a sum total of 10,100 women to be assassinated. He stopped and re-examined his options.
“It will be easier if you accept it,” said the 23rd avatar. A very diminutive young woman, barely more than a girl. A Maharashtrian, with the dark skin and black pupils of the Dalits of the Deccan Plain, descendants of the ostracized scheduled castes of the 20th century, the ‘untouchables’ that Mahatma Gandhi had renamed ‘harijans, children of God’ and whom Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar had renamed Dalits. She was weaving a shawl on a charkha, using her feet to grip the wooden spinney, and working steadily as she spoke. “The more you fight it, the harder it will be for you later.”
He spoke with barely concealed anger, his frustration getting the better of his legendary self-control. “How do you do it? You transmit the genetic coding through orbitals? But then how do you effect the morphing? This kind of technology doesn’t exist! It has to be some kind of illusion.” But no illusion could deceive the massive processing power that he had accessed to check and recheck the 22 ‘impossible’ transformations.
She worked the spinney, weaving the red, white and saffron strands of wool expertly as she spoke. “Is it so hard to accept, Envoy? You are Indian, like us. Not a Westerner with a mind fogged by science. You know that some things cannot be explained, only accepted.” He sat down wearily, his blood-splashed feet staining a pile of spotless white wool, not caring. She clucked her tongue and moved the wool aside, picking out the stained strands and putting them in a separate pile for cleaning later.
“All right,” he said, deciding there would be no harm in a brief theoretical discussion while his systems sought a more scientific explanation.. “Assume for the moment that you are all avatars of the Devi. But-”
“Nako re, baba,” she said. “No, my brother. We are only women. Ordinary mortal women. Only when the living avatar of the Devi dies, then the next of us in line takes her place. Samjhe? Understood now?”
She reminded him irritatingly of his mausi, a paternal aunt who was always completely self-assured and unplacable.
He gritted his teeth in frustration. “But how many times can it possibly happen? There has to be a limit!”
“Kashasaati limit?” she asked him in the matter-of-fact Maharashtrian way. “You know your religious mythology. A Goddess can be reborn infinite times, because a Goddess on the mortal plane is aatma, pure spirit. And an aatma cannot be killed. Read your Bhagwad Gita again. Weapons cannot cleave it, wind cannot blow it away, fire cannot burn it, water cannot dissolve it, earth cannot consume it, it is the soul immortal.”
He was silent. The very same mausi had taught him this exact same verse from the Gita, in the original Sanskrit. With very little effort he could recall her sitting cross-legged before the wooden chaupat propping up the oversize hand-calligraphed copy of the Bhagwad Gita, chanting the Sanskrit slokas in that maddening, unforgettable singsong manner.
“Then there is only one solution,” he said at last.
And stood up. She looked at him over the rims of her spectacles, pausing in her weaving. “I have to nuke you all. Wipe out the whole of Kali in one shot. That way, there won’t be any more bodies left for your damned Goddess to take refuge in.” He walked away from her then paused. He really should kill her. He had said too much. Perhaps she had some way of informing her compatriots, of mounting a defence against the genocide he proposed. But for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He consoled himself with the thought that he would be killing them all anyway in a few moments. As he walked away, the sound of the charka whirring began again behind him.
It took surprisingly long for him to secure the necessary permission to “salinate” the disputed territory. It was a final alternative listed in his command menu, and as the official Envoy to the rebels, he had the authority to take the decision. Kali had become a sore on the belly of United India over the last decade. The noises of commisseration from overseas had begun to sound more like rumbles of discontent, especially after so many American and European women had emigrated to the renegade ‘nation’. His superiors had anticipated the need for a final solution and had sent him in with all the necessary preparations in place. They wanted this problem solved now, one way or the other, before the tri-annual summit of Non-Aligned Independent Nuclear Nations the following week in New Delhi. He filed a charge of discovery of nuclear weapons and testing on Kali territory, proof of the renegades’ terrorist intentions and capacity. He initiated a program that simulated a crisis situation developing on his arrival in the disputed territory.
Reviewed later by the inevitable Human Rights panel, it would perfectly simulate a series of events in which all his accompanying officers and staffers were successively tortured and brutally killed by Kali terrorist troops and then he himself was taken on a tour of their formidable nuclear facility in order to inform and warn the world of Kali’s intention to strike blind at India. There would be holes unfilled, and gaps, but they would only add to the authenticity of the whole charade. The nuclear orbitals were positioned and armed, ready for release on his command. He had retreated through the tunnel by this time, almost at the peripheral guard base from which he had entered. The guards had offered no resistance at all, not even an attempt to stop him. He smiled at the absurdity of these people. And felt a rush of joy at their imminent destruction.
He triggered the nuclear orbital the moment he reached MSCD (minimum safe-care distance).
In an instant, the guady afternoon sky over the flatlands was obscured by the familiar blinding flash and then the rising mushroom cloud. He whistled as he walked to the Rimmer he had left parked on the Indian side of the Line of Control. There was a welcoming committee waiting to greet him, to shake the hand of the man who had finally ‘solved’ the Kali problem.
He allowed himself a smug smile of triumph and was about to offer his hand in greeting when the change took him.
“Agent Dravid?” said the PM-General, his smile wavering as he saw his most celebrated safe-care executive stagger and raise a hand to his forehead. “Are you feeling quite well?”
Dravid swung around, staring at the billowing cloud that marked the 230 square kilometres of land that had housed 700,000 renegade women until a few seconds ago. He raised his fist and shook it, his mouth opening in the rictus of a soundless scream.
“Damn you,” he managed to choke out. And then the Change was done.
When he turned back to the PM-General, the anger and hate was replaced by an expression of such calm serenity that it startled the supreme leader of United India far more than any act or gesture of violence would have done.
“I am Durga Maa,” said the man formerly known as Envoy Dravid.
(c)Ashok Banker 2005-2010. All rights reserved.
How I stopped Facebooking & faced books again
This excerpt on Fortune online from the upcoming new book about Facebook (pictured) got me thinking about the reasons why I got onto and then got off the social networking bandwagon…
I’m not on Facebook anymore. Or Twitter, Orkut, GoodReads, LibraryThing, Shelfari, Linkdin, or any other social networking site. I tend to be an early adopter, as they call us in marketing terms. Always among the first to try out new technology. And once I’ve used it, I often don’t see the point in it anymore. It was that way for me with social networking sites. I have no use for them, just as I barely have a use for a cellphone – or even a plain old telephone, for that matter. I recently checked my cellphone usage and found that I use an average of 34 minutes a month. That’s less than a minute a day, and that includes both incoming and outgoing calls. As for a landline, I don’t have one!
With social networking sites, it was the opposite. I spent so much time and got so involved with them, it became a part of my day. I also realized that far too many people who know me or are readers of my work are on those sites. Within a month of my joining Facebook a few years ago, I had reached the FB friends limit (it was 5,000 at the time, and still is, I believe). I received an average of 1,000 new friends requests each month. A few of these were either old friends or former colleagues but the majority were readers of my books who wanted to connect with me and often sent me direct messages with their friend requests, telling me how much they loved my work and wanted to connect with me directly. It reached a point where I was sending out fifty apology messages daily to new friend requests, explaining why I couldn’t add them as I’d reached the friends limit on the site. I tried setting up a Page for myself as well which people could become Fans of (now one simply ‘Likes’ the Page instead of calling oneself a Fan, which is a better option), and it got over 500 fans within a month or so, and the number kept climbing steadily. I also received anywhere from 50 to 100 direct messages each day, often from readers asking complex questions about my books, or trying to connect with me personally – invitations to dinner, to come over to my house and talk to me urgently about something or the other, attend a wedding, a birthday bash, speak at a seminar, etc.
It got so bad that one day, I realized I had spent the entire morning just answering messages, and hadn’t got any writing done at all. What’s more, each message I replied to was a huge encouragement for that person, who then wanted to continue corresponding regularly. A few got pretty obsessive about it, even getting upset if I didn’t reply immediately to their messages, and at least a half dozen became virtual stalkers.
On Twitter, it was somewhat better at first. Almost none of the people I connected with were readers of my work, and in its first several months, Twitter was a pretty cool place to be. Everyone tweeted about their lives, their daily activities and because it wasn’t the high-profile ‘place to be seen’ that it is today, it was quite genuine and sincere. I connected with other animal lovers, book lovers, movie lovers and enjoyed the format of expressing myself in 140 characters, even finding that I had a talent for spinning off quick witty quips and one-liners. I quickly gained a following of over 1700, although I always followed far more than I was followed by – again, I was limited only by Twitter’s ceiling of 2,000 followers. (You can follow more than 2,000 only if you’re followed by more than that number, after that, the two numbers have to increase proportionately.) I also kept hitting the API limit and exceeding the permissible number of tweets per hour, clocking up over 15,000 tweets by the end of my Twitter run.
But as time passed and more people came on board, I discovered the darker side of Twitter. Like all online networks, Twitter doesn’t discriminate between users. Unlike, say, a local train where you would definitely not want to talk to some of your fellow travelers, actively avoid others, and be friendly with a few, Twitter puts everyone in the same box. I discovered some hair-raising characters. There was one elderly fellow who used Twitter to troll for young girls whom he intended to then meet in the real world and have ‘fun’ with. I have no idea what happened to him but when I tried to warn other Tweeple, they thought I was joking or just had some issue with him. I found a journalist who was also dealing drugs and was using Twitter as well as his blog (which was hosted on the newspaper’s website) to openly promote his side biz and build his client base. When I tried to tell others about him, he retaliated by tweeting bitterly nasty stuff about me.
Then there was the Delhi divorced mother who made a big issue of the fact that she was a cancer survivor. She turned out to be a celeb stalker, going to any lengths to ask celebs on Twitter for special ‘favours’ (don’t ask), and quite predictably, turning on them once they had complied and bitching endlessly about the same celebs who had helped her out. She managed to get a free copy of a book out of me by badgering me for weeks; finally I sent her the book, signed, to get her off my back online. She instantly began tweeting about how she had no intention of reading the book and bitching about me. I later learned that not only was she not a cancer survivor – she had only had a biopsy which had turned out to be benign, which is not the same as a malignant cancer growth at all – but she had split with her husband, was addicted to prescription drugs and had been separated from her daughter because of alleged child abuse, as well as killed her first dog ‘accidentally’ in a fit of rage. Not exactly the long-suffering cancer survivor and happy mother, wife and pet-lover she pretended to be on Twitter.
Then there was the scriptwriter for a major television production house with a high-profile daily show on a major channel, big shot on Twitter with a great following who hung on his every word. What they didn’t know was that he had repeatedly raped his young niece since she was 12 and had been living with him after her parents (his sister and brother-in-law) died and she had nowhere else to go. Now, she was 19 and he was trying to get her married but she was refusing to do so because she was so emotionally dependent on him.
And then there are the PR pros who are aptly named because they act like they’re on Twitter to solicit clients and if you’re not a potential client then they just want you to F-O. In fact, if you go on Twitter and follow this particular breed of person for a while, you’ll find that despite calling themselves Public Relations professionals, they are actually the first to spread gossip, rumours, and bitch about celebs and other professionals, and generally give PR a bad name just by existing. They would be doing themselves, their clients and the whole PR industry a huge favour just by staying offline and keeping quiet, rather than giving themselves bad publicity all the time.
I could go on. But think about it. If you put a lakh of people together in one place, do you seriously expect them all to be saints and perfect human beings? There are bound to be crooks, criminals, rapists, murderers, liars, thieves, cheats, and all kinds of people among them. Fair enough, that’s the world. But would you share your life and daily activities and chat about politics and books and movies with the same crooks, criminals, rapists, murderers? Would you still be willing to chat with someone about sex, knowing that he’s a child-rapist? Would you be willing to take advice on surviving cancer from a woman who in fact hasn’t had cancer at all? Would you be willing to discuss politics and IPL with a wife-beater who hates women? At what point do you draw the line between casual social conversation and ulterior motives? Would you be willing to call yourself a ‘friend’ of someone who is only on that network to hook people onto the drugs he sells and to introduce the same dude to new ‘clients’?
I can’t speak for you. And I’m not saying that social networking is bad in itself. Obviously it’s not. The virtual world is similar to the real world, with all kinds of people, right? Well, not quite. The virtual world is limited to people with online computer access. And social networking is mainly used by people who have online access most of the time. Which means it’s dominated by a certain stratus of society, and accounts for the unusually large representation of IT professionals on social nets. It’s not the real world, not by any stretch of the imagination, it’s another world, very discriminatory in access and very elite in membership. In short, it’s a limited, relatively exclusive group of people who are there because they want something from each other and have personal agendas.
I’m not one of those people, or even that kind of person. I disagree with this idiotic misconception that people can be brands. Bullshit. People are people. I’ve probably made over 2,000 friends in my lifetime, of whom I’m in touch with maybe 10% at any given point in time. I’m not anti-social, but I’m not a social networking kind of person either. I don’t attend parties or functions, and only meet friends one on one or at their or my home usually. I prefer to connect with people who relate to me and whom I relate to and on a level that’s intellectual and stimulating. I don’t have business meetings or career contacts at all – nil, nada, zero. I don’t see the point in it, and don’t believe that networking or contacts or meetings can further your career. Only good work gets you ahead. And for an author, good work means writing good books. Nothing else matters. Definitely not PR, media appearances, online social networks, or similarly pathetic attempts at keeping a public profile.
So that’s the story of how and why I decided to ease myself off social networks. It took almost four months to do it, and I tried to make the transition easier for the 30,000+ ‘friends’, followers, fans, and other connections I had formed online during that period (that’s the sum total of my Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, GoodReads, Shelfari, LibraryThing, and LinkedIn circles, not counting overlaps – if I included overlaps it would be around 42,000 total). I announced my intention to ‘retire’ well in advance and phased out my withdrawal. In early 2010, I stopped updating or visiting the sites. And about a month ago, I went around deleting all the accounts completely.
I don’t even do what some people do these days – use another person’s log in to go on Facebook and check out what others are doing or saying. What would be the point? If I wanted to be on the train, I would buy a ticket and get on with my bag and baggage. Not ride on the roof and eavesdrop.
I think Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites are great for a number of people. They’re excellent for the celebs and self-promoting types who need to get their names and messages out there to their market every single day, because their livelihood depends on it. In my case, I’m neither a celeb nor do I believe in promotion (waste of time, effort, money, energy) of any kind. Even among authors, I’m not one of those who will ever be read by Chetan Bhagat kind of numbers, and I’m very comfortable with that. I have a strong niche, and people find my books and seek them out through word of mouth, not through publicity or promotion or through my presence on social networks. As for brand-building, I give a flying fish about it. I only blog about things that I find interesting, regardless of whether it helps my profile or fits in with my so-called ‘brand’.
I’m back to writing again, reading as much as ever, and living my life the way I love to live it. And everytime a friend tells me how much time and effort he’s spending on keeping his social networking alive online, I sympathize, but I also wonder why he doesn’t follow the excellent advice given by Tom Hanks to his proteges The Wonders in the film That Thing You Do. “When your set is over, you unplug and run…smiling, always smiling!”
I unplugged. I walked away. And I’m smiling broader than ever before.
Most of all, I have my life back. And neither FB nor Twitter own any part of my ass. I hope you can say the same.
Why I write – David Morrell
Thanks to reader Mukesh Dhoot for this link to this very interesting and inspirational article (actually it’s an excerpt from a book) by thriller author David Morrell. I’m quoting from it briefly. You can click through to the article (link above) to read it for yourself. Recommended.
“Why do you want to be writers?” I repeat. The squirms are more uncomfortable. Someone admits, not in so many words, that it would be neat to be the subject of magazine articles and appear on the Today show. The writer as movie star. We go back to the usual suspects: King, Grisham, Clancy, and Cornwell (while we’re at it, let’s add Danielle Steele and Mary Higgins Clark-–there aren’t many brand names). Again, the USA Today list gives us perspective. Scan the names of the top fifty authors. I doubt that more than twenty will be familiar to you. Even fewer writers are famous than earn a living at it. More important, while I can’t imagine anyone foolish enough to turn down money, I have trouble understanding why someone would want to be famous. As Rambo’s creator, I’ve had experience in that regard, and if your idea of a good time is to be forced to get an unlisted number, swear your friends to secrecy about your address, and make sure your doors are locked because of stalkers, you’re welcome to it.
Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer – online excerpt
Just read the first chapter of John Grisham’s YA legal thriller, Theodore Boone Kid Lawyer at the Penguin USA website. Interesting, promising, exciting? Well, yeah, but nothing that couldn’t be done better on film than in print. Why can’t an Indian author do something this simple yet effective? Why doesn’t someone try? Hell, Grisham doesn’t even write that well, he’s so easy to overtake. For that matter, why are Indian publishers perpetually chasing the long but almost-vanished tail of the last international publishing trend in YA literature instead of commissioning and publishing genuine home-grown YA work, entertainers as well as literary gems? Let’s put Theodore Boone Kid Lawyer on the case. Better yet, let’s give him a Commissioning Editor’s budget and the authority to publish what he finds and likes. Because I bet you that even a 13-year old would commission, write, edit and publish more exciting YA fiction than the western-aping tomes thudding on local bookshelves. Until then, right-click on the image above to download and read the excerpt from the YA book that’s going to outsell every other YA novel published this year, in India as well as elsewhere.
VORTAL:SHOCKWAVE free ebook – download, share, email, as you wish!
Yup. You read that heading right. The free ebook of Vortal:Shockwave is available right here right now. That’s totally free, no strings attached, no holds barred. You can download it and read it on any ebook reader you please, or even on your comp. You can share it online, email it to anyone, do as you please with it – everything except print it or sell it. The last two are because those rights are reserved for commercial publication and this, after all, is a free ebook meant to be read online without paying any charge!
And it’s only the first of several more free ebooks I’ll be posting right here on my blog. So go ahead, get started. Enjoy! And don’t forget to come back and let me know what you felt after reading the book!
Right-click here to download the free ebook of VORTAL:SHOCKWAVE
