The Way Things Were Read online

  A few stayed behind to ask Toby questions. ‘But, Raja saab,’ one old man in a Himachali cap said, ‘you have said nothing about 1857?’

  ‘Should I have?’ Toby asked.

  The man gave him a wink and a smile. An elderly lady, breathless from her walk up to the stage, said pointedly, ‘So, Mr Ketu, you have learnt Sanskrit then.’ This was not a question. And she seemed not at all uncomfortable by the silence it produced. An old bureaucrat, in beige and brown, cut in, with a burst of raucous laughter, ‘Well, Raja saab, the return of the native, eh?’

  From out of this fusty crowd, Toby felt a hand, soft, dark and jewelled, clutch his. He knew immediately whose hand it was. But he caught only a glimpse of her. She was beautiful. Her eyes bigger, mistier and yet more melancholy than they had seemed from the stage. She had long black hair and was dressed in a green chiffon sari, with a single emerald edged with diamonds around her neck.

  She said, ‘I hope I’ll see you later tonight at Bapa’s.’ Then – adding, ‘That was amazing, by the way’ – she pressed his hand and withdrew quickly.

  He was so overcome he had not been able to reply, and, when finally he was able to get away and go out to look for her, he was detained by an unusual man, a man who stood out at first glance.

  Toby was in a hurry, but there was something arresting and assertive in how he had stopped him in his tracks and introduced himself in the corporate way, energetically shaking his hand while at the same time presenting his card. Toby at the time recalled thinking, This is someone completely new. The ring of Hessonite on his fingers, the little moustache, the slightly unhealthy pallor of skin, had all suggested one kind of person. But his careful, accented way of speaking, his beautiful clothes and shoes, and . . . and, well, his intensity, the fire in his eyes, singled him out, as someone who, in Toby’s considerable experience of India, was utterly unfamiliar.

  And he seemed ready to assault Toby with his question: ‘The Ramayana, Professor Ketu, or should I say, Raja saab: what is it to you? Myth or history?’

  Had Toby, in a hurry to find the woman in the green chiffon sari, answered this man’s sincere question with a fudge, an intellectual swipe? Perhaps. He had said, with a smile, ‘Why not stick with the Indic definition? Of Itihāsa! Which is a compound, as you know, itiha-āsa, and when broken down, means, literally, The Way indeed that Things Were. That covers everything: talk, legend, tradition, history . . .’

  ‘That’s very glib, Raja saab,’ the man said. ‘But that doesn’t answer my question, does it? Do you regard it as history, in the sense of it having all really happened, of Ram having really existed, or would you say it was myth?’

  ‘These things, especially in an Indian context, are not so easy to classify. And I’m not sure it’s so important . . .’

  ‘Oh, it is important! If tomorrow you told a Muslim Muhammad did not exist, he would consider it important.’

  ‘What I was going to say was I’m not sure if it’s important for these things to meet a Western standard of what is historical or not. Which is maybe too limited for the Indian context. People, after all, have all kinds of ways of thinking about their past, and the important thing is to discover how they saw themselves, rather than how we see them today.’

  It was an academic’s answer, and Toby’s interrogator sensed its safety.

  ‘Let me ask it more simply, Raja saab: do you, as a professor, believe that such a man as Ram ever existed, the way Jesus—’

  ‘Jesus is not a historical—’

  ‘OK, fine. Muhammad, Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare . . . I don’t care. Do you believe that there was ever a king in India called Ram?’

  ‘There may well have been one. But no – by the standards you are applying, he is not historical. But neither, as you mentioned, is Jesus nor the Buddha—’

  And here there was a crack in his interrogator’s composure. His eyes swelled round and white in his head; his lips trembled.

  ‘Buddha, Ram, not historical? Shit Muhammad historical?’

  Anger came now to Toby too.

  ‘What do you want me to say? Mr . . . Mr . . .’ He glanced at the card in his palm. ‘Why don’t you just come out with it?’

  ‘You people, you have a full agenda. In league with those Islamic shits—’

  ‘You stop that. Don’t you dare use that kind of language—’

  ‘I suppose you’ll be saying next that there was no destruction of temples. Vijayanagara not destroyed. Vedic culture not Indian culture; the Aryans came from elsewhere. That’s what you want to say, no? India zero, a big fat anda? No?’

  ‘Vijayanagara,’ Toby said, interrupting firmly, ‘where, incidentally, I’m headed myself in a few days, was destroyed. And we know that because the Muslim historians, who you despise so much, have recorded it. As for the Aryan migration, which, if it occurred, occurred thirty-five centuries ago, you should ask yourself why it bothers you so much? What is this obsession in India with origins? This need to have people spring from the ground. Thirty-five centuries is a long time. Longer than the histories of Greece and Rome. Why is it in India alone that the mere suggestion that the Aryans might have come from elsewhere causes such discomfort? Can you tell me that, Mr—?’

  Before he could look at the card, the man replied, ‘Yes, I can, Raja saab. I’m not . . .’ He hesitated; his lips were dry, a fragment of spittle clung to them, ‘I’m not afraid to take things head on. I can tell you just why. It’s because you . . .’ Here, again, he paused and – as if wanting, now at this bitter end of the conversation to make amends – took the trouble to correct himself. ‘They, the white man and the Muslim,’ he said, taking Toby by the hand with his two hands – not now the corporate shake – ‘made us believe we have nothing of our own!’ Then, making to go, he added, ‘Raja saab, please: if I have said anything untoward, forgive me. And if I can be of any assistance to you at all, during your stay in India – these are delicate times! – do not hesitate to be in touch.’

  With this, he swung round and vanished ahead of the small crowd of people leaving the IIC. Toby, seeing his card face down in his palm, turned it over. Mahesh Maniraja, CMD Mani Group. It was a name he would have cause to remember.

  Evening fell. A queue – people clad in beige, cream and white, with the occasional green and red of a sari – formed before a table draped in satin; the clatter of crockery merged with the clamour of human voices, and the drone of insects. Toby knew a sudden feeling of confusion and melancholy.

  The auditorium had been full of his friends but they were gone now. Only Tripathi, who had been with him since the airport that morning, when he landed from London, remained. He now approached.

  ‘Raja saab,’ he said, ‘your friends Mr Mohapatra and Gayatri madam told me to tell you to come this evening to Bapa saab’s in Sundar Nagar. They’re all having dinner there. They said they were sorry for having to run off in a hurry, but their father was among the politicians arrested last night, and there are a million things to be tended to.’

  ‘I know, I know. I was meant to be staying at Nixu Mohapatra’s house on Aurangzeb Road. He was going to give it to me for the summer, in return for my flat in London. But he’s not going to London now. It seems like everybody is here all summer.’

  ‘Have you made alternative arrangements?’

  ‘Yes. My friend Viski Singh Aujla is going to give me a discounted room at the Raj for as long as I like. Well, until, I finish my textbook, at least.’

  Tripathi smiled, and, seeing some disappointment in Toby’s face, but unaware of its cause, he said, ‘I think everyone’s been a bit thrown off with this Emergency business. It’s all been very sudden.’

  Toby feigned interest, but the antics of the modern Indian state left him cold. It was such an anxious and clumsy entity, now invading alpine kingdoms, now abolishing the princes, now spoiling the skylines of temple towns with concrete water tanks. Emergency, immujency, immjunsi. He had heard the word, fresh both in sound and meaning, ricochet around the city all day, acquiring new significance as it moved.

  Driving in from the airport, he had seen sandbags in the shade of trees still festive from their May blossoming. In the dead white light of that June day, he saw men, Jats invariably, in olive-coloured uniforms, their handsome faces beaded with sweat, take their positions behind barricades. He had observed the blue metal barrels of guns cast their blank and cyclopean gaze over the still and scorching streets. It had been a day of stealth, and heat, and the crackle of radios, whispered conversations in darkened shops and houses. A day without newspapers, save for a few – where the government had forgotten to turn the power off.

  ‘Will it last long, Tripathi? This Emergency?’

  ‘Who can say, Raja saab? At the moment the elites are most affected, the newspapermen, the politicians. The public, the truth be told, are quite relieved. They feel there’ll be some proper governance for once.’

  ‘It’ll be bad in the long run, Tripathi, you watch. This kind of thing always is.’

  They stood like that for a while, the occasional IIC member, tea and samosa in hand, giving a little bow or a smile as they went past. Observing the descent of evening over the IIC, and the park at its rear, ornamented with tombs, Tripathi muttered, ‘Go-dhūli.’

  ‘Yes!’ Toby said, feeling his spirits lift a little at this reference to the earth-dust hour, so resonant in poetry.

  He had intended to say something about it in his lecture. But he had forgotten. Rifling through his reference cards, he handed Tripathi one dated 26 June 1975. Tripathi put on his spectacles and read aloud in a low murmur, ‘The majestic sun is setting bringing on gracious night . . . here, carrying their water pots, are the sages returning in a group . . . their bark-cloth garments soaked with water . . . the smoke, pearly as a dove’s neck, carried by the wind . . . the trees all about . . . seem to have grown dense; the horizons are all lost to view . . .’

  ‘That is my India, Tripathi,’ Toby said, when Tripathi looked up. ‘A place of sages returning home in the evening, of smoke visible from their sacrifices; of trees filling, as they do here, with the sudden violet density of dusk. This, for me, is the real India, the India that lives on. Not this shabby Sovietic state the witch and her son want to shove down our throats.’

  ‘Careful, Raja saab,’ Tripathi said, and laughed. ‘You’ve only just arrived.’

  ‘The hell I care. By what I gather, I have more friends in jail than out. But, listen, Tripathi, we’ll have some good times together now that I’m here.’

  ‘Will you stay for a while this time?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Toby said with a grin. ‘Maybe for a long while.’ Then, recalling the secret cause of the elation he felt, he said, ‘Tripathi, tell me: did you see that lady sitting next to Isha Singh Aujla? The one in the green sari?’

  ‘Viski saab’s wife?’

  ‘Yes. No, I mean. Not her, but the one next to her.’

  ‘Her sister? Mishi madam, I think.’

  ‘Mishi? Is that her name?’

  ‘No. Uma, I believe. Odd choice of name for a Sikh girl. Punjabis, I tell you! They give a girl a name like Uma, then call her Mishi. Ishi and Mishi!’ Tripathi said and laughed. ‘Why? Some problem?’

  ‘No, no, nothing.’

  Skanda is alone after what feels like days. And back in Delhi.

  He had feared dislocation, feared things not ringing true. But it had not been like that. From the moment he set eyes on the Tamasā he had known a great sense of familiarity. And later, when they had all come down to the banks of the river – to the uninhabited left bank, at the shmashana ghat – and the Tamasā was visible behind the veil of sooty smoke and orange oblation-fed fire, he had known a sense of purpose too. When in the hour before the cremation the sky darkened, robbing the river of its glitter and threatening rain, he had, despite the entreaties of the Collector to wait for the arrival of an important MLA, given the priest permission to begin. Just as well. For the MLA did not arrive for another hour. And by then it was dark.

  He had feared passivity, withdrawal, his tendency to retreat behind the walls of some inviolate system or structure; what his sister, Rudrani, angry that he was angry (for her not coming) had called his ‘little fortresses’. ‘That’s right. I’m really to learn how to take things head on from you, Mr Let-me-find-the-most-complicated-language-in-the-world-to-lose-myself-in – a dead one at that! – and-if-I’m-lucky-it-might-just-get-me-through-my-entire-life. Give me another one, Skandu. At least I have a relationship with a human being, someone I love; I have children. It could be said that I’m living my life. That I don’t want to come to India is my business. Everyone deals with these things in their own way. And Baba, more than anyone, would have understood.’

  But grief was not purely a private matter. There was Kalasuryaketu to think of. His father had made it clear what he wanted; and someone had had to execute his wishes. He, Skanda, had done that. He had cremated his father. He had watched as the fire rose and darkness fell; watched as the flames, overcoming their initial reluctance, coaxed the flesh off his father’s body. He had watched them make a cathedral of his ribcage and give to his mild face a fierce and aboriginal aspect. Then, when the priest instructed him, he, Skanda, had smashed open the back of his father’s charred skull, so that there would be an aperture for the spirit to escape its earthly prison.

  Had that not all been real life? What could be more real than death? And had he not lived through it? Had he not done all that was asked of him? He had taken his father’s body from Geneva to Kalasuryaketu, returned with his ashes in a terracotta urn so that they could be immersed at the Confluence.

  A message on Skype informs him, ‘Theo Mackinson is online’. He has been fighting to keep awake. Drinking black coffee, eating peanuts. Narindar has left him a Coke on the desk, his father’s old desk. And, in a moment, he brings up his class in New York on his computer. He can see them all ranged around a large brightly polished table: Liese, the yoga teacher; Diksha, the exchange student; Kris(hna), a Californian Brahmin; and Alexis Dudney, a thin pale-faced scholar of Indo-Persian, who adds Sanskrit to his repertoire of languages the way a sexual adventurer might add a red head to a catalogue of other conquests.

  ‘Skanda Mahodaya!’ Theo Mackinson says, his image lagging. He is from the west coast, Oregon perhaps. He is in his early thirties, with short brown hair and brilliant blue eyes; his handsome face has hard edges, and a glow: a real tranquillity, Siddhartha-like, a mixture of Indic and west-coast serenity.

  ‘Skanda Mahodaya,’ he repeats in a more solemn tone now, then looks about the classroom and thinks better of it. Hurriedly he types a message: ‘Everyone is here at the moment. But I’m very sorry for your loss. If you’d like, we can arrange a chat next week.’

  Skanda: ‘I’d like that very much.’

  Theo: ‘Great!’

  Then aloud, Mackinson says, picking up the thread of an earlier discussion, ‘What we have here, in The Birth of Kumara, is a dual narrative. There is the realm of the gods and the realm of men. The two narratives breathe easily next to each other; rarely is it made explicit that one is aware of the other, but we, the readers, on some implicit level, will always sense the presence of the other. Here, in the second canto, the gods, harassed by a demon called Taraka, have been told by Brahma that only a son born of the seed of the great god Shiva can kill Taraka. For this to happen Shiva must fall in love with Uma, the beautiful daughter of Himalaya. Uma, who, like an embodiment of the female principle, is central to this poem. Uma, “whose waist is altar-shaped, with three beautiful folds, which are like a ladder for Love to climb.” The only trouble is that Shiva is deep in meditation and cannot be disturbed. Which is why, at the end of this canto, the gods will recruit Kama – Love – to go into the forest and disturb Shiva’s austerities. And, for this,’ Theo says, with mock solemnity, ‘Love will die. Skanda Mahodaya, 2.10, if you will: ātmānam ātmanā vetsi . . . You know the self by the self.’ Then, teasing him for his love of cognates, he prods: ‘Vetsi? From vid, like veda, cognate with . . . ?’

  In the world of Indology, these are the cheapest of cheap thrills. But his father had understood. After the material from which we’re made, he would say, this shared history of sound and meaning is our deepest affinity.

  ‘The Latin videre, to see,’ Skanda answers. An old beautiful root, which fuses words of seeing with words of knowing. ‘Related also to the Dutch weten, the German wissen; in Old English witan. And wot: singular present of wit.’

  ‘Right, Skanda Mahodaya!’

  Now, Dudney, the most Indo-European of them all, cannot contain himself either. He says, ‘It’s the source of such words as video and vision. And I read somewhere – in Calasso, I think – that the reason veda has the same derivation is because the seers did not, as is commonly believed, hear the Vedas. They saw them!’

  When it is over, he is drained. Over-caffeinated and sleepless. It is only 10.20 p.m. or so. Not yet 1 p.m. in New York. On his iPad, the Leonard Lopate show is still playing. They are predicting clear skies over Central Park, and temperatures for the first time in the high 70s. He is not homesick, but a feeling of dislocation is setting in. And the flat is eerily unchanged, a monument to his parents’ relationship. When, at length, his mother calls, she says, reading to the bottom of his mood, ‘And so, then? Are you going to just stay on there? Indefinitely? You can, you know. I have no objection. In fact, it’s nice for me to have you there, nice for the flat to be used. But what about your college? Your degree?’

  ‘Well, we’ve broken for the summer. I just had a make-up class via Skype.’

  ‘Great! Well, then, stay. Stay as long as you like. Skype, did you say? I love it: a man sitting in India learning Sanskrit via Skype from New York. Your father would have loved that: no greater comment,’ she says in a heavy voice, ‘on the state of Indian learning in India. Good. Well, you have everything you need?’