CHAPTER
ONE
If Hemagiri Fort ever had a watchtower, surely it must have been where Nayar’s tea-stall stands now: on the brow of the hill where the trunk road from Mysore rises steeply before it dips down eastwards and gets lost in lanes and byways as it reaches the sleepy town that lies curling around the base of Mount Hemagiri. No one can go in and out of the town without passing by Nayar’s tea-stall. Not that anyone ever wishes to. It is spotlessly clean and looks more like a wedding hall than a tea-stall. Steps leading to the front porch are flanked by lush clumps of plantain trees that give the place a festive air; and their broad green leaves sway to the music, light classical and pious, that pours from the radio beside the till. Few can resist stopping there for coffee or tea, to hear the music or listen to the cricket. On hot days, and most days are hot in Hemagiri, hot and sultry, no one can serve a chilled drink as Nayar can from his large ice-box, be it Pepsi or Fanta or Mango or green coconut. And there is no better place around town for thinking folk to meet and talk and watch all there is to watch. From the verandah which Nayar’s son Ambi regularly washes down with phenyl, you can see lorries and buses from the west, long before they begin to haul uphill. It is an unwritten rule, obeyed by all drivers, that they halt by the tamarind tree in front of the tea-stall, though the bus stop is at the market further downhill. It is a cheery pastime to watch buses from Mysore and from the Nilgiris clambering up the hill, their roof-tops packed with shuddering baskets of potatoes, beetroots, nool-kohl, cabbages, and cauliflowers, such Eng-leesh vegetables as lucky folk in the cool climes of the west can grow. Sometime later, if you look out for the same buses leaving Hemagiri by the eastern gate of the ruined Fort where the trunk road restarts, you can tell how good or bad business has been in the market, and what chance there is of seeing at dinner something other than the tedious brinjal which alone the soil around Hemagiri can bring forth. You can tell this, simply by checking how full or empty the baskets on top of the buses are, and how lightly they judder their way uphill to Vellore and Madras beyond.
Looking west or east can liven up a day; but as for the south and the north, there is little to cheer one’s eyes or heart. To the south lie dry fields dotted with stray palms here and there where once there were whole groves; so dry and hot the plains are, descending down to Salem, that even the electricity pylons seem to be melting. Somewhere far down south, they say, and it could almost be a legend, long long way down south, they say, runs the mighty Cauvery roaring with torrents of water. They also say, and this must certainly be a wicked rumour to tease a dry-land folk, that a canal is to be built, that a long line of concrete pipes is to be laid to haul up the river northwards and make the red earth sprout green. Northwards? Can anything settle the dust that hangs about the granite country up there? Great boulders lie scattered, as if some prehistoric creature has wreaked havoc, got lazy, and become extinct, leaving the modern monsters of Gita Granite Mills to do the clearing up. Day in and out, heavy machines imported from Germany blast, split, cut and crush block after block off the rock-face. The air rings with the grind and groan and is thick with a grey dust that makes one’s nostrils tingle and one’s chest ache from dry coughs.
So, as they grow weary of looking to the South for waters that never come, or, as waiting for the noise of granite-crunching in the north to cease, they grow tired of longing for the promised land that lies west amid wooded hills but too too far to reach, Hemagiri folk set their sights firmly to the east; for there, half way up the mountain, forever shrouded in a gentle blue mist, rests their one comfort, one hope, one lasting source of joy: for there, in the mutt beside the Jyotirlingam Temple where Shiva is manifest as a pillar of light, dwells that living embodiment of Shiva, Jagadguru Chidananda Swami, affectionately known as Chinnaswami. What if the land is dry, the town dishevelled and people poor? They have their guru and the whole world comes to sit at his feet and lap up the nectar of wisdom that falls from his lips. And there is a lot of activity in and around the temple this morning, as you can see from Nayar’s tea-stall, or better still, from the tamarind tree, which is where that boy Ambi is at the moment, perched on the topmost branch with a pair of binoculars and looking eastwards.
Krishnan Nayar spots the Mysore Express groaning uphill. The verandah has been washed, but no plates or water-glasses are ready yet for the late-breakfast clients who will disembark from that bus.
‘Ambi! Eh, boy! Where have you gone, you rascal, just when folks are wanting their food, where you disappear, you Saturn’s own?’
The boy replies from the top of the tree: ‘Just one minute, father!’
Nayar rises from his seat by the till, comes down the steps and looks up. His well-trimmed moustache quivers as he shouts.
‘Come down at once! What are you doing up there? Where did you steal those binoculars from? You rascal, wait till I get my hands on you!’
‘—What’s up, Nayar!’ Palani Pillai, the sawmill proprietor, puffs up the steps, hauling on the pillar of the verandah as he propels his claypot of a paunch forward. He is accompanied by a less stocky and deceptively younger silk-merchant, Govindan Chetty: Chetty can pass as not yet forty until he removes his turban to expose an oval head that is totally hairless. No one can tell whether that smooth dark sheen is due to premature baldness or the consequence of obligatory head-shaving for the frequent vows and pilgrimages that Chetty undertakes. The two worthies of the town always manage to reach Nayar’s tea-stall at the same time each morning. Neither would admit to it, though everyone can see that they keep close watch on each other; there is between them the warmth and jealousy of sparring partners.
Ambi darts down the branches, nimble as a monkey.
‘I never do stealing, father. These are Sethu’s. He lent them to me, when he came for his bicycle.’
‘His bicycle! Has he bought it?’ Nayar quickly runs a check on the array of brightly-polished Hercules bicycles, lined up like sentinels against the verandah, waiting to be hired. ‘Do you think we are a charity here? What have you been up to? Lending free-of-charge again? If that Sethu doesn’t pay up, I shall twist these ugly big ears of yours right off! —Sitting up a tree like a baboon at this time of the morning!’
Ambi ducks from under his father’s menacing forearm and runs to the table where Pillai and Chetty are seated. ‘Usual, sirs?’
Pillai rinses his mouth with the water that Ambi has poured into a tumbler before him and spits out chewed betel-leaves and nuts, targeting the base of the plantain trees. ‘No vadai today, just the idli. Make sure the coffee is well-sugared! And what have you been up to, boy?’
‘They are letting the temple elephant out today. I was watching.’
‘—Are they now?’ Govindan Chetty cranes his neck forward. ‘Not making monkey-mischief, boy? You know about the boy who cried "Tiger! tiger!" too often? You know what happened to him?’ With each question, it looks as if Chetty’s prominent Adam’s apple is going to pop right out of his scrawny neck.
Ambi backs away a little. ‘No mischief, sir! It is true. Sethu told me. Sethu knows.’
‘Sure he knows. If the son of the steward at the ashram doesn’t know, who else will? But why? Why are they letting Raja out at this time of year? Why, I ask.’ Chetty looks around before proceeding. ‘Pillai! Did you hear what I hear? A whole bunch of white men are newly arrived at the Fort Hotel.’
Pillai shakes his top towel dismissively and concentrates on cooling his coffee, pouring it in and out of a deep saucer. ‘White men! There are always white men hanging about our Swami. They must be running out of gurus in their country. Why else they want to come all this way, leaving wife and children? There was a time when they couldn’t be stopped selling their gods to us. How they expected anyone to go to them after all the bad names they called us I never know. Now they are after our gods, our guru. Times are changing!’
Chetty’s eyes sparkle: his cue has come. He removes his turban and wipes off the beads of perspiration glistening on his dome. ‘Times are surely changing. There was a time when no white man could enter our temples. Now they trample all over, socks and all. Bad, very bad!’ Chetty shakes his head and loudly slurps down his coffee. ‘Eh, Ambi! Get me another coffee, nicely sugared this time—the last one was bitter.’ He clears his throat loudly and stretches his sparse body as well as he can to fill the chair. As usual, his meaningful cough brings everyone’s attention to him. ‘Bad time, I say, bad time for letting an elephant out. Elephants have long memories. Do you know what happened in Colombo a-while ago?’
Nayar looks up from counting money and frowns, his thick eyebrows knitting, aligning themselves to the curve of his moustache. ‘No Colombo-talk here! Haven’t I enough trouble without you folk talking of Colombo, Eelam, Tigers and such? I run a neutral tea-stall. Neutral. —All understand?’
Govindan Chetty throws his arms out in a gesture of disengagement. ‘Right you are! We all like neutral. Our Panditji was always for neutral. There was not another like him. You are right! But I am talking no politics. I am wanting to tell you a simple story, an elephant story! If no one wants to know, I’ll shut up.’
Ambi places the second coffee before him. ‘Please, Chettiar! Tell us the story! —Please, father, let’s have the story!’
Pillai yawns. ‘Make it short. If I wait for one of your epics, my business’ll go phut. Hurry up with it!’
Chetty cracks his bony knuckles leisurely.
‘Well, the story goes like this—except it’s no story, it is true. There was this mahout in Colombo. Expert trainer of elephant he was—’
Pillai snorts, his mockery shuddering down several chins. ‘Expert, indeed! I know what the rogues do! Torture the poor creatures! All right, go on! Let’s hear the worst!’
‘Well, this mahout, this "expert-rogue" as our Pillai here rightly says, could make the elephant do as he pleased and always rewarded him with a bunch of bananas. All is well. Then one day, this white woman comes. The mahout gives order to the elephant to bow down before her, so she can climb on him and have a ride. The elephant doesn’t white woman too! So he prods him with his stick hard behind his ears, three times, like this!’ Chetty pulls Ambi to him and thrusts a drumstick of an index finger behind the boy’s left ear. Ambi squeals but Chetty ignores the boy and continues. ‘The elephant obeys. The woman climbs up and has a nice ride. Her spectacles fall off. The elephant picks them up and gives them back to her. She is pleased. The mahout is pleased. Everyone claps. The elephant is so good, he gets double bunch of bananas, and, then—’ Chetty pauses and takes a deep breath, and the whites of his eyes flash wide. ‘And the next morning when the mahout gives him the usual bananas, the elephant picks him up and dashes him to the ground. The mahout’s dead. End of story.’
Pillai mops himself and heaves himself up. ‘Told you! White people and elephants. Nothing but bad comes of that! To humiliate a sacred elephant like that, as if he were some bazaar-monkey playing tricks! That mahout had it coming to him, foolish fellow! Now what would these white men want with our Raja? —Look who’s coming!’
Chetty gets up and joins him. ‘Minor Murali! What brings him back to town, I wonder? And a brand new motorcycle!’
Minor Murali, equally notorious as ‘Motor-Cycle Murali’, a well-built man in his mid-forties, dressed all in black—black trousers, black leather-jacket, dark glasses and black-rimmed helmet—roars up the hill and halts before the tea-stall. He takes off his helmet and glasses, and surveys them all with restless eyes, like some large bird of prey that has reluctantly given up soaring the skies and has decided to swoop down for a few pickings.
All fall silent. Nayar is the first to speak.
‘What would sir like? Something to eat? Or drink?’
‘Any decent cigarettes?’
‘Most certainly, sir! Camel brand!’
‘Is that the best you have? Any papers?’
Nayar shouts across to Ambi. ‘Eh, boy! Can you hear, you lazy donkey? Find sir a good paper!’
‘—What paper dorai like to read?’ Ambi chooses his words carefully, for he isn’t sure whether he is expected to collect any money from this awesome figure about whom he has heard many tales from his friend Sethu, who has him for uncle.
‘Daily Telegraph ’ll do.’
Ambi finds the day’s issue. Minor Murali flicks it open, scrutinizes it rapidly and flings it back. He moves to go, and then turns back to throw some coins at Ambi. Watching the boy catch the money, Minor Murali’s grim-set features relax into a smile. He calls to the boy as he remounts the motorbike. ‘You’re quick. You should play cricket. I’ll teach you. Come and see me sometime!’
As soon as the motorbike disappears, leaving a trail of dust and smoke, Nayar turns an irate eye on his son.
‘Don’t you go anywhere near that profligate! You hear me? He’s nothing but trouble. You hear, boy? Cricket, indeed!’
‘—Well,well!’ Pillai sits down again. ‘Not seen him for a while. I wonder what he’s up to now?’
Govindan Chetty leans over the table and whispers. ‘You saw him with that paper? Did you see what I saw?’
Nayar smells gossip and is peeved at being left out. ‘Out with it, Chetty! You think I can’t hear? Why all this whispering? We’re all friends here.’
‘Nothing much.’ Chetty shrugs his bony shoulders.
Pillai laughs out loud. ‘You and your guesses! One day they’ll land you in real trouble. Did you hear what he’s saying?’
Nayar’s light-brown eyes gleam with suspicion.
‘What?’
‘That our Minor Murali is gun-running for the Tamil Tigers!’
Nayar flares up. ‘Eelam again! There’s police all over the Fort. I tell you once again, never ever—’
Pillai intervenes. ‘Calm down, Nayar! Chetty here is talking nonsense. The only thing that Minor Murali scours a paper for is horses. He won’t rest till he melts down all his father’s fortune. That poor saintly wife of his! What she has to put up with. It’s a pity, a pity!’
‘—He must be coming down, Raja must be! Everyone’s running down the hill!’ An excited Ambi is calling from the tamarind tree. ‘Can I go and see, father? Please, just this once!’
‘Go! Go, you good-for-nothing! But be back with money from that Sethu! Tell him he can pay up, now that his uncle’s back.’
* * *
As Ambi cycles up the curve from Amman Street at the bottom of the hill, he can hear the crowd in the temple above chanting victory slogans:
‘Jai-Gaja-Raja, Jai-Gaja-Raja, Jai, Jai!
‘Jai-Gaja-Raja, Jai-Gaja-Raja, Jai, Jai!
‘Rajaati-Raja, Jai, Jai!
‘Jai-Gaja-Raja . . .’
—Clunk!
The chains come off the legs of the temple elephant. His skin looks sore where they have weighted him down for months. The mahout’s all kindness this morning: not since Arudra Festival in December has Raja been fed such huge lumps of moist jaggery. Raja lifts one forefoot first, then the other, shaking off the straw that clings to the leathery folds of his ankles. His trunk swings upwards: he smells freedom.
Someone shouts: ‘Jagadguru Chidananda Swami!’
The response is louder than before: ‘Jai! Jai!’
The mahout, already on top, helps to hoist up the priest. Musicians lead the way: first the nadaswaram player piping a staccato melody, then the tubby tavilwan, who thumps out an energetic flourish, sweat pouring down his bare back, his tufted hair tumbling free as his head shakes in time to his vigorous beats. The procession moves out of the hall, past the outer corridors and out through the south gopuram, into the narrow, tree-lined street that winds downhill. Shrill, rhythmic clangs from cycle rickshaws and raspy whines from scooters join with the chants and the music. The procession moves slowly, for their way is frequently blocked by recalcitrant bullock carts and smoke-spewing lorries; yet the jeeps and vans that precede the elephant crawl backwards, as if in deference to the beast’s holiness. One such van has its own white mahout, perched on the roof, denim-clad, his eyes glued to the viewfinder of a camera.
A large-boned Englishman in dark glasses and white beret puts his head out of the window of the van, screws his face up in an aborted sneeze, and calls.
‘— Keep rolling, Cooper! Get as many of the crowd as you can! Zoom in on that child on her father’s shoulders—there, right by the elephant!—And that old man on the bench outside the bidi shop! Faces and more faces!’
Jonathan Bexley, known to his team as JB, producer, director and chief interviewer for NAP (New Age Pilgrim Films) is delighted. He could not have wished for a better turnout. He removes his beret and runs his fingers through a mop of straight, sandy hair, and sneezes again. As his watery-blue eyes scan the crowd for that look, that smile, and that unique oriental blend of joy and wanness, his chapped lips shape a thin smile. It is hard to tell from the rapture on the faces in the crowd what they find more exciting: the rare event of an elephant procession, or the white men with their cameras and microphones. The primary school has declared a holiday and the street is full of children in colourful clothes, accompanied by their doughty parents. Their wide-eyed wonder should give these frames just that lightness and brightness which may or may not be there in what is to follow. So far, so good. If his cold doesn’t get worse and his temper keeps even, if the elephant proves as reliable as the mahout claims him to be, they should be able to get the whole thing down in a take or two. If the elephant proves difficult, then they’ll have to hunt around for a circus animal. Or he may have to drop the whole notion—though that would be a pity. He mightn’t light on another concept to match this in inspiration or verve. The moment his assistant Carol came up with the information that the choice of the next guru had fallen to the whim of the temple elephant, he had to do it this way, and no other. He can see it now, the first episode of his as yet untitled documentary on the lives and times of a great guru: ‘A Jumbo Choice’. Perhaps he should have listened to that young man Sethu, and put in a prayer or two at a suitable shrine before they began shooting. Not being a praying man these days, JB clenches and unclenches his fists to avert potential disaster. He can feel another sneeze working its way up his watery nostrils. He has heard it said that in this region a single sneeze bodes ill, and a double one a blessing.
The procession turns into Amman Street. The way is blocked by a group of children playing hopscotch. At a light touch from the mahout, Raja stops before the third house. The children scatter—all except two, a nine-year old boy in baggy khaki shorts, and his companion, a bright-eyed girl in a red cotton skirt and pigtail. At another prod from the mahout—this time on his left flank, below the ear—Raja lifts his trunk and grabs the rose garland that the priest extends to him.
Raja treads over the lines of the hopscotch, obliterating the ‘houses’ as he moves towards the boy in khaki. The music gets louder. The girl in red screams. The crowd shouts ‘Jai! Jai!’ JB holds his breath. The elephant takes his time, swings the garland up, scans the space before him, and, after a precise thrust from the mahout, lowers the garland round the boy’s neck. At a further signal from the mahout, Raja curves his trunk round the boy and lifts him up towards the priest. The priest gives the cue for a new chant and the crowd shouts: ‘Jaya Guru, Jaya Guru, Jai, Jai!’
So it had been that the twenty-first successor to His Holiness Jagadguru Brahmananda Swami, head monk of Sankara Ashram, was chosen, by a sacred elephant. A bewildered, thumb-sucking boy of no particular distinction had been lifted out of his game of hopscotch to fulfil his predestined role as jagadguru, ‘world teacher’. Thanks to the white man and his film crew, Hemagiri folk can once again re-live and rejoice in an event that took place some forty years back. Women prostrate themselves before the boy guru-elect. Young men and boys fall to clapping and whistling, while the older ones look on, stern and unsmiling.
‘Cut!’ JB’s nostrils flare red. ‘Shh . . . t.’ He snarls at the crowd. ‘The cretins! Didn’t Sethu instruct them? —Cooper!’
‘Yes, JB!’ The young man in denim replies without moving his eyes off from the viewfinder.
‘Can you save it? Who asked them to clap and grin and fool around like this? Everything’s just an amusement to them. The stupid lot!’
‘You can relax, JB. It’s O.K. Carol can doctor it.’
‘Thank God!’
Cameraman Cooper looks round, grinning. ‘Which God?’
JB’s response gets lost in the convulsive burst of yet another mighty sneeze.
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