River of Gods (54 page)

Mamata Ray sets her cup on the table turning it on the saucer so the
handle faces exactly to the left. Gardeners and houseboys lean close,
anticipating action. The rising wind tugs at their turbans and
tassles.

"I argued against it, you know. The decision to split the
business. That may surprise you. I argued against it because of you,
Vishram. I thought you would waste it, throw it away. I am no
different from Govind in that. Your father alone had faith. He was
always so interested in what you were doing in that terrible Scottish
country. He did quite respect you for having the courage of your own
convictions—you always had, Vishram. I said I had no head for
business, maybe it is people I have no head for, my own sons. Maybe I
am too old to change my opinions."

Mamata Ray looks up. Vishram feels rain on his face. He sets down his
cup—the tea is cold, bitter—and the malis lift first it,
then the table. The rain drops heavily on the bougainvillea leaves.

"Your father is doing puja at the Kali temple at Mirzapur,"
Mamata Ray calls back from the rear of the procession of garden
furniture. The rain is heavy but not so loud as to mask the sound of
aircraft engines on approach. "He does puja for the end of an
age. Siva's foot is descending. The dance begins. We have been given
over to the goddess of destruction."

As they reach the safety of the east veranda the clouds burst.
Thunder blares as the tilt-jet comes in over the water garden.
Navigation lights turn the pelting drops into a curtain as the
engines swivel into descent mode and the wheels lower towards Ram
Das' shaved turf. The garden staff shield their eyes.

"Then again, you were right, I always was a flash bastard,"
Vishram says to his mother and dashes through the rain, collar of his
good suit pulled up, towards his transport. Marianna Fusco waves
excitedly from the rear seat.

Old Shastri leads Vishram and Marianna Fusco up the steep galls of
Mirzapur. The laneways are narrow and dark and smell of piss and old
joss. Kids fall in behind the little procession as it trudges up from
the concrete ghats. Vishram glances back at the tilt-jet on the river
beach. The pilot has taken his helmet off and sits on the sand a
respectful distance from the fuel tanks smoking a cigarette. The
monsoon that was breaking over Varanasi has not reached Mirzapur
sixty kilometres west. The alleys concentrate the heat into a thing
almost tangible; trash swirls in the djinns of stifling, fetid air.
Marianna Fusco climbs steadily, letting the stares of the youths and
old men slide off her peripheral vision.

The Kali temple is a marble plinth crowded in on every side by shops
selling votives and gajras and icons of the goddess custom printed
from a huge database of images. Kali is the main business of this end
of Mirzapur, a decaying rural town that missed the information
revolution and still wonders what happened. The footpaths push up
against the water-washed marble steps, even at this late hour they
are thronged with devotees. Bells clang constantly. Metal cattle
grids herd the worshippers toward the garbhagriha. A cow saunters up
and down the steps, bones moving loosely inside its bag of yellow
skin. Someone has daubed red and yellow tikka paste between its
horns.

"I'll stay here," Marianna Fusco says. "Someone's got
to mind those shoes." Vishram understands the apprehension in
her voice. This is a place outside her experience. It is essentially,
inexplicably Indian. It makes no concessions to any other
sensibilities; all the contradictions and contraries of Bharat are
made incarnate in this place of love and devotion to the wrathful
manifestation of primal femininity. Black Kali with her garland of
heads and terrible swift sword. Even Vishram feels a clench of the
alien in his stomach as he ducks under the lintel adorned with
musician Mahavidyas, the ten wisdoms that emanate from the yoni of
the black goddess.

Shastri remains with Marianna Fusco. Vishram is absorbed into the
stream of pilgrims, shuffling through the maze. The temple is low,
smoky, claustrophobic. Vishram salutes the sadhus, receives their
tilaks for a handful of rupees. The garbhagriha is minute, a narrow
slit of a coffin where the black, goggle-eyed image is smothered
under swags of marigold garlands. The narrow passage is almost
impassable from the crowd pressing around the sanctuary, thrusting
their hands through the yonic slit to light incense, offers libations
of milk and blood and red-dyed ghee. Thirsty Kali demands seven
litres of blood every day. Goats provide it now in sophisticated
urban centres like Mirzapur. Vishram's eyes meet those of the goddess
that see past present future, piercing all illusion. Darshan. The
surge of people whirls him on. Thunder shakes the temple. The monsoon
has come westward. The heat is intense. The bells clang. The devotees
chant hymns.

Vishram finds his father in a black windowless subtemple. He almost
stumbles over him in the deep darkness. Vishram puts out his hand to
steady himself, pulls it back from the lintel, wet. Blood. The floor
is thick with ash. As his eyes adjust he sees a rectangular pit in
the centre of a room. SmasanaKali is also goddess of the ghats. This
is a cremation house. Ranjit Ray sits cross-legged among the ashes.
He wears the sadhu's dhoti and shawl and red Kali tikka. His skin is
grey with vibhuti; the white sacred ash streaks his hair and stubble.
To Vishram this is not his father. This is a thing you see sitting by
a street shrine, sprawling naked in a temple doorway; an alien from
another world.

"Dad?"

Ranjit Ray nods. "Vishram. Sit, sit." Vishram looks around
but there is nowhere but ash. It's probably a worldly thing to worry
about your suit. Then again he is worldly enough to know he can get
another one. He sits down by his father. Thunder shakes the temple.
The bell clangs, the devotees pray.

"Dad, what are you doing here?"

"Puja for the end of an age."

"This is a terrible place."

"It's meant to be. But the eye of faith sees differently and to
me it seems not so terrible. It's right. Fitting."

"Destruction, Dad?"

"Transformation. Death and rebirth. The wheel turns."

"I'm buying Ramesh out," Vishram announces sitting barefoot
among the ashes of the dead "That will give me two thirds
control over the company and freeze out Govind and his Western
partners. I'm not asking you, I'm telling you."

Vishram sees a flicker of old worldliness in his father's eyes.

"I'm sure you can guess where the money's come from."

"My good friend Chakraborty."

"You know who—or what, rather—is behind him?"

"I do."

"How, long have you known?"

"From the start. Odeco contacted me when we embarked on the
zero-point project. Chakraborty was admirably direct."

"It was a hell of a risk, if the Krishna Cops had ever found
out. Ray Power, power with conscience, treading lightly on the earth,
all that?"

"I see no contradiction. These are living creatures, sentient
creatures. We owe them a duty of care. Some of the grameen bankers."

"Creatures. You said creatures there."

"Yes I did. There seem to be three Generation Three aeais, but
of course their subjective universes do not necessarily overlap
though they may share some subroutines. Odeco I believe is a common
channel between at least two of them."

"Chakraborty called the Odeco aeai Brahma."

Ranjit Ray gives a small knowing smile.

"Did you ever meet with Brahma?"

"Vishram, what would there be to meet with? I met men in suits,
I talked to faces on the phone. Those faces may have been real, they
may have been Brahma, they may have been its manifestations. Can one
meet a distributed entity in any meaningful sense?"

"Did they ever say why they wanted to fund the zero-point
project?"

"You will not understand it. I do not understand it."

Lightning momentarily flashes up the inside of the cremation chamber.
Thunder comes hard and heavy on it; strange winds stir the ash.

"Tell me."

Vishram's palmer calls. He grimaces in exasperation. Devotees glare
at the interruption of profanity in their sanctum. High-priority
call. Vishram flicks to audio only. When Marianna Fusco has finished
speaking he slides the little device into an inside pocket.

"Dad, we have to leave now."

Ranjit Ray frowns.

"I can't understand what you are saying."

"We have to leave right now. It's not safe here. The Awadhis
have captured the Kunda Khadar dam. Our soldiers have surrendered.
There's nothing between them and Allahabad. They could be here in
twenty-four hours. Dad, you're coming with me. There're spare seats
on the plane. All this has to stop now, you're an important man with
an international reputation."

Vishram stands, offers a hand down to his father.

"No, I will not come and I will not be ordered around like some
doting widow by my own son. I have made my decision, I have walked
away and I will not go back. I cannot go back; that Ranjit Ray does
not exist any more."

Vishram shakes his head in exasperation.

"Dad."

"No. Nothing will happen to me. The Bharat they have invaded is
not the one I live in. They cannot touch me. Go. Go on, you go."
He pushes at his son's knees. "There are things you must do, go
on. Nothing must happen to you. I will pray for you, you will be kept
safe. Now go." Ranjit Ray closes his eyes, turns a blind, deaf
face.

"I will come back."

"You won't find me. I don't want to be found. You know what you
have to do." As Vishram ducks under the blood-daubed lintel his
father calls out. "I was going to tell you. Odeco, Brahma, the
aeai—what it's looking for in the zero-point project. A way
out. Out there in all those manifolds of M-Star theory there is a
universe where it and those of its kind can exist, live free and
safe, and we will never find them. And that is why I am here in this
temple, because I want to see the look on Kali's face when her age
comes to an end."

The rain is falling steadily as Vishram leaves the temple. The marble
is greasy with water and dust. The narrow lanes around the temple
still throng with people but the street spirit has changed. It is not
the zeal of religious devotion, nor is it the communal celebration of
rain falling on a drought dry city. Word of the humiliation at Kunda
Khadar has passed into general circulation and the galis swarm with
brahmins and widows in white and Kali devotees in red and angry young
males in Big Label jeans and very fresh shirts. They peer up at
television screens or tear hardcopies from printers or cluster round
rickshaw radios or boys with news-feeds to their palmers. The noise
in the streets rises as news spreads into rumour into misinformation
into slogans. Bharat's bold jawans defeated. The Glory of Bharat
crushed. Awadhi divisions already driving around the Allahabad ring
road. The sacred soil invaded. Who will save? Who will avenge?
Jivanjee Jivanjee Jivanjee! Warrior-karsevaks march to sweep back the
invader in waves of their own blood. The Shivaji will redeem the
shame of the Ranas.

"Where's your father?

Rickshaw drivers shove around Vishram as he pulls on his shoes. "He's
not coming with me."

"I did not think he would, Mr. Ray." Strange to hear those
words from Shastri. Mister. Ray.

"Then can I suggest we get out of here because I feel very white
and very Western and very female," says Marianna Fusco. The
steep lanes are streaming and treacherous with rain. "How is it
with you things always end in a riot?" Marianna Fusco asks but
the spirit on the street is jabbing, ugly, contagious. Vishram can
see the tilt-jet on the beach between the overhanging buildings.
Behind him a crash; voices lift into panic. He turns to see a tin
samosa cart spilled on its side, its cargo of spicy triangles
scattered across the gali, hot oil spreading across the shallow
steps. A touch from the lighted gas burner; fire fills the narrow
alley. Cries, shrieks.

"Come on." Vishram takes Marianna's elbow and hurries her
down the steps.

The pilot has the engines warmed up as Vishram and Marianna dive into
their seats behind him. Shastri steps back out of the blast pattern
of the jets, hands raised in blessing. The tilt-jet lifts through the
downpour as the people come pouring down the steps like rats rushing
to water, waving lathis and picking up sticks and stones to throw at
the alien, the invader. The pilot is already too high. He turns his
ship and Vishram sees the fire as a pool of heat, spreading from
building to building like liquid, undaunted by the rain.

"The Age of Kali," he whispers. The lowest throw of the
dice when human discord and corruption abounds and heaven is closed,
when the ears of the gods are deaf and entropy is maximum and there
is no hope to speak of. When the earth is destroyed by fire and
water, Vishram thinks as the tilt-jet slips into horizontal flight,
when time stops and the universe is born anew.

Outside the arch the rain falls like a curtain and Lisa Durnau is on
her third gin. She sits on the wicker chair on the marble cloister.
The only others on the terrace are two men in cheap suits and
sandals, taking tea. From this vantage she can cover main gate and
reception desk. The noise of the rain on the tired stone is
incredible. It is some storm, even by Midwestern standards. Lightning
and everything.

Empty again. She signs to the waiter. They are all young, shy Nepalis
dressed as Rajputs, in Bharati Varanasi. She cannot work that. She
cannot work most anything up here in the black north. She had just
been getting the beautiful civilised south and its soft anarchy then
she was set down in the middle of a nation and a city that looked the
same and dressed the same but was in every way different.