The Great Indian Novel (24 page)

Out of view of her rumbustious cousins, Duryodhani tiptoes to her sleeping victim. She looks around her: not a leaf stirs. She drops a pebble on his chest, to find out whether he might lightly wake. When this provokes no change in the rhythm of his heavy breathing, she tries a larger, sharper stone. Still there is no reaction. Now acting with unpractised efficiency, she bends to thrust an umbrella under Bhim’s bulk. Using it as a lever, and with surprising strength for one of her frame, she topples him with a splash into the river.

Imagine it, Ganapathi, as a silent film of the 1920s. There stands Priya Duryodhani, a thin cotton dress on her bony frame, contemplating for one jerky moment of uncertainty the riverine ripples eddying from her action. Then it is all swift movement. She looks around with a rapidity only the celluloid of the era can record, to ensure that no one has seen her. Satisfied - imagine the close-up, Ganapathi, at that firmly set mouth, those grim thin lips, that determined face with its blazing eyes - Duryodhani slips quickly away.

You can invent the caption to that shot, young Ganapathi. Bhim has sunk like a boulder; with the poison also working its way inside him, it is a reasonably safe bet that he will not resurface alive. ‘A job well done!’ the titles would say on the screen. Fade and dissolve, to Duryodhani returning to join the others, her expression giving nothing away. Years later an American Secretary of State would sigh with regret at the loss that Priva Duryodhani’s political success had meant to the world of poker.

But no, Ganapathi, do not fear the worst. A reasonably safe bet, it certainly was; but she was quickly to learn that with the Pandavas there are no reasonably safe bets.

Pan our film back to the shot of the riverside. As Bhim rolls into the water - slowly here, it is over in an instant - he is bitten by a venomous snake. Thus does Fate protect her favourites, Ganapathi, for the scheming Priya Dury-odhani had poured the contents of a poisonous snake-bite antidote into her victim’s lunch. The sharp fangs wake Bhim from his drugged stupor just as the serpent’s venom encounters its antidote in his bloodstream - and neutralizes it. Bhim, instantly awake and cured, takes a deep breath as he goes under, comes back to the surface and swims back to the shore in a few strong strokes. Applause, Ganapathi, from the cinema floor, from the youths in the 25-paise seats. Cat calls and cheers as Bhim hauls his bulk out of the water and wrings his singlet dry.

Cut! Turn to Priya Duryodhani, twelve years old, and cheated of her best birthday present. As the screen fills with her sallow face Duryodhani does not betray the slightest hint of astonishment when Bhim rejoins her group), soaking and as large - quite literally - as life. ‘Been taking a swim, brother?’ she asks casually, her heart pounding for fear that he had seen her.

Bhim laughs, his customary reaction to most questions. ‘Must have dozed off and rolled into the river in my sleep,’ he says, tossing water off his forelocks. ‘Unless one of you . . .’ but he dismisses the unspoken thought with another laugh, and any fears of discovery that Duryodhani may have are soon drowned in the squeals of the others as Bhim proceeds to chase them towards the river for a fraternal dunking.

There I must end our little film sequence. But you see what I mean, Ganapathi. Priya Duryodhani acted only according to the dictates of her own conscienceless mind. Even at the age of twelve, overkill was already her problem.

Perhaps things might have been different had Dhritarashtra taken her in hand, rather than his pen. But he did not, and there is no point in speculating about what might have happened if he had. History, after all, is full of ifs and buts. I prefer, Ganapathi, to seek other conjunctions with destiny.

With their father away on political errands or in prison, the Pandavas also lacked a stable paternal presence in the home. Kunti was determined not to let them suffer in this regard, and began looking for a regular tutor to take them in hand. But the wilful boys proved more than a handful for the various forlorn Bachelors of Arts Kunti engaged, and after several such failures she realized they would only respect a tutor they chose themselves. Yet none of the prospective candidates who answered her advertisements met with the boys’ approval, and Kunti despaired of ever finding them a suitable guru.

One day the Pandavas were playing their favourite sport - cricket, of course, Ganapathi: that most Indian of organized pastimes, with its bewilder-ingly complex rules that are reduced in practice to utter simplicity, its underlying assumption of social order, its range and subtlety that so suit our national temperament - when a mighty swipe by Bhim sent the ball high over the others’ heads, soaring out of the ground and landing with a loud splash in a disused well. Five sheepish ex-princelings were soon gathered round the brick structure, helplessly watching the red cork-and-leather object float twenty feet below-them. It was a sheer drop; the fungus- and slime-covered wall offered no purchase, no crevice or projection, for a descent down its slippery side. There was not even a bucket attached to the threadbare rope that dangled uselessly from the wooden cross-beam above the well. The boys leaned despairingly over the edge, seeing their prospects of an innings ebbing with the water around their irretrievable ball.

‘What have you lost, sons of Hastinapur?’ asked a gravelly voice. They turned, startled, to discover a saffron-robed sadhu, his full beard still more black than grey, the staff and bowl of his calling in each hand, surveying them with an amused smile.

‘Our ball,’ replied Yudhishtir, the most direct. ‘But how do you know who we are?’

‘I know a great deal, my boys,’ came the answer. ‘A ball, eh?’ He looked with casual curiosity into the well. ‘Is that all? You call yourselves Kshatriyas, and you can’t even recover a ball from a well?’

‘Actually, we don’t call ourselves Kshatriyas, because our family doesn’t believe in the caste system,’ Yudhishtir replied, revealing yet again the obsessive earnestness, the desire to lay all his cards on the table face up, that was to become his best-known characteristic.

‘And if you think we’re so stupid, can you do any better?’ asked Bhim a little more aggressively.

‘Why, certainly, if you wish,’ the sadhu said, unoffended by the challenge. ‘But my services don’t come for nothing. If I can get your ball out for you, will you give me dinner tonight?’

‘Just dinner?’ Yudhishtir asked in surprise. ‘I’m sure we can offer you something that will last longer than that.’

‘Dinner will do for now,’ the saffroned savant smiled. ‘A sadhu’s lot is a hungry one.’

He reached up for the old rope hanging above them, which in better days would have carried a bucket into the depths.

‘If that’s your plan, forget it,’ said Arjun, who had so far remained silent. The rope is old and frayed. We’ve already worked out that it won’t support the weight of one of us, let alone an adult like you.’

The sadhu gave him a darting, sidelong look, as if briefly acknowledging the perspicacity of the speaker. But he did not reply, and the smile was still on his face as he looped one end of the rope and balanced the decaying hemp in his hand. Then, with the briefest of glances at the position of the ball, he tossed the rope in a casual curve into the water, tightening the loop as it landed. When he hauled the rope up, the ball, its redness dulled by the soaking, was safely imprisoned in the knot he had made.

As the boys stared at him in astonished gratitude, he slipped the ball free and tossed it to Yudhishtir. ‘Next time,’ he said, sounding at last like a sage, be more careful.’

‘That’s fantastic!’ the twins exclaimed in one breath. ‘Can you teach us how to do that, sir?’

‘Don’t be silly, Nakul and Sahadev,’ began an embarrassed Yudhishtir, turning to the sadhu. ‘Thank you, sir. . .’

‘Why not?’ the sage cheerfully addressed the little twins. ‘And many other things besides, if you’re only willing to learn.’

‘Can you teach him to bat properly?’ Nakul pointed at his twin. ‘He was out for zero again.’

‘Zero?’ the sadhu laughed. ‘Well, that is nothing to be ashamed of. The English game of cricket would never have taken shape without the Indian zero.’

‘What do you mean?’ This was Arjun, intrigued but wary.

‘It’s quite simple,’ the sadhu replied. ‘While some of our historical-scientific claims (to have discovered the secret of nuclear fission in the fourth century AD, for instance) are justly challenged by Western scholars, no one questions the fact that our ancestors were the first to conceive of the zero. Before that mathematicians, from the Arabs to the Chinese, left a blank space in their calculations; it took Indians to realize that even
nothing
can be something. Zero;
shunya,
bindu,
whatever you call it, embodies the unchanging reality of nothingness.’

‘But zero’s still zero,’ Nakul said.

The sadhu roared with laughter. ‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘The Indian zero is no empty shell. It reflects the perpetual intangibility of the eternal, it embodies the calm centre of the whirling tornado of life, it stands for the point where our verifiable values are transcended by the enigma of the void. Yes, young man, it is empty of numerical value. But it is full of non-empirical possibilities. It is nothing and everything; it is the locus of the universe.’ He chuckled at the puzzlement on the twins’ faces, even as he took in the sharper look of insight that had appeared in Arjun’s and Yudhishtir’s eyes. ‘Now do you see, my friends, why your zero is really something very special, very Indian?’

‘But can you teach him to bat?’ asked Nakul, as his elder brothers burst out laughing.

‘Perhaps,’ side-stepped the sage. ‘But first, what about that dinner?’

So they took him home, Ganapathi, and sat around him in an adoring semicircle as he deftly did justice to an appetite as prodigious as his skills. In between courses, he told Kunti and the Pandavas his story.

‘My name is Jayaprakash Drona,’ he said. ‘I was born a Brahmin, and believed from my youth in the great tradition of Brahmin learning, unrelated to any profession or material gain. When I felt ready I took leave of my family and, adopting the robes of a mendicant, set forth into the world. All my knowledge and skills I acquired from a rishi at the foot of the Himalayas, and as for my food, I was given whatever I wanted by those to whom I extended my empty bowl, since I believed, in the tradition of our great sages, that my material needs were irrelevant, for a Brahmin’s upkeep is the responsibility of society. Having learned all that my rishi had to teach me, and upon his advice, I returned to the plains, there to impart some of my learning to those who sought it, asking in exchange nothing more than the occasional bowl of rice and dal.

‘In the course of my wanderings I came across an Englishman, who was then visiting the remote district in which I happened to be travelling. He was a civil servant sent out to administer justice in a complicated matter involving land. (How ironic, is it not, my sister, that the British, those great usurpers of land in this country, presume to tell us Indians what to do with the little they have left us?) Anyway, this Englishman clearly found his stay onerous and had little to do in his spare time in that place, until he chanced upon me. He spoke our language, after a fashion, and we talked. He professed interest in our ancient practices and customs, our traditional knowledge and skills. I answered his questions, and he seemed greatly interested in what I had to tell him. During the time that he remained in that district I saw him for at least an hour every day. When he left he said that he owed all that he knew of India to me, and that he would never forget it. He gave me his personal card and said that if ever I needed assistance I should not hesitate to call on him.

‘It was not long after that I found a good woman to bear me a son. I called him Ashwathaman, and his birth obliged me, if not to settle down, at least to acquire a dwelling where I could leave him as I set forth each day. The responsibilities of parenthood are not meant for us who have taken saffron; and yet I must confess that my son became the be-all of my life, much as I imagine these fine young boys are to you, sister.