White Man Falling (26 page)

“Very good,” DDR is saying, “crowd is massive! Swamiji guru, you are not realizing the effect you are having! You are all humility. If I do not help you, what would happen?
They are loving you so much that they would tear your arms and legs off.”

The convoy travels at a crawling pace through Mullaipuram’s hysteria, while garlands rain down on the Mercedes like some kind of supernatural hailstorm. Swami looks out of the window, his
attention pitched in a very curious place, a distant contrary place of amazement and apathy. Onlookers are shrieking and shouting and crying. He isn’t really taking in what DDR is saying. He
is resigned to his fate.

“…not possible to go to your little bungalow today,” DDR is saying.

“But – we want to go home now,” Kamala says, plaintively.

“Daughter, I understand, but look out of the window, Daughter! It is like this at your dwelling place also, there are thousands of people swarming there waiting for the guru. If we arrive
there it will be complete chaos, they will rip your Appa apart out of their overwhelming adoration for him, we will never get you inside, and if we get you in we will never keep all these people
out.”

“But – we – I want to see my Amma and my sisters,” Kamala protests, her eyes filling with tears.

“Yes Daughter, I know, don’t worry, you are very good girl, but your respected Amma and sisters are not there.”

“Where are they? Saar, where are they? Appa, where is Amma?”

“Please don’t be worried Daughter, no no, no need for tears!” DDR laughs uneasily, as Swami’s slow and undemanding gaze sweeps from his anxious daughter to DDR, and then
out towards the throng they are pressing through. “Daughter, Swamiji, your family members will be waiting for you at my house. Really, I was having to rescue them. Please understand the
practicalities of this business, you have been away, you don’t know how Mullaipuram is now, it is crazy for the guru Swamiji. Life is not the same any more for the guru and his
family.”

“Appa?” Kamala pleads. She wants to go home; she wants to lie on the cement floor with her head in Jodhi’s lap as Amma scolds them from the kitchen; she wants to sew a furry
pencil case and show it to her father, gaining the approbation of his slow smiling nod, while Leela says that the pencil case is the most horrible pencil case in Tamil Nadu, and possibly in the
whole of South India. But what can Swami do? It is obvious – even to a fellow who can go hours on end without a single thought troubling his holy numbskull head – that Number 14/B is
not a viable option.

“Everything I am arranging,” DDR reassures them, “please don’t be worrying yourselves about any detail, already I have arranged for your family to be picked up, probably
they are at my house already. It is secluded secure place, you will all be safe and private there. Very big place, please don’t be anxious, I will provide best accommodation! Maybe in a few
days you can go to your little house,” DDR lies blithely.

Regardless of whether Swami is an aspect of the godhead or not – there seem to be indicators on both sides of the premise – has it got to the point of no return, this perception that
he is? Can he go back to his ordinary life one day, and be a nobody again, even a laughing stock? If he tried, who would believe him now?

* * *

Amma, Jodhi, Pushpa and Leela are waiting outside Mullaipuram Mansions with thirty or forty other people of much more impressive standing – friends and acquaintances of
DDR’s who have been arriving at his house throughout the last few hours in order to be in on the action.

“Here he is, my daughters,” Amma whispers to her brood, resplendent in her finest sari, as the cars come sweeping up the dirt drive, “imagine how he must feel!” She
blinks some tears away.

“Amma, definitely Appa is in one of the big cars?” Leela whispers fearfully; she just wants to see her daddy. Like Amma, she is whispering because she feels self-conscious in this
fine place with all these VIPs braying and milling around. Jodhi and Pushpa hold her hand, all family tensions being put on hold for this special time and momentous occasion.

Servants leap to the back doors of all three Mercedes and open them. A variety of impressive-looking personages are getting out of the cars.

Out of the first Mercedes emerges D.D. Rajendran, in his off-white Nehru suit, smiling broadly – “Friends… the guru Swamiji, he is here!” – and some North Indian
dignitary can’t help shouting “Wah wah!” – and everyone strains forwards to see the guru come out. There is something of an anti-climax as DDR turns around and finds himself
helping Kamala out after him. She looks around her, warily, and sees her three sisters surging to greet her. Amma remains behind, conscious of her dignity. The girls embrace.

“Come and see Amma,” Jodhi whispers.

“But Appa—”

“I will help him out.”

So while all eyes await the imminent discharge of Swami from the Mercedes, Kamala goes up to Amma and touches her feet in the traditional way, and then embraces her, crying, while nobody notices
or cares.

Swami still sits in the back of the car, not shifting. His mind is in its own faraway world at this moment. An image has come to him from nowhere, and this delays him somewhat. It would perhaps
be instructive to record the profundity of this experience in its every detail, alluding to the measureless interior landscapes he is traversing and the cosmic connections he is making –
except that he is wondering whether he has left his pen in the desk at Highlands.

Such natural theatrical genius, D.D. Rajendran marvels, as he waits by the open door for the guru to emerge, and as the small crowd gets ever more anxious and anticipatory.

Then,
here are my daughters
, comes to Swami, and he sticks a foot out of the car.

The crowd has been hushed by the delay. It murmurs and sways. DDR stands back and gazes at his creation, as Jodhi tugs Swami upright.

Swami feels the love of his daughters flow over him like warm fragrant water. Jodhi, Pushpa and Leela touch his feet respectfully, then cling on to him, trying not to weep but not succeeding
very well, as they steer him across to Amma, who by now is very much at the back of the crowd. As for that crowd, the murmuring and swaying starts to develop into muttering and exclaiming and
adaa-daa-daaing somewhat, and a fair portion of its individual members are gearing up to manoeuvre themselves into advantageous spots, from where they will be able to access the guru; but at the
same time, there is something fiercely powerful about the family reunion, and as Swami limps over to his wife, people hold back.

Before she looks at him, she touches his feet. It is only in the act of rising up that their gazes meet.
Here is my wife
. They hold each other’s gaze for a long while, and Amma
says “Husband” without hearing herself do it.

“Swamiji,” DDR is now saying, at his side, “Swamiji, many distinguished visitors are coming here to welcome you.”

It is not that Swami has much interest in being rude or in asserting his own autonomy; it is more that what happens is what happens. He puts his hand on Kamala’s shoulder as usual, and
Jodhi takes hold of his hanging arm tightly, and they shuffle round and begin walking into the house.

“Swamiji…”

Amma, with her arms around Pushpa and Leela, walks close behind them, head bowed.

“Swamiji,” says DDR, following up, “I am thinking you will like very much to be introduced to K.S. Ramachandran – he is the Junior Fisheries Minister from Chennai; the
Chief Minister has sent him here to see you.”

The family go through the open front door, trailed by D.D. Rajendran and some of his anxious associates.

“Shall I escort you to reception room for meeting the many prestigious admirers?” DDR tries, increasingly dismayed that this event is not panning out as he had intended. Poor old
DDR, he doesn’t understand yet that non-cooperation is a vital bit of kit in Swami’s feckless, lucky arsenal. Nobody wants a doormat for a guru.

“Saar,” Kamala says, “Appa needs a wash and a nap now, please show us a family room.”

Swami and his women abandon the notables to their own devices, even the Junior Fisheries Minister, who has been sent here by the Chief Minister to suss out how much mileage there may be in
visiting the guru during these early days of his fame.

* * *

Swami is alone with his wife and daughters in one of the rooms DDR has allocated them. He sits in an armchair, with Leela sitting on his lap. Amma and the other girls are at his
feet, cross-legged on the floor.

“Pushpa did not get very finest marks in geography test,” Amma is saying.

“It was trick question Appa, about Narmada dam.”

“Appa, you are slightly little bit less cuddly,” Leela says.

“Leela, don’t tell Appa he used to be fat.”

“I don’t want to be in this big house, I want to go home, when will we go home, Amma?”

“What are you talking about, Kamala? How can we take your beloved Appa to our little house? Police are guarding it to make sure the devotees aren’t stripping it bare!”

“But we can’t stay here for ever, Amma.”

“Yes yes, God will do everything,” Amma points out, gesturing towards her husband in a vaguely complacent fashion; she could get used to staying here for ever.

“When are they bringing more tea?” Jodhi complains. “They said they would be bringing the tea.”

“Did you ever see a room like this one?” Pushpa says, gazing around; it is far larger then the bungalow. The huge bed at one end is twice as big as Number 14/B’s kitchen, and
all four of its legs once belonged to a fierce wild elephant shot by the Maharaja of Mysore in 1907, after the animal had been rendered safe, drunk and incontinent with three gallons of toddy.
Rugs, handwoven for years on end by the nimble fingers of infant Afghanis, are scattered over the marble floor. There are antique chests and teak cupboards, idols carved from sandalwood and ivory,
and at the end where the family is gathered is a group of western-style armchairs and settees, and a vast eastern-style recliner. French windows lead to a private terrace.

“Appa, you are not smiling much, but you are feeling happy,” Jodhi says.

How should Swami respond? His speech is no better than before he died, and his inclination to employ it has become almost non-existent. After coming back from death, he doesn’t care any
more if he can’t express himself. People seem to understand this, no one seems to expect him to say anything anyway – in fact, the less he says, the more they are in awe of him. He is
content to exist in peacefulness, with his family all around him, talking their nonsense.

After a while the family decides to take a nap. The elephant-limbed bed would fit four of them, the recliner would fit three, each of the two settees could take two sisters at least… They
go to sleep on the floor, all together on a rug, Pushpa hanging on to a corner of Jodhi’s
chudidhar
, Kamala’s fingers trembling as she dreams inexplicably about playing the
piano on top of a skyscraper in New York, Amma snorting cacophonously while she dribbles onto DDR’s $14,000 antique rug, and Leela burbling her oddities – “give me a blue dust and
I’ll go,” she announces.

At some point Swami wakes up without waking up, feeling Leela’s knees twitching against the backs of his thighs. His wife and daughters are all around him, in their dream world. On the
other side of the room the white man is asleep in the vast bed.
Oh, there you are
, goes Swami, and there is a
Yes I’m here
from the sleeping white man.

Maybe there is some cosmic logic playing out in the way that Swami has ended up at D.D. Rajendran’s house. Although the banyan tree in the garden is neither so vast nor
so ancient nor so steeped in God as the one in Chennai, in the grounds of the Theosophical Society, near the bank of the Adyar river, yet it is certainly very large and very old and full of God.
Many many years ago, when Mullaipuram was little more than a stronghold next to a rock, and had no burgeoning brash developments pressing out in all directions, no soft-drinks factories
(quarter-owned by DDR) sapping the water table and ruining the farmers thereabouts, this banyan tree belonged to nobody and everybody and all the villages around. Untold thousands of home-made
religious rituals have been undertaken in the presence of its spirits. Murtis of Mariamman and many other local deities – some of them forgotten now – used to be lodged in the crevices
of its trunk and in crannies of its gnarls, placed in the whorls at its base. Long-dead mothers brought their babies here to ask for protection and prosperity; long-dead priests performed pujas for
worshippers who brought their upturned coconut halves, flames flickering within on a wick stuck into a daub of clarified butter.

About ten years ago in Mullaipuram there was sporadic outrage and a badly organized protest when the compound of DDR’s half-built house mysteriously outgrew the limits indicated in the
building plans, to incorporate this sacred tree of everybody and nobody into its grounds; a couple of people ended up in hospital after a terse dialogue with some of DDR’s least verbally
gifted associates. One of them sustained a broken cheekbone that didn’t get set properly, and even now he is still known as Banyan Balu. But maybe the appropriation of this natural temple
into the gardens of DDR’s house is in the best long-term interests of the tree and of all the spirits it shelters. Mullaipuram’s ever-growing outskirts are not noted for their sensitive
touch; they blindly envelop everything in their way, whether beautiful or ugly, covering it all with low-rise blocks of flats, new roads, warehouses and factories and ostentatious company
headquarters and stinking shanty settlements. And maybe, as has been noted, there is a deeper logic in these things, beyond our easy comprehension – because, by and large, any serious guru
requires a damn good tree.

As soon as Swami sets eyes on it, just before sunrise the following morning during a solitary amble, when his daughters are sleeping and his wife is preparing to do her morning darshan in a puja
room, he feels a terrific charge of recognition and acceptance. This tree, it’s been waiting for a man like him. He threads himself through its natural pillars – the branches of the
banyan tree grow up and out and round and then down, down into the earth, where they root, so that the whole structure is like nature’s pillared temple. All manner of exotic ill-kept hounds
from DDR’s collection are following him, sniffing and trailing him but not harassing him. He circles the tree several times.