by Vikram Seth
At first, Dipankar had hardly been able to register the question. His mind had reverted to the horror of what he had seen—experienced more than seen. Once more he saw the broken body of the old man a few feet away—the nagas stabbing at him, the crowd crushing him underfoot—the confusion and the madness. Was this what human life was about? Was this why he was here? How pathetic now appeared his hope to understand anything. He was more dismayed and horrified and bewildered than he had ever been.
Sanaki Baba placed his hand on his shoulder. Although he did not repeat his question, his touch brought Dipankar back to the present, back to the triviality, perhaps, of great concepts and great gods.
Now Sanaki Baba was waiting for his answer.
Dipankar thought to himself: Om is too abstract for me; Shakti too mysterious, and I get enough of it in Calcutta; Shiva is too fierce; and Rama too righteous. Krishna is the one for me.
‘Krishna,’ he said.
The answer seemed to please Sanaki Baba, but he merely repeated the name.
Then he said, taking both Dipankar’s hands in his own: ‘Now say after me: O God, today—’
‘O God, today—’
‘— on the bank of the Ganga at Brahmpur—’
‘— on the bank of the Ganga at Brahmpur—’
‘— on the auspicious occasion of the Pul Mela—’
‘— on the occasion of the Pul Mela,’ amended Dipankar.
‘— on the auspicious occasion of the Pul Mela,’ insisted Sanaki Baba.
‘— on the auspicious occasion of the Pul Mela—’
‘— at the hands of my guru—’
‘But are you my guru?’ asked Dipankar, suddenly sceptical.
Sanaki Baba laughed. ‘At the hands of Sanaki Baba, then,’ he said.
‘— at the hands of Sanaki Baba—’
‘— I take this, the symbol of all your names—’
‘— I take this, the symbol of all your names—’
‘— by which may all my sorrows be removed.’
‘— by which may all my sorrows be removed.’
‘Om Krishna, Om Krishna, Om Krishna.’ Sanaki Baba began to cough. ‘It’s the incense,’ he said. ‘Let’s go outside.’
‘Now, Divyakar,’ said Sanaki Baba, ‘I am going to explain how to use this. Om is the seed, the sound. It is shapeless and without form. But if you want a tree, you must have a sprout, and that is why people choose Krishna or Rama. Now you hold the rosary thus—’ and he gave one to Dipankar, who imitated his gestures. ‘Don’t use the second and fifth fingers. Hold it between your thumb and ring finger, and move it bead by bead with your middle finger while you say “Om Krishna”. Yes, that’s the way. There are 108 beads. When you get to the knot, don’t cross it, return and circle the other way. Like waves in the ocean, forwards and backwards.
‘Say “Om Krishna” on waking, on putting on your clothes, whenever you think of it. . . . Now I have a question for you.’
‘Babaji, I have one for you as well,’ said Dipankar, blinking a little.
‘My question, however, is a shallow one, and yours a deep one,’ said the guru. ‘So I will ask mine first. Why did you choose Krishna?’
‘I chose him because I admire Rama but I find—’
‘Yes, he was after worldly glory too much,’ said Sanaki Baba, completing his thought.
‘And his treatment of Sita—’
‘She was crushed,’ said Sanaki Baba. ‘He had to choose kingship or Sita and he chose kingship. He had a sad life.’
‘Also, his life was one from beginning to end—at least in his character,’ said Dipankar. ‘But Krishna had so many different stages. And at the end, defeated, when he was in Dwaraka—’
Sanaki Baba was still coughing from the incense.
‘Everyone has tragedy,’ he said. ‘But Krishna had joy. The secret of life is to accept. Accept happiness, accept sorrow; accept success, accept failure; accept fame, accept disgrace; accept doubt, even accept the impression of certainty. Now, when are you leaving?’
‘Today.’
‘And what was your question?’ Sanaki Baba said with gentle seriousness.
‘Baba, how do you explain all this?’ Dipankar pointed to the distant smoke from a huge funeral pyre, where hundreds of unidentified bodies were being burned. ‘Is it all the lila of the universe, the play of God? Are they fortunate because they died on this auspicious spot at this auspicious festival?’
‘Mr Maitra is coming tomorrow, isn’t he?’
‘I think so.’
‘When he asked me to give him peace, I told him to return at a later date.’
‘I see.’ Dipankar could not disguise the disappointment in his voice.
Once again he thought of the old man, crushed to death, who had talked of ice and salt, of completing his journey back to the source of the Ganga the following year. Where would he himself be next year, he wondered. Where would anyone be?
‘I did not, however, refuse him an answer,’ said Sanaki Baba.
‘No, you did not,’ sighed Dipankar.
‘But do you want an interim answer?’
‘Yes,’ said Dipankar.
‘I think there was a flaw in the administrative arrangements,’ replied the guru blandly.
11.27
The newspapers, which had been consistently lauding the ‘commendably high standard of the administrative arrangements’ came down heavily on both the administration and the police. There were a great many explanations of what had happened. One theory was that a car which supported a float in the procession had overheated and stalled, and that this had started a chain reaction.
Another was that this car belonged not to a procession but to a VIP, and should never have been allowed on the Pul Mela sands in the first place, certainly not on the day of Jeth Purnima. The police, it was alleged, had no interest in pilgrims, only in high dignitaries. And high dignitaries had no interest in the people, only in the appurtenances of office. The Chief Minister had, it was true, made a moving statement to the press in response to the tragedy; but a banquet due to be held that same evening in Government House had not been cancelled. The Governor should at least have made up in discretion what he lacked in compassion.
A third said that the police should have cleared the path far ahead of the processions, and had failed to do so. Because of this lack of foresight the crowd at the bathing spots had been so dense that the sadhus had not been able to move forward. There had been bad coordination, poor communication, and under-staffing. The police had been manned by dictatorial but ineffectual junior officers in charge of groups of policemen from a large number of districts, a motley collection of men whom they did not know well and who were unresponsive to their orders. There had been less than a hundred constables and only two gazetted officers on duty on the bank, and only seven at the crucial juncture at the base of the ramp. The Superintendent of Police of the district had been nowhere in the vicinity of the Pul Mela at all.
A fourth account blamed the slippery condition of the ground after the previous night’s storm for the large number of deaths, especially those that had taken place in the ditch on the edge of the ramp.
A fifth said that the administration should—when organizing the Mela in the first place—have used far more of the comparatively empty area on the northern shore of the Ganga for the various camps in order to relieve the predictably dangerous pressure on the southern shore.
A sixth blamed the nagas, and insisted that the criminally violent akharas should be disbanded forthwith or at any rate disallowed from all future Pul Melas.
A seventh blamed the ‘faulty and haphazard’ training of the volunteers, whose loss of nerve and lack of experience precipitated the stampede.
An eighth blamed the national character.
Wherever the truth lay, if anywhere, everyone insisted on an Inquiry. The Brahmpur Chronicle demanded ‘the appointment of a committee of experts chaired by a High Court Judge in order to investigate the causes of the gh
astly tragedy and to prevent its recurrence’. The Advocates’ Association and the District Bar Association criticized the government, in particular the Home Minister, and, in a strongly worded joint resolution, pronounced: ‘Speed is of the essence. Let the axe fall where it will.’
A few days later it was announced in a Gazette Extraordinary that a Committee of Inquiry with broad terms of reference had been constituted, and that it had been requested to pursue its investigations with all due promptitude.
11.28
The five judges in the zamindari case maintained strict secrecy about their consultations. From the moment that the case was closed and judgement reserved, their taciturnity exceeded even the regular bounds of judicial discretion. They moved around in the same social world as many of those whose lives and properties were bound up in this case, and they were conscious of the weight that even their casual comments were certain to carry. The last thing they wanted was to be in the eye of a storm of speculation.
Even so, speculation was widespread, active, and furiously inconsistent. One of the judges, Mr Justice Maheshwari, unconscious of the low esteem in which he was held by G.N. Bannerji, had greatly praised the eminent lawyer’s advocacy to a lady at a tea party. He had made some extremely telling points, the judge confided. The news had spread, and the zamindars began to feel optimistic again. But on the other hand it was the Chief Justice, and not Mr Justice Maheshwari, who would almost certainly write the first draft of the judgement.
And yet it had been the Chief Justice who had given the Advocate-General such a grilling. Shastri had rallied, reconsidered his arguments, and accepted that if he maintained the line that had been so successful in the Bihar case, he might jeopardize his chances in the Purva Pradesh case. Here the judges seemed inclined to make different distinctions. But whether his attempt to double back had been successful was anyone’s guess. G.N. Bannerji had, in his final two days of rebuttal, flayed what he called the ‘opportunistic drift of my learned friend’s rudderless raft, which looks to the current stirring about the bench and changes its course accordingly’. It was the general opinion of those present in court on the final two days that he had destroyed the government’s case.
But the Raja of Marh, some of whose lands had been ravaged suddenly one day by a swarm of locusts, saw this as the warning of an unfavourable judgement. Others took note, with more substantial grounds for gloom, of the First Amendment Bill to the Constitution. This bill, which in mid-June received the assent of the President of India Dr Rajendra Prasad (whose father, interestingly, had been the munshi of a zamindar) sought further to protect land reform legislation from challenges under certain articles of the Constitution. Some zamindars believed this to be the final nail in their coffin. Yet others, however, believed that this amendment itself could be challenged—and that the land reform bills it sought to protect could in any case be declared unconstitutional since they infringed other, unprotected, articles—and indeed the spirit of the Constitution itself.
While the zamindars on the one hand and the framers of the act on the other, the tenantry on the one hand and the retainers of the landlords on the other, all underwent these swings of elation and depression, the judges continued to frame their judgement in secret. They assembled in the Chief Justice’s chambers shortly after the arguments were over to discuss what shape and direction the judgement should take. There was considerable disagreement over the issues, the line to be taken in arriving at the judgement, and even over the judgement itself. The Chief Justice, however, persuaded the other judges to present a united front. ‘Look at that Bihar judgement,’ he said. ‘Three judges, not essentially in disagreement, each insisting on having his own say, and at—I presume I will not be quoted—at such tedious length. How will the lawyers know what the judgement means? This isn’t the House of Lords, and our judgements shouldn’t be in the form of individual speeches.’ He eventually brought his colleagues around to the idea of a single judgement unless there was strong dissent on a particular point. Rather than entrust any other judge with the first draft of the judgement, he decided to write it himself.
They worked with as much speed as care allowed. The draft judgement did the rounds of the judges in a single circular, gathering comments on separate sheets. ‘In view of the argument on page 21 about the non-applicability of implicit concepts wherever specific provision covering a particular matter already exists in the wording of the Constitution, is not the rather lengthy discussion of eminent domain moot?’ ‘I suggest that on page 16 line 8, we delete the phrase “were tilling their own land” and substitute “were not in fact intermediaries between the agriculturists and the state”.’ ‘I believe we should retain the eminent domain discussion as a second line of defence in case the Supreme Court overrules us on the non-applicability aspect.’ And so on. None of the five were unconscious of the heavy burden of responsibility that lay on them in this decision: their judgement would be as momentous as any act of the legislature or executive and would alter the lives of millions.
The judgement—seventy-five pages long—was drawn up, amended, discussed, reamended, examined, approved, finalized. A single copy was typed up by the private secretary of the Chief Justice. Gossip and leakage were as endemic in Brahmpur as in the rest of the country, but no one except these six people got to learn what the judgement—and, most crucially, its final operative paragraph—contained.
11.29
For the last week or so Mahesh Kapoor, like many other senior and junior state politicians, had been shuttling back and forth between Brahmpur and Patna, which was only a few hours away by road or rail. The political aftermath of the Pul Mela and the precarious state of his grandson’s health kept him in Brahmpur. But he was pulled towards Patna every second day or so by the momentous events occurring there, events that were likely, in his view, to alter entirely the shape and configuration of the political forces of the country.
These matters came up in a discussion with his wife one morning.
The previous evening he had learned, upon his return from Patna (where several political parties, including the Congress Party, were holding sessions in the mad heat of June), news that would keep him in Brahmpur at least until that afternoon.
‘Good,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor quietly. ‘Then we can go together to visit Bhaskar in hospital.’
‘Woman, I will not have time for that,’ was Mahesh Kapoor’s impatient reply. ‘I can’t be hanging around hospital wards all day.’
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor said nothing, but that she was upset was obvious to her husband. Bhaskar was no longer unconscious, but he was very far from normal. He had a high temperature, and he could remember nothing of what had happened during the day of the stampede. His memory, even of earlier events, was erratic.
When Kedarnath had returned, he had hardly been able to believe the news. Veena, who had reproached him in his absence, did not have the heart to do so now. They stayed by Bhaskar’s bedside day and night. At first heartbreakingly vague even about the identity of his own parents, Bhaskar had slowly begun to identify himself and his surroundings. Numbers still mattered to him however; and he cheered up whenever Dr Durrani visited him. But Dr Durrani did not find these visits particularly interesting, since his nine-year-old colleague had lost some of the acuity of his mathematical insight. Kabir, however, for whom Bhaskar had previously been just an occasional face in his house, had become fond of him. It was in fact he who prodded his absent-minded father into visiting Bhaskar every two or three days.
‘What is so important that you can’t visit him?’ asked Mrs Mahesh Kapoor after a while. Her husband had turned back to the newspaper.
‘Yesterday’s Cause List,’ replied her husband laconically. But Mrs Mahesh Kapoor persisted, and the Minister of Revenue explained, as one would to an idiot, that the Cause List of the Brahmpur High Court contained a bench-by-bench list of the next day’s agenda; and that the judgement in the zamindari case would be announced in the Chief Justice’s court at ten o’clock tha
t morning.
‘And after that?’
‘After that? After that—whatever the verdict is—I will have to decide what the next step must be. I’ll be closeted with the Advocate-General and Abdus Salaam and God knows who else. And then, when I return to Patna, with the Chief Minister and—why am I explaining all this to you?’ He returned pointedly to his newspaper.
‘Can’t you leave for Patna after seven o’clock? Evening visiting hours are from five to seven.’
Mahesh Kapoor put the newspaper down, and almost yelled: ‘Can’t a man have peace in his own house? Pran’s mother, do you know what is happening in this country? The Congress is threatening to split down the middle, people are defecting left and right to this new party.’ He stopped, then continued with increasing emotion: ‘Everyone who is decent is leaving. P.C. Ghosh has gone, Prakasam has gone, both Kripalani and his wife have gone. They are accusing us, rightly enough, of “corruption, nepotism, and jobbery”. Rafi Sahib, with his usual circus skills, is attending the meetings of both parties—and has got himself elected to the board of this new thing, this KMPP, this Peasants’ and Workers’ Peoples’ Party! And Nehru himself is threatening to resign from the Congress. “We also are tired,” he says.’ Mahesh Kapoor gave an impatient snort before repeating the last phrase. ‘And your own husband feels much the same,’ he continued. ‘This is not why I spent years of my life in prison. I am sick of the Congress Party, and I too am thinking of leaving it. I have to go to Patna, do you understand, and I have to go to Patna this afternoon. Every hour the shape of things is changing, at every meeting there’s some new crisis or other. God knows what is being decided for this state in my absence. Agarwal is in Patna, yes, Agarwal, Agarwal, who should be clearing up the Pul Mela mess, he’s in Patna, manoeuvring endlessly, giving as much support to Tandon and as much trouble to Nehru as he possibly can. And you ask me why I won’t defer going back to Patna. Bhaskar won’t notice my absence, poor boy, and you can explain my reasons to Veena—if you remember one-tenth of them. You take the car. I’ll find my own way to court. Now, enough—’ And he held up his hand.