There are also spirits of children who die of various causes. They are in a separate league.
My own memories are not so terrible. I didn’t have any problems, save the fact that I had to desert my darling wife and beloved daughter on earth to suffer alone. While I was alive I lived like a king. It is difficult to listen to the stories of other trapped spirits. I had no idea people could suffer in so many different ways. When I was alive, I spent all my time thinking of land and property, and when I had some time on my hands, I spent it on booze and babes. Even if I had noticed people’s sorrows, I would have ascribed it to their past life karma or something, but now when I hear their stories I feel grief seeping into me.
There is another special category of haunting spirits in India – the spirits of those who die in communal riots. The millions who died in the carnage that followed the partition of the subcontinent in 1947; Sikhs who were killed in the riot that followed Indira Gandhi’s death (Udhaya told me many times that he was an eye-witness to that carnage); some three thousand people who had died in the Gujarat riots. The spirits of newborn infants are also part of this list. Some were killed before they were born into this world – cut out of their mother’s wombs and set ablaze. I heard that all those babies went back to India soon after landing in the spirit world.
African spirits are numerous. They mostly belong to people who died before their time from hunger and poverty. Though such deaths were neither suicide nor murder, their spirits too couldn’t ascend to the soul world because their deaths were not classified as natural deaths.
There are hundred thousand Tamil spirits – the spirits of those killed in the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. All of them died untimely deaths and if you listen to their stories, I guarantee you that blood will gush forth from your ears.
Just as there are good people and bad people, there are good spirits and bad spirits among us. I don’t have to tell you that the good ones are very rare. I wanted to talk to the Mahatma’s spirit, but I heard that it left for the soul world soon after reaching this place. The ghosts of Indira Gandhi and her two sons, Sanjay and Rajiv, are still knocking about here but I am not too keen on meeting them. They are the spirits of people whose party wrecked ours, after all.
Apart from real estate, the only thing, or person rather, who affected me was Udhaya. At times I find myself wondering whether I am the spirit of Pakkirisamy or of Udhaya. Once I reach the soul world, my problem will be resolved. There, one will not be hounded by memories of past lives. The reason why Udhaya had such an effect on me is because we were polar opposites in the lives we led. He was always criticizing our party in his newspaper columns though he liked to hang out with us. Sometimes I would ask him, “Why don’t you mingle with people from the other party? That way, neither you nor we will have problems.” His reply was, “I could do that, but then they don’t know me the way you know me and I know you.”
Though he did not really belong in our crowd, there was something attractive about Udhaya. Life was much more fun when he was around. I lack Udhaya’s talent for writing for I studied only up to grade ten and my reading was limited to the film advertisements of local newspapers. Even as a child, school was a bitter experience for me. If I tried to read a book my head would spin and I would see bright lights dancing before my eyes. It was only when I met Udhaya that I realized that I hadn’t lost anything by not getting an education. Thank God I didn’t study further. If I had, I too would have become a beggar like him. He runs a magazine with money borrowed from friends. I doubt anyone is able to understand one word of what is written in it. He was running from pillar to post trying to get advertisements for his magazine. Socrates would tease him about it: “If God appeared before Udhaya and gave him one boon, he would ask for advertisements for his magazine.”
Many a time, I heard Udhaya complaining that he was able to get only one advertisement. So one day I asked Socrates whether I should place an advertisement on behalf of our company in Udhaya’s magazine. “Sure, but let’s wait till he drops by next time. Then we can discuss it with him,” he said. And finally that day arrived.
“I was thinking of telling Pakkiri to place an ad in your magazine, Udhaya. But you upset the apple cart when I least expected it,” complained Socrates. That week, Udhaya had gone to town criticizing our party in a local magazine.
Udhaya’s retort was immediate: “You have been promising this for the past three years, Socrates. You should understand that friendship is one thing and a writer’s freedom is another.” It was during this time that the minister got entangled in the license issue. He was targeted by everyone in the media and since I was his close aide, the spotlight fell on me too. Socrates called up the company that was releasing advertisements to Udhaya’s magazine and made them stop. I didn’t like the move Socrates made. The license problem was also spiraling towards a crisis. The minister was cooling his heels in prison while I was spending my time shuttling between the investigating agency and my home. Udhaya stopped meeting me completely during this time. He also started criticizing us in the vilest terms. What the heck! I knew the writer kinds rather well. They didn’t have the power or potency to pluck a single strand of my hair, by way of doing any harm.
But what did Socrates gain by blocking the few ads he used to get? Like a dog that had been beaten, Udhaya began to bark even more loudly at us. Should a man who is dealing in millions wage war with a fellow who can barely scrape together ten thousand rupees? Socrates didn’t understand this because he was also an educated fellow. All these fellows have useless brains, it seems. It was true that I didn’t like what Socrates did to Udhaya but I couldn’t say anything about it. When you are dealing with the rich and powerful, you have to keep your profile low and your mouth shut. Otherwise, you will be branded an enemy or a traitor. Once that happens, death will be an act of mercy. After all, who wants to become a beggar on the streets? And that is only the least of things they can do to you.
When Udhaya called me, I tore into him without preamble: “Udhaya, why are you maligning my name? You can write what you want about the license affair. But why do have to attack me personally?”
“But I never make personal attacks, Pakkiri.”
“Of course you have, though I haven’t read any of it. Socrates told me about it. When have I ever read the trash you write anyway? It was Socrates who read it out to me: ‘Pakkirisamy is like his leader; he is used to taking, not giving.’ Why did you write such things? I have to face flak from so many quarters for being your friend. Once I sponsored the tea party for everyone at your literary meet because you persuaded me to. It cost five thousand rupees. Now how to I assuage the feelings of the person who sponsored it?”
“Would you stop my bread and butter just because I criticized you? Why did you block the ads for my magazine?”
“I swear upon my child, I would never do anything as contemptible as that!”
“I don’t believe you. You are the one behind it. If you do things like this, I will be forced to commit suicide.”
Then he hung up. After this conversation, I made some enquiries and realized that it had all been Socrates’ doing.
See the insidious connection between me and Udhaya?
He threatened to commit suicide but I was the one who actually went ahead and did it.
Chapter Four
1 – Death by Fire
Traveling in a car in India is dangerous and unadvisable for a multitude of reasons. One is that a goat, a cow, or a human might suddenly materialize out of nowhere and fancy crossing the road. I remember the night I was returning to Chennai from Tirupati; our car almost swerved off the road due to the ghostly apparition of a huge white pig that was saucily shaking its rump. Next, drunk drivers, like the gods, are ubiquitous. Take a look at the outside of a Tasmac shop around nine in the evening; it’s either a motorbike exhibition or a free roadside parking lot. Despite a law banning drunk driving, there are pie-eye
d blokes at the wheel. (I mean, there are laws against bribing, rape and murder too, but those don’t stop folks from bribing, raping and murdering – just saying…) Hang around at a traffic signal in India for a bit; it will soon become clear to you that four-fifths of the population suffer from serious mental issues. Even when the traffic light is red, there will be a moron – or ten – furiously honking without letup; and half the drivers, in addition to having no mother wit, have no driving license. When Kokkarakko and I were on our way to Bangalore from Chennai, we were on a one-way route when a car, coming from the wrong direction, collided with a truck in front of us. The driver of the car probably fancied taking a U-turn like a boss.
People in Europe have more road sense than their counterparts in India, but there, drivers tend to fall asleep at the wheel as they drive on highways that seem to go on forever. This I witnessed thrice: when I traveled from Paris to Oradour-sur-Glane, again from Paris to Berlin, and on another occasion from Toulouse to Barcelona.
Kumarasamy and Murugan, who accompanied me to Oradour-sur-Glane, were both Sri Lankan Tamils. Train travel would have been my preferred mode of getting there if not for the overpriced ticket fare and the want of a train that went all the way up to Oradour-sur-Glane. I was wary of making the trip by car as Kumarasamy had only recently learned to drive. He got accustomed to driving on the Parisian roads but the road to Oradour-sur-Glane was a highway – no place for turtle races – which meant he had to ride at a perilous speed of 150 kmph. I was relieved when Murugan offered to take the wheel. Bewilderment was writ large on their faces when I first said “Oradour.” They confessed it sounded like the name of a Tamil village. Technology then was not as sophisticated and omnipresent as it is today for us to have looked it up.
Kumarasamy dialed his friend Catherine with whom I’d once had an argument at the Amethyst Café when she’d been visiting India. She was my friend Vincent’s French girlfriend. It turned out that the conceited Frenchwoman knew sweet Fanny Adams about French writers. Such is the case with Italian tourists in India as well – ask one about Italo Calvino and he’ll look at you like you asked him if he knows who the Ashwinikumaras and the Apsaras are. When a trio of my friends went to Goa, they made the acquaintance of a Russian in the bar of the luxury hotel they were staying in. Each man introduced himself – one of my friends was a professor in a medical college, the other was a six-figure earning sales representative of a multinational company, the third worked in the export business. As for the Russian, he was a welder! In Thailand, I asked a Russian streetwalker whether she’d heard of Tarkovsky; she royally snubbed me like I’d asked her to fuck a wild banana and let me film it.
While I was engrossedly discussing Serge Doubrovsky with Vincent, Catherine cut in with some poppycock. When I told her she was misinformed, she got furious. You dare challenge a French national about something concerning a French writer? This was what the look on her face said to me. Oh, simmer down, you belle dame sans merci! Being French isn’t the same thing as being a connoisseur of French literature which I have been for thirty years and counting. Besides, she was trying – and making a court jester of herself in her attempt – to speak the Brahmin variety of Tamil. Why do all whites come to India and act all high and mighty? Anyway, it was this Catherine that Kumarasamy called for information on Oradour. Turns out her knowledge of Oradour was commensurate with her knowledge of French literature. She told Kumarasamy in a snot-nosed way: “If they’ve come from Eendia, tell zem to see ze Tour Eiffel and be done wiz eet.”
It was December and the sky was overcast. When we left Paris behind it began to drizzle. At some point on the highway, we had to pull over to pay a toll. Neither Kumarasamy nor Murugan had two cents to offer and as for me, I’d spent a fortune on gas and vehicle insurance. I was left with just two hundred and fifty francs of which I parted with fifty only to be told that the toll was a hundred.
After being cash-stripped, we traveled fifty kilometers when a strong wind began to blow. It soon became clear to us that we were heading into a storm. I was sitting in the backseat, fumbling with my seatbelt when I heard Murugan murmur, “I think Udhaya’s scared shitless.” If he’d stopped at that, it would’ve been fine, but he tossed in the fact that he too was scared stiff. “Every time a truck passes, I feel like I’m a hair’s breadth away from death.” Now the fear set in. What he said held true for me as well. Those trucks were like sixteen-wheeled monsters next to our ladybug-like car. Their tires mercilessly whipped rainwater onto the windshield and the condensation, aggravated by the keening wind, only worsened the visibility. It was a nerve-wracking experience, but Murugan just wouldn’t stop talking.
“It’s been two years since I’ve driven a car.”
“Why didn’t you drive for two years?”
“An accident. I stopped driving after that.”
Kumarasamy immediately started enumerating every accident he could remember – like accidents were the most comforting things to hear about in our chancy situation. One of his friends had driven down to Pondicherry. When they were on the road, the friend who was driving announced that he hadn’t been behind the wheel in a year because of an accident. En route, they met with an accident. The first friend to regain consciousness found the driver slumped over the wheel, quite dead. The rest who managed to not die were seriously injured. Kumarasamy had barely concluded his grim tale when Murugan began to describe, in minute detail and with photographic precision, a freak accident he had witnessed.
Their stories were messing with my head, so I yelled, “Please just stop! Both of you! If you don’t, I’ll die of a heart attack before the pair of you explode in this car.”
Murugan didn’t seem to care for my heart or any other part of me, so he dropped another bombshell. “Udhaya, my eyelids are heavy with sleep. At least in Paris there were traffic signs to keep me alert, but on the highway it gets monotonous and I feel drowsy. The only way I can stay awake is if I talk.” My chicken-heart was in my mouth by the time he’d said his say. Then he said, “Udhaya, I have often laughed myself silly reading your articles. Why don’t you crack some dirty jokes? I’ll be less likely to fall asleep then.”
I was left without a choice; it was a matter of life and death. So I told them a joke I’d heard many years ago in my village, sitting with my companions under a tree.
A foolish monkey was making whoopee with its female partner without a break for three hours. The female finally got cheesed off and complained to God on high. God on high ordered a bitch to gather intelligence on the situation, but the bitch had her own complaint: “Lord, he doesn’t care how many people are watching. He just jumps on me shamelessly.” After hearing similar tales of woe from many other animals, God on high was moved to anger and declared: “All male animals shall remove their organs and hand them over to me and I will give them all tokens in exchange. Each animal can then come to me but thrice a month, hand in their token and collect their organ.” The female monkey was delighted. She cocked a snook at her partner and taunted him, saying, “Serves you right!” But the male monkey was not even slightly badgered. When the day came for the animals to hand in their tokens, the male monkey was beside himself with excitement. This puzzled the female monkey until she was told: “I stole the elephant’s token and replaced it with mine!”
Oradour-sur-Glane, Saturday, June 10, 1944: A day frozen in time. This little village still bears silent testimony to the extremity of violence of which man the beast is capable. Nazi soldiers segregate the men, ostensibly to check their identities, and line them up at the granary. The women and children are made to endure a torturous wait in a nearby church. The men are shot below the waist and burned alive. Once the men are burned beyond recognition, they lob grenades at the church, killing the women and children. Anyone trying to escape is promptly felled by a machine gun. A woman sees her daughter go down with a bullet. Her name is Rouffanche, Marguerite Rouffanche. The church is ablaze and the air is filled with smoke a
nd is being rent with the piteous screams of the women and children inside it. Madame Rouffanche notices a ladder near the altar behind which there are three windows. She rests the tip of the ladder against the largest window – the one in the center – and starts climbing up. She jumps down nine feet. Another woman with an infant tries to do the same, but both are gunned down by the Nazis whom the child’s cries alerted. Rouffanche is injured in the shooting too but somehow manages to crawl into the bushes where she hides until the arrival of the French troops the next morning. The Nazis continue to search for survivors. They stumble upon a child and an old man and burn them alive. Finally, they loot the village and scorch it.
The French have preserved the village just as the Nazis left it. I spotted a mute witness to all the carnage – the burnt shell of the mayor’s car. Oradour looked like a ghost town, like a tsunami-ravaged place. There were aged rails on which trams must have plied once; a burnt sewing machine – so many objects, each with its own story. The killers were like us – human beings with hearts, with families. Historical records estimate the death toll of that black day to have been six hundred and forty-two. Nobody has been able to explain why these people had to die in so brutal a manner, why they had to die at all. And it wasn’t even an act of revenge; it was just an act of bestiality perpetrated in the name of nationalistic pride.
The same western European countries that were decimating each other’s populations during World War II have now formed the European Union with a single currency for and visa-less travel to all the countries that are part of it. But in India, if you’re traveling from one state to another, like in a private hospital, you have to undergo a thousand checks. Before 1947, the land which now goes by the name of Pakistan used to be called India. But today, India and Pakistan are sworn enemies. And it’s not just Pakistan. India and China are antagonistic to each other as well. It is not much different with Bangladesh. As for Sri Lanka, the diplomatic relationship is dictated by political necessity to prevent any cozying up to China.
Marginal Man Page 10