by Tahir Shah
As the waiter snored loudly, a mysterious old man — wrapped in a navy blue blanket — came and sat next to me. His skin was dark, his face was square, and a clump of shiny black hair poked out from each ear. As I scratched away at a notepad, the man watched me in silence.
Observing my interest for his town as I looked around inquisitively, he said:
“It was once very different, you know.”
“But it looks as though nothing’s changed here for centuries,” I replied.
The old man chuckled, and the blanket rippled with his laughter.
“Look around! Where we sit now was jungle not long ago: there were dense forests, monkeys swinging from tree to tree, and panthers stalking through the undergrowth. Now, instead of big cats, there are camels: it’s not a jungle, but a desert!”
Putting away my notes, I looked in all directions. It seemed hard to believe that panthers ever roamed these parts.
The man had more to say:
“For thirty years I’ve lived here. I am making a study for Calcutta University... my work you see, is concerned with the Gonds, and how their society vanished.”
“Who are the Gonds? I asked.
The man pulled his wrapping closer, as if a freezing chill had run down his spine.
“Who are the Gonds?” he echoed. “Well, this great tract of land used to be known as Gondwana: it was named after its people, the Gonds.”
The café filled with a fog of black coal smoke as a steam-engine roared by. The one-legged waiter snorted in his sleep and, when the smoke had cleared, the old man continued:
“The Gonds were a stocky, dark people, quite unlike the other tribes of Central India. They told of a time when their ancestors ran wild. In an epic rhyme they sang the adventures of their prophet — whose name was Lingo. With the poetic meter like that of Hiawatha, the epic story is, in some ways, similar to the tales of the Norsemen.”
The old man paused and, twisting the clumps of hair which sprouted from his ears, the tale began...
“One day the Goddess Parvati gave birth to twelve clans of Gonds: they lived in the jungles and were very wild. They ate anything that moved. Goddess Parvati loved them, but her husband — the Great God — did not. He sent a squirrel amongst the Gonds, which they chased. When the rodent scurried into a cave, the Gonds followed. Then the Great God sealed the cave with a boulder: trapping all but four Gond men inside.”
“Did the Gonds perish in the cave?” I asked.
The academic ignored my interruption. And, when I was silent, he continued with the story.
“Parvati was very sad because her Gonds had vanished. In her misery she went to the God of Gods. When he listened to her tale, he presented her with the bud of a flower. The bud opened and gave birth to Lingo, the prophet of the Gonds.”
As the old academic wriggled deeper into his chair, I wondered how long his fable might be. India is famous for its epic poems. Some are said to be so long that they take almost a lifetime to tell.
Noticing that my attention was straying, the storyteller coughed and caught my eye.
“When Lingo was nine years old,” he said raising his voice, “he yearned to meet other people. So he climbed a tree and spied the four Gond men, who were barbarians. Lingo felled some trees, made a field, and grew some rice. From a giant he stole a firebrand as well as the giant’s seven daughters. The flames and the women he gave to the Gonds.”
“What were the giant’s daughters like?” I asked.
Instead of answering my question, the man abruptly removed his dentures, rubbed them on his blanket, and stuffed them back in his mouth. Then he frowned.
“What happened then?” I inquired weakly, hoping to break the uneasy silence.
“Well, one day,” began the voice again, “when the Gond men went hunting in the forest, the women tried to seduce Lingo. So he pounded each one with a pestle. The Gonds were angry when they found their wives battered black and blue. So they killed Lingo and played marbles with his eyeballs.
“But the Gods breathed life back into the prophet Lingo and sent him to find the other Gond people. Which he did. When he had saved them from the cave, he became their leader.”
The ancient paused for a moment, as if his strength were failing. Yet I sensed that there was more to tell. Looking deep into my eyes, he whispered:
“The Gond kingdoms have fallen, their people live dispersed in poverty: the teak trees and the jungles have been cleared... but the importance of the Gonds must not be forgotten!”
“What importance is that?”
“Gondwanaland!” shrieked the weary academic, his fingers grasped around each other.
The waiter sat up, woken by the cry. He reached for the prosthesis and strapped it onto his stump.
“What is Gondwanaland?”
“Long ago India, Africa and South America formed one super-continent,” continued the scholar. “This colossal landmass, known as Gondwanaland, was named after the Gonds and Gondwana.”
“How on earth did a theory like that get named after such a remote and unknown tribe?”
The man explained:
“Gondwana,” he said, “was found to have many species of flora and fauna which existed in other parts of the Gondwanaland.”
“Are there other features common to the different areas of Gondwanaland?” I asked.
The old man sipped his tea, narrowed his eyes, and observing me straight on, screeched:
“That is something for you to find out!”
* * *
As I sat at the back of the drafty auction hall, wondering about Gonds and super-continents, a hammer banged down and lot 732 — my sword — was sold for six thousand pounds.
I went about London gripped by a strange and unhealthy greed. As my mind set to work, I began to consider what eastern treasures one might find at the source. If one could buy a Mughal sword in England for fifty pounds, how much would it cost in India?
Gonds, India and riches became fused in my mind.
In the early morning activity of London’s antique markets, I would often hear tales of wondrous things to be found in Mumbai’s Chor Bazaar, the Thieves” Market. British antiques were said to lie there in abundance, unwanted, underpriced, or discarded along with rare artefacts from Mughal India, the splendid empire which the British had displaced.
With the profit from my Bermondsey buy, I arranged an expedition. I bought maps and guides and finally a ticket to Mumbai — the Chor Bazaar and its treasures were waiting.
One morning, a few days before I was about to leave, I received a letter from an old traveling companion of my grandfather. He invited me to his house for tea.
On arriving at the house in the countryside, some miles from London, I was led into the durbar, reception room. The walls were hung with ancient Bokharan tapestries; the floors concealed by Afghan rugs bearing the filpai — elephants” foot — design.
Furniture carved with Arabic calligraphy, and brass trays were dotted about.
I explained to my host my plans to go to India and see what I might find: as I, too, had an interest in eastern antiques.
He showed me the most prized pieces in his collection: Turkish yataghan swords, their hilts carved from walrus ivory and silver; daggers with damascened blades and rock-crystal pommels; and a number of ancient amulets and talismans with hidden spells.
After we had drunk some tea, and I had listened to my host, he stopped for a moment and sat in silent concentration. Then, from a large elaborate display, he took down a pair of camel saddle-bags which had hung on a hook. The bags were embroidered with geometric designs and symbols.
“I want to present you with these,” he said. “Your grandfather and I were presented with them by a dervish on our travels in the Middle East some fifty years ago. The mystic promised that they would always bring their bearer good fortune.”
Thanking the old gentleman warmly, I left.
When I was ready to start packing, I opened the saddlebags to check their f
ull capacity. They were lined with a fine gray felt, in which lingered the musky smell of camel. Grains of some, doubtless desert, sand were rubbed deep into the seams.
The two main pockets were quite sufficient to hold all that I intended to take. As I filled the pouches with my clothes and maps, I discovered something odd: at the bottom of one pouch there was a secret pocket. It had been craftily concealed beneath an extra felt flap. At first it seemed empty, but then I noticed that something was hidden there. Inside was a scrap of parchment. As I unfolded the sheet, the edges cracked; it was old and delicate.
Inscribed on it was a verse from the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam, the eleventh-century Persian mystic. Reading the words aloud I prepared for a most amazing journey:
The sages who have compassed sea and land,
Their secret to search out and understand,
My mind misgives me if they ever solve
The scheme on which the universe is planned.
TWO
Servants with Children
Eating raw and eating rotten;
Eating squirrels, eating jackals...
Eating lizards, frogs, and beetles,
Eating rats, and mice, and bandicoots;
So the Gonds made no distinction.
The India Guest House was hot at night, and was always so: except when it rained.
A fan above my squalid box of a room rotated, blowing the hot air downwards across the four graffiti-covered walls. There were no windows. This was the third night.
A servant with a fixed smirk ground mashed cockroaches deeper into a plug hole with the end of a spoon, and grinned wider as I stared and gagged.
I was in Colaba — the “A-1 part of town” — as the taxi driver had assured me, en route from Mumbai’s International Airport.
The steps and walls of the street were plastered red, as if a gangland gunfight had taken place, and the corpses had just been removed. Blood-red splashes of half-masticated paan — the concoction of betel leaf, lime and tobacco which Indians love to chew — decayed amongst bits of straw and coconut husks, as I walked out into the sunshine.
It was hard to get to grips with a city where all the elements of human existence mingled: from the most affluent businessmen and visiting landed gentry, to the poorest wafer of human servility. Mumbai is a mixture of all that is human.
I wandered about the streets looking, smelling, and listening to a new kind of chaos: almost melodious and well-practised. It seemed as if such disorder had been going on since the beginning of time and would continue until time came to an end. It had experienced all, seen everything, and been exposed to the most bizarre and peculiar qualities of man. I was to find it impossible to surprise.
Colaba is an island edged with reclaimed land. It is lit with street lamps, drained by sewers, and has shops in which chocolate can be bought. Yet children with elephantiasis played in rags, their noses streaming like those of any other children. I heard the shouts of beggars: “Doh Rupia, Doh Rupia! (Two Rupees, Two Rupees!).”
I saw coffee brewing on tiny stoves, stalls selling surgical gloves in rows, imported Lux soap, cans of Coca-Cola, underwear and paperbacks, as I walked into the waves of dark heads, gripped by a strange excitement.
Treasure and the Gonds. Mumbai was where they intersected: for here, by current repute, the relics of the Mughals and the British Raj alike were concentrated. More than that, I had discovered that Mumbai was a form of Parvati, deity of the Gonds, derived from Maha Amma, Great Mother. Coincidence or omen?
Back at the guest house I tried to acclimatize. A travel-worn adventurer had once told me that leaning with one’s head dangling over the end of a bed was the best way to achieve this. It was while I was in this position, the blood rushing to my temples, that the door swung open.
The western woman who entered seemed to be tattooed from head to toe. She rubbed a stick of sandalwood incense between her fingers as she gushed excitedly in a Texan drawl:
“I just had to show someone,” she said.
Having adjusted myself to a more usual position I asked what she had to show.
“It’s very special and so symbolic,” she gasped.
“What is?” I asked.
Unravelling a long white crepe bandage from her left arm she revealed a newly-tattooed epic scene.
What I made out to be a dragon was being ingested by what looked like a scorpion: which in turn was in the process of being swallowed by a field-mouse.
“It’s very nice,” I said politely; “What exactly does it mean?”
The woman’s eyes burned with evident horror that I should not understand such an elementary scene as this. At that moment her husband arrived. A towering hulk of a man with long blond hair and six days” growth of beard, he wore no shirt. He, too, was heavily tattooed with outlandish symbols and motifs. As his wife danced about in the confinement of my box, with what she confided were secret movements, whose meaning she was forbidden to divulge, the man addressed me:
“We just came from a monastery in Kathmandu, where we stayed with the head priest as his guests. Of course not anyone could just go and stay with a priest like that.” He looked at me accusingly as if that was my very intention. “A very, very wonderful thing happened while we were there.”
“What was that?” I inquired with interest.
“The priest wanted our electric tattooing needles, and in exchange he presented us with the chisel they had used for the very same purpose — that is to say, tattooing — for hundreds of years.”
I was appalled that such an ancient tradition had ended so suddenly. But the tattooed figure had more to say:
“You know what was even more wonderful than that?”
“What was?”
“Well, as we were leaving the monastery, we heard our very own, one hundred per cent American, tattooing needles being put to work. And I said to Jan, “You know Jan, the monastery’s gone electric!”
In desperation I wandered the streets of Mumbai to find a new place to live. The tattooist-mystics had come to my room late at night, brandishing the Nepalese chisel: seeking virgin skin. Jan’s delirium had been uncontrollable. She had rubbed her hands across my bare chest, calling for a ceremony of demonic proportions and guaranteeing its wholly genuine Tantric provenance.
The Texans hummed in unison outside my door, in an attempt to recreate the natural monastic surroundings for the blunt knife. It was then I had realized that it was time to leave.
As I turned onto Veer Nariman road for the first time, I found what were to be my new hangouts, my new homes. On the right was the Chateau Windsor Hotel, and opposite, on the left, Gaylord’s restaurant. Both were imbued with tradition and hospitality, lubricated with endless supplies of servants, who laughed and listened, and became my friends.
I moved up into a rooftop room aired by breezes rolling off the Arabian Sea. The bathroom had no bath or shower, so the television — which did not work — was thrown in free of charge. By now I had been in Mumbai long enough for the arrangement to seem perfectly natural.
The hotel ran on peculiar lines. I would go down to use the shower on the floor below, and return to find a troop of six or more miniature, khaki-shorted servants pilfering from my possessions. Some had dusters, others mops, or even only decorative smiles.
A managerial lady, standing five foot five, towered above them as she called out constant instructions in Hindi. Pulling the towel tighter to my waist, I would point to the door. The army of khaki uniforms and servile giggles then ambled out. I would go back into the bathless bathroom, to find four more lurking with the last-stand resistance of knobbly-kneed schoolboys, caught hiding behind the bicycle sheds during lessons. They looked sheepish and bowed themselves out.
* * *
As the primitive elevator wound down from the fifth floor, I was saluted by the gentleman with a silver mustache and green beret who never left the elevator. Gradually, with cables grinding up above us, we were lowered down the shaft. In a brief and jolty examinat
ion of the walls which enclosed us, I noticed a small sign, which read:
Servants are not allowed to make use of the elevator unless accompanied by children.
The monsoon had come. In the depths of the umbrella bazaar I spent much of the afternoon negotiating to buy an umbrella. The bazaar was knee-deep in mud. A man, squatting on the gutter’s edge, juggled a set of cobweb spokes. He was a master craftsman who could reconstruct a delicate framework, like the skeleton of some primeval creature, to shield one from the hardest monsoon waters. Rebuilt and modified contraptions, beautifully restored, were sold as new. Some must have been upwards of a hundred years old. An antique umbrella was placed in my palms and I inspected it like a new revolver, looking down the barrel in respect for such workmanship. We haggled for what seemed like hours and, having marched off in pretended indignation more than once, I threw down some notes and left protected.
The Chateau Windsor, by almost alarming contrast with where I had been living, filled me with a deep sense of pride. I could now ring my parents’ friends without being ashamed of my lodgings. An operator with four days’ growth of beard grinned conspiratorially at me and pointed to an antique Bakelite telephone. I called an old friend of my mother’s who lived nearby. The line was triple-crossed and punctuated by a loud buzzing. My words echoed as if off a satellite. “Hallooo!” came a distant voice. I yelled into the mouthpiece with some difficulty, as it was fixed at stomach level to the wall. My mother’s friend answered and I managed to shout my address before we were cut off. An hour passed and a telegram was handed to me: an invitation to dine by the lady to whom I had spoken.
In the depths of Colaba Market, far from the tourist cameras and souvenir shops, vegetables and videos were sold in heaps. All night, Xerox stalls guarded by blinking assistants clattered and flashed, in the mysterious practice of copying stacks of books.