Mr Iyer Goes To War

by Ryan Lobo

  Empty of argument, he finds himself enjoying simpler sensualities: the morning sun on his skin and the taste of water. He becomes acutely aware of his bowels and their timings. And from this place of meditation, Iyer begins to remember his childhood. He remembers odours and tastes – once so sharp and fresh, now dulled with time. Time moves faster as you grow older, he thinks.

  He finds himself singing verses from Soundarya Lahari by Adi Shankaracharya composed two thousand years before the birth of the Jew Jesus Christ, the same verses his mother would sing during her puja.

  Shiva and Shakti are one and the same.

  There is no place that He is not.

  There is no place that She is not.

  They are one and the same.

  She is the one in the three worlds.

  Shiva and Shakti are one and the same.

  That is the secret.

  With the singing comes an anxiety; Iyer thinks of his brother Arjun. On those nights, in spite of the Sizopin, Iyer is the shining warrior Bhīma: muscled and lean, fighting battles with demons.

  He begins another journal.

  Bhīma looks at those he kills honestly, weighing their skills dispassionately. That scaly ghoul is good with the lance, and is cut down by a slash to his upper arm when his back is turned. That rakshasa moves too fast, so Bhīma knocks him down with an arrow to the thigh, severing his femoral artery. He stabs with little effort; his objective is to incapacitate as quickly as possible, without any confusion. Winning is his objective, a soldier’s goal – not murder.

  Sometimes when he wakes up, his hands are still holding a mighty sword that fades away as he watches.

  Arms stained to the elbow with blood, he looks at a large number of his cousins lying dead around him. The wheels of the chariots, attached to broken-legged horses and upturned while in full charge by bamboo stakes, are still spinning. The wounded are trying to clasp their wounds shut with ever-weakening fingers, or are attempting to hide in elephant grass from the cowards searching for easy kills. The weight of a shadow on Bhīma’s shoulders makes him whirl around and bury his sword into a man’s abdomen, throwing him to the ground.

  Iyer also writes down the details left out of the books.

  Bhīma felt an indifference with victories and spent days on the long walks back home after battle, accompanying the wounded who were riding on bullock carts, groaning over the rough tracks. So much of war was bargaining with traders, camp intrigues, or the sight of orphans following the columns like scavengers. And then one had to return home and inevitably change the war experiences to suit the purposes of storytelling.

  Awakened, Iyer sometimes finds that the floor of his room is covered in blood – two inches deep – immersing the Reader’s Digests. Alarmed, Iyer invokes the goddess Durga to save him from the powers of the night. When he stops praying, the vision has passed.

  Another false herald. And how many of those have I seen in my life?

  Iyer starts his yoga regimen again. Lying on his back, adjusting his shoulders, pulling his navel towards his spine, breathing diaphragmatically and clenching his anus, he surrenders nightly to higher powers, begging to be delivered from his visions. Prayers done, he imagines his own funeral rites, down the smallest detail.

  At the moment of Iyer’s passing, the purohit would recite verses into his ear at close range. Iyer would listen, waiting for that glorious moment when his spirit would leave his body. All the residents of the home, led by a repentant Khanolkar, would be wailing like children, and would bathe his corpse in Ganges water. Rice grains would be placed in his mouth and his jaw would be bound. His big toes would be tied together. His head would face south and the Vratodyapana rituals would be conducted by a priest with a melodious voice, who would no doubt break down at some point too. Bencho, with tears pouring down his face would, in perfect English, tell the multitudes who came to pay their respects that he owed Iyer everything. He would then recite stories about the selflessness of his mentor. The whole city would gather outside the home with teary eyes, aware that a great brahmachari had passed. Even the Muslims would attend.

  Bencho and Mattroo would place him on the bamboo stretcher. They would hold him aloft on the walk to Manikarnika ghat, followed by Arjun, who would be wrecked with regret at having abandoned him, shamed by the disapproving stares of the crowd and begging the gods for forgiveness.

  Then Iyer would be set upon a sandalwood pyre, followed by the requisite chanting and pouring of high-quality ghee. The Dom Raja himself would place an ember on his chest. TV crews would beam his immolation live to the country and millions would weep uncontrollably, some shaking with grief – especially Khanolkar, who would turn over a new leaf from that day and offer rooms free of cost to everybody. Lying on his bed waiting for sleep, Iyer would feel the flames licking at his neck, and when the fire was high enough, his head would burst into blue flame, releasing his soul from the pitiful body he had chosen for himself.

  Whoosh!

  It is at this point, when his head would burst into flame, that Iyer usually finds rest. One evening, mid-meditation, just as he is about to be released from the confines of his earthly existence, from deep within the flames Iyer hears a woman laughing.

  ‘Hehehehehehe.’

  The door of his earthly room opens with a whoosh.

  A pretty girl in tight jeans with perfect breasts enters, giggling into her iPhone.

  5

  Iyer watches her as she walks in with manicured feet in gold-buckled sandals and a magenta-cased phone in painted fingers.

  ‘Uncle?’ She asks, placing a hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

  ‘I am not your uncle. I am Bhīma.’

  Ignoring him, the woman hangs up her call and walks to the cupboard. Pushing the hangers aside, she rummages through Rane’s neatly folded clothes, making a little pile of them on the floor. The white shirt he would wear on Saturdays; the singlet that Rane had darned so many times, now transparent and fragile like tissue paper. She takes out his military jacket and rests it against the pillow, looking through the pockets for money. Then his shiny military boots with metal toecaps. Turning her attention to the photograph on the side table, she picks up the medal and, together with the boots, throws it on the pile.

  ‘Madam! That is the highest award for bravery in the nation!’ Iyer says, alarmed.

  ‘I don’t need it,’ she says, using her foot to push Rane’s slippers out of the cupboard and onto the floor.

  ‘Can I have it?’ he asks, sitting up in distress.

  ‘Ya, OK.’ She bends over, her bottom round and pert, lifts the photo and medal from the floor and tosses the medal to Iyer, who catches it deftly.

  ‘Who was the Major to you?’ asks Iyer.

  ‘My father,’ she says, pocketing the Major’s wristwatch.

  ‘Ah. You must be Amba. He spoke about you a lot. Why didn’t you come to see him?’

  ‘I didn’t have time.’

  ‘You could have called. There is a phone here!’ says Iyer, his voice rising slightly.

  ‘Listen here, Mr … Mr?’

  ‘Mr Bhīma,’ says Iyer coldly as the door opens, letting in Krishna.

  ‘It’s not Bhīma, it’s Iyer!’ Krishna says, cheered at the sight of this girl with her trim figure.

  ‘So, why didn’t you come to see him?’ asks Iyer again, ignoring the doctor.

  She doesn’t answer, tipping his drawers onto the bed and sifting through the contents instead.

  ‘Calling doesn’t take time,’ presses Iyer.

  ‘I paid for him to stay here just as someone is paying for you to stay here. Without me he would be in the gutter, Iyer.’

  ‘Bhīma,’ Iyer says, raising his voice. ‘The strongest of the Pandava brothers.’

  ‘Miss Rane here does not need to hear the story, Iyer,’ Krishna says, taking his tube of ointment out of his satchel. Iyer lies on his stomach and Krishna begins to take off the knee brace.

  ‘Silence,’ Iyer says and for no reason w
hatsoever, begins speaking in a formal tone, much like a school teacher. ‘I, as you know, am the warrior Bhīma – the winner of many battles and trysts with evil. My sworn enemy of the ages, the man-eating demon Bakasura, had been cast into the deepest pits of Narka – south of the universe, beneath the earth, in a vault made from the lowest foundations of Mount Kailash – but somehow he managed to escape from Yama’s clutches. I wished to engage him in battle, but the gods warned me that battles were only for the earth and not for the heavens, where the usual parameters of existence do not apply.’

  ‘Parameters?’ asks the girl, typing a message on her phone.

  ‘Yes, good and evil, right and wrong, space and time. Simple things like that.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Please do not interrupt, and stop fiddling with your phone!’ Iyer says, raising his voice slightly. Taken aback, the girl freezes mid-SMS.

  ‘I searched for him all over the cosmos, in pestilential swamps and venomous forests, in fiery planets and in the frozen caves of forgotten moons. I transcended death to visit those shadowy realms where even the dead fear to visit lest they dissipate into the void. The beast knew I was hunting him, and since I was the only one who dared, we were connected in ways your simple human mind cannot understand. He left signs for me to follow, like poisoned rivers, noxious vapours, polythene bags and tribes with the practices of cannibalism and sophisticated rhetoric. Destiny bonded us.’

  ‘Destiny? How were you bonded to …’

  ‘Madam! Listen! Please!’ Iyer says forcefully. ‘After millennia of searching, I finally found him – more by accident than design – crouched like a ghoul over a whole civilisation that had reached an essential part of its existence: the beginning of its own annihilation.’

  ‘Where was this?’ the girls asks.

  ‘In 1565. In a swamp near Bijapur. I attacked without ceremony, trying to cripple him as quickly as possible, but his skin was covered in scales that deflected my celestial sword. Then began the greatest battle of my life. And what a battle it was! What a battle it was.’ Iyer closes his eyes tight in recollection.

  Krishna and the girl smile at each other as the doctor snaps back the clasps on Iyer’s brace. ‘We fought continuously; his tentacles were most effective, and it was only with the greatest skill that I managed to fend them off. Some had spikes and others spat venom, while a few moved like Russell vipers with sucker ends that went for the eyeballs. We wrestled in malarial swamps within whose sludge unholy beings crawled.’

  ‘There are no swamps near Bijapur,’ said the girl, reading from her phone screen. Iyer ignores her.

  ‘There were times it took all my will to avoid being crushed by the sheer unrelenting darkness of his being.’

  ‘Is this really necessary, Iyer?’ Krishna says, but he’s ignored by both parties.

  ‘OK. Then what happened?’ the girl asks.

  ‘Days into the battle, or maybe centuries in earth terms, we found ourselves at the edge of a terrifying abyss, with hailstones the size of Maruti cars smashing down on us. The light of a half moon illuminated the struggle. I held his jaw in what I thought was a death grip and stared into his single reptilian eye as I tried to break his vertebrae. And then something horrible happened. It was so horrible that I nearly fainted. I, the great Bhīma himself, felt terror for the first time.’

  ‘What?’ asks the girl.

  ‘Deep in that horrible eye I saw my own reflection.’

  ‘I can imagine your terror, really,’ Krishna says, sarcastically.

  ‘No, you cretin. My face had scales! Scales! And my two eyes were becoming one.’

  ‘So?’ says the girl.

  ‘I was turning into Bakasura!’ Iyer says. ‘We both stopped fighting and released each other. I thought that some of his venom had infected me, but then something even more extraordinary happened. Bakasura – that infinite, all-consuming horror, the terror of ages, eater of babies – began to weep like a child.’

  ‘Why?’ asked the girl, engrossed.

  ‘Bakasura noticed that he was turning into me!’

  The girl lapsed into silence.

  ‘Poor fellow, I actually felt sorry for him. Such a big fellow, crying.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Krishna adds, dryly.

  ‘In that moment of empathy, I became more like him than I had anticipated. Seizing my advantage, I hurled him into the abyss. He fell silently, like a child betrayed. What I did not know was that the abyss led to a portal, which led straight to earth.’

  ‘Where did he land?’ the girl asks.

  ‘In Delhi, close to the Parliament.’

  ‘Take your tablets Mr Bhīma,’ says Krishna gently, tearing the Sizopin from its foil.

  ‘You know, I sometimes feel that I am responsible for the state of this country.’

  ‘Wasn’t Bhīma ten feet tall and very strong?’ Krishna says, giving Iyer the pills.

  ‘I had to pursue Bakasura on earth, so I decided to take the form of a human being. I appeared to one Mr Lalgudi Iyer in the middle of his meditation, and made him an offer. In exchange for his body, he could attain moksha.’

  ‘And so this Iyer gave his body to you?’ says Krishna. ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Yes. I became Mr Iyer, with all his memories. And life was fine for a while. But there was an accident, and he had to leave his home and come to this godforsaken place.’

  ‘That meniscus needs time to slip back into place,’ says Krishna, touching the knee brace, ‘it’s high time you healed.’

  ‘Yes, doctor, sir.’

  ‘Madam, a pleasure,’ Krishna says, taking his leave. ‘Would you like me to stay, or are you two going to be all right?’

  ‘No, doctor, thank you.’

  ‘Uncle, that was such an interesting story,’ the girl says, leaning in next to Iyer, holding her iPhone high to get them both in the frame.

  ‘No. The taking of smiling photographs encourages mental decay, self-centeredness and degenerate behaviour.’

  ‘Two seconds. Let’s express ourselves,’ she says, giving the camera a pouting smile, and takes a selfie with a scowling Iyer.

  ‘Who do you think you really are, Uncle? Bakasura?’

  ‘I just spent the last ten minutes telling you, halfwit.’

  ‘Whatever. You know …’

  ‘We are fools. Ten thousand years ago we fought our own cousins. In 1565 we fought the Muslims. In 1857 we fought the British. In 1947 we fought ourselves. In 1984 we fought the Sikhs. In 2002 we fought the Muslims. Today we fight our own families. But I am Bhīma,’ Iyer says, snarling, ‘son of Vayu, master with the mace! Tamer of elephants! Destroyer of evil.’

  She begins to laugh, partly to banish the memory of having been sucked briefly into his story. She walks backwards, unable to stop laughing.

  ‘You’re insane, Uncle,’ she says, laughing. Her phone rings; the ringtone is a catchy new song. She raises her hand to answer it.

  ‘No!’ shouts Iyer, wagging his finger at her.

  ‘What the hell, man!’ says the girl, raising her voice. ‘This is like, you know, harassment.’

  ‘You accuse me of harassment? Centipede … socialite!’ stammers Iyer hoarsely, eyes wide with disbelief. As he struggles to get up on his feet, his leg brace pops open and Iyer looks down upon his knee, realising suddenly that it has not collapsed.

  ‘I can bend my leg,’ says Iyer incredulously, bending his knee; the meniscus had popped back into place.

  ‘Who the hell cares!’ the girl screams, answering the phone with one hand and throwing her father’s remaining odds and ends on the floor with the other. Picking up the photograph from the bedside table, she drops it into the dustbin, the glass shattering as it hits the surface. Iyer pauses, and smiles. He is suddenly calm.

  ‘Madam, since you are a lady, I will not precipitate you out of the window. But since you’re an imbecile, I will have to avenge this insult,’ says Iyer, reaching under his bed and pulling out a cricket bat. Leaping forward, the knee working per
fectly, Iyer grabs the phone out of her hands.

  ‘Be careful. It’s an Apple!’ she squeaks.

  Iyer bellows in her face.

  ‘AYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAAAA!’

  She screams back, ‘AIEEEEEEEEEEE!’ her tonsils vibrating with the effort. And though his eardrums smart, Iyer notices that her perfume is lavender-based. His every sense is sharpened. Still shouting, Iyer drives the girl out of the room, squealing for help. Further down the hall, Mala screams too. The ghat dogs join in, and Iyer throws the phone high up in the air, as hard as he can, swivelling perfectly on his miraculously healed knee.

  ‘AOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!’ howl the dogs.

  ‘AIEEEEEEEE!’ screeches the girl.

  ‘HAAAAAAAA!’ goes Mala.

  The phone flies out of the window and over the ghat, plopping into the dark waters. Iyer kicks open the door of his room with his newly activated leg, and tears outside.

  6

  First, Iyer attacks the television next door. Kapadia, whose room it is in, starts shouting at him, looking up from his wheelchair, which he tries to roll over Iyer’s toes.

  Bump.

  ‘You! Leave my television alone,’ he shouts, the wheel bumping Iyer’s toes without rolling over them as Iyer tries to push the TV off its stand.

  Bump.

  ‘Maniac.’

  Bump.

  The ancient Dyanora doesn’t budge an inch and Khanolkar, alerted by the racket, rushes up the stairs and into the room, waving a cane like a sword. Other denizens of the home appear at their doorways and in moments they have an audience.

  ‘You bloody lunatic! What are you doing?’ Khanolkar shouts, ducking to avoid a vase of plastic flowers that Iyer flings at his head. They explode against the wall.

  ‘Mongoose!’ shrieks Iyer, and Khanokar bolts him into the room, forgetting about the side door. Iyer soon bursts through it into the next room, assaulting a radio in the process – this time with some success.