Mr Iyer Goes To War

by Ryan Lobo

  The ringing of cicadas – as shrill as machetes being sharpened on lathes – travels sharp and clear over the river. Cosmos flowers explode on the banks, long-bodied murrals splash about the reeds hunting frogs, hummingbirds dart about the riot of vegetation on the bank. The sun-sharpened turquoise sky throws light on a foot-wide ammonite fossil lying exposed on an eroded boulder, a memory of the time when the island that they now call India had inched its way across the lava mantle and crashed into the landmass of Asia, destroying the quiet lives of sea-dwelling creatures in the process.

  What are human beings to rivers and mountains, sky and earth?

  They pass an ascetic bathing in the shallows. He does not even glance at the boat or its passengers; the silence is broken only by the sounds of water falling off his body. There are signs of tribal life here: a campfire on the banks without discarded plastic litter, footprints in the sand that extend into an overshadowed forest – a tangle of bushes and trees. We have given a name to all of this, Iyer thinks: Ganga Maa.

  Bencho gets a bite and yanks on the line. A large goonch catfish, the eater of corpses, breaks the surface next to the boat, its whiskers trembling and its shiny bony back glistening like wet armour. It shakes its head from side to side like a wet dog and breaks free of the hook. Just as Bencho reaches into the river to grab it, Iyer startles him by shouting, ‘You’re eating a fish when you’re with a brahmachari?’

  ‘Not any more, sir,’ Bencho says sadly, ‘your shouting made me drop it!’

  ‘Stop fishing and come and listen.’

  There are no blaring transistor radios. No truck horns in the distance.

  ‘Pure silence,’ Iyer says.

  The broadening waters flow through forested islands. They would need to find the main channel again, but the river seems to flow in endless circles, the tributaries Venn diagramming each other amidst tangled islands.

  Bencho baits the hook again and lobs it into the water as Iyer has his epiphany.

  They pass an ancient river fort, its walls covered in creepers. A sounder of wild boar break out from a clump of lantana ahead of the boat, and paddle across the river with their heads above the surface, their bulging eyes fixed on Iyer. A flock of pintail ducks does not fly away when the boat passes them, turning instead as one organism to view the boat. Somewhere beyond the hills a tendril of smoke extends up to the skies. In time, the boat meanders between overgrown fields, jungle shrubs dotting what was once mustard or sorghum.

  ‘They have gone to the city, these Gonds,’ Iyer says, ‘which makes me wonder at the weakness of their characters. The loudspeaker in Kashi said one day that they could own flats and cars. It is an insult to the sacred life, a journey towards annihilation, a rotting of the soul.’

  ‘They want flats and cars, sir,’ ventures Bencho, the line limp in his hands. ‘I do too.’

  ‘You think from the perspective of slack-jawed imbeciles in television ads. The cities are full of your Robinson Crusoes, journeying outward to capture their own islands, relocating the locals and making survivors their slaves.’

  The majesty of the scene and Iyer’s words are lost on the wounded Bencho, as just then a fish yanks the entire wooden block out of Bencho’s hands and dives back into the river. Defeated, he leans against the mast, hitting his forehead over and over again with his palm.

  ‘What is it, Bencho?’ mocks Iyer, scouring the banks for monsters and otters, secretly hoping to find otters.

  ‘I am thinking how long we have been on this quest to defeat Bakasura, and how I’m no closer to my political career,’ he says, smacking his forehead again.

  ‘Soon! Why are you hitting yourself?’ Iyer says, watching a flock of rain quail rising out of the reeds like a burst of applause.

  ‘I am counting the days we have been travelling by the number of times we have been beaten up.’ Bencho smacks his forehead again, the sound echoing like a shot.

  ‘So, then, how long have we been on our river?’

  ‘About forty years I think.’

  Smack.

  ‘A brahmachari does not count his bruises; he collects good karma.’

  ‘Sir, please excuse my impertinence, but where is that city you are going to win my elections in? We have fought so many battles, but you have not conquered one town. And right now we do not even know where we are. So many streams going so many places here ...’

  ‘I am not to blame, Bencho. Bakasura has crippled the insides of the people here.’

  ‘Sir, what are you talking about? The river has broken up into many. And why blame Bakasura?’

  ‘It is more terrible than I had imagined,’ Iyer says.

  The boat enters a faster-flowing stretch. Iyer dozes but has trouble sleeping; Ranjana appears in his dreams like a celestial Apsara, persuading him to thrash a skeletal errand boy, running her tongue over her lips as Aurangzeb holds her from behind like a lover would, whispering into her ear.

  Bencho wakes him up.

  ‘So when, sir, are you going to introduce me to Jayachandra? He will give me a ticket if you help me persuade him.’

  ‘Let’s first destroy Bakasura lest he foil our plans, Bencho.’

  ‘Sir, where exactly is this Bakasura? Where does he hide? Where can we find him?’

  ‘We need silence to be able to see clearly, Bencho. We need the absence of noise for any great quest,’ Iyer declares, sitting up.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘To find a great demon like Bakasura, we have to avoid making a noise. We need to be guided. God does not scream into our ears, Bencho. See how these trees grow. See how the fish live. They do so in silence. The sun, moon and stars are silent. No matter how you argue with them, they will respond with silence. When you are young they are silent, and when you are about to die they will still be silent. And after our factories have drunk the rivers and burnt the trees and we have poisoned the fish, there will still be silence. And in that desolation, it will still speak to us. That is God. To find Bakasura, Bencho, we need to listen very carefully.’

  ‘But life is always noisy, sir. Like our Kashi!’

  ‘“Kashi” means to listen. Now do you understand? Remember to listen.’

  ‘How do you know, sir?’ Bencho asks, straining at the oars.

  ‘When I sleep, I travel to that dimension when Bhīma lived on this earth and relive all those creatures he destroyed. We are locked to those we have encountered. They become a part of our destinies, Bencho.’

  ‘Where did you get your power to do this? And where is this other dimension?’

  ‘No matter what you think with your five senses, the world is as it is. Consider yourself blessed, Bencho. We brahmacharis have to deal with so much more than mortals like you.’

  An eagle with a hilsa fish in its claws flies over the boat, its shadow making Iyer look skyward. It lands on its nest high up in a mango tree, causing a langur to jump off a branch and into the foliage. The eagle rips into the still-gasping fish, dropping chunks of its flesh into a chick’s open beak.

  ‘Sir, your life experience is different from us humans? How sir?’

  ‘Bencho, the human embryo resembles a fish at one stage. At other times it has a yolk sac just like a bird’s egg, and then it develops a tail like a monkey. So we were many things once upon a time. We have plenty of life experience.’

  ‘So, why do you only dream of that time when you were Bhīma? What about the other lives? Why not a fish dream, sir?’

  ‘Yes, why not the migration of a hilsa fish that migrates upriver to the place where it was spawned once upon a time? I can see us now, swimming up the Ganges …’

  ‘Sir, what if someone were to catch and eat us? We have passed so many gill nets this journey, and the holes in the nets are not large enough for the smallest minnows to escape.’ Bencho grins, enjoying the conversation now.

  ‘Yes, Bencho. In the olden days hilsa was not caught between Lakshmi puja and Saraswati puja, to let them breed and replenish the river. But times have changed. We have succ
umbed to the Christians, and the first chapter of their book that says they believe they were given dominion over the earth and its creatures. The world is not our home, they tell themselves. Heaven is our home and that is why they do not care so much for the forests and its beings. We Indians have learned this from them. We are no longer a part of the world; we think we are its masters, to eat as we wish and fear that if we do not keep up with the rest, the barbarians will enslave us again. That is the great fear we have. The whole world lives with this fear, holding it close to their hearts as they run towards the precipice.’

  ‘I would not mind some hilsa, actually.’

  ‘We have forgotten what the sages tell us: that all life is one long creature stretched out through time and space, living, dying, decaying and growing simultaneously, each aspect a part of the rest – tied to humanity, tied to who we are now and then and later. Our festivals came with the change of seasons, the harvest and the solstices, to prepare us for what earth and time would give us. Now instead of celebrations for the soul, our festivals have become celebrations for shopping. We drink the holy river – it gives life to our crops, and when we eat, it becomes our body. The river becomes us. Once we never painted Ganesh idols before immersion. Now we paint them with poisons and your hilsa floats up asphyxiated.’

  ‘Hilsa is very nice with mustard, sir. I do not wish to be reborn a fish,’ says Bencho.

  Iyer begins to sing the Sree Ragam, an ode to the Ganges and other holy rivers.

  Om Gangeca Yamune caiva Godavari Saraswati Narmade Sindhu Kaveri jalesmin samnidhim kuru.

  Hail O ye Ganges, Yamuna, Godavari, Saraswati, Narmada, Sindhu and Kaveri, come and approach these waters.

  They reach a portion of the river with many small islands, each filled with migratory waterfowl, the cacophony of their honking and squawking coming to them through breaks in the wind like the sounds of a distant city. And they journey on until human settlement invades their reveries in the form of blaring Bollywood music.

  Bencho punts the boat to the banks and buys some spinach and a bag of broken rice from a woman with a large goitre and tattoos on her arms. They make their way further downstream, coming to another industrial area where factories and tanneries line the banks, waste pouring into the water from crowded shanties. A mangy dog feeds on a woman’s bloated corpse by the water’s edge, scanning the horizon for competition; further along an old woman squats in a rubbish dump and lifts her sari to move her bowels. An island of polystyrene floats past them. Shrouded figures pass on the bank towards a cremation ghat, holding a stretcher bearing a corpse. The sight arouses a restless foreboding in Iyer, who stands up and chants to the river, his arms extended and eyes closed,

  Om Namah Shivaya!

  Om Namah Shivaya!

  Om Namah Shivaya!

  His chant is broken by a splash; Iyer sees Bencho throwing a plastic packet of rubbish into the river. Leaning outwards, he picks it up and flings it back into the boat. Upset, he turns to Bencho.

  ‘How can I live truly when one sees clearly the inherent darkness of existence within your own self? Such irony for the speakers of truth, to know that they themselves are in need of rescue. Such irony, to know that your own chela pollutes the river of truth.’

  ‘Sir, it is only a small packet.’

  ‘“Sir, it is only a small packet.”’ Iyer mimics, the veins on his neck standing out. ‘We worship the gods of the forest but chop the trees. Progress, Bencho! This is what we call progress,’ Iyer splutters. ‘Tell that to the river!’ he bellows.

  ‘Sir, I will become vegetarian I think, in time. I will leave the hilsa alone,’ Bencho says guiltily.

  But Iyer doesn’t hear him, having spotted a man defecating near the bank.

  ‘Bastard, don’t shit in the Ganges!’ he yells.

  Other heads emerge from the reeds around him.

  ‘Sir, but you just said the river was a part of us,’ Bencho says, leaning into the oars.

  ‘The best parts only,’ Iyer snaps, looking for missiles to hurl.

  The man curses and tries to frog-hop backwards into safety.

  ‘Go shit in your father’s field, insect!’ yells Iyer, throwing a rotten brinjal at the man, missing him by inches.

  ‘All fields lead to the river, you mad dog,’ the man yells, flinging the brinjal back at Iyer.

  ‘And all rivers go to the sea, so shit in the Bay of Bengal,’ shouts Bencho, punting away as Iyer hurls the boat’s collected rubbish at them, delighted that someone else was getting flak for destroying the river.

  They float away, and Bencho is taken aback by the sight of an upright rhesus macaque walking along the bank, like a relic from ancient times when men did not exist, and the apes were the kings of the earth.

  16

  In time, the boat finds the main channel, the speed of the flow increases and Bencho uses the pole to push the boat away from rocks as they careen downriver. When it slows down, they find enormous boulders littering the river and surrounding countryside as if they had just fallen from the sky. It is the ruins of a city, as can be seen from the stone pillars jutting out of the riverbanks.

  ‘Who were these people who once lived here?’ asks Bencho.

  ‘I do not know,’ replies Iyer.

  ‘Why did they leave? What happened?’ asks Bencho as they pass the shell of what would once have been an elephant stable. On an island of grass, in the crushed remains of an unrecognisable statue, crows pick at a large dead masheer fish.

  ‘One day in the future, when the ashes of our civilization have been blown about by the wind, the survivors will look at our ruins the same way we look at these ruins now.’

  ‘Sir, it will only get better, I feel. Once upon a time there were only fields here, and all the people could do was dig and plant things. Back-breaking work. Now we have factories, and soon we will have a car for every family,’ Bencho says, repeating the election speech he had heard in Varanasi. ‘When I am a politician I will make sure that everyone has a car, a flat and …We should head to Kanauj now. Why are we meandering like this?’

  ‘Soon, Bencho.’

  ‘Jayachandra won’t be able to say no if a big man like you introduces me, sir: Brahmin, good family, good English.’

  ‘There is savagery at the beginning of the ascent of a civilisation,’ Iyer begins, ‘then a glorious flowing into learning and science, and then, of course, the decadence and sloth that lead to destruction from within and without. We are locked in this – the defeated of today becoming the victors of tomorrow. And then the next civilisation will write books about us, not seeing that it is, all the while, hurtling towards the same fate.’

  ‘But what stage are we at, sir? India, that is.’

  ‘We have to transcend our curses and wounds and discover who we truly are.’

  ‘Sir, I get cursed every day. Sometimes, several times a day. I do not believe in curses. Just last month Khanolkar cursed me to be reborn as a cockroach.’

  A spluttering barge travelling upriver chugs into view and interrupts their conversation. They see a boat filled with rows of men in handcuffs, with two policemen – armed with Enfield rifles – on guard. This can’t be good, thinks Bencho.

  ‘Row alongside it, Bencho. Row along their boat NOW,’ Iyer hisses with pursed lips, raising his staff for emphasis.

  ‘No, sir. No. They are the police!’

  Iyer seems to see sense for a moment before the barge’s engine splutters and stops, its exhaust spluttering out a plume of black smoke – much to Iyer’s joy.

  ‘The gods have decided for us,’ says Iyer, and Bencho breaks out in a cold sweat.

  ‘No, sir, please.’

  The engine box rattling, the barge turns with loud instructions from one of the constables to the boatman, and pulls up at a reed bed on a small island.

  Separated by about thirty feet of water, Iyer cups his hands to shout, ‘I am Bhīma of Benares, brahmachari!’

  Bencho rolls his eyes heavenwards.

 
‘What are these men in chains for?’ he continues.

  ‘The roads are closed and they all have a special date to get to!’ the constable shouts back.

  ‘What are they guilty of?’ Iyer asks

  ‘Get lost,’ says a constable, unzipping himself at the stern.

  Iyer shouts to a chubby man in a well-stitched shirt, handcuffed in the last row.

  ‘What are you in chains for, man?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘What are you in chains for, man?’ he bellows.

  The man thinks for a few seconds and grins.

  ‘Sir, I am here only because of poverty.’

  ‘Poverty?’

  ‘I did not have enough to bribe the police when I was caught.’ The other convicts snigger.

  Bencho’s only form of protest is refusing to row the boat up to the barge, but it floats closer towards them anyway.

  The man next to him is short, with a Hitler moustache. ‘What are you here for?’ Iyer asks him.

  ‘I am here because I am too gentle, sir.’

  ‘Gentle?’

  ‘Yes, I could not bear the slaps of the policeman and said I did it, sir.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Fell into the arms of a beautiful girl, but they said she was unwilling,’ he smirks, tossing his head while the rest of the convicts snigger again.

  A clean-shaven convict with a row all to himself raises his hand, and the whole boat falls silent. He’s tall and wiry, with pale skin and sharp, intelligent eyes. A long scar runs from his forehead to his ear, passing through an eyelid, healed but distended.

  ‘And you? What is your tale of suffering?’

  The two boats are now close enough for the tyres that hang off the side of the barge to touch the boat.

  ‘My dear, I am here for the crime of falling in love,’ he says smiling, the scar turning pink as he does so.

  ‘Falling in love?’

  ‘I love what I do, my dear, and that is why I am here. People call me “The Lover”.’

  ‘And what do you do?’

  ‘I remove all that inhibit progress,’ he says evenly. No one laughs; they look away, keen to not involve themselves in the exchange.