Mr Iyer Goes To War

by Ryan Lobo

  ‘I was executed for a terrible crime, Damayanti. And they responded with even greater ones.’

  Damayanti looks hard at his face. ‘I am not the killing kind, Iyer. And neither are you,’ she says, now a little exasperated at the tone of the conversation.

  ‘We are as we are, we will be what we were not and we shall become what we hate,’ Iyer says, and lets his hands travel again, moving down over his throat and into the plains ahead, over his chest and down his left arm to the hand, where his fingers twitch. Iyer begins to laugh, and though no sound of laughter is heard, tears trickle down his face.

  ‘Yes?’ asks Damayanti. ‘What did I do to you now?’

  ‘Here is where I lost my hand at the battle of Lepanto, fighting the Ottomans, in 1571, defending that group of villages we now call Europe,’ Iyer says, pointing at a mole on his left wrist. ‘I was a Spaniard then.’

  ‘That’s not a big wound,’ Damayanti says sceptically.

  ‘It was Bencho who fired that cannon shot that blew off my hand.’

  ‘Bencho! Ha! Finally someone else. Who was Bencho? Tell me.’

  ‘He was a slave named Hameed owned by the Ottomans, descended from Tenali Ram, formerly a warrior in the employ of the Vijayanagara king, Rama Raya, captured at the battle of Talikota and sold to some Turkmenistanis as a gunner who was to serve under the Turks in the battle at Lepanto. Bencho – I mean Hameed – lit the wick of the cannon that blew off my hand. I was captured and made a galley slave, and I ended up sharing a bench with him, as he had been demoted for bad accuracy, thievery and poetry. I nicknamed him Bhantaki, or what he called a brinjal in his language. Black as a brinjal, that drunken Bencho was. Hameed Bhantaki,’ Iyer chuckles.

  ‘So you knew Bencho before. And me, too?’

  ‘You were my maid Aldonza in Spain then.’

  ‘Ah, was she beautiful?’

  ‘No. She was an ugly woman who made extra money by whoring on the side, and she hated me very much.’

  ‘Why? For calling her such terrible things? Definitely.’

  ‘No, my dear, for not paying you your total fee.’

  Damayanti opens her mouth in shock and then bursts out laughing, covering her mouth with her hand.

  ‘What a story!’ she laughs. ‘You really know how to spin a tale.’

  Iyer looks confused and then smiles.

  ‘That Hameed Bhantaki had such wonderful stories to tell me. So much time chained and rowing, chained and rowing, rowing and chained. I think when you’re chained the spirit is set free and when you’re freed, the spirit chains itself. If it wasn’t for that scoundrel Hameed, I might not have made it. That brinjal was a gift from heaven.’

  Damayanti feels his forehead and it burns. ‘Your fever is rising.’

  ‘How we laughed, Damayanti. In the midst of such pain, we laughed.’

  ‘You have known Bencho a long time, Iyer!’

  ‘A somewhat useless fellow for the most part, but nonetheless a poet floating through the ages. A bumbling lump of loyal corruption,’ he says, laughing.

  ‘Poet through the ages?’

  ‘Yes, he was so many. Asvaghosha, Kalidasa, Bharavi, and then later, when Kaliyug struck, Hameed and that fellow who sounds like a saucer.’

  ‘OK, Iyer, that’s enough. At least I know who we are now.’

  ‘All our lives yesterday are also our lives today. I have lost count, as we were beasts and plants too, my dear, but the wonderings of ants, the musings of banana plants and the philosophies of crocodiles might not make for proper conversation today. Our atoms have been there from first light, from first sound,’ Iyer says, fatigue coming over him.

  ‘You knew me in all lives? In all those different worlds?’

  ‘Om Namah Shivaya. We have been together from the beginning,’ he says, taking a deep breath. ‘And this too shall pass.’

  ‘And what of Bakasura and your quest for the immortal, which the whole ghat is chatting about now?’

  Iyer pauses, his eyes closed, thinking hard and then relaxing.

  ‘When I felt I should slay evil demons, I have brought my own self close to death; when I thought I had journeyed deep into the darkness of this age, I have come to the centre of my own; and where I thought I would find a slavering demon, I discovered the Nataraja himself.’

  ‘And now? Will you run away again?’

  ‘When I had thought myself to be alone, I have been with you, since the beginning.’

  ‘What about us?’ Damayanti asks, softly, unsure of what Iyer is saying but overcome with a sudden feeling of tenderness. Iyer remains silent as she squeezes out the rag and spreads it over his forehead, looking down at his cartography marked with keloids for hills, cuts for valleys and bruises for earth, no fat obscuring the details.

  ‘Most waste life living in the future and the past.’

  ‘What about us?’

  ‘I am here with you, now.’

  ‘Do not die, Iyer,’ she says, her voice breaking. ‘And why did you not share all this with me earlier? Why not tell everyone who you’ve shared lives with?’

  ‘It is like I am on a boat in the river. I sail downstream and you row upstream. We pass close – so close that if I reach out I could touch you – but during the journey, the waters are rough and the oars need managing. When our boats pass, we are too busy rowing to even look. And life passes.’

  Damayanti can feel her heart contracting; she can’t speak, and takes a few breaths to steady herself.

  ‘Tomorrow I will visit Kashi Vishwanath temple and offer up prayers for you,’ she says with forced brightness.

  ‘Tomorrow I will leave to battle. The demon awaits!’

  ‘You are not going anywhere. You will relearn how to live,’ Damayanti says, and a wind rushes into the window, bringing with it some orange blossoms from the Gulmohar tree.

  Spring.

  Iyer closes his eyes. The tiredness returns. He feels like the world is whirling around him, but is comforted by Damayanti’s words.

  A brass band is passing by: another funeral procession. Rose-ringed parakeets fly overhead like shrieking green comets. Iyer sees them from behind his eyelids.

  ‘Iyer,’ she whispers, trying to wake him, but Iyer is in a place beyond words.

  Damayanti sees a contusion has spread out over his sternum like a rose, where Krishna had pressed down on him with his staff. An infection seems to have set into its scratches, and it radiates outward from his heart – tributaries from a spring-fed lake, rays from a child’s sun – meeting the blue veins in his shoulders, rising to his throat and flowing into his arms. She caresses its progress, following the dark veins as if they are tributaries. She touches his lips with her fingers and feels his breath on her fingertips.

  He breathes.

  She places her face over his and closes her eyes. She feels his exhalation on her forehead, the hum of his breath on her burns. She hears his heart, her ear over the star, and the sound of it passes through her, filling the room, flowing out of the window, rushing down the streets and becoming the water that flows over the land. Her tears fall on him.

  Wiping her eyes dry, Damayanti bends over the map of his adventures – in this life and the others – and, closing her eyes, she kisses his heart.

  39

  This time he would have to plan ahead, dreams Iyer.

  While the dying slept, he would pack a bag with some clothes and basic weaponry. He would rise early and conceal the bag under his jacket. Then he would insist on walking down to the mess for breakfast, being helped down the stairs, making a show of it, exclaiming in pain perhaps. He would eat well and request to sit in the little sunlight to warm his aching knees. Given his pitiful state, Khanolkar would never suspect an abscondence, and permission would be granted. On the way to the platform by the river, which he would hobble towards, pausing from time to time in case anyone was watching, Iyer would remove a bamboo staff from the funeral stretcher that awaited him in the courtyard.

  Once on the stone platfor
m and left to his own devices, he would stand on his good leg and use the bamboo as a crutch to limp down to the balconies where the beggars thronged.

  Bencho would help, of course, but not so early in the adventure, as Bencho was likely to insist that Iyer regain his strength before running off again. So Bencho would not be informed. The surly leper, on the other hand, would be essential. Iyer would strike a deal with him for protection and transport. He would haggle for a place on the pushcart in exchange for riches and fame beyond the craven leper’s wildest dreams. The leper would be a hard negotiator, no doubt – given the degenerate criminal he surely was – but Iyer, as always, would prevail, using wisdom and divine bribery to get his way.

  The leper had mentioned something about Bombay, and the idea of a new city appealed to Iyer. They would leave for Bombay, the leper pushing the cart, the promise of fame and riches filling his crumbling body with strength and his surviving fingers with endurance. They would head west towards Allahabad and then onto Kanpur, and Khanolkar would not suspect a thing as they fled, scouring the banks of the river as they made good their escape via land. They would beg for food from travellers and sleep under the night sky, as few attacked lepers except for other lepers, but Iyer would arm himself with the staff in any case. They would work their way southwest from there, onward to Indore – that dividing city between the Deccan and Delhi, built as protection from both the Marathas and Mughals – where they would rest for a few weeks before walking to Bombay, formerly a mangrove swamp – an ideal habitat for demons.

  There would be a good chance that he would contract leprosy, but the affliction would be advantageous to his quest, as lepers are seldom searched or suspected. And if he looked pathetic enough, it could be a valuable disguise. It was also likely that suffering in this life for the right reasons would assist Iyer in his next incarnation, where he could be reborn into a better avatar, a bottlenosed dolphin perhaps. Or if he were lucky, he’d be reborn a whale – once closely related to man, but who had chosen to remain in the ocean and develop inward over millennia, perfecting senses, communication, love and awareness unlike man, who had chosen the other direction.

  Afflicted with the gift of leprosy, a gift because no home would take him, Iyer would hunt down Bakasura and his minions, who’d be unprepared for the apocalypse that awaited them. He would, of course, have to be careful with the surly leper, as it was certain in Iyer’s mind that he would try to kill, or at the very least, rob him once they were out of the city. He would have to be alert. But the leper only had two fingers, and however strong they may be, Iyer was an incarnation of Bhīma.

  Fingerless palms would not allow him the skillful use of the mace, and with missing limbs he might not survive a horde of demons taking different forms. One of his knees is useless, but there is still strength left in the other one: Iyer kicks off the sheet to test it. His head throbs with fever but Iyer smiles to himself, stretching out on the bed like a cat, savoring the excitement of making plans.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many people inspired this book, consciously and unwittingly. In particular I am deeply grateful to:

  Irina Snissar for her love, criticism and forbearance while I wrote this story.

  My parents Dr. Aloma and David Lobo for their example, faith, love and goodness, without which so much might have been so different.

  My sister Nisha for her patience and wisdom.

  Dr Ashok Krishnan for his kind encouragement, mentorship, friendship and guidance, both literary and otherwise.

  Faiza S. Khan, my editor at Bloomsbury, for having faith in this story and for her incredible role in the formation of this book.

  Mr Suchindranath Aiyer for sharing his story, thoughts and historical views.

  Mr K.V.K. Murthy for his writing, example and integrity.

  Vikramajit Ram for his listening ear and kind advice.

  Eric Strauss, Shantulan Mishra and Adarsh N.C. for their companionship and support during so many adventures on the Ganges and elsewhere.

  The ‘Knights of the Square Table’, the universe at the end of Koshy’s Restaurant, Prem Koshy for his generosity, spirit of adventure, expertise regarding aliens and talent to create minor cataclysms of the storytelling sort.

  Nausheer Hameed for his cheerfulness, humour and wit, no matter the cataclysm.

  Darius ‘Tuffy’ Taraporvala for his calm and conversation.

  D.P. Sridhar for his measured silence, style and integrity in all circumstances.

  Ravi Khanolkar for his gentle rage against the machine.

  Dr N.V.S. Krishnan for his wisdom, stories and deep suspicion of all things worthy of deep suspicion.

  Reverend Peter Anirudh for setting the example of how to be a good man in dark times.

  First published in Great Britain 2016

  This electronic edition published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  © Ryan Lobo, 2016

  Ryan Lobo has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

  Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.

  This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

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