by Ian McDonald
Mr Nandha slides his gun into his jacket pocket.
‘You have been of great assistance. Ray Power. Most interesting. Please do not attempt to leave the premises, police officers will arrive shortly.’
As he departs, Mr Nandha notices that the broom boy is also quite quick with the fire extinguisher.
Ram Sagar Singh, Bharat’s Voice of Cricket, burbles the tail-end batting order on the solar powered radio. Dozing in the shade of the hibiscus-trellis, Krishan is lulled into memory. All his life, that slow voice has spoken to him, closer and wiser than a god.
It was a school day but his father had woken him before light.
‘Naresh Engineer bats today at ul-Huq.’
Neighbour Thakur was taking a load of shoe leather up to his buyer in Patna and had been only too happy to give Kudrati father and son a ride in his pick-up. A low-caste lift, but this was in all likelihood the last time Naresh Engineer would ever take the bat.
The Kudrati land had come from the hands of Gandhi and Nehru; taken from the zamindar and given to the tillers of Biharipur. Its history was his pride, not just the Kudrati inheritance but the heritage of the nation itself; its name was India, not Bharat, not Awadh or Maratha or States of Bengal. That was why Krishan’s father must see the greatest batsman India had produced in a generation step to the crease; for the honour of a name.
Krishan was eight years old and his first time in a city. The StarAsia sports channels were no preparation for the crowds outside the Moin ul-Huq stadium. He had never seen so many people in one place. His father led him surely through the crowd that swirled, patterns within patterns, like printed fabric.
‘Where are we going?’ Krishan asked, aware that they were moving against a general gyre towards the turnstiles.
‘My cousin Ram Vilas, your grandfather’s nephew, has tickets.’
He remembers looking around at the hive of faces, felt his father’s sure tug on his hand. Then he realised that the crowd was bigger than his father had imagined. Dreaming wide green spaces, stands in the distance, polite applause, he had forgotten to arrange a meeting place with cousin Ram Vilas. Now he was going to spiral his way around the ul-Huq ground, if necessary checking every face.
After an hour in the heat the crowd was thin but Krishan’s father ploughed on. Inside the concrete oval bursts of loudspeaker cackle introduced the players; the Indians greeted them with bursts of applause and cheering. Father and son both knew now that his grandfather’s nephew had never been here. There never were any tickets. In the sloping shadow of the main stand was a nimki seller. Mr Kudrati seized his son’s hand again and hauled him across the concrete. When they got within smelling distance of the rancid, hot oil, Krishan saw what had galvanised his father. Balanced on the glass display counter was a radio, blatting stupid pop.
‘My son, the test match,’ his father gibbered at the vendor. He thrust a flutter of rupees at the hot snack seller. ‘Tune, tune, retune! And some of those pappadi, too.’
The vendor reached in to the hot eats with a cone of newspaper.
‘No no no!’ Krishan’s father almost screamed with frustration. ‘First, retune. Then the food. 97.4.’ Ram Sagar Singh came through in his BBC Received Pronunciation and Krishan sat down with the paper cone of hot pappadi, back against the warm steel cart to listen to the match. And that is how he remembers Naresh Engineer’s last innings, sitting by a nimki vendor’s cart outside the Moin ul-Huq cricket ground, listening to Ram Sagar Singh and the faint, half-imagined crack of the bat, and then the rising roar of the crowd behind him; all day as the shadows moved across the concrete car park.
Krishan Kudrati smiles in his doze under the climbing hibiscus. A darker shadow moves across his closed eyelids, a waft of cool. He opens his eyes. Parvati Nandha stands over him, looking down.
‘I should really be telling you off, sleeping on my time.’
Krishan glances at the clock on his radio. He still has ten minutes of his time but he sits up and flicks the radio off. The players are on lunch and Ram Sagar Singh is trawling through his compendious tallboy of cricket facts.
‘I just wanted to see what you thought of my new bracelets for the reception tonight,’ Parvati says, one hand on hip like a dancer, the other weaving in front of him.
‘If you held it still, I might actually see it.’
Metal catches light, dazzling Krishan. Instinctively, he reaches out. Without thought, his hand is around her wrist. Realisation paralyses him for a moment. Then Krishan releases his grasp.
‘That’s very fine,’ he says. ‘Is it gold?
‘Yes,’ Parvati says. ‘My husband likes to buy me gold.’
‘Your husband is very good to you. You will be number one star attraction at this party.’
‘Thank you.’ Parvati ducks her head, now ashamed at her forwardness. ‘You are most kind.’
‘No, I am just speaking the simple truth.’ Made bold by the sun and the heavy scent of soil, Krishan dares: ‘Forgive me, but I don’t think you get to hear that as much as you should.’
‘You are a very forward man!’ Parvati scolds, then, gently, ‘Is that the cricket you are listening to?’
‘The second test from Patna. We are two hundred and eight for five.’
‘Cricket is not a thing I understand,’ Parvati says. ‘It seems very complex and hard to win.’
‘Once you understand the rules and the strategies, it is the most fascinating of sports,’ Krishan says. ‘It is the nearest the English come to Zen.’
‘I should like to know about it. It’s all the talk at these social events. I feel stupid, standing there not able to say anything. I might not know about politics or the economy, but I might be able to learn cricket. Perhaps you could teach me?’
Mr Nandha drives through New Varanasi to Dido and Aeneas, English Chamber Opera recording, which Mr Nandha notes for its rough approach to the English Baroque. On the edge of his sensory envelope, like a rumour of monsoon, is this evening’s durbar at the Dawars. He would welcome an excuse not to go. Mr Nandha fears Sanjay Dawar will announce the happy conception of an heir. A Brahmin, he suspects. That will start Parvati again. He has repeatedly made his position clear, but all she hears is a man telling her he will not give her babies. This depresses Mr Nandha.
A discord in his auditory lobes: a call from Morva, in Fiscal. Of all of his people in the Ministry, Morva is the only one for whom Mr Nandha has any respect. There is a beauty and elegance to the paper trail. It is detection at its purest and holiest. Morva never has to leave his office, never faces the streets, never threatens violence or carries a weapon but his thoughts go out from his desk on the twelfth floor across the whole wide world with a few gestures of his hand and blinks of the eye. Pure intellect, disembodied as he flits from shell company to tax haven, offshore datahaven to escrow account. The abstraction of his work excites Mr Nandha: entities with no physical structure at all. Pure flow; the movement of intangible money through minute clusters of information.
He has chased down Odeco. It is a secretive investment company sheltered in a Caribbean tax haven, much given to throwing mega-dollars into blue sky. Its investments in Bharat include the Artificial Intelligence unit at the University of Bharat, Varanasi; Ray Power Research and Development division and a number of Darwin-ware hothouses hovering on the edge of legality breeding low-level aeais. Not the aeai that leaped out of the backyard betting scheme in TikkaPasta and ran amok, Mr Nandha thinks. Even a high-risk venture company like Odeco would not risk dealing with the sundarbans.
Americans fear these jungle places as they fear everything outside their own borders and co-opt Mr Nandha and his kind to wage their unending war against the wild aeais, but much of Mr Nandha admires the datarajas. They have energy and enterprise. They have pride and a name in the world. The sundarbans of Bharat and the States of Bengal, Bangalore and Mumbai, New Delhi and Hyderabad resound globally. They are the abodes of the mythical Generation Threes, aeais sentient beyond sentience, as high over human intelligences
as gods.
The Badrinath sundarban physically occupies a modest fifteenth floor apartment on Vidyapeeth. Dataraja Radhakrishna’s neighbours doubtless never suspect that next door live ten thousand cybernetic devis. As he hoots his way in to park through the mopeds Mr Nandha summons his avatars. Jashwant had been warned. Datarajas have so many feelers, trembling to the vibrations in the global web, that it is almost as if they are prescient. As he locks the car Mr Nandha watches as the streets and skyline fill with gods, huge as mountains. Siva scans the wireless traffic, Krishna the extra- and intranet, Kali raises her sickle above the satellite dishes of New Varanasi to reap anything copying itself out of Badrinath. Harm’s our delight and mischief all our skill, sings the English Chamber Orchestra Chorus.
And it all goes white. A shout of static. The gods are wiped from the skyline. Dido and Aeneas shorts in mid continuo. Mr Nandha rips the ’hoek from his ear.
‘Make way, make way!’ he shouts at the pedestrians. In his first week with the Ministry Mr Nandha experienced first hand a full-strength EM pulse. There is no mistaking its signature. As he sprints up the steps to the foyer, thumbing for police support on his sputtering palmer, he thinks he sees a something, too big for a bird, too small for an aircraft loop away from the apartment building and vanish into the Varanasi sky-glow. Seconds later the fascia of the fifteenth floor apartment explodes in a gout of flame.
‘Run, flee!’ Mr Nandha shouts as the smoking debris rains down on the gawpers but the one, huge, gagging thought in his head is that he won’t get his suit from Mukherjee’s now.
SHAHEEN BADOOR KHAN, NAJIA
Prime Minister Sajida Rana wears gold and green today. Her cabinet knows to expect matters of national pride when she is dressed in the flag. She stands at the east end of the long teak table in the luminous marble cabinet room of the Bharat Sabha. Gilt framed oils of forebears and political inspirations line the long wall. Her father, Diljit Rana, in his judge’s robes, father of the nation. Her grandfather, Shankar Rana, in his English Queen’s Counsel silk. Jawarhalal Nehru, aloof and vaguely fearful in his sweetly cut suit, as if he had seen the price future generations would pay for the quick, dirty deal he did with Mountbatten. The Mahatma, father of all, with his bowl and wheel. Lakshmi Bai, warrior Rani, standing in the stirrups of her Maratha cavalry horse commanding the charge on Gwalior. And the autocrats of that other mighty Indian dynasty to share the name Gandhi, Sonia; assassinated Rajiv; Indira the martyr, Mother India.
The marble walls and ceiling of the cabinet chamber have been worked into an intricate filigree of Hindu mythology. Yet the acoustic is dry and resonant. Even whispers ring and carry. Sajida Rana places her hands on the polished teak, rests her weight on them, a fighter’s stance.
‘Can we survive if we strike at Awadh?’
V.S. Chowdhury, Defence Minister, turns his hooded, hawk eyes to his leader.
‘Bharat will survive. Varanasi will survive. Varanasi is eternal.’
There is no doubt in the echoing hall what he means.
‘Can we beat them?’
‘No. Not a hope. You saw Shrivastava on the White House shaking hands with McAuley on his Most Favoured Nation status.’
‘It’ll be the Shanker Mahal next,’ says Energy Secretary Vajubhai Patel. ‘The Americans have been sniffing around Ray Power. The Awadhis won’t need to invade, they can just buy us up. Last I heard, old Ray was down at Manikarna ghat doing his surya namaskar.’
‘Then who’s running the bloody shop?’ Chowdhury asks.
‘An astrophysicist, a packaging salesman and a self-styled comedian.’
‘Gods save us, we should surrender right now,’ Chowdhury mutters.
‘I cannot believe what I am hearing around this table,’ says Sajida Rana. ‘Like old women around a pump. The people want a war.’
‘The people want rain,’ says Biswanath, Minister of Environmental Affairs, stiffly. ‘And that is all they want. A monsoon.’
Sajida Rana turns now to her most trusted aide. Shaheen Badoor Khan is lost in marble, his attention seduced by vulgar pagan deities scrambling over each other’s bodies, up the walls and across the roof. Then he mentally erases the grosser contours, the sculpted cones of the breasts, the crude jut of the linga, reduces them to an androgynous blur of marble flesh, flowing into and through and out of itself. Vision jumps to an angle of cheekbone, an elegantly curved nape, a smooth perfect curve of hairless scalp glimpsed in an airport corridor.
‘Mr Khan, what did you get from Bengal?’
‘It is fantasy,’ Shaheen Badoor Khan says. ‘As always, the Banglas want to demonstrate they can engineer a high-tech solution to a problem. The iceberg is a PR stunt. They are almost as thirsty as we are.’
‘This is it precisely.’ Interior Minister Ashok Rana speaks now. Shaheen Badoor Khan has no issue with nepotism, but it should at least aspire to fitting the man to the job. In pretence of making a point, Ashok will deliver a short speech in support of his sister’s policy, whatever it is. ‘What the people need is water and if that takes a war . . .’
Shaheen Badoor Khan gives the slightest of sighs, enough for the brother to catch. Defence Minister Chowdhury chimes in. He has a high and querulous voice that strikes unpleasant harmonics from the squabbling marble apsaras.
‘The Land Forces Strategic Development Unit’s best model involves a pre-emptive strike on the dam itself. Send a small commando force in by air, take the dam, hold it until the last moment and then withdraw across the border. Meanwhile we press the United Nations for an international peace-keeping force on the dam.’
‘If the Americans do not call for sanctions first,’ Shaheen Badoor Khan comments. A murmur of agreement rolls around the long dark table.
‘Withdraw?’ Ashok Rana is incredulous. ‘Our brave jawans strike a mighty blow against Awadh and they turn tail and run? How will that look on the streets of Patna? This Strategic Development Unit, have they no izzat?’
Shaheen Badoor Khan feels the climate in the room change. This balls-talk of pride and brave soldiers and cowardice is stirring them. ‘If I might offer an opinion,’ he says into the perfect, resonant silence.
‘Your opinions are always welcome here,’ Sajida Rana says.
‘I believe that the greatest threat this government faces comes from the orchestrated demonstrations at Sarkhand Roundabout, not our dam dispute with Awadh,’ he says carefully. Voices on every side of the table raise objection. Sajida Rana lifts her hand and there is quiet.
‘Continue, Secretary Khan.’
‘I am not saying there will not be war, though I think my position on aggression towards Awadh is clear to everyone by now.’
‘Woman’s position,’ Ashok Rana says. Shaheen hears Ashok whisper to his aide, ‘Muslim’s position.’
‘I am talking about threats to this government and clearly, the biggest threat we face is internal division and civil unrest fomented by the Shivaji. As long as our party enjoys mass popular support for any military action against Awadh, any diplomatic negotiations will come through this cabinet. And we are agreed that military force is purely a tool to get the Awadhis to the negotiating table, despite Ashok’s high regard for our military prowess.’ Shaheen Badoor Khan holds Ashok Rana’s eyes long enough to tell him he is a fool appointed above his competence. ‘However, if the Awadhis and their American patrons see a political alternative with wide popular support in Bharat, then N.K. Jivanjee will set himself up as peacemaker. The man who stopped the war, made the Ganga run again and brought down the proud Ranas who shamed Bharat. We will not see the inside of this room for a generation. This is behind that play-acting over Sarkhand Roundabout. It is not the moral outrage of the Honest Hindutva of Bharat. Jivanjee plans to raise the mob against us. He is going to ride that Chariot of Jaggarnath right up Chandni Boulevard into this room.’
‘Is there anything we can arrest him on?’ Foreign Minister Dasgupta asks.
‘Back taxes?’ Vipul Narvekar, Ashok Rana’s PA , suggests to
a murmur of laughter.
‘I have a suggestion,’ Shaheen Badoor Khan says. ‘Let N.K. Jivanjee have what he wants, but only when we want him to have it.’
‘Explain please, Mr Khan.’ Prime Minister Rana leans forward now.
‘I say, give him his head. Let him call up his million staunch believers. Let him ride his war chariot with his Shivaji dancing behind him. Let him be the voice of Hindutva, let him make the war-mongering speeches and stir up the offended Bharati pride. Let him drive the country into war. If we show ourselves to be doves, then he will become the hawk. We know he can stir a mob to violence. That could be directed against Awadhis in the border towns. They’ll appeal to Delhi to protect them, the whole thing will escalate. Mr Jivanjee needs no persuasion to ride his rath yatra right up to the Kunda Khadar dam. The Awadhis will strike back; then we move in as the injured party. The Shivaji are discredited as the ones who started the whole thing; the Awadhis are on the back foot with their Americans and we go to the negotiating table as the party of reason, sanity and diplomacy.’