by Anil Menon
This pretence has a name. It’s called ‘suspension of disbelief.’ I was warned to become an expert at it as quickly as I could, if I didn’t want to go mad. I was assured this was a normal part of growing up. If I didn’t, I was in for it. I was told I wouldn’t be able to enjoy literature. I would be driven mad by Little Red Riding Hood’s mania for wearing a riding hood but never go riding. And Cinderella. If her shoe was such a good fit, how come it had slipped off in the first place? (Laughter.) That filthy naked dead body on the street that somebody else should pick up? Are you dazed with disbelief that your world could be so? Look boss, the body is from a different world. It is lying there only because waste allocation among different disposal alternatives is in equilibrium when the marginal social cost of each alternative is the same across the complete set; sooner or later, the invisible hand of the market will pick the body up and carry it away. See how the suspension of disbelief works?
I think what I’m trying to say is this. I was lucky, yes. Bacch-gaya lucky. However, we can’t run a world on bacch-gaya luck anymore. My friends, I want you to go out and build a world where people don’t need bacch-gaya luck. A society that routinely relies on bacch-gaya luck is a sad society, because it condemns millions of its people to suffer.
Now I can hear some of you thinking, Dhasal, look man, I can’t even fix a masala dosa for myself, and you want me to fix the world? Now who wants me to suspend disbelief ? (Laughter.)
But it isn’t belief that’s required of you, it’s action. Belief and disbelief cost nothing. What does it matter what you believe or disbelieve, if you do not act? When religious beliefs divide us into different worlds, it is time to rethink one’s actions, not worry about belief. Set aside your Vedas, your cross, your turban, your topi. There is no Hindu, no Mussulman, no Sikh and no Isahi. We’re one humanity. What matters is that you act to make this a liveable world for all.
Everything you do, matters. Suppose you write a program that helps sell T-shirts on the web. Well, that reshapes the way people buy clothes. Suppose you make a new kind of one-minute dal. Well, that can reshape eating habits. Suppose you make a movie about the importance of friends over relatives; well, you reshape human expectations. Living in this world is like walking on a sand dune. It’s impossible not to change the world as one walks.
As you must have learned from your friends by now, we can be different from one another, but still live in the same world. There is a word for this possibility in all cultures, all languages. In Sanskrit, we call it vipralambh, love-in-separation, or more philosophically, love-in-difference. It is not just a possibility. It is also a promise the universe makes to each and every one of us. Once I realized this truth I discovered that my parents, though dead, were always available to me. Stars who died many millions of years ago are still visible in the night sky. My beloved siblings, though dead, are always with me. Even the ultimate separation can be bridged in love. Such a world is the only one I can believe in.
Such bright young smiling faces! I’m filled with hope. I can tell you’re all going to remake this world into a better world. A world where children needn’t die of chikungunya. A world where ruined jawans are taken care of. A world where an orphan arouses not just useless pity but also action to find him a home. A world where there’s no war, no poverty, and I must add, for your sake, no convocation speeches over fifteen minutes. (Laughter.)
My friends, my comrades, my beloved brothers and sisters, I charge you with the task of building this better world. Burn bright. Burn true. Burn as long as life permits and fill this world with love and light. Thank you.
2
SOMETIMES, IN THE MORE HABITUAL MOMENTS OF THE DAY, SAY, missing Tanaz, reading reports, watching the world slip by, lying in bed unable to sleep, or swirling the threads of saffron in my chai,
I’m led to contemplate the other lives I might have had. I hadn’t always been with Cultural Affairs. Once I had been other things, had intended to be other things, been at forks, could have turned left instead of right, and who is to say where the other fork might have led.
I can almost hear my wife’s voice, amused: To me, where else?
Yes, without question. In any case, I knew where I would go next, what would happen next. A final rail journey from Kanpur to Delhi and I’d reach Tanaz. After one year, seven months and seventeen days of separation, I would be home. I would call out her name, and my wife would answer, not my imagination. So comforting had been that anticipation and the futures it held in trust, I half-dreaded the moment when fact would make imagination no longer necessary. Walking down Kanpur Central’s railway platform, flanked by my two uniformed men striding confidently, even arrogantly, beside me, my glance was drawn upwards towards the dust scattering the harsh orange light from the ceiling fixtures, sepia-staining the long rectangular spaces of the railway station. I wished my men would stop strutting; something about wearing a uniform invariably reduced men to swagger sticks. It was only five in the morning but an old woman in a floral cotton sari and threadbare khaki coat was sweeping the platform, one hand folded behind her back. A white woman in a sweat-stained T-shirt and faded jeans stood by one of the elevators, weeping. The lady seemed self-sufficient in her sorrow.
‘You, either keep moving or get out of the way,’ barked the sweeper-woman.
Then she looked up, and her expression transformed from attitude to fear. She straightened. I smiled and after a second’s hesitation, the old woman returned the smile, adding a comical half-salute with her broom.
I moved on. We are in the same profession, I said to my men, and for some reason, they decided I was joking and laughed. I cut through the crowd, happy to drown in brown, idly wondering about the story fragments around me whose endings I would never learn. I liked rail stations. I was glad I had decided to take the Shatabdi Express to Delhi. It was slower, yes. But that wasn’t the only plus. I liked the slowness of rail travel. At a short distance from us, to our right, I noticed a young female officer on a railway bench. She wasn’t alone. Seated next to her was a mongrel stray. Judging from the animated conversation she was having, they appeared to be on familiar terms.
The khaki and shoulder badges marked her as a soldier from the Jhansi Reserve Corps, which had seen considerable action in Orissa and Manipur. If memory served, the Lokshakti had originally formed the unit from the Nagaland Mahila Indian Reserve Battalion and operationalized it for peacekeeping tasks such as crowd-control, disaster relief, curfew enforcement, QoL operations, that sort of thing. Tasks quite different from the ones she had actually engaged in.
Also, tasks quite different from the one she was currently engaged in. People ahead of us were slowing down to stare at the young soldier. Understandable. Some objects, like alpacas or the Eiffel Tower, are meant to be stared at. Bilkis was one of those objects. I would have made it my business to intervene even if the people hadn’t been laughing at an officer of the Lokshakti; that is, laughing at the Lokshakti. They were laughing at my friend. As we approached the bench, the crowd magically found other things to do.
‘Lieutenant, atten-shun!’ barked one of my men, before I could restrain him.
Bilkis jumped to her feet. When I had first met her some months ago, I’d taken her for a Punjabi kudi, raised on lassi and film songs, but she could have been a Pashtun, a Balochi, perhaps even a Chitrali; certainly one of those Northern places Sikander had trampled centuries earlier. I had been struck by her unexpectedly sweet face, now marred by a film of tears. Bilkis seemed unaware she was weeping.
‘See what they have done to Balbir,’ she said to me, as if we were resuming a conversation.
I glanced at the stray. Some joker had hung the Lokshakti’s logo—a red Ashok Chakra over a pair of crossed swords on a black background—around the dog’s neck. The mongrel didn’t look like a Balbir to me. But there is no reasoning with pet lovers.
My officer was about to reprimand her, and I put a restraining hand on him. One glance at her uniform, badly ironed, stained, revealed
Bilkis wasn’t Bilkis, perhaps irretrievably so. Despite myself I felt a wrenching disquiet; mental illness evokes a peculiar dread. My mind raced with fixes. I would take care of her. Tanaz would understand. Bilkis could stay in our guest room; we never had guests. Doctors could be arranged. Bilkis was young, she would heal.
But she’d already come to her senses. First she half-saluted me, then gazed in a confused manner at the dog. With an incredibly fast sweep of her hand—I hardly saw the knife appear in her hand—she cut the cord around the mongrel’s neck. Balbir must have noticed the change in her because the moment she released her hold, the mongrel leaped off the bench and fled, all without making a sound. I had seen her enough times in action not to be surprised.
‘Vyas! Vyas, you—’
We embraced. Brother, sister. I took the cord from her, turned away as she surreptitiously wiped her tears. She said something about having missed her train to Delhi. I spoke with my men, told them to arrange for an extra seat in my coach, and then told them to go on ahead and wait for me in the VIP room. I didn’t need their escort. I had all the escort I needed at the moment. Yes sir, yes sir.
Their neutral expressions and exaggerated gestures of acquiescence revealed their astonishment.
‘Have you eaten, Bilkis?’ I asked.
She didn’t seem to know, and I decided she hadn’t. Bilkis was curiously pliant as if all she wanted was to be freed of decision-making. When I suggested she spend a few days with her Abba-jaan, she started as if she’d seen a ghost and shook her head. I explained she could travel with me to Delhi, and Bilkis merely nodded, as if the option was, as I had intended, an instruction. She had a pathetic and much-abused army trunk, which I gallantly offered to carry and nearly tore off an arm trying to lift.
‘Let me carry it,’ she said, ‘it’s got everything I have.’
Well, if she insisted. I led her to the railway canteen, which turned out to have a VIP dining room. Bilkis ordered an idli plate, a kathi roll and a large Fanta. I ordered a chai. She supersized the idli plate, which proved to be prescient, because watching her eat made me hungry. She gave me a complacent smile as I reached for a share. We had met in Odissa. The Lokshakti with the army’s help had finally managed to wipe out the Maoists, mostly by taking the metaphor somewhat literally. I had been busy with the clean-up of the once booming radical publishing network in Odissa. To my surprise I had found many of them run entirely by women, armed women, and shutting them down sometimes required muscle. The Lokshakti, ever sensitive about appearances, had decided to call in the Jhansi unit rather than use the Kalki’s so-called Lokveer and after some half-adozen operations, Bilkis and I became friends because we became friends. By the time Bilkis finished eating, she’d fully recovered. Or so I judged. She wouldn’t admit to stress but her long list of woes spoke for her. Bilkis was tired of combat. She was tired of being single. She was tired of losing dear friends. She was tired of delivering the bad news to their kith and kin. Balbir, I learned, had been one such friend. She claimed I’d met Balbir Singh and described him to me. The name didn’t ring a bell, and frankly, for me one sardar looks a lot like another. But I was sad to hear her friend had died in action and said so. It hardly registered. She belly-ached about how she’d been tasked with finding Balbir’s artist girlfriend and delivering the bad news. When I offered to arrange for someone else to handle that delicate responsibility, Bilkis refused.
‘I’m not complaining! Besides, I have a duty.’
Dooty had a central place in the Book of Bilkis. People had a dooty to do their jobs. A dooty to stand for something, a dooty to act, and a dooty to do the right thing, not just the logical thing. Dooty’s dooty, it seemed, was to be a pain in the ass. Dooty had a boinkable sister called Ijjat but that’s another story.
Bilkis was tired, tired, tired. In particular, Bilkis was tired of being a mere Lieutenant.
‘I’d like to become a Captain before I die. Merit has to mean something. Four tours, three gallantry commendations, my CO even told me, to my face—Bilkis, in my mind you’re already Captain—and I replied, thank you, thank you sir-ji, but please let the army also know what’s on your mind. Do you think I’m asking for too much?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘No, tell me if I’m being unreasonable.’
‘It’s perfectly reasonable.’
There was no use pointing out to her that rationality and the army had gone their separate ways shortly after Ug the Caveman had raised the first infantry unit.
‘Yes, yes. Just shut up, right?’ She smiled, then added in the offhand tone she used to state facts, ‘You’re not a nobody like me, are you Vyas?’
‘Well, that depends. I manage the Department of Cultural Affairs. It is merely the tail of the elephant that is the Lokshakti. If you saw my office, you’d laugh. No one takes my work seriously. Anyway, what does my rank matter? It changes nothing between us.’
‘Are you sure you don’t mind sharing your compartment with me?
I snore.’
It was hurtful, the question, as if status had ever been an issue between us. And I knew she snored. She knew I knew. Why even raise the topic of sleep when the entire journey would be over in six or seven hours? There was no point in asking Bilkis. She used thoughts to think about the world, not the thinker. Had her conscious mind published a newspaper, she would have believed every word on its pages.
My cellphone rang—Tanaz!—and in my hasty fumble I dropped the cell. Bilkis caught it in one smooth motion. She glanced at the display, then handed the phone over as if it had suddenly acquired a slither and a forked tongue. Victor-chacha, she mouthed.
I walked towards the relative privacy of a pillar, took the call.
‘Sir?’
‘Vyas!’ General Victor Dorabjee sounded as relaxed as a British squire on his morning constitutional. ‘Hope I am not interrupting a round of poker with the missus?’
‘I’m still in Kanpur, sir. I’ll reach Delhi in the evening.’
‘Good, good. Your filly’s been counting the minutes till she sees you again. You’ll get quite the moist reception, I imagine.’ ‘Yes.’
‘Quite.’ The General paused. ‘Have you been watching the news?
Durga Dhasal’s dead.’ ‘Dead!’
‘Yes. You know how he could never resist attacking Hinduism. This time it was the convocation address at DU. Took some potshots at us as well. All very elliptical of course. Last night, around eight, a mob stormed his apartment. The usual saffron excitables. They roughed up the old man a bit. One of Kalki’s men was at the scene and luckily he reined in the duffers before they totally wrecked the place. Dhasal himself was less lucky. He had a heart attack en route to the hospital. Cremation’s tomorrow. Some minor clashes here and there. On the whole, we’ve come out looking quite good. The old man’s finally gone. Sic transit gloria, what.’ He laughed.
Durgal Dhasal is dead. Durgal Dhasal is dead. The words rang out clear in my head but they didn’t ring in the truth. The truth was I didn’t know if I was in trouble. Which itself was troubling. Getting rammed is unpleasant enough, but to be also rammed by surprise adds insult to injury. I would have to do something. Durgal Dhasal is dead. Durgal Dhasal is dead. The words tolled for me.
‘Woohoo. Vyas? You there?’
‘Yes sir. I wish he hadn’t died. Not just yet—’
‘If only the bloody universe took that into consideration.’ Dorabjee sounded irritated. ‘I’m bloody relieved, that’s what I am. You didn’t know him like I did. The old man was more devious than all our jokers put together. He was a royal pain in the arse. Without him, the CPI will go back to being what it has always been, the crazy uncle of Indian politics.’
‘No, it’s not that, his death has created some awkward problems—’
‘Who gives a queef ? Next, we’ll bring the DU radicals to heel— I say, I’m a bit piqued. Yes, piqued. I thought you’d be pleased to hear the news. He hated your department in particular, wanted it shut down. Have you
forgotten? And here you are, snivelling. I’ve never liked this streak of sentimentality in you. I need people with commitment. I hope I can count on commitment, I really do, yes.’
Dorabjee wanted me to do my job. He wanted my approval. If I approved, he was nonchalant, but if I withheld it, he’d wring one out of me. He was a doer, a man of action. He might, like Aurangzeb, wish for all bookworms to have a single neck so he could sever it with a single cut, but since that wasn’t so, he needed me, or rather, my department, to watch the hydra. I had Dorabjee’s indulgence so long as I acted like I was unaware of this dependency. I had to lead like Fred Astaire while pretending to be Ginger Rogers. ‘Of course I’m committed, Victor. Two hundred percent. But it’s put me in a spot. Has anyone else entered the apartment since the attack?’
‘No, it’s sealed. But I’ll be sending a clean-up crew soon. All his stuff will be sent to Archives. The usual. Why?’
‘I request you hold off on that, sir. I’d like to look around the place first.’
‘Look for what?’ He sounded fearful.
‘This is really embarrassing,’ I began.
Durga Dhasal had harassed my department, and on Dorabjee’s orders, we’d returned the favour. We had pestered him with notices, summons, subpoenas, ne exeats, quo warranto writs and nuisance suits of every kind; legal buggering, as Dorabjee put it. Dhasal hadn’t been intimidated of course. On the contrary, I’d been the one buggered with infinite documents to sign.
‘I’m waiting for the bloody point,’ complained Dorabjee.