The PuppetMaster

by MacNair, Andrew L.

  He looked crestfallen. “There is a problem, Sahib?”

  “Yes. Now that she is the finest bicycle in Uttar Pradesh, I will need to give her a new name and purchase a thick chain to keep her safe.” Relieved that it wasn’t his fine work that was being called to question, he told me where I might locate the chain and lock for a decent price—a shop owned by his uncle. The re-christening he had no suggestions for.

  I paid him the agreed upon balance and added enough tip to buy at least one of the shoes for his feet. With a promise that he would be my number one bicycle maintenance engineer for as long as I owned her, I swung my leg over her frame and pedaled proudly towards the Sigra section of the city. I had business with the police.

  By the time the new wheels were clicking smoothly in third gear, I’d decided that the eight-fingered Charup deserved the tip for the second shoe. Missy Ugly rode like a dream. I weaved smoothly up Madanapura Road to Luxa and Vidhyapeeth Avenues. The sour feeling that had gripped me that morning departed with every click of the chain. Twenty minutes later I cruised into the neighborhood of Sigra and slipped unctuously back into low gear. The Mother India Temple, with its impressive gardens, rose in front of me, but that wasn’t my destination, the mildewed Sigra Police Station was.

  I pushed through the door with my bicycle in my right hand and my backpack in the other. The Sikh sitting behind the desk, with red turban, neat beard, and sweat-stained armpits rose immediately to command in ‘veddy crisp English’ that my bike would need to remain outside and my backpack searched. No problem with the bag, I replied, but Miss Ugly stayed inside. I asked Mr. Singh—all Sikhs have that name—if he would fancy leaving his wristwatch outside on her seat. He got the point, especially when I told him I was there to report a theft.

  “What kind of theft would that be, Sir?” he inquired as he plopped himself back into his chair and stroked a pair of handlebars on his mustache that were longer than Ugly’s.

  “My computer was stolen yesterday . . . from my home.”

  “Ah…” He began flipping through a file cabinet next to his desk. “That is a valuable item. Would you estimate that it was worth more than one hundred dollars American, Sir?”

  “Yes, about ten times that amount.”

  He lifted a folder and dropped it in front of him. The weight of Indian bureaucracy thudded heavily onto the desk. “Ah Yes. Well, let us see. Here it is. You will need to fill this out, Sir. And this one as well.” Two forms from the previous century were turned towards me.

  For the next half an hour I wended my way through a maze of ludicrous questions. In the twenty-ninth minute I was wondering if my sense of humor could still be intact. Assuring me the form was correct, Mr. Singh assisted me with such queries as: Will you be selling this item in Uttar Pradesh? Or, Would you consider the purloined item to be an heirloom?

  As I gratefully arrived at the signature line, I had a thought. I mentioned casually that I was an acquaintance of Assistant Chief Inspector Madru Ralki, and had information regarding the death of Jotilal Sukkha.”

  “ACI Ralki does not work in this office, Sir.”

  “Yes, I realize that, but could you inform him of something important? Send a message to the head office, perhaps.”

  Morbid curiosity is a wonderful motivator. Mr. Singh would be more than pleased to send a message. His pen poised expectantly over his note pad.

  “Would you be so kind as to tell him that evidence has come to light indicating that the accident near the Imperial Holding was not an accident.” The pen scratched and came to a stop with a little jab. He waited.

  “Nothing else, Sir? Do you not wish to explain more?”

  “That’s all. No, wait. Add this: As you are probably aware, this evidence is incontrovertible.” I helped him spell it. Hopefully Ralki would sweat a drop or two over the contents and have to consult his dictionary. It was a jab, a small feint to stir things up. I thanked Mr. Singh in my veddy own crispest English and rolled Miss Ugly out the door.

  Thirty

  I arrived at Manikarnika by way of Dashvamedha Ghat, the most popular tourist site on the river. It was always crowded. Foreigners, sadhus, artisans, and beggars, were scattered across the steps, and like Manikarnika, it was a spiritual center--sacrifices had been performed there since before recorded time. They also sold precisely what I needed in the shops above the embankment.

  With my gifts, I made my way out to the river.

  Besides my packages, I was also holding the horns of a dilemma--the handlebars of my bicycle. I couldn’t leave Ugly unattended, so I would have to roll her, or carry her, along the riverfront. Had the Ghats any uniformity to them, that might have been a simple enough task, but the stairways were a like a stack of demented Legos, frustratingly difficult to traverse. From Dashvamedha they went in rational fashion and could be crossed easily, but soon obstacles reared up that forced me to the river’s edge. Boat’s prows pushed across my path like jousting lances, tents, stalls, vendor’s blankets, and the ever-present mob of worshippers reared before me like a maze. I was also sure Miss Ugly had gained a kilo of weight with her new layers of polish and oil. Liquid began to course through my pores, along my skin, and into my kurta. So much for looking cool.

  Approaching Manikarnika, I saw a gathering under the shala. More than twenty listeners were pressing under the overhang, some, for lack of space, stood uncomfortably in the afternoon sun or sat on the steps below.

  At the center of the audience, Sharmalal-Adam reclined in a folding sports chair, legs crossed casually at the ankles. In light-gray slacks and a white short-sleeve shirt, he looked like a CPA checking for last minute deductions. A clear thermos of what appeared to be iced coffee rested at his elbow. Petey and Shawn were standing behind him looking beatifically stoned.

  I searched for Uli and spotted Jitka. Miss Congeniality had positioned herself to the right of Adam, elbows splayed like an offensive lineman lest anyone enter her hallowed space. I could just make out the waving blondness of Uli’s hair behind her.

  Adam’s rapid fire speech sharpened as I trudged up the steps.

  “The seeds of hostility, those minute germs of hatred and vehemence are sown early into the soil of our lives, My Friends. They are watered and fed by those who want us to hate. They point out dissimilarities. He is Brahmin, she is Harijan. My color is correct, yours is not. He is a brown Musselman, she is an ivory Catholic princess with ADD and too much make-up. Did you see the color of that Buddhist’s robe? How could he wear those sandals with that saffron? Maybe with a red purse it would have worked, but they were totally wrong with that yellow. And that hairstyle. Oh my Gaaawd.” This last part was sung in a Valley Girl accent that had me shaking my head with laughter and bewilderment. Where had he picked that up?

  As humorous as his accent was, his message was clear.

  “Seeds of aggression are cultivated by ten thousand years of separation. Be different from them you are taught. Lessons that are, how shall we say, erroneous, false, incorrect, and full of more cow dung than the bleak gullies of this fair city. Commandments to violence have been woven like fine silk into the fabric of our lives, and we continue to carry them. Now we stand with our backs set firmly against crumbling walls and gather larger stones to fling at our perceived enemies--enemies that we do not need to search very far into the past to recognize as our own family.” He uncrossed his legs and stared down at me as I lugged my bicycle up the steps.

  “Ah, Bhim, my thirsty friend. How are you this fair, but sizzling afternoon?” And with that peculiar greeting, he leapt from his chair, down the space between us, and lifted Miss Ugly from my arms and up to the shala with athletic ease.

  Twenty people turned to stare at me as sweat poured unimpeded from my hairline into my eyes. I forced a weak smile and noticed Jitka frowning. But Uli…she was smiling at me like I was her favorite knight. Suddenly, I didn’t care who stared.

  After I assured myself that Adam wasn’t preparing to divide Mi
ss Ugly’s tires between the destitute of the riverfront, she was given a place of honor in the shade. I thanked him and edged as close to Uli as I could without subjecting my ribs to Jitka’s elbows.

  Settling back into his folding chair, Adam pulled another Fanta from his cooler, popped the cap, and thrust it towards me. He studied my face and then the faces of those around him. His eyes swept across us like beacons in a dark sky and his tempo slowed.

  “We will change, my brethren, for good reasons, not the least of which is that we must. It is not written this way in any holy book. We will not change because scripture tells us to, or because some invisible deity is directing us. We will change because it is correct to do so and we have no choice. Our survival depends upon it. We will demand that the politicians, the clerics, and all the so-called leaders of humanity change as well. We must force them to revise their creeds, and if they continue to adhere to violence, they will be rejected. If their words set blind conviction above common sense and compassion, they will be rejected. And do you know what will be our greatest challenge in this quest to adapt and survive?” Without waiting, he surged on. “Admitting mistakes. Ten millennia worth, my brothers and sisters. But that, as we say, is another story.” He grinned at me. “One for tomorrow.”

  I realized with regret that I had again arrived at the end of Adam’s speech. As he rose to fold his chair and tote his cooler up the steps I noticed two things: He didn’t place his hands together in the traditional namaskar, and second, I was thirsty, not for another Fanta, but for more of his message. His phrases, few and simple, were a draft of freshness and I found myself desiring more. I knew why. They rang true.

  Varanasi was a center of ritual, and its steps were soapboxes for a thousand orators. Sermons were intoned at every corner, temple, and tea stall, and scripture flowed like river water. Opinions sprouted as commonly as grains of rice. But those sermons, as time-honored as they were, had always been coated with the same rhetoric for me--stale as week old chapattis. They bounced straight off my non-believing ears. Adam’s message was different, and for that reason I was fairly certain the gathering beneath his shala would continue to grow. Different, however, wasn’t always embraced in the old city.

  The crowd drifted away, and I looked at the remaining. Other than the Chapens, we were the same group as the day before, with a few additional faces: three Australians—a tall woman and two men with thick accents and short crew-cuts--and four English-speaking Hindus. It was a diverse group, especially with Shawn and Petey, who always added a healthy dollop of diversity. All of them seemed to still be languishing in Adam’s words.

  Petey and Shawn, since the previous afternoon, had acquired some fancy designs of henna on the backs of their hands and forearms. A talented mehndi artist had decorated their skin with mandalas and vines. Leaves snaked into the dirt between their fingers and spread up their arms to their elbows. Shawn, whose beehive hairdo now had gray mud caked into it, twisted his decorated arms together and wrapped his legs around each other. It made him look like a four year-old needing to pee. Garudasana—the eagle pose. From this ungainly stance he managed to bow without toppling over and chirped, “That was the most amazingly beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. His words were like totally unreal. Bom shakti.”

  Petey, who had struck his own pretzel pose, concurred. “Even more beautiful than yesterday’s, Shawny. Ethereal it was, like the clear light of samadhi bottled in the prettiest speech ever spoken.” I couldn’t have stated it better myself. For a few seconds we drifted back into our own thoughts, and then the English boys ambled northward to find a bhang lassi--a yogurt smoothie with enough cannabis in it to keep them brain altered for a day and a half.

  While Uliana and Jitka asked the Australian trio where they were staying, I shifted closer to Uli. This didn’t go unnoticed by Jitka, who scowled. I suspected that she wasn’t too keen on the prospect of having to search for bratwurst and pumpernickel on her own while Uliana dined with me.

  I struck up a conversation with one of the Hindus who had been listening to Adam. “Aap Hindi bolte hain?” Do you speak Hindi?

  His head bobbed. “Oh yes, Sir, that it is indeed my native tongue, but I much prefer the speaking of English. I am called Bijram Nataratri, and you are Bhim who studies Sanskrit with Master Devamukti, yes?” Damn, did everyone know that? He wagged his head again, while I let out a small groan. How many times did I have these exchanges, one where I wanted to converse in Hindi and my counterpart need to practice his English? I usually caved.

  “Okay, English it shall be. Do you live in the city, Bijram?” This was the standard opener that would eventually segue into some prediction about the rains. His buddies gathered around. Close. Clearly I was good post-sermon entertainment, and if Bijram happened to drop the conversational ball, they would be right there to scoop it up.

  “Oh certainly, Sir. We are all from Kotwali beyond the Alamqir Mosque, though I am born in the red-light. And you? What is your native place?” I did some quick translation. The red-light was an infamous warren of prostitution. Bijram apparently called that his birthplace.

  “I live in Nagpur, south of the Asi,” was all I offered. I had learned not to tender much information about where I lived.

  Over Bijram’s shoulder I watched a funeral pyre being readied at the top of the rise. The deceased, I could tell, was from wealth, the pyre constructed from an ample supply of wood. Good wood meant good money. Partially consumed body parts of the poor often floated downstream where I liked to wade and cool my legs. That tended to keep me from dunking my head too much into the loving arms of Mata Ganga.

  Bijram was rambling on about the heat, the topic of rain clearly approaching. I listened inattentively and peered over his shoulder as the priests circled the pyre, saturating the cadaver with oil. The cries of loved ones drifted down with the heat of the afternoon breeze, while hand gongs tolled softly into the air. From the tirtha, the eternal fire, the flame was lit. The ceremony was nearing its climax, and I felt compelled to turn my head and avert my eyes. But I didn’t. The cremations tortured me, yet like beggars, they demanded just enough attention to pay them heed.

  Five doms, the untouchables given the grisly task of lifting corpses to their place on the pyre, set themselves in a circle about the body. The corps was obese, another sign of affluence, and a sixth dom slide into position near the belly. I gasped--audibly enough that Uli halted mid-sentence to look at me. The untouchable squatting to lift the corpse was wearing light gray slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt. Adam! He was sliding his hands under the mid-section of the corpse.

  I looked at Uliana. She followed my gaze up the pyre and looked puzzled. I knew she didn’t grasp the significance. Adam was a harijan, an untouchable. It was as unlikely as snow in the afternoon.

  They heaved the body, as respectfully as its weight would allow, onto the wood. The priests ladled it with more oil, the kindling caught and flames swelled. I was grateful that we stood enough distance away to avoid the stench. I had smelled that foulness at a close distance once. It would linger indelibly. In the haze, Adam receded. A harijan? How could he be a achut, one that handled corpses? It was the lowest position, next to shit-sweeping, that a person could be assigned in life.

  I turned back to Bijram, who had just predictably predicted rain in two days. In whispered Hindi, I asked, “Brother Bijram, do you know much of this Sharmalal, where he comes from? His education?”

  He replied in equally quiet Hindi, “This Adam? Very little, that is a fact, Sri Bhimaji. I do know that he has no varna. He is a harijan, and I have heard that he is also a gifted nipuda. The rumors say that he was orphaned and taken in by an instructor at BHU, but schooled in the U.K. He used to speak at the railway station, but now he speaks here, and the priests pay him enough respect to keep the shala open during this hour of the day. Many young people listen, but they are the ones who do not care that he is a achut.”

  “And you . . . why do you listen to him if h
e is untouchable?”

  Bijram wagged his head like a hula doll in the rear of a Chevrolet. “Because. . . I like his words. My friends and I are engineers, alas, currently unemployed clerks of the government office, but we are learned in the sciences, and his words make sense. They come back to stay inside here. Always” He tapped the side of his head. His buddies wagged in unified agreement.

  I looked at the spires of the Alamqir Mosque towering above. Bijram noticed where I was looking and whispered. “The Imam does not like the words of Adam, and it is said the Cabinet Minister also is very displeased.”

  “Qereshy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Between us, Bijram. Qereshy is an asshole.” He grinned and everyone wagged their heads at that one.

  With assurances that we would see each other again, the boys moved off to find other entertainment. The Australians departed, and Uli, Jitka and I were alone once more.

  For three breaths we stood looking at each other, and then I reached into my pack. “Jitka, here are two gifts for you,” I stammered. “Small, but given as thanks for graciously allowing your sister to join me for dinner.” I fixed her with my best ‘truce be with us’ smile. Her scowl stayed, but when she opened the pink carton and saw the squares of pistachio, milk, sugar, and egg confections, it disintegrated. “I also know of a cafe, if you are interested, where you can find the best Chinese stir fry in Uttar Pradesh. Beef or chicken, and I thought perhaps, while Uliana and I discuss the poetry of the Ramayana, you might like to try it.” I hesitated for a minute as she eyed the candy, and then added, “I would have invited you also, but my housekeeper would object to my bringing two beautiful women to dine. She is traditional.”

  I had taken her unawares, sideswiped her armor with sweet-talk and confections. With a smile that looked as it might crack both cheeks from the effort, she replied in brusque gutturals, “That is very thoughtful. I am . . . grateful for both.”