Miss Seetoh in the World (58 page)

It was whispered that the return of The Holy
One had thrown the great TPK into a quandary that had little to do with the old
politics. Mrs TPK had started having dreams in which The Holy One as well as
the old mentor who had raised him from the dead, had appeared to her, promising
to cure her. In his hand, he held a little phial of pure white fluid which gave
out a heavenly scent. Mrs TPK woke up from each dream in tears, knowing that
her husband scoffed at miraculous cures; moreover, his hatred of V.K. Pandy was
probably too ingrained to allow him to face the once arch foe in the completely
reversed role of a supplicant.

Maria felt a small tap on her shoulder. A
man was standing next to her; from his white robe and daubed forehead, indeed
his very demeanour, she could tell he was one of The Holy One’s followers. He
spoke in English and had a message for her: The Holy One had invited her for a
special ceremony to witness the greatest miracle of all. The messenger gave the
details of time and place and emphasised that attendance at the ceremony was by
invitation only, and she was not to let anyone know.

Maria scribbled down the details quickly.
Her thoughts went into a tumult of speculative wonder and fear. The fear was
for the strangeness of it all; she was being invited into a world that she had
little experience of and even less inclination for – the world of the
supernatural, of faith and healing, of miracle cures that she had associated
with simple-minded, unquestioning people like Por Por, or perfervid converts
like her mother and her fellow churchgoers on their frequent pilgrimages to
Europe, or those Singaporeans who went to pray to trees bearing images of
temple deities. If the special event to which she was being invited was one
more of the so-called miraculous healing sessions, she would not be at all keen
to attend as a witness who was likely to be called upon later to testify at
some public event, for holy men and women were not above the promotional stunts
of business entrepeneurship. No, she thought, I don’t think I’ll go.

As she was about to leave the hall, elbowing
her way though the crowds, she felt another tap on her shoulder. It was the same
messenger.

He said, ‘The Holy One requests to see you.
Follow me.’ It was bizarre, as if the god-man had read her thoughts and wanted
to reassure her.

She was led to a small back room in the
hall, where she waited a full twenty minutes before he appeared. He stood at
the doorway, looking at her with the instantly recognisable deep-set,
glittering eyes. She moved slowly towards him, as if impelled by an invisible
force, aware of a strange sensation filling her entire body, causing it to
tremble. He was aware of her moment of confusion when she wondered whether to
offer her hand in greeting as an old acquaintance or to bow as a new devotee.

There was a slight smile on his face as he
said, ‘Miss Maria Seetoh, I have not forgotten you. You were the only one in
Singapore to whom I opened my heart, a bitter and wounded heart. But it is
wounded no more. It is full of love and compassion and forgiving.’

As her eyes filled with tears in the sensation
of being in the presence of suprahuman greatness, her mind was alert with the
need to ask questions of a purely worldly nature: ‘Didn’t Dr Benjamin Phang
help you too? With money, influence? There were rumours regarding the Big Bird
incident –’ But one never asked rude questions of a holy man, only listened to
what he had to say.

Through her tears she saw a smile on his
face, and when she blinked them away, he was gone. The Holy One and his
attendants had vanished. She was alone in the little back room. The whole
experience had the bizarre feel of a dream.

On the eve of the big day of the ceremony,
she was unable to sleep: what if her alarm clock failed to wake her up at the
strange hour of four in the morning to allow her to be in time to reach the
venue for the ceremony, a place she had never even heard of, tucked away in a
corner of the island? The hours ticked away, as she tossed and turned,
wondering about the mystery that would soon unfold. A strange place, a strange
hour, a miracle to outdo all the miracles that The Holy One had performed in
Singapore. A miracle that had to do with love and compassion and forgiving.

‘Oh my god,’ gasped Maria, in a moment of
stupendous comprehension. Of course. The miraculous healing of Mrs TPK. The
ultimate act of forgiveness.

She had heard rumours of TPK, out of sheer
love of his wife, sending aides secretly to the holy man to ask for the magic
phial she had repeatedly seen in her dreams, and offering any amount of money
to build any temple or shrine he wanted. It was also said The Holy One had
angrily rejected the offer of money, but promised to cure Mrs TPK.

Breathless with wonder and excitement, Maria
was ushered into a small room which had only one other occupant who carried a
camera. He was clearly a foreigner tasked with recording the ceremony; so The
Holy One was not above the vanity of watching a replay of his miracle-working
sessions.

‘Do you know what’s happening?’ whispered
Maria. ‘Why are we here in this small room with only these slits and peepholes?
Where is The Holy One?’ but the cameraman simply put a finger to his lips and
continued checking his equipment.

Maria could not take her eye off the
peephole. It was as she had expected. She saw the great TPK, dressed in his
habitual white shirt and white trousers, standing in what seemed like an open
area, lit only by a large fire burning in the centre, surrounded by what
appeared to be huge wooden or canvas panels to ensure utmost secrecy. He was
accompanied by two aides, and he wore an expression of tense anxiety in place
of the habitual stern bellicosity. He looked around nervously, as his aides,
one on each side, stood by with stern impassivity. The Holy One was not in
sight.

Then after about thirty minutes, by which
time the nervousness had produced a pallor on TPK’s face, The Holy One appeared
accompanied by a small group of attendants, dressed in his usual snowy white
robe opened at the chest to expose the holy sheen. He did not even look in
TPK’s direction. He walked to a simple wooden chair some distance from the
fire, and sat down, his back upright, his eyes closed, his hands laid casually
on his lap. All the while, TPK’s eyes were following his every movement. The
Holy One then signalled the aides to leave TPK’s side. There was a little show
of reluctance for they had come with the sole purpose of protecting the prime
minister, but he said something to them, and they walked off to stand and watch
from a distance. The Holy One then signalled something with a raised hand and a
nod, and at once, two of his attendants went up to TPK and began removing his clothes.
There was a slight scuffle as his watching aides made to rush over and were
restrained.

‘Oh my God,’ gasped Maria who saw the great
TPK now standing as naked as a newborn.

In a few seconds the attendants had put a
white loincloth on him; Maria watched the prime minister grimace and wince at
the indignity of having the long band of white cotton cloth strapped between
his legs, then pulled up and wound tightly round his waist. She now understood
the need for all the secrecy; it was gracious of The Holy One to agree to this
condition for the conducting of the ceremony. She thought, as she continued to
gaze fascinated at TPK through the peephole, ‘How he must love his wife.’

The next stage of the ceremony was so
bizarre that Maria whispered to the cameraman, ‘Are you sure you should be
recording this? Why don’t you just skip it, out of deference to the Prime
Minister of Singapore?’

For TPK, his face and naked body daubed with
red and black ashes, was mimicking the movements of one of the attendants: he
was prancing round the roaring fire, like a primitive warrior in a cheap movie,
closely watching the attendant as if to make sure he had all the movements
right. The comical stomping of feet, flailing of arms, thrusting of hips and
jerking of head were completely at odds with the look of serious purpose on his
face.

If Maria were not so shocked, if she were
not convinced that religious rituals appeared comical only to profane
outsiders, she would have let out a roar of laughter. She saw that the
cameraman was smiling broadly and thought, ‘Maybe they will edit out this part
and concentrate on the real ceremony.’ The real ceremony must be the handing
over of the all-important phial, after which TPK would probably heave the
greatest sigh of relief in his life, get dressed, go home to his wife, and put
the unspeakably ludicrous incident behind him. Maria had no idea what the crux
of the ceremony had been planned to be, and when she saw it, she understood its
whole purpose, and broke into angry tears.

‘Stop.’ The Holy One waved an imperious hand
after TPK had done a fourth idiotic dance round the fire. He stopped, panting
and sweating, the red and black ash now brownish streaks running down his face,
neck and chest. He stood expectantly facing The Holy One still sitting in his
chair. One of his attendants went up to TPK and said something. There was a
look of incredulousness, disgust, fear, loathing, all mixed together on TPK’s
face, and the attendant had to repeat himself.

‘Oh my god, oh no,’ cried Maria, for now she
saw the great TPK get down on the ground and lie prostrated there, facing The
Holy One who was holding up in his hand a phial of pure white fluid glistening
in the light of the roaring flames.

It took three full prostrations to reach The
Holy One who then handed over the phial. Maria thought she saw a smile on the
holy face that said, ‘At last.’ The words that he uttered to her that day over
lunch, his face all contorted with fury, came back to her: ‘He told me, ‘You
will come crawling to me.’ ’ She had been invited to a ceremony, not of love
and compassion and forgiving, but of revenge in the fullest manifestation of
loathing and savage triumph.

Suddenly she turned to the photographer and
said, ‘Of course! You’re from The International Courier!’ So V.K. Pandy had
included in his scheme of vengeance a fellow victim of the great TPK – the
newspaper that together with him had been sued for huge sums of money. The man
folded up his equipment, returned it to a large black bag, smiled and said, ‘It
will be in the papers tomorrow. Not of course The Singapore Tribune. But all
the others. The Malaysian papers will be full of it.’

‘Dearest Brother Phil,’ wrote Maria. ‘I’m
afraid this is going to be such a depressing letter, and so soon after the
happy one I had sent off! It looks like happiness and peace of mind come only
in small doses to me, to be savoured quickly before they disappear again. But
no, I don’t mean to wallow in self-pity. The one who deserves pity is the great
TPK himself. Or The Holy One for being exposed as the exact opposite of what he
had claimed to be. Or Mrs TPK who I understand is as ill as ever. Or Singaporeans
taken in by the greatest act of fraudulence ever foisted on their society, the
greatest fool being myself. So, yes, it’s a kind of self-pity I’m wallowing in,
only its true name is shame. Now I’m being incoherent and you will have to
excuse this wildly rambling letter because right now I’m so angry, so confused,
so humiliated that I don’t know where to begin.

I had told you about my great excitement
regarding the re-appearance of V.K. Pandy as The Holy One because of his
message of love, compassion and forgiving: I should have listened to your
advice about being cautious. When you wrote, ‘A dose of scepticism is always
healthy and a megadose here, which I know you are very capable of, my dear
Maria, is in order,’ you probably had no idea what this god-man was up to. The
most contemptible form of revenge which he must have been planning in his holy
head right from the start. Perhaps the revenge was the sole purpose of the holy
man persona. And I was party to it! He had made use of a little satirical poem I
had written about the great TPK, comparing him to the almighty Tua Peh Kong,
for he had the cheek to give it to The Internationl Courier to use as a caption
for the pictures that appeared with the report. Do you remember that I had read
the poem to you? They used the opening line Even Tua Peh Kong must bow before a
greater to caption the picture of TPK lying prostrated at the feet of V.K.
Pandy holding aloft the phial of holy liquid. And they deliberately published
those pictures showing TPK at his most ridiculous, in that obscene loincloth,
dancing like a drunken Red Indian round the fire. And of course The Holy One
knows he can’t be sued. It would draw attention to the whole fiasco that would
make the poor Prime Minister of Singapore the laughing stock of the world. I
understand that
The New York Mail
and
The London Times
have
already carried the story – with those sickening pictures! (Did it reach any of
your Irish newspapers? I hope not.) The Holy One is back in his ashram and must
be laughing himself sick. I wish I could have gone up to him after that
so-called ceremony and given him a piece of my mind. But this is mere bravado
after the fact. I admit that when, upon his request, I had met him that day
after he left his huge crowd of Singapore fans, I was overcome by a sense of
his power. My God, what is happening in the world?

Dearest Brother Phil, I need you more than
ever now to straighten me out, because, more than anything, I feel a deep sense
of guilt with regard to our prime minister. I had detested him for his
heartlessness, his utter ruthlessness, and you know what I have just found out?
It may be a rumour, but I believe it. It seems that while he had successfully
sued V.K. Pandy for large sums of money (which, it was well known, he
immediately donated to charity), he had been secretly paying for the expensive
medical treatment of V.K. Pandy’s wife! Today, if she is alive and well in
India, it is not due to any holy man, but to TPK’s generosity. V.K. Pandy did
not have the decency to tell me the truth and even complained that his wife’s
cancer could have been caused by the stress of the bankruptcy suit and the loss
of their printing business. The death in India, the restoration to life, the
ashram, the commitment to a mission of love and compassion, the holy fluid, the
miracles – all, all, a shameless fabric of lies! It will take me a long time to
understand the scale and magnitude of this scam and the power of hatred once it
is lodged deep in the human heart. In my most charitable moment, I had wished,
for V.K. Pandy’s sake, that the revenge he executed with so much skill and
panache, would have expelled from his system whatever venom it carried from
Singapore, and freed him, once and for all. Yes, even The Holy One needs
healing, maybe more than anyone.