The Solitude of Emperors (19 page)

“Oh, it’s very wet up there…” Richards said.

“Wet?’’

“Yeah, from all the tears of envy that are being shed…”’

The scooter’s front wheel had got stuck at an angle, and Noah was wrestling with it. ‘That’s the only way to be, man, so far ahead of the pack that you basically make the rules… Otherwise you’re fucked, you either have to conform or find a cave, drop out of sight… Here, help me with this scooter, da, I want to be out of here before someone tells the Brigadier and his cohorts that I’m trespassing on his hill.’

I thought of the distinguished-looking man he had avoided in the market, and I wondered again why the elite of Meham disliked him so much. They were probably old-fashioned and conservative, and would be offended by Noah’s dress sense and manner, but surely that and his stealing the occasional fuchsia were not sufficient to unleash the guard dogs? He had told me quite a bit about himself, but would he really tell me if he had done something terrible?

We finally managed to get the scooter pointing in the right direction and I climbed on behind him with some trepidation, remembering the terrifying ride of the day before; then I thought of Mr Sorabjee riding his motorbike full tilt down Marine Drive and sheepishly told myself to relax. In any event, I needn’t have worried because this time Noah drove sensibly, even sedately.

~

It was a brilliant day, and we rode under the same sort of hard blue sky I had remarked on when I had first arrived in the Nilgiris. We took a different route this time, skirting the town. About a kilometre short of our destination the road descended gently towards a hairpin bend, beyond which lay the Valley of God, as Noah mockingly called it. He switched off the engine, and we began coasting downhill.

As we came around the bend, the great rift opened up before us. The first time I had seen it, it had inspired awe—the tremendous mountains, the whirling mist and cloud—but even on a clear, sunny day it was no less dramatic. Row upon row of granite peaks, marched up to the precipice, and then tumbled over to the plains many thousand feet below. At the very edge the Tower of God was outlined against the sky.

‘It’s quite a spectacle,’ I said.

‘That it is, ready to climb it?’

‘Absolutely,’ I replied.

‘Hope you have a head for heights,’ he remarked as he parked the scooter. From the road we descended to a plateau on which there was an observation tower, with glassed-in windows, urinals off to one side and a few shops. This was the point from which anyone who wished to climb the Tower of God would need to set off. In addition to the facilities for tourists and pilgrims, there was the police picket that Professor Menon had told us about. The three policemen on duty seemed bored, and after giving us a cursory glance went back to playing cards. The mist that had filled the valley the previous day had hidden all this from view.

‘How long do you think the police will stay?’ I asked as we approached the shops.

‘I guess they’ll be here for a while, not that these clowns could stop anyone.’ Noah smiled, waved to the policemen, and we walked on. I saw militant slogans daubed on the surrounding rocks and even on the observation tower in praise of Lord Shiva and demanding the return of the shrine to him. Unlike similar establishments surrounding places of pilgrimage, the stalls here were free of gaudy pictures of gods and goddesses, cheap statues and devotional bric-a-brac. I remarked on this and Noah said, ‘That was the Collector’s idea. He laid down orders prohibiting the sale of religious artefacts until further notice so, ironically, the shrine, which has been secular for hundreds of years, is even more secular today. Come on, da, let’s have some secular tea,’ he said with a laugh; ‘we have quite a climb ahead of us.’

Finishing our tea, we were lounging around chatting when Noah happened to look up. Fists of cloud were beginning to uncurl in the sky, and he got up. ‘If we’re going to get to the shrine, we’d better start right away. The steps leading to the Tower will be impassable if it starts to drizzle.’ He explained that it would take us at least an hour to get to the summit, the Tower was farther away than it looked. First, we would have to climb down from where we were sitting to level ground, then we would need to trek through a stretch of jungle that would get us to the Shiva temple, and it was only after that the climb up the Tower proper would begin.

After paying for our tea, we walked down a steep flight of steps to the path that led to the Tower. We crossed a bridge that spanned a clear mountain stream and then the path began to rise. On either side there were broad-leaved plants with white, bell-shaped flowers. I was reaching out to pluck one when Noah snapped, ‘Don’t, they’re poisonous.’ I drew back hastily, and after that we walked in silence until we reached a windswept ridge spined with a few hardy trees. Beyond lay a stretch of open land, and then the path led into what looked like impenetrable forest. The brightness of the day had dimmed considerably and a grey mist had begun to sift through the trees.

Within minutes of entering the forest I became jumpy. It was difficult to see the path in the gloom, and I remembered Professor Menon’s tales from the previous evening about the wild animals that early pilgrims had had to avoid. Common sense told me that there was no threat but I had never been in a forest before, which I suppose accounted for my nerves. As we walked further into the woods, the light grew murkier. Everywhere around us there were furtive rustlings and chitterings, as if an array of unseen creatures was watching our progress and telegraphing it ahead to some nameless horror which lay in wait. I was telling myself to stop being so jittery when a terrifying cry erupted from the gloom. I almost tripped and fell, and frantically asked Noah what it was. His reply was a laugh. ‘Nothing to be worried about in these woods my friend,’ he said. ‘The creature that made that noise won’t eat you—it’s a smallish bird called a scimitar babbler. It’s very shy, very rare, you’ll be lucky to see one.’

‘So, no wild animals here?’

‘If you’d lived a hundred years ago, maybe. Now the only nuisance is marauding monkeys, all spoiled rotten by the pilgrims and pujaris at the Shiva temple.’

As if in response to Noah’s remark, there was a crashing in the trees and a rhesus monkey appeared on a nearby branch. He regarded us with bright-eyed interest. ‘Don’t do anything, don’t make any threatening moves. When he realizes you don’t have any food for him he’ll leave you alone.’

Presently the forest began to thin, and we came to a clearing in which the temple to Shiva stood. It was a modest building, with none of the elaborate carvings of gods and demons or gopurams that adorned most Tamil temples, but the mist and the great forest that surrounded it imbued it with an air of grandeur and holiness that no human hand could have created. Involuntarily I bowed and put my hands together in a respectful namaskaram, almost expecting this gesture of devotion to be accepted by an enormous multi-armed figure stalking out of the gloom, a weapon in every hand and a rudraksh mala around his neck. But no such apparition emerged, and the only sign of life about the place was an old woman weaving marigold garlands in a stone quadrangle in front of the temple. She would pick up the flowers from a large basket that glowed orange in the poor light and skilfully thread them on to a string she held in her other hand. She looked up, but her eyes milky with cataracts didn’t appear to see us. Noah greeted the old woman politely, and we passed on, leaving the temple behind.

In a short while we’d reached the base of the Tower of God, which, up close, looked even more impressive than it had appeared from the road. Steps were cut into it, and for the safety of pilgrims and visitors there was a guard rail, two strips of braided steel wire threaded through spikes hammered into the living rock.

Rubbish littered our passage—food wrappers, tins and bottles, broken chappals—and we had to pick our way carefully through the junk until we reached the steps. The profusion of rubbish was the one thing I had seen thus far that was common to other places of worship I had visited but I realized that nowhere on the approach to the Tower of God or the Shiva temple had I encountered the clotted masses of people—devotees, and those who preyed on them, freelance priests and other peddlers of salvation, hawkers, thieves and pick-pockets, and most of all the rows of beggars, screaming at the faithful and God to give them alms, salvation and a cure for the various afflictions they suffered from—who infested the other temples. Even as I thought this, I knew why they were missing: it was simply too cold for the poor and the ill-clothed to visit Meham in the winter; in the summer the scene would be altogether different. The forest and the tower of stone would be submerged in a noisy surge of humanity, which, in its urge to supplicate God, wiped out the very silence that was at the heart of the divine mystery. But perhaps that was only the way I saw it; others probably needed crowds of like-minded people to reinforce their own faith and maybe God himself needed the masses as much as he needed to walk alone.

I was about to set foot on the lowest step when Noah stopped me. He told me to be very careful, to test my footing on each step before moving on to the next; if I found myself slipping, I was to grab the rail. Apparently, it had only been installed quite recently, when three pilgrims had fallen to their deaths. ‘Not that it was something that had never happened before. Every so often an old or infirm pilgrim would disappear, but nobody minded much, it was considered auspicious to die while you were climbing the Tower of God—granted you instant nirvana. But these three were a bunch of bloody NRIs from Vancouver or New Jersey, or one of those places, and there was an outcry, reports in the media and talk of suing someone, anyone, so the district administration had to do something.’

They had also become a lot stricter about enforcing the policy of not letting anyone on to the Tower of God during bad weather. Even now we had to proceed carefully, as some of the steps, especially those in shadow, retained some moisture from the rain of a few days earlier. Once I nearly slipped on a patch of moss, but regained my balance in an instant, without needing to clutch at the guard rail, which seemed dangerously flimsy to me. We emerged from the mist into brilliant sunshine, and no longer had to worry about our footing but I found myself in trouble for an altogether different reason. Although we had climbed just over half the 108 steps, my thighs, unaccustomed to the steep gradient, were screaming in agony. I said to Noah that I would have to rest, so we sat down on the steps. ‘Don’t look down,’ Noah said, ‘if you are not used to heights.’

The rest did me some good, but the pain returned almost immediately when we resumed climbing. Noah seemed as fresh as ever, so I grimly ignored the pain, planting one foot after the other, counting each step, determined to hang on because I knew that if we stopped again I would be able to climb no further. 101, 102, 103, 104, 105… and to my surprise we were on level ground. I had got the count wrong and relief had come sooner than I had expected. We were on a ledge that was cemented over; there were a couple of benches for pilgrims to rest on and a tall earthenware pitcher of water covered by an aluminium saucer on which there was a long-handled dipper. I eased my aching body on to one of the benches and watched as Noah drank some water. It was cold on the exposed ledge, but I was sweating from my exertions. I sat there for a while letting the breeze dry me off, then drank some water and, feeling quite refreshed, was ready for the final stage of the climb. It had taken us slightly over an hour to get to this point and I wondered at the fortitude of some of the more decrepit pilgrims who attempted the journey. From where we sat a concrete walkway sloped upward to the shrine and its outbuildings, but Noah wanted to take me along a different route. He explained that the benches and the walkway were new, and that a few years ago the final approach to the shrine wound around the contours of the rock formation. He suggested we follow the old route, it was much more scenic; besides, there was something he wanted to show me. We took a narrow path that followed the curve of the Tower and led us into a field of blue so intense that it seemed as though a patch of sky had fallen and draped itself over the hard grey stone. This part of the monolith was partially sheltered from the wind and had been taken over by long ropes of morning glory that hung over the precipice, blazing with flowers. As I took in the scene I saw in my mind’s eye the old gardener feeding the flowers into the fire and telling me the only way to get rid of morning glory was to burn it. Some things, I thought, had no place in civilized homes and gardens, they were simply too overpowering and needed the quiet, wild places of the world in order to flourish.

A single strand of rail along which the vines had twined themselves was all that stood between us and the drop; when I realized this, I stepped back hastily. Noah said, ‘That was wise. It’s a good thing you don’t have vertigo.’

The path wound around the rock and eventually led into the courtyard of the shrine. Here another surprise awaited me—the air had a subtle fragrance to it. At first I couldn’t place it, and then I saw where it was coming from. In the middle of the courtyard was a trellis embedded into the concrete almost entirely covered by a luxuriant jasmine creeper spattered with tiny white flowers. At the base of the structure thick ropes of jasmine were heaped, most of them brown and faded. Noah explained that offerings to the saint took the form of jasmine garlands, in keeping with the legend of his death and miraculous transformation. The scent of old flowers accompanied us into the shrine.

Freshly lime-washed, it glowed bone-white in the high clear light. There was no furniture of any kind within—no pews, no table and no altar. There was a small raised platform where an altar would normally have been, and on it, mounted in a block of granite, was the miraculous cross behind an iron railing on which pilgrims had twisted prayer ribbons and attached handwritten messages.

‘Ah, here’s the professor,’ Noah said from behind me, and I turned to see our host of the evening before, dressed in a blue sweater and white trousers. He greeted us warmly and suggested we go for lunch. As we walked out of the shrine, I was surprised at how large the summit of the Tower of God actually was. It must easily have been a couple of hundred metres across, and contained besides the shrine itself a low building towards which we were heading and another narrow two-storeyed building, which housed the living quarters of the custodian and others who stayed here.