The Solitude of Emperors (34 page)

Having finished his puja, Rajan dressed quickly and told his host that he wanted to get to the Tower of God early to ensure all was in readiness. He declined the breakfast of iddlis and sambhar that had been prepared. Accompanied by his Bombay associates, he set off for his destination.

As he drove through that whisper-soft morning of mist and cloud towards his fateful encounter with Noah, I wonder what he was thinking about. He was used to dealing with death and intimidation, he was a good planner, and he knew how to use the specifics of any situation to his advantage, but I remember something the Brigadier had said to me in his home—apparently when he set out on a combat mission, all the rehearsals, operations-room briefings and strategies would disappear, to be replaced by a keen awareness of his physical self and the environment around him, everything accentuated by the fear and adrenalin coursing through him. Did Rajan look around, feel the mist sliding off the windscreen? Did he think of calling off the project on account of the inclement weather? Did he worry that his kolhapuri chappals were inadequate for the climb? Did he think that the Shiv lingam wrapped in saffron silk might fall from his grasp as he ascended the Tower of God? If the Brigadier was correct, these are the things that would have preoccupied him, his mind would have been emptied of everything else, including any prospective encounter with the defenders of the shrine.

At the steps leading to the shrine Rajan met a small group of men who had been instructed to meet him in advance of the main body of demonstrators, who were expected to arrive a few hours later when the demonstration was officially scheduled to begin. Rajan told the men that he wanted them to follow him after an interval of an hour and then wait at the base of the Tower of God for further instructions.

It was nearly seven and the first traces of morning were beginning to infiltrate the mist. Rajan and his two closest associates set off down the steps that led to the path that would take them through the forest, past the Shiva temple and to the base of the Tower of God. Even on this short flight of steps, Rajan almost slipped and fell, the thin soles of his kolhapuri chappals offering him little purchase on the moisture-slick stone. One of his lieutenants offered to go back and get him a pair of thick-soled boots but Rajan refused. In defiance of the elements and the terrain, he had dressed in the garb of a Bombay politician—white kurta-pajama and chappals—his one concession to the Meham weather a shawl thrown around his shoulders. His single- mindedness and self-belief would have it no other way; he was Rajan, the powerful politician who would bring the shrine to its knees, he was not about to hide behind boots and sweaters. But after he slipped again his companions were able to prevail upon him to discard his unsuitable footwear. The kolhapuris were found later in the day next to the little stone bridge leading into the forest, perfectly aligned, for Rajan was a fastidious man.

Rajan still did not opt for sensible shoes. Instead, he decided to make the rest of the journey barefoot. ‘Sahib said this was an act of pilgrimage, and it was only proper that it be carried out in bare feet.’ This was the moment Rajan chose to reveal his audacious plan. He had decided to approach the shrine with only two companions in order not to alarm the custodian. Once he got close enough, he wanted his men to create a diversion while he sneaked around on the little-used path to the old entrance of the shrine. He expected to get into the chapel undetected. Once inside, he would install the lingam behind the cross, quietly ascertain how many defenders were present and then slip out to rejoin his men, who would summon the reinforcements waiting at the bottom of the Tower. When they arrived he intended to march boldly into the shrine and ask for it to be searched for any signs that it was a Hindu place of worship. When the Shiv lingam was discovered, his men would swiftly overcome the defenders of the shrine. He didn’t expect much resistance from them, they would be country people, small-town people, who would be no match for his ferociously committed rioters. By the time the police arrived on the scene the shrine would have been converted into a makeshift temple to Lord Shiva with a minimum of fuss. It was a precisely thought-through plan but it hadn’t bargained for one eventuality—Noah.

~

I’d like to think that Noah spent the evening before his death reading one of his beloved modern European poets, Rilke maybe, thinking about Maya and Iva, listening to Jimi Hendrix tearing music from his guitar, smoking dope—it would somehow have been appropriate for his inspiration to have come from something that was diametrically opposed to the forces that drove Rajan. But that is something we will never know. All that we can verify is that sometime between my argument with him and evening prayers, Noah arrived at the shrine. Its occupants marvelled at his ability to negotiate the Tower in such treacherous conditions and poor light, but Noah was a child of these mountains and he told them it had been no trouble at all. In addition to Menon and two full-time volunteers, the custodian had permitted six young men from town to spend the night at the shrine in order to defend it should it come under attack. They were unarmed, for Brother Ahimas wouldn’t allow weapons in the place. Their choppers and lathis were left outside.

When Noah had announced his intention to stay, Brother Ahimas had tried to dissuade him. There were enough defenders, not that he expected the shrine to be attacked. There had been demonstrations before, but they were usually held outside its precincts and had never been a threat, only a nuisance, so he didn’t expect this one to be any different. Noah had apparently told him that Rajan was an adversary who was more dangerous than any the shrine had been threatened by before, and he was adamant about staying on. The custodian had relented, and space was found for Noah to stay the night. He hadn’t spent his time sleeping, Brother Ahimas told me; instead he had talked to the old man into the early hours of the morning, when the custodian had excused himself to go to his own quarters.

Noah stayed awake, wrapped in a borrowed blanket, looking out into the blank white emptiness of the rift from a ledge that overlooked both approaches to the shrine. At first light, as people began stirring, he drank a cup of tea, refused the simple communal breakfast of poorie and potatoes, performed his ablutions and returned to his post. ‘It was almost as if he was waiting for something,’ one of the young defenders said to me later. As Brother Ahimas and the others assembled in the chapel for morning prayers, Noah saw Rajan walk out of the mist and head for the little-used approach to the shrine. Seeing that he was alone, Noah didn’t alert the rest of the group, but got up, picked up a lathi and quickly walked around the shrine and on to the path from the opposite direction, so he would come face to face with Rajan.

If Rajan was surprised to see Noah, I’m guessing he didn’t show it. He would have been single-minded in his objective and now that he was so close to achieving it, he wouldn’t have flinched even if he had found commandos in full battle gear confronting him. As there were no reliable witnesses to their encounter, we’ll have to guess at what happened next.

As I had discovered, the old approach to the shrine that wound around the rock was so narrow that there was barely enough space on it for two people to walk abreast. A single strand of wire was all that stood between anyone on the path and a drop of thousands of feet; indeed the protection afforded by it was so inadequate that on festival days volunteers would prevent people from taking that route for fear of an accident.

Rajan had already advanced a fair way along the path when he realized he was not alone. His two followers have steadfastly maintained that it was Noah who initiated the attack, although it is clear that they would have no means of knowing this, but both of them agree that any altercation the men might have had was short. From my knowledge of the two, I’d say it was Rajan who made the first move, once he realized that Noah had no intention of getting out of his way. It was an attack that stood no chance of succeeding, but the darkness that had been building in the two men through their entire lives had settled in them, rock hard and unyielding, and it would exact its price. Rajan and Noah met in the middle of the approach, grappled briefly and silently, lost their footing, slipped and fell; their momentum was arrested for a moment by the guard rail before it gave way, then they pitched headlong down the yawning blue throat of God.

~

Noah’s body was never recovered. Search parties were only able to make the perilous descent into the rift three days after the accident because the weather had turned particularly severe with heavy rain cutting off all access to the Tower and its approaches. When army jawans and the police finally lowered themselves into the chasm, they found Rajan’s shattered body—which was quickly cremated—but of Noah there was no sign. The tattered remnants of his Jimi Hendrix T-shirt were discovered on the branch of a tree and it was surmised that it had been ripped off as he hurtled to his death. Once the police had finished with it, I had it interred in a cheap plywood coffin in the cemetery in which Noah had lived. Moses, the priest, graciously gave me permission to bury the coffin there, although the cemetery had long been abandoned; parishioners of the church were now buried in a new cemetery, further up the hillside.

At the funeral service there was one face I didn’t recognize, a short weathered wisp of a man, who came up shyly after it was all over and introduced himself as Arumugam, Noah’s long-time accomplice. None of the working-class people from town and the surrounding countryside made an appearance. I guessed it was because they were intimidated by the thought of attending a church service along with the sahibs and dorais, not that any of Meham’s elite bothered to attend. As he shook hands with me, Brother Ahimas said he would hold a special service for Noah the coming Sunday—his friends would get to bid him farewell after all. After the funeral I asked Moses if he had seen Godless, and he said the dog was tethered to a tree behind the parsonage. Arumugam had asked for him and would be taking him away in a short while. We walked across, and the long black form of the great hound flowed up from the ground and regarded us silently. I had never petted him before, and I hesitated to do so now. Finally, I did nothing, but made a namaskaram to Arumugam, which included Godless, and went off with the pastor. I had a couple of questions which I hoped he’d be able to answer before Mr Khanna’s driver took me to Coimbatore to catch my train.

The priest cleared up a little more of the mystery surrounding Noah. He told me he wasn’t related to him in any way. However, as he had known his father, who had once been the pastor of the church, he had decided to help when he found Noah sleeping on a bench in the Meham bus terminal a decade or so ago. Noah was homeless and jobless at the time and was scavenging for food from the town’s rubbish dumps. The priest had told him he would pay him a small salary to be the caretaker of the old cemetery and look after the parsonage’s vegetable garden. Noah had never given him any trouble besides occasionally borrowing his scooter without permission, but that was a minor infraction outweighed by the benefits—his family had never had to go to the vegetable market in all the time Noah had tended their garden. He showed me the gatehouse that he had permitted Noah to use. Its interior was very clean, and besides an old blanket and the trunk I recognized from my visits to Noah, the only other thing in the room was a rough-hewn plank of wood attached to the wall on which there were a handful of paperbacks, many without covers, all well used—books of poetry by Rimbaud, Rilke, Pessoa, Moraes, Eliot, Auden and a dozen others who were new to me. The priest said I could have the books if I wanted, but I demurred saying I had no taste for poetry, then changed my mind and took a few volumes, those that Noah had quoted from.

I don’t remember much about the journey back to Bombay, except that during the early hours of the morning, when we were still an hour from the city, I drowsily recalled the one trip that Noah and I hadn’t taken while I was in Meham. Noah had said to me that if I’d had more time, he would have taken me to see the Toda land of the dead, the ammunor, which lay beneath the western edge of the mountains. One of the things he liked most about Toda culture was the fact that their afterworld closely resembled the everyday reality of the Nilgiris. In my waking dream I picture him walking west towards the Kundah Hills, along routes clearly marked for the convenience of those who would cross over. He crosses the Avalanche River and reaches a stone which the dead are expected to touch so that they can forget the world of the living. Further on he will reach another stone which he will touch to rid himself of all earthly infirmities. Whole and healthy, he will take a path through the jungle until he reaches a rope bridge over a deep ravine. The Toda believe that if a man or woman has led a good life they will negotiate the rope bridge safely; otherwise it will give way and they will fall into the leech-infested ravine below. Noah crosses the rope bridge safely, passes the other obstacles that trip up sinners and enters the land of the dead. It is a world I am sure he will be welcomed into; the dead look out for their own.

15

The Last Truth

Bipeds, especially those from southern climes, are not meant to walk upright in ice and snow. A South African friend who has lived slightly longer than I have in Canada taught me how to negotiate the slipperiness of winter by walking like a penguin—feet splayed outward, gait flattened and rocking from side to side. I always feel faintly ridiculous walking like this, but as the alternative seems to be either falling backwards every few steps or crawling on my hands and knees, I put up with it, and maybe one day it will come naturally to me.

I have lived here for seven years now, and it has helped me to heal. The locals think of their city as bland but I prefer to see it as a kind city, hospitable and welcoming to those of us who have fled traumas that we would be unable to deal with at home. It is exactly what I was hoping to find when I tried to put as much distance as I could, both physically and mentally, between myself and the tragedy in Meham.