Combining Indian myths, epic history, and the story of three college kids in search of America, a narrative includes the monkey's story of an Indian poet and warrior and an American road novel of college students driving cross-country.
Red Earth and Pouring Rain
By Vikram ChandraBack Bay Books
Copyright © 1997 Vikram Chandra
All right reserved.ISBN: 9780316132930
CHAPTER ONE
... before
THE DAY before Abhay shot the white-faced monkey, he awoke tofind himself bathed in sweat, a headache already cutting its way intohis skull in a razor-thin line across the middle of his forehead. He laystaring at the slowly-revolving ceiling fan that picked up dust witheach revolution through the hot air, adding another layer to the blackstains along the edges of its blades. Much later, he rose from the bedand stumbled to the door, rubbing his face with the flat of his palms. Ashe looked out at the sunlit court-yard with the slightly-dazed eyes ofthose who go away laughingly on journeys and return only to findthemselves coming home from exile, his mother swayed across the redbricks, carrying a load of freshly-washed clothes on one hip, andvanished into the stairway leading up to the roof In a room diagonallyacross the court-yard from where Abhay stood, his father's ancienttypewriter beat out its eternal thik-thik, creating yet another urgentmissive to a national newspaper about the state of democracy in India.A single crow cawed incessantly. Abhay forced himself out into thewhite, blinding square of heat, feeling the sun sear across the back ofhis neck, and hurried across it to the damp darkness of the bathroom.He stripped off his clothes and stood under the rusted shower head,twisting at knobs, waiting expectantly. A deep, subterranean gurgleshook the pipes, the shower head spat out a few tepid drops, and thenthere was silence.
`Abhay, is that you? The water stops at ten. Come and eat.'
When he emerged from the bathroom, having splashed water overhis arms and his face from a bucket, his mother had breakfast laid outon the table next to the kitchen door, and his father was peering at anopened newspaper through steel-rimmed bifocals.
`We could still win the Test if Parikh bats well tomorrow,' said MrMisra sagely, `but he's been known to give out under pressure.'
`Who's Parikh?' Abhay said. He could see, in a head-line on the frontpage of the newspaper, the words `terror threat.'
`One of the best of the new chaps. Haven't been keeping up withcricket much, have you?'
`They don't have much about it in the American press,' Abhay said.`When does the water come back on?'
`Three-thirty,' said his mother as she emerged from the kitchen bearinghot parathas. `I thought of waking you up, but you looked so tiredlast night.'
`Jet lag, Ma. It'll take a week or two to go away.'
`Maybe,' Mr Misra said, folding his newspaper. Abhay looked up,surprised at the sudden quietness in his father's voice, wondering howmuch change his father recognized in his eyes, in the way he carriedhimself A quick movement on the roof caught his eye, and he cranedhis neck.
`It's that white-faced monkey!' he burst out. `He's still here.'
`Oh, yes,' said Mr Misra. `He's a member of the family now. Mrinalinifeeds him every morning.'
The monkey hopped onto the roof from the branches of the peepultree at the front of the house, loped up to the laundry line and, with asweep of its arms, gathered up a sari, a shirt and two pieces of underwear,and raced back to the tree. It waited, firmly seated in the spreadingbranches, as Mrs Misra went up the stairs and laid two parathas onthe wall that ran around the edge of the roof and stepped back somefour or five paces. The monkey, moving with assurance, as one movesduring the performance of a familiar ritual, swung back to the roof,dropped the clothes, seized the parathas, and clambered back into itsfamiliar leafy territory, where, after it had seated itself comfortably on asuitable branch, it proceeded to eat the bread, cocking its head occasionallyto watch Mrs Misra as she gathered up the clothes and putthem back on the line.
`It's still terrorizing you after all these years,' said Abhay. `You shoulddo something about it.'
`It's just trying to make a living, like the rest of us,' Mr Misra said,`and it's getting old. He's moving pretty slowly now, did you see? Forgethim. Eat, eat.'
Abhay bent his head back to his meal, but straightened up everynow and then to peer at the peepul tree, where the monkey was intentlydevouring its daily bread. Somehow, even as he savoured the strangelyunfamiliar flavours of his mother's cooking, Abhay was unable to shakethe conviction that the animal, secure in the cool shade of the peepultree, was enjoying its meal more than he was, and that there was somesecret irony, some occult meaning in their unwitting sharing of food.The monkey finished first and sat with its head cocked to the right,peering intently at the family below, a puzzled look on its face. Itscratched at an armpit, turned and swung itself deeper into the recessesof the peepul, stopped and peered at the sparkling white house with itslittle square court-yard, and then abruptly slung itself away into thetrees on the adjoining maidan.
That afternoon, in the course of his meanderings over the roof-topsof the city, the monkey found himself in a tree on the maidan again.More out of habit than from hunger, he negotiated his way to thepeepul and vaulted onto the roof Below, Abhay was seated at thekitchen table, sipping from a glass of cool nimbu pani, speaking haltinglyand somewhat formally to his parents about his travels and timesin a foreign land. As the monkey began his customary gathering ofgarments, he was surprised to see Abhay jump out of his chair and dashup the stairs to the roof. Moving as fast as his ageing limbs wouldpermit, the monkey propelled himself off the roof and onto a branch,clutching just one piece of apparel. A moment later, a nasal howl ofpain burst from his lips as a jagged piece of brick shattered into smallerfragments against his rump. Pausing only to bare his yellowed fangs inthe general direction of the roof-top, the aged monkey disappeared intothe trees on the other side of the expanse of open ground in front of thehouse.
`He got my jeans,' Abhay said. `The son of a bitch has my jeans.'
`Well, what did you expect?' Mrs Misra said, a little stiffly, irritatedby the sudden violence inflicted on a member of the tribe of Hanuman.`You scared him away'
`Will he bring them back? Cost forty dollars.'
`No, he'll probably drop them somewhere and forget all about it.You've lost those pants.'
She walked away, into her bedroom. As Abhay descended from theroof, suddenly aware of the perspiration streaming down his sides andhis mother's displeasure, he felt an old adolescent anger awaken, sensedan old bitterness tinged with resentment and frustration leaping upagain, ancient quarrels and terrors and reasons for leaving raising theirheads, unquiet, undead, effortlessly resurrected.
When the trees extended serrated shadows across the maidan, under afew gaily-coloured kites that hung almost motionless in the air, tiny bitsof red, green, yellow and orange against a vast blue, Abhay walked in ahuge circle, over the tufts of grass and through the teams of barefootboys engaged in interminable games of cricket. To the south, in thecrowded lanes and bazaars of Janakpur, his past waited, eager to confronthim with old friends and half-forgotten sounds and smells. ButAbhay hesitated, nagged by a feeling that he had been away for severalcenturies, not four years, afraid of what he might find lurking in theshadows of bygone days, and suddenly he felt his soul drop away, felt itwithdrawing, leaving him cold and abstracted. So he watched himself,as if from a great height, watched himself describe two great circles andthen trudge back into the white house. in the same dream-like state, hewatched himself converse with his parents and eat dinner. Much later,he calmly observed himself scrabbling in the recesses of a cupboard,throwing aside yellowed comic books and once-cherished novels, toemerge, then, finally, bearing a child's weapon, a child's toy this: a rifle,bolt-action, calibre 0.22, a miniature weapon, yet sleek and deadlyHands caress it, linger over its contours, feel the smooth blue-blacksteel, hands trace the lines of the heavy wood and test the action, snick-CLACK,these hands that belong to someone not familiar to the membersof the Misra household, these hands that feed the slim goldenrounds into the magazine, click-click-click, these hands belong to astranger. This stranger sits in a chair next to a window, cradling therifle, watching the roof Far away, on the edge of wilderness, a jackalhowls, and the dogs from the city retort, but there is no indication thatthe figure by the window hears any of this.
The monkey, propped securely in a fork high up on a banyan tree, wasawakened by the first rays of the sun spreading warmth across his backand a sudden emptiness in the pit of his stomach. He recalled, fuzzily,having been hungry when the sun last set, but the encounter with thefragment of brick had already begun to fade into the undifferentiatedgrey mist that constituted his past. Ravenous, the monkey skimmedacross the tree-tops and roof-tops of the city, to the white house at theedge of the maidan, where a substantial meal could usually be negotiatedwithout too much trouble. The house, the top of its walls beginningto glow a rich pink, was silent, and the laundry line was bare. Themonkey wandered disconsolately across the roof, pausing to sniff at thecrumpled remnants of a kite. He squatted at the edge of the roof, abovethe court-yard, feeling faintly, tantalizingly, the lingering odours ofcooking float up from the kitchen. Restless, he moves, and is momentarilysilhouetted against the pink-white wall where the staircaseemerges onto the roof, and then, abruptly, a thin line of white lightblossoms from a dark window, and the monkey feels an impact againsthis chest, under his right shoulder, an instant before he hears the flatVIMP, before he registers, with a baring of fangs and an amazed growl,that something very bad has happened; he feels himself being spunaround, sees suddenly the red sun, the pink-white wall splattered withred; the world spins and breaks into fragments, red and white, red andwhite, another wall a glowing yellow, staggering to the side, the edge,slipping and stumbling, a slow slide, a desperate grab at the edge of theroof, but already strength and balance are gone, and the monkey drops,turning, and in the drop, within the space of that turn, a wholly unfamiliarimage, a completely un-monkey-like scene flashes into its mind,red and white, red and white, glowing yellow, three thousand lances,the thunder of hooves, and then the monkey hits the red brick with athick thump, to lie silently at the edge of the court-yard.
Abhay walked out to the still lump of flesh and fur, carrying the rifle,and stood over it, staring down, blinking, at the neat round hole drilledinto the fur, just beginning to fill with blood. A moment later, his parentsburst out of the dark recesses of the house, rubbing their eyes.
`Abhay, what have you done?' Mrs Misra said.
`Abhay, you know there is a Hanuman temple not five minutes fromhere; if they find out they'll start a riot!'
`Is it still alive?'
Abhay watched, his pulse suddenly vibrating and strumminghoarsely in his ears, as his parents picked up the limp animal and carriedit into his father's study His mother came out, then hurried backpast him, carrying a pot of steaming water, her eyes reproachfullyaverted, but he stood, paralysed, the stock of the rifle hard and heavy inhis hand, staring with unbelieving, stunned eyes at the stains on theground, red on red.
For nine days and nine nights the-monkey lay unconscious, its chestswathed in cotton, eyes closed, while Mrs Misra held handkerchiefssoaked in milk to its lips, and Mr Misra paced up and down, handsclasped behind his back. The door to the room was kept closed toprevent visitors from catching a glimpse of the wounded monkey, butoften Abhay stood outside the room, a puzzled look on his face,moving his head back and forth. On the ninth day the monkey openedhis eyes and gazed uncomprehendingly at the ceiling. The Misrasrecoiled, a little frightened, but the monkey didn't seem to notice them.It lay, eyes glazed, lost in an internal fog in which pieces of a life longgone drifted together, images colliding, and melding to form a self, aragged, patchwork nothing, a dream, a person named Parasher. I know.I am he. I. I am the monkey I am that diaphanous mechanism onceencased in human flesh and known as Parasher, or Sanjay. I am he,come back from the phantasmagorical regions of death and the mists ofanimal unknowing.
I felt my soul settling into a shape, a form. Each day I rememberedmore, and each day I grew more conscious. At first, as I lay paralysed, Icould barely see the man and woman who kept me alive. When mysight cleared, I saw that they were dressed in garb I could not put aname to but which seemed strangely familiar. There was a look of warinesson their faces that I could not quite understand, and I strained mythroat to tell them that I was Sanjay, born of a good Brahmin family. Icould, however, emit only sudden growls from the back of my throat,which caused them to retreat in fear. Then, you see, in my delirium andshock, I imagined I was still swathed in the human body I knew so well,with its two scars on the forehead, its flowing white hair and the missingfinger on the left hand. So, I lay limp, seeing pictures coalesce in themotes of dust above my head, and I saw a face appear again and again, abroad, kindly face with sad eyes and a resolute jaw, greying whiskers,oh, my Sikander, those sad, sad eyes - I saw this and other things,tumbled together and indistinct. On the sixteenth day I found I couldmove my left arm. Slowly, straining, I raised my hand away from thesoft cloth it had been resting on; slowly, my heart pounding - I believeI knew before I ever saw the fur and the brown-yellow flesh - Ibrought it up, closer to my immobile head until I could see it, and thenmy blood ran cold. In that instant, I remembered the last awful moments,I remembered my death, that terrible walk through the rain, andthe dark figure that walked beside me. In that instant I knew what I haddone and what had happened, what I had become. I brought the handclose to my eyes and looked at it, noting, in a wildly detached manner,the cracked skin of the palms, the matted fur and the small black fingernails.I ran my hand over the contours of my face, feeling the fur alongthe cheek-bones and the jutting jaw, the quickly receding forehead andthe jagged teeth. Gathering all my strength, I raised my head andglanced around the room, seeing first a little ivory statuette on a table, adelicately sculptured chariot drawn by six horses, bearing a warrior anda driver under the banner of Hanuman, and seeing that familiar image Iwas momentarily relieved, but then I saw the rest of the room, theshelves brimming with books and the strange white sheen of the impossiblyfast punkah that rotated overhead, the equally strange pictures onthe wall, and I knew then that I was immeasurably far from home.Terrified, I tried to get up, scrabbling weakly at the sheets, whimpering.Somehow, I managed to turn my body; I felt myself drop and hit a hard,cool floor. Dimly, I sensed hands picking me up. My vision constricted,and I hurtled down a long, dark tunnel, and then, once again - darkness.
As my body regained its strength, I slipped increasingly into a hazynarcosis induced by fear, by the terror of the unfamiliar and unknown.Unable to speak to my benefactors, to produce the sounds of Hindi orEnglish with my monkey-throat, I sat huddled in a little ball, paralysed,listening to the strange inflections in their language and the wonderfuland incomprehensible things they spoke about. Consider, if you will,the hideousness of my situation. To be sure, I had once professed todespise the condition of being human, and had longed for a lifeconfined simply ad safely to the senses, but to be trapped in a furry,now-unknown body, fully self-conscious and aware yet unable to speakand unwilling to communicate for fear of causing terror - this is aterrible fate. To construct an elaborate simile in the manner of theancients, my soul prowled about restlessly like a tiger caught between aforest fire and a raging river; I was now immeasurabiy grateful for thegift of self-awareness but was terrified of the trials and revelations thatwould undoubtedly follow in this strange new world. For a while, atleast, I was content to sit in,a comer and watch and listen. I learned,soon enough, that the woman's name was Mrinalini. With her greyinghair, quick laughter, round face and effortless grace she reminded me ofmy mother. He, Ashok Misra, was tall, heavily-built, balding, gentle,with a wide, slow smile and a rolling gait. From their conversations Igathered that they had both been teachers, and now lived in retirement,in what passed for vanprastha-ashrama in this day and age, more orless free from the everyday tasks and mundane worries of the world.Apart from the natural respect one feels for gurus, for those who teach,I soon conceived a liking for this amicable, gentle pair. Even for onesuch as I, it is comforting to see people who have grown old in eachother's company, who enjoy and depend on one another after longyears of companionship. Perhaps, despite myself, I communicatedsome of this feeling to them, in the way I sat or the way I looked atthem, for they grew less fearful of me. Soon, each of them thoughtnothing of being alone in the room with me, and went about theirbusiness as usual, regarding me, I suppose, as a sort of household pet.
On the twenty-ninth day Ashok sat before his desk and pulled thecover off a peculiar black machine, which I was to later realize was atypewriter. Then, however, I watched curiously from a corner as he fedpaper into it and proceeded to let his fingers fly over the keys, like amusician praying some strange species of instrument related vaguely tothe tabla: Thik-thik, thik-thik, and the paper rolled up and curled over,revealing to me, even at that distance, a series of letters from thelanguage I had paid so much to master. Intrigued, I lowered myself to theground and walked over to the machine, causing Ashok to jump up fromhis chair and back away Fascinated, I hopped up onto the table andcircled the black machine, running my fingers over the keys with theirembossed, golden letters. I touched a key lightly and waited expectantly.Nothing happened, and I tried again. Smiling, Ashok edged closer andreached out with his right.hand, index finger rigid, and stabbed at a key,and an i appeared on the paper. Without thinking, delighted by thisstrange toy, I pressed a key and an a magically appeared next to the i;intoxicated, I let my fingers dance over the keys, watching the followinghieroglyphic manifest itself on the sheet: `iamparasher.' Ashok watchedthis exhibition with growing uneasiness; clearly, my actions were toodeliberate for a monkey. I learned much too fast. Bending over, he peeredat the sheet of paper. Meanwhile, I was engaged in a frenzied search forthe secret of spaces between letters, pressing keys and rocking back andforth in excitement. Finally, I sat back and tried to remember the mannerof the movements of Ashok's hands over the keys. I looked up at him,and motioned at the machine, gesturing at him to type something again.He grew pale, but I was too excited to stop now. He leaned forward, andtyped: `What are you?' I hesitated now, but I had already stepped into thedangerous swirling waters of human intercourse, tempted once again bya certain kind of knowledge and the thrill of the unknown. There was noturning back. I leaned forward.
`i am parasher.'
When Ashok, his face pale, ran out of the room, I slumped to the hardwooden surface of the desk, suddenly exhausted. Drawing my knees upto my chest, I let my mind drift, filled with an aching nostalgia andafraid of what I would discover in the next few minutes, afraid of thebewildering depredations and convolutions that are the children ofKala, of Time. I let my mind fix itself on one image, and clung to it - redand white, red and white, three thousand pennants flutter at theends of bamboo lances with twinkling, razor-sharp steel heads; thecreaking of leather, the thunder of hooves; three thousand impossiblyproud men dressed in yellow, the colour of renunciation and death; theearth throws up dust to salute their passing, and in front of them,dressed in the chain mail of a Rajput, the one they called `Sikander,'after the rendered-into-story memory of a maniacal Greek who wanderedthe breadth of continents with his armies, looking for some unspeakabledream in the blood and mire of a thousand battle-fields; eventhe images we cling to give birth to other stories, there are only historiesthat generate other histories, and I am simultaneously seduced byand terrified by these multiplicities, I worship these thiry-three millionthree hundred and thirty-three thousand and three hundred and thirty-threegods, but I curse them for the abundance of their dance; I amforced to make sense out of this elaborate richness, and I revel in it butlong for the animal simplicities of life pointed securely in one directionand uncomplicated by the past, but it is already too late, for Mrinaliniand Ashok and a dark, thin face I seem to remember hover over me,filled with apprehension and awe and fear.
`Who are you, Parasher?'
`I pushed myself up, and typed:
`who is he'
`My son, Abhay But who are you?'
Abhay's eyes were filled with a terror I have seen before - it is thefear of madness, of insanity made palpable, of impossible events, theexistence of which threaten to crack one's mind in two like a rottenpomegranate. He was very close to breaking, walking around me, rubbinghis head. I hurriedly typed:
`do not fear me. i am sanjay, born of a good brahmin family i deliveredmyself to yama in the year nineteen hundred and eleven, or, in theenglish way, eighteen hundred and eighty-nine after Christ. for the badkarma i accumulated during that life, no doubt, i have been reborn inthis guise, and was awakened by the injury i suffered. i wish you noharm. i am very tired. i am no evil spirit. please help me to the bed.'
I lay exhausted on the bed, unable to shut my eyes, fascinated, yousee, by the thought of the world that lay beyond the house. I gestured atAshok to bring me the machine; as soon as it was set beside me on thewhite sheets I typed feverishly:
`where am i. what is this world. what year is this.'
The rest of the afternoon, as you may imagine, passed quickly asAshok and Mrinalini, in hushed tones, told me of the wonders of thistime, filling me with dread and amazement as they painted a picture ofa world overflowing with the delights of a heaven and the terrors of ahell. Abhay listened silently, tensely watching his parents speak to ananimal; he frequently looked away and around the room, as if to locatehimself within a suddenly hostile universe. Finally, shadows stretchedacross the brick outside, and I lay stunned, my mind refusing to comprehendany more, refusing, now, to understand the very words thatthey spoke; drained, I was about to tell them to stop when a thin, pipingvoice interrupted:
`Misra Uncleji, my kite-string broke and my kite is stuck on thepeepul tree and could you . . .'
The speaker, a girl of about nine or ten, dressed in a loose whitekurta and black salwars, stepped through the doorway and stoppedshort, her face breaking into a delighted smile.
`A monkey! Is he yours, Abhay Bhai?'
`No,' snapped Abhay. `He's not mine.'
`Come on, Saira,' Ashok said, trying to divert her, but Saira's interesthad been aroused, and she was clearly a very intelligent girl with a verydetermined mien. Side-stepping Ashok, she stepped up to the bed, alerteyes instantly taking in the typewriter and the bandages.
`Is he hurt? I . . .'
She stopped suddenly, but I was unwillingly fascinated by the ball ofkite-string she carried in her left hand. I reached out and touched thedangling, "ragged end of the string; it dawned upon me gradually that ablanket of silence had descended upon the house - I could no longerhear the chirping of birds or the distant, hollow sound of cricket ballsbeing struck; I let my eyes wander from the string and noticed, vaguely,the goose-bumps on Saira's forearm; I looked up at the doorway andknew then, stomach convulsing, knew, for the air outside had turned adeep blue with swirling cuffents of black, knew, for I felt my chestexplode in pain, knew, for out of the densening air a huge green figurecoalesced to stand in the doorway, knew then that Yama had comefor me again. Yama, with the green skin and the jet-black hair, withthe unmoving flashing dark eyes and the curling moustache, he ofthe invincible strength and the fearsome aspect, he who rides the terribleblack buffalo, Yama, who walks in all three worlds and is fearedby all.
`Sanjay,' said Yama, stepping in, banal as always, we meet again.'
I was silent, and noticed that the others in the room were looking atme curiously Saira turned away and bent over the typewriter, readingmy side of the strange conversation that had taken place earlier.
`They can't see me,' remarked Yama. `Only you. The child felt somethingfor a moment.'
`What do you want?' I snapped, and my friends, hearing only amonkey growl addressed seemingly to empty air, stiffed uneasily Sairatugged at Abhay's sleeve and began to whisper in his ear.
`What do I want? What do I want?' Yama gloated. `Surely you joke.Surely you felt the pain in your chest, the convulsing of your stomach.You were an old monkey, Sanjay, and even though the bullet was small,it was enough. You'll notice I came for you myself I, the very Lord ofDeath. No minions to be sent for you, an old and honoured adversary.'
`Already?'
`Already. You've had more than you should've already, this return tohuman consciousness. An accident which I must admit I don't understandcompletely myself.'
`To ... to what?'
`You mean, what next?' he said, suddenly laughing uproariously, exposinggreat white teeth. `Where on the wheel is the next time around?Is it to be up a ladder or down the slippery back of a past misdeed,suddenly fanged? I don't know, Sanjay. Karma and dharma, those aremechanical laws sewn into the great fabric of the cosmos, you understand,mysterious in their functioning; there's no predicting the resultsof those deadly calculations, each deed producing a little burst of karmato be weighed in those inscrutable balances; who knows, who can understandthe subtle ways of dharma? - but you've undoubtedly been abad monkey, Sanjay. Instead of attending to monkey dharma, you'vehaunted the dwellings of humans, begging to be captured, to be reintroduced,in one way or another, to the society of these clumsy butadmittedly lovable creatures. In one life you allowed yourself to be capturedby a princeling's hunters, and spent your time happily amusingspoilt young royalty, in another, you allied yourself with a blind holyman,thus adding to his reputation as a miracle worker and enablinghim to carry on a life of debauchery and dissolution. In all yourmonkey-lives, you've ignored your natural relatives and hidden by ventilatorsand windows, listening to the speech of another species; haven'tyou noticed how easily you understood what these friends of yourswere saying? Somewhere in your soul all those lives have left a sedimentof the knowledge you acquired unknowingly, so now your speechis a curious melange of living words, dead expressions and buried andforgotten phrases.'
Continues...
Excerpted from Red Earth and Pouring Rainby Vikram Chandra Copyright © 1997 by Vikram Chandra. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
