On Hindutva
I
Pg. 69: Once Kitten Singh has gone, she says abruptly, ‘It has a bad reputation, you know, your great language. Here, at least, it has been co-opted by all the worst people. Every Hindu nut from here to Kanyakumari.’
II
Pg. 82: ‘Yes. But for so many it is. And I’ve always regarded the men in saffron as the true enemies of the Indian past . . .’
‘Because . . . ?’
‘Because,’ and now he looked at Uma, to make sure she was interested in their conversation. ‘Because . . .’ he repeated abstractedly, then the words came: ‘they would see it reduced – all the glory of ancient India – to slogan.’
‘To slogan, yes! Slogans and pamphlets. Very nice, very nice thing to say. And then, of course, in that form it has no meaning. It is no longer an intellectual thing, no longer interesting.’
‘No,’ he said, trying not to look, but afraid they were boring her, ‘in that form it is worthless.’
III
Pg. 117: ‘Yes. The women in this poem have nothing to do with what the men in saffron say the ideal Hindu woman should be like.’
‘In the sense . . .?’
‘In the sense that they are far from demure; they are sexually liberated and experienced; they drink wine. Even if you take the moment when Shiva’s wedding procession passes through the streets of Himalaya’s capital, Oṣadhiprastha . . . The windows of the town are filled with the faces of women who reek of rum or spirit. And whose eyes are vilola . . .’
‘Vilola?’
‘Moving to and fro. Agitated. Tremulous. Like swarming bees. And their girdles are only half-done up. They’re dropping jewels as they run to the window. One woman’s waistband comes undone as she goes to see Shiva go by, and she doesn’t even bother to do it up. She just stands there holding it. And Kalidasa describes the rings of her hand as illuminating her navel. Another has only a single eye kohled – such is her urgency. Still another has lost the ribbon in her hair and the mass of it has come undone.’
‘Are these prostitutes?’
‘No, no! These are the beautiful women of the town. My father would always say, “These goons in saffron, they say they want a Hindu renaissance, they have no idea what a Hindu renaissance would entail. Their shitty little values about sex and food would be the first thing to go out of the window”. But try telling them that!’
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IV
‘He is about to come face to face with reality.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You see all this time he’s held “us lot” in contempt. Deracinated, colonized, little brown sahibs, keener on Shakespeare than Kalidasa . . . And he’s not wrong there. All the time, he’s held out hope that some other truer, purer, more authentic India will rise, and push us out. Then, verily, we will see the coming of Ramrajya or whatever fantasy he’s cooked up in that head of his. There’ll be seminars on Tantric Shaivism and theatres full of well-heeled people applauding the latest rendition of Bhavabhuti: children in school will argue whether Vallabhadeva was a better commentator or Mallinatha: and in the drawing rooms of Delhi people will be made to feel small for not knowing the third person optative of the Class VII verb “rudh” . . .’
Uma laughed.
‘You’re mad, Gayatri.’
‘I mean it, Uma ji. He has always harboured some little hope of a second Ayodhya rising up, like a city upon a hill, out of whatever churning is due our way. And here, again, he’s not wrong. There will be a churning. This old order will not survive. And it is true: the people who come after us will have more regard for the things Toby has such high regard for. But if he thinks that it is Renaissance – quattrocento Florence-style – that’s coming our way . . . Wow-zee, does he have another thing coming to him! Because he doesn’t know rough till he sees this bunch. And what’s more . . .’
Their food arrived. Uma looked at the dishes being laid out in the hope that they might bring respite from this tirade. But Gayatri seemed only to be warming to her subject. She tore up a naan in her fingers, as if to occupy her hands. When the waiter was gone, she began again, ‘And you know what else? You know what Toby doesn’t see? This new order – this bania century that is upon us – they will use the things of Toby’s world – the epics, the poets, Manu, Ayodhya, whatever – and they will hollow them out of meaning. They will make slogans of them. That is what they want them for, as symbols of their rise, and nothing more. They don’t want an intellectual rebirth; that requires hard work and labour; that, if it is taken all the way, can be a frightening thing. It can force you to confront things about your past that are uncomfortable. No, no, no, Uma! This lot, much more than us, wants the full tacky blast of modernity: the malls, the cars, the fat children shovelling McDonald’s and KFC down their throats, the wives, dolled up like Christmas trees, in Armani, from head to toe. They don’t want a renaissance, Uma: they want the West, onto which they will graft the little symbols of their culture, so as to give themselves the illusion of not having lost it. Here a little Indraprastha luxury mall, there a Maharaja Mac, Ram and Laxman action figures made by Mattel. And they will say proudly to you, these new Indians’ – and, here, she gave a little nod of her head, and adopted an accent – ‘“Look, you see, even the mighty McDonald’s had to Indianize itself before coming here.” What they don’t know – of course! – is that McDonald’s, before it came to our beloved country, made a hundred such adjustments in a hundred such places: it was their express strategy to make these adjustments.’
‘But, Gayatri, what has all this to do with Toby?’
‘It has everything to do with Toby. Because when it happens our messiah-in-waiting will see that change has indeed come, but that he is no part of it. And there will be the extra pain for him of seeing the things he has treasured most in his life turn to dust before his eyes. There will be more Hinduism – oh, yes! – more temples, more jagrans; the air will be high with chauvinism. But Kalidasa will be just as forgotten as ever. No one will be any better able to decline Sanskrit nouns. And the study of Indian things will fall quietly – as so much else has – to the scholars in Europe and America. Toby’s renaissance, in short, Uma, will be a big fucking dud. A lemon, if ever there was one, with no intellectual component! And what’s more: when this lot gets rich: they’re not going to build institutes of classical studies, oh no! They’re going to pay for chairs in Oxford and Princeton, and send their children to those places. Who, when they return to India – with the veneer of Western education sticking thinly to them – will, if you swap America for England, be just like us, Uma. It’ll be us all over again, but on a bigger scale, and a hell of a lot more vulgar, I can tell you.’
V
Pg. 505: Then, he said, ‘I spoke to I.P., you know, the other day. I called him in New Zealand, just to fill him in.’
For a moment Skanda thought he meant on the changes in their lives. But no.
‘On the madness over this temple. On these shiny-faced thugs in saffron, wanting to build a temple in the place where Lord Ram was born. In a manger, no doubt! Who are these people, Skanda? Crusaders? Mujahideen? Not Hindus, surely. Can you imagine? No culture in the world less anxious about place and time than ours. A panchronistic flatland, Deshpande called it. A sacred scheme that could be – and was – reproduced anywhere. Never needed an army, never an imperial project. But, despite that, it went everywhere, as far as Java, purely on the appeal and confidence of that culture. Never jealous, Skandu, never mean-spirited, never interested in stamping out the local culture that came under its great vault. Never Rome. And yet as grand as Rome: among the most effortless and peaceful transmissions of culture the world has known. And these greasy little swines in saffron will see it reduced to the mean objective of demolishing a mosque and building a temple. It’s too squalid for words.’
Then – and only then – did he give some indication of why it hurt him so much. He said, ‘And you know who their real enemy is, Skandu? Not the Muslims. They, poor fellows, are just stand-ins. Their real enemy is their past. They act as if they want to preserve it; but they want to destroy it, to remake it completely.’
‘But why?’ Skanda said, for truly he did not understand what his father meant.
‘Why?’ Toby said. ‘Because it’s inconvenient, no less than I am inconvenient. It doesn’t tell them what they want to hear. But what they don’t see is that their repackaging their culture in this way will not strengthen it; it will kill it. And what’s happening in Ayodha in the name of Hinduism is far more alien to the culture of this land than that little Mosque.’
On Cognates (I)
The car barrelled south; the sun rose; the heat was exquisite. It was worse with every hour; it was as if they were making a journey to the source of the parching breath that blew in through the open windows. The enemy of moisture. It did not even make them sweat; to sweat would have been better; but it seemed by just blowing over them to rob their body of its liquids. They soaked her shaneel dupatta in water and draped it over the Rexene seat. They took turns lying in each other’s laps. By 3 p.m., the arid hills had begun to appear, and the land grew scorched and ravined.
The driver, alone, was serene. He had a wet handkerchief rolled up behind his neck. And, save for a brief query at Gwalior as to whether they wished to go further – receiving, in reply, new and more generous terms – he said nothing. By late afternoon the bare and eroded kernels of hills that must once have been mountains began to appear. Hills covered in burnt yellow grass.
‘You can see why we have so many words for brown,’ Toby said. He was sitting up; the sight of the hills had revived him, the hills that anticipated the Tamasā.
‘I can’t think of even one.’
‘Oh, there are many. It’s like ice and the Eskimos: aruṇa, piṅgala, kadru . . .’
‘Go on!’
‘It’s true.’
‘I mean: go on.’
‘Oh, what, just off the top of my head? Babhru. Like brun and brown.’
‘Wait. Are you making this stuff up?’
‘What stuff? The cognate stuff ?’
‘Yes. What does that mean anyway, cognate?’
‘It means born together with, co + natus. And natus from (g)nascor is cognate with the Sanskrit root jan from where we have janma and the Ancient Greek gennáō, to beget. Genesis, too. Or, here is another one: lubh, to be perplexed or disturbed, become disordered, go astray; to desire greatly or eagerly; to entice, allure . . .’
‘Oooh, how exciting. What cognates does that have?’
He smiled. The car had begun to climb for Kalasuryaketu. The heat was gone. Soon the Tamasā would be visible. Soon they would be having drinks on his terrace. Soon she would be bathed and dressed. And beautiful again. But, for now, she was sprawled out on the car seat, her head in his lap. Her face was covered in a film of sweat and dust; her hair was rough and dishevelled; even her dark breasts, pressing against the black cloth of her kurta, had a moist and begrimed look about them.
‘With the Latin lubet, libet, libido; the German liob, lieb, lieben; the Anglo-Saxon leof.’
‘Toby!’
‘In English?’
‘Yes, in English.’
‘Love only.’
Cognates (II)
The white headlights sweep over an arcade of palms. They are ranged around the red sandstone rim of a central oval whose wet earth is bare and upturned, like a freshly ploughed field. Etched blackly onto the pale trunks of the colonnading palms are terms of abuse and the promises of lovers. The capitals of the palms, frayed and burnt brown in the acid winter air, overlook a fountain whose basins are dusty and dry, its Egyptian needle a shattered stump. An unplastered brick wall, perpendicular and precise, comes from one edge of the property to cleave the central basin of the fountain unevenly in two. The wall climbs the house’s shallow steps, spoiling the symmetry of its pillared entrance, and plunges deep into the hulking shell of the Lutyens mansion.
Standing outside, Gauri says, ‘This is your real Massi’s house?’
‘Real Massi. Isha Massi. Mother’s sister.’
‘They had some family feud or what?’
‘Brothers. Property.’
‘Typical, no? Wherever money’s involved. When did you last come here?’
‘I virtually grew up here, Gauri; I was here for countless Holis and Diwalis and birthday parties, but I haven’t been back in – what?! – twenty years.’
‘Twenty years! So long. How come?’
‘Just . . . I don’t know. We drifted apart, I guess.’
‘And, out of the blue, she called you, this Isha Massi of yours?’
‘Out of the blue. She heard I was in town from Kitten Singh and called. She said they were having a party.’
‘Not much of a party, janoo,’ she says, wrapping her shawl more tightly around herself.
‘Maybe we’re in the wrong place.’
Breathing in the thick night air, and letting her teeth chatter for effect, she says, ‘What a night!’ She draws him close to her, and, seeming now to want his attention, says, ‘How do you say night in Sanskrit, baby?’
‘Rātri, of course,’ he says easily.
‘Ah, yes, of course.’ Then, half teasing, half humouring him, she says, ‘And does it have any cognates?’
She turns away, missing the smile her question brings to his face.
The cognate game, introduced to him by his father – and something of a joke between him and Mackinson – has, in the six months Skanda and Gauri have been together, been appropriated by them.
‘Making fun of me or what?’
‘No, truly! I want to know.’
‘Well, the answer is, no. No cognates.’
‘How boring!’
‘Baby.’
‘What?’
‘Baby!’ he says, now wrapping his arms around her.
‘What?!’ she says, embarrassed.
‘Any cognates?! I love you!’
‘Shut up, fool.’
‘No cognates for rātri, but I might be able to rustle some up for nakta.’
‘Nakta?’ she repeats carefully. ‘Is that night too?’
‘Yes, a long dark nocturnal thread.’
‘Go on.’
‘On one condition?’
‘What?’
‘A kiss for every one.’
‘Silly fool.’
‘Agreed?’
‘Agreed.’
‘Nox.’
‘Uffff, I knew that.’
A grudging peck.
‘Núx.’
‘Again?!’
‘No! Nox Latin, núx Greek.’
‘Oh, fishy, but OK.’
A taut and withheld one; a have-a-good-day-at-the-office kind of thing. ‘Then?’
‘Nakht-uru.’
‘Eeeks! What is that? German?’
‘Zend-Avestan.’
‘Oh, baby. Come here. You’re so sexy.’
A real kiss, something long, and ponderous.
‘Go on.’
‘Nacht.’
‘What?! Bloody cheat. Making a fool of me?’
No kiss; a shove instead.
‘No. I promise. This is the German,’ he says, extracting his due.
‘The next one better be wildly different.’
‘Naktis,’ he says sibilantly into the night, seeming now not even to want a kiss.
‘Oh, what’s that?’
‘Lithuanian, my love,’ he says airily.
‘Come here, little bugger.’ And she gives him a kiss that’s like a spanking.
‘And?’
‘We may already be at the end of the thread.’
‘Oh! That’s not so impressive.’
‘Nahts!’
‘What’s that?’
‘Gothic.’
And now she takes his face in her two hands and gives him the best kiss of the night.
Still being kissed, he murmurs, ‘Neaht, niht.’
‘What . . . ?’ she mumbles with her mouth full.
‘Anglo-Saxon,’ he mumbles back, and the kiss deepens.
‘Any more?’
‘Nošti, Slavic.’
‘Not cheating, I hope.’
‘No, Gauri. Deep all-enveloping night, Finnegan’s Night – the dark night of the soul – where under the cover of fog and darkness, we enter this shell of a house together. Look,’ he says, and points to the light in the portico of the house. A few naked bulbs extend from long wires. They reveal a construction site of sorts, and, hanging from a line, the frayed vests and paint-spattered trousers of labourers.
‘Inside?’
‘Inside, yes. We have to find this party.’
**********
Gulmarg incident
Skanda, though he had been up late the night before, had never been able to sleep into the morning. Moments before, he had been amusing himself with a loose strip of plywood on the headboard of the bed he was sharing with his mother, snapping it up and down, till she ushered him out with, ‘Baba, let me sleep. We were up very late last night. Why don’t you go outside? Nana and Nani should be here soon.’
His feet had barely pressed against the floorboards in the corridor when he heard a familiar, ‘Oh, Skanda, go back to sleep.’ His cousins. Who, it always seemed to him, more than sleeping late, enjoyed boasting about it.
Outside, all around him were the remains of the party: ashtrays, powdery and full; clear glasses with the flat still remains of whisky sodas, some containing a stray cigarette butt, whose black nose dipped down, while its body swelled and thickened, the tipping paper gently peeling off. The morning broke weakly over the smells of stale smoke and flowers; the light was pale and diffident.
Tunnu had been trying the door, but, finding it locked, or perhaps glimpsing Skanda inside, had decided instead to rap. At first, Skanda was not sure he had heard correctly; the noise came from an anteroom beyond a thick curtain; his footsteps on the wooden boards were loud. But when he stopped walking, and the house regained its quiet, he heard it again, distinctly this time. He thought it must be his sister and grandparents.
He pushed aside the curtain and followed the rapping to the door. He was surprised to see an unfamiliar face. Still, a visitor was a visitor, and, if nothing else, it was an excuse to wake the others.
He turned the key in time with Tunnu turning the brass knob. The door opened with a shudder and the full freshness of the Gulmarg morning, of grass, dew and sunlight, poured in, overthrowing the stale air in the house. But Tunnu was not of a piece with its freshness.
His face was drawn and lined, his features lost in the sagging mass of hair; and only the redness of his eyes, like two dying embers, brought anything that might be described as life to his ashen face. He was like someone fearful of the day. He entered with the haste of a man wanting to escape its light and freshness.
‘Bete,’ he said rapidly, ‘where is your mother’s room?’
‘She’s asleep,’ Skanda answered casually, adding with annoyance, ‘everyone is.’
‘I know, bete, but where is her room?’ Tunnu pressed him.
Skanda suspected nothing. He was pleased to allow into the house someone willing to wake the others.
‘I’ll show you,’ he said, turning toward the large door that led into the internal corridor. The gloom closed around them and the two figures moved soundlessly through the darkness of the corridor.
At the door of his mother’s room, the visitor said in a quiet, but friendly voice, soft and full of patience, his eyes shining, ‘Now, go outside, bete. We have some grown-up things to talk about.’
Skanda nodded, put his head through the door and said somewhat triumphantly, ‘Ma, someone’s come.’
Then he turned around and vanished down the corridor.
He had barely made it to the main room, when reaching him past the vault-like hush of the house, he heard a harsh splintering sound. An upward movement, a snap. Immediately his mind made the connection: the strip of plywood I was just playing with has been torn from its place on the headboard. But why? That short cruel sound was followed fast by a volley of muffled thuds, incoherent conversation: ‘Huh? What? Who?’ ‘Whore. Bitch. My wife.’
Then they came, and they sucked the possibility of action from his body. He crumpled on hearing them, buckling against a wall in the outside room to his haunches, unmoving but for the violent and involuntary trembling that gripped his body. His mother’s screams. It was as if he had anticipated this moment for years now; the moment of real physical threat to his mother; it was something that was built into the idea of his father’s departure, always there in the background. But now that it was real, he found himself inert. Cowardice – for that was what it felt like – rose like a cold, silent flood. It was like drowning. With every cry that came from the bedroom, he tried to listen for some hint that the fight was turning in his mother’s favour.
But, though they were angry cries – and they would have been that way right to the end – they suggested no victory of any kind. The house was silent, the man emboldened and his mother’s screams were growing hoarse. Where were the others? He was useless. Fine! But – oh, God! – where were the others?
He dragged himself to his aunt’s room. It was across the corridor from his mother’s, and, though Skanda himself could not speak, he managed to throw open both doors at once. On one side, the dark silent cavity of his aunt’s room; on the other, a scene more terrifying than he could ever have imagined. A tempest of white sheets and morning light. A little man, like a spirit or djinn, his short wild shadow dancing against the wall, blue turban and hair unravelling about him, struck his mother again and again, now with the blunt end of his fist, now with the strip of plywood. Skanda saw the open gash on the headboard. And his mother, until now so strong and defiant, was a pathetic figure of rage and sobs, a battered woman. The image, as if closing a circuit in his mind, wrenched from him a shriek. For a moment there was no response. Then, as if
the black cavity of his aunt’s room had been a mute intelligence of some kind, watching and listening, but not speaking, it let spring from its unresponsive darkness, the enraged and running figure of his aunt.
She tore into his mother’s room, not stopping once to take in the scene. Without a moment’s hesitation, she caught hold of the little demon’s beard and spat in his face. ‘Go beat your whore of a wife, who sleeps with all of Delhi!’ The petty demon shrank before her strength, and, even before she had taken the green plastic jug of water that lay at Uma’s bedside, emptying its entire contents in his face, he was vanquished. He had become in a few short seconds the weak-voiced figure of moments ago and, his beast having deserted him, he could only mumble through his soaked beard, ‘Teach your sister some manners next time.’
‘I’ll teach you some manners, you little fucking turd! Dirty coward. Beats a woman when she’s asleep. Beat your whore of a wife…’ his aunt yelled, and dug her hands into his shrunken body, throwing him to the floor.
Now others had appeared in the corridor – Viski, his cousins – but the object of his fear had been reduced to this tortured figure, dishevelled and deturbaned, collecting hair and cloth about him, while trying to stand up. There was little left for Viski to do. He grabbed hold of Tunnu’s elbow and pushed him out of the corridor, causing him to become entangled in the long length of his turban. It was left behind, and Fareed and Iqbal took pleasure in gathering it up crudely into a blue starchy knot, and throwing it after him.
**********
Name: The Way Things Were
Author: Aatish Taseer
Imprint: Picador India / Pan Macmillan India
Price: INR 699
Page Extent: 565
Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 978938261633
(Published with permission from Pan Macmillan India/Picador India.)