Before everything, over everything, was the silver spear of the Jyotirlinga.
‘Sarasvati!’
‘Vishnu?’ I could hardly hear her over the roar.
‘I’ve come to get you.’
‘You’ve what?’ It was as noisy where she was. I had a fix. The autodrive would take me there as quickly as it could.
‘You’ve got to get out.’
‘Vish.’
‘Vish nothing. What can you do?’
I did hear her sigh.
‘All right, I’ll meet you.’ She gave me a fresh set of coordinates. The driver nodded. He knew the place. His uniform was crisp and his cap miraculously correct but I knew he was as scared as I.
On Mehrauli Boulevard I heard gunfire. Airdrones barrelled in over the roof of the car, so low their engines shook the suspension. Smoke rose from behind a tatty mall fa¸ade. This street, I recognised it. This was Parliament Road, that was the old Park Hotel, that the Bank of Japan. But so faded, so dilapidated. Half the windows were out on the Park. The secluded gardens around Jantar Mantar on Samsad Marg were overrun with packing-case houses, their plastic roofs pushing right against the austere marble angularities of Jai Singh’s astronomical instruments. Everything was overrun with lean-tos and huts and miserable hard-scrabble shelters.
‘This is as far as I’m going to take you,’ the driver said as we ran into an immovable horde of people and animals and vehicles and military at Talkatora Road.
‘Don’t go anywhere,’ I ordered the driver as I jumped out.
‘That’s not likely,’ he said.
The press was cruel and chaotic and the most terrifying place I have ever been but Sarasvati was here, I could see her in my mind-map. A cordon of police bots tried to drive me back with the crowds from the steps of the Awadh Bhavan but I ducked under, out and away. I knew this place. I had given my balls to work in this place. Then suddenly, wonderfully, I was in the clear. My heart lurched. My vision swam. Delhi, dear Delhi, my Delhi, they let this happen to you. The gracious greens and boulevards, the airy chowks and maidans of the Rajpath were one unbroken slum. Roof after roof after roof, slumping walls, cardboard and wood and brick and flapping plastic. Smoke went up from a dozen fires. This, this was Dalhousie. I knew the name of course. I had never thought it would ever become the name of the great sink where this newest of New Delhi’s condemned would be driven by drought and want. Such disdain did new India show for old Awadh. Who needed a Parliament when universal computing made everything a consensus? From where I guessed the old Imperial India Gate had stood at the end of the gracious Rajpath, there rose the Jyotirlinga. It was so bright I could not look at it for more than moments. It cast a terrible, unnatural silver shine over the degradation and dread. It abused my Brahminic sensibilities. Did I smell voices, hear colour, was that prickle like cold lemon fur on my forehead the radiation of another universe?
People milled around me, smoke blew in my eyes, the down-draft of airdrones and hover cams buffeted me. I had only moments before the army would catch me and move me away with the rest of the panicked crowd. Or worse. I saw bodies on the ground and flames were coming up from a line of plastic shacks.
‘Sarasvati!’
And there she was. Oh, there she was, plunging whip-thin in combat pants and a silk blouse, but filled her wonderful energy and determination out of the pile of collapsing housing. She dragged a child in each hand, smudge-faced and tearful. Tiny mites. In this place, she had slipped from my nuptial elephant to caper with the revellers in her ridiculous man’s costume and exuberant false moustache.
‘Sarasvati!’
‘You’ve got a car?’
‘It’s how I got here, yes.’
The children were on the verge of bawling. Sarasvati thrust them at me.
‘Take these two to it.’
‘Come with me.’
‘There are kids still in there.’
‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘It’s a special needs group. They get left when the sky opens. Everyone else runs and leaves the kids. Take these two to your car.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘There are more in there.’
‘You can’t go.’
‘Just get the to the car, then come back here.’
‘The army.’
She was gone, ducking under the billowing smoke. She disappeared into the warren of lanes and galls. The children pulled at my hands. Yes yes, they had to get out. The car, the car wasn’t far. I turned to try and find an easy way with two children through the wheeling mass of refugees. Then I felt a wave of heat across the back of my neck. I turned to see the blossom of flame blow across the top of the gali, whirling up rags of blazing plastic. I cried something without words or point and then the whole district collapsed in on itself with a roar and explosion of sparks.
The Age of Kali. I have little patience with that tendency in many Indians to assume that because we are a very old culture, we invented everything. Astronomy? Made in India. Zero? Made in India. The indeterminate, probabilistic nature of reality as revealed through quantum theory? Indian. You don’t believe me? The Vedas say that the Four Great Ages of the Universe correspond to the four possible outcomes of our game of dice. The Krita Yuga, the Age of Perfection, is the highest possible score. The Kali Yuga, the Age of Strife, darkness, corruption and disintegration, is the lowest possible score. It is all a roll of the divine dice. Probability? Indian!
Kali, Paraskati, Dark Lady, Mistress of Death and Drinker of Blood, terrible ten-armed one with the necklace of skulls, She Who is Seated upon the Throne of Five Corpses. The Ender. Yet Kali is also Mistress of Regeneration. Ruler of All Worlds, Root of the Tree of the Universe. Everything is a cycle and beyond the Age of Kali we roll again into the Age of Gold. And that which cannot be reasoned with must then be worshipped.
I believe I was mad for some time after Sarasvati’s death. I know I have never been sane as you would consider me sane. We are Brahmins. We are different. But even for a Brahmin, I was crazy. It is a precious and rare thing, to take time out from sanity. Usually we allow it to the very very young and the very very old. It scares us, we have no place for it. But Kali understands it. Kali welcomes it, Kali gives it. So I was mad for a time, but you could as easily say I was divine.
How I reached the temple in the little, drought-wracked town by the sewer of Mata Ganga, I have chosen to forget. How I came by the offering of blood to the priest, that too I’ve put where I put the dis-remembered. How long I stayed there, what I did, does any of this matter? It was time out from the world. It is a powerful thing, to subject yourself to another time and another rhythm of life. I was a thing of blood and ashes, hiding in the dark sanctum, saying nothing but offering my daily puja to the tiny, garland-bedecked goddess in her vulva-like garbigraha. I could have vanished forever. Sarasvati, the brightest and best of us, was dead. I lolled on foot-polished marble. I disappeared. I could have stayed Kali’s devotee for the rest of my long and unnatural life.
I was lolling on the wet, foot-polished marble when the woman devotee, shuffling forward through the long, snaking line of cattle-fences toward the goddess, suddenly looked up. Stopped. Looked around as if seeing everything for the first time. Looked again and saw me. Then she unhooked the galvanised railing and pushed through the switch-back line of devotees to come to me. She knelt down in front of me and namasted. Above the single vertical line of her Shakta-tilak she wore the red Eye of Shiva.
‘Vish.’
I recoiled so abruptly I banged the back of my head off a pillar.