“On with the show!” he cries, and gallops toward the tent.
Murthy is hauled to his feet by a couple of bailiffs and dragged along with the crowd toward the tent.
The painted backdrop, which, for the last week, has displayed scenes of palaces, forests and rocky beaches-Rama’s castle was mysteriously identical to Ravana’s, down to the personnel-now provides the atmosphere of a courtroom, with a ragged St. George flapping forlornly off the same flagpole as Ravana’s flag, which stands out straight, starched with rice paste. On a podium stands a statuette, dangling scales from one hand; instead of classical Greek garb, however, the female figure is wrapped in the manner of a Tamil country tribal.
As Vairum surges forward with the crowd, he realizes that his salon-fellows are not the only detainees. There are others who must have been frog-marched in with the crowd from points distant. But-that one, with the wire-rimmed spectacles and bald head-is he supposed to be…? If he were reduced by about three stone, perhaps he could pass. And why is that other prisoner clad in the jaunty cap and buttoned-up jacket of…? But the hat is tied on with string, and that dark visage, with teeth poking out in all directions, hardly cuts the profile on which so many hearts are said to have been dashed. The men of the salon don’t look up often, but when they do, they are even more frightened to find themselves surrounded by characters whom they recognize from newspapers and books, but whose likenesses here are to those photos as the Self-Respect Ramayana is to the original. Vairum is concerned for the salon members and glad to be out in the crowd, should anything untoward happen. But until it does, he has to admit this Ramayana is far more entertaining than the other.
“And now, who is our judge?” demands Ravana of the crowd. “Who will sit in judgment on all those who, in weakness and greed, have downtrodden the rightful people of Dravida Nadu?”
“You, Ravana!” several young men chorus back. “You judge!”
Ravana blushes and fawns. “No, no, I really couldn’t.”
Uproarious laughter rises from the crowds and Ravana turns serious.
“No, I refuse to judge because I myself must be judged. I want to submit to trial along with all the others who have purported to rule and lead you. Let us put a halt to blackmail and subterfuge, and let the people judge who is to rule them!”
Cheering.
“But someone must guide and order the proceedings, at least, and for this task I propose our Mariamman, never bent nor bowed.” He kicks off his slippers and makes an elaborate prostration to the tribal goddess. All those present do the same, though the salon members must be rolled into and lifted out of the position, unable to help themselves with their hands.
Ravana settles himself on a bamboo mat. Two curvaceous young women fan him. “I declare the proceedings open,” he announces lightly.
This is the night Sivakami is to attend the Ramayana she sponsored. Muchami has minimized the degree of attrition it has suffered, so she is shocked, when she approaches the pandal, to find no more than twenty people in attendance, made up of a few neighbours, with some Kulithalai Brahmins she doesn’t know, even though the coronation of Rama has already begun. She has brought Vani, and had called for Murthy and Rukmini before leaving. Rukmini came but said it seemed her husband was already at the performance. Gayatri, sitting on her veranda with her children as they passed, said the same thing.
Now Sivakami turns to Muchami, who is following with Mari at a respectful distance. “Muchami! Where are Murthy Anna and Minister Anna?” she whispers loudly.
Muchami, miserable and mortified on her behalf, looks around. “I can’t imagine, Amma.”
Sivakami takes a place on a mat to one side of the stage and says to Vani, “I suppose Vairum was meeting some associate and will come when he’s done?”
Vani doesn’t answer. Sivakami looks at her hard and looks for Muchami again, but he has taken a place with the non-Brahmins, too far away to ask him the same question.
Back at the Self-Respect Ramayana, each of the characters is tried, one by one. Vairum, caught up in the mood of the crowd, finds the hearings eerily convincing. It never would have occurred to him to fault Rama and Sita for behaving as they do in the story, but it’s really quite arguable. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to see his gods as he did before. Perhaps this is what it means to be a Hindu in the new age. Mother and father are to be worshipped as gods, and they have their limitations, as Vairum increasingly can see. Why shouldn’t the gods, too, admit their faults?
Next, the politicians are tried: the chubby Gandhi, the buck-toothed Nehru, a host of others, found short-sighted-nay, blind; neglectful; unwilling to face their own prejudices. The crowd is in a frenzy.
Finally, the men of the salon: Brahmin and non-Brahmin but all clearly elite, marked unmistakably by their fine clothes, soft hands, softer bellies. They are given no chance to speak because they are clearly guilty, guilty, guilty.
Vairum recalls his euphoria at that long-ago courtroom victory when he won his sister her due. Here it is again, the triumph of right over might. The excitement of the crowd, unbelievably, is still mounting. Their clamour coalesces into a chant: “Parade! Parade!”
Like a snake with a belly full of squirming mice, the throng surges out along the path where, so recently, Murthy stretched his now defiled body, and heads toward the other tent.
“There’s another Brahmin!” shouts one of the hired goons. “Take him!”
Vairum is alarmed as two of the bailiffs reach for him.
“Ugh!” The one to reach him first pulls back. “Stop! Leper!”
The thugs surround Vairum but none is willing to touch him. One throws him a rope. “Tie your own wrists, leper.”
“No!” Two of Muchami’s nephews push through the crowd and shove them aside, defending Vairum against attack as they had when they were all lads in school. “He doesn’t count. He has attended every night of your Ramayana.”
“It’s lascivious curiosity, just as they like our women,” sneers the roughest-looking bailiff.
“Yeah, take advantage, but don’t take it home,” says another.
“Really, he is different. Even the Brahmins know it,” says the older nephew gently. By then, several of Vairum’s friends, who were willing to defend him but, unlike the nephews, unused to having to, have advanced with similar protests.
The mass has continued to flow around them, and now Ravana comes past on his horse, with the prisoners of the salon, roped together, trudging abjectly behind.
“What’s this, a stray?” Ravana trumpets from far above, then squints at him. “Leper?”
“They say he’s an exception, sire,” the tubby bailiff explains.
“Oh, they say so, do they?” Ravana glances from one nephew to another. “Well then, it must be so. We must trust the locals, fellows, or how will they ever trust us? Hop to, my nasties,” he calls to the salon cortege. “There’s more than one way to conquer,” he nods to the foiled vigilantes. “In making war, as in making love, you must use your head as well as your hands.”
He gallops on with a laugh and wink.
VAIRUM IS SWEPT ALONG in the crowd to “The Coronation of Rama,” the grand finale of the conventional Ramayana.
Thus it is that Sivakami witnesses her gods arrested and tried, in a monkey court where the only monkey is found innocent, and the enemy of her gods, whose painted demon face revealed little intelligence and much vanity, is surprised but gratified to find himself revered as a hero. She sees her gods and her neighbours pelted with shoes (no one should have been wearing shoes on ground that had been consecrated for the performance, she thinks-did they bring them in bags?) and thus turned into untouchables. Rama is defiled, hit with the very sandals-his own-that his younger brother had placed on the throne when the god was sent into exile.