Friday 30 September 2016
Thursday 29 September 2016
Armageddon of 2019, Redux
I seem to have
inadvertently become famous.
Let me explain.
A little over three
years ago, I wrote a speculative story about a war between India and Pakistan I
predicted would take place in 2019. If you haven’t read it already, you can
either click here...
<----------------- or look to the left of the page where it’s right on
top of the list of popular posts, and where it seems determined to stay for all
time to come.
In fact, at this point
I strongly suggest you read it, if you haven’t already, so you know what it is
that I thought might happen if India and Pakistan went to war.
It’s a story that’s got
me a lot of vituperation, including multiple threats of violence and a couple
desiring my death. All, without exception, of these threats were from anonymous
persons purporting to be Indian patriots, that is, Hindunazis. I’m fairly
certain not one of these gentlemen ever put on a uniform, or has any intention
of putting on a uniform and laying his life on the line. For Hindunazis, the
keyboard is their weapon and shield, the only thing that gives some validity to
their lives.
But even then, a lot
of people seem unable to differentiate between fact and fiction, to the extent
that I’ve had people asking whether this actually happened. And Arsalan
Ghumman, whom I’ve given a role in the story, told me that a Pakistani military
person of his acquaintance informed him that this story was written by an
Indian intelligence agency (RAW) “element”. Both of us had a good laugh, though
it wasn’t funny.
Yes, you imbeciles, it
is a story. It is as much a story as the vainglorious crap you might prefer to
read with Ramboesque Indian supersoldiers massacring evil Pakistani terrorists.
Only it’s not fantasy, and if it doesn’t fit into your comfort zone, too bad. Nobody
put a nuclear bomb to your head and made you read it.
Do I think India and
Pakistan might actually go to nuclear war? No. But if India and Pakistan did go to full scale war, it could not, in my opinion, stop short of going
nuclear. The reason is simple. In the far north, the frontier along the divided
state of Kashmir is mountainous and heavily fortified on both sides. There is
no way an Indian attack across the frontier there would achieve anything. Next
is Punjab, which is also heavily fortified (I read of one Indian defence
account which called the Pakistani fortifications “mind boggling”) . Any Indian
attempt to attack there would be doomed. The southern end of the frontier, in
Gujarat, is marshy and unsuitable for large scale troop movement. The only
place where any Indian offensive has a good chance of success is in the central
sector, where the Thar Desert lies across both countries. An offensive across
this desert could cut Pakistan in two.
Pakistan is well aware
of that possibility, and has prepared by mounting tactical nuclear weapons on
short range battlefield missiles, to be used on its own territory. Those
missiles essentially make any major Indian offensive impossible, and India
cannot counter in the same way because it has no tactical nuclear weapons. It’s
threatened to retaliate by nuking Pakistani cities, which is basically the only
option open to it. And in that case, Pakistan, which has many more and likely
better nuclear weapons than India, can do exactly the same. And then India will
suffer massively because almost all of its industrial and economic centres are concentrated
in the north and west of the country, within easy rage of Pakistani missiles
and aircraft. Modi’s own home state, Gujarat, which is the westernmost Indian
province, especially wouldn’t stand a chance.
No, a full scale war
is not going to happen. But that doesn’t mean one can’t write speculative
fiction warning of the consequences if it did.
[As I write this, I
heard of the Indian government claiming it had conducted “surgical strikes” on “terrorist
camps” in Pakistani Kashmir. I do not believe one single, solitary word of it,
and anyone who does needs a brain transplant. The story is an obvious
fabrication by the Modi regime to placate its right wing constituency and claim
that it “defends the nation”.]
A few days ago, I
discovered that a Pakistani television channel had done a programme based on my
story. It’s basically a narration of my story in Urdu, with visuals added,
mostly from films depicting the bombing of Hiroshima. It does compress things a
lot and makes some errors, but these are relatively minor, not even worth
discussing here. The thing is, someone read the story and thought it important
enough to make a programme on it. And they did it not as entertainment, but as
a plea for peace.
Here is the video:
It is significant that
it’s the “warmongering” Pakistanis, who, according to one person who saw fit to
comment on my story, only want their “72 virgins”, are the ones who used my
story to make a plea for peace, while my allegedly “peace loving” Indian
compatriots call anyone who wants peace a “commie traitor” or – as per one
Twitter feed – “pro-Paki doves.” It is absolutely no surprise to me, though it
may be to some people. India pretends to be peaceful, but it’s a hyper violent
country with an enormous chip on its shoulder, which wishes it was a great
power and reacts violently to reminders that it is not.
No, the Pakistani
channel didn’t ask for my permission to make the programme, though they did
show my photo and name. They should have asked, but I won’t make a big fuss on
the point.
If it helps give some
idiots a new perspective, it will be worth it.
Oh Batman Had A Baby
Oh Batman had a baby
He called him Lad
Robin
He dressed him in
shorty shorts
And dropped him in the
bin.
Oh Lex Luthor found
the baby
Who was quite cute, no
doubt
Lexy took him along on
crime sprees
To act as his look-out.
Robin grew to boyhood
A fine figure of a boy
was he!
He wore bright clothes
with shorty-shorts
And a mask through
which to see.
Oh Luthor had a plan
so good
It would make the
world sit up, for sure
He needed Batman out
of the way
For that he set a
lure.
Robin put on his
yellow cape
His yellow cape wore
he!
And in his red and
green and shorty-shorts
Stood down by the sea.
And the tide it began
to rise
The tide it rose so
high!
As the full moon, like
a swollen balloon
Lurched slowly across
the sky.
Someone saw Robin on
the shore
As the tide surged
around his feet
And signalled, the
Batsign out
Glimmering above the
nightswept street.
Then Batman came on
his Batmobile
He roared along the
beach!
Like a movie scene,
stopped the mighty machine
By Robin, near close
enough to reach.
And then it was that
the Boy Wonder
Said, “You left me for
dead.”
Took a stick, or maybe
a brick
And smashed it on
Batman’s head.
Batman fell with a
hollow groan
And drowned in the
rising tide
Yes, Batman drowned,
in the rising waves
Drowned right until he
died.
Then Batman was a
goner
You can check if I
lied!
And Lad Robin, with a
wicked grin
Took the Batmobile for
a ride.
Lex Luthor in the
meantime crimed
Oh what a crime spreed
he!
And with his load of
ill gotten gains
Back homewards he started to flee.
Now the cops were on
his trail
And fast it was they
came!
Lex Luthor moved his
fastest
But it wasn’t the
same.
It was as though it
was all over
He’d lost everything
once more
Bitterly he thought,
and almost forgot
That he’d sent Robin
to the shore.
But the Boy Wonder came
roaring up
In the Batmobile he
came!
And stopped by Lex,
laughing aloud
As though it was a
merry game.
“Get in, you bald old
coot!”
He shouted, and he
grinned
And the Batmobile,
like the Devil’s wheel
Through the streets it
spinned.
And Lex won to his
hideout
Got home with all his
take
And he lit a candle,
on his laden mantle
For his arch-enemy’s
sake.
“I’ve done enough,” he
declared
“This heist I’ll never
top,
So it makes sense,
even to the dense
That now I’d better
stop.
“I’m the King of Crime
right now
What more could I ever
need?
I have infamy and
fortune
And the Batmobile as
my steed.
“So I’ll hand over my
reins
You’ll be the King of
Crooks, won’t you?
Come with me and we’ll
celebrate
With a trip to the
zoo.”
And now it is that Lad
Robin
Strides across the
World of Crime
While Luthor sits in
luxury
Batman’s bones roll in
grime.
One day perhaps a Catman
will rise
Or better yet, a
Ratman grow
From out among the
oppressed throng
And a gauntlet he’ll
throw.
And then maybe the
world will see
The beginning of Robin’s
fall
But until then, the criminals’
friend
Will stand over the
city tall.
And to think it was
Batman’s fault
To bin the brat he
bred!
It was indeed, that he
deserved it
This had to be said.
Someday when the wind
moans so
And the sky with
clouds is filled
Look for his bones,
among the beach’s stones
And if you find them,
don’t be thrilled.
Batman was a selfish
pig
A capitalist lord as
well
And he deserved his
warm reception
Among his partners
down in hell.
Long may the Lad Robin
shine
In his shorty-shorts
and yellow cape!
And with his rule, you
stupid fool
You yourself need to
shape.
And Lex Luthor,
holiday home
A blessing on his
baldy head!
Long may it glow, in
calm and in blow
Until we’re all long
dead.
And then the world
will be a better place
When Ratman and Robin
see
That apart they’re
enemies, but
Friends is the way to
be.
Then it will be peace
and calm
A Golden Age will
come!
The only ones who
demur then
Will be the criminal
and the bum.
Oh Batman had a baby
He called him Robin,
oh delight
And Robin killed
Batman
And took the world
overnight.
[Image Source] |
Wednesday 28 September 2016
Fidayeen He Wrote
A couple of days ago I got
an email from a young lady whom I'll call ZA. This is what she wanted to know:
Mr.
Purkayastha,
I'm ZA, in my
first year doing undergraduate degree in Sociology in ******** College, New
Delhi. As part of the first project assigned to us, we were asked to do a book
review on any fiction/non-fiction and sociologically analyse it. I chose
Fidayeen, which I found to be super interesting. I feel it's a book that must
be read by more people, especially in the present context.
My question of
clarification is very much simple, sir. It is, "What made you write
Fidayeen? Or what was the context that led you to its writing?"
I hope my
polite inquiry is genuine, as it's not easy and takes a lot of courage to write
on a topic so controversial.
Expecting your
reply soon, as the deadline to submit the project is very much near.
Best Regards
ZA
BA(Hons) Sociology,
****** College, New Delhi
As some of you may or may
not remember, I wrote this book:
And as it happens I got an
award for it:
I thought you might also
like to know what made me tick when I wrote this. If you don’t, then don’t read
further.
This is how I replied
(slightly edited to remove identifiable information and spoilers):
Hi, Ms A.
I’m glad you liked the
book. I’ve not much idea what a “sociological analysis” is, but I’ll be waiting
eagerly to read your review.
You ask what made me
write it. Now, I think you’ll understand well enough from reading it that I’m
not a “nationalist” or a conventional “patriot”; I do not believe that
everything a country does is fine only because one happens to have been born in
it. Especially in regard to Kashmir, I’ve found the situation very troubling on
many levels.
Back in 1989 – this will
likely have been long before you were born – I was a student in Lucknow when
the Kashmir rebellion broke out. Within a matter of weeks, the Kashmir valley
had virtually gone out of control. My classmates pulled a publicity stunt of
signing letters in their blood and sending it to the prime minister of the day
– I think it was just after Vishwanath Pratap Singh had taken office – pledging
to “give their blood for Kashmir”. It was an absurd publicity stunt, and of
course not one of them ever actually joined the army.
It was around the same
time that a friend of my uncle’s, who was at that time a lieutenant colonel in
the army (he had earlier fought in Sri Lanka and been wounded by an LTTE
grenade) was posted to Kashmir and saw some combat there. I recall meeting him
in 1991 or 2 when I was home on holiday and so was he. He showed me photos of
his deployment to Kashmir, including pictures of combat, and gave me detailed
descriptions of some battles. You remember the battle in the village where
Mushtaq and the others are in the house, and then one of them was hiding in a
pipe in the field? That’s an almost exact retelling of one of the episodes he’d
told me about. He also told me that the army actually did mistreat Kashmiris
very badly, and that most of the allegations about the army murdering civilians
and torturing prisoners were based on fact.
So at that time I was
already deeply interested in Kashmir. I was also not ignorant of military and
militant matters – there was an insurgency on in this state at that time, under
the terrorist Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) which has now been
virtually wiped out but was then very strong. In 2001 I was 50 metres from an
HNLC attack in which five people were killed. My first book, Rainbow’s End, was a fictional account
of the HNLC insurgency. So I already had a good idea of how it feels like to
live in the middle of terrorism and civil conflict.
Around this time I
also read several books on Kashmiri insurgency, especially Manoj Joshi’s Lost Rebellion, which is a detailed
history of the Kashmiri rebellion from the start in 1989 to the late 90s, and Death of Dreams by Aditya Sinha, which
is the authorised biography of the militant leader turned politician Firdous
Syed Baba. Both these books gave me a detailed historical and personal insight
into the whole Kashmir conflict which I might otherwise not have got, including
the machinations on both the Indian and Pakistani sides.
Around that time, the
mid 2000s, the first fidayeen attacks started in Kashmir, targeting army and
CRPF or BSF camps. This was, of course, not a new tactic; the Japanese used
kamikaze attacks in World War II and I’d read a lot about them. Also, suicidal
mass attacks had been carried out by the Chechens in Russia in 2001 in Moscow
and 2004 in Beslan. But the idea of a small force of two or three men
penetrating a military establishment was new to India then. And it was
fascinating.
Right at this point
I’d like to say something: just as I do not consider kamikaze pilots cowards, I
do not consider fidayeen attackers cowards. In fact, and this is without taking
into account their aims, I consider them extremely brave people. Unlike those
who pack explosives into a car and set them off in marketplaces, fidayeen
attackers quite literally sacrifice their lives for what they believe in. And
this, obviously, raised the question of why they should do this. What would
make a normal human being give up his hopes and dreams and his family to go off
on an enterprise which would inevitably
result in his death? What is in this belief system that makes them feel that
their lives are less important than fulfilling whatever mission it is that they
are on?
At this point I was
not planning to write any book on fidayeen. However, I was reading on them, all
I could, and I kept newspaper clippings and website bookmarks which threw any
light on them at all that I found. This was alongside other things I read up
on, and to this day I read up on multiple topics that I find fascinating, on
which I might or might not write something in future.
I don’t know if you’re
familiar with orkut.com. It’s now gone, but in the period I’m talking about –
approximately 2003-7 – it was extremely popular, not as much as Facebook is
today, but still very important as the first great social network. I met and
became friends with several Pakistanis there, some of whom were extreme
religious fundamentalists. They gave me a good deal of insight into their
thinking, though I was only vaguely planning a book at that point and I had
nothing concrete in mind.
Then, around 2007, I
wrote a story which I posted on multiply.com – another wonderful site which is
now gone. It was only a little story, and it was about a boy called Ali in
Kashmir who was lame and sitting in a park when he was approached by the
narrator. The narrator gets friendly with Ali, asks him questions, and Ali
tells him that his sister is engaged to a militant who visits her in the
evenings. At the end of the story it’s revealed that the narrator is an Indian
intelligence agent and that the whole idea was to lay a trap for the militant.
The story wasn’t much but it got a lot of favourable comment from readers, who
asked for more stories on Kashmir. I then wrote another one of a small group of
militants coming at night into a village because the mother of one of their
members lived there. She hadn’t seen him for years but they could only spend a
couple of hours before they had to go again. This too was very popular with the
readers and it told me that I was capable of, at the least, writing a book on
Kashmir. And that was the point when I seriously started thinking about it.
Right away, I realised
that the story was much more than just the fidayeen. They had a context in
which they operated, the situation in Kashmir; they didn’t just appear out of
nowhere. It’s pointless to just blame them on Pakistan. It was India which
created the situation in which they could appear, and if the source was
Pakistan, it was still India’s fault for creating the circumstances under which
Pakistan could take advantage of the situation. The context, then, included
India and the Kashmiri people, and the people included, in turn, the Kashmiri
militants. They, strangely enough, did not conduct fidayeen operations, giving
their lives for the cause – their
cause – while the foreign militants did. This was also very interesting, and
required a lot more plot development, including tracing the different
psychologies of the two groups. At that point the idea of contrasting two
militants – Mushtaq and Abu Hassan – was born.
I did not, of course,
choose one or the other of them as “good” or “evil”. I do not believe anyone is
fully good or fully evil. I consider them both victims, as I do the Kashmiri
people and the Indian soldiers who were sent to fight for it. My own thoughts
about Kashmir are really irrelevant to the topic, because I am not Kashmiri,
but if you want to know what I think it’s that the state should be given
independence from both India and Pakistan. In one small part I mentioned a
Kashmiri whose house Raja Bhattacharya was searching and who lectured him on
Kashmir. That’s more or less what I think, but as I said it’s not relevant.
Nor was I ever going
to write a stupid action book like the Cobra series. I detest action books,
movies, and the shallow effort that goes into them. What I wanted, basically,
was a fictionalised history of a facet of the Kashmiri insurgency, a little
like what the Kenyan writer Meja Mwangi did in Carcase For Hounds about the Mau Mau revolution. I was only unsure
if I was up to it.
At this time I wrote
the first few chapters of Fidayeen
and let it lie for a while. In the meantime I wrote another book – The Call Of The Khokkosh – which has
nothing to do with militancy in any form. I may not ever have returned to Fidayeen because I had a bit of a
writer’s block on it. My friend Sujay Panyadi (whom I mentioned in the
dedication) kept nagging me to finish it, but I didn’t really think I would. I
felt I couldn’t do it justice, and assumed that it probably would never get
published anyway.
But then the Mumbai
attacks of 2008 happened. I know Mumbai very well – it is my favourite Indian
city – and also I suddenly found that I knew more about what was going on, due
to my research, than the talking heads in the television studios. And
afterwards I went right back to the book. I rewrote the chapters I’d written
and started again from the start, and the more I wrote the easier it became to
go on. At that time an ex classmate of mine who was then a major in the army
was visiting town and he told me all about the Indian Army’s counter-terrorist
protocols in Kashmir, which I’ve also described. In fact all the research fell
into place.
Putting myself into
the heads of Sabira, Nausheen, Mushtaq and Abu Hassan, Loveleen or Raja
Bhattacharya was no problem at all. I’ve never had any trouble putting myself
into the point of view of people with whom I have otherwise nothing in common.
I have written stories from the points of view, among others, of a Nazi
concentration camp commander, a murderous Zionist settler in Occupied
Palestine, at least three separate ISIS men (one of those stories is a novella
length detective story) and Moby Dick (the whale). Once I’d done the research,
knew what the background information was like, the story itself came easily.
In the end I finished writing
the whole book in less than a month – 25 or 26 days I think – and then
discovered that I couldn’t find a publisher to save my life. I’ve talked about
that on the blog article you read, I think – it was only in 2015 that a
publisher could be found brave enough to take it on. I was on the verge of just
putting the whole thing online at that point. Now I am researching for a
planned sequel called The Black Flag
which will bring back ... (names deleted to avoid spoilers) ... and other survivors
of the first book, and which will revolve around ISIS trying to infiltrate the
Kashmiri insurgency. I will almost certainly be writing it next year.
Publication, though, I don’t know.
I hope this account of
mine is helpful...As far as your comment about “courage” goes, I don’t think I
am particularly courageous. It was a topic that needed to be written on. Someone
had to do it. I did. That’s the way I think of it. As such, I’ve been attacked
many times over the years for my opinions, including death threats, and if
those didn’t shut me up criticism of this won’t.
If you have additional
questions I’d be glad to answer them.
Regards.
The New God
There was a giant sitting on a mountaintop
outside town. The giant was so large that he was actually larger than the
mountain, and he hadn’t moved in a long, long time.
The giant was a former
god, who’d stopped being a god when people no longer worshipped him. The people
of the town said that he was sitting there thinking about why he was no longer
a god, and that someday he would realise why. That day he would stir, and rise
from the mountain, and he would crush the town like an anthill in his fury,
before going out to destroy the earth.
For many years, the
priests of the town gods had tried to find a way to keep the giant quiescent.
They could not, of course, worship him, because he was no longer a god. Nor
could they beseech their own gods to keep him quiescent. To point out that
they, too, would inevitably drop from divinity when people no longer worshipped
them, and that other, future gods might then be called on to imprison them in
turn, would only rouse them to fury. And yet, with every year that passed, the day
the giant would finally stir grew ever closer.
“I thought I saw his
knee twitch this morning,” one of them reported one day. “But it was only for
an instant, and I saw it from the corner of my eye, so I can’t be sure.”
“We must keep a closer
watch,” the other priests declared. “We will have to build an observatory with
a telescope at the foot of the mountain, to keep him under constant surveillance,
and let us know of every movement, no matter how slight.”
So they built a mighty
observatory at the foot of the mountain, with a huge telescope trained on the
gigantic figure sitting on the crag. All day the junior priests watched the
giant, ready to rush to report at the first sign of movement. As sometimes
happened, clouds would hide the giant, and then they waited with the greatest
anxiety for the skies to clear again. And at night, they still watched, as best
they could, by the light of the moon and the distant, glittering stars.
Then one day the High
Priest of the Grand Temple called a meeting. All the archpriests and assistant
priests, the sub-priests and the acolytes, gathered together – all but the team
at the observatory, which, of course, had to keep watch. The High Priest ran
his fingers through his beard as he looked gravely upon the throng.
“It is clear,” he
said, “that the day the giant arises cannot be far off. With every day that
passes, more and more do we see him stirring. It is only a matter of time until
he wakes in fury.”
“What can we do then?”
an archpriest asked. “Should we evacuate the city? Ask everyone to take their
things and move away?”
“Where to?” another
archpriest asked. “It’s not as though the giant will sit down and go back to
silence if he finds the city empty. His fury will be such that he will not be
content until he destroys the land.”
“Could we...destroy
him?” one of the sub-priests suggested timidly. “Is it possible?”
“How?” the High Priest
asked, raising a hand to cut off the contemptuous jeers of all the archpriests
and assistant priests, not to mention the other sub-priests, who jeered more
loudly than everyone else. “He might be a former god, but he still has enough
powers that no mere human power can harm him.”
“Only another god can kill
him,” an archpriest snapped, “and of course they will not help.”
The sub-priest, who
was very young, only just more than an acolyte, gulped. “In that case,” he
said, even more timidly, “we must look for a god who will help.”
“And where can you
find a god who will do that?” the High Priest asked, amused despite himself. “Where
does such a god exist?”
“Maybe he should go
and find the god,” the arch-priest who’d spoken earlier said. “It would be of
more use, at least, than his making such ridiculous suggestions.”
“Yes, send him,”
everyone else added, the other sub-priests loudest of all. “Send him to go find
such a god.”
“Very well,” the High
Priest shouted above the jeering. “Go and find a god who will help, so that we
can get some discussion done.”
“And don’t take too
long about it,” the archpriest called. “Or the giant will get up and do for the
world before your god can do him in.”
So the young sub-priest,
having no way out, walked sadly away. He left the Grand Temple, passed the
other temples, and then came to the streets of the city. He had no idea what to
do. Where do you go looking for a god whom you don’t know to exist? Besides, he
didn’t even know the city; he was from a village far away, and had never left
the temple complex before since he’d first arrived as an acolyte, years ago. So
all he could do was wander about, glancing up once in a while at the distant
giant on his mountain. It was a clear day, and the giant was very visible.
“Why does a priest
look so sad?” a voice asked at his elbow.
The sub-priest turned
around to see who had spoken. It was a plump old woman at the door of a shop. She
smiled at him warmly.
“What’s the matter?”
she repeated. “Why is a priest so sad?”
“I’m not a priest,”
the young man confessed. “I’m only a sub-priest, and I don’t think I’ll ever
rise any further.”
“Well, then,
sub-priest, you still don’t have to look so sad. Why don’t you come in here and
tell me about it?”
Having no other option,
no idea what to do, the sub-priest followed her into the shop. It was old and
dark, and after the sunlight outside the young man could see little. The woman
motioned him into a chair.
“Tell me,” she said. “What
is the problem?”
So the young
sub-priest started telling her, and once he started talking it became difficult
to stop. She listened without interruption till the end and nodded. “So all you
need to do is find a god to destroy this former god before he wakes, is that
so?”
“You talk as though
that’s a little thing,” the sub-priest said bitterly.
“It’s not that
difficult,” the old woman said, her plump cheeks dimpling. “I can tell you
where to get a god. Only, you have to be quite sure that you want him.”
“Quite sure? Of course
I’m sure. I’ve just told you, haven’t I?”
“So you have.” The old
woman didn’t seem put out in the slightest. “My dear young sub-priest, I wouldn’t
tell you something if I didn’t mean it. Now, if you want a god, I can tell you
where to get one.”
“Where?” the
sub-priest asked. “Do you have one to sell or something?”
“Almost,” the old
woman said, and there was a strange note in her voice. “But they aren’t for
sale.”She picked up and lit a tiny candle. “Come.”
“What do you mean?” But
even as he said this he found his legs carrying him behind the woman into the
depths of the shop. It seemed to go on and on, much longer than it should have.
And in the half-light the things on the shelves grew more and more strange, their
shapes bizarre and twisted. The sub-priest moved in a dream.
“What is this place?” he asked, finally, when
they seemed to have been walking for hours, and the things on the shelves bore
not the slightest resemblance to anything seen in the normal, everyday world. “Where
are we going?”
“To answer your first
question,” the woman said, and her voice had changed, become more powerful, “you
aren’t in the town anymore. You aren’t even in the world you call yours
anymore. This place is...between the worlds.”
“What are...what are
you?” the sub-priest whispered.
“Think of me as a
guardian of the spaces,” the woman said. “In your world, I am an old shopkeeper
woman, who dabbles a little in spells and cures on the side. In the world on
the other side...to where you are going, to answer your second question...I’m
merely a keeper of the gate. But this space, in between...this is my domain.”
“The other world,” the
sub-priest repeated. “What’s there?”
“Everything else.” The
woman’s voice was almost unrecognisable. The tiny candle, which should have
melted down to nothing long ago, was still burning somehow, and when the sub
priest saw the shadows it threw, he didn’t want to look at the things whose
shadows they were. Least of all did he want to look at his companion.
“This god,” the
sub-priest began.
“Yes,” the woman said.
She stopped, holding her candle high, and its light illuminated a square panel
in the floor. “Lift that,” she ordered. “There will be stairs. Go down them,
and you will find what you want.”
“I don’t understand,”
The sub-priest had to swallow several times before he could make himself speak.
“You say there’s a god down there? How?”
“Not just one,” the
woman told him. “You can choose the one you want.”
The sub-priest knelt
and pried up the panel with his fingernails. It came up surprisingly easily, as
though it weighed almost nothing. Wooden steps vanished down into darkness. “I
don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t.
If you did, you wouldn’t be here.” The woman held her candle so that it
illuminated the stairs. “You come looking for a god, to save you from a god who
is no longer a god. And you haven’t even thought what that means.”
“What does it mean?”
The sub-priest looked down the stairs. They were steep and narrow, and made of
wood which looked warped and cracked.
“When a god is no
longer a god, it’s because you replaced him with other and newer gods. Well,
have you thought of where those new gods
come from?”
The sub priest
blinked. “I...no.”
“Go down,” the woman
said, and her voice was ancient and terrible. “And mind you choose well,
because the gods are not all the same.”
“Aren’t you coming?”
the sub-priest asked. He was suddenly very reluctant to descend those stairs,
and he’d rather have the woman, or whatever she was now, with him than to go
down them unaccompanied.
“No. From here on you
go alone.” The woman’s candle flame dimmed abruptly. “Go now.”
Abruptly terrified of
being with her in the darkness, the
sub-priest began climbing down the steps as quickly as he could. The candle
flame dimmed rapidly, spurring him on, and from behind and above him he heard
something that sounded almost like laughter. “You really should have thought
this one through,” she said. And the next moment the candle flame went out and
he was in darkness.
But not for long. Only
a little ahead of him, there was a dim glow, which crawled and flickered around
the stairs and the walls, from a myriad of pinpoints of light that came and
went like twinkling stars. They seemed almost close enough to touch, but as he
advanced down the stairs they seemed to be as far away as ever. Then he
realised that they were very far away, and they were much larger than he’d
thought. And then, at last, when he’d gone so far down the stairs that they
were no longer pinpoints, he realised what they were.
They were baby gods.
They were all shapes
and sizes, a million different gods. Some were hard to see, little more than
pulsing flashes of light. Some were huge-horned and leathery, with tusks
sprouting through their mouths. Some writhed and twisted on innumerable
tentacles, snapping at the air with sharp-toothed jaws. And there were those
who looked human, like the sub-priest, but were not.
“Which god should I
take?” he asked aloud. “How can I choose?”
One of the gods curled
up nearby opened little black eyes and stared at him. “Why would you want to
choose a god?” it asked.
The sub-priest stared
at the god. It looked human enough, though he couldn’t determine its gender. It
uncurled itself and yawned delicately.
“Well?” it asked. “Here
we wait for the aeons to pass, until someone, somewhere, thinks of a god who is
just like one of us, and begins worshipping him or her. And then, only then,
can we be born. Some of us have been waiting since the start of time. And you
want to choose one of us?”
“I need a god,” the
sub-priest confessed. He explained his problem. “Will you help and be our god?”
“It might be eternity
before my chance to be born comes round,” the baby god said. It stepped out of
its little pool of light and on to the stairs next to the sub-priest. “Of
course I will go with you.” It was already no longer a baby. “Let’s go. No, not
that way,” it added, as the sub-priest began climbing the steps. “A god has
powers to go the way he wants.”
A shaft of light
appeared overhead, like a spear poking down from the ceiling, and the god
stepped inside. With a moment’s hesitation, the sub-priest joined him. The
shaft of light rose, carrying them with it.
They emerged into the
inner yard of the Grand Temple, where the High Priest had been holding his
meeting. There was no meeting now. The archpriests and assistant priests, the
sub-priests and the acolytes, and the High Priest himself were still there, but
they were rushing around in terror and confusion.
“The giant,” they were
screaming. “The giant has risen!”
And over the roofs of
the Temple complex loomed the giant himself. His head touched the sky, and as
he turned it from side to side, blinking slowly, his immense beard shook with
the sound of a million cyclones. He took one slow step forward, and another.
The ground shook.
“Do something,” the
sub-priest pleaded to his god. “Do something, please.”
The god grew. And it
grew, and grew. It hurtled up towards the sky. Its shadow blocked out the sun.
Night fell across the city. The giant halted, looking up at something many
times its own size, astonished.
And then the god
struck. It struck with an enormous fist, a blow that might have been felt in
all the many worlds, and the giant crumbled. One moment it was there, and the
next there was only a puff of powder, blowing away.
The new god came down
again to the Temple yard. “All done,” it said.
The High Priest and
the other priests had gathered around in awestruck silence. It was the
sub-priest who made the introductions.
“You asked me to find
a god who would save us,” he said. “I did.”
“Only this god could
have saved us,” the High Priest declared. “From this moment onward, it is our
god, and none other.”
“Wait...” The
sub-priest said, appalled, recalling the woman’s last words as he’d started
down the steps. But it was already too late.
And the next morning
there were giants sitting on all the mountains around the town.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2016
Monday 26 September 2016
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