The Last Laugh

“Ye Nastika, I have an offer for you”, Seemanna called out.

Seemanna’s offers usually spelled trouble.

As I saw him approach, I remembered our conversation from a week ago: he was falling short of vanaras for his performance at the jatre and was on a mission to recruit volunteers.  

“Seemanna”, I said pre-empting his offer, “Don’t bother trying – I am not acting in that godforsaken dance-drama of yours.”

“Godforsaken dance-drama? Aiyo Nastika, how can you say such things? If there is no God, how can he forsake things?”

I didn’t want to be drawn into an argument. My religious beliefs brought me a modicum of infamy. Mostly, it set me up for some harmless fun at the hands of men like Seemanna. Not particularly keen on being ridiculed, I focused my attention on aiming pebbles at a touch-me-not plant.

“You only have yourself to blame, you know” Seemanna soldiered on. 

“Just like I have only myself to blame for last year’s earthquake.”

“No, no, no, no. Not quite. Not in the least. You have only yourself to blame. You have invited attention and scorn. Take last week, for example. The priest was merely giving honest advice about fidelity -- ‘God is watching your every act’ – to a newly-wed couple. It did not call for you to butt in – rather, spit in their faces – and declare, in full view – full view -- of fellow villagers gathered for the aarti: ‘For god to watch, he must exist … And that’s the basic problem.’ The thing is, Hon’ble Mr. Nastika, you don’t even drink – there’s really no excuse for such stupidity.”

I didn’t think it was stupid in any way. The priest didn’t either. Indeed, he even put my name on the temple notice-board alongside a message that read: “This man’s views must be treated like Bhasmasura’s boon: innocuous on the surface, dangerous inside”. I had laughed and made an argument – loudly, at the tea-shop around the temple-corner -- as to how the priest got his metaphor all wrong. Bhasmasura’s boon was anything but innocuous: it allowed him to turn to ash anyone whose head he placed his palm on! “It was dangerous on the surface and deadly inside”, I had thundered then to scattered applause.

It was actually an old trick my father – a respected vakil in his day -- had taught me: ridicule the technicality, obscure the contentious issue. It worked like a charm: the very next day, my name and the faulty metaphor had mysteriously disappeared from the notice-board.

“Seemanna”, I said, picking my tangent well, “that priest is a swindler. Do you know how much money the temple makes?”

“Wonderful you brought that up, because that brings me straight to the offer I mentioned earlier–"

“Not interested, Seemanna.”

“Listen, for once. Ramanna and the others-"

“Have you found someone to play a rat?”, I cut in and asked, hopeful. The rat – Lord Ganesha’s vehicle – was the only part I was willing to play; it involved no real dressing up and no lines; it also only featured in one scene.

“Yes, we have.”

“Really? How?”

“If I can find 20 monkeys, one rat is really not an issue. Anyway, all this is irrelevant, Nastika – please just listen to me. This is not an audition. I have an offer: Ramanna and the others have bet me 5000 rupees to break open the hundi at the temple. I can’t find an accomplice because no one wants to incur the wrath of Lord Seshashayana. My intention is not to steal, but I need to have proof that I opened the hundi and took a token sum – say 1 rupee or 10 – from it. I have been looking for someone who will be both witness and accomplice. Which is why, when I saw your outburst at the temple, I knew I had found the perfect person. You don’t fear God. To quote from Thus Spake Nastika: ‘For God to get angry, he must exist … And that’s the basic problem solved.”

I am a practical man. I mulled over it and asked:

“What is in it for me?”

“Scientific evidence of the non-existence of God. By defying the Lord and stealing from his hundi, you will have proven to everyone that you don’t fear God because he doesn’t exis –“

“50 per cent.”

“25.”

“Okay, special offer for you: 75 per cent.”

“Yo, shut up and take 50.”

“Okay.”

****

The biggest jatre in our temple’s history was in 1981 when our then Chief Minister Gundu Rao was the Chief Guest. He arrived four hours late and nearly choked on his paan during the dying moments of our final performance – it was not out of emotion, he had merely nodded off to sleep.

Every village’s jatre has its own protocol. This is ours:

First, the idol of the main temple in the village –Durgeshwari Amma – is placed on a palanquin and accompanied by a crowd of devotees (of Durga and/or toddy) to all neighbouring villages. The procession is colourful, loud and painfully slow; devotees chant praises, beat drums, sing songs, dance and make merry; the streets are lined with pious onlookers; the priests and the other Brahmins jealously guard the palanquin and make up the head of the procession; the other castes make up the torso, the Harijans comprise the disembodied legs (maintaining – as society deems – a respectful distance); and finally, the intoxicated form the disproportionately long tail.

When the idol returns, it is not carried back to a temple, but taken to an open space where it watches -- alongside thousands of others -- performances put up on stage by artistes of varying shades of mediocrity. Every now and then, offerings of food – idli, paayasa -- are made to the idol. Durgeshwari Amma– ever the epitome of abstinence -- watches on idly.

Our village, thus, has two temples – one that Amma lords over and the other where Lord Seshashayana -- the One Who Sleeps On a Snake – rests. It is the Mother who gets to do some annual sight-seeing on the day of the jatre. Lord Seshashayana cannot be bothered to stir from his sprawled out position.

What this means is that the night of the jatre is the perfect time to break open Seshashayana’s hundi: the priests are all concerned with Amma, the villagers are in a frenzy at the grounds, the sky is moonless and Seshashayana himself, well, sleeps.  

***

Seemanna and I met at midnight. He was perspiring. I could not tell if it was because he had run half a kilometre or because he’d just finished performing as Hanuman. The jatre was in full flow, the cheers from the ground pierced the darkness. Seemanna arrived in costume, his tail limp, his crown discarded. In the light of his torch, I made out his face: lined with red and white paint, he looked like a sedentary vanara.

“Come, come.” he beckoned and offered some idli he had wrapped in a newspaper. There was chutney too.

“Where from?”, I asked.

“It was offered to the Goddess; when I finished playing my part and got off stage, I walked up to her, offered my prayers and under her benevolent gaze, picked it up and wrapped it in my angavastra.”

“You stole it?”

“Well, I figured if I am going to steal from Seshashayana, the Goddess mustn’t feel left out.”

“Makes sense.”

The chutney was lovely – I had no pity for the priest whose stomach it would have ended up in otherwise. It really isn’t a stomach, more an akshaya patra in the inverse: infinite capacity to consume, not produce.

Still savouring his idli, Seemanna produced an old, rusty iron box from underneath his lungi. Its contents? A safety-pin, a hammer, a screwdriver, a couple of wires and a bunch of old keys. I examined them in the torch-light and said:

“I have never broken open a lock before. I usually even have trouble opening locks with the right keys.”

“If you’d not gone to college, maybe you’d have learnt it. And if you hadn’t gone to school, maybe you’d have learnt even how to repair cycles and cars.”

Seemanna, as I always told him, had a way with words. If he had gone to school, he would have been a writer.

“Here, hold the torch for me”, he said.

I watched him go about carefully picking the lock – an old, rusty one the size of two fists; lock-picking was evidently a patient science, one I tired of pretty soon. My gaze wandered around the temple: there was not much to see actually, just the silhouette of the sanctum sanctorum looming large over us. Outside, behind us, were the toilets, beyond which lay an old shed and Ramappa’s paddy fields.

A shadow fleetingly slinked past; I jumped, flashing the torch at the skies.

Seemanna’s concentration was broken. He barked:

“What?”

Sheepishly, I said:

“I think it was a dog.”

“How can you be afraid of dogs when the Gods don’t scare you?”

“Because dogs have canines – they bite, they bark. You don’t have to believe in them for them to exist. They are, that’s all. At best, God is a probability.”

“Don’t start your philosophy, Nastika … Do you have matches?”, he asked.

“Why? Can’t you see with this torch?”

“No, mighty philosopher, I want to light my beedi”

I was not carrying matches. So, Seemanna grabbed the torch from me, hoping to find matches in his tool-kit.

That’s when I heard sounds. Initially, I feared the worst – a pack of hyenas, perhaps (clearly, sinning on a moonless night brought out the zoophobiac in me). I groped for and found Seemanna’s hands even as he made to light his beedi; the match flew and landed behind him. He was very annoyed: "Marla", he hissed, "have you gone mad?"

“Shhhh”, I said.

“What?”

“I heard something.”

“Ye Nastika, have I suddenly put the fear of God in you?”

“No, no. Listen.”

And so we listened. But for the gossiping crickets, the night was still; Seemanna’s unlit beedi drooped. I took that as a sign that his patience was wearing thin.

“Maybe they were ghosts”, he suddenly said and chuckled nervously. Tha's when I realized: he wasn't tiring in the least, he was agitated. Seemanna may not have cared for the Gods, but ghosts are another matter altogether.

Meanwhile, I began to believe I was merely imagining things. I waved my hand dismissively and signalled to restart work on the picking of the lock, when, without warning, we heard the sounds again. This time, it was clearer: someone was talking in hushed, rhythmic whispers. Seemanna immediately turned his head in the direction of the toilets (for that’s where the sounds seemed to come from). My attention was, however, elsewhere – something was glowing behind Seemanna.

His tail was on fire.

The match may have failed to light his beedi, but had set his tail ablaze.

“Seemanna”, I screamed and lunged for his back, kicking the tool-kit in the commotion. Keys and screw-drivers whizzed past him; the hammer hit the hundi and made a loud, hollow sound.

He jumped in horror; the tail – an earthly shooting star in the darkness – swished dangerously and thudded against his lungi; its hem was now lined with gold embers.   

Seemanna’s face, however, betrayed a mix of fear and confusion: remarkably, he still didn’t know he was on fire. I hastily yanked his tail out – he let out a tremendous wail – and I began kicking his buttocks. He -- clearly thinking I had lost it – yelped like a mongrel on jaggery. The fire was doused in three quick, well-aimed strikes, but the commotion brought lights on – albeit briefly – near the unused shed behind the toilets. I noticed them and, even in my semi-panic mode, wondered what that signified.

I expected Seemanna to be angry, but he was, in fact, very visibly shaken. He eyed me like I was a new species, a platypus with footballing ambitions, perhaps. I tried to assuage his fears by saying something, but I was still catching my breath and wind substituted for words. I tried sign instead. I pointed to his behind and waved my hands, trying to imitate fire.

This is how the events thus far seemed to him: first, his perfectly sane friend, for no apparent reason, turns his posterior into a punching bag; then, by means of explanation, he waves his hand manically and makes windy faces.

He did the logical thing: he simply ran, shouting ‘devva, devva – the ghost has possessed the nastika’.

Dazed, he headed straight for the sheds. The lights came on again. Soon, a very frightened woman emerged, assuming Seemanna had come to apprehend her. She had draped her sari rather strangely, it was a little all over the place. Seemanna, in no state to tell reality from illusion and not in the least comprehending this strange apparition, fell at her feet:

“Amma Durgeswari, we have sinned. Release the nastika!”

He must have prostrated for a few seconds, but when he looked up, she was gone. Seizing her opportunity, she tore through the harvest-ready paddy like a comb through hair. Seemanna made to get up, when we both noticed another figure – a portly man this time – tiptoe past the large doors of the shed. Once again Seemanna took to the ground, sprawled out like a man granted a holy vision.

“Lord Seshashayana!”, he exclaimed.

Torch in hand, I sprinted towards Seemanna and the figure. The figure attempted the same trick the woman did, but I was faster. I leapt and pinned down the pot-bellied man, barely a few feet from the fields.

I shone my torch on a sweaty face that shrank in shame.

It was the priest, my enemy number one.

I was too shocked to say anything.

Seemanna, meanwhile, looked up to find me on top of another man – or God? – in a position sure to inspire a romantic song or two.

“Aiyo”, he said, shielding his eyes, “What am I seeing?”

“Chee”, I said, suddenly aware of what he may have presumed and stood up hastily.

I spat at the priest: “Don’t you have any shame? Who was that woman with you?”

At first, his mouth moved wordlessly – there really wasn’t anything to explain, he was caught red-handed.

“Nastika”, the priest eventually whispered a comeback, “you are truly godless. I saw everything you were doing: what other man would steal from a hundi!”

The response infuriated me. I was supposed to have the upper hand here. I was supposed to do the accusing.

“Yo, shut your mouth”, I snapped and added, “What did you say the other day? God is watching your every act!”

I wanted to laugh, to mock, to celebrate the victory of discovering this godly man performing godless acts in God’s backyard. But, Seemanna had fled the scene, fearing for his sanity. I cursed him mentally – even wishing, for some strange reason, that he would suffer a lock-jaw -- and wondered what to do next, when I noticed something wet and grey tingle my feet.

The priest was bleeding.

I shone the torch at his knee and recoiled. A deep, ugly gash had materialized. It was as though his knee had sprouted a small volcano, with lava-like blood spilling slowly, all the way down to a pool that lay between us.

Instinctively, I held out a hand and helped him up. I put his arm on my shoulder, wrapped my arm around his. He hobbled.

We were two men on three legs.

Many months later, the priest packed his bags and left with his family for Kasi. In all the intervening days, we had never once acknowledged our meeting. Seemanna himself avoided me for a few days after, but soon regained his old self (perhaps fully satisfied I wasn’t possessed anymore). We pretend like the night of the jatre ended with his performance as Hanuman (though sometimes, I must admit, I fight back the urge to fall at his feet and cry: Seshashayana!).

That night, however, as the priest and I walked back arm-in-arm, a breeze floated by: it was light, no longer bearing the weight of the voices from the long-completed jatre; we remained silent – the imposing, absolute darkness stole from us the need to converse.  

We were almost at the priest’s place, when I was certain I had heard laughter in the distance, from the direction we had come in: it was a lovely sound, echoing like it emerged from a deep well.

I turned to look at the priest and smiled. Seshashayana was laughing at us.