I sat on a bench waiting for Sister Meera John. I don’t know how long I waited. I was in a state of confusion. Too many things had happened all at once. I felt I was in a daze. Why should a man, already fossilized in my memory, resurrect in this fashion? The face that had been revealed to me when they lifted the sheet did not mean anything to me. The face of Seshadri whom I had known so long ago had disappeared from my mind and it could not be replaced by the one that emerged from under the sheet. This one was as good as a new one, and I could not even say for sure if it was him. Seshadri was just a name in my mind, a name and some related events, to which I could now clip a new face, that was all.
Some people are remembered by their faces. When you see them, your mind tells you that you have seen them somewhere. Some people are remembered through the events in which they played a role. This man, Seshadri, was destined to take a place in my mind in the following days, not through his face or our little shared history, but through certain other things lying entirely outside the norm.
At last Sister Meera John made her appearance. She gestured and I followed her to her room. We did not exchange a single word. Once there, she silently indicated a chair and I sat down.
Then, suddenly, she repeated the doctor’s words, ‘Strange man!’ and took a deep breath. ‘He came all alone. Said he had no one to call his own. Got himself admitted after the initial examination. He carried enough cash with him for the admission. “You can return the balance if I survive, otherwise just consider it a donation to the hospital,” he said. Other than the clothes he had on he carried nothing. Gave no addresses or names to get in touch in case of an emergency. It was then that he spotted you in the corridor while being taken to the clinic. An anchor at last for a drifting boat, that’s the impression I got. You mentioned a brief acquaintance from half a century ago. Did you even recognize him?’
‘No, not really. I had forgotten his face and even his features,’ I admitted a bit sheepishly.
‘But he recognized you.’
‘What were his chances of survival, sister?’ I asked.
‘Twenty per cent.’
‘Did he know that?’
‘The doctor had told him. Don’t you want to know his ailment?’
‘No.’
‘You too are strange!’
We sat looking at each other’s face for a few moments.
When I lowered my eyes, I saw the pendant she was wearing on a chain around her neck. It was not a cross, as I would have expected, at least not the usual one. It looked like a cross, but somewhat upside down.
Catching my glance, she pushed it under her blouse. Noticing the smile on my face she said, ‘We are not supposed to exhibit these things outside, you know.’
‘But it is not a cross. What is it, sister? Looked like an anchor. You called me that — an anchor for Iyengar.’ I made a weak attempt at humour.
With a shake of the head she dismissed my questions. She then switched over to Malayalam, like Seshadri had done when he had first met me in my room, and asked, ‘Don’t you want to see the letter he left for you? He had no pen or paper with him. Borrowed from me. Sat through the night, writing. He waited for you till late, up to eleven I think.’
‘My God!’ I said again.
‘Only then did he decide to write. The operation was scheduled for the morning, so I pressed him to make haste.’
She pulled out an envelope from the drawer of her table. It was stapled at the end.
‘“Pass it on only in case I die”, that was what he said.’
I took the envelope. The instructions were repeated on the envelope. My name followed by ‘to be handed over only if I die’ within brackets.
Sister Meera John rose from her chair. She said, ‘It is certainly not my concern, what is inside. I will, however, tell you one thing. Though physically in poor health, Mr Iyengar’s mental faculties were in perfect condition. Perfect memory; oh well, how can I say that. I don’t know his history to say if he remembered things right.’
She chuckled and I returned a smile.
I opened the envelope only after I reached home, late in the evening, as something kept pulling me back from it. But I had to do it before I retired. I was alone at home. I switched off all the lights and fans in the other rooms and sat on my revolving chair by the side of the writing table with the table lamp on. I found that the note inside the envelope was somewhat long.
‘These words are coming to you from the other side of death, for I certainly would not have given this note to you had I survived. Nor would I have opened the can of worms I am about to before you’—that was how it started. No form of address, no pleasantries. Chaste English. Fine penmanship.
‘Like everyone else in the Mehta Company, you too must have assumed that I am a trickster,’ he continued. ‘Yes, I am a liar and a killer too. I cannot help these things. I belong to a cult centuries old, founded on the principles of deception and destruction. These have not changed even today. Nor will they, in the future.’
I was taken aback by this straight plunge, but gathered courage to continue reading. Needless to say, that was just the beginning.
‘You must have heard of thugs,’ he continued. ‘You must certainly have studied in your history classes that the British suppressed the thugs and eliminated thuggee from its roots a century and a half ago. But I will tell you that no one can eliminate the philosophy of destruction. The phenomenon of destruction is as old as that of creation. I will add that behind all civilizations, religions and ideologies lies the idea of destruction. The beautiful green foliage and flowers of love and compassion that you see blooming over the ground … they are all sustained by the nourishment their roots obtain from the underground, by stealth. But why only religions and ideologies? Every living being on this earth relies on deception and killing for its sustenance. Lift the veils of hypocrisy lying over your thoughts, and you will have to come to terms with this fact. Thuggee was not invented by anyone, nor can it be eliminated by anyone. Though not being practised as widely as before, or, to be more precise, not in the same fashion as it used to be, we have kept it alive and not allowed its roots to rot or its stem to wilt. The philosophy is alive, and the practitioners sworn to relentless and unerring destruction, active.
‘I can see you wondering how I, an Iyengar Brahmin, became a thug. Let me interrupt to assert that I am an Iyengar Brahmin. A liar and swindler I certainly am, but all that I told you about me was true. A true Brahmin from Tanjavur, I had once been a teacher at Banaras Hindu University. After I left Rajhara, I also taught at Aligarh Muslim University and did a variety of jobs. But let me not digress. I was saying that our cult transcends castes and religions. It is not limited by languages or regional identities. Sure, we are not many in number. But we have a presence everywhere; from the Pathans to the Tamilians, Gujaratis to Assamese, Hindus to Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains and Buddhists, and among Brahmins and Dalits. There are thugs among ministers, bureaucrats, doctors, architects, academicians, students, intellectuals, historians, writers, dancers, scientists, policemen, industrialists, traders, workers, saints, city-dwellers and nomads. You can wonder, but you would never know, whether your neighbour is a thug or not. Only a thug can know another thug. Did you know that the resident director of Mehta Company, Chandulal Gandhi, was a thug?
‘Don’t ever look down on thugs. Ours is a glorious profession handed down from the remotest past to a select worthy among men chosen by Devi Bhavani as well as Allah the Great. Its nobility can be judged by the fact that it unites men of every creed and colour. You have to be a thug to understand what is meant by brotherhood and fraternity. All those who respect the philosophy of destruction become brothers irrespective of their caste, religion, ideology and profession. A Muslim Pathan thug can very easily recognize a Tamil Brahmin thug. I will of course not tell you how. The methods are elucidated in The Book of Destruction.