His fingers, no longer daring to touch the paper, followed the course of the partition line, south from the one connecting the coasts, until it reached the province of Karnataka and his hometown. The imperceptible dot that represented Mahisūru was obscured by the line. Not to one side or the other: right in the middle. It was a fate worse than being close to the border: the town itself had been split with the nation. His limbs lost their strength and he crumbled down on the map, his limp body ripping it apart in its fall, his tears sliding off his face and onto the broken land of India.
Morning, April 30 (Gregorian), 1917
Mangaluru
When the first wave of despair had abated, professor Hiriyanna found himself in agreement with his family’s sentiment that little would be gained by encouraging all their neighbors to leave Mahisūru. The Peace of Rome had not yet been made publicly known, and the mass panic that was inevitably coming would only spark quicker if entire families were seen fleeing at once. The professor, as well as Lakshmi and Rukkamma, talked in person to a small number of personal friends and advised them to make their departure quiet. They couldn’t rule out the possibility that their friends would spread the word farther, but keeping the truth to themselves felt like the more irresponsible choice.
Quitting their jobs was the easy part. Hiring a carriage to take them to the nearest airship port, Mangaluru, was no issue. Obtaining exit permits for all of them was the deciding step on which everything else hinged. To the professor’s surprise, Sagunabai had made her own arrangements before traveling to Mahisūru and left the school and its litigation in more energetic hands, which meant she was free to go wherever she would end up being allowed to migrate. While waiting in queue at the Imperial Travel Authority to receive an answer to their applications, the professor asked her why she’d taken so bold an initiative. She had a reply at the ready.
“Suppose I make it to Madrid. I can campaign more effectively if I get close to the seat of power.”
“I find that sort of plan premature. We still don’t know which destinations are affordable.”
She sighed and pointed at the stamps on her identity papers. “With the type of imperial subject they categorize me as, I may only travel between Iberian territories anyway. Whatever place I reach will be living with the same problems as far as my work is concerned.”
They reached the front of the queue and the clerk excused himself for a minute to retrieve their files.
Professor Hiriyanna translated his exchange with Sagunabai to his wife, and she said, “I don’t think it’s premature. Have you given any thought to what could be a good destination?”
He nodded. “I’d like for us to try Persia. It’s equally distant from Christians of the Roman, Nordic, and Chinese persuasion. With the Imperial Certification in Languages I got last year, I can claim I aspire to further the Portuguese tongue abroad.”
His wife leaned closer and whispered, “But your degree is in Vedic Sanskrit.”
He whispered back, “That part can go unmentioned.”
They looked around, checking that their conversation hadn’t been picked up by any of the Holy Inspectors who wandered the room. Agents of the Customs Inquisition Office had the authority to randomly search any luggage, and the professor had heard enough stories from Hariram to know what tricks worked. He saw the scene repeat itself all over the queue; one by one, travelers opened their bags and hoped that the Holy Inspector on duty that day would miss the hidden pro-independence pamphlets, the blessed idols, the carefully folded handkerchiefs with prayers to Vishnu in invisible ink. Hariram had declared those measures suicide and volunteered his printing press for a more effective solution. The best strategy to hide the truth was not to conceal it, but to dress it in lies that were more visible. The Church had insisted on making its sacred literature available in Hindustani to assist the Order of the Preachers, and it had been easy for Hariram to produce adulterated copies of those books with entire sections from the Sanskrit classics, which used the same alphabet and were easy to miss in a hurried look. So the professor’s suitcase contained a selection of the finest productions of Indian thought. There was the Sāṁkhya Sūtra split in fragments between Saint Paul’s epistles; the Nyāya Sūtras substituted for the counterarguments in the Summa Theologica; the Vaiśeṣika Sūtra appended after Clement’s Exhortation to the Greeks; the Tarka Sangraha Dipika cleverly pretending to be the footnotes to Tertullian’s refutations of heresy; the Tattvacintāmaṇi blatantly replacing the entire Psalms; the Pramāṇa Samuccaya on every even page of the Acts of the Apostles. The quality of the printing and the speed with which his friend had provided the fraudulent volumes made him suspect that this was a request frequently made of printers, but he preferred not to ask. As added defiance, he’d also brought his copy of the Tirukkuṟaḷ, the Tamil classic of ethics, which he planned to flatly say was Saint Augustine’s Confessions if anyone asked.
To his family he showed a confident face, but he knew he was taking a serious risk. He stood no chance against Customs Inquisition if the true content his books were recognized. But that was the only way of fighting he knew. He was no warrior. He was just a teacher attempting to do the one good thing that circumstances left available for him to do. In his estimations of the future, India was truly going to disappear. What had to be done about it was to preserve its wisdom.
“What if we’re not allowed to go to Persia?” Lakshmi interrupted his thoughts and made him realize they were still waiting for the clerk to return with their travel permits.
“Well… failing that, we… would try our luck somewhere else. From Europe we may cross over into Ottoman lands.”
“What would we do there? I don’t speak Ottoman. Do you?”
“No, to be honest.”
“Perhaps you could find employment at a religious school?”
“I have only the barest acquaintance with Arabic. But I’d be quick to learn. Until then, life would be complicated. But we’ve discussed this. We know things will get harder, but by no means harder than among Christians.”
Sagunabai signaled to get their attention, and they turned to watch the clerk resume his seat.
“I’m sorry I took so long,” the man said in Spanish. “The mail delivered us your applications on different days, so each of them was processed by a separate analyst. I had to dig through the entire archive, but I have your replies here.” He started opening the first folder. “Señora Sagunabai Kshirsagar. Which of you… all right. Your travel permit has been approved.”
She submitted her identity papers and the clerk added several stamps to them. Then she opened her suitcase for a preliminary check, and he gave her a slip to stand in queue in another floor of the building where her luggage would need to pass a more comprehensive review by a Holy Inspector.
“Next is…” He moved the first folder aside and opened another one. “Señor Mahisūru Hiriyanna. Oh.”
“Oh?”
“I’m sorry, Señor. Your application has been denied.”
“What?” blurted the professor. “Does it say why?”