too run-of-the-mill to boast about, he said, “I know they say India has no black panthers, but I have seen one sitting here, in the middle of this very road, coal black but for a white patch on its tail, with green, shining eyes. There is another I have seen—not once but twice—it comes up from the forest on full-moon nights, and this one has square markings instead of round.”
He had to raise his voice to make himself heard that evening. Songs relayed by a microphone drowned his voice. The singing did not come from our temple, but from one further away, where a godman had taken up residence. Jeeps drew up and off-loaded fresh platoons of acolytes who marched up the hill to his temple. The way to it was festooned with banners and garlands.
“It’s started early this time,” the boy said, when I asked him what the noise was for. “It’s not for a religious festival—the Baba has come for the elections. He’ll be here for the next six months.” The boy’s smile was wide and untroubled. “It’s great for business, as long as it lasts!”
twelve
Sanki Puran had no recollection of his cow having aimed a kick at the Brigadier, but Mr. Chauhan’s neck throbbed with stress each time he allowed his thoughts to return to that party. He had tended, since that day, to encounter Puran at every turn: smelly, slovenly, a disgrace. What was more, he grazed his animals on precisely those slopes where Mr. Chauhan had planted signs both in Hindi and in English announcing fines for illegal grazing. Puran was not acquainted with the alphabet in either language, but he welcomed the iron signboards because the posts they stood upon provided sturdy places to tether cattle.
Throughout his working life, Mr. Chauhan had despaired over the lack of discipline, civic sense, and hard work among his fellow citizens, but what he saw around him in the hill country beat everything he had ever been exasperated by before. It was as if people were on vacation all the time. Apart from getting drunk or gossiping around the peanut seller’s charcoal brazier, Mr. Chauhan did not see the men doing anything at all. And of all the men he saw, Sanki Puran grated the most. “Not only is he a shiftless rowdy,” he told his wife, “he is shiftless and rowdy in an army uniform. But I have decided what I need to do, for a start.”
His wife saw that familiar gleam in his eyes and smiled. He really did know how to change things. She remembered the time when they had been posted in a cantonment town in Uttar Pradesh, where too he was administrator, “responsible for everything from light in a bulb and water in the tap, to keeping the cantonment clean and green.” His notion of “clean” included reforming the morals of the young. He came up with a novel scheme. He sent the police around to all the public parks in the cantonment area and wherever they came upon romancing teenagers, the policemen frightened them out of their wits by taking their pictures, demanding their names and addresses, and threatening to inform their parents of—as Mr. Chauhan put it—their “extracurricular activities. ” “This is when you should be studying, not being obscene in parks,” Mr. Chauhan had thundered at a cowering couple on the first raid, one that he had personally conducted to show the staff how to go about it. Mrs. Chauhan narrated this story of her husband’s innovative thinking to many people in Ranikhet and told them she was sure he had thought of something similarly novel and exemplary for the insane cowherd.
What happened a few days after the party later became a frightening haze in Puran’s head. It was around midday. He had been sitting at the edge of the slope next to his cows. He had tied Gangu, the skittish young one, to a tree; spoken some sense into the wobbly, large-eyed new calf that was unable to draw enough milk from its mother; and then sat back on his haunches, smoking grass. Charu was at some distance, high up in a tall oak tree,
He had to raise his voice to make himself heard that evening. Songs relayed by a microphone drowned his voice. The singing did not come from our temple, but from one further away, where a godman had taken up residence. Jeeps drew up and off-loaded fresh platoons of acolytes who marched up the hill to his temple. The way to it was festooned with banners and garlands.
“It’s started early this time,” the boy said, when I asked him what the noise was for. “It’s not for a religious festival—the Baba has come for the elections. He’ll be here for the next six months.” The boy’s smile was wide and untroubled. “It’s great for business, as long as it lasts!”
twelve
Sanki Puran had no recollection of his cow having aimed a kick at the Brigadier, but Mr. Chauhan’s neck throbbed with stress each time he allowed his thoughts to return to that party. He had tended, since that day, to encounter Puran at every turn: smelly, slovenly, a disgrace. What was more, he grazed his animals on precisely those slopes where Mr. Chauhan had planted signs both in Hindi and in English announcing fines for illegal grazing. Puran was not acquainted with the alphabet in either language, but he welcomed the iron signboards because the posts they stood upon provided sturdy places to tether cattle.
Throughout his working life, Mr. Chauhan had despaired over the lack of discipline, civic sense, and hard work among his fellow citizens, but what he saw around him in the hill country beat everything he had ever been exasperated by before. It was as if people were on vacation all the time. Apart from getting drunk or gossiping around the peanut seller’s charcoal brazier, Mr. Chauhan did not see the men doing anything at all. And of all the men he saw, Sanki Puran grated the most. “Not only is he a shiftless rowdy,” he told his wife, “he is shiftless and rowdy in an army uniform. But I have decided what I need to do, for a start.”
His wife saw that familiar gleam in his eyes and smiled. He really did know how to change things. She remembered the time when they had been posted in a cantonment town in Uttar Pradesh, where too he was administrator, “responsible for everything from light in a bulb and water in the tap, to keeping the cantonment clean and green.” His notion of “clean” included reforming the morals of the young. He came up with a novel scheme. He sent the police around to all the public parks in the cantonment area and wherever they came upon romancing teenagers, the policemen frightened them out of their wits by taking their pictures, demanding their names and addresses, and threatening to inform their parents of—as Mr. Chauhan put it—their “extracurricular activities. ” “This is when you should be studying, not being obscene in parks,” Mr. Chauhan had thundered at a cowering couple on the first raid, one that he had personally conducted to show the staff how to go about it. Mrs. Chauhan narrated this story of her husband’s innovative thinking to many people in Ranikhet and told them she was sure he had thought of something similarly novel and exemplary for the insane cowherd.
What happened a few days after the party later became a frightening haze in Puran’s head. It was around midday. He had been sitting at the edge of the slope next to his cows. He had tied Gangu, the skittish young one, to a tree; spoken some sense into the wobbly, large-eyed new calf that was unable to draw enough milk from its mother; and then sat back on his haunches, smoking grass. Charu was at some distance, high up in a tall oak tree,
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