The Cauliflower (2 page)

Salt
.

Nun.

Mother.

Saint.

Ma
.

Ah …

Sri Ramakrishna.

1857, the Kali Temple, Dakshineswar (six miles north of Calcutta)

There are so many strange stories I could tell you about Uncle's boyhood. In fact, all the stories of Uncle's boyhood are very curious. It would be difficult for me to recall a single story that is not thus. Uncle was always the weft in the weave. He was singular. Chandradevi tells how she was once holding the baby Uncle in her arms as she was relaxing in the sunlight by a window when she suddenly felt him grow very heavy on her lap. Somewhat alarmed, she quickly lifted Uncle up and placed him down onto a winnowing fan lying on the bed close by. Moments later the fan began to crack, then the bed underneath Uncle started to creak and complain.… She tried to lift Uncle but she could not. Uncle had become an extraordinary—an unbearable—weight!

Chandradevi—and she is a simple soul, by nature—began to wail. Nearby villagers ran into the house to try and aid her, but she could not be calmed until a ghost charmer was summoned. Only once he had sung a
mantra
to pacify the spirits could she be persuaded to hold baby Uncle in her arms again.

On a further occasion I have been told how she left Uncle on the bed and turned around for a moment to perform some minor chore or other, and when she turned back again the top half of the baby's body (Uncle could not have been more than three months of age) was hidden inside the nearby bread oven. The oven was cool and full of ashes. Uncle withdrew from the oven and proceeded to roll around on the floor until he was coated from head to toe in white ash (
ash
, the dust of renunciation—Lord Shiva's habitual raiment). Chandradevi simply could not understand how Uncle—still such a small baby—had crawled into the oven, nor why he now suddenly appeared so large to her as he rolled around. Again she began wailing, inconsolable, until a local woman ran into the house and—apprehending the dreadful scene before her—scolded Chandradevi for her terrible neglect of the child.

On a further occasion Chandradevi had placed the baby Uncle under the mosquito net for a doze. She then went off to perform some small task, but when she returned a fully grown man was sitting under the net in Uncle's place. Chandradevi was dreadfully shocked and alarmed. She simply couldn't understand where her baby had gone. Again, the tears, the wails, the pitiful calls for assistance. But on this occasion it was Kshudiram, Uncle's father, who rushed to her aid. I am told that Kshudiram was always a profoundly devout and holy man. People accused him—just as they do Uncle—of being truthful to the point of mania. In fact, he had lost his fifty-acre family estate in Derapur after a powerful but corrupt local landlord tried to force him to testify falsely in court against an innocent neighbor. When he refused, the landlord's wrath became focused upon Kshudiram himself, culminating in a second court case and the eventual loss of his entire inheritance. Kshudiram, his wife, and his family (Uncle had a sister and two considerably older brothers) were saved from complete destitution only when a kind friend—Sukhlal Goswami of Kamarpukur—stepped in to help him with the offer of a group of huts on his property and a half acre of fertile ground. Kshudiram accepted this gift most gratefully. He thanked his chosen deity, Sri Rama, for it and then—apparently without any bitterness or resentment—he dedicated himself still more heartily to a dignified
Brahmin
's life of quiet meditation,
japa
, pilgrimage, and worship.

Every happening in Kshudiram's life was perceived by this devout and well-respected man as a sign from God. On apprehending his wife's distress at Uncle's transformation, for example, he calmly told her to collect herself, hold fast her counsel (to please avoid encouraging the villagers in idle gossip or unnecessary speculation), and simply accept the fact that these strange occurrences were a part of God's divine plan for their son. They were beyond mere human comprehension. Uncle was different. It was ever thus. He was golden. He was special. He was oddly blessed. Most important of all, Uncle was ours. He was
ours
. He came from us.

Twenty-one years earlier

The streets of Calcutta are flooded with books. Piles of books from England and America. Books in incredible, immense,
inconceivable
quantities. A veritable infestation of books; a plague!

At every brief stop or blocked intersection people thrust them into carriages or through palanquin windows. Huge consignments of novels and philosophical tomes. Books about free will and independence and revolution. Every kind of book. Sometimes (it occasionally happens) a ship from England or America bound for Calcutta is wrecked at the Cape of Good Hope—the Cape of Storms—and the sandy African beaches are littered with novels. Thousands of novels in colorful mounds, in prodigious literary heaps, in giant fictional dunghills. And the savage wind blows across them (as the savage Cape wind invariably must). Their pages flip and tear and whip over and over and over and over. A million sentences, a billion well-turned phrases, all clamoring for attention. Read me! Read me! Read me!
Please
.

The gulls circle and then take fright—keening pitifully—at this awful, bright mess of fatally sodden torsos, this tragedy of broken spines, this terrible, deafening flapping and beating of horribly disabled limbs.

Charles Dickens,
Bleak House,
Chapter 6 (1852–53)

“I don't mean literally a child,” pursued Mr. Jarndyce, “not a child in years. He is grown up … but in simplicity, and freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine, guileless inaptitude for all worldly affairs he is a perfect child.” …

When we went downstairs we were presented to Mr. Skimpole … a bright little creature with rather a large head, but a delicate face and a sweet voice, and there was a perfect charm in him. All he said was so free from effort and spontaneous and was said with such a captivating gaiety.…

“I covet nothing,” said Mr. Skimpole.… “Possession is nothing to me.… It's only you, the generous creatures, whom I envy.… I envy you your power of doing what you do.… I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as if you ought to feel grateful to me, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity.… For anything I can tell, I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you, by sometimes giving you an opportunity of assisting me in my little perplexities. Why should I regret my incapacity for details and worldly affairs, when it leads to such pleasant consequences?”

Monday, 30th June 1884, at 4:00 p.m.

Sri Ramakrishna (
with a melodramatic sigh
):
“I used to
weep
, praying to the Divine Mother, ‘Oh Mother, destroy with Thy thunderbolt my inclination to reason!'”

Truth Seeker
(
patently surprised
):
“Then you, too, had an inclination to reason?”

Sri Ramakrishna (
nodding, regretful
):
“Yes, once.”

Truth Seeker (
eagerly
):
“Then please assure us that we shall get rid of that inclination, too! How did you get rid of yours?”

Sri Ramakrishna (
with an apparent loss of interest
):
“Oh … [
flaps hand, wearily
] somehow or other.”

Silence
.

1862, approximately

This is the story of an unlettered sage who spoke only in a rudimentary and colloquial Bengali—described by some commentators as a kind of abstruse haiku. A curiously effete village boy who stammered. Who didn't understand a word of English. Who went to school but wouldn't—yes, wouldn't—read. At a time when the world was ripe with a glossy new secularism—bursting at the seams with revolutionary ideas about Science and Knowledge and Art and Progress—this singular individual would tie his wearing cloth around his hips with an expanse of fabric hanging down at the back to simulate a tail (and him a respectable
Brahmin
—a temple priest), then leap—with beguiling agility—from tree branch to tree branch, pretending to be an ape. No, worse. Worse even than that.
Believing
himself to be an ape.

Eventually he would be called God.
Avatar
.
Paramahamsa
. He would be called The Great Swan.

This squealing, furtive, hyperactive, freely urinating beast is none other than Sri Ramakrishna.

Although some people call him Gadadhar Chatterjee. Or Uncle. Or Master. Or
Guru
(which he loathes). And his real name, his actual name—the name you will rarely ever hear—is Shambhu Chandra.

1857, the Kali Temple, Dakshineswar (six miles north of Calcutta)

This is our story, because Uncle belongs to us. And it is colorful. And sometimes I don't quite understand where the joyous
kirtan
s and ecstatic love poems of Ramprasad and Chaitanya—or the heroic stories of the
Mahabharata
and the
Purana
s—begin and the tales and mysteries of Uncle's life end. Everything is woven together in my mind—by the tongue of Uncle himself—and it cannot be unpicked, because I, too, am a part of it all, and if I try to dismantle it, thread by thread, I will lose myself, and I will lose Uncle, and although Uncle depends on me for everything, my hold on Uncle has never been a strong one. Uncle has an independent spirit. Uncle is single-minded but he is also simple and humble as a child.

Which of us may truly hope to understand Uncle? Ah, not one such as I.

We are a poor family. There has been much loss and hunger and tragedy. And sometimes we call on the gods for aid, and sometimes it feels as though the gods are calling on us in their turn. They are very close. They are breathing down our necks. They are speaking through us and they are writing our history. They prompt us from behind a dark curtain. Of course, some of us hear them more clearly than others. They whisper mysteries into Uncle's ear. From behind a dark curtain, or … or hidden under a cloth in the manner of a photographer. Precisely so. A photographer takes your picture, but the portrait he makes belongs to you. It is your own. It is yours. A perfect likeness. Simply in a more formal setting—the studio. And holding very still. And carefully posed. That is Uncle's past. It needs to be stage-managed and well lit. I am Uncle's technician. Although Uncle will not be managed and he will not be directed and he will not be exposed. Uncle will expose himself in his own good time. He is very particular in that way. He will not be controlled. He will not be pushed. He will never be rushed.

Kalikata/Calcutta/Kolkata

In the beginning was the word. And the word was Calcutta. And the word was a place. And people disagreed about the origin of the word. In 1690, a man called Job Charnock—a dour and morose administrator for the English East India Company—anglicized the name of one of the three small villages already established in this swampy, malarial, and deeply inhospitable location (Kalikata), believing (correctly) that it would one day become India's great colonial trading city.

Three hundred eleven years later, in A.D. 2001, it was renamed Kolkata, in line with the Bengali pronunciation of the word. Some speculate that the name originally came from the Bengali root
kilkila
(or “flat place”). Others say that the area was known for its production of quicklime, or
kolikata
. Still others argue that the word might have its origins in the conjoining of
khal
(or “canal”) and
kata
(meaning “dug”). But the general consensus is that it means “field of Kali.” Kalikata is Kali's place. Kali: the fearsome, fearless Black Goddess of Destruction and Creation—mistress of
Shakti
, or primordial, cosmic energy; wife of dreadlocked, ash-covered Shiva, God of Renunciation—whose devotees traditionally call her
Ma
.

In the beginning there was nothing. Then there was a sound. The hungry, howling
aaaa
of
Maaaa
:
Aaaaa
 … That was something. And that sound, that something, was somehow—quite miraculously—sustained:
Aaaaa-uuuuu
.… And then it concluded, in a throatily dynamic, busy-bee hummmm:
Aaaaauuuummmm
. Finally it stopped. Or did it stop? How could it? How could such deep, primordial hunger, such yearning, ever be truly satisfied?

This strange
Aum
, this sound, this process, is embedded and celebrated in the Hindu faith by dint of its mystical triumvirate—its holy trinity—of three Gods: Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva (the destroyer).

In the beginning there was a piece of land and a stretch of river. Then there were three villages. Then there was Job Charnock. And Job Charnock was a dour and morose administrator royally despised by virtually all of his contemporaries.

In the beginning there was a man called Job Charnock, a dour and morose administrator, a jobsworth, a company man, who was feared and hated by his contemporaries because of his inflexible stance around issues of smuggling and corporate corruption (endemic in Anglo-Indian trading at that time). His contemporaries (all happily accustomed to the long-established tradition of receiving kickbacks) had nothing good to say about him. He was a man of stern and unbending moral character. He was universally loathed.

In the beginning was the word and the word was “Calcutta” and in 2001 it became Kolkata. And in 2003 a Kolkata high court ruled that long before Job Charnock (that colonial lickspittle, that dour and morose and intensely unpopular administrator) had sailed down the Hooghly, a “highly civilized society” had already existed there, it was a thriving religious hub, an “important trading center”: Kalikata. The court therefore ruled that Job Charnock's name be summarily removed from all official histories of the city. This great city. Kolkata.