Whichever gods Manu believed in (if he believed in them at all anymore) were turning out to be anything but merciful. They had snatched from him every living soul he had ever loved. The prince had died in prison, Sayoni had died a horrible death in the riots. The cruel gods had denied him even the closure of performing their last rites, let alone being by their side in their final moments. Yes, Mary was still alive, but he was as good as dead to her. And so in the spring of 2002, 65 year old Manu found himself to be utterly alone, abandoned even by the beasts of the forest.
But it was Sayoni’s death that he was finding impossible to come to terms with. Night and day, a red-hot guilt burned inside him, for he held himself as responsible for her murder as her unknown assailants. Wasn’t it his thirst for money, his hunger for political power that had brought him to Gujarat? Wasn’t it his obsession with the Gir project and the long separations that had made Sayoni want to join him in Ahmedabad? Hadn’t she warned him that the saffron-clad senas of India were no different from the skull-cap wearing jihadis of Bangladesh? She had managed to escape from one, only to fall into the murdering hands of the other...and he had been responsible for it.
Like a cancer, the pain cut deep into the very marrow of his bones. He felt as if he had been hollowed out and a terrible emptiness ached inside him. He had nothing to live for, nothing that he wanted anymore – neither love nor vengeance, neither power nor fame. He had even lost his hunger for money – the one desire that had been the lodestar of his life ever since he had tasted his first ice cream in Buckingham Place Hotel. From that moment onwards, his insides had forever whined for more – more ice cream, more money, more stocks and shares, more bungalows and BMWs. But now, their very thought nauseated him.
Within a few weeks of Sayoni’s death, Manu got rid of all his possessions. He sold off his cars, properties, shares – everything. He closed his bank accounts and shut down his construction business. Then he looked up Mary’s NGO on Google and sent across a cheque for the entire proceeds of the sales (a most handsome amount, if I may say so), keeping only a few lakh rupees in cash for himself. He moved into a small rented house in Kumbalgodu, a remote village on the banks of the Vrishabhavati river, miles away from Bangalore city. And there he spent his days, cut off from the rest of the world, smoking endless cigarettes and staring blankly at the Vrishabhavati river.
You did not have to be a soothsayer to predict that Manu’s days were numbered. He was dying of heartbreak.
I may be a bad historian, but it is as a soothsayer that I really suck. As it turns out, Manu did not die of heartbreak or from the sheer boredom of staying in Kumbalgodu village. A wounded bird returned him to life.
It was I who first noticed the bird. One day, during my usual morning jaunt over the Vrishabhavati I saw a large white bird on the left bank of the river. Swifter than Salim Ali, I identified the bird as a sarus crane (or antigone antigone for the ornithologically obsessed). The moment I saw it, I did a quick double take. For instead of standing upright, as cranes invariably do, it was lying flat on its back. I craned my neck and took a closer look. There was no mistake. It was definitely a sarus crane, red-crowned, long-necked, white-winged – the works. But it was lying on its back – a most unnatural sight, almost as unnatural as a road without potholes in Bangalore; for apart from Indians, cranes are the most aatma-nirbhar species I have known – they learn to stand on their own two feet from a very early age and must remain that way until they die.
I glided down to the bird and greeted her: “Hello there. How are you doing today?”
The crane snapped its beak angrily and said: “Can’t you see I’m in pain?”
She pointed her wing tip at her right leg and showed me what was troubling her. The poor thing was in a mess. Instead of being straight, the portion of her leg above the knee (if that’s what they call it for cranes) was bent at an angle of almost 90 degrees. Clearly, it was broken.
“What happened? Did you ‘brake’ too hard while landing?” I asked, wiggling my wings to mime the quotation marks.
The crane groaned and said: “No, you idiot. A bloody dog did that to me. A filthy mongrel that was scrounging for food in the garbage that people throw into the river. Must have thought I would make a tasty meal and attacked me. Snapped my right leg when I wasn’t looking and bit it right through the bone. I pecked and pulled and tugged and somehow managed to escape. But the damage was already done. That bloody dog has finished my leg,” she wailed.
“Oh dear,” I said. “How horrible.”
The crane’s eyes darkened with pain. “You have no idea what I have suffered. I will never stand up on my two feet again, I will never soar in the skies again and feel the sun on my wings,” she sobbed. “I will just lie here in the dirt until I die. And what a mercy that will be! Oh dear god, what a mercy that will be.”
I was deeply moved by her plight. It was awful to see this beautiful creature writhing in pain, waiting for death...and it was then that I was struck by a brilliant idea. I did not know whether it would work. But it was a ray of hope. If fire could fight fire, I thought, then perhaps darkness could fight darkness? Worth a try...definitely worth a try.
“Listen my friend,” I said. “I’m going to leave you for a bit now. But I’ll be back soon with help.”
“Please don’t,” the crane groaned. “The last thing I want is your help. I just want to die in peace.”
“No one is going to die. Not yet,” I said as I took off into the skies and headed straight for home.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Will she live?”
Excerpted with permission from Song of the Golden Sparrow: A Novel History of Free India, Nilanjan P Choudhury, Speaking Tiger Books.
