Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
his artists' colony-cum-ashram, but that home was a ruin. The last
time they'd visited there was with Daddy's ashes.
Their lives had stopped with Lord Sinha's death. Everything,
the way Anjoola told it, had begun to disintegrate around that time.
They were lost without a man at the helm. The only man left was
less capable than they were of doing anything. Sanna had been so
overshadowed by his father and grandfather that he felt incapable
of ever matching their standards, sinking deeper into drink, drugs,
and gambling.
The grandmother kept nodding agreement as Anjoola puffed away
on her Wills for the next hour and a half, filling in the blanks of
twenty years. Manjoola, clutching herself as if in pain, paced up and
down muttering. And Lady Sinha hunched over the phone,
occasionally turning to roll her eyes at us.
I pictured them all sitting here like this, night after night, waiting,
wondering, totally lost, while the swarming city growled and burned
and collapsed around them. By the time I'd returned to my refuge
at the Taj Bengal I was thoroughly depressed. So I treated myself to
one of the best Chinese meals I've ever eaten. In Calcutta, food
is
the meaning of life.
Once upon a time, when gods still walked the earth, King Daksha,
the father of Sati (or Shakti, or Parvati), wife of Siva, decided to
perform one of the epic Vedic rituals called
yagnas
. He invited
everyone to attend the elaborate rite, which probably took months
to complete - everyone, that is, except his son-in-law, Siva. Sati was
so heartbroken by this insult to her husband that she died while the
yagna
was in progress. Hearing this tragic news, Siva was furious
with grief. He came like the wind, devastating the
yagna
, scattering
its spectators, and taking up Sati's lifeless body on his shoulder he
began to move in the dreadful steps of the great
tandava
, a dance that
commences the destruction of all creation. Naturally, this alarmed
the other gods, and they realised they had to move quickly. They
had to take Sati from Siva so that he would be forced to spare creation
or lose his eternal consort along with it. The Great Preserver and
Sustainer of Life, Vishnu, was sought out, and the god was persuaded
to hurl his
sudarshan chakra
, a sort of whirling frisbee of pure energy.
