Here, the atmosphere was of conspiracy. People wore attires of all sorts, lungis of butchers, pyjamas of ekka-wallahs4 (lips red with paan), or of beturbaned office peons. I was disguised in Western clothes, looking a law student. I hid at the chowk behind a pillar. I was not particularly brave. But I would be if needed. The fact that impressed me most was the crowd, silent and stiff, as if knit with a deep singular purpose. Whatever will happen will happen. At any moment the machine gun may go off and everyone mowed down as in Bihar. The women indeed were most astonishing. They stood steady as if nothing would move them. The earth may quake before we would move. But we will not move.

From before me, I saw a sudden movement across the chowk, and over the heads of the populace. Indira Devi was there before the Congress portals. She seemed to have been ushered up from under the earth, as it were. I could see from where I was, the big lock, the sturdy cross-bar, the red seal. The British tommies still walked by the machine guns, nose in the air. The sergeant, I suppose he was, walked behind Indira Devi. He walked as if nothing was happening. He was polite, leisurely, smiling. Indira Devi, then between the wink of an eye made the fateful move forward, to break open the seal, but he took her gently by the hand, and arrested her. She obeyed and led by the sergeant, walked towards the Black Maria, awaiting by the steps.

Nobody moved or said a word. The British tommies now stood stiff and alert before the machine guns. The soldiers had their heavy metals still pointed at the populace. It was the moment of shining reality. You only had the sea of feminine faces, and man’s unacknowledged stare. The gods indeed were somewhere. It was again an instant of the Mahabharata War. Sri Krishna was not driving a chariot. He was in prison, at the Aga Khan’s palace.5 So too was Arjuna in some nameless southern fortress, so it was rumoured. Only Draupadi was free, her back bun tied round around, as in a firm vow. And as she moved down the steps, from nowhere, I saw suddenly an elderly woman, some sixty years of age, kneel down, a round bell-metal kumkum box in hand, and awkwardly pushing herself up, place, in unction, the bindu mark on Indira’s high forehead. The earth seemed to shiver. It has always seemed to me, this old woman, was indeed the Bharat Mata6 of our wakeful dreams.

Indira Devi lifted herself, so naturally, smiling, into the police car. The car moved on. Nobody moved. The earth moved on its pivot. Had anything happened. No. Whoever says anything happens. The non-happening occurs: the bindu, the centripetal sound, shines on the faces of silence.

10

André Malraux among the Gods of India