Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra

Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A potpourri of Hindu myths, Indian history during the British and Mughal times, mysticism, magic-realism, horror, the 1857 uprising for Independence, iconic battles on the plains and ravines of central India, cricket and politics. There is a melange of characters – Hanuman, Ganesha, Yamraj, Kaal , a Methuselah-like poet, European buccaneers, Rajput Queens, tormented American teenagers, a macabre encounter with Jack the Ripper. There is an interlude about the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy and the angst of Anglo-Indians.
Here is a hilarious extract from Alexander’s encounter with a mystic sadhu, high on hashish – an example of the sublime to the ridiculous

Alexander through a translator:…you should tell him exactly what mystic path you followed to reach this sublime state of indifference
Sadhu: Mystic path?
Translator: Mystic path. Literal translation.
Sadhu: When I feel like shitting, I shit; when I feel like eating, I eat.
Translator: … He says that shitting when you feel like shitting is irresponsible, you should have some discipline in your life, instead of lounging about naked under a big tree. He says people who shit when they feel like shitting never do anything with their lives.
Sadhu: Ask him how often he shits.
T: You want to ask Sikander of Macedon how often he shits, in public? … I think he’s speechless, I think he’s upset.
Sadhu: Oho. I thought he looked constipated the moment I saw him. … Tell him that’s why he’s impelled to invade other nations and massacre tribes and all of that – any student of yoga will tell you that mistreating the body leads to mental disorder. Yogic science has shown that people who hold it in are inescapably driven to behaviour like running about slashing at people, besieging town, and frivolous acts of bravery. … He’ll be better off if he shat more often. I wonder what his per week rate is. … Get this fellow shitting right and he’ll probably do home, quiet as a lamb. … History will remember you as the originator of the world’s only all-comprehensive theory of imperial conquest: the constipation hypothesis, or the shit-glory affinity. … You’d save the world from a lot of tight-assed murderers. … And so the world dies, from a surfeit of surly sphincters.

At times allegorical, at times realistic – this is an interesting book, narrated in the fashion of The Mahabharata - stories within stories within stories... ad infintum.

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