Sikander and the Sadhu

Translator
He wants to know why you're naked.

Sadhu
Ask him why he's wearing clothes.

Translator
He says he's asking the questions here.

Sadhu
Questions give birth only to other questions.

Translator
He says people who get funny with him get executed.

Sadhu
Why?

Translator
Because he's the King of Kings. And he wants you to stop asking
questions.

Sadhu
King of Kings?

Translator
He came all the way from a place called Greece, killing other kings, so
he's the King of Kings, see.

Sadhu
Fool of Fools. Master-Clown of Clowns. Maha-Idiot of idiots.

Translator
You want me to tell him that?

Sadhu
I said it, didn't I?

Translator
You're crazier than he is. He says he'll kill you. Right here, right
now.

Sadhu
I'll have to die someday.

Translator
Listen, don't do this. He's demented, he doesn't realize who you are,
he thinks naked people are poor savages. He'll really kill you.

Sadhu
I'll really have to die someday.

Translator
He wants to know why you aren't scared of dying.

Sadhu
That'd be silly.

Translator
He says that's not a satsfactory answer.

Sadhu
What sort of answer would he like?

Translator
He says you should tell him exactly what mystic path you followed to
reach this sublime state of indifference. And he wishes you would stop
asking questions. Really, this is incredible, I think you've got him
hooked.

Sadhu
Mystic path?

Translator
Mystic path. Literal translation.

Sadhu
When I feel like shitting, I shit; when I feel like eating, I eat.

Translator
I don't think I've ever seen him like this -- he doesn't know whether
to be upset or horribly fascinated. You're very good at this. 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.

Translator
You want to ask Sikander of Macedon how often he shits, in public?

Sadhu
I said it, didn't I?

Translator
You know, you're starting to get on my nerves with this
answering-questions-with-questions dodge. All right, I'll ask him. I
think he's speechless. I think he's upset.

Sadhu
O-ho. I thought he looked constipated the moment I saw him.

Translator
What? What? You want me to tell him that?

Sadhu
Why not? Tell him that's probably why he's impelled to invade other
nations and massacre tribes and all that -- any student of yoga will
tell you that mistreating the body leads to mentall disaster. Yogic
science has shown that people who hold it in are inescapably driven to
behaviour like running about slashing at people, besieging towns, and
frivolous acts of bravery.

Translator
Now you've done it. He has those fits when he gets angry, see, he's
rolling about on the ground. Last time he did that he put a city of
eighty thousand to the torch, no survivors.

Sadhu
He's be a lot better off it she shat more often. I wonder what his per
week rate is.

Translator
I'm not going to ask him, understand? He'll kill you and all your
friends and probably all the rest of Sindh too. I refuse on the grounds
of conscience. It's my job but I refuse for the well-being of all the
population of this country.

Sadhu
There's a yogic cure for constipation. Every morning, you take...

Translator
Shut up. Shut up. You've caused enough trouble for one day.

Sadhu
You'd be remembered as the man who saved the world from Sikander the
butcher. Get thie fellow shitting right and he'd probably go home,
quiet as a lamb.

Translator
No, no. You're lucky, he's decided killing you would be bad for his
campaign at this moment, he's look cruel, and then nobody would
surrender. He's having his chroniclers strike this conversation from
the record. Now history will state that Sikander the Great met some
naked men under a tree, that's all.

Sadhu
Well, well. Good luck, friend.

Translator
Good luck to you too, or is that what one wishes people like you? Now
I'm asking questions.

Sadhu
Why don't you write this down, or at least the gist of it? Then this
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.

Translator
No, thanks. Even if I hated my children, I would wish other curses on
them, not ridicule.

Sadhu
You'd save the world from a lot of tight-asses murderers.

Translator
No. No.

Sadhu
You'll see. All the truly great liberators will admit this theory into
their suminations and calculations.

Translator
No.

Sadhu
And so the world dies, from a surfeit of surly sphincters. It is, after
all, so very simple.


from the novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra

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