It troubled us greatly when news arrived that the book was going to be separated into two. As characters in the book, we were gripped by confusion and panic. What did that mean for us, which book would we find ourselves in, did we have choice, would I be separated from my family and friends? Our questions were fodder for rumours and gossip. Each raced the other to reach more ears. Meanwhile we raced to the ashram for advice.
But bleating goats and meowing kittens were all we found inside Saint Premanandji’s hut. Premanandji had left at dawn, the ashram helper told us. He was headed to the eastern state to mediate between two groups of characters who had broken into a violent clash. Each blamed the other for the separation.
An absent Saint
Premanandji’s absence was a devastating blow. He was everything for us; our hope, our compass, the gatekeeper for our morals. The laughter in our dark times, the fleet footed mongoose in our epic struggle for freedom against the Best Viper Company. He had brought us this far in the story and now, when we were only a few chapters from the end, it appeared he had left us rudderless to navigate a storm that threatened to destroy everything so many had fought, bled, and died for.
When one among us voiced this sentiment, and in veiled sentences hinted that Premanandji had abandoned us, he was silenced with a cracking slap. In the stunned silence a voice challenged us: Did any one us question the Saint when he asked our sons and brothers to stand courageously before lathis and bullets? Did we not exult when we had salt in our dal, did he not shrink, starve, and shrivel when those we loved were killed in the Garden? His ways are beyond our understanding. Perhaps we are not ready for his methods. Have you forgotten how hard he has fought and spoken against the separation? Imagine how he must be feeling. Let them who have the courage to peer into his heart and bear his burden step forward and curse him.
Dumbstruck by disbelief, we turned away and led by silence walked past the frail, swaying bamboo gate. The sound of bleating goats cast an ominous soundtrack to our departure.
Dumbstruck by disbelief
Dumbstruck by disbelief claimed a chapter title and it detailed instances of the many whose mouths were wide open but no words were uttered. For the rest of the story they would not speak. Voices weren’t silenced. It was said, they screamed the loudest because prominent characters were dumbstruck by this development. It wasn’t just us characters of course. Many in the Best Viper Company couldn’t believe the book would really be separated into two. They were appalled an idea that was once merely an academic pursuit, a plaything for armchair theorists could have become the ugly monster that was sharpening its claws. The story of the architects and authors who had plotted this is best captured in the chapter that tells the allegorical story of The Dying Archaeologist.
The Dying Archaeologist
When he spots the dark cloud of death on the horizon, a dying archaeologist is standing in a gigantic crater at a site. For hundreds of years he has dug and dug and now the crater is so vast it is all he can see, it is so vast that not only can he not find his way out of it, he doesn’t even have time to leave it. In fact, it is so comfortable and familiar there he wonders why he should even depart. And so, instead of simply dying and becoming bones he decides to start one more dig.
He unearths a large tooth, then dusts sand off a gigantic claw. Not realising what lies buried he continues to dig. Soon, he finds he cannot stop digging. His arms are seized by a demonic urge, driven by a perverse curiosity to see what lies buried. Spurred by unholy avarice he stabs the earth and watches it bleed giant limbs, bones, knuckles, and knees. An insatiable desire to know the real form of this half-revealed creature gives him supernatural strength to keep death at bay.
Until the day when the last specks of sand are brushed off to reveal a terrible monster, two-headed, and in eternal battle with itself. The left at war with the right, one head biting off parts of the other and vice-versa; distrustful and fearful of the other, neither head slept. It was the mythic beast that had been spoken of in whispers in the hallways of power in London. At one time it was nothing more than an inflammable idea, simply a musing amusing in its possibilities and deadly in its consequences. Soon, time passed and the more it was spoken about, debated, and discussed, the more it fossilised into the Company’s collective consciousness. No one imagined characters would collect fragments of conversations from one chapter and deposit them in other chapters. Phrases, secrets, words, and ideas moved between the flurry of turned pages and soon, it seemed as though the whole story was about this monster.
In the last hours of his life, his monumental task completed, under the gaze of Company onlookers, the dying archaeologists records his findings in what will later become the Two-Book Theory.
The Two-Book Theory
As the deadline for the separation of books neared, characters rushed frantically from page to page, desperate to make it to the other book. When characters met on the fault line, tempers, emotions and passions flared violently. Those who had lived harmoniously turned on each other with devastating savagery. And the ones who managed to cross would bear the scars as would generations to follow. The binding frayed along various parts of the two books, as entire families, homes and even villages uprooted themselves and moved, to ensure they may live another day. Characters by the thousands perished. Families were torn apart. Brothers and sisters were infused with a rage they never knew they harboured.
Horrified by the bloodshed, the Best Viper Company hastily washed the ink off their hands and made for a hasty departure. And Premanandji, lay hungry and enfeebled by news filtering in through the creaking windows and doors.
And so the two books came to be, cleaved out of one. The separation had been stitched in history. But loose threads and lost characters cried out for help. So they would remain forever. The characters of the Old book, as they called themselves, determined to read their story from the left, from the time of original birth, for that is where they believed their story began. And the characters of the New Book, determined to show their difference and incongruity with the old characters, determined that their book would be read from the right, progressing backwards to the time of the great cleft. For that is where they believed their story truly began.
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