Story
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The God in the Garden
 
by Lee Kok Liang 
  

  Part 1
 
HER VOICE CAME over the phone, harsh and angry. "I've told Nila to ask you to come. And now you've asked her to tell me to come. Do you think I want to drag you from your work? If it was an emergency call, you would have dropped everything and gone to the Centre. But with me, no. You're always against me. Never for me."

Whatever message she had at first intended to convey was forgotten in the rush of her anger and bitterness. My God, he thought, I have done it again. She was right. He should have gone at once. After all, she would never have asked Nila to call him if it wasn't urgent and he should have had the sense to know that it was something vital. When he sensed that she had had her say, he said:

"I'm sorry. But I'm in the midst of consultations. And Nila, that stupid girl, was babbling. Could not make sense."

His wife was placated by his contrite tone. "Kris," she said. His wife called him Kris instead of the full Krishna. It sounded more like the short form of Christopher. "We're having big trouble in the house. A whole crowd is in the garden and more are coming over the sea-wall. I've told you many times to put up a barbed wire fence along the sea-wall, but you won't. They are coming
over. And carrying the bloody statue of Ganesh."

So that was what Nila was mumbling about. Ganesh. The roly-poly, elephantine offspring of Shiva and Parvati, the obstacle remover, the one who received homage first before other Gods. Ganesh.

"What do you mean Ganesh? I don't understand."

"They found a statue of Ganesh washed on shore, directly in front of our house this morning. When I woke up there was a crowd gathering on the beach. They came through the next door. Someone had found the statue. I was talking to one bald-headed chap. Smelt like dung, he did. Now the crowd is gathering and they insist on putting it under the rain tree and calling for a priest
to come. I said no. But they want to. Do something quick. Are you listening Kris? Sometimes, you're hopeless. Can't take care of your things. Let people into your house."
She always had to rub it in about his being lackadaisical in family matters. But what she was telling him now was serious. A crowd clambering over the sea-wall, trampling on the imported Australian short grass. Once his beach front had been private, sea-locked; but recently the foreshore had extended owing to the shifting sands brought in by the change in currents. The public could now walk on his beach. He had kept postponing putting up the wire fence, hoping somehow that the sea would reclaim its former territory. A wire fence would look ugly.

"All right. All right. I understand. I'll get the police."

"Get them at once, quickly." Her voice had a harsh edge to it.

He put the phone down and stared at the nurse. She held a pencil in her left hand. Her round pudgy face was blank. She must have so few problems in her life, drawing her salary and living within her means.

"Nurse, get me the OCPD. And tell the other patients to wait."

The nurse contacted the switchboard. Soon Deputy Superintendent Ismail was on the line. Mr. K. had met him several times. A youngish man who liked to drink on the quiet. Mr. K. was also acquainted with the man's dather, a former hospital assistant, a Malay of great standing in the political circles who had won several franchises from the Government. DSP Ismail had always come to the Government Hospital to see his father when he was a schoolboy and that was how Mr. K. came to notice him. Sometimes he wished his sons had the easygoing manners of DSP Ismail, who could talk for hours on traffic problems and his affairs with white women the last time he was sent for Special Branch training in Amsterdam.

"Ismail. Mr. K. here. How are you?"

"Good. How are you, Sir?"

Well (that boy remembered his manners. Not stand-offish like some Malay bureaucrats. Independence had gone to their heads.

"Well, I've got a small problem."

"What is it, Sir? Anything I can help?"

"It is like this, Ismail. My house has been invaded."

"What!"

"No, what I mean," Mr. K. had forgotten that Ismail, like many others who had finished their secondary education in English locally, tended to take every word literally, "is that a group of people has trespassed onto my grounds."             

"For a moment, Sir, I thought the military has started an action. Glad to learn that phrase from you.!1 I'll try it out on my friends."                                  

"Ismail, please do me this favour. Go down and see what's wrong. You can contact me at my office. You've; got the number. How's your father? Well, soon he'll be a Tan Sri. Bye-bye."

Mr. K. put down the phone. Well, the police would; come and chase out the crowd. He had told Ismail everything and the man would send along a sergeant to take his report in his consulting room. Everything would be over soon and he would go back once more into the peace of his garden; Some damage would. have been done, of course. But since his house was Company property, he would get tax deductions for repairs to the lawn and the flowers.

What Mr. K. failed to realize was that DSP Ismail would not go there himself. DSP Ismail had classified it as an Indian Affair and had sent Inspector Gopal of Division Three to investigate,    As inspectors went, Gopal was average stuff, that is to say, he had gone through routine training, did a bit of Field Force work, attended courts, ran through all the sections, drugs, vice, gambling, secret societies and moved happily among the corridors of the huge Police Headquarters, offending no one and producing nothing spectacular. But Inspector Gopal had one little secret. He worshipped all the Gods of India and spent hours collecting and hunting for idols. Inspector Gopal was a bachelor. He liked drinking as well. In his room he had shelves and shelves of statues, idols, icons, figurines, dancing Krishnas, drawings of Shivas, four-armed, six-armed, staring portraits of wild-eyed Kalis with out-sized tongues and also one of Durga (Kali) stirring by Her Movement Shiva, the Corpse, to Life. And placed between these idols were oil lamps of
various shapes and sizes. On festival days, Inspector Gopal retired alone to this room and lit the oil lamps and stripped  himself to the waist and practised yogic postures, trying to raise the Serpent in his anus.

Inspector Gopal felt slightly embarrassed about his secret. In front of his colleagues he assumed the pose of a man of the world and drank heartily with them. No one suspected otherwise.  In appearance, Inspector Gopal was round, short, with a Charlie Chaplin moustache riding above a wide smiling mouth. He had a rich voice and sang a lot when drunk.  But all the while the inspector was trying to find his Guru. He was also trying to find his Shakti, for Inspector Gopal was also a follower of the Tantric sect. That is, he was a follower in mind, because as far as he was concerned, religion was a private matter, and he did not like joining crowds or groups. It did spoil the flavour of things. He, however, through his  readings had discovered the answer. He had to find his Shakti to share with him the discovery and joy of Krishna and Radha, in his room, alone. A vivid impression was forcibly sealed onto his mind, when, during one of the police raids in a local brothel, he had suddenly burst into a room and confronted a  couple in copulation. The woman and man had faced  each other and the woman was astride the man, immobile. Inspector Gopal was sure that his lingam had  gone into her yoni. He had never seen such an expression on a woman's face. Such utter surrender. But it was too brief a moment. The couple separated , and the woman gave a scream and ran into the bathroom and locked herself in. Inspector Gopal was disappointed to find that she was not a prostitute.
The man, who was in his fifties, had brought his young mistress with him for one of their fortnightly encounters. It checked out. Inspector Gopal wished she had been one, because then she could have been his Shakti.

Another thing that was not known to his colleagues was that the inspector had another name - Arjuna - a secret name given by his mother, taken from the priest, a symbol of his inner self. That was when he was very young and had gone down with a high fever for a week, and his mother had then taken him to the temple, and the priest, touching him on his hot face, sprinkled him with holy water and whispered the name Arjuna into his mother's ear. Unfortunately for Inspector Gopal, he did not have a real-life Krishna to guide him in life and when faced with choices he preferred not to choose at all. His mother finally gave up persuading him to get married. All her efforts raised no spark in him; the full-faced photographs of damsels, the subterfuges to bring about meetings with girls, the promise and readings of his horoscope, produced nothing. He could not make up his mind, like Arjuna. But all the while he dreamed of his Shakti and read everything he could on Tantrism, three-quarters of which he could not comprehend. Inspector Gopal read the lore in English. His Tamil was spoken and colloquial, and the script was beyond him.

When DSP Ismail gave him this assignment he felt excitement mounting in him. He had heard of Mr. K. and admired the surgeon who was handsome, lean, well-dressed and had a beautiful car. But what touched him most was the story of Ganesh being washed up by the waves and landing in front of Mr. K.'s residence. DSP Ismail warned him to disperse the crowds quietly and restore peace and order soon.

Inspector Gopal took the patrol car. With him went PC 2168, a dour-looking Malay chap from Kampung Pisang who was frightfully jealous of his young wife; DPC 4010, a Chinese detective with a  pock-marked face, a veteran whose ambition was to become a professional magician; and PC 5927, a fellow Tamil, thin and disrespectful, whose father sold cow-dung for a living. #

(to be continued)

Reproduced by permission of Mrs Lee Kok Liang
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INDEX

Point to the article that you want to read, and CLICK

Index page      The Baling meeting    Book review    Food guide    The god in the garden    Grandma's garden

Letter from Pulau Tikus     Malay words from Chinese      The mistress of ceremonies

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The Penang File Issue  39