A Bad Character

Deepti Kapoor, 2014

_________________________________________

Both sides of the crowd are stepping forward, they’re about to meet like two sides in war, when all of a sudden there’s a terrible scream in the air, as if someone has been stabbed, so terrible that everyone stops in their tracks, the entire crowd freezes still. It’s a bicycle courier riding right through the gap at full speed. His voice is the only thing that parted the crowd, his voice and nothing else, no pain, no knife, no gun. It was amazing he says. It struck him right there, the certainty of the rider, the reaction of the crowd. How a crowd can be controlled. How the bike would have crashed if he’d failed.

Left before the main market, past the bell of the monastery— there’s a small alleyway, nothing more than a gutter between two buildings, on either side of which there are more shops selling bags and shoes and all manner of counterfeit clothes. At the end of that alley, dodging the sewage running through the middle, we come to a door with panels painted black so you can’t see inside. Into that drab building, through another door on the right, and you’re in Tibet.

Like my grandfather he is the godman. Like him, he has things to say. He speaks of Shiva to me, and I have become his disciple on the dusty road. Convincing, persuading, cajoling me. He gives his sermon as he speaks, of another future, of revolution in the villages, in the towns and cities, the revolution of technology, the Internet, new connections and networks. Revolution in India, this is how it will be: no war, no guns, only technology, this he truly believes. He tells me how these connections will occur, how the poor will see and hear, how there will be empowerment for all, how Shiva guides him, and of this world he will be king.

He was in motion the moment the photo was shot, talking at us until the needle hit the vein. He moved around the room in anticipation of it the way a boxer moves around the ring, his mouth the jab, the needle the knockout punch. In his fifties, a body of hardship and experience, an Irishman from Galway, with a history of junk as long as his arm. His hair is cropped close to his head, a Caeser cut for a backstreet emperor. His eyes are blue. They fix on you, they don’t shy away. He could be dead now too, I’ll never know.