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The Rediff Special/ Prem Panicker

When the echoes of the blasts have died down, what remains?

About now, you must be getting radioactivity, thermonuclear testing, sanctions and suchlike coming out of your ears.

Hang in there -- I suspect the coming week(s) will see more, not less, of the same.

But enough of that -- this is where I go into my best antediluvian mode and, taking time off to don an asbestos suit (protection, this, against the flames I am sure will follow), go into reminiscent mode.

You guys ever heard the theory that the Mahabharat is no more, or less, than the record, considerably fictionalised, of the last nuclear holocaust known to man? An uncle of mine is a passionate adherent of that view, which sparked this reminiscence.

How that theory is buttressed is as follows: there is, in that epic, a description of the use of the ultimate weapon, the Brahmastra. Once, about a couple of decades ago, an American scholar of Sanskrit translated that description, then juxtaposed it with the eyewitness descriptions of the dropping of the atom bomb over Hiroshima. Surprise, surprise -- the descriptions tally, in every important detail.

Mushroom cloud, check. The "light of a thousand suns", check. The single, calcified tree trunk remaining upright at the epicentre of the explosion, check. More checkmarks, down the list, verifying pretty much every important detail.

Raises the fact-or-fiction question all over again. And the explanation I've heard is: imagine a thermonuclear holocaust today. When the echoes of the blasts have died down, what remains? A few survivors, in the far flung corners of the world -- the Eskimo in his igloo perhaps, the tribal in the remote forest, and such.

Wiped out, with the rest of 'civilisation' as we know it, are the means we use to perpetuate our own follies -- books, newspapers, computers, television stations... the entire communications infrastructure, in sum.

And this in turn forces the survivors to go back into word-of-mouth mode -- the oldest form of news known to man. You can almost sit back and imagine how the survivors, today, would tell the story of the holocaust to their children: "Once, long ago, there was a good, wise and benevolent king by the name of Clinton, and an evil rakshas named Yeltsin...."

Why not the truth? Why the fictional tinge? Simply because the survivors, located as they are in the forgotten outposts of the civilised world, would not possess the knowledge needed to understand, then explain to the next generation, the geo-political realities of the world, or even the technological knowledge required to explain nuclear fission.

It is, the argument goes, far easier to describe a valiant warrior propitiating Brahma with prayer and penance, and getting in return the ultimate weapon. It is difficult to explain chemical warfare to a young 'un -- far easier to talk of the Naagastra, which when used poisons entire armies. Hard to explain the flame-thrower, considerably simpler to say that the God of Fire presented our favourite warrior with the Agneyaastra which, when used, scorched entire lands.

Proponents of this theory, that India was the original nuclear nation, have in fact taken it several steps further, and predicted that history will repeat itself.

To this end, they quote the cryptic utterances of Nostradamus, to the effect that by the turn of the century, India will be governed by a militarily strong theocracy (whether J Jayalalitha will allow the BJP to survive till the turn of the century being, of course, moot). In passing, I just love that chap Nostradamus -- the nice thing about his writings is that you can interpret it to mean almost anything. Heck, if you like, I'll dig out a quartrain of his that seems to indicate that Mohammad Azharuddin will come back as India's cricket captain, and lead India to a win in the 1999 World Cup in England.

Asides aside, it is further argued that the turn of the millennium signals the arrival on earth of the final avatar of Vishnu -- Kalki, to give him a name. And how is Kalki represented? As a warrior, drawn sword and all, on horseback -- the only Vishnu avatar, in fact, that is represented as unambiguously militaristic.

When I first heard these stories, and theories, I laughed.

I still tend to laugh, today, when I recall my uncle sitting on the porch of our ancestral home, spouting his piece. And I laugh harder at the mental picture of our charming, poetry-spouting Atal Bihari Vajpayee on horseback, holding his dhoti in place with one hand and an upraised sword in the other (Our defence minister George Fernandes, with his penchant for pajamas, just might find the equestrian stunt easier to pull off).

But post-Pokharan, I seem to sense a slight undercurrent of puzzlement in my laughter.

I mean, it couldn't be... could it?

There are more things in heaven and on earth, Billy the Bard once said, than are dreamed of in Horatio's philosophy.

Could the same apply to me, too?

With tongue firmly in cheek, this postscript: Any resemblance between this columnist and the likes of P N Oak -- he of "The Taj is a Hindu palace" fame -- is purely coincidental.

The Rediff Special

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