Page 14 - Tales Apocalyptic and Dystopian

The Mount of Darjeela
(Fantastic Transactions 1, 1990)

“In Vedic times,” intoned Guru Bhastrika, “we had all these things:
nuclear power, television, space travel, air conditioning. Yes, so many
things. But in those wars, those terrible fraternal struggles so
beautifully described in the Mahabharata, we almost lost them all. It
is very sobering to consider what might have become of India,
through the millennia of history since that glorious era, had the
subcontinent been totally burned and blasted by the awesome
weaponry of the Pandavas and the Kauravas and our ancestors
driven back into a lower state of existence. Had that happened, no
doubt our great palaces and temples would today be nothing but
cracked and crumbling ruins, after an endless procession of
conquerors and religions had swept across the Deccan, each
displacing its predecessor in a bloody wave of human savagery.”
The pedant paused, surveying the chelas at his feet. Their smooth
blank faces betrayed little of the imaginative effort his words had
undoubtedly triggered. The same lessons were available to them on
their home computers, and in a rather more entertaining format, but
their parents still held the traditional belief that the moral essence of
a teaching could only be imparted by a live human instructor.
And old Bhastrika was a walking anachronism, having spent some
of his middle years as a sky-clad mendicant, humbling himself before
the skyscrapers and expressways of Sanchi and Varanasi. At last a
group of his wealthier followers had convinced him to form an
ashram and spend his old age attempting to give their children a
view of their own heritage not available from All-India Televideos. In
the bottom of his consciousness he could not honestly say whether
his students were encouraged to enroll in his ashram for its
educational value or the spiritual cachet it conferred on their fathers.
But the vagaries of human motivation were not often the subject of
his ruminations.
Any youngster supposing the guru had lost the thread of his
exposition during that brief silence would have been disappointed
when he resumed.

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