35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

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EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
whose rule alone they could all be equal. That such people, with
such principles, and such detachment from worldly success, could
simply walk away from it, on principle, is rare in any nation’s history.
The most extraordinary thing about the Paliwals is that no individual
names have survived to overshadow their collective identity.
That night we made camp beside the crumbling temple and empty
echoing courtyards of another Paliwal village, under another starsplattered
jet and sable dome.
‘It’s just like they leave only yesterday, no?’ Hoppy said over
dinner, indicating the dreadfully silent village beyond, its smooth
masonry now silvered with moonlight.
‘Where did they go?’
‘Good people,’ Hoppy replied, scratching his stubbly chin
thoughtfully. ‘They just vanish . . . like many good things of the
world.’ He gazed away across the shifting sands.
‘Many ghost here,’ Girdhar announced, quite seriously.
‘Jesus!’ Bentley complained. ‘Let’s get off death for one night,
eh? Don’t you guys have another topic?’
I asked Hoppy what he felt about the caste exclusivity of people
like the Paliwals.
‘Now very greedy.’ The answer was predictable.
‘All lazy,’ Girdhar threw in, illustrating this with a story about a
Brahmin who now made his living by smoking.
‘Smoking?’ Apparently the man in question sat somewhere in
Jodhpur all day long, smoking a hookah, dressed in traditional robes,
so that tourists could photograph someone in traditional robes
smoking a hookah – and, of course, pay for the privilege.
‘Are Brahmins allowed to smoke?’
This brought a chorus of complaints: they weren’t allowed to eat
themselves into airships either, but they did; they weren’t allowed
to use temple funds for personal use, but they did; they weren’t . . .
Well, the gist was that they lived like parasites from the sweat of
those who worked. These men, I felt, saw their own caste – now
independent workers more than warriors – as sandwiched between
parasites: the Brahmins, the Harijans, what was the difference?
None of them believed for a moment that the universe any longer