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demons will maintain their grip on power, that the wheel of time will cease to turn, and that the
chaos of adharma will inextricably dominate the cosmos.
The apprentice Bodhisattva, Langford must learn, is ill equipped to battle the demons at
the end of time. This may only be due to the fact that Koch is mixing relatively incompatible,
even if closely related, sources—the Bodhisattva comes out of Buddhist tradition, and the
avatar of the Hindu. Ultimately, the goals of all of the Indian philosophies remains essentially
the same, and the Bodhisattva perfectly realises Krishna’s Supreme Utterance to act without
interference of ego, which justifies at least Koch’s progress from the one to the other. And yet,
battling the demons Koch has conjured up seems too big a job for a Bodhisattva, and requires a
true avatar—a reincarnation of the ultimate creative force in the universe on the lines of the
Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita. There is no evidence that Koch is creating an avatar here—
Langford as Vishnu incarnate would be even worse than as a Bodhisattva—though he plays
with the idea often enough. In The Year of Living Dangerously President Sukarno imagined
himself to be one, and even Billy Kwan, before he got better control of his ego, entertained
similar dreams. Koch makes Langford the reincarnation of his great-great-grandfather, not of
any god. In the meantime, however, Koch also has the demons send the gods tumbling from
their position in the heavens, disrupts the continuity of time and space, and rushes the beautiful
apsarasas who welcomes Langford to Madame Phan’s home off to seek refuge where she can.
Koch’s world needs help.
Adrian Mitchell touches upon just who or what Mike Langford is when she writes that,
like the heroes of traditional epic, Mike’s meaning resides not so much in
himself as in what he represents. He has certain distinctive qualities: he has
the heroic qualities of innocence and selfless bravery, he is youthful, and
defeats time for a time, and he is an idealist. In some respects he is almost
unworldly, yet he is also strongly attached to this world, and to the people of
this world. (Mitchell, 1996, Ancestral Voices, 6)
Langford ‘satisfies the longing of others to believe in that rarity, a greater because common
good’, and since he is both ordinary and special and also that, as Koch makes clear, his life
extends beyond the limits of his birth and death, he is ‘the sign of what makes us immortal,
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