Listening by Dave Mckay Mckay (best summer books .TXT) 📕

Maybe there were others apart from the Aboriginal community who were hearing the warnings.

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Chapter Eight--Trouble in India

"You seeee, sometimes we must do things that are not...?" The Minister for Law had a habit of turning a simple sentence into a question like this, by raising his voice in anticipation and then pausing before the final word.

"... Easy," he concluded, like a teacher answering on behalf of a slow student.

Guru Vaishnu and his followers had benefited greatly from the generosity of the Tamil Nadu Government, but now the popular sect leader was seeing the other side of the Government's generous support. He had never liked this Minister, whose political career had always depended on Mafia-like control of the slums in his electorate; yet here Vaishnu was, seated in one overstuffed chair facing his opponent, who was seated in another overstuffed chair. K.A. Krishnamurthy smiled wickedly through a mouthful of crooked teeth as he spoke. His hands were clasped on top of his huge stomach, and his thumbs rolled around each other as he spoke.

"Your people can finish the job in a...? ... Day. And then you will have a second...? ...Temple. You see how easy it is?"

Krishnamurthy was talking about a slum village that he wanted levelled. He was asking Guru Vaishnu's followers to perform the unpleasant task of burning down the thatch huts, in return for use of the land when they were finished. But what he was asking was much more than a request. If Vaishnu refused, he knew that he and his followers would bear the wrath of this Government.

The village he was being asked to raze was in the electorate of one of Krishnamurthy's cronies, who had just failed in a bid for re-election. Slum lords retained their power through political terrorism, and the poor know that if they do not vote them back into power, retribution will be swift and cruel.

Krishnamurthy could have assigned the task to anyone else, but he was deliberately using it to push Vaishnu over the brink.

For a time he had, in co-operation with the Chief Minister, been able to exploit the hard work and good will of Vaishnu's army of volunteers. Huge amounts of money had been approved for various clean-up projects, and while the Vaishnuvites had faithfully carried out the tasks, for virtually nothing in return, Krishnamurthy and others in his party had pocketed the allocated funds. Corrupt use of funds was not unusual; what was different this time was that the projects were actually being done. At first, support for the Government had soared. But there was a growing awareness that it was really the Vaishnuvites who had transformed the image of the corrupt BJP Party in Tamil Nadu and in neighbouring states. Slum dwellers were starting to believe that change could come through the ballot box, but they were aware enough to know that a vote for the BJP was not necessarily a vote for the Vaishnuvites.

The BJP, like fundamentalist parties in other religions, existed primarily for the rich and powerful within Hindu society. Non-Hindu elements (chiefly Christians and Muslims, but also Communists) had, over the years, created unrest amongst outcastes and untouchables in India, by offering them more humane treatment in exchange for deserting their religion. Vaishnu and his followers, with their willingness to do the work of the untouchables, had appeared to be the perfect answer to the void left by untouchables (or dalits) who had deserted Hinduism. But their actions had so inspired the poor that some of the dalits were returning to Hinduism with a hew hope for change. They were politically aware enough now to represent a serious threat to the upper castes in Hinduism.

As yet, there was nothing overtly political about Vaishnu's movement; but the more discerning members of the BJP could see that the sect was having a political effect anyway. The election loss for one of their most promising incumbents was proof that the dalits were being dangerously influenced by the Vaishnu movement.

Krishnamurthy could think of no better way to solve both problems than to assign the task of punishing the poor to the very people who had, in his opinion, caused the slum dwellers to revolt in the first place.

"This is an important decision. Can I have a few days to discuss it with my people?" Vaishnu asked. He had known for some time that he was walking a dangerous path in his dealings with these people, but at the same time, Krishnamurthy's inhuman demand had shocked him.

"Two days. That is all the time we have. I will send for you on…? …Friday."

Vaishnu stood to his feet. "I will move quickly. I think we can meet your deadline."

"You know what this will cost if they do not agree? You will tell them?"

"Yes, Minister, I understand. I will do my best."

Later that afternoon, Vaishnu met with his top followers. The meeting had been arranged secretly, and was held in a humble hut, where they were forced to sit cross-legged on reed mats on a dried cow-dung floor as they spoke.

"We must move quickly," he said, after explaining what the Minister had asked of him and of them. "In two days, the Minister will come looking for me. When he fails to find me, he will come looking for you. And if he cannot find you, he will take out his anger on our people. They must be warned to flee immediately."

"But where will we go?" asked one of them.

"We can go anywhere, as long as we do not go together. No more than two or three members to any one location. They cannot find an organisation that does not exist."

"Not exist?" the same man asked in dismay. "But what of our work? What of your teachings?"

"Our movement and my teachings are in their hearts now… if they have learned well. From today on, we each must seek to serve the God alone... or with the help of one or two others. If we work in this way, they cannot stop us."

"And where will you go?" asked one of the other men.

"Only the God knows. I will pray for wisdom, and each of you must do the same."

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Chapter Nine--Dodge City

It was shortly after sunset in an Aboriginal settlement called Dodge City, just outside of Brewarrina, New South Wales. Chaim Rosenberg had accompanied Molly on an expedition to visit some of her relatives. Molly was off touring the neighbourhood, and Chaim sat casually on the couch at Ben Black's place while half a dozen men of various ages passed a flagon of port around. Ben himself was not there. The lounge-room was almost dark now, either because the electricity no longer worked, or because someone had failed to replace a bulb. In either event, the men were oblivious to the darkness as long as they could make out one another's silhouettes in the light that came through curtain-less windows from a nearby street light.

The house smelled of dirty nappies from the two babies that lived there, though it had little effect on any of the men in the room. Conversation was banal and tended toward arguments over the least detail. But none of this fazed Chaim, who remained silent, and simply passed the flagon on untouched whenever it came to him. No one seemed aware that he was not Aboriginal, that he was not joining in the conversation, nor that he was not drinking.

These were the kind of scenes Chaim had grown accustomed to over the past few months. He had come to love them, not because of the conditions just described, but because he had a growing conviction that, as a people, the Australian Aborigines were just waiting for something of immense importance to happen... something in which they would play a vital role. Ironically, the Aboriginal community itself was almost indifferent to all the fuss the rest of the world was making over the war in America.

"You mob clear out. We got business to 'tend to." It was big Ben Black standing in the doorway. (The door itself had been removed years ago.) He had a tall, thin white man in a cheap, dusty suit with him. The Aboriginal men in the the room rose to their feet, as Ben motioned Chaim to stay seated.

"Charlie, you can stay too," he said, and one of the older men in the room resumed his seat on the loungeroom floor.

When the others had left and there were just Chaim, Ben, Charlie, and the stranger, Ben began his introduction.

'This young fella is name of David… David Hartley. He got some fings to show us from the Bible... important fings for our people."

David was about 35 years old. Chaim later learned that he had been raised in the Seventh Day Adventist Church... a group that believed fanatically for decades that it was evil to worship on Sunday. The movement had, in recent years, become far more liberal, and far more tolerant of other Christian denominations.

David had left the church during one of many divisions that resulted from its shift toward mainstream Christianity. He had spent a couple of years on his own, travelling around the country. Like Chaim, he had a strange attraction toward Australia's Aboriginal people.

"I discovered this a few months ago," the young preacher began, opening a well-worn Bible to the 18th chapter of Isaiah, and squinting heavily as he struggled to read in the dim light. "It's a message to people from Kenya, who it says came to Australia many years ago. Least that's the way I read it."

The chapter started with, "Woe to the land… which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, that sends ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes, saying, 'Go, swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto, a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have despised."

David looked up to see if he still had their attention before he continued: "Some translations say this new land they were talking about was vast and flat, with few rivers, and no way to travel 'cept by foot. Most big flat dry places in the world either have horses or camels, but not Australia. The first people here got 'round by walking. Doesn't it sound like the Aboriginal people of Australia?"

He went on, without waiting for an answer.

"There's theories that the first Aborigines came from Africa, maybe in papyrus boats, just like the verse says. Then there's the baobab tree. It only grows in Australia, India, and Africa. In all three countries there's a legend about God punishing the tree for its pride by pulling it out of the ground and planting it upside down."

"He thinks us Black people, here and in India, come from Africa," Ben put in.

Chaim's thoughts strayed at the first mention of India. He had, since attending the conference in Chennai, formed a deep friendship with Guru Vaishnu. The two had corresponded almost daily via email, and earlier that week, Chaim had received a disturbing letter from Vaishnu, about problems with the government there.

David's voice brought Chaim back to the passage of scripture and the darkened room: "It starts out warning the people in this country; then it says there'll be some pruning; and it finishes up saying they'll bring a gift to God at the time of the harvest, when a trumpet blows."

Chaim