The Great Game

Sonam Singh was the oldest son of an oldest son going back untold generations, long past the time when the Marathas built Varanasi’s – Banaras to the barbarian British, the vowels all flattened out like chapattis – uncountable number of ghats, perhaps before Buddha’s first sermon at Deer Park and some whispered even before Shiva struck his trident at the confluence of the Varuna, Assi and Ganges Rivers forging the world’s oldest inhabited city – though that was all speculation, and Sonam was not one given over to unfounded speculation.

No, what was certain that in the year of our lord eighteen-hundred and sixty-eight, in the second decade of Queen Victoria’s rule, Sonam, against the admonishments of his Brahmin family, wedded a peasant girl, Paravati, and enjoyed several years of domestic bliss, followed by a series of harrowing miscarriages, the birth of a son, the poor boy’s death by cholera six years later and his wife’s ever growing retreat into a despair that seemed almost palpable at times, and though her suffering only seemed to increase his love for her, they were unable to have any more children and, again, against his families’ wishes, he refused to divorce her or even take on a concubine to bear him a son, or at the very least, a daughter.

Exiled from his caste and no longer able to either read the Vedas or perform the rituals for birth, marriage and death, to earn either income or merit, he took employment with the hated British as a lowly postal worker, zip code 221001, to eke out a living and such was the situation when his supervisor – in a terrible breach of protocol, arrived at his simple home with a letter from his supervisor asking for his help in finding Lord Tallison’s son who had disappeared during his grand tour of the Raj and who by all accounts did not want to be found either by his father or anyone else.

“Don’t do a thing for those monkeys,” Parvati said, once his supervisor was gone and the tea cups were cleared. “They’re filthy, both in their habits and their customs.”
“Don’s be so harsh on them,” Sonam said, “they have a different culture than ours.”
“A simple-minded culture,” she said, “and a dangerous one.”
“It’s still a young culture,” he said and ran his fingers across her cheek.
She took his hand and kissed it, saying, “Just do your job and don’t put yourself at risk.”
“I won’t dear one,” he said. She shook her head and left him to his musings.
Sonam opened the envelope his supervisor had left, the seal embossed with VICTORIA DEI GRATIA BRITANNIARUM REGINA FIDEI DEFENSOR, the wax crinkling as he separated it from the paper, revealing parchment paper covered with simple, straight-forward script.

Dear Mr. Singh,
It has come to my attention that you possess an extraordinary degree of insight into the motivations and machinations of the oriental mind, often considered unfathomable to either an Englishman such as myself or even other Orientals. I have also been briefed on your incredible work ethic in a region of the empire known for sloth – though some naturalists assure us that’s part and parcel of living in a tropical climate. The governor of Baranas informed me of your help in locating the missing King of Siam’s sapphires, as well as the mysterious affliction of his white elephant, poisoned by the Afghanis, a nasty piece of business that was, the solving the mystery of the robbery of the royal mint in Aghora, the goading of the Sikhs into an alliance with the deceitful and murderous Marathas, the disappearance of the Bengali Tigers from the Delhi Zoo, the murder of an English Officer at Darjeeling not to mention your stellar work at the Banaras Post Office.

I come to you both as your rightful and lawful liege as well as a father grieving the lost, both physical and moral, of his only son Thomas. Thomas was always a head-strong lad and though possessing a first-rate mind he graduated at the bottom of his class at Cambridge due to a malicious confluence of poor companions, bad decisions, inclement weather, gambling, whoring and dabbling in the black arts though, to the best of my understanding, that mostly consists of re-enacting pagan, folk rituals, the ingestion of certain alkaloids, in addition to a healthy laudanum habit, and consorting and even coupling with women of low character and even lower social positions.

More to the point, one of the fraternal organizations Thomas was a member of, the Lodge of the Unspeakable Rites of Man, has discovered certain facile similarities with a Burmese sect that once ruled a swath of Southeast and Central Asia and Thomas was sent as an ambassador of sorts to make contact and see if these two ridiculous cults, west and east, have some common ground. That was six months ago and we have not heard from him since he debarked from Banaras for Burma. This would not be unusual except he has also failed to cash his monthly stipend checks and his mother is distraught beyond consolation at the idea he has succumbed to some foul play.

I have authorized your supervisor to give you a leave of absence, with pay, to investigate his disappearance as well as the authority to commander supplies and materials, not to exceed two hundred pounds, for informants and sundry to ascertain his whereabouts and if he has, God forbid, passed from this world. As an incentive I am also authorizing a raise in your pay from level F-6 to Level F -5 on the condition he is found alive. Good Luck and God Speed.

Sincerely,
Lord Tallison
Member of the House of Lords, Duke of Manchester, Earl of Dorse, Viscount of Bath, Defender of the Faith