Calicut (Present-Day Kozhikode), Kerala
South India, 1919
Stanley was born that year into a Christian family converted by German missionaries who worked largely on the coast of Malabar. His father, originally a descendant from the ‘Purathu’ family, was a Hindu. Deeply moved by Christian teachings, he persuaded his father to let him convert to Christianity. Old Purathu magnanimously allowed him and, there, the name David emerged. Naming himself after the Christian missionary John David, he became John David Purathu. He later changed his name to John Purathu David and began his ministry as J.P. David.
Soon, David needed a church. He approached his father and asked for a small plot of land on which he could build his church. Again, the request was granted by old Purathu. The church was built and David delivered his sermons. All seemed to be going well for the young priest, but soon, Christian zealousness got the better of him. He could not resist the temptation of denouncing the Hindu workers working on his father’s land. Forgetting that his father was a Hindu on whose land he had built the church with the same workers, he would brand them as ‘Heathens’. The workers tolerated this for a while, but soon complained to old Purathu.
It hurt old Purathu, but in his wisdom and love for his son, he forbade his workers from harming David or his congregation. He said, ‘Whenever John talks like that in his sermons, just put up ladders, climb to the roof of the church and start removing the tiles. Let us then see how John delivers his sermons!’
The story was Stanley’s favourite and, as he grew older, he became more and more conscious of his Hindu past. He revered his grandfather, for old Purathu was an icon of Christian restraint and tolerance.
At the age of 18, Stanley decided that Calicut was not the place he wanted to be, nor was it a place where he could flourish as a singer. Singapore was, or so he thought. By that time, his eldest sister had established a successful career in Bangalore. She was one of the first graduates of the first women’s only medical school in Vellore, founded by Ida Scudder. The school became one of Asia’s leading medical institutions of the time.
Stanley travelled to Bangalore and exhausted her with his dreams of Singapore to an extent that she paid his passage to Singapore.
*
Singapore, 1939
It seemed to Stanley that the city beckoned him with a promise of fulfilment. Here was a place where he would emerge as a great singer in the tradition of the Italian masters, and here he would satisfy his curiosity and fascination with the Orient and marry one of his people. As a boy, he had said so to his cousins and friends.
In a few hours, he had managed to lodge himself at The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and, in a few days, he was actively looking for an opportunity in the many dance halls and nightclubs to register his talent. A few songs and a meal in the house were as far as he got, before returning despondently to his room every evening. There was nothing wrong with his voice or his singing; they had just wanted another kind of song. Then one evening, when the money had run out and he was beginning to feel that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Frank spoke to him.
‘Look Stanley, you’ve got a great voice, but singing isn’t going to feed you anymore,’ Frank said in concern.
Frank was Chinese and a new acquaintance in Singapore. A second-generation Christian like Stanley, Frank had received an education in English—the benefits of British colonialism and European Christianity that those so desirous subjects could obtain.
‘You need a job, my friend,’ Frank advised.
‘I can’t argue with that, Frank. I guess I’ll have to do something else with my voice, huh? But what?’ asked Stanley irritably.
‘Talk, that’s what you can do,’ Frank replied after a moment of thought.
‘Talk! About what? And who do you think is going to listen to me?’ challenged Stanley, and immediately regretted his petulance. Frank was the only friend he had in Singapore, and he had helped him through from the moment he had landed.
‘I’m sorry,’ apologized Stanley.
‘Become a salesman, that’s what I was trying to say,’ an unoffended Frank said. Fine example of Chinese practicality at its best, Stanley mused.
‘As a salesman, you have to talk a lot. Good persuasive talk that, Stanley, you should be able to do,’ commented Frank.
Stanley grimaced, seeing his singing aspirations reduced to flotsam by a dawning reality that he would have to do something quickly to survive his misadventure, and that Frank was holding the answer to his predicament.
‘I’m not advocating you as a mouthpiece in a shop, Stanley, if that’s what you think I’m saying,’ continued Frank, sensing that Stanley’s spirit was rebelling at the thought of having to surrender his freedom to the mundane task of daily living.
‘Freelance…yes, freelance. Look around you. What do you see in this very building? People wearing ties and socks, meaning they are buying them.’
‘Make it easier for them. Save them the trouble of having to shop around by getting the goods to them at a fee. In other words, your profit or your income, call it what you like. Add handkerchiefs to your list, so on and so forth.’
‘Now, that’s a start, but before all that you’ll have to locate some reasonable merchants and negotiate a fair price,’ Frank explained to an attentive Stanley.
‘And if you still want to sing, there’s always the church choir, Stanley,’ he added smugly with a grin.
A whole new world of possibilities opened to Stanley, filling his mind with anticipation and renewed excitement in his life. He didn’t have to return home a failure, at least not yet.
‘Frank, you’re a genius! Help me find these merchants and I’ll get started right away,’ declared Stanley exuberantly, already working out portions of his time when he would sell and when he would sing in his mind.
Thus, the two friends busied themselves the next day; one trying to survive and the other, the good Samaritan, doing a good deed which the spirits of his forefathers would have approved. The friendship between Stanley and Frank grew in the years that followed. The small enterprise mushroomed into a sizeable business that sustained the immediate needs of Stanley. He sang bass at the local church and soon became a social entity.
Frank found his way into civil service and became an official of some stature, while Stanley moved into an apartment, establishing an independent existence. He had bought a car that enhanced his area of operation and, after a brisk day’s work, had ample time to devote the evenings to new friends and new pursuits, and the occasional stray to the local dance halls. With encouragement from Frank, he began to attend meetings and lectures and heard, for the first time, words from powerful speakers that inspired him. This experience suddenly made his preoccupation with his miniscule world of singing, dancing and selling diminish in significance.
His soul thirsted for knowledge and he quenched that thirst at the local libraries. He read voraciously and finally settled at a fountain from which, however much he drank, he would never be satisfied. Neither his thirst would be quenched, nor the source dry up.
The fountain was mysticism.
Soon, he became the member of a few mystical societies, and became particularly enthralled with Hindu mysticism and philosophy. The Indian mystics fascinated him and, eventually, his mind gravitated to the quest of self-realization and discovering the ultimate reality.
He moved from guru to guru and from society to society, finding the subject of his quest fleeting and elusive, until his spirit began to agitate restlessly. It was then that he realized he needed to be alone, to meditate and to move away from the little nest he had made for himself in Singapore. He was raising a curtain to Malaya, a new environment where he would continue his search alone, and for physical sustenance, he would sign up as a travelling agent with the Australian company for the distribution of potatoes in Malaya that Frank had introduced him to.
*
Malaya (Present-Day Malaysia), 1942
The new job with the Australian company distributing potatoes in Malaya had opened opportunities to Stanley for which his soul had clamoured—opportunity to drive the length of the peninsula from plantation to plantation, giving him the time and space to untie his mind from the clutter of material strife, opportunity to enjoy the verdant expanse of the countryside and live closer to nature, opportunity to meet different people with different temperaments and meditate upon the mystery of the Timeless Being.
The mounting ferocity of the war in the West had merited little of his attention, for it had seemed far removed from his ashram of divine quest. He had exalted himself with serenity and was content with his solitary life when, suddenly, his personal ethereal world of mystical bliss erupted like a volcano with a catastrophic force, shattering his anchor of tranquillity.
The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and, with that one presumptuous act, brought a curtain of fire over these parts of the world. The brutal advance of General Tojo’s crack assault troops reached Malaya with stunning speed, mauling the hastily retreating Allied Forces with a savagery unparalleled in the recent history of human primitivism—subjugating the local populace with terror in its path.
The grotesqueness of death was evident everywhere his unbelieving eyes looked; the defending rearguard and civilians alike, bombed, strafed, shot or lanced by the bayonet. More horrifying was the macabre sight of headless bodies lying in pools of coagulating blood and victims of summary executions by an indiscriminate and arrogant sword that had shamed the teachings of Zen.
These storm troopers, often led by lowly officers seeking immortality, wouldn’t have a reputation less than that of their Teutonic counterparts from barbarity and infamy. They were intent upon proving their martial acumen and determined to patent their superiority in Asia, which tragically made the idea of taking prisoners unappealing to most of these units.
After the carnage came the regular army—warlords in the tradition of the Samurai, tying to restore a semblance of order and propagate an economic hegemony amongst the conquered territories which they called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Japanese Army gained labour, and the populace, slavery. The storm troopers had seen to it!
The process of acquisition and confiscation, interrogation and internment, and segregation of the able-bodied for slave labour commenced efficiently amongst the vanquished. It was from this baptism of fear and doom that Stanley surfaced from his cocoon, shaken to the core of his being. He could not understand the acute silence of God over a shocking war that stripped decency and dignity from human beings. War, he now understood, was a far cry from the romanticized notion of uniforms in conflict.
But he had surfaced unscathed, his car untouched and the privacy of his little ashram left inviolated—a miracle that reinforced his belief that divine powers of his maharishi were at work and protecting him from harm. He salvaged what remained of his potatoes and unobtrusively went about bartering for the daily necessities of life.
The Whites who hadn’t been killed or imprisoned had since long gone. The Chinese population had been decimated, for a large number of the people had been exterminated as suspected communists or sympathizers, while the Malays had dissolved into their native background like silhouettes in a changing landscape.
The Indians seemed to have survived as a recognizable entity, unmolested by the occupying force. Even those caught alive with British uniforms were just disarmed and interned for a purpose, a design that the Japanese soon intended to stroke on their canvas of conquest. Stanley would shortly become a pigment on this canvas, assuming the form of a singer, but a singer of a different kind of song.
*
A Suburb in Kuala Lumpur, Malayasia
The Japanese canvas of conquest found this pigment in Stanley when he was returning home one evening from the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. As he neared the city, driving in the dark road, he saw two Oriental men standing by a car and waving him down in urgency. He could not dismiss the uniform they were wearing, for it was Japanese. He also could not ignore the authority of the outstretched hand; it was a command. Stanley pulled over compliantly by their car, praying that this was not a random exercise in violence that the occupation force liked to indulge in, especially after several cups of sake.
‘Excuse me, our car has broken down and we need to get to the city immediately. We would be happy to get a lift,’ said one of them in flawless English. The politeness surprised Stanley, and he noted that they were officers.
‘Of course! At your service,’ readily obliged Stanley, relieved that they had not intended to commandeer his car. He got out of his car in a sprightly manner and opened the rear door for the two officers.
The officer who spoke reciprocated with a bow and entered the car promptly with a satisfied smile. The other officer remained silent and unconsciously drummed his fingers on the holster at his waist as he slid into the car beside his compatriot. Noticing this, Stanley decided not to speak while he drove them to their destination. He would just follow instructions and hope they would be satisfied.
‘I am Captain Ito and this is Lieutenant Tanaka,’ the officer who had spoken earlier said. ‘What is your name?’
‘Stanley, Stanley David,’ answered Stanley amicably, and added quickly, ‘I’m from India.’
‘Ah! I thought so,’ remarked Captain Ito.
‘I’m honoured to make the acquaintance of the lieutenant and Captain San,’ he added, bowing at their reflection in the rear-view mirror. Stanley had learned Japanese courtesy and civility.
‘What are you doing in Malaya?’ asked Captain Ito. ‘You are not a soldier.’ It was a pointed question that demanded a forthright answer, and Stanley narrated, though succinctly, the story of how he came to be in Malaya.
‘So, you are an adventurer, eh?’ remarked Captain Ito. ‘But tell me, David San,’ probed the captain, ‘now that there are no more Australians, Americans, or British…or their monopolistic business in this part of the world…for you see, their capitalist stranglehold of Asia is over and Imperial Japan is the power now…what do you think you will do? We don’t have potatoes for you to sell.’
Stanley felt his throat constrict slightly while thinking of an answer that would sound reasonable enough to placate the power that could crush him and yet deflect any specific interest in him by the officer. He glanced at the picture of his maharishi that was conspicuously panelled on the dashboard of the car, and drawing comfort from it, answered factually.
‘I honestly don’t know, Captain San.’
‘I suppose not,’ observed Captain Ito.
Mulling over Stanley’s answer, the Japanese captain found it interesting that the Indian—a subject of the imperial British—has not worn their uniform, and felt that the man was probably not a threat to his country’s ambitions. Perhaps he could put this Indian to good use, thought Captain Ito. The uneasy silence came to an end shortly when Stanley reached the military camp, where he dropped off the two officers and hoped the acquaintance would end.
‘David San, where do you live?’ Captain Ito asked Stanley. ‘Please give me your address.’
The request left Stanley with no recourse but to furnish Captain Ito with his address. The Japanese now knew where he lived. It was only a matter of time, for sooner or later the occupation force would have him account for his presence in the country, Stanley rationalized, and drove away from the camp, thinking nothing of the matter.
The next morning, Stanley received a visit from a Japanese soldier bearing a note from Captain Ito, instructing him to accompany the soldier. Suppressing his instant reaction of fear, he followed the soldier in acquiescence to the camp where he was shown Captain Ito’s office. The mandatory picture of the emperor in all his finery took prominence on a wall, while military maps and daily agenda decorated the rest of the office. The office itself was Spartan, noticed Stanley.
‘Ah! David San, good morning,’ greeted Captain Ito heartily, stretching out his hand in a very European handshake.
‘Sit down. Have some tea.’
Stanley thanked him and sipped his tea tacitly, and was pleasantly surprised that it was sweet. Sugar was scarce these days, he realized, and wondered why this Japanese officer had summoned him. He looked straight into Captain Ito’s eye for an answer without exhibiting any fear, and willing to accept his karma.
‘You sent for me, Captain San?’
Ito looked at the young Indian sitting in front of him, apparently unafraid of the summon. His name suggested that he was a Christian, but that was probably because of his erstwhile colonial masters. Otherwise, Indians were a mystical lot and this man seemed to bear some of that quality, he sensed. He had noticed the picture of a strange-looking ascetic in the man’s car.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Actually, I wanted to thank you for having been helpful yesterday, David San,’ said Ito, ‘because we might have got into trouble.’
The statement was an indication of how popular the invaders were in territories that had come under their occupation. The Japanese Army was not impervious to sudden death at the hands of the resistance, and the more horrifying the reprisals, the more agonizing and degrading the retaliations became. It was human nature to nurture a grudge that, regardless of the might of the oppressor who stripped and outraged what it held sacrosanct, would avenge its rape at every opportunity—however futile or banal it may seem, thought Stanley. Ito was aware that this young Indian had probably saved him and Lieutenant Tanaka from danger, indignity and almost certain death.
‘I would like to give you this in appreciation,’ he said, and placed a sachet on his desk in front of Stanley. ‘It’s sugar.’
Stanley was overwhelmed by the gift, for it was more than just a reward. It was his security pass for the moment! He could claim the acquaintance of an officer of the Imperial Japanese Army and would be spared harassment from the ordinary soldier.
‘I also have a job for you,’ Ito said after a moment, with a wide grin. ‘I think you should consider it. This could be your future after Malaya.’
Stanley was astonished for he hadn’t expected a proposal, nor was the implicit advice lost on him. He was on Japanese territory, after all, Stanley realized.
‘This is wonderful, Captain San,’ a choiceless Stanley replied. At least, this was better than conscription, he thought.
‘But what kind of job?’ he asked the captain in curiosity.
‘Aaaah!’ exhaled Ito. ‘It’s a bit dangerous, but then there’s a war going on and war is always dangerous, and mostly dreadful things happen until finally a good thing can surface.’
‘A good thing?’ asked Stanley in surprise.
‘Yes. The good thing that will emerge is a new world order. A new Asia no longer exploited by the West. Asia for the Asians, with Japan as their guardian and watchdog. What do you think?’ baited the captain for contradiction.
Stanley tactfully nodded his head, denoting consent, seeing which the captain elaborated his vision on the new world order.
‘Together, we can develop a mighty industrial complex with our resources which the West has plundered all along,’ orated an indoctrinated Caption Ito, satisfied for the moment with Stanley’s response.
‘The bad things we can’t help,’ shrugged Captain Ito, waving a hand in dismissal, ‘are the killings, the suffering, the indiscretion and unscrupulousness of battle troops, some more than the others I concede. But that, I don’t have the power to stop. I’m sure every army has its hooligans and its decent men,’ proffered the captain.
Was there such a thing as a good soldier or a bad soldier, or for that matter, a good war or a bad one, wondered Stanley, when the semantics of the war spoke only about the taking of life?
Captain Ito rose from his chair and paced the room in deep thought for a while, and then said, ‘What I can do is repair the damage and try to minimize the hurt in the memory of the people, for they will be the beneficiaries of the good thing when it occurs. And Japan is fighting this war to bring about this wonderful and much-needed change.’
Stanley listened to the passionate convictions of Captain Ito and wondered whether this military officer was aware of the countless wars that had lost their exalted ideals and floundered upon the maniacal ambitions of glory-seeking generals and callous politicians, indifferent to the abysmal suffering that they were inflicting upon human lives. This was not a moment for philosophical debate, realized Stanley, and continued listening to an impassioned Ito.
‘This is the propaganda unit of the Imperial Army,’ said Captain Ito, proudly tapping the surface of his desk, ‘and our job is to bring this message home to the peoples we have liberated.’
‘We need their cooperation. We need them to lay down their arms and eschew their pointless resistance. We will let them work with us to achieve our goals, and we will help them to rebuild and reclaim their independence.’
‘I see,’ observed Stanley.
Captain Ito looked at Stanley for a moment and wondered whether the Indian sitting in his office really saw or shared his vision of the new world order. He stopped pacing and took his seat, looking at Stanley keenly and waited for a reaction. Lofty ideas, granted Stanley and he asked Ito, ‘What exactly would I be doing?’
‘We need interpreters to convey our message to the people; mostly yours, Indian soldiers, who had the misfortune of wearing British uniforms. We also need someone to talk to the communists in the jungles,’ illuminated the Captain.
‘The communists!’ baulked Stanley in alarm.
Talking to his countrymen, whatever their uniform, was an agreeable task, but talking to the communists was as good as inviting imminent death, Stanley was convinced. The communists were as fanatical as the Japanese and as unafraid of death as the storm troopers, Stanley knew.
‘You will have well-armed escorts, my friend. And, of course, I’ll be your guardian,’ Ito said in consolation, noticing the obvious distraught displayed by Stanley.
‘It will be an adventure and you are an adventurer, aren’t you?’ Ito challenged.
The truth was that Stanley had no place to escape, nor did he have an alternative. The Japanese had him captive behind their lines, and with that realization he accepted Captain Ito’s offer. Thus, a Japanese military officer and he had shaken hands on a delicate partnership that had no common ground. They had journeyed together in a continuum of time, one with illusions of a greater and victorious Japan, and other, a victim of geopolitical circumstance, grasping at an opportunity to survive.