Bali and Indra

"You know how Bali fell," said Bhishma from the bed of arrows. "The dwarf at the sacrifice, the boon of three paces of ground, the small body that grew until two strides covered everything there was and there was nowhere left to set the third. That is the story of the fall, and it is told elsewhere.

"This is what happened long afterwards, when all of that was old. There is no god in it who grows, and no boon, and nothing miraculous at all. It is two men in a ruined building, and it is the harder story."

Indra was ranging the worlds. He did that in those years, riding out through the three worlds to look at what was his, the way a man walks his fields after a good harvest, not because anything needs doing but because it is pleasant to see it lying there.

He came, in this ranging, upon an empty place: a settlement gone back to grass, a house with half its roof down, weeds through the courtyard, and at the side of it a byre where a few lean animals stood in the shade. The kind of place a king rides past without turning his head.

There was a figure seated in the doorway, doing some small ordinary work with his hands.

Indra pulled up. He was a god and he had eyes, and he had also fought this person for a very long time, and one does not forget the shoulders of an old enemy.

It was Bali. Son of Virochana, grandson of Prahlada, once emperor of the gods and of men, lord of the three worlds, at whose sacrifices the wealth of the earth had been given away by the cartload. He was living in the ruin. He kept the house. He kept the animals. He was not hiding and he was not performing a penance; he was keeping a house the way a householder keeps one, because that was where he was and there was work in it.

He looked up, recognised his visitor, and did not stand.

Indra did not dismount at once. He sat and looked down, and something rose in him that he had not expected and did not stop to examine, and he began to talk.

"So it is you," he said. "I had heard it, and I did not believe it. Bali himself. Keeping cattle.

"Where is the white parasol? You had one held over you by four men, and the shadow of it fell across whole assemblies. I look for it and I find a broken roof.

"Where are the armies? You could put a host into the field that took a day and a half to pass a given tree. I count three animals and a thin dog.

"Where is the tribute? Kings used to come up your road with elephants and their daughters and the produce of provinces, and stand in line for the honour of being looked at by you. There is nobody on your road. There is no road.

"Where are the poets? They made your name into songs. I have not heard one of those songs in an age. The men who knew them died, and nobody troubled to teach the boys.

"Is this not bitter? Tell me honestly, because I have wondered about it for years and there is no one else alive to ask. You sat where I sit now. You had all of it and you have none of it, and I have it, and I am looking at you in a doorway with straw on your hands. Does that not burn? It would burn me. I think it would burn me until there was nothing left to burn."

Bali finished the small thing he was doing, and set it down, and looked up at Indra with an attention entirely free of resentment, which is the one response that no victor is ever prepared for.

"No, Vasava," said Bali. "It does not burn me. And you have come a long way to find out whether it does, so I shall tell you why, since it is the only thing I have left to give a guest.

"I do not grieve, slayer of demons, because none of it was ever mine.

"Consider the list you have just made. The parasol. I did not make it. It was made by men whose names I never asked, out of a tree that grew without my help, and it stood over me for a while, and it stands over you now. The armies were not mine. They were men, each one with a mother, who came when the drum sounded and would have gone elsewhere had the drum sounded elsewhere. The tribute was not mine; it grew in other men's fields. The songs were never mine; poets make them, and poets make them for whoever is standing in the light.

"All of it came to me. None of it came out of me. It arrived while I was living my life, it stayed while its season lasted, and it has gone on. Time lent it and time has recalled it, and time did not consult me on either occasion, and why should it? It did not consult me about my birth.

"If a man borrows a lamp for the evening and is asked to return it at dawn, he does not weep in the doorway and tear his hair and call the owner a thief. He gives back the lamp. That is the whole of what I have done. It was a very large lamp, I held it a long time, I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I have returned it without a complaint.

"And what would grief be for? Grief is a wage paid to nobody. It brings back no province. It only spoils the day I still have, which is the one thing that is genuinely in my hands."

"But there is a part of this that concerns you," said Bali, "and since you asked so warmly, you shall have it.

"You are wearing my fortune, Indra. Not one like mine. Mine. That same Shri who sat at my shoulder and made my counsels look wise and my blunders look like strategy has crossed the floor and sits at yours. She was not born in your house. She has had a great many hosts and she has left every one of them, and she does not say goodbye and she does not leave a reason.

"Look at what you were doing this morning. Riding out through the worlds to see what is yours. I used to do that. I remember the exact feeling of it. The land goes by and it seems to be saying your name, and a man begins to think that it is a property of his nature that he is where he is, and that his position and his person are one thing. That is the hour in which a fortunate man is in danger, and he never knows it, because it feels like the safest hour he has ever had.

"The proof of it is sitting in front of you. You are addressing a doorway. It is a very fine doorway to address. Speak louder, Indra, and there are gods who will laugh, and they will be laughing in doorways of their own soon enough.

"Time will recall your heaven too. Not as a punishment. As an administration. Another will sit where you sit, and by then I shall have been forgotten and so will you, and he will ride out to look at what is his, and one morning somebody will come and find him in a byre.

"So wear it. Wear it fully, rule well while you have it, enjoy it without apology. Only wear it knowing whose it was, and where it goes."

Indra did not answer at once. He had come with a great deal to say and found that all of it had been spent in the first minute, and what remained in his mouth had gone flat.

He looked at the roof with grass growing out of it, and at the lean animals, and at the man in the doorway who had once given the sun its orders, and he could find in him no shame, no plea, no bargaining and, worst of all, no envy. There was nothing there to be victorious over. You cannot defeat a man who is not defending anything. There was nothing left to take from Bali, and Indra understood, with a coldness under the breastbone, that this had been true of him for a very long time, and that his own case was the exact reverse. He had everything. Everything can be taken.

He said something courteous. It is not recorded, and the silence about it is probably deliberate. Then he turned and rode back to heaven, and he went slowly, and he was a quieter god than the one who had come.

"That is the meeting," said Bhishma. "Mark how it ended. The vanquished disarmed the victor without ever raising his voice, and never once said a bitter word.

"Now, Yudhishthira. You have won an empire, and you should be clear about how you won it. You won it as Indra won his: out of the hands of the dead. Your throne came to you through the bodies of your kinsmen, and it is worth no less for that, but you may not pretend that it grew in your own garden.

"So hold it the way Bali lost his, without confusing fortune with self. That is why I have kept this story for you and not the tale of his fall. Any man can be brought down; that requires only an enemy. To be brought down and to remain entirely yourself, in a byre, with straw on your hands, takes a lifetime of never having believed the parasol.

"Reign, son of Kunti. Reign fully and without apology. And when they come at last for what you are holding, let them find you in the doorway, at some small ordinary work, glad to see whoever it is."