Chapter 1: A Nice Vegetarian Curry
I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species. We err in copying the lower animal world if we are superior to it.
Mahatma Gandhi (A.D. 1869-1948)
From atop a hill Mohandas Gandhi gazed across the flatlands, surveying the world that was home to his people. The bright sun above cast its soothing glow over the landscape, showing all the ripples in the fields as the hot summer wind blew through them. Here the wheat thrived in the fertile soil, and Gandhi knew this would be a bountiful cropland. Perfect for the land that was destined to be India.
South of the hill, he saw huge herds of Brahman cattle roaming the fields, truly magnificent beasts of nature. There they grazed, undisturbed, oblivious to the world around them. Such a peaceful yet industrious creature was worthy of Gandhi's highest regard. "We shall never interfere with the matters of these cattle," he declared. "From this day on, they shall be considered sacred, and it is our duty to ensure that no harm ever falls upon them."
The people obeyed this decree, although it is unclear whether they did so out of respect for the Mahatma, or if they simply could not withstand the stench of manure that polluted the air each time a new gust of wind blew in from the south. Following their leader, they set their sights on the grasslands to the north, but Gandhi had instructed a few of them to climb the summit to the east, in order to get a better view of the surrounding terrain. There the discovered a tribe that called themselves the Yayoi, who made sturdy pots from the stone they harvested on the mountain slopes. The Yayoi offered to teach this technique to the Indians, which the Mahatma greatly appreciated.
In the meantime, Gandhi had led his first settlers down the hill, away from the sacred herd, and it was here that they decided to build their first city, Delhi. A nearby tribe of the Hsung-Nu barbarians noticed their arrival and approached them with weapons drawn, but the Indians assured them that they had no hostile intentions. At this point the Hsung-Nu chief stepped forward and greeted Gandhi, who, after a long discussion, managed to persuade him that a vegetarian lifestyle was the way to go.
The chieftian, visibly impressed, ordered his men to lay down their arms and offered them to the Mahatma for inspection. Never before had the Indian people seen advanced weapons like the bows and arrows that these Hsung-Nu tribesmen used, and although they felt they had little need for it in the future, the gift of knowledge was still well-received.
And so it was around Delhi that the Indian people first discovered spices and the tantalizing flavor that they added to their food. Over the years a number of talented Indian chefs developed a fine vegetarian curry made from these spices, which soon became Gandhi's favorite. When a road was finally built into the jungle for easy transportation of the spices back to the city, it brought many a smile to the faces of Indian citizens who had grown tired of ordinary wheat bread.
With plenty of delicious food to spare, it did not take long for a group of people to gather enough to take with them on a journey to build a new city. The Mahatma had declared that the sacred cattle herd to the south must be left alone, so they went westward, escorted by a band of tough warriors ready to meet the next challenge. Presently they arrived at the shore of a great ocean. A school of fish had been spotted off the coast, but Gandhi had told them not to disturb the creatures of the sea either, so they pushed further to the southwest, deeper into the jungle, until at last they reached a point where they could go no more.
There they settled the city of Mumbai, well beyond the fish but also far away from the nearest arable land. The first residents had to gather scraps of food in the hills, or chew on kelp that washed upon the beaches, but inspired by Gandhi's vision for a glorious and peaceful India, they worked hard despite the harsh conditions.
But while Mumbai went through difficult times, the people of Delhi continued to prosper, and the capital soon became overpopulated again. It was not long before another group of settlers left for the east, where they found yet another ocean and built their settlement of Chennai on the coast. Because they also sighted fish swarming in the waters further to the south, they wound up with the same unlucky fate as the settlers of Mumbai.
Neither did the third group of settlers fare any better. In fact, on the way to their destination they were ambushed by an aggressive tribe of Ghuzz barbarians, from whom they barely escaped alive. Eventually they also reached the coast, where they founded the city of Kolkata, wedged in yet another unforgiving location.
And so for many years, very little happened in any of these settlements. Gandhi received reports of temples being constructed in them to honor the Hindu deities, but at the time he was much more concerned with the work of his sages and mystics. He wondered what they could possibly be up to while chiseling strange patterns into stone, but soon they had come up with an acceptable explanation. They called it Sanskrit, and it was the first writing system known to the Indians.
Over the years the use of Sanskrit would gradually decline, but the many different forms of writing that succeeded in its place all followed the same principles of representing ideas and sounds with symbols.
It was at this point that a sage named Vyasa stepped forward and offered to write a great historical text of the Indian people, and Gandhi gave him his support. Vyasa already had an idea of how to keep track of the years by this point, and he estimated that it would take him until the year 1000 BC to complete the epic work.
In the meantime, a group of restless warriors had left Delhi for the sheer sake of exploration and adventure, and they traveled to the southern lands that Gandhi had forbidden from settlement in order to preserve the cows. They had one goal in mind: to find a source of fresh water to bring back to the plains of Delhi so that a greater population could be supported. In the south, they discovered two lakes, but much to their dismay they found they could not use either of them for irrigation.
The first one was sighted southwest of Delhi, but it was surrounded by hills and mountains that made it impossible to bring the water back. Not yet ready to give up, they ventured further south, where they discovered a larger lake surrounded by plains. Unfortunately, they were confronted by a herd of elephants around whom they did not dare remain for long, lest they get trampled under their incredible weight. There would be no way any water could be brought back from this lake either.
Frustrated, they were ready to turn back, when they were attacked by a barbarian tribe that called themselves the Phrygians. Though the Phrygians did not manage to inflict a single casualty upon them, the warriors did find some loot in the Phrygian camp, and so they did not return to Delhi empty-handed.
Mahatma Gandhi, hearing of the elephants, decided to pay a personal visit to see those majestic creatures. The sheer size of them left him in awe and wonder, and he declared that these elephants, too, would be sacred animals never to be disturbed by mankind.
But while the exploration parties that were sent out did not discover any source of fresh water, they did find some better land for settlement, land which was not dominated by hills and jungles. In the northwest, a new source of spices was discovered, and it would be here in Hyderabad that Gandhi got a taste of yet another style of vegetarian curry.
At around the same time, another city had been founded by a hill of gold in the southeast. The location was too remote to be productive, but Gandhi requested the construction of another temple in Bangalore so that its borders could expand and connect with the rest of India.
And since the elephants were declared to be off-limits to any new settlement, there was room for only one more city in the southeast. The land around Mysore, although now quite as bad as the jungles of Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata, still offered few resources and little opportunity for growth. Nevertheless, it was another swath of land claimed by the Indians.
The year 1000 BC finally arrived, and just as expected the sage Vyasa finished his epic work on schedule. It was a poem of over 100,000 verses and told the tale of India from the very beginnings. "I present to you the
Mahabharata," he announced proudly. "May this become the literary text for all our young minds to learn from in years to come."
And indeed the
Mahabharata set a fine example for future works of literature, which Gandhi decided he would collect in a Great Library, where the Indians could gather all the knowledge of the world. But first... what else was there in this world, anyway?
... to be continued
