Diamonds Are Forever

Short Fiction ~ Aneeta Sundararaj

‘The desire to provide a legacy that outlives us can be an excellent way to accomplish more in life. When we face a haunting reminder of our death, focusing on what we would like to leave behind could help us turn something terrifying into a positive motivational experience. Artists are the perfect example of this. Through their creative legacies, they live on and are never totally gone. Such legacies also help those who remain cope with their loss.’
Professor (Adj.) Dato’ Dr. Andrew Mohanraj
 
 
All of Alor Setar’s high society was abuzz with the news.
It wasn’t that we’d have to turn up at Stadium Dato’ Syed Omar on short notice. It was not that a celebrated dancer, who returned home after an illustrious career in Australia, had chosen our tiny town in which to give his first live performance. It wasn’t even the anticipation of wondering if this Malay-Muslim would publicly carry out the Hindu ritual of paying homage to both his guru and the Gods before dancing. It certainly wasn’t about a dance form that none of us had heard of. Mercifully, in a feature article published in the papers the day before he arrived, the dancer explained that Odissi was a sensuous and lyrical dance form which originated in Eastern India.
The talk of town was quite simply that Rosli Idris was coming to dance for us at the invitation of the Sultan.
I repeat.
At the invitation of the Sultan.
Imagine that!
This had never happened before or, for that matter, after Rosli’s ‘one-night-only’ performance.
Seated between my parents, three rows behind the Sultan, I instinctively recited the Guru mantra when Rosli, to the left of the stage, waved the aarti in front of a brass sculpture of Ganpati whom we believed removed all obstacles.
“See, Daddy,” I whispered every so often throughout that performance. “That’s Kuruma,” or “that’s Vamana.” I showed off my ability to interpret Rosli’s depiction of the ten incarnations of Vishnu, one of the principal trinities of the Hindu Gods. Vishnu descended into our world to restore peace and righteousness whenever humanity was threatened by chaos or evil.
Doubtless, Rosli’s production that night called Dasavatar was an unforgettable event for the inhabitants of the town a mere hour or so south of the border with Thailand. After this magical evening on the second Sunday of August 1980, as the world hurtled into the new millennium, Stadium Dato’ Syed Omar was torn down, the Sultan’s long and prosperous reign came to an end, and Rosli became a world-renowned dancer showered with accolades, awards, titles and much respect.
 
“But, Darling, that was more than forty years ago!”
Such was Rosli’s response, with one elbow resting on the shoulder of his principal male dancer, when I reminded me of his visit to Alor Setar.
“Ah well…” He walked towards the dining table of his house in suburban Petaling Jaya.
Ah well, indeed. Keeping in mind Rosli’s multipronged oeuvre, the events of the past ten days were nothing short of unbelievable.
“See what they did.” He stretched his left leg from under him once seated.
I tilted my head. An electronic tag encircled his ankle.
“One step out of this house and, within seconds, sirens will be blaring.” Rosli reached for the jug of fresh lemonade and poured me a glass.
A week after Valentine’s Day in 2023, Malaysians woke up to the following headlines: ‘Iconic dancer arrested for alleged theft of a black diamond.’ The report stated that Rosli and his dance troupe had agreed to an impromptu performance at a high-end luxury store. They were accompanied by a local artiste singing her heart out to Dame Shirley Bassey’s ‘Diamonds Are Forever’. The diamond stolen was worth USD37 million.
“Why are you giggling? What is so funny?”
“Rosli, you’re an Odissi dancer.”
“So?”
“’Diamonds Are Forever?’ How did you dance to this?”
“I can do other dance forms, you know.”
He had a point. The youngest of five children, afer completing his studies at the elite Malay College of Kuala Kangsar, he’d pursued an engineering degree in Australia, after which he joined a ballet company. He’d aslo dabbled in contemporary dances before immersing himself in various Indian dance forms.
“But why? What was special about this black diamond?”
Sighing, he leaned back: “I’ve been reading Jung lately. We are all going to die, you know.”
“Why, lah, so morbid?”
“No. No. No. I’m just thinking about my childhood. What is my legacy?”
“Hmmm…” I didn’t know how else to respond. After four decades, Rosli had become synonymous with dance globally. It seemed inconceivable that a time would come when there was going to be no Rosli. 
“What am I leaving behind? Has it all been for nothing? Is there zero purpose to all I’ve done?”
I recognised this lamentation of an artiste. Yes, our creative endeavours fed our souls. But at the heart of it was the desire that the life we breathed into our creations would live long after we gave up our mortal coils. That we had, in some small way, touched another human being. That they, connected to us by blood or spirit, would hopefully find solace and comfort from our works if and when the need arose.
“But why do this, Rosli? The charge is stealing. I know you didn’t do it. So, why?”
It’s the way he looked at me. He neither smiled nor scowled. There was the faintest dilation of his pupils. He lifted his chin, challenged. “What’s the proof?”
“Errr…”
“That’s what I mean. There is nothing to tie me to this. This is just another way for the authorities to stop me from dancing.”
“Huh?”
“Geeta, I am Malay. Right now, there are so many issues here. All those religious people, instead of serving the rakyat, they are forever being vigilantes and taking the holier than thou attitude to extremes.”
“But you’ve been doing this for years. Why should they bother you now?”
“Aiya. Now, we have a new lot. I’ve already been told I cannot teach Indian dance because it involves rituals. I expect to be arrested if I enter a temple or conduct the prayers with my students during Vijayadashami.”
He had a point.
“People think dance is just dance. It’s not for me, you know. It’s a passion. Actually, no. It’s more than that. It’s a calling.”
“I agree. You’re so talented, Rosli.”
“That talent, Geeta, is a gift. It is a golden opportunity to fulfil one’s reason for being. I love to quote Martha Graham who said, ‘I did not choose to dance. Dance chose me.’ That’s it. Odissi chose me. Ballet chose me. I didn’t choose them.”
During the ensuing silence, I wondered how I’d get him to reveal the location of the diamond or, at the very least, how he’d taken it from right under the noses of the authorities.
“Hypothetically speaking, Rosli…”
“Y-e-s?”
“Hypothetically speaking, how would you have done it?”
“Did you watch any of the videos posted online?”
“Well, sort of. I don’t trust what I see.”
“Pity.”
“Huh?”
“Geeta, you’re like so many of the children of the modern world. Your body is now weak and you’re poorly coordinated.”
“Fine.”
“No. I’m not trying to insult you. Tell me, what did you do for fun when you were a child?”
“Play, I suppose.”
“Play what?”
“Masak-masak.”
“Masak-masak.” He hit his forehead with his palm. “For God’s sake! Did you run? Skip? Dance like there was no tomorrow?”
“No. I was in Alor Setar. We didn’t have dancing schools like in KL. And, if I wanted to learn dance, I’d have to go to the temple. That wasn’t what girls from good families did. We played piano. Other girls travelled to Penang to learn ballet.” I waved my hand. “Bharatanatyam was out of the question.” I shuddered. “And, all those priests? Huh! They would be staring at us.” Dropping my voice a few decibels, I added, “Some didn’t stop at staring, I tell you.”
“Hmmm… Okay. You’re forgiven. But look at the ones in the city today. They are clumsy, sit like buffaloes and look at their tablets all day. They can barely walk up the stairs without panting. They don’t know what grass feels like under their feet.”
“They live in condos, Rosli.”
“Exactly! It’s a real pity because Nature is the greatest teacher.”
“Okay, but that doesn’t explain how…this…happened.”
“Well…actually, Geeta, do you know any Greek mythology?”
“Some. I mean, I know the major ones, like the Apollonian and Dionysian principles. Apollo and Dionysius were the sons of Zeus, no? Apollo represents order, predictability and stability.
“Ah! So, you know something.”
“I studied it in school. Very basic. It’s the idea of stability, no?”
He nodded. “Sort of. With Apollonian, everything has to be symmetrical. With Dionysian, it’s the opposite. Nothing is symetrical. Dionysius is all about chaos, instability and surprise. All my life, I’ve tried to create a balance between the two. That’s what we did here. I created a balance.”
I frowned. “How?”
 “I’m not going to tell you.” He had a twinkle in his eyes. “I’ll show you.”
I stared at him, trying to decipher his meaning.
“You brought your phone, yes? Put on the music and let me dance. Find something better than Shirley Bassey. Something Indian. I’ll go change.” 
In fifteen minutes, Rosli, dressed in a floaty white cotton kurta, walked onto his ‘stage’ in the lush garden of what was, rumour had it, going to become the archival centre of Indian dance in Malaysia. He winced when he stepped onto the sun-soaked slab of cement measuring some fifteen feet in diameter.
“There,” Rosli said, pointing to the middle of it, “I put a piece of granite I brought back from the Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal. I was there on 9 September 1999.”
“Ah-so.”
“Music.”
As he began to dance to the tune of ‘Lalitha Lavanga’ by Sikkil Gurucharan and Anil Srinivasan, there was a sudden breeze. The palm fronds, leaves of the bouganvillea and surrounding bushes all rustled, as though Mother Nature appreciated this impromptu performance.
“The first avatar, as you know, is Matsya.”
Avatar? I took three deep breaths. Decades of yearning to see this particular performance and, now, in these strangest of circumstances, I would bear witness to it. I held my breath, afraid that the tiniest movement may make Rosli change his mind.
He moved his limbs to form a fish swimming in the waters. Similar to the myths of many a culture, Matsya forewarned the coming of a flood and ordered Man to preserve all the grains and living creatures in a boat while he retrieved the Vedas from the clutches of the demons.
“I,” Rosli said, “wanted to preserve the goods from being taken by all the baddies.”
“Hmmm…” It was a rescue mission for the black diamond, rather than the theft of it. That was how Rosli planned to plead, apparently.
“No man is an island like Mount Mandara.” Rosli opened his palm and stuck out his tongue. He was metaphorically tasting the mythical nectar of immortality, amrit. In this, the second incarnation, Vishnu was Kurma, a tortoise. Acting as a pivot, the reptile stabilised the mountain for the task at hand. 
“But I almost broke my back lah, Geeta.”
“Why?”
“With so many people and things in the crowd, lah.” In a classic step familiar to thieves, Rosli moved his limbs, mimicking the act of avoiding an invisible high-end handbag here, a string of Mikimoto pearls there, one fat Datin swinging her Louis Vuitton bag here, and the emcee there. “Like Vasuki, the snake used to churn the ocean, I moved around so much so that nobody would think that I stuck to near where the diamond was.”
Taking a moment, he stood still. “That Nagen dancing with me for incarnation number three was a huge mistake. It should have been Padmini. But she’s busy with her parents right now.” Rosli then struck a pose to depict Varaha, the boar who raised Mother Earth from the bottom of the sea after the demon Hiranyaksha dragged Her to the bottom of it. “He was supposed to show that Bhoomidevi sat on the tip of Varaha’s tusk, like a spot on the moon.” Shaking his head, he added, “Instead, he was like a bull in a China shop. We missed our steps, almost knocking that whole pedestal with the diamond on it.”
I laughed, unable to help myself. 
“Don’t laugh, Geeta,” Rosli scolded from the stage. “It was bad, okay? I had to do quick damage control.”
“Okay. Okay. Okay.” I pushed a lock of hair behind my right ear. “What next?”
“Narasimha.”
For a moment, I wondered how this half-man-half-beast incarnation of Vishnu could possibly aid in Rosli’s quest. When he bent his fingers to depict talons, I got it. This was a crime that would be committed neither by using tools nor exposed human fingers. Rosli had worn gloves. The precious stone wouldn’t be snatched under the cover of darkness or when the entire store was bathed in bright light. Its removal would take place when the lights were dimmed and the focus was solely on the sinewy girls modelling various pieces of jewellery in the middle of the store.
“That almost worked, but, again…” He shook his head. “Arrogance got the better of me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I miscalculated the number of steps to another dancer, Yogini. She is Nagen’s younger sister. I was supposed to take only seven steps. But I needed ten to reach her.”
Ah! This meant the diamond was already in Rosli’s possession.
“If only I could have been like that Vamana.” The fifth avatar, this clever dwarf begged a king for all the land that he could cover in three large steps. The king granted his wish. Vamana then morphed into a giant who was able to cover earth, heaven and all the space in between.
“Hmmm… If the steps were not enough, then how did you do it?”
Patting the side of his nose with his forefinger, Rosli said, “It’s all in the timing, Darling.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Remember how Parashurama wielded his axe to get rid of all those corrupt kshatriyas? Well, I also began to twirl. The more I moved around, like I was wielding an axe, the more people had to make space for me. And that got me farther away from the…err…scene of the crime.”
“Okay. But this one thing I remember from all the videos online. You were not just moving around, Rosli. You stopped in front of so many people as though you were putting something in their hands.”
“Yes. That’s what Rama did, isn’t it? After he killed Ravana, he distributed the demon’s ten heads to the presiding deities of the ten directions.”
“Huh?”
“I was making sure that as many people were distracted as possible for what I was about to do next.”
“Okay.”
“Like Arjuna in the Mahabharat, I let my ‘Krishna’, the eighth avatar, lead the way in the chariot.”
I frowned. Feeling like a real dumb-dumb, I asked, once again, “What does that even mean?”
“Well, a charioteer guides the horses, no?”
“Yes.”
“He guides them off the battle field, no? Taking with him all that’s in the chariot?”
“Ah-so.” Even if Rosli had been caught and searched at this stage, the diamond was already in the hands of dancers who’d left the stage altogether. “Why did you continue dancing? All over, what?”
“I needed to change direction. Like with Balarama. The ninth avatar, is said to have used his plough to change the course of the river Yamuna and save mankind.”
“I thought the ninth avatar was Buddha.”
“Aiya! It can be. But for my dance it’s Balarama, okay?”
“Okay. So, how?”
“Remember how Krishna danced off the stage? Well, I danced in the other direction and made sure that while my dancers left the store, all attention was on me. Then, I danced Kalki. I made the audience feel the rasa.”
Hearing Rosli’s words, in my mind’s eye, I went back in time to when I was all of eight years old. My eyes were glued to the person on the stage at Stadium Dato’ Syed Omar. All our surroundings – the sound of the music, the Sultan, my parents, the very air we breathed – became secondary to the dancer twirling, head raised to the skies. Round and round he danced with an unstoppable energy from within. Arms akimbo, he welcomed the energies flowing from on high. In the language of dance, Rosli was in communion with the Divine.
I exhaled.
 
Rosli did not bother to change out of his sweat-soaked kurta. Instead, he returned to the dining table and reached for the second jug of fershly made lemonade. 
“I don’t understand, Rosli.”
“What don’t you understand now?”
“In that store, you danced to Shirley Bassey. Here, Indian dance. This doesn’t gel.”
“A good dancer can dance to any tune. It can be dacning to tunes from Old Malaya to tranditional dancing. Like you. A writer.”
“Huh?”
“Good writers can write books, for the papers, journal articles no? Same here.”
“Ah.”
For a while, neither of us said anything. Then, I couldn’t help myself. “Where is it now, Rosli?”
There was that smile again.
He shifted in his seat. “In dance, Geeta, we may learn what a shloka means. You know exactly the meaning of all the lyrics in Dasavatar. Nothing is more wonderful, however, than when these lyrics are imagined. So, imagine. Look around you.”
I did for close to a minute until I realised that Rosli’s gaze was fixed in the direction of the cement platform with a series of concentric cicles carved into it. 
Oooo…
What was that?
Hadn’t he said that he’d placed what he’d brought back from the Himalayas? Still, unprocessed rough granite didn’t posses the power of reflectivity. As the light of the setting sun hit the very centre of Rosli’s stage, light was not merely reflecting off the surface, but coming from within. It was quite simply sparkling.
Turning to the dancer, whose years on earth were close to threescore and ten, I shivered.
“R-o-s-l-i?”
We stared at each other for some moments. I knew the question in his eyes: ‘What are you going to do now that you know the truth?’
I didn’t dare say a word. And I knew I never would in this lifetime.
“I try not to be too specific about the future, Geeta.” Rubbing his chin, my idol for life added, “Destiny will look after itself. If the endurability of your spirit deserves it – whatever the tapestry of your mind conceives it to be – it’ll happen.”
 
***
 
References
Mohanraj, A. October 2, 2022. Thinking about dying can spur you to live a better life. The Star. Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/health/matters-of-the-mind/2022/10/04/thinking-about-dying-can-spur-you-to-live-a-better-life

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Aneeta Sundararaj is an award-winning short story writer whose work has been featured in a national newspaper, various journals, magazines, ezines and anthologies. Aneeta’s bestselling novel, ‘The Age of Smiling Secrets’ was shortlisted for the Book Award 2020 in Malaysia and her latest short story collection is ‘Tapestry of the Mind’ (Penguin Random House SEA, 2024). Throughout, Aneeta continued to pursue her academic interests and, in 2021, successfully completed a doctoral thesis entitled ‘Management of Prosperity Among Artistes in Malaysia’. She manages a website called ‘How to Tell a Great Story’ and occasionally tweets at @httags.

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