by Vikas Khanna
She pulled out the food packet Ma had packed her. Though comfortable on her lower berth, she barely closed her eyes all night, too anxious to sleep, mulling over everything that had happened so far, thinking of it over and over till everything dissolved into nothing, and nothing exploded back into everything.
The long sleepless night ended with her staring blankly out of the window at the passing landscape for signs of her eventual destination.
Morning came, and with that the first rays of light peeking above the horizon. She sat up and took in the fact that today was her birthday, it was Holi, and she was back in the town where it had all begun.
At last she finally saw the name that she had so far only imagined seeing at each of the previous four stations: It was only a sign, but to her it was akin to a tourist finally visiting the Taj Mahal after seeing pictures of it everywhere, in books, postcards, tourist brochures, movies, posters, advertisements—so familiar that though this was the first time one was actually seeing it, it felt as if one had been there many times before. Seeing the Varanasi sign caused a similar effect in her—the difference was the sign was exactly as she had left it, exactly as she had actually seen it twenty years ago to the day, and had seen it since in her dreams every night.
“Varanasi Junction” The town’s name appeared on an iron signboard in bold letters emblazoned across a background that shimmered as bright and yellow as the summer sun at its peak. It was written in English, Hindi, and Urdu. Varanasi, it was a Sanskrit name derived from the name of the rivers Varuna and Asi, between which the city was built, a naked city where the truth had nothing to hide beneath, no modesty cloth, no veil; a city where you felt so close to death that you were always aware of being alive. How ironic that the “City of the Dead” was the oldest living city in human civilization.
The train lurched through a cloud of its own smoke to a stop.
She had reached her destination.
She grabbed her belongings and made her way deftly through the chaotic throng of passengers filing out of the train’s narrow crowded corridors. When she finally set her feet on the platform it was as if the ground seemed to tug at her entire being with the familiarity of an old friend. Her eyes sought her shadow that stretched long and transparent, like a tangle of film, across Varanasi Station’s stout asymmetrical iron pillars that had been painted and re-painted an endless number of times and now stood rusting. How, she wondered, can anything seem so newly painted from a distance while a closer look reflected only the crumbling rust and decay of an epic struggle for survival?
The jagged zigzag of torn signs and posters that adorned the station’s walls seemed to have been artfully organized to fill the space. The walls were a fading yellow, coated with paint that was somewhere smooth and seamless and in other places peeling so markedly as to reveal the naked bricks behind that had been fired and stacked into a station wall more than a century ago. The sun hung at about the same position as her height, the same now as it was then.
Were the shadows encroaching again? Those dark sights, sounds, and scents of the memories I thought I had eclipsed more than twenty years ago?
She rummaged for her phone and called Ma. Her mother picked up even before the phone completed one ring. Ma always had a sixth sense about her, one she could never hope to evade, and really, why would she ever want to? She imagined her mother, still sitting at the windowsill, waiting for her with two cups of masala chai—like she had always waited, every evening since she had returned to Delhi after graduating from Law School in Mumbai. Her simple ritual with the cups of chai, she knew, was what made her mother feel as if she was always near, whether or not she was actually there to drink the tea or inhale its fragrant aroma.
“Beti? Are you safe?” Her mother answered the phone breathlessly.
“Ma, I’m on the platform at Varanasi. I’ve made it. Relax.”
“Oh! Bless you, my child, happy birthday my golden one, happy Holi, may god grant you a thousand years of life! Please take care of yourself. Beti, I can’t tell you how happy I am you’ve reached the end of your long journey. Rab Rakha tera. Jeeti Reh, Khush Reh, God will look after you, a long happy life to you, always.”
It wasn’t just the natural freshness of morning or the spring-bound energy of impending summer, it wasn’t the marigold-seller and his fragrant wares or the slight moisture that caressed the air, it wasn’t anything her mind could grasp or her hands could hold, it was just Varanasi that impelled her feet lightly forward on their own so that she was almost skipping.
She entered the city in a dream, ignoring the hawkers and the coolies, her free hand lightly grazing the hundreds of colored imprints of joyous, outstretched hands on the painted and repainted wall. Then she heard a soft distant chiming sound that grew louder and more reminiscent of a voice, and it caused her to stop. She had forgotten about this chiming sound for years, but clearly it had survived and now echoed along Varanasi’s narrow sun-less streets.
“Choti! Chotiiii, run!”
She whirled around! Her eyes searched every corner!
Though the city was filled to the brim with its own people and Holi visitors, plus their hundreds of thousands of pigmented hands of every shape and social standing, there was no one she recognized.
She saw a group of kids playing with the colors of Holi. She started walking again when one of them, dressed as Durga—the beatific, many-armed Hindu warrior-goddess whose mission it is to defend dharma against evil— approached to stand in front of her. The micro-goddess and she stared at each other, and then she smiled at her. The little girl smiled back and shyly put a smear of red color on her cheek.
Varanasi was the kind of place whose colorful, spiritual energy could be detected with one’s eyes closed, just from inhaling its air, and she was breathing in all of that air again. Varanasi’s chaos was the chaos called “life,” and the town’s beautiful chaotic life swirled eternally amid its winding streets and temples down to the very banks of the Ganga river.
The chaos of that day had particularly vibrant hues due to it being the start of Holi. Street carts and vendors appeared everywhere, loaded with piles and small packs of powder, the many-colored powders from indigo to vermilion to yellow to rani-pink, all to be joyously tossed around and smeared on faces all day and all-night long. Yellow-liketurmeric or red-like-chilli, they were all on display, ready to explode.
Varanasi had barely blinked her beautiful eyes awake, yet already more and more groups of buoyant children were coming out of every corner, playing with colors, tossing the powdered pigment high above their heads and at each other, creating haphazard rainbows and atmospheres. She imagined what the scene would be like if a typhoon were to suddenly appear—the entire town would be swept away, yes, but swept away in the most joyous colors!
A little further, what seemed to be the city’s entire population began to run past her, racing to reach the legendary corner wall at the turn to Bhoot Gali, Ghost Alley, and imprint it with their color-soaked hands. She paused to stand by her favorite wall, which had probably been painted many times after she had left this town. Blue like a peacock’s neck, yellow like marigold, red like a nightingale’s eyes, pink like the color of a Rajasthani woman’s saree on Teej celebration—handprints of every hue and dimension stamped atop, covering the wall.
Another group of children dressed as Hindu gods and goddesses passed by, some as Krishna, some as Parvati, some as Rama, and the last one as Shiva, his tiny body painted the blue that signifies immortality, who bolted to the wall of hands, then turned back to toss a handful of powder—a color-burst of dusky rose hit her cheek—as if seeking to highlight something on a blank page. Instinctively, she covered her handbag with her arms, tightened her grip on her jute shoulder bag, covering it with her saree, and picked up her pace.
She finally stopped at a street corner, where the ancient branches and roots of an old banyan tree had long prised apart the abandoned Hanuman temple in the corner of the crossroads, which, doubtless, must have onc
e had a glorious past. Though the temple was deserted, nature had embraced it in its arms, laying bare its ruins with the roots of a tree, as if to reveal a more gut-wrenchingly honest story about its genesis than its formerly solidly plastered and painted walls.
She spied a broken concrete bench across from the tree’s conquest, and crossed the road to sit there for a moment to admire the steady, yearning power of nature. For more good luck, she picked up a pebble and tucked it into her bag next to the Supreme Court orders. She never really understood the human desire to cherish pebbles, yet here she was indulging it. Did this strange desire, this natural whim, reach back to prehistoric times when our ancestors might have played with such small stones, or used them as tools, or collected them as souvenirs of the earth itself, perhaps out of some prescient instinct that the earth would someday disappear; or simply because they considered them inherently auspicious. The mystery of pebbles.
It had been twenty years since she had last walked these Varanasi streets on Holi. They appeared to her like Indradhanush or the bow of Indra the Sun God or a rainbow having descended to earth. Nothing seemed familiar, yet she didn’t need to ask anyone for directions because even with no real cognizance, she trusted her legs, in their determination, stride, speed, and confident turns, to take her where she needed to go.
She emerged out of the tiny tentacle of an alley, onto a small lane without any identity, any sign, or even a name, onto Bhoot Gali.
Two decrepit ancient structures alongside two jarringly modern ones, and she arrived at her destination.
Cars crowded the streets and sidewalks, sacred cows wandered around or stopped to stare and chew, Holi celebrants gathered in groups with their powders, and thin rickshaw-pullers struggled through the morning rush.
She had her own struggle to make as she lugged her bags through the sun-deprived streets toward the ashram of her memory, stopping at a low, ornate, but rusted metal gate, and looked across at the dilapidated courtyard it haplessly sought to protect.
In the corner of the courtyard, next to the now crumbling wall, towered a huge mango tree. The grass around its sturdy trunk, which struck her as more like that of a huge elephant’s than a tree’s, had turned brown in patches. Exactly thirty-three steps—she had once counted them— from the trunk of the mango tree stood the ashram, its once white facade now dull and yellowed. After retracing her steps of years’ ago with her eyes, she reached out and pushed open the gate. As it creaked open, she felt the dam of her mind restrain the flood of images that wanted to overrun it. A loud voice, the same chiming one as before, soared across her ears, “Choti! Run! Run and never look back!”
She stood rooted in exactly the same spot as she had then, at the same gate, but back when it would have been freshly painted at the slightest scuff or trace of dirt or rust.
The courtyard had been different then, with soothing beds of holy basil and tulsi populating its center, and without such a sprawling mango tree. Now, though the ashram had decayed, the plants remained, but barely. In her memory, the ashram, though it was no longer that way, would always be white, new, young, and welcoming as a heavenly garden.
Across the courtyard near the ashram, in the partial shadow of the mango tree, her colleagues Alka and Geeta, who had arrived the night before to ensure that the ashram was secure and that the local police had been informed of today’s celebrations, were deep in conversation. Before this day, neither the police nor the locals would have spared a thought for the old crumbling ashram. Like its inmates, it too had almost been invisible—colorless for decades.
The winds of change had finally enveloped this sacred space.
The news of Holi being played by color-deprived widows had spread and grabbed everyone’s attention. Sometimes a war between the new and the old wants to erupt in ancient cities, but many want to abort the revolution before it is born. Ancient cities have witnessed war, disaster, and conflict, yet sometimes change seems like their most threatening enemy. An unchanging, unquestioning society is the safest way to preserve the status quo. But who wanted safety for some and oppression for others? She certainly didn’t.
Her greatest fear was that all of Varanasi, maybe all of India, might resist, or burst into sudden conflict upon witnessing the change of ideals, ideas, laws, and customs to come. No matter; she had come too far not to be there to protect the new, while fending off the old. She had to be there to help greet the dawn of a new Holi, whose rays could be enjoyed by all.
She quietly entered through the gate and stood near the tulsi plant that was planted in an ornate but cracked iron pot set on a podium. Seeing the dry tulsi struggling to raise its branches past the rim of the broken pot, she thought how this plant—which had once been so cared for and loved, and by someone who was so dedicated to it— had no choice but to shrivel after time and circumstance had caused that love to disappear.
Without love, not even a tulsi plant can survive.
A throng of women in white sarees sat in the courtyard, their backs resting against the crumbling walls of the ashram, carrying the burden of their own worn, staring, somber faces; faces she was almost respectfully ashamed to look at. These plain women, enshrouded in unavoidable, unforgiving white, were India’s widows. White was their color of mourning, and these women were expected, as per Hindu custom, to remain for the rest of their lives in this perpetual state of mourning.
Why? She knew why, but she could never accept the answer.
Indian widows were considered inauspicious; having outlived their husbands they were nothing but a burden on their families; society had no use for them and so used religion as a means of marginalizing them. They were banished far away from their homes and told to live a life of complete abstinence, to eke out the rest of their existence, to emaciate themselves, to live on the bare minimum.
Since India’s ancient times, many still believed that color is what made women beautiful, more young and vibrant, and therefore, more desirable. No doubt some overly superstitious someone in our long history must have wanted the widows, in their perceived absence of desirability, to look destitute and isolated and plain, and the easiest way was to take all traces of color away from them.
As she reverentially circumambulated the tulsi, the widows who had gathered in the courtyard eyed her with some amount of suspicion. Most of them, courtesy of Alka and Geeta, likely knew that she was the attorney with “the file.”
After completing her circle (and making the silent wish that even this shriveling tulsi would one day return to its full lush and green glory), she took those self-same thirty-three steps she had in the past toward the mango tree. She had always loved the fresh scent of mango leaves, and this time it was mixed with a scent of roses that had wafted in from somewhere.
She traced the rose scent back to one side of the courtyard where several widows were tearing petals from a heap of roses and scattering them into a beautiful rich pink carpet. The sight was impressive, even more so, admittedly, against the backdrop of the widows’ oppressive white sarees. To see widows actually touching colorful rose petals almost brought tears to her eyes.
As if with a mind of their own, her feet lead her to the mango tree. She climbed up a low brick wall and leaned into its branches to smell a tiny unripe mango. She breathed in deeply.
It smelled like childhood itself.
As she inhaled the unripe mango’s scent, she swiveled her head to look for a particular far corner in the wall. There, as if it had been waiting for someone to find it before it decayed with time, clung a small strand of plastic peeking out from a crack in the bricks, a strand so small that only someone who knew it was there could have found it.
She lowered herself to the ground, and reached her arm elbow-deep into the gap in the bricks until her fingers felt a familiar crevice—their secret hiding place. She pulled out a plastic-wrapped, yellowing, dog-eared notebook that, literally, when she touched it, made her body shake. She was shaking so much, she had to glance back to make sure she wasn’t causing t
he widows to suspect her even more.
She pulled the long-hidden bundle out, pulled off the plastic wrap with trembling fingers, opened it to the first page, and traced the first line with her finger. It said, “Meri Choti, Mera Chand,” in Hindi.
The simple line almost exploded the floodgates she had erected around her heart. The word “meri” is a small one, but it’s a word with the potential to change the course of the universe. Meri means “mine”. The idea that she had belonged to someone suddenly broke her heart. Someone who had once told her when she was young, “Never give pet names to stray dogs, they won’t leave you, and will follow you till death.”
This profound feeling shook every last inch of professional resistance from her body and she slumped to the bottom of the wall sobbing like the little girl she once had been.
In her vision, she saw her face, through her tears she saw Ganga, then into her heart entered her namesake, the one whose name she had chosen as her own: Noor.
“Someone, get this young woman some water.”
“Daughter, are you okay?”
“What happened? What happened to her?”
Her suddenly overwhelmed behavior—and she was the lawyer come to help them—soon grabbed everyone’s attention, and threatened to cause the gathering of local women who were supporting the Holi celebrations for the widows, to surround her and embrace her personal turmoil and turn it into a public one, when it was their turmoil that mattered most. The women’s concerned voices fell around her like a protective cover.
Alka saw the open notebook she had dropped in her lap and lifted it to her face. “Who is this Choti?” she asked, after reading the line that had sent her crashing to the earth.
