Two hours later, the rain has abated. The tempo lurches forward on its single front wheel, grinding Damini’s bones. She’s squeezed into the cab beside the pointy-nosed driver, her bedroll taking up half her seat. She leans against it and rests her feet on her shoulder bag, like the woman on the pink poster.
She tries to smile that woman’s carefree smile, but anxiety will not allow it—possibly because she’s hanging on while the tempo careens down the half-disintegrated road.
She will have to face Chunilal as well as Leela and the whole village.
This is how she felt after her wedding, when she came to live in Gurkot. “When you leave home,” her mother said, “you believe everything is coming to an end. But really, it is only the beginning of your life’s battles.” Piara Singh was beside her, then.
And again now. Boyish, diamond-eyed—and now half her age. His favourite Kullu hat upon his head, the one with the rainbow band. The wiry body she came to love so dearly, covered with a pale blue muslin kurta and pyjama. His cheeks look smooth as if he’s had a shave at the barber. Those two black fringes above his lips—she can almost feel them whisking her cheeks.
I heard your name among all the others my parents proposed and said, She is the one. I said, She will be like lightning, travelling between earth and sky, plains and hills, fearing nothing. And I said lightning brings the blessing of rain. And then I met you and found you were such a fearful little thing! And remember I told you, you had nothing to fear?
Though he’s less substantial than air, his youthful energy and hope envelops her.
He was right, for his parents made her welcome, not only when she was fourteen, but for all six years she was married. In those days people said a woman from Rajasthan wouldn’t have the stamina to live in the hills, but they didn’t know Damini. At first she thought it impossible to love a place that wasn’t her own, just as she could not love her birth village. But since no one said she could not love her husband’s village, she did—to her own surprise.
She had returned to her birth village in Rajasthan only twice during her marriage. The last time was when she found her mother—she stops herself before the memory overcomes her.
Anyway, she was the luckiest of her sisters. Her mother-in-law would never refuse permission if Damini wanted to visit her parents; she said Damini’s father knew his duty, which meant he sent gifts with Damini on her return. But there was never enough money, or there was too much work to be done or no one to escort her since she didn’t have a brother who could come and get her. And in those days young women did not travel alone. The question of visiting her sisters in their new homes didn’t arise—her sisters couldn’t afford to send gifts for all Damini’s in-laws.
If Damini forgot important things like who was older than whom as she served family, her mother-in-law, Ramkali Bai, would forbid Damini to enter the kitchen even for a drop of water, as if she had suddenly become unclean or outcaste like a sweeper. But she never ever beat Damini. And once her new daughter-in-law was trained, Ramkali developed mysterious ailments that kept her from chopping vegetables, washing clothes, cleaning out the cowshed, milking the cows, and kneading dough for rotis. Ramkali became “house manager” and house managers do not hand-water timorous shoots or weed cauliflower beds.
Everything, everyone was full of shanti till you died, she tells Piara Singh’s spirit.
She doesn’t mention the three times she threatened to leave and take Leela and Suresh home to her own parents, when the jooa cards stuck to his fingers and the hopsy smell of hooch stank in his clothing. But he hears her now as he never did alive.
I gambled, I drank—of course. But when Nehru-ji said big landlords had to reduce their land holdings, did I wait an instant? No—I borrowed money from every relative and went to Sardar-saab and bought our land.
You did, you did. I tell Suresh this story often. But you didn’t borrow all the money—quite a bit of it came from my dowry. A little far uphill from Jalawaaz, it’s true, and not as fertile as your parents would have liked, but land.
Old Sardar-saab! He sold it, thinking it useless. And I cleared the jungle and built our house. With my own hands, and with the help of my brothers and my jooa-playing friends.
And when the house was built, and before we moved in, we held a special ceremony for Lord Golunath, so he’d always bring us justice. And then your mother became angry because we hadn’t honoured Anamika Devi.
She would say, Anamika wishes to speak: and her body would shake and tremble and a deeper voice would come.
Damini smiles inside. The last time the goddess spoke through Ramkali Bai she informed Ramkali’s astounded husband and remaining sons that widowed Damini would be going to the plains to work for Mem-saab. And that Ramkali would no longer be house manager, but would raise Leela and baby Suresh. This decision was, the goddess said via Ramkali, premade by the universe, stemming from their family’s ancestral loyalty to Sardar-saab’s. And if Ramkali Bai’s husband didn’t agree, Anamika Devi’s curses would ruin him.
Of course Damini’s father-in-law agreed—though he did say he would miss Damini’s cooking. That man’s decisions usually stemmed from his fears. Whereas his son, her dear Piara Singh sitting beside her in spirit form, could have been kind enough to have more fear, especially of heights.
Piara Singh’s grasping brothers didn’t dare object. Not then, or when they learned Ramkali Bai had reregistered Piara Singh’s house and land in Leela’s name. “If owning this land is not in Suresh’s stars,” Ramkali told Damini, who was visiting Gurkot with Mem-saab for the summer, “then neither is it in theirs.” Her gift was for Leela’s dowry, and Piara Singh’s brothers were too afraid of a dead mother’s curses to give Leela trouble.
Suresh both appreciated and resented his grandmother’s bequest—by putting the farm in Leela’s name, Ramkali Bai had gifted away her grandson’s patrimony, but relieved him of responsibility to provide a dowry for his sister. Suresh could have challenged the registration, but it would have taken years in court and more money than he’d ever seen in this life.
I didn’t live in your house long, Damini says to Piara Singh’s spirit. Your family was supposed to be my protection, my anchor. But only your mother understood that your brothers could kill me. When my life was in danger only she knew what needed to be done, what needed saying … All those years, she looked after our children in that house.
Return there, now. Live there now.
So many relatives’ feelings to consider, not just our children: what about Chunilal’s family—Leela’s in-laws. His parents, his brothers and their wives will say we took from a daughter.
Don’t be afraid.
Don’t go far from me.
I am with you.
The tempo arrives where the ghost-trail begins. Two bamboo poles prop up a dingy canvas that marks a one-chair cubbyhole of a barbershop, a phone stall, and a chai-stall nestled in a cleft in the mountain.
The tempo driver alights and a burly Tibetan man leaves his pipe to set the chai kettle on the clay stove. A messenger boy is dispatched to the porter’s hut. The tempo driver sits down at one of the tea-stained tables and orders a plate of potato pakoras. A saab on the radio says not to panic but plague has broken out again in India. Another saab says England beat South Africa by eight wickets, which seems unfair—Englishmen are always winning. A third is saying it’s possible India may not sign a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty when it comes up for renewal next year, citing national security concerns. Damini only listens in hope that film music will follow.
She surveys the single-use shampoo packets hanging from the ceiling. Her gaze moves to the Liril and Lifebuoy soaps, Vicco Turmeric vanishing cream, bottles of Fair & Lovely lotion, and trial packs of Rin stacked on the counter. Large jars on the counter keep rusks and vegetable patties safe from mosquitoes. She points at the Hajmola sweets and hands over a rupee. The four sweets will taste of the churan and betel mix her mother administered to quell hunger. The Tibetan man inquires where sh
e’s going and doesn’t seem to remember her—years ago, men remembered Damini if they saw her even once.
The Hajmola settles her stomach. She relieves herself behind a bush, climbs back into the tempo cab and waits some more.
The ponderous energy of the rain-soaked mountain towers above her. This knoll didn’t exist when she first came to Gurkot—an avalanche formed it after the state government used dynamite to make the road cut. The Tibetan man and his wife were children of road workers back then—they’ve certainly climbed higher than their refugee parents. The wife, she recalls, wore rainbow blouses with her full-length bakus and gave teenage Suresh an extra pakora on his way home from selling vegetables in Jalawaaz market. Suresh hated taking vegetables to market. It wasn’t warrior-like, he said. Not what a kshatriya should do.
When the tempo-man’s cousin-brother arrives, Damini alights. The porter greets her with “namaskar” instead of namaste, which tells her he too is a kshatriya, just poorer. He has a longer beard and whiter hair than the sage Vyasa. The wicker basket on his back is supported by a band around his forehead and pulls his bushy eyebrows into a look of constant surprise. The grey rinds of his feet are at least two centimetres thick; Damini’s trust surges.
He manages to stuff her bedroll into his basket and tie her shoulder bag on top. He squats beside the tempo and shares a beedi with his cousin-brother. Damini would like one, but she doesn’t want to buy a whole cone. When finished, he hoists his basket and sets off on the ghost-trail without a glance in her direction. Damini hastens to follow, hitching up her salwar as she picks her way between the puddled ruts and the rain-filled gutter. Radio chatter fades behind her.
When the ruts vanish, the porter finds cart tracks, then hoof marks to guide them down a bridle path to the river. In May and June this was a mountain stream that wound its way downhill to feed the silver-grey rush of the River Sutlej, but today it could smash a body to pieces against its boulders and rocks. One year its wood-slat footbridge washed away, and her husband and all the villagers came together to rebuild it.
Damini puts one rubber-sandalled foot gingerly before the other on the footbridge. The rope-railing is slick and rough in her palms. The bridge sways as she grips one side then the other. In the middle of the foamy roar, boulders and timber toss up spray.
The railing is Lord Hanuman’s tail. She’s walking across just as Lord Ram walked the monkey bridge from India to Sri Lanka to rescue abducted Sita Mata—she murmurs the Hanuman chalisa to give herself the bounce and surefootedness of the monkey-god.
Today Hanuman is listening—Damini crosses the bridge safely.
Beyond the riverbed, the porter enters the forest, with Damini following. At this pace, it will take only four hours instead of five to climb the scraggly track that traces the mountain slopes like a balcony grafted to a crumbling tower. But she can’t keep up.
“Slow down!” she yells. “What are you trying to do, kill an old woman?”
The porter settles into a more bearable rhythm.
Up and up goes the steep footpath where the dead survive. In this dwindling jungle, the spirits of those who died a violent death linger like poems in Pahari, the ancient language of mountain tribes. Sad spirits are sustained by fear-thoughts, and many simply tethered by love.
As she breathes and paces upward, she’s taking in the shape and cry of birds, the shadows of things seen and unseen, beings revealed and hidden, the burn in her thighs, the churn of her own digestion. The mountain seems to grow and grow as she climbs. Rock fragments skitter as she scrambles for footing.
The porter seems to make his way by unseen footholds. She can feel every stone and twig beneath the thin soles of her rubber sandals. She slithers and skids in muddy patches. The heavy scent of wet bark, rain-soaked earth and undergrowth fills the air.
Deep breath and a step up, deep breath and another step.
Piara Singh isn’t a sad ghost—at least she doesn’t think so. Once when he appeared, he said he had been reborn abroad in a place where people take birth but once. A place with no brahmins, no kshatriyas—he has fallen a little. She felt his happiness, along with her own sadness at his distance.
Muscles contract and release in her thighs and buttocks. Shadows expand and collide on the sun-dappled footpath. Every day her Leela uses this footpath to carry a headload or backload of firewood.
She can bear a lot, Damini thinks. She gets that from me.
Tiny purple and pink flowers sprinkle the underbrush like the laughter of the gods. Lantana is everywhere, since the British saab-log imported it, grown beyond control.
A precipice falls to a chasm beside her.
Don’t look down, don’t look back. Small steps, smaller steps.
Cinnamon sparrows chirp and shift through leaves as she passes. A tiger moth dances uphill. A white-eyed buzzard cocks its head at her, like the blind man in the train. For a long stretch, there’s only gloom beneath the shushing oaks. A goat bleats behind her on the muddy trail. Then another, a baby goat.
If she thinks how far the village is, she might stop. If she thinks of mountain cats or women who have died in childbirth and become churails, she might stop. She takes a swig from her bottle—the water retains the heat of the plains—and keeps going.
A griffin with a worm wriggling in his beak swoops clear of the mountain, glides into the valley below and floats free of time. Flesh and blood seem so fragile here—she had forgotten.
Trees darken and glow. Birdchat and twitter signals nightfall.
Damini keeps her gaze on the basket bobbing with the porter’s loping gait. She matches her footfall to the rhythm of his bare heels.
The mountains loom larger, as if bursting and birthing through ground. Through gaps between the trees, whole lower peaks come into view, half flesh-toned brown, half hirsute with pine. On the horizon, snowcaps are colouring with the last rays of the sun.
Damini is beginning to shiver with worry about walking the rest of the trail in the dark. Her gaze sweeps the looping trail, looking for a familiar red flag, a vermilion-smeared stone and a trident. The very trident with which Anamika Devi, guardian goddess of Gurkot village, called forth the water. Water that draws strength from the mountain soil, and tumbles and sprints as if inspired, all the way to the Meethi Darya. The flag and trident mark a cave—and now it opens like a nostril in the mountain.
The porter stops, leans his basket against the mountainside, and removes the band from his forehead. Damini follows him inside. He strikes a match, illuminating Anamika Devi in her niche, her shakti contained in the bulbous belly of a pot.
The clay pot is robust, despite its fragility. Straightforward, practical, modest, perfectly ordinary. It reveals no great thought, likely turned roughly on an irregular wheel. Sand sticks to the pot’s surface; its firing was careless. There’s no meekness in the goddess’s painted snow-leopard eyes and arching eyebrows. Only that smile at our follies in Kaliyug, this age of greed.
She who named each god when the gods had no name, who now names every being and thing, goes unnamed—she is Anamika Devi, the goddess without name. And though she is not outwardly beautiful, her foreknowledge is trusted. You can say anything to Anamika Devi and she doesn’t answer, but her eyes say she is as empty or full as you. Some say her husband was Lord Shiva, but then who named Lord Shiva? The writers of the vedas and shastras do not say. Childless, though she could have been a mother, she offers her power to women who wish to be mothers. She requires no elaborate rituals, no animal sacrifices—though people will sometimes slaughter a goat in her honour anyway. She does not require regularity, but most people say Thursdays are most effective for propitiation.
Damini folds her hands and bows before the graceful black eyes, nose-jewel and slightly upturned lips painted on the terracotta surface. She places a rupee before Anamika and her match illuminates cave paintings from pre-Vedic times. She lights a cone of camphor and one of the clay diyas before the goddess.
“All she needs is a little respec
t, then she showers her blessings,” she says to the porter.
The first time she worshipped Anamika Devi in this cave, the rupee was but a chauvani and the cone of camphor was lit by Ramkali Bai in celebration of her son’s wedding. Daughters-in-law are gold, Ramkali Bai said. Her dowry had been sufficient for the expectations of hill people, provided her labour made up the difference. And sufficient to marry off Piara Singh’s three sisters—Damini has a silver toe ring, a silver nose ring and a pair of gold-wash earrings commemorating the weddings. And her father-in-law could then divide his property between Piara Singh and his elder brothers.
Quickly, before the day dies and night cold sets in, Damini directs the porter to clear a space for sleep. “Don’t get me stung by a viper, or a scorpion,” she tells him. “And make sure there’s no goat dung.”
She returns to the footpath to wait till the porter has laid out the bedrolls.
The sky turns sapphire and burns the far razor-sharp ridges. Very soon, the hazy glow of a new moon catches between branches. Damini turns back into the shadows leaping in the womb of the cave.
The porter has spread his jute bags and is fast asleep.
Damini lies down on her side, knees drawn up, so her rupee-wad crushes into her waist.
Why did I waste that rupee? What is Anamika Devi anyway but a terracotta pot?
Sleep comes, troubled by a half-waking dream.
A naked young woman with flowing river-black curls drifts across her inner eye. Her perfect body sits in lotus position, eyes half-open, in blissful trance. A tree rooted in her yoni rises to merge with her torso. Where does the woman end and the tree begin? Her veins and arteries fork and net beneath her skin, her breasts, and within her arms and these are also branches, branches of the tree. The life-tree’s face is serene as a goddess. Her hair is a halo of coiled springs and for the tree becomes a canopy.
Swaddled newborns surround her, swimming in the air like fish in a sea. This is the goddess whom Damini called just a terracotta pot. Anamika Devi, the source of all being, origin of the world. Damini tries, but cannot call to her familiar spirits for protection.
The Selector of Souls Page 18
