by Pratap Reddy
Snow flurries are sweeping down from the sky, making the night look darker. There are a handful of cars parked outside the temple. She notices with some surprise that the temple is now sporting an elongated dome, like a gigantic plump white radish. When she last visited the place, there was no dome; the temple was just a rectangular block with glass sliding doors like an office building, looking like no temple in India ever does. Yet, inside it had, and still has, an ambience, even if faint, of a holy place which makes its many devotees want to come back.
Ramya slips in through the automatic door that slides back making screechy, protesting sounds. She feels like a prodigal daughter returning; deep inside she’s not sure if she’s welcome. Religion has a way of making her feel uncomfortable. In a religious place, or in the presence of pious people, she is sometimes overcome with a feeling of inadequacy. She feels like an interloper. No, more of a pariah.
The walkways inside the temple are made of granite. In the foyer, she removes her boots and hangs her coat on a rack. In socked feet, she goes inside. The sanctum sanctorum is carpeted — something unimaginable in India, and so spotlessly clean — more like a 5-star hotel — that it almost robs the place of its sanctity.
On a large platform on the eastern side, a series of statues of Hindu gods are arranged, some standing, some seated on lotuses, some reclining on serpents. They look familiar, like old friends. She approaches them, her head bent, her palms pressed together, and recites the short mantras Amma had taught her. Her mother, steeped though she was in religion and rituals, and able to rattle out passages and passages from scriptures, never taught Ramya a single sacred line to communicate with God.
It’s arati time. The poojari lights tablets of camphor on a salver and traces circles in the air with it in front of the deities. All the devotees sing the sacred song Om jaya Jagadisha haré. For those who don’t know the lyrics, the words in Devanagari and Roman scripts are electronically projected on a dropdown screen operated by a remote. Worship has come a long way. Many of the miracles narrated in scriptures which wowed you can now be wrought by a schoolboy with a handheld device.
Ramya takes blessings from the priest, holy water and prasad, and makes her way to the bookshop. There she buys a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, fat as a dictionary and with an exuberantly colourful cover showing Krishna the charioteer raising a didactic finger at a contrite looking Arjuna kneeling on the ground. The book has verses in Sanskrit written in Devanagari, but it also has a transliteration in Roman script and a translation in English. Triple whammy!
Amma moved to Hyderabad when Ramya’s mother fell seriously ill. Amma sold Grandpa’s ancestral home, Grandpa having died years ago. The only recollection Ramya has of her grandfather is his sitting on the floor in front of a collection of pictures of Hindu gods, deep in prayer. The sunlight coming in from the window fell on his bald, oily pate which shone like silver.
Mummy’s sickness made her so weak that she could hardly take care of herself, let alone Ramya. As far back as Ramya could recollect, her mother had had a delicate constitution, and was always falling ill. In those days, they used a special word for people like Mummy; it was ‘valetudinarian’. Her daily communions with God must have completely enervated her, consuming what little energy she had. Even as her health was failing, Mummy tried steadfastly to observe all rituals and festivals.
Unlike her daughter, Amma was a strong, robust woman, who started putting the house in order from the very moment she stepped in. As Amma loved to put it, the house had going to rack and ruin. Mummy anyway was too preoccupied with religious duties to have any oversight of the house. Daddy was busy with his profession, and being a man, was not expected to deal with the domestic issues the way a lady of the house would. Was it any wonder that the servants had had a field day?
It was only after Amma came to stay with them that they began to have tasty wholesome meals. There were always extras like homemade pickles, poppadums, bhajjis and sweets. The house began to acquire a clean, nice smelling aspect. Amma made one of the servant girls adorn the front of the house with rangoli, the colourful geometric patterns, every morning.
Amma always used the spare room on the ground floor. It was cool and dark, smelling of the snuff powder she tooted and the Sloan’s liniment she rubbed on her aching limbs. The floor was sparkling clean and almost cold to the touch even in the height of summer. There was always a zero-watt bulb aglow even in the daytime. Amma kept the windows shuttered, the heavy curtains drawn to meet, so that there wasn’t a single interstice through which the sun, insects or dust could enter. Once a day in the morning she’d have the servants open the windows and part the curtains to air the room. If Ramya was there, she’d sit on the cot, and gaze fascinatedly at the dust motes jiving in the shaft of golden sunlight let in by the open window.
When Ramya was sixteen, Amma, who was getting on in years, showed a keen desire to go on a pilgrimage. She wanted to visit any one of the innumerable holy sites in the country. After all, until she’d moved to Hyderabad, her house was a stone’s throw from an ashram, which was as good as living cheek by jowl with divinity. So Daddy made arrangements for the two to go to Tirupati. When Ramya was a little girl she’d been taken to the place a couple of times by her parents, and on one occasion had her head tonsured.
Daddy bought Ramya and Amma first class train tickets, a luxury they didn’t enjoy as a rule. It was considered a safer alternative as two women were travelling by themselves. Tirupati is a sacred place in the southern part of Andhra Pradesh, one of the most visited holy places in India, if not in the world.
They got off at Tirupati railway station and then took a sky-blue bus to the temple town proper, ensconced on one of the summits of a series of hills. The bus took a narrow road which clung perilously to the sides of the hills and made many treacherous hairpin bends. Sometimes the bus slowed down to a crawl, unable to ascend a steep curve, and on more than one occasion it even rolled back a little, terrifying the passengers. But the bus would pause as if to gather its strength, and then, after groaning in agony as the driver forcibly changed gears, it would crawl up the incline. Even if the drive was a frightening experience, in that early morning air, they were privy to the exhilarating views of the forest-clad hills with mist rising like smoke from the valleys.
They checked into a guesthouse, one of the thousands dotting the hills. After having a quick bath, the two of them walked to the temple. Amma looked tired after the overnight journey, and found the walk exhausting. There were buses zipping up and down the streets which were free to ride on. But Ramya couldn’t make out where the bus-stops were, and she wasn’t sure if her grandmother could board the bus with ease, hauling herself up the narrow, steep steps. Outside the temple, there were thousands of devotees, many of them — both men and women — with shaved heads, standing in a serpentine queue which seemed miles long.
They joined the slow-moving line and were on their feet for five hours, without food or water, before they could enter the heart of the temple. In that seething mass of people, they didn’t get even twenty seconds to have a glimpse of the deity, who stood bespattered with jewels from head to toe, oblivious to the smoke from incense, oil lamps, and camphor. There was an enormous din — the continual ringing of bells and people chanting: “Govinda! Govinda!” The temple guards pushed and shoved the devotees, exhorting them to move on. There were tens of thousands of out-of-town pilgrims waiting outside, some having travelled hundreds, if not thousands of miles, to get a chance to pray before the idol.
Amma endured the calvary with uncomplaining devotion. Even as she was taking halting steps on their way back to their guest house, Amma said: “I’m so happy, we came. This may well be the last time for me.”
Once they reached the guesthouse, Amma lay down on her holdall which was unrolled over a wooden cot. She didn’t even have the strength to accompany Ramya to the restaurant for a bite. Ramya went out alone, in the dimly lit streets, looking for a canteen or a mess. She found a small place
at a crossroads not too far away that sold tea, coffee and south Indian fast food. She bought a few idlis and vadas, which the vendor packed in a parcel made from sheets of dry leaves stitched together. Amma ate only a few morsels, preferring to drink water from her brass goglet.
Their return journey was the most arduous one Ramya had ever experienced. Thinking back, she was always to wonder how they’d managed to complete it: the slow excruciating progress on foot to the bus station; the ride to the railway station in Tirupati with the bus continually making vertiginous turns; and the overnight train seeming to take an eternity to reach its destination, stopping at every wayside station.
Luckily for them, Daddy came to the station to receive them, and seeing him standing on the platform with his usual thin, watery smile, Ramya felt so much joy and relief that it brought tears to her eyes. In India, the hardest part of a journey often begins after arrival: One has to bargain with temperamental porters called coolies, and all over again with belligerent auto rickshaw drivers outside the station, before you finally reach your home. But when Ramya got into their own car, the familiar smell of seat leather, with an undertone of motor grease, made her feel she was already home.
The trip to Tirupati proved too much for Amma. She was nearly seventy-five and it undermined her health for good. She spent most her time confined to her bed and could only stumble about with the help of a cane. Gone were the days when she tramped about the house like an Amazonian general, barking commands to her foot soldiers.
Without question, the person who took most care of Ramya was Amma. Though she’d had a sharp tongue, she was loving in her own way. She’d watched over Ramya during her adolescent years — those trying times! At the onset of puberty, how helpful Amma was with her sage advice and comforting presence. Amma had ensured that Ramya grew up in clean, healthy, and safe surroundings, and got to enjoy the privileges that came with her father’s position in society. Sometimes Ramya wondered what would have happened to her if Amma hadn’t elected to leave her home to come and stay with them. Before Amma came, she was growing up like a waif, receiving random care and affection from the many servants in their household.
When Ramya was in Grade 10, on Children’s Day, which falls on November 14th, the birthday of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, her teacher gave the students an assignment to compose a poem about their mother or father.
The teacher was very young and new to the school — she had very little experience but boatloads of enthusiasm, and this alone made her a great teacher, though she herself may not have known it. Perhaps fearing some of her students were orphans, she quickly amended: “Or write about your pet animal.” Then, when she realised that only a handful of her pupils could afford to keep a pet animal, she added hastily: “Write about anything. Anything, as long as your poem doesn’t rhyme!”
Ramya pondered on her well-liked teacher’s parameters for great verse. She decided against writing about Barghest the pet dog she once had. As to Daddy, he simply didn’t make good copy. So she wrote a poem on her mother. Of course, she couldn’t write the actual fact. She composed the poem about a persona who was part Mummy, part Atom Auntie but mostly Amma.
The teacher had liked the poem so much that she had it printed in the school’s annual magazine called Excelsior. It was a good thing that Ramya no longer attended the old neighbourhood school. Had her old classmates read the poem, Ramya was sure, they would’ve only tittered, since they’d had a ringside view of Mummy’s excesses.
The poem, which unfortunately rhymed for the most part, read:
Mother
You nurtured me with love and care
All the birth pangs you did bear
When I cried for company
You were always there
In my joy or sorrow
You always had a share
Like a ministering angel beside my bed
With your soothing hands, so soft and fair
Quelling all the ills I had a dread
An aura of comfort and joy you spread
When growing up blues haunted
The elder frowned and peers taunted
You were the pillar on whom I leaned
Till from all fears I was weaned
I miss you, my dearest mother
I am a boat yawing in bad weather
A ship on the rough seas without a rudder
I wait for the day when we shall be together
Though Ramya had to exploit a creative vein in her writing skills to come up with the poem, the part about missing her mother — all her idiosyncrasies notwithstanding — was true.
7
Barghest
THERE’S A SILVER medallion that has a brown patina that Time, the merciless god who spares no thing and no one, has conferred on it. The word “Barghest” is inscribed on it in stylized letters. The medallion had come surmounting a leather dog-collar that their neighbour Saroja had gifted Barghest on his first birthday. Ramya kept the medallion, even as Barghest went out of her life for good, collar, leash and all, like an item of household junk an itinerant peddler carries. It was no merchant of used goods, but their faithful manservant Sailoo, who led away that more than willing canine.
In retrospect, Barghest was the first, perhaps, the only being other than her immediate family whom she’d loved. Never mind how fleeting that love was — evanescent as a wild flower in bloom or a shower of rain on a summer evening. But it had roused intense passion in her. It was a love that, unlike a storybook love, had a sad and tempestuous ending.
A few days before her 10th birthday, Ramya’s father asked her what she’d like for a gift. It was his annual routine — in the week preceding her birthday, Daddy would put that question to Ramya, prefixing it with an endearment like “Ramya darling …” or “Ramya sweetheart …” even though he’d already made up his mind on what to give her. Ramya, weighing the question seriously, would come up with a wish: a set of sketch pens, bewitchingly arrayed in a clear plastic case, or a magic slate on which all your doodling would disappear at the press of a button.
The item she wanted was invariably something she’d recently seen in the possession of one or the other of her classmates. In those days, when the country suffered from socialism (it may well have been a disease like eczema or tuberculosis), and populist slogans like Gharibi Hatao! Get Rid of Poverty! were energetically spouted by politicians, the shopkeepers’ shelves were stocked not with eye-catching merchandise, but with dismal locally-made run of the mill stuff. There was also a chronic shortage of all goods, and poverty was widespread. There was very little purchasing power in the hands of the people — so much for sloganeering.
Being a moneyed GP, Daddy would not only get Ramya whatever she had wished for (even if he had to request his out-of-town friends to procure it from the Burma Bazaar in Chennai, that haven for smuggled goods), but would also surprise her with the gift he had in mind — a rocking horse or a tricycle or a gold-plated watch.
But this year it was different: Ramya was waiting impatiently for the ‘birthday-present’ question to be popped, her mind fully made up. No sooner had her father begun, “Ramya, my precious, what would …” than she interrupted him with breathless excitement: “A puppy!”
Daddy smiled in his fatuous absent-minded way, and walking up to her, leaned forward and bussed her forehead. A touching display of paternal love no doubt but obviously not so satisfying for Ramya.
“Da-ddy!” Ramya said, sighing with exasperation. “I meant a small dog. A pet dog.”
“Really?” Daddy said, taken aback. In Hindi, the word pappi meant a kiss. “Are you sure you want to have a pet dog?”
“Yes, of course!” Ramya said, nodding her head vigorously — she’d received enough paternal expressions of affection to last a lifetime.
“So, my little girl wants a pooch and not a smooch!” he said with a nervous laugh.
He looked puzzled, unable to understand why his daughter would want such a peculiar thing for a birthday pre
sent. He may have been expecting her to ask for a bicycle, a pair of roller skates, or some such thing. Very few of their relatives or friends kept pets; some of the patients did, but you could count them on the fingers of one hand.
One of Daddy’s acquaintances kept a collection of birds — budgies, parrots, lovebirds — which transformed the man’s house into a smelly, fluttery aviary. Guests balked at coming to his house parties, not just because of the icky, unattractive ambience, but because being surrounded by live specimens of birds made the thought of eating meat unappetizing.
Then there was a patient who had a passion for snakes, and kept half a dozen of them hissing and twisting in glass and chicken-mesh enclosures. In this creepy atmosphere, when Ramya’s father was preparing to jab a needle into the patient’s buttock, he felt a grue crawl up his back. He half-expected a cobra to slither up his trousers and bite him on his butt to avenge his master.
Ramya’s father was always of the opinion that the rightful place for an animal was, if not the jungle, at least a farm or a zoo. Now, his little daughter was demanding he bring home a quadruped! Though it went against his belief, he was loath to displease Ramya. He also realized that the fault was partly his. A few months back, he’d taken Ramya to see the Hollywood film The Incredible Journey. Not being an animal lover, he’d found it a drag, but for Ramya’s sake, soldiered through it. He would’ve preferred to watch westerns with their fast-paced plots and racy music. In these spaghetti westerns, the animals, were they horses or coyotes, had a specific function —they were in no way objects of adoration. Anyway, he never went to the cinema much nowadays, but when he was a medico in Chennai he’d been a great fan of John Wayne.
