by Sara Banerji
The servants had all crept into the little bit of protected bungalow where Babuchi lay, because that was the only spot where the rain did not come in. Babuchi had tried to force them to go away, telling them that as a corpse he had a right to peace, but they did not want to move away and get wet, and were too afraid to go back to their homes because they had heard wild elephants on the road.
Then Babuchi told them, probably as much to get rid of them as for any other reason, “Before the bungalow fell I saw a ghost in the sky!” He thought that such a pronouncement would send them rushing away in fright.
The servants, however, gathered tightly round Babuchi, gasping, saying, “Oh! Babuchi has seen a ghost! What a thing to happen!” and they did namaskar to the kitchen Ganapati for protection. Those of them who knew Babuchi well were not much impressed, for the cook was a renowned ghost seer. But they thought that by keeping him talking they would be allowed to remain in the dry safety of the kitchen corner.
“What was it like, Babuchi-ji?” they inquired respectfully.
Babuchi, inspired by all the interest his announcement had caused, told the gathered group imaginatively, “It had the face of a wild tiger and was flying like a goose! I was peeing at the back when it passed. It shouted to me that all those inside this bungalow were to be destroyed. If I had listened to this ghost I suppose the bungalow would not have been crushed in by a tree at this moment!” All the admiration was making him feel better.
“Oh!” cried the servants. “What a brave man to keep standing there and listening to such a horror!”
The little tribal boy was already feeling his blood run cold. Then Babuchi, a bit carried away, added, “The creature said it will come back soon and kill everybody who survived the first attack!” He was, perhaps, a bit delirious with his fever. The little boy, however, was not to know this. He decided to dash. Even the elephant-infested roads were preferable to the ghost with the face of a tiger and the flight of a goose coming back to kill him.
It took him three petrifying hours to reach his village in the jungle. But he did not regret the journey at all. Nothing that he encountered on the road was half as frightening as Babuchi’s ghost.
As soon as he reached his village he knew that something had happened. The houses of his village were all made of woven branches, stood on stilts, and were reached by vine ladders. Usually at this time of the day, for it was morning by the time the child arrived, the people would be down on the ground, making fires to cook the meal, or getting prepared for a pig hunt. But today a great silence had fallen on the village, and though he could see faces looking from the doorways, no one was down on the ground at all and no fires were lit. As he stood staring with exhausted bewilderment, wondering what had happened in his village, the silent hunting dogs came and sniffed his hands, and recognising him, lay down again.
Then someone whispered from the nearest house, “Come up inside. There is a ghost in this village,” and the little boy, in spite of his tiredness, was up the swinging ladder, and huddled with his brothers in a moment.
Jaswant Narayan Singh had woken the morning after Julia’s birthday party, and had been astonished to find himself sleeping in the still stuck car. Feelings of self pity pushed the astonishment to the side as he realised that he must have been forgotten by all the party guests, including his usually doting mother.
Actually at the moment of his waking his mother had been regaining consciousness in the Arnaivarlai hospital, having been hit on the head by a falling tallboy the night before.
Her first words as she opened her eyes were, “Where is my boy? It can’t be that he is still out there in the car with no one to rescue him?” Due perhaps to the knock on the head she seemed to have forgotten the several attempts at rescue made by other party guests. But after the cave-in of the bungalow the guests were all much too concerned with their own problems to worry about Jaswant any more. He had been driven entirely from their minds by the falling house. The two old bachelors had crept around over muddy rafters for quite a long time hunting for their drinks.
“Sure I left it on the piano.”
“Piano seems to have gone.”
“Can’t have! Saw it with my own eyes! You must be drunk!”
Muriel, who had only just discovered she was having a baby, had cried loudly, not because she was hurt, but because there was no Mothercare shop in Arnaivarlai.
Harry had come limping out of the debris on Doris’s arm to be snatched up by a couple of hospital stretcher bearers. He was on his back and being carried away before he managed to explain that his feet were normally sore, and that his limp had nothing to do with the collapse at all.
Amanda and Bertie were discovered in a passionate embrace under a fallen sheet of corrugated iron. Something to do with the cool rain had awoken desire in her. She was just telling Bertie, “You are getting nearly as good as a woman,” and he was just reacting with blushing pride, when the rescuers came upon them shouting, “Are any bones broken?” Bertie, who often asked himself this question after a lovemaking session with Amanda, said, “No, survived again!” before he had understood what they were taking about.
Eventually all the guests were either taken to their homes, or to the hospital to be treated by Kuts Chatterjee, no one giving the least thought to Jaswant Singh.
Jaswant, feeling frightfully hurt in his heart and stiff in his legs, decided to hobble home. As he climbed up the hill he chanced to look back down the side of the valley and was astonished to see that half the Senior Manager’s bungalow had been flattened by an enormous tree.
With great courage, and displaying all necessary filial concern he rushed down the hillside, and began to rootle among the now deserted debris, shouting, “Ma! Oh, Ma!”
When the Rani heard of this episode on her return to her son’s bungalow a couple of days later she felt very gratified, and thought to herself that perhaps there are some rewards for the sufferings a mother has to endure after all.
The Rani stayed on with her son a few extra days, to get her strength back after her accident, and during this period was alarmed to notice that her son seemed not to go to work at all.
“It’s all right, Ma,” Jaswant? assured her. “They are all over the hills searching for Julia Clockhouse. They are not doing any work on the tea at all.”
“Then should you not be out there searching too?” said the mother, snappy with anxiety. “Surely they do not pay you wages just to sit here in the bungalow all day. And what has happened to this Julia Clockhouse anyway?”
On the third day the Rani decided to leave. Although still slightly weak she had an important family wedding to attend in Manopur.
“You would be going if it was not for this job,” said the Rani, as she folded her saris and her slippers and her gold jewels into the suitcase. “It is the wedding of your uncle’s wife’s sister. It will be a big one!”
“I should definitely be there!” cried Jaswant, leaping out of bed hopefully. “Here, pack my things in too!”
“No, you stay here and pursue your career,” she said sternly, knowing that sometimes in this life one must be cruel to be kind.
After his mother had gone Jaswant began to feel very low. Then he began to wonder at what his mother had said. Where had Julia Clockhouse gone? He suddenly had before his eyes the picture of her standing before him on the night of her party. There had been something almost completely inward about her. When he first got the idea of becoming a sanyasi he read up all about them, so that he would be fully aware of what he was in for. Each time a person gets born, his book had stated, the person’s consciousness expands, so that the person becomes more and more aware. A person with a very expanded consciousness is as much superior to an ordinary person, as an ordinary person is to a goose, said the book. A very aware person, Jaswant’s book said, can see things invisible to those with narrower consciousness, can hear things inaudible, can do things impossible. All the people here talked about the impossible things that Julia Clockhouse was sup
posed to have done. Perhaps she really did these things, because her consciousness was expanded.
He sat up in bed and thought about this for quite a long time. He remembered being told that she had been dropped on the head as a baby. That had probably hurried up the expanding process, which was why she seemed to be a bit out of step with herself. Jaswant thought that perhaps if she had not been dropped she would not have expanded quite so much until her next birth and then she would have been able to cope with it better. He began to feel as though he was putting a difficult jigsaw together. Julia Clockhouse was a person with an expanded consciousness who did not know it. She had got muddled because of things people had told her, and this had made her angry, or afraid, or sad or something. Perhaps, thought Jaswant, when an expanded person feels negative their powers become used for bad instead of good. He stood at his bedroom window and looked down thoughtfully on the fallen bungalow, above which hung a giant boulder like a menacing fist. If that had fallen it would undoubtedly have killed everyone inside, including his mother, thought Jaswant. It seemed perfectly credible to him, in view of his latest thoughts, that Julia Clockhouse had caused this bungalow to collapse. He felt quite excited, as another piece fitted.
He began to pull on his clothes, feeling suddenly that he understood in some deep sort of way what had happened to Julia. As he put on his shoes he thought to himself that someone ought to tell her the things that he had read in his book, for he knew now that the labourers were wasting their time looking for her in rivers and gullies. People with expanded consciousnesses don’t die in gullies and Jaswant had looked into her eyes on the night of her party and knew now that that was what she was.
Without telling the servants anything, so that they looked after their suddenly activated master in amazement, he went running down the hillside. He did not think he would have to do anything special to find Julia Clockhouse. If he was meant to catch up with her then he would.
“After all,” he rehearsed to himself as he marched along the road, “I don’t think I was ever cut out to be a tea planter, any more than she was cut out to be a madam.” He felt a bit doubtful as to whether he was cut out to be a yogi either, but decided that he would know the answer to that when he caught up with Julia Clockhouse.
Chapter 20
While Jaswant raced round the hills imagining that he might be able to become a yogi if he caught up with Julia Clockhouse, the managers of Arnaivarlai met over whisky pani in the club and said to each other, “Edward Buxton was right after all. Obviously you can’t rely on Indians in management positions because that new little Raja fellow has left after only a single week, and without doing any work at all!”
Jaswant had imagined he would be able to catch up with Julia quite soon, and so had planned to walk. However, on his way he found the very bus he had come up the valley in was now on its way down so he got on. As he travelled he kept his eyes on the road all the time for the sight of Julia Clockhouse walking along the road. As the bus rumbled along he laughed to himself at the thought of what his mother would say.
“You are a complete idiot, Jaswant! There is no point at all in the whole world in racing after that crazy Julia Clockhouse. Whatever are you doing it for?”
Fun, he might have told her. There had been something so odd about Julia’s craziness that he had been attracted by it. His mother may not have believed that Julia was capable of performing impossible tasks such as cracking ceilings without moving, and making a jackal fall dead with her pet still alive in its jaws. Jaswant, who had looked into her eyes on the night of her party, believed them.
He could just imagine his mother pooh-poohing when he said, “I think she is on the edge of being enlightened, and all the trouble is coming because she doesn’t know it.” He could just imagine her stern warnings to him not to be taken in by these Europeans. “The trouble with that country nowadays,” the Rani would often say, “is that the people there are trying to become Indians. All this puja and meditation! It’s absurd. These things are for Indians! Europeans should stick to stocks and shares and football!”
Jaswant wondered what would happen if he told Julia Clockhouse of his ideas about her, and felt his heart skip a beat. Perhaps she would become angry with him for interfering in her life and would put a spell on him. Then a man on the bus said, “Did you hear that a white-haired ghost fell into the village of the tribal people?”
“I never listen to such stuff,” said the other.
“This is certainly true,” said the first. “Apparently anyone would have said it was a European but for the fact that it fell out of the sky.”
“Europeans don’t fall out of the sky,” agreed the first.
Jaswant felt a skip of excitement and asked, “Where is this tribal village?”
“Two-thirds of the way down to the plains,” said the man. “In the impassable mountains.”
“You will only be able to get there by walking,” they called to him, as he sprang from the bus.
The little tribal boy huddled with his brothers in the dark for ages, talked to them soothingly, and tried very hard not to show any alarm at all at the ghost in the trees. After all was he not a travelled person who had worked in a European’s household?
“Even their hands are white,” he told his brothers. “Even their …” but he did not dare say any more, suddenly remembering Babuchi’s instruction to him never to look at the Madam’s body.
“So is the ghost,” said the brothers.
The head men of the village had climbed up the mountain a couple of days earlier, having been called to the tea estates to search for the missing Madam, so the only people left were the women, the old, and the very young.
Now the word went round that the servant boy who had actually worked in a European household was here. “He is the one who will advise us,” the women said to each other. “He is the one who has seen the world and will know what this thing in the trees is,” said the old people. “He is the one who will save us!” shivered the children. So they all called out to the little servant boy, and because he felt so proud to be relied on by his people he came down the swinging ladder, and walked all by himself to the tree in which the ghost was, while people peeped at him from every door and window. He walked very slowly and carefully, so that they should not know how hard his heart was beating, nor how much his legs were shaking. And he looked up into the tree, and, feeling very surprised, turned and called out, “This is not a ghost! This is Julia Clockhouse Madam! This is the Madam everyone is looking for!”
The Raja Jaswant Singh looked much like any other peasant by the time he reached the tribal village in the jungles, below Arnaivarlai. Sweat and mud, rain and wind had removed almost every trace of his blue blood. The first person he saw was someone he knew. Or at least the first person he saw professed to know him. The Clockhouses’ erstwhile little servant, after one start of surprise, took Jaswant by the hand, pulled him towards a large tree, and, pointing upwards, said, “Look, Sir!”
And up in the higher branches, resting lightly, so lightly that she might have been floating, lay the body of Julia Clockhouse.
At first the villagers refused to climb up and carry her down. But in the end Jaswant managed to persuade them that she was not a ghost but a European.
“But why is she up in this tree and how did she get here?” asked the villagers.
“The Europeans do all kinds of things,” said Jaswant. “I have often known them to go flying round. Sometimes they float into trees then sleep for three days without moving like this one has done,” he lied. “This is usual for Europeans, though we Indians would never be seen doing such things.”
In the end they grudgingly believed him. After all they had never seen a European before, although they had heard some extraordinary things about them. This stranger however seemed to know their ways. Following Jaswant’s instructions they carried Julia into one of the houses and laid her on the ground. Even here Julia seemed to be resting very lightly, as though the buoyancy of
the yogi still infected her. Although she breathed it was only shallowly. But she did not seem ill. In fact, thought Jaswant, she looked rather well. Her face was pale but it did not seem to be the pallor of illness. The skin was glowing almost as though there was a light inside her. And although she was not conscious there was a slight smile on her lips. Jaswant thought back to what he had read, and decided that the reason for her stillness was because her consciousness did not choose to come back into its body, not because it could not. If you apply sesame oil to the body it feeds the soul, Jaswant’s book had said. And if you apply it to the head the consciousness is nourished. Hoping to lure back the soul and consciousness of Julia Clockhouse with food he told one of the children to run down to the little shop and buy a quarter of a litre of the stuff.
Sesame oil must be strong stuff, for Julia flicked into wakefulness in a moment, as soon as it was rubbed on to her head.
She sat up, and did not seem at all surprised to be in a hut ten feet high in the trees. She was not surprised to see Jaswant either. She looked him up and down, while the gathered tribal people watched from every possible angle, and hardly breathed in their fascinated alarm. And then Julia said calmly, “I see you are not wearing your white coat! I hope it isn’t still lying in the mud.” Her voice was very strong and resonant, so that no one would have guessed that she had lain unconscious for three days. She herself appeared rather surprised with her voice, for after speaking she looked around for a moment, as though searching for the throat from which it had come. Then she gave a short laugh, apparently at herself, for being silly.
