The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories

by Stephen Alter

  ‘Does he come to see you?’

  ‘Who?’ I was startled: Was he talking about father? The next instant I realized he was talking about our elder brother who had moved out to another part of the city. ‘Oh yes, he does. Sometimes. In fact, it’s he who sent me here.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘He wants us to sell our home. I’ve brought the sale deed for you to sign.’ At once, I felt relieved. The task for which I had undertaken the long journey was done. How incredibly, wonderfully simple it had turned out in the end!

  He raised his head. His eyes ran over the briefcase lying on the floor. Slowly, an understanding of what the papers he had helped retrieve from his doorstep were all about, dawned on him.

  He looked at me rather wearily. ‘If you sold the house,’ he said slowly, ‘where would mother live?’

  ‘It’s up to her. She can live with either of us.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘I’ll have to rent a house. In fact, I’ve already found one.’

  ‘So all the decisions have been made. What can I say in the matter now?’

  ‘You too have a share in the property.’

  ‘Do I?’ He laughed. ‘I left it all a long time ago.’

  I looked at him in silence.

  ‘Is it really necessary to sell the house?’

  ‘Perhaps not, but our brother wants to buy property in Dehradun. He needs cash.’

  ‘So he’d sell our father’s house?’ There was just an edge of sarcasm in his voice.

  ‘How else can he hope to raise the money?’

  ‘Father put all his savings and gratuity into it.’

  ‘I know. But he is no more.’

  ‘True. Still, how can his things cease to be his?’

  I gazed at him. Amazing, I thought, and felt like asking why, having renounced the world, he was still concerned whether the house was sold or retained.

  He leaned forward, a reminiscent smile on his lips. ‘You know you were in the final year MA when father bought the house. We didn’t have the electricity connection then and you’d study in the light of a lantern in your roof-top room.’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  ‘You were married in the courtyard below.’

  The courtyard, the roof-top room—what was he driving at? Obviously, he wasn’t talking about the house itself. What he was saying was something very different, but I failed to grasp it in my anger.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw what looked like the blazing eyes of some wild animal flash past the air-vent in the side wall. It gave me quite a turn. ‘What was that?’

  ‘A flash of lightning.’

  My fear was now replaced with worry. ‘I must leave. It’s going to be difficult to go down if it starts raining.’

  ‘You needn’t be in a hurry.’

  ‘The schoolteacher would be worried.’

  ‘He knows you’re here.’ Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he added: ‘Why don’t you stay with me tonight?’

  I’d come ready with an answer. ‘It’s my blood pressure,’ I said, trying not to sound foolish. ‘It may not be good for me to stay overnight at such a height.’

  I knew I was making a fool of myself, for I was going to spend the night in the mountains anyway. But the thought of spending it with him in his cell was unbearable. We can spend our nights with someone who is either known to us or is a total stranger. He was neither; I felt distant and close to him all at once—which was probably why I had been sent to see him in the first place.

  I picked up my briefcase and got up to leave.

  ‘Wait a minute. I’ll be right back.’ He went into the rear portion of his cell and emerged with an umbrella in one hand and a flash light in the other. ‘Keep this,’ he said, giving me the umbrella. ‘Let me walk you part of the way.’

  He stepped down the three whitewashed door-stones, reaching out his hand behind him to steady me at the same time. His touch, so gentle, surged in my veins in search of the timorous memories crouched out of sight even as the love and affection of yesteryears returned to illuminate the darkness . . . Was he the very same person who had left us for good?

  I saw him stop and turn around. ‘Well,’ he said with a laugh, ‘I thought you were following me.’

  I hurried my steps. Darkness lay under a thin glowing veil cast by twinkling stars in a clear, dense sky. To think that only a short while ago there had been a flash of lightning! Unbelievable!

  He walked effortlessly ahead of me, the spot of his torch picking out the way, the wayside bushes, trees, rocks. A bird flapped its wings among the leaves and flew away overhead, screeching into the darkness. Suddenly, as my tiffin-box bumped against the thermos in my shoulder-bag, I realized I didn’t have my briefcase with me.

  ‘My briefcase . . . I think I’ve left it behind in your cell.’

  ‘Never mind, it will be safe there. You can take it back tomorrow.’ He stopped and turned towards me. ‘Are any of your writings in it?’ he asked impulsively.

  For the first time during the day he had made a reference to my writings. I’d assumed that he must have long since forgotten that I ever wrote. Writing, for me, had been rather like an illegitimate activity, almost a private disease not to be openly discussed.

  ‘No, there are none. It contains only the property documents and some letters meant for you.’

  We resumed walking.

  ‘I’ve not seen any of your stories in a long time.’

  ‘I haven’t written much. There is so much to do at the newspaper office . . . Do you get magazines here?’

  ‘Not regularly. The schoolteacher brings some from the library from time to time . . . I remember seeing one of your stories in an issue way back.’

  I kept pace behind him, my heart pounding away in shame. Several years ago I’d written a story which got into print—indeed it was, written for publication. It was not so much about the one who had left home as about those left behind. Both mother and father—but mother more than father—were hopeful that he would return immediately if he ever came across the story. Why speak of returning, he hadn’t even dropped a miserable postcard . . . I was glad he could not see my shame in the dark. I blurted, ‘You didn’t even write to us!’ My voice caught in my throat and I was doubly ashamed. I had resolved before leaving Delhi that I would not ask him any questions of this sort—but now it was out there between us, past us, like the bright round spot of torchlight on the mountain path.

  ‘It would have been futile,’ he said.

  ‘You know how we looked for you in all the likely places?’

  No, it was useless to go on. How could he, from his peaceful summit, comprehend the torment of the scurrying beetles on the distant plains? He could not have known how it felt to go on endless rounds of the hospitals, the railway platforms, the bus-stations, or checking the updated police lists of missing persons, or staring into the faces of the dead in morgues, or placing ads in the newspapers: Please come back. Mother is ill . . .

  ‘I still think it would have been futile.’

  ‘You could have at least informed us you were safe.’

  ‘Suppose I’d done it, would that have made it easier for you to bear the pain?’

  ‘I’m not talking about pain.’

  ‘What are you talking about then?’

  I groped in my heart for an answer but I found none. I could not lay my finger on anything, neither pain nor mother’s old age, nor my own failures—everything would still have turned out the way it had. More or less.

  ‘What was the point then in writing home after ten years?’

  He was silent awhile. ‘Maybe, I shouldn’t have.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I took all of ten years to write to you. Long enough, I thought, when it would no longer make a difference to you whether I was alive or not.’

  There was the detachment in his tone—otherwise manifest in the trees, the rocks, the streams—which is above the pain and hurt of embroiled relationships. It had taken him ten auste
re years of solitude to acquire his detachment.

  I heard a rumbling on the slope below us, as if a rock had come loose and was hurtling down.

  ‘What’s that noise?’

  ‘It’s a waterfall. I bring water from there.’

  ‘Isn’t it too far away?’

  ‘Not really. As a matter of fact, the stream flows by just a short way below the cell. I’ll show you the place tomorrow.’

  So he fetched water himself. Instantly, my fatigue, my shame and the lingering hurt dissolved. The sudden quiet resounded with the splashing water of the hilly stream. The evening prayer bells tinkled in the temple above.

  ‘You should go back,’ I said. ‘I can find my way now.’

  ‘All right,’ he agreed, but he made no move to go. I could not tear myself away, either.

  ‘I’ll come again tomorrow,’ I said reassuringly.

  ‘Is it all right at the schoolteacher’s? He has only one small room. You can shift into the rest-house, if you like.’

  ‘No, it will not be necessary. I’m quite comfortable there. Besides, it is only a matter of another day or two.’

  Another day or two—the words had tumbled out from my mouth unawares. They swung to and fro, rocked by the wind and the temple bells.

  I left hurriedly. I headed down the slope towards the bend in the path. As I reached it, I turned round and saw him still standing at the spot where I’d left him . . . still, and unmoving.

  The lights were strung out in a festoon along the motorable road below. A mist hung over the sleepy town. Had he also gone to sleep by now, or was he up alone in his cell? I’d met him after a full ten years and still . . . Couldn’t I have spent even one night with him? You are a writer, I told myself; yet you readily give a wide berth to raw reality when you encounter it, as if living was a thing apart from the truth of existence or that truth was a thing apart from writing—as if living and truth and writing bore no relation to one another: as if each hung like a cold corpse from its own separate gallows. If I had to run away like this, why did I stay for even a single night here? I ought to have hurried to get his signature on the documents and caught the return bus back home. What was the point in staying on in town if we had to spend the night under different roofs? Why did all of us, my brothers and sisters, dry up like a wilted stalk at the moment of reckoning? How was it that at a certain point all our love dowsed itself in sand and ashes? How could we leave one another to his or her fate and stand aloof? Wasn’t it the tyranny of this sinful indifference which had driven him away from home?

  Even as I plunged downhill, I sank deeper into the mire of guilt and self-recrimination. With every step that took me nearer the schoolteacher’s quarters, I burned more intensely with a desire to become invisible or else somehow vanish in his cot for the night and leave for Delhi the first thing in the morning.

  The schoolteacher was busy in the kitchen, and I got in unnoticed. I could not summon enough courage to face him right then. All I wanted was to change into my night clothes and burrow into the cot. A brazier glowed in the room. As I approached it I suddenly felt very exhausted and cold and feverish. In the core of my being my feverish heart and my body, shivering with cold tortured and played with each other, while ‘I’ stood to one side uninvolved. This was good in itself, providing as it did some measure of relief to a layman, who may not renounce the world like the sadhus and sanyasis but nevertheless can, albeit briefly, walk out of his body and heart with their tensions, and disembodied, stand apart. But I was not in luck. I had barely stretched out on the cot when I started at a sound from the direction of the kitchen. I turned to see the schoolteacher standing in the doorway, staring hard at me as if he had caught me red-handed.

  ‘When did you come in?’ he asked.

  ‘Just a little while ago. I’m not feeling well,’ I offered by way of an excuse.

  It mollified him somewhat and he came over. ‘I told you last night to sleep on the cot. In the rains, the floor is rather damp and chilly.’

  He placed his palm on my forehead and felt my pulse. ‘No fever,’ he concluded, ‘but you must be exhausted. I have some brandy. I’ll advise you to have a sip. It will relax you.’

  He took out a small bottle from the cupboard and brought two glasses. I sat up on the cot. Opposite the two of us sat the glowing brazier like some mysterious hill deity whom we had come to appease. As we drank, a bird out in the darkness scattered the silence with its strange entreating cries.

  ‘It’s the ninira bird. Its call puts the children to sleep.’ He took a swallow from his glass. ‘Would you like to have a splash of warm water in your drink?’

  ‘No, don’t bother. This is okay . . . Do you have liquor shops in the town?’

  ‘None. I get my occasional bottle from Almora or Bhuvali, thanks to an obliging bus-driver.’

  Thanks to the brandy and the brazier, my limbs began to loosen and the knots melted away. Although the feelings of guilt and of overwhelming disquiet did not vanish altogether, they withdrew a pleasant distance away to hover within my soul. I grew light-headed, dimly aware that the schoolteacher was regarding me with a quizzical expression on his face.

  ‘Have you been to see babaji?’

  I stared at his yellow teeth. Perhaps he did not suspect that the one whom he called baba could in some way be related to me. People hardly ever pause to think that holy men come from ordinary homes and have ordinary pasts.

  ‘Was he in his cell?’

  ‘Where else could he have been?’

  ‘Anywhere. Until some time ago, he used to roam all over the place. He would even come down for shopping.’

  ‘Doesn’t he go out any more?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him around lately, though. There was a time I’d go to see him in his cell and help him with the chores, but I found his behaviour rather strange and discouraging and stopped going there.’

  ‘What did you find so strange in his behaviour?’

  He gazed into his palm, as if the answer was written there. Then he took a sip from his glass. ‘Last summer I used to fetch water for him,’ he said, looking up at me, ‘but he did not like it. One morning I was returning from the waterfall when he met me on the way. “Could you gather some firewood for me?” he asked. “Why not?” I said. Thereupon, he asked with a smile if I could cook his meals also. “No problem,” I said at once. After all, he used to eat only once a day. “And I—what would I do?” he asked. “Why baba,” I said, “you must spend your time in meditation and prayers, for which you renounced the world.” Do you know what he said then?’

  The schoolteacher fell silent, staring into the sibilant flames in the brazier.

  ‘What did he say?’ I demanded.

  ‘He said: “How can you meditate upon one you know nothing about.”’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘I said if it was so, why did he leave his family to come here. Can you imagine what he said? He said: “I have left nothing; I only came away.” There was nothing I could do then but leave the pail at the spot and walk away. I wonder, a man who does not like being served, how can you serve him?’

  The schoolteacher sighed and resumed after a while: ‘I also live here alone but I have a job to do. Why is he here? He does not read his scriptures, nor say his prayers, nor meditate, nor hold discourses. He does not even have a word of counsel for the visitors who call on him to pay their obeisance.’

  ‘Still people go to see him?’

  ‘They do. Remember you too came from far-off just to see him!’

  ‘I’d heard about his fame,’ I said lamely.

  ‘So did others. Some come for wish-fulfilment or for receiving his blessings, some are merely curious.’

  I felt the schoolteacher’s penetrating glance on me. I looked into myself and found nothing—neither any wish nor curiosity—but a loose thread of relationship dangling among the cobwebs, which neither the schoolteacher could grasp nor I pull down.

  ‘Shall I get out dinner? It’s alr
eady late.’

  He went into the kitchen. I remained sitting on the bed. Outside, crickets chirped monotonously. The brandy had kindled in me a gentle, cosy fire; slowly its warmth spread to combat the frost in my marrow and the cumulative exhaustion of a lifetime of routine-bound existence.

  ‘Have you dozed off?’

  I came to, with a start; the warmth had indeed lulled me to sleep. He set down two trays of food on the floor: dal, a vegetable, thick hot chappatis . . . He had prepared the meal himself. I envied his simplicity in extending hospitality to me without demanding to know who I was. I was so touched I wanted to confess to him that this unorthodox baba was none other than my own brother, but I got over the impulse immediately; it would only have embarrassed him . . . Some truths are wholly unnecessary and are better left alone.

  ‘You’ll stay here for a few days, won’t you?’ His manner was easy, friendly and eager.

  ‘No, I must push off tomorrow,’ I said, somewhat selfconsciously. ‘I could get only two days’ leave.’

  ‘Where do you work?’ This was the first direct question he had put to me, and he sounded so genuinely concerned that I felt grateful to him. I told him about my work with a newspaper, about my children, my household. He listened quietly. After I’d finished he still didn’t speak, I began to have doubts whether he had heard me at all. I looked up into his face. In the pale moonlight from the window, I saw his wide-open eyes fastened on me. It unnerved me. Whatever was going on in his head?

  ‘Look, why don’t you stay on for another couple of days? You’ve come so far away from home, it would be a shame if you had to go back so soon.’

  ‘What’s the point? What shall I do here?’

  ‘You can be with baba that much longer. He is all alone these days.’

  ‘Why don’t you call on him more often yourself?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t know what to talk to him about.’