‘Anyway, he left home on his own. And to live alone is not such a great misfortune, either. After all, you also live alone,’ I reasoned with him.
‘It’s different with me. I go away to Almora for a few days every month. If I could find a better house here, I’d even bring my family over.’ As another thought occurred to him, a look of puzzlement came into his eyes. ‘I don’t understand something,’ he said ambiguously. ‘Many years have passed since baba came to live here. But, so far, no one from his family seems to have ever visited him.’
I had a lingering suspicion that he had known all along everything about me but had taken care not to show it in his face.
‘Probably his family doesn’t know he is here.’
‘You mean in all these years they couldn’t even discover his whereabouts?’
‘They must have tried their best. It’s such a vast country. How can one comb every part of it?’
He stared into the darkness outside, lost in thought. At last, he spoke up: ‘Perhaps he never had much of a family.
There are some who leave their homes in search of god out of sheer loneliness.’
‘You should have asked him.’
‘He tells us as little about himself as about god. Sometimes I doubt if he is a true sanyasi. I doubt if he has truly renounced the world and taken to god.’
What was he if not a sanyasi, I asked myself? Ten years ago he had left everyone at home crying; now, how could he leave god as well? The night held out no answer.
I lay down on my bedding on the floor while the schoolteacher stretched out on his cot, as he had done the previous night.
But unlike last night, the room was not completely dark: the moon hung low in the kitchen window, shedding a pale luminous dust on the things in the room. I lay awake for a long time. When my thoughts turned to my family, they seemed to belong to another world; and when I thought of my brother living the life of a hermit, his seemed to be yet another world unknown to us. These different little worlds abutted on one another, yet they were virtually millions of miles apart. How did these worlds become imprisoned in their isolation? The question was painful and frightening. I tucked it under me for the night, turning over on my side.
Crows wheeled overhead, scores and scores of them. Cawing shrilly, they descended through the air to settle on the rocks, the pathways, the branches, the tree-tops, everywhere. Their sharp cries chipped the sky.
The schoolteacher and I had gone to the bus-stand. In the attached shed, there was a small crowd of passengers. Stray dogs and coolies dozed outside the eating-places across the road. The schoolteacher made his way to the booking window. It was closed. He rapped on it with his knuckles several times before a head peered out. Soon he returned with the information that there was no advance booking. ‘You’ll get your ticket on the bus itself,’ he told me.
‘Did you ask what time it leaves?’
‘There is only one direct bus to Delhi in the evening at six. Another leaves at eight, but you’ll have to catch a connecting bus in Bhuvali.’
A lot of time to go till six o’clock, I told myself. I had already packed my things. In fact, I left my luggage at a sweet-shop nearby to save me a detour to the schoolteacher’s on the way back from the summit in the afternoon. I carried with me only my duffel-bag and the umbrella my brother had given me the previous night.
‘Come let’s have another tea. You’ve a long climb ahead of you.’
We’d had our tea before starting out for the bus-stand. It was so cold out here that I couldn’t resist the temptation of hot tea by the warm oven at the tea-shop.
The schoolteacher had been unusually quiet since the morning when he asked me again not to be in a hurry to leave for Delhi. However, he did not insist when I told him that I had to get back to write my column for the newspaper the next day. We did not talk about the baba any more; we seemed to have reached a tacit agreement to black out his cell, the temple, the forest rest-house, everything higher up. The sky was overcast but it did not look as if it would rain: it promised to be one of those days when there is neither rain nor sunshine. A grey mass of spent cloud racks had piled up, trapped between the valley below and the peaks above.
‘These clouds pass over Bhuvali to reach here,’ the schoolteacher remarked. ‘The main rain-clouds are borne to Ranikhet and Nainital, while the dregs are banished to this penal settlement of a backwoods . . . to serve their sentence, as it were.’
‘Well?’ I took another sip of tea. ‘Don’t these clouds go on ahead somewhere?’
They go nowhere. Only the crows do. Look at the swarms of them!’ he said laughingly.
Indeed the crows were all over—over the peaks, the housetops, the trees . . .
‘Aren’t there a lot of them for a small town like this? They say this place carries a curse that all its dead will be reborn as crows.’
‘Still, people live here?’
‘Yes, they do, because they also believe that these crows in turn attain salvation on dying,’ he explained soberly. This town is a sort of a transit camp for men and crows on their way to deliverance.’
The schoolteacher was no longer smiling. With a pensive look in his eyes, he gazed quietly at the black legions of crows and the little town lost in misty clouds. A penal settlement, he had called it: for the clouds from Bhuvali, the farthest end of the earth; a province for the spirits of the dead and the crows. He had spent half his life here.
He didn’t let me pay for the tea.
‘Try to get back early. I’ll see you here.’ He hesitated a moment before adding: ‘And pay him my respects also.’
‘Why don’t you come along? He’ll be glad to see you.’ I didn’t want to go to him alone this time.
He was caught unawares. ‘No, no,’ he said evasively. ‘I can always see him later. But for you this may well be the last opportunity.’
With that, he turned away abruptly and disappeared into the bazaar.
The road uphill was muddy, and a light drizzle had begun. It was midday, yet a darkness was creeping up. I unfurled the umbrella over my head and continued to walk with long strides. By the time I reached the rock steps which led to the temple, I was panting. I felt like sitting down to recover my breath: it would not do to rush in on him gasping and sweating. On the other hand, the sooner I was on my way again the longer I could be with him before I had to get back in time for the six o’ clock bus. I was up and off in a couple of minutes.
Below the path was a beautiful little cottage which must have been nestling there since the time of the English . . . a relic from the old familiar world: lighted fireplaces, the carefree laughter of girls in the passages, music on the radio. It called for a deliberate effort to think that up here in the outlands there lived ordinary happy people who had nothing to do with the secluded cell of my brother, the naked ascetic, or the loneliness of the schoolteacher. Within similar four snug walls I’d spent the forty years of my life. But from these misty heights the familiar and the known seemed suddenly to sink into unreality . . . And then, without forewarning, a fear gripped me: what would happen to me if, in a convulsive moment, my world were to turn inside out? I’d probably beat the darkness in vain with my inadequate wings like an insect nipped from the drawing room between thumb and forefinger and thrown out of the window at night, unable ever after to find its way back in. But, mercifully, the moment passed and I could laugh at myself. I reached into my coat-pocket and touched my bank passbook; I touched the muffler round my neck given to me by my wife on our last anniversary; my patent leather wallet carried photographs of both my children; I was a part-owner of a house in Delhi; and there were books with my name on their covers—all solid, incontrovertible proofs of my earthly existence. I was born forty years ago, quickened by the essence of life everlasting. It seemed impossible that it should now betray me and let me be turned into a mere moth. No, there was no cause for fear. Reassured, I hastened towards the cell of my brother, glad in a few hours a bus would take me back to the world
where I belonged.
I sighed with relief when the cell came into view. I almost ran up the three door-stones. Dull lamplight shone through a fissure in the door. As I made to rattle the chain, I heard his voice, and it sounded as if he were praying or talking to himself or mumbling in sleep or in a stupor of high fever. I looked in through the fissure and caught sight of him standing below the air-vent.
Even today I haven’t been able to get over the scene—though, perhaps, scene may not be the word for it. The person I saw through the fissure was neither a hermit—heretic or otherwise—nor the brother I’d known. Completely oblivious of his surroundings, he was talking to himself and laughing at the same time. Awestruck, I stood glued helplessly to the door, torn between fear and old ties of love, even as another part of me pushed headlong in to cling to him, screaming at him in bewilderment as to what he thought he was doing, whoever was he talking to, whatever was he laughing at.
They say when the soul is rendered dumb the body speaks: the blood rumbles in the dead silence and we hear our heart beat. Something like this happened to me also. I do not remember when my hand, of its own volition, rattled the chain or when he opened the door, but I do remember the touch of his hand upon my shoulder and the sound of his words in my ears: ‘What held you up? I’ve been waiting for you since morning.’
His voice was so matter of fact, calm and collected that my head jerked upwards. I was astonished to see him smiling serenely. Was he the same person who only a minute before was laughing to himself and raving like a madman?
‘You . . .’ I started to ask him but changed my mind at the last moment and left the question uncomposed. A door inside me swung closed. In the past, too, I’d closed so many doors behind me that one more made no difference.
‘Your hand feels very warm,’ I said instead. ‘Are you all right?’
Gently, he removed his hand from my shoulder and said as though he had not heard me: ‘Come in. It’s very cold outside.’
I stood his umbrella in a corner and took off my shoes. It was as cold in here as outside. The solitary lamp cast but a yellow smudge of light in the bare room.
‘Where have you been so long?’ he asked.
‘I went to the bus-stand to book a seat on the evening bus.’
He did not say anything. In the wan circle of light, his pale face, his greying beard, his thick black eyebrows—nothing registered any flicker of emotion. The gaze he directed on me was impassive—neither intimate nor aloof.
‘On my morning walk, I passed by the rest-house. I happen to know the overseer in charge of it. He can spare a room for you.’
‘What’s the use?’
‘You can take a few days off. You need not be in a hurry to go back.’
His voice carried just a hint of insistence and a faint trace of a distant affection. His apparent self-control made the mild concern all the more difficult and painful to bear.
‘Would it make you happy if I stayed?’
He laughed a little loud. ‘Would you be staying for my sake alone?’
‘Who else is here? I only came to see you.’
‘I thought, maybe, you’d like to spend some days here.’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘What I want is irrelevant.’ He fell silent. Then he added slowly: ‘Why don’t you give yourself a holiday?’
‘Back home, they’d think I too have gone your way. Isn’t one sanyasi in the family already more than a handful?’
‘Do they really think I’m a sanyasi?’ He smiled, ‘I live here the same way as I did over there. There’s only been a change of places.’
‘Is that all? You think nothing else has changed? That you haven’t changed either?’
‘Have I? What do you think?’ I thought I detected a glint of amusement in his eyes.
‘I’d never imagined I’d ever see you again in this life.’
‘In this life? What do you mean?’ He looked at me in amazement. ‘Is there any life other than this one?’
I gave him a cautious, searching glance: Was he playing with me? But his gaze was unwavering and steady and there was sadness in his voice.
‘If we live but once and if living here is no different than what it was back home, what was the point then in . . . in your change of places?’
‘There is a point,’ he said slowly. ‘Over there, I did not matter to anyone.’
‘And here?’
‘Here there is no one to whom I should care if I mattered.’
‘How is it possible to . . . to give up your own folk?’
He was lost in thought. The daylight filtered into the small room. He let his head drop to his chest until only the thatch of his grey hair showed. The face that I’d seen creased into laughter only a short time ago was now a flat shadow in a dark pool.
‘No,’ he spoke at last. ‘It is not possible. That is why I wrote to you. It is not enough just to give up certain people or things and hope to become a sanyasi. .. ’
He had leaned farther away from the wall. His eyes were closed. The door moved as a wind rose and swept leaves and dust inside.
‘Just have a look. See who they are,’ he said to me.
I went over and opened the door wide. Some three or four men stood outside. They were accompanied by two women. When they saw me, one of the men stepped forward to inquire if the baba was in.
Even before I could answer him I heard my brother’s voice behind me: ‘Please be seated under the tree. I’ll be with you in a minute.’
At his voice, they folded their hands in humility. I moved over to let my brother pass. As he went down to the bottom step, the visitors took turns to come forward to touch his feet. The last one was the younger of the two women. She was very young and was draped in a black shawl. She looked up to the baba, sank to her knees and bowed until her head touched his feet. She remained in this position for what seemed a long time.
Throughout all of this my brother stood still. He spoke not a word, nor did he once hold out his hand in blessing.
Finally, he turned to me. ‘Wait inside,’ he said. ‘It shouldn’t take very long.’ He looked rather ill-at-ease. Wearily, I watched him. Was he ashamed of me before the visitors?
I went back in and turned down the lamp so that the grey daylight could advance further into the cell. The group of callers were sitting with him on a low whitewashed platform beneath an old plane tree which stood over to one side. Fragments of their voices as they talked to the ‘baba’ carried in, but I heard him say nothing in reply. I recalled, with a feeling of shame, the question I’d put to him about leaving the family. He had left us but would these strangers leave him alone? What did he have to offer to them? Why did they keep coming to him? Most certainly they got something from him in return about which I knew nothing. Was I looking at a stranger in the guise of my brother, asking him questions that had no relevance in this place? My mind floated back across several years to the time I’d done the rounds of the morgues in search of him. It seemed to me as if I was one of the many queuing up in front of the platform to receive his blessings . . . to catch a glimpse of him from close by. But it was another time, another place: instead of the platform there were slabs of ice on which corpses lay like dead fish. As I lingered by the slabs looking for him, the attendant in the morgue pushed me from behind. Hurry up, he said rudely: there are others too, who have to identify their dead: quick: move on, will you? Their dead . . . the other people . . . I was jostled and pushed and carried onwards, on and on, up through the next ten years. I made out I was lying on a cold slab of a floor and he was leaning over me, concerned.
‘Chhote!’ he was calling out to me.
I heard him faintly and saw the lantern he held over me. It had been ten years since he had called me by that pet name: Chhote—the little brother. I sat up, startled. Where was I? Was I back home? I stared wide-eyed at him.
‘You’d fallen asleep,’ he said gently. I saw him more clearly now, and saw his blanket around me, warm with the heat of m
y body.
‘Have those people left?’
‘They left long ago.’
‘This blanket? I don’t remember. . .’
‘When I came in I saw you shivering, as if you were lying on ice,’ he said, smiling.
On ice, was it? I emerged from a ten-year-old dream. A faded yellow light reached out across the floor. The sun had come out of the clouds, readying to go down below the horizon. The peaks glittered in the late afternoon sun.
He spoke again, very softly, leaning over me: ‘Do keep lying, rest some more. I’ll make you some tea.’
I saw him, a slight smile across his mouth—as if he too had just got up from another slab of ice, his own, and come out into the light where his present blended with my past. In the lingering moment, my gaze and his silence were, it struck me, a kind of preparation—for this moment had instantly spanned the vast speechless desert that stretched away into the past: a preparation for both of us. Perhaps it was for this reason alone that he had called me over. He had wanted to break with us, with all of us, one last time. Finally. A clean break.
I rose slowly, folded his blanket and put it away in a corner. I crossed over to the door, put on my shoes and picked up my bag. I looked round at him. He stood there, with the lantern still in his hand, although, here in the doorway, it was not necessary.
‘I must push off,’ I said. ‘It’s nearly time for the bus.’
He looked at me in silence. Then he said slowly: ‘Wait a minute. I’ll be right back.’
He went away into the rear part and returned with my briefcase in his hand in place of the lantern.
‘Aren’t you overlooking this again?’ he said smilingly, giving the briefcase back to me. ‘I’ve taken the letters and . . .’ After a momentary pause, he added: ‘You can see I’ve signed all the papers.’
I saw him turn slightly away. The sun straining through the branches of the plane tree beside his cell, fell across his feet. I bent down at his feet to pay my respects, and felt his hand on my head, his fingers stroking my hair, his burning touch sending waves of heat through my body.
The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories Page 29
