Maya

by C. W. Huntington

  She hoisted a pack of Dunhills out of her bag, flipped back the red and gold lid and proffered it to him. “Do you mind if I smoke?” The Hindi words slid effortlessly from her lips. That did it. He was overjoyed. He and the chauffeur both joined her for a cigarette. Everyone was happy. Even Suresh, who had been left out of things so far, was quite cheery now as we veered along the unpaved road, smoking and conversing in a language he could understand.

  We had traveled some distance from Ramnagar by this time, and the terrain now contracted around us in a frenzy of rank vegetation. Teak, oak, and other hardwoods mixed with conifers and stocky palms. The shadows between them crawled with serpentine vines and surreal tropical plants and flowers. We were being swallowed by a primeval jungle. A band of silver langur monkeys romped in the trees near the road. Each black face turned to watch us as the car wheeled by. Rounding a sharp bend we suddenly came upon a luxuriously plumed parrot perched on a branch that jutted over our path. The bird cocked its head, scolding us with a depraved, strangely human cry as the jeep passed below.

  While we drove, Colonel Singh narrated the story of the Patlidun Valley, telling us a bit of its checkered history under the Raj and its eventual association with the British naturalist Jim Corbett, who died in 1955. For most of his life Corbett had been known locally for his bravery in hunting down several man-eating tigers that had roamed these hills during the almost eighty years he lived here. In his later years he had earned a small international reputation as the author of a series of adventure stories based on his exploits. It was clear that Singh looked on him as a hero of sorts, which may have accounted for our host’s own British affectations.

  We had been riding through the jungle for half an hour or so, listening to his stories, when the Land Rover arrived at a juncture in the road, one way leading to the park and the other to a small town nearby. The colonel signaled our driver to stop. He took a last puff on his cigarette, poked out the butt in an ashtray on the dash, and turned around to face us.

  “What are your plans, then? Where shall we drop you?”

  Penny and I looked at each other and realized that we had not the slightest idea where we would go from here. Our plans had not extended beyond the border of the park.

  Finally Penny spoke up. “We hoped to find a government tourist bungalow in the park. Perhaps you could direct us to one?”

  He looked at us quizzically. “Tourist bungalow? In Corbett?”

  “It needn’t be luxurious. Anything at all will do. There must be something nearby.”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Nothing at all?” I’m sure I sounded both surprised and incredulous.

  He shook his head. “The park isn’t designed for overnight visitors. There are no accommodations. Kuch nahin.”

  Wonderful. This explained why people in Delhi had never been here. For a minute it seemed that no one knew what to say. At last, the colonel spoke up.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said, shifting back into English. “I have a forest bungalow not far from here. My own place, you understand. Would you be interested in putting up with me for a night or two? It’s small, but I could give you a room if you like.”

  “Are you certain we won’t interfere with your work?” said Penny, looking concerned.

  “No, no! On the contrary. It will be my pleasure. One grows lonely out here in the bush. It will be an excellent diversion for me. You must understand, however, that I’m not really equipped to deal with guests. But I’m sure my cook can produce something suitable for dinner. And I keep the bar stocked. We can tour on one of the elephants after breakfast tomorrow, as well. Perhaps spot a tiger. A bit rustic, to be sure, but it could be, well, fun.” He looked at me, then over at Penny. “What do you say?”

  I turned to Penny, who shrugged her shoulders.

  “All right,” I laughed. “We accept your invitation. With pleasure.”

  12

  SINGH HAD BUSINESS to complete prior to heading home, which presented us with an opportunity to visit some of the outlying areas of the park. Suresh threw the Land Rover into four-wheel drive and took the left fork, abandoning the main road for a path barely wide enough to accommodate a vehicle this size. We hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards before we entered a clearing, scattering a group of spotted deer that had been drinking from the brackish waters of a lagoon. They bounded away on agile legs, plunging into the underbrush. I could see them peering out at us from the shadows, turning their ears and sniffing at the air. Remnants of brush dangled from the sprawling horns.

  We turned back into the jungle, plying our way along a trail—nothing more than two parallel ruts—that led eventually to the periphery of a wide meadow. It was dotted with compact trees and wiry shrubs that squatted in the grass like petulant dwarfs, their twisted limbs held close under leafy cloaks. On the meadow’s far side a small herd of elephants grazed in the sun. They were occupied in gathering lunch, delicately uprooting the dwarfs and dislocating their limbs, but at the sound of the Land Rover, all activity ceased and every head turned in our direction. Nurslings, small and wrinkled with gray sails for ears, stared out at us wide-eyed from under the bellies of the gigantic adults, each miniature trunk coiled around the nearest available leg. As we approached, the larger calves pulled close to their mothers. Singh had the driver stop so we could step outside and get a better look, but it soon became evident that the big females were not pleased by the unexpected guests at their midday meal. Several began pawing and stamping at the dirt. It wasn’t long before the closest trumpeted aggressively, which persuaded us to move along.

  From there, our path wound up over a ridge and along the rim of an immense gorge that had been cut into the earth by the Kosi River as it poured down out of the mountains on its way to meet the Ganges. We pursued a dramatic, treacherous route, the gorge growing ever wider and deeper. By now the Land Rover was a good forty meters above the meandering water, chugging along the edge of a striated rock wall that plummeted nearly straight down to the boulders below. I had my eye on Suresh, who seemed focused, but totally at ease, when Singh motioned again for him to stop.

  While Suresh waited, the rest of us climbed out and walked to the edge of the precipice. Far below, dozens of crocodiles sprawled on the river’s bank, scattered in a jumble of dull, mossy scales, dozing and sunning themselves. Now and then one of the giant lizards would yawn, flaunting ragged strings of teeth inside its long, pink mouth.

  “We better go,” Singh announced, his voice pulling us back. “We have an errand to run, and we need to be home before the sun goes down.”

  I could not begin to imagine how dark it would be in the jungle at night.

  Once in the car he informed us that we were to pay a call on an old anchorite, Kalidas, who lived nearby. According to Colonel Singh the man “watched over things in the backwoods,” though it was not altogether evident what this meant. He had been living alone in the bush some fifty years, surviving Singh’s two predecessors, who had also known him and tolerated his presence within the park. In India, saints and holy men are allowed to violate not only social conventions but often legal ones as well. His peculiar history had once been a legend among the people who lived in the hills around Almora, but with time Kalidas had gradually been forgotten by the outside world. He came here as a young man hoping to escape society, and though it had taken him nearly half a century, he seemed largely to have succeeded in his effort. For the past fifteen years Colonel Singh and his driver were the only visitors to his isolated sanctuary. They may have been the only two people left who remembered the story of how it was that he came here so many years ago.

  Singh told us that the hermit Kalidas had originally been Ramesh Jaganath Mishra, an anonymous midlevel bureaucrat under the British Raj, employed as an accountant at the viceroy’s regional administrative offices in Dehradun. Educated at English-medium schools, Ramesh launched into his career after graduation and was soon married to a girl from Mussoorie. He brought the new bride back
to his mother’s home and settled in, anticipating the security of career and family life. At the end of their first year together a son was born, and Ramesh must have felt that he had everything life could offer. But within months all this collapsed.

  Shortly after the birth of their son, the accountant experienced the first in a series of dreams that eventually upset his happiness. The legend has it that he was visited in his sleep by the goddess Kali, usually pictured wearing a garland of severed heads, her long tongue uncurled obscenely over black, shriveled lips. Kali is the only member of the Hindu pantheon who still demands to be worshiped through blood sacrifice. That first night she merely offered him darshan—the blessing of her presence. Other dreams followed, though, and before long she began to lift the corner of her veil, favoring Ramesh with increasingly abhorrent visions. His young wife grew accustomed to being awakened at night by her husband’s quick, panicked breathing and by the terrible sound of his cries.

  The border between dream and reality eroded, and within months the images began to infringe on Ramesh’s waking life. At first it was only the memory of these dreams lingering through the day, but later he saw things—the same, dreadful images—while wide awake.

  His waking life became a nightmare. He made the mistake of sharing these experiences with his neighbors. But one can easily understand how impossible it would have been to keep such a thing hidden in a small Indian village. It wasn’t long before he was publicly recognized as a seer, favored by the goddess. It was said that he could read the circumstances of each person’s death literally inscribed on their features. To look upon the faces of his neighbors was actually to watch each one of them die. For Ramesh this ability to witness the eventual death of his family and friends was a gift of prophecy he had not asked for. Once the visions swept over him, he was incapable of resisting. Accident, disease, and death were with him constantly.

  People came from as far as Delhi to sit at the feet of the great prophet. The desire for darshan—to see and be seen by a holy person—is an ancient feature of Hinduism, but in this case it took on a unique flavor. Most of those who came to him were simply pious pilgrims, but as his fame spread, his visitors were increasingly driven by a compulsive need to know every detail of their fate. He complied with their requests, persuaded that the goddess had granted him this power and that it was not up to him to understand why.

  The accountant Ramesh was not a sophisticated or ambitious man, and living with these alarming visions must have been an unbearably heavy burden, reading in every face the clear imprint of its destiny, the very moment of death. He resigned from his job and became dejected and withdrawn, passing his days in meditation and worship. Neighbors heard him praying to Kali late at night, quietly sobbing and pleading, gently, unceasingly, for mercy. Hers was a hard blessing.

  One of the last to visit him, or so the story goes, was the Mahatma himself. Gandhi is said to have made a trip to Ramesh’s home in 1924, shortly after the famous “salt march” to the sea at Dandhi. He had just been released from his first stay in a British prison. If there is any truth to this story, and to the entire legend surrounding Kalidas, then the accountant may have revealed to Gandhi exactly when and where the fatal bullet would be delivered some twenty-four years later. Colonel Singh did not doubt in the least this account of Gandhi-ji’s visit. He had heard it all directly from his predecessor, who had in turn heard it from the previous director, a man who claimed to have seen the youthful ex-advocate with his own eyes the very day he arrived in Dehradun to receive the prophecy. The story will probably never be confirmed, but among the local population there was no question as to what followed.

  Not long after the Mahatma’s pilgrimage to Dehradun, a disaster occurred that once again altered the course of Ramesh’s life. Most people insisted that he had seen it coming and had done his best to prevent it but that his puja and meditation had been to no avail, that it had all amounted to nothing more than a desperate and futile attempt to alter his own destiny. Among educated brahmans it was generally acknowledged that things might have been different had Ramesh been stronger, better suited to serve as a vessel for the goddess. The consensus among these learned pundits was that his case was a tragedy; they may well have been correct. Certainly Ramesh was not the obvious choice for the job. He was far too timid, not equipped emotionally to cope with the formidable strain. But then, how many of us are born with the courage to take on the burden of an oracle?

  According to Singh’s story, Ramesh was up much later than usual one night, praying and meditating long after his wife and child went to bed. The baby had been wrapped and laid as usual on a mat next to its mother, but apparently the boy awoke sometime after and crawled away, falling asleep again off in the darkness where he was not easily visible. When Ramesh entered the room he stepped down on his son and literally crushed the child’s tiny body under one bare foot, killing him instantly. A macabre howl reverberated through the household, a primal wail of bottomless despair that woke his wife.

  Whether the infant’s death could be viewed as an accident was hotly debated. A number of people blamed Ramesh directly for the tragedy. They insisted that he should have run away the moment he saw what was going to happen. Most agreed, though, that even assuming he knew exactly what was coming, Ramesh could no more have escaped his fate than any of us can escape ours. Whatever the truth, the accountant abandoned his wife shortly after his son’s death and set out to wander alone in the mountains, eventually ending up in the region of Almora. Here he had dwelled as a hermit ever since. In 1935—almost ten years after his arrival—the area was designated a federal wildlife sanctuary, but he was permitted by the first director to stay on, apparently at the request of Jim Corbett himself.

  “The precedent was set almost forty years ago,” Singh told us, “and I have had no reason to overturn it. He is an old man now. Every year he becomes weaker. But he will never leave the jungle. Of that I am certain.”

  I had been listening to all of this with great interest. “You say that he came here for total solitude. To escape society. Why do you bother him, then?”

  Colonel Singh drummed nervously on the seat with his fingers. “We bring him a few supplies, some simple things to keep him going. Nothing much. One cannot very well just let the man starve.”

  “And that’s why we’re going there now?” Penny asked.

  “Yes.” He waved a hand toward several burlap bags stowed behind the seat where the two of us were sitting. “Just some simple provisions. And this.” He picked up a brightly colored box of incense and held it between us, then tossed it back down beside him. “For puja.”

  I reached over, lifted the package off the seat and sat turning it over in my hands as though it might contain something more precious than incense, a secret teaching, perhaps, or a prophecy of its own. “So he still worships the goddess?”

  Colonel Singh seemed surprised by my question. “But of course. He is extremely devout. He will die here in the jungle, doing puja to Kali.”

  “Colonel, do you mind if I ask you something?” I said this in English so the driver would not understand. I couldn’t resist. “Did he ever tell you anything? I mean, well, you know . . . anything about your own death.”

  “I have not talked with him about it, Mr. Harrington.”

  “I see.”

  “The fact is I have not talked with him about anything.”

  “About anything?”

  “I mean, simply,” Mr. Harrington, “that he has not spoken to me, and I have not spoken to him.”

  “Not once in . . . how long has it been?”

  “Almost ten years since I started here.”

  “Are you saying that you’ve known this man for nearly ten years and during that time you’ve never exchanged a single word with him?”

  “That is correct. He stopped speaking long before I arrived. He accepts the provisions we bring, but he is not interested in anything else. You’ll see for yourself.”

  “But if the legen
d is true, then he knows . . .”

  “About my death?” The colonel interrupted me, smiling ironically. “Yes, of course he knows. The whole thing must seem very peculiar to you, Mr. Harrington—an American with a university education.” He hesitated. “But I have no doubt that he sees clearly what fate has in store for Suresh and myself.”

  “And there are no other visitors?”

  “No one enters this part of the park. Nor do we ever talk about Kalidas outside. His presence here is . . .” He considered for a moment. “It’s become our secret, I suppose. I doubt that anyone else knows the man is still alive, or even remembers him for that matter. Which is precisely how he wants it.”

  Penny had remained curiously silent throughout our conversation. I wondered what she thought about all of this, but it would have to wait until later when we could talk in private. Meanwhile our path led farther into the jungle.

  We pulled into a clearing surrounded by dense forest. A ramshackle hut stood at the center, not much more than a bamboo cage covered with a patchwork of palm leaves, the whole thing laced together with a blue plastic cord that must have been included in one of the packages left there by the colonel. As the jeep drew near I saw someone stir inside. A silhouette in the dark interior drifted toward the entrance, then stopped short of the porch and hung back among the shadows, watching cautiously. It would have been difficult for him to see Penny and me in the back seat, and from what Singh had told us, we certainly would not have been expected. I gathered that this was his usual reaction to the colonel’s arrival.

  Suresh pulled the Land Rover up to the front of the house and cut the engine. Kalidas remained in the dimly lit entrance, a frail old man bent over his cane, barefoot but otherwise fully clothed in the same government issue shirt and pants that the others were wearing. In this case, though, the outfit was several sizes too large for the tiny man, who seemed to have retreated into the baggy folds of worn khaki. His wispy hair and beard fell around his face and down over his hunched shoulders and narrow chest to well below his waist.