The Scent of God

by Saikat Majumdar

  The Lotus must have stood there for a long time. He never rushed. Then he called: ‘Will looking at the rains make everyone clean?’ His voice fell like a whip on their naked backs. ‘The dirt won’t go even if you’re scrubbed for hours under boiling water.’

  There was bitter laughter in his voice.

  Red welts appeared on their skin quickly as they looked away from the girl under the ledge. Did she see them? The crowd of towel-wrapped boys on the balconies above?

  Shame hung over the corridor like a red cloud. They wanted to see the girl, her skin. They were hard and breathless.

  Welted by the Swami’s words, they lined up for the bathroom. They did not look out to see if the girl was still there or had fought the rain to go back home.

  Suddenly, something was lost.

  A beautiful passage was read out during prayer that evening. A passage about women and gold, drugs that ambushed you on the way to god. Women were gold; and gold, women. They cast a spell on you.

  It was a beautiful passage read out by Niraj Bora. Why did Kamal Swami make Bora read this? For him it was a pain, stammering and stuttering and all that. Continuous reading in Bangla lay many traps for him, perhaps continuous reading in any language. But as he read, the prayer hall gasped with the wet dreams he proudly shared in the hostel, about the bodies of the mothers and sisters of his classmates, dreams that had caught like wildfire and made Bora the big boy in Bliss Hall.

  The red cloud spread in the air again, the redness and the beads of sweat on Bora’s forehead as he trudged through sentences about the drug of women.

  Yogi did not dare to look back, for the fear of Kamal Swami’s closed eyes, the smile dancing across his mouth like a white cloud on a sunny day.

  At dinner, Kamal Swami announced that they were going on a trip that weekend to a beautiful place— Chandrachur, the moon-mountain, a town by the Ganges where the monastic order had its headquarter. Just a few hours from the ashram. A blessing of a place.

  ‘Whoever goes there,’ the Swami said. ‘comes back a changed person.’

  Saturday morning was a riot. They piled into two giant tourist buses. All of Class 9 was going. One hundred and twenty students. Sections A, C and E in one bus, and sections B, D, F in another. English and Bengali medium, mixed up.

  Kajol had entered the bus early and got a seat by the window. He had saved the aisle seat for Yogi.

  ‘Changed person, perhaps,’ Kajol said. ‘But it’s still a waste of the weekend.’

  To be able to sit next to Kajol made Yogi happy. But there was also a rash of fear. Kajol had his goal sharp and clear. He had signed up for coaching for the engineering entrance exams, Sylvan Mentoring. Once every month, they sent whole question banks of Class 12 math and physics and chemistry reprogrammed in mind-altering permutations. Kajol knew the questions they would mail every month and the four years till Class 12 were just a waste of time as he was prepared to crack the IIT entrance tests already. He was on his way and he was going to take Yogi with him. He would do nothing without Yogi.

  ‘Why?’ Yogi had asked. ‘Isn’t this nice?’

  ‘The half-yearly exams are just around the corner.’ Kajol had frowned. He looked like a little boy when he did that. ‘I wanted to get started this weekend. Especially on the trigonometry.’

  ‘Trigonometry?’ Yogi was terrified. Did they have trigonometry? In Class 9? He couldn’t ask.

  He averted Kajol’s glance and looked down. They were wearing their school uniform. Ashen shorts and white shirts made of coarse cotton. It had to be the cheapest kind of cloth. Even though the saffron worn by the monks were smoother and shinier and the great secretary-monk wore saffron silk. The over-starched coarse cloth clung to Kajol’s dark and thin legs like a sheet of paper. His legs were almost hairless and there was something insect-like about them, the bulbous knees, but right beneath them Yogi could see the tiny blisters like permanent goose pimples and for some reason he wanted to scratch that skin very gently.

  ‘Why are you always with Sushant Kane?’ Kajol frowned. A jolt shot through Yogi. What was he to say?

  ‘He’s a good teacher.’ He said weakly.

  ‘He’s a bad guy.’ Kajol looked outside on the speeding road and rested his arms on the armrest between them. His bony elbow touched Yogi’s arm.

  ‘He smokes ganja in his room.’

  Only bidis, Yogi wanted to say. But he didn’t know if he could say that. So he kept quiet.

  ‘You haven’t spoken much to him, have you?’ he asked. ‘Outside class?’

  ‘I don’t have time to waste.’ Kajol said while looking out of the window. His upper lip throbbed like a bird’s wing, quivering as it fought against the wind. He was unreachable. So brilliant, so angry.

  ‘I know he fills your head with nonsense.’ Suddenly Kajol turned to him, grasped his wrist. ‘Seriously Yogi, get back.’ What would he do with his wrist? How long would he hold on to Yogi?

  The boys were chatting and laughing and somebody was singing at the back. But they were all far from them. Nobody looked at them.

  ‘What?’ Yogi felt a twinge of shame as soon as he uttered it.

  ‘It’s Class 9!’ Kajol looked straight at him. ‘Do you have a goal in life?’

  Yogi rested his hand lightly on Kajol’s.

  Kajol pulled his hand away. ‘You can forget about getting Science in your Plus 2 if you score below 90 per cent in your boards.’

  I can never be as good as you, Kajol. He wanted to say. My handwriting will never be as beautiful as yours.

  ‘And then what will you do?’ Rage sparkled in his eyes. ‘Take the IIT entrance test from the Commerce stream?’

  ‘I don’t care about the IIT, Kajol.’ Yogi said.

  ‘Of course, you don’t. It’s only your life, why should you care? When you can lock yourself in a room with a shady man and smoke ganja?’

  Yogi felt throttled. Kajol always did this to him. Where were they going? What did the future hold?

  He was going to say something nasty when he heard the roar.

  ‘Apples? Grapes? Strawberries? Apples, did you say?’

  Mihir Dam, the PT teacher, was wobbling his way along the aisle of the bus like a drunkard. Always the first thing he said when his temper exploded. Apples. Red juicy apples.

  ‘Your father buys you apples? Apples from Kashmir? Hundred rupees a kilo?’

  Guppy was Ankur Banerjee, large and round with the complexion of Europeans. He had pink patches on his huge cheeks that became red when he was flustered or terrified. As they did now. His parents worshipped him and loved to brag about what a fancy cricketer he was and how highly prized in the snazzy cricket clubs of Calcutta like at CCFC and the snooty cricket camps. Guppy’s family was as rich as they looked and both his parents were some corporate bigshots. But that didn’t explain why their cricketing IQ was subzero as Guppy barely lasted at the wicket for a ball or two after wielding his pricey English Willow like a giant spoon a couple of times.

  Guppy was the kind of boy Mihir Dam loved to beat into pulp.

  ‘So your father’s a rich man, is he?’ Mihir Dam shouted hoarsely. ‘He feeds you apples, does he?’

  Do you eat apples? Mihir Dam screamed this question whenever he attacked a boy. Short, dark and square, he was a poor villager who had won the blessing of the order and made a living as one of the sports teachers at the ashram. He knew deep down that boys made mischief for one reason, and one reason only: their fathers’ money, and the pride that came with it.

  The driver drove faster and faster. He was terrified of the scuffle at the back. Mihir Dam pulled Guppy by his hair and banged his clenched fist on his back. It was like an explosion. Even on Guppy’s soft, cushiony fat. After all, he was right about Guppy.

  The fat idiot couldn’t hold a bat to save his life but would not stop bragging about the pricey cricketing gear his parents had gifted him. Especially the bat, apparently real English Willow, that cost a bomb. He wished he could take it to the town of Chandra
chur where the temple courtyard would be the perfect place for a match. He also said something about rustic old fogeys who taught the boys sports but wouldn’t know a piece of English Willow if it hit them in their face. He had said it loudly when the bus had stopped by some empty field where the driver wanted to take a leak. He was stupid that way.

  There was something sad about watching Guppy being thrashed. Because he was a clumsy and helpless boy, so fat that he took two seats anywhere. And his parents certainly never touched him except to kiss and coddle him so being hit was an unreal thing; his body didn’t know which way to shake and tremble and he was too zapped to cry. But it was also kind of beautiful because Mihir Dam kept shouting about apples and Guppy looked, well…like an apple himself. Large and pale with reddish cheeks that got redder and redder the harder he was hit.

  ‘Now he will burst,’ said Bora, transfixed at the violence.

  Mihir Dam turned to him as if electrocuted.

  ‘My father is a farmer.’ Bora said like a robot.

  Luckily for him, Mihir Dam turned back to Guppy. He slapped him on his cheek. There would be short and stubby finger marks on those pale cheeks for a few days now.

  Yogi glanced at Kajol. He was looking out of the window. He liked to pretend such things never happened.

  Yogi had never been to a place like Chandrachur. It was quiet and saffron and breezy and merged into the river that flowed past. The air smelled different. It was pure and full of faith and you felt someone was smiling at you all the time, someone who cradled you in his arms high above the dirt of the world. You also felt that this person had glasses and the kindest smile in the whole universe. When you thought about it there were happy monks in billowy saffron robes, many of them wearing glasses, rushing from one house to another, talking to knots of people, sweeping the steps and watering the trees.

  The boys marched in a clumsy antlike procession, rows of white shirts and ashen trousers, elbows and black shoes shooting out in odd directions. It felt fine in school where they belonged but here the huge temples and monasteries and prayer halls were large and wide open to the world and there were people from all over, tangles of white foreigners milling around and the river flowing away forever.

  They walked the boys through the rooms where the Happy Bearded One had spent his last days, rooms full of dark wood and white cotton sheets and large wrinkled cushions and Yogi felt he could live there forever. It was like living in a prayer hall. They showed them the field where the twelve original disciples of the Happy Bearded One had gathered after his death one wintry night and had sworn over smoldering log fire to pledge to the brotherhood.

  Yogi smelled the river as they walked through the ashram. The Ganga. It was a river the colour of ash and saffron and blue smoke, the river of yoga and burning bodies and hymns and snow that came down from the mountains up north. It took in everything, flowers and leaves in prayer, human waste and charred belly-buttons from corpses burnt at the crematoria that dotted its banks, even the smoke of factory-chimneys, and sang along its way to the sea. Out here she spoke Bangla and cradled the ashram town of Chandrachur and covered it lovingly with a sandy hue.

  There was no real sand but the temples looked sandy. It was sand the colour of the robes the monks wore. Sometimes they were aflame, deep and amber, almost a shade of orange. Then they looked intense and angry, like they were on fire. But more often they were faded, a kind of light dusty saffron that looked old and peaceful, the kind that faced the world with the childlike smile of a happy old man. They looked old but if one looked closely they were beautifully crafted and nothing was chipped or broken or mossy like real old temples. The main shrine looked like something a talented child had put together after traveling around the world. There were pillars like those in ancient South Indian temples and steeples like churches in Italy and domes like mosques in North Africa along with brickwork that looked like terracotta burnt and shaped in the villages of Bengal.

  They had lunch in a long hall with the coolness of a mud-thatched roof, sitting on long benches with long tables before them, just like the dining hall back in school. It felt cooler here as they were on a holiday and there was no need to rush through lunch to get ready for the rest of the school day. And they were being served! Brahmacharis only a few years older than them served them rice and dal and fish caught from the river. The Brahmacharis were monks-in-waiting; boys who had vowed to enter the order but were serving the twelve-year apprenticeship before they earned their saffron robes. They wore white robes and the colour looked boyish on them but also a little stupid. They had their eyes drowned in the dal they served and refused to look up. But a couple of them smiled at the boys and asked them to eat well.

  Later in the afternoon they sat on the grounds where the twelve monks had gathered before a log fire after the death of their guru. Now it was a field with manicured grass. But there were two banyan trees that were over a hundred years old, so they must have been there when the Happy Bearded One died. It must have been a strange and bare time. They were poor young boys who had left their families and taken the mantra from the Happy Bearded One, Himself touched with the madness of God. They burned their guru, came back from the crematorium and discarded their clothes, shaved their heads. Then they put on the saffron robes and picked up their alms bowls and walking sticks. They promised to live by begging, wear nothing but the robes of the monk, the wooden flip-flops as those used by gods in exile.

  Standing there, Anirvan felt liquid electricity shoot through his body, scarring his flesh. There was something, something to be done in life. Something that would rage in the world.

  Flames had danced on their faces as they joined twelve hands to pledge eternal brotherhood, for earthly life and beyond. They had nothing but their begging bowls. And yet they were the richest young men that the motherland had ever seen.

  They would carve her sleeping dream. The nation of saffron.

  They were to sleep in a giant hall. On one massive bed. They had rolled out dozens of ribbed carpets and spread swathes of white cotton sheets over them. It was hard and there were no pillows. But Mihir Dam told them that they could sleep with their arms under their heads. The soft part of their forearm made a nice pillow and the posture was also good for the spine. A few boys had brought air-pillows they planned to inflate after the lights were out. The monks would not allow it.

  It was exciting to sleep there. It was hard to say why. The place looked like the school assembly hall where they gathered to say their prayers. To truth from untruth. Take us. To light from darkness. Also a bit like the room where wedding guests spent the night of the wedding with the newlyweds, singing and laughing and gossiping. Perhaps it was the white sheets. The wedding hall also had white sheets spread all over, with long-stemmed roses wrapped in silver foil everywhere, the red petals torn and scattered at the end of the night of merrymaking. But the white sheets on the wedding bed always looked crumpled, even before anyone sat on them. Everything in the assembly hall was clean and straight and taut.

  Kamal Swami came to inspect the hall. They sat quietly while he walked around, his soft clean feet treading the white sheets on which they were to sleep. He looked around, his face hard to read—the mouth parted faintly to reveal two small uneven teeth but it wasn’t a smile. He was checking to see if they were quiet and well-behaved; also perhaps to make sure everything was okay and no boy had to sleep on the floor.

  But things had become tense even before the Lotus entered the hall. It was Tavi, he could never control himself. The boys had dumped their knapsacks on the spots where they planned to sleep. The usual knots had formed. The problem was that someone had dumped his knapsack next to Rajeev’s. Once someone did that, it was sacred as the place was ‘taken.’ But Tavi wanted to sleep next to Rajeev, and when Tavi wanted something that looked hard to get, his upper lip quickly became dotted with sweat and he started to stammer. It was frightening because when these things happened Tavi could do anything—he became a kind of demon, totally diff
erent from the laughing left arm fast bowler who decimated the opponent’s wickets at every third delivery and cheered with his teammates.

  But today it was scary as it was Lothar who had dropped his knapsack next to Rajeev and had ‘booked’ his place. Not that Lothar cared where he slept, he had probably dropped it by accident, but it was not good for Tavi to fling his knapsack away and ask him to scoot as the place next to Rajeev was, naturally, his. Rajeev looked worried but playfully so, as he was friends with both Tavi and Lothar. But Lothar looked up with bloodshot eyes and said something that had a nasty American slang in it, which made things worse as Tavi, who was from the Bengali medium, did not know much about American slangs, just enough to realize when something stinky was being thrown in his face.

  But Kamal Swami walked in right then and the fight had to be flung under the sheet. The sheet stirred like a wounded animal. Everybody sat quietly as the Lotus glided through the room and eyed every inch and the light shone on his shaved head. In their corner Lothar’s eyes grew redder and redder like they had dead flies in them and Tavi stammered to himself darkly and tightened and loosened his right fist ceaselessly. Yogi leaned closer to him and heard a word repeated like a mantra. ‘Shonabitch.’ It was Lothar’s fault really, he spoke too fast and faster when he was flinging some mean street curse and now it was up to Tavi to sit and repeat what he had heard like a mantra till it made sense to him but it never would.

  Kamal Swami barely said anything during inspection. They all wished he would say more, perhaps grumble a bit or be mean in a salty, pointed way like some of the other monks. ‘Is that your underwear or a turd? Smells like it.’ ‘Next time you walk in with your shoes I’ll make you lick the floor you haramzadah son-of-hell.’ Some of the monks spat things like that at the boys. The Lotus was clean and quiet but his eyes roved behind his shining glasses and the boys’ hearts beat fast and faster. Their skin crawled with shame and the air felt heavy. Why did Tavi, the big and loud fast bowler, want to sleep next to Rajeev who seemed to care about nothing and was always singing holy songs in his girlish voice? Why, everyone knew why he did. But who would talk about it but in a whisper?