He heard the shower.
He didn’t want to open his eyes but he knew he was in a large, quiet, airy bathroom. Green shoots nuzzled the huge open windows and wild birds sang odd tunes. He didn’t want to open his eyes because his mind was slowly going blank. It had already left his body under the shower and was floating away from it like a wisp of air. He watched his body breathe and get beaten down by the sprinkling shower. But he felt nothing.
‘You’re lost,’ the little boy voice came from far away. ‘Lost, lost. Lost.’
A voice soaked in love and rainwater.
Safe
A bronze swan crested the gate of the ashram. There was no doubt that it was a swan; yet it always reminded Yogi of a smiling serpent. Perhaps it was the long, meandering neck that shone in bronze. Perhaps it was really a python. There was a serpent, they said, that slept inside us. There was only one way of awakening it. Yoga. The kind of yoga that led human souls out of the cycle of karma, into the black hole of nirvana.
The serpent curled up and slept inside people, like an entangled intestine. The final dream of nirvana was to awake the intestine-serpent, let it swallow the whole human being.
He walked inside. It was green, so soft and green. The air felt pure and clear. To his left was the big ashram office. A different kind of an office. It didn’t have the sinister, paan-stained grin like government offices in the city. No paan or cigarettes here but swathes of white cotton and blue. Once in a rare while, a saffron swish. Only one or two monks worked here, and they were almost hidden till one walked out, or went from one room to another.
He walked towards the vast ocean of green. It was their playground. He loved the madness of this place. But some days his game-time was spent hiding from the playground, sneaking into the library, winding along the path that went past the hostels. Two hours when he held his breath, hoping no one caught him not playing.
Many years had passed since he had walked these lanes. Many years? Why, it had not even been two years yet. Why did it feel like many years?
He walked past the school. The swan floated here again, huge and smiling, on the school’s forehead. Here it sat on a lotus, the lotus that promised to bloom but did not quite. Smiling, the swan sat on the lotus, as if it was an egg it was trying to warm to life. Right under the façade was their assembly hall where every morning they chanted the prayers that longed to sing the python awake.
He passed the mango orchard on his right. The leafy trees were clustered so thickly together that the orchard felt dark and moist at all times of the day. As if it was raining there silently, all the time.
If he walked straight, he would get to the huge Central Library. He didn’t need to go there today. There was no need to hide.
He walked on the trail that snaked past the hostels. L-shaped buildings that crawled with boys who sang and jumped. Little boys. It was almost evening, and moving in and out of the dining hall they looked happily tired. They had played hard on the grassy grounds.
Conscience. Grace. There was Bliss Hall. His home for three years. Was it not?
He entered Bliss Hall. Some of the boys looked at him but most of them didn’t. Did he still look like a schoolboy?
They were on their way back from the evening snack in the dining hall. Some of them with towels around their waists and wet hair, walking out of the shower. It was one of those hours on a loose end, those in-between hours when the boys led scattered lives. They were back from the games and had to shower and eat. Then they would go for evening prayer.
He walked to the warden’s room. Amber light shone through the saffron curtain. He knocked.
Kamal Swami parted the curtain.
‘Come in,’ he said.
He looked at Yogi. Smiles always brought the dimple on his cheeks, like a baby’s.
Yogi felt numb. A silken, beautiful kind of numb. His body didn’t belong to him anymore. The fragrance was numbing. Incense sticks and sandalwood and fresh clean cotton. Smiling saffron and amber. Colours that created home.
Was he crying? He couldn’t say.
‘Sit,’ the Swami pointed to his bed. ‘Here.’
Yogi sat on his bed. There was no cushion, just a few cotton sheets folded and stretched across the wood. It felt soft and smooth and clean, just like his saffron robe. He had never touched his bed before.
‘Sit,’ the Swami said again, and stepped out of the door.
Yogi had never been in his room all alone. It was such a small room. But it was a beautiful room. There was hardly anything in it. A bed, a table and a chair of dark wood. The table-cloth was saffron, a lighter shade, and there were a few books and a notepad. The three of them looked at him from the wall. The Happy Bearded One, the Great Saffron one, and the Melting Mother.
The room was small, neat and fragrant. It hugged Yogi.
Kamal Swami came back. He sat on the chair.
‘How’ve you been?’ He asked.
Yogi nodded. He tried to speak but couldn’t.
‘Sushant is a good man,’ he said. ‘Good that you’re staying with him.’
‘Yes,’ Yogi said. His voice sounded lifeless.
The curtain rippled and there was a knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ the Lotus said, his eyes on Yogi.
Kajol stepped inside. Yogi’s heart shifted in his chest. Especially to see him in this room. It was home.
‘Sit,’ Kamal Swami pointed to the bed.
Yogi moved a little to make space for him. Kajol sat on the other end of the bed. The bed creaked faintly. Yogi shivered.
The Lotus sat on the chair.
‘Did you eat your evening snack?’ He asked Kajol.
‘Yes,’ Kajol said.
‘What did they serve in Bliss today?’
‘Muri, coconut slices,’ Kajol said. ‘Tea.’
‘Oh, nice.’
‘Did you eat anything?’ Kamal Swami looked at Yogi. ‘We have bread and butter today. And hot chocolate.’
Butter and brickbat. Back then they used to joke. Slices of bread as thick as their knees and only the fragrance of butter. Butter was expensive. It was hard to tell what the hot chocolate was. Some thin brown trickle with a touch of sugar. Hot chocolate!
Yogi wanted to eat bread and butter and hot chocolate. And live in these rooms. Why did he go away?
The bell rung. The bell for prayer.
The Lotus picked up his prayer book from the table. The green book with the sitar on the cover.
‘I have to go for prayer,’ he said. ‘You sit and talk.’
The conch sang. They blew the conch three times before prayer started. One of the tribal boys with strong lungs.
The Lotus paused at the door and turned back.
‘A monk’s room is a safe place,’ he said. ‘Stay as long as you like.’
And then he was gone.
They were safe. Here. Nobody could come in. Nobody could see them.
Safe from the world. Safe from life.
The conch sang again. It started sharp and thin and then slowed down, bloated up, like a balloon, crying a song.
The hostel was empty. Everybody was now in the prayer hall.
‘Everybody’s proud of you,’ Yogi looked at Kajol and smiled.
‘Yes,’ Kajol said. ‘I suppose.’
‘You’re one step closer to IIT now,’ Yogi said. ‘What you always wanted.’
‘IIT,’ Kajol said absently.
‘I knew you would do it.’
Suddenly, Kajol’s eyes twinkled.
‘But who’s been changing the world?’ his lips curled with mischief. ‘One neighbourhood at a time?’
‘Sure,’ Yogi said. ‘Go ahead, have your fun!’
‘I went to a gathering at the refugee colony,’ Kajol said. ‘I heard you speak.’
‘You did?’ Firecrackers burst inside Yogi’s chest. ‘To hear me?’
‘You look calm when you speak,’ Kajol said. ‘But you’re terrifying.’
An old flash of anger shot through
Yogi. Between them there was a red ring of hatred. Hatred for the lives they lived.
‘Of course you find it terrifying,’ he said. ‘For you, it should be.’
‘You have a good life. All worked out,’ he said. ‘Computer engineering at IIT. Then the MBA and a job with a multinational. Right?’
Kajol looked at him. Pain spread a dark cloud across his face.
‘Right?’ Yogi wanted to take him in his arms, squeeze him so hard that it hurt. Hurt him with vengeful cruelty.
He dreamt of deep red welts on Kajol’s naked skin. He would caress them, and watch him shiver.
‘Then a lovely wife?’
Kajol looked at him with still eyes. Eyes that trembled with rainwater.
Yogi wanted to claw and scratch at his flesh, make him bleed. He had the sharpest words.
And then the music started upstairs. It was so slow and drowsy. The voice of eighty boys coalesced into a large, lazy animal that dragged its own massive weight. Yogi never realized it sounded so slow from outside. Cutting the ties to this world, I pray to you. It meandered. Full of virtues, you transcend all worldly virtue and quality.
They were smaller, bonier, awkward boys. Suddenly, they were smooth and hairless and their skin hadn’t broken out in pimples. They were in Class 6. The ribbed carpet of the prayer hall was home and bed under their bodies and it would give them shelter forever. White flowers were heaped around the shrine and flames flickered on the lamps and the fragrance of incense floated over them like a slow cloud. But the shrine was far away. Right before Yogi was a small, thin boy covered in the fine white cotton of the prayer chador. Yogi could see his dark skin underneath, and the white vest that he wore under it. Yogi wanted to close his eyes and sing but he couldn’t take his eyes off the dark skin and the bony ridges of his shoulders. He stared at it. There was nothing else in the world, just this boy.
At long last, he was a Yogi. The Yogi who saw nothing in the world. Just this boy.
Had Kajol moved closer, or had he? On Kamal Swami’s clean, austere bed, their knees touched.
Kajol looked into his eyes. For the first time, he didn’t look away.
They were safe. It was a monk’s room.
They didn’t know how their bodies got entangled. They were plants and suddenly they were a forest. Shoots and stems and creepers were entwined, creating dark, moist shadows and the sweaty fragrance of human flesh. Like blind men, they groped each other, felt each other’s cheeks, hair, collarbones.
They kissed. They had no sensation anywhere in their bodies except on their mouths.
Everything was food. Lips and tongue and teeth. All of them were hunters. The teeth and the tongue and the lips. Soundlessly, they hunted. Their lips glowed with spit.
Up above, the song floated like a large, drowsy animal. Cutting the ties to this world, I pray to you. The metallic percussion danced like a small, mischievous boy.
At the door, saffron curtains fluttered in the breeze.
The World
‘We are such a waste of space, are we not?’ He clutched the microphone and spoke to the people. ‘We cannot read or write. Books are better than us, so much better.’
The people were quiet. So quiet that nobody dared to move in their chairs. One could hear the squeak. Sometimes he hated it. Nobody ever cheered and chanted when he spoke, like they did with other speakers. Raghav, Malini, all of them got balled fists and zindabad. When he spoke the people became a photo still and it seemed nobody breathed. They stared as if he was a ghastly accident. Usually by the time he was done they were crying, but in silence. But they still stared as if he was a blood-streaked mishap.
‘They are a Centre of Culture,’ Yogi sang. ‘None of you can spell “culture”. Yogurt has more culture than you.’
‘You are nothing but bodies,’ he told them. ‘You’ve entered the earth as bodies, and you will rot as bodies. You will leave no mark on paper. You have to be coached to dip your thumbs in ink and leave an impression when real people, people who also have minds, want to take away things from you, such as whatever chipped coins you have. Or whatever garbage heap of land, as they want now.
‘They are holy people. Holy saffron people who are beyond bodies. They have built that beautiful mahogany paneled house with glass doors and leather sofas and, and that thing that would never make sense to you—the smell of books. Never.’
Renu stood next to him. This was her hood and her world. He was her boy. She called everybody over whenever the party needed a meeting. And then she propped him up before the mike.
He turned and looked at Renu. He felt short of breath. He looked away quickly. Renu always knew. He didn’t want her to see him.
‘Loving saints want this land,’ he told the people. ‘They are so kind that they look away from the dark lives you lead here, soiling it forever. Nothing but bodies, you are, and you give it to whoever gives you money for the evening. You will never know what it is to have a soul. The kind saints, the pure souls, do not hate you for that. They are still willing to take this land on which soulless bodies have lived and fucked and died and after it is theirs they will make it pure. With hymns and songs and the fresh breath of incense and flowers.’
Hymns and flowers. Suddenly his head reeled. He saw the soft white bed strewn with rose petals and smelled the incense. But then he heard the hymn, the chorus of growing voices, a large, lazy animal that dragged its own dripping weight. It was not a white bed but a thick dark-green ribbed carpet and all the flowers were white, jasmine and tuberoses and yellow garlands of marigold drowning the shrine.
He wanted to sit down, cry quietly.
‘And once the kind saints have cleansed your dirty home,’ he told them, ‘they will build another mahogany paneled, glass-door palace with shelves and shelves of books. Can you believe your luck? Books bound in beautiful leather, books with hundreds and thousands of pages, books which are heavier than people. Nobody will remember the smelly mindless bodies that have romped on this soil. There will only be the fragrance of incense, bound volumes and flowers around the shrines of the gods.’
The people stared at him like they were watching a puppet show with lightning. They were animals. He could call them anything and they would still stare, frozen. And then they would cry like dumb beasts.
‘But the Party is selfish,’ he said. ‘They don’t want you up in the air, dissolved in nirvana. They don’t want books with hefty spines where your stinking shacks are now. They don’t want the clean smell of flowers. They want the stench of your clients’ body fluids on your bed, your hair and your saris. They want you here.’
He looked at Renu again. Her eyes glistened, as if with sweat. She stared at him as if in a trance. He tried to speak but suddenly he couldn’t hear anything. Something fought inside his throat.
Did she frown? He couldn’t tell. She looked around, whispered something to her right.
The Party. He thought he said it but still he couldn’t hear anything, not even his own voice. He needed to lie down.
The music struck. The podium floated on it and everyone could see Salman Khan dance, muscles rippling out of every inch of his skin. Someone had turned on the giant speakers behind the podium. The faces blinked and looked around. Two young girls stood up and shook their hips.
Renu came up behind him. She slipped an arm into his. ‘Come.’
He leaned on her and walked. When he was with her, he didn’t need to walk. She took him along. His weight disappeared into her and she just floated and he floated along with her. She knew where to go. Always.
They walked over to the beer shack. It was a little hole in the wall where the prostitutes stocked alcohol that they bootlegged on dry days. The warm beer was in great demand among desperate college students.
She cupped his face in her hands. Her bangles jingled.
‘My boy,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
He looked up. His tears blurred her face. But it was there. She was there.
‘You’re dead,’ she said.
‘I’ve never seen you dead like this. Tell me.’
He nodded. He didn’t want to talk.
She ran her fingers through his hair, parting them gently. Neatly, she settled them.
‘Forget about the meeting,’ she said. ‘Let’s go home.’
He nodded again. He tried to swallow his tears but they were hard and lumpy.
‘I can…’ He said. ‘I can go back to the stage.’
‘And break down there?’ Renu made an ugly grimace. ‘What the fuck for?’
He looked down. And tried hard to swallow again.
The shack smelled of alcohol and stale sweat. It was an airless hole.
Renu drew him close. Her arms were around him, and the jungle of bangles. They jingled lightly. They could cut his skin, make it bleed.
‘Tell me na,’ she whispered. ‘What are you hiding?’
‘The prayer hall,’ he whispered. ‘I keep thinking of the prayer hall.’
‘The prayer hall,’ she repeated softly. ‘And someone in there?’
Relief flooded him like a delirium. That he had told her. Of how he floated in the songs of prayer, huddled in thin cotton. How his eyes teared up in the smoke of incense. And other things.
How he came to love a pair of bony shoulders out there. How he came to play hide and seek with his love. How the shoulders shone heavenly light.
Renu milked stories out of him. Just the way she milked everything. When his eyes glistened she knew the tale that would go with it. When he stammered she knew what he did not want to say. When he looked away she knew exactly how he wanted her to prod him so that he would talk.
She was his nest. A bird with huge, soft wings.
‘Someone in prayer?’ She looked into his eyes. Did her eyes look wet?
Sharply, he looked away.
He nodded. Slowly, very slowly.
Swiftly, she pulled him around.
She cupped his face again.
‘Go, Go, my son. Go back there,’ she said. ‘Let go,’ she whispered. ‘Go be happy.’
Her voice was hoarse. She kissed his forehead and drew away.
He stepped out of the shack. Behind him was the smell of booze and stale sweat.
Before him were Pir and Sana. Pir looked thunderstruck. Sana chewed on something, her eyes large and curious.
The Scent of God Page 17