Bhairavi

by Shivani Gaura Pant

  ‘We’ll just take off, Chandan!’ Somebody had said to her once, ‘we’ll get down at whichever station catches our fancy and get on any train that we want to.’ Was it Vikram whispering in her ear?

  Out of breath and tremulous, she got into the ladies’ compartment of the train waiting at the station.

  EIGHT

  Dawn had barely spread its arms around the world; the train started moving as soon as she sat down, as if it had been waiting for her. Till now the forest-girl had been unconcerned about the absence of her blouseless outfit, she started when she saw the other women in the compartment. A group that had been to a fair filled her compartment. She suddenly became aware of her immodest attire among them. Chhi-Chhi! What would people say when they saw her state of semi-nakedness? She wrapped her saffron sari all around her hands and face.

  Neither did she have a ticket nor a travelling companion. She sat down in a corner like a saffron bundle. As soon as the train started, a heated verbal duel broke out between two villagers returning from the fair. The attention that had been momentarily fixed on her, was now focused on this new source of entertainment. The fight got over only when the group’s destination arrived. Chandan was now all alone in the compartment.

  In her loneliness, she remembered with sadness another such train ride. Those fierce faces, the four demons surrounding her like dogs and the groans of her husband calling out to her, ‘Chandan, Chandan!’ Vikram had seen her ruination, then how could she dare tie a thread at the mazaar?

  For a moment, she wanted to alight, run back, untie the thread and let it float away in the air. The train seemed to be ambling along, saluting every station. Nobody entered the compartment, and nobody came to check her ticket. The moment she felt that a station was nearing, she would run into the toilet and bolt the door, but how long could she play this game of hide and seek?

  The unknown destination arrived ultimately, and her compartment was isolated as it stood still in the yard. All was quiet. Feeling fearful, she stepped out of the train from the back door. She did not hesitate to jump out when she saw the small iron door unguarded.

  When she stepped out, the familiar city snatched her saffron clothes off her and rendered her completely naked.

  ‘Try as hard as you might want to, new Bhairavi, will you be able to hide from us?’

  Trucks loaded with iron rods, black and yellow taxis, colourful cars and scooters. She stood shocked in the middle of the milling crowd like a village belle lost at a fair.

  ‘Oh, new Bhairavi, where are you coming from?’

  Vishnupriya Didi, saffron bedding on her head, took her hand.

  ‘Have you come alone or has Maya come with you? It’s good that we met here, have you forgotten your luggage in the train?’ Chandan could not answer any of Priyadi’s many questions.

  From the expression on Chandan’s face, the wise Vaishnavi understood that something unfortunate had happened.

  ‘Let me call a taxi, you look very tired, you’ll get more tired on a bus. I stopped taking scooters since the time I fell from one.’

  Chattering thus by herself, Vishnupriya Didi hailed a taxi and they settled in.

  ‘It’s good that I returned today, otherwise you would have kept looking for me everywhere.

  I had taken Raniji to Mathura, Vrindavan and then Nathdwara. Raniji remained there, saying, “Vishnupriya, you should go, my Radhagovind is all by himself there.” So I came back. She doesn’t let the gates of the temple close for more than eight days. I was wondering how I would live alone. Govind sent you, thankfully.’ The fatigue from the journey entered the eyes that hadn’t slept for two nights. Without saying anything and with a sad expression, Chandan continued to look out of the speeding taxi.

  Vishnupriya Didi asked the taxi driver to stop when they reached their destination and taking her bedding roll out of the car laughed and said to Chandan, ‘Won’t you get out?’

  The Radhagovind temple was on the western side of Raniji’s enormous haveli and Vishnupriya Didi lived in its storeroom.

  ‘Why Bhairavi, your silence is frightening. Is everything fine? I haven’t received any letters from Maya in a while. Is Maya fine?’

  Would she have come here had Maya been fine? The tears she had been trying so hard to hold back started flowing and told the truth. Then, Chandan dried her eyes. Haltingly, she told Vishnupriya everything. Vishnupriya was Maya Didi’s guru behen. Had Maya Didi been alive, she would have told her everything herself. The pain Chandan had been holding back for so long poured out of her.

  ‘I knew that unfortunate wretch would come to such an end some day! She left a Vaishnavi akhada to give company to snakes. That Aghori demon had bewitched her!’ Vishnupriya dried her eyes with the end of her sari and took a long breath.

  ‘Now, where will you go, Bhairavi?’

  This jolted Chandan out of her sad reverie; she was not prepared for such a question.

  Vishnupriya did not have the courage to keep this spark of beauty in her arsenal. Raniji’s young nephew visited often with his friends. Even Vishnupriya’s guru came on visits. The one whose divine beauty had swayed Maya’s learned master could just as well make her old guru dream of the hues of happiness.

  It was clear to Chandan that Vishnupriya was reluctant to make her a member of her akhada because she had run away from the last one. Vishnupriya had brought her from the station thinking that a student of Maya’s had come to visit Delhi. Chandan got up without answering the question she had been asked twice now.

  ‘I’ll leave now, Priyadi!’ She pulled her saffron sari to her shoulder.

  It was pitch dark partly because it was almost dusk and partly because of an overcast sky. It looked like it might rain any time.

  ‘Oh Ma! Where will you go in this new city? That too with this face. Here, even old Vaishnavis are harassed by louts and you…?’ Chandan stopped her mid-sentence, laughed and said, ‘Don’t worry about my face, Priyadi. I have learnt to hide it well.’

  Indeed, she wrapped the sari around herself, turning it into a burqa.

  ‘See?’ She said in a strangled voice, ‘Now, who can tell whether it is a Sanyasi or a Sanyasini?’ She left as Priya looked on at her retreating back. Thank god, the problem had been resolved on its own.

  Clad in her saffron attire, Chandan went to the bus stop and waited there. She had stood at this very bus stop with Sonia and Vikram so many times. The tall building with blinking lights which said LIC brought back so many memories. When she had not made a mistake in alighting where she had, then how could she make a mistake in recognizing this huge building?

  She had a cup of tea at a tea shop on the road. Then pulling the chillum out from her waist, she filled it and asked the shopkeeper for four burning coals; he looked shocked. Her entire face was covered, just her eyes could be seen. The sanyasi had covered his face so! Maybe he was suffering from a terrible disease, his nose might have fallen off and he had covered his face in that saffron robe to hide the grotesqueness of his visage. Delhi was full of such specimens.

  The shopkeeper took four burning coals from his stove and dropped them in the chillum.

  She recognized the leader under whose statue she was sitting, chillum in hand.

  ‘If you ever lose your way, then remember, Bhabhi!’ Sonia had said, ‘Walk in a straight line from this statue’s nose, then turn at its left ear. The gate with the netted wall is ours.’ She took a long puff under the statue—‘Jai Guru Jaalandhar. You’ve gotten me so far, now look after me the rest of the way too.’

  Baba Pir, I have tied a thread at your mazaar; the intoxicating smoke of the chillum was reaching her head, making her luscious eyes look like cinders.

  When she got up, neither did her legs tremble, nor her heart. She was now an accomplished heroine on her way to meet her dearest love.

  She did not hesitate even a little when she saw the milky white lights shining on the netted walls. Was this way still open for her?

  ‘It is not difficult to run away
from your husband’s house, Bhairavi,’ Maya Didi had once said to her swaying in her intoxication. ‘What is difficult is returning there. The door you had opened and jumped out of, will you be able to return to it?’

  She was at the back door. That narrow alley, by which the milkman brought his buffalo for the milk delivery. With tremendous self-confidence, she walked in as if she had just returned from a walk. It did not take her long to recognize her window; she stood under it, patiently waiting.

  The thread she had tied at the baba’s mazaar started flitting in front of her intoxicated eyes.

  Strains of western music floated in from another window. The bittersweet smell of Nibori reawakened her memory. Her golden past floated in front of her eyes. Holding her husband’s hand at unknown small stations, roaming in the forest of young love, she remembered all of that. Now, she did not fear being seen or heard.

  A long car came and halted next to her instead of rolling up at the portico.

  Had the driver not been careful, he would have surely hit her.

  ‘Who is this impudent wretch?’ He got out seething in anger and stood in front of her.

  That laugh.

  It was such a strange laugh. As if a person long dead had returned after an age to visit his relatives for one last time.

  She stood resolute before him like the epitome of hapless beauty.

  ‘I knew I would get to see you; after all I had tied a thread at the Baba’s mazaar.’ She laughed again and with this laugh, the fields of Arhar, the well and the Dharchula valley all appeared before Vikram.

  ‘Chandan, Chandan!’ He caught hold of her and started kissing her like a madman. He forgot that his second wife had just vanquished death to make him a father. He forgot that the car he had just alighted from and under whose shade he was kissing her madly was a gift from his new mother-in-law. He even forgot that his mother and mother-in-law were pacing inside the house, waiting to hear about his wife’s well-being. He had taken leave of his senses on seeing the new beauty of his beloved. The knee-length dhoti, rudraksha mala around the neck, the semi-nakedness of the divine beauty he had made his own once! His wife, his companion, his lover.

  No, nothing could besmirch that face. That stain had made her more beautiful, like the spot on the moon! He leaned over her mouth again but this was not the familiar smell of kasturi which he was familiar with, having lived at his hunter grandfather’s house. He recognized this smell. This was the smell that had wafted about his old foreigner friends. The lines in English he had read recently appeared in front of him.

  ‘The smell of marijuana clings to breath and clothing. The smokers suffer from bloodshot eyes.’

  Had the intoxicating smell coming from every fold of her attire made her eyes go red?

  To see if his suspicion was right, Vikram lifted the face that had drooped over his chest and his companion tightened her embrace. She seemed afraid that this treasure she had found with such effort would be snatched away from her.

  ‘Vikram, where did you go?’ Startled, they parted. Her mother-in-law’s voice pulled Chandan back to the present. She quickly hid behind a pillar.

  ‘I am coming, Mummy.’ Vikram moved towards his mother as she stood near the car after climbing down the stairs.

  Chandan saw her mother-in-law from behind the pillar and suppressed the hiccup forming in her throat and closed her eyes.

  ‘Why don’t you say what happened?’ Mother-inlaw looked very scared.

  Vikram caught hold of her hand and pulled her towards the portico—

  ‘Why don’t you say anything? Is Darshan fine? I called the hospital so many times. Your mother-inlaw has fainted some hundred times. She is anyway neurotic, and ever since she heard it was a caesarean she went mad chanting Darshan’s name. What happened? Say something, son, I am prepared for the worst.’

  ‘Darshan is fine, Mummy. It’s a boy.’ He whispered softly but the one standing just at a short distance had heard him.

  Fate had drowned her in such a strange swamp!

  His mother took the whisper and turned it into a loud fireball and threw it out: ‘Arre Sonia, give Darshan’s mother smelling salts again! It is a boy. Come inside, why are you standing here? We have to give Daddy a trunk call.’

  ‘Look at his fate, stays at home every day but the day he gets a grandson, he’s in Bombay.’ She pulled her son inside.

  Chandan walked out the same way she had come in. Maya Didi had been right, ‘Any man can forgive all your sins at just the sight of your face and he after all is your lusting husband.’

  The kind judge had indeed forgiven all her faults. Could she still be freed from the eternal stigma of her exile?

  Even after being freed of one’s shackles, a prisoner cannot forget their death sentence, their conscience shackles them forever. They look at their life transformed by just a moment and wonder, where would they go now?

  Chandan, like a prisoner set free was wondering the same thing: where would she go? Where?

  A CBS company and Yoda Press, New Delhi

  Copyright © Shivani, 2020

  Translation copyright © Priyanka Sarkar, 2020

  The right of Shivani to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with Section 57 of the Copyright Act, 1957.

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