by Bapsi Sidhwa
Turning to Ruth he said: ‘You’ve had your first look at the hijackers.’
‘They seem angry.’
‘They’re always angry.’
The car picked up speed and began to move. Hitching up their lungis, taking long, lithe strides, the men ran alongside, stroking and patting the Mercedes as if it was a horse. By the time the driver came to a stop before a line of elderly, neatly turbaned Sikhs holding garlands of roses and marigold, the crowd of young men had swelled noticeably. Ruth took in the complex of ancient buildings built around a grassy courtyard. The architecture was a mixture of Mughal and Hindu styles. A few newer structures stood discreetly to one side.
Raj stepped out of the car and good-naturedly saying, ‘Let me get through, my friends, let me pass,’ tried to shoulder his way around the car.
The older Sikh men, reprimanding the agitated young stalwarts and shoving them aside, pressed forward. Closing ranks and joining their palms they greeted him: ‘Saat Sri Akal, Minister Sahib.’
Saying ‘Saat Sri Akal,’ Raj returned the Sikh greeting and opened the door for Ruth.
The reception committee, taken aback at Ruth’s presence, exchanged quick glances. Pleased and flattered that the minister had thought fit to bring his wife, their faces wreathed with smiles, they placed fragrant strings of marigold and roses around Ruth’s neck; and removing more garlands from a stick held forth by a grubbily attired, meek little man, placed them around Raj’s neck in a fragrant band that covered his chest and rose to his chin. They stood with palms pressed before their flowing grey and white beards murmuring: ‘We are honoured you have taken the trouble to grace us with your presence; we are specially honoured you have brought along your begum.’
The slight man holding the depleted stick of garlands was introduced to them. He was the granthi, the priest in charge of the precinct’s small Gurdwara temple.
Ruth, blushing furiously at being mistaken for Raj’s wife, stood awkwardly beside him. Raj’s customary pallor was replaced by a flush and the top of his ears reddened. But before either of them could think to correct the inference they were rudely drawn apart. The men physically tugged Raj away and surrounded him in a heated clamour of what appeared to Ruth to be importunate accusations.
Ruth caught the word ‘cigarette’ twice. Had they caught the offending reek of smoke off her clothes? Off Raj’s? She tried to draw closer to him, alarmed at their fury; until she realized the grievances were directed not at her or Raj but at the grubby, bandy-legged little granthi she glimpsed hovering at the fringe of the excited crowd, the depleted stick of garlands still in his hand.
At what seemed to be the end of their litany of intemperate grouses a tall fellow, his large black eyes flashing, held aloft a solitary weather-beaten cigarette stub. The contentious bunch quieted briefly: ‘See? See what we found near the compound wall?!’ the man said, his accusation ringed with triumph. The others raised their voices to join his: ‘Yes. Look at it! We cannot permit such sacrilege. These are sacred premises! The granthi has permitted smoking!’
The vast complex was surrounded by a ten-foot-high wall, topped by glass shards and Raj knew there was no access to the premises except through the gate which was always locked. The man offered him the cigarette butt.
Raj stretched his lips in a squeamish expression of distaste and shook his head to decline the offer.
‘My brothers, if all you can find is a single crushed cigarette butt,’ he said, speaking unctuously, ‘it can only mean that the holy ground is commendably free of smokers. Instead of blaming the caretakers you should thank them for their vigilance. Anyone could have chucked it over the wall.’
But no, they were having none of it, and the little Sikh priest, his checked lungi outlining his bowlegs, stood accused of permitting desecration of the sacred premises.
‘Why aren’t the thugs in jail?’ Ruth whispered when the quarrelsome band, distracted by some flare-up amongst them, briefly withdrew their attention.
‘They have been allowed out to take part in some week-long religious rites at the samadhi. Don’t worry; they are confined to the complex.’
‘They’re dangerous. What if they escape?’
‘Where can they go? If they cross the border to India they’ll be strung up; their wanted-posters hang in all their police stations. In Lahore, with their long hair, turbans and beards, they’ll be spotted right away by the police.’
The crowd grew as the fathers and uncles of the hijackers, their grey hair tied in top-knots, or freshly washed and open to the sun, idly joined the crowd, contributing their own assessment of the crime. Some of them had set up camp in the shrine’s precincts for the duration of the trials and some periodically visited their jailed kin from across the border.
In trying to deflect their anger Raj only confused them when he suggested: ‘Let the poor fellow alone … You have a much larger enemy to contend with … don’t you? A loftier cause!’
Ruth guessed he was obliquely referring to the Sikh demand for a separate state, Khalistan. The hijackings were in fact the mainstay of their strategy to draw attention to their demand. But the cause, for the moment at least, appeared to have been relegated to the background, and the sinister machinations of the hapless granthi were of more immediate concern.
The accusations and recriminations were becoming serious. The granthi, who had so far followed them silently and hitherto pleaded his case with only a hounded look in his anxious eyes, suddenly thrust out his pigeon chest and slapped himself repeatedly with the flat of his hand. ‘So kill me. Put a bullet through me right here,’ he cried out between the loud thumps he was raining on his chest. ‘If I’m a sinner, shoot me for my sins!’
Raj hastily stepped forward and grabbed hold of the man’s flagellating arm. ‘Arrey, baba, no one’s going to kill you,’ he said, holding the man’s arm still and sounding mildly exasperated. ‘They have more important work to do than kill you. They have a larger cause to further … A more urgent goal … Don’t you? Don’t you?’ he said addressing the young men.
The Minorities Minister could not very well spell out his thoughts about their more pressing cause—it would create a political crisis and exacerbate the tension with neighbouring India. But his insinuations, which had been accompanied by suggestive movements of his eyes and hands, were lost on these villagers-turned-terrorists. They were unable to see beyond their immediate grievances, and they read in the minister’s attitude towards the granthi only a baffling obstinacy.
The zealots now trotted out a slew of other accusations. They did so tentatively, as if randomly testing the waters of the Minister’s forbearance of the priest’s misdeeds, and ultimately hurled the charge that the granthi not only smoked, but also served meat in the sacred precincts of the vegetarian langar! It was as if God had hurled a thunderbolt!
Primed for action and as predatory and dangerous as a pride of young leopards, the men would have as little compunction in tearing the priest apart as the ferocious cats their prey. As they moved in on him Raj quickly interposed himself between them, and the numerous fathers and uncles stepped forward to drag their enraged kin away. The reception committee of elders hastily escorted Ruth and Raj up some steep steps into the mausoleum.
After the din it was blessedly quiet beneath the square roof, its fluted dome ringed with a design of cobra hoods. A domed marble pavilion, decorated with what Raj described as pietra aura work, formed the centre of the sepulchral chamber in which a lotus-shaped marble urn contained the ashes of the Maharaja. Eleven smaller knobbed shapes held the ashes of four queens and seven slave girls. ‘They were dutiful wives,’ an elder who spoke English explained. ‘They flung themselves on his funeral pyre.’
The interior of the chamber was elaborately decorated with frescoes pertaining to Sikh gurus.
They were next escorted to the Gurdwara Dera Sahib. Built in 1619 it was a small shrine dedicated to the memory of the Fifth Guru, Arjan Singh. An elder with two leather straps crisscrossing his chest
to hold two curved jewelled daggers, spoke to Ruth in rapid Punjabi and, noticing her bewilderment, the man who spoke English obligingly translated him. ‘Guru Arjan Singh jumped into the Ravi river on 30 May 1606 and forever disappeared into the void.’ He intoned gravely, and Ruth understood that the Fifth Guru had not merely jumped into the river like an ordinary mortal and drowned; some miracle had taken place at this point. She would ask Raj later.
They walked into a chamber and Ruth was relieved to see the maligned granthi in the sanctum where the Granth Sahib rested. The enormous holy book was covered in blue velvet as it awaited the morning and evening prayers. The floor was covered with a red and pink carpet and white pillars rose out of square, ice-cream-pink bases. A gallery with a delicate fence surrounded the room above them, and a smattering of women and children looked down from it at them.
They left the temple and walked past the five-foot-tall plinth upon which the temple stood. The worn, narrow brick, embedded in deeply grooved and depleted clay, showed the platform’s antiquity. ‘This is the oldest part of the temple,’ the English-speaking Sikh explained and pointed to a darkly shadowed space in the foundation plinth a little ahead of them. ‘That is a holy entrance … it leads to the place from which our Fifth Guru, Guru Arjan Singh, disappeared into the river.’ Had he not drawn their attention to it Ruth might have walked past without noticing it. ‘Of course, the river has changed its course,’ the man continued: ‘Every time there is a big flood the Ravi moves further away.’
Ruth glanced at Raj: he looked tired and abstracted. The evening sun was aiming its glare at them and it was blistering hot. A floppy white cloth cap covered Raj’s head: he must carry it in his pocket. It also occurred to her that he was going through the tour for the umpteenth time because of her. She felt a swell of gratitude.
By now they had arrived at the shadowy space the elder had indicated. With most of the supporting brick missing at the top it appeared to have been gouged out of the plinth and looked more like a muddy ingress to a cave. Ruth could make out a narrow passage part of the way before it became engulfed in darkness. It must be cool inside the cave, she thought.
Surrounded by a coterie of elders, Raj had moved ahead. Ruth felt a gnawing curiosity. She knew she should follow them, but an indefinable impulse to know what lay beyond rooted her to the mouth of the cave. And then she felt the pull of something powerful and benign as a subtle strength swelled in her body and provoked her to follow its direction.
Ruth had to stoop to enter, but once she stepped on the earth floor the passage widened and she was able to stand up. A little ahead of her the path seemed to veer to the right; she wasn’t sure—the light was too murky. Stepping somewhat hesitantly, she walked up to a sort of landing, from which the path sharply turned and sloped gently down. She stood there. It was blessedly cool and after the glare outside, the diffused light engulfed her with its benevolent serenity. She went down the slope, lightly touching the cool earth walls of the tunnel with her fingers.
Her senses were enhanced—even in the dark she could see clearly: the walls of the tunnel and the roof had a strange translucency that enabled her to see the grit and stones embedded in the mud. Ruth stood before a steep shadow-shrouded staircase that seemed to disappear down and down into a void. She felt no fear, only a sense of lightness. She took her first step, and then another, and with each step the void that appeared to swallow the steps further down filled with a greenish glow which grew brighter and brighter—not a blinding light but a diffused pleasurable brightness, evocative of promise, of expectation. The glow reached out to engulf her and she stepped into that light.
It was not until she became aware of the voice saying ‘Memsahib! Memsahib! Stop’—at first distant, and then all too close—that she became conscious of the state of bliss she was being wrenched out of, and her whole body resisted and stretched backwards like rubber.
In an instant she was drenched in an almost unbearable disappointment. As the granthi’s hands gripped her she heard Raj’s fearful: ‘Ruth? Ruth? Are you all right?’ And then he had his arm around her and she leaned against him with the lassitude of regret. He half carried her up the steps, lit now by the granthi’s flashlight.
When they were ready to leave, the elders once again formed a line, holding their palms pressed together and bowing. The granthi, smiling and swelling with pride, placed an orange ‘sarrappa’ scarf round their shoulders. It was meant to cover Ruth and the Minorities minister with respect from head to foot. The Sikh stalwarts, surprisingly subdued, hovered in an awed, uneven line. Word had spread that the woman had experienced something mystical in the tunnel. Even that she might have seen their Fifth Guru, Guru Arjan Singh, in a flood of divine light.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ Raj asked on their way back.
Ruth turned to him on the back seat. Groping for words she tried to explain the regret she had felt at being dredged out of her experience. ‘I wasn’t conscious of the state of bliss I was in till I’d left it … I wonder if that’s what death is like: the brightness at the end of the tunnel dying people see.’
Raj held her hand. ‘That is what we seek: At the end of the cycle of birth and rebirth the eternal divine bliss—Nirvana. That is why we meditate—to lose ourselves in the cosmic soup.’
‘I’ve lost my fear of death,’ Ruth said definitively, startled by the surety of her knowledge. Raj squeezed her hand tight, rubbing her fingers as she leaned against him. He stroked her arm. Conscious of the driver’s presence up front, there was not much else he could do.
Dusk had almost deepened into night as Ruth lightly touched Raj’s proffered hand and stepped out of the Mercedes. ‘Won’t you come in?’ she said to him. They could hear Jungi Khan drawing the gates shut behind them. Raj searched her eyes; she briefly held his gaze, untroubled by what he might see in them.
Billo held the door open to let them in and Ruth asked her to get them coffee.
‘I’d prefer tea,’ Raj said.
After they’d had tea and the maid had cleared the coffee table and retired to her room in the servants’ quarters, Ruth languidly stood up to say: ‘You haven’t been upstairs, have you?’ She glanced at Raj, who lay almost supine on the sofa.
‘No, but I’ve been waiting for the grand tour of the house,’ he replied, sitting up at once.
Ruth led Raj up a stylish flight of wooden slats that ran along the brick dining room wall. At the middle landing, and sharply angled to the left, another flight of steps led to the upstairs hallway. Ruth had not turned on the landing light and in the glow coming from the dining room, she, for an instant, imagined herself in the passage in the cave, except, instead of going down, the steps rose up. Raj was ahead of her. She followed him to the top of the stairs and as he stepped aside to make way for her, pushed open the door to their right. As Raj stepped into the room she suddenly noticed Jungi Khan close behind her on the steps. He slightly bent his head to lower his gaze and, assuming a somewhat deferential posture, remained on the steps—the gun slung on his shoulder.
Ruth blushed. She marvelled at his stealth.
Raj had not seen him. His voice thick, turning towards Ruth, he murmured: ‘Show me the rooms, my dear …’ and he noticed the guard on the steps, his chiselled profile and still body as if carved from stone. Raj caught a hint of movement beneath his lowered lids and he sensed the dire glint of menace flash a warning. He knew that even if he was to as much as touch Ruth, Jungi Khan would have no compunction about killing him. The guard was honour bound to protect Rick’s possessions.
Acutely conscious of the gatekeeper’s presence on the landing, Ruth led Raj perfunctorily through the two guest bedrooms. Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in her ears.
When they emerged Jungi Khan had his back to them. His shoulders sloping, his neck bent, he was trying to appear servile and inconspicuous but Ruth knew: had she permitted Raj to embrace her, the man would have broken his neck and flung him down the steps.
Moments later, when Ruth s
aw Raj to his Mercedes, the gatekeeper was already at his post at the gate.
‘Next time, my dear,’ Raj said, unrepentant and amused, ‘let me take you on a tour of my hotel suite. The hotel’s guards are more civilized.’
‘When would that be?’ Ruth said, trying to match his tone but failing.
‘How about, I send the car to fetch you tomorrow evening,’ Raj said. ‘I’m leaving the day after for Islamabad … To be sworn in as Roving Ambassador at Large.’ Raj conveyed the news of his appointment with his usual disarming humility.
Ruth was taken aback enough to say: ‘When were you going to tell me? One is not appointed Ambassador at Large every day!’
‘After I’d had you to myself for a bit … If that damned mountain oaf had not felt duty bound to kill me.’
‘He would have, you know,’ Ruth said, her shaky voice revealing the extent of her fear now that the terrifying moment was past.
‘I know,’ Raj said simply.
Ruth twisted her head as if ridding herself of a crick in the neck. ‘You’d better go,’ she said, nodding her head towards the car and stepping back.
‘Will you be all right?’
‘Yes …’ she said uncertainly, and then noticing Raj’s concerned face added on a firmer note: ‘I’ll be damned if I let that man hang around … I’ll tell Rick’s office to get rid of him.’
Later that night as she tossed restlessly in bed, she knew her affair with Raj was over. A sense of relief seeped through her. She remembered the merciless gossip that had erupted when it became known that a woman of her acquaintance was having an affair. What was she thinking? Behaviour that might be condoned back home would be unforgivable in this culture; frowned upon even by her closest friends.