by Ryan Lobo
Two streets away, Dr Krishna has just returned to his clinic and applied leeches to Mr Goswami’s psoriasis-scarred elbow in his clinic as the latter grips onto the arms of his chair, making the veins on his forearms pop. Rain clouds darken the west bank, rumbling towards the clinic. Krishna sits on the doorstep, sipping tea from an earthen tumbler and watching vehicles with loudspeakers exhort the populace to attend the election rallies.
‘It’s going to be a rainy night,’ he thinks, just as his cell phone starts ringing.
‘Iyer has gone mad! Bring sedatives! Hurry hurry hurry!’ Khanolkar gasps, speaking so fast that the doctor can barely make out the words. He hears what sounds like glass breaking in the background. Before the call cuts off, he hears Khanolkar saying, ‘No, Iyer, NO!’
Without delay, Krishna puts down his tea and grabs his satchel and umbrella.
‘I’ll be back!’ he tells Goswami.
‘When, sir?’ Goswami asks, his eyes closed tight against the pulsating creatures drinking his blood.
‘Soon. Soon.’
The doctor leaps into a funeral procession and the rainstorm breaks. Fighting his way to the front, he comes face to face with Bencho, one of the pallbearers, who is shielding himself from the sudden deluge with the stretcher, holding it straight above him.
‘Doctor, where are you going in such a hurry?’ Bencho asks, teeth red with paan.
‘Iyer has gone crazy again!’ Krishna says, hurrying along.
‘Ah, Iyer Sir,’ Bencho cheerfully moves out from under the stretcher, causing the corpse to slip off the stretcher and into a gutter.
‘Wait!’ shouts Bencho after the doctor as the dead man’s relatives rush forward.
‘You dog! How dare you? I am an inspector of police,’ screams the corpse’s son, a sturdy young man swathed in white mourning, his moustache vibrating with rage.
‘Sorry, sir!’ shouts Bencho, abandoning the procession and running after Krishna.
After a few turns in the maze of lanes, they reach the home to see a forlorn Khanolkar standing at the gate, soaked to the skin and holding a sodden newspaper ineffectually over his head.
‘It’s over! I am finished.’
Krishna calmly searches through the satchel for morphine just as Kapadia’s television bursts through a window and lands on the pavement with a loud crash, exploding into fragments. They enter the home, led by a gibbering Khanolkar, to find the other inmates gathered at the stairwell, baffled and fearful but deeply excited.
‘It has come to kill us all! A dark spirit has risen!’ Mala hisses, whipping her head back and forth as Khanolkar, Bencho and Krishna creep up the stairs. They see Iyer dart across the corridor, wraith-like, and disappear into his room, slamming the door behind him.
‘We are here to help,’ whimpers Khanolkar outside his door, almost weeping now.
Krishna peers through the keyhole. Thrown against the wall, the shadow of Iyer seems almost demonic.
‘He will murder us all,’ sobs Khanolkar, nudging Krishna out of the way. Led by Bencho, they burst into the room, sending the door and its rusty hinges flying across the floor. Iyer’s traces end in wet footprints leading towards the window. The cupboard is wide open; clothes and books are strewn about the floor. His knee brace lies next to the curtain. Khanolkar rushes to the window, but there is no one to be seen on the street outside.
‘He can’t have gone far,’ says Krishna, preparing the morphine injection and squirting some out in the process. Placing the plastic cap over the needle, he, too, looks out of the window at the ghats but sees no one.
From outside the home, they would have seen Iyer on the parapet by the side of the window, his back against the wall, beard flapping in the wind. Soaked, he carries a stuffed backpack over a Mysore jacket and dhoti, his shoes tied around his neck with their laces, a scooter helmet on his head and a bamboo staff in his hand. Carefully, Iyer walks to the end of the parapet and drops the staff off the edge. Grabbing the parapet with both hands, he lowers himself slowly, his arms screaming in protest. When fully extended, his feet dangle a few inches off the compound wall. He lets go another inch, holding on to the parapet with only the first joint of his fingers when his toes find the wall. Iyer lets go and jumps off the compound wall – his feet splashing mud – right in front of the beggar Omnath, who was fast asleep under the tonga. He can hear Khanolkar shouting his name from the window above.
Rising to his feet, Iyer curls his toes, letting the mud seep out from between them. Ignoring Khanolkar, he takes a deep breath, suppressing the battle cry he wishes to bellow, and raises his face to the rain, receiving it on his face like a blessing.
7
Scurrying down the road, Iyer joins yet another one of the endless funeral processions leading to Manikarnika ghat. His chest hurts, and the exertions have given him a headache, but he has to hurry. The sun has almost disappeared into the river stretching out to his right; only its pink rim is visible.
Pulling off the helmet and ducking to reduce visibility, Iyer notices a group of lepers sitting against a step, shielded from the rain by a balcony. They are sticking their fingerless hands out – each one more disfigured than the next – looking as pitiable as possible as they beseech the crowds for alms. In front of them, a line of women stand ankle deep in the river, beating the rocks with hotel linen despite the rain pouring on them.
‘Saar, saar,’ the lepers chant, their limbs stuck out in supplication.
The end of the line is marked by a particularly disfigured leper: a surly, one-eyed man with matted hair, rotten teeth and a single working finger on each palm. A push-cart stands by his side, which he uses to transport one of his companions – a legless crone with a withered arm who sits next to the cart – her fingerless palms beating the ground in supplication.
Iyer sits next to the cart, covering himself with his blanket. The crone cannot speak, and frantically makes hand motions in his direction as he croaks Saar in his best beggar voice, extending a parrot fist. ‘Rascal, this is our place,’ the one-eyed leper threatens, wagging his single finger at Iyer. Iyer is about to inform him of his incarnation but drops his head on seeing Khanolkar and Mishra huffing and puffing down the street. They stop directly in front of Iyer, who recedes further into the blanket, clenching his fingers inwards, palm facing the sky.
‘Saaaaaar,’ begs Iyer from deep within his blanket.
‘He’s probably headed to the boats,’ Khanolkar tells his accountant and yes-man Mishra, looking this way and that up and down the ghat.
‘Yes, I’ll go there. You head to the bus stop,’ says Mishra, as the duo rush off in opposite directions.
‘If this were Bombay I would have cut your throat by now, pig,’ snarls the leper, his jaundiced eye glaring at Iyer.
‘Insect, I am Bhīma: the tamer of elephants, master of the mace.’
‘Go mace some elephants then, master,’ the leper says, making a dismissive gesture with his finger.
Iyer looks out over the river as the rain abates, and utters a quiet prayer of gratitude for his deliverance from Khanolkar and Mishra. Sitting on the cart, Iyer feels a strange sense of comfort, even with the crone plucking at his blanket. The rain stops by the time his prayer ends. A flaming aarti floats past, followed by a hundred more, lit by pilgrims who have waited for the deluge to stop. Following their passage, Iyer spots Damayanti.
She is not twenty metres away, swimming in the shallow waters surrounded by marigolds and aartis. The sun floats low and red over the west bank; Iyer feels he has never seen such beauty. With her bathed in twilight, everything seems possible. The darkness to come holds no fear. The slouching beasts of the present recede in Iyer’s imagination and his eyes fill with tears as he feels the indescribable landscape of love, his chest feeling so full that he has to place his hand over his sternum to prevent his heart from exploding.
The crone taps at Iyer’s legs with her palms and says something that Iyer cannot understand.
‘What is she saying?’ hiss
es Iyer.
‘She says that you are her long-lost son and that I am your father and to get lost.’
Damayanti reaches the steps leading up to the ghats and stands there, her hands joined in prayer. Then she immerses herself – once, twice, thrice – tossing her hair skywards and sending marigolds and illuminated drops of the Ganges flying towards Iyer in a perfect arc. Emerging from the water and rubbing her hair down vigorously with a towel, she walks up, clothes clinging to her body, which looks hard and lean from a lifetime of manual labour. A used shampoo sachet clings to her sari. Standing up, Iyer takes off his helmet and blanket and tidies his hair.
Damayanti spots him and smiles at ‘the sad old poet’ standing at the top of the steps.
‘Ah, Mr Iyer, how are you?’
‘Goo—gooood morning,’ stammers Iyer, suppressed adoration writ large on his face.
‘Damayanti, where are you, you lazy woman?’ comes a call from a nearby house.
‘Coming!’ she shouts, turning her head back to smile at Iyer.
‘Hurry up,’ the voice hollers.
‘What a perfect day, no?’ asks Damayanti, unhurried and smiling. She spots Iyer’s backpack and the helmet he holds.
‘Where are you going?’
‘On a journey to vanquish a great evil,’ Iyer says, looking deep into Damayanti’s eyes, the odour of Liril soap filling his senses.
‘Damayanti, where are you?’ comes the cry again.
She smiles at Iyer and turns to leave, the shampoo sachet coming into view.
‘Madam.’
‘Yes?’
Iyer points at her sari.
‘What? Where?’ asks Damayanti, arching her neck but not seeing the sachet.
As her neck stretches, Iyer can see her trapezius defined against the wet cotton of her choli. Her acid scars run from her cheek down to her neck, two keloids journeying beneath the fabric towards her breasts. He reaches around her and plucks away the sachet. Damayanti smiles in thanks, her teeth white against her skin. As she turns and heads off towards the origin of the shouts, she tosses her hair, which brushes against Iyer’s face.
8
He’s still standing there in a daze when a fat hand lands on his shoulder and yanks him into an alley. Before Iyer can exclaim, another hand covers his mouth and nose, blocking off all air.
‘Bhīma Sir, it is me only!’ says Bencho through gritted teeth, his breath heavy with arrack. He’s surprisingly strong for a man of his size. ‘See!’
Gagging from Bencho’s hands, Iyer sees Khanolkar in the distance, his head ahead of his body like a mongoose, jabbing his finger at the surly leper who points enthusiastically in Iyer’s direction. Iyer shoots down the alley.
‘Sir! Where are we going?’ Bencho exclaims, jogging after Iyer and dragging Trishala, his donkey, behind him.
‘We will need a place to plan our escape from Kashi,’ whispers Iyer, checking to see if they are being followed. A crow squawks, flying off a dustbin and almost colliding with his face, and then expertly flying through a tangle of electrical wires above him.
‘Bencho! The crow will guide us!’ Iyer says, brushing at the swarm of flies rising from the garbage.
‘Sir? How?’
‘Have no fear, my ignorant chela. The heavens will guide him.’ And Iyer bolts after the crow.
‘Sir? Can the heavens tell him to fly a little slower?’ gasps Bencho, trying to keep up.
‘We will leave in your boat, Bencho. Make sure it has supplies – enough to last until we reach my brother’s home downriver.’
‘I stocked the boat yesterday for a firewood trip. Isn’t your older brother the same fellow who put you here?’ gasps Bencho, now completely out of breath.
‘We will be received as heroes and he will see our true natures. A good man, my brother is,’ says Iyer, leaping over a sleeping cow.
‘Sir, we can also meet the MLA Jayachandra?’ Bencho gasps, lungs on fire.
‘We are on a divine mission and the entire universe will conspire for us,’ declares Iyer, ducking into a side street, trying hard to keep up with the crow, which periodically perches on telephone lines, as though waiting for them to catch up.
‘“Within my soul I feel a rising of forgotten knowledge.”’
‘Within my stomach I feel hunger. I missed breakfast, sir,’ says Bencho, wondering why he was exerting himself so. ‘And it’s my family’s turn to manage the flame at Manikarnika next week.’
‘Bakasura does not wait for breakfast! The sacred flame can look after itself. We have a mission. Prepare the boat!’ Iyer says as he turns the corner to see the crow perched atop an enormous dreaming Vishnu. An open sewer separates Iyer from the ruins of what was once a temple complex. He leaps across it without hesitation, landing well clear of the edge, his knee elastic and supple. Bencho pauses at the drop, examining the dark green sludge ten feet below. The stench is overpowering, and something slithers in the vegetation that grows thick by the walls.
‘It is too wide, sir.’
‘It is not as wide as you think. Jump, Bencho,’ shouts Iyer from the temple.
‘What if I fall?’ Bencho grumbles, releasing Trishala to graze on the lush grass around the sewer.
‘It is by going down into the gutter that we find the treasures of life, now jump!’
Taking a small run up, Bencho leaps across, barely making it to the other side, grabbing onto the Vishnu sculpture just in time to prevent himself from falling. His face scrunching up with the effort, Bencho embraces the dreaming Vishnu, the god sleeping under the hood of a stone serpent, dreaming until he would have to wake up and ensure the next cycle of existence.
‘Sir, what about your poetry? Can you recite some for me?’ asks Bencho, distracted by the beauty of the sculpture even when its face had been sheared off by some sort of Central Asian implement five hundred years back.
‘We will not recite poetry Bencho, we will live poetry,’ Iyer says grandly. ‘One day a sage will write about us. “Bhīma strode into the dark forest in pursuit of the demon, accompanied by his faithful warrior Bencho, riding on the noble mare Trishala.”’
‘Yes! You have described me perfectly. This is so true to life! And Trishala too!’ Trishala raises her head from her grazing, eyes Iyer balefully and resumes grazing. Noticing Trishala chewing away, Bencho’s stomach grumbles, and he is overtaken with doubt.
‘But sir, I cannot leave like this. What will happen to all the corpses? Who will dispose of the dead?’
Iyer jumps off the ruins and lands close to Bencho.
‘We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. I have reached that time, Bencho, when I look back over my life and it seems to have had a plot, as though composed by a writer. Every failure and success, every mundane moment has steered me to this rock where I am now allowed to speak to you. Events that once seemed accidental or incidental turn out to have been central in the composition of this great adventure. It is eminently clear.’
‘Sir, who is this writer?’
‘Our lives are directed by that soul of which mere humans like you are largely unconscious, Bencho. I, on the other hand, am the dreamer of my own life,’ says Iyer, stroking the axe-scarred remains of the dreaming Vishnu under his seven-headed serpent.
‘Sir?’
‘You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.’
‘Beautiful! How beautiful, sir,’ exclaims Bencho, clapping energetically.
‘For so long, Bencho, memories of my past lives were but flashes of strange memory: an inexplicable ache from within, a sudden familiarity, a scuttling beast at the corner of one’s eye. Once, this knowledge of all lives was clear, when humans enjoyed some measure of peace and oneness with the earth, when good kings allowed their subjects the undisturbed pursuit of an inner life, before the arrival of democracy and its lumpen elements, which ensured the coming of inevi
table hordes over the hills. It ended with the destruction of the Cholas and Vijayanagara, and since then clear thinking has been made very difficult. But now I know my task.’
‘Sir, and it is?’
‘I am looking to right ancient humiliations and regain lost honour.’
‘Sir! This is fantastic. We can become famous.’
‘Do not dream of the future, Bencho, think of the present moment.’
Confused, Bencho does not reply and, seizing his advantage, Iyer takes off his helmet and hands it to him.
‘Let’s test this helmet,’ Iyer says, taking a step back, twirling his staff and breathing diaphragmatically, getting into yoga mode.
‘OK, sir.’ Bencho hesitates, forcing the helmet onto his head. ‘But why a helmet …?’
‘Because you will need it. Sit down.’
Bencho sits on a half Ganesha as Iyer twirls the staff overhead, raising it as high as he can. But before Iyer bludgeons the helmet, Bencho springs out of the way.
‘Hello! Hello! Let’s try it off my head!’ exclaims Bencho, yanking off the helmet.
‘Bencho, oh Bencho! Omnath, the great beggar sage, taught me a mantra that I recited over the helmet. Nothing can break it. Use your brains, man!’
Bencho takes the helmet off his brains and places it on a rock. Without delay, Iyer leaps into the air, bringing the staff down on it with great force. It shatters, shards flying in all directions.
‘Those would have been my brains, sir – you could have killed me!’ he says walking backwards, eyes wide open in shock.
‘Don’t be stupid. It would not have broken if your head was in it,’ says Iyer, shocked at Bencho’s ignorance.
‘Also, what are you paying me? Nothing! Not even a token amount.’
‘Did Arjuna pay Lord Krishna to ride the chariot? Did Rama pay Hanuman for rescuing Sita? Did Hanuman ask for a token amount?’
‘And when I asked, you refused to introduce me to that MLA Jayachandra!’ says Bencho, walking off. ‘I will stay in Kashi.’
‘Chela! Your Kashi is the culmination of defeats and sublime triumphs over thousands of years. It has been razed and looted so many times, Bencho. Down these streets horses ran, down those a mass murder, and here, a fierce battle between the Nagas and Aibak’s men. Listen, I can hear the screams!’ Iyer closes his eyes and inhales deeply, taking in the forgotten scene.