by Gita Mehta
Dawn lightened the sky and I was able to see the Narmada leaping headlong through the distant marble rocks, the spraying waterfalls refracting the first rays of sun into arcs of color as if the river were a woman adorning herself with jewels.
Below the terrace the water was still dark, appearing motionless in the shadows like a woman indolently stretching her limbs as she oiled herself with scented oils, her long black hair loosened, her eyes outlined in collyrium.
I watched the water slowly redden, catching reflections from the rose colors of dawn, and imagined the river as a woman painting her palms and the soles of her feet with vermilion as she prepared to meet her lover.
It was the first time I had entertained such thoughts about the river. Now the legends of the Narmada merged with Nitin Bose’s story as I struggled to understand the power of the woman who had enchanted him.
If even the Great Ascetic could not withstand the weapons unleashed from Kama’s sugarcane bow strung with honeybees, how could poor Nitin Bose survive as Kama’s arrows found their mark, piercing him with enchantment, inflaming him with lust, parching him with desire, rendering him helpless with the paroxysms of his own longing, until he was wounded with that fifth and fatal arrow, the Carrier of Death?
The sun appeared above the Vindhya Hills, a fiery ball of light leeching the color from the water until it shone like glass, as hard as woman’s pursuit of a lover. The bright light hurt my eyes. I turned from the terrace and saw the staff waiting for my instructions. I issued the first orders of the morning. Then I wrote a note to Mr. Chagla advising him to keep an eye on Nitin Bose because I was going to bed.
“SIR! WAKE UP, sir. You must get ready!”
I opened my eyes. Mr. Chagla’s round face was peering down at me, moisture beading his fingerprints on an iced glass.
“Here, sir. Drink some juice.”
“How is our visitor, Chagla?”
“Excellent, sir. You will see when he comes back from the shrine.”
“You let him go to the shrine by himself?”
“As if, sir! The guards went with him. Also, their wives.”
“They are illiterate villagers.” I could hear my voice rising with fear. “Why didn’t you accompany him? What if he harms himself?”
“I couldn’t, sir. They will not let outsiders come to their shrine. But I have given stern instructions. Mr. Bose must be returned to us in A-one condition.”
“How has Bose gone with them? He is not a tribal.”
“They say he has been touched by the power of the goddess so he is not an outsider any more. Anyway, don’t perturb yourself, sir. I know everything what is going to happen. Their shrine is only a big banyan tree. Nothing harmful. There the villagers will have an assembly with Mr. Bose. Now hurry, sir. You must take refreshment. The cook is waiting in the dining room with your meal.”
Mr. Chagla left my room and I washed hastily. As I was dressing I shouted to him through the closed door, “What happens in the assembly? Did the guards tell you?”
“The tribals will beg the goddess to forgive Mr. Bose for denying the power of desire.”
“Power of desire?” I demanded as I came out, reassured by the brilliant afternoon sunlight and my starched clothes. “Chagla, have you been infected by this foolishness?”
Mr. Chagla looked at me with the anxiety of a parent watching a willful child. “But, sir, without desire there is no life. Everything will stand still. Become emptiness. In fact sir, be dead.”
I stared at him in astonishment, and Mr. Chagla’s smooth face wrinkled with the effort of making me comprehend. “It is not a woman who has taken possession of Mr. Bose’s soul, sir. How can such a thing can ever happen?”
“Then what is all this goddess business?”
“Sir. Really, sir.” Mr. Chagla sighed in frustration. “The goddess is just the principle of life. She is every illusion that is inspiring love. That is why she is greater than all the gods combined. Call her what you will, but she is what a mother is feeling for a child. A man for a woman. A starving man for food. Human beings for God. And Mr. Bose did not show her respect so he is being punished.”
“By sitting under a tree?”
“No sir. He will not be sitting. The villagers will be sitting. Mr. Bose will be making a mud image of the goddess.”
“What for?”
“To carry to the river for immersing purposes. I have found a spot where we can observe the procession, hidden from the human eye. But you must eat first, sir. These tribals have no sense of time.”
I could feel the situation sliding out of my control. “What is the point of the procession?”
“Ritual, ritual, and ritual, sir. Like repeating your two-times table.”
“Chagla, you are not making sense.”
“Certainly I am, sir. It is Mr. Bose who is making no sense, pretending desire is some kind of magic performed with black arts. But desire is the origin of life. For thousands of years our tribals have worshipped it as the goddess. You have heard the pilgrims praying ‘Save us from the serpent’s venom.’ Well, sir, the meaning of the prayer is as follows. The serpent in question is desire. Its venom is the harm a man does when he is ignoring the power of desire.”
Defeated by Mr. Chagla’s good nature, I walked to the dining room, wondering if his open face and rotund body hid an understanding that I did not possess. As I ate, I tried to fathom what Mr. Chagla had been saying while my eyes wandered idly over the mosaics of flowers and birds inlaid into the dining-room walls.
The sound of drumbeats and singing voices brought Mr. Chagla running into the room. “Sir, hurry! The procession is coming through the jungle.”
I ran up the stairs followed by the cook and other curious members of the bungalow staff. We crowded onto the terrace of Nitin Bose’s suite, which overlooked the jungle.
Trees obscured the steep path leading down to the riverbank, but there was an open space where we could see a line of villagers following a garlanded idol carried on a platform supported by long bamboo poles. Four men held the poles to their shoulders. I recognized them as bungalow guards. Behind them I caught a brief glimpse of Nitin Bose’s face. Then he disappeared down the curve of the path, and I could see only the idol above the bushes, rocking on its platform as the men descended the steep incline.
Mr. Chagla gently pulled at my elbow, whispering conspiratorially “Sir, let us go to my hidey-hole to observe the ceremony.”
I followed him down the stairs and into the garden. At a corner of the garden he opened a rusting iron gate that led to the water tanks below the terrace. The path was used once a year when the water tanks were inspected. Now Mr. Chagla walked in front of me crushing nettles and weeds underfoot to clear the way to a rock escarpment halfway down the hillside.
We crouched behind a boulder as the procession skidded down the steep path. Mr. Chagla had chosen a perfect vantage point. We had a clear view of the riverbank two hundred feet below us, and I could even see fish swimming in the clear water of the river slowly turning gray in the approaching dusk.
The procession stumbled down the slope, and the guards yelled to each other, struggling to keep the idol from sliding off the tilting platform as they lowered it to the ground.
The procession of villagers fell back to allow Nitin Bose to approach the idol. He looked dazed. For a long moment he stood in front of the mud image and nothing happened. Then, as if he had suddenly remembered an instruction, he put his arms around the idol, lifting it from the ground. Holding the idol, he walked into the water. The tribals waded in behind him, their hands raised, their faces turned to the west. The crimson sunset reddened their features as Nitin Bose immersed the idol in the river, chanting
“Salutations in the morning and at night to thee, O Narmada.
Defend me from the serpent’s poison.”
The mud idol began to disintegrate in the current, and we watched fragments of the image being swept downstream—a broken arm, a breast, torn garlands spinning in
the water as they were carried toward the clay lamps floating in the darkness at the river’s bend.
The temple bells from Mahadeo were ringing for the evening prayers. Mr. Chagla got to his feet and began stamping down the nettles. “It will be completely dark soon, sir. Let us return to the bungalow before we are eaten up by snakes.”
I stood up. Below us I could barely see the shadowy figures of the Vano villagers still standing around Bose in the water. I followed Mr. Chagla up the pathway to the bungalow, the voices of the villagers growing fainter as they chanted after Nitin Bose,
“Salutations in the morning and at night to thee, O Narmada.
Defend me from the serpent’s poison.”
For three weeks Nitin Bose remained in the bungalow, a source of constant concern to me.
I could not concentrate on my dawn meditations listening to him sliding down the steep path that led to the river. I was always afraid he would fall or be bitten by a snake before he reached the riverbank to make his salutation.
In the evenings I no longer enjoyed watching the sunset from our terrace for fear some harm might come to him standing waist deep in the water below me, praying to the Narmada.
Never having been a parent, I found this unfamiliar burden of responsibility an irritant. I considered Nitin Bose a foolish young man who attracted misfortune, even though Mr. Chagla told me he appeared to be working on something because his desk was covered with papers.
I was greatly relieved when Nitin Bose finally left us and the bungalow returned to its routine serenity.
Shortly after his departure I received a letter from my old colleague thanking me for looking after his nephew.
“I knew I could rely on your discretion. Incidentally, Nitin showed me a most interesting essay he has written concerning the tribal practices in your area. I have asked him to submit it to the Asia Review for publication.”
Mr. Chagla was pleased to hear about the essay.
“And guess what, sir?”
“What, Chagla?”
“Only yesterday I heard some village children singing on the path to Vano. Do you know what they were singing?
“Bring me my oil and my collyrium.
Sister, bring my mirror and the vermilion.”
“Nothing is ever lost, sir. That is the beauty of a river view.”
9
Dr. Mitra had been away in Delhi attending a medical conference. Now we were sitting on the wide veranda of the bungalow having tea while I brought him up to date with Nitin Bose’s story.
It was late afternoon and the sultry atmosphere that precedes the monsoons seemed to be lifting at last. A light breeze was blowing in from the river, bringing hope of rain.
“An interesting case,” Dr. Mitra observed as I ended my account. “But probably not unusual.”
A sudden bark of laughter shook the lanky frame on which the white cotton shirt and trousers seemed to flap as if suspended on a hanger. “Someone is sure to commemorate Nitin Bose’s recovery by building a temple where he immersed the idol. It will become a place of pilgrimage, attracting hosts of lunatics to your riverbank.”
“Have you ever had patients who claimed to be possessed?” I asked, unable to imagine anyone sharing Nitin Bose’s ailment.
“Not possessed exactly, but pulled in two directions. Only to be expected when we are sitting on the battleground between the Aryans and the pre-Aryans.”
I idly watched a fallen blossom roll across the grass below the veranda. “What does that have to do with being possessed?”
“My dear fellow. This is where the war for the possession of India was fought—pitting Aryan reason against the primal beliefs of the tribals. Though they weren’t tribals at all, really. As Nitin Bose noted in his diary, they had a civilization long before the Aryans arrived, with great cities and so forth. Called themselves Nagas and worshipped the Naga, the snake. In my opinion the Sanskrit word for city, nagara, comes from them.”
He stretched out his long legs and leaned back into the cushions of the cane armchair, narrowing his eyes against the afternoon sun slanting across the river. “Did you know ‘narmada’ means ‘whore’ in Sanskrit?”
I was offended. “That’s impossible. The Narmada is the holiest river in India.”
He turned toward me, his lean face creased with amusement. “Ah, yes. I forgot. A mere glimpse of the Narmada’s waters is supposed to cleanse a human being of generations of sinful births. Just think how pure you and I must be, gazing on this river every day.”
I ignored Dr. Mitra’s sarcasm. “So Narmada is unlikely to mean whore.”
He shook a bony forefinger at me. “I hope you are not contracting the fatal Indian disease of making everything holy, my friend. The Narmada is already too holy by half. Do you know how many sacred spots there are supposed to be on her banks? Four hundred billion, according to the Puranic scriptures.”
I didn’t argue. Dr. Mitra is something of a scholar on the Narmada, part of the general eccentricity of his nature that has led him to run a six-bed hospital in the small town of Rudra in preference to the lucrative practice that his many medical degrees could have gained him in any of our large cities. He maintains that he encounters more interesting patients here than he could hope to find in Delhi or Bombay, and whenever he describes a pilgrim brought to him with only one-third of a body or some particularly horrifying form of elephantiasis, his eyes shine with excitement as if he is describing a work of art.
It is odd that someone as skeptical as Dr. Mitra should enjoy the stories of the river, but his wayward temperament seems to delight in unraveling the threads of mythology, archaeology, anthropology in which the river is entangled.
As if reading my thoughts Dr. Mitra said, “You know, the great Alexandrine geographer Ptolemy wrote about the Narmada. I suppose even the Greeks and the Alexandrines had heard about the Narmada’s holiness and the religious suicides at Amarkantak— people fasting to death or immolating themselves on the Narmada’s banks, or drowning in her waters—in order to gain release from the cycle of birth and rebirth.”
He shook his head in disbelief at the extremes to which religious folly could take men.
“The ancient Greeks would probably have sympathized with the river’s mythology, but at least they had to deal with only one set of myths, whereas Indians have never been prepared to settle for a single mythology if they could squeeze another hundred in.”
I laughed at Dr. Mitra’s expression of incomprehension as he expanded on the excesses of the devout.
“On top of all that mythology, there’s the river’s astrology. Her holiness is believed to dispel the malevolent effects of Saturn so all manner of epileptics, depressives, and other unfortunates rush to her banks. And yet, the Narmada is also a magnet to scholars. Towns on the banks of the river are renowned for the learning of their Brahmins. It is as if reason and instinct are constantly warring on the banks of the Narmada. I mean, even the war between the Aryans and the pre-Aryans is still unresolved here.”
“After four thousand years?”
“My dear chap. What about the temple of Supaneshwara on the north bank of the Narmada?”
I reluctantly admitted that I had never heard of it.
“But you must have heard of the Immortal who sleeps in the forests near the temple.”
“What is an Immortal?” I asked, faintly irritated by Dr. Mitra’s heavy-handed display of mystery.
“An Aryan warrior.”
“Are you telling me that a four-thousand-year-old Aryan warrior is asleep on the north bank of the Narmada?”
“Absolutely, my dear fellow.” Dr. Mitra gave me a gleeful smile. “I can even tell you his name. Avatihuma.”
“I’ve never heard such nonsense in all my life.”
“Ask any local tribal. Your guard is from Vano. He’ll corroborate my story.”
I couldn’t resist the challenge and shouted for Mr. Chagla. A round head appeared through the office window, happily nodding assent when I asked
for the guard.
Dr. Mitra tapped my arm. “Now remember, the pre-Aryans had lived here peacefully for centuries, perhaps even millennia, before the Aryans arrived. Their philosophy was based on a profound respect for nature and the interdependence of all life.
“Then along came the Aryans. Restless nomads. Obsessed with conquest. Reveling in war. Placing the truths learned by the mind above all other truths, including the truths of nature. In other words, the war between the pre-Aryans and the Aryans was a classic conflict between instinct and reason. Rather like the conflict that drove Nitin Bose mad. In any case, the pre-Aryans slaughtered a number of Aryans. But the Aryan warriors had been granted immortality by their gods. And immortals cannot die. Ah, here’s the guard.”
A tall man in a khaki uniform was standing on the grass below the veranda, a stout bamboo stave held in one hand. With the other hand he saluted. Dr. Mitra clasped his own hands together in greeting before asking “Have you ever heard of a temple called Supaneshwara?”
“Yes, sahib. My father went on a pilgrimage there.”
“Is it easy to find?”
The guard looked dubious. “It’s not far from here. But the jungle is very thick in those hills where the river rises, sahib.”
“I wonder if I could go there . . .” Dr. Mitra was only thinking aloud, but the guard became quite agitated at his words.
“Don’t, sahib. My father nearly lost his life on the journey. Bandits and all sorts of bad elements live in those parts. There are no villages to provide shelter to the traveler so anyone can strike at Will.”
I was curious to know why the area had so many bandits. “Can’t the police catch them?”
“Impossible. A man can disappear forever in such jungles. But that is not the only reason bandits go there, sahib. They also seek the Immortal.”
“Who is this Immortal?” I asked with growing impatience.
“Of the race who conquered my people. Even though my ancestors severed his head from his body, he could not be killed. To this day the head just lies in the jungle, sahib. Sleeping because it cannot die.”