The Age of Shiva

by Manil Suri

  “This is hardly the way—”

  “Mummy, please.” You turned to Father Bernard. “We don’t have to go to your office. If you could punish me here, we could be done with it.”

  “Ashvin, come with me at once. I’ll complain to the principal himself.”

  But you were already bending forward and putting your hands on the mango tree. Father Bernard raised his cane and swung it through the air a few times to limber it, then stepped forward and took aim. I tried to look away as he raised it again, but couldn’t. There was black paint on the tip, I noticed, which had begun to wear, revealing the beige wood underneath. Then Father Bernard’s arm came down, his robe fluttering with the effort, his left foot moving forward as if it were a step in a dance he was performing. I heard the thwack of wood against cloth—cloth covering something it couldn’t quite protect. You gasped as if you had been expecting to remain silent, as if the sound had been forced out of you involuntarily. On the third stroke, you straightened up and turned around, as if you had had enough, as if you had changed your mind. But Father Bernard forced your head down and spread your hands on the tree again. “Not yet, son,” he said, and took aim once more with the cane.

  He hit you ten times in all, then left wordlessly. The children who had gathered to watch looked eagerly at your face, to see if you were crying. Your cheeks were flushed, but there were no tears. You pushed aside the hand I offered to help you up, and looked at me defiantly. “I’m fine,” you said. “You don’t have to say anything.”

  JUNE TURNED TO JULY, July to August. Time, space, emotion all seemed to freeze between us—we were like two figures embedded a fixed distance apart in a paperweight. Each morning, I looked anxiously towards you for any signs of change in your demeanor, any traces of thaw in your remoteness. Just as I was beginning to wonder if this suspended state would continue forever, your uncle moved to Bombay.

  chapter thirty-three

  THE FIRST LETTER FROM ARYA HAD ARRIVED IN JANUARY 1977, WHEN Indira Gandhi experienced her mysterious change of heart about the Emergency. She suddenly declared elections and released all her political prisoners, including Arya, from jail. I recognized the writing when the letter came, and almost tore it up; but it was addressed to you, and propriety held me back. “I miss you and hope we can be friends once more. Not a day has gone by during these last fifteen months in prison that I haven’t felt remorse for what I did.” At the bottom of the page was a P.S. “By the way, don’t worry about my nose—it’s mended in a way to give me an aristocratic air.”

  You did not reply to that letter, or the one that followed immediately after. Perhaps you, like me, still mistrusted your uncle. I saw you pore over the text of each letter, agonizing about whether to respond. Once, you even asked if I would be willing to compose an appropriate reply. But you were proficient enough in Hindi now, I reminded you—I would not assist in writing back.

  Hema sent me a newspaper interview in which Arya related how he had been beaten and tortured with electric shocks while incarcerated. Her letter arrived the same week that the chief of police went on television to accuse former detainees of making up such stories to aggrandize their political standing. Indeed, Arya did get an offer to stand for office from a plum seat in Punjab. He handily won in the election that March, like most of the candidates in the Janta coalition which routed Indira and her Congress Party.

  After the elections, the letters stopped. Hema sent us the occasional clipping about Arya’s tenure in the government, but he did not personally write until almost three years later, in 1980. The Janta coalition had recently collapsed under the weight of its own bickering and Indira had been swept back to power. “It’s just as well,” Arya wrote about the seat he had lost. “I’m glad to be out of the government, out of an institution that’s so corrupt.” He announced his intention to move to Bombay. “With both Babuji and Mataji gone, there’s only Hema auntie left to keep me company here. We’ll meet as soon as I get there—maybe I can even make it by May, in time to celebrate your fifteenth birthday.”

  I found his words unsettling—the casualness with which they rolled across the page, as if the past had been squared. What if he was returning to renew his designs on me? What if I ran into him on the street or found him standing in front of our doorway? Would he apologize, as he had to you in his letters, or go on the offensive, forcing himself in to try to play out that Divali night again? But your fifteenth birthday came and went, and we did not receive any further intimation from him. The crisis with you demanded my full attention, leaving no room to entertain abstract fears about your uncle.

  I soon discovered that there might not be any need to worry about Arya’s motives after all. It seemed he was returning to stoke the flame of a romance more long-standing than me: the HRM. Indira had followed up her victory in the national elections by trouncing the opposition even more decisively in the recent state assembly elections. India Today described the Janta coalition as thoroughly demoralized and in complete disarray. Member groups such as the HRM were searching deep within their souls for ways to reinvent themselves and reconnect with the public. A line near the end of the article said Arya had moved to Bombay to lead the rejuvenation efforts there.

  It surprised me that your uncle had not tried to look you up—there had been no mention of another letter from him. In recent weeks, all you seemed to do was study—returning home hours late from school some evenings, even going there to read in the library on Saturdays. I supposed it was necessary, this distance you so scrupulously maintained, this time you were presumably using to heal the rift between us. I tried to distract myself from my sense of forlornness, tried not to dwell on all the extra hours of solitude I faced. Reserve was an improvement over stoniness, I consoled myself.

  For a while, I looked for a job. In the years since my stint at the nursery school, I had conducted brief experiments with various kinds of employment—as a transcriber for a law firm, a proofreader for the Bombay University press, even an aide at the Prince of Wales Museum. Although the income provided a welcome bonus to the insurance money interest on which we subsisted, none of the jobs ever really engrossed me. I especially hated the way I could not be at home when you returned from school, and quit each time over the inflexibility of the schedule.

  This time, I simply didn’t find anything—the job market in Bombay had dried up, and I refused to ask Paji for help. I resumed my excursions to Chowpatty—the same pilgrimages on which I had whiled away my time in the city all those years ago when I first arrived. By now, a small park had sprung up on the upper beach, with trees to offer protection from the sun and rain. My favorite was the large spreading pipal in the middle—I sat under it with a cone of peanuts and read one of the afternoon papers like Midday.

  One Saturday, I noticed a front-page article on the inauguration of a pilot program by the HRM, to teach Bombayites self-defense. It quoted the noted HRM leader, Mr. Arya Arora, as saying that for centuries, invaders had successfully overrun India because of the weakness of its citizens. “In this day and age, with enemies at our border, with antisocial elements infesting our communities, it is even more important that we train our youth for a strong defense.” There would be free classes in activities ranging from calisthenics to wrestling, offered by seven participating gyms and akharas in the city. “I encourage all Hindus between twelve and forty years of age to participate.” Arya himself appeared in a picture on the inner page where the article continued, smiling at the camera as he cut a ribbon.

  I was about to move on to the Busybee column, when I found my gaze pulled back to the photograph. There was something about the group of youths just behind Arya, all of them wearing identical caps. I could make out only a few of their faces—one in particular looked over Arya’s shoulder, straight at the camera. I stared at that face for a full minute, until the warmth left my fingers and the last hopeful ray of doubt faded from my mind. There was no mistaking it, even through the poor resolution of the photo—that it was you standing
behind your uncle.

  I began walking towards Opera House, the newspaper open and fluttering in my hand, as if your picture were that of a missing person with which I intended to stop and question pedestrians. Halfway over the bridge, I started running. A taxi pulled up, and I clambered in, telling the driver to take me to St. Xavier’s School. A few boys in blue cadet uniforms stood in formation under the mango tree, but otherwise the school grounds were deserted. The entrance to the main building was open, but the library door, when I tried it, was locked. “It’s closed today,” the school watchman told me when I found him rubbing tobacco in his palm at the gate.

  “There must be people inside—my son has been coming here to study every Saturday.”

  The watchman popped the tobacco into his mouth and chewed on it thoughtfully. “I’ve worked here for six years, memsahib, and I can’t remember a single time the library has been open on a weekend.”

  The photo caption said that the inauguration had taken place at the Shivaji Gymkhana in Bandra. I took a taxi to Churchgate to catch a train. There was a class on lathi wielding in progress at the club—I scanned the participating boys, but didn’t see your face. The office was closed, but an attendant pointed me towards a room at the back. Two men sitting on wicker chairs sipped tea inside—they told me to come back on Monday afternoon if I wanted to meet Arya sahib.

  “Do you know where he lives?” I asked, and the men exchanged knowing glances. “I’m his sister-in-law, you see,” I lamely added, trying to correct my mistake.

  “He has a flat somewhere in Worli,” one of the men replied with a leer. “Surely as his sister-in-law you must have a phone number for him?”

  You returned late that evening. I was sitting in the balcony, waiting, and recognized the blue of the shirt you had on when you were just a speck up the street. I meant to be calm, perhaps not even confront you directly, but as soon as I saw you, all those intentions evaporated. I ripped out the page with the photo from the newspaper and thrust it in your face. “Is this what you’ve been doing at your school library on Saturdays?”

  I had been tiptoeing around our estrangement so long that my anger took you completely by surprise. You made no attempt at evasion or stonewalling, just let the words tumble out freely. You had been visiting Yara uncle for over a month now—not only on Saturdays, but also on the evenings late from school. You told me how he took you along on his rounds of the HRM network, and enrolled you in yoga classes at their gymkhana at Byculla. How his flat was furnished with little more than some chairs and a bed, though there was a pooja alcove with a complete set of miniature idols (including incarnations of Vishnu you’d never seen). “Usually I just go there and sit around with him—he reads out Hindi poetry, or teaches me to meditate.”

  I felt numbed at first by your ready confession, but then the emotion returned to fill me. “How could you not have told me?” I finally asked. “All the stories about your studies—you’ve never lied to me before.”

  “I thought you’d have been angry. I didn’t think you’d let us meet.”

  I managed to suppress the feeling of betrayal that welled up inside, managed to keep my hurt contained. I saw no use forbidding you from seeing Arya—it would only give you something to rebel against. Perhaps these trysts were needed to coax you out of your reclusiveness, the price to be paid for what I had allowed to take place. I stifled the urge to ask why you felt it necessary to punish me like this. “I can never forget what he tried with me, Ashvin. But he’s your uncle—had you asked, I wouldn’t have stopped you from seeing him.”

  I wonder how things would have played out had I been able to squelch this fraternization right there and then. In the months to come, I watched helplessly as Arya insinuated himself deeper and deeper into our existence. Not a day passed without the name of your beloved Yara uncle issuing from your lips. “Yara uncle feels I should exercise more often.” “Yara uncle thinks the Congress government is going to fail.” “Yara uncle says film actors are all Communists.” You were always accompanying him to events—a special pooja for Dassera, a temple drive for flood victims, a blessing ceremony by some dignitary of the HRM. The religious slant to these activities worried me—I started having the same paranoid fears against which Paji railed.

  Perhaps most ominous were the tilaks you flaunted, just like your father before you, when he had discovered religion overnight. You came back from the small shrine at Tardeo with the holy marks smeared prominently on your forehead every weekend morning (you were still shy about displaying them at school). For a few weeks you tried observing the fast for Hanuman on Tuesdays, but had to stop after you almost fainted in gym class one afternoon. You resumed the search for Dev’s lost guruji, making a fortnightly trek to Dadar by train.

  There were benefits as well to having a father figure in your life again—for instance, an increase in your self-confidence. I noticed it in all the little ways you asserted yourself—demanding money back from the fruit seller for mangoes rotten inside, insisting the barber retrim your hair until he got the curve above your ears just right. You tried to make yourself look more imposing—doing push-ups in the morning and drinking extra glasses of milk. When that failed to bulk you up, you developed aggressive opinions on politics to compensate. You had particularly harsh words for Indira Gandhi, even though her beloved Sanjay, the son whom she had picked to be her successor, had just been killed. “Do something,” you exhorted, each time she appeared on the television, her expression numb, her face creased. “Now that you’re no longer being dominated by that scoundrel son of yours, save the country from its decline.”

  You were obviously parroting Arya’s lines, but I tried not to let my recognition show. Past the swagger and the posturing, I could still see the unsureness you tried to conceal. I found it almost painful to watch—this desperation to come off as world-wise. (Did everyone go through such a phase? Had I? Had Roopa?) I tried to appear encouraging, to nod intelligently at your bluster with a smile.

  But then your precociousness took on a chauvinistic edge. You stopped watching movies on television, declaring them too racy, finding fault with the costumes worn because of the way they emphasized the actresses’ breasts. “Look at those girls!” you exclaimed, walking along the street with me. “Don’t they know how un-Indian are the jeans they have on?” You made bombastic pronouncements about the loss of ancient Hindu values, invoking the epics and the Vedas as if intimately familiar with these texts. “All the centuries of foreigners we’ve been forced to absorb—this is the result—what else can you expect?” You complained one day about the admission policy of your school, about the disproportionate number of Catholics accepted by the Jesuits in charge. “It’s a plot to take over the country, all these Christian schools run by them.” Another day, you turned on your history teacher, Mr. Nawaz, after a test in which you didn’t do so well. “What does he know? He’s a Muslim,” you said.

  “How does Mr. Nawaz being Muslim have to do with anything?”

  “Yara uncle says they twist everything around to suit their own purpose. History, especially. They’ve managed to infect all our textbooks with their lies.”

  “Zaida auntie is a Muslim too. Do you want to go and tell her Yara uncle says she’s a liar?”

  “He wasn’t talking about Zaida auntie. In any case, I don’t take history lessons from her.”

  Even more disturbing was the attitude of intolerance you brought back each time you visited the HRM gymkhana at Byculla. A ramshackle colony bordered the north edge of the field where the club stood, whose residents were all Muslims. Sometimes you complained about the loud religious music they played, supposedly to ruin the concentration of club members trying to meditate. At other times, it was their lack of cleanliness—how cow blood had been found on the club premises, how hovering over the whole area was the stench of stewing beef one couldn’t escape. “They’re stealing all our jobs, these Muslims,” you came home and declared.

  “Since when have you become so knowledge
able about the job market? And what jobs are these you’re talking about, anyway?”

  “Just go to any factory and you’ll see. The Muslims have taken over completely. Even the Hindu owners have been brainwashed into allowing them into their mills all over the city.”

  I would have laughed at such nonsense issuing from the mouth of a fifteen-year-old, had I not seen the earnestness in your expression. “Have you been to these mills yourself, Ashvin? Or talked to these workers in person? In the future, get some proof before you go repeating such an outrageous accusation.”

  I wondered what exactly went on at the gymkhana beyond the yoga sessions in which you claimed to participate. Was it just affinity for your uncle that kept you returning? What in the atmosphere there could be so fascinating? Each time I contemplated making a trip to investigate, the thought of encountering Arya kept me away.

  I remembered the shakha where Arya had worked in Nizamuddin, with its bare-walled rooms, its scraggly field, its rickety benches. It had been a club clearly aimed at the lower classes, offering such earthy activities as kabaddi and mud-pit wrestling. How had you made the jump from your school to such a place? St. Xavier’s boasted of a proper basketball court, a manicured cricket pitch, a set of running tracks marked off neatly in chalk every day. “We turn boys into gentlemen,” the slogan in the catalog for last year’s Republic Day parade had read. Wasn’t this the world to which you more comfortably belonged? A world with smart ironed uniforms and blue-striped ties, and a school badge inscribed with the inscrutable Latin motto Duc in Altum. A world of class picnics at Juhu Beach and lemon pastries during lunch break, and a dramatics club that two years ago had given you a part in Oliver Twist. You had had your run-in with Father Bernard, it was true, and were never too friendly with your classmates, but could you really have become so alienated? “Yara uncle says that the gymkhana is where one finds the real India. The boys in my school have all been spoiled by the West on their brain.”