The child turns to Mihir. ‘Are you my baba?’ he asks, grave as an inquisitor at a crucial trial. Mihir looks away, saying nothing.
‘Tell me, Baba. Are you my baba?’ The child’s voice has risen to a delirious shriek.
Mihir turns to look at the child, at the inky puddles of his eyes. An impenetrable cloud gathers on Mihir’s face. ‘No,’ he answers, expressionless.
The child is seven and his reasoning is seven years old. If Mondira says she is his mother, how can Mihir not be his father? But Mihir clearly denies being his baba, so Mondira must not be his mother.
That night Mondira quarrels with Mihir. ‘Why did you tell him?’ she demands. ‘Do you realize what you’ve done to all of us?’
‘I couldn’t lie to that child.’
‘So much for your virtue, my truthful Harishchandra! And where was your truthfulness when you lied to her?’
He answers in an even voice, his fastidious face frowning. ‘I never lied to her.’
‘Oh, no. You didn’t have to. She never thought of asking, so you didn’t have to answer! But if she’d asked, would you have lied?’
He looks at her, heart-sore. ‘I don’t know,’ he says.
‘Tell me the truth, my mother,’ implores the boy. ‘Did you do it? Did you push my mother into the well?’
Mondira freezes over the fish she is cleaning at the running tap.
‘No,’ she answers firmly. ‘I did not push her. She killed herself. She jumped into that well. The times were bad.’
‘Was she my real mother?’
‘No. She was your aunt. She was my sister. I am your mother. Look at me, child. I am your mother!’
‘But Baba says he’s not my baba. How can you be my mother then?’
She is at a loss, pitted against this child’s merciless logic.
‘Who’s been telling you these lies?’
The child turns sullen, then spits out the defiant words: ‘That old woman. The Didimoni who died in hospital.’
Purabi!
‘Devyani was your mother’s name,’ the old woman had told him, her fawning eyes slurping at his face. ‘The lovely, lonely Devyani. I remember her going to the mutth for kirtan. Oh, she was noble, she was! Veiled, like all high-born ladies of the village. Two saris were held betwixt doorstep and buggy—yards and yards, child, two walls of cotton, and the veiled lady passed between them. So sad, the poor little Devyani, your mother …’
The boy twists out of Mondira’s grip. She pursues him down the courtyard and out into the banana clump. ‘That old crone was a liar!’ she shouts.
‘No! You’re lying! You’re the liar! You pushed her down a well!’
Mondira is in tears. Mihir rises from his veranda cot and says: ‘Listen, boy. Listen to me. Your father’s name was Amalendu. He was killed. During the bad times. The troubles. And Devyani was your aunt and my wife.’
The child is baffled: ‘How can she be your wife? She was my ma and you say you are not my baba …’ he whimpers, defeated.
Mondira’s voice is clenched. ‘You see now what you have done?’ she hisses. ‘Try answering. With your accursed truth, try answering him!’
‘Only the truth can work now,’ he says lamely. ‘Nothing but that.’
The last chapter would need careful doing. Sravan had the episodic sequence plotted out in his notes. The child disappears. A search is organized. A weeping Mondira charges Mihir with having upset and estranged the child. The search party returns without a clue. A scene in Lalbazar Police Station. A visit to the morgue. Then a nocturnal visit from the reporter of a local daily. The whispers of malicious neighbours. Photographs of the child in the daily Missing Persons column. Mondira stops speaking to Mihir, threatens to leave him. Finally, a phone call to the ashram where they live and work, from an acquaintance in Siliguri. News of the kid. He has been sighted at the bus stop. Reported to have wangled a ride up the Sikkim route. Mondira and Mihir rush to Siliguri. Comb several cities—Gangtok, Pelling. Pick up stray bits of information. They trace the kid to a small Tibetan monastery some distance from Rumtek. The scene with the abbot needed reflection: the abbot refuses to let the kid return. The kid is too disturbed, denies his parents, will not go back. Let him stay here for a bit, persuades the abbot. The turning of prayer wheels shall calm his rage to a rhythm, the chanting of serene prayers shall bring peace to the disordered little soul. We say in our discipline that the desire to assert, ‘I am the parent, the author’ shows a mind not yet spiritually adult … Let the boy go—do not cling to him. Return when he is twelve and we shall then ask him whether he is prepared to go back with you or whether he desires to take the robe as a novitiate.’ But Mondira can’t bear to return. She takes up a housekeeping job in a small tourist lodge so as to be close to the monastery. Mihir returns to Calcutta.
There were a few scenes Sravan was having real difficulty visualizing: the abbot sequence and the journalist and police sub-inspector bits. There was a problem with the kid’s ‘Did she jump or was she pushed?’ question, too. Mondira’s agony over the child had to be more intensely realized. He had to feel these things in his nerves. He left it to time. All he had to do was invoke the images patiently, sitting at his desk every morning for an hour.
Sometimes it was best to do no active work, to exert no compulsion upon the mind to throw forth potential personalities. It’s quite possible, reflected Sravan, that these characters I think up are people long dead, their essence preserved in the air that I, like a medium, allow to manifest in my imagination. My mind may be a fluid screen on which old sequences are projected! It’s best to let them form and fulfil themselves, rise to the surface of my consciousness, bringing their own histories. I must not command them into existence, I must not compel, I must only accept their materialization. There seems an infinite reserve of potential beings. Tune in to any one and he or she shall gather into form, an entity emerging out of the soil of my receptivity. God doodling on the sheet of my vacant sensibility.
Suddenly he saw a complete sentence just ahead of him, fully finished and waiting.
She rattled the phlegm in her throat, brought it up with a rusty snort. She expelled it in a jet into the spittoon that Mondira held.
Somehow a symbol of ejected guilt? Ugh! What an image. But the picture was a sharp one. Why did Mondira tend the old woman with such devotion? Sravan wondered. First, to overwhelm her with shame. An avenging compassion. Second, to sublimate her own revulsion of stench and decay. Third, to act on an abrupt insight into the old woman’s real state—a demented, pitiable creature, a suffering animal. But these diverse complexities would have to find expression by suggestion, the grades of motive smoothly fused, seamless.
And meanwhile the old woman, the one who wrought such havoc in Mondira’s life, lies in the old people’s ashram where Mondira and Mihir work. Her bedsores stink. She will not die. (No, didn’t the kid refer to her as the Didimoni who died? That bit would have to be rewritten.) She waits for her sons and daughters to come, but they despise her for her habitual homewrecking ways and her history of destructive malice. So the days pass. When at last, tired of fighting the tow of nature, the old woman’s foggy mind releases its stubborn clench upon her will, she goes off one dank, misty morning, her glassy eyes wide open, still frozen upon the door.
Exhausted with visualizing the old woman’s death labours, Sravan stopped to wonder where it all came from. Not out of my head, I’m sure. I’ve never witnessed this death or anything like it as far as I can remember. Perhaps back in the misplaced past there was something my mind couldn’t handle. What I’m trying to connect here is the old woman going crazy, confusing Mondira’s small son in his mother’s absence. Then the bashfulness of the girl bride, Devyani, on her wedding night. And how her mother-in-law, that wise matriarch, had the four-poster double bed artfully removed and a single bed put in. Devyani, his favourite character.
The door to Sravan’s study blew open ever so slightly, and along the blade of sunlight floated Buddhoo’s animated voice.
>
‘That was my pal Vikas. Lived to be a millionaire stockbroker and a proper old seth in Bombay. Son of a district judge with pots of the stuff and but three loves in life—booze, wenches and his old man’s official car. One hell of an awesome car, that, a blaze of lights glimmering on its bald head, and his old man didn’t put up any objection to his piece-of-the-moon using it as often he pleased. Well, one day, bloke oils up to our man and fawns: “Kahiye Vikas-bhai, we’ve grown up together and all the rest. Been chums of the loincloth, as they say. And now I have the pleasure of bidding you welcome to my cousin’s wedding. The best booze that a feudal baron’s money can buy. And,” he winked, “the comeliest of village wenches, ah, such dancing fillies, chilli-hot lasses, wickeder than you can fancy! As luscious on their feet as on their backs! All on the house, mind. We zamindars know how to look after our guests. The pick of the bunch shall be yours, believe me. So what d’you say?”
“Okay, if you insist, I’ll come,” grunted Vikas-bhai.
“A thousand thanks, brother mine!” gushed the wily fellow. “I knew you would not fail us. We shall meet on Thursday, the fifth, then. I shall come to your house and we shall proceed to my village together—no?”
“How do we get there? Train?” asked Vikas-bhai.
“Oh, no, no!” squealed the fellow. “My mistake entirely. A little detail of the programme that I forgot to include. We drive down in your most splendid car of the many lights.”
“Hold it!” barked Vikas-bhai. “What’s this now? What’s my old man going to say?”
“Never mind that, big brother,” assured the other. “The sons of district judges may with pride grace the weddings of village barons. As the lights on your car, so be the gems on our turbans in our ancestral portraits.”
“Oh, all right,” agreed Vikas-bhai, deciding not to let his old man in on the project.
‘Vikas-bhai drove through dust and pothole, stoically steering the awesome Ambassador with his jabbersome host beside him. His thoughts, no doubt, drew ample comfort from the delicious prospects of the evening ahead. He drove and drove until they reached a remote village, innocent of road or rail. To discover, ah, too late that the feudal mansion was a tumble-down shack and his fellow guests-of-the-groom’s-party a miserable gaggle of garlicky rustics, all agog over his car!
“A thousand welcomes!” gushed Vikas-bhai’s host. “The wedding party leaves for the bride’s village in an hour. I am sure, O Venerable Uncle,” he addressed the hoary old patriarch, “that my friend shall generously consent to drive the groom yonder in his glorious car of the many lights, and shall also happily drive the wedded couple back tomorrow after the nuptials have been tied and the feast is over.”
‘Well, Vikas-bhai seethed in fury. His car, not his presence, was the object of the sly invitation. He swore he’d give the rascal who had brought him to this godforsaken hole the finest hiding of his life, but decided to bear the outrage with fortitude—in view of the delights promised him ahead.
‘Soon enough Vikas-bhai found himself driving a yellow-robed rustic bridegroom and a horde of betel-munching, hawking, belching, bad-mouthing drunken brethren down to the village-but-one-along-the-river where, he hoped, better conditions for repose and jollity existed. Aha, none of it! At the wedding all he got was cheap, gut-flaming hooch, a string cot under a tree and for bedfellows, lo, no country songstress lasses but only swarms of mosquitoes making music in his ear! And worse—no loo! The wide-open fields for his royal lavatory, whither he betook his suit-clad, tie-knotted self on the morrow, head spinning with bilious hooch waves and bowels churning with a red-hot mess.
‘The bride’s family was speechless with awe to behold the groom arrive a twinkle-lighted car, chauffeured by a suit-and-tied attendant! But Vikas-bhai, it may be unnecessary to remark, was in a bitter frame of mind. It was also unfortunate that one innocent serving-guy committed the unforgivable blunder of addressing Vikas-bhai as “Driver Sahib”! Hate burned in his bosom. He lay awake all night scheming revenge, and hit upon a choice method of wreaking it.
‘The next morning Vikas-bhai sat patiently on his string cot, biding his time. The wedding party, complete with bride and dower, was to return to his host’s village at noon. Vikas-bhai showed great readiness to accommodate as many village brethren as his car could hold. So when the sun vaulted up the pole and stood roaring in the middle of the sky that blinding-hot April day, the groom, the bride, the host, the groom’s father and two uncles piled on and Vikas-bhai drove majestically out of the village with showers of rice and benedictions following him. He had not gone far when the car began to show signs of reluctance. Vikas-bhai braked and got out, a worried frown darkening his brow. He opened the bonnet and tinkered about. He shut it with a resounding bang that made his passengers jump and hastened back to the driver’s seat, apologizing unctuously all round for the delay. “This car,” he explained, “is an old one. Often gives trouble.” He started the engine and drove cautiously on. A couple miles further down the dust road, the car began chugging in strangled convulsions. Vikas-bhai swore and braked, got out, opened the bonnet again and peered into the innards. He emerged clucking like a hen, a look of embarrassment on his face.
“I regret to say that my car has developed serious engine problems,” he disclosed. “I’m ashamed to put you to this trouble, but I must request that you get off and assist this old hulk by lending its old battery the cooperation of your muscles. In short, heave it a mighty push, and carry on pushing till its stubborn sinews begin to pulse again.”
‘His passengers were sympathetic. “We quite understand,” they assured him. “When our bullocks evince similar dullness, we’ve got to fetch them a hefty one on their arses to get them to move. No problem, sir.”
‘So out they clambered, all except the little bride, and, arraying themselves in ordered formation behind the car, they dealt the Ambassador a most mighty shove. And Vikas-bhai, at the same instant, stepped on the accelerator and was off, flying like a falcon down the dusty expanse without a look behind! Oh, yes, he left them stranded on the dirt track there—not a nice thing to do at all and I don’t for a moment exonerate him—but he wasn’t so hot on being nice that day and that was that, ha!’
And as Buddhoo’s raucous narrative came to an end, Sravan heard an unfamiliar sound. A strange, sputtering squeak, like a door creaking on a rusty hinge. It took him a minute to realize that it was his father laughing!
Manfully he forced his mind back to Devyani, but somehow Buddhoo’s silly narrative had put him off his own. He suddenly remembered that he needed to call Malini to fix up the evening at Amirbagh.
5
For some weeks Sravan had been giving Malini a steady dose of soul in a tactical effort to conquer her sensibilities. The gathering of shabby-genteel writers in Ranjana Devi’s Amirbagh bungalow wasn’t a bad location for an effective exercise.
Malini was dressed just right for the sort of role she saw herself playing—the unspoilt lady of sensitivity and subtlety, subdued of voice and dainty of step. She wore a pale-lemon outfit in Dhaka cotton, a simple, elegant cut that flattered her form and allowed the fine muslin dupatta to swing in a languid hammock from shoulder to shoulder, cradling the teasing weight of her breasts. Her eyes were finely kohled and her lips a mellow peach, and on her small, well-tended feet she wore a cunning pair of sandals of an ingenious basket weave.
The gathering assembled in the sprawling drawing room, with the furniture moved back against the discoloured walls, the floor covered with spotless white sheets and a large number of cushions and bolsters strewn about. There was an elaborate alpana at one end and an arrangement of Ranjana Devi’s favourite crotons in decorative earthen pots painted with intricate patterns, each crowned with a circlet of mango leaves and a deepak. Marigold garlands were festooned in scallops round the white-sheeted divan reserved for readings and speeches. In its customary corner stood a small table holding an outsized oil portrait, Maheshwar Dayal Saxena gazing morosely into space.
Sravan knew everyone in this crowd of literati, regulars of long standing at the Amirbagh house. His nose twitched as he abandoned his sandals and stepped into the room. There was always an air of the prayer meeting about these posthumous birthday celebrations. Was this some sickeningly strong rose attar or a cheap joss stick? The room was already full when they arrived. Ranjana Devi, grown frail and stooped with her arthritis, signalled her inability to rise to her feet, inviting them in graciously from where she sat between the portrait and the divan. They stepped through the throng of seated guests, carrying on a spirited mime of greeting, namaskaring, nodding, smiling, waving until they found a place to sit near the veranda.
He could tell Malini was impressed. This wasn’t her usual crowd. Surely she found the faces of these bearded relics inspired and these khadi-draped frumps intellectual, he thought with a stab of malice. It was her first exposure to a circle where the same affectations operated, though in less obvious ways, as in her own. Personally, he’d sized them all up long ago, every one of them. Humbugs. Rancorous in their rivalries, poisonous in their jests and as covetous of each paisa as any petty grocer but without the grocer’s frankness. He’d observed this lot and many more like them for over twenty years now, and there was nothing more to know about them.
A sitar trailed the thin thread of a raga in the humid air. Ranjana Devi always favoured Mian ki todi, the sort of lugubrious stuff played by All India Radio to announce a state funeral. The sitar shook out a final tassel of notes into the incense-heavy air and subsided. The last invitees had arrived and Ranjana Devi’s rigmarole commenced. The portrait was garlanded. Maheshwar Dayal Saxena regarded the proceedings in resignation. The deepak was lit by old Abhishek Agnihotri. Then came Ranjana Devi’s speech, cast in the form of a poem. Sravan groaned. He knew each pause and impassioned quaver by now; she’d only added a couple of extra sentences. Soft perfumed words with a sweetish, unaired sort of mustiness. Last season’s stale scent trapped in the folded lines, as though they’d just been unpacked for their annual appearance out of a trunk in the boxroom. Ugh, that speech! But then, lots of senile people went on writing senile stuff. Like those two old jokers Srinivas Avasthi and Javed Farooqui, sitting there like a pair of dusty dodos.
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