by Chatura Rao
They walked along the ridges of soil that marked the boundaries of rich green fields. Mahnoor’s foot slipped and she almost teetered into the waterlogged paddy, but then got back her balance with a wave of her arms and a gasp.
‘Careful,’ Uma cautioned, going slower now, seeing the girl was not accustomed to walking in places where the mud was not firm underfoot.
‘Doctor Rawat said that if I stayed here through autumn I’d see something special. It was some peculiar trick of nature but his hillside was a gathering point: the cloud path led up the hill, across the shrine, along where we were sitting and to his house. Doctor Rawat called it the cloud run, the place where clouds come home.’
‘Was it cold,’ Mahnoor wanted to know. ‘I hear it is cold in the clouds.’
‘It got cold up there,’ Uma said gravely. ‘And even in those days the doctor had a persistent cough. When I asked him about it, he coughed some more and his face crinkled into a grin: I’m only human, he said. He had no family to care for him. He died up there some years later, coughing till his heart gave out.’
Under the trees on the eastern border of the village, Uma bowed her head remembering her friend. Mahnoor looked up into the spreading branches, and through the tears that had arisen, watched the clouds that went past and did not return.
***
Uma led Mahnoor to the river that ran along the eastern border of the village. The river was dry in this season. Smooth beige sand formed a bed for the biggest rocks Mahnoor had ever seen. They were in shades of grey and brown, veins of purple, dark blue and pink running through them. Uma picked her way to the middle of the wide river bed, Mahnoor slipping and sliding her way across behind her. They chose adjoining rocks to sit on, each rock shaped differently, and Mahnoor looked around in wonder.
Morning mist lingered low, pooling between the rocks. Only the call of birds swooping across to the forest growing on the faraway eastern bank broke the silence.
‘The day before I left Raikholi to return home I climbed down the hillside to the shrine to collect the offerings the villagers had left for Doctor Rawat. They’d sent messages saying that the foodstuff would perish if he didn’t collect it. He sat at the top of the trail so he could watch for my safety.
‘I took about twenty minutes to climb down over roughly hewn steps in the hillside to the shrine. There I sat on the flat rock by the small stone Buddha, enjoying the sunshine and the breeze. I opened one of the packets of biscuits that I had collected and munched. I rested my gaze on the hamlets below. The cloud run, I saw, was not a gentle slope. Instead the earth pitched down below my feet that dangled from the rock ledge. For the clouds this would be an easy climb, I remember thinking, but not for humans.
‘I sifted through the assorted offerings: goat cheese, bread, biscuits and an embroidered handkerchief. I put them carefully into the bag slung across my shoulders and watched a white wisp drift up the cloud run.
‘I climbed back up. Doctor Rawat made us both ginger tea and we sipped it and talked one last time before I went away.
‘“Sometimes I imagine the clouds that rise here in autumn are the Buddha’s clothes, hair and beard,” Doctor Rawat had smiled. “The animals I treat are warm and solid and the clouds, cold to the touch, and flowing. I feel like a father to them too, since they gather in this place at the end of each day. I’ve named every animal I delivered and the clouds that came here. Just for fun, child,’’ he’d added at my wide-eyed stare.
‘“What did you name them?’’ I’d asked wonderingly.
‘“Zim, Silver, Kunzang,’’ he’d rattled off. “See, those are Uma and Sarika drinking from the stream down there.’’
‘“But my name is Uma!’’ I’d protested.
‘He’d looked at me through the steam leaving his tea, his eyes bright.
“‘Then you might be my cloud-daughter in human form, Uma. I should like you to marry that young boy-cloud Zim in a year or two.’’
‘“No!’’ I had cried out, and the doctor had laughed.
‘“But how,’’ I’d asked shyly, “can I be a girl and a thrush and a cloud?’’
‘“Everybody has more than one form,’’ he’d said. “The storm wind is air, as is the fragrance of the rose. Stale water in a bottle is also the ice of the glacier. The essence is the same, only the forms of things change. So here and now, each of us has the potential to be many things. And all things come finally to rest in the same place.’’ His eyes were on the faraway white temple with its colourful flags, its roof wreathed in cloud.
‘I often recall what he said,’ Uma murmured. ‘It comforts me in the worst of times to think that we might all find peace from our struggles.’
‘All things end,’ Mahnoor whispered, tears welling up in her eyes.
Uma drew her to share the rock she was sitting on. She folded her into her arms, a daughter come home to her, to this river bed that was hundreds of years old, like she’d once gone to the mountain home of Doctor Rawat.
‘I’m pregnant. It is what we always wished for, yet he is leaving . . .’
‘Shh,’ Uma murmured, her eyes filling up too. She held Mahnoor and stroked her head. ‘He will find his way back to you.’
She looked at the landscape populated by the hardy gods that dwelt here–the rocks that weathered the harsh heat of summer, the freezing cold of winter and the tumult of monsoon, decade after decade. These subtly changing deities of time carried in their essence the strength to endure. She prayed for some of this for Mahnoor.
36
F
our days later Zahyan spent one last hour with Mahnoor. On a platform of the Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station in Delhi, they sat close together on a bench and waited for the Gujarat Sampark Kranti Express to draw up. Mahnoor clung, dry-eyed, to Zahyan’s arm.
‘Take care of yourself, jaan,’ he murmured gently. ‘You remember where I’ve kept the bank documents, our academic degree and marriage certificates? The key to the bank locker?’
She nodded.
‘And you’ll move in with your parents till I come back.’
‘No, I will stay alone,’ she replied, unsmiling.
‘Then I’ll worry about the baby and you!’ he said alarmed.
‘Like I’ll be worrying about you.’
Zahyan exhaled and rubbed his forehead, wondering where the pliable woman he’d known had gone. If only he hadn’t told her the real reason for going away–if he’d lied that he was deputed on a University assignment, she’d have accepted it without question. But he’d felt that she had the right to know the truth and somehow, after what had happened to her in Gandhinagar, would support his decision.
‘Listen, Nawazbhai will bring you some money . . . for household expenses,’ he said. She stared at him.
‘I won’t take it,’ she said. ‘He’d better not show his face at my door.’
‘Noora!’
Suveer returned from smoking a cigarette and noticed they were sitting apart, both pretending to be absorbed in the goings-on around them. It was past noon and Mahnoor announced that she was hungry, so Zahyan went and bought pooris and potato curry from one of the railway canteen stalls. The three of them ate in silence as passengers milled around, their eyes on the electronic indicators overhead or trained expectantly at a distant point along the tracks.
When Zahyan and Suveer walked away to trash the leaf bowls they had eaten from, putting aside his misgivings about how Zahyan would receive his advice Suveer said, ‘At this . . . training camp you’re going to, don’t just swallow every argument placed before you. Use your own logic to whet what you’re told.’
‘Don’t patronise me,’ Zahyan retorted. ‘Logic is not what people employ when they brand an entire community as trouble.’
‘I’m sorry about–’ Suveer began, stung.
‘No, don’t be,’ Zahyan cut in with a shake of his head.
‘Still, about yesterday–’
But Zahyan refused to discuss what had happened.
; The previous evening he was watching the news on television with Suveer’s father when the latter who had thus far kept his political views to himself, turned to him and asked innocuously, ‘Do you consider yourself first a Muslim or an Indian?’
‘I could ask you a similar question, sir,’ Zahyan flashed back.
‘Really? What question would you ask me? I served the cause of law and order in my country for forty years!’
Zahyan did not want to offend his host who was older than his own father and carried himself with such gravity, but he found himself speaking out.
‘I have not broken the law or disturbed the order of my country. Why should I have to prove myself to be a good Indian?’
‘You don’t need to disturb anything, son,’ Raghav said cynically. ‘Wherever you people settle, law and order problems crop up and it falls to the police and the army of this country–and most other countries of the world–to deal with it. We lose good men from our ranks in the process of restoring peace.’
Their voices were pitched low, still Suveer who had been in the kitchen helping his mother heat up the food, exchanging light banter with her and Mahnoor, grew alert and came to the living room.
‘There is no logic to what you say. Anyway, what have I got to do with any of this?’ Zahyan asked, his face darkening.
‘Nothing at present perhaps,’ Raghav pursed his lips and eyed him coldly. ‘But scratch the surface and you’ll see that the call to violence in the name of religion lies just below your skin as it does for every Muslim–’
‘Papa!’ Suveer warned sharply, but Raghav went on, ‘and it will take very little for you to answer this call. I’ve seen plenty of people like you in my years in the force.’
‘He is our guest!’ Suveer stood between them. His father’s manner brought to his mind other confrontations from his teenage years, where Raghav would attack his wife or son’s vulnerabilities from what appeared to be an experienced and logical standpoint, and they would remain mute out of deference. Suveer generally avoided sparring with him but he was really angered by his father’s baiting of Zahyan.
‘You cannot insult him, whatever your views.’
Glaring at Suveer, Raghav stood up and walked stiffly to his room from where he did not emerge for the rest of the evening. Suveer apologised, saying that his father got this way sometimes. Zahyan accepted the apology with difficulty. He became utterly silent, wreathed in his own dark thoughts. A pall was cast upon Mahnoor’s and his last evening at the village home. They ate their dinner and retired to bed early. The bus to New Delhi left at dawn.
At the station in Delhi now Zahyan embraced Suveer.
‘I don’t have the words to thank your mother for her kindness to Mahnoor,’ he faltered.
‘Just return safely to us,’ Suveer put his hand on Zahyan’s shoulder and forced him to meet his gaze. Zahyan knew what he was asking, the same plea was in Mahnoor’s eyes. He looked miserably away.
When Suveer and Mahnoor were seated in the train to Baroda, Zahyan said a brief khuda haafez to his wife’s anxious, ghostly face on the other side of the reinforced glass window. He pressed his fingers to her’s through the glass that would not budge, feeling as if he was worlds away even before her train began to move.
He walked towards the platform exit, a lonely figure in his kurta pyjama and skull cap. The basic cell phone over which his instructions would come to him was cradled in his pocket. It struck against his hip as he moved.
Suveer’s father had been quite right, he thought bitterly. The call to arms had barely come and he had put aside his job, wife and unborn child to answer it. Raghav Bisht had questioned his nationalism. But Zahyan felt himself, at this moment, alienated from all the identities he’d known. Indeed he felt himself to be something less than human.
37
O
n a street to the west of Nizamuddin station, Zahyan entered a small restaurant, seated himself at a table by the open door and ordered a cup of tea.
He looked at the shops, rickshaws, taxis and tempos, and watched the coolies, drivers, and tradesmen who milled around making a living off the activity at the station. Whole families had travelled from the relative orderliness of small towns and cities to the clamour of one of the key transit points of the north. They anxiously guarded bulging jute bags, bedrolls and battered suitcases. Children clutched at their mothers, subdued by the overwhelming hustle and bustle around them.
After the calm of the village he’d just spent close to a week in, Zahyan felt disoriented. His head throbbed from the heat and noise. He finished the tea, paid for it and checked his phone. Nothing. He had a hollow sensation in the pit of his stomach, as if the unknown world that was about to swallow him had come to live within. He was relieved that Mahnoor had gone; he preferred to face his fears alone.
I’ve always been alone, he thought. Almost always, he corrected himself, for the first time in his life someone had stood with him shoulder-to-shoulder . . . But he refused to think about that or recall Suveer’s last plea. Such an emotion might make him falter in his resolve.
He needed to find a quiet place to pass the time until the call came. He was stretched thin from the strain of waiting. Added to the suspense was a doubt about the soundness of the decision he’d taken quite easily in the company of Nawaz and the brotherhood. He did not feel so sure about it anymore.
Why wouldn’t the call come? The call would put an end to all his doubts!
He went out into the street and asked an elderly magazine vendor for directions to the mausoleum of Nizamuddin Auliya. He’d heard from many that the shrine of the Sufi saint, not far from the railway station named for him, was a place worth visiting.
Zahyan set out in the direction the vendor had pointed him. He walked to the north end of the railway station parking lot. There was an open metal gate to his left as his guide had said there would be. He passed through and turned immediately right so that he was heading north again on a narrow paved road. He’d been told that he’d pass a small tomb on the right, just outside the entrance of the main Humayun’s Tomb complex. He would have passed it by, but for the striking green doorway with its beautiful trellis-worked ventilator. Below this were marble plaques inscribed in Urdu. One had the name of the saint buried here: Patte Wali Hazrat Shamsuddin, Zahyan read. On the plaque below it in bold letters Baab-e-Rahmat, or door of mercy, was inscribed.
Through the doorway he saw a mosaic-tiled courtyard bathed in sun light. A young neem tree stood in the centre casting a gentle shadow over a simple steel and cane chair placed under it as if to welcome the weary visitor. Low white walls deeper within the courtyard appeared to demarcate the residence of the caretaker: a line of his washed clothes were hung out to dry in the yard beyond the wall.
Zahyan stepped through the green doorway. He passed through the outer and into an inner courtyard where lay the tomb of the saint. It was covered with a zardosi-embroidered quilt and strewn with rose petals–the rich green with its glitter of gold edging contrasted with the bare simplicity of the courtyard.
A woman in a burqa and another in a salwar kameez, her forehead adorned with a red bindi, sat a few feet apart by the tomb. One prayed silently and the other simply stared into space. At one end of the yard a peacock, peahen and a few pigeons pecked at grain that an old man in a worn, off-white pathan suit was spreading out for them.
‘Are you visiting for the first time?’ he limped over to ask. ‘I haven’t seen you here before.’
‘Aren’t strangers allowed in?’ Zahyan asked tentatively.
‘The door of mercy is open, son. All who seek it may enter,’ the man smiled. ‘Drink some water,’ he pointed to a clay canister set in a corner of the roofed area, ‘and refresh yourself.’
Zahyan mumbled his thanks and went to get a drink. He sat in the shade of a tree a few feet away from the peacock, wondering at the brilliant patterns and colours of its tail feathers. By and by he felt the invisible band of iron below his chest give, the hard knot at his
heart loosen. He rested his forehead upon his knees and allowed the tears that welled up to flow; his body was wracked with sobs. When the surge had ebbed, he raised his tear-drenched face to look up into the sparse branches and their clusters of tiny leaves. Small birds flitted from one branch to the next.
He wiped his face on his sleeve and looked around to find the women who had been praying gone, the old caretaker nowhere in sight. The light was a chadar of peace spread over the empty courtyard.
Suveer came to his mind–the brother he had never acknowledged as one, perhaps because the man had never demanded his loyalty nor claimed thanks for the help he’d rendered so freely.
‘Thank you,’ he mumbled brokenly. ‘May God’s mercy descend like rain on you and yours.’
Exhausted, he lay down on his side by the wall, pillowed his head on his arm, and slept. Afternoon eased into evening and Zahyan did not stir. The caretaker came around to look at him. He came back to place troughs of fresh water for the birds and dogs that were regular visitors here. More devotees entered the courtyard, prayed and left. Still Zahyan slept.
When he woke up it was dusk. He needed to relieve himself and went in search of the caretaker. The old man indicated the common urinal on the other side of a half-wall. Zahyan came back and drank two cups of water from the clay canister to moisten his dry mouth and ease his swollen throat. He breathed in the balmy air of the early summer evening with a lightness of heart he hadn’t experienced in months.
All of a sudden he remembered why he was here. The call he was supposed to receive . . . had he missed it? He took the phone out of his pocket and checked the screen. It was dead. Had the phone run out of battery? It couldn’t have–he’d charged it fully before they’d set out from the village at dawn. He looked at the spot he’d slept at. Perhaps when he’d lain down, the phone that had been in his kurta pocket had hit the courtyard floor at an angle that had caused it to switch off.