Blind Faith

by Sagarika Ghose

  She walked away from him in a daze. On the ride home, she stared blindly out of her window and that evening she sat up late and wrote her resignation letter. Her time at SkyVision had been very fulfilling. But she wished to marry and move. It had been so wonderful to be a part of a great team. She had learnt so much, acquired so many friends. But now she had met somebody wonderful, a soulmate.

  She felt as if she could easily step naked off the morning train, like the Dasanami Nagas of the Kumbh Mela. Amidst grey suits and white shirts, would run the journalist as stripper. The shrieks of bystanders would be nothing but harmless birdsong. She would shrug them off, because none of them were as liberated as she was, by the simple power of a painting coming to life.

  ‘Very good news, darling,’ – her producer looked at her searchingly – ‘lovely news. Congratulations.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she smiled.

  ‘All good things in the future, Mia. Only good things.’

  ‘Only good.’

  After the initial shocked murmuring, her colleagues planned her farewell party and chatted about what they would wear to her Indian wedding. In the ensuing debate over short black dress versus cream frock, she made an excuse, grabbed her bag and ran out.

  ‘Today, is the day,’ Karna said as they sat on their bench, ‘that I have to go, Maya. As I told you, I have to go away on my mission.’

  ‘Today? Right now?’ She heard herself sound desolate. She saw herself staring at him in an open-mouthed way. He turned towards the rallyists.

  ‘You’ll see me again, Maya.’

  ‘Vik’s gone too,’ she said as if by way of explanation.

  ‘What is this, Maya?’ Karna placed his chin in his hands. ‘You will miss us both? Me and your tycoon? But don’t worry, we’ll meet again. Promise you’ll come to the ashram.’

  ‘Promise.’

  A sudden roar of sun pounded down and converted him into a faceless silhouette. Light blazed in his spectacles masking his eyes. ‘You know, Maya, I have very much enjoyed being with you. I have seen how innocent you are. It is very rare, this innocence. You are that rare thing and you have convinced me that innocence exists.’

  ‘And you have convinced me that one doesn’t have to find words for certain things. That there’s meaning beyond…sensible language. I don’t know if that makes any sense.’

  ‘Have I?’ he frowned. ‘Then I will come and see you even if you don’t find your way to the ashram. Leave your address with the Brothers.’

  She looked up into his face and found he was studying her through his spectacles. ‘I have never met anyone like you, Maya. There is an openness in your face, an honesty I didn’t think existed anymore.’

  ‘So I will see you again,’ she said.

  ‘I will see you again, even if you don’t want to see me, Maya. You will be mine one day, part of my life, remember that. One day you will leave your Vik and come with me. But for the moment, I must say goodbye.’

  ‘Bye, Karna.’

  She watched him disappear into the crowd. Handsome, happy, this-worldly Vik, had entered her life only so that she could be free to begin her journey with Karna. A stop at the station only to wait for another train. Vik had called her a wildflower, a love-in-a-mist, but Karna was going to take her to the Kumbh Mela. The holy man and the businessman wouldn’t understand each other, but she understood them both perfectly.

  She understood that she would never be abandoned again, she understood that she had jumped off the lonely wall to find that love was growing at her feet like two trees slanted in two different directions.

  For the moment both had gone. One to his Berlin business meeting. The other to his mission. But soon she would go to New Delhi, the city where she would find Karna’s ashram. She was alone, but not for long. Karna is my father’s painting. I am getting married to Vik and this is some sort of fantasy. My mind has unhinged into a focused acid trip where I’m seeing things I normally wouldn’t. A huge amount of history has been crammed into a short space of my otherwise blank existence and is making me crazy. Like a wild night’s partying after weeks alone in the desert. Like a screaming day at a non-stop rock concert after a lifetime’s solitary confinement. She felt herself spiral upwards towards the sky; as if the satellite overhead was the circling orb of her future.

  She would go with Karna to the Kumbh Mela. She would leave the ice rain, the dull-eyed homeless, the heavily-pierced prostitutes in Soho, turn her back forever on this city where she had become a perpetual stranger. Leave Mithu to her life with Tiger.

  And find what Anand had seen.

  She would understand why her father had chosen death above life.

  ALQUERIA, GOA

  Justin walked down the zigzag to the police station in Fontainhas to ask if they could provide some police protection for Indi. She was blind, she lived alone, she had insisted on living alone, intruders would see her as a target and she would never know or be able to protect herself. She felt she was being watched, there was someone on the roof, in her house, someone at her elbow, someone stifling a yawn nearby. She had smelt something, a smell of an unidentifiable chemical. There was definitely somebody there.

  The incidents at Sharkey’s Hotel were worrying and there could be others.

  Justin had his own rooms in St. Theresa’s Hospital where he was always on call so she was mostly on her own. Once they had caught the person making the blank phone calls and sending the email viruses they could dispense with the guard.

  The policeman at the desk, his speech as slow as the Goan afternoon which slides calmly into siesta, agreed to send some help. For the moment, he said, they could make do with Francis Xavier.

  Justin frowned. Francis Xavier was useless. Francis Xavier, who every evening stopped off at Nerul fish market to inspect the catch, then for a leisurely beer at Dom’s Bar And Rest before ambling back to his duties, slower than a jellyfish undulating its way into the sea. ‘Can’t you send someone else? Francis Xavier isn’t the fastest guy in the world.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mr Justin,’ the cops smiled indulgently at the bedraggled American. ‘Does anything bad ever happen in Alqueria? Nothing in Alqueria. But don’t worry. We’ll be on watch.’

  What keeps this old foreign man here, the policeman wondered, as Justin walked back down the zigzag. Why does he never go home to where he belongs? Working day and night at the hospital, taking care of the beautiful owner of Sharkey’s, totally disregarding his own appearance, he was like a man who had already committed suicide.

  Justin went back to Indi’s house to tell her what the police had said. Don’t worry so much, Justin, said Indi. I’m far better at defending myself than you think. I’m more than a match for the Phantom Listener.

  She could no longer see the Alqueria sunset. But she could hear the twilight guitar from the homes, the evensong from Santa Ana, the music from Sharkey’s. She could remember the families sitting out in their verandas, under the low tiled roofs and she could smell the coconut toddy. She could remember how cashew trees became luminous in the setting sun and how, very rarely, a pearl floated in with the tide. She could smell the rain on the palms. Palms that were like skinny bent uncles offering chocolates to a child. Avuncular palms.

  She could smell the receding tide. She could hear the roar of the sea and the low horn of the barge. Soon the bells of Santa Ana would ring.

  As they walked along Capuchine Beach, Justin pushed his spectacles back and put his arms around her shoulders. ‘It’s the Kumbh Mela again next year,’ he said. ‘Remember I was there twelve years ago?’

  ‘Don’t I just,’ laughed Indi. ‘Your Oriental trip. Where was I? Ah yes, the Ministry of Social Welfare. Had to have you rescued from the station because you had lost your tickets or something at Allahabad station. You’re a gullible gora.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Justin holding her closer. ‘I wonder whatever happened to Anand. Remember Anand Bhagat, the painter from London? That oil on canvas of the Kumbh with me as an Indian sadhu? Made me s
it still for a whole afternoon on the sand, wouldn’t even let me get up for a pee. It came out terrific, I must say.’

  ‘Yes, I remember you telling me about Anand and the painting. Where is he these days?’

  Justin shook his head. ‘Don’t know. He left me his address and contact number but I, I think I lost it. Hilarious, the way he kept following me around. He was teaching in London if I remember correctly. Anand, super guy, great painter. Wonder if he’ll be there again this year.’

  ‘The painting did very well didn’t it,’ Indi reached for his hand. ‘Got some great notices at the time.’

  ‘Yeah, it did,’ said Justin. ‘Wow…a long time ago. Wonder where it is now. Oh, well…Remember the poem he read out to me?

  The universe is a horse.

  Its eyes are pierced with evil.

  Its ears are pierced with evil.

  But from its mouth comes…Breath.

  And Breath is the Word.

  And the Word is…Adi.

  Him without Beginning or without End.

  Him who is One and Indivisible.’

  Indi laughed again. ‘Hey, I remember your Advaita phase. Ramana Maharshi. Advaita, the philosophy of what…non-duality?

  ‘I find it totally unique,’ Justin said. ‘A single reality, the single being. That two disparate beings can coalesce into a single whole. Individual A, Individual B, actually the same. A man and a woman, the same. Polar opposites, the same. King and subject. The believer and non-believer, the same. God, the brahman, and the human – the atman being the same.’

  ‘“I am the ever-shining unborn,” quoted Indi, “one alone, imperishable, stainless, all-pervading and non-dual – that am I, and I am forever released.”…Shankara. Right?’

  ‘Hey, pretty good. You know your Advaita too!’

  ‘Oh, bugger off,’ said Indi. ‘All very egoistical. The supreme I, me, the one-ness of the Brahman. All very male. The oneness of the male reality, basically. The single Big Guy.’

  ‘Not male at all,’ argued Justin. ‘It could be equally applied to the female. She who creates and She who destroys being the same. A bit’ – he stroked her thick black and grey hair – ‘like someone I know.’

  They walked along the water’s edge. Glistening sandy flats were streaked with crimson from the setting sun. Drinkers in Sharkey’s called out greetings to them, admiring these two unusual individuals who even in old age seemed as urgently excited to be together as secret lovers meeting once a year.

  They went back to the house and opened a bottle of Grover’s red wine. Indi lay back in her chair and waited for Justin to light her an evening cigarette.

  ‘Vik’s getting married,’ Justin whispered.

  ‘Really? To whom?’

  ‘Someone called Mia. He met her in London. He phoned me at the hospital.’

  She inhaled on the cigarette he had placed between her lips. Then she slid further down on the reclining chair so that his lips brushed her cheek as he bent over her.

  ‘So are you going to attend the marriage?’ she asked.

  ‘Are you? Why don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t want any responsibilities,’ she shrugged. ‘I’m denying responsibility. I’m not responsible.’ She blew a smoke ring in the direction of the sea. ‘I want you to take me back to the bedroom and make love to me gently, and then cook me my dinner and make love to me again because I’m so blind I can’t read and write and am therefore illiterate. What a sorry end this has been for an upstanding servant of the government who gave her best years to the cause of the people of this country.’

  He laughed. ‘Excellent idea, Madam Additional Secretary.’ None but the brave, he had once written to her from America, deserve the fair. Justin’s eyes were still piercingly blue. As blue as the sea on which his forefathers sailed their Viking ships to America. He had always been remarkable looking. But now, after a lifetime of devotion to Indi, he was thin and stooped, his pale skin was mottled, his grey hair hung about his shoulders and his once blond beard and moustache were snowy. His clothes were so bedraggled that he looked like the backwash of a tide.

  He walked up and down the zigzag, a fully surrendered man. So surrendered to Indi that he could have been a priest who had given up his life for the love of his own god.

  The rain stopped and the stars came out. The veranda of the house looked out on to the curve of the bay, where a year later a plane would break up and fall. Starlight stabbed at the sea as if to prepare it for the assault, to meet the challenge of burning metal.

  Justin and Indi didn’t know what lay ahead. They couldn’t see the drowning plane. They just drank their wine and became as selfish about each other and as contemptuous of those outside themselves as they had always been.

  He had listened silently to her rages. He had bent over her, as the palms bend over stormy seas, and placed soothing hands over her eyes. She had deprived him of everything. But he had continued by her side, joking that if he went back to his life in America he would be like a mad stallion trapped in a polite parade of ceremonial ponies.

  But even though he had given up everything except his skills at repairing bones and easing aches to be her protector, she would be the cause of his death.

  Her eyes turned towards the ocean. She drank her glass of wine feeling its redness stain her throat and shivered with a terrible recollection. A recollection that made her world heave under her chair.

  There was that other memory that had been returning to her of late. Her mind floated back to a hot afternoon when the sun had beat on the window panes so hard that its reflection had torn up the last of her eyesight. That afternoon, sunlight had intruded for the last time into her eyes, intruded with biting agony, then disappeared forever.

  ‘ Remember that hot afternoon?’ he whispered, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Somehow I keep thinking of it nowadays. I keep seeing it. I think of it as often as the tide comes in to the beach. That hot afternoon in a hospital. You said a dry breeze had come beating against the windows, when the street outside had been covered in dusty heat. That hot afternoon.’

  ‘No,’ lied Indi. ‘I don’t remember. I remember nothing.’

  You are a liar and I’m a prisoner at your side, Justin thought, uncaring of how ridiculous I am, even to myself. Perhaps human beings are not meant to be loved as dementedly as I love Indi. If they do, they became enraged and lure their lover to greater heights of sacrifice and pain. Receiving love never really makes people content, they are only motivated to put their lover through an even tougher obstacle race.

  He stroked her hair. There was a new sound in the hush of the waves that scared him. He turned his head. Indi was right. A stranger had come to Alqueria. Someone was standing outside the cottage. There was someone there. He could feel it, he was sure. There was a smell, a funny unrecognizable smell, yes, he could smell it too. Nail-polish remover? Hair dye? Someone whispering through the net door, walking in the beach, yawning outside, as if weary of a long vigil. He squinted towards the waves.

  A shiver ran down his shoulder blades at what he thought he saw.

  5

  LONDON

  Mia trailed down Regent Street with Mithu, imagining Karna suddenly darting out from behind Liberty; wondering agitatedly why Vik’s hugs were so chaste.

  After he came back from Berlin shouting, ‘Hey Mia’ with the airbus engine behind his voice, she had led him up to her room and assured him that they didn’t have to wait. As he began, dutifully, to undress, she saw that strapped to the belt of her athletic emperor was a small monitor which looked like a TV remote, about the size of a deck of cards. A thin plastic tube connected it to a circular disc that sat just above his pelvis.

  He studied her expression and explained: ‘My Medtronic MiniMed implantable insulin pump. The closest thing to an artificial pancreas. I set the monitor and the pump delivers insulin into my body through a needle or cannula implanted under the skin. Need to change it every three or four days but it only takes ten minutes,’ he shrugged. �
�The latest technology against diabetes mellitus.’

  ‘ You have diabetes?’

  ‘ Yup and I’m a pumper. Freedom from insulin shots.’

  ‘ Shouldn’t you be more careful then, with all this travel?’

  ‘ Nah,’ he shook his head. ‘It’s all under control. Was diagnosed when I was ten.’

  ‘ Shit!’

  ‘ Not shit, piss!’ he laughed. ‘Went to the loo a lot.’

  ‘ Must be tough to live with.’

  ‘ Not really. I can disconnect the tubing,’ he pointed to the disc, ‘when I’m showering or swimming, and a computer controls the insulin level. Sounds complicated but it’s not. It doesn’t hurt,’ he laughed again, ‘if that’s what you’re concerned about. There are many little kids who are pumpers too. People live with these things: Iron in their knees. Pipes in their hearts. Steel in their backbones. The human body is not alien to metal.’

  In bed she brought him the full force of her loneliness and heard him gasp in surprise at her dreamily powerful desires. Her body, he said, was the most precious thing he had ever touched. Not only because it was beautiful but because she seemed so far away, as if she was drifting through his arms towards some other planet of limitless eccentricity. He said her narrow hips and soft waist were bewitching. She really was a love-in-a-mist.

  She couldn’t think of anything to say. His insulin pump clouded her vision. It telescoped the world into a giant capsule which barrelled incongruously through her nighttime mind. She imagined the needle positioned in a perpetual pierce of his skin, a spaceship inching through blackness towards the infinite nothing.