Blind Faith

by Sagarika Ghose

  The bow and arrow man was their nemesis. He had come to punish them for their love. Punish Justin. Punish Indi.

  If either one of us were to die, thought Justin, the pain would be physical. Grief would manifest itself in physical ways. A knife permanently wedged in the skin.

  ‘You haven’t sinned Justin.’

  ‘Yes, I have, Indi. We both have.’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ she said. ‘I believed in everything that I did. If I have to pay a price for it, I’m willing to. But I’m not going to apologize. I’m prepared to defend myself for my values and for everything I believe I stood for. I will never apologize or beg for forgiveness. Forgiveness from whom? Apologize to whom? It is I who should be the recipient of remorse and forgiveness. I refuse to also be a provider of sympathy.’

  He stroked her hair, convinced there wasn’t much time. Those four decades of grand obsession were churning away into a gutter where weakness and compromise flowed.

  7

  NEW DELHI

  Winter came to Victoria Villa garden. The semal had started to shed its leaves. The jamun’s fruits were gone. Almost seven months had passed since she had arrived in New Delhi and with every passing week, the waiting in the air had become stronger.

  One night there was an unexpected shower bringing with it a blanket of cold. Vik was away at a wedding. Mia sat alone on the four-poster bed watching the rain spray off the jamun leaves making them shine in the moonlight. Suddenly, there was a screeching sound of brakes and then another long sound. A human scream? Or was it the familiar imagined scream from the semal? She ran out into the living room and peered through the doors down the veranda. Another shout wavered through the rain, a human voice punctuated by the sound of falling water. Vik? Perhaps the wedding had been rained out.

  She called out for the guards. There was no answer. She pulled on her dressing gown and crept into the windswept driveway. Clouds powered out of the horizon. She ran down the lawn and out of the gate. The guards were asleep behind the bolted door of their wooden cabin near the gate. A truck stood on the road, its headlights glaring onto the verge.

  There he was at last. The painting of Justin had been a sign. The rain had been a herald. He was sprawled on the grass next to the road. His eyes were closed and the moonlight ran off his face. His beard had grown almost to his chest and his hair was down to his shoulders. His glasses sat crookedly on his nose and she noticed he wasn’t wearing the wooden bow and arrow. It might have simply been an exotic toy to lure the Londoner.

  A long streak of blood was beginning to emerge on his thigh, through his white pyjamas. In the darkness, she knelt down next to him and held her hand over his forehead. He opened his eyes, raised himself on his elbow and gazed at her.

  ‘Maya?’

  ‘I went back to give my address to the Purification Journey Brothers,’ she blurted out. ‘Sanatkumara said he’d never heard of you.’

  ‘The Brothers are protecting me.’ The whites of his eyes shone in the darkness. ‘Protecting’ – he winced and raised himself on his elbow – ‘me because of my mission.’

  The wind boiled up again. The storm penetrated the ditch next to the road and howled in its depths. The truck stood under the sky like a metallic Tyrannosaurus Rex, searchlights on for the next prey. The rain slowed and became less sharp as they shook hands awkwardly.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you for almost an entire year.’

  ‘Maya, as honest as ever. You haven’t changed. You’re thinner but just as pretty.’

  Crusader for purity, Karna.

  Innocent Maya, who married even though she knew marriage is meaningless.

  She led him past the semal – grinning, she thought, as it stood upright in the storm – through the veranda, into the leathery living room. She brought him water, Savlon, cotton and bandages, and he turned his back to her so she wouldn’t see his upper thigh. He dressed his injury with expert soldierly gestures and then he turned towards her and smiled. He was so unkempt, so covered in beard and hair, that she could barely make out the expression on his face. He kept far away from her, as if she was a precious object that would be damaged if he went near.

  ‘So,’ he sat gingerly down on the sofa and looked around. ‘What a big house. Your new home. Your new home with…Vik?…Vik, you said his name was? That would be an abbreviation for Vikram. Vik, who sells make-up to film studios, worries about the acidity in his stomach and kisses you with his mouth closed. How is your life with him in this huge place? Is he a fat pig?’

  ‘He’s not!’ she protested indignantly, surprised at how readily she sprang to Vik’s defence. ‘And this is a beautiful house, I’m lucky to be here. I think he genuinely believes in what he’s doing. Creating employment. Giving people jobs. And he loves paintings too, like me. He’s shown me some lovely ones, oils on canvas, of his mother. And there’s a painting of someone called Justin who looks just like you.’

  ‘Well, then, an artistic pig,’ Karna smiled again, hitting the centre of his forehead with his fist. The gesture was heart-stoppingly familiar. Someone else had made a similar gesture but Mia couldn’t remember who it was. ‘The owner of Moksha Herbals. Yes, I remember the name. That name which makes a mockery of faith.’

  ‘It’s a very successful company,’ she said resolutely.

  ‘A frivolous tycoon, Maya,’ moaned Karna. ‘A CEO of money. Come with me. Leave him. It’s easy. It’s very easy to leave and begin again. You’ll be surprised how easy it is. You left your life in London. You can leave this life. Now. Immediately.’

  ‘Karna, no! That wouldn’t be right. I like, I love Vik. He’s been good to me. I have no complaints. We need to make plans, though. The Kumbh Mela. Remember?’

  ‘Ah,’ his eyes widened. ‘The Festival of the Pitcher, as you call it in English. Of course, you must come with me, Maya. Embark on a new and much more fulfilling life as my assistant in faith. I,’ he smiled, ‘being the CEO of faith, while your husband is the CEO of Moksha. My gods are beggars who wear imitation jewellery and sleep in railway stations. His gods are the snowy deities in his deep freeze next to his…what is it…tubs of Haagen Daz ice cream.’

  Outside the garden was velvety with rain. The semal tree seemed to come marching out through the moonshine like an African mask, elongated and dark.

  She laughed. ‘Poor Vik. You’re very unjust to him. Right, come on, let’s fix the dates. I’ve looked it all up on the Net. Jan 9 is Paush Purnima.’

  She didn’t tell him about Anand’s painting because she was afraid of a prosaic explanation. Afraid of an explanation that would make her miraculous coincidence into an ordinary one. She would much rather remain with the fantasy than hear an explanatory account of Karna’s chance meeting with a London-based historian and painter who had perhaps seen him at the previous Maha Kumbh in ‘89 and decided to paint him. Instead, she told him about Vik’s paintings. The painting in which there was a white-haired man named Justin, an American doctor, who looked exactly like him.

  ‘Nothing but an artist’s impression,’ he brushed away her enthusiasm. ‘Of little consequence.’ He turned away from her and stared out of the window. ‘Let’s not talk of these other things, Maya.’ His voice was soft: ‘Of course I remember about the Kumbh Mela. In fact, that’s why I came to see you, because we don’t have much time. We must make our preparations. First I’ll show you Pavitra Ashram, then you come with me to the Kumbh. There are three main days of the bath. Paush Purnima, Mauni Amavasya and Basant Panchami. Cleansing baths, the bath that purifies, washes, cleanses. We’ll fix a date. Then…’ he turned, ‘you’ll join me.’

  ‘Join you?’ she asked. ‘Where?’

  ‘Join me on my road,’ his voice dropped and became hoarser than normal. ‘I’m walking a long road, Maya. It could even be a deadly road. But there is joy at the end of it. Immense joy. I have given myself this mission. And you know why? Because you can go mad thinking what kind of world we’ll leave for our children. You can go mad thinking we can be snu
ffed out at any time and there will be absolutely nothing left. Nullity and void. Nothing. We have to act, we have to act because it’s all in our hands. We have to act now. Will you walk the last deadliest mile with me, Maya?’

  How do I want to spend the days allotted on this earth? Either by cynicism and reducing every true word of life lived to a joke about weight-loss or bad sex. Or by edging away from the prison of jokes and information, leaving the oil-paint-and-turpentine flat in London and Victoria Villa behind, knowing that the world, this colony of humans like any colony of ants, is really a very small place where those who tell us what to do are not wise, but simply expert at playing the necessary games. The wiser way is to seek out the other crazier moments because everything is lopsided and tilted off balance.

  Involuntarily, she stepped closer to him but he pushed her away, almost violently. He would not let her get close; never stood less than a couple of feet away from her.

  ‘The vow of a brahmachari, or renunciant, can be broken one day, Maya,’ he smiled sheepishly. ‘After my mission is over you will see the true depth of my love.’

  She had never had missions. She didn’t know what people in political movements or nation-building projects felt, what sort of purposeful energy filled up their days; whether they hurtled from one intense experience to another without ever having time to stop and lapse into superstitious schemes. She had interviewed such people – the oracles, the activists for world peace, the zealous leaders of people – she knew their lives were centred on a higher purpose, that many risked death so that others could vote, many starved in solitary confinement so that their countries got their own rulers. Others stood in neck-deep water so villagers were given land or took a bullet in the neck simply to convince others that the present system of government was squashing their rights. But she had never explored these individuals beyond the eighty-word limit of a TV script. The only semblance of mission in her life was the one charted by Anand, which was to look at the world with an artist’s eye. To find a vision that came not just from the light of a television camera but from the darkness of the spirit. A vision like Homer’s who wrote epics in blindness. Vision in which a naked human being next to a billion-year-old river was seen for what he was. A neglected memory, not a joke.

  ‘So what’s this mission about?’ she asked.

  ‘Before I tell you, I need to know,’ he said. ‘I need to know if you will come with me, Maya. Will you come with me down the last deadliest mile?’

  Yes. She wasn’t scared of the deadliest mile, whatever it was. She listened to him tell her about his plans to rid the world of pornography, the ill-effects of the female ego, the need to purify society, while her mind spun out a double-life of a homestead with him on a mountainside.

  The darkness became darker. The moon struggled up through the settling dust and positioned itself above the semal. Smoke rose from the wood fires in the slums surrounding Victoria Villa. The night grew cold.

  ‘The rain’s stopped,’ he said. ‘Come, let’s go out. I’ll bring you back before your chief executive officer comes home, I promise.’

  ‘Go out now? But if Vik comes back, he’ll be frantic.’

  ‘He won’t, Maya. I promise you he won’t.’

  He took her to the Hanuman Temple. In the assault of colour and crowds she forgot to ask him how he could be so sure that Vik wouldn’t return. Even at night, the wet courtyard of the temple was bright and bursting with soaked people trying to catch a glimpse of the garlanded deity through the crowd. Women held up glass bangles gleaming with rain, for sale. Piles of damp marigolds lay abandoned near the temple steps.

  They sat down in a corner of the courtyard under a tamarind tree hung with paper flags. He was distinctive, encased in a flame, a man set apart from the crowd because he was touched by some some extraordinary current of air.

  Vik? Vik was a corporate guerilla. Party hard, play hard, work through daily rituals of money, sex and booze. Karna was different. Karna had called her Maya. How had he known that Anand’s name for her was Maya? Because Anand and Karna were made of the same stuff and it was no accident that after her father died, the young priest from his painting had walked into her life. She would abandon all of it one day – London, Vik’s parties, SkyVision – and spend her days playing footpath whore to his footpath prophet. The world would rush by with its meaningless preoccupations but Karna would travel with her into monsoon nights ‘fragrant with flowers and bursting with honey’ – as she had read in the Oxford translation of Tamil Sangam poetry.

  Karna was a gateway to literature; Vik was a clubby sex symbol with attention deficiency syndrome whose highs and lows depended on his balance sheets, his effect on a glamorous crowd, and whether or not his beer was foamy enough.

  Back in the taxi, as they neared Victoria Villa, Karna said, ‘If your CEO comes home and sees me here, he will call me a loser and a thug and call the police.’

  ‘He might.’

  ‘Strange, isn’t it? Someone who is trapped is perceived as a success, while he who is most free is perceived as a failure. A success at what, a failure at what?’

  ‘An eternal paradox,’ she agreed. ‘Thanks, Karna. Thanks for the ride.’

  ‘We will not see each other for a few days, Maya,’ he said, saluting her in a soldierly way. ‘But I’ll be back to show you the ashram and I’ll make arrangements for the Kumbh. We will leave on New Year’s day. You’ll stay for a few days at the ashram and then I’ll meet you in Allahabad. In the meantime, think of what lies ahead. Think of whether you can keep your promise to me to travel the last mile.’

  She waved at him from the gate as he drove away in the taxi. Tendrils of cloud slipped across the moon.

  She lay down in bed again. Vik was a threatening rich kid. Concerned only with how to organize his evenings. And his need to decorate things. He led a boxed-in life in a neurotic world, a needy yet dismissive world. A few hours later, at the tail-end of her first dream, she smelt the faint smell of make-up and sensed him slide into bed. With a dreamer’s fuzzy conviction, she decided it was the latest Moksha range.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said to Vik the next morning, watching him put on his tie after he had finished an exciting account of a politician who had spat into the construction magnate’s plate of food in the course of an argument, ‘about’ – she gestured towards the painting – ‘the Kumbh Mela. I’d like to go. Maybe after we’ve been to Alqueria, once you get back to work, I can make a trip.’

  ‘Trip?’ he cried, hitting his forehead with his fist, ‘To the Kumbh Mela? Hell, not your father’s painting again! No, never, we’re going to Goa!’ He always looked freshly bathed, his eyes and teeth shining, his hair neatly combed. He looked so confident as he strode off to work every morning; in the evenings he was wet-haired and flushed, after his workouts

  ‘After Goa, Vik. It’s happening in January. Just another two months away. It’s the Mahakumbh this time, after twelve years, in Allahabad. I’ve been pretty obsessed with it, you know that.’

  ‘I know you’ve been obsessed,’ he stared at her in horrified astonishment. ‘But you actually want to go there? It’s no place for you. You’ll fall ill. Nude sadhus with big dicks strutting around pulling trucks with ropes attached to their dicks. Bending them around swords. It’s fucking awful, man. There’s no way you can go there, Mia. Never.’

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘I told you, baby, it’s crazy! Thousands and thousands of people. Stinking toilets. Shit and piss everywhere. There are always stampedes. People die. It’s ghastly. It’s filthy. No, no,’ he splashed on furious amounts of Azarro. ‘There’s no way I’ll let you go there. You’d get hurt. It’s not safe.’

  ‘But my father went.’

  ‘Your father was a Sixties type, Mia. An expat in search of his “true” Indian self, or some such shit. And it was different in those days. It’s awful now. Believe me, it’s not for you. You’re not some foreigner searching for the mystic East and all that crap. You,’ h
e ruffled her hair, ‘are my wildflower. My wild party flower. My love-in-a-mist. Come on, put on some of the new stuff I got for you. Did you see what those women were wearing that evening? Hot, eh? No question of going to the Kumbh Mela. Don’t even think of it, okay? Besides,’ he stroked her cheek, ‘we have a big night tonight, right?’

  He was always so full of energy.

  She would watch him every night showering, changing and splashing Azarro on his closely shaven cheeks. She would watch him strap the insulin pump to his belt and key in the dosage. She would watch him button his shirt and smooth down his trousers and wet and comb back his hair. He was very neat. He folded away the bed-covers carefully, plumped his pillows, smoothed down the sheets and tucked every little wedge into the mattress.

  That night, a pre-dawn light grew behind the semal tree. Vik stood in the light, his shadow reaching up towards the sobbing heights of the tree. He stood very still. The party lights were running low. The cooks were asleep behind their skewers.

  ‘Hey,’ he cried out, suddenly bursting into the living room. ‘Let’s have a game. Let’s act the bloodied sheet!’

  The runner-up, the gun-trader and the wordless beauty clapped sleepily.

  ‘Blood?’ giggled the construction magnate. ‘Oooh! I mean eeyew!’

  ‘What’s the bloodied sheet?’ whispered the runner-up to the wordless beauty.

  ‘The bloodied sheet!’ Vik held Mia’s shoulders. ‘Come on, you guys, don’t you know? Celebration of the new wife, the blood on the sheet thing. The Rajput stuff.’

  Long ago, marriages of Rajput princes were confirmed by bloodstains on the wedding bedsheet. The prince would emerge after the wedding night and display a bloodstained bedsheet to family and friends to prove that the marriage had been consummated and that his wife had been a virgin.