The lamp next to her bed cast a pyramidal glow on the Kumbh Mela painting. Karna hadn’t come again after that rainy night, although he had been calling every day to say he was in the process of completing his mission and would take her to Pavitra Ashram as soon as he returned.
She had waited for him for three days, counting the precious time they were losing while Vik had been away. She had gone shopping to Ansal Plaza with the runner-up, been to lunch at Basel and Thyme with the wordless beauty, wandered through Victoria Villa and sipped tea in the garden. She had studied Justin’s portrait, leafed through The Drama of Depression and surfed the Net for more information on the Kumbh. Mithu called to enquire whether Mia was pregnant and to announce that America, not England, was the First World: Brooklyn Heights was so stylish, the people so friendly. She had been to see the World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty. She had already been to Victoria’s Secret and Banana Republic. In Jackson Heights everything was available, from paan to papad. And at the Lincoln Center there was even a festival of Satyajit Ray films.
Not long now, she thought as her mother rang off. Not long before her date with her father’s painting. Once she had returned, she would re-assess her headlong rush to India, she would write to SkyVision asking if she could return, she would cut her losses and write off her incursion into Vik’s life as a temporary period of instability after her father’s death.
After an eternity of a four-day wait, Karna appeared. He seemed pleased with himself and said the ‘mission’ was proceeding well. His hair, beard, and moustache camouflaged the shape of his mouth, the contours of his cheeks – everything except his sharp eyes behind his glasses and his indigo-dark skin. A dark-skinned John Lennon in the guru phase. A Hindu Che Guevara. Jesus with glasses experimenting for a while with another religion.
Pavitra Ashram was located in a small village on the outskirts of the city where tarmac tapered into wheat fields and yellow-painted buildings gave way to cottages with buffaloes tied in the courtyards. Down a dirt track, leading into an area of woodland, a painted board announced, ‘Pavitra Ashram’.
‘Walk in,’ said Karna.
‘And you?’
‘I’m in retreat. I won’t come with you. You go in. Don’t worry.’
‘You won’t come with me?’
‘No.’
‘But why?’
‘Don’t worry. Just go in. Don’t mention my name. Don’t say I brought you here. Just say you’ve come because you want to learn.’
‘But why hide from the Brothers?’
‘Because I don’t want them to think I brought you. I’d like them to believe that you’re here for your own reasons, that there is no intermediary between you and the Purification Journey. Besides, I don’t want them to know that I’ve come back. I’ve come back’ – his eyes smiled – ‘only to see you. Go on. Go in.’
She walked down the dirt track to an arc of mud-daubed huts standing around a calm lake. In the centre of the lake was a building which looked like a seaside church in Greece – white-painted with a blue dome. The whiteness of the building stood out starkly against the inky blue lake. Lilies and ducks floated on the water. Water hyacinths bloomed in clumps. The water in the lake was so still that the temple island looked as if it was suspended from the clouds by invisible threads.
Water and land met in featherlight calm.
Mia walked towards the smoky stillness of the ashram and found herself in an open courtyard in front of a cluster of huts. Groups of men, some in white kurtas and pyjamas, others in jeans and T-shirts, some clean-shaven others with beards, sat on the ground chatting and laughing. The red-haired man whom Mia had seen at the Purification Rally in London twirled a rounded bamboo stick in the air. He recognized Mia at once and stood up and folded his hands, as if he had been expecting her.
‘The Almighty Presence bless you, Sister,’ said Sanatkumara. ‘Thank you for coming.’ All the Brothers rose to their feet, folded their hands and bowed. As they stood up, she saw that many of them, like Sanatkumara, carried rounded bamboo sticks.
‘Please don’t be afraid,’ said Sanatkumara. ‘These are not weapons. It’s a part of our dress. We feel it takes us closer to our forefathers.’
‘Interesting,’ Mia smiled. No less absurd than a suit and tie. No less foolish than strings and thongs.
‘Please come, you are welcome,’ said Sanatkumara again. ‘I remember you very well, Sister. You asked about someone I could not tell you about. You mentioned a name I could not place.’
Sanatakumara, he explained when she expressed curiosity about his name, was a famous yogi who, many centuries before Jesus, renounced the world to live like a beggar. This Sanatkumara said, he was born on the banks of the Danube but had been so inspired by the Purification Journey that he had come to the ashram to spend the rest of his life.
The ashram was surrounded by mustard and wheat fields. A line of men marched into them in single file, while others bent into the earth, their faces bobbing between the stalks. Everywhere there was a smell of woodsmoke, horse-dung and freshly-cut grass. Horse-drawn carts clip-clopped past the huts. Children sat quietly next to their mothers, reverentially touching the feet of the Brothers as they walked past with Mia. A group of boys stood patiently next to a well. The Brothers took her to a long dining hall where Mia was served a breakfast of milky dalia and rotis. The warm smell of the first chapattis of the day came wafting out of the community kitchen. She looked out of the window and saw a blue-painted child wearing peacock feathers in his hair, playing a flute by the lake. ‘That child,’ she asked. ‘Who is he?’
‘Oh,’ laughed Sanatakumara. ‘That’s our little Krishna. We’ve adopted him. We dress him up like that for fun.’ A blue-painted orphan Krishna with a talent for telling stories, abandoned on the footpath and adopted by the Brothers. She had heard the story in London.
The women in the ashram all wore bright saris with their pallus drawn over their heads, some with their veils pulled down to their lips. They sat in the doorways of the huts, cradling their children. There were women with baby boys riding on their shoulders or strapped to their backs. She noticed an adolescent being suckled in a tiny woman’s lap, although the child was almost as tall as her. The women were all silent but smiling, their heads covered, their bosoms uniformly large, their hips maternally rounded, their heads bowed.
‘We have a regular routine here. We sleep in our huts. Our beloved sisters sleep separately in their own huts. We eat two meals a day and we take turns cleaning each others’ toilets,’ smiled Sanatkumara. ‘Once in six months we abstain from speech for two or three weeks. We have our own cows for fresh milk and cheese and no medicines.’
‘No medicines?’
‘The human body cures itself, Sister. All we need is the goodness of the plants left behind by our ancestors. And all we need is the Pure Love of our Mother Women.’
‘And do the women all cover their heads?’ She felt herself clutch instinctively for an absent notepad and pen.
‘It’s our belief that the Mother Woman should be protected. Protected, because the lust of men is neither beautiful nor poetic, as the advertisers are trying to make out. The lust of men is simply ugly and such lust gives women too much unhealthy power. We are the protectors of the Mother Woman. We protect women from themselves.
In the world of the Mother Woman, women are sheltered and not savaged. In the world of men they are treated like servants and whores but don’t realize it because their egos are so big. The ego of a woman must be controlled, Sister. The female ego is the most destructive force today.’
The Purification Journey offered a unique 15-day introductory package to interested visitors. Guests could come for a fortnight, attend yoga classes, eat simple meals and learn about the Purification Journey. It was a unique experiment. It helped return lost individuals to their values and to fight their way back to their own better selves.
Mia sat with the Brothers on their charpoys in the courtyard, wishing fervently she h
ad her notebook and camera. SkyVision would have been in raptures over Pavitra Ashram. Sanatkumara told her about how international their movement was, how people from many parts of the world had joined them and how their membership was growing. Another of India’s secrets, she thought. Inside a jungle on the city outskirts, where there is apparently nothing but trees, is in fact a spiritual community aiming to wage the Inner War.
They told her a story about Aditi. Aditi was the mother of the gods. She had eight sons. The last was Martanda whom she tested the most. She buried him alive under the earth with an elephant for company, but he survived and grew up and became stronger than she could have imagined.
And then, of course, there was the story of Kunti. Did Mia know the story of Kunti? Kunti was a wayward teenager who lived in those uncertain times when gods walked among men. One afternoon, she ran into swaying fields out by the river and spread her legs to the sun. The sun obliged and Kunti became pregnant. But as soon as her son was born she floated him away in a basket and when he grew up and became a brilliant warrior she tormented him and made him promise that he would never fight against her own legitimate children. Her son grew into a very sad very angry man. Karna was a very sad and angry man because his mother had floated him away in a basket.
‘Karna?’ she blinked.
‘Yes, Sister,’ Sanatakumara nodded approvingly at her interest. ‘Kunti’s son’s name was Karna.’
The mythological Karna never had much of a chance, she remembered him telling her in London, but he would.
‘You see, Kunti was not a Mother Woman in the right sense of the term,’ explained Sanatkumara. ‘She was too promiscuous, too busy with her lover, the sun, to love her own son. Kunti had too much of an ego. Karna never got a chance to get his revenge on Kunti.’
Bells sounded at noon. Down the dirt track, Mia saw groups of villagers making their way towards the blue-domed temple. Mia walked along with the Brothers across the pebbly path over the lake, but when they entered the temple she was sharply shepherded away from them. Men and women sat in separate enclosures, children in a common central corral. The villagers settled down comfortably, clearly this was one of their regular visits to the ashram. Women with bright tikas and flowered saris smiled at Mia and made place for her among them. In the centre of the dome was an idol of a female deity in white marble cradling an infant. A sharp light focused on it from the ceiling. The temple floors were white and sparkling and shone with mesmerizing whiteness.
Prayers began with a humming chant. Sanatkumara whirled around like a dervish with his lamp held above his head. Then back again to heaven and down to hell. Bells rose in crescendo. He whirled to the ground and the earth rose up to touch his forehead. The burning incense brought tears to Mia’s eyes.
After the prayers, Sanatakumara gave a sermon.
‘What is the meaning of the Inner War? What is the implication of the Mahabharat? It is the war within, the war for your better self. If you fight your bad self, you will give birth to a society where we can return to the Pure Love of the Mother Woman. It is a violation of the Almighty Presence’s law that girls should show off every inch of their bodies to men. Men and women are not the same and they cannot be. Is this why your forefathers brought you into this world? So that your daughters cease to have dignity, grace and affection and become instead seekers of sex?’
The crowd murmured unhappily.
‘Look around you. Your old values are ruined, your morals are at sea, your children’s marriages torn asunder by distant journeys in search of employment. Machines are tearing down your shops and constructing new malls where you cannot buy anything. And above all, your daughters have become slaves. They no longer decorate their hair with flowers or carry sweets to the temple. Instead, your daughters laugh and swagger on the streets and spill their breasts and navels for any passing stranger.
‘People with rich lives are engaging in sexual fetishes. They can even kill just to get sexual excitement. At their parties, everyone drowns in their own egos. They are converting the beaches of the world into hell-holes of drugs and fornication, where under the glitter there is the pure evil born from extreme affluence and extreme boredom. They scour the world for bodies, for bodies to have intercourse with and then kill, because their lives are so far away from everything that is true or simple. They look alive. In truth, they are dead.
‘This shallowness is a form of evil. Those who are unthinking have no idea of what is right and wrong, are incapable of honest friendships or attachments. They have turned their backs on the Inner War. They have ceased to fight. That’s why they have forgotten why humans were created.’
Anand would have been in a sweat of curiosity about the Pavitra Ashram, thought Mia. The beauty of the surroundings, the outlandish Brotherhood preaching a schizophrenic battle, would have sent him into a welter of analyses. He would have sat on the banks of the lake watching the water hyacinths and uncovering the layers of life that must have existed here before him, trying to find the human stamp on stones and plants.
What would Vik do if he saw her here? He would cringe in disgust. He would titter at Karna and try to offer him champagne. Vik would never be able to sit still and watch the sun rise over a lily lake. Vik would squirm at the sight of the buffaloes and bury his face in his Azarro-scented shirt. When Vik called on her mobile in the middle of Sanatkumara’s sermon to find out where she was and to tell her that he was about to leave his hotel for the Belsize Park flat, she whispered that she was at a movie.
Karna was waiting for her outside the ashram and they both took a taxi back to Victoria Villa. It was early evening. The winter sun was fading and a cold breeze had begun to blow across the grass. They sat together in silence as they had in London on the park bench in Hyde Park.
‘Thank you for taking me,’ she told him. ‘It was captivating.’
‘The Kumbh Mela,’ said Karna slowly, ‘is even more wonderful than the ashram. I won’t be going with you. But all the arrangements have been made. You will stay at the ashram for a few days. Before I leave I’ll call you there to tell you where to meet me on the festival ground.’
‘So,’ she said, ‘we’re off and away, Karna, son of Kunti.’
‘Ha,’ he laughed. ‘The Brothers told you Karna’s story. Bad things happened to my mythological namesake.’
‘It’s a sad story.’
‘Sad? No, not sad. These things happen. You can never tell about people.’
‘No, you can’t,’ she agreed.
‘Not even about your tycoon husband.’
‘Vik’s’ – she glanced upwards at the semal – ‘been talking about some man. He says he wants to fight someone.’
‘Fight someone?’ Karna frowned. ‘Who?’
‘Someone threatening his mother.’
‘His mother? Why?’
‘They don’t know. Someone. A man. Vik calls him a thug. He’s been harassing her. In Goa.’
‘His mother lives in Goa?’
‘Yes, she runs a hotel there, Sharkey’s Hotel.’
There was a pause. ‘What sort of man?’ he asked. ‘Do they know?’
‘He didn’t tell me. But Vik says he’ll hunt him down if the police can’t catch him. One of his friends told me at a party that he was even considering hiring someone to finish him off, a supari.’
‘Outrageous!’ Karna threw up his hands. ‘Just listen to the way the rich and powerful talk! It’s shocking! Shameful! You can’t just go out and shoot a man down! Just because your husband happens to be rich he thinks he can do what he likes? Is your husband mad?’
‘But why should he be trying to scare me?’
‘He sounds like a loose talker, this husband of yours. You can walk miles with him into the water and still be in only ankle-deep. You’ll never reach the ocean with him, Maya.’
She looked down at her hands. ‘After I come back from the Kumbh, I’ll write to him and tell him the whole thing was a mistake. I should never have got into it. I can’t understand hi
m at all sometimes. We don’t really have anything in common. I was deluded. It was my mother’s obsession with getting me married and me trying to make her happy. Trying to make up to her. My father’s death…I’ve just not been myself this past year. I’ve been reading too much into things. That damn book. It’s like I’m on a drug or something.’ She looked up at him, ‘Maybe I should go back to London and try and get my old job back.’
‘No, Maya!’ he sprang to his feet, his glasses reflecting the branches of the tree. ‘You can’t go back to London. You promised to come with me. Don’t you remember? You promised that you would walk with me down the deadliest mile. You can’t forget. You can’t walk away now.’
No, to be separated from him now would be an impossible act. He seemed so vulnerable, so unmindful of himself. Yet his eyes were sharp, as if he saw her stripped to the bone. She was far away from her childhood, far away from her home and her mother. She was her father now. She was Anand, her painter-historian father with his artist’s satchel and water-bottle, clambering onto an ox-cart to bump his way towards a remote tribe. On an impulse, she tried to walk into Karna’s arms again. What would his lovemaking be like? Intense one moment, joyful the next? But he pushed her gently away.
‘I can’t tell you any more, Maya,’ he smiled. ‘But you must trust me. Your father would have wanted you to trust me. After I’ve completed my mission, you’ll see how much I love you, Maya. You will see. But you will catch only a glimpse because my love is so large you will not be able to see all of it with the human eye.’
‘Vik will be back from London soon,’ Mia said after a pause.
‘Will he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s teach him a lesson, this fat pig of yours. If he wants to kill a man, let me first kill his house.’
‘What d’you mean?’
Blind Faith Page 18