Blind Faith

by Sagarika Ghose

  ‘I mean why did she want to be beautiful, the witch?’

  ‘It’s a sort of metaphor for a better life.’

  ‘It’s not what I would call a great story,’ pronounced Vik after a pause. ‘Not even pass. Maybe D grade.’

  ‘What rubbish!’ shouted Indi. ‘D grade! It’s a great story. It’s a story from Siliguri. It contains all kinds of metaphors about individual respect and individual freedom. The boy and mother both respected each other’s freedom. And by doing so, they were able to improve their lives. Personal liberty is seen as the basis for community improvement.’

  ‘Where did the boy live if the witch lived with the magician?’ he interrupted.

  ‘The boy lived in another tree,’ said Indi absently. ‘Because that helped the witch become better. See, he let the witch have her freedom and in return she loved him.’

  ‘Crap!’ Vik cried. ‘What about the boy’s freedom? Who would have freed him, if the witch was always trying to be free?’

  ‘She was doing it so he could be happy,’ explained Indi condescendingly. ‘Don’t you understand anything at all? It’s a story of understanding between two people.’

  ‘It’s a pathetic story,’ said Vik. ‘You can’t tell stories like these and expect me to believe them. They’re so silly. You can’t tell good stories. You’re weak at stories.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Indi cried. ‘This is folklore with such a sophisticated message. You are such a dumb child. God knows what you’ll do in life.’

  ‘It’s a bad story,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that, you moron!’ said Indi. ‘You idiot! Perhaps I should get you a collection of writing from India so you can learn about all sorts of traditions of storytelling. These tales are part of your heritage, you should learn to appreciate them.’

  She stalked off but he paced the floor of his room thinking of alternative endings to his story. There could be many endings and many different characters, but she had told it in such a stupid way. He became angry at her for pissing the story away.

  His story would have been neater, richer and not set in a tree but in a proper house with flowers in vases and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

  J She was dirty, he thought.

  Icky. Far too curvaceous for her clothes. Her tightly braided plait came undone at the end of the day. Her breasts burst out of her tight, high-necked blouses, as if she was a seal wrapped in bandages. She smelt too – a fishy smell of perfume and sweat. She never shaved her underarms and wiry hair grew out of her sleeveless nightdresses. Her nails were not filed, sometimes they were black with grime. Her feet were dirty, her heels were cracked. Her neck would be beautiful if she washed it. Maybe he should offer to help her wash her neck and while he was washing it, he would punish her for being so impure and for always making him feel he wasn’t as clever as she was.

  Punish her for seeking so many magicians to make her beautiful when she should have been content to remain a witch.

  10

  KUMBH MELA, PRAYAG

  Mia entered her father’s painting. The pilgrim came to the Kumbh Mela. To my dearest little Maya, with love from Papa.

  At the gigantic festival site thousands paced the walkways and bridges across the Ganga. Some in processions, others alone, chanting and murmuring. Hundreds washed and bathed in the river like insects feeding off an avalanche of honey. Clumps of police in riot gear carrying sticks and wearing helmets stood about in case some mystics got carried away and charged at their devotees with their tridents. Pilgrims placed little offerings on the sand: frankinscence, sugar, and three blades of grass.

  God and advertising were everywhere. Lurking in the lavatories and skulking in the dark tents were banners and hot air balloons announcing Pepsi and eternal peace. Kwality’s ice cream came wrapped in decorated cones. Down from the mountains, up from the backwaters, out of the forests, walking out from Himalayan temples, from venerable institutions in Benares, from scholarly mathas in the Sahayadri mountains or flying out from Californian ranches, they had come, some clad in diaphanous white, some in bright colours, some in saffron lungis, some with followers – to live here for two months and watch the river become a bridge between life and death.

  There were rockers who sought inspiration for new tunes, wildlife photographers seeking escape from the traumas of the sanctuary, millionaires hoping to impress their latest girlfriends, wellness bimbettes from Mumbai whispering excitedly about the latest hot sadhu, and industrialists’ trophy wives padding after their yoga instructors. There were priestly orders from the hills of the north-east, who had handed down prayers by word of mouth, other sects with miles of written tradition, Vaishnav singers, Shaivite ascetics, a family of temple guardians from the western seashore who were also environmentalists, another temple trust working with local governments to rinse the Ganga of the detritus of worship.

  Opposite the rows of sadhus’ camps, skinny, caparisoned elephants and ragged horses were being readied for the bath. The Nagas with their dreadlocks, superbly smeared with ash and wearing long marigold garlands, had been quarrelling among themselves about which order of priests would bathe in the Ganga first. One of the more unusual babas had the final say because his penis was bent around a sword and there was no knowing what he would do if enraged.

  Lines of tents stretched along the river banks. Hermits stuffed their faces in sackfuls of marijuana and emerged groggy-eyed and detached. Entrepreneurial ascetics set up clay collecting-pots and did brisk business telling fortunes. Dopey-eyed sadhus with dreadlocks piled on their head lurched by in dusty taxis.

  Mia wandered along the tents to gaze at men and women of different denominations: rich pandits sitting grandly under glittering canopies tended by dozens of attendants offering their guru oranges and bananas on brass plates. Vedic intellectuals from Tamil Nadu, levitation artists from Birmingham, lamas who had come walking all the way from Tibet, Harvard Business School graduates who had become monks, and prophets from among the fisherfolk communities on the Andhra coast. Journalists and cameramen raced around. A naked ascetic with his penis bent around a sword was guaranteed to make the gods of the newsroom smile.

  She arrived breathless at the appointed place in Sector 10; Karna emerged, dishevelled, from a tent and pulled her in. He looked calmer and happier than she had ever seen him.

  ‘Maya,’ his smile was broad. ‘You came.’

  They spent the night in a tent on the banks of the river. At night, a procession of candles and lanterns moved along the water. A chorus of lamps and chants rose into the sky. Smoke reached out from the woodfires. She sat with Karna and a group of Naga sadhus around a dhuni. One of them, with his head piled with ashen locks, reached out and drank from a steel bucket brimful with transparent liquid. Mia peered into the bucket.

  ‘Don’t worry, Madam,’ he smiled, ‘it’s not anything bad. It’s only ghee…’

  ‘Oh,’ she laughed. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘ You look confused,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘Interested.’

  On the flats by the river, she lay stiffly next to Karna in her sleeping bag. Mithu and Tiger were a million miles away. She had no claims there any more. She had lost everything. She had lost her London marriage. She had lost Vik. All she had was Karna.

  ‘Tomorrow is the holy bath,’ he whispered. ‘After the bath you’ll see what you were meant to see.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  By the time she woke, he had gone. It was not yet dawn. She raced along towards the river for her plunge into the water. The sand was grey and wet. The Ganga looked discoloured, rippling like a long, sleeping beast under the clouds. Thousands had gathered and lamps, torches and candles flickered against the faces of the crowds.

  There was a rush to find a corner of emptiness on the banks. To fill a swiftly closing vacuum with one’s shivering body before other bodies rushed into the flesh-enclosed space, arms upraised, clothes billowing, the mud
dy river slipping between their toes, dripping underwear running drops down the leg and onto other people’s feet. An arm on a shoulder blade, thighs against waist, faces close and smelling of the last meal; the private processes of undressing, there in the open, for all to see.

  In the suffocating press of bodies her toes darted out in imaginary circles, trying to create space for the body to expand and take in air. Elbows came up against children and the elderly, crushed flowers and sand squelched underfoot.

  The pilgrims came on. Trailing their old and young. Flower-sellers sat along the paths marked out by bamboo barricades. The moon still stormed in the clouds overhead, but the night was patient and suspenseful. Dawn would bring the first communion of pilgrim and water.

  Mia felt her heart grow still and become enveloped by silence. Among the walking thousands, a quietness came to her like an answer. She was alone, under the sprouting galaxy. Nothing could be more ordinary or so familiar. This was a spreading realization from the stomach: that the universe was just an arena of vast commonsense. God was natural and ordinary. There were no final arrivals or final departures. Death was nothing but an ordinary turn of the head in another direction. The end or the abyss was spectacularly safe, it was crowded, it was cosy. There was nothing to fear.

  Madness drained away, leaving her limp. She was many different people living at the same time. What was there to fear? If one of her existences died out, another would live somewhere else in another space and time. She was an old lady, a young girl, an old man, she was everyone and everyone was her.

  And death? Simply walking along a highway and turning down a familiar alley. That was all there was to it.

  She was in a protected place.

  God was irrelevant here, belief or unbelief didn’t matter. What mattered was this, this human crowd, reaching upwards into a greying sky, lifting off into a greater understanding of themselves for a few seconds. This grave, serious crowd, not celebratory, not festive, yet dignified with tragedy and forgiveness, was whatever god was. In the embrace of this crowd, for thousands of years, at this very spot, lay the realization that death was the safest thing on earth.

  The sky began to lighten, making the moon look overdressed against its mutedness. Mia was like the sky. Observant, thoughtful, Mia, until recently driven mad by circumstance, was a sweep of fast-drying paint.

  The sadhus and high priests in their decorated chariots rolled along their designated avenues. The crowd swelled to immense proportions as the first pink shards pierced the sky like bright stuffing oozing from a dull pillow. The scholarly orders had been allotted first place in the order of the bath and portly crowned priests sitting fatly under glittering umbrellas and being fanned by devotees on elephants and cow-drawn carts approached the river. Their followers pranced ahead of them, clearing the way among the pilgrims walked along on either side.

  This was their moment, this sheepish moment. The spectacle they had helped to create. The water was meaningless in itself. It was they, the pilgrims, who raised it to godliness. No wonder they looked on at the river with possessive pride.

  The pressure of the crowd was overpowering. Everywhere she looked a surging tide of heads and bodies pulsated together. The fog was beginning to skirt cunningly around the boats, profiles and crowns formed in the clouds. Light from sulphur lamps was vanquished by the first rays.

  She took a deep breath and began to run. She pushed through the bodies, pushed against a solid wall of people that didn’t seem to give an inch. Near her ankles, a child and its mother sat, eating and changing at the same time. A set of heads crushed against her stomach. She pushed with all her might and felt the sand grit against her toes.

  Suddenly a small whirlpool of bathers gathered behind her. There was a circling and murmuring and they began to spread out in concentric circles towards the water. She bounced between them like a broken asteroid in the solar system, hurtling from one group of people to the next, and found herself at last on the banks of the river. In a crowd of at least a hundred, she leapt into what felt like a square centimetre of unoccupied water.

  The water was freezing. She felt suddenly cold and then began to shiver. She felt crowded in on herself, palms pointing inwards at a gaping open mouth. She felt her legs curl under her in the bejewelled water. She bent into it feeling marigolds in her hair, flecks of incense in the crevices of her neck, a floating nail near her lips.

  ‘Mia!’ She heard a familiar voice.

  Standing next to her in the water was her stepfather, Tiger, recently shifted to New York.

  ‘Tiger? Tiger! My god, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Hallo darling! Surprised, eh? Now tell me how could I miss the Kumbh Mela? Couldn’t miss it for the world! Isn’t it fab? Look at you. You look very nice. Thin, but nice. Better to be thin, after marriage, eh?’

  ‘Is Ma here too?’

  ‘Oh, no. Left your mother behind in America. She’s scared of crowds. But she wanted me to come, particularly because Vik was so insistent and told us you were going to be here. And because of Anand’s painting. So peaceful…ahhhhh.’

  ‘How did you know I was going to be here, Tiger?’ she asked again slowly.

  ‘Vik told us. Isn’t he here with you? He said he would be. He told us to meet you here.’

  ‘Vik? Vik told you?’

  ‘Yes, sweetheart. He said we would all meet here. He called about a week ago. You see,’ Tiger chuckled, ‘a couple of months before he met you, before he came to the Belsize Park flat, I had shown him your photograph. You know, just to make sure he would like you. And I told him how sad you had become after your father had died and he seemed to be really taken up with that because he said he hadn’t recovered from his father’s death, either. He said he knew you were right for him when he heard how you had wept for Anand. Then I took him back to the flat and showed him your dad’s painting. Just to make sure he understood you properly. Anand’s painting, you know, the one you had up on your wall? You know, the painting which you loved? The Kumbh Mela painting? I took him up to your room and I showed it to him. And he said it was such a coincidence that the Kumbh Mela was just a year away. That’s when we made the plan to come here. So, ever since then, he has told me that we would all come and meet here. Cute, eh? Didn’t he tell you about the plan, darling?’

  Vik had decided to marry her because they had dead fathers in common. He had seen Karna in the painting. And he had become the bearded close-up. No wonder he looked so different from the other Brothers of the Purification Journey. No wonder they were all clean shaven and Vik was the only one with the thick beard and long hair. Moksha Herbals, with access to one of the best make-up range in the world. His make-up room was state-of-the-art. The makeup room with the murals of gods painted on the walls. Good over evil, weren’t those the stories he liked best? He knew how to create good drama. He had created the perfect alibi in an outrageous plot. The skin dyed black. The eyes darkened with contact lenses. The beard and hair, so bushy and unruly, added next, taking care to always remain at a distance, never get close. The voice, affected through the back of the throat, made Karna’s sound husky and Vik’s loud and high-pitched. The portraits of his mother, whose existence had deprived him of his manliness and his sanity. The chemical smell of make-up, of dye, of foundation, of false skin and glue. Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie must have smelled similarly when his make-over transmogrified his persona.

  Oh, Vik. The holy war against oneself. Wasn’t that the true definition of jihad, of the Mahabharata, of the eternal struggle within? The war inside the self?

  He hated himself above all.

  Why had Karna cut down the semal tree? Because Vik hated it. Why was Vik a party animal? Because Karna was a renunciant. He wanted to be sympathetic, to love, to take care of his blind mother. Instead, he had put on a false beard and white robes to take revenge for being less clever, less beautiful and less accomplished than her. No wonder she had mistaken Karna for Justin.

  Vik was Justin’s son. His unclai
med, unacknowledged son. Indi had conquered Justin by damning his fatherhood into irrelevance. His trips, once to Berlin, then to London. In London, both Vik and Karna were gone together, that must have been the time of the ‘mission’. The party trick about virgin blood, it was a trick that would befit any member of the Purification Journey who detested women. The Pure Love of the Mother Woman was surely the opposite of the egoism of Indi.

  Poor Vik. Poor Vik with his insulin pump hoping to please his wife who was obsessed with her father’s painting. Poor Vik, gazing quietly at her infatuation with Karna and thinking he was unworthy of pure love. He had always been unworthy of being loved the way he was.

  He had once made Victoria Villa pretty for Indi too. She was careless with details of home decoration. But Vik would always make sure that the lawn was well trimmed and the flowers planted in season. He would light a lamp in his grandfather’s study. He would hang up a garland of mango leaves above the front door. In between volumes of dusty books, Vik would place a vase of flowers.

  He had wanted Mia to be pure. He had treasured her in so many ways. He had treasured her when he was Vik. And he had loved her when he was Karna. He had loved her from opposite sides. He had met her in the city centre on the banks of a lily lake. He had married her with a bow and arrow strapped to his back and played Cupid in bringing her to her lover. He had killed the tree which knew his secret. He had brought her to the Kumbh Mela so that she might understand his sorrow and banish her own madness.

  He had nothing to do with the Purification Journey, she saw it all clearly now. He had only identified with the monks and travelled with them briefly because their ideology appealed to him. But he was not part of Sanatkumara’s Brotherhood. He had only used them as an alibi, he was a rogue lone agent, no wonder Sanatkumara had no idea who he was and no wonder Karna had stayed away from Pavitra Ashram. It was a plot, an elaborate charade.

  She saw him standing far way in the water, next to a pilgrim, surrounded by floating marigolds. She saw him without his disguise, without his false hair, beard or glasses. She saw that his skin was pink. The make-up studio at Moksha Herbals had served him well. That make-up room decorated with gods and demons with the half-man, half-lion dismembering an evil king.