Darshan

by Amrit Chima

  “As a farmhand.” He would not look at her. He would not look at any of them. “I am tired. Have you all eaten?”

  Harpreet nodded.

  “I am not hungry,” he said.

  Baba Singh moved toward his father. “Let me get you some fresh water.”

  “Whatever is in there is fine,” Lal replied, pushing past and walking down the hallway toward the washroom, an opium pipe in his hand.

  He had taken his chappals off at the door, but still, his feet were coated with mud from the fields, and he left a trail along the freshly cleaned ceramic tiles. Baba Singh stared at the impressions on the floor, the half footprints, like a ghost’s, like only a shell of a person had left them, a man who had lost his land to a cheat and now worked another’s.

  ~ ~ ~

  There was one widow living in Amarpur in those days, before the coming wars widowed many more. She was middle aged and had no remaining family nearby. Her kin had abandoned her, claiming that her shadow was a particularly malevolent manhoo, bringing them bad luck by the elephant load. When residents in town discovered that Ranjit had begun to work for her two mornings a week—sweeping the front of her home and delivering sundries—mutterings of criticism pitched like bats along Suraj Road. One man felt it his civic duty to rap on the Toor door and caution the family against such blind and careless undertakings.

  Amarpur had still not fully recovered from the monsoon disaster of last year, the man told them, just before which this very same widow had stepped outside wearing not the white of perpetual mourning, but blue, gold bangles tinkling shamelessly on her wrists. He shuddered. And she had the temerity to walk about without her chuni, revealing the indecency of her recently oiled, tumbling hair, making a lewd spectacle of herself with the men folk.

  “Everyone knows widows are bound to keep their heads clean shaven, for what man can resist such seductive curls?” he asked them, gratefully sipping tea Harpreet had delivered into his trembling hands. Doubtless the deluge that followed, sweeping away homes and livestock and heirloom family trinkets, was a direct result of her manhoo. The town nearly crucified her after that. “See for yourself,” he begged them. “Her house still bears the scars, dents in the wood from many swinging batons.” She only survived, the man insisted, because she had opened her second-story window and chopped off her hair in a display of contrition.

  “He is exaggerating,” Ranjit said after the man left.

  Desa stared at her brother in shock. “What if he is right?”

  “We have already had our bad luck.”

  Ranjit also found employment as one of two tailor’s apprentices at India Quality Cloth—regrettably located next door to Mr. Grewal’s thin-bricked money-lending establishment. The proximity bothered him, but he told Baba Singh that it never hurt to watch the man. Someday, when all the farmers’ anger rose high enough and bubbled over like a boiling pot of milky tea, there would be retribution. He was happy to be close enough to watch.

  Desa began to work for the administrator of the local two-room schoolhouse, washing his and his wife’s laundry, as well as keeping the school’s grounds tidy. Khushwant, who still had dreams of attending school, split his time between his duties as the street hawker’s assistant—selling cigarettes, tea, biscuits, and sweetmeats to customers along Suraj Road—and peeking through the schoolhouse window at the lesson board so he could practice his writing with a stick in the dirt.

  Baba Singh was not as successful. He had found it more difficult to find employment, turned away from a number of places, including the main sundry store and the carpenter’s. He had found the courage to enter the astrologer’s shop with its shelves packed tightly with massage oils, aphrodisiacs, opium, and animal skulls, only to be sent out. And the telegraph operator would not have him either, shooing him away as though annoyed by a relentlessly buzzing fly so he could concentrate on his many gadgets and instruments.

  Gloomily leaving the telegraph office, Baba Singh sat outside on his heels at the base of the staircase to the town’s sleepy train-station platform. He missed his cousins, his aunts and uncles, the pond and animals. Hot tears came to his eyes. Hopelessly, he wiped his face on his sleeve, and stood.

  He wandered down Suraj Road until he came across the smithy, owned by Yashbir Chand. Peering through the aged, clouded glass, he saw that familiar abundance of metal where the Toors had often come for farming tools. Every corner and free bit of floor was cluttered with metal objects, some worn with age, others glinting with newness: thali plates, aluminum tumblers, pots, eating utensils, garden tools, and iron buckets. An anvil and sledgehammer were centered in the middle of the shop, an iron-chimney stove nearby. A desk was off to the side, chisels strewn on its nicked surface. Swinging open the door, he went inside to say hello.

  “Yashji?” Baba Singh called out, stumbling over a pile of hinges. Steadying himself, he edged through the narrow corridor of objects toward the blacksmith’s apartment at the rear of the shop. Two swords were crossed above the door. The blades flashed in clean, curved lines, the detail work on the hilts intricate. The curtained doorframe itself was nothing spectacular, but the swords above had always given it the impression of majesty, an entrance fit for a palace, beyond which he had always imagined a mattress lined with silk bedding, hand-carved wooden furniture, and decorative metal plates propped on a dresser.

  “Yes?” a man said from behind him.

  Baba Singh whirled around. An aging, thin Sikh stood in the middle of the aisle. He was very tall and wore a tightly wrapped sky-blue turban, a white, mid-length tunic, a dhoti tied loosely between his legs, and tattered, dusty sandals on his feet. “Hello, Baba,” Yashbir said, smiling kindly.

  “Sat sri akal, Yashji.”

  The blacksmith glanced outside. “Where is your father?” His hands were clasped together over his flat abdomen as if in prayer. They were coarse hands. But not like a farmer’s. Farmers’ hands were made of grit and torn nails. His were like stone, the gray-brown of rock, with white healthy nails cut close to the skin. They were cast, chiseled, like the metal he worked with. “Did he send you alone?”

  “He did not send me.”

  Yashbir frowned. “Did something happen?”

  “Everyone is here,” Baba Singh said quietly. “We are staying.”

  “I see,” Yashbir replied. “Where did they put you?”

  “The hotel.”

  “Not so smart, the British, but getting smarter. They are scared of an uprising now. Too many of you. At least they did not leave you to wander into Amritsar to starve.”

  “Ranjit said they have already done that to many others.”

  “Yes,” the blacksmith murmured. “Any more and they would have a riot on their hands.” He pointed at the swords. “Do you like them?”

  Baba Singh nodded. “Did you make them?”

  “Some time ago.”

  “Our teacher in Harpind has swords like those crossed over the schoolhouse doors,” Baba Singh said. “But they are not as nice.” They had always been there, representing an article of Sikh faith, once used to fight against the Moguls for freedom of land and religion.

  The old man thoughtfully ran his fingers through his long beard and stepped back toward his desk, indicating that Baba Singh should follow. He sat, looking pensive. “They were once weapons of war, but today they have no purpose. They are merely figurative, representing the power of truth to cut through all that is untrue, meant simply to be hung above doorways. Now we have guns.”

  He squinted thoughtfully at Baba Singh. “It was a long time ago, but I remember the hotel when it was open. We had so many guests before they laid the train tracks, people who stayed the night. I used to like their stories, to hear where they had come from and where they were going.” He crossed his legs, and his sandal hung loosely off his big toe. “Amritsar is only two hours away by train now. People do not stay anymore. Trains and motorcars have made everyone so impatient, but it was nice to have guests who stayed a while, not rushing in and
out.”

  “Yashji,” Baba Singh said, looking around. “Where is Raj?”

  “He left me,” Yashbir said. “Last year. He went to apprentice with a well-known blacksmith in Amritsar.”

  Baba Singh was instantly hopeful.

  Uncrossing his legs, the old man leaned forward, understanding. He rested his forearms on his thighs, the end of his beard brushing the backs of his hands. “You are a bit small to be my apprentice.”

  “But I am very strong.”

  The blacksmith let his eyes roam the length of his shop. “It would be good to have another person around again.” He stood. His eyes were soft and wrinkled, like Baba Singh’s favorite dog in Harpind. “I am at the temple in the mornings. You can come by tomorrow afternoon and we will see.”

  Baba Singh smiled, pressing his palms together and bowing. “Thank you, ji.”

  “You should also visit Dr. Bansal,” Yashbir said. “He is always looking for someone to get his office in order. It is disastrous—criminal even—especially for a doctor.”

  Baba Singh’s smile faded.

  The blacksmith chuckled. “Give him a chance. He is not so bad.”

  Dr. Nalin Bansal was a Hindu with neatly combed, short hair that was so heavily oiled trickles of grease stained his shirt collar. He constantly swept his tongue over the chip in his front tooth and flicked his wrists about when he spoke as though he were inelegantly dancing to music. “Yashji sent you, I know,” he said cheerfully when Baba Singh visited his office. There was an intense furrow between his bushy eyebrows that made it seem as if he was perpetually confused. The doctor scrutinized Baba Singh, but not critically. His expression was oddly sympathetic. He offered the young boy half of a sweet, round, honey-golden ladoo.

  “No thank you,” Baba Singh said, shaking his head.

  “But you must have one.”

  Baba Singh hesitantly reached for the ladoo and bit off a piece. It crumbled, then melted in his mouth.

  The doctor smiled. His office was eerily dim, reminding Baba Singh of the astrologer’s shop. Behind the counter and tacked to the cracked wall were two faded certificates, their basis uncertain, next to which hung twigs the doctor said were curative herbs. A shelf was stocked with several vials of mint extract, old cigarette tins containing cures for various ailments, and many bottles, numbered serially. Baba Singh recalled a particularly bad day when the doctor had been in Harpind to check on the children, forcing them all to swallow some of number three. Admittedly it had worked, but the children had always been terrified of Dr. Bansal and the vile taste of his medications, administered with that peculiar, jovial grin.

  “There is nothing to be scared of,” the doctor said, watching Baba Singh carefully. “You are not little any longer.” He pointed at the plate of ladoos. “Another?”

  “I wasn’t worried,” Baba Singh said, flushing.

  “Just clearing the air,” Dr. Bansal replied, smiling again.

  Baba Singh took another bite.

  The doctor nodded happily. “We can begin tomorrow while Yashji is at the temple.”

  The next morning Baba Singh approached the black storefront of Dr. Bansal’s office and knocked on the door, rapping on the silver stethoscope painted on the small glass window. The doctor flung the door open in wide-eyed surprise. “So glad you could come,” he said, waving the boy inside. He removed his faded, dark blue jacket, sweat stains already circling his armpits, and hung it on a hook by the door. He then headed directly to the back, yelling over his shoulder, “I am about to make chai. Let’s have a cup.”

  Baba Singh heard the doctor rummaging around for earthenware mugs and then the clanking of a tin kettle being placed on the stove. After several minutes of more clanking and rummaging, Dr. Bansal returned with a tray of hot tea and ladoos, which he circumspectly placed on the counter.

  “Enjoy,” he said, and they ate and sipped their tea, sitting in what Baba Singh felt was awkward silence, although the doctor seemed quite content.

  When the business of the day finally commenced, Dr. Bansal asked Baba Singh to fill vials with accurate dosages—which he would check later in the day—as well as dust shelves and the glass counter laden with heaps of unorganized papers and tins, and record in-home patient visits in the patient log. Then the doctor went out into the town to see patients—as he would most mornings—leaving Baba Singh to tidy and organize. Cleaning consumed the rest of that first morning and Baba Singh still had not made much headway. He found trinkets and glass jars full of filmy, dark liquids not unearthed in what seemed like centuries, and dust thick as a wool blanket over everything.

  Just before lunch the doctor returned, and under his arm was a brown-paper-wrapped package tied with string. His spirits were especially high as he regarded the mess of his office that Baba Singh had made while trying his best to put it in order.

  “Well done,” he said with enthusiasm. “A bit of chaos is what we need. It means a new beginning is approaching.” He gave the package to Baba Singh. “Please take this to the train station master for the post, and then you can go see Yashji. He is waiting.”

  Baba Singh stood and slapped the dust off of his clothes, receiving the package gratefully. He was tired of cleaning.

  “Hurry,” the doctor said, shooing the boy out. “I can hear the train’s whistle. It never stays long.”

  Baba Singh stumbled out of the office and ran down Suraj Road toward the station to catch the weekly train. Panting, he leapt up the stairs and onto the platform, shoving the package into the station master’s arms. “From the doctor,” he gasped. “For the post.”

  The station master gave the boy a curious look. “I see he finally found help.”

  “Yes, ji.”

  “I will see you next week, then.”

  “Ji?”

  “He sends these every week,” the station master said, considering the package for a moment. “To a woman. But he has been here for a long time and none of us has ever seen her.”

  ~ ~ ~

  It had been nothing but tedium at Yashbir’s that afternoon. Following a morning wading through the doctor’s mess, Baba Singh hoped the blacksmith would have some inclination to begin educating his new pupil. But all Yashbir did was ask Baba Singh to hold the sledgehammer in various positions: high, low, straight out to the side. “Give it a good swing,” the old man said, patting the anvil and grunting with approval when Baba Singh slammed it down with such a clang the room vibrated with the echo. That was it. After, it had just been more cleaning. And although Yashbir’s clutter was not as chaotic as Dr. Bansal’s, the job was nonetheless as immense. Baba Singh had barely made any progress when the sky began to darken and he was sent home.

  Exhausted, he stopped outside the hotel, and for the second time that day slapped the dust from his clothes. Kicking off his sandals, he went inside. He was surprised when he saw the furniture: two reed chairs and a table, all looking a bit shabby. His mother sat in one of the chairs, staring at a picture of Guru Nanak, his hand raised in angelic benediction. She turned to look at Baba Singh and smiled. “Come, sit with us,” she said.

  Lal was in the other chair at the far corner of the lobby. His pipe was lit, held casually in his hand, the room full of the tar-smoke smell of opium, much like burnt butter. His feet were unwashed, still covered in soil from the fields.

  Ranjit was on the floor with Kiran and Avani. The girls were helping him to construct a charpoy, the wooden bed frame already built. “Hold it tight,” he told them as they struggled to keep pressure on one end of the wide strip of heavy cotton he was using to wrap around the frame for the pallet.

  “Where did all this come from?” Baba Singh asked.

  “The carpenter had scraps and such,” Ranjit replied.

  “What about our mats?”

  Harpreet placed a hand on her stomach, and Baba Singh felt there was something odd about the way she did it, like she was protecting herself. “This place is a hotel—or was—and it needs beds.” She rested her head agai
nst the back of the chair like she wanted to sleep.

  Lal inhaled deeply from his pipe. “It is not a hotel. It is some other man’s finished business,” he muttered.

  “It is such a big place for us,” she murmured, glancing at her husband with sympathy. “It is more than we need. We lost everything and now we have something else, something we did not want. I do not understand it.”

  “I want to go home,” Kiran said as Avani released the cotton strip and picked her elephant up from the floor.

  None of them replied, and she sulked.

  “Where are Desa and Khushwant?” Baba Singh asked.

  Ranjit shrugged. “They should be home soon.”

  Baba Singh watched his family uneasily. They had only been here a few days, but in all that time he had been having the same foreboding dream. He thought of it now, but it was too indistinct, just a sense that the Toors had all vanished, scattered like pollens.

  He supposed they had.

  Wiping his sweaty palms on his kurta tunic, feeling the granules of dirt from the day’s work, he kneeled on the floor, joining Ranjit and his two little sisters.

  Dr. Bansal’s Ladoos

  1911

  Family Tree

  Baba Singh stared at Dr. Bansal’s usual weekly post from across his plate of ladoos. The package sat there on the edge of the counter, just as it always did. Six months of that same brown paper, same string, same exact proportions. Not one bit of difference. His curiosity—constrained by good manners alone—was tormenting and ruthless. It made his fingers tingle, heartlessly prodding him to do the very thing for which he could never forgive himself. Rip away the paper. Tear open the box. Consider the consequences later.

  Guilt, however, made his case hopeless, and the mystery around the secret contents continued to intensify, compounded by each passing week and by each new package.

  The woman had been the worst of it for Baba Singh. In his daydreams she was a shadowy figure of curvy lines and swishing fabrics, hips swinging bell-like, smiling boldly with invitation. Only a woman like that deserved the privilege of receiving regular weekly gifts. But one look at the doctor—with his oily hair and chipped tooth, his good cheer and many peculiarities—and the possibility of such a woman disintegrated.