Darshan

by Amrit Chima

  His palms were sweaty. The first time they had done this, Baba Singh had groomed for his sitting. He had combed his beard with extra care and tucked it neatly. He had smoothed his eyebrows and fussed with his turban until it was perfect. Once in the chair, he had maintained a straight posture, had fixed an expression of pride on his face, with just the slightest hint of an amiable smile. Now he slumped in defeat. He could not hide.

  Was he rigid? Was he so horribly severe? Was that it? Was there nothing else to balance him out? Certainly there had to be. He could recall being soft. He had a wife, whom he sometimes could not remember, but whom he had certainly adored. They had held each other. Many years before, he had whispered sweet kindnesses to her in the night. And what about Kiran and Avani? He had loved them. Love and loss ached so painfully. It was all inside. He had never let that go. So why was it missing?

  “Enough,” Baba Singh said, his chest constricted.

  Junjie paused, his charcoal suspended over the paper. “I am not finished.”

  “I don’t care. I do not want another one. The first was enough.” He stood and swept past the candle, nearly snuffing it out.

  Almost at the door, changing his mind, he spun on his heel. “Let me see it.”

  Junjie wordlessly handed him the drawing.

  Baba Singh gaped at it in disbelief. “What is this?”

  The artist casually stood and replaced the charcoal in his cupboard. “It is you.”

  But that was impossible. Baba Singh’s beard had been shaded the white of an old man. His turban was missing and he had no hair. His eyebrows were bushy tufts. He was not twenty-nine. He was old and creased, sharp wrinkles branching across his face. He was withered and exhausted. The other portrait had conveyed a sense of searching. Beneath the stiffness there was desperation for a kind of nourishment, a seeking of answers. This self, this future rendition was finished searching.

  And by the look of it, he had found nothing.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Bebe!” another boy shouted from outside the mud hut. “He is here! Quickly, fix your hair! It looks like a nest. He is coming!”

  Baba Singh tore his gaze away from the elephant in Satnam’s lap to glance outside the hut.

  Satnam chortled, covering his mouth as Sada Kaur carried in a tray of tea.

  The other boy, also water soaked, flew breathlessly inside, stopping short when he saw Baba Singh. Then he burst out laughing. “I am too late,” he said, slapping his knee. Assessing his mother, he nodded with satisfaction and gave her a thumbs-up.

  She pursed her thin lips as she set the tray down on the small table. “Vikram, this is your bapuji.”

  “Eh, Bapu, was it a good one?” Vikram asked Baba Singh, wiping a wet clump of hair out of his face and squeezing water out of his topknot.

  Sada Kaur threw him a towel. “Not on the floor.”

  “Good one?” Baba Singh asked.

  “Your face was so shocked!” Vikram said. He nodded toward his mother. “Her hair hardly ever looks like a nest. It is the absolute truth. Look how beautiful she is.”

  “Vikram,” Sada Kaur said, her voice firm.

  He flung the towel over his shoulder and clapped his palms together, attempting to be more serious. “Sat sri akal, Bapu.”

  Baba Singh smiled in acknowledgement.

  “I meant the floor,” Sada Kaur said with raised eyebrows as she threw down several more rags.

  “Oh,” Vikram said, attempting to wink at Baba Singh, but actually blinking. He chuckled to himself.

  Satnam put Avani’s elephant on the table and jumped down off his chair to help his brother.

  Baba Singh watched his sons, the deliberate way that Satnam cordoned off the water with a rag, the slow circular motion of his arm as he methodically wiped the floor, the way he politely gestured that Sada Kaur bring over the iron bucket that was resting by the cupboard, the way he wrung the excess water into it. It was so different from Vikram’s haphazard flinging of his rag back and forth, not cleaning it up but rather smearing the water around.

  Done, Vikram plopped himself cross-legged on the floor, the wet rag flung over his topknot. Satnam wrung the last drops out of his rag and hung it over the edge of the bucket. He then sat with his brother.

  Sada Kaur gave Baba Singh a cup of chai. She held the mug with both hands and leaned forward slightly, as if presenting it to him. She smelled like mint and ginger, like she had been handling the herbs before he arrived. They scented her hair. His heart quickened and he smiled at her. “Thank you,” he said, receiving the tea and taking a sip. She waited until he nodded, then sat in a chair across from him.

  Swallowing another sip of tea, Baba Singh realized his sons were waiting expectantly, staring up at him. He crossed his legs and leaned forward. Mug cupped in both hands, he rested his forearms on his knee. “Are those your bikes?” he asked them.

  “Yes,” Vikram said, grinning. “The rusted one is mine. I rode it into the pond once. It never recovered.”

  “We will need to get him another,” Sada Kaur said. “It barely makes it all the way to Amarpur now. Sometimes he walks it home.”

  “That is only because the seat is like a rock.” He rubbed his behind.

  Satnam smiled. “You are too skinny.”

  From where he was sitting, Vikram twisted around, trying to look at his bottom. “This whole time I thought everything else was too hard.”

  Baba Singh laughed, and Vikram wink-blinked at him again.

  “Vikram is in the second standard,” Satnam said. “And I am in the third. We study math, science, history, Gurumukhi, Hindi, and Urdu.”

  “And we dance,” Vikram said. “We practice at the gurdwara.”

  “Your Khushwant Chacha used to dance for Basant,” Baba Singh told them.

  Vikram’s eyes brightened. “Maybe we can dance together.”

  “I am not so good,” Satnam replied a little morosely. “I usually come home and help Bebe wash the animals.”

  Baba Singh smiled. “That is also good.”

  Sada Kaur looked pleased.

  They heard the snort of a bullock outside and the metal clank of tools placed in a pile. Prem and a teenage young man, sweaty and dirty from an afternoon in the fields, pushed through the curtain.

  Baba Singh rose in astonishment when he saw Manmohan.

  Prem sat on his charpoy. “Hello Baba. It is good to see you again.”

  “Sat sri akal,” Baba Singh replied, inclining his head with a reserved respect.

  “Manmohan, do you remember your father?” Prem asked. “You were big enough.” He kicked off his chappals and began to massage his feet, making faces of exaggerated agony and relief. He had not aged well. His cheekbones were prominent, and his leg hair had thinned, the veins beneath purple and thick.

  Manmohan nodded slightly. “Sat sri akal, Bapu.”

  “You look so much like someone I knew,” Baba Singh said, thinking of Ranjit.

  Vikram rolled his eyes playfully. “Manmohan is the smart man. He is finished with school. He knows everything now.”

  Manmohan flashed a boyish grin, lightly shoving Vikram with his foot. He was so much like Ranjit, with that same upward tilt of the eyebrow, amused and confident, yet the world had so far left him untouched.

  “You are lucky,” he told Manmohan. He glanced at Avani’s elephant then turned to the others, speaking with deliberation, enunciating his words carefully. “You all are. I hope you know that, really know it.”

  Yet, as his sons all politely nodded, quizzically, like he had gone mad, he knew they could not possibly grasp the significance of what he said. They did not know what it meant to lead such fortunate lives, what it had cost to give it to them, to maintain it for them. They had not scrambled out of the valley only to discover that the world was much bigger and more frightening than they had imagined. How could they appreciate their privilege enough to protect it if they did not comprehend that it could be lost?

  When the family prepared for bed that
evening, Baba Singh felt empty thinking of their faces, their lack of understanding. He reclined on his old charpoy, uneasy, a guest in his own home.

  Sada Kaur was in the main room with the boys, helping to get their beds ready. Baba Singh waited for her, fidgeting. He was not certain of her anymore. Earlier she had inspired in him a charge of desire. Now he was sick with anxiety. What would he say? How could he say anything, how could he do anything after his many nights alone with Bao Yo, who had known him longer, who knew, simply because she was there, what he had sacrificed?

  ~ ~ ~

  Bao Yo laughed her throaty laugh. “An old man?” she asked, amused. Then noticing Baba Singh’s distress, she quieted, patting the bed with a pout.

  He climbed on, the overused springs making him wobble as he crawled over to her. She languidly reached her bare arm toward him. “Do not take it so seriously,” she said. “Junjie drew you like that because he hates you, that is all.”

  “But we are friends,” Baba Singh grumbled.

  “Still,” she sighed. “He hates you. He hates us all.”

  She drew back the covers to reveal her sagging body. The sight of it had once made him cringe, but now he settled down next to her and cupped his hand over her breast.

  Truthfully, she was the most unattractive woman he had ever encountered. When he had first come to see her, he could not imagine how she made her living as a prostitute. What right-minded man would touch her? She had black teeth, her hair was thin and oily, and her features were small and placed too close together, as if when she was a baby her mother had suctioned her face.

  But she had grace.

  Those narrow hips of hers swayed like ship masts on a calm day. They had fueled her reputation, and men came panting. She was also older and therefore not giggly like the other prostitutes in the house. Baba Singh especially liked the fierce aggression behind her luxurious movement. She would not hesitate to tackle any man to the ground who tried to cause her harm, as often happened to women in her profession. And the things she said often entertained him, strange things in broken Punjabi with a thick Cantonese accent. She told him she would like to learn to wear a turban for him, then wrapped her head with the long dress she had just stepped out of. She said she would mount him twice if he paid a little more so she could buy herself some wine and cheese and eat like the French for a night.

  “How do you know Junjie?” Baba Singh asked her, moving his hand from her breast to caress her stomach.

  “I know everyone,” she smiled. “Except your brother. Does he know what you do with me?”

  Incensed, he tried to pull his hand away, but she firmly gripped his wrist and grinned wickedly. “You wish you were in love, like he is. I know. It must be painful to see that kind of devotion.”

  He relaxed his arm, but turned away, ashamed. She forced his hand back to her breast and squeezed his hand around it, moaning slightly. He was not sure if she was mocking him.

  “Do not be upset,” she said. “Not everyone is so lucky. Most women are terrible creatures. Junjie was thrown out like garbage and—although he pretends he is not—now he is angry and bitter. The love of his life ran away, like a startled little gazelle. She threw him out when she learned he had been cut off from his parents’ money. And I knew his father. They had a lot of money. You should move on. Empty your head of it all.” She pretended to spit off to the side, exaggerating her point.

  “My wife…” he began, looking at her.

  “I am sure she is no better,” the prostitute said. “Cold like a dead fish.” She brought him closer and wrapped a thin leg around his waist.

  He clutched at her, roughly seizing her thigh, her flesh swelling between his spread fingers. He tried to remember. Sada Kaur was not cold, not when up close. Her skin had been hot when he touched it. It had burned into him.

  But she was so far away. He gritted his teeth. She might not even have been real.

  ~ ~ ~

  There had been warnings and signs.

  Baba Singh wanted to roll his eyes at them now, at the red flags of his past telling him unambiguously that there was trouble. But he had missed them. What could be done about it now? Forward was the only direction—the only option—available.

  He was pacing in front of Yashbir’s shop. Desa was there, on a stool Khushwant had brought outside for her. She sat sloppily, like a man. She slouched, her forearms resting negligently on her open knees, her mid-length salwaar hanging in the space between her legs.

  “Stop it,” she said.

  He reigned himself in, took a seat on the ground beside her stool.

  There had definitely been warnings. Some of what he had disregarded was excusable, like his mother’s constant cramping and nausea. How could he have known what that meant? And there was his father’s opium. But Baba Singh had been dealing with his own grief. He had been too overburdened—and young—to fully grasp the extent of Lal’s.

  But maybe he could have been more diligent the night he heard Kiran’s voice. That still bothered him. And there was Mr. Grewal, but he preferred not to dwell on that for too long. He still had nightmares. And truthfully, if he was absolutely honest with himself, he had known what would happen to Ranjit. He could remember the feeling he had when his brother left for Amritsar. That itchy sensation in his mind, an annoying mosquito he had just swatted away.

  And Junjie. He had seen that coming, too. In all fairness, despite a growing dislike for the artist, Baba Singh had tried to do something about it. But in retrospect he had not made enough of an effort. From here, standing on the other side of the savage Hong Kong riots, he could clearly see how easy it would have been to rescue Junjie before the artist was swallowed by the enraged crowd. He could have forcibly dragged him away, whacked him over the head with his baton to sedate him.

  “What is the matter with you?” Desa asked, although Baba Singh could tell she did not really want to know. He had been fidgeting, rolling his hands, one over the other, like washing off soap.

  Flattening his palms against the ground, he asked, “Why did you give Satnam Avani’s elephant?”

  “Because he liked it. Because you are his father.”

  “He does not know that I made it. He does not know whose it was.”

  “You two have something in common,” Desa said. “Why don’t you tell him?”

  An old woman dressed in a white salwaar kameez was passing by. Her chuni was drawn up, but when she turned her head to him, he noticed that her hair was shorn, stubbly, soft like white, cut grass. She came nearer, stopping in front of Baba Singh. She bent and jutted her face toward him like a pigeon.

  Baba Singh inclined his head politely. “Sat sri akal, Auntiji.”

  “Reopening?” she asked, nodding at Yashbir’s shop. Inside, Khushwant and Simran were organizing and cleaning.

  “Yes,” he murmured.

  She leaned closer to him and he looked at her inquiringly. After a moment, she sighed and straightened, waving her hand as if pestered by an insect. “I thought you would know me,” she said, indicating her hair. “I thought it would be obvious.”

  “Auntiji?”

  “Your brother, Ranjit, once worked for me.”

  Desa’s eyes widened.

  The widow chuckled at their surprise, then glanced regretfully down the sunny road. “I should go now,” she said. “It is nice out. But a shift in the weather could undo me. I thought the wars would change things. All these women alone here, I thought I could just be another one of them, but it seems I am special. This town will never let me out of my long-dead marriage.”

  “I am sorry, Auntiji,” Baba Singh said.

  “I was sad to hear of Ranjit’s death,” she said gravely. “I sometimes feel responsible.”

  Glancing away tiredly, Desa said, “What could you have had to do with it?”

  “He was with me the night your sisters went missing. He never forgave himself.”

  Desa stood abruptly. “He would not have done that.”

  The old wom
an reached out a placating hand. “We were only friends. He was grieving for your mother and I knew something about grief.” She exhaled heavily. “He felt he was expected to save everyone, and then the girls got lost.”

  She adjusted her chuni. “He was such a nice boy,” she said, smiling wistfully. “He felt everything so much more powerfully than most of us.” She again looked down the road. “I am so glad to have seen you both. I wish I could stay longer, but there are clouds approaching.” She bowed her head and continued on.

  Baba Singh watched her go, remembering her manhoo, how Ranjit had spent too much time in that woman’s unlucky shadow. But it was too late and foolish to blame superstition. There had been signs, little clues that, had he paid even the slightest attention, had he given the slightest credence, would have changed everything.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Get moving, Junjie,” Baba Singh said, roughly pulling at the artist’s tunic. “They will be here soon.”

  Junjie pointed in exasperation at his latest painting. “I am not finished with this,” he said, jerking his tunic free.

  Baba Singh gaped incredulously at the artist. “I am trying to help you!”

  “I do not need your help.”

  “Des Voeux Road is a main crossing. That mob is serious. The whole city is lost. You will be trampled.”

  “They are tired of not getting paid for their work,” Junjie said, dipping his brush in a blob of yellow paint. “That is how your British bosses treat this country. They have a right to be angry. They have been told they are worthless.”

  “Junjie, at this moment the reasons do not concern me. Just get away.”

  “You do not have to worry about me. You should be worried about yourself. I will not be harmed.”

  Baba Singh pulled out his baton and stared down the road. He could see smoke in the distance, down by the docks. “How do you know?”