by Sharon Maas
Savitri spent six weeks at the Asramam. She never spoke a word with the Maharshi; in fact, he hardly ever spoke to anyone. Speech in this place seemed superfluous, like fitful ripples on a lake as smooth as glass, like the shattering of whole and immaculate crystal.
She stayed six weeks and would have stayed forever. The world outside held no more lure for her, no appeal. She had sloughed it off as a butterfly leaves its cocoon. It was pain. There could be no return.
And yet, at the end of those six weeks, the knowledge came to her, unbidden and wordless, that return she must. That new life waited for her. That she, as a new woman, must enter that life.
It was Gopal who found the personal ad in the Hindu, which he sent to Savitri in great excitement.
English-educated Brahmin barrister-at-law, widower, well-settled in Georgetown, British Guiana, excellent income and social standing, seeks remarriage with Brahmin woman of childbearing age, willing to resettle in large pleasant home in Georgetown and raise a family. Widow acceptable. Dowry not required. Condition: must be literate and speak excellent English. Please send photo.
Savitri took her kohl pencil from her dresser and drew a large black circle around the ad. She pushed it across the breakfast table to June.
'That's it,' she said with finality.
Henry frowned. ‘British Guiana? Where’s that?’
‘Africa!’ said June.
‘I don’t care,’ said Savitri. ‘As long as it’s not India.’
‘I don’t think it’s Africa,’ said Henry. ‘You’re thinking of Ghana.’
‘Well, get out the Atlas, then.’
They got the Atlas and looked for British Guiana, and found it, but not in Africa.
'South America! That's the other side of the world!' exclaimed June.
'The other side of the world is exactly where I want to be,' replied Savitri.
'But you've never even seen the man!' protested June.
Savitri smiled one of her rare, wistful smiles and pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
'You forget — I'm an Indian!' she answered.
'Savitri, you're an Indian, but your mind is English. You've lived among us for so long now, in fact all your life. You've loved one of us, and you were ready to marry for love. You know the difference. You know better. You can't just reverse all you've learned from us and bow to tradition. That's so passive — so weak!'
Savitri's head was bent. She smiled. 'I'm still an Indian, June. That means I will kindle love for this man, whoever he is, whatever he is like. True, I cannot love him the way I loved David: that was once in a lifetime, that was special, and that will never cease for David is always with me, every second of every day. So what does it matter, June, where I go or what I do, or whom I marry? What can that change?'
'But — marriage to a man you've never seen?'
'It can't be worse than marriage to Ayyar — and I survived that, didn't I?' Savitri paused. 'June, I have a feeling, a knowledge, almost, that I have some task, some duty to fulfil. Perhaps I must be a mother again. Perhaps that is the only way to exorcise the ghosts of my lost children. Who knows? Perhaps that is why I am drawn to this man. For who will marry a widow in India?'
'But how fatalistic! Savitri — I can't believe it is you speaking! After so much pain, so much tragedy, you deserve a little happiness in life, a little success, and with our help and support — oh, the world is open to you now, now that you are free of your family! You could have a career! Look, we'll help you. Go back to school. Get qualified. You can be a doctor, even. It's what you always wanted! Why risk yet more pain!'
Savitri looked fondly at her and patted her hands. June's were hot and sweaty and wringing with agitation. Savitri's were cool and calm.
'I've had my career,' she said. 'Those months in Singapore; my last few weeks there. That's enough career for five lifetimes. Any other career would be an anti-climax.' She stopped, started again. 'One of my only comforts during my marriage were the poems of Tagore. My favourite is the one — do you know it? — of the maiden who has spent a night with her beloved. She waits in anguish for his departure, not daring to ask for the rose garland around his neck. In the dawn, after he has left her, she searches the bed for a few stray petals. But:
“Ah me, what is this I find? It is no flower, no spices, no vase of perfumed water. It is thy mighty sword, flashing as a flame, heavy as a bolt of thunder…”
She paused, as if drinking in the words, and her voice trembled slightly. June's eyes were stricken, fixed on Savitri with almost awesome fascination. Savitri seemed to have forgotten her, her eyes luminous and far away.
When she looked up at June they were free of tears. 'June! This pain has made me strong. There is no more fear. No more tears.'
The words of the poem continued in Savitri’s mind: From now there shall be no fear left for me in this world, and thou shalt be victorious in all my strife. Thou hast left death for my companion and I shall crown him with my life. Thy sword is with me to cut asunder my bonds, and there shall be no fear left for me in the world.
Before Savitri left India she returned to Mani. Mani lived with his wife and children in a crumbling brick building not far from Old Market Street. Savitri would not enter his house. She stood on the tinnai outside the entrance and said:
'You have won, Mani. I am leaving India. I will bring no more shame to the name of Iyer. You are rid of me, for ever.'
She straightened her shoulders. 'I have not forgotten Nataraj. But I know your cruelty and I know you will never return him to me, and on my own I can never find him. I pray to God to look after him, to keep him safe, and that is my guarantee that he will be safe. But I will leave my address with you. If ever you change your mind and your heart and your conscience speak to you, you may write to me and tell me of his whereabouts. I will come and get him. I pray for you, too, Mani, that your soul may find forgiveness with God. That is all I have to say.'
Mani, who had been grinning his mocking grin as she entered his home, turned his eyes away and it seemed to Savitri that she, and not he, was the winner, for Mani's eyes clouded and she knew that the fear of God had entered his heart. She looked at him, and pitied him, for death was written all over his face. She smelled death. Mani would die, and burn, and the secret of Nataraj's whereabouts would burn with him. She saw it in his eyes. And yet…
He seemed to be considering, weakening. He was silent for some time. Then he mumbled for her to wait, went inside the house and returned with a folded slip of paper.
'Nataraj is dead,' he told her. 'He grew sick and died, several years ago. You need never return to Madras. Here is the proof.'
He handed her the paper. She unfolded it. It read: Certificate of Death. One male infant. Name: Nataraj Iyer. Cause of death: Unknown.'
Nataraj would have been ten days old, according to the barely decipherable date scrawled at the bottom. Savitri only nodded, and returned the paper to him. She did not cry.
'Mani killed him,' she said, later, to Henry and June. 'I'm sure of it.'
'You must report it to the police,' Said June. 'The bastard!'
But Savitri shook her head. 'Would that bring my baby back? No. Mani could have just thrown the body away if the death was suspicious. Or bribed the police. And anyway, do you think they will go after him after all this time? I have no proof. He had custody. Do you think the police will listen to me, a single mother? There is no justice on earth. Mani's sins will catch up with him, in this life or the next.'
Savitri left Bombay on the Portuguese ship Benjamin Constant, taking the route via South Africa to Brazil and British Guiana.
She married Deodat Roy. Seven years later she was the mother of three living, healthy children: Indrani, Ganesh, Sarojini.
67
Chapter Sixty-seven
Saroj
Madras; a Village in Madras State, 1971
The beast that would shatter love's perfection had a name, and that name was Madras. Not that the love itself was shatt
ered. But love seeks to mirror itself, to see itself reflected in the world outside, in peace and loveliness and unsullied perfection. The mantle of soft magic that a Ceylon beach had spread around them had been just such a perfect world.
Madras was chaos multiplied by pandemonium, a cacophony of sounds and smells, a tangle of careening vehicles breathing stench, noise, filth. But Nat was with her, a rock in the madness, calm and knowing. Nat held his peace in bedlam, and Saroj clung to him as to a lifeline. What use are all my books, now, at this moment, she thought grimly; if it weren't for Nat…
They took a bus from the airport to Mount Road and there Nat stopped a cycle-rickshaw and helped Saroj onto its ripped and grime-encrusted seat. The rickshaw-wallah was a tall thin Dravidian, in a blue-chequered lungi doubled up on itself to show legs of skin, bones and sinewy muscle. With a blaring honk of his klaxon the rickshaw-wallah leaped on to his cycle and plunged into the fray, winding his way around cars, lorries, buses, bicycles, dray-carts, bullock carts, pedestrians, cows and all the other denizens of Mount Road, honking his ragged way through the medley. Saroj glanced from the chaos of the street to Nat's face. It was perfectly relaxed.
Nat seemed to be enjoying the madness, smiling contentedly to himself. A nostalgic, affectionate, indulgent smile, as a mother will smile at a toddler who has covered himself with mud, granting absolution. He loves this crazy place, Saroj thought. Can I ever?
Nat directed the rickshaw-wallah to a side street; Vallaba Agraharam, he kept saying, lest the wallah forget, and the wallah kept turning his head to comment, taking his eye off the traffic to Saroj's consternation. Nat seemed unbothered. He spoke Tamil, a language which to Saroj, hearing it for the first time, sounded as rough and aggressive as the city itself. But Nat spoke it with grace and melody, whereas when the rickshaw-wallah shouted back it sounded as if he were angry at Nat. But then, as he braked in front of the Broadlands Lodge and handed them their bags, he smiled as affably as ever, and when Nat gave him the fare he raised his folded hands to his forehead in thanks, the coins held together between the palms, then rolled the money in a corner of his lungi, tied it and tucked it into his waist, and lunged off down the road.
'Come on!' said Nat, and slung both of their bags across his shoulders. They had not brought a lot. Nat said they didn't need much. He himself kept his Indian clothes in India, and apart from one change of clothing for the plane and one for the city, his bag was full of medicines and other supplies his father had asked him to bring.
Saroj had given much thought to what she would wear in India. Instinct told her she should wear a sari; but she had not done so in years, and had always felt awkward in one. The sari represented the culture she had wilfully sworn off and kept at bay; but that had been before Ma's death. She had never worn a sari in England. To India she had brought cotton slacks and two long flowing skirts, which, thanks to the hippie culture, were in good supply in London. Nat had advised her not to wear any skirt shorter than ankle length, an advice she had first resented, but now that she was here she realised that he had been right. The slacks she wore made her feel awkward and out of place. Being Indian herself added to her discomfiture, plus the fact that she was, right now, confused, helpless, and completely frazzled. She followed Nat into the hotel lobby.
Broadlands Lodge was a third-class hotel. But, Nat had told her, he had always stayed here when he was in the city, and he had reserved the best room for them.
'The honeymoon suite,' he added, with a suggestive twinkle in his eye.
The hotel rooms were arranged in three tiers opening onto the verandahs overlooking a central courtyard with a broken-down fountain in the middle. The hotel had been claimed by travelling Westerners as their Madras stopover and hang-out, and as Nat and Saroj walked along the verandahs and up the stairs to their room they were greeted now and then by long-haired men or long-skirted women passing by, leaning over the railing and chatting, or sitting in their doorways drinking chai.
'Do you know everyone here?' Saroj asked.
'No. But somehow they all look familiar. They just say hi to everyone from the West.'
'How do they know we're from the West? We're both Indians!'
'We have that Western aura,' Nat grinned.
'So, here we are. Ladies first!'
He let Saroj pass by him into the room. It was the highest room in the hotel, all alone in splendid isolation, and reached by its own staircase. Like an eagle's eyrie, Saroj thought: windowed along three of its walls, the fourth wall opening onto bathroom and toilet. Like our tower on Waterloo Street, she thought again, but cut off that thought at the moment of its birth. It was a large, clean, cool, pleasant room, and Saroj was glad it was theirs, and not one of the cubbyholes along the tiers below them. She let herself fall onto the double bed that stood in the middle, beneath a rusting overhead fan, which now, for Nat had turned the switch, slowly, creakingly, began to revolve.
'D'you like it?' Nat placed the two bags on a table against the wall and came towards the bed.
'It's perfect,' said Saroj, and held out her hands to him. 'A perfect refuge from the outside world. A time capsule.'
Later Saroj and Nat emerged from their hotel. It was evening, and a strange lustre, a bristling excitement, lay over the city. They walked, this time. Nat wanted her to feel Madras with all her senses.
'I could have taken you to a posh hotel in a shady secluded part of the city, and we could have cut ourselves off from all this —' he gestured towards a half-naked beggar crouched in a shop doorway '— and hidden ourselves away in our time capsule. But, Saroj, I want you to see, to feel, to know what poverty is, and misery, and the misery of an Indian city is like no other misery in the world. Don't turn away from it: look it in the face, and love it. Because all this is part of you, and part of us.'
He stopped outside an Indian restaurant. They stood in the doorway, looking in. Inside was darkness, but as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness Saroj made out tables in rows, with Indians sitting around them, and round silver plates before them. They were all eating, pushing food into their mouths with their fingers. Above the doorway was a sign: Arjuna Bhavan — Delicious Vegetarian Meals. Little boys with rusty buckets scuttled between the tables collecting used glasses, and other boys sloshed water on the tables and rubbed them down with dirty cloths. The floor was wet with spilled water, and strewn with pieces of food.
'This is India,' said Nat, and his eyes were serious. 'The real India, the India of the streets. I've often eaten here. Shall we go in?'
Saroj couldn't help it; disgust shuddered across her features, though she tried to hold it back. Nat chuckled and placed a protective arm around her.
'But I see it's too much to begin with. Come on, before you throw up.'
They walked for ten minutes down Mount Road, in silence. The pavement was packed with people jostling, pushing, scrambling, edging and even crawling past each other, humanity in rags and in riches, in grimy shirts and silk ones, bare-backed and half-naked, swathed in saris, in pristine white flowing kurtas or in ill-fitting buttonless pants and shirts, torn and patched or richly ornamented — humanity, swarming from the Wellington Talkies and from Ashoka Hot Meals and from Parvati Men's Suitings and from Ramlal's Electrical Supplies; buying combs and bras and soap-dishes and lottery tickets from roadside vendors; waiting at bus stops, descending from and mounting rickshaws…
Above the chaos of the streets enormous hoardings loomed over them, etched against the night sky and illuminated by floodlights, displaying, as if in another, serene, divine world far above the real one, pink-faced chubby-cheeked heroes, gazing languorously at voluptuous doe-eyed creamy-skinned belles in bosom-clinging, seam- splitting saris.
They passed beggars and cripples and a little boy with a fortune-telling bird, piles of refuse and a mother holding out a crippled baby, and Saroj felt India, Madras, a microcosm of all of India, reaching out to enfold her, and struggled against it, lost the struggle, struggled again. This is India... Nat had said. It
is a part of you... do not reject it...'
But that's enough, she thought, I can't take any more... just as they reached a hidden staircase between two shops, and Nat drew her in and up into the sanctuary of Buhari's restaurant, and quietude closed once more around them.
'How're you getting on?' He smiled at her across the white-clothed table, from behind his menu, and she thought he was laughing at her and her fickleness of mind. But he wasn't.
'I know, it's a shock, and I've thrown you right in at the deep end. But I know you'll swim, because I know you're strong enough to take it. I can't protect you, Saroj, not from anything, you have to see it all and know the worst, for this is India. There is no time capsule.'
She was silent. He continued.
'I highly recommend their Tandoori chicken. And they have the best sweet lassi in town.'
68
Chapter Sixty-eight
David
Singapore; Madras, 1942-1945
Friday, thirteenth February began inauspiciously, with the water supply to the Alexandra hospital cut off. David and the rest of the staff carried on as best they could, trying to ignore the pandemonium outside, the screech of air raids, the bursting of shells, the boom of mortar bombs.
The attack came out of the blue. All of a sudden the Alexandra swarmed with Japanese, waving their bayonets, running through the corridors and into the wards. Lt. Weston rushed to the rear entrance of the hospital waving the white flag of surrender and was rewarded with a bayonet plunged into his heart by the first Japanese to enter.
David was preparing for an operation in the theatre block when they kicked open the door and surrounded the group gathered round the operation table, shouting unintelligible orders. David, with all the others, immediately raised his hands. The Japanese continued to shout, waving their bayonets towards the door, shooing them out. The patient, unable to move, was disposed of with a bayonet through the heart.