I was contemplating a reply when a voice called, ‘Mashima!’
‘Who is that?’ I exclaimed, startled.
‘It’s the boy next door. Mejo Bou’s son. Come up, Kshitish.’
The next moment a pleasant looking youth of about sixteen or seventeen entered the room. He seemed surprised to see me at first, but collected himself soon enough and brought his hands together in a namaskar. Then, turning to Rajlakshmi, he said, ‘We’ve put down twelve rupees against your name, Mashima.’
‘Twelve rupees it shall be. But be careful in the water. There must be no accidents.’
‘Don’t worry, Mashima. We’re all good swimmers.’
Rajlakshmi unlocked her almirah and took out the money. Taking it from her the boy said, ‘Ma told me to tell you that Chhoto Mama will come with the estimate the day after tomorrow.’
‘What estimate?’ I asked as the boy ran nimbly down the stairs.
‘The house needs repairs. Besides, the second floor was just begun when I bought the house. I’ll have to complete it.’
‘How do you know all these people?’
‘Why, they’re our neighbours! They live next door.’ She rose saying, ‘It’s time I started cooking or your meal will get delayed.’ And she hastened down to the kitchen.
Thirteen
SWAMI BAJRANANDA ARRIVED EARLY ONE MORNING. RATAN, WHO had no knowledge of Rajlakshmi’s summons, came up to my room and announced glumly, That sadhu from Gangamati is here. God only knows from where he got the address. Now we have him on our hands for heaven knows how long.’ Ratan disliked and distrusted ascetics as a rule. He hated Rajlakshmi’s gurudev and took no trouble to conceal the fact. ‘I wonder what that rogue of a sanyasi is up to this time,’ he said after a pause. ‘He’s after Ma’s money, I’ll warrant. These holy men have a hundred ways of fleecing women.’
‘Ananda is a rich man’s son,’ I replied. ‘He’s a qualified doctor. He doesn’t need money for himself.’
‘Humph! A rich man’s son indeed! Why should a man with money turn himself into a sanyasi?’ And, with this triumphant conclusion, Ratan walked out of the room, his chest heaving with indignation. Ratan couldn’t bear the thought of anyone fleecing his mistress—barring himself, of course.
A minute or two later, Ananda burst into the room with a hearty greeting. ‘Namaskar, Dada! Here I am, once again. What’s the news? Where’s Didi?’
‘She’s in her prayer-room, I believe. She couldn’t have heard of your arrival, yet.’
‘I’ll go to her myself in a minute and send her down to the kitchen. Her prayers can wait. Where’s that son of a barber? Why doesn’t he put the kettle on for tea?’ He bellowed out Ratan’s name a couple of times and walked away in the direction of the prayer-room.
A few minutes later, Rajlakshmi and her sanyasi brother made an appearance. ‘Off load some money, Didi,’ Ananda said with his usual aplomb. ‘Five rupees at the least. A morning stroll through the Sealdah bazaar is indicated.’
‘There’s a very good bazaar much nearer at hand. Besides, why should you go? I’ll send Ratan.’
‘Ratan? He’ll pick up stale fish and rotting vegetables deliberately to spite—’ His sentence was left in mid-air as Ratan entered the room. Ananda’s handsome features twisted in comic dismay as he said with exaggerated humility, ‘Ratan, don’t take offence, my son. I didn’t know you were in the house. I thought you were philandering in the neighbourhood. I called several times, you see.’
Rajlakshmi and I burst out laughing but Ratan took no notice. ‘Ma,’ he said, maintaining an air of stern dignity, ‘I’m going to the bazaar. Kishen has put the kettle on for tea.’ And with that he walked out of the room.
‘Ananda and Ratan aren’t the best of friends,’ Rajlakshmi commented, the smile still on her lips.
‘I don’t blame him, Didi. He’s a well-wisher of yours. He doesn’t like rogues and parasites hanging around you. But I’d better seek his company or my lunch will be ruined. I haven’t had a decent meal in months.’
Rajlakshmi hurried to the veranda and called out to the departing Ratan, ‘Take a few more rupees with you and buy a big sized rui, Ratan. Make sure it’s fresh.’ Then, addressing herself to Ananda, she said, ‘Go wash your face and hands while I make the tea.’ And she hurried down to the kitchen.
‘Why the urgent summons, Dada?’ Ananda asked.
‘You expect me to provide the answer?’
‘You’re still nursing your anger,’ Ananda smiled. ‘I hope you aren’t planning to disappear again. Goodness! What a storm you stirred up that time in Gangamati. The whole village invited and the master of the house absconding. Ratan ready to drive out the guests and Didi weeping and beating her breast. And I running from pillar to post like a distracted hen. You’re really impossible, Dada!’
I smiled with him. ‘I’ve got over my annoyance. You needn’t worry anymore.’
‘I can’t help worrying. Quiet, seclusion-loving people like you frighten me to death. I often wonder why you allowed yourself to become a family man.’
‘Destiny!’ I said to myself. Aloud I said, ‘That means you think of me sometimes. You haven’t forgotten me.’
‘It isn’t easy to forget you. Or to understand you. And it is impossible not to love you. I had only known you for a day or two but I was ready to weep and beat my breast, like Didi, the day you disappeared. If I weren’t a sanyasi, trained in the art of stoic self-control, I would have done just that. Ask Didi if you don’t believe me.’
‘That must have been out of sympathy for your Didi. You came all the way at her request.’
‘That is true. For me a request from her is like a mother’s call. I couldn’t resist it. My feet started moving in spite of myself. I’ve sheltered in so many homes, I’ve seen so many women—but not one like her. You, too, have travelled a lot, seen a lot. Have you seen another like her?’
‘Many,’ I answered shortly.
‘Many? Many what?’ Rajlakshmi entered the room with Ananda’s tea. Putting it down she looked up enquiringly. Ananda stiffened a little as if anticipating an unpleasant scene.
I answered quickly, ‘Your accomplishments. Ananda expressed some doubts regarding their number and I objected indignantly, “They are many,” I said.’
The tea spluttered in Ananda’s mouth and some of it spilled over on to the floor as he laughed and coughed by turns. ‘Dada,’ he said as soon as he was able to speak. ‘Your presence of mind is admirable. How neatly you turned the tables on me.’
Rajlakshmi laughed too. ‘He has made up stories for so long now that he’s become a master of deception.’
‘You don’t trust me?’ I asked in mock dismay.
‘Not a bit.’
‘Then you are no less a mistress of deception!’ Ananda exclaimed. ‘You said “Not a bit” without batting an eyelid.’
‘I’ve learned a little from him—in self-defence. Drink up your tea and get ready for your bath, Ananda. You must be tired and hungry. You haven’t eaten anything on the train. I can see that in your face. And—’ Rajlakshmi dimpled and her mouth curved upwards. ‘Don’t make the mistake of asking him to list my virtues. You’ll be stuck here for a week.’
Ananda looked at her retreating back and smiled. ‘You’re a wonderfully compatible pair. God took a lot of trouble matchmaking for you. I noticed it first under that tree in Sainthia station. After that—I haven’t seen another couple like you.’
‘Ah! Ananda. Why do you always say these nice things behind her back.’
With Ananda’s arrival, Rajlakshmi’s excitement knew no bounds. She was busy day and night, cooking for Ananda, chatting with Ananda and planning all the things they would do together in Gangamati. I heard only snatches of their conversation but I gathered that among the projects they would undertake was the opening of two primary schools—one for boys and one for girls. There was some talk, too, of a dispensary for the people of Gangamati.
Ananda was a man of action. He had trem
endous enthusiasm and energy and the capacity to carry out whatever he undertook to a successful conclusion. He was, therefore, the ideal man for Rajlakshmi in her present mood. If Ananda ever sought my assistance or advice, Rajlakshmi stopped him with a laugh. ‘Don’t drag him into it. Your work will be ruined if you depend on him.’ She understood my incapacity for action, my retiring nature that shrank from anything positive—however deep my feelings. But I couldn’t let her comment pass without contradiction.
‘Only the other day you said there was a lot for me to do, to achieve,’ I grumbled.
‘Forgive me, gosain.’ She brought her hands together in mock humility. ‘I’ll never make the mistake of saying anything so foolish again.’
‘Does that mean I’m never to do anything?’
‘Oh no. Do all you can. Only, don’t fall ill and frighten me to death. I’ll be obliged to your forever.’
‘You mollycoddle him too much, Didi. You’re turning him into a weakling,’ Ananda said.
‘I don’t have to turn him into anything, bhai. God has done that for me. Besides,’ she laughed embarrassedly, ‘that astrologer in Muraripur has made me so nervous, I don’t dare let him out of my sight for a minute.’
‘Astrologer? What astrologer? What did he say?’
I answered for Rajlakshmi. ‘He said I was going through a bad phase, that it was a matter of life and death.’
‘Do you believe all this nonsense, Didi?’
‘Of course she does,’ I answered for her once more. ‘“Have you never seen anyone going through a bad phase?” she asks me, time and again. “Have you never known accidents to happen?”’
‘Anything may happen to anybody at any time,’ Ananda said gravely. ‘But is it written on one’s palm?’
‘I can’t answer your question, Ananda. I can only say that I quake in terror at the thought. God has given me so much! He won’t snatch it all away and drown me in sorrow. That is the only thought that gives me comfort.’
Ananda looked at her, in silence, for a while. Then he changed the subject.
The construction of the second floor was to commence. Cartloads of lime and cement, fancy doors and slatted windows arrived. Rajlakshmi seemed determined to transform the house into a palace. One evening, Ananda said to me, ‘Let’s go out for a while, Dada.’
‘At this hour?’ Rajlakshmi exclaimed. ‘It will be dark by the time you return and he’ll be sure to catch a chill.’ The prospect of my venturing out of the house alarmed Rajlakshmi these days.
‘People are panting with the heat and you’re worried about chills. You’re impossible, Didi!’
I wasn’t feeling too well that day. I said, ‘I won’t catch a chill. But I don’t feel like going out today, Ananda.’
‘That’s simple inertia. If you keep sitting at home, evening after evening, you’ll become a fossil.’
Rajlakshmi hastened to my rescue. ‘Kshitish brought my new harmonium over day before yesterday. I haven’t had the time to try it out as yet. Why don’t the two of you listen while I take the name of the Lord?’
‘What does that mean? Can you sing, Didi?’
‘A little.’ She waved a hand in my direction and continued, ‘I took lessons from him as a child.’
Ananda was thrilled. ‘Dada!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re a genius at hiding your talents. Looking at you no one would dream that you could sing.’
Rajlakshmi laughed merrily at the success of her joke but I couldn’t join in with equal abandon. I knew Ananda would insist on my rendering a song and would dismiss my entreaties as the humble self-negation of the true artist. He might even take offence. I knew the song the blind Dhritarashtra had sung over his dead son’s body, but Ananda wasn’t expecting a comic interlude.
The harmonium arrived. Rajlakshmi sang a few traditional verses in praise of the Lord and then—one Vaishnav padavali after another. Ananda was amazed. He asked, during a pause in her singing, ‘Have you learned all these songs from Dada?’
‘Not all. No one can teach you everything, Ananda.’
‘That’s true.’ Then, turning to me, he said, ‘Now you must take over. Didi is tired.’
‘No, bhai. I don’t feel up to it.’
‘You turn down my request? Remember that I’m your guest.’
‘I feel really unwell, Ananda.’
Rajlakshmi kept a straight face for as long as she could. Then she burst out laughing. Ananda understood, at last. He turned to her, ‘Who was your teacher? You must tell me.’ Then, after a pause, he said, ‘I know something of music. I learned a little but had to give it up. I got too busy and couldn’t find the time. But, now I’ve found you, I’ll take it up again. Won’t you sing some more, Didi?’
‘Not today, Ananda. It’s time I went down to the kitchen. You must both be hungry.’
Ananda said, ‘People like you, on whom so many depend, have little time to spare. But I’ll claim the privilege of a younger brother and insist that you teach me whatever I’m capable of learning. When I’m weary and lonesome, in strange out-of-the-way places, I’ll use your gift to comfort myself.’
Rajlakshmi’s face softened with love. ‘I’ll teach you all I know, Ananda. In return you must promise to keep an eye on this sick brother of yours all your life.’
‘Don’t you ever think of anything else, Didi?’
There was no answer. Ananda glanced briefly at her bent head and turned to me. ‘A fate like yours is to be envied. I haven’t seen another like it.’
‘You haven’t seen weakness and vulnerability as pitiful as mine, either, have you, Ananda? God makes us what we are but he doesn’t abandon us. He has, out of His great love, sent someone in my life with an arm strong enough to steer my boat safely to the shore. It would have drifted away otherwise or been shattered by the rocks. God balances the strong and weak, the rich and poor, the good and evil—thus. And so His creation survives.’
Rajlakshmi fixed her eyes on my face for a long while after I said these words. Then she rose and left the room.
The construction work began. Rajlakshmi started her preparations for leaving Calcutta. All the things she wouldn’t be taking with her was stowed away in one room. The old durwan, Tulsidas, was to remain and supervise the work. The day we were to leave, Rajlakshmi handed me a postcard with the words, ‘This is the answer I get to my eight-page letter. Read it.’ I glanced at the two or three lines written in a shaky, female hand.
It was from Kamal Lata. ‘I’m well, bon,’ she wrote. ‘My Radha Govinda, to whose service I’ve dedicated myself, will never abandon me. My welfare is in their hands. I trust you are well and happy. Bara gosainji sends his Anandamayee his deepest regards. I end—Sri Sri Radha Krishna Charanasrita—Kamal Lata.’
She hadn’t mentioned my name even once but, as I sat with the postcard in my hand, all that she had left unwritten was before me in an instant. I scanned the lines, once again, to see if a tear marred their evenness but I couldn’t find any. I glanced out of the window at the sunlit sky flashing between the fronds of two tall coconut trees that grew in our neighbour’s garden. And, suddenly, out of that hot blue sky, two faces swam to the surface. One was Rajlakshmi’s, clear and strong and beautiful. The other was Kamal Lata’s, vapoury and blurred, a little strange, a little unreal, like a face seen in a dream.
‘It’s time for your bath, Babu,’ Ratan’s voice broke into my reverie. ‘Ma sent me to remind you.’ Even my bath hour was regulated. There was no escaping Rajlakshmi’s vigilance.
We arrived at Gangamati early one morning. Everything was the same as on that earlier visit. Only, this time, Ananda was an invited guest—not a stray passenger picked up from the station. The house was full of people, all smiling, all welcoming us.
Sunanda came out of the kitchen, touched our feet and said, ‘You don’t look too well, Dada.’
‘When has he ever looked well?’ Rajlakshmi cried impatiently. ‘I’ve failed miserably with him. I admit it. That’s why I’ve brought him over to Gangamati. Now
that you all will have the caring of him—do the best you can.’
‘Rest assured, Ma,’ Kushari ginni answered for her sister-in-law in a voice melting with motherly love. ‘The climate here is dry and fine and the air and water pure. He’ll get back his health in a few days.’ The only person who wasn’t worried was myself. I didn’t feel very ill and I couldn’t understand why the others thought I was.
Rajlakshmi and Ananda took up their tasks with the inexhaustible energy that was characteristic of them. But I grew more and more listless as the days went by. This may have been ‘simple inertia’ as Ananda had described it or it may have been the first symptom of the disease that was feeding on my life force slowly and imperceptibly. I was grateful for one thing. No one disturbed my peace for no one expected anything of me. There was a tacit understanding among all the people surrounding me that I was weak and sickly, that I hadn’t long to live. But I didn’t feel ill. I ate and drank and slept and awoke and ate and drank again. Ananda would look sharply at me, sometimes, ask me questions and prescribe diets and medicines. At these times, Rajlakshmi would draw him gently away. ‘Leave him alone, Ananda. Who knows what will lead to what? If anything untoward happens we’ll all have to suffer.’
‘Suffering is inevitable, the way you’re going about it. If at all, it might be intensified. I’m warning you, Didi.’
‘I know, bhai. God set it down in my fate the moment I was born.’
What argument was possible after that?
I passed my days in reading and gazing out of the window at the hard blue sky and dun-coloured fields. Sometimes, I wandered about by the side of the canal or stood for a moment on the rickety bridge. But, more often, I sat at my table and put down on paper the strange and varied events of my life. I knew myself. I had little drive and less ambition. All the things men hankered after in the world—money, power, status, privileges—all seemed dreamlike and unreal to me. It was enough for me to be allowed to live. Sometimes, shamed by the energy and enthusiasm of the others, I would try to rouse myself, to break out of the inertia that had settled on me like a cloud. But, before I knew it, I was back again within its enveloping folds and was my weary, half-conscious, half-dying self again. Yet those same senses, which not all the shoving and pushing in the world could awaken, would burst into exuberant life whenever I remembered my ten days’ stay at the akhra in Muraripur. I would hear Kamal Lata’s voice, not wraithlike and insubstantial, but living and vibrant, in my ears. ‘Natun gosain, will you crimp this border for me? Ma go, what a mess you’ve made! I’ll never make the mistake of asking you again. Where’s that good-for-nothing Padma? Why doesn’t she put the kettle on? Doesn’t she know it’s time for your tea?’
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