We that are young

by Preti Taneja

  Twenty kilometres outside Kurukshetra – a town Jeet has always wanted to go to but never has, for fear of being disappointed by its banality – they stop again for sweet chai. The night market is beginning; girls in jeans and bindis and sweaters and bangles, all clutching their binders, arrive in twos and threes to walk the strip, to text each other, to stop and meet outside the sari emporiums, though they do not go in. Young couples and small families stop for frozen yoghurt, even though it is almost November – Diwali is coming; fireworks are on sale outside almost every store – while on street corners groups of boys meet to smoke and stand around. Bollywood serenades the street with tunes Jeet doesn’t recognise from films he does not know. It is so long since he passed through this world. It almost seems too bright, too full of young people, all shopping, all talking – not seeing that here again, on every post and bin and shop front, is Bapuji’s face and finger, pointing them to Delhi.

  Jeet imagines himself standing, now, on the roof of the car, shouting to the shoppers as they pass. I am here to tell you it is time to renounce your old lives, to follow in Bapuji’s example! Join his sacred fight. We must take our protest from Delhi where Bapuji is sitting in silent fast from lying words, to Srinagar, the paradise on earth which belongs to us. It is time to take a stand and join Team Devraj!

  They would all join in with applause. It would be as the Chandigarh rally, when Bapuji inspired every person to cheer for him.

  Instead, Jeet sips his tea. At the newsstand he picks up a copy of The Economic Times; it has a cover on Surendraji, ‘Mr Gargi’, who is now acting CEO of the Company board. He is quoted as saying, ‘After the first crore, one stops counting.’ He has never been involved in corruption, has not taken any part in the business so far: this is well-known. Jeet flips through the Times of India for more; he finds that Surendra has also finally made it as author of The Speaking Tree: ‘Potting the hole: the purpose of Dharma in Business.’

  Jeet reads the column in the cold air, tasting, with vicious guilt, his own satisfaction that Surendra’s point about dharma is actually quite crude. Surendra is only being published here to steady the Company share price. Flicking back automatically to check out the page-three people, he finds instead a picture story of Bubu’s funeral. He looks up to see a bank of TV screens in a SONY store showing late breaking news – an insert of Amrit’s uncle, the Company guard, a handheld video of him being arrested for Bubu’s murder earlier today. Jeet checks his BlackBerry: Twitter has the story – and more. Alone in his cell, Jeet learns, the Company guard beat himself badly, perhaps to show his remorse. Then he took his own life with a leather belt he was wearing, which happened to be just the right length.

  In the car, Amrit is silent, his jaw clenched. He grips the wheel. His phone is on the seat beside him. Ranjit is sleeping on the back seat.

  —Move over, Jeet says. I will drive.

  How strange it is that hands and arms and feet remember how to indicate, clutch, accelerate, check rearview, shift stick, change lanes. Amrit stays quiet, sometimes looking out of the window, sometimes texting. Jeet wants to tell him not to mourn; his uncle, the guard, was a martyr and a hero, who has sent Amrit to Delhi to join the highest cause.

  But Ranjit is sleeping and Jeet has not driven a car for so many months; this old model has a sticky clutch. So he keeps quiet and watches the road, letting Amrit’s silence fill him.

  The highway widens into seven, then eight, then nine lanes. Jeet swings the car through narrow gaps between scooters, taxis, jeeps, estates. They pass an elephant lumbering towards some groom’s baraat, a trumpet player in a tinsel waistcoat squatting on its neck.

  —When will we reach, Sita? When will we reach? Amarnath! Lord Shiv, to you I am bound. I want to touch the lingha that waxes and wanes. So sighs Ranjit.

  Although Jeet is driving, he can’t bear to look as the road becomes more and more familiar. Here are the Wedding Farms where at least four brides’ fathers will be hiring space for their betiyan tonight. There are the stone slab outlets; then the low houses, the shuttered markets. The streets seem free compared to the gridlock in the daytime. Jeet speeds around the ringroad as if taking mountain passes with a wish to die. Ranjit begins to snore, comforted by the swerving car. Stay still, old man, Jeet thinks. Dream that we are about to enter the blasted heart of the mountains.

  The air gets thicker. The yellow smog they left in Dhimbala has beaten them to this place. It muffles all noise; it almost blocks any view of the road. Jeet passes over flyovers and under the metro highlines, ignoring the sleeping enclaves and high rise blocks the city rises around him, low at first, then more and more vertical, dizzying – how he used to be proud of every inch of concrete and glass, as if he had made it himself. Now he feels the road to be an old friend he has outgrown – there is nothing here he cannot face – he has been driving this route since he was sixteen-years-old, from the outskirts to the centre. He moves the little car through and around; the metro stations are lit above them, strange portals of night. He gets lost around Satyagraha Marg, takes a right, a right, and a right, and a sharp right; he is forced to a slow crawl – then realises he is quite near old Delhi Gate. He cannot reach the centre; the car is surrounded by people walking in ones and twos, fives, tens and groups of twenty, carrying torches and tricolour flags. A river of boys, men and women – more than Napurthala or Chandigarh – moving through the smog towards Ramlila Maidan. Where Bapuji is holding his fast.

  Jeet stops at the side road. He tries to wake Ranjit and help him up.

  —Have we reached? When will we reach? asks Ranjit; he is hardly able to stand alone.

  —We still have some way to go, Jeet says. At least we have so many others to keep us warm! So many pilgrims have gathered to march – there must be five or ten thousand people here – the biggest crowd we have seen. Everywhere, against the night, saffron, white and green flags are waving, the centre wheel spinning in the wind. A group is coming towards us, singing.

  Jeet’s breath fogs in front of him; he is glad of the Company jacket, the remains of Bapuji’s Shahtoosh underneath his Yogi’s wrapping. He feels himself a thin spike among the puffa-protected youth around him. Some have Bapuji masks on – some have painted their faces with flags – some are carrying Sita Devi banners with pictures of Sita with Bapuji from months ago – and most have Gandhi caps. Sita Devi! None of them take any notice of Jeet. A young man walking near to them veers away, as if their smell, even in the smog, is of Dhimbala.

  This, after the whole long day that began on a Tuesday night so many months ago, makes him want to shout.

  I am here.

  —I can’t feel any hill at all, says Ranjit. Have we reached?

  —Almost, Jeet tells him, right into his ear. Stay close to me.

  He looks back for a landmark – the car is parked sideways, like a dash, next to a Company billboard for a new eco-car. Jeet supports Ranjit – it is difficult – Amrit is on the other side, quiet, withdrawn – Jeet feels as if he is carrying both of them. He looks around at the flashes of Burberry lining, Ralph Lauren fur, at the Zara, Mango, Marks and Spencer, Woodlands, Kim & Kareena; the soldiers of India’s newest civilisation are on the march, mixing with those from the outskirts of the city, the towns and villages Jeet and Amrit have just passed through.

  Here are the people of the new model army. Jeet wants to gather them to himself. There are no airplanes here, no trains or cars. Not even a bicycle can pass. Jeet has lived to see it: when, finally, the people go with their feet. Some waving flags, others hoisting their homemade banners. Now is the time, he thinks, when every person must choose. Whose world will it be? Jeet’s or Sita’s? Will the people want an heiress girl or a self-styled warrior of dharma? A man who has survived every circle of this earth to rise, here, now? Or a woman with nothing but her name? He tries to make out individual faces, but all he can see is labels, clothes.

  Watching Bapuji, Jeet has learned: flatter the people – they demand it. Show them purity to mask decay. O
bserve the rituals and call it freedom. Offer them riches blessed by God. Money, health, happiness, individual, family, nation – what more is there in this life?

  Jeet will build an ancient tribe of modern men, enthral to all he can promise. He will harness their sadness and their rage. He will put them to work in the service of God and country. He shoulders his father. Around him the people are feeling their way through the smog. If a man is blind, he can be led, Jeet thinks. He stores this knowledge inside himself to use one day, when the time comes. In Kashmir.

  They push forward into the rally grounds, following the stage lights until they reach an awning. An ocean of bodies sits quietly facing a small stage, empty except for the table swathed in white, a microphone on a stand and the backdrop – two huge pictures, one of Gandhiji and one of Bapuji, wrapped in white with a string of marigolds around his neck.

  Everywhere Jeet sees police on their mobiles, and private security in check shirts and jackets, headsets and walkie-talkies, sniffer dogs. There is a smell of onions and frying – somewhere food is being made to feed these thousands. Faces loom out of the darkness: half brown, half in white masks; those without use their scarves against the smog.

  —Have we reached Amarnath? How can that be? says Ranjit. I can smell pakora, I feel quite warm. I can sense there are people – but why is nobody moving?

  —No – not Amarnath, Jeet says. He presses his eyes into their sockets until bright saffron garlands bloom behind his lids. Then he gives in. Can’t you feel the sweet high mountain winds on your face? Thand toh lagni chahyie.

  —No, really, it smells of potatoes.

  —Imagine you are in the fresh mountain air, Jeet says. He nods Amrit permission to let go of Ranjit. Then he walks his father slowly around the outside of the tent.

  —There is thick smog everywhere, he says. The ice is all around.

  —Yes! But how poetic your voice sounds now, almost as if you have been educated, says Ranjit.

  —No, not at all. You are imagining it. I am exactly the same, only with a better jacket, which your kindness has given me.

  —Do not argue with me; I hear what I hear.

  They reach the front, where, despite the security Jeet has seen, the bamboo barriers are easy to slip through. There is a ramp leading up to the stage. They climb it together. Rudra the Naph in his saffron cloth wrap, his sandalwood mala, his black beard hiding his face. Ranjit in his dun shawl and white cap.

  —Old man, dear sir, Jeet says. The high slopes of the Kashmiri mountains rise around us. The snow line. The black, jagged rocks. The ice bridge, where, if you walk in spring, you will fall through a crevice so deep your body will petrify there. We cannot reach the ice of Amarnath, we are lucky to have made it this far in such cold. The road is about to close behind us. We have driven through walls of solid white. And if only you could see how majestic the mountains are! It is midday. Can’t you feel the pure light reflecting off the hill? Can’t you perceive it behind your poor eyes? I can see, when I look down, the tops of the eagles’ wings, swooping below us, chasing sparrows small as mice. I can hear the saffron pickers singing while they bend to their tireless work. Listen!

  He helps Ranjit up the slope onto the stage, he sings into his father’s ear,

  —How pink is saffron’s colour, Collecting it into heaps we are bathed in sweat, soon too soon, it will be humid in the city. Enjoy its glorious view, O Samad! How pink is saffron’s colour! It’s wonderful! You know it Sir, there is a boy carrying stones on his head trying to clear a path for the pilgrims. What a job! He is an ant carrying a crumb to its hole. The donkey boys are down where we began, trying to get a fare for their raat ka khaana and there are pilgrims climbing up, carrying their bundles as topknots. Men and women, all of us climbing, climbing – Hai Ram, but the height, the distance down, I’ll feel dizzy! I cannot look down from such heights or I will fall.

  —Move and let me stand where you are, says Ranjit. In a wavering voice, he begins to sing.

  Om bhur bhuvah svaha

  Tat savitur varenyam—

  Then he tumbles forwards, flat onto the stage.

  —Hey, Uncle, what happened? You fell!

  Jeet kneels. He shakes Ranjit, sitting him up.

  —Did you slip? Who was with you? Can you stand? Hup, hup, that’s right. That’s right.

  —I can’t see, says his father. Ek admi mere saath tha… ek basti wala.

  —You are lucky, Uncleji, God has blessed you today. Now do you see? You’re in Delhi with Bapuji, at Ramlila Maidan.

  His voice gentle, his arm around his father, Jeet leads him back, into the masses.

  —Ladies and gentlemen, we welcome Bapuji! one of the men on stage shouts into the mic. Feedback screams around the tent; with a shock, Jeet sees Kritik Sahib – and with him, Bapuji. In a clean white kurta, a garland of marigolds tied in a circlet around his old head, instead of his neck where it should be.

  —What is happening? says Ranjit.

  As one, the crowd stands. It begins its cheer – which rises, rises until Jeet wants to leave Ranjit and jump back onto the stage, to shout – I’m here, I’m Jeet, and Rudra, your boy! But no one would hear. He is too far now from the night of the storm, when Rudra was lead by the hand through the welcoming crowds at Napurthala.

  On the screen above the stage, Bapuji’s face is in close up: he looks truly unwell. His eyes shift here and there, his skin is sallow. It must be true, then, Jeet thinks, he has refused to eat anything for weeks. Now, one of his Hundred steps forward with a microphone – that same lucky guy, Jeet thinks, from Chandigarh. He announces that he will address the crowd with something Bapuji wrote while inside Tihar jail.

  Rudra steps back – he thinks he knows this spokesman, his father is a high-ranking civil servant or some such. Jeet thinks he may have even taught this guy’s sister how to kneel (and apply the correct pressure, depth and movement for maximum satisfaction, a service to her future husband, of course). Under Jeet’s trousers the Shatoosh chafes him: he wants to change for Bapuji. In Bapuji’s smile, in his gaze over their heads, Jeet sees Gargi when she needs something she cannot ask directly for. He waits. Ranjit also waits, his face so wrinkled, as if he has been held underwater for too long. Camera crews, radio, newspaper journalists – is that Ashutosh? Mobile phones – everyone is waiting. The Company owns shares in all the media networks, Jeet thinks. How much money will Gargi make tonight while her father is here? Feedback screams around the stadium. Bapuji, who has not spoken for a week or more, opens his mouth. He points at the crowd. He laughs.

  —Mice! Has anyone brought a cat?

  —Is that Devraj? My old friend? says Ranjit to the air.

  Bapuji clears his throat; his face turns serious, and he ignores all the men behind him on stage still jostling each other. One of them, in a police uniform, is speaking into his phone.

  —So many of you have come to see me. So many of you have stood up and asked me to help you solve the problems in your lives. Don’t blame yourself young man, if your wife is a cheat. Everyone in the world fornicates – this is nature. Mice and elephants, all do the same. What do you say?

  The crowd roars, Bapuji!

  Five thousand voices, business types to fresh college girls and boys – the everyday people he has come to know – all cry:

  —Mar! Mar! Mar! Mar! Mar! Mar! Mar! Corruption, Mar!

  The stage lights suddenly flame and die: an energy surge and blackout. Thousands of mobile phones are held up. In this forest of luminous fruit the chant possesses Rudra; he may never need food or water again, so what? From the first Napurthala rally, to Chandigarh to the basti-boys, looking to him for guidance – to this, all of this, eyes watching him, hands clapping him – he is soaring, his senses stretched as if flesh has no matter, so beautiful, so dark and so light.

  Then a rush of dark shapes; the cries turn to screams. People fall over each other across the grounds, pushing over him, pushing Ranjit. Police shout back! Arrest! Arrest! They storm through the te
nt, picking people up, kicking them aside. The crowd splits and falls, running in all directions. On the stage, confusion.

  —Ranjitji, we must go, Rudra says, pulling his father backwards, thinking where can we go? He almost has to carry Ranjit through the smoke and dark; he feels stones pelting around him and starts to weep – white smoke mixes into the smog – tear gas. He must get out, for Ranjit’s eyes.

  —Me, mine, mine; Ranjit moans. Then, somehow, they stumble out of the Maidan. Swept along with people trying to scape to the streets, they reach the road; the car is still there under the Company sign. Amrit? They cannot wait. Jeet buckles Ranjit into the back of the car. He takes the wheel. Reverses through the crowd – then they are clear – they fly across the city. Jeet breaks free of the old town; he crosses India Gate, all the way back, around the dividing, ruled streets and endless circles of the Imperial city. Welcome home, say the wide, empty avenues – past the town-houses of the Princely States, the vast gated bungalows with their secrets kept safely in cupboards. He is home! Jeet’s foot presses down on the accelerator as hard as he did when he was younger; he races the traffic lights and down and down, around the flyover where silver balloon sculptures rise from the traffic island as if celebrating this return. Past Aurobindo and INA, follow the yellow line under the ground, until he reaches Qutb Minar, and from there to the white maze of walls, the bumpy track that is never fixed for no one can say whose responsibility the potholes are. Slow, slow, turn left and then left and then left – to the Farm.

  At the gates Jeet slides his window down, enough to show his eyes. He clears his throat, a driver on his best deference.