Hillstation

by Robin Mukherjee

  ‘There’s always a “they”.’

  ‘And what do “they” say?’

  ‘The show must go on,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. But like I said, your sisters aren’t my problem.’

  She was right, of course. The goddess moves as she wills. Of what concern are two silly girls doused in petrol? But I was her destiny and this, if nothing else, made me her problem.

  ‘I think I have a solution,’ I said. ‘If we announce our betrothal, then my sisters would be obliged to wait until after the wedding before they set light to themselves.’

  She glanced back at me for a moment. ‘I think I’ve made it pretty clear what I think about that idea,’ she said.

  ‘What is clear,’ I said, ‘is that nothing can stand in the way of what’s meant to be.’

  Pol’s words were flooding back to me now. When they say no they mean yes. When they say stop they mean go. This was the English way, passionate, expressive, and requiring, above all, an overwhelming declaration of intent. I had often noticed birds flapping their wings during moments of amorous engagement. I had even seen rabbits kicking each other as the one attempted to appraise the other of its affections. The bee must sometimes break the petal to retrieve its nectar.

  I caught up with her on the far side of the pool. ‘My love,’ I said, taking her hand.

  ‘Don’t be daft, Rabindra, come on.’

  ‘You are the spirit by which I move, the light by which I shine.’

  ‘Did you get this out of a book?’ she said, wincing.

  ‘From the book of your heart,’ I said, although she was right. Pol used to bring over some of his mother’s romantic novels when they had pictures. ‘For there can be no better rhyme, nor metre, than the sweet perfection of your smile.’

  ‘You’re hurting me,’ she said.

  ‘Martina,’ I said as she dug her nails into the back of my hand. ‘Love is not two things coming together to make one thing but one thing together always.’

  ‘So you can let me go then, can’t you?’ she said with incisive rationality.

  ‘Never,’ I said, pulling her towards me. ‘For we are the sun shining in different pots, seeming as many but forever oof.’ I had closed my eyes to receive her kiss but instead felt a sharp pain in my lower regions.

  ‘Nobody grabs,’ she said. ‘You got that?’

  I tried to nod as my body bent double and my legs collapsed.

  ‘You’ll be alright,’ said Martina, scanning the horizon before making her way down one of the streams.

  As I waited for my breathing to normalise, and the pain to subside, several flies began to explore the end of my nose. Since my hands refused to move, I tried snorting them away, which only made them take an aerial tour of my face before landing again. I shook my head vigorously, but they seemed to enjoy that and, after a few minutes, came back with their friends. When a large bee buzzed over to see what all the fuss was about, I managed to find my feet.

  I heard Pol’s laughter long before I reached Shiva Rock.

  ‘You are so mean,’ said Cindy.

  Which only made him laugh louder. He stopped when I tripped over just behind the ridge.

  ‘What was that?’ said Cindy.

  ‘Maybe a goat falling over,’ said Pol.

  ‘Goats don’t fall over,’ observed Martina.

  ‘They spiked its drink,’ said Pol, laughing again.

  ‘Goats don’t say “bloody hell”,’ said Cindy.

  ‘Please believe,’ I croaked, ‘that my intentions are, have been, and will always remain honourable.’

  ‘You could have fooled me,’ said Martina.

  ‘But I understood that to be the procedure,’ I said, struggling upright. ‘Unless, of course, your response is also part of the procedure in which case there is much to admire in the resilience of the English gentlemen.’

  They were resting in the shade of the rock, Pol and Cindy’s legs entwined, Martina to one side, rubbing her feet.

  ‘If the procedure requires it on subsequent occasions,’ I said, ‘I would appreciate some forewarning.’

  ‘That would spoil the surprise,’ said Martina.

  ‘Then our married life shall be characterised by a perpetual state of tension,’ I said.

  ‘That is married life,’ she chuckled. ‘But seriously, Rabindra. Okay? We’re not going to have a married life. Why? Because we’re not getting married. Cindy can do what she likes and I wish them every happiness. But I came here single and I’m leaving that way.’

  Pol and Cindy were nibbling each others necks.

  ‘You have already proposed?’ I said.

  ‘Accepted,’ said Cindy.

  ‘And the other,’ giggled Pol.

  I have never thought myself prone to the darker reaches of human emotion, such as envy, jealousy, and spite. But in that moment I could have scraped the grin off Pol’s face with a blunt surgical instrument unwashed from its previous task of removing warts from the underside of a dhobi-wallah’s foot.

  ‘And we’re going to be very happy,’ said Cindy stroking Pol’s face. ‘Among the mountains and flowers and all these lovely people. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted. Except babies. But we’ll have lots of those.’ Pol squeezed her hand. ‘We’ll come here for picnics. And I’ll tell them the names of all the mountains, once Pol’s told them to me, and the flowers and every single buzzy bee, even if it’s different bees, it doesn’t matter, kids don’t really notice that sort of thing. And we’ll chase rabbits and lie on our backs looking up at the sky, until our babies have babies and we’re old and crabby like all those crabby old people down there, but everyone’ll treat us like we’re wise just cause we’ve been stupid longer.’ She gave Pol a hug that crushed the air out of him.

  ‘Well, hopefully we’ll visit,’ he gasped.

  ‘Every day,’ said Cindy. ‘Even when it’s snowing. We’ll make snowmen and have snowball fights and hot chocolate afterwards, round the fire singing.’

  ‘I mean from England,’ said Pol.

  ‘Stuff England,’ said Cindy. ‘I’m staying here. I want to skip among the hills. I want to saunter down the high street like those elegant ladies in bright saris shouting at street vendors and ordering their cooks about. I want to dodge scooters crossing the road, and kick stray dogs off my doorstep. I want to smell dust, and sweat, and god knows what all day long. I want to stare out of my window and see this.’ She spread her arms. ‘All around me. Every day.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Pol. ‘Every day of our holiday.’

  ‘Phooey,’ said Cindy. ‘Holidays are only as good as the shades you see them through. Sun-hats, blokes with tashes, and cheap tat you can’t think why you bought. They’re not life. Life is potatoes. Life is clipping your nails on the side of the bed. It’s the smell of soup in the cupboard under the stairs. It’s cat litter on the floor, cigarette burns in your new dress, the shoes you bought you wish you hadn’t, the things you want you’ll never have. It’s being me, waking up with the same thought I went to sleep with. It’s not two weeks pissed and back to worrying about a spot on my forehead, or if my legs are getting fat, or how come I didn’t make the Christmas Page this year when she did.’

  ‘Change your agent,’ said Martina.

  ‘But the whole point,’ said Pol, ‘was getting out of here.’

  ‘The whole point,’ said Cindy, ‘is that we love each other.’

  ‘Which has been stated and is understood,’ said Pol, sharply. ‘But as a wife you should listen more and talk less.’

  ‘I hope you are,’ murmured Martina.

  ‘Of course she is,’ said Pol. ‘Because her husband is talking. Now, you think that you are going to enjoy some sort of relaxed and privileged lifestyle in this silly little place in the hills. You are wrong. You will be the wife of a low-born. You will always be served last in the shops. Yo
u will not be invited to tea with any of the other wives, and if you try inviting them you will find them all quite suddenly engaged on other matters more pressing. Instead we will spend the evenings listening to my mother imagining that she’s just escaped her kidnappers and is presently hiding in a forest hovel. It will be a futile, agonising life of daily torments.’

  ‘But not if we’re together,’ protested Cindy.

  ‘Then why not be together in England?’ said Pol.

  ‘My Dad lives in England. And that’s a good enough bloody reason for not living there.’

  ‘Then the entire plan comes to nothing,’ spluttered Pol.

  ‘I never had a plan,’ said Cindy. ‘I didn’t plan to meet you. I didn’t plan to have the sweetest, cuddliest night of my life. I didn’t plan to fall in love with a little village, silly or otherwise, in the hills. But I have. Because love isn’t a plan.’

  ‘It is for you to love and me to plan,’ retorted Pol.

  ‘I’ll tell you what a plan is,’ said Cindy, standing up. ‘It’s an immigration visa. It’s an entry permit. It’s telling someone you love them so you’ll get past the blokes at Heathrow. And I’ll tell you what love is. Love is trust. Love is believing what you’re told. Love is saying what you mean. I don’t trust you anymore and I don’t believe anything you say.’

  ‘You are wilfully misinterpreting my words,’ growled Pol, ‘in order to confound my authority and get your own way.’

  ‘No,’ said Cindy, quietly. ‘I’m just saying that all this talk of love and happiness is just so you can get a ticket. Well, I’m not a ticket. And you know why? Because I’m not going anywhere. From the minute I set foot in this place I knew where I belonged. It’s the happy hideaway I’ve always dreamed of. And I’m staying here whether you like it or not, with or without you.’

  ‘For this disobedience you should be beaten!’ shouted Pol, raising his hand.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ said Martina, menacingly.

  ‘Without me, then,’ said Pol, sensibly dropping it again.

  ‘Okay,’ said Cindy. ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘No, no,’ spluttered Pol, ‘That is not what I’m saying.’

  ‘Too late,’ said Martina. ‘You just said it.’

  Pol looked at me for help but I was too busy enjoying the departure of his smile, as clinically complete as anything I could have achieved with my imaginary scalpel.

  ‘A lot of people say they love me,’ said Cindy. ‘Usually cause it’s in the script. But this wasn’t a script. This wasn’t acting. Not for me.’

  Pol reminded me of a deer we’d accidentally cornered once in the caves, breathing sharply, his bony shoulders twitching. ‘What have I done?’ he cried. ‘Every blessing I have ever sought now stands before me and I am speaking like an idiot. Oh, this is justice! For I have mocked the gods and now they mock me. The pride! The folly! Rabindra, my friend, why didn’t you strike me for speaking as I did? My beloved Cindy, why do you stand there sobbing when you could dash my brains to the ground with a suitably selected stone? Oh ye Gods, why sit there laughing when you have lightning at your disposal, one flash of which could resolve my arrogance into ashes? Forgive me Rabindra. Forgive me Cindy. Forgive me, you heavenly graces. All of whom I have horribly abused.’ He looked up at the rock. ‘It is no accident that we are here. For this is where pride perishes, where arrogance dies, where turtles are slain.’

  ‘Okay, you’ve had a tiff,’ said Martina, as Pol began to climb the rock. ‘Don’t worry about it. Cindy, talk to him.’

  But Cindy had turned away and I was momentarily speechless.

  ‘I wished only to penetrate the veil of illusion,’ said Pol, slipping a little. ‘I didn’t care about aeroplanes, wives or England. But she came anyway. And in her love there was no veil.’ He slipped again. ‘No pretence, delusion or purpose beyond the simple fact of being. It was there and I couldn’t see it.’

  ‘Pol,’ I said at last. ‘I forgive you. And if you look at me you will see that I am no longer sneering.’

  ‘I am glad,’ said Pol, scrabbling up to a ledge. ‘But the gods demand their price.’

  ‘Do you remember that sage, when we were children,’ I asked, ‘who declared that the only fitting home for a disciple of Shiva was the very top of his rock? And do you recall how a stray dog dropped a bone one morning in the playground? And how we played with that bone until we were called to lunch? And how our revered teacher fetched his anatomy book and contemplated it before taking a party of elders to pick up the rest of the bits?’

  ‘The sage was right,’ said Pol, peeking over the ledge. ‘In the end we must throw everything to the gods.’

  ‘He probably just dozed off for a moment,’ I called as Pol disappeared again.

  ‘I have amends to make,’ replied Pol. ‘In this life and the next. However long it takes. Even if I have to come back as a worm, life upon life, slithering blind, trodden on by careless feet or burned in the belly of a bird. We have often spoken of destiny,’ he said. ‘Well, this is mine.’

  It seemed to me that in the interests of friendship I ought to go after him. ‘It seems to me,’ I said, ‘that in the interests of friendship I ought to go after him.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Martina, ‘but you might want to check that out.’ She pointed towards the village where a thin tendril of smoke was billowing upwards. ‘It seems to me,’ she said, ‘like something’s on fire.’

  11

  While my sisters on fire would undoubtedly provoke a great deal of shouting, I thought them unlikely to produce quite so much smoke. As I reached the village, gasping for breath, the sounds had become deafening and the plumes of black fog almost impenetrable. I stopped, clutching my chest, to see that the fire was in fact coming from a large black car parked in front of the barricade. Perhaps even more astonishing was that somebody was dancing on top of it. For a moment I thought it might be one of my sisters but couldn’t imagine them dancing so wantonly, even on fire.

  Swearing profusely, Mike was sprawled across the bonnet of another car, struggling with two burly men in grey suits. Two other men, also in grey suits, were rocking on their heels as a fifth man, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and maroon cravat, exhorted them to ‘shoot the bitch’.

  Several villagers had fetched fire-extinguishers from their respective homes, bought the previous year from Bister’s Domestic Emporium, only to squirt a feeble spit of congealed paste over their shoes and trousers. Malek was responding to complaints with a vehement discourse on the finer points of warranty agreements. As I pushed to the front of the barricade, a fleeting gap in the smoke revealed the dancer to be Sharon, bare feet spurning the flames, hair spinning as she turned.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked Dev who had remained comfortably ensconced on his chaise longue, tucking into a packed lunch.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said through a mouthful of roti. ‘The usual.’

  ‘My revered brother, I would not describe an English woman dancing on the roof of a burning car as the usual.’

  ‘Well, not here, I suppose. But in England it’s perfectly normal. I’m not sure why, I don’t think anybody does, but every second Sunday of the month, especially in the more fashionable quarters, ladies set light to cars and jump about on top of them. It’s a bit startling at first, but you soon get used to it.’

  He had that half-smile he sometimes wore when he teased me.

  ‘But these men in grey suits,’ I said, ‘are surely no ordinary phenomenon. And while I can accept that such people are common in certain parts of India and possibly even elsewhere, nobody in this village, so far as I know, has ever worn lizard skin shoes.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Dev. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. They’re not lizard skin shoes. They’re fake lizard skin, which are much more expensive because fake lizards are harder to catch.’

  ‘Please,�
�� I said, getting exasperated, ‘that’s enough cultural induction for one day. My burning question, no pun intended, is what are they doing here?’

  He took a bite from a spinach bhaji and chewed thoughtfully. ‘These are good,’ he said.

  ‘Dev!’

  ‘Alright, let me think. Our beloved sisters, having poured petroleum spirits over themselves, were hugging each other, grim-faced and slightly hysterical. Father was shouting, obviously. In fact everyone was shouting, mostly asking them to move away from the stalls. Mr Chatterjee was trying to bore them into submission by rambling on about the all-too-often underestimated perils of setting light to yourself. At one point he seemed to be arguing that this was contrary to vegetarianism but frankly, I’d lost his thread by then. I must admit I started to get a bit irritated by the whole kerfuffle and seriously considered putting a bloody match to them myself.’ I looked for the smile but couldn’t find it. ‘But then I had another thought which, I have to say, in that particular moment was marginally more compelling.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Research.’

  ‘Your devotion is an example to us all,’ I muttered.

  ‘Well, you know how it is,’ he said, poking around in his box. ‘Vocation isn’t a question of personal whim. It’s the innermost throb of our spiritual being. And, so far as my spiritual being was concerned, I can tell you, I was beginning to feel the distinct onset of a throb.’

  ‘And how did you resolve this dilemma?’ I asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t call it a dilemma,’ he said. ‘More of a choice.’

  ‘But presumably you went to the clinic since our sisters, from what I can see, remain unconsumed by flames.’

  ‘Really, Rabindra,’ he said, fishing out the emerald hemisphere of a sliced lime, ‘I took you for a better diagnostician. That one thing is the case doesn’t necessarily mean the other is.’

  ‘Then please tell me, my revered brother who is a Doctor and has been to England,’ I entreated, ‘who are these people, why did they come here, how has this car come to be on fire and why is Sharon dancing on top of it?’