A Place Within

by M G Vassanji

  Rows of tall straight pines run down the valley on one side of us; close to the track, wildflowers, berries, drops of water clinging to the leaves after the most recent downpour. Somewhat foolishly we’ve left our umbrellas behind, having used them so far to ward off monkeys and, for Mahesh at least, to take comfort from the fear of the leopard or cheetah reportedly seen around Shimla. What a short umbrella can achieve against a leaping large cat has not been brought up with him. Mahesh regales us with his pilgrim’s tales: how three crates of Alphonso mangoes were picked by a seller in Bombay to ripen exactly on the day—no, the very hour—of his arrival in Czechoslovakia some years ago; how his arrival in Dalhousie (a local town) once had been announced to his host on the local cinema screen; he recites the poems of the two mystics, Kabir and Rahim.

  A clearing of trees beside the path, at a cliff edge, reveals a grand and beautiful vista—hills and valleys, the green in a variety of textures, shaded by clouds in motion overhead, their shapes friendly or menacing. The trek is always upwards, until the halfway point after forty-five minutes, when it eases and at the same time a downpour begins. We take shelter among the trees but get drenched to the skin anyway. A pilgrim from Bihar pauses to spend a moment with us, discusses the virtues of this track and its facilities (none) compared with the temple of Vaishno Devi in Jammu. Having imparted this knowledge, he hurries along. In a sense, visiting different temples across India is like earning stars; there are major stars and minor ones, the temple we are visiting is an average one.

  When the downpour diminishes, we walk, and when it surges again, we pause for shelter. It is a well-known adage among visitors to the hills that when a hill person tells you your destination is “right there,” it could be fifteen minutes to an hour or more away. Several times we meet groups returning from the temple. “How far is it?” we ask. “Twenty minutes,” they all say. One time a wife corrects her husband: “These are tourists—thirty minutes.” Finally, after we are told, “You are right there,” it takes us twenty more minutes to get to the temple.

  The temple is on a ridge at the top of a hill. The odd sight of a woman working by herself cutting stones at the base prompts Mahesh to recite a beautiful poem in Hindi by Nirala, about stonecutters:

  A woman breaking stones—

  on a road in Allahabad I saw her

  breaking stones.

  No shade

  from the tree under which she sat.

  Her body black, her young breasts

  bound tight in the choli;

  eyes lowered,

  mind turned to her lover

  and acts of love.

  Our subject is not as voluptuous as the one in the poem, and the sun is definitely not shining. It has taken us two hours and forty-five minutes to climb up to the temple; on a rainless day, it might have taken an hour less. The Goddess images in the temple are of clay and draped in coloured cloth. Hundreds of coloured chudis, glass bangles, have been left by local women for the Goddess, in the expectation of some blessing. The temple building itself is new but simple—a white structure with a verandah of arches, a red-tiled roof, and a front porch from which flies a red flag. There are adjoining quarters for the priests and caretakers. A sign outside informs the visitor that this is one of the fifty-one shrines to Devi.

  A specialty of this temple is that it helps you obtain your driver’s licence, therefore many men climb up the hill to pray for success in their driving tests. All of them pass, we are solemnly reassured; those who refuse to humble themselves before the Goddess invariably fail, then finally make the journey and beg forgiveness.

  It takes considerably less time to go down, and when we reach the road we are dry but hungry. It is 4 p.m., and the dhabas on the road don’t sell food anymore. We have tea and catch a bus. Rain clouds prowl overhead. By the time the bus drops us off, it is pouring again, and we get drenched once more. Another dhaba, more tea, but again no food; then another steep climb, the incline almost forty-five degrees, before we arrive at Boileau Ganj, which has the feel now of a metropolis. Dripping, we walk into yet another dhaba, which serves us samosas, chana, jelebis off the fire, and tea. From here, after picking up some vegetables—Mahesh a compulsive buyer of them—we climb up to the Postmaster Flat, where there is a heater and a bottle of brandy.

  It’s taken us ten hours to go visit the Goddess. Some good should come of that, we tell ourselves.

  If the viceroys’ tribe loved gardens, so do the Indians. Fixtures might come off the walls, toilets stink, roofs leak, stairs have deadly unrepaired sections, rugs be coated with dirt and hair, doors be painted over so many times they jam, and window panes have streaks of dried paint running down them—such is the state of maintenance at public places crowded with workers—but public gardens, to put it simply, work. And they work wonderfully; they are tended with care and devotion, they are neat and colourful, and they proliferate.

  A large, lush green lawn is the frontispiece to the Institute, at one side of which stand three Himalayan oaks, a tall, straight-trunked deodar or Himalayan cedar, and a slim tulip tree brought by the British—perhaps the only one in India, the director says, his voice glowing with pride. On the way to the greenhouse and nursery, a juniper and a holly. And everywhere else space permits, flowers: dahlias, gladioli, marigolds, daisies, football lilies, lilies of the valley, torch lilies, white lilies, roses, and irises, in pink, blue, and white, as tall as hedges. The greenhouse this day is a glowing, dizzying red with masses of geraniums stood in rows on stands, all bred and grown locally, among them the prizewinners of a recent flower show wearing their ribbons. A gardener comes up holding a flower. They are dropping, he informs the director, there’s something in the soil. He uses a Hindi word, which the director interprets as “virus.” A brief technical discussion ensues. Whatever level of formal schooling this gardener has received, he is a true horticulturalist.

  At the back of the main building is a long terraced garden on four levels. There are two chinars here on the first level, a rare Japanese maple lower down, two Chinese elms, and the Himalayan variety of pine with drooping needles. And the most imposing one, outside the vicereine’s bedroom window, a massive oak, reputedly six hundred years old, host to a dozen smaller plants growing on, climbing up its bark, basking in its shade on the ground. Two former outdoor tennis courts now make a wild-flower nursery, behind which, at the farther end, in the midst of trees and bush, is an indoor tennis court, now used as a badminton court, its walls constructed of the same grey stone as the main building, with a wooden gallery at one end where once stood a billiard table and the sovereign’s representative perhaps sat watching a game. This day a children’s badminton game is in progress, part of the local welfare program. Other days, the Institute provides music lessons.

  There is no more tennis in Shimla. On the way back a rather odd sight comes into view, a coat of arms fixed on the side of a parapet. These gardens were designed, apparently, by Lady Minto. As you climb the steps back to the main level there stands before you an imposing pedestal of brick or stone, on which is mounted a copper sundial; it is now broken, defaced by tourist scratchings. Also once mounted here, on the parapet, I am told, was a map of the horizon, etched on copper, so that standing looking in the distance and consulting the copper map at your elbow, you could identify the mountain peaks of the Himalayas. It was taken down some time ago.

  An alien race had descended here for a time, so it seems from this vantage point, and then gone away, leaving behind all these amazing structures. Tourists leave behind cigarette packs, potato chip bags, polythene bags, all the indestructible refuse of economic liberalization and Western ways, which the director’s staff picks up every day. Young visitors from abroad hike up all the way from the Mall to gaze at these grounds in silence and wonder was it truly their ancestors who had lived here once in such opulence.

  The sunset today is a tremendous, loud, clanging surprise from the heavens. Initially, an orange slit perforates the clouds in the west, soon a faint c
loud-veiled orange breaks loose and dips behind the mountains. That should have been the end of the day, but suddenly there’s a tinge of faint red in the east, and you know it must come from the sun, but how? You look west again and the whole western sky is ablaze, a fiery red and orange, almost reaching overhead, so bright you can barely face it. The sun god Surya having a final laugh somewhere beyond the horizon. Across the valley, in the east again, the white buildings of the town are bathed in his glow.

  The director, a native of Assam, is the local raja, driven up and down the hill every day to his large opulent home in a white Ambassador with DIRECTOR printed over the licence plate. He is in charge of everything, from funding to labour disputes; wherever he turns, hands join in namastés. He knows every bird call, they say, and can name everything that grows on the ground. But he was trained as a philosopher, in England. Even after sitting through the most jargon-filled seminar he will come up with a precise, plain-worded, incisive question reflecting a philosopher’s clear mind at work.

  But the kingdom rests on shaky ground. Every once in a while the government, which has been generous thus far, reminds the Institute that it is merely a tenant, and so a Damoclean sword hangs over the place. Only other pickings, one supposes, and distance, keep the bureaucrats and politicians at bay, but one fine day they could come and convert the place into a five-star tourist complex with a casino, or a conference centre resort for themselves. It is something too good to be left only to scholars and teachers; it invites takeover, pilferage. It is said that when the public works department replaced the eighty-year-old wooden beams of the greenhouse, material was used which began to rot in a year; meanwhile, the original wood, which was still good, went into private homes. The PWD has also built an ugly concrete apartment building on a green space outside an old Institute cottage, and a courtroom battle has ensued. A building at the gate has been occupied by the local university for a pittance, and the university refuses to budge. What belongs to the government is up for grabs. Fine antique furniture has disappeared and there is not much left of the original. Such are the travails of running the Institute. What amazes is the resignation, a touch of irony maybe, but nevertheless no outrage.

  The Institute has a resident jinn, a flitting peddler to attend to your needs; when you walk to the Mall you see him hurrying the opposite way with his long strides, carrying something back in his jola; when you go to Boileau Ganj, he is there, too, making purchases; when you return, he is already on the grounds; when you visit someone at their office, he suddenly appears, bringing tea from the canteen outside. Square-faced, with a thin moustache, curly hair, chappals on his feet, walking at a slight backward tilt, his jola swinging about his shoulder, he has the manner of a village teacher. He is a presence easy to describe yet unknowable in his personality. For twenty years or more—and he doesn’t look over forty-five—he’s been the local peddler; if there were drugs on the scene he’d be a pusher, I imagine. No sooner do you run into him than he’ll offer you something. He’ll be the first to discover your cigarette habit and take it upon himself to keep you supplied. He’ll corner you on the way to a seminar—“Sah’b you need a cigarette now, take it”—he’ll even call you up to remind you of your habit. He’ll offer to bring you your groceries: “Madam, can I bring you chicken?” Once, he badgered a scholar I was visiting into ordering tea. The reason, apparently, was that she’d got some clout, and he knew she always received a generous supply of milk, not all of which she would use. So after she’d finished preparing her tea, he would take the tray away and place it on a windowsill and drink up the remaining milk, presumably with the sugar. His name is Rampal and he’s already built himself a house, it is said.

  It is my friend Vijaya, the mystic scholar who took me to Jakhoo Temple, who shows me the little church she has discovered.

  After breakfast on a Sunday we walk through the French doors at the rear of the Guest House, past the porch, to a settlement where some of the peons—the lowest-level servants—live with their families in their shacks. Some kids are running around, a young one or two play naked, a woman combs the hair of a girl who sits in front of her. A man smiles at us; he is the oldest of the dining room workers and finished serving us not long ago. A short distance ahead is the church, which Vijaya has already visited once. Although she had looked nervous that evening on the road to Jakhoo, I have discovered that she is an intrepid hiker and has been to all the temples in the area at least once. She assumes a peculiar gait during her walking expeditions, hanging forward as she takes her lengthy strides, her arms swinging forward and backward at an angle.

  The church is an old rectangular red-brick building, its short side visible from a distance and distinguished by a large wheel-like attachment above the door under the pitched roof. As you draw closer, you see on the wheel a makeshift patch made of flattened tin containers, on top of which is a red Christian cross. A sign on the wall says, “ANGLICAN CHURCH, DIOCESE OF BOILEAU GANJ, REV PARDESI.”

  As we enter, a short dark man welcomes us fervently; he is finishing sweeping the floor, which is of dusty, crumbled concrete. There is a lectern at the far end, covered by a white cloth with a cross on it.

  It is a completely dilapidated interior we have walked into, roughly twenty-five by a hundred feet. It’s been stripped bare: apart from the draped lectern and three metal chairs, there is no other furniture. Old wood panelling covers the lower half of one side wall; the plaster above has peeled off in places, the uprights are rotten. The windowpanes are plain and simple; around their rectangular frames are the arched shadows of the presumably more elegant original windows. There are two lightbulbs, both turned on, hanging from the rafters. By way of added decor, about twenty potted plants have been brought to stand in a huddle on the opposite side of the panelled wall.

  The reverend proceeds to lay out two rough, red carpets on the swept but still dusty floor; this first layer is covered by another, newer carpet on which goes a cloth spread. Beyond this covering he places the three chairs. Another rough piece of red carpet forms the runner to the lectern. He places seven pairs of hymn books on the covered floor, one in Hindi and English, the other in Hindi only. He gives a pair each to me and my companion, asks us to sit on two of the chairs, and gives us a black Bible, which is in English. Then he goes to the lectern and begins the service. There are only the two of us in the congregation, neither one born or brought up a Christian.

  It is a sight at once pathetic as it is inspiring. What is the point of this performance? It must be that he believes in his truth and his calling, and he must carry on. What would he have done without our presence?

  He sings a hymn in English, in not the best of voices, then reads the story of Cain and Abel from Genesis. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” In another twist of irony, both of us, schooled in former British colonies, familiar with Western culture, can pick out the chapter and verses from the Bible.

  In between Bible readings are sung hymns in Hindi—Christian bhajans—which he sings off-key, banging a tambourine in accompaniment.

  Suddenly two girls of about eight arrive, with neat pigtails and wearing clean clothes, and sit on the clothed carpet in front of us. The reverend goes on, exhorting them to join him in singing, but they are too shy. Epistles of Paul and John follow, in Hindi. And then he begins a sermon, the subject being the treatment of our fellow beings: Cain was the murderer; Jesus says don’t even call your brother a fool; and John says if you are angry, you are a murderer…

  Towards the conclusion, two couples arrive, with a baby, parents it seems of the two girls. The women are better dressed than the men, who look like labourers. I wonder if they have arrived late because they don’t have the patience for the reverend’s full hour of service.

  “Lord they love you, but bring them closer to you,” says Reverend Pardesi, referring to us in the final prayer, and when it is over he comes to say goodbye at the door and tells us to return next Sunday.

  As we depart, past the rubble, the stones, and
the cowpats, I wonder, Surely the viceroy might have attended here sometimes?

  Waning Days in the Hills: Recalling Love, Art, and Politics

  This blemished light, this dawn by night half-devoured

  Is surely not the dawn for which we were waiting.

  This cannot be the dawn in quest of which, hoping

  To find it somewhere, friends, we all set out.

  FAIZ AHMED FAIZ, “The Dawn of Freedom”

  “IT HASN’T COME OUT, HAS IT,” she says regretfully.

  No, she’s not quite captured the previous evening’s glorious sunset in her watercolour. Her husband, Bhishm-ji, comes into the living room which is also her studio and says he’ll make the tea.

  “I will,” she offers.

  “No, I’ll do it.” And he goes to the kitchen.

  “I was good,” she says to me. “I used to take lessons in Delhi, just after my wedding. I was eighteen.”

  This was before the Partition, her father was with the police and had been transferred to the capital for prosecution duty.

  Bhishm-ji comes in with the tea and says something in Punjabi, which I take to be, “Did the painting come out all right?”

  “No,” she replies.

  “Next time,” he tells her, a sympathetic smile on his face.

  Later he lights a cigarette and they share it.