In the Shadow of Crows

by David Charles Manners

  By morning, my bed was sodden.

  My disgust at finding mice droppings in my sheets was soon surpassed when I looked at my flushed and haggard features in the broken bathroom mirror. Stuck to my hair was a half-squashed cockroach with legs outstretched, as if suspended in an ultimate, energetic star-jump.

  In revulsion, I leapt to turn on the taps. There was no water.

  In anger, I kicked the corroded pipes. They did not even gurgle.

  I sought a solitary comfort in the pristine whiteness of my toothpaste and scrubbed my teeth with vigour, determined that at least one part of my body would feel clean. I rinsed with a careful measure of depleted drinking water, then chewed at the brush’s nylon bristles as though their residual mintiness might assuage my misery.

  If only it could have been Priya’s puris, or Grandmother’s Dijon-drenched muslin that had been true.

  ***

  Bindra woke to the sound of men in the forest. She opened her eyes and stared into the dawn. She quickly slid her hand around Jyothi’s waist and drew him close.

  The voices were approaching. She listened intently. Nepalis, who spoke her own dialect.

  Bindra sat bolt upright.

  The two figures in the trees stopped still.

  She could make out the formal dress of white suruwal trousers worn tight on muscular legs, and the black dhaka topi caps on their heads. The white daura tunics drawn around their stocky torsos by a patuka sash, collars tied close to symbolise the serpent of liberating knowledge that enwraps Lord Shiva’s blue-stained throat. She could see that one wore rudraksha mala strings and a cloth bag stitched with kauri shells across his chest.

  The two men peered towards her.

  “Jhankri-jyu! Kushal Magar dajoo!” she cried. “Last night I dreamed that you were coming to me! And here you are, brought with the sunlight!”

  The kindly jhankri stared in astonishment. “Bahini? How can you be here, in this forest?”

  “But dajoo, brother, how can you be here, so far from Lapu basti?” she gasped.

  Neither seemed to need to answer the other’s question.

  “I knew you would come!” Jyothi smiled. He had been awoken by the exchange and clapped his hands as the jhankri and his companion approached, their strong shoulders laden with provisions. “We did Lord Kubera’s puja one week ago, didn’t we Ama? And his Punyajana brought you to us!”

  Bindra explained that she and her sons were travelling to Kakariguri on the Plains, in search of foreigners’ medicine to heal her. The jhankri was pleased. He said it was good and right. He in turn explained that he was travelling with his brother Darpan to an ancestral village on the Darjeeling road, to undertake the annual baje-boju puja for his mother’s forebears.

  “But, jhankri-dajoo,” Jyothi interrupted with marked intent, “you are here to tell the ban jhankri it’s time to give my brother back!”

  Kushal Magar looked at Bindra. She rocked her head from side to side in anxious affirmation.

  “Bhai,” he said softly to Jyothi, “the ban jhankri are great masters. Not like me. I can ask for you, little brother. But I cannot promise that the ban jhankri of this forest will listen.”

  Jyothi stood up and boldly approached the two visitors, dragging his thin blanket behind him. “Yesterday I dug iskusko jara and tarulko jara. I shall light a fire, Ama will bake the squash root and tapioca, then you can ask the ban jhankri to bring my brother back!”

  Kushal Magar laughed. “Then, bhai, you light the fire so your ama can cook, and my brother and I shall prepare for puja!”

  Jyothi did not say a word, but ran towards the trees to gather fresh kindling, his whole face alight with new smiles.

  ***

  The air was still and stifling as I ventured out into the blinding daylight. I could feel the calenture coursing through my body with new cruelty, tearing at my mind with malicious intent.

  As familiar rickshaw-wallahs, touts and erotic-miniature sellers ran towards me, the heat and filth, the aggressive demands for money and attempts at pickpocketing were suddenly no longer tolerable.

  I had to get out of Udaipur. Now.

  For two and a half hours, I queued in the train station, dragging my rucksack across the concourse floor. I filled in forms and queued again. I was sent from window to window, only to be told that there were no seats.

  There were no seats on any trains.

  There were no seats on any trains for the next five days.

  I was convinced of some conspiracy between the hotel owners and the booking-office staff, so went in search of the senior station master. The man looked strained, as though permanently sucking in his belly in order to fit into someone else’s military-style uniform. Barrel-chested and brusque, he barely deigned to rest even a glance on my perspiring figure before curtly ordering me to write him a formal letter, “for politely requesting a seat”.

  But where was I to find writing paper, pen and envelope? He ignored my impertinent question. Instead he made a loud, viscous snort, and spat a gelatinous projectile towards my toes.

  Through the back door of a station office, I caught sight of a tubby little man dawdling beside an impossibly cluttered desk. He burst into life as I knocked on the doorframe, announcing with flamboyant pride that he was “Station-secretary-sixteen-years’serviceSir!” With unabashed coquetry, he flashed his close-set eyes and well-formed teeth, and declared me “a-most-handsome-youngwelcome-guest-in-my-country-Sir!” He was giggling and wiggling with such heightening ebullience that I had to look away with unease.

  He did, however, agree to donate a piece of scrap paper and a pencil, on the condition that I promised to post him a generous selection of books from England.

  “Only-big-lovely-colour-picture-volumes-and-expensive-to-buy-Sir!”

  In that moment, all residual patience evaporated. Incensed with the absurdity of the situation, made fragile by my fever, and desperate to escape this suffocating office with its sticky-sweet, diabetic odour, I dishonestly agreed. Brightly coloured and costly beyond imagination the tomes would most certainly be.

  In gratitude, he offered to spend a night with me in my hotel, if a seat on the train was not forthcoming. I politely declined, but thanked him for his inordinate, giggly, wiggly hospitality.

  I immediately delivered a hasty letter to the office of the senior station master, and was instructed to return in five hours. Only then might a decision as to whether or not I would be allowed on the train be decided.

  Five hours. I had to wait five hours.

  I lingered outside the crowded “Men Only” waiting room, until I caught sight of the secretary through the doorway. He was still wiggling in his chair, flashing his teeth, waving at me with a little too much enthusiasm.

  I nodded politely, turned my back, then promptly plunged into the riot of the station forecourt.

  ***

  “Aung Baneshkandaya nama ...”

  Kushal Magar withdrew long chains of ghanti bells from his cloth bag, which he draped around his neck and across his chest. He tied a length of white cloth around his waist to represent the consciousness of semen: Shiva. He tied a length of red cloth around his waist to represent the energy of menses: Shakti. He knotted the sashes tightly on his left side, a reminder that he, like all existence, embodied both these principal forces in the cosmos.

  Kushal Magar bound his head in a white scarf, over which he donned a headdress stitched with feathers and small kauri shells. The short pipe made from a human arm-bone was sounded. Kushal Magar unwrapped the thurmi dagger from its cloth binding and drew a circle on the forest floor. He marked the eight directions with the white, paper-thin totala seeds sacred to the ban jhankri.

  “Aung satom bhi dhumba damdim vajradhumbha ...”

  He dipped the ceremonial dagger into the smoking ash of the dried gur
ubuwa teaching plants he had ignited in the dhupauro bowl. Ganja cannabis, titepati mugwort, hasana night jasmine. He dropped an intuitively measured portion of psychotropic saal resin onto the glowing embers of the new fire.

  Finally, he offered two drops of his own blood to the flames, by the pricking of his navel with the consecrated dumsi porcupine quill, as evidence of his self-surrender.

  Kushal Magar sat cross-legged in the centre of the circle. He offered his mura drum to the rising smoke, as his brother struck the brass discs of the mujura cymbals to sound the supreme union of the universe.

  Kushal Magar placed on his tongue a small piece of cooked gurboko jara cobra lily root and closed his eyes.

  The spiral journey of the jhankri had begun.

  ***

  Outside Udaipur railway station, I bartered a price with a rickshawwallah. He agreed to cycle around the more pleasant and less crowded areas of the old city, whilst I sat huddled up and shivering beneath the rickshaw canopy.

  Bounded by wooded hills and bathing ghats, we stopped at Lake Pichola, the “Sapphire Udaipur”, in which stood two gleaming island palaces. As my driver wandered off to urinate and spit scarlet paan into the shallows, I sat in the sweet-scented, dappled shade of gaunt acacias to watch ducks dabble, swallows swoop and ioras flare emerald and amber like silk shot with gold.

  A lithe young man rose from the lake before me, glistening in the sunlight. As he stood to wipe the water from his eyes and smoothed back his black hair, I smiled at the thought of my wan, von Aschenbach face blinking out from my motorised bathchair at this dark-skinned Tadzio. The boy looked up and cocked his head. He grinned with knowing, waved, then dived back into the blue.

  Across the lake rose the towering walls, balconies, cupolas and hanging gardens of the largest palace complex in all of Rajasthan. Even in my fever, the temptation was too great.

  It was thus to the carved-marble arches of its northern entrance, where Maharajas were once customarily weighed and their weight in gold or silver distributed to the populace, that I next instructed my driver to take me.

  ***

  Kushal Magar slumped forwards.

  The writhing and drumming had stopped.

  The forest was quiet.

  Jyothi looked to his mother. Her eyes were closed.

  Kushal Magar stirred.

  “Jhanar,” he murmured. “The waterfall. The ban jhankri will return him at the waterfall.”

  ***

  I fought my way through the vociferous mobs of unofficial guides excited at the sight of an end-of-season visitor, and entered the relative cool of cloistered courtyards, mirrored hallways, piercedmarble corridors, and painted walls depicting extravagant courtly life and creative love.

  I had vividly imagined Udaipur’s City Palace as a child, for it had been from its royal menagerie that Kipling’s Jungle Book Bagheera had escaped to forest freedom. Even as childhood had become adolescence, Kipling’s panther had continued to stalk my dreams, and I now found myself astonished to be standing in a very real building that still maintained the appearance of my having stepped into a storybook.

  I flopped faintly by an arid fountain, beneath the fragrant racemes of a graceful tree. I was shivering feverishly again. I had been unable to eat a thing since leaving Dalba, three days before, but now acknowledged that I needed to build my strength. I decided to search out plain rice and bland vegetables - “boiley-food”, as my father’s mother used to call such convalescent fare - to find that I was struggling to stand.

  I was the only customer at the rabble of plastic garden furniture beneath a sun-scorched marquee that passed as the palace restaurant. When my order arrived, I could distinctly smell urine. I concluded that I had become so accustomed to the all-pervading, frowzy stench that it was now permanently lodged in my nostrils.

  I dabbed the perspiration cascading down my temples, neck and throat with a fist of pink paper napkins, before prodding at the limp vegetables. I had to try.

  I thrust a single forkful of wet rice and unseasoned potato into my mouth, but could not swallow.

  The taste of food on my tongue, taken from a bowl that I had been able to buy with such nonchalance, stirred visions of starvation, crippled limbs and reasty corpses. The vivid summary of images fused with a fearful guilt, revulsion and despair that now overwhelmed both heart and mind.

  I slumped forwards in the chair to rest my burning head in moist, hot hands. I was on fire, giddy with resurgent fever, nauseous with shame and self-loathing for the naivety and indulgence of my life.

  I did not want to remember why I had come to this place, to Udaipur, to India, to poverty, suffering and squalor. I did not want to admit that however far I travelled from a shattered tree in a quiet lane, the memories from which I ran would still be true. The broken ribs and bloodied lungs. The slow and lonely death.

  I pushed the vegetables aside and spat the contents of my mouth into disintegrating napkins, as I struggled to contain compulsive retching.

  ***

  The climb was hard and long, and took two days.

  Kushal and Darpan Magar led the way, but Bindra panted hard and often had to stop. Little Jiwan’s legs could never have carried him this far.

  As the watery rumble of the fall finally grew near, Bindra paused at a Shakti Tree. She bowed her head in pranam, both to catch her breath and show her respect to the tiger-riding Mother, whom she too embodied. Jyothi ran to her side bearing scarlet petals from a lallipatti, which he placed in reverent offering at the weather-worn feet of the Goddess held firm in its roots. It was Durga who represented the strength within that had sustained them in their sojourn amongst the trees. It was Durga who represented the strength that would enable Bindra to bear the challenges that she knew were yet to come.

  And then, “Bahini!”

  Kushal Magar and his brother were standing by the edge of a forest pool, into which bright waters pounded.

  Bindra could not contain the cry that tore from her throat. Seated on a rocky platform in the centre of the churning waters was a naked child. She stumbled forwards and fell to her knees, gasping. Jyothi danced around her in excitement, waving frantically to his brother.

  “Ama, it’s Jiwan-bhai!” he cried. “The ban jhankri has given him back to us! Ama! Ama!”

  “Dhanyabad! Thank you!” was all Bindra could mutter, as she watched Darpan Magar quickly strip down to bare skin and swim towards the motionless Jiwan.

  Chapter Eight

  My obsequious letter to the station master at Udaipur had worked. I had been approved for a berth on the night train.

  A buck-toothed teenager followed me from the platform to my compartment, where he proudly introduced himself as “Injan Wailrayz buk sellah, sah’b.” He had made his poor clothes so presentable and had oiled his hair into the finest colonial-schoolboy parting-and-fringe that I felt obliged to purchase one of his prudently plastic-bag-wrapped, paperback books. With only a cloth sack around his narrow neck in which to carry his wares, the literary selection on offer was both limited and uninspiring. Neither the Krishna Calorie Counter, nor the Jackie Collins best-seller, discreetly bound in a disguise of brown paper, appealed.

  I chose instead Agatha Christie’s By The Pricking Of My Thumbs. However, the story would turn out to be much more of a convoluted mystery than the novelist had ever intended. Whilst the spelling in my Indian-published copy was creatively eccentric, the cheap print had smudged whole passages into indecipherability. To further obscure the tale, pages were missing throughout, and those that remained attached to the budget binding had been inserted in a confusingly capricious order.

  I had tipped my friendly rickshaw-wallah with the last of my coins, so I paid for my slim, but incomprehensible, volume with a note. However, in my dizzy fever I gave my “buk sellah” 500, instead of 100 rupees. By the time I realised my inatte
ntion, he was nowhere to be seen. I was livid with myself for being so careless, and furious with him for not acknowledging my mistake.

  I petulantly kicked off my shoes and climbed up into my upper bunk, feeling very sorry for my situation. Sick, weak, taken advantage of. Poor thing.

  I huddled up against my rucksack in an effort to contain incendiary emotions born not only from my own negligence that had enabled the young vendor to cheat me, but my whole upbringing. I was coming to believe that, in my youthful innocence, I had allowed myself to be seduced by an image of an India that did not exist. I had been duped by tales of elegant comforts and exotic luxuries that had merely been a mirage, an illusion fashioned by previous generations on nothing more than the enforcement of colonial privilege and the vile deception of an imagined racial superiority, in which I now felt I had unwittingly played a part.

  Suddenly, the book-boy reappeared in the cabin.

  “Your change, sah’b,” he said, offering me 400 rupees in carefully flattened notes and a conscientiously written receipt in an elegant hand.

  I stared at the paper in his outstretched palm, unable to articulate a suitable response in my shame and embarrassment. I had automatically expected the worst of him. I had assumed him to be a scoundrel, like the other scurrilous urbanites who filled the rickshaw ranks, hotels and tourist-centred streets, all trying to scratch a basic living in an over-populated country oppressed by social divisions and all-pervasive corruption.

  “You sad, sah’b?” he asked, eyebrows bonding in concern. I told him I was fine.

  “Be happy, sah’b,” he smiled.

  And waited until I smiled back.

  ***

  Jiwan was quiet, still and apparently unharmed.

  “Where have you been?” Jyothi asked. “You’ve been gone for days!”