In the Shadow of Crows

by David Charles Manners

  Bindra suddenly could not bear to think of her little Jiwan amongst the taboo-breaking Aghori Babas.

  “Behenji,” the Aghori looked into her eyes, drawing her back from the dark anxiety in which she was losing herself. “Sister, no need for fear. No problem.”

  ***

  “Young chap,” Mr Duppa announced, “I’m as old as the century! I had an English father, became a planter in 1919, and attribute my uncommon longevity to an unfaltering abstinence of salt, chillies, meat, alcohol and tobacco - in addition, of course, to the devotion of a loving wife.”

  I nodded with an appreciative smile, and thought of his plate secretly piled high with lamb chops.

  We were sitting in an old wooden house handsomely furnished with Victorian mahogany and teak, its walls and floors draped in richly dyed cloth and hand-woven carpets.

  I looked up to meet the eyes of Mrs Duppa, who had appeared in the doorway. She bowed in greeting and offered me a plate of spiced egg sandwiches. Like her kindly husband, she had retained a remarkable elegance, even beauty, despite the stains of age.

  “Now, Mister David,” he continued, “I am informed by the Club of your search for your Uncle Oscar.”

  I nodded, my mouth full of peppery deliciousness.

  “We knew him well,” Mrs Duppa added nonchalantly, thrusting a plate of sweetly scented sour-milk cake slices beneath my nose.

  I was stunned.

  “You knew him?” I spluttered, in such surprise that I momentarily lost co-ordination and inhaled my first mouthful of cake. “Oh my, yes! You did not realise this?” asked Mr Duppa.

  I shook my head, unable to speak as I was trying to dislodge the lump of creamy stodge now stuck in my throat.

  “My wife’s cousin, Premlal, married Lily. So you see, we are related! You know Lily?”

  I shook my bewildered head.

  “Oscar’s eldest daughter. A most luxurious woman. She wore golden ear pieces, precious native necklaces and never used the same handkerchief twice. She also had a passion for pet rabbits, which was considered highly eccentric in these hills,” he chuckled, sipping noisily at his tea. “Then there was Tuss, of course, who disappeared off to sail the seas with a parrot on his shoulder. Winnie was a wild one - called a ‘flapper’ in those days - who was always running away, until her pet monkey bit her and she died of lockjaw. The youngest daughter, Elinnie, was beautiful, intelligent, with a gift for music, and loved by all - but she went away and never came back. And last of all, Harry, who was named after me!”

  My head was spinning. My Grandmother’s clandestine whispers had been true. Tears began to run down my cheeks.

  “Oh, how we understand your emotion at hearing our chitterchatter of your old family, all now expired,” Mrs Duppa nodded in sympathy.

  A touching moment it may have been. However, the cause of my watering eyes was the cake lodged fast in my windpipe, which was now causing me to struggle for breath.

  Mr Duppa continued, oblivious.

  “Young Harry and his wife - also a Eurasian, as we mixed-blood of the so-called ‘Domiciled Community’ were once called - spent much time here with us. He was a freeman of independent means, so left for New Zealand, or some such spot that was British and sunny, and we unhappily did not hear of him again.”

  My distress at the prospect of having survived violence, disease and dangerous jungle in my journey across India only to lose my life to a surfeit of teacake, caught the attention of Mrs Duppa. She had, at last, begun to realise that my strained expression was much more than immoderate sentimentality.

  Still Mr Duppa continued.

  “Oh, but Darjeeling was magical then, of course. The Governor and his entourage would spend the six summer months here, if not at Simla, to escape Calcutta at its worst. They would stay at the Club, while the planters moved into the Elgin and Park Hotels. And such balls we had! The Darjeeling Gymkhana had a Burmese teak floor so perfectly sprung that we could dance all night and never once tire! And every day the streets were washed so as not to soil the memsahibs’ white dresses, all ordered from European dhurzi tailors. They even had hairdressers brought in, just for the season, all the way from Paris! Can you imagine?”

  I could not.

  Rather, I had given up all hope for myself and had turned my concerns instead to the effect on my genial hosts of a discourteous demise on their chaise longue.

  At that moment, the octogenarian Mrs Duppa leapt to her feet. She swung towards me with alarming speed and belted me across the back with a force that quite surpassed her age.

  The incident seemed to endear me to Mr Duppa because, whilst they laughed and I apologised as a servant cleaned up the ejaculated soggy crumbs, he told me that in the future I was to call him Uncle Harry. He glanced at his pocket watch, then indicated to me that it was time that we go together into the bazaar. I obediently bade fond farewells to his sweetly smiling, powerfully dextrous spouse, who insisted I take with me a full tiffin’s-worth of cake and sandwiches, which the maid had already bound in brown paper.

  My new uncle took my arm as we walked back into the crush of the old bazaar, busy with all manner of mountain people from across the Eastern Himalaya. In his three-piece suit, wide-brimmed hat, and with a confident swing in his polished cane, he walked me straight to the home of a swarthy Tibetan. They muttered to each other on the front step, whereupon Uncle Harry announced that at seven the following morning, Gombu would drive me in his jeep, eastwards across the mountains, to a town called Kalimpong. There, I was to stay at a hotel called the Himalayan View.

  “Ask the proprietor for directions to the home of Doctor Alex,” Uncle Harry insisted. “None but he has the answers for which you have come.”

  ***

  Bindra was sitting up in bed.

  The heat was unbearable. The air stagnant. Her head throbbing.

  Jyothi had gone to the Nepali temple for the afternoon. He had promised to do puja at the lingam on her behalf. He had promised to bring back sidur to mark her forehead, to honour the divinity within.

  Bindra shifted herself again. She had been warned by the doctor not to remain in one place for too long. The loss of sensation in her body risked her lying motionless for hours, unaware of the deficiency of blood in her veins, the ulcerating pressure on her bones.

  Even so, Bindra could not stay still. These days she was constantly agitated until Jyothi was back with her, cuddled against her on the bed. He had not used his bedroll once since Jiwan had gone. She could feel his loneliness.

  She wondered whether the Aghori Baba was really out on the cremation ghats searching for Jiwan. Was he looking properly amongst the crowds? Was he asking every dom that cremates the dead? Was he searching all the Bhairava temples in the city, and not just the Aghori mandir near Thatheri Bazaar?

  Bindra wiped perspiration from her forehead with a bandaged hand. She scanned the other women with whom she shared the little room. Most were sleeping in the heat. None could speak Nepali. All had been ravaged by leprosy. She wondered where they had come from and what had brought them to Kashi. She wondered if they too had lost their homes. And their children.

  Bindra stared into the haze beyond the window, searching for the promise of a breeze to ease her mind. She longed to be outside, on hillsides, in forest.

  Bindra suddenly longed to be anywhere but here.

  ***

  Back at the Planters’ Club, I sat beneath a dilapidated gazebo in the garden to try to write the first letters home since my arrival in India. It was time to explain my sudden disappearance, both to my parents and to Priya’s. I had been so consumed by my own grief, that I had not once considered theirs. I needed to apologise, to give account of myself, and it was not until now that I had felt able to begin to find the words.

  I was still struggling with the opening lines of the first page when a young
boy in a smart school uniform confidently approached.

  “Uncle,” he addressed me courteously, “will you play TT with me?”

  I had no idea what he meant.

  “TT, uncle! Tabletop Tennis! Will you play with me?” His polite pleas were irresistible.

  Ambreesh from Calcutta passed a very long hour indeed beating me at every game, before we were abruptly interrupted by an anxious Yashu.

  “Forgive my goodness, sir. Just to be warning of much possibly troubles in town,” he announced in earnest. “For your sake, sir, please be keeping out from bazaar!”

  Little Ambreesh shrugged his shoulders. He shook my hand, graciously thanked me for letting him win, which in truth I had not, and ran to find his parents.

  I left the safety of the Club as jeeps began to invade the streets, grinding their gears beneath the weight of angry youths waving green flags and chanting “Gorkhaland! Gorkhaland!” Lorryloads of Gorkha National Liberation Front militants had begun to pour into Darjeeling to hear their leader, Subash Ghising, threaten to revive aggressive agitation for the creation of a new mountain state within the Indian Union. I decided to take my self-appointed valet’s advice and slip away from the town centre.

  I walked quickly along the Nehru Road, where shopkeepers were hurriedly pulling down shutters. I scuttled across Chowrasta, where Gilbert and Sullivan had once rung out from the bandstand, but twitchy soldiers now gathered with rifles ready.

  I reached the road for Observatory Hill as the mountains began to resound with violent ranting blasted through megaphones, demanding political independence from the Marxist state of West Bengal. Chilled by tales of riots, murders and bombings here just a few years earlier - all of which seemed wholly irreconcilable with these gentle-mannered, tolerant hill people - I decided to keep my distance and visit the Gymkhana Club.

  The main doors of the old building were guarded by a stocky little Gurkha. He was unexpectedly rude and adamantly refused me entrance. I grizzled under my breath and was about to turn away, when he promptly softened.

  “You’re a Britisher?”

  I replied that I most certainly was.

  “Oh, I am apologising!” he burst. “I am much accustomed to barging Americans that I was not considering, until I was hearing of your fine speech. Of course you may by-golly enter,” he offered in penance. “And in my friendly sorryness, I am giving you a marvellous jolly guiding!”

  The Club was a rambling building, parts of which seemed to be fast approaching dereliction. My diminutive escort led me through the banqueting hall with its precarious musicians’ gallery, and the library with its empty mahogany shelves. The numerous games rooms with their worn baize card-tables and ornate scoreboards from which all brass inlay had been meticulously picked. The drinking salons with their cracked, smoked mirrors and splintered, linen-fold panelling. The cavernous ballroom, the moorghi-khana “hen house” for the mems, and then the vast upstairs skating rink, once so popular amongst the ladies for all those inevitable “collisions” with eager bachelors.

  I had to catch my breath at what must have once been an exquisite tiered theatre. It still had its original hangings, now suspended from their fixings in shreds. Painted flats were stacked in optimistic readiness for another season of Barrie and Shaw, but were now rotting to tatters in the scenery store. The auditorium had retained the ruins of once elegant seating, although the orchestra pit was now home to a pack of wild dogs.

  My doorman reverently showed me into the old boardroom, still with its original long teak table, surrounded by chairs. He suddenly drew so close to me that I thought he was about to plant a kiss on my chin in appreciation for my nationality.

  “I fought for our most goodly king in the War,” he announced with emotion, “and am receiving a bally handsome pension from your fine marvellous country.”

  I assured him that I was delighted, and that his annuity was no doubt well deserved.

  “But,” he hissed, “the Britishers have not left this place, I am telling you! At nights when I am guarding they come!” His eyes widened and his lips seemed to pale in genuine fear. “If I am not attentive to my duties, if I am placing these chairs this way and that, in the willy-nillies, they come around when I am at my least expecting to push me so hard that I am left all tipsy-topsy!”

  He quietly shut the door and led me, with exaggerated stealth, to the bottom of the main staircase.

  “In day-time and night-time, those old Britishers come back, drinking in the bar their top Club whiskies,” he whispered with intensity. “Now you are not believing perhaps, but many have heard their talking, their merry chinkling of glasses and creakly footsteppings.” He gripped my arm tightly. “But one which gives me most the terrorful jeebies is a pukka sah’b who is walking down so jolly quiet and disappearing, oh my gollies, in this very same spot,” and he indicated to the foot of the stairs.

  I could have listened to his tales for hours, but dusk was fast descending and I needed to return to the Planters’ before I was caught up in any riots in the darkening town below. As I thanked him for his kind indulgence, my retired soldier, evidently fearful of the coming night and the persistent ghosts of sahibs and mems, hugged me tightly in farewell, his head only reaching my chest.

  “Be most forgiving, sir, but you could be my very son,” he mumbled into my coat buttons.

  ***

  When Bindra woke, the sun was low. The cooling air moved sluggishly, bearing on it the sweet incense of innumerable pujas. Jyothi was sitting beside her, in silence.

  “Timi thakay ko chau?” she asked him. “Are you tired?” No response.

  “Jyothi?”

  Nothing. She drew herself close to him.

  “Ama?” he asked quietly. “Am I going to die?”

  Bindra sat up, enabling him to rest his head in her lap.

  “What a question for such a young boy!” she chuckled to disguise her unease at his uncharacteristic demeanour. Jiwan would ask such a thing. But not Jyothi.

  She hugged him closer.

  “You know we are all born and that we all die. Life and death, sickness and health are just part of the natural order . . .”

  She paused to consider her words.

  “That’s why we see Lord Shiva as both bearer of the eternally creative lingam and as dancer of the Tandava that causes the cosmos to unravel,” she continued slowly. “And Shakti may be expressed both as Annapurna, who nourishes life into being, and as Kali Ma, who absorbs it all back into its original, inert state. You see? Creation and dissolution are the two principal forces of all existence. One is not ‘good’ and the other ‘bad’. They are both indivisible aspects of the same eternal process. Two ends of the same stick!”

  Jyothi did not respond.

  “Even the deodars, Lord Shiva’s most revered cypress trees in our high Hills, rise and rise until they touch the sky, only to fall back to the earth from which they sprang,” she explained. “Even the stars in their innumerable crores appear in brilliance, only to tumble back at the twinkle of an eye into the same darkness that gave them birth. We all come and we all go, like sun and moon, cold season and monsoon. It is the natural order,” she repeated. “It is all as it should be.”

  Jyothi gently placed his hand on her arm.

  “And what happens when I die, Ama? Where do I go?”

  “Well,” she took a deep breath, “Bahun priests with their laws and castes, and mountain lamas with their Dharma and Buddhas, believe each of us is born again in another body. Many times, over and over. They believe that if we’re ‘good’, we’re born as a paleskinned Brahmin, or as a holy monk. And if we’re ‘bad’, they say we’re born dark-skinned, low caste - or as a woman!” she chuckled out loud. “But, of course amongst our people, it’s different,” she emphasised. “We don’t hold to caste, do we?”

  Jyothi shook his head.<
br />
  “We see all men, all women as equal.”

  Jyothi rocked his head from side to side in agreement.

  “We see all life, in all its forms, as an expression of Shiva and Shakti - consciousness and energy - in perfect union.”

  “So when I die?” Jyothi reminded her.

  “When we die, all the elements from which we are made, including the knowledge we have learned and the wisdom we have gained, return to earth, plant and animal. To fire and water, air and sky. All back to the single, underlying source from which new life continually springs.”

  Jyothi now lay very still.

  “So you see, we each have a responsibility to seek out good knowledge and learn true wisdom,” she impressed on him. “Each life has a bearing on what comes after. Nothing and no one is lost. For, in truth, there is no ‘death’, no destruction, no end. Only absorption back into the ceaseless course of creation.”

  Jyothi listened hard. He listened for answers and understanding. “My good, kind boy,” Bindra assured him, “as you grow older, you will see how our gods and our puja all help us to understand this essential truth.”

  Jyothi put his arms around his mother and hugged her tightly.

  “Ama,” he whispered, “I hope I have life enough to learn.”

  ***

  With “Gorkhaland! Gorkhaland!” still ringing through the town, and half-sized Rambo-imitators storming through the streets in green headscarves, waving flags and tying banners to drainpipes, I was relieved to reach the Club without incident.

  The fog that had enshrouded Darjeeling since my arrival had begun to dissipate in the late afternoon sun. I paused to look from the balcony across rooftops and market, wooded heights and dark valleys, but was quickly driven inside by an increasingly aggressive wind. I entered the room to find my bed prepared and curtains closed, the fire lit and bath towel hung nearby to warm through.