In the Shadow of Crows

by David Charles Manners

  Bindra sealed her promise by touching each dark head in turn, then turned back to Sushmita. “Why would anyone do such a thing?” she asked.

  Sushmita dropped her voice to a desperate whisper. “The slum colony said they wouldn’t pay the Collectors any more!” she almost mouthed. “They said they no longer need their bad, expensive medicines or their ‘protection’. Foreigners have come to give them all they need. The Collectors have lost their power. It seems the slum colony is free!”

  Bindra pressed her cheek to the trio of warm heads that leant against her chest. A single caw rang out above them. She looked at the new shadow that stretched out on the ground before her. The shadow of a single crow that had alighted directly above her door.

  She smiled.

  “What is it, behenji?” Sushmita whispered. “You’re not afraid?”

  “Afraid?” Bindra chuckled. “Why would I be afraid? It is today that my son will find me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I spent the morning in the charity hostel. The residents were delighted, the teachers tense and taciturn.

  I taught volleyball in the dustbowl of the “sports ground” and yoga on the prickly grass, yet still my mind could not free itself from the violence of the previous night. Violence beyond the perimeter fence, cruelly perpetrated by the slum dwellers against the most vulnerable in their midst. Violence - and even deaths - because of us.

  “Don’t come, sah’b-ji,” Bhim Vir had sobbed in the fading glow of last night’s torchlight, as Ben and I had tended his bruised limbs, the cuts on his head and swollen eye. “Not safe for you. Not safe yet.”

  I had wanted to go straight down into the slum, to see for myself what we could do. But Bhim was adamant.

  “Please be waiting, sah’b-ji. You come now and those damn goondas they’ll be watching. They are saying they’ll be cutting your throat. We leper-types are okay. All’s too big danger now. Sah’bji, please be waiting.”

  As the morning bell was rung, I could not think of eating any lunch. Ben was already in the bazaar, buying up a long list of medical supplies, from both pharmacies and herbalist pansaris. I sipped at my boiled water with disinterest. I threw the remains of my banana to the waiting crows. They paid it no attention.

  I knew that it was unproductive to indulge the fretful guilt that threatened to submerge me. If I could not yet enter the slum, then I would go back to the forest colony and continue my rounds until Bhim confirmed it was safe to return to his community.

  I filtered and twice boiled water from the tap. I poured it, steaming, into thermos flasks. I bundled bandages, wadding, gauze, disinfectant, surgical gloves and jars of honey into my big red bowl.

  I kicked at the dust and sun-crisped leaves beneath my feet as I began the long walk into the trees. I tried not to think of the slum beyond the boundary fence, from which I was temporarily forbidden for the sake of many more than me.

  I thought instead of the cheery faces about to greet me at the lingam in the roots of the old peepal tree, at the entrance of the forest colony. Only then could I muster a smile for the promise of new friends, for the bright sky above, and for the flight of soundless crows that seemed to be deliberately following my route.

  ***

  Bindra’s fever had steadily, fiercely increased.

  And yet she had spent the morning carefully brushing the floor of her hut with a loose bundle of dry grass. To disguise her shivering, she had struggled into a tatty jumper that had once belonged to Jasoda.

  Bindra hobbled to the pump to wet her face and hair, to rinse her mouth, then hobbled back to rebind her head with cloth.

  She was almost ready.

  Between her bandaged feet, Bindra positioned the twine-bound blade. Between her bandaged hands, she took a stick to represent Akash: the world of gods, of all-encompassing consciousness. Into this, she cut nine notches for the levels of Dharti: man’s limited, sense-bound experience of the external world. She turned the stick to cut into its soft bark seven more notches for the levels of Patal: the symbolic, inner world of water and crystal, the limitless, inner luminescence from which all else arises.

  Bindra clasped the prepared wood between her palms and, with great effort, plunged its point into the ground at the centre of her hut. She closed her eyes to voice the secret bija of Shiva, the rarely spoken syllable of the Absolute. This, then, was now Bindu, symbol of man’s limitless potential.

  With steady sweeps across the smoothed earth, Bindra drew a yantra to represent her own, inseparable connection with the cosmos. She first scored three concentric circles around two interlocking triangles, and then the eight lotus petals of Kali Ma. These she enclosed with three firm squares to mark the four directions, the underlying structures of reality, surrounded by eight trishul tridents to denote the three qualities of Nature, the three primary streams of consciousness: time, space and that which surpasses both.

  Finally, she marked out the sacrificial khadga, the Sword of Knowledge, to signify the battle against her own ignorance that prevented her from understanding the infinite reality of existence, and thereby her true nature.

  Bindra scattered vermilion sidur and hibiscus flowers for Shakti. A little milk and bilva patra leaves for Shiva. She intoned the initiating mantra of Mahadeva’s dynamic, hidden form, then sat back.

  The yantra of Khadgaravana, for the welfare of her children, was now active.

  Bindra had prepared the way for the son that was to come.

  ***

  “Namaste, sah’b-ji! Namaste!” familiar voices called in welcome as I paused to mark my respects at the old stone lingam.

  “Namaste Pitaji! Mataji!” I replied. “Aap kaise haiñ?”

  “Thik! Thik!” they grinned, assuring me that all was well with them.

  I wiped my brow and sat beneath the peepal tree, in which my companion crows had now alighted. Residents of the forest colony were quickly drawn into the shade to proudly show me that sores were healing. Deeply cracked skin had begun to soften and swellings had abated. Infected cysts had shrunk and putrid ulcers had lost their stench.

  They cried aloud impassioned blessings, arms and faces cast skywards. Blessings upon my mother who had borne me safely. Blessings upon my father who had taught me well.

  They wanted to bend and touch my feet. Indeed, since the heat had driven me out of shoes some weeks before, my intact toes had become the cause of great fascination. As I had sat amongst them, affectionate finger stumps had been regularly employed to transfer honorific kisses to every one of my pale, healthy digits in turn. I grasped their shoulders, insisting there was no need.

  I made my way slowly through the colony to be greeted as “Babu!” by men squatting at their dice games, “Our dear son!” by women tending to their chores. Others, so damaged by disease and malnutrition that they could not lift themselves beyond their doors, stretched out thin arms to proclaim me”Bhagavan!” I laughed my protestations, insisting I was only as much “God” as any one of them. It was simply as their brother and their friend that their suffering was now mine and, in return, my heart forever theirs.

  I called on old friends to gently clean sores on Drupada’s distorted hands, wash self-inflicted slashes on Alka’s shins, and smooth disinfecting lotion into Rekha’s oozing scalp. I carefully massaged oil into the taut muscles of Kabir’s contracted arms, lanced boils on Jaspal’s back, and redressed Nanu’s twisted, toeless feet.

  Then on to a new, narrow lane of little huts. New skinny children, new smiles and blushes.

  I laid my bowl with its weighty contents on the ground and crouched to face them. Only one small girl stepped forwards from amongst her shy playmates. She cocked her head and squinted to look me directly in the eyes. Her face was inquisitive and expectant, her hair wild and black. She wore a full-length dress that was torn and scarlet, the colour of the Goddess. A little
Kali Ma.

  “Mataji!” she called, without once allowing her unyielding gaze to lose its hold.

  From the farthest hut behind the children, a thin, bent woman, her face shadowed by a heavy wrap of tattered cloth, shuffled out into the light.

  “Kya hua hai?” she croaked. “What’s up, Aarti?”

  “Namaste, Mataji,” I greeted her in traditional respect, standing to touch hands to heart. I stepped towards her, momentarily distracted as the crow that had alighted above her doorway began to bob. “Main David huñ,” I announced in simple introduction.

  The woman suddenly drew herself upright and her smile broadened, as though in recognition. She bowed her head and touched her heart with bandaged hands, then opened her frail arms towards me, as though to offer an anticipated embrace.

  “Main Bindra huñ,” she replied.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The hut in which I squatted was dark and airless. The blaze of light beyond the door, beyond the breach of corrugated tin, blinding.

  A charpai slumped to one side, its roughly carved legs long buckled, its jute-twine mesh sagging and torn. In the corner, a heatcharred mud hearth. Beside it, twigs and kindling grass neatly piled. Against the soot-blackened wall, a metal bucket of well water. On a high shelf, corroded tins of rice, lentils, flour and oil. Hanging from a rusty nail, a single, scorched karai cooking pot.

  The little woman named Bindra agreed for me to remove the rough splints on her ankle and unwrap the black, stiff rags that bound both her feet. The silent audience of bright, wide eyes followed my every move. Three little girls and their mother, named Sushmita.

  I tried to blow away the flies that fought to alight on soiled cloth and runny flesh. The child in the red dress shuffled forwards to assist me, waving her hands, flapping her wrists in every direction. The flies remained defiantly unperturbed.

  As I moistened the last of the foul cloth bindings, as I eased them from the skin to which they had adhered, my companions leant forwards to catch a glimpse of the impending horror. They were not disappointed.

  In the sweltering confines of the little room, I had to turn my head for a moment, to press mouth and nose into my shoulder. I breathed in the dusty sweetness of my own scent in an attempt to quell the straining in my belly.

  “Mujhe maaf karo,” I muttered into my sleeve. “Forgive me.”

  “It is I who should ask forgiveness,” Bindra grimaced, biting her extended tongue as she peered at the putridity I had revealed.

  I looked hard at her for a moment. I had only ever seen this idiosyncratic, lingual gesture in the Hills.

  “These poor old feet are not only making me sick,” she sighed in apology, “but now you too!”

  It was no wonder this little woman endured a chronic fever. The ulceration of her feet, so common in those affected by leprosy, had evidently been unattended for years. With simple protection for extremities deficient in both sensation and blood supply, such secondary damage and infection could have been entirely avoided. The fire of anger began to tighten my already nauseated stomach.

  “What has the charity doctor been doing?” I despaired.

  Bindra indicated to the mother of the girls, who stood on tiptoes to run her hand along the length of the single shelf, bringing down a haze of dust and dead beetles.

  “Here, sah’b-ji,” Sushmita muttered as she passed me a weighty plastic bag filled with tablets of every shape, size and colour. “But please don’t tell. Far too dangerous for you. For all of us.” She was genuinely afraid.

  “What are these?” I asked, studying the polychromatic contents in undisguised dismay.

  “This week’s medicine from Doctor Dunduka,” she replied, dropping her voice to such a whisper that she merely mouthed his name.

  “This cannot possibly be for one person, for one week!” I protested, rotating the bag in my hands. “How many do you take of each?”

  “Oh, he never says, so we don’t touch any of it,” Sushmita continued, as her daughters joined us in what had now become a conspiratorial huddle. “It’s poison, sah’b-ji!” she asserted. “Bad medicine that makes us sick, sick, sick, until we die!”

  “But a doctor would never do that to you!” I declared, in disbelief.

  “Not a good doctor, sah’b-ji. But ours is a bad doctor, who gives bad medicine!” she insisted.

  “And what of your wounds?” I pressed. “Doesn’t he see how infected they are? Doesn’t he treat them?”

  “Oh no!” she laughed crossly. “He would never touch us!” Sushmita’s face suddenly became serious and still. “Doctor Dunduka despises us, sah’b-ji. He hates us!”

  I looked to Bindra. She raised her eyebrows in affirmation and rocked her head from side to side. “We all have choices, we all have responsibility,” she stated softly, “but not all of us have learned wisdom.”

  “Certainly not the doctor and his goondas!” Sushmita burst in anger, gathering all three children into a single, fearful sweep of her arms.

  Aarti turned to look at Bindra.

  “Mataji?” she asked, as though requesting comfort.

  Bindra gave the little wild-haired child a smile of unqualified love.

  “As hard as it can be, it’s not for us to judge that the immature and foolish, the unwise and unkind have nothing good in them. However difficult it is to see, they all have something to teach us,” she openly reminded herself. “It’s only as we learn to see both the bound and the liberated, the ignorant and the wise in our own selves that we gain true wisdom.”

  I looked at the little crumpled woman, whose deep wounds I now packed with high-grade honey. I looked up at her and wondered at the gentility of her eyes, when her body had been so long damaged and neglected. I wondered at the way she seemed to illuminate the darkness of the dingy hovel to which she had been reduced.

  I wondered just who this woman might be.

  ***

  “You people . . .” he bellowed. Bombastic, bellicose.

  “Sir,” I boldly interrupted in impatience, “I am not here to criticise, but to offer whatever help I can. You cannot need reminding that your charity was originally founded specifically to relieve the suffering of those reduced to living in this city’s gutters?”

  He evidently did not. The Major slammed his perspiring palm down hard onto his ink blotter, leaving the dark imprint of a comicbook crime scene.

  “You have no right!” he squealed at such a pitch that the nervous secretary burst in through the curtained doorway, as though brusquely summoned by a dog-whistle.

  “No right?” I exclaimed, no longer willing to temper my frustration. “It is my fundamental humanity that gives me a right to ask why simple wounds in the forest colony are being left unattended until they fester and rot? A right to ask why there are still no fruit or vegetables whatsoever in their diet, despite our repeated appeals? A right to ask why those without hands are left to carry water from the pump in buckets with metal handles that deeply lacerate their forearms? And a right to ask why those in your charge are being left to die in horrendous pain and needless suffering, simply due to inadequate - or rather incompetent - medical intervention?”

  My carefully suppressed fury had finally begun to reveal itself by an intensifying quiver in my voice. The Major felt less inclination to quell his own.

  “Get out!” he erupted, causing the timid secretary to tumble back through the very curtain he had just opened.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this, sir,” I attempted in ineffective reconciliation. “I’m only offering the little I can, for the sake of ...”

  But he had grasped, not just the receiver, but the whole telephone in both his tremulous hands.

  ***

  The daily cleaning and rebinding of Bindra’s feet and hands was a long, slow process. To ensure that all those who needed t
reatment in the forest colony received attention, I finished my day in her hut at the end of every afternoon.

  Bindra preferred not to make conversation. I had quickly learned that she had no interest in social triviality. She preferred to sit and watch in delighted fascination at the disinfecting of my hands and the putting on of latex gloves. The laying out of tubes and tubs, spatulas and gauze. The pouring of boiling water from thermos flasks into my big, red bowl.

  We were never without our well-mannered audience of three little girls. They had taken it upon themselves to be my official flitters-of-flies, brushers-of-bugs and scarers-of-scorpions. When all was cleaned, treated and rebound, our diminutive companions sang and danced at Bindra’s request, to express gratitude and celebration.

  The day I arrived with balloons, bottles of blowing-bubbles and stripy humbugs in deficient exchange for such tireless entertainments, neighbours gathered at the door. The cries of wonder at such exotic, previously unseen gifts had brightened the entire length of the alleyway. I attempted to encourage games with the gubara balloons, tossing the elongated, fluorescent pink, green and yellow sausages into the air. However, the children would have no such mindless foolery. They gently laid their emaciated stick-doll in a safe corner, in order to care for new, over-inflated infants.

  Bindra sucked with surprise at the minty sweetness in her mouth and chuckled at the delight of the three girls as they tended to their tubby charges with motherly embraces. She then turned to look so long, so hard at me that I almost dared not breathe for fear of breaking an inexplicable spell.

  Once Sushmita had returned from her wood-gathering and the neighbours had departed, I began my work. Bindra had admitted to intense pain in her spine and shoulders, so once the usual dressings were completed, I offered to massage her back. She called on Sushmita to assist in removing her tattered, dirty clothes until she sat before me naked. The years of suffering and sickness had eradicated all physical taboos, all embarrassment and shame. My own cultural politeness, however, caused me to avert my eyes.