‘Please don’t embarrass me,’ Gautam said.
‘I received your letter only two days back,’ Haseena’s mother said. ‘It shattered me. I haven’t had any sleep since then.’ Moisture welled up in her eyes.
‘It’s all Providence,’ Gautam said. ‘Man is only an instrument in God’s hands.’ But he soon realized that he’d spouted a platitude.
Outside, the hammer strokes continued: clang-clang, cling-clang, clang-cling.
‘Indeed, my son.’
Gautam felt gratified to be addressed so endearingly. This emboldened him to strike a personal note.
‘If you’d met my father, ammijan,’ he was also impelled to respond with the same warmth, ‘you’d have taken him for Haseena’s father—such a striking resemblance!’
‘Divine coincidence, maybe,’ said Haseena’s mother.
As Gautam now looked about the room, he saw on the front wall a silver-framed motto inscribed in gilded letters. Although he didn’t know any Arabic, his knowledge of Urdu enabled him to guess what the words were. It must be the kalma, he thought: ‘God is one, and Mohammad is His sole Prophet!’ Close by, on the same wall, hung a coloured picture of the Grand Mosque at Mecca—a pleasing harmony of turrets and domes, in green, yellow and blue.
Gautam wondered how his Arya Samajist father would react to the kalma. Would he accept this monopolization of God by Mohammad as being his sole Prophet?
Into his stream of thought splashed a voice, wistful and poignant.
‘It appears we will have to move—to Pakistan,’ said Haseena’s mother. ‘Oh, the pain of getting uprooted from one’s native place, after generations … But there’s no alternative.’
‘All of you?’ Gautam asked.
‘Naturally.’
How could he blame Begum Rahim for wanting to migrate?
‘I understand your feelings,’ Gautam spoke in a low voice. ‘This subcontinent has become a savage battlefield. We seem to have lost our sanity. Nobody had foreseen the gruesome consequences of this partition. Not even Mahatma Gandhi!’
‘Maybe the British knew,’ intervened Sheikh Ahmed, who hadn’t uttered a word so far.
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Gautam. ‘I think we always tend to make them a scapegoat for all our lapses.’ Suddenly, he became conscious of another presence in the room. ‘What do you think, Salma?’ he asked, turning to her.
‘What?’
Salma’s mind had been running in another groove. All the time she’d been watching Gautam intently, wondering if he was in love with her sister. Why had he done so much for the family? Although just a teenager, she’d matured within a few weeks.
‘This idea of migrating to Pakistan,’ Gautam now phrased his question more explicitly.
‘Is there any choice?’ came a soft but decisive reply.
‘And you?’ Gautam turned to Haseena.
‘I don’t know,’ Haseena muttered. ‘I haven’t given any thought to it yet.’
‘Oh,’ said Gautam. Then, standing up, he added: ‘I must get moving now.’
But it was only a feeler to see if they’d ask him to stay back for a while. So, he was immensely pleased when Begum Rahim said: ‘Are you in a hurry?’
‘Not quite,’ Gautam replied, sensing he’d been liked by the family. ‘But, tomorrow, I have to go around the city to report …’
‘Yes, Haseena has told us about it,’ said Begum Rahim. ‘But you must take care of yourself.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘It should be all right so long as I move about in a dhoti and kurta, some caste mark displayed on my forehead.’ He smiled. ‘How funny, one’s life depends upon what one wears these days.’
‘Indeed,’ said Sheikh Ahmed.
There was a brief silence.
‘Would you please let me take Haseena along with me tomorrow?’ Gautam asked Begum Rahim. ‘I don’t know the town so well. She could be a great help.’
‘Wouldn’t that be too risky?’
‘We could do it in the same dress we came in from the station,’ Gautam replied. ‘A kumkum on her forehead … All that one needs these days is two sets of clothes in a handbag. It’s like playing Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’
Although only Haseena understood the literary allusion, the others were able to guess what it meant.
Begum Rahim pondered over Gautam’s request; then said, gravely: ‘I’ll gladly let you take the responsibility.’
Had she given her consent out of obligation to her daughter’s saviour?
‘Thank you,’ Gautam said. ‘Then I’ll meet her tomorrow afternoon, at the tea-stall, at two.’
15
Gautam was only a seventh grader, a young boy of twelve, when he first visited Allahabad for the immersion of his uncle’s ashes into the holy Ganges. He still remembered how his father had argued with his mother, all the way from Lahore to this city, against such ‘silly rituals’. He’d kept repeating that Allahabad was essentially ‘a city of the dead’, and therefore one of the most depressing places in the country. But since his mother had insisted on this ceremony, he’d given in, though most reluctantly.
One vivid recollection that had stayed with Gautam all these years was of an old, clean-shaven man, with a long fluffy tail drooping from the middle of his head, feeding three white swans on the holy bank. A small crowd had gathered around him, as though held under some divine spell. Since Gautam’s father had gone to get some snacks, his mother felt emboldened to ask the man if the swans were his pets.
‘No,’ the man replied, ‘these birds are the reincarnation of three pious pandas who, during their previous life, had served Mother Ganga as her high priests. Their souls have now returned to the holy river as swans, robed in these white garments. If you come here a little before dawn, you may even hear them chant mantras from the Bhagavadgita. At sunset, they fly away to parlok, the other world.’
But now, as a free-thinker, the Triveni appealed to Gautam’s aesthetic sensibility only. The image of the two rivers, the Ganges and the Jumna, merging into each other, with the third river, the Saraswati, flowing invisibly underneath to forge the Triveni, merely testified to the fecundity of the Hindu imagination. No wonder, Hindus consider this confluence as the most sacred spot to immerse the ashes of their beloved dead.
As Gautam sat to lunch at his hotel, The Rainbow, a few yards away from the offices of The Pioneer, which was once edited by Rudyard Kipling, these memories kept bobbing up in his mind. Although the local press had predicted a calm day, he knew it could be just a lull after the communal storm that had rocked the city a few days ago. Maybe, the two communities were now bracing up for the next round. Hadn’t he seen Mohalla Kashana already keyed up?
Precisely at two Gautam and Haseena met near the tea-stall. While she hastily put red kumkum on her forehead, he looked an orthodox Hindu in his white dhoti and kurta.
‘You certainly got around mother very smoothly,’ said Haseena.
‘I had to do it, you know.’
‘Where shall we go?’
‘Anywhere,’ said Gautam, somewhat excited. ‘How about a trip to the Ganges? I’ve some childhood memories of the Triveni. In any case, rivers fascinate me—any river, anywhere.’
‘All right,’ said Haseena. ‘But I’d be the first target there if someone sniffed me out.’
‘With that kumkum, you look like one of the Hindu goddesses—Parvati or Lakshmi.’
‘Do I?’ she blushed.
‘On the contrary, I’ll have to watch out because I don’t believe in all this crap—holy immersions, Triveni and all. I might give myself away, somehow. To me it’s just like going to the beach. An afternoon picnic.’
‘I’ve never gone deep into the river,’ said Haseena, ‘not as far as the Triveni. It was just a quick boat ride once, with a group of college students.’
‘Let’s do it then.’
Since they looked like pilgrims, they had no difficulty in hiring a tonga to the riverside. As soon as they got dropped there, they were besieged by a horde of pandas.
‘A dip in Mother Ganga?’
‘Want some holy water?’
One fellow was bold enough even to pull at Gautam’s shirt-tail: ‘This way, sir. Let me show you around.’
‘Will you stop bothering me?’ Gautam snapped. ‘We’d like to do it on our own.’
Threading their way through a throng of pilgrims, they found themselves in front of a large shop which was cluttered with steel and silver bowls of various sizes, poised one on top of the other, like pyramids. The only other articles in the shop were tiny idols of gods and goddesses, in wood or bronze and, of course, picture postcards.
The shopkeeper was a clean-shaven man, plumpish and dark. Under his caste mark on the forehead, blinked two inquisitive, beady eyes. He was sitting on a wooden seat with nothing but a dhoti round his waist.
‘Do you want some holy water, sir?’ the man asked, coaxingly. ‘Fresh from the Triveni.’
‘No, please,’ said Gautam. ‘We should like to get it ourselves from the river.’
‘Nothing like it,’ the man said, looking impressed. ‘But you’ll need a bowl then. A silver one, I guess.’ Without waiting, he reached out for a large silver vessel with a sliding lid, and the image of Lord Krishna engraved on the bulge. ‘Only seventy-five rupees, sir. Very cheap. I may be losing a fiver on it, but I don’t’ care.’
‘That’s expenseive,’ said Gautam; then, pointing towards a small stainless steel bowl, near the shopkeeper’s right foot, asked: ‘How about that one?’
‘Only twenty,’ replied the man, holding it up by the lid.
‘That’ll do,’ Gautam said, taking two tens out of his wallet.
The shopkeeper’s fingers grabbed the tens, which he nimbly clamped shut into a wooden cash box. His paunch quivered like jelly as he moved from one side to the other, showing three creases just above the navel. On his vast bosom stood some beads of perspiration, which he wiped off with a dirty towel. From his neck dangled a platinum pendant over his breasts, sagging like those of an old gorilla Gautam had once seen at the Wellington Zoo in Lahore.
‘And won’t you need two tickets, sir, for the boat ride to the Triveni?’ the man asked. ‘Well, the next launch leaves in about fifteen minutes—and just two seats left.’
This shop was obviously a multidimentional establishment, handling all sorts of transactions.
‘No,’ said Gautam. ‘We’d like to take a small boat, entirely to ourselves.’
The man shot a searching glance at the couple. Surely, he thought, they looked special in all respects—urbane and aristocratic. Although Haseena hadn’t spoken a word, the shopkeeper felt awed by her quiet dignity—and beauty. He took them for a newly married couple on their first visit to the holy city. That’s why they wanted privacy.
‘Then I’ll fix up an exclusive boat for you.’ The man said; then, swinging around, he shouted: ‘Eh, Bhole! Where are you? Come out quick—will you?’
At once emerged from inside the shop, a mammoth creature, tall and muscular. Gautam noticed that he had three gold teeth, while the others were stained yellow with tobacco. He wore a pair of gold earrings and a gold ring. ‘Lots of gold,’ Gautam said to himself. Like his master, Bhole was stripped to the waist, and his body glistened in the afternoon sun, like a granite pillar.
‘They want a special trip to the Triveni,’ the shopkeeper said, turning to Bhole. ‘Special, understand?’ He repeated the word as though he were relaying some secret message to his assistant.
‘I do,’ grunted Bhole. ‘That’ll be sixty only.’
‘Isn’t that a little on the high side?’ said Gautam.
‘Not at all, sir,’ replied Bhole. ‘That covers the entire ride—along the eastern bank, deep into the river, right up to the Triveni, then back via the fort. Sort of three-in-one. And an easy, smooth ride too.’
‘We’ll take it,’ Gautam said, pleased with the itinerary. He felt too awed by this creature to get into an argument with him.
‘Then may I have the sixty, please?’ the shopkeeper stretched out his hand, like a performing monkey, asking for a handful of peanuts from one of the spectators.
‘The entire sum in advance?’
‘Of course.’
As Gautam paid up, Bhole leapt out of the shop, like a wild animal, beckoning his customers to follow him. A few yards down the lane, a swarm of beggars surrounded them—one-legged, armless, blind and those who were carried about in wooden trawlers by their partners. But they buzzed off the moment Bhole shouted them away.
Gautam and Haseena had to squelch through a patch of marsh before they got into a small, elegant boat, with a plank across the sides and two cushioned seats. A special arrangement indeed, Gautam thought. As the man undid the moorings, the boat lurched into motion. It was now gliding on the russet waters of the Ganges, occasionally ploughing through clusters of flowers, offerings of the living to the dead.
Above their heads, the sky hung bare and austere in the afternoon sun, whose reflection shimmered in the river like a golden bowl.
‘Are you from Delhi, sir?’ Bhole asked.
The bull’s-eye! How could this man place him so correctly? But then, Gautam thought, he must have handled thousands of pilgrims from all over the country—from south, east, north, west. He felt scared lest the man should probe him any further.
Gautam was, however, now primed to parry off any further questioning.
‘Yes.’
He thought a snappy, monosyllabic answer may discourage the man from getting any deeper into conservation. But hardly had he reclined against his cushion when Bhole broke into words again: ‘We’ll be at the Triveni in a few minutes.’
‘Good.’
Well, Gautam thought, so long as the man talked like a tourist guide, he could endure him; but the panda’s loquacity was picking up.
‘Newly married, sir?’
Ah, the primal assault! But by now Gautam was ready for anything.
‘Yes.’
‘So I’ve bagged it again.’ He grinned, showing his gold teeth and sausage-like lips.
Now exulted, he pressed on, jerking his boat out of an obstinate whirlpool: ‘What caste, sir?’
‘Tripathi!’
Gautam knew it was coming, so he had it all worked out. He decided to feign Brahminism—just the bit he knew the panda would relish most.
‘Ah, high-class Brahmin!’ the man said, gleefully. ‘Then you’d perhaps let me also do a prayer for you, at the Triveni.’
‘Certainly.’
‘Only five rupees extra.’
‘That’s fine.’
As the boat swung into the Triveni, the panda let it swirl around for a while.
‘Now the prayer, sir?’
‘Sure, go ahead,’ Gautam said, feeling tempted to add, ‘spit it out—quick.’
But Bhole came up with another question.
‘Your father’s name, sir—and yours?’
‘My name is Lalit, Lalit Tripathi, my father is Girdharilal, my grandfather was Kishorilal, and I think my great-grandfather was Banwarilal. I guess this’ll do.’
Gautam concocted an entire genealogical tree to give the irrepressible creature a mouthful of names to roll over his tongue.
‘And your wife’s name?’
‘Seema, her mother’s name is Kaushalya, her father’s Kanhiya Kishore Pandey … I guess this would take care of her side too.’
‘Splendid!’ Bhole exclaimed. ‘I feel very impressed, sir. You know, I’ve seen people who can’t remember even their …’
‘Father’s name,’ Gautam interjected, smiling.
As the panda began to chant mantras, interpolated with all the names doled out to him, Gautam recalled the other prayer he’d heard at St. John’s, a few days ago. Father Jones and Bhole—what a contrast! While the panda was chanting away, Gautam’s eyes caught the sharp borderline between the two rivers—a sort of silken ribbon separating the russet brown of the Ganges from the bluish green of the Jumna. He also filled up his bowl with the holy w
ater.
Suddenly, the chanting ceased. Gautam wished he’d given this man some more money and a longer list of names so that he could have flowed on, like the holy rivers. But, having done the prayer, Bhole turned to him with a wry smile.
‘Look at the colours, sir—the brown and the blue,’ he said. ‘The blue you’ll remember was the colour Lord Krishna got from the great Naga when the reptile hissed out at him.’
‘Yes, I know the story,’ said Gautam; then, looking straight at Bhole’s face, he asked, half-mockingly: ‘What colour is the Saraswati that flows invisibly underneath these two rivers?’
The panda’s forehead wrinkled up; he’d never been asked this question.
‘White, I think.’
‘Why?’
‘The colour of purity, chastity …’
Gautam marvelled at the panda’s nimble wit.
He then dipped his right hand into the Ganges and his left into the Jumna, feeling as though he was holding the two rivers within the palms of his hands. But it was the mythical Saraswati, flowing on in the subliminal zones, that really excited his imagination.
‘How one wishes,’ said Gautam, ‘one could touch the Saraswati as well.’
‘We can never touch things that are pure and invisible—God and Saraswati,’ Bhole said, ponderously. ‘But, now everything is being tainted.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Muslims have descended upon us like locusts, defiling our temples, our sacred rivers … The other day, a Muslim couple visited Mother Ganga, masquerading as Hindus. But I got them in the end. Pushed them both into the river near the fort,’ Bhole said, rolling his bloodshot eyes menacingly. ‘I can always sniff out a Muslim.’
Startled, Gautam tried to look away, while Haseena blanched with fear.
‘Last week, some Muslims threw a cow’s head into the Hanuman Temple, near the Sapru Bridge …’
‘Oh, that’s too bad.’ Gautam could mumble only a mild protest to appease the panda.
‘But they paid heavily for it,’ the panda said. ‘We slaughtered two Muslim mohallas.’ Bhole’s eyes were flashing.
‘Now the Muslim ringleaders are hiding away in Mohalla Kashana,’ said Bhole. ‘But we’ll get them there too—sometime next week.’ Then, looking at Gautam: ‘Shouldn’t a Brahmin like you also pray for us?’
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