by Sara Banerji
Mrs Fielding had met, without any great delight, many natives during her life in India – government officials, royal princes, wealthy businessmen – and almost all of them had been, by Indian standards, fair complexioned. Not, of course, poor things, as fair as Europeans, but good enough. It was wonderful, she would announce at intervals when her husband was not present, how even uneducated people recognized the fair skin as superior. She felt confident that the Indian ancestor in her husband’s family, if indeed such a person had existed, would have not been dark.
She had come across occasional dark-skinned achievers and had, out of charity, been extra kind to them, talking in a special benevolent tone as though they were afflicted with a pitiful deformity. And after they had gone she always made sure the cups they had drunk from were even more thoroughly washed than those used by the usual Indian. For you never know, do you?
The Collector, though, had made it clear from the start that he felt absolutely no different about anybody because of the colour of their skin, and that he despised those who did.
Sometimes Mrs Fielding would get the feeling that her husband loved the people of India more than he loved his own family. She had felt almost sure of it when he had insisted on sending Hermione to that filthy Indian college.
After Yudhishthira had come to tea she wanted to say ‘I told you so’, because Hermione had not caught nits but, much worse, had brought home a black-skinned inarticulate native in flopping clothes. However, years of marriage to the Collector had taught her when to keep silent.
Her husband was an intense, irritable man, prone to under-diagnosed diseases, and much of Mrs Fielding’s efforts were directed at keeping these at bay. If saying she did not like black-skinned people upset him, then she would not say it.
Hermione did not argue when Yudhishthira invited her to his room to spend the night with him. She told her parents that there was an English teacher at the college, and that this lady had invited her home for the evening and would put her up overnight too.
‘Truth is precious,’ was Yudhishthira’s comment when she told him how she’d fixed things.
‘I can’t see any reason for truth to be precious in itself,’ cried Hermione. ‘Yudhishthira, don’t worry and don’t look so glum. It’s my lie and not yours.’
He sighed.
Then somehow they caught hold of each other’s bodies in the way that people do when they are trying to comfort each other in a disaster.
Hermione felt Yudhishthira trembling under the thin cloth of his silk kurta and his heart ticking against her chest, racing a little. He kissed her very profoundly and the inside of his mouth seemed to her own probing tongue to have the texture of moistened marble. A golden dizziness began to overwhelm her so that she became unable to separate herself from him. Her whole body felt so weighted that she could only lean weakly against him and rejoice in the sensation of him.
They were both inept, untrained in the physical expression of their feelings, so that their noses intruded and there seemed no place for arms. As bone butted bone, blood beat blood, the girl’s hair fell stingingly into the eyes of the boy; his strange new breath, perfumed with a whole lifetime of things unknown to her, burned against the gentle skin of her neck.
The moment when he ripped into her body hurt her and drove out the silence so that she wanted to ask him if it was always like that for women – in the end loud and disappointing so that the only pleasure came from the way their bodies had wound together.
A pigeon cooed loudly at the barred window when she woke next morning, and Hermione for a moment felt like shouting throatily of love as well. And then, as the bird’s voice thinned, as small song of doubt entered her heart. Last night she had not seen the room, for it had been lit only by a tiny oil lamp and anyway she had been too thrilled with apprehension. Now she saw the barren lime-washed walls smudged with dark stains where oiled heads had rested, a charpoy bed of strings woven over a wooden frame and a rail on which hung Yudhishthira’s clothes.
The room aroused fear in her, its repulsive poverty making her feel insecure, unnerved.
Yudhishthira leant on his elbow and watched her speculatively. He was thoughtful for a while then, as though he had read her thoughts, said, ‘I’m only renting it till I make my fortune. Which won’t be long. I hope.’
He spoke half sarcastically, so that she knew he did not expect anything much.
‘Once I’ve finished college and got my brilliant degree I will undoubtedly get a scholarship to study at medical school.’
He had been talking in a half-joking, tense voice, patting himself theatrically on his bare chest but suddenly his mood changed and he leant forwards catching Hermione by the hands, his eyes full of anguish. ‘Have I ruined your life?’ he cried.
‘Come on, Yudhishthira!’ she laughed, his concern driving out her fear. ‘The only thing that can ruin my life is if I have to spend it without you.’
In the heart of Calcutta is a great and historic piece of common land called the Maidan where, in windy weather, kite-flying contests took place. Strings coated with crushed glass were set to chop the strings of rivals and send their kites plummeting.
Hermione and Yudhishthira were watching a conquered kite that one moment was a proud diamond against the putty-coloured sky and in the next had come rushing to the ground in a tangle of broken bamboo and tattered tissue when Hermione said suddenly, ‘A new assistant in my father’s company called Hugh Crombie has asked for permission to marry me. He’s got red hair, and a body as huge as his ambitions,’ She laughed as though telling a joke, and added, ‘I’ve only known him three days,’ Catching Yudhishthira by the hand she said, ‘So you see, darling, what a desirable woman you have caught. My father says Hugh is headed for the top.’
Yudhishthira swung round, stared at her and asked, almost as if he was angry, ‘What did you say to your father?’
‘What did I say? No, of course. What do you think? It’s you I love.’
Something dark happened to Yudhishthira’s mood after that. He tramped beside her, his eyes on the littered ground, and seemed immersed in thoughts that Hermione felt certain were sad. Then suddenly he told her she had got to marry Hugh.
At first she thought he was joking but then realized he was deadly serious.
‘I will never be able to give you the sort of life you are used to,’ he said. ‘But this Hugh will.’
‘My father will help you,’ she cried. ‘My father has all sorts of contacts.’
‘Your parents don’t even like me in their house,’ he said.
Hermione did not see much of Yudhishthira for the next couple of days. He became elusive, said he was busy with an essay, they would have a talk as soon as he had a moment. It was close to the exams, she was busy too, so did not worry.
Then suddenly, unexpectedly, with none of the doubts or wonderings he had expressed previously, he invited her to come round to his room in the evening – saying he wanted to give her something. From the way he spoke, from his serious expression, she felt only surprised and a bit mystified.
That evening he embraced her then said he was going to teach her a technique which, as though he were a fairy godmother, would ensure that all her wishes were fulfilled.
He told her to close her eyes, and gave her a sound to use that he said was in tune with her nervous system and would take her mind beyond thought.
‘I am going to take your mind down with mine to the source of creativity,’ he told her. ‘Just as we discovered Calcutta together, now we will explore the silence together, and it is there that all desires are fulfilled.’
Sitting by her, he commanded her with low words and to please him she followed his instructions, repeating the silly sound silently.
From the serious way he murmured the words, from the strong rich quiet that pervaded him, she knew that this was a sacred moment, but all the same was unprepared for the strange sensation that surged through her as though she were an electrical appliance plugged in. At first s
he felt a tickling of the stomach as though she was rushing downwards in a swift lift. And then that she was swirling through wild avenues of space and time.
A shiver of panic shot through her because she realized she was flying through nowhere, experiencing for ever, and no longer had any boundaries. She reached out, clutching for something familiar, then she heard Yudhishthira’s voice that was without sound, whispering, ‘It’s all right. Don’t be afraid,’ and the fear receded.
Sometimes sounds from outside came to Hermione’s ear but transformed, so that the clamour of car horns, the shouting, the grinding of cart wheels, the barking of dogs sounded glorious and rhythmic. A pigeon cooed and it seemed that out of the bird’s wet throat came sounds like the pouring of liquid in Heaven, the rich humming of circling stars, the low and sweet song of honey bliss flowing through human veins.
She realized she had not breathed for ages and that her body had become still as though in death. She heard a little moaning cry and realized it was her own voice.
‘Open your eyes, don’t struggle,’ came the soft calm voice of Yudhishthira.
Her lids seemed to have become as heavy as iron but she somehow managed to tear them open, and felt shocked to see the world small, sharp, in scale, and Yudhishthira still sitting there, leaning forwards, watching her, smiling as though she had done something well.
‘Take a breath,’ he said, and when she tried it she found her ribs had become heavy too, as though they had not stirred for ages, and had almost forgotten they had lungs inside.
Then she saw that though the bamboo blind was down there was something shining round Yudhishthira as if a shaft of sunshine was blazing on the white of his clothes and the dark of his skin.
‘What is that light?’ she asked at last when she had gathered enough air inside her to be able to speak.
He smiled quietly and said, ‘There is one around you as well,’ without answering her question.
He straightened slowly, and gently pulling himself away from her went over and released the blind. As the sun rushed in over the floor, Hermione lost sight of the halo round Yudhishthira.
She took a taxi home and sat looking out on to the leaping lights of Calcutta’s lanterns and candles, while her whole system stung with delight as she remembered the strange new moments and sensations, and knew that nothing could go wrong with her life now, for Yudhishthira had taught her the way to perfection and he and she would be together for always.
As she travelled to college in her father’s car the next day, she began shivering all over, so excited at the thought of seeing Yudhishthira.
He was not there.
Hermione went from room to room searching, asking.
No one had seen him.
At midday she took a taxi to his room. The door was barred. And the man who had a beedi shop below said, ‘He locked it all and went away last night.’
While she’d been singing with her whole being in the taxi home the night before, Yudhishthira was already going away from her.
The next days were spent in a dry cocoon of pain and incomprehension. She did not know where he was, why he had gone, or if he ever intended to come back to her again.
On the third day the servant handed her a letter. It was from Yudhishthira. He had, he said, decided to cut short his studies, leave college, and that there was no place at all for her in his life for he was going to become a yogi. He ended, ‘Marry Hugh.’
There were no words of love in this terrible letter, and though Hermione wept and tried to remember, she could not see what she had done wrong.
In the weeks that followed came the rage, the hurt, the sudden hopes and dreadful disappointments, the blamings – my fault, his fault, Mummy’s fault, Father’s fault – then, drably, there was nothing she could do. It was society’s fault. No one knew where Yudhishthira had gone. No one had seen a new yogi walking away into the rising sun.
Like sugar trickling down a folded paper Hermione had in the end, without struggle, without any means of struggling, gone the way fate, nature, whatever name it had, directed her.
Hugh had let out a shout of exultant laughter and called her a splendid girl when she had agreed to marry him. In a wild surge of happiness he had enveloped her in a huge embrace, and she had been so nearly overwhelmed by the unfamiliar smells of nicotine and of his hair and body that she had been on the verge of changing her mind. But she had gritted her teeth and gone on with it because although everything inside her felt damaged by her pain, no other course seemed to be open to her.
She thought she was pregnant.
‘Darling! Get married in a week?’ cried Hermione’s mother, alarmed and pleased.
‘It’s for Hugh’s sake,’ sighed Hermione trying to keep a resigned tone in her voice. ‘He has to work out on the tea estates for his first two years, and won’t be able to get any leave for a year.’ She added, knowing her mother, ‘Or I could go there and get married. There’s a little church and …’
Mrs Fielding had expected big struggles and this was turning out to be too easy. ‘How wonderful, how wonderful! I had been so worried you were going to do something silly. We must have it in Calcutta. I want all the best people to come. I’ll send the invitations out tomorrow.’ She was an immensely frivolous person and, even when confusion had plunged its teeth really deeply into her, killing nearly everything that was conscious, still craved for parties. ‘My goodness, I hope people don’t think the hurry is because you have to marry him.’ Hermione’s mother gave a little snigger implying both lust and contempt.
Three weeks after telling her parents the lie that had enabled her to spend a night with Yudhishthira, Hermione married Hugh in Calcutta.
She went on practising Yudhishthira’s technique even after she married Hugh and lost Yudhishthira for ever. Yudhishthira had told her that from the state of quiet alertness reached by his meditation all things were possible. Even happiness, even finding him again, she had imagined at first. When Hugh teased her about her Hindu ways and said it was because she had had an Indian childhood, she smiled and never told him who had really taught her.
At first Hermione practised the technique while Hugh performed his Christian praying. She would sit cross-legged on the bedside rug, eyes closed, palms up, knuckles resting on her knees, while beside her Hugh knelt and leant his elbows against the bed. But Hugh’s prayers were noisy and hurried. He moved creakily from knee to knee as though muscularily egging on a reluctant deity, making the bedsprings twang. He breathed heavily when he was trying to think of something to beg for, or suddenly gasped when he realized some previous demand had been unanswered: the boy’s entrance exam failed, the company still not moving into three figures, the desired promotion denied, the rains arriving late.
Hermione’s first son, Edward, was born eight months after she married Hugh. Three years later Rupert was born, and three years after that Daniel. But Hermione’s mind was never completely on her husband and her sons, for during those early years, though she felt sure it was hopeless, she constantly watched out for yogis. The tinkle of prayer bells or the clatter of a holy man’s beads would send her racing to the window. She would think, for a moment, watching some half-naked man with cow-dunged ringlets, that she recognized the sway of the spine or jut of jaw where the sun caught it.
In the car they only had to pass a yogi with deer skin flung, cloak-like, across his shoulder and Hermione would remember that that was how Yudhishthira would carry it. Or when one strode by, head high, a man totally unfettered, she’d recognize Yudhishthira’s walk. There would be a skip of the heart, intake of breath, hopeful cautious peeping. It is him. It is Yudhishthira!
Always disappointment. It never was.
Under a layer of dust or glistening in ghee, in swirling saffron robes, or naked with unconcealed male organs: shaved yogis, bald ones, bearded and longhaired; yogis with bellies, boots, umbrellas, shoulder bags, or emaciated with wicker-basket ribs were never Yudhishthira.
Hermione became expert at surr
eptitiously spotting yogis and thought her family did not know. Until one day years later, when they were back in England, Edward said, ‘Why were you always looking out for holy men when we were little, Mother? We used to get quite worried thinking you might be going to leave us to become a yogini yourself.’
After a few years something went wrong with the technique she had been taught. It started with a feeling of restlessness. The quietness, which seemed to Hermione to be the only place in which she could find Yudhishthira, began to slip away from her. She tried to hold on to it but the more she clutched, the further it drifted until her cross-legged sessions became suffused with clamour.
In the end Hermione realized that he was lost to her both in the noisiness, and in the silence.
Chapter Eleven
Nineteen years after Yudhishthira had walked away to be a yogi, Hermione bought some mangoes from an old fruit merchant in New Market and he told her they were langras, and had come from a village forty miles away called Ampukur.
‘Ampukur means Mango Pond, and they grow the best langras in the whole of India there.’
When Hugh was on tour and the boys, eighteen, fifteen and twelve, were at their English schools, on the spur of the moment Hermione decided to go and see Ampukur. It had been langra mangoes she and Yudhishthira had eaten together, and ever since she had felt that this variety was connected with him.
Her friends were horrified.
‘My God darling, those revolting little villages, you’ll catch something,’ They sounded like her mother.
She drove into the Bengali countryside. The summer had just ceased and the orchards were bowed with the weight of different kinds of mango.
Hermione was dizzied by the tarry, almost turpentine smell of them, when she turned into Ampukur’s little bamboo-stilted main street. As she got out of the car to be submerged instantly in an elbow-high mob of fascinated gummy-nosed juveniles, there was a sudden cracking sound almost as loud as gunshot. The urchins laughed with delight when she gave a jump at the noise which turned out to come from a bamboo gong being struck to keep off the birds.