by Roshan Ali
‘It pains me,’ she said, ‘but I think I’m a better editor than a writer, a better changer than a creator.’
This kind of disarming honesty was typical of her of late. It was a side she showed only to those she was close to, and it immediately thickened our relationship, to intimate levels and casual levels.
Obviously, finding work wasn’t going to be easy, I knew, but I never considered a job to be so important, the pivot of an entire life. That seemed staid and unexciting, the sort of thing that only studious people did. I felt a need to explore, to move about freely in more than one building. The first few weeks I wandered about with no aim and no worry, but soon this became unexciting. I needed to find work, but the kind of work that didn’t keep me pinned to one place. One day as we sat drinking, Major said, ‘How about doing many jobs? Odd jobs, perhaps. You don’t want money, so you can do that, no problem.’ He was right.
* * *
They say if and when life throws you lemons, you must make lemonade, but what if you don’t know how to make lemonade? Then you go about learning the technique. And to learn the technique by yourself is almost impossible, unless you are of the genius type, a rare type. I was no genius and needed help catching these lemons, cutting and squeezing them: How much sugar, how much salt and how much water? These are things that have to be learnt and discovered. Said Major, ‘The more sour they are, the more difficult to make, yet the more you learn.’ And a few weeks later, a big fat lemon came hurtling my way in the shape and form of an illness to my poor, dear mother. She was coughing blood and could barely speak. We took her to the hospital, and the doctors were concerned. One said, ‘We have to do thorough check-ups.’ Another just shook his head. The nurses were rude and laughed amongst themselves. Mother didn’t object to any of it, or make one expression of pain. She felt, I think, that the tolerance of pain is the greatest good. But how were the doctors to know what she felt? With great reluctance she told them of a pain in her chest. Then it took only a few hours, and the younger doctor (the older one had left for the day) came in and patted my back and said everything is OK, it’s just a lung infection, no cancer. When he said that word, we felt relief from a burden nobody had even spoken about but which hung around like a dark and threatening cloud on the horizon. But his words ushered in the sun like a great wind that parted those frightening clouds. But of course there was barely a reaction on her face as she lay there but she caught my eye and I could see her relief like the glint of gold in the darkness of a mine. Meanwhile, Ajju had arrived just in time for the good news and took command and spoke as if he had known all along. ‘I had a feeling it was nothing serious,’ he said knowledgeably to the young doctor who didn’t seem very impressed and so a few minutes passed in which Ajju tried to appear more impressive and spoke about his contacts in the government. We still hadn’t spoken since the incident and that icy silence remained as we made our way slowly down the stairs (Amma refused to take the lift and said it made her feel disabled). On our way back, Ajju wanted to stop at the temple, the one with the peepul tree. I wondered if we should perhaps take Amma back home first. ‘She needs rest. Besides, Appoos will be awake by now, shouting for food,’ I said tersely, not directly at him. ‘Rest? That’s why people get sick. What better sustenance than meeting with god?’ Ajju scoffed. He ignored Appoos’s plight.
At the temple, I held Amma’s hand. Ajju went inside, first through the low door and the high step. We could hear the temple bells and the chants which nobody understood. Amma went in next, letting go of my hand at the last minute as she disappeared into the camphorous inner sanctum, and the peepul tree that rose above and over the low temple sighed with sadness. ‘Here we go again,’ it seemed to be saying, ‘here come the desperate fools.’
It was empty that time of day. Amma and Ajju were nowhere in sight. I sat on the low cement platform that formed a seat around the tree and waited, and around me the sound of temple bells swirled.
I began to drift in and out of some strange dream of frogs and assassins. The world seemed unreal one minute and the next, it was rudely present, in my face, and the smell of camphor was in my head. Like an orange phantom, a sadhu had appeared suddenly and was standing right in front of me. I jumped up, mumbling apologies, but he didn’t say a word and continued to stare at my face. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked suddenly. I pointed towards the room where the idols were and mumbled. ‘No, what are YOU doing here?’ he said again.
I said, ‘I had to come with them.’ He didn’t seem happy with my answer.
‘Come tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Come tomorrow and we’ll talk.’ Then he turned and disappeared into his room. A moment later, his face appeared at the small window and his eyes were closed.
Mother had just come out from the room. ‘Who was that?’ she asked.
‘No idea, Amma, just some nut.’
‘Don’t say things like that. He’s a holy man.’
‘I don’t know about holy, but he’s definitely crazy.’
‘Shhh, Ajju is coming.’
‘So why . . .’
‘Ib!’ she said with the kind of forcefulness that comes with fear.
Grandfather climbed over the high step and into the courtyard with that expression that religious people have after praying, as if they have done something so utterly humble and noble, an expression of self-righteous power and abject surrender at the same time. ‘Ready?’ he asked Amma. We climbed back in his Fiat and drove off just as the temple bells began again.
On our way back Ajju said angrily, ‘A sadhu lives in that temple. He’s a crazy fellow. Don’t go to him.’
‘Who’s going to go, baba? Nobody is going,’ Amma said and looked at me with a warning in her eyes.
‘I’m just telling you, in case. He’s mad. Not spiritual or anything, a fraud probably, will ask for money and then go and get drunk. You see one day we’ll see him on the road completely tight.’
The rule that generally applied in my world of humans was that the people Ajju disliked and called mad were in reality excellent guys, marquee girls, and were capable and strong, and had independence and clarity. They were not sheep, not easy to herd or steer in the direction he liked. And so the sadhu who had appeared at the temple was probably quite a great man, and it was possible there was a lot to learn from him, despite his rudeness and abruptness. But I had learnt that abruptness in people was a good sign of entertainment or knowledge to come. I decided that I would go back to the temple as soon as possible, if only to spite Ajju.
When we reached, he was still grumbling. ‘Crazy old fraud,’ he was saying, ‘one day he will be exposed. It will come in the paper. You see, I’m telling you now . . .’
* * *
It’s not easy to tell which moment shaped your life, or steered it in any one way. Life forces are like a potter and life is clay and there is a gradual moulding that takes place, and the faster the wheel spins, the smoother you become. But suddenly, one force becomes too much and the clay is torn from the wheel and rips apart, flying everywhere, or is grotesquely deformed. So one must balance the influences that come from everywhere, all trying to mould you, all trying to spin the wheel faster and faster. One must be still, be centred, or the balance will tilt and you will be a crooked pot, taking in things crookedly, favouring one side over the other, and eventually things will accumulate on one side and begin to stink. If you befriend the potter, that’s another matter, but there is no potter, only the pottery. These are some of my theories.
And so looking back, it would seem that choosing to go back to the sadhu was some form of cosmic pottery, and the mould was formed, shaped by unknown and old forces, the blood in our veins, the fog in our brains and the unstoppable physics of nature and the sun; the mould that the rest of my life would form in, germinate. How the final foliage would turn out was another matter, and obviously being small and stupid, I couldn’t see beyond a few days. And it was decided that I would go immediately, the next day, even if I didn’t have time.
The next morning it was hot when I got out of the house, with that harsh heat that reminded me of factories and molten metal, not the wet heat of a coastal town, like a steam room. I reached the temple soaked in sweat, and was relieved to sit under the shade of the peepul tree. The sadhu came out of his room and sat on the cement and stone floor opposite, in a patch of shade. ‘So you came?’ he asked with an amused twinkle in his eye. I nodded and tried to speak, but he cut me short. ‘I didn’t ask you to speak,’ he said, ‘just sit and listen.’
So I sat and listened and this was what I heard. First, first because sounds come with an order, first was the sound of the peepul tree, a hushed rustle, like a thousand women in silk sarees doing a silent dance, then the wind, a low and distant howl like a lonely faraway wolf, then the birds, only one or two, alternating between loud chirping and a low short whistle. The sadhu pointed up towards the sky. Everything in the sky was silent—the clouds floated by and the sun, the most silent thing in the sky, beat down incessantly with its thousand bright white hammers on the vast land of my birth. The earth was brown and silent too, but within it, there was a world of worms and insects, small crawling rustling creatures who lived beneath our feet. This was the world below our world, the world that kept us up. And far away, a mosque cried and pigeons erupted into the air like loud smoke and dispersed, then the mosque was silent and another one then another one, a chain reaction of prayer and fools. Somewhere to my right and perhaps a few hundred yards away, a dog yelped and screamed and was silent. Suddenly the sadhu clapped, and the sound yanked me out of my soundscape. ‘You see?’ he said, ‘the world around you. You are nothing but a part of it, a small and useless part. If you die, everything else will go on. You are nothing.’ I was convinced by now that he was slightly unhinged, yet there was something refreshing in his craziness and lack of etiquette.
‘Do you know what the world is?’ he asked. I nodded.
‘It is a vast arena of power and hatred, where the rich control everyone and everything with strings made of money and gold.’
‘And yet here we are,’ I said.
‘Yes, here we are. That means nothing.’
‘Doesn’t it mean something? I am not here for money, neither are you.’
His face grew tense and his eyes narrowed.
‘What do you know? You are a young man. Nothing you say or do now means anything. In a few years you too will be in that factory outside.’
‘The factory needs to function,’ I said, ‘or how do you get your food, your bricks, your water?’
He didn’t like what I was saying and stood up quickly. ‘Do you think I want that?’ he said loudly. ‘But nobody leaves me alone. I don’t want their food or their bricks. They came and built it around me.’
‘You mean you were here first?’ I asked.
‘First, last, how does it matter? In the end, everything dies and is reborn.’ He was a master of the pivot.
This was the first of my encounters with Mr Sadhu, and subsequently there would be many more. There was something in him, a strange mixture of wisdom and confusion, an accuracy of experience, yet no loyalty to the truth. It was clear he was an unchallenged type, and had lived his whole life without ever having been argued against, and this reflected in the way he argued. One morning he was naked and I didn’t even bother asking him why, but he told me anyway, in that unhinged way that he spoke, that it was a matter of mother nature against society. ‘What do you think, that humans can tell me what to wear and what not to wear?’ he shouted. ‘I do not take directions from fools.’ And then in the next ten minutes, he was back in his orange robe, smoking a beedi, looking around suspiciously as if at any moment somebody would snatch it away. Why did I go there? Because it was a space where I didn’t have to align with working people, and could just sit and stare at nothing, and nobody said anything. Outside, there were people in lines; here there were no lines, and very little order lingered. Mostly, when I visited, we sat on the stone and cement floor, and closed our eyes. Sometimes he cried, his shoulders shaking with the desperate escaping energy of his sobs, then in an instant, he was silent and still, and didn’t even move his hands to wipe the tears that dripped down his beard and on to his sallow, thin-haired chest. Later, he wouldn’t even acknowledge this and once said, ‘What happens when I meditate is separate. If I did cry, it is but a side effect of something much higher.’
‘Where do you go?’ I asked.
‘It is a different realm. Beyond thought and reason.’
‘How is that possible? Are you not thinking about it?’
‘No, one cannot. I am only telling you about it.’
‘But you’re speaking about it, so how can it be something beyond thought and reason?’
He flashed a rare, brown smile. ‘I am referring to it such as a physicist refers to the fourth dimension,’ he said. ‘You know about this fourth dimension? Imagine a universe where there are only two-dimensioned beings . . .’
‘Sadhuji, I’ve heard this before. Spare me.’
He was already a little past his tolerance for dissent and made an ugly face. ‘How can I fill a cup that is already full?’ he asked mockingly and shrugged at the sky. ‘This cup is already full.’
These were the kinds of times we had, brief moments of argument, sprinkled amongst long, still moments of silence. The silences made the rest tolerable. To the mystery of why Mr Sadhu tolerated my presence and didn’t beat me with his favourite stick, I had no answer. Perhaps I reminded him of a past version of himself, a younger, brighter and less confused version. But did this mean that if I didn’t watch out, I could become like him in ten or twenty years? If I didn’t hold on to reason’s ropes and attempt logic’s ladder, would I be lost in the mist and madness of intuition and confusion? I could picture that mist swirling through the heads of Mr Sadhu and others like him, sickly and yellow, and all around, and the ladder resting against a steep, sharp cliff, just about visible, and I’m running, stumbling towards it, clutching at a thin rope. On one side a thousand-foot drop, and behind an army of saffron zombies with yellow eyes and halos of yellow mist. Yes, perhaps one day I would become like him, chasing stumbling fools over a thousand-foot cliff.
* * *
One day Mr Sadhu told me a story. ‘When I was younger, the world was a different place,’ he said. ‘Now listen, I will tell you my adventures. All of them. No, not all; some adventures. I used to travel everywhere, from south to north, west, east, everywhere. I stayed under trees and under bridges, drank from streams, ate whatever I could find. I did not have money; I did not understand it. So I relied on kindness, and the irritation of strangers. It was mostly the children who told their parents to give me something. I think they sensed my honesty, that I was no scammer, or king beggar. But I grew thin and weak and looked starved. I met many kinds of people, but there were two types. The happy simple ones, and the greedy sad ones.’
‘Greedy for money?’ I asked.
He slapped my thigh hard. ‘Shut up. Are you not listening? Greedy for everything. They may even be greedy for happiness. Actually, the ones who are greedy for happiness are the worst off, the worst. They are so miserable. But the simple ones, they are happiest. And not, mind you, simpletons. Not the idiots walking around looking like robots, but the ones who don’t want much. They are blessed, these people. They do not want a lot, but no, more than that they want only what they have.’
‘But how do you become like that?’
‘You cannot. It is a blood-given gift. If you are like that, you will be a happy person. If you aren’t, then expect misery. What’s your name? Yes, Ib. Ib, you are not a simple person. The greed you lack for money, for things, for fame, you make up for with your greed for artistry, your greed for cleverness. You want to be the one who sees things that nobody else sees.’
‘I thought this was supposed to be a story,’ I said with irritation.
‘Yes, a story about you. And about me. About everyone. We are all the same. But different. This is the co
ntradiction. But once in the mountains I met a man; he was so sad, and so young. I said to him, “If you are already so miserable, what will happen in a few years?” He cried to me, tried to make me his guru. I told him there’s nobody here to give him happiness. He said he had run away from home. “Why?” I asked him. He said there was a restlessness inside him, like his body wanted to run away from his skin. So he left a steady job, family and ran.’
‘What was his problem?’
‘I don’t know. I told him geography cannot change biology, and that he was probably clinically depressed. He didn’t like that and threw himself to the floor and began to kiss my feet. “Please baba, take me as your student and teach me how to be one with the universe.” Imagine that, he’s not even one with his family and he wanted to be connected to the Supreme Being.’ Mr Sadhu laughed and took a puff of his beedi, and continued.
‘So I took him with me, played along, to see the depths of his misery and lengths of his credulity. One evening there was a thunderstorm and we were in a cave. “You want some ganja?” I asked him. He wasn’t sure but because I was smoking it, he assumed I think, that it would help on that transcendental ladder. So he smoked it very fast and started seeing things. Poor boy, the next day he was speaking about how an alien visited him and told him of his purpose in life, and the alien was farting loudly and carrying a bolt of lightning.’
I burst into laughter.
‘Then what happened?’
‘I couldn’t go on. He was beyond saving, that boy. He was already so deluded and neck deep in wishful thinking that no amount of reason could have saved him.’