Sleeping On Jupiter

by Roy, Anuradha

  At the back of the hotel was a garden. Along its edge ran an earthen pathway pillared by palms. It ended in a low iron gate. They had not noticed the gate before, but now they saw it opened directly onto the beach. Stepping through the gate, they were confronted by the white and blue of ocean and beach in limpid morning light. Bare-chested fishermen were pushing wooden boats into the surf, chanting prayers together for luck. Women in fluorescent knee-high saris walked past in pairs and threes, with fish-baskets on their heads.

  Vidya and Latika took their slippers in their hands and walked barefoot, scanning the beach for a round form in a sari. They passed a scent of cloves and ginger. Latika remembered the tea stall and turned around to find it, but as she turned she glimpsed someone who looked very like Suraj from the back. She grabbed Vidya’s hand to propel her the other way, babbling, “Look, they’re selling lobsters there. And crabs too. By those boats.” Upturned boats rose out of the sand like the carcasses of prehistoric animals. Latika pointed Vidya in their direction.

  They hurried away, Vidya protesting. “If we walk this quickly, we’ll never find her. Slow down!” The tea-man’s morning song came to them in snatches, “The rain came again that night. And again and again and again.”

  A familiar voice interrupted the song. “Awake at last. And I’ve been up and about since dawn! You should have seen the sunrise. Today I decided I would say my prayers out here by the sea.”

  She was parked on the hull of an abandoned boat. Despite her prayer beads and white hair and bulk, Gouri looked more sinister than grandmotherly. She wore round sunglasses that they had never seen on her before, and a necklace of rose-pink pearls acquired minutes earlier from a vendor who was offering them identical strings now. She bared her teeth in laughter at their furious faces and the stark white of her dentures gleamed in the sunlight. “Oh come, come,” she said gaily. “I am not under house arrest here too, am I? And anyway, I have a stuffy old room, yours are much nicer.”

  They did not know what to say, feeling their pent-up emotions drift clear of their bodies.

  “I can’t bear to stay in my room, it suffocates me,” Gouri stated as she rose from her throne.

  “Why didn’t you at least carry the cards I made for you?” Vidya’s voice rained hailstones when she was this furious. The voice that was said to detonate bombs under the chairs of sleepy clerks when she was Director General, Social Welfare.

  It did not intimidate Gouri. She whipped out one of Vidya’s handwritten cards from somewhere inside the layers of her sari and waved it in her face. “I didn’t carry my handbag, that’s all. It’s so heavy.” She sounded even more smug now.

  For a long time neither of them could speak to Gouri. It was only after breakfast, when they reached the bazaar, where they had to pool voices to discourage beggars, that they forgot their anger. They shopped, then found a restaurant to eat lunch in. Steaming mounds of white rice and daal and vegetables, too much for any of them to finish, were served by a waiter who seemed in a hurry to be somewhere else. Bells began ringing all over the town, bhajans battled each other on competing loudspeakers. From above, the first floor of the building, they heard voices chanting hymns, intoning the Sanskrit in exotic accents. A band of pilgrims passed them, singing kirtans, tinkling their cymbals. There were young women, men, even a child or two, all in saris and dhotis, their foreheads marked with the tilak of Vishnu. They smiled at the women through the glass front of the restaurant.

  “Let’s eat quickly,” Vidya commanded. “We have other things to do.”

  As they began their meal the singing stopped and half a dozen men and women came down the stairs. They were foreigners in saffron and yellow robes. Sprigs of hair sprouted from the backs of their shaven heads like stalks from berries.

  Gouri noticed that the foreigners were being served only bowls of grapes. Why was that, she asked their waiter in a whisper, “Don’t they like the food?” He gave her a withering look. “They are fasting,” he said. Then more emphatically, “For Shivaratri. Some of them won’t touch water either all day. You’ve forgotten?”

  The disdain in his voice, its air of authority, reminded her of home. It was how her son spoke when he said, “Your widow’s pension was to be picked up, didn’t you remember? The children were to reach their tennis lesson at two, didn’t you remember?”

  She remembered her terracotta tea and told herself she must have that third cup before returning home. And she would go back to the temple. By herself.

  *

  On the morning of Shivaratri the great temple was more crowded than usual. Badal was escorting a man in his eighties who hobbled along, trying to keep his footing in the cavernous inner sanctum. As always it was half dark, lit largely with flickering lamps.

  “Please hold on to my arm, you might fall.” Something about the man reminded Badal of his father. Perhaps the over-large ears. The sign of a good man, Badal’s father used to say, pulling at his own elongated lobes. Look at the ears on statues of the Buddha.

  The man said, “I may look feeble, son, but let me tell you, in my time I’ve climbed the Himalaya and swum half way across the English Channel. I just didn’t reach the other side because . . .”

  Inside the sanctum sanctorum, the image of Vishnu glowed red and gold and black. In his infancy, Badal had felt a sense of dread in the temple, even though his father held his hand. The oil lamps cast black shadows everywhere, the air thrummed with chanting, and there were people in such raptures of devotion that they appeared insensible to the world. They frightened him then, with their swaying bodies, their dazed eyes, their delirious singing. He used to be frightened too by the temple’s priests in their white dhotis, bare bodies melting into the gloom, the image of the Lord looming above them all with the impassive might of a mountain.

  But what mountains had he seen? He had never left the shores of the sea he had been born by. A few nights ago, he had dreamt of them: snow peaks and ranges of blue hills. He was following people who were trudging up the rocks and ice. They had a dog with them. It was cold, the sounds were muffled. Everything was happening very slowly, every step took an aeon. All at once he was transported to a long, red-carpeted corridor and someone was shouting at him: “The doors are shut. They won’t let you in.” The shouting voice had woken him.

  Awake, he had felt with superstitious certainty that he had dreamt of his own death, and the people he had been following were the Pandavas on their long trek to heaven. In the Mahabharata, the Pandavas too had been stopped at the gates of heaven. Indra had appeared and ordered them, “Abandon your dog, dog-owners have no place in Heaven.” And Yudhishtira, defiant, had declared to the king of the gods that he would abandon heaven before he gave up a friend.

  Badal would never abandon Raghu, whatever happened. He would forget what he had seen: the monk, the beer bottle, the tight black jeans. He had not been able to find Raghu since. He had to have him back, he would not ask any questions. All he needed was to hold Raghu so close that he would not be able to tell their heartbeats apart.

  A din of voices and exclamations broke into his thoughts. Commotion everywhere, people pushing each other, stumbling on the slippery floor. Badal realised he had been standing in a dream, his eyes shut tight. The old man he was meant to be looking after had wandered off. He tried to find his way through the crowds in the half light, damp with instant sweat. You must not panic, he told himself. Keep your head, you’ll find him.

  The old man’s daughter, who had lost sight of him as well, heard a thin, shaking voice from some corner, turned to look for him, could not see anything in the dimness until she spotted a huddle around a figure on the floor. “Papa!! Papa!” she cried out.

  Terror snaked through the crowd. People began to push each other aside to get out of the shrine, thinking something was wrong. A man fell and cried out. A voice shouted, “There must be a fire! Something’s caught fire.” The pushing and shoving grew more urgent.

  Badal managed to reach the old man. “There’s no fi
re. I have him safe,” he called in a raised voice. “He’s not hurt.”

  He sat the old man down on the steps at one of the smaller shrines outside. A shrunken widow singing kirtans for alms interrupted herself to bring them water in a small brass pot. “At such a great age,” she said to the daughter, “it’s hard. It’s hard for us old people. The ground slips away.” The old man’s hands were shaking. Badal held the pot to his lips and tipped it a fraction. Most of the water dribbled down the man’s trembling chin to the front of his clothes. Over the man’s head, he exchanged a look of shared relief with the daughter, whose eyes shone with unspilled tears. She dug into her handbag and brought out two hundred-rupee notes which she pressed into the hands of the widow, saying, “Please. For all of you. Sing a kirtan for us. God has been very good, He has seen to it that my father is not hurt.” When they were leaving, she leaned out from the awning of their rickshaw towards Badal. “I don’t know what we would have done without you. I should never have let him come. But he doesn’t listen.” She had a chubby face and a lopsided smile that gave her a rueful expression. The old man, who had recovered his spirits, quavered, “The next time I’ll make sure you show me the whole temple. I want my money’s worth, I’ll be back!”

  Badal waited, saw their rickshaw find its space in the crowds of cycles and rickshaws and scooters in the narrow lane. He stayed where he was till he lost sight of it. He met so many people in a year, his head had become a room filled with a faceless crowd. Even so, he knew he would never forget this woman and her father. He felt he had been responsible for the old man’s fall. He should have been taking better care of him. The irony of their gratitude! If the man had come to any harm – he did not want to think about it. He felt reduced by their generosity.

  Yet the afternoon filled him with contentment. Usually he had no interest in the pilgrims he had to conduct around the temple. They were work, and when they were gone it was over. But these people – he wanted to show them around Jarmuli now, take care of them, see that father and daughter came to no harm, feed them the special fish and rice at Manoj’s lean-to behind the bazaar, then the warm, succulent sweets at Mahaprabhu. Take them to Johnny Toppo’s tea stall.

  That tea stall! The shadows from the night before lifted as if by magic, the mid-afternoon sun dazzled. Badal went off to the lane where he had parked his scooter. He would eat something. Then he would go and look for Raghu. Maybe he was back and waiting. At long last, he would give him the mobile. He sang aloud as he turned the corner. One of Johnny Toppo’s songs, sung every day:

  Dark, gleaming gold are my love’s bare legs,

  Deep in the emerald paddy.

  Red as rose are her bangles that shine,

  Bright in the emerald paddy.

  Wary as a thief is that watching egret

  White in the emerald paddy.

  And the rain came again and again that night,

  Soaked all the emerald paddy.

  Business was slow at the tea stall. Not many people on the beach and so many women fasting because of Shivaratri, it halved the number of customers. Johnny Toppo was by himself, pottering about. White spikes of stubble stuck out from his chin and his bald head shone. Raghu had wanted time off and he had told him to disappear. It was a relief to be rid of that boy. Johnny Toppo was sure the rascal was stealing; he was a sly fox, that one. Just thinking of Raghu today was putting him in a bad temper even though he had woken that morning feeling as light as the froth on his tea. More often than not, he found himself grinning about nothing even when alone, and at times he was gleeful without reason, like a simpleton or a child. The other day he had been gazing at the madman watering his dry twig and then making his daylong sorties into the water when he had abandoned his stall and sprinted off in daft pursuit. He wasn’t thinking, he hadn’t planned it, it was the end of a tiring stint, almost night, and there he was, racing the lunatic into the froth and back again, shouting nonsense, and then the two of them had laughed like hyenas and pissed into the sea side by side. Yet today he could not stand the sight of that filthy, ugly loon. And he wished his customers would disappear as well. But he needed to earn, didn’t he? He had to grin at tourists and brew tea and grin again. Some days he wanted to turn his table into a raft and sail off into the Bay of Bengal. He’d be washed up on an island nobody knew, and live on fresh fish, beeris, and palm toddy. And not one drop of tea.

  He was lost in these thoughts when Nomi appeared and said too close to his ears, “One. With ginger and cloves.”

  For some reason, whenever he was startled this way, pinpricks of an itch started all over him and took time to subside. He scratched his head, then scratched his shoulders, fought not to scratch his armpits and groin. He tried to summon up a smile and his patter. “Done shopping today? Gone to the temple? Buy a few saris while you’re here. And don’t forget to eat fried prawn by the sea. That’s what Jarmuli’s famous for! That and my tea.” It was what he rolled out for everyone and he forgot that she had heard it all from him twice or three times already. This girl made him uncomfortable, he could not tell why. Maybe the way she kept staring at him with those big, black eyes of hers.

  On the beach, the madman scurried around, planting his twig, watering it from the sea, stepping back to admire it, then plucking it out from the ground and planting it in a better place.

  Johnny Toppo had not covered the scar on his neck with the cotton square he used sometimes as scarf and sometimes dishcloth. He felt her eyes upon his patch of raw, buckled-up flesh. Quickly, he adjusted the cloth. He straightened, took shelter behind his stove. He stirred his pan with great vigour, he clattered dishes and cups around. His smile was gone, he was not singing.

  Nomi strolled down to the water, kicked a dented plastic bottle out of her way. It flew seaward in a shower of sand and the madman rushed out chasing it into the waves. She turned around to look at Johnny Toppo at his stall pounding the ginger and cloves in his mortar as if they were fighting back. He picked up a jar filled with what looked like black dust and tossed some into the water boiling on his stove. When she came back, the mixture was bubbling, dark and frothy like the beers she had drunk in Germany. She took a deep breath of the tea in the pan and said, “Sometimes I feel I’ve seen you before. Don’t you feel sometimes . . . as if you’ve seen someone before, been somewhere before?”

  “I don’t think too much, or feel too much.” Johnny Toppo poured out her tea. “If you think too hard you just get a headache and lose your hair. And I don’t have any hair to lose, see?”

  They stood in silence. She finished the tea in her cup and peered inside it. She said, “Do you know, people tell fortunes from tea leaves?”

  “I don’t know. People will say anything to make money.”

  “No, really, I had my fortune told once. And the woman – she was a very old woman in New York – that’s in America – her room had bead curtains and a mini tree – this small – in a pot by the window. She told me that if there was one place I should visit on earth, it should be a place in the east by the ocean. So here I am.”

  “My tea has no leaves, it’s all boiled up. I can’t tell you where to go next.”

  Nomi smiled and ran her finger over her beads. “Can I have another?” She was not going to leave, Johnny Toppo could see. He poured milk into the pan and more water, tipped in a spoonful of sugar.

  “You sing so often of trees and flowers and paddy fields. Are you a farmer or a gardener?”

  “I am what you see. I sell tea and biscuits.”

  “But wasn’t there a time when you looked after plants?” She sounded braver now, her voice was louder.

  “Everyone’s looked after plants some time or other. That crazy goat out there? He’s watering one, see? You must have had a plant or two in your life as well.”

  She blew on the tea he handed her. “I mean, did you ever look after plants as your work? Somehow, because of your songs . . .”

  “No,” Johnny Toppo said. “And it will be ten rupees for the tea
.” He turned away from her and stood behind his stove. His bones stood out more than usual now, as if he had sucked in his hollow cheeks and sealed his mouth against further talk.

  “I’ll take one of your umbrellas,” Nomi said, “and sit here.”

  “I have no umbrellas for hire today,” Johnny Toppo said. He had three umbrellas propped up in the iron bucket behind him, but if she persisted, he would say they were spoken for.

  She looked out to the sea. Johnny Toppo clattered his pots and pans. Then she said, “Do you know of an ashram here in Jarmuli?” Her gaze was fixed on the madman, who was now stamping on the twig he had been watering.

  A band of pilgrims passed them just then: young women, men. They smiled as they went down the beach, swaying and singing.

  “Ashram?” Johnny Toppo said, after the pilgrims had gone. “There are hundreds of ashrams here, this is a temple town. All you hear is the sea and bells. And fools like these every five minutes, braying like donkeys, buying an advance booking to heaven. Temples. Ashrams. Devotees. That’s Jarmuli.”

  “A big ashram. Run by a guru. It had a school. Since you’ve lived here for many years, surely you’d know?”

  Johnny Toppo stalked towards her and growled, “Who’s to tell how long I’ve lived here? I’ve lived in a thousand places. Tomorrow I might be somewhere else. All ashrams are run by gurus, how do I know where yours is?”

  Before she could ask another of her questions, two tourists soaked in seawater came up to the stall panting. “Hot tea! Hot tea is what we need!” one of them cried out.

  “Arre Babu! Look what you have done to your clothes!” Johnny Toppo’s transformation took no more than a second. He sounded like a mother delighted by the waywardness of her toddlers. “What kind of tea? With ginger? Or with lemon? With sugar or without?” He turned away from the girl and produced the genial chuckle all his customers were given. He stirred his pot and started humming to himself. The tourists said, “What are you singing? Sing it aloud.”