The Heat and Dust Project

by Saurav Jha

  For a few seconds, I am numbed. My chirpiness vanishes in an instant. ‘Are you going to take dowry?’ I demand of Rohan Saraf. ‘I am not going to,’ he tells me, enunciating each word coldly. ‘But do you know what my aunt said when I told her this?’ He looks at the boys – from this point onward, he only addresses them. ‘She’s beginning to look for girls for me,’ he reports. ‘I told her, you figure it out. I will come for a week, meet the final girls once and pick one of them. Anyway, when I told her this dowry thing she said, “If our boy is from IIM and we are not asking for dowry, do you know what the ladkiwaalein will think? They will think there is something wrong with you and we are trying to palm off damaged goods.”’

  Diego titters. S gets up and goes to the bedroom to change. I throw my weight flat on the divan. The blinding success of frenemies was an infinitely better subject in comparison.

  Then, Jiya calls. Diego shushes me, speaks to her for a bit, and tells her right at the end that there is a surprise for her. He then hands the phone over to me. I squeal. Jiya squeals. For the first few minutes we end up speaking over each other, then waiting for each other, and finally, when we interrupt those silences, our conversations overlap again. Jiya, I say finally, you speak. Go. She laughs. Through Diego’s phone her breathy laughter, always slightly anxious, always slightly unsure, makes me the bossy friend all over again, discussing questions for the next day’s paper. ‘Hurry up, Jiya. It’s a trunk call, for crying out loud. You’re not that much of an heiress in pounds.’ She laughs again. In Kent, it is evening and her classes are over for the day. She is walking back to the flat she shares with two Korean girls after picking up one or two things from the store. She has a paper due tomorrow and she’s not written a word yet. It is dark and cold and miserable. She’s been living on cheese and milk and smoked chicken. ‘And how are you, Dippy?’ she asks me. ‘What’s Diego’s house like?’

  I settle down on the floor to chat.

  Saurav

  It is Uttarayan morning and a holiday in Ahmedabad. Diego goes back to bed after seeing us off. Rohan has not stirred. We find an auto to take us close to the old city. Johnny Mawan, the friendly autowallah, informs us at the outset that he is a Christian, and then points to the back of the auto where there is a rack full of magazines. We both find something we like to read, though every few seconds we look up to observe the kites that are flying over the city and the few that are tangled in the trees. Lunch is cheap and filling in a small restaurant near the station, but as we wait for the food, last night’s conversation hangs heavy between us. Our exit from the predominant dharma of our peers is still new enough to plunge us into anxiety from time to time.

  We walk down the roads of the old city, entering from Delhi Darwaza, and it is the similarity to buzzing parts of old Calcutta, the commercial belt, filled with shops and tradesmen and narrow old streets – Bada Bazaar, for example – that soothes us. D suddenly takes it into her head to buy some apples. These are got from a fruit seller on a cart. Then she demands a knife. ‘Why on earth?’ I say. ‘Just use your teeth.’ She does not listen to me and marches into one of those dingy cast-iron shops and emerges with a fairly large knife. I take it from her – lest there be an accident – and it’s still in my hand when I hail an auto. The autowallah agrees to take us to Sabarmati Ashram but first, he says, I must put the knife into the bag straightaway. ‘This is the old city, sir. After the riots, a new law was instituted. The police can arrest anyone wielding a weapon. Knives are included.’

  As the auto crosses over Subhash Bridge, I see a Sabarmati which is flowing, albeit at low ebb, with a part of its rocky bed visible. I remember something I had heard from my father. In the late 1970s, when he worked in industry here in Gujarat and often visited Ahmedabad, the river was a dried-up mess. In any case, the Sabarmati is a non-perennial river which had water only for a few months in the year.

  ‘Modi has done wonders for the Sabarmati,’ the autowallah says. ‘There used to be markets and slums on the river. Modi relocated all that. He is building that waterfront you can see from here and has brought water for the Sabarmati from the Narmada canal. Now there is water most of the time.’

  The bridge culminates in a large circle, where the autowallah takes a gentle left to enter a tree-lined avenue with empty pavements, except for a solitary paanwallah sitting under a parasol and conversing with what is probably his second or third customer of the day. The auto stops right opposite the duo and the gate of Sabarmati Ashram comes into view. But once we enter, I realize I was perhaps premature in judging the day’s prospects for the paanwallah. Quite a few people are milling about inside the leafy settlement that was once Gandhi’s experiment in sustainability and simplicity.

  It wasn’t always Gandhi’s though. Sabarmati Ashram has been a site of pilgrimage through antiquity. It is believed to be the site of one of Rishi Dadhichi’s ashrams; Dadhichi set up several such abodes across India, the chief one being in Naimisharanya, near Lucknow. Rishi Dadhichi is immortal in Indian memory for the sacrifice of his mortal self to help Indra fashion a weapon out of his bones. This was used to defeat the nearly unassailable Vritrasur.

  Vritrasur was a gifted asura who had strayed from the path of dharma and had blocked the flow of rivers on earth through the creation of some ninety-nine fortresses. Rising to be head of the asuras, Vritrasur exposed the impotence of the devas when they challenged his might. Despondent, the devas finally turned to Vishnu, who revealed to them that Vritrasur could only be killed by a weapon fashioned out of the bones of a rishi since he had acquired numerous boons through austere penance in the past. This precluded the possibility of him being slain by any conventional weapon. Dadhichi willingly gave up his body to restore balance in the world.

  It is hard to imagine that the symbolism of this story would have been lost on Gandhi. By settling down on this bank of the Sabarmati, Gandhi may have sought to internalize Dadhichi’s message as he fashioned the greatest weapon of sacrifice – satyagraha – against an enemy that was no less complex than Vritrasur, a colonial edifice on a ‘civilizing’ mission, apparently standing for modernist development, but actually standing on the damaged psyche of a civilization much older than theirs.

  We walk along the pathways that are a playground for squirrels, following signs that point to the Mahatma’s cabin. As I approach the house, I begin to notice a heaviness that has been welling up inside me. Having been raised in Bengal, I have always been acutely affected by Gandhi’s decision to favour Nehru over Bose to succeed him as the dominant voice within the Indian National Congress in the late 1930s. And like other people from the state, I too grew up to be aggrieved with this choice, even so many decades after it was made. Once, when historian Ramachandra Guha had come to JNU to deliver a mess talk, I remember vehemently opposing his support for Nehru by raising not just the ‘Bose question’ but also the way in which Nehru had dispensed with other rivals such as Shyama Prasad Mookerjee. ‘This man must be a Bengali!’ Guha had retorted, after which a spirited discussion

  had ensued.

  The small forecourt of ‘Hridaykunj’, the quarters of Mohandas and Kasturba, is lined by a little wooden fence with a door between two mini stone pillars. As I enter, a goosebumpy sensation rises from the base of my spine, culminating in tears that begin to wet my cheeks. I am overwhelmed. As I peer inside the Gandhian quarters (spartan doesn’t begin to describe it) with its mat, munim desk, a pillow and charkha, I can no longer harbour doubts about the strength of the man’s sadhana for India, if I ever did.

  Outside, I sense that D too has been moved. We begin to meld into the crowd that has suddenly congealed. There are many parents here accompanying dewy-eyed children, dutifully asking them to take off their slippers and escorting them inside for a darshan of the sanctum. It is as if they are going to meet a clan elder who is still around. A very Indian pilgrimage this.

  ‘My life is my message’ written in Gandhi’s hand is kept as one o
f the displays in the ‘New Museum’ that holds all sorts of memorabilia. That message, as is obvious from Sabarmati Ashram, is not limited to seeking total independence from British rule in India. It is a call to a mode of living where self-sufficiency is blended with inter-generational equity.

  Thus, Gandhi, in his book, Village Re-development for the 21st Century, emphasized the need to keep the fertility of the topsoil intact and not subject it to industrialized chemical farming for higher yields that wouldn’t last much longer than a couple of generations.

  His simple words have been completely ignored by several generations since independence, so that we are at a point where topsoil, along with water, is one of the two most valuable commodities in the world today. Large corporates are grabbing relatively virgin (in terms of chemical fertilizer and pesticide use) farmland wherever they can get it, whether in Ethiopia or Argentina. In many parts of the world, subsistence farmers are suddenly becoming cash rich by allowing topsoil brokers to cleave 4 inches of their existing fields to be deposited several thousand kilometres away. The good earth is no longer a punch line.

  We walk out of the museum area into a garden at the back which is almost entirely deserted but for a flock of parrots on a tree and two children – a brother-and-sister duo – sitting in the middle of kite-flying paraphernalia and several kites. The stillness is redolent with a sense of peace.

  It is broken when the phone rings.

  I squint at the number and hand the phone over to D. It is her supervisor.

  34

  We sit morosely outside Sabarmati Ashram on a bench. Buses and cars go past. In between the passing vehicles, in soft nano-snatches of silence, I can sense twilight advancing. I exhale noisily.

  ‘What did he say?’ S finally asks.

  I bite my lower lip and unconsciously strike a suitable pose: body tightly rolled up, legs drawn closer to the trunk but still dangling, and move back and forth in acute agitation. ‘Remember how I’d given the money and documents to that classmate of mine? Angela Savitri?’

  ‘Yes. She was supposed to pay your fees at the school office and do the registration for you.’

  ‘Apparently it wasn’t done.’

  ‘You mean, she didn’t do it?’

  The speed at which I rock on the bench increases.

  ‘So,’ I continue, ‘if I want to remain registered as a student, I have to get there in person. By Tuesday or Wednesday, latest.’

  ‘Back in Delhi?’ S sounds incredulous.

  ‘Yes,’ I reply, quickly allowing myself to become very angry. Everyone knows whose idea this project is. Naturally, the last thing I would have wanted is an interruption. But the fault is in my stars – there are always such fatal mistakes I make. ‘Look. I was a fool. I knew Angela was not reliable. I should have done it myself before coming.’ I feel so stupid that I want to lie flat on the pavement and smack my head against the kerb. God, I am foolish. I could have easily done it myself before we went to Jaipur. It is, in any case, a semester of waiting. Until the viva voce for my MPhil dissertation is scheduled, I am, in a manner of speaking, free from any academic compulsions. Just the registration. A mere formality. But I hadn’t gone in person – Paharganj was too far away from the campus, I was packing for the trip, I’d seen others do it for friends all the time, and Angela had, in a moment of utter reliability, said she would do it. Easy-peasy, she’d said, her posh accent underscoring the ‘pea’. But now my supervisor had spelt it out. If I wanted to retain my place, I’d have to go and do it myself.

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  I have no answer.

  We keep sitting on the bench by the road. The buses and cars go past. The twilight has now crept up the trees and swarmed to the tips of branches. Any moment now there will be a giant leap and dusk will cast a gargantuan net on the sky, and the clouds will thicken into evening.

  ‘Are you saying we have to return? Go back to Delhi?’

  I still don’t say anything. Shadows lengthen. Across the road a kite floats down lazily on the back of an evening wind that rises from somewhere. It lies like a red gash on the pavement.

  Eight:

  How (Not) to Get Late for Girnar

  I’ve always believed that when you do a thing you should forget everything else and do that one thing with heart and soul. When I was interested in mundane pursuits, I was a perfect materialist. You would never in your life have imagined that I could be interested in spiritual subjects. And when I was doing Sadhana, I forgot everything else and I did it. For example, for ten months in Girnar I lived in an Arka (Calotropis Gigantea) tree in an old cemetery, eating only Arka leaves, doing a ritual to please Anjaneya. Arka leaves cause violent purging and vomiting. Do you know how ‘hot’ Arka is? Arka means Sun and after two or three days of eating those leaves my mouth and tongue had swollen to twice their normal size. But that didn’t stop me, I continued with the ritual. Aghoris always overdo a thing.

  – Robert E. Svoboda quotes Aghori Vimalananda in

  Aghora, Chapter 10, Girnar.

  35

  Saurav

  14 January 2010, 8:30 p.m.

  ‘Haven’t you brought blankets?’ the lady says incredulously. It reminds me of a smug classmate in the fifth standard saying, ‘Haven’t you done your homework?’ Indeed, the cold Saurashtra night is proving to be a veritable class teacher hell-bent on teaching D and me a lesson for taking it lightly. ‘Your wife should have thought of it,’ she adds, casting a glance at D. ‘My wife is the bookish type,’ I tell her, affecting despair.

  Our impression of winter in Gujarat had been largely shaped by the past few days – a warmish Palanpur and a nice, cool Ahmedabad, with road travel in packed buses and jeeps in between. Now, as the train snakes its way to Junagadh through a mostly barren landscape, ghostly in the moonlit night, the near-empty sleeper compartment and its ill-fitting windows conspire to spread an eerie chill.

  D finds warmth in her book. She strains her eyes to read in the dark. It is an Agatha Christie she nicked from Diego’s house. I find no comfort. I wander from this bunk to that, hoping to sleep for at least an hour or two. Nada. The cold is uniformly bitter everywhere.

  At four in the morning, several grave-looking men get into the train. They are wearing formal office wear, and carrying office bags. They take off their highly polished shoes and place them neatly by the window. They take out sheets and blankets from their office bags, blow up air pillows and go to sleep. Apparently, they are railway employees commuting to Veraval where they work, and they do this every day.

  15 January 2010, 4:30 a.m.

  The scene at Junagadh station as dawn breaks: a throng of people all wrapped up and bustling around trains, the smell of milky tea being boiled over and over in the same utensil, dull oblongs of white light on the grey platform, cast by tube lights fixed on the corrugated ceiling. This could be an early morning shot of Jamshedpur and I could be eight, accompanying my parents aboard the Steel City Express for Howrah, the Jharkhand winter as bone-juddering as the Kathiawari one.

  The brain discerns some patterns of more recent vintage as well: an eager autowallah immediately agreeing to take us to our destination – Sabri Shopping Centre, Kehra Chowk – asking a fare which we suspect is higher than par but one which we acquiesce to after yet another weary journey. And then rocketing out of the station area in what seems to be the world’s fastest manned three-wheeler.

  Whether it is because it has risen out of a sparse countryside at the foot of a range or whether by municipal design, Junagadh does not seem to have many trees. The streets are clean enough, by Indian standards anyway, and like Palanpur, this place too has decent pavements and covered drainage. The buildings near the station are typical of most growing Indian towns – three or four storeys, built with complete indifference to aesthetics of any kind, comprising shops on the ground floor and a cyber cafe or two in the first.

 
Our auto comes to a halt near a large but somewhat shabby shopping complex. It has an exaggeratedly small entrance with shops (now shuttered) lining the corridor that leads to the staircase. Ascending the stairs, we notice the sign for Hotel Madhuvanti on the first floor, pointing to the left. Apparently, there is another hotel on the second floor too.

  On the first floor, we find Hotel Madhuvanti. But there is no door. Instead, from the other side of a locked grille, we can see a reception desk, shadowy in the half-light. A man is slumped on it. The desk is in a channel that opens into a wide courtyard. The boundary of the courtyard, we are to see later, is a double-storeyed wall made up of rooms. I remember how surprised we were later, with the scope of the building. One would have never imagined from the exterior of the building or the staircase area that within its walls would be a big courtyard lined by rooms stacked on one another.

  A suspicious voice issues from the man at the desk, who seems to be stirring. ‘Yes?’ It sounds more like, What the hell are you doing here, you morons with backpacks?

  ‘Oh, we have a booking. We called…’ says D in English.

  ‘No rooms,’ the man says abruptly, cutting her off. It’s not what one wants to hear at the crack of dawn, having landed in a strange town. But like a true veteran of such endeavours, D now proceeds to give him the precise time and content of our call, wherein we had confirmed a booking and room charges (negotiable), interspersed with information about our project, all in Hindi. ‘And we have arrived well within the approximate hour we had told you over the phone,’ I added, also in Hindi, pointing to the wall clock which read 5.15 a.m. We had promised we would be in by six in the morning.