A River Sutra (14 page)

Fifty years ago, in the days when there were still kingdoms in India, our small state of Shahbag was famed throughout India for its culture.

Too small to be of interest to the British Empire, perhaps Shahbag was saved by its size. Our ruler, the Nawab of Shahbag, was awarded no British gun salutes and the iceroy never visited. But if we were denied imperial splendor, in our isolation we were able to maintain the truer splendor of civilized behavior.

It was easy to cultivate civility in the beauty of our setting. You see, 'Shahbag' means 'garden of the emperor.' Our capital gained its name from the Emperor Jehangir's pleasure when he saw the fields of flowers growing on our riverbank and,

Once a year, as schoolchildren, we joined our ruler in showering blossoms on its waters. The Nawab was a Muslim but he honored the river's holiness. I can still hear his voice echoing through the microphones: "Bathing in the waters of the Jamuna purifies a man in seven days, in the waters of the Saraswati in three, in the waters of the Ganges in one, but the Narmada purifies with a single sight of her waters. Salutations to thee, 0 Narmada."

Then we all shouted "Salutations to thee, O Narmada!" and flung our garlands into the water, competing to throw them farthest.

In those days if you went for a boat ride you could see people promenading in the gardens that stretched the entire length of the city or lying by the flower beds that led to the water's edge, and in the evenings there were always musicians playing in the wind pavilions. Then, as night fell, above the gardens you could watch the skyline of the city being etched into the darkness as lamps were lit in the mosques, the arched balconies of the Nawab's palace, the windows of the grand houses of the aristocrats. Our haveli was one of the grand houses. The less wealthy lived on streets leading to some central point, a bazaar or a place of worship, so that the whole city had a symmetry that pleased the eye.

Wide boulevards
_-
bordered the river gardens. Now the globed gas lamps imported from Paris by the Nawab have all been removed, but when I was a child their light cast a romantic glow over the horse-drawn carriages in which the gentlemen from the great Shahbag families took the river air. Sometimes a famous beauty like my grandmother was seated at their sides. Although her face was veiled, her rich garments and most especially her ostrich-feather fan with its jeweled handle revealed to every eye that she was from our haveli.

You see, the courtesans of our haveli were rumored to be even wealthier than the wives of the Nawab. Presents were showered on them by other rulers. Renowned not just for their beauty but for their learning, they were in great demand to educate the heirs to India's mightiest kingdoms.

Are you familiar with Vatsayana's classic, the
Kama Sutra?
No? Read the requirements of a courtesan as Vatsayana describes them. Sixty-four arts she must be mistress of, from architecture to zoology. Painting, flower arrangements, music, languages, philosophy, jewelery, literature, even mathematics. Perhaps we were not as educated as the ladies of the
Kama Sutra,
but we were certainly more accomplished than any other woman in India.

And really the essence of all our arts was a single art only: to teach noblemen good manners. For instance, such things as how to pay a compliment.

What is so difficult about paying a compliment? you might ask. It seems an easy thing to tell a woman she has a pretty face.

You are wrong, gentlemen. Those compliments are accepted by fools from gangs of boys who roam the marketplace. We required a lighter touch, a phrase that could delight and yet contain a barb to remind us that beauty was a passing thing, and love beyond attainment.

To give such compliments is one of the things we taught these princes. But to turn a pretty speech on beauty, a man must be able to perceive beauty. After all, the primary colors Eire seen by every lout, the ordinary scales heard by every washerwoman who repeats them in her songs while she is beating her clothes on the rocks in the river.

But to teach a prince the subtle grading of color or the microtones of melody, to educate a young man's palate so he becomes an epicure, to introduce him to the alchemy of scents—this was the most demanding part of our education.

You see, we were forbidden to give voice to our instructions. We could only educate by hint, by hide-and-seek, by nuance, always struggling to make of our knowledge something as light and transparent as a soap bubble, keeping it suspended in the air as its colors were admired until our students grasped its fragility.

And when they had understood such refinements, but only then, we sometimes allowed them to touch us.

After all, touch is the most dangerous of the senses, wouldn't you say, sir?
Our establishment was so famous for the rigor of its training that our most brilliant courtesans were sometimes invited by an important king to sing and dance when he was entertaining the Viceroy of India himself. My grandmother was in great demand for such occasions. I can still feel the touch of my grandmother's soft, scented hand stroking my forehead as I lay with my head in her lap, while she described how she had trembled as she waited for the court minister to give her the cue to enter those huge audience chambers with the king on one throne, the viceroy on another grander one, his mighty retinue flanking him down the length of the chamber.
And when she had ended her performance she told me a shadowy figure would sometimes stop her in the corridor and offer her a velvet box in which might rest a lotus blossom fashioned of pearls or a rosebud carved from a diamond solitaire. If she accepted the gift the courtier would beckon her to follow him.
My grandmother wove such magic around those nights. She spoke of being rowed to lake palaces under a star-filled sky. Of gossamer nets hanging over beds strewn with jasmine blossoms. Pearls scattered on the sheets. Arched doorways opening onto balconies below which the water lapped softly against the stone foundations.
Oh, friends, how Shahbag has changed in my lifetime. Where there used to be gardens now we have factories. Our gracious old buildings have been torn down to be replaced by concrete boxes named after politicians. The woods that once ringed the city have been cut down for the shantytowns of labor colonies. Even the boulevards ' around our haveli have been overrun so that our view is now only of a bazaar, and we must keep the windows to the west closed because of the smell from the open gutter.
The city is owned by men who believe every human being has a price, and a full purse is power. Trained as scholars, artists, musicians, dancers, we are only women to them, our true function to heave on a mattress and be recompensed by some tawdry necklace flashing its vulgarity on a crushed pillow. When they come to our haveli they throw cigarette cases, watches, dirty bank notes at our feet as we dance, oblivious to the frigidness of our salaams.
How often I used to weep in my mother's arms at the coarseness of our audience, but she would hush my sobs and tell me I would never be soiled by their touch.
What can I say, sir, except to tell you that my mother died and I lost my protection from such men.
But my daughter knew nothing of these matters. Inside the walls of our haveli she still learned the arts that had once kept our reputations burnished throughout the Indian kingdoms. Teaching my daughter was no task at all. She seemed to contain in her slender form all the aspirations of our haveli. I had only to make a suggestion and she would bring the hint into the full flower of an art. From the bells on her anklets she could teach the impermanence of the world. Through a song she could inspire her listeners to imagine the possibility of perfection.
Knowing from bitter experience that the era of our haveli had passed, I wanted nothing to compromise my daughter's name, and I permitted her to appear only at weddings, or the birth of a son, or before families celebrating the head of their household. So jealously did I guard my daughter's reputation that I succeeded in creating an aura of awe around her until she became famous not just for her beauty but for her modesty.
She was called an angel. You may think it is only the opinion of a mother, but truly, sirs, my daughter was an angel, giving love to all who met her as a child gives love to those who have cosseted and spoiled it because it does not know there is harshness in the world, or ugliness.
When she was only seventeen our member of Parliament requested my daughter to perform at his election meeting in the capital. He told me important people from Delhi would be addressing the meeting, and thinking my daughter might one day need the protection of such powerful patrons, I myself took her to perform that afternoon.
Strangely, I felt a premonition of fear when I saw those thousands of people in the park, shifting in boredom as political speeches echoed from the microphones wired on every tree, but I dismissed it as nerves for my child.
I need not have worried. From the moment a party worker led her to the microphone and she began to sing, my child soothed the crowd into silence.
I don't think even my grandmother could have controlled that vast audience as my daughter did that afternoon, exciting them, consoling them, giving voice to their longings and their despairs, as if our haveli were expressing itself through her slender form.
She was so innocent in the face of her own power, so overwhelmed by the response to her art when the seething mass of people exploded into applause, that her body shivered in my embrace as I led her from the platform.
Hoping to calm her, I suggested we walk home through the bazaar. As always happens during an election campaign, the bazaar was covered with party posters and campaign flags. Political jingles echoed from loudspeakers lashed onto auto-rick shaws, competing to be heard above the film music blaring out of the tea stalls. While my daughter wandered from shop to shop, I stopped at the side of a street to watch a troupe of folk actors enacting the politician's promises for those who could not read.
And then, sir, my life somersaulted.
The sound of machine-gun fire burst through the noise of the bazaar. I screamed for my child but the street was filled with panic-stricken crowds. People were trampling over each other to get into the shops, shrieking with fear as rounds of bullets tore into the air. Seeing my daughter at the far end of the bazaar, I pushed against the crowd with all my might to reach her, but I was crushed, unable to move. I could only watch as a blanket was thrown over her head.
My daughter's limbs flailed against her captor as he flung her over his shoulder. He turned his face to avoid her clawing nails and, oh, sir, I saw Satan walk this earth at that moment. Then his men were helping him into a jeep, and they were gone, firing their guns in the air.
Rahul Singh took my daughter, sir.
My child has been abducted by the most wanted bandit in the Vindhyas, a man the police fear, a murderer whose name is used even in Shahbag to frighten children into obedience.
Please, sir, do nothing until I hold my daughter safely in my sums again.

Mr. Chagla looked at me. I averted my eyes, ashamed at my reluctance to assist the old woman.
"The police will not hear of your daughter's escape from us," I assured her. "You are welcome to stay as long as you wish."
"Thank you, sir. You are doing a great kindness to my daughter as well as myself."
Mr. Chagla nodded his round head in approval. "I'll tell the staff to prepare rooms."
The woman covered her face with her hands and her shoulders shook as she began weeping again. "I fear my daughter will have much need of kindness. How could this terrible thing have happened? I did everything to protect my child. With

her beauty and her unblemished reputation, she could have married a respectable man. Who will believe in my child's virtue now? Who will accept her as a wife, a girl captured and kept by criminals for two long years?"

I was on the brink of suggesting her daughter might be employed in some capacity in our bungalow but fortunately Mr. Chagla returned, saving me from making such an extravagant offer before I had even met the girl.

He helped the old woman from her chair. "You must recover your strength for tomorrow," he counseled compassionately as he led her up the stairs.

That day we saw no more of our visitor. She remained in her rooms while Mr. Chagla tinkered with the generator and I did an inventory of the leaks that had developed in the roof during the recent downpours. By the time Mr. Chagla had Succeeded in restoring our power, the storm had passed and we were able to take advantage of the clear sky to make some minor repairs to the roof. We did not need lights immediately, but I was glad the fans were working and the old lady would get some relief from the oppressive humidity.

To my delight the good weather lasted. The next morning, after many weeks, I was able to go the terrace for my dawn meditations. As I was crossing the gardens, I saw a figure dressed in white slipping through the bungalow gate, and I knew the old woman was already leaving to meet her daughter.

I have always regretted the heavy storms that prevent me from coming to the terrace more often during the monsoons. The Narmada is at its most dramatic during this season. The distant waterfalls, swollen by monsoon rains, crash through the marble rocks like surf breaking at full tide, and below the rest house the river churns and bubbles around sudden rapids, eroding the gray-green stones lying on its riverbed into the oval lingams that are the symbol of Shiva.

For some reason only the rocks in the Narmada riverbed carry the mark denoting the third eye of Shiva and the three lines of his ascetic's ashes, becoming the smooth lingams worshipped in family altars and mighty temples alike with the prayer "In the living stones of the Narmada, God is to be found."

I sat in the darkness repeating the invocation until the first rays of daylight pierced the monsoon mists shrouding the fields across the river. A strong wind was pushing banks of clouds toward our hills. I watched them changing shapes and colors in the sunlight as they raced toward the eastern horizon like herds of animals or the battlements of medieval cities, some yellow, some the color of smoke, some white with the pink blush of conch shells.

By the time I ended my meditations the sky overhead was blue, without a cloud in sight. I decided to take advantage of the fine weather and walk to Tariq Mia's house, curious to hear his reaction to the old woman's story.

A thick undergrowth of ferns had sprung up in the jungle behind the bungalow since my last walk, and water from the previous day's storm still dripped from the luxuriant foliage. I made my way around the puddles in the mud path, avoiding the fallen creepers—blue convolvulus, white jasmine, orange-pink lantana—floating in the water. Monkeys shrieked at my approach from branches overhead, and once I paused to watch a peacock fanning its tail as it performed its mating dance to some peahen, invisible in the distance.

My pleasure at being out of the bungalow was so great I was unaware that I had reached the summit of the hill until I heard a group of village women shouting at me from the Jain caves.

"Sahib, see what we have found!"
"Sahib! Come quickly!"
A woman ran up to me and took my arm, pulling me toward a cave where the other women were crouching over a black bundle.

"We came here looking for dry kindling, and found these."
"What shall we do with them, sahib?"
My hands suddenly felt cold in spite of the heat. Three rifles and two boxes of cartridges wrapped in an oilskin were lying on the mud. "Send your men to call the police from Rudra."
The women watched me wrap the oilskin around the arms, noisily speculating on who had hidden the guns.
"Someone tell Tariq Mia to keep all his villagers inside until he hears from me," I said as they followed me up the hillside. "The rest of you return to your homes and stay there until the police say it is safe to move about again."
When I reached the bungalow, I told the guard to make sure the staff did not wander out of the grounds. He ran outside to see if anyone had left the rest house and I carried the oilskin bundle to my office, certain the weapons were somehow connected with the old woman's daughter.
Opening the steel cupboard in which I keep cash for bungalow emergencies, I stored the guns and boxes of cartridges on a stack of unused files on the bottom shelf. As I was locking the cupboard, the door of my office opened.
A slender young woman stood in the hall. Although she was dressed in a white sari, the homespun cotton gave her almost a royal air as she waited to be invited inside. I could see she had just bathed. The thick black hair hanging loose to her waist was still wet. She kept her gaze demurely away from me but her modesty was magnetic, forcing my eyes to stay on her as her long eyes examined some object on my desk, the lashes brushing against the delicate color of her cheek. "I came to thank you for your kindness to my mother," she said softly, her low voice pleasing to my ears.
"Your mother?"
"Yes. She met me on the road."
I pulled up a chair, trying to disguise my shock. "Please. Please sit down. Are you all right? Is there anything I can get you?"
She sat down with an economy of movement that did nothing to distract from the suppleness of her slender body or the fluid grace of her actions. "Would you like some food? Do you need money or—"
"My mother has already taken care of my requirements," she interrupted me gracefully. I was unprepared for such self-possession and could hardly believe she had undergone her terrible ordeal. "Where is your mother?"
"Resting before our departure. I made her lie down."
"Could you fetch her?"
"Please, sir. She is very tired. Let her rest a little longer."
"I'm afraid I must talk to her urgently."
"Can't I help instead?"
"I don't know. Guns have been found in our jungle. It will take the police an hour to get here, by which time your mother and yourself can be gone. But you must tell me at once if you are being pursued. I am responsible for the safety of my staff."
She looked at me and I thought I saw a flash of defiance cross her expression before she dropped her eyes demurely again. "No one is any danger because of me."
"How do you know your kidnappers are not already on your trail?"
"Perhaps you would believe me if I tell you why I was kidnapped."
She folded her hands on the desk. I could not help noticing the elegance of her slim fingers. Then I saw her nails were bitten down to the quick, and that evidence of nerves moved me in a way her self-control had not. As if reading my response, she suddenly seemed to become a vulnerable young girl.
"It was many weeks before I myself knew the reason for my capture, sir. I can't tell you much about those weeks except that we fled deeper and deeper into the jungles, to some place my captors called the resting place of the Immortal where no police dared follow.
"Of that time I can only remember my exhaustion, and the bitter taste of my fear, and the strange men always nearby so I could hear their coarse laughter and smell the stink of their unwashed bodies even at my most private moments. But through that whole time my worst fear was waiting to be assaulted by the leader of the gang.
"He had a black power that seemed to enclose him like a cloud and he stared at me all the time. Once I saw him wet the edge of his turban to wipe the dust from his face, showing a fair skin under the grime. But I still thought of him as black, as something evil and forbidding. When I heard his men calling him Rahul Singh, terror turned my limbs to stone. Even in Shahbag we knew of Rahul Singh's crimes. After that I tried to hide whenever I saw him watching me. But his eyes were always on me, like a panther stalking a goat."
She pressed her wrists to her temples. For a moment I thought she would swoon, but she smoothed back her hair almost coquettishly and continued.
"Eventually we reached this place where the Immortal is supposed to sleep. It was desolate. No human dwellings. Only the cry of wild beasts and the shrieking of hyenas. For weeks I had been living in the jungle, fearing snakes each time I lay down. Now I was kept in a cave, like an animal. I begged God then to let me die."
She laughed but there no merriment in the sound. "Unfortunately, I discovered the will to live is stronger than the longing for death. Then one night the thing I most feared happened. Rahul Singh appeared in my cave. He placed a lantern between us and sat down. I hope you never endure such fear as I knew then, sir, as I waited for him to move.
"It seemed hours passed as he stared at me with those eyes red with dust before he finally spoke, saying 'I ask forgiveness for what I have made you suffer.'
"I could not understand the timidity with which this man who inspired fear with his very name was now telling me 'God knows my soul and he knows I would not have exposed you to these indignities. But I live on the run from injustice and you must live like me.'
"I implored him to release me. In my desperation I tried to bribe him. 'My mother is not a wealthy woman. But she will beg or steal to pay a reasonable ransom for me.'
"My words angered him. 'We didn't take you for ransom.'
" 'Then what are you going to do with me?' I whispered, frightened by the rage in his voice.
" 'Don't you know? You, who have been my wife in so many lives before this one? Don't you know?'
" 'No!' I screamed. 'No! Never!' I don't know what I was denying beyond my captor's insanity. I only knew this madman was telling me that I would never be allowed to go home. I screamed and screamed when he said, 'No one will harm you. You are under my protection.' I screamed, thinking I would never be permitted to return to our haveli, never again enjoy the sweet refinements of my old life where each motion, each sound was judged by its appropriateness. I screamed, refusing to believe I would be forced to spend the rest of my life with these coarse criminals. But in that desolate resting place of the Immortal, who was there to hear me?
"I cannot tell you how long I screamed, only that I must have gone mad myself because when I came to my senses I was in a mud hut and village women were taking care of me."
Her thick hair had fallen over her shoulders. She swept it back impatiently, lifting her arms to wind it into a bun at the nape of her neck. The gesture pressed her round breasts against the thin fabric of her sari and I saw a mole on the curve of her throat. Embarrassed that I should be so aroused by her beauty when she was telling me her dreadful story, I lowered my eyes and began rifling through the papers on my desk.
"Surrounded by women again I slowly recovered my wits and began planning my escape, but when I asked the women to help me they only laughed. 'How will you escape Rahul Singh? He knows these hills better than any man alive.'
"I pleaded with them to help me escape this murderer.
" 'Rahul Singh is no murderer!' they shouted at me. 'He has the highest decorations for his valor in two wars with Pakistan. When his soldier's commission ended and he came home, he found his family dead and his lands stolen. No one dared help him. The man who took his land had the protection of the local politicians. Denied justice, Rahul Singh only did what any man of honor would do. He swore vengeance on his family's murderers and killed them all. Of course he has become a hunted man. But he has never harmed anyone who did not deserve it.'
"I told them he had harmed me by stealing me from my family. Again and again I begged them to help me run away. They laughed and showed me all the presents he had left for me. And when he came to take me back to the jungles, they sent me with him as if I were his bride."
I listened, hypnotized by the low voice, but in a way which I could not quite identify I saw the girl's demeanor had changed. Now she was telling her story as if she was acting out a play, her expressions changing as she spoke her captors' words, then her own. She no longer appeared vulnerable as she described the next months when, finding she had no weapons except the weapons of the haveli, she employed every art to make Rahul Singh desire her.
"By then I knew in some part of my mind that the village women were right and he would not touch me without my consent. So I punished him by inflaming his longing for me. Then I laughed at his misery when I showed him how coarse I found him, how lacking in the refinements I admired.
"He endured my hatred and my insults. Each time he went on a raid he returned with a gift for me, although his men told me he had risked his safety in some bazaar to do so. And when he was in the camp he sat outside my cave like a dumb brute enduring my worst cruelties."
Now there was an artifice to her manner that I was beginning to find brittle, even distasteful. Her beauty continued to astonish me, but I saw in her gestures the manipulations of the courtesan, as she told me how Rahul Singh left new clothes and once even a set of anklet bells outside her cave.
"I suppose it was boredom that led me to put on the anklets and practice dancing. He used to stand outside the cave in the dark, watching me as if trying to prove there was a greater art than all my arts, the ability to love someone as he loved me, while I danced as if to amuse myself but really to taunt him.
"One night he could endure my cruelty no longer. Under the trees outside my cave, with no light except that of the stars visible through the thick canopy of leaves, with no sound but the calling of wild animals to contradict him, he shouted at me, 'Don't you know you are mine? You have been mine in many lifetimes but each time I lost you. This time I have unsheathed my dagger before Fate. I will not let you go.'
"He stretched out his arms to me. Suddenly I knew he was speaking the truth, and that night I entered my captor's embrace. Guided by his touch, I learned I had known his body in a hundred lifetimes before he took me again a virgin on the thin cotton quilt which was all that shielded our bodies from the ground."
I stared at her, barely hearing her account of their secret marriage at the temple of Supaneshwara. I could only think of what her mother would feel when she discovered her innocent child had seduced the Satan who had kidnapped her.
"After the wedding he was afraid the police might capture me in order to capture him, and he wanted me to learn how to use a gun to defend myself when he was away.
"He took me to his private place and taught me how to shoot. We were so happy there, in our solitude. He told me a great warrior slept somewhere close by with honeybees circling his head. He laughed, saying his men thought he was himself immortal because he had been stung by one of those bees. I wanted to be stung by such a honeybee so we could be together forever, and sometimes we set out to search for the warrior but we never found him, distracted by bur desire for each other.
"When we returned to camp he left on raids with his men again. I repeated the story of the bees to myself while he was gone to calm my fears for his safety. I knew on each raid he put his life in jeopardy to buy something for me, a veil for my head or a fragrance for me to rub on my wrists.