Hillstation (2 page)

But that year's holy man had been quite helpful. The young Guptas offered him alms of various kinds before asking if he could bless them with progeny. He recited a few prayers, lit a fire, and sprinkled them with flowers. The results, however, had been disappointing. They offered him sweets, jewels and money. He blessed them, their families, their ancestors and, more to the point, their descendants. But not a sausage emerged from the dubious fertility of their respective loins. At last, the young Mr Gupta marched up to the holy man's cave and denounced him as a fraud. The holy man took a well-aimed swing at Mr Gupta and knocked him off his feet. Mr Gupta jumped up and threw a punch at the holy man who dodged it nimbly, spinning round to deliver another fearsome thump. Mrs Gupta, shrieking by now, grabbed the holy man's hair, yanking out a couple of tufts, any attachment to which he promptly renounced. Mr Gupta, bruised and dispirited, sat down to weep. Mrs Gupta, shocked by this display of unmanliness, hit him over the head saying what sort of a husband is it who can't even get his wife pregnant. Mr Gupta wailed that the gods must have cursed him for some ugly secret in her family undeclared in the matrimonial preliminaries. She said any ugly secrets were more likely to be in his stinking, rotten family than hers. In a moment of divine insight the holy man said do you have sex? They stared at him.

Nine months later she had a baby.

How he knew about sex, being a holy man, is a mystery. But perhaps holy men have knowledge even of things they aren't allowed to do. At any rate, she was a lot more cheerful after that and so was her husband.

The fact is, even without my prompting, Dev had often raised the subject of English girls, especially on those evenings when the effects of his research were most apparent. He would flick a toy taxi across his desk, rambling variously about the sharp sticks attached to their shoes which made them wobble as they walk, or skirts that come so far above the knee that their knee is no longer the most interesting thing about them. He talked of their soft voices, how they look you in the eyes, and how many of them become educated and even get proper jobs. Above all, he'd say, zooming a little aeroplane around his lampshade, they were ridiculously beautiful with long limbs and pale skin, a bit thin by Indian standards but ravishing nevertheless. And once, after a particularly rigorous research session, he said that English girls didn't require marriage as a prerequisite for sexual congress.

It might have been this thought which triggered off a seismic shift in my consciousness, or it might have happened anyway. Pol and I could never decide which, but over the span of a single summer, what might have been a blur in the farthest reaches of our peripheral vision suddenly had the effect of jerking our heads round so forcibly that our necks hurt. An afternoon breeze, tugging playfully at the slender hem of an embroidered sari walking in front of us, would become the only visible thing in the universe. Whereas before it might have seemed effortless to nod and say good morning to the baker's daughter or the weaver's sister, suddenly it was all we could do to breathe. If any of these feminine apparitions actually spoke to us, the rushing noise in our ears rendered us incapable of hearing, while a gelatinous paralysis of our mouths left any sort of reply out of the question. And even when there wasn't a girl in sight, idle thoughts that might have wandered aimlessly over any old thing began to swerve violently towards the single, throbbing, oddly uncomfortable and entirely imaginary conjuration, based largely on guess-work with a little help from Dev's anatomy books, of a girl with no clothes on.

And so our talks, as we strolled up to the meadows or sat in the caves, changed inexorably from the best way to sneak up on a rabbit to whether Jasminda or Chocha provided the greater level of sensory intoxication. Uncomfortable as it was, we accepted the unsolicited arrival of carnal desire as something that eventually happens to everyone, even girls. And it wasn't too hard to work out that if you had the same effect on a particular girl as she had on you, then you were in trouble. Unless your respective parents approved, in which case it was marigolds all round.

Although I wasn't entirely ineligible, such prospects as I had were largely derived from my proximity to Dev. As a Doctor who had been to England he was the apogee of matrimonial desirability, the coveted prize of every high-born family, though he had thus far resisted their many propositions. As his brother, I might have satisfied most second sisters, but such were the aspirations of all sisters that I had either to wait until he'd made his decision, or settle for one whose resentments at the implicit failure would tarnish any hope of marital accord. Dev's argument was that a man of his stature required a properly educated wife, which is to say, from the plains. That no sensible family from the plains would consign their daughter, however ugly, to the hills meant a celibacy for Dev to which he seemed placidly resolved.

Pol stood by the cave-mouth picking stones from the wall. The bats had started to fly in and out, speckling the light with fidgeting silhouettes. For me, the sudden uprush of hormonal disquiet was merely another source of frustration. For Pol it was a catastrophic obstacle to his quest for spiritual perfection.

‘All I wanted,' he moaned, ‘was to meditate, do my
pujas
and not become like my father. But now the mind, like a tempestuous horse, races off in all directions to wallow in lascivious images of ankles, bangles and the hair over Kula Nabwar's shoulders.'

‘Her skin!' I sighed, imagining its smooth undulations under my fumbling fingers.

Pol looked round, a liquid shape against the sky. ‘It was in some previous life,' he said, ‘that we turned our thoughts to the transient pleasures of the material world. A moment, that's all it took. Some footling thing. And now we must pine for liberty while our souls thrash helplessly in lurid chains of insidious discontent.'

‘Yes,' I said, shifting the moss under my head. ‘I expect that's it.'

Pol was dark-skinned as befitted his birth. He had a thin moustache which his father would have liked him to grow thicker though I'm not sure that was an option at this time. How can you be taken seriously in business, Malek Bister would say, without a decent moustache? His hair was another battle-ground, Pol preferring it tidy while Malek insisted he tussle it like a movie star. The fact that Pol cared at all about his inner being was a major source of irritation to his father who took great pleasure in declaring, preferably with elders in earshot, that there was no such thing.

Pol slumped back against the wall. ‘We just have to accept,' he sighed, ‘that we have becomes slaves to lust and the heinous consequences thereof.'

‘Which is quite spiritual, isn't it?' I offered.

‘What is?'

‘Accepting the consequences.'

‘If we have the strength,' he said after a while. ‘Think about it. Marriage, family, the years of unremitting toil. To climb from the stained shame of a conjugal bed, slouching to work for a few meagre rupees, staggering home again to rage at nothing, the supper late, our slippers cold, and then, as night falls, to squirm before our demons, not least among which is the dream of how it might have been. Once a week we shall satisfy our wives. And once a month we shall become so inebriated that she beats us with a broom. And in this manner shall the days of our lives unfold as youth, joy and the tender aspirations of our early years bleed to nothing and we die.'

‘I wouldn't object to marrying Jasminda Biswas,' I said, ‘but the only reason her parents even talk to me is because they half-suspect that Dev fancies her so, really, I don't stand a chance.'

Pol turned slowly back to the sky.

‘And as for you,' I said. ‘Who's desperate enough to marry a Bister? You'd be lucky to get the squinty one with bad breath.'

‘Your remarks,' he said, lifting a spider from the wall, ‘are sometimes less constructive than you think.' He let the spider crawl back. ‘It is true that our prospects are not high, but don't you see?' He looked at me earnestly. ‘The uglier she is, the more stupid and unpleasant, the more useless and ungrateful, the greater our chances of spiritual transcendence. For what do the scriptures, and just about every holy man who ever came here looking for somewhere else, say? Through suffering alone is liberation possible. So let us agree, Rabindra, to find the worst possible wives, to spawn the worst possible children, to live the worst possible lives so that our spirits have no choice but to flap like free birds to the great beyond!'

As I've said, in my opinion merely metaphysical solutions are no solutions at all.

‘You suffer if you want to,' I said, ‘but I've got other plans.' He moved to speak but I carried on. ‘You know Mr Dat? Of course you do. And we all know his wife, Mrs Dat. You can hear them shouting when he gets home at night. And how does he walk? Eyes to the ground. And why's that? I'll tell you: suffering. Is that spiritual?' Pol shook his head. ‘And what about your mother?' I demanded. ‘Completely mad. Everyone knows that. But why did she go mad? Assuming she wasn't mad to begin with. Because of your father. Because of her marriage. So how does that help her transcend the world of mortal delusion? She's more deluded than anyone I know. And what's the cause of that? I'll tell you again. Suffering.'

Pol studied his shoes in the half-light, then straightened his back. ‘I shall marry as the gods decree,' he said. ‘The least appealing she is, the more conducive to my inner calm, for there shall be no danger of me ever enjoying a single moment with her, carnal or otherwise. That is my vow.' He jutted his chin out like an ascetic deciding on some terrible penance. ‘As the gods will,' he intoned, ‘so we act. There is no choice in these things.'

‘But are they not,' I said, ‘open to persuasion?'

He stared at me.

‘And is it not customary,' I continued, ‘for people with a particular wish to perform such oblations as may be necessary for the gods to grant it?'

Pol looked out again, stroking the frail strands on his upper lip. ‘Only if the wish is lawful,' he said. ‘But can it ever be lawful to wish for personal happiness at the expense of one's spiritual prospects?'

‘Maybe,' I said, ‘maybe not. All I know is that my wish is to marry an English girl.'

He moved his mouth for a moment. ‘A what?' he said at last.

‘An English girl.'

‘But why?' he said.

‘Because they are effortlessly beautiful. Because they are elegant, mysterious, and wear peculiar shoes. But most importantly, because they live in England which is where I wish to live, with an English wife, in my English house, doing nothing but English things on a daily English basis.'

‘Your father would never send you to England,' said Pol.

‘Then she will have to come here. We'll meet by chance and fall in love. Father will be impressed, my brother delighted. They'll sit around discussing whether The Charge of the Lightbulb Brigade was heroic disaster or just plain stupid. And then, once the formalities have been completed, she'll take me home with her.'

He ran his hand through his hair, inadvertently ruffling it. ‘How?' he said. ‘No English person has ever come here, never mind two English girls looking for husbands. Not in living memory, not in dead memory, never!'

‘Exactly,' I said.

He stared at me again.

‘Well, think about it. The longer it hasn't happened, the greater the chance of it happening now.'

‘That is not the proper application of the laws of probability,' he said, looking at his shoes again. ‘Alright,' he said after a while. ‘I accept that your wish is an appealing one. But let me tell you, there is no wish less lawful than for what can never be. For if it were the slightest bit lawful the gods would not have made it impossible.'

‘Perhaps it is up to us to make it possible.'

‘How?' he barked suddenly, his eyes, a little bulgy anyway, threatening to pop out at me.

‘In the traditional manner, through sacrifice and austerities,' I said calmly. ‘We'll light fires, burn some butter, recite a few prayers and, if it please the gods, they'll grant our wish.'

Pol began to walk in circles. ‘And if this desire is not lawful?' he asked. ‘I mean, inherently sinful, devious or malicious.'

‘Then they won't grant it.'

‘They will punish us.'

‘What could be worse,' I said, ‘than staying here for the rest of our lives?'

He twined his fingers nervously. A bird called from outside. Then he took a breath and sat down. ‘No,' he said. ‘I am resolved. God willing, I shall marry some local harridan nobody else in their right mind could possibly want. If we cannot find one here, then my father will make enquiries in the city on the plains. Those with a shortage of decorative features, brains and modesty are in plentiful supply down there, by all accounts, and generally available. The dowry will not concern us. But if I marry an English girl…' A vein on his temple began to throb. ‘I shall never be free of the bad Sanskara that has rendered me an outcast. Happy yes, but never free.' He folded his arms with the finality of one so flattered by the sound of his own argument he no longer cares if it's right.

‘No-one doubts,' I said, ‘that you must have done some pretty dreadful things in a previous embodiment to earn such a bad one this time around. But if you really want to make up for it, what greater sacrifice could there be than to imperil your soul for the sake of a friend?'

‘Perhaps,' he retorted, ‘to imperil a friend for the sake of his soul.'

‘Well, good luck,' I said a little tartly. ‘No doubt you'll be happy to come back as a temple monkey.'

‘It was not my intention,' he answered quietly, ‘to aim so high.'

‘The fact is,' I said, ‘you've read the Vedas, you've studied the rites. If I tried reciting prayers, the gods would send me back to school. I'm asking you, for my own personal happiness, even at the expense of my future embodiments, please.'