Home To India (10 page)

Even as he spoke, one of the Delhi businessman's little boys brushed aside the curtain long enough in passing to cast a bright, awestruck glance into the room.

“See what I mean?” I said, getting up. I felt like striking out for somewhere, but I didn't know where. My voice must have come out louder than I knew, because an anxious voice from behind the curtain said, “Is everything all right?” It was Mr. Malgaonkar. His eyes, big with curiosity and alarm, were visible for a flash through a tear in the curtain.

“Fine, thank you,” Tej replied in a voice as normal as he could make it.

“Just wondered,” Mr. Malgaonkar said, and made his way back to his room. We could see him urging his reluctant wife and daughter from the scene.

“Well that's settled, anyway,” I said.

“What's settled? Nothing is ever settled,” Tej declared gloomily. “Nor is there any reason it should be.”

He picked up the sitar again and made a final effort to hone its tune to a fine point. Then he began the alap, the slow first movement of his favorite raga, “Megh Malhar,” one to be played in the monsoon season. It was a wistful utterance, tinged with regret, and it was as if in the plucking of the strings of the instrument Tej were communicating with a spirit that could understand him as no human being could. I felt left out. I sat down again to listen in spite of myself.

Several improvisations on the raga in the alap followed one another in great, soft sighs. This is our wedding night, I said to myself. It was something I had lost sight of, what with the long bus ride and all the traveling before that. It seemed as if I'd been on the road for months, with only a brief, intense stopover in Majra. Perhaps it was the struggle through the rain, the anticlimax of actually being here. Of all the times I had imagined my wedding night—great filmy abstractions—nothing like this had ever surfaced. Meanwhile, Tej's fingers hovered over the same four notes of the raga, worrying them into a shimmer of sound.

Outside our room was the small bustle of people gathering around—footsteps on the cement stairs, creaking on the wooden floors. I got up and looked out. The Aggarwals and the Malgaonkars and their children were sitting crowded together in the narrow hall. The elderly Subramaniams were standing at the door of their cubicle at the upper landing of the stairs. Enchanted. Tej moved into the second phase of the raga, increasing the tempo, composing now, melody after melody. And finally came the climax, a cascade of sound and rhythm at unbelievable speeds. An occasional
“Wah-wah”
was heard outside, registering approval, delight, surprise, as Tej, like a magician pulling several rabbits out of a hat, drew out unexpected variations from the instrument.

All rancor between us subsided with the final notes of the raga. Deep night had fallen. No stars, no moon. An overcast sky. There was a shuffle of feet outside in the passageway as the audience got up to leave. In the next cubicle the Delhi businessman and his family were settling down for the night.

“This isn't what I expected, Meena,” we heard Mr. Aggarwal say.

“It's not a proper ashram,” his wife declared. “Not like any we've visited before, I don't think.”

“I wonder where the Babaji lives?” one of their boys said.

“He doesn't seem to be anywhere around,” Mrs. Aggarwal said.

“It's a funny place,” the other boy remarked sleepily.

Tej and I sat cross-legged on his bedroll facing each other, sharing a grin.

“It's like no ashram
I've
ever seen,” the wife went on. “No priests, no Babaji, no reading from the scriptures. No discourses. This is supposed to be the abode of the gods, Shiva and Parvati. Dancing.”

“The cosmic dance,” her husband chanted in agreement.

“But it's only the other visitors wandering about. As if on a holiday. Those Bombaywallas, and the South Indians.”

“The Sardarji with his memsahib. And then a sitar recital. Pukka rag—classical music—in the middle of the night,” Mr. Aggarwal said.

“I didn't see anybody praying,” Mrs. Aggarwal said.

Tej looked at me. “Let's have a look around this place, memsahib,” he whispered. “I'm not sleepy yet, are you?”

We tiptoed out through the maze of packing-box rooms like cat burglars, not wanting anybody to hear us. We went down the winding stairs to the covered veranda that ran the length of the building and separated it from the sacred tank of spring water. Steam billowed out as the chill breeze off the river hit the boiling water that gushed out of the rocks below the gurdwara, housed in the ashram at ground level. A soft, steady rain was falling now, and instead of mingling with the water of the cold river, it darted here and there on the surface, just as the clouds of steam that rose from the hot springs failed to merge with the flood, but instead rebounded from it in great bursts of vapor. The pool was divided in two by a bridge that could be crossed in five strides. A low railing divided the body of water from the veranda. The bench along the wall of the building, and that which earlier in the evening was the center around which the life of the ashram spun, was empty now.

Tej and I walked along the veranda, looking at the pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses which papered the outer wall of the building. They had been clipped from religious magazines and old calendars. Some had been hand painted by devotees. Gory scenes depicting battles and tortured heroes from Sikh history shared the space with pictures of Krishna sporting amorously with the milkmaids and Parvati worshiping the Shiva lingam. An ornate wall clock hung over the door of the cave-room which the Babaji was supposed to occupy. Its shiny brass pendulum and carved wooden case gave it authority and rendered Time important. Tej lifted the cover of a transistor radio that sat on a shelf beside the clock. It had been hand stitched by some devotee out of silk brocade and bristled with stiff frills and flounces. At the far end of the veranda was a separate enclosed tank for women to bathe in, and some more stairways, this time leading up to a multitiered terrace.

“That's it,” Tej said, taking my arm and putting it around his waist. We stood like that, absorbed in the scene, our eyes accustomed to the night now. All of these details clamored for attention. None of them blended. Everything was cut up, partitioned, refusing to mingle. Every item declared its independence from everything else, and at the same time demanded to be taken into account. It was more than I could take in. I closed my eyes. The damp air had penetrated my lungs, made my hair fuzzy and Tej's beard curl. Our clothes were damp, our skin felt like wet rubber. It kept feeling hot, then cold.

“Come,” Tej said, reaching down and putting one hand in the pool. “Let's try it out. It feels warm.”

The pool itself was in contrast to all the separateness and divisiveness of the surroundings. A constant stream of boiling spring water flowed into it and warmed the water from the icy river to a temperature just right for bathing. Tej drew me down beside him on one of the rock ledges in the shallow, warm, sulphurous water. It had a texture of its own. I had the conviction it was flowing through me, that I was dissolving into it, losing myself and at the same time gathering it all to me. The cells of the body renew themselves—almost a completely fresh set—every year. In that pool, it happened all in a few minutes to me. A great shedding of old cells. Fresh ones taking their place. New nuclei!

The drizzle of rain continued, but it became one with the pool. All the complexities of the scene outside were dissipated. At the same time, the lines that divided Tej and me were impossible to maintain, even if we'd wanted to; they were erased, washed away by the flowing water. His loose shirt and cotton pajamas billowed out around him; my dupatta lost its veil-like quality and became a floating wreath around my shoulders. Without even touching him, I was certain that his flesh beneath the wet clothes was warm and solid, and familiar, as familiar as my own, and that I'd make my home on one of Jupiter's moons, if need be, to live out a lifetime with him.

Minutes later we emerged from the pool and headed towards our room, simply cold and wet now and eager to dry off. A figure came toward us out of the shadows at an unhurried pace from across the little bridge. It was the server of tea, the maker of dinner, the truck driver with the marvelous smile.

“Good night, children,” he said in Punjabi-accented English. “Sleep well.”

8

Back in our room, Tej carefully replaced the sitar in its case, and I stretched out on my bedding against the wall opposite him. I speculated about what it must be like to be him—a man. What does it feel like to have a man's body, I wondered. Those muscular shoulders, long legs? What does it feel like to rise almost six feet above the ground, to be able to see over the heads of crowds? To look down on everybody? How would it feel to have large hands like that? To manipulate the things of this world with fingers almost twice the length of mine? What to do with that long back? The tight, muscular hams? How would it feel to touch your face and encounter a soft, silky beard? To touch a chest that is flat and downy? To clasp forearms that bristle with hair? How to move the big bones and muscles, to establish a rhythm of walking stride by stride instead of step by step? What must it be to hold possession of such a body? And how could it not affect the mind inhabiting it? Did Tej even half realize the power it gave him over me? One drop of his semen could throw my whole system into top gear, could start a baby.

What was it like, I wondered, to be Tej: the human being that he was. The behavior learned from family and kin lay fused like a firmly bonded veneer on his outward self, I thought. But in what conflict to his inner self, the one that fell in love with me, someone of his own choice, and experienced feelings contrary to the values he received while growing up. “He's walking a tightrope too!” I exclaimed to myself in surprise. “Between two ways of life. And he can't get off.”

By now, all the other pilgrims had gone to sleep. I could hear Mr. Aggarwal lightly snoring, or was it his wife? From a room above us, a girl cried out in her sleep. Somewhere amongst the web of human life in that architectural nightmare of an ashram was the Babaji. Was he awake or asleep? Praying or meditating?

A light breeze kept blowing the curtain back and forth as though with the comings and goings of busy phantoms, which, now that the lantern was out, possessed the room. It had become damper, the room more permeated with the smell of sulphur. Gigantic sighs and superhuman whispers raced through the window.

“What's that sound?” I said.

“Which one?”

“I can't hear it just this minute, but it comes at regular intervals,” I said. It sounded like the hoarse whisper of a giant.

Tej raised himself on one elbow. His silhouette was solid against the luminous night sky as it streamed through the hole in the packing box wall. “Where do you think it's coming from?” he asked.

“For all I know, from inside my head,” I said. “I just begin to fall asleep and then I hear it again.”

“It might be Shiva and Parvati,” he whispered in a straight voice. “You heard what the lady said.”

“You don't really …”

“Believe that?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “You don't really think they're here.” I strained to see him in the dark, but his features were in shadow.

“He's the god of destruction and she's his consort and between them they're supposed to be able to dance up a storm. This is, after all, their legendary home.”

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“The next valley is named after her. Not for nothing.”

“Come on. What does that prove?” I said. “It's just folklore.”

“No,” Tej insisted. “It's what the sound tells me. I hear it now. What you heard.”

“I don't believe it,” I said. “You're making it all up.”

He laughed and lay down again.

“If you want it to be Shiva and Parvati, why not?” I said, wanting to have the last word. “We haven't even seen the Babaji yet, but you insist he exists. Do you think we'll see him?”

“I suppose so,” he mumbled, turning over.

“Maybe we'll see him in the morning?” I suggested.

“We're leaving in the morning,” he said, barely audible now.

“There'll be time to meet him before we leave, won't there? After all, he's the reason we've come up here.”

It was getting harder to make sense of all this, with my eyelids refusing to stay open and my breathing slowing down. “Tej,” I said, “isn't it odd? I can see myself lying down here; I can see the two of us, your sitar and our gear and everything. And at the same time I can see us trudging through the rain up that slippery path, and earlier, all of us bumping up and down over that dirt road, squeezed into the bus all morning. Did we really do all that? Or am I dreaming?”

“We did,” Tej reassured me.

“You know,” I said, staring into the darkness of the room, “sometimes I wonder if life is going to be just a series of disconnected comings and goings. At the end, will I look back and see a meaningless hodgepodge of pictures that are unrelated? That have no development?”

“Do you suppose,” I went on, not caring now whether he was listening or not, “that we experience life in the same way as we look at a motion picture? With that defect in the human eye they call persistence of vision? I once read that because of some peculiarity, our eyes hold onto the image of a subject for a bare instant after the thing we're looking at has moved. Moving pictures are just a series of still pictures, but our eyes don't perceive the gaps in between; we are fooled into thinking that everything is moving. Isn't that odd?” He didn't answer.

“In our lives, are we really moving along? Or does it just seem that way? Do we suffer a kind of psychological persistence of vision too, that makes us think we're going somewhere when we're not? It could be that our lives, like the motion picture, are just some stills that we connect together so that they will make sense.”