In the Shadow of Crows (33 page)

Thirdly, they revealed a collective dream for some level of self-sufficiency. However, with no boundary wall for their isolated community within the slum, their attempts to grow food had been constantly thwarted by wandering dogs, goats, chickens and cows.

It was time to pull on our biggest, newest, chintz-upholstered string.

One phone call to the
Raj Bhawan
and we had a personal introduction to a contractor who could provide an electric, deepbore water-pump that would function with the push of a button in all weathers. This was followed by the assurance that a sturdy brick wall would be constructed at the state's expense, to enclose and protect the entire, desolate quarter.

A difference could indeed be made. The change had now begun.

Thereafter, Ben and I defied the dominant culture and sat with the residents of the slum colony, purposely emphasising their worth as fellow men and women to the gawping locals. Every day, we sat amongst dense clouds of flies that rested on open, stinking sores as we washed and treated deep ulcerations, dressed wounds from which bone and empty knuckle joints thrust.

Witty, welcoming and ever smiling amidst this horror, our gentle hosts sat quietly as we gently massaged healing oils into shattered, painful skin. Sat quietly as tears trickled down their cheeks that they feared to wipe away in case senseless, ruined hands crushed out remaining sight.

“Not even our parents touched us like this,” they would softly choke and, in the low light of daily dying suns, hug us unreservedly.

***

“Jayashri!
Mero
Jayashri!” Bindra cried out into the darkness.

She had not been asleep long when the clamour of angry shouts had woken her abruptly. She strained to listen beyond the beating of her heart, beyond the cries of lost children she heard nightly in the darkness.

She strained to hear beyond the forest colony, beyond the trees. Strained to make sense of the rising commotion in the slum beyond the boundary fence.

The cries of fury.

The screams for mercy.

***

I woke with a start.

It was not a sound, but a smell.

Dirt. Decay. Death.

I sat bolt upright to stare into the indiscernible features of a figure at the foot of my bed.

“
Sah'b-ji
!” a voice trembled.

I fumbled to switch on the light, but the electricity was off.

“Who's there?” I hissed, in anxious return.

“
Sah'b-ji
!” repeated in unenlightening reply.

My hasty fumble for the torch caused Ben to stir. I scuffled with its loose switch and a cruel glare slammed into a startled, tear-stained grimace beyond my toes.

Both Ben and I cried out.

We fought with our bedclothes to reach the trembling intruder.

It was Bhim Vir.

He was bleeding.

***

Bindra was sitting in her doorway. It was the first day that she had felt able to shuffle from
charpai
into sunlight.

The broken ankle had been slow to mend and the fiery swelling in her lower leg had yet to subside. She winced as she sought the least painful position in which to rest against the wall. She now had new sores on her ankles, buttocks and back, mercilessly gouged by the slack jute-twine on which she had lain for far too long.

Bindra sighed and raised her face to smile at the caress of warm morning brightness against her skin.

“Kali Ma,” she whispered towards the earth, the sky, the air she breathed. “Is it really today?”

“
Behenji
!” Sushmita suddenly interrupted. She was hurrying down the narrow lane towards her. Aarti, Poojita and Dipika followed close behind. “Have you heard?”

Bindra smiled broadly at the three girls, who scurried past their agitated mother and into the comfort of her waiting arms.

“Last night! Did you hear? Such a
burra danga
riot in the slum! They've beaten everyone in the colony down there. Even the women!”

“Who's been beating whom?” Bindra asked in distraction, as she stroked the three little heads with bandaged hands.

“Those
badirchand
Collectors paid residents - no doubt with our money! - to attack the colony last night. They smashed the water-pump. They cut off their electric powerline. They beat them with sticks and now two of them are dead! Of course, the police won't come near. They all benefit from the ‘rents' with the rest of those
goondas
. The colony is already pulling down huts to try to build a
chitaa
pyre by the river.”

Bindra hugged the quiet, nervous children to her breast.

“I will protect you with my life, my lovely girls,” she whispered into their sweetly pungent, mustard-oiled hair. “With my life.”

Bindra sealed her promise by touching each dark head in turn, then turned back to Sushmita. “Why would anyone do such a thing?” she asked.

Sushmita dropped her voice to a desperate whisper. “The slum colony said they wouldn't pay the Collectors any more!” she almost mouthed. “They said they no longer need their bad, expensive medicines or their ‘protection'. Foreigners have come to give them all they need. The Collectors have lost their power. It seems the slum colony is free!”

Bindra pressed her cheek to the trio of warm heads that leant against her chest. A single caw rang out above them. She looked at the new shadow that stretched out on the ground before her. The shadow of a single crow that had alighted directly above her door.

She smiled.

“What is it,
behenji
?” Sushmita whispered. “You're not afraid?”

“Afraid?” Bindra chuckled. “Why would I be afraid? It is today that my son will find me.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

I spent the morning in the charity hostel. The residents were delighted, the teachers tense and taciturn.

I taught volleyball in the dustbowl of the “sports ground” and yoga on the prickly grass, yet still my mind could not free itself from the violence of the previous night. Violence beyond the perimeter fence, cruelly perpetrated by the slum dwellers against the most vulnerable in their midst. Violence - and even deaths - because of us.

“Don't come,
sah'b-ji
,” Bhim Vir had sobbed in the fading glow of last night's torchlight, as Ben and I had tended his bruised limbs, the cuts on his head and swollen eye. “Not safe for you. Not safe yet.”

I had wanted to go straight down into the slum, to see for myself what we could do. But Bhim was adamant.

“Please be waiting,
sah'b-ji
. You come now and those damn
goondas
they'll be watching. They are saying they'll be cutting your throat. We leper-types are okay. All's too big danger now.
Sah'bji
, please be waiting.”

As the morning bell was rung, I could not think of eating any lunch. Ben was already in the bazaar, buying up a long list of medical supplies, from both pharmacies and herbalist
pansaris
. I sipped at my boiled water with disinterest. I threw the remains of my banana to the waiting crows. They paid it no attention.

I knew that it was unproductive to indulge the fretful guilt that threatened to submerge me. If I could not yet enter the slum, then I would go back to the forest colony and continue my rounds until Bhim confirmed it was safe to return to his community.

I filtered and twice boiled water from the tap. I poured it, steaming, into thermos flasks. I bundled bandages, wadding, gauze, disinfectant, surgical gloves and jars of honey into my big red bowl.

I kicked at the dust and sun-crisped leaves beneath my feet as I began the long walk into the trees. I tried not to think of the slum beyond the boundary fence, from which I was temporarily forbidden for the sake of many more than me.

I thought instead of the cheery faces about to greet me at the
lingam
in the roots of the old peepal tree, at the entrance of the forest colony. Only then could I muster a smile for the promise of new friends, for the bright sky above, and for the flight of soundless crows that seemed to be deliberately following my route.

***

Bindra's fever had steadily, fiercely increased.

And yet she had spent the morning carefully brushing the floor of her hut with a loose bundle of dry grass. To disguise her shivering, she had struggled into a tatty jumper that had once belonged to Jasoda.

Bindra hobbled to the pump to wet her face and hair, to rinse her mouth, then hobbled back to rebind her head with cloth.

She was almost ready.

Between her bandaged feet, Bindra positioned the twine-bound blade. Between her bandaged hands, she took a stick to represent
Akash
: the world of gods, of all-encompassing consciousness. Into this, she cut nine notches for the levels of
Dharti
: man's limited, sense-bound experience of the external world. She turned the stick to cut into its soft bark seven more notches for the levels of
Patal
: the symbolic, inner world of water and crystal, the limitless, inner luminescence from which all else arises.

Bindra clasped the prepared wood between her palms and, with great effort, plunged its point into the ground at the centre of her hut. She closed her eyes to voice the secret
bija
of Shiva, the rarely spoken syllable of the Absolute. This, then, was now
Bindu
, symbol of man's limitless potential.

With steady sweeps across the smoothed earth, Bindra drew a
yantra
to represent her own, inseparable connection with the cosmos. She first scored three concentric circles around two interlocking triangles, and then the eight lotus petals of Kali Ma. These she enclosed with three firm squares to mark the four directions, the underlying structures of reality, surrounded by eight
trishul
tridents to denote the three qualities of Nature, the three primary streams of consciousness: time, space and that which surpasses both.

Finally, she marked out the sacrificial
khadga
, the Sword of Knowledge, to signify the battle against her own ignorance that prevented her from understanding the infinite reality of existence, and thereby her true nature.

Bindra scattered vermilion
sidur
and hibiscus flowers for Shakti. A little milk and
bilva patra
leaves for Shiva. She intoned the initiating mantra of Mahadeva's dynamic, hidden form, then sat back.

The
yantra
of Khadgaravana, for the welfare of her children, was now active.

Bindra had prepared the way for the son that was to come.

***

“
Namaste, sah'b-ji
!
Namaste
!” familiar voices called in welcome as I paused to mark my respects at the old stone
lingam
.

“
Namaste Pitaji
!
Mataji
!” I replied. “
Aap kaise haiñ
?”

“
Thik
!
Thik
!” they grinned, assuring me that all was well with them.

I wiped my brow and sat beneath the peepal tree, in which my companion crows had now alighted. Residents of the forest colony were quickly drawn into the shade to proudly show me that sores were healing. Deeply cracked skin had begun to soften and swellings had abated. Infected cysts had shrunk and putrid ulcers had lost their stench.

They cried aloud impassioned blessings, arms and faces cast skywards. Blessings upon my mother who had borne me safely. Blessings upon my father who had taught me well.

They wanted to bend and touch my feet. Indeed, since the heat had driven me out of shoes some weeks before, my intact toes had become the cause of great fascination. As I had sat amongst them, affectionate finger stumps had been regularly employed to transfer honorific kisses to every one of my pale, healthy digits in turn. I grasped their shoulders, insisting there was no need.

I made my way slowly through the colony to be greeted as “
Babu
!” by men squatting at their dice games, “Our dear son!” by women tending to their chores. Others, so damaged by disease and malnutrition that they could not lift themselves beyond their doors, stretched out thin arms to proclaim me”
Bhagavan
!” I laughed my protestations, insisting I was only as much “God” as any one of them. It was simply as their brother and their friend that their suffering was now mine and, in return, my heart forever theirs.

I called on old friends to gently clean sores on Drupada's distorted hands, wash self-inflicted slashes on Alka's shins, and smooth disinfecting lotion into Rekha's oozing scalp. I carefully massaged oil into the taut muscles of Kabir's contracted arms, lanced boils on Jaspal's back, and redressed Nanu's twisted, toeless feet.

Then on to a new, narrow lane of little huts. New skinny children, new smiles and blushes.

I laid my bowl with its weighty contents on the ground and crouched to face them. Only one small girl stepped forwards from amongst her shy playmates. She cocked her head and squinted to look me directly in the eyes. Her face was inquisitive and expectant, her hair wild and black. She wore a full-length dress that was torn and scarlet, the colour of the Goddess. A little Kali Ma.

“
Mataji
!” she called, without once allowing her unyielding gaze to lose its hold.

From the farthest hut behind the children, a thin, bent woman, her face shadowed by a heavy wrap of tattered cloth, shuffled out into the light.

“
Kya hua hai
?” she croaked. “What's up, Aarti?”

“
Namaste
,
Mataji
,” I greeted her in traditional respect, standing to touch hands to heart. I stepped towards her, momentarily distracted as the crow that had alighted above her doorway began to bob. “
Main
David
huñ
,” I announced in simple introduction.

The woman suddenly drew herself upright and her smile broadened, as though in recognition. She bowed her head and touched her heart with bandaged hands, then opened her frail arms towards me, as though to offer an anticipated embrace.

“
Main
Bindra
huñ
,” she replied.