Portent (26 page)

    At that moment, however, the rain was at rest, and outside in the streets the populace went about its business regardless of the brown floodwaters of the Ganges that swirled through the city. The Ganga Flood Control Commission had striven to improve drainage over the years, and had built dams to lessen the flood's impact, but soon now the deep-cut streets would no longer be able to cope with the rising levels and even the platforms on which goods and food were stored would be under threat.

    Salim hoped that his sister, Nergish, a year younger than his ten, would find garbage dumps high enough to scavenge plastic and tin to fill her huge bag this day. Their father would be displeased if the bag was not bulging with recyclables for the greedy scrap merchants and he would take his anger out on them all.

    Salim had left Nergish just before dawn at the edge of the shanty town where they lived with their parents and baby brother, Tipu, he journeying into the waterlogged city, his sister taking a short cut through the jungle scrub to the dumps on the outskirts. Their father, Rakesh, had been in a drunken rage the night before and even at this mid-morning hour probably tossed in his sleep and dreamt of his glory days as an officer in the Indian Army. He had been a proud man then, a short service commission officer, serving his country gladly only to be cast aside like a bonded labourer after ten years, without pension, medical cover, or subsidized ration, but with a young family to feed. For a while he had worked as a pandal builder, but such toil was not to his liking, nor did it suit his dignity as an ex-officer. Now Salim and Nergish laboured to keep him and their tuberculosis-stricken mother, Rajnee, and Tipu, while he consoled himself with cheap liquor and railed against the fates that contrived so spitefully against him, sometimes his language so crude and his mood so clumsily violent that his family would flee across the sewage canal that ran by their shack to wait until snores took the place of his ramblings.

    Ignoring the immense black flies (they had become known as the beasts of the air) that swarmed while the rains regathered their strength, Salim briefly looked up from his labours to watch the teeming activity outside. There were no yellow Ambassador taxis to clog the streets today, for they kept to the city's higher ground, but cycle rickshaws and camel-driven carts waded in abundance through the waters, while enterprising boatmen drifted by, their small boats and gondolas filled with fare-paying customers. Pilgrims and worshippers were everywhere, making their way through the bazaars and narrow alleyways to the Mother Ganges, mourners among them bearing shrouded burdens, lamented loved-ones whose bodies would be purified by flames on the banks of the great river and their ashes cast into the flow. Some seasons before, an even greater multitude of worshippers had flocked to this city of the dead to witness the miracle of the goddess' menstruation, for the river had suddenly begun to run red; not even when the Grasilene factory further upstream was prosecuted for using rayon grade pulp in its manufacturing process and discharging its effluence into the river, did the fresh influx of pilgrims diminish. Sacred cows wandered at their will, and dhobi-wallahs, on their way to the river carrying their laundry, scrupulously avoided them, afraid to even brush by the lumbering beasts with their bundles.

    Across the street a tea-seller called out 'Chai! Chai! Chai!' and Salim's dry mouth ached for the thick sweet cardamom taste. Someone else called his name and he looked up to see Rekha waving down at him from one of the small individual balconies that graced the top floor of the building opposite. Below her, a covered wooden gallery ran the length of the building, and below that, at ground level (but still raised from the street itself) was a line of shops. Rekha was a hijri, a eunuch whose manhood had been removed at the age of twenty-one (she had been known on occasions to lift her skirts and reveal the castration scars to any passerby who might be interested) and she lived among others of her kind with their guru in the top-floor brothel. They proclaimed themselves the chosen guardians of the prophet's grave and would often descend on marriage and birth ceremonies dancing and singing and demanding money for their blessing, a curse taking its place if no rupees were forthcoming. Her sari was of the brightest yellow and even from where he squatted Salim could see her lips were painted the deepest rouge and her eyes were kohl-lined, her skin lightened with turmeric paste. She pouted her lips at him and lowered her eyelids in seductive manner, screeching with laughter when the boy quickly lowered his gaze and became intent on his work.

    She called his name again, a tease with no spiteful intent, for she liked the boy and would often, when the streets were dry and she flaunted herself among the tourists and pilgrims, stop to talk to him and sometimes toss him a boiled sweet as he pounded away at his batteries. Salim sneaked another look and grinned from ear to ear; he returned the wave. An itinerant barber shaving a customer in a doorway nearby caught the exchange and hawked phlegm in to the muddy water his lower legs dipped into, for the hijra were reviled as well as respected, not just because they had power to bless or curse as they pleased, but also because their lifestyle was considered disgusting by the pious of the community. He growled at Salim, who busied himself with his task once more. Rekha waggled her tongue at both the boy and the barber and swanned back into the room she had come from.

    As Salim hammered, his thoughts drifted to things less dull, the thoughts becoming daydreams: of celebrations with elephants wearing flower garlands and painted with vegetable dye, of tiny bells tinkling on chains over soft beds, of tiger hunts (now banned) and polo matches, of fresco painters high on bamboo ladders adorning virgin walls with India's past glories, of bejewelled dancers dressed in brocade and transparent veils, their ankle-bells tinkling to their rhythms, of flaunting peacocks and colour-transient chameleons. He dreamed of such things because the world outside these very doors held none of them; save for the occasional glimpse of Rekha and her lurid companions, his daily vista was drab and unexciting. So his mind presented him with things bright, adventurous and beautifully gay.

    Sometimes he daydreamed of the little ball that glowed like a sun-filled pearl and floated as a petal on the breeze.

    It filled him with joy, this vision, and was as welcome as a visiting friend. In night-dreams, for he saw it in those too, the light brought others to him whose companionship was utter, their bonding supreme. Usually he sensed them, those other children, but occasionally he saw them and they were of all races and creeds. And all were charged with the same unfathomable yearning as he.

    Yet recently he had begun to wake from such dreams in a burning sweat, for now there was something to fear in those wondrous slumbers, something that loomed and spread like the blackest of clouds to subdue the glory; it came as a dark threat that possessed no substance. This thing frightened Salim, but the mundanity and hard toil of his waking hours soon shooed away such terrors. What always remained, however, no matter how harsh this regime, was the urge to reach beyond the mere dream and to touch the haunting light.

    The strains of the five-stringed tanpura interrupted his wanderings as the Ustad played from the dark recesses of his shop across the street and Salim's skin prickled as the old music guru's chant rose above the other city sounds, for the words sang of fire mingled with heaven's tears. The cooling rains that followed the scorching, dry heat of April and May had always been welcomed, even when they gave cause for the goddess Ganga to overflow her banks and flood the plains; but the Ustarts words warned of the horrors when fire and water combined their might. Two pandas who squatted on stone blocks above the flow not far away, their loins wrapped in muslin, the sacred thread denoting they were twice-born in Hinduism's endless wheel of life worn over their naked shoulders, paused from their puja to listen. Salim caught trepidation in their eyes before they bowed their heads and renewed their devotion with greater intensity.

    The hammer Salim wielded hovered over its mark as he heard a distant thunder, and passersby paused to listen too, some cocking their heads to one side in attitudes of unease. The boy saw a bright flash of colour as Rekha returned to the balcony. She first peered down into the street below, then up at the heavy skies as if curious about both. The Ustad's song ceased when the sluggish waters that drifted through the old city began to agitate.

    Salim felt the floor beneath him quiver. The pyramid of batteries belonging to the boy behind him collapsed, the cartridges rolling loose among the powder.

    The floodwater was now stippling as well as surging through doorways it had been unable to reach before. Everywhere people were looking around in dismay.

    At that moment the clouds decided to discharge their load and the rain struck so forcibly and with such suddenness that several of the people fell or tottered beneath the impact. The downpour swiftly turned the flood ooze into a bubbling sea so that small boats and gondolas rocked in the storm.

    Salim hurriedly moved back from the open doorway, his skin and shorts already soaked with the spray and his black hair flat against his forehead. He prayed that his sister was not caught on the garbage dumps, for torrents of this intensity would create quagmires of the tips, drenching everything into a swampy mass that was easy to sink into and be lost. The other boys huddled together at the back of the room, the candlelight sputtering on its shelf, while Salim stayed to view the teeming sheet of greyness, his mouth gawped open at such a wondrous deluge. The floor trembled, sending up clouds of fine dust and Salim marvelled at the rain's power.

    He could just discern the colourful robes of Rekha high on her balcony, those shades now reduced to pale pastels by the deluge between them; the buildings opposite were no more than dull shapes, as were the figures scurrying before them.

    Salim shivered, although the air was not yet cold; he shivered because a strangely exhilarating fear was stirring within him. He was suddenly both afraid and excited, and neither emotion held the upper hand.

    He felt the presence in his senses before his eyes caught sight. He stared at the precise place where the small globe was to appear seconds later.

    It emerged from the rains like a single headlight, its incandescence scarcely muted by the downpour, the halo around it close to the undetermined surface, and it floated gracefully above the erupting floodwater, the drenching having no influence on its journey.

    It came to a shimmering halt directly in front of Salim, although some distance away still, close to the building opposite. A rainbow formed around it, a complete circle whose lower edge dipped into the unsettled water below, and the boy's smile widened in recognition. This was the light of his dreams.

    He gave a cry of delight, and the boys behind him cowered further back, gaining no such joy from this odd sight. But soon even Salim's smile withered on his lips.

    The structure around him had begun to tremble. The lantern fell from its shelf, its glow snuffed so that half the room was cast into further darkness. The batteries jiggled and twitched on the floor, their piles disassembling, their sound that of a thousand chattering teeth. The boys wailed.

    Outside in the rain, the pearly light started to spiral, its sweep limited at first, then opening out as it rotated faster. No raindrops bounced from the light's soft-edged face as it cut its circular swathe through the downpour. It spun faster, rising slowly, and licks of water rose with it like lizards' tongues snatching at a taunting prey, until the water swelled as a mass towards the glowing orb.

    Salim watched mesmerized, oblivious to the shaking of the building around him. He craned his neck as the light and the spume-flecked water beneath it rose higher, and his breath was held and his heart beat faster. He fell back among the scattered casings when a roar rumbled from the earth below the street and the very foundations of the ancient city seemed to shudder. Mud and thick clods of earth abruptly spewed from the rising heap of water and almost immediately a great fountain of dirt burst through, an immense geyser that quickly ran clean as boiling liquid soared skywards to claim the shining orb. Steam hissed and billowed around this giant white tower, whose edge drove through the sidewalk and gallery above, rising to take some of the small balconies, on one of which the hijri stood gaping. Rekha screamed in agony and surprise as the scalding column flayed the skin from her flesh and took her with other flotsam to the heavens. Her cry was swallowed along with her body.

    The waterspout expanded as it flowed, its crest unfurling high in the sky, showering droplets that sizzled with the rain, and at its base steam rolled outwards in great clouds, creating a searing fog that spread with lightning speed.

    The noise was shattering as Salim fled to the back of the room to join his friends who huddled together in a tangle of bodies. But no one was safe from this unleashed behemoth.

    Within seconds the whole fagade of the building it was closest to was dismantled, only the rear walls containing the furious steam; the jet rapidly spanned the whole street, instantly boiling the merchants, holy men, pilgrims and animals in its path.

    The terrible scalding heat felt by Salim and his companions crouched there in their dusty refuge lasted but a moment, for its shock alone was enough to destroy any sensing. And as their frail bodies blistered and broiled, another part of them, a part that could never be touched by physical pain, was released.

    As Salim's spirit sailed it seemed that he was heading for a bright light, far brighter than any he had ever known in his short life.

    More radiant even than the sunlit pearl of his dreams.