The Assassin's Song (24 page)

When the application forms came for me some six weeks later, I was surprised, thrilled, frightened. I had not expected them; the prospect of applying to a university in America had looked more and more ridiculous as the days had passed. Now I mulled long and hard over them. How attractive, how impossible—even the quality of their paper intimated wealth and power. Why should those people who sent men into space and educated presidents be interested in me? I filled in the blanks as best as possible, expecting to complete the rest with the benefit of Elias's guidance. But Elias did not come to the library when next I visited, so I completed the form on my own. I had already written the required essay, which I had not intended to show my friend, for it described my life and heritage. A fee was required to be sent with the application that amounted to about a hundred rupees, an astronomical sum. In my letter to the university I said I had no money; if I could find it, I would send it to them. Meanwhile, please, could they still consider me. I also had no money to take the tests they had recommended. With my application in my hand, on my way to the post office
I saw Elias behind the front counter of Samuel Chemists, assisting the customers who were clamouring for attention from the sidewalk. I told him I was going to post my application.

“Wait—” he said, and hurried out. “Show me.” And then: “Yaar, you should have typed it!”

“Where would I have found a typewriter, tell me?”

“And how did you make it look so crumpled?”

He looked genuinely concerned.

“I won't send it, then. What's the point of wasting postage money?”

“No—send it. They know we are poor in this country. Are you sending it by registered post? You should. Or these post-wallahs—you never know with them, they will copy your application for their own children and throw away yours into the dustbin.”

“Yaar, even if I send it by ordinary post, I will have to beg the bus conductor to take me home for free.”

I could have cried; clearly I was out of my league. My friend looked at me sympathetically. He glanced quickly over his shoulder into the shop; then he casually went inside, hands in his pockets, and stood at the till. He chatted up an elderly man with a black cap, who I presumed was his grandfather, then slyly opened the cashbox unseen and slipped a note into his pocket. He hung around some moments, then cheerfully strolled out.

We had to stand in a long queue to get my letter registered.

On the way back, I ran into Mr. Hemani standing at the door of his shop, sipping from a cup of tea and contemplating the busy street. How he made a living was a mystery, there was hardly ever anybody in his shop.

“Ay Karsan, where have you been? You haven't come to visit for some time,” he said. “Busy, eh? Exams?”

“Yes, Hemani Sah'b, very busy.”

Struck by a moment of inspiration, I shot my hand into the envelope I was holding and brought out a recommendation form. “Hemani Sah'b— I am applying to university—will you write a letter of recommendation for me?”

Startled by my abrupt gesture, he took the form and stared at it, his eyes going up and down. “Impressive …,” he said. “Very impressive, Karsan.” He gave a grin. “I will write the very best reference letter for you, Karsan, don't worry.”

And that was that.

•   •   •

One Saturday, as I came out of our gate, there stood Raja Singh like an apparition, grinning broadly, leaning against the passenger door of that old truck, the Kaleidoscope I knew so well. Nothing could have pleased me more than seeing this familiar figure again, whose absence had left a hole in my life. I kept shaking his hand, not wanting to let it go. “But where were you, Sirdar-ji? Where did you go off to, forgetting all about us?”

“Arré sorry, Kanya … elder brother died and mother needed support.”

Pulling me towards him, he embraced me. “Jeet raho, putar. Arré what a man you've become …”

To be closer to his mother, he had been doing the Delhi-Punjab routes, he explained. Bodywise he had evidently done well with her stuffed parathas and butter, his bush shirt stretching desperately to cover the hairy potbelly. Following my eye he patted it solidly. “Khub khilaya,” he said, she fed me a lot. I asked him where he was off to now. “Umdavad,” he said. Ahmedabad.

“Take me there, Sirdar-ji,” I said, then in a low voice: “I'm going there too.”

He glared at me. “We have grown up, have we? And school?”

I did not reply.

“Permission from Mai-Baap?”

I pursed my lips.

“What do you do in Ahmedabad? Smoke? Visit whores?” Randiyon ki pas jaté ho?

“I only go to the library, Sirdar-ji. To read. And I go to the bookstores!” Parné ke liyé!

“Chhotu, get permission from them, then Raja will take you. Don't do it behind your parents' backs. They have put their trust in you. You will be a Saheb one day.”

There was nothing to say to that. He dropped me off at the school.

When I returned home that afternoon, several bulky stacks of newspapers and magazines were waiting for me beside my table in the courtyard. Practically a library. Raja must have been collecting them for months. I choked back my emotion at this thoughtfulness that sought no reward. For all the responsibility I had been burdened with, this driver of the Kaleidoscope was surely my compensation.

“Happy at last?” Ma said, coming over as I stood staring at my gift from the roads.

“Yes, Ma. Happy.”

“Now you won't be bored.”

And she was happy. She went to the kitchen to get my snack.

Mansoor, already there and nibbling something, called out across the courtyard, “Why bother to read all that, Bhai? You'll forget it anyway!” and Ma affectionately reprimanded him with a light smack on the back of his head.

That night I dragged the stacks into my room, cut open the strings around them, painstakingly reordered them according to my own system. Finally I picked up something to read. Perhaps a copy of
Time
with a story on the Vietnam war; or the
Pioneer
from Chandigarh, the
Statesman
from Calcutta. Yet as I flipped the pages, I knew there was just a little something missing from this experience, reading about the world by the light of a wick lamp, in my own courtyard in the confines of the family home, in this sanctuary garden of which my father was lord.

I sneaked off to the city only once after that, when I spent several hours dusting Mr. Hemani's books and reshelving them, for which he was immensely grateful. I didn't see Elias anywhere, but I left word at the chemist's that I had looked for him.

Months passed, I had almost forgotten about my application to go to America; it had been a wild and impossible idea, I did not expect anything to come out of it, and with time even George Elias began to take on the aspect of a flake. But from time to time the tantalizing thought would steal in, What if? What if the impossible happened? My shell would crack, my world would come apart, I would fly … Really? A good thing then, all that was in the realm of fantasy. Meanwhile, after consulting with Bapu I had applied to go to the MS University in Baroda. It was less than a hundred miles away, and I could be home during the holidays.

And then it happened. The impossible.

It was Saturday afternoon, I was returning home after time spent with Harish and Utu, who was visiting that day. We had stopped for tea at the new chai shop up the road; sitting on the bench outside, mangy dogs busy
around us among the refuse, we talked cricket (the West Indies were in India) and girls (there were lots of pretty ones in Baroda) and joshed each other, attempting to maintain that old relationship. The recently engaged Harish was prone to teasing now. He had retaliated with typical brazenness, bringing up Mallika, and since her family delivered milk in the area the double entendres came tripping out with raucous laughter. Happily, Utu's occupation was not mentioned. We had always been an unlikely troika, but in a village, as they said, anything that moves is a carriage. Now things were decidedly different.

As I passed through the shrine and reached our back gate, Ma suddenly popped up before me. “Go see your Bapu in the lai-beri,” she said.

“What's up, Ma?”

Her large wide eyes signalled a warning and she waved me to go on. Warily I turned around and went to the pavilion and thence into the library.

My father was sitting as usual on the floor. In one hand was a clean, white foreign-looking paper, a letter. On his portable desk beside him was a large white envelope of similar superiority with foreign stamps on it. He looked up at me, and his face seemed rather small.

“Bapu?” I ventured from the doorway.

“You … you applied to go to university in America—”

“Yes, Bapu-ji.”

“Without telling us—or does your mother know?”

“No, Bapu-ji.”

“I am very disappointed.”

Plain words; coming from him, sharp as a dagger. Bapu-ji, my father, with all his hopes and his faith and his pride in me, disappointed in me. This was it, the full sentence. Disappointment. The last time I had disappointed my father was when I wanted to join the cricket academy in Baroda and had thrown a public tantrum. That was nothing compared to this double-cross, this act of filial betrayal.

Ma had come to stand at the other entrance, her round figure filling its width.

“Your son wants to go to America,” Bapu-ji said in a flat tone to my mother.

Her mouth fell open; she gaped at me.

“Yes, Ma,” I said uncomfortably.

There followed a moment of silence, all her response on her guileless face, her hand at her mouth in that typical gesture of shock or surprise. In this case, both. And then, “Arré Karsan,” she said finally, and tears fell down her cheeks.

The large white foreign envelope had arrived with much fanfare in my absence and my father had signed for it. Ma had seen the expression on Bapu's face after he'd opened it and called for me, and she had had time to speculate and worry. Now this.

Bapu-ji handed me the letter of admission and the envelope, looking away to avoid my eyes. As I read it, I could hear him speaking sternly and without emotion: “You are the successor to a line. People expect from us, they rely on us—we are not free from obligations and duties—”

Not only was I admitted, with many congratulations, there was also a full scholarship.

“You are the future Saheb of Pirbaag, Karsan … you will be the light of our Pir Bawa, the father of our people—”

That was when I said in frustration, “But I don't want to be God, Bapu-ji!”

I was weeping too. For I knew in my heart the import of what he said, already felt the guilt it implied, and that in spite of everything I would go.

In the next few days Ma tried to cajole and plead with me. “So far away? … who will look after you … aeroplanes can fall, nai? … what will you eat?” My mother's sadness seemed mundane and small and manageable to me; I grieve now to recall this. She knew too well that first and foremost I was my father's son and successor. That is where the battle was. Try as she might, she could not budge me from my resolve. I told her I would come home for holidays, and in a few years would be back for good. Soon she would even forget that I had been away. That seemed to mollify her somewhat.

Bapu-ji simply said, “You have taken your own decision. A Saheb is not supposed to have a heart. But you have broken this father's heart.”

If he had simply said, No, I refuse you permission to go, I would have complied. He was my Bapu and the Saheb. But he didn't refuse; he expressed his displeasure and gave me the choice. I would go, but our fight was not over.

I did not feel as cocky and resolute as I appeared to my parents. I was scared and nervous and uncertain. Did I really want to go away so far from the certitude of everything I knew? What for? Exactly the words of Raja Singh when I told him what had happened.

“Arré yaar-ji, what for? Life is short, but. Why give up all this?” He spread out his arms to indicate my world, but dropped them abruptly. Wasn't he the one who had enticed me with that bigger world?

And Mansoor, admiration on his face: “How did you make him agree, Bhai? You will be free now—Bapu-ji won't be able to make you do anything he wants.”

“That's not why I am going, Mansoor. And I will be writing regularly. You be good when I am away.”

My fare was part of the scholarship. All I had to do was board a plane with my passport. Raja Singh was entrusted to take me to Bombay and seat me on the plane.

Early on a Sunday morning in August, I was ready to depart; Raja carried my bags from the house to his truck, and I began my farewells.

First I went to pay homage to our shrine, the beloved garden of my people. The mausoleum of the sufi reposed in silence, overlooking all its domain through a shroud of mist bequeathed by the recent rains. With some trepidation I took the three steps up and entered the inner room. There, joining my trembling hands before the tomb with its crown, I prayed, “Pir Bawa, I thank you for letting me go. Bless me and guide me in all my endeavours. And bring me back home safely to you.” I stepped back, then turned around to leave, after a brief glance at the eternal lamp whose secret had once caused me so much anguish. Outside I joined my hands to Jaffar Shah, patron saint of travellers, then to all the other personages and ancestors.

Bapu-ji was waiting for me at the entrance. I bent and touched his feet. As I stood up he took my face in both his hands with an urgency and looked at me, into my eyes, intensely. He kissed me on the mouth and slowly uttered a string of syllables. “This is your bol,” he said. “Always
remember it.” He paused, then said, “Repeat it to me.” Slowly and almost in a whisper and meeting his eyes I repeated the syllables back to him. He continued, “This bol comes to you from Pir Bawa through the line of your ancestors. It will bring you comfort and assist you. It is your special mantra. Do not abuse it. Do not repeat it to anyone but to your successor—when the time comes.”

Together we walked towards the front gate. My family and wellwishers were waiting for me. Harish walked over from his store across the road to say goodbye; he was a married man now. We shook hands. Good luck, dost, come back safe. I will; and you keep well, friend. Utu's father, Ramdas, who sold flowers and chaddars to worshippers, and also the gaudy clandestine pictures of the Pir, put a garland over me. So did several women, faithful devotees of Pir Bawa, whose history and mine were intertwined through the generations. Ma wept, tears streamed down her face as she hugged me tight to her bosom, and she cracked her knuckles against my head. Releasing myself from her grip, I went to shake hands with my brother and embraced him. “Be good and take care,” I said. “I will, Bhai,” he replied, nodding seriously. “Don't worry.”