The Way Things Were (10 page)

‘I know what you mean. In the place where I grew up, a terrible place, not worth mentioning, I used to know some people, so culturally denuded, that their names had become Neel and Diamantine. You, Toby must know—’

‘Nala and Damayanti?’ he said, laughing, and glanced at Uma, who had drawn up her feet and was leaning back against a bolster.

‘Exactly! People would have you believe that none of it was important; they would have you believe these are trifles: but, of course, it is important: important how India is thought of in India, no? How, for instance, Toby, is your interest in classical India regarded among your class of person?’

‘With dismissal, at best. Or suspicion.’

Toby felt her gaze on him, a questioning gaze. He felt her form her earliest impressions of him.

‘Right! Suspicion that you might have some right-wing political agenda, that your interest is but a cover for a hatred of Muslims or some such.’

‘Yes. But for so many it is. And I’ve always regarded the men in saffron as the true enemies of the Indian past . . .’

‘Because . . . ?’

‘Because,’ and now he looked at Uma, to make sure she was interested in their conversation. ‘Because . . .’ he repeated abstractedly, then the words came: ‘they would see it reduced – all the glory of ancient India – to
slogan
.’

‘To slogan, yes! Slogans and pamphlets. Very nice, very nice thing to say. And then, of course, in that form it has no meaning. It is no longer an intellectual thing, no longer interesting.’

‘No,’ he said, trying not to look, but afraid they were boring her, ‘in that form it is worthless.’

Silence.

He interpreted it as brought on by them having lost her, but it was broken – to his great joy! – by a question of some intensity from her. A question that made him feel that the thing he loved most in life might one day get along with the thing he was beginning to like more and more.

‘How did it begin for you?’ she said. And, though Vijaipal had asked him something similar a moment before, it felt so fresh and heartfelt coming from her that he was almost flattered by it.

‘You know,’ he began, addressing her, then thinking better of it, turned to Vijaipal, whose drink he could see was empty, ‘I think it was Latin and Greek in school.’

‘In England?’

‘In England.’

‘Oh, I see, I see. The regard one place has for its things producing in you a similar regard – a need, even – for your own things. I understand that very well. I’ve known such a need myself.’

‘It’s true. Because, you know, here, the Sanskrit teacher is invariably a figure of fun.’

‘A kind of holy fool, no doubt! Caste-marked and full of outdated ideas. Probably everyone in the school had a kind of contempt for a man like that. Not attractive and interesting-seeming, not like the English teacher, say?’

‘That’s it. But once I was able to connect the Sanskritic world with the classical world at large, it came to seem like the greatest discovery of my life.’

‘How so?’ Uma asked.

Again he felt a flush. ‘Well, I think more than anything, in a country where so little was planned, everything haphazard and shoddy, here, at least, was an example of the most exquisite planning. Proof that things had not always been as shitty as they are today. Because, Vijay,’ he said, turning to the writer, ‘if we were to associate the genius of a place with one particular thing – the Russians with literature, say, or the Germans with music, the Dutch and Spanish with painting – we would have to say that the true genius of Ancient India was language. Not so much the use of it as the study of it: their grammars were peerless, easily the most profound meditation on language in pre-modern times. And once I discovered them I could never again think of India as merely the shabby place I saw around me. It changed my entire relationship with what remained of old India in India . . .’

‘To the past?’ Vijaipal said.

‘To the past, yes. But also my idea of East and West.’

‘Those distinctions would have broken down. Of course! It would have come to seem like a shared past.’

‘It
is
a shared past,’ Toby said. ‘Where these languages are concerned – the Indo-European ones, at least – it is most definitely a shared past. And while, in Europe, this is only a point of curiosity – a confirmation of the Biblical idea of the Tower of Babel, say – in India, it was like permission to respect oneself anew.’

Suddenly he became aware of her presence. Uma, who had been sitting across from him, got up, as if drawn to him by his intensity, and came to sit next to him.

Vijaipal glanced at her, then laughed. ‘Like discovering, while mired in deep poverty, that you are, in fact, the first cousin of the King.’

‘It’s true, Mr Vijaipal!’ Uma said.

‘Vijay, surely!’

‘Vijay. Because we grew up with so little. We had nothing. And the worst part was that we made the people below us, who did have something, believe that what they had was worthless. We forced them, if they were to enter our ranks, to surrender their culture.’

‘Such a bad business, isn’t it? Confusion heaped upon confusion. The more I travel in the colonial world, the more it feels like a general condition.’

For some time now Laban had been waiting. Seeing an opening, he said softly, ‘Khana.’

Dinner had been laid out for them in a partially enclosed veranda overlooking the river on three sides. They discussed the trip ahead, how long they would wait in Kalasuryaketu, how long the drive would be, where they would stop, where they would stay.

At one point Uma said, ‘What makes it so important, Hampi? Why do you people keep going back?’

Her question produced an awkwardness among the two men, as though they both acknowledged their reasons as being very different and wanted, out of courtesy, to give the other way.

‘My reason is simple, Uma,’ Toby said. ‘I find it beautiful. But hear Vijaipal out.’

‘I’ll tell you, Uma, I’ll tell you. In my work it is not so important to have historical information as it is to have a historical sense. To be able in some way to give the past shape. And you will see how a place like Vijayanagara, with its unique history, will do that for you automatically.’

He said this and looked out at the Tamas
ā
, where through the gaps in the muslin curtains it was possible now to see the lit shapes of long boats on its dark surface.

Midnight in the flat. No sounds from the city, the air still and dry. Skanda lies on a faded sofa, the nap of its floral upholstery coarse under his back, staring up into the musty darkness. A single light, a halogen light – rare piece of refurbishment! – shines on the flat’s most beautiful object, bought years ago in the south, somewhere near Hampi, in anticipation of Skanda.

It is a picchvai of peacocks. At the centre of this ostentation of white birds there is a single blue peacock. The peacock is Skanda’s mount. A foolish and haughty bird. Orgulous. In the picchvai, the peacocks dance under a bruised monsoon sky. A sky due any moment in Delhi. Of heavy wandering clouds. Nabhas in Sanskrit,
nebulosus
in Latin, like
nebula
, ‘mist’.
Nifol
, in Anglo-Saxon: dark. Daytime darkness, he likes to think. When
by th’clock ’tis day, / And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
The trees acquire that special density and their white flowers seem to prick the canvas, as though it were a canopy, with nothing but starlight behind. The miniature painters devoted such attention to the trees, distinguishing the lighter and big-leafed banana from the darker entanglement of mango. And, fountaining up over every copse, was always the prickly canopy of a palm.

It is a scene that awaits rain. Who knows why these vain birds need the rainy season to come alive? Or why they are so dejected when the rains are done? But it has always been so. In the Ramayana – when the monsoon is over – the peacocks glimpse the sky free of clouds and their tails droop. They are described as gat’ôtsava – robbed of festivity – and, in this mood, they fall to contemplation.

In the picchvai, they are in disguise. As with Shakespearean comedy, it is the great theme of Sanskrit literature. In The Birth, Shiva comes in disguise to Uma, who has taken on asceticism to win his love. It is a test of sorts. ‘He wants,’ Skanda recalls Toby saying, ‘to see if his world is suited to hers.’ And so, disguised as a student, with matted locks, an antelope skin round his waist, a staff of palasha wood in his hand – the mark of the student – he enters the ascetics’ grove and, on seeing Uma, questions her as to the cause of her asceticism.

The David Smith, which Skanda feels is more beautiful than his, has Shiva saying: ‘Why in your youth have you discarded your ornaments and put on the birch bark . . . is [night] ready for the red morning when it’s evening and the moon and the stars are out?! / If you’re seeking heaven, your effort is in vain – your father’s dominion is the land of the gods . . . if you’re seeking a husband, have done with meditation! A jewel does not seek. It is sought.’

Uma does not reply. But a girlfriend informs the ascetic that the man she seeks is none other than Shiva. ‘Shiva!’ the ascetic cries: ‘that beast, that wild man, that dweller in the places of the dead. Shiva, whose body is covered in the ash of funeral pyres, whose elephant hide garments drip blood, Shiva, the skull-bearer, this jewel of a creature seeks him?! Surely this is some kind of joke?’

‘While the Brahmin was saying these unpleasant things, she, [Uma] looked at him sideways’ – this is the Smith.

Skanda’s is: ‘She looked at him askance, with eyes whose corners were bloody, her brows contracted into creepers, her lower lip trembling with rage.’

And then, after tearing into him, she pulls away, her breasts break against their bark garment, stana | bhinna | valkal
ā
: that is the compound; bhinna, related to the Latin
findo
, the German
beissen
, meaning to break, shatter or pierce; in English, it gives us bite. Breasts biting in anger against their bark garments until Shiva reveals his true form. Then she is neither stayed nor gone. With one foot raised to go, her body moist with sweat, Uma is, the poet tells us, like a river whose course is obstructed by a rock.

‘O you of stooping limbs’ – Shiva says – ‘I am from this moment on your slave.’ When the moon-crested Shiva said this, she cast off the weariness of her exertions, for with the fruit exhaustion turns into freshness. But since this is a dual narrative – its two arms working in tandem, one energizing the other – the fruit varies from narrative to narrative: for Uma, it is the love of Shiva; for the gods, it is the birth of Skanda, their general.

Skanda asleep on the sofa, under the dim lights and high ceilings of the flat in Delhi.

Uma never forgot that first morning in Kalasuryaketu, of sitting out on the terrace of Shiv Niwas, the sluggish green expanse of the river sprawled out over the bleached land beneath her, the sound of bells carrying up from the scorching ghats. It was a glimpse of an India that the thin but culturally impervious layer of post-colonial life in Delhi – the world of clubs and convent schools – had never before allowed her to see.

And soon after, there would be the sight of Vijayanagara at dawn, the veil of morning mist hanging over the ruined city, giving it the aspect of a place still smoking from siege. The surrounding land was covered in gigantic boulders and paddy fields, in whose glassy surfaces shoots of rice burst through the repeating tableaux of blue sky and clouds. The Tungabhadra – reflecting pool of a river! – negotiated a placid course through this plateaued country, its path obstructed with dancing rocks. Kishkindha! Where in the vast ruins of a great capital, amid wide avenues and shattered aqueducts, there were still palaces where musical columns could be played.

Before leaving Kalasuryaketu, she had called her sister, Isha, from Tripathi’s house in the bazaar. Toby stood outside, in the light of a kerosene lantern, now smoking, now negotiating with a man selling fruit.

‘Does Mama know?’

‘No, you fool. I’ve been covering for you, of course. From the moment she called, I said you were with me . . . But Mishi, there’s a limit . . . I’m all for breaking the rules . . . but I hope, you know . . . thodi reputation di bhi fikr kar . . .’

‘Ish, I think it’s fine.’

‘Fine? Are you mad? The whole town’s talking, Mishi. Kitten Singh saw you two taking off . . .’

‘No, I mean. I think it could be serious.’

‘Are you completely off your bloody rocker? You’ve been gone less than two days. How—?’

‘Is it that little? Really? It feels so much longer already.’

‘Mishi!’

‘Chal, well, let’s see. Now I’m gone, I’m gone. Anyways, I was away a lot. Say I’m off flying or something, no?’

‘Arre, at least, show your face at home?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not in Delhi. I’m somewhere in the wilds of M.P., about to head further south.’

‘South? Where?’

‘I’m not sure. Hampi.’

‘No! With him only?’

‘Yes, obviously. And some writer chap. Vijaipal . . .’

‘Sooprasaat?’

‘Yes. How did you know?’

‘Oh, he’s famous, yaar. I’ve read about his books in the papers.
Man of Hidden Shallows
.
India and Oblivion
. Get something signed, no?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘And, Mishi . . .’

Already she felt she did not answer to that name.

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t say anything stupid.’

She laughed. ‘I’m not the stupid one. Remember?’

She stood there a little while longer, observing Toby. It surprised her that, in such a short time, she was hardly able to separate his smell from her own. His pale nakedness, at first so strange to her – the pinkish nipples, edged with thick brown hair, the ridged crevasse of his chest – no longer held any secrets. His erudition ceased to intimidate her. The love affair of thirty-six hours had already blurred these lines. She felt in possession of him. And the thing that surprised her most was how little any of it surprised her. She must always have expected something like this would happen to her. Now that it had, she felt entitled to it, felt it her due. She had spent a long time in the wilderness, waiting for it, among people who had tried to diminish her. She would almost have liked to retain some bitterness for them, but it was impossible. Her happiness was too great.