Bhava Read online

  ‘But you are giving away your food to him—what will remain for you? Shall I bring some idlis for you when we reach the next station?’

  ‘I don't take food from hotels. When I travel I carry some curds and avalakki. Even after sharing with him, I will have some left over. Anyhow, I'm grateful to you for your offer. May I know your good name?’ Shastri said, happy to return to his own language.

  2

  * * *

  Later, in moments of need, Shastri would get strength from remembering how—in pain he couldn't fully understand—he had watched Swami eating, with great appetite, the plateful of curd and beaten rice. Some door which had been closed was suddenly open. He began to feel afraid. While Shastri was searching for bananas in his deerskin bundle, the Ayyappa devotee, who was looking more and more like a true swami to him, searched in his own bag for bananas and apples and grapes. He took them out with his left hand, placed them on the seat, and with his right hand gestured to say, ‘Take these.’ ‘Must be from a good traditional family,’ Shastri thought. Shastri couldn't be certain whether his reply to Swami in the rude Bombay Hindi of his previous life was appropriate for the feelings that Swami's Hindi expressed. ‘Are you full, Swami?’ he asked.

  There was a pause. Then Swami said softly, ‘You must call me Dinakar, you are my elder.’ Shastri, hearing these soft hesitant words, felt as if he were receiving punya from a previous birth, and it swept away his fear of hell.

  ‘From your kuttavalakki I remembered the name Mother used to call me, “Putani,”’ Dinakar said. ‘What does Putani mean? If the name suits me, call me by that name.’

  When the man dressed in fashionable jeans heard this conversation, he closed his India Today, laughed and said, this time in Hindi, ‘Achcha, my guess was right, then.’ Then he returned to his magazine.

  Dinakar, to enable Shastri to understand, began to speak in Hindi slowly and simply.

  ‘I have heard that my mother was from Kannada country. When I was five, she died in the Ganga at Hardwar. Many years later, because of a friend's mother, I remembered that my own mother fed me kuttavalakki, for I loved it very much. And now your kindness has brought that back to me. As for my father, I don't know who he was. I might have lost him earlier than I lost my mother. Now, I have been trying to lose my name these past two months or so’

  Dinakar smiled in a beguiling manner. With what effortless intimacy he spoke. His words seemed to Shastri like a sudden gift of grace.

  ‘For your sake, I will return to my name. If you like, I will even return to the pet name that Mother gave me.’

  This time, Dinakar spoke as if making fun of himself—he had made this part of his engaging TV manner—and then continued with some seriousness, ‘Achcha, I need help from you. Twenty-five years ago, in Hardwar, I got acquainted with someone from Mangalore. I hear he is now a famous advocate. For a whole long month, we were close friends. This was also because of his mother—her name is Sitamma—the only person I ever felt was like my true mother. If Amma is still living, I want to meet her again’

  Taking from his bag an old address book, Dinakar showed Shastri the address of one Narayan Tantri. The sign that his whole life would change became stronger, and again in anguish Shastri forced himself to return to his everyday personality. ‘Ayyo! These people are very dear to me, I know them very well. I always stop for a day at their place on the way to my village. Your friend's mother is still there. Every time I go, she makes me recite from a Purana. In these ten or fifteen years, I must have recited the same Purana many times to her. I myself will take you to them. This train reaches Bangalore in the evening and then at night there is a luxury bus to Mangalore.’ Shastri surprised himself with his own volubility.

  As he used his Bombay Hindi to speak of his present calling, Shastri remembered that he had learnt that language half a century ago, when he used to wear a shirt and pyjamas and a black cap to hide his brahmin tuft, with no caste mark on his forehead, while wandering like a lost spirit on the streets of Bombay. Therefore he felt that it was not he who was speaking. but the demon that had entered him. Yet Dinakar looked at him with such earnest hope that Shastri spoke on without holding himself back.

  ‘“Putani” means a dear son. I have no children now. The one daughter I had, walked out of my house two years ago. It is all my fate. You could have been my son.’

  When Shastri risked saying those words, Dinakar replied with unaffected courtesy.

  ‘If you feel like calling a bearded bumpkin like me your son, what can I call you? Shall I call you Chikappa, or Dodappa, or Mama?’

  Hearing Dinakar speak in this way, Shastri was so shaken that he felt himself drained and insubstantial, like a wraith. But Dinakar was cheerful and, when the man in jeans took his autograph book out from his briefcase, he scrawled in Hindi, ‘Not from the Dinakar of TV, but rather an ignorant putani who is now reaching Bangalore.’

  Then, looking at Shastri, who had become pale, Dinakar spoke as sweetly as a putani. ‘Chikappa, your Hindi sounds good to me. But please don't address me in the plural’.

  Shastri kept staring at the amulet around Dinakar's neck, and what Dinakar now said in explanation made him even more fearful.

  ‘Look, Chikappa, this amulet was tied around my neck before my mother went into the river Ganga. She never came back again. The food you fed me made me remember what happened. For forty years I have worn this amulet as matra-raksha.’

  Hearing this, Shastri closed his eyes, grasped his rudraksha beads and silently prayed, ‘Shiva, Shiva, protect me.’

  3

  * * *

  Shastri was stupefied, as if he had been stricken. The language embellished for the pleasure of others which he had cultivated for recitation of the Puranas; the lewd language which he had learned in Bombay as if in a previous birth—neither could express what he was beginning to understand in his anxiety. Dinakar was insisting that he accept a ride in his hired car to Mangalore.

  ‘Look, Chikappa. Although I may be an Ayyappa bhakta, still I have a credit card.’

  ‘Ayyo, it is not a question of expense. It is not safe to travel in the Ghat section during the night. I myself have plenty of money. I earn not less than five lakhs of rupees from growing areca. And have I children or grandchildren to spend it on? Why then should I bother about money, why bother about expenses? No, in order to work off my karma, I have cultivated this addiction. I keep on wandering, keep on doing what I do.’

  Speaking these words with effort, Shastri found himself desiring to address Dinakar as Putani, his dear child, but the endearment stuck in his throat. ‘What if he is the son of Pundit, what if he is that prostitute's son?’

  ∗

  The taxi shared by Shastri and Dinakar wove this way and that, through narrow lanes, climbing up and down, and finally stopped in front of the bungalow of ‘Narayan Tantri, Advocate’. Dinakar, whose eyes had become jaded from living in Delhi, was cheered at the sight of the Mangalore-tiled roofs, the many tones of faded brick-coloured tiles, the little porches jutting out from the faces of the old houses.

  ‘Don't tell them who I am, Chikappa. I would like to see whether “Mother” will recognize me after twenty-five years, especially dressed as I am now. If Amma does recognize me, it will mean that Dinakar has not yet become nameless.’

  Dinakar had become very light-hearted. Walking easily, the bag swinging from his shoulder, he opened the gate. Green hedges, mango trees and coconut trees had half hidden an old bungalow to which winding paths led, as if the bungalow were playing hide-and-seek on its two acres of land.

  Shastri, counting his rudraksha beads, followed Dinakar.

  An old woman was standing in the veranda outside the, house, her white hair neatly combed. The eyes in her wrinkled face caught the light of the pole lamp; they shone in expectation of discovering who the visitors were. If a person is thin, it is said, you cannot tell their age. Sitamma looked not very different from her Hardwar days. She had more wrinkles and more white hair, that w
as all. Her white sari and her wet hair knotted at the end showed that she had just finished her bath.

  The rangoli box in her hand made plain why she stood in the veranda. That black stone box must be the one she had bought in Hardwar when, along with other pilgrims, she had come to stay in the dharamshala built by Tripathi, Dinakar's foster father. Within a couple of days, the lustre in Sitamma's face had endeared her to Tripathi, and she had come to stay in their house. Every day she would get up at dawn, sweep and sprinkle the veranda, and after a bath in the river Ganga, she would spread her hair on her back. Then, with great concentration, she would take up pinches of different-coloured rangoli powder and, slowly sifting it between two fingers, draw on the earth of the veranda. So the ancient house of Tripathi suddenly acquired the charm of new prosperity. Sitamma had taken the vow of cooking for herself, and she insisted on doing all of the cooking. When the rangoli-laying was over, she would go into the kitchen to make upma or kesaribath or idlis, and feed everyone in the house as if she were their own mother.

  She was at that time in her middle years, a widow of about forty-five. Tripathi was already seventy-five, a rich man from a good family, and a well-known charitable soul. With great affection, he would call Sitamma ‘little sister.’

  ‘Little sister, we too are brahmins, we don't even eat onions. You don't have to do all the cooking, you can eat what we eat.’

  Since Tripathi spoke in Hindi, Sitamma couldn't understand him. But her son Narayan Tantri had learnt Hindi in school as a result of the zeal of the Hindi movement, and also because he loved debates. Therefore, he became her constant interpreter.

  ∗

  Dinakar now stood before Sitamma and said ‘Amma’ and Sitamma, with narrowed eyes, gazed at the amulet as Shastri had done. Then she looked into Dinakar's face. Her eyes slowly began to shine with the compassion of a mother and, as she went back in time, it seemed she was recreating him. Dinakar, in sweet pain, watched apprehensively.

  ‘Ayyo, isn't it Dinakar?’ she said. Because she was in a state of madi, having just bathed, she did not embrace him immediately. But her eyes gave him all the pleasure of a mother's touch. A moment passed like this. Then Sitamma turned to Shastri and said, ‘What, Shastri-gale, why shouldn't I bathe again and then make your food?’ So saying, she came and took Dinakar's hand, not even asking why he hadn't come to see her all these years. She cried out, ‘Nagaveni, bring coffee!’ Then, when she started to go inside to bring the rattan chairs out to the veranda, Dinakar said, ‘Amma, lay your rangoli, I want to watch.’ Although she didn't understand the words, Sitamma guessed his meaning.

  ‘You always liked that, didn't you? Sit down. I will draw what you used to like in Hardwar. Watch while you drink your coffee. And you, Shastri-gale, go and have your bath. There is hot water if you want.’ Smiling to herself, she squatted down to lay the rangoli.

  With her thumb and index finger she took a pinch of rangoli powder and rubbed it to make it firm, moving her fingers just enough for the delicate thin line to appear. In a moment, at the very center of the swept and cleaned veranda, she had drawn two intersecting triangles, one upward-pointing and the other downward-pointing. In one, god's grace descended from heaven to earth; in the other, the soul ascended, aspiring toward god. Because of Sitamma's faultless eye, both met in perfect harmony.

  Dinakar drank his aromatic coffee from a silver cup, becoming immersed in Sitamma's creation, as he used to do twenty-five years before. What for thousands of years took form on the walls of temples and in the verandas of cottages, no matter how poor, had begun to manifest this morning on the veranda swept with cow-dung. A vine where one was necessary, and a leaf on the vine; for every leaf a flower, and a swastika to guard it all, and then peacocks, and then—look—there was Lord Ganesha, and even his mouse to ride on.

  As she drew the mouse, Sitamma smiled and said to herself, not bothering that Dinakar didn't understand Kannada, ‘This has gone a little crooked. My fingers aren't strong enough. My hand shakes a little. Tomorrow I will do it better. Tomorrow Ganesha will come in the center. Tomorrow he won't be sitting, he will be dancing.’

  4

  * * *

  ‘My Nani always gets up late. But his son Gopal is up very early. When we went to Hardwar, Gopal was a very small child. He had lost his mother. A girl called Gangubai used to look after him, you may remember her. She was crazy for getting bangles fitted, wherever she saw bangles she had to have them put on. Do you remember all this? She has a son now, younger than Gopal by a year. Gangu went to school again and has become a high school madam. Her child's name is Prasad. Our Nani got a house built for her. Gangubai got married from her mother's side. Her husband doesn't understand much, but he's a gentle one, like a cow. He also looks after cows himself, and he milks them. Some milk he keeps for the family, the rest he sells. You see?

  ‘My grandson Gopal has begun to run about a lot these days. My son became president of this municipality—my big son did such great work—and now my grandson wants to save the whole nation. For appearance's sake he got “lawyer” put beside his name on the signboard along with his father's name. But does he care for his father's advice? Today he's in one party, tomorrow he is in another. Early morning he gets up and begins to phone while listening to Subbulakshmi's Venkatesha Stotra. You will see for yourself how he will buzz around when he sees you. Whenever we have seen you on TV we have talked about you. Nani says you must have forgotten us. But I always tell him, “I will not die before seeing him again.” I say to Nani, “Why don't you write to him?” but Nani is lazy. “He has become a big man, he must have forgotten us years ago,” says my son. What big man you are I don't know.’

  As Dinakar sat on a stool in the kitchen listening to Sitamma, not understanding a word, she came to pinch his cheek—then remembered that she was in madi and laughed, stepped away, and squatted again before the earthen oven. She went on talking in the same way, waiting for the kadubu to be steamed.

  Sitamma always cooked squatting at the firewood stove. She herself mixed the mud and built it, the main oven opening sideways into another, and then another. Every morning she would clean this stove, sweep it with cow-dung mixed with coal dust, and lay rangoli on it. Nobody else could arrange the pieces of firewood in the way she did, to make them burn with such a glow. In the main oven it would be bright and hot, and in the other two the flames would be diminished. On each one of these outlets Sitamma put whatever was the proper thing to cook there. She would sit before the stove and become as absorbed as when she was laying rangoli—here, lifting a little piece of wood to let fire catch in it, or pushing in or pulling out or placing one piece of wood on top of another, so that the fire would cooperate with another piece of fire, making the fire grow. Watching her skill in building the fire, Dinakar again remembered the Hardwar days.

  In Hardwar she had got the right kind of mud and built a stove for Tripathi's house, and she who had come for ten days stayed for a month.

  ‘What was I saying?’ she said to herself, and kept on talking, even though Dinakar didn't understand.

  ‘As soon as I saw the amulet, I knew it was you. Let us see whether Nani recognizes you in your new attire. And what about Gangu? But how could they forget you, they have even seen you on TV. How could they forget your eyes? If you had not taken this vrata, I would have waved drshti over you’

  Sitamma noticed Shastri at the kitchen door, listening intently as she spoke.

  ‘Do you see how mad I am, Shastri-gale? How I am chattering away, forgetting that this boy doesn't know Kannada? In Tripathi's house, my belly felt as if on fire when I looked at this orphan boy. What a great man Tripathi was. He didn't let this boy down. Only five years old, they say, when his mother came to Tripathi's house, herself like an orphan. She came with a trunk and a bag full of clothes. Tripathi knew only that she was from the South. He was such a large-hearted man. Seeing what state she was in, he didn't ask, “Who are you? What about you? Why did you come?” and all that. He just gave her
a place to cook her food and stay. He got her all the materials for setting up a kitchen. Just one time he asked her, because of the kumkum on her forehead, “Shall I go and search for your husband?” But when she stood there, not answering, her eyes full of tears, he never asked that question again. He even warned the other women not to ask her any such questions. Isn't one woman always curious about another?’

  Seeing Shastri growing pale, Sitamma asked, ‘Aren't you well? Didn't you sleep last night?’ and she gave him a wooden plank so he could sit in the kitchen.

  ‘Some five or six months passed like this. Then, I am told, early one morning the boy's mother got up and went to Tripathi. He was meditating in his puja room. This boy's mother was said to be a very graceful woman. Her eyes were exactly like the boy's. She wore the marriage-thread around her neck as well as this amulet. Tripathi told me all this, you see?—I started wanting to say something but I am telling you something else now—this boy's mother set down her trunk before Tripathi, touched his feet, and opened the lid of the trunk.

  ‘Tripathi couldn't believe his eyes. There were at least two maunds of gold. A necklace, ear studs, bangles, and a gold belt. Not only that, there were also bars of gold. Tripathi showed it all to me. He guarded that trunk like a cobra.

  “Think of my son as your grandson, and think of me as your daughter,” Dinakar's mother said, bowing down to God and then to Tripathi. Tripathi touched her head, blessing her, and locked the trunk in his iron safe. Could my two eyes alone be enough to see all that gold? The ornaments were from the days of the Vijayanagar Empire. They were on top, and the bars of gold were below.

  ‘A month passed after this happened, and Tripathi became attached to Dinakar. He was like a child of the house. Tripathi had him and his mother live in his house, got him educated with his own money. He never touched the gold. But that is another big story …