Bhava Page 5

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  ‘Soon Pundit will arrive, see what has happened, and inform the police,’ Shastri thought. Then he decided he would kill Pundit too and throw him into the pit. After that, he would go to Kerala for a few days. So, although he had set out for Kasargod, he turned the car around and when he reached home again it was eight o'clock, with the oppressive darkness of a moonless night. In his frenzy he had left without locking the door, and when he entered the house it seemed frighteningly silent. Had Pundit already come and gone? Or was he about to come just now? Fearfully, Shastri made his way in the dark to the pit, took a hoe, and dragged all the dug-up earth back into the hole. Breathing heavily, he worked for an hour. ‘Tomorrow morning I will get up, level this place, and plant a jackfruit sapling there,’ he told himself. He sat on the steps of his house with a sickle in hand, waiting to kill Pundit. But Pundit did not come. ‘Arrey, has the enchanter come and gone? Has he already complained to the police?’ Without sleeping, Shastri waited. But nobody came.

  In the morning he added more earth and levelled the pit. Then he left, this time not forgetting to lock the door. He drove to Mangalore and stayed in a hotel. After two days of fearful waiting, surprised that he was still safe, he returned home.

  The red earth pit was just as he had left it. But in front of the house there were tyre marks from Pundit's car. ‘Were those marks left behind by Pundit after I killed her and drove away in my car?’ he wondered. Then he went into the puja room and saw the door of the iron safe standing open. The trunk full of gold was gone. All at once, the horror of having done murder vanished in the rage against Pundit that began to howl in him.

  ‘O the enchanter robbed me and ran away! His eyes were not on Saroja, but on gold. Yet he even made her pregnant.’ Calculating, considering whether he should report to the police that Pundit had killed Saroja and run off with the gold, Shastri drove to Udupi and stopped the car in front of Pundit's shop.

  Pundit's door was locked. Shastri, widening his bloodshot eyes, asked the neighbouring shop owner, ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Ah, yes. One evening, it must have been three days ago, yes, on the new moon day—Wednesday evening—he left and has not returned since. I thought he had perhaps gone to your house.’ Did the shop owner Kamath smile falsely, as if there were some hidden meaning in his words?

  ‘No, he's a householder like me,’ Shastri told himself. ‘He is my age, has children, and he even keeps a lorry.’ Shastri felt fully reassured that Kamath did not see him as a murderer but only as a customer when Kamath said, ‘I have got excellent toor dal from Hyderabad, only one bag left. Shall I have it put in your car?’

  Refusing the dal, Shastri had gone to Radha's house. He had not seen her for some days. She touched his forehead and said, ‘Ayyo, you are feverish.’ She opened a bedroll and made him rest on it, and for the first time ever he told her a lie.

  ‘That useless one ran away with Pundit three days ago. The whore also took the trunk of gold.’ His scheming mind had decided not to complain to the police and risk getting into a criminal suit.

  He went back home, took more earth from the paddy-field, and added it to the pit. In the center of the pit, he planted a jackfruit sapling. He told people that the fruit would be as sweet as honey, and people were surprised at the unfamiliar friendliness in Shastri's hostile, ever-burning face.

  9

  * * *

  Shastri got down from his taxi and asked the driver, who was whistling away merrily, to wait. He went into Radha's house with his bag.

  ‘Look, here is a Madras sari for you,’ he told her. Although Radha was pleased, she knew there was something else on his mind. ‘What is the matter?’ she asked. Shastri was surprised by the relief he felt when he found himself replying, ‘I believed I had told you a lie. But after forty-five years, I see that what I told you may be true.’ Then, in great detail, he explained to her his present state of uncertainty.

  ‘I had last seen the amulet on Saroja's neck when I was in a state of utter fury. When I saw it yesterday, it seemed to me a sign that I could die and be born again’

  ‘But how can I say whether he is my son or Pundit's? When Mahadevi had a daughter from me, I realized that Saroja too might have been pregnant from me. Then I feared that I would rot eternally in hell for killing not only Saroja but my own child, so I began to work off my life in this new costume of reciter of Puranas. Yet it seemed this body into which the demon had entered has never learned anything. Had I not felt that very same kind of rage towards my own daughter? I might have killed her, but she escaped. Now Mahadevi feels rage like that, and wants to kill me. And I feel the same. But am I, speaking to you now like this, the same person who felt my heart turn over as I watched someone who might be my son eating the food I gave him?’

  Shastri's throat choked with emotion. But then he chided himself, ‘I should not seek sympathy from Radha so that I neglect to observe my own hell.’

  He looked at Radha, waiting for her reply.

  ‘I have not told you this,’ she said. ‘The servants here always gossiped that you killed your wife and buried her in the pit. They say that is why the jackfruit tree you planted there does not bear any fruit. I didn't tell you lest it would give you pain.’ Radha sighed, adding, ‘God has saved you.’ She went inside and brought milk and fruits, then sat down and pressed his feet. But Shastri drew his feet back.

  ‘Do you think Pundit lifted her from the pit, when she was half-dead, and then took the gold from the safe? Yet it doesn't seem he was a thief … when she was washed away in the river, all the gold she had brought with her was still untouched. But then why did he leave her? Or did he die, and did she take refuge in Tripathi's house because she was alone? She must have lived with Pundit at least until her son was five years old. And I heard that she had kumkum on her forehead when she went to Tripathi's house, so she didn't go as a widow.’

  He fell silent for awhile.

  ‘I don't want to care whose son he is, yet that is how I feel. Couldn't he be Pundit's son? But then, I might have created him when I was howling like a demon. Now I am sure of nothing. Was it really Saroja herself who went to Tripathi for shelter, or could it have been someone who resembled her?’ Shastri began to pray, ‘O God, save me from these tormenting doubts which make me like a ghost in limbo.’

  Radha came, sat by his side, held his hand tenderly, and said, ‘Believe that he is your son.’

  ‘One moment I believe so, but the next moment I think that Pundit made him, and I feel fire burning in my stomach.’ He got up without drinking any of the milk she had brought him.

  When Radha asked why, he said, ‘Hereafter on Ekadashi I will not even drink milk.’

  10

  * * *

  Radha saw signs of Shastri's release from the demon which tormented him. For a whole year she had been holding onto a secret, something which was essential for his liberation. Now she watched him, hoping that in a few days she could reveal to him what she knew.

  Shastri looked at Radha's hair, which had begun to turn gray, and her lovely, still-unwrinkled face, which glowed with warm affection.

  ‘Why did I ever marry Mahadevi? Of course, you were urging me to marry. And I thought that if I had a child my troubles would go, and I would have peace. Saroja tortured me with her beauty and indifference. But Mahadevi was just like me. From the start she fell on me with her eyes burning. She is nothing like Saroja. She hates you too. And my daughter is truly my daughter. Stubborn. Marrying an idiot who wants to make revolution and destroy people like me with good family backgrounds. She left my house, I don't know where she went. Sometimes I feel a desire to bring her back home. Who knows what I become from moment to moment? Perhaps for people like me there is no release from this bhava, we stay entangled in this world. But at least Saroja has not died by my hand. I prayed to God to be released from bhava because, when my daughter was born, I suffered thinking that Saroja could have become pregnant from me. What God can give me solace? My fate is written h
ere,’ he said, touching his forehead, suddenly feeling as if he were speaking well-rehearsed words in his role as puranik.

  He returned to the waiting taxi and went home. He did not expect that as soon as he entered the house, Mahadevi would pounce on him without any reason. But, seeing her standing before him as if to devour him, seeing her flared nostrils in a contorted face, he felt, to his surprise, compassion welling in him for this helpless woman.

  Mahadevi at once started to pick a quarrel over Radha's wealth and the gold bangles Radha had got made for a grandchild. She kept saying, ‘Because of your murderous nature …,’ working herself into a fury and screaming about the daughter she had lost. Shastri had never before touched Mahadevi in consolation. But now he embraced her although she tried to squirm away, probably thinking that he was going to strike her. But instead, very gently, he spoke her name over and over, ‘Mahadevi, Mahadevi …’

  ‘I have not killed anyone, Mahadevi. What the servants said was wrong. I myself once believed as they did. But yesterday in the train I came to know the truth.’

  He knew that Mahadevi couldn't make sense of all he said. But, feeling the tenderness of his touch, she wept, and he caressed her and said, ‘Don't cry. I will find out where our daughter is and bring her here.’

  Looking surprised, Mahadevi went inside the house, blowing her nose with the end of her sari. Shastri felt a faint hope that he might be healing. He looked at the parijata tree growing haphazardly in front of his house, the crooked-in-eight-ways tree which, by shedding on the earth all its delicate blossoms, fulfills itself. Saroja used to gather its flowers with the tips of her nails, careful not to wither them from the warmth of her fingers. One by one she would pick them up, collect them in a banana-leaf cup, and pour them over the snake pit which had formed in the backyard. Remembering this, Shastri again felt pain. Why had there been kumkum on Saroja's forehead when she was carried off in the river? Why was there a marriage thread around her neck? Had it meant that Pundit was not dead? Or did it mean that the one who had held her hand in marriage was not dead?

  Feeling weak, the fragile signs of his recovery fading, he went into a bathing-room. It was not the same bathing-room in which he had smashed Saroja's head. That one he had got torn down, and he'd had another one built in a new place.

  BOOK TWO

  11

  * * *

  First, as if from the depths of a cave, one, one, or two, two, sprouts of melody, and now the clear sound of a bell emerging, and then a bass melody oooooo, and then jingling as if from belled anklets. All melody as if made from itself inside itself. As if going deeper and deeper down inside, melody wandering and searching the depth of the depths. Even as everything ended, again a melody arising from a deeper side of the kundalini. Did the melody find what it sought? As if saying look, look, the wonderment of small, small bells. Was it being lost, or drowning in ecstasy?

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  Dinakar, reading an English translation of Bardo Thodol, listening on his Walkman to the chanting of Tibetan lamas, tried to relate his present state of mind to the bardo state described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Not reclining on a pillow, he sat up straight on a mat.

  He was in the drawing room of Narayan Tantri's big house, sitting straight-backed even though mattresses were laid out together with large cushions covered in white cloth. Sitamma saw Dinakar and said, ‘What has happened? Come sit on a mattress.’

  She saw Dinakar smile and said, ‘Ayyo, I keep forgetting that you don't understand Kannada. Get up and take a bath. Then I will give you your morning food. Everyone will be awake very soon. As soon as he sees you, my grandson will start dancing about and troubling you. That's why I haven't told him you have come, I left him tied to his phone. Get up, get up!’ Then she made gestures to make clear that he should take a bath.

  Dinakar took a clean towel and Pears soap from her, surprised that after twenty-five years she still remembered he was fond of Pears. Humorously, forgetting that Sitamma wouldn't understand him, he said in Hindi, ‘This means you are my other mother.’ Sitamma shot back, ‘What? Early morning you get up and right away you speak to me in the Sahib's tongue?’

  She went on, ‘Tripathi was such an orthodox brahmin, my dull mind could never understand why he spoke that Sahib's language.’ Then, feeling shy that perhaps she had said something which she ought not to have said, she covered her mouth with the end of her sari and, laughing, entered the kitchen.

  By the time Dinakar came out of his bath, all was festivity.

  Gopal, Narayan Tantri's son, flung himself at Dinakar's feet and then began dancing about. ‘See,’ Sitamma said, ‘my grandson will boast of you to his whole gang and get his dinner out of it as well.’ As Sitamma stood making fun like this, Narayan Tantri caught his mother's eye and gestured that she should not embarrass Dinakar. Dinakar considered the changes in Narayan Tantri. ‘I would certainly not have recognized him. He has grown stout. And now he weighs his words like a public man.’ The sharpness and mischievousness of his old friend didn't seem to be there. Dinakar felt a little disappointed to think that he had found a mother again, but not a brother.

  As he watched Narayan Tantri, Dinakar's resolve to confide in him withered. How could he speak to this successful public man of the secret that gnawed at him?

  He had even prepared what he would say to his friend.

  ‘Look, Narayan, it seemed there was nothing sacred left in my life, so I began wearing these clothes. After my foster father died, his sons had become very greedy, and I went less and less often to their house. Their eyes were on the gold which Tripathi had never even touched. I felt disgusted, but gave them what they wanted. Now I go there only for Tripathi's shraddha.

  ‘After my education in England, I lived in Delhi. Slowly I became empty. I could say anything, charm anyone. I didn't know where my roots were. Even if I searched for them, I knew I could not find them. But it wasn't in my nature to be lonely, either, and I lived a dissolute life. The women I made love to then are everywhere now. In Lucknow, Delhi, England—but gradually I got tired of this. Trying to hide one woman from another, having affairs … the weariness increased. At the same time, it was an addiction.

  ‘All this business began in Hardwar, in my twentieth year, when I was with you. Even while I felt that I was being reborn—that, having lost my mother, I was reborn in your mother—even in those days I kept a big secret, without any regret, and I was happy with that secret. But now I want to understand what happened to me then.’

  Such words went round and round in Dinakar's head as he tried to bring himself to speak of what was so important to him. Hopelessly, Dinakar looked at his old friend. Meanwhile, Narayan Tantri was flattering Dinakar with elaborate hospitality. Perhaps, Dinakar thought, his friend had also prepared for himself a voice meant to obscure some hidden sorrow.

  12

  * * *

  Banana leaves cured on the hot ash of the bathing-room fire. On these fragrant, bud-shaped banana leaves, kadabu steamed in cups made of jackfruit leaves, and on the kadabu, yellow-coloured ghee from cow's milk. Three different types of chutneys. In a banana cup, creamy curd. On the side, hot steaming coffee.

  Dinakar, who didn't know the Kannada names of any of these foods, sat and ate with great appetite. Narayan Tantri and his son Gopal had bathed and, sitting by Dinakar's side, ate more than he did. It was Sunday, the courts weren't in session, and Narayan Tantri seemed more relaxed. But although Gopal ate his food, he was eager to go and share news of Dinakar's arrival with his cronies.

  There was a sound from the backyard—somebody calling out ‘Amma.’

  ‘Who is it? Chandrappa? Just stay and wait a little,’ Sitamma said, going into the yard.

  She came in again, ladled some kadabu and chutney onto a banana leaf, and on her way to the backyard said to her son, ‘Gangubai wants to meet you. Chandrappa has come to ask whether you will be at home. I told him, “Let Gangubai come.”’ Then she took the leaf-plate out to Chandrappa.

&nbs
p; Sitamma, who was very fastidious about eating taboos, didn't serve Chandrappa or Gangubai or Prasad inside the dining room. But she would never let them go without giving them something to eat and exchanging courtesies, inquiring after their joys and sorrows.

  Gopal seemed displeased that his grandmother had invited Gangubai home, and Narayan Tantri's face fell when he observed his son's angry look. Dinakar could not quite make out what was happening between father and son, but he remembered that Gopal had been a very obstinate child, and that when Gangubai was a girl looking after him, she often resorted to the four upayas to get him to sleep. Sitamma took no account of the tension of the moment, but went to the backyard and began to talk of this and that with the dull-witted Chandrappa.

  ‘How much milk does the cow give? Has the white cow become pregnant? Were you able to sell the male calves? How much did you get for them? How long is the school holiday for Gangubai? Why doesn't Prasad show his face here at all? How is his music going? How well he sang in the temple on Ramnavami.’ Sitamma had already asked most of these questions many times that week. As usual, she expected no answer from Chandrappa. Her only aim was to make him happy.