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  Chandrappa looked at her, listening to her affectionate words with his mouth slightly open. Seeing his open mouth, Sitamma said, ‘What, isn't the kadabu tasty? Shall I bring some more curd? It is the curd of Tunga, your own cow, so thick you have to cut it with a knife.’ This Chandrappa understood. He shook his head, said, ‘No, Mother,’ and began to eat the kadabu.

  Sitamma, seeing a coconut which had fallen from a tree in the backyard, brought it and said, ‘Chandrappa, will you please shell this for me?’ There was no need for it to be shelled, but she knew that Chandrappa delighted in any manual job, especially where he could use a knife. In his house, it was he who cleaned Prasad's bicycle so that it shone without a speck of dust, then oiled it and tied a garland of marigolds on the handlebars. On festive days, it was he who brought mango leaves and festooned the door with them.

  When Sitamma came back into the house, she looked angrily at Gopal. She knew what he was waiting to say. Gopal spoke with a heavy face. ‘Let Father go to her, if he wants. But she should not come here. You must know how the whole town talks…’

  ‘Can you or anyone stop wagging tongues? Who are they to us? Let your politics go to hell! I know your worry is only that the brahmins here won't vote for you. Just think, your mother died immediately after giving birth to you and didn't even see you, do you know that? It was Gangu who carried you about and played with you. Get up, go, bow down to God and ask forgiveness for your bad thoughts. Take this rupee and put it in the box for the god of Tirupati.’ From the coins tucked in her waistband she gave him a rupee. She had many coins left there, for the beggars who came to the house.

  Gopal took the money from her like a little boy and, with a sigh, walked to the puja room.

  Sitamma sighed too. With relief.

  13

  * * *

  As Gangu came down the stairs after finishing her talk with Narayan Tantri, she seemed to be in tears. Narayan Tantri followed, looking down as he descended the steep, old-fashioned stairs, holding onto the railings so as not to lose his balance.

  Even after twenty-five years, Dinakar's heart pounded at the sight of Gangu. Still slim, with her salt-and-pepper hair in a bun, her pallu pulled around her shoulders and held with both hands, Gangu looked a mature, handsome woman. She came downstairs without any support, touched Dinakar's feet, and, in traditional welcome, said, ‘Have you come?’ She didn't seem to have lost her passion for bangles. The many she wore on both arms expertly harmonized with her sari and blouse.

  Dinakar managed not to reveal his feelings because Sitamma came over and began to talk pleasantly. He noticed that Narayan, with hands clasped behind his back, was observing his reaction to Gangu. Dinakar reflected that his sexual impulses had not changed in spite of the Ayyappa clothes he now wore. Feeling awkward, yet wanting to say something for the sake of propriety, he began making small talk in Hindi.

  Even in the old days Gangu knew Hindi, which she had learnt in high school. She used to speak with such playfulness, but now she stood quietly, listening to Sitamma who was saying, ‘Our Gangu is not an ordinary person. Can you say that she has aged? Doesn't she look as she did in Hardwar? I tell her, “Dye your hair just a little, here and there,” but she has got vairagya in her. She has become a madam after finishing college. Whenever she comes back from school, she has a bunch of children following her. She is truly a kindari jogi. But can one say that only she has vairagya? Her son also has vairagya. He is like sage Shukamuni. Not at all like our Gopal, the jewel of our family. Gangu's son doesn't even wear a shirt, he puts on a white dhoti and white upper cloth, and sports a long beard. You should hear his singing, when he is singing it seems as if Tyagaraja was born again. Our Gangu is truly blessed.’

  Gangu looked pleased by what Sitamma said. And Dinakar was amazed at Sitamma. Even though he couldn't understand the language she was speaking, he could see how her words made everyone happy.

  14

  * * *

  ‘The beach near Suratkal is beautiful. Let's go there,’ Narayan said to Dinakar as soon as it was evening. Narayan drove his car himself, but his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. Dinakar suspected that Narayan, like himself, was waiting to say something. But Narayan talked on and on, full of praise for Dinakar's TV show about the election, his report on South Africa, his various articles, and so forth.

  Dinakar walked on the clean pure sand of the beach, looking with pleasure at the sea which rose in waves, approaching and then receding, enjoying it in silence. Then Narayan turned to him, held his hands, and said, ‘I must tell you something. I have wanted to say it all these twenty-five years, but was unwilling to speak. I had even thought it might be better not to meet you. When I saw you today, I thought, “Why on earth did he come?” But after seeing Gangu this morning, I decided that I must tell you.’ Then he stopped.

  For a while, both men stood gazing at the sea, not saying anything. The setting sun bathed the whole sky in colours that changed every moment. There was no one else on the beach except for a few fishermen who were spreading their nets. Dinakar sat on the sand, began pushing it into small mounds, and waited.

  Although he was a man of forty-five years, Dinakar felt himself becoming a boy again. He could hear anything, say anything. And Narayan seemed free from the English which in public he used so carefully. Now he unthinkingly mixed in Kannada words, speaking as if talking to himself. Yet Dinakar had not brought himself to say what he wanted to say. He thought that he should speak out, yet he was reluctant to interfere in Narayan's inner conflict. The sky was becoming bare, losing its colours, returning to its own true state as it had done from time eternal.

  ‘Dinakar,’ Narayan began, ‘you know after my wife died I didn't marry again. Gangu came as a maid servant and became part of the family. She brought up Gopal. Back then, she had been married off to someone on her mother's side. Her mother had belonged to the prostitutes' community. As was the practice, for the sake of appearance, she had given Gangu in marriage. The husband was one of her own dull-witted cousins—the man who came this morning to our house. The fellow is as gentle as a cow and he actually lives by tending cows. Gangu hadn't wanted to follow the profession of her mother, so she came to our house. She had by then finished her high school. After coming back from Hardwar, I put her in a college. Her mother, who had always been after her, had died, so Gangu felt free to do what she liked.’

  Narayan stopped talking. Dinakar, who had been digging the sand, began to take out wet handfuls, and shaped them into shivalingas. He remained silent, certain now that he could never tell Narayan what he wanted to say. Narayan began speaking again.

  ‘You did not know that I had a sexual relationship with her in Hardwar. And I did not know that you had a relationship with her.’

  Dinakar suddenly felt very light. For a moment he wanted to say, ‘But I possessed her first, when she was still a virgin.’ Then, ashamed of his crude impulse, he quietly went on listening to Narayan.

  ‘Only a few days later, after we came back from Hardwar and she began college, did I come to know she was pregnant. I was scared, though also relieved knowing that people would assume the child belonged to her husband … I am by nature a practical man. Gangu insisted that she should have an abortion, otherwise it would be difficult for her to study. Although I thought the same, I felt I should say, “No, have the child.” After she became pregnant, Gangu began to love me so much that I developed an attachment for her which I never had for my own wife. The way she felt helpless made me love her more. I bought a house for her, and saw to it that there was a little garden and a cowshed at the back. My mother also pressed me about this. What I bought then for half a lakh would now cost at least twenty lakhs. Land prices in Mangalore have become like Bombay.

  ‘Never mind. Gangu was four or five months gone in pregnancy, the baby inside her had begun to kick, and again she kept after me that she wanted to abort. Then one night, as I was lying beside her, she began to sob and tell me of the affair between you and her. “I don't kn
ow whether this child is yours, it could just as well be his,” she said. “Leave me if you don't like me,” she said, and kept on sobbing.

  ‘A great rage against you and her arose in me, more for her than you. I wanted to beat and kill her. Maybe my lawyer's cautiousness held me back, or the merit of my ancestors. Never mind. I thought she must be an enchantress and I suffered, thinking about the power of this woman who could hide from me in Hardwar her love for you.

  ‘I stopped seeing her for a few days, but then I went to her again. I couldn't check my desire for her. They say that when you lust, you have neither shame nor fear.

  ‘I took her to Bangalore secretly and found a doctor willing to do the abortion. The night before the abortion, as she slept in a hotel room by my side, she herself looked like a child. I cannot explain what happened to me then. It must have been the doing of my god.

  ‘Suddenly I thought, “What does it matter if the child is mine? What does it matter if it is Dinakar's? It is still a child that is floating and growing in her womb. Let it be born and let it grow. I will believe that it is mine.”

  ‘When I thought all this, I woke Gangu and told her. She embraced me, weeping with joy. The next day I brought her back from Bangalore. Who knows what Mother felt when she saw me? She scolded me, “You have not worshipped God in so many days. Take a bath, then go to the puja room.”

  ‘I believe there must be something of my mother's grace in the change that took place in me.’

  15

  * * *

  In the sky, the sun's love-play was over and the moon's grace appeared. While the sky seemed serene and peaceful, frothing waves moved over the sea, like thousands of white horses rushing forward in battle. The waves wet the feet of the two friends. Dinakar got up first. Then Narayan, who seemed to have been in deep meditation, lifted his heavy body by bracing his hands against the sand. The rudraksha beads on Narayan's neck caught Dinakar's attention, and Narayan Tantri in turn looked at the amulet on Dinakar's neck.

  ‘You've always worn that, haven't you?’ Narayan Tantri said.

  Dinakar felt eased of tension by this casual question, although he was still aware of the profound effect that Narayan's earlier revelation had created.

  ‘That is matra-raksha,’ Dinakar said. ‘My mother hugged me and tied it around my neck before she went to bathe in the river. Inside me there is a painful knot of unanswered questions. Did she tie the amulet around my neck knowing she was going to kill herself, or did she accidentally fall and die? Who is my father? They say my mother wore a tali around her neck and kumkum on her forehead. That means she was not a widow, she must have left my father. But why did she leave him? And whose gold was in the trunk? My father's? My mother's? That gold must be tainted … because of it my benefactor's children became greedy. It also led to the shamelessness of the woman I married.

  ‘By today's reckoning, the gold must be worth a crore. Sometimes I am tormented, wondering “Did my mother steal it? Is it dirty gold?” But I feel lighter because I have lost half of it. That is another big story, I shouldn't go into it now,’ said Dinakar. Then he went on to tell it just the same.

  ‘You remember how Tripathi used to sit on that chair, a stick in his hand, kumkum on his forehead, neatly shaven, with a big white moustache, a gold-bordered shawl around his shoulders. Even now I can see him sitting there like a king. He had a very strong voice. He would sit on his chair and get everything done in his masterful way. Exactly the image of a feudal lord. Yet he was also a great philanthropist. Every day food was given to people in the dharamshala he got built. He never touched any of the gold from my mother's trunk. He educated me in English schools with his own money. But the son he had who was my age, he sent to a Sanskrit school, trying to bring him up as another Tripathi. From the beginning, that son didn't like me. When his father couldn't hear what he was saying, he would insult my mother and make me cry. He hated me because I was his father's favourite. So Tripathi himself bears some of the fault. A man who looked after everyone else with such lordly kindness did not treat his own son with enough kindness.

  ‘Even before I went to Oxford, Tripathi's influence had begun to wane. His son stopped the daily feeding in the dharamshala. Tripathi would sit in that old chair of his, stick in hand, like an aged lion, and he grew increasingly more melancholy.

  ‘Now I believe that Tripathi was perhaps an ichchamarani. One morning, after his dip in the Ganga, he could not sit up straight in his puja room, so he leaned on a wooden plank. Even though his own son knew Sanskrit and wore a tuft like him, he didn't call his son. He sent for me, with my modern cropped hair, and said, “If you have already bathed, put on your silk dhoti and come.” I wore as an upper cloth the silk dhoti that he had given me in my eighth year, after my mother's death, when he whispered the Gayatri mantra into my ears and got the thread ceremony done. I put on the gold-bordered silk dhoti which he gave me the previous Navaratri, and sat before him. I have a good voice. People say that my mother was a good singer, and I must have got it from her. Tripathi requested me to recite the stotras composed by Adishankara. But before I started reciting, he asked me to bring the bunch of keys from his bag. From this big bunch of keys he took one out and gave it to me, saying, “I have kept your mother's gold in my small iron safe. Here is the key- Be careful, keep it from my greedy son. When you go to England, don't leave the key here. After you come back, as your gift for having grown up in this house, rebuild the temple which my ancestors had built on the bank of the Ganga. In England, don't eat what ought not to be eaten, don't drink what ought not to be drunk. Come back, then marry a girl from a good family and become a good householder.” I fell at his feet and he blessed me.

  ‘As I began to recite Shankara's stotras, he closed his eyes and never opened them again.

  ‘I finished my studies in England, came back, and rebuilt the temple. His son did not particularly want this done. The dharamshala built by Tripathi was slowly becoming like a hotel. Those who came to stay there were now asked to pay some money in the form of a donation.

  ‘They even had to pay for hot water.

  ‘This saddened me deeply. Then, one day, Tripathi's son brought an accounts book and showed me some accounts on old yellowed paper. I could tell he himself had written this, but he pretended that his father had done so. He forced a smile and told me, “Look, these must be expenses incurred by my father on your behalf.”

  ‘The account he placed before me was for nearly ten lakhs. I began to tremble in disgust. I went and got the trunk from the iron safe and told him, “Don't bring dishonour on your father's soul by yapping at me that this account was written by him. Just take from this trunk whatever you want.” That made him unsure of himself. So I went and sold some bars of gold and gave him ten lakhs. Then I took my trunk with what remained in it, and came away to Delhi.’

  ∗

  When he realized that Narayan, walking by his side, was not responding, Dinakar felt ashamed. ‘Have I acknowledged the nobility and sacrifice of his feeling “Gangu's son could be your son, but I will bring him up as my own?” Is it right for me to be boasting of my generosity in giving away gold?’ Dinakar felt dismayed at the self-regard which had not left him despite his new attire.

  Yet even as he thought of touching Narayan's feet in reverence, Narayan surprised him by making a pointless remark, speaking purely as a lawyer.

  ‘You know, it wasn't necessary to give up the gold. You could have maintained that the account was a forgery, and not in Tripathi's handwriting. If the son had gone to court over it, he would certainly have lost the case.’

  ∗

  Dinakar felt relieved by Narayan's worldliness, even though just a moment ago Narayan's large-hearted speech had created a dilemma for him. Seeing how a man such as Narayan could overcome his limitations in a noble gesture made Dinakar feel small. If he had responded by touching Narayan's feet, that act would also have increased his own self-esteem, and would not have been a sign of turning over, in facing a truth.r />
  ‘What was I really feeling as Narayan told of his affair with Gangu?’ Dinakar wondered. ‘Was it regret? When I pressured her the first time, she had appeared ignorant of such things, yet how soon she began to teach me. Did Gangu, who lost her virginity with me and I with her, then learn from a married man and begin to teach me?’

  Dinakar remembered the places and times of meetings with her. Whenever Narayan and his mother went to the temple for darshan, Gangu would quickly pat Gopal to sleep, or leave him to play with one of the children in Tripathi's house, then find some unused corner of the attic Where, to the sound of Tripathi reciting mantras, they would join together in love.

  ‘When I was not there, would she meet Narayan in the same place? And when the bedding was spread and the others lay down to sleep, she would sometimes say that she wanted to wander on the bank of the river. Even in that cold we would open the doors of the old temple that Tripathi's ancestors had built and lie together under that stone wall with the big carving of Ganesh on it. On the stone floor that was damp with oil, sandal-paste, and kumkum. And again we would lie together in Kashi, where I went with them because she asked me to go. In my very small room. On a torn mat.

  ‘Where could she have met Narayan when everyone was sleeping side by side? Could he even have had her when his mother was sleeping in the same room? I had thought that all Gangu's stolen moments were mine alone. Where else, when she was out of my sight, could she have been meeting him? At Hardwar? At Kashi? At Mathura?

  ‘I used to get up early every morning to bring buckets of hot water to people staying in the dharamshala, to the very old and the very young who couldn't go in the cold to bathe in the Ganga. And then in the afternoon I had to serve food to everyone. I had taken these duties on myself during my holidays … perhaps that was when Narayan had his stolen moments with her.