A Fine Family: A Novel (3 page)

He turned around to go home He watched the ground below and the narrow tarred, metalled road slowly opened up the soft, light earth on either side at the cantering speed of the horse. He kept thinking of the tempting lady, and the titillation he must suffer on her account. As he recalled the peculiar scent he tried to eliminate one Muslim friend after another, but the exercise was fruitless. She remained a mystery and he unfaithful in his heart.

The next morning Bauji took a train to the guru’s ashram.

At the railway station Bauji did what he had done for years: he bought a first class ticket and wentand sat in a second class carriage. As the train pulled away he looked out at his beloved city from a distance. They crossed the bridge over the canal and the familiar white temple on the banks and the bathing steps which went all the way down to the canal. Although he had donated for the building of the temple, he had never thought much of its architecture. The mosque in the distance, however, was a much more impressive structure. Its design was pre-Mughal, inspired by the domes of the Sultan period. Further along the canal they passed the burning ghat, where he had gone over the years to cremate many relatives and friends’ relatives. Soon they were on the dusty plain, with eroded ground on both sides. They crossed the Old Nallah, which was a dry river bed that filled up during the monsoons, got flooded and wrought havoc to the surrounding villages, washing away their cattle and their goats. Lyallpur was now a white speck in the distance, and he remembered how this landscape glowed at twilight during the rainy season. Everything became a golden yellow, especially the white walls of the town on the horizon.

As the train picked up speed, an officious Ticket Collector entered his carriage. Bauji frowned. More than the interruption it was the embarrassment. The TC wanted to know why he was travelling second with a first class ticket. Bauji muttered something about being comfortable where he was. But the TC persisted, reassuring him that the first class carriage was empty. He had immediately understood the real reason for Bauji’s strange behaviour—which was that Bauji was afraid of a chance meeting with an Englishman in the first class coach. Before the TC left, he reminded Bauji to get a refund for the difference. Bauji thanked him, but he was upset by the intrusion, and of having been reminded of his humiliation of many years ago.

In early 1931 Bauji had been travelling by first class on this same train, when an English Army officer had come in before Lahore and told him to leave the compartment. Where another Indian might have complied, Bauji had protested and stuck to his right to travel in the same carriage. It had soon become ugly since neither the Indian station master nor the railway police would support him. In the end, the English officer had physically pushed him out.

It was not the end of the affair for Bauji complained officially and the matter went up higher. At first the English officials tried to cover up, but Bauji persisted, until it eventually reached the Governor. An official enquiry was held, and Bauji had the satisfaction of seeing the officer reprimanded, the station master censured and the policeman transferred. During the enquiry, the press took it up as well. The Anglo-Indian paper of Lahore, the
Civil and Military Gazette,
sided with the English officer, asking the authorities to call off ‘a frivolous enquiry’. The English population of the Punjab closed ranks and openly sided with their own officer. But the Indian press and opinion heavily supported Bauji. In Lyallpur, the local Superintendent of Police tried to harass him in small ways, but he quickly gave up when he realized that Bauji was not about to be cowed down easily.

In the end Bauji felt that his faith in the British rule of law had been vindicated. From a private hurt, which would have scarred him forever, it had become a public affair and in his eyes the British system went on trial. And in the end the system was found to be sound. Thus a personal injustice, which might have radicalized him and pushed him into the nationalist camp, in fact reinforced his faith in the impartiality of the British Raj. In the meantime his law practice did suffer on account of this. It scared away many of his clients. They did not share his faith in the neutrality of the British judicial system. A couple of times, Bauji too had reason to doubt this faith. Once an English Magistrate was unduly sarcastic and rough with him in court. But all in all, not a single verdict went deliberately against him because of his involvement in this matter. Slowly, after about six months his practice picked up again, and the affair was soon forgotten.

It was an unfortunate experience for one who was basically a private man. The personal humiliation that day at the Lahore station forever took away much of his earlier romance and appetite for railway travel. It also accounted for his odd behaviour today in insisting on buying a first class ticket for there was always a hope, even when he was sure that at the last minute he would not have the courage to enter a first class compartment.

It was late afternoon when he arrived at the tiny village platform. A porter in a red turban scrambled to lift his luggage. ‘Hot tea,’ cried the tea boy as he scurried past. Bauji stared at the proud yellow sign which proclaimed to the world the existence of this sleepy village. The porter loaded his bag onto a waiting tonga and he rode towards the river. The tonga took him for two miles through wheat fields and here and there they passed flat houses of unbaked mud. They came along a line of buffaloes, moving down towards the river, flicking flies with their tails from their gleaming skins.

‘The guru be blessed!’ shouted a passerby. ‘The guru is mercifull’ responded the tonga driver. Bauji smiled at these old courtesies of the road. Suddenly the tonga turned and they were at the river Sutlej. The sun was coming down and the ashram was in full view. Bauji’s face filled with pleasure at the sight. The ashram was on the banks of the river. From the front, it looked like a jumble of simple brick huts surrounding an imposing building in the Muslim style with domes and minarets, where the devotees assembled twice a day to listen to the guru’s discourse. As expected, Shankar Singh’s letter opened all doors at the ashram and he was treated with respect and courtesy. Since he had been travelling the whole day, he was pleased with the chance of a bath in the river. He luxuriated in the cool stream, and allowed his mind to wander aimlessly over the memory of the burkha lady.

Bauji was not religious by nature, but he was impressed by the tranquil atmosphere of the riverbank. Silence seemed to fill the evening. Around six he was invited to tea on the terrace of the guru’s apartment. The guru, he noted, was six feet tall. He had a flowing white beard and wore a white turban. He kept smiling at everyone. Bauji was taken up by his awesome bearing. He thanked the guru for his courtesy and briefly stated his marriage proposal. The guru smiled and gently called in the boy, Seva Ram, to meet Bauji. Although Bauji found his potential son-in-law quiet and aloof, he was impressed with the young man’s intelligence and simple manners. The only thing that bothered Bauji was his short stature because he would have liked a tall grandson.

One of the disciples struck up a conversation with the guru. Seva Ram listened attentively, but he had a distant look and Bauji could not tell what he was thinking. He was sitting on the opposite side of the room and every now and then Bauji glanced at him. He looked to be in his mid-twenties. He had a pleasant face, thought Bauji, neither handsome nor plain, rather shy and in no way remarkable. His looks were certainly not capable of winning Tara’s heart.

Bauji was struck by the fact that though he had not said more than half-a-dozen words since entering the room, he seemed to be perfectly at ease and in a curious way he appeared to take part in the guru’s conversation without opening his mouth. Bauji noticed his hands. They were not long, but they were nicely shaped, even though they were large for his size. He was slightly built but not delicate in appearance; on the contrary he was wiry and resistant. His face was tanned, a minor disadvantage thought Bauji, because fairness was preferred. But he was not naturally dark, Bauji realized, and he felt reassured; it was probably because he spent a lot of time in the sun. His features, though regular enough, were undistinguished. He had normal cheekbones and his temples were hollow. He had wavy black hair which he combed to the back. His eyes looked larger than they really were because they were deep set and his lashes were thick and long. His eyes had a peculiar intensity.

A few notables of the ashram now entered the room. Among them were a princess of a small state in central India and a professor of philosophy. The conversation suddenly became livelier. As people were chatting and enjoying the breeze from the river, Bauji leaned over the edge of the terrace and looked out at the river. In the setting sun, the river glowed along its quarter-mile width, framed by ravines and reeds on the flat plain. He was struck by the beauty of the moment. When he turned back to the company, he heard the professor of philosophy ask, ‘Guruji, if there is a God why does he permit such suffering and pain in the world? Why isn’t the world a better place to live in? Why aren’t people happy?’

The guru laughed as he always did, not at the questioner or the question, but to convey that it was a difficult one and hence a good question. ‘God did not intend this world to be a perfect place for human happiness or to be our permanent home,’ he replied. ‘It is a school, where you come to learn.’

‘Learn what?’ asked the princess.

‘Learn, my child, the way to your real home, which is the place for true human happiness.’

‘And how do I learn that?’ she asked.

‘You learn through meditation. By emptying your mind of all distracting thoughts and concentrating your attention between the eyes. During meditation you will forget your body and you will be guided either by an inner light or the sound of inner music. The light will sometimes appear in the form of your guru, who will guide your spiritual journey towards God with the help of the light and the music.’

‘Guruji, if this world is not my true home, then why do I get involved here? I mean get attached to my family?’

‘Child, you must teach your heart. What a waste these attachments are! One day you will die, and that too without warning. Suddenly you will leave your family and friends. You see, the world is not a permanent place. Nothing is forever.’

‘Look upon this world as a passenger on a train looks at a wayside stop. On the train journey the traveller makes acquaintance with fellow passengers. Some passengers get off earlier, some later; some have a short journey, some have a longer one. But no one makes deep friendships, because they all know that each one has to get off. That is how you must learn to live in the world. Do not imagine for even a moment that your parents, children, friends, are going with you. They are all passengers.’

Bauji was alternately moved and disturbed by this analogy. Even though he felt sceptical about the possibility of a true home or a perfect world, he was drawn to the perspective of the train passenger. He wondered what the world would be like if all relationships were as casual as those of passengers. Slowly a vision of that world appeared. And it was a bleak vision. Surely this world, he thought, with all its failures and sorrows, is better for the emotion that we invest in it, especially in human relationships. He began to be repelled by the vision. In the meantime the guru had changed the analogy.

‘Look at how the wise bee sits on the jar of honey!’ continued the guru. ‘The bee sits on the jar and licks honey from its edge, and flies away when it is content. That is how you must live in this world. Enjoy the world, but do not get involved. Be ready to fly a way at any time. Most of us, however, live like the stupid bee who sees the honey with hungry eyes and plunges in—with the result that it gets stuck in the honey as we get stuck in our involvements.’

This was more than a lesson in moderation, Bauji felt. Despite the fact that the analogy was more convincing, he still felt uneasy. He thought to himself that he liked getting involved and attached. Although he did not think of himself as the greedy bee stuck in the jar, he liked to plunge in and form attachments. His world was the richer for these entanglements. If he hadn’t felt as he did for Tara, why would he trouble himself with these arrangements for her happiness?

As the evening wore on, the professor of philosophy kept interrupting the guru with countless questions. ‘Who created the universe? If God created the universe why did he create it? Etc., etc.’

Finally the tired guru sighed and said, ‘Listen, professorji, I shall tell you a story. Once there was a blind man who fell into a deep well. Fortunately a shepherd happened to pass by; he heard the blind man’s cries, and took pity and offered to pull him out.

‘Instead of taking hold of the rope lowered by the shepherd, the blind man started to argue. He questioned the shepherd about his motive in helping him. “Where was the guarantee,” he asked, “that he wouldn’t fall again in a well? Why didn’t they make safer wells for blind people? Why did they make wells at all, in fact?”

‘The patience of the shepherd was taxed by these questions, but he gently replied that it would be in the blind man’s interest to take advantage of the rope. After coming out he could study the situation for himself at leisure and form his conclusions.

‘The blind man, however, persisted and asked the shepherd why he had not also fallen into the well. The kind shepherd said that he was in a hurry to get home where he had a number of tasks awaiting him.

‘“All right, “ said the blind man, “but first answer only two questions: when was this well built and how deep is it?”’

‘“It is deep enough to be the grave of some people,” said the shepherd and left in disgust.’

Everyone laughed heartily at this tale, including the professor.

As the evening came to an end, the guru turned to Bauji. ‘You have been quiet all evening. I perceive disquiet in your heart. What is it?’

‘Guruji,’ said Bauji. ‘I have always believed that a man should lead a virtuous life, do good to others, avoid causing pain or harm to fellow human beings, and earn an honest living. I never thought anything more was necessary.’

‘Bauji, I applaud your beliefs. You are in fact far better prepared to undertake the spiritual journey because your mind is pure. A pure mind is like a beautifully arranged table before dinner, with clean plates and silverware. Now you must place food in them. Your hunger will not be satisfied merely with plates and spoons, just as the soul’s hunger for the Infinite cannot be satisfied purely by virtuous living.’