In the Shadow of Crows (15 page)

“We cannot go back!” Jiwan announced with uncharacteristic intensity, unappeased by her reveries. “
Ama
, we can never go back to the Hills!”

“What do you mean?” she chuckled, unsettled by his unfamiliar passion. “You've not forgotten your sister, your little Jamini-
bhaini
, have you? She's still with the Christians at Ninth Mile. And we have yet to find your Jayashri-
didi
, to bring her safely home . . .”

“They will burn you again,
Ama
!” His eyes seemed to shine from the darkness of his silhouette. “I have seen it!”

Bindra faltered at the memory of the spiralling light. The flash of fire. The reek of flaming skin and hair.

“But, my son,” she pressed, “we have nowhere else to go.” With effort, she lifted her legs from the bed and hugged him gently to her chest. Her hand touched his lower back. He flinched. “Jiwan!” she gasped. “What's this?”

She ran her hand down his back. He flinched again. His shirt was stuck fast to his skin.

“You've been bleeding! Who's done this?” she cried aloud. “Who's hurt you?”

“We must leave this place,
Ama
,” he began again, pressing his little body against her for comfort. “They make us kneel to the dead god on the wall. They say that we are
pa-paapi
,” he stammered, “that we are wicked, because we give respect to
murti
images! They say that your sickness,
Ama
, proves you are
paapista paapini
! A cursed sinner!”

Bindra was astonished to hear such words in the mouth of her own child.

“But there is no sin, Jiwan!” she asserted. “Only lack of balance in our choices. Only lack of understanding . . .”

She heard herself say the words even as she searched for her own understanding, her head spinning in confusion, her heart pounding in fierce fury.

“We must leave this place,
Ama
!” Jiwan repeated, with no attempt to whisper. “This is not a good place to be.”

“But, where else do we go?” she restated emphatically.

“
Ama
,” he placed his hands gently on her cheeks and looked directly into her eyes, “we are going to Kashi!”

***

I rose early to discover that the plaster ceiling had split with the weight of the night's rainfall. My bed was soaking. Not only was I wet and cold, but also bearing a zodiac of bedbug bites.

As I left the hotel, I walked straight into the amorous Kamlesh. “My dear Mister David!” he cried in delight. “So here it is you are staying!”

I greeted his wife and her sister, prompting yet another round of uncontrollable twittering.

Kamlesh took my arm and turned me to one side. “Tonight I will be coming to the privacy of your own room, and will be showing all my true loving for you!”

Whilst Priya would have laughed until she cried, I responded by hurrying off to the railway office to book my passage out. It was time to say farewell to my father's family and start the great trek “up-country”, across the Subcontinent, eastwards to Bengal, in search of the ghosts of my mother's.

It was time to follow in the footsteps of enigmatic Uncle Oscar.

It was late afternoon when I summoned my faithful, curly-haired Kashmiri to carry my rucksack to the station. I felt great regret at leaving Shimla and Kasauli, and did not relish having to return to the Plains so soon. As we made our way through the streets, we passed many of his barefooted colleagues. They were bent beneath huge crates, sacks, archaic typewriters and mattresses. One man had completely vanished beneath a double wardrobe, with only his muscular calves and thick ankles exposed as evidence of his presence. At every step, “Heart Throb” smiled and laughed through his curly, black beard, and struggled bravely with his English. He revealed that he came from a village outside Srinagar, where he had had to leave his family, despite the fierce fighting between the proIndia and the pro-Pakistan factions in the city. He had been working for the season in Shimla in the hope that he might be able to afford to resume his teacher training back in Kashmir and one day support a wife.

I tipped Dilruba one hundred rupees at the train station for being entirely honest with me about the accommodation on my arrival and never asking for or complaining about money. He had only ever said, “You give me only as much as you believe I am deserving.” At the sight of the rupee notes, he held my hand tightly and bent low, pouring gratitude. I took him by the shoulders and told him not to bow to me because he was my equal. He asked Allah to bless me with health and safety in my travels. As he walked away, waving and smiling, I knew he had taught me something in his calm dignity and sky-filled face, despite his days spent doubled over beneath other people's luggage and staring at his toes.

I sat on the platform, overwhelmed by Dilruba's reaction to a mere £1.50. I had to put aside the freshly fried, potato-packed
puri
and pickle I had just purchased from a station stall. For the first time since the Plains, I again felt overcome by nauseous guilt at my decadent origins, at the luxury of innumerable choices in my life which I had so mindlessly, irresponsibly squandered.

I wondered what Priya would have done.

The toy train soon tooted its readiness for departure, so I forced my rucksack into the crowded carriage, and settled into my seat. I tried to write in my journal, but my fellow passengers consistently peered over my shoulders. Some even boldly nudged away my arms for a better view of the page. These distractions, along with a blotchy biro, the jolt of the tracks and the discomfort of the wooden-slatted seats into which, due to a significant loss of weight, my newly acquired bum-bones dug, had turned my school-scolded script into a near unintelligible scrawl. This fact was brought sharply to my attention when two inquisitive passengers innocently enquired, “
Sah'b
, you Japanese?”

I eventually had to concede defeat. I put aside my book and instead leant my forehead against the glass. I considered the father I had found in these hills, where once he had been a stranger who had sporadically appeared at bedtime with tales of scorpions, rope tricks and tigers. I smiled at the child in his Sola topee and Boy Scout garters, hiding behind his mother for fear that the servant girls might kiss his pink cheeks, or that the soldier guard who accompanied them to market might fall on his rifle and shoot them all dead.

Unexpectedly, as though some barrier had slipped away, I felt a connection to my father that I had never known before. We had lived so much of our lives apart, and yet here I realised that the nights he had sat at my childhood bedside had been extraordinarily influential on my perception of the world. I recognised, perhaps for the first time, the depth of his love and respect for me as his son. It was as though I was able to piece him together, as though the puzzle was now complete.

The dusk darkened with tempestuous cloud as my train continued to ease its slow descent towards Kalka. I watched as the mountains vanished beneath an impenetrable torrent of rain, their vast, suspended, indigo, island peaks momentarily silhouetted by furious bursts of brilliant topaz.

I was indeed forsaking Narnia.

Chapter Eleven

Dawn had not yet broken when Bindra, Jyothi and Jiwan walked quietly out of the Good Shepherd Ashram.

“Where are we going,
Ama
?” Jyothi asked. “Kashi!” insisted Jiwan.

“My good, brave boys,” Bindra smiled, “I don't know where we're going . . .”

“We're going to Kashi!” Jiwan announced again with untiring confidence.

“But, son, I don't know where Kashi is,” she protested. “We speak of it in our tradition - but I don't know where to find it. Do we walk towards the rising sun, or towards its setting? Is it one day's travel, or one year's? You see? I don't even know where to begin.”

Bindra knew the name of Kashi, the City of the Light of Liberation. She knew it from the tales of Skanda, the Spurt of Semen, divine patron of learning and hidden wisdom. She knew it as the place where Syambhuva and Shatarupa, the first named humans of this cycle of mankind, were said to have paid homage to the forces of their creation. She had described it to her children as the place at which an immeasurable laser beam, a
lingam
of light, once broke through the Earth's crust and illuminated the cosmos to reveal the underlying consciousness of which the entire universe is an expression. However, whilst Bindra knew of its mythical beginnings, just where the city of Kashi stood she could not say.

She paused at a junction in the dusty street. She looked from left to right, as though determining her bearings might help her decide what to do. She reached out her bandaged hands and drew her sons close.

Bindra felt utterly lost.

A distant glow to the east had begun to seep along the horizon as Bindra and her boys huddled together beside the empty road. In silence, they watched the darkness wane through a dust-sullied pallet of dirty mauves, pinks and oranges. They watched a solitary rickshaw appear from the gloom and pedal past lethargically, when Bindra's attention was caught by movement above the bamboo tops. “Kali Ma,” she whispered towards the raucous spirals of crows that were summoning the dawn. “I know!” she announced to her sons with sudden, new determination. “We'll go back to the Kali
mandir
! Someone there is sure to know where Kashi lies.”

***

Upon arrival at Kalka, I disembarked the Shimla toy train and boarded the overnighter to Delhi. I pushed through jostling, goodnatured crowds, grumpy porters and noisy vendors, only to discover that my pre-paid berth had not been reserved. According to the
gariwan
coachman, all sleeping compartments were fully booked and my name was absent from the list.

Until two o'clock in the morning, I was unceremoniously shoved from second-class bench, to filthy floor, to bustling corridor, until I could bear it no longer. I determined to search out the most senior conductor and implore him, on my knees if necessary, for a seat.

The portly, perspiring man became impatient and dismissive on my request, bellowing with unnecessary volume that the train was completely full, with “not one place for not one person!” However, it was hard to take his abrasive manner seriously when he had evidently spared no effort in his grooming to ensure his merkinlike ear tufts achieved their own perfection.

Indeed, the conductor may have noted my expression of genuine admiration for the coiffure of his hirsute auricles, as he promptly softened, conceding that he could possibly make one last check if I donated two hundred rupees to his outstretched fingers. I doubtfully, and somewhat begrudgingly, handed over the money, whereupon he swiftly turned and unlocked an empty compartment.

I did not wake until choking heat had parched my airways. I peered through tired eyes and grime-caked glass at the defecating throngs that lined the tracks. I forced open the window, inadvertently welcoming into the compartment the stench and dust that heralded my return to Delhi.

Upon arrival, I stepped from the train and plunged into the tumultuous tide. Before I had a chance to find my bearings, I was swept from the train door along the platform, up staircases, across footbridges, along corridors, through ticket halls and out into the street.

I stood in the road, trying to avoid being hurried into eternity by pollution-crazed drivers in their demon taxis and three-wheeled
tempos
. I turned to face the storming hordes pouring from the station entrance.

I was confused. At Shimla, I had been assured that I would arrive at New Delhi Station, from which I had originally departed, where my train to the east would be waiting for immediate connection. But, the station through which I had been so brusquely hurried was unrecognisable.

Rather than jeopardise my life by attempting to force passage back into the ticket hall against the single-minded, lemming sea of commuters, I pushed my way around to the side of the building. I blundered into an airless office, where a group of soldiers, sipping tea and holding hands, pointed me through an open door. Behind a paper-piled desk sat a fearsome little Fat Controller.

“Excuse me, sir,” I began, with as much respectability as I could muster in my bedraggled state.

“No! No!” he shouted, waving me away.

I was not to be so easily dismissed. “Sir, could you please tell me...”

His eyes bulged to amphibian convexity. “Public complaints should be taken to the Grievances Cell for dealing with between 11pm and 6am!”

I attempted to explain the simplicity of my enquiry and that, until this moment, I had had no complaints whatsoever. However, the swollen veins on his temples were pounding and his short, plump fingers had become quite stiff, so I departed his presence before my polite request for assistance triggered an irreversible catalepsy.

***

The lamp-lit temple was bustling into life as Bindra and her boys approached along the tree-lined path. A small number of devotees were already circumambulating the shrine. The low hum of their repeated mantras gave Bindra comfort and restored her hope.

She led Jiwan and Jyothi to the steps, where they paused to brush the dust from their feet. “Once again, we bring nothing to Kali Ma,” Bindra muttered to herself.

“
Ama
,” Jyothi beamed, “I have uncooked rice and bananas!” He unrolled the little blanket he had tied across his shoulders and revealed its contents. Bindra was astonished.

“Where does this come from?” she asked, with concern.

“From the Fathers' kitchen!” Jyothi chuckled.

“However difficult things may be,” his mother frowned, “we do not steal from others, neither in deed, word nor thought. There is wisdom in being able to accept that what we have is always enough. And lasting freedom when we surrender the desire to possess that which belongs to another - even when we think we are destitute.”

Jyothi hung his head in theatrical shame.

She drew him close. “If we learn from our mistakes, then we are wise. If we choose not to, we are foolish. Choose the path of wisdom, my good, kind boy.”

“But now we have
parsat
for Kali Ma!” he triumphantly announced, lifting his face to hers with a cheeky grin. And, proudly waving a banana, Jyothi scurried up the temple steps towards the sanctuary of the Dark Goddess.

***

Across the cavernous hall of the railway terminus, I caught sight of a faded sign that promised “Information”. I clambered over tors of trunks and parcels, tiptoed between undulating hills of sleeping bodies, slipped in generous splatterings of scarlet saliva - only to discover the desk was closed.

I asked various people for help, but no one was interested. Three times I was escorted by surly men to different platforms, only to endure importunate demands for money as a reward for their assistance. My patience had begun to wear very thin indeed.

A firm hand grasped my elbow and I turned to find an elegantly uniformed soldier beside me. He grinned and asked to see my ticket. He explained that I was at Old Delhi Station, not New Delhi as I had been told at Kalka. He walked with me to a platform, to my embarrassment moved people from a bench, and sat me down. Before I could thank him, he was gone.

It took a moment for me to realise that he still had my ticket.

I stood up in panic, but he had vanished back into the impenetrable crowds.

In my misery and anger, I could not think what action to brave next. The heat was rising fast and I was foolishly still dressed in my weather-wary hill station clothes. I wiped the spate of perspiration from my face and my handkerchief turned black. I took a gulp of warm bottled water and looked on enviously at the men and boys stripping at the standpipes with their communal bar of bright green soap.

A solitary woman approached me. Her tattered sari blouse exposed flaccid, nail-torn breasts, her face distorted by unimaginable terrors. She was evidently mentally ill. I smiled awkwardly at her, but she did not seem to see and wandered on. I watched her go, consumed with frustration at my incapacity ever to do anything more than spectate.

My eyes immediately caught those of an old man dressed in filthy rags. His nose had fallen into his face. His tongue lolled over toothless gums and distended lips. The remains of what had once been his hands rested heavily on the handle of a makeshift wooden trolley, on which he steered a crumpled woman. She had no fingers. No feet. No eyes.

I had never before seen human bodies reduced to such a pitiful condition. My father had told me of deformed beggars, of purposeful debilitations, of enforced amputations. But none of this was deliberate. This was disease. This was horrific.

The extraordinary vision cut a broad swathe through the crowds on the platform as it approached. People pushed and tumbled to get out of their path, snatching away luggage, plucking up parcels, clutching at children.

In a moment, they were before me. Two living, breathing corpses.

I bent to pick up my rucksack, to let them pass, then stopped. I stood up and looked back at the old man. In those deep, dark eyes was a dignity I did not recognise in myself. There was a peace. A stillness.

He smiled softly and I found myself transfixed by a depth of wisdom that starkly exposed the paucity of my own. In that moment, I felt that for my education, all my opportunities and indulgences, I knew nothing compared to this man who now struggled to stand before me.

I bent to place money into a tin the old woman held between her encrusted ankles. She suddenly came to life and offered
pranam
in my direction, as did he.

I returned a respectful bow to both of them.

“No, sir!” a voice cried out from amongst the crowd. “Stay back! They are lepers, sir! Lepers!”

***

The sun had illuminated the treetops when Bindra caught sight of a face she recognised. The woman slowly hobbled down the path, then slumped onto her usual spot at the base of the temple steps. She was panting.

“
Namaskar, didi
!” Bindra called out in greeting.

“
Namaskar, bahini
!” came the breathless reply.

Bindra shuffled along the step to sit closer, and offered one of Jyothi's purloined bananas. The woman touched her heart in thanks.

“
Didi
,” Bindra asked, “do you know of Kashi?”

The woman smiled and tipped her head to one side in affirmation.

“Then,
didi
,” Bindra continued, “how many days' walk is it?”

The woman shook her head and laughed. “
Bahini,
Kashi is very far away! And it's not days, it's
many
weeks! Kashi is thousands of
kos
from here, far across the Plains!” She looked to Bindra's bound feet. “I'm sorry,
bahini
, but if you try to get there on those, you may never reach Kashi at all!”

Bindra nodded her head from side to side in resignation.

“
Tirthajatra
?” the woman asked. “You want to take a pilgrimage?”

Bindra shrugged. “It's my Jiwan, my little one . . .”

She turned to look up to the inner sanctum, where her youngest son now sat motionless before the image of Kali. Jyothi was rummaging through the palm thicket, in the hope of finding
iskus
and yet more bananas.

“Then you must go!” the old woman declared with conviction. “That child of yours has a path to follow. If it's to Kashi he says he must travel, then it's to Kashi that you must take him!”

Bindra's thoughts were suddenly very distant. “I have two daughters. Pretty girls, good girls,” she said quietly. “I have left one up in the Hills. The other . . . I have lost.” She looked up towards the circling crows. “How far is the city called Calcutta?”

“Also very far from here,” the woman replied. “Far to the south, where the land meets the sea. It's a huge place, I'm told. Full of many great buildings, with cheap food, but too many people.”

Again, Bindra nodded with resignation.

“Go to Kashi,” the woman advised. “Trust Kali Ma and take your sons!”

“But,
didi
!” Bindra protested. “Look at me! Look at my boys! How can we walk so far?”

“Walk?” the woman laughed out loud. “Of course, you can't walk! You take the Pilgrim Bus! It leaves often in this season.”

“But,
didi
!” Bindra repeated in protest, “I have no rupees to pay for a bus! And they would not take me!”

The woman laughed again. “
Bahini
, you think pilgrims, the dying and the widowed making their way to Kashi to welcome their end will care who or what you are? The Pilgrim Bus is very cheap. And as for money, sit here with me. It's a
puja
day. Many devotees of the Dark Mother will come, eager to give an offering to Kali Ma.”

Bindra shook her head. “Forgive me, but I cannot beg,
didi
!” she gasped in dismay at the thought.

“Why? Are you better than our Lord of the Mountains, Shiva himself?” the old woman playfully retorted. “You know, one of His sacred names is Bhiksu, the beggar! Don't you know our mountain tradition teaches that one of the
ashramas
, one of the stages of life most suited to those of us living in these tumultuous days, is that of the
maagne
beggar? Even the
ranas
and
ranis
took time to wander in their lives, in search of truth. Yes, even our kings and queens found wisdom in living for a time from alms!”