In the Shadow of Crows (18 page)

I woke as the train rattled through the Hindi-speaking state of Bihar, infamous as one of the most corrupt and lawless in all of India. Across the barren fields, small villages of grass huts crouched desiccating in the sun. I wiped the dust from my eyes and peered down into the dry Gandak River, where an army of women and children were busy breaking stones.

The bare living that could be scratched from rice-growing offered little sustenance to Bihar's hungry population of eighty-four million. Many had simply turned to the more profitable professions of banditry and smuggling. I had already noticed that Bihar was frequently reported in the Indian newspapers for unceasing atrocities. For its notoriously undisciplined police and the systematic blinding of prisoners. For bride burnings and torture.

How incongruous this all seemed when it had been from Bihar's city of Patna that the great king Ashoka had once ruled his peaceful and prosperous kingdom, and at Pawapuri that Mahavira, founder of the principal tenets of Jainism, had attained
Nirvana
. How incongruous, when it had been at Bihar's Bodhgaya that a prince named Siddhartha had once sat beneath a
Bo
tree and found the “enlightenment” of Buddhahood.

At Baruni Junction, two men joined my compartment. Neither was willing to acknowledge me. I turned my attention, instead, to the platform, which was crowded with fried-peanut sellers offering their wares mixed with spices, chopped onion, green chilli and slices of lemon, served in paper cones made from gaudy magazine pages. There were vendors of salted cucumbers, juicy coconut slices, oranges, cashew biscuits and chewing tobacco. There were makers of omelettes,
pakoras
,
puchkas
and
paan
, whose younger siblings persistently flicked the air with water in a vain attempt to keep down dust and drive away flies.

Inside the train,
chai
and
kaufi
sellers scurried along the carriage corridors, each trying to out-cry their competitors. Fleshless boys with grass brushes vigorously swept the compartment floors in the hope of a few rupees, sending dirt and dead bugs billowing into the air, and robust cockroaches scurrying into corners.

My water supply was largely depleted and I had counted upon buying more at the station. However, out here, in this most desolate region which foreigners purposely avoided, amongst all these hawkers with such a variety of fare, there was not one vendor of bottled water. I was desperate.

Suddenly, a mendicant gang forced decaying limbs between the bars of my open window, the foul, chaotic stench of putrid flesh awakening in me an instinctive, animal alarm.

Leprosy!

With indescribable horror at the suppurating stumps thrust towards my face, I looked into the beseeching eyes that stared back at me. Defying all reason, I wanted to reach out and put my arms around them.

Instead, I fumbled to drop pathetically few coins into the tins that hung from scabby wrists. When I handed out the last of my bananas, my companions reprimanded me and shooed them all away.

As the train moved off, one of my fellow travellers donated his soap and signed for me to go and clean myself immediately. When I returned, I discovered the other man had not only removed his shoes to sit in my window seat, but was washing his own hands and face in the last two inches of my only drinking water.

Hair stiffened into sedge by scalding dust, mouth parched and lips cracked into a drought-crazed crust, I slumped into a corner. Despite the intensifying stench of stale sweat and stinking socks in the compartment, which seemed to cause the very air to curdle, I deepened my breath in an effort to exhale the memory of leprous wounds and extinguish the pleading eyes that still stared within my pounding head.

I looked down at my own firm, fully fingered hands to find that I was shivering with shock.

***

Bindra woke. She looked at the dim glow of the early dawn reflecting on the ceiling and smiled. She felt well today. Even her back was more comfortable to lie upon. She turned to peer at her boys, to mouth a blessing upon them for the new day ahead.

Only Jyothi lay sleeping on the bedroll.

Bindra sat up and awkwardly swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She was not yet permitted to walk. Not until the newly stitched stumps where toes had been were fully healed.

“
E
Jyothi!” she whispered, not wishing to disturb the others in her dormitory. He opened heavy and resistant eyes.

“
Hajur
?” he muttered respectfully, “Yes,
Ama
?”

“Where's Jiwan-
bhai
?” she asked with urgency. “Where's your brother?”

“Oh,” he yawned, scratching his head with one hand, his ear with the other. “He's gone.”

“Gone where?” Bindra gasped.

“Jiwan-
bhai
has gone to the burning
ghat
,
Ama
,” he replied sleepily, “to become an
Aghori
.”

Chapter Thirteen

My train had been scheduled to arrive in the early afternoon, far north of the Ganges River delta and Calcutta at the Bay of Bengal. I had wistfully fancied that I would take the first transport up into the mountains and reach Darjeeling in time for dinner. However, the train did not reach New Jalpaiguri station until shortly after ten at night.

In the days of the Raj, the gregarious Bengali had been derided for his gentle, optimistic disposition and small stature. His colonial masters had not only dismissed him as “effeminate”, but had denounced him for lacking that most essential of “manly” restraints, which they had believed would save him from going blind, insane, or growing hair on the palms of his hands.

“Effeminate” was the last adjective on my mind as, through the darkness of the station forecourt, I was besieged by a mob of taxi drivers, hotel touts and rickshaw-wallahs. It was now all too familiar.

I quickly returned to the safety of the station building and enquired at the chauki police office as to how I could reach Darjeeling before midnight. The dufadar constable regretfully informed me that all buses and the toy-train steam railway, which took a full seven hours to make its perilous ascent, had completed their last trips for the day. My only option was to stay the night.

I stepped back into the riot of the forecourt and considered what to do. Despite the lateness of the evening, the heat was sweltering. However, I had no opportunity to acknowledge just how tired and thirsty I was feeling, for the touts and drivers lunged towards me, each grasping hand determined to glean some income from the solitary foreigner, by dragging me, against my will if necessary, into the urban misery of the town.

My mind was set. I had to procure a taxi willing, at such a late hour, to make the circuitous fifty-mile journey into the mountains.

The mention of Darjeeling, and the clamant mobs vanished. Nobody would agree to drive me.

I was approached by a boy who seemed bright, resourceful and fascinated by the colour of my skin, which he asked permission to touch. In return for my concession to his exploration of my forearms with grimy fingertips, I asked him to seek me out a driver directly. He flicked his head to one side in cocky affirmation and confidently led me across the car park to a vehicle, at which he indicated I was to wait.

I had almost lost my confidence when the boy returned out of the darkness. He was in the company of two cheerless men, both of whom looked as though they had been newly woken from deep slumber. They were not too drowsy, however, for much intense and noisy bartering, at the close of which they had agreed to take me to Darjeeling for what ultimately remained an extortionate price.

My attempt to climb onto the back seat turned into a tussle, as I insisted that I was to keep my backpack with me and not have it stuffed into the boot. Their repeated objections had been unnecessarily aggressive.

I settled back for the long, slow ascent to an altitude of some seven thousand feet. And yet, as we turned out of the station forecourt and began towards the town, I found myself tense and alert.

My instincts were vociferously asserting that all was not as it should have been.

***

Bindra did not know what to do.

The clinic staff had adamantly refused to allow her to walk out of the ward. The stitches on her feet, where gangrenous toes had been removed, were far too fresh. She must take her medicines, they had told her. She must wait.

Bindra's agitation was preventing her from any rest. She had thought of sending Jyothi to the cremation ground, to search for Jiwan, but was afraid he too would not return.

Bindra sat on her pillow in an attempt to peer over the window sill into the gali lane beyond. She could see nothing, so shuffled to the end of her bed to get a better view of the corridor. Why would Jiwan walk away without a word to her? How could he choose to leave with such ease?

Was this, then, the path on which the ban jhankri had set her little boy, all those many weeks before in that distant forest? Was this the path foreseen by the woman at the steps of the Kali temple in the palm thicket? Was it for this that Jiwan's daily lessons at the wooden Shiva temple had been preparing him?

Bindra lay back on the bed and closed her burning eyes. “Ama?” Jyothi said softly, as he cuddled up against her side.

“Was Jiwan-bhai born to be an Aghori? To live on the cremation ground, without his clothes?”

“Not ‘born to be', my son,” Bindra replied, her voice tired and tight. “There is no destiny. Not in the way the Bahun priests describe.”

She was searching for a way to explain it even to herself.

“The truth is we determine our own futures,” she began. “You see, ours is a limitless universe of infinite possibilities. From these we make our choices of how to think, feel, react, to be, every minute of every day. These are choices that ultimately determine the experiences we call our life.”

Jyothi wiped his nose on the back of his hand, but stayed quiet.

“It means we have great power over the passage and experience of that life,” she continued, “for if we change our choices, we change our ‘destiny'.”

Jyothi's thoughts took time to become words.

“So,” he tentatively began, “if Jiwan-bhai believes he can be an Aghori, if he chooses to be an Aghori, then that's his ‘destiny'? But if he believed he could be a paddy farmer and chose to be a paddy farmer, then that would be his ‘destiny' instead?”

“This is why we must make our choices with awareness, with responsibility,” Bindra affirmed. “We need to ask ourselves whether our daily choices lead us towards greater freedom, joy and truth, or towards greater contraction, pain and self-delusion. This is what our puja teaches us, whether it be to Durga or Lord Shiva, Kubera or Kali Ma. The symbols of all our rites and traditions remind us to reconsider the choices we are making every day of our lives.”

Jyothi was listening intently, trying to understand.

“As you grow older, my brave, strong boy,” Bindra continued, “you will learn to see that the person you are and the life you lead are the results of all the choices you've made so far. Instead of blaming others for the way we feel, the way we are, we must take responsibility for it ourselves.”

“So are you choosing to cry tears now, Ama?” Jyothi asked, with concern.

“Yes, son,” Bindra replied, wiping her eyes again on the sheet and laughing gently at herself. “I suppose I am.”

***

The two men drove in silence through miles of twisting, unmade back streets.

I was slow to realise that they had been taking me in repeated circles. I leaned forwards to ask why we were still in the town. They pretended not to understand.

Minutes later, the car was brought to a hasty halt in an unlit alleyway. The driver switched off the engine, whereupon both men hurried from the car.

I watched them vanish into the darkness.

I waited.

And I worried.

Just as abruptly as they had left, the two men returned. They slammed the doors, started the engine, and we were off, without one word of explanation. Not until we passed beneath a solitary street light at an intersection were their faces momentarily illuminated.

Only then did I realise that the men now driving the car were not those who had driven me into the alleyway.

As the two heads silhouetted against the windscreen remained stationary and silent, I quietly rummaged in my rucksack for my single defence: the Deluxe Tinker Swiss Army Knife. I drew it from its wrapping and clasped it tightly between my legs.

The vehicle bounced on and the scant glow of the town quickly faded into impenetrable darkness. As the scent of jungle seeped through the glassless windows, I breathed deeply and slowly, preparing myself for the worst, while hardly daring to contemplate just what the worst might be.

For almost an hour we drove through deep forest, along a rough, winding road, overhung with tropical trees.

Suddenly, the hair on my neck prickled with foreboding.

My fists instinctively tightened.

The driver braked.

The man in the passenger seat swung round and savagely thrust a short, blade towards my face. He broke the breathless silence with the scream of “Dollars! Dollars!”

I did not pause to think. I swiftly raised my solitary defence and levelled it at his throat.

“No dollars!” I replied firmly.

To the surprise of us both, I found myself smiling broadly at the surreal absurdity of the situation. Smiling broadly that I was threatening two violently inclined bandits with an inadvertently extended corkscrew.

My two would-be assailants began to jabber at each other at ever-heightening pitch.

“Tor matha gooe bora!” the driver spat, evidently furious with the unexpected turn of events.

“Tor gesai boto nai!” his accomplice retorted.

In response, the driver punched him squarely in the face.

The ensuing scuffle on the front seat gave me my opportunity. I flung open the door, grabbed my rucksack and leapt headlong into the undergrowth, trying not to laugh out loud at how ridiculously Bulldog Drummond, late of His Majesty's Royal Loamshires (Hurrah! Hurrah!), it all seemed.

The engine immediately started up.

With my open door swinging, and the Bengali obscenities still exploding from the front seat, the car turned and swerved its way back towards the dusty miseries from which it had come.

I stood up to watch the rear lights of the vehicle disappear into the darkness. And dark it was. There was no sight of moon or stars above the forest canopy. The jungle was quiet, except for the gentle movement of a cooling breeze. The quote “Life rustling in the leaves, death moaning in the grasses,” suddenly came to mind, unsettling my nerve. Curse those schoolboy recitations.

I knew Darjeeling lay high in the mountains above me, but the Queen of the Hills was at least another hour or two's drive away. I did not much fancy my chances on foot, nor did I know what inhabited these jungles. I had once read that the Bengal tiger still claimed the lives of, on average, thirty people a year. I had no wish to join a guidebook statistic and certainly had no intention of becoming a macabre anecdote for my nephews or nieces, however much it might bring them their friends' eternal respect.

I decided instead to wend my way down the centre of the road, my knife, and now the vicious-looking horse-hoof scraper, open at the ready. I had noticed flickering lights amongst tall, straight saal trees some miles back. I would make my way to the gates and barbed-wire fences of what had appeared to have been the neatness of an army base.

I felt sure the two startled soldiers were meant to raise their wooden rifles and shout the standard playground, “Who goes there? Friend or foe?” as I approached the perimeter fence. Instead, they remained holding hands and simply blinked in silent astonishment at the appearance of my wraith-like features in the darkness.

My cheery “Good evening, gentlemen!” stirred them to invite me into their guard hut, where they sat me on a wooden stool. They automatically threw a blanket around my shoulders, despite the heat, and offered a steaming cup from their canister of tea, whilst I breathlessly spilled my sorry tale, to which they made suitable noises of outrage and sympathy.

After a hurried discussion between themselves in animated Bengali, one of the young soldiers ran out into the night. He promptly returned behind the wheel of an open-top jeep, whereupon Corporal Rao announced that the least he could do, considering his fellow-countrymen's dastardly behaviour, was to deliver me safely to Darjeeling.

***

Bindra woke herself with her own panting sob.

She had thought she had been searching for Jiwan on the riverbank, and amongst the mounds of dhobis' washing. Searching in the piles of cremation ash, and in the heavy darkness of the water.

Bindra closed her eyes again, but could not fall back to sleep. She could not accustom herself to the heat of the Plains, nor the quiet of this city at night. No thrum of insects in the trees. No jhankri drums. No jackals in the darkness.

She moved her arm to give Jyothi's head a little more room on the bed. He did not stir. She skimmed her eyes back across the ceiling to find the pale cheparo lizard that scuttled on its dainty toes above her.

Bindra had requested an audience with the Aghori Baba who had founded the clinic in which she lay. She had wanted to thank him. Again and again, to thank him.

She had wanted to ask her unseen benefactor to find Jiwan amongst his ash-strewn kind. To bring him back to his brother, to return him to her arms. But the Aghori had been visiting his guru in the mountains for many months. Nobody could say when he would return.

Bindra closed her eyes and her head began to drift.

She was back home, oiling her daughters' hair. They were laughing as brightly as snow on the mountain peaks. Gundruk boiling in the tasala, makai maize cobs drying on their poles. All those she loved gathering together at the shaktiko roukh, taking it in turns to place saipattri marigolds around its roots.

Suddenly, the tree burst into violent flame, consuming flowers, bark, leaves and goddess.

Bindra backed away, to find that she was all alone.

No Kailash. No children. No hands.

Bindra woke with heart pounding and brow wet. Gasping for air, she carefully pulled herself upright, without disturbing Jyothi.

Bindra cried out.

Standing by the side of her bed was a small, naked, silver-grey figure, with red stripes drawn across forehead, arms and chest.

“
Ama, ramro cha
,” Jiwan whispered. “Mother, all is well.”

And he was gone.