In the Shadow of Crows (28 page)

“
Mataji
,” Aarti interrupted, “if Baby sleeps, then she won't be hungry for
daal-chawal
. So shall we sing for her?”

Bindra chuckled again. It was this playful make-believe that had illuminated an impenetrable darkness. It was these innocent smiles that had delivered her from a dim twilight of confused thought and action from which she had once thought she would never be able to return.

There had been so many long years before these new games and new laughter. There had been so many long years out on the scorched roadways and in the tarring camps, when only the gift of hand-rolled balls of cremation ash mixed with buffalo
ghiu
, given by the
jhankri
all those years before at Lapu
basti
, had saved her.

“Throw one ball into fire for every
bija
, every seed of sound, of the mantra,” Kushal Magar had instructed long ago, in the shadow of the Kanchenjunga. “Throw one ball into fire when you believe you have no more choices,” he had directed, in that other place, that other life.

Bindra had often clutched at the greasy little bag when despair had threatened to steal away her heart and mind. Yet still the bag remained tied closed, for even when reason had seemed to have been snatched from her, Bindra had found she always had choices. Choices even when Jyothi had returned to fire and earth, plant and water, air and sky.

The
jhankri
's gift had taught her that however isolated, however lost within herself, she alone was responsible for the ways in which she chose to respond to the natural ebb and flow of her life. She alone was the source of either her dark introversion and distress, or her bright clarity and peace.

Of course the
jhankri
had known it when he had given her the little bag of hand-rolled balls. This had been the very wisdom he had intended her to learn.

“
So jao
. Go to sleep,” Aarti cooed, rocking the stick doll tenderly in her arms.

Bindra closed her eyes again and leant a heavy head against the soft, mud wall. She smiled as the biting insects, the burning spine and even the aching memories began to sweeten, as Aarti, Poojita and Dipika sang to their communal Baby the one song that Bindra had taught them in her own, long-silenced, mountain tongue:

“
Resam phiriri, resam phiriri udera jauki darama bhanjyang, resam phiriri . . .
”

***

Clad in thermals, enrobed in woven shawls and topped with woollen
topis
we may have been, yet still Ben and I shivered in the deep darkness of Kalimpong's persistent power cuts. Still we shuddered at the murdered-infant howling of approaching jackals, and tried to ignore the spreading numbness in our toes.

And yet, now that we had once again to say goodbye, I knew that I would miss the arrival of the milk every morning, carried warm in its churn by the
gharwalni
milk-woman, who glimmered with ear discs, coin necklace and nose-ring. The family
dhurzi
tailor, who, before lunch, could whip up a shirt with cut-away collar and double-cuff sleeves. The
misteri
carpenter, who sat on the lawn to craft a new bedstead with nothing more than handmade tools and a handsome apprentice. The
naw-malissgarney
barber-masseur, who would squat on the verandah to whisk off fresh whiskers with cutthroat blade, and unknot tired shoulders with talented thumbs. The Bengali
dhunia
who thrummed cotton on his
dhanu
bow to re-plump old mattresses and winter quilts, whilst covering the garden in a fine, sneeze-inducing snow.

I would miss the group treading of clothes on washing day, accompanied by song, as though the task were a joyful, communal dance. And then the subsequent watching of the ants as they swarmed over wet garments to eat the remaining soap, which left them so intoxicated that they would curl up to thrill at who knows what sud-induced dreams.

I would miss the blissful hours spent pottering in the garden and bamboo thickets, playing games with the children and teaching the Tibetan guard dogs to fetch us sticks. I would miss my cousin-uncles' patient daily lessons in Nepali irregular verbs and Bengali basics, and my cousin-aunts' instructions in the infinite medicinal uses of local flora, soil and sap.

But perhaps most of all, I would miss the many hours of chat and tales at the kitchen table. The laughter and unspoken understandings in every interaction.

It was never easy to say goodbye.

However, this year, we were not returning to the blossoming of an English spring. Instead, Ben and I were travelling westwards, across the Plains, to a charitable compound in a distant slum, into which those affected by leprosy had been gathered from the district's streets. I had read of the place ten years before in a Delhi newspaper. Its name had caught my eye as it stood outside the town to which, many years before, Priya had been sent for schooling. Even before I had reached the end of the article, I had vowed that, one day, I would offer myself to these people who had been rejected, ostracised and abandoned for no other reason than the stigma of a disease. People whose desperate and unrelenting plight had affected me more than any other in all my contact with India. This new journey was the consummation of a decade of determination.

Uncles were horrified. Four months in slums? Four months so far away, with Plains-men? With Hindi-speakers? With leprosy?

Aunts despaired. Where would we sleep? Who would wash our clothes? Who would understand our Hill Nepali? And, most troubling of all, who would cook our food?

Fourteen winters spent in India, yet still they gave us lessons in survival. Do not drink the water. Do not take tea from roadside stalls. Beware
bagala-mara
pickpockets and
dakait
bandits. Avoid orthodox
Bahun
priests and
bicho
scorpions.

“And sons, wherever you are, whatever you do,” they begged, “keep well away from policemen and politicians!”

***

Stillness in the colony. An apprehensive anticipation, a fearful quiet.

It was Friday. Doctor Dunduka was coming.

Bindra swept the swathes of biting bugs from her doorway with a loose brush of dried grass, held clasped between her wrists. She paused to tensely arch her tormented back and called out in Hindi, “Jasoda-
didi
,
aap thik ho aaj
? You alright today?”

A lethargic shuffle and a cloth-bound head peered out from the shadows of the opposite hut. Sunken eyes struggled briefly in the morning sunlight, then listlessly withdrew, back into the gloom.

“
Didi
,” Bindra tried again, “you not well?”

There was no reply.

Bindra shuffled the few steps to Jasoda's door. She eased herself down with effort and cautiously leant against the splintered doorframe.

“I'm boiling
tulsi
leaves, sister,” she offered gently, brushing the biting bugs away from her bare feet with the hem of her shawl. “Good for your fever.”

Jasoda gave a painful, choking cough in reply. She drew close to Bindra's side, curving her twisted spine against the brightness of the day.

“Not well today,
bhabhi
,” she wheezed in apology, mistakenly addressing Bindra as “sister-in-law” in her muddled mind. “My feet have brought such
bukhar
fever!”

Bindra guided Jasoda to turn towards her, to lengthen her thin flaking shins, to brave the sunlight. The few toes she had retained were little more than shrivelled, oozing stumps. The ulcers on her deeply creviced soles, foul. The bone beneath, infected.

“Oh sister!” Bindra grimaced, biting her extended tongue. “In the Hills, I could have done so much to help you. We have good plants there. We have
putkako maha
, treasured insect honey that cures all wounds.”

She blew away the flies from Jasoda's feet. She swept away the new flurry of biting bugs that had drifted from the
saal
trees.

“We must protect your sores, sister,” she insisted. “We must keep them covered. But first,
tulsi
tea for the fever.”

As Bindra struggled to stand again, a strident voice drew their attention down the alleyway.

“Quick, sister!” Jasoda cried in whisper. “Doctor Dunduka has come! Do not let him see you help me! You know his temper! You know what he can do!”

Bindra returned to her doorway. By the time she had swept away the bugs and eased herself back to the newly infested ground, he was there. Standing at a carefully judged, safe distance. Unblinking eyes monstrously magnified by heavy-rimmed spectacles.

“
Namaste Daktar-ji
!” Jasoda muttered with required respect.

Bindra touched hands to heart, but said nothing.

“Your medicine!” he called out with contempt, tossing toward them two plastic bags heavy with a colourful mix of pills. Jasoda offered thanks, but wanted him to know that the fever was growing much worse, that the holes in her feet were growing ever deeper.

“Then take a double dose, ungrateful hag!” he spat defensively. “A good handful might even silence your miserable complaining for good!”

Bindra stayed silent. She took nothing given by Doctor Dunduka. She knew he despised them. She knew he improved on his government salary by dealing in black-market tablets. She had watched too many in the colony die quickly and violently after a measure of his illegal medicine.

Every bag disdainfully thrown at her each week Bindra kept hidden in her bedding. And after dark, when the children buried them for her in the forest, she always paused to ask forgiveness of the
Punyajana
in the trees.

Bindra was comforted that the Good People also knew Doctor Dunduka was distributing poison.

***

Dawn was dissipating dense fog.

I peered through the grimy carriage window at vast sugar-cane plantations and enticing jungle, wild with boar, shimmering with peacock. I peered at children bursting from thatched huts to dance at the boisterous rhythm of the passing clickety-clack.

I had never tired of rail travel in India, even though for eight hours I had lain wide awake as the men in the lower bunks had snored like congested trufflers. One had repeatedly shaken the entire carriage with his sudden, chilling screams, until I had given up all hope of slumber. Instead, I had counted the cockroaches scuttling through the empty rivet holes on the rusting ceiling, and wondered at the demons by which my companion's dreams were haunted.

The last station at which we were to change trains already heaved with life, even at four o'clock in the morning.

Amongst cows, dogs, rats and crows, vociferous
chai-
and
chatwallahs
competed for custom with many busy book and fruit stalls balanced on buckled wheels. Scarlet-clad porters strained beneath battered trunks and over-stuffed portmanteaux, between heavyhipped
matajis
, who force-fed their sleepy broods with
dum aloo
and buttery
paranthas
from burnished towers of tiffin tins. Dignified tribals, with arms encased in dowry gold, nervously eyed mighty Pashtuns swathed in mountain wool. Enrobed Punjabi
sadars
, each with
pagri
turban, elaborate whiskers and splendid nose, swilled teeth at taps with old-time Congress-
wallahs
bearing Gandhi topi caps, unbleached “homespun” and defiant chins.

And between them all, steely-eyed urchins with Struwwelpeter hair and scabby,
sidur
-reddened cheeks cartwheeled and back-flipped in hope of alms from the indifferent throngs.

For two days we had travelled from Kalimpong to reach our final destination, which lay embedded in an overbuilt valley beneath dry and rocky hills, hard up against the border with Nepal. The nearest town proved a filthy, dreary place with virtually all remnants of its history eradicated. A crumbling colonial bungalow in abandoned, squatter-ravaged gardens. An exuberant Mughal façade, now disintegrating and defaced, in a back street of the bazaar. A refined and elegant past reduced to little more than mere hints of long-lost wonder.

I was astonished to think that Priya had once been here, walking through this dust in pleated grey and navy blue. Satchel full of Shakespeare, Sassoon and Sukanta Bhattacharya.

“
I threw away my heart in the world; you took it up
,” I smiled at her memory. “
I sought for joy and gathered sorrow, you gave me sorrow and I found joy
,” I recited in gratitude for the way of loving that she had taught me.

The charitable colony for leprosy sufferers in which we were to work lay far to the north of the town, hard up against the remaining forest's darkness. It had once been entirely isolated within dense
saal
trees, but over the years many hundreds affected by disfiguring disease had gathered outside the official boundary. All waited in hope of a place within, for a convenient demise.

Over the years, these invading squatters had systematically cleared the once fertile land. Where there had been thorny
dhaak
,
tesu
and
babool
, stealthy leopard and shy musk deer, a noisy rabble of squalid homes now engulfed the arid ground. Where a fish-filled mountain river had gushed, a choked and viscous public drain now stagnated.

The official colony was a cluster of decades-old block buildings and wooden huts, which lay wedged between slum and hillside trees. The quarters in which Ben and I were to spend four months stood at the perimeter of the community. The two rooms were mouldering, dirty and infested. Upon arrival, we spent our first hours scrubbing and cleaning.

“You're sure we won't catch anything too nasty?” Ben coughed through mite-dense dust that now billowed from the open door.

“Don't worry!” I assured him, as we coaxed dark, mucus-like growths from concrete floors, knowing exactly to what he referred. “Most of us are born with a resistance to the leprosy bacillus. And even if we did catch it - which would be highly unlikely as our immune systems are in such good nick - we could be easily cured before it did us any lasting damage.”