In the Shadow of Crows (31 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Bindra had lost track of the days.

“
Shanivaar
,
behenji
!” Sushmita emphasised to her. “It's Saturday, sister. Are you awake? Are you ready?”

Saturday had once been marked by early morning Shiva
puja
in the forest. The drawing of the
yantra
of his secret, fierce form of Khadgaravana. The invocation of the necessary strength within herself to protect and heal her children.

Another place. Another family.

Bindra moistened her mouth and indicated towards the old tiffin tin, tucked far back on the single shelf.

“You'll have to climb on the
charpai
to reach it,” she chuckled, “so don't you go falling on top of me and break the other leg!”

Aarti, Poojita and Dipika clapped as their mother brought down Bindra's money box. They all joined in the struggle to prise open the lid and peer inside.

“But
behenji
, this is not enough!” Sushmita whispered. She looked over her shoulder, as though she expected someone to be listening at the door.

“What to do?” Bindra shrugged. “Poor old thing, like me! Can't get very far on a good day, let alone with an ankle broken by the good doctor's midnight
goondas
!”

“But
behenji
,” Sushmita persisted, “they never take excuses. You know how it is!”

“What to do?” Bindra repeated, with a sigh of resignation.

Sushmita shook her head. She slipped the good fingers of her right hand into the waistband of her sari skirt and drew out a twisted loop of cloth. She removed two coins, dropped them into the tin and raised a chiding palm before Bindra could say a word.

“You'd do the same for any one of us,
behenji
,” Sushmita insisted. “You've cared for us all and fed my daughters as though they were your own. Sister, if these tokens protect you from those
badirchand
,” she spat the word, “then they make only little amends.”

“We must find compassion even for the
badirchand
of this world,” Bindra smiled, looking towards the three little girls. “Even those ‘idiots' are but aspects of ourselves.”

Sushmita's brow furrowed deeply.

“It's very hard to find compassion for those filthy men,
behenji
, when they come with foul words and stealing fingers,” she growled, drawing her daughters close, “with cruel fists and brutal kicks.”

“Then silently call them
Mataji
!” Bindra recommended, as much for herself as Sushmita. “Call them ‘Respected Mother' and just see if your anger can become compassion for their ignorance. The greater our compassion, the greater our freedom from our own selfishness and suffering.”

Sushmita's brow expressed dismay.

“Try it, sister,” Bindra persisted, “for your own sake, just as I must do for mine. We must choose not to allow their deep disquiet to be ours. Let's call them
Mataji
and just see how it draws us away from our anger and hatred, our jealousies and fears.”

She smiled at the attentive girls, with a fading recollection of teaching this same lesson to her own children. Bindra raised her gaze back to Sushmita. The two women looked at one another for a moment in affectionate silence and unspoken understanding.

Suddenly, Sushmita dropped her head and covered her mouth to stifle a single, choking sob. Her daughters looked up in alarm. Bindra beckoned them to draw their mother to the bedside, where Sushmita knelt heavily to cry her raging tears.

“Not this,
behenji
!” she stuttered, grasping her children to her breast. “Not this for my girls!”

Aarti, Poojita and Dipika hugged their mother in return, as Bindra put out a tight, thin arm to rest her bandaged palm on Sushmita's cheek.

“Sister, my children are well!” Sushmita burst in overpowering frustration. “Not one of them infected! Yet still they must live out their lives like this?” she cried aloud. “Their father abandoned us when my sickness was discovered and now my misfortune is forever theirs! No school will take my daughters! No vendor in the bazaar will take their money or sell them food! No healthy
dulhi
bridegroom will want them, when their time comes. And all this because of me!”

She clung hard to her frightened girls, as though they were to be stolen away. She pressed her teeming face against the crowns of their dark, quiet heads. Sushmita yearned to breathe them in, to keep them safe.

“And now this!” she cried, throwing back her head in fury. “Thirty rupees the Office gives us every month. Barely enough to buy one bag of dried peas! And every other Saturday, the slum master's Collectors slip through the fence to demand fifty-five!”

She was shouting now, almost as though she hoped she might be heard.

“They force us to beg! Force us to endure endless abuse from passers-by! And why? To buy their permission to purchase the good, clean medicine that Doctor Dunduka is employed to supply, instead of that toxic filth he doles out every week!”

She was shaking with the turbulence that stormed within her, even as Aarti stretched out a tender hand to stroke her mother's hair.

“You saw what they did to Aadarsh!” she exclaimed to Bindra, who sat quietly listening. “Gentle, old Aadarsh! For three months he'd sent his pitiful allowance to his sick sister at Naugunj. And now his back is so damaged after their beating that he cannot stand! All day and all night he weeps for his blind wife! ‘Who will care for you?' he sobs. I hear him,
behenji
! ‘Who will cook your food and nurse you?' . . .”

Voices in the alleyway. An argument. A cry.

“Hush now, sister,” Bindra hissed. “It's time!”

With practised speed, the three girls slipped beneath the sagging
charpai,
as Sushmita drew close to cover them.

“Kali Ma, Kali Ma,” Bindra muttered to herself as she tipped up the old tin onto her blanket and quickly rechecked the coins. “Alright, my good, sweet girls?” she whispered to the eyes staring up through the fraying jute-twine below her. “Stay still now. Sing softly on the inside - but outside not a sound!”

Bindra and Sushmita simultaneously looked up towards a sudden movement of shadows at the door.

“Kali Ma, Kali Ma,” Bindra whispered, “the slum Collectors are here!”

***

My rounds had not progressed further than the fourth alley of the charity's forest colony when I determined to confront the Major with the misery over which he ruled.

“Sir, may I ask when you last visited the leprosy colony?” I enquired with a conciliatory smile, feeling compelled to sit as neatly as I could in the compulsive order of his office. I knew from the residents that he had never once sullied his lustrous leather uppers in their settlement.

“You people . . .!” he began in defensive repetition. “You people have no permission to step beyond the hostel grounds! No permission!”

“Sir, are you aware that the residents of your colony have no fruit or vegetables in their diet?” I persisted with unfaltering gentility in my voice.

“You people come over here with your Western arrogance, trying to expurgate your colonial guilt . . .”

Today, especially today, I was not interested.

“Sir,” I interrupted calmly, “the paucity of their diet may well be exacerbating the extensive signs of anaemia and scurvy. The swollen, spongy, bleeding gums. The red, sore tongues. The eye infections and exhaustion. And then there's the appalling bruising, not to mention the atrociously poor healing of their wounds . . .”

“You people . . .!” he was still bellowing.

I refused to be defeated.

“Of course, their medical conditions are complex, but the addition of some source of vitamin C to their diet could only help.” “Imperialist meddling . . .!” he was still shouting to drown me out, even as my eyes were drawn to newly blackened roots and the runny bruise of herbal hair dye that rimmed his forehead.

I had to try another tack.

“Sir, what if Ben and I were to find a source of regular fruit and vegetable provision? At no cost to your charity?”

He stopped. “How much money are you proposing to give?” he asked with sudden, animated interest.

“We won't be giving money,” I emphasised. His upper lip curled. “We'll have the produce delivered directly.”

His attention waned just as abruptly as it had arisen. A bored hand extended towards the telephone.

“It would require no additional expense or work to you,” I smiled, quickly adding with feigned nostalgia, “You know, sir, your fine regimental tie is reminiscent of my Grandfather's. He was so very proud of his years of army service here, in his beloved India.”

The hand paused in indecision, wavering above the handset.

“Inform me of the quantities you are prepared to provide and we shall deduct it from their usual food rations,” he offered munificently.

“I'm sorry, sir,” I responded in undisguised disbelief, “the whole point is that the fruit and veg are a supplement to their present diet - not a replacement!”

But the meticulously manicured fingers were dialling. The double-speed retroflexion on an agile tongue.

Nothing more needed to be said.

I had been dismissed.

***

“Why are some people so unkind?” asked Aarti.

“What a question for such a little girl to have to ask!” Sushmita sighed, striking a match. She lit a cotton wick and watched it struggle to feed a guttering flame from the small amount of mustard oil at the bottom of the clay cup in which it lay. “Let's hear how our good
guruma
would answer,” she chuckled, glancing towards the charpai.

Bindra beckoned the little girl to her. Aarti approached, nursing the communal stick-doll in her arms.

“People are not born unkind,” Bindra assured her. “They may grow up to think unkind thoughts, to do unkind acts, but they are not unkind by nature.”

Aarti climbed onto the
charpai
beside her. Bindra slipped an arm around the sleepy-eyed girl, so she could lie against her shoulder.

“Then why do people think and do such unkind things,
Mataji
?” Aarti pressed.

Bindra paused for a moment to sift through the wisdom of her life.

“They do unkind things because they don't know who they really are,” she carefully replied.

“So who are they?” Aarti puzzled.

“Well, just imagine you're standing alone, staring at a little twig. And that little twig is all you see.”

Aarti lifted her stick Baby to examine its crooked length.

“Now, you're so busy thinking that little twig is all there is, that you don't look up to see the towering tree you're standing beneath. You don't even see the great
saal
forest you're walking in, which spreads far beyond the horizon, when it's this forest of which your twig, like innumerable other twigs, is an indivisible part!”

Sushmita listened intently as she bent to stroke the heads of Poojita and Dipika, who were already sleeping on the floor. Sushmita treasured these moments of learning from Bindra.

“In the same way,” Bindra continued, “people live their lives seeing only
their
little twig, which they think is separate and solitary, with no connection to any other. They don't look up to see that they are just one integral part of the very same trees as everybody else, in the very same, endless forest of existence.”

Aarti cuddled her stick Baby to her chest and closed her eyes, to better imagine the never-ending forest to which she belonged.

“So, to create a sense of who and what they are, people impose a false hierarchy. They begin to judge everything and everybody as either better or worse than them, as either good or bad. They decide that this person is worthwhile and this person is worthless. That this thing is sacred and this thing profane. Some food they pronounce pure, some impure. Parts of their own bodies they pronounce clean, others unclean . . .”

“They say we're unclean, don't they
Mataji
?” Aarti murmured.

“Only in their staring at their little twig do they, my lovely girl,” answered Bindra emphatically, “when, in fact, all existence is an equal expression of the very same universal forces. My people in the Hills called it Mahadeva - the perfect union of Shiva and Shakti. Paramshiva - the perfect union of consciousness and energy.” “So, am I not unclean?” Aarti asked.

“Is the sun clean or unclean?” Bindra exclaimed. “Or the Himalaya? Or the seasons? Is Ganesha? Lord Shiva? Or Kali Ma?”

Aarti raised her eyebrows high and vigorously shook her head.

“Well, you and I are not separate, not different, from them,” Bindra insisted. “Nothing is inferior or superior to anything else. Only man's limited understanding imposes such judgements, when it is not the reality of existence. It is only when man believes himself to be an independent, solitary twig that he grows vain, greedy, proud, jealous, even cruel and unkind in his ignorance.”

She paused.

“Have I answered your question?” Bindra asked. “I think so,” whispered Aarti.

“That's why we need wise teachers, to guide us to look up from our little twigs and see the vast forest, mountains and eternal sky in which we move, and from which we are indivisible,” Bindra smiled, her eyes closing for a moment in blissful reverie of another home.

“Who's your teacher,
Mataji
?” Aarti asked, her quiet voice beginning to fade yet further.

“Oh, my teachers have been many,” Bindra replied, her heart swelling in gratitude for grandmother and
jhankri
, sons and daughters, weather and crows.

“And what did they teach you,
behenji
?” Sushmita asked, softly sitting at her feet.