Seahorse (5 page)

In all honesty, I might have preferred coming across a ghost.

My journey through the forest proved quiet, and disappointingly, uneventful.

Beneath my feet, the ground squelched, softened by months of monsoon rain, and the air carried the smell of damp, decaying things. Here and there, a high-rising gulmohar, now green and unblooming, and the sparse babul with yellow summer blossoms. Hidden amid the others, the petite ber, with drooping, glossy leaves, and, of which I was fondest, the golden amaltash, when it was radiant against a blue April sky. I hadn't ever spotted any yet, but the forest was inhabited by gentle chinkara and blue-coated nilgai. Once or twice, I thought I'd glimpsed a tiny leaf warbler, and the sudden scarlet of a rose finch. Over the years,
this place had remained unaltered while the landscape around its fringes transformed rapidly—on one side the university buildings, on the other, the Civil Lines neighborhood, demarcated from imperial-era military zones, a remnant of the British Raj. In comparison to the south of the city, though, the north was relatively static.

The South, if you'll forgive the hyperbole, was our generation's brave new world.

Heaving with suddenly wealthy neighborhoods, its roads peeling under the speed of foreign cars. Everywhere the fresh scent of money, the incredible hum of movement.

It all seemed terrifically heady and exciting, but here, in the north, beyond the Dantian circles of Connaught Place, the tangle of crowded markets in the old walled city, the hulking sandstone loneliness of the Red Fort, life was still somewhat slow and untouched.

And that afternoon, as I tread on a slushy dirt track, listening to the sounds of a forest, I could have been miles away from a city of many millions.

“In a forest,” Lenny once told me, “all time is trapped.”

Admittedly, tramping through the Ridge wasn't a preferred pastime. I was on a journalistic mission. In my first year in college, I'd been accosted by Santanu, a lanky Bengali with the (still) faint beginnings of a mustache and wispy long hair.

“Would you like to write an article?” he asked.

“For?”

“The college newsletter.” Of which Santanu was the often despairing, yet resilient, student editor.

“I'm not sure I'm the best person for this.”

“You're in English Lit, aren't you?”

I nodded.

“Everyone in the Lit department can write. Or at least has some secret ambition to be the next Rushdie or something.”

Accustomed to persuading reluctant contributors, Santanu wasn't one to give up easily—“I'll give you plenty of time”; “You'll see your name in print”, and finally, “I'll buy you beer.”

Okay, I said, suddenly convinced.

Since then, I often wrote for the newsletter—a piece on the oldest academic bookstore in Kamla Nagar, a commercial area near the University, interviews with visiting lecturers, a book review as though penned by Chaucer:
But thilke text held he nat worth an oistre.

That day, I was trudging through the forest looking for a story.

Soon, I came to a clearing. And there stood a four-tiered tower, atop a stepped platform, built of fire-red sandstone, capped by a Celtic cross.

Santanu wanted me to write on the Mutiny Memorial.

Apart from solemn, elegiac monument to the dead, it also served, for years now, as a frequent nocturnal hangout for university students. For gatherings of the least expensive and un-glamorous kind. Usually, the birthday boy spent the money his parents sent him to buy “something nice” on a neat half dozen bottles of whisky. Now, though, the place was vacant, strewn with the remnants of revelry, cigarette butts, broken bottles and greasy bits of newspaper.

The tower glowed warm and fiery against the sky. Over a century ago, it had been built by the British to commemorate the soldiers who died in the Mutiny of 1857. (Or as Santanu explained, more appropriately “India's First War of Independence.”) It rose above the trees in solid, symmetrical lines, tipped by elaborate Gothic adornments. On the walls, white plaques carried the indecipherable names of the dead. An arched doorway led to the upper tiers, although a thick, rusty chain was slung across the entrance and a signboard, in English and Hindi, warned against using the stairs. I peered inside; the rubble floor was choked with weeds and plastic bags. It was moving and absurd all at once—this promethean bid for remembrance. Its faithfully distilled recording of history. I looked around wondering if this was the only
one in the forest. What other monuments were there, rising from the ground like giant tombstones?

In the stillness of the evening, I heard a distant echo of voices, the slap of footfall. It might have been students, gathering to drink or smoke weed. Perhaps a courting couple, looking for some privacy. Through the trees, I caught a glimpse of two figures. One in a long blue kurta. Peppery grey hair. The other in a pastel shirt. In his hand, an old-fashioned briefcase.

I was caught in inexplicable panic.

In that instant, I could have jumped into the shrubbery—but the noise might alert them. What would I say if I were seen? It was too late to flee down the path leading out of the forest to the main road.

Perhaps it was better to stay where I was.

Unless, it suddenly struck me, they'd come here to be on their own.

They were getting closer; I could hear laughter, the sharp crack of undergrowth.

On impulse, I jumped over the chain strung across the doorway and ducked inside, fumbling up the stairs that spiraled into darkness. Loose rubble scattered from under my feet, and a queer stench clung to the air, a mixture of urine and moldy dampness.

Their footsteps grew louder, hitting stone. I could hear the art historian's voice.

I imagined them gazing at the tower.

From here, his could be the only voice in the world.

“Architecturally, there's nothing quite like it in Delhi.” Adheer was speaking. “It's built in a high Victorian Gothic style…”

Did he really need to explain this to an art historian?

“Why this particular place, though?”

I didn't know, but Adheer hazarded a guess. “It was the site of a British army camp, I think, during the rebellion… Of course, back then, this whole area was forest and marshland…”

They were circling the tower slowly. The art historian pieced together the few still-visible names into a curious mantra—
DelamainChesterNicholsonRussellBrooks.
He pronounced them carefully, as though the chant would somehow keep their memory alive.

Adheer went on to explain how in 1972, the twenty-fifth year of India's independence, the monument was renamed Ajitgarh, Place of the Unvanquished, and the government had a plaque put up with corrections—“That the “enemy” mentioned on the memorial were immortal martyrs for freedom…”

The art historian stopped by the doorway. Blocking the patch of light pooling on the floor. Would he hear me breathing? Or somehow sense I was there.

“Does this go all the way to the top?”

I was tempted to inch up further, but was afraid I'd dislodge some rubble, or worse, have a stair give way under my feet. For now, where I was, they couldn't see me.

“I don't think so… it's like at the Qutub Minar. They've closed the stairway for safety reasons.”

In the silence that followed, I could hear the art historian deliberating. The stench around me grew stronger.

“See…” I imagined Adheer pointing at the signboard. “It says it's unsafe. Better not risk it…”

I was thankful for his caution. The art historian stepped aside.

The pool of light emerged whole, intact.

I shifted imperceptibly, in relief, and wished they'd walk back into the forest, leave me with my ruin.

“It doesn't smell very inviting.” I could hear their laughter, then as though in obedience, their voices and footsteps faded.

At first, I couldn't move. My limbs caught in a grip, still tight and motionless. Above me rose a strange, secret rustling. Was it an owl? A squirrel? Perhaps I'd disturbed the creatures that inhabited the tower.
Under my feet, a silver-green masala-flavoured chips packet glistened, long empty. I wondered who else had strayed there, and when, and dropped it at that spot. And why?

I began descending. I should leave. It was getting late. I'd prefer to be out of the forest before dark. When I'd almost reached the bottom, Adheer and the art historian drifted back. They'd probably only moved to the edge of the platform. I stopped short, pressing myself against the curved stone wall.

Even though they hadn't been gone long, something had shifted, their voices oddly tense.

“I know what it is,” the art historian was saying, his voice clear, ringing through the air. “I know why… that's why we're here… and it's alright.”

I was uncertain what Adheer said, if he said anything at all.

“I don't see how it could happen…”

“Of course… I-I don't know what… I mean… I didn't mean…” It was the first time I'd heard Adheer stumble over his words.

“It's not like I don't understand.”

“I know… I didn't mean…”

“It's alright.” There was a brief, tight pause, before he continued. “Why don't you show me where the plaque is?”

“Yes… yes, it's here. This way…”

Again, their voices, and footfall, died away. This time they didn't return.

In our time together, I thought this was one of few details hidden from me about Nicholas. The strangeness of love is it tempts you to feel you haven't met a person at a particular moment in their life, a mere sliver of time, but that somehow you've embraced it all. Their laden pasts, their abundant present, and (you hope so much) their undiscovered future. I did try and enquire, occasionally, as elliptically as I could—
whether he'd been for many walks in the Ridge, if he'd heard some of the stories about the place, the ghosts, the strange creatures, the couples and parties at the monument.

He'd furrow his brow. “Yes… Myra and I explored it a few times too…”

Myra was his step-sister, who'd visited him in Delhi over Christmas that year. I wasn't keen to discuss her, bring her into our conversation; while she was around, I hardly stayed at the bungalow, and Nicholas and I were never alone.

Had anything odd ever happened? In the Ridge.

I had to leave it at that; I wouldn't like to try his patience.

I never confessed what I'd overheard, him and Adheer, and how.

Once, though, I asked if he knew about the pond.

“In the forest? Are you sure?”

I was certain.

When he asked me where, I couldn't explain its exact location.

I found it the afternoon I ducked into the tower.

By the time I emerged, it was early evening, and in the twilight, the forest had thickened, hiding its paths under leafy shadow. Suddenly, it wasn't a place to be alone. I tried to retrace my steps, but must've taken a wrong turn. The track disappeared and the ground hollowed into a pond. The water green and solid, clogged with lotus roots and leaves. I stood at the edge, the woods around me glistening with hidden light. I turned back, my breath heavy, a trace of fear on my tongue. Something struck at my shoulder, a dead, heavyweight branch. As panic rose like a dark thing from my chest, I caught a glimpse of the mud track leading out to the main road.

When people leave unexpectedly… Nicholas, Lenny… you are left only with unanswered questions; they travel long with you, looping their way into your thoughts, becoming your intimate companions.

“But where are you going?” I'd ask Lenny, and he'd offer no reply. On those afternoons he wouldn't permit me to accompany him, on those
evenings he didn't return to his room. The mud, unexplained, splattered on his motorbike wheels.

Maybe on one of those excursions he met Mihir.

The stranger.

The solitary backpacker who drifted into our hometown, winding his way from the northern tip of the country, down the wild mountains, across wide rivers and into our sloping streets. He had coal-dust eyes, and mercilessly sun-darkened skin. I remember he carried the scent of bonfires, of nights spent out in the open, of old wood-bone. He spoke softly, hesitant for you to hear what he had to say.

While I was working on somehow getting through my final exams in my last year in school, Lenny took Mihir for bike rides out of town, to all the secret tea stalls he'd shown me. To the forest. The lady at the one-room tea shop called them her butterflies.

I met them infrequently—between tuition, extra classes, and paranoid parents, I had little time—yet when I did, I could sense Lenny was secretly, silently reanimated. They would travel together, it was planned.

“Where?” I asked in wonder.

And Mihir, in his twilight voice would tell us where he'd been. To Varanasi, sitting at Assi Ghat at dawn, to Sandakphu from where you could see the Himalayas, and four of the highest peaks in the world. To a hidden, abandoned fort along the Konkan coast.