The Assassin's Song (19 page)

This war was different from the China war, because it was so much closer—in Gujarat, though in the desert mostly, and Punjab—against a sworn enemy that was also related to us, that was a part of us until only twenty years ago. According to an adage that was quoted, your enemy who's your brother is the most dangerous of all. Wasn't the great war of the Mahabharata fought among cousins? This was what had troubled the hero Arjun. Why, he had asked Krishna, should I fight men who are from my family? And Krishna had taught him the meaning of karma yoga. You have to perform your duties, he said; but ultimately nothing matters.

This is what my father would have believed. Ultimately nothing matters. Still, he looked thoughtful.

When your country is at war with its neighbour, which until recently was simply one with it, you don't know exactly what to think, how to respond. You don't have the stock responses of Pradhan Shastri, not the invectives, not the venom and the pure hatred, for you know it to be the country of people who look like you and speak your language, eat what you eat, where Hanif scored his 499 runs, a record you always wished you would break one day when you too played first-class cricket; and you know it to be the country of Iqbal Chacha, your Bapu-ji's brother, and others of the Pirbaag community who decided to leave this India. You feel strangely incomplete; even when you try and cry pure hatred and wish death and destruction on those who live there, you sound false. Are you not patriotic enough?

“They did not emigrate to become our enemies,” Bapu-ji said to me. It was evening, and he had paused at my table in the courtyard to answer my question.

“They went to become Muslims and for a better life … Though who knows why people decide to pack up and go? It's only themselves they are running from.”

“If India defeats Pakistan, they can return, Bapu-ji.”

As at all such moments, I wished him only to tarry, to continue talking with me. His face was shaded in the poor light of my table lamp, turned down to conserve fuel, so I could not read his expression as he said slowly and curtly, “Your uncle has repudiated the past. To him our way of life was all lies and superstition. He calls it Hindu.”

“Are we more Hindus than Muslims, Bapu-ji? We must choose, no?”

In the current mood in our country, it was clearly better to call yourself a Hindu; and I guessed my uncle would have little scope for ambiguity in his country of adoption.

Ma had come to stand on the corridor outside the bedrooms, and was watching us, arms at her hips. For her the urgency lay somewhere else. Behind her, Mansoor's and my room was wide open, a swathe of pale light falling diagonally across the floor from outside; in the shadow lay my brother, sick with fever. In the past two days Ma had metamorphosed from her usual plump and loving self, the Saheb's good-natured wife who stayed in the background, into a harried demoness who stalked the premises night and day. She looked worn down, her skin pale, her hair bedraggled. On the first day of Mansoor's fever the doctor had not been called, for reasons of economy. Yesterday, the second day, when he was evidently needed, he was out of town. He had arrived this morning and said he would order medication from Ahmedabad; meanwhile the boy was not to eat anything but could drink sugarcane juice. Mansoor could not eat anything anyway. He lay in his bed barely conscious, his body taut with fever, his skin discoloured, and discharging urine terrifyingly dark as tea.

Before, it had been the war up north that had worried Ma, for there were reports of bombing raids close to Jamnagar, where her folks lived. There was no word from them. Now Mansoor's condition overshadowed everything else.

“If my son dies I will walk out from this place,” Ma said in a trembling, edgy voice not her own, glaring at the two of us. “What kind of Saheb are you, what kind of foreign pir is this, who doesn't listen to the pleas of a mother? We have not asked for anything. Give, give, all I've done is give—my life, my happiness,
my older son, the first-born of my womb!
Now he wants my Munu too.”

My father opened his mouth to chide her; the outrageousness of what she had uttered came from desperation, but surely it had suggested itself from the war-fuelled insecurity and rhetoric that was currently in the
wind. This was something I had never heard before, from anyone; perhaps she had. But my father's stern expression had melted no sooner than it had formed, and at the same time Ma broke down into huge sobs and beat her chest a few times, so that it bruised and turned a deep red.

I had never seen her so ravaged; I was shocked and ashamed. The sight of Bapu-ji and me discussing politics had caused her the deepest offence.

There was the utmost silence all around us; it was broken finally by the groaning of a bus on the road outside, the so-called Rajkot Express changing gears, speeding away. As the sound abated, Bapu-ji said, “Let's take a look at him.” He turned around and the three of us walked into the room where Mansoor lay.

He had shrivelled into a skeleton, his large yellow eyes with protruding black pupils freaky as a lizard's, his breathing quick and urgent. Beside him on the floor was a barber's brass bowl containing water and a steel needle, left by the crone who was a local healer. Ma must have tried to work whatever magic she could with this rudimentary equipment.

For a while Bapu-ji stood by the bed gazing thoughtfully at Mansoor. He sat down at the edge, put his large hand on the boy's forehead and under one cheek, caressing with his fingertips; he picked up one small limp hand, released it. There had come a tender look on his face. He straightened, then bending forward quickly he picked up my brother, who seemed as light as paper in his arms, his bare feet dangling, and held him close and stood up. He closed his eyes as though in prayer. Ma wept, and I was crying too, I did not want Mansoor to die. However much he annoyed me, he was my little brother, he was a part of my life and I loved him.

To my mother's and my surprise, Bapu-ji carried Mansoor out into the corridor and through his library into the pavilion, which lay clothed in the penumbra of a naked light bulb fixed to the ceiling. The two of us followed him like shadows as he turned and proceeded to the mausoleum, before which he paused, but only for a moment, before climbing the two steps to the verandah and into the inner chamber through its open doorway. Ma and I stood outside waiting, unable to observe or comprehend the encounter between the medieval sufi and his current avatar.

The light of the eternal lamp inside the mausoleum cast a pale yellow glow over the entrance, leaking out over the verandah to the steps where we were standing. It seemed then as though the sufi were with us.

“Pir Bawa, make Mansoor better,” I said softly, fervently. One was supposed
to offer the Pir something, even the promise of a penance, but I didn't know what to offer. “I'll do anything you ask,” I added lamely. Ma looked at me and smiled her appreciation. I wondered what she was thinking then; what prayers she had already uttered here, what promises she had already made.

Bapu-ji came out, carrying his frail bundle that was my brother.

“We 'll take him to Balak Shah,” he said.

Evidently Pir Bawa was testing the Saheb, telling him to seek help from the Child-imam at the rival, Muslim shrine. Balak Shah, who had died as a child, was reputedly a healer of children.

Ma's face had brightened, for now a real course of action was being taken. She relieved Bapu-ji of his load and carried her sick child in her arms, and our procession of three emerged from Pirbaag in silence, crossed the road past the tire shed, and headed towards the other shrine. A little boy followed us curiously. We went through the massive gate, past the row of single-room shanties, now all quiet save for the tinny transmissions from a radio or two. The mosque lay ahead of us. The last time I had been here was a few weeks before, with Mr. David and Mansoor, when we had all taken our turns on the ancient black stone. Mansoor had been his bouncy self, and Mr. David kind and thoughtful. He had wished to leave for America, and I wondered when he would go. He was still shunned at the school.

We knocked loudly on the gate of the mosque enclosure, for it was late, and minutes later the gate was opened by the short and burly Sheikh-ji, a shawl wrapped tightly around him. We had woken him, but he glanced at the limp form that was Mansoor and wordlessly bade us enter.

“I've brought my child to receive the mercy of Balak Shah,” said my father when we were inside.

“Certainly,” replied Sheikh-ji. “How can he refuse you, Saheb?”

Bapu-ji took Mansoor from Ma. Holding my near-lifeless brother in his arms as if ready to hand him over, he walked up to the mosque; he climbed the dozen or so steps to the verandah, where he turned left and in slow, deliberate steps approached the little grave of Balak Shah reposing beside his mother's. Through gaps in the ancient stonework balustrade we saw my father kneel and place my brother alongside the little grave. He himself sat down, crossing his legs. We waited.

There followed the unbearable minutes of an oppressive, deathly stillness, until finally I heard Sheikh-ji call, “You will have to go, Saheb. That is the condition. You have to leave the baba with the Imam for the night.”

Bapu-ji slowly came down the steps. His long shirt was crumpled, the day's stubble partly shaded his face; the thin halo of his hair was dishevelled. Yet he appeared calm. “Come,” he said to Ma and me. “We will leave our Mansoor with Balak Shah.” He paused, then added a touch of humour: “Let the two boys be with each other tonight.”

Ma gave a sob. My father patiently waited for her. Finally she nodded; then she took the shawl from around her shoulders and gave it to the sheikh. “Put this over him …”

“Jaroor,” said Sheikh-ji kindly, taking the shawl from her. Certainly.

As we departed, the sheikh was climbing the mosque steps to place the shawl over Mansoor. It was ten in the evening.

The next morning at around eleven, the sheikh arrived at Pirbaag, in kurta and pyjama and white cap, his beard gleaming orange, holding Mansoor by the hand. We had been waiting for them on the pavilion. My brother looked frail but was all smiles, very much enjoying the attention and concern. He looked washed and smelled of perfume. “I had jelebis to eat!” he announced.

“Arré! Are you allowed to eat them yet?” Ma exclaimed, her hand leaping to her mouth in that gesture of astonishment. But there had come a sparkle of joy in her eyes.

“He can eat anything,” said Sheikh-ji with a grin, “he's a growing child!”

Letting go of Mansoor's hand he went and paid his respects to Pir Bawa, who was after all the grandfather of Balak Shah. And Mansoor, like a wild buck released, looked around, took his first hesitant steps, then ran off.

The baby grandson had come to the aid of the grandfather, and the Balakshahis celebrated this proof of the preeminence of their Imam. Did we imagine that Sheikh-ji's azan from his mosque sounded a bit louder now, perhaps too strident at a time of war against Muslim Pakistan? The Saheb on the other hand had shown a sign of weakness; by seeking help
elsewhere, especially at a mosque, he had revealed a crack in his image. It would come to be used against him.

With the angel of death having come so close to our home, and the dramatic way in which he had been cheated, the war lost some of its edge for us. Reports would come of bombings in Punjab, tanks captured in Cutch, combat in Kashmir; and occasionally, from the fork up the road, outside Pradhan Shastri's house, cheers would erupt and we knew that our troops had won a skirmish if not a battle. Ma's energies now were focussed on fattening her Munu. At the shrine, people poured in as usual, bringing their worldly worries for the Pir Bawa to solve for them. Two weeks after the war began, a ceasefire was declared. Prime Minister Shastri, it was announced, would go to Tashkent in the Soviet Union for a summit with Ayub Khan of Pakistan.

India had won, it seemed—almost. People were relieved it was all over, the killing had stopped. Now there would be room for the better sort of news. Only Pradhan Shastri could be heard regretting the outcome, ranting outside the village store—“We could have crushed them like cockroaches! If our leaders had not been the eunuchs they are, Lahore would be dust! We have been bullied by the world!”

As soon as peace was announced in the media, Ma set off for Jamnagar to see her folks, taking Mansoor with her.

I had been to Jamnagar only once with my mother, years before, when I had met my grandparents. The visit was not a happy one for me, for I had been a village boy in a city, prone to ridicule by my cousins. My status as the son of Pirbaag also put me in an awkward situation, for my mother's family had come under the influence of some purist priests of an orthodox temple. The family never visited us, and my father never spoke of them.

Late in the evening Bapu-ji and I said goodbye to Ma and Mansoor at the gate. Bapu-ji picked up Mansoor and kissed him. Mansoor let me embrace him only after I had let him throw a mock punch at me. Ma shyly touched Bapu-ji's feet in the traditional manner, then looked sadly at him before taking my brother's hand to climb up the steps of the bus. It was the Rajkot Express.

My father and I were now in the care of Shilpa, who had taken a vacation
for that purpose. She was in her paradise. Early in the morning would come that sweet rich voice from the temple, stirring the scented air.
Hoon re piyaasi
, she would sing, I thirst for a sight of you; and
swami rajo aave
, when my lord arrives, the jhungi-drum will roll; and
hansapuri nagari mahe
, in the city of Hansapur there will be a fete today … She would bring me breakfast and send me off to school. When I returned, she would be at his attendance, song on her lips. Make me your servant, Lord … She had the art to give devotion and service with a light and humorous touch, and Bapu-ji became used to her as an indulgence.

Late one night I woke up to hear sounds of conversation in the pavilion. I got up, went out the back door from our courtyard, and stood listening. There came Shilpa's rich voice, then a low murmur that was Bapu-ji, and a couple of male voices. I edged closer to the pavilion until finally I saw shaded in the penumbra Shilpa and two youths sitting intimately with my father. I watched them awhile, unable to hear what was said, then feeling bitter with jealousy turned to go back to sleep. But Bapu-ji had sensed my presence.