The Guru of Love (15 page)

The baby was passed around, and when she came to Ramchandra, he held her awkwardly. Rachana smiled at him and said something that sounded like “ba, ba.” Everyone laughed, including Malati. Goma joked, “Maybe she thinks you're her father,” and Ramchandra felt embarrassed. He kissed the baby and, out of the corner of his eye, looked at Malati, who, once again, had that soft smile on her lips. Goma went to the kitchen to check on the food, and Sanu followed her. For a while Ramchandra and Malati were alone, except for the baby and Rakesh, who was engrossed in his toy army truck.

“I am glad you're here,” Ramchandra said. “I thought you might not come.”

“Why wouldn't I come?” Malati said, looking at the baby, now in her lap. “Goma bhauju invited me with such an open heart.”

“She likes you.”

“I like her too. She's so gentle.”

Ramchandra pointed toward Rachana. “Is she hungry?”

“She ate before she came, but you never know.”

“You can feed her now,” he said.

“Not in front of you!” she said.

Rakesh looked up from his toy. “Is the baby hungry?”

“Maybe,” Malati said.

“Can I watch her eat?”

“She doesn't eat dal-bhat like us,” Ramchandra said. “She drinks her mother's milk.”

“I want to watch her eat,” Rakesh said.

As if prompted by Rakesh, the baby started clawing at Malati's breast.

“Looks as though she's hungry,” Ramchandra said. “Why don't you go to the next room and feed her?”

He escorted Malati to the children's room, and just as he was shutting the door, Rakesh slipped inside.

In the kitchen, Goma was stirring the goat meat, and Sanu was shelling green peas. “It smells great in here,” he said.

Goma didn't respond. From the back she looked tense, so he asked, “What's the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said.

He looked at Sanu, and saw that she once again had a sullen face. “What happened?”

“I can't deal with your daughter anymore.”

“What happened?”

“She refuses to apologize to her grandparents.”

“And why did you have to bring it up now? They're not here, are they?”

Goma put the ladle into the stew and faced him. “I was just talking to her, trying to make things right. She cannot keep treating her grandparents this way.”

“You told me you'd make up with her, and the first chance you get, you argue again.

Their voices had grown louder. It's a replay of last night, Ramchandra thought. Sanu had stopped shelling the peas and was staring at the floor.

“You seem not to realize what your daughter has become.”

“My daughter is fine,” Ramchandra said. “Perhaps you should realize what you've become.” He couldn't remember the last time they'd argued like this.

“What have I become? All I want is my children to respect their elders. Is that too much to ask?”

“The elders who want respect should respect others.”

“They haven't been disrespectful of anyone.”

“How can you say that? How can you stand there in front of your daughter and pretend that nothing's wrong with the way your parents behave?”

Goma's face suddenly became transformed, and she started to cry. Sanu leaped from the floor and went to her mother. Goma pulled her hand away and turned her back to them. Father and daughter exchanged glances, and Ramchandra motioned to Sanu to go to her mother again. Sanu stood near her and said, “If it's that important to you, Mother, I'll apologize.”

Goma didn't respond. Ramchandra placed his hand on her shoulder. “Okay, enough. We have a guest in the house. What will she think?”

“This whole thing gives me a headache,” Goma said.

“All right. Sanu will apologize, so please stop worrying.”

It took a few minutes for Goma to regain her composure. Then she embraced Sanu.

They heard the children's room door open, and Malati and Rakesh appeared in the kitchen doorway. Malati obviously sensed that something untoward had happened; she looked uncomfortable. Goma smiled and said, “The food should be ready in a few minutes. Is your daughter sleeping?”

Malati nodded. She was standing close to Ramchandra, and as Sanu left the room, Malati had to shift closer. Now their shoulders touched. Briefly, Goma turned back to her masu, stirring the meat, scooping up gravy to smell it, and Ramchandra let his small finger caress Malati's wrist. She blushed.

“Taste it and tell me how it is,” Goma said. She put a piece of meat and some gravy in a bowl and gave it to Ramchandra. He tasted it and made appreciative noises. “Delicious,” he said, and as Goma turned toward her cooking again, he looked at Malati directly and said, “Delicious.” Only then did he notice that Rakesh, who had been fiddling with the religious calendar hanging on the wall by the entrance, was watching him.

They ate in the kitchen while the baby slept in the children's room. Malati had a funny way of eating. She'd scoop up the rice with her fingers, lower her head, and thrust the food into her mouth, keeping her head lowered while she chewed, as if she were embarrassed to have anyone watch her eat. “How is it?” Goma asked, and they waited while Malati finished swallowing. “It's delicious.” Ramchandra became mesmerized by the movement of her slender fingers cradling the food and then putting it into her mouth. Her bangles tinkled. Goma asked him whether the meat had enough salt, and he nodded, unable to talk. “Tell me if it's not good,” Goma said, laughing. “I can take it.” She explained to Malati that Ramchandra never criticized her cooking, which was good, but she didn't know whether he was being completely honest.

Mr. Sharma across the courtyard began to chant his religious hymns at his window, and abruptly Malati looked up.

Ramchandra said, “Seems that our neighbor is late today.”

“On Saturdays he wakes up late,” Goma said.

“Mr. Sharma is funny,” Sanu said.

“Why?”

“He stares at me.”

“He doesn't stare at me,” Rakesh said.

“When did he stare at you?” Ramchandra asked Sanu.

“Every time I'm in the courtyard, he looks at me, as if I've done something wrong.”

Ramchandra recalled Mr. Sharma's comment about Malati. He stopped chewing, drank some water, and said to his daughter, “The next time he does it, ask him why he's staring.”

“There you go again,” Goma said, “teaching her to mouth back to adults.”

“But why does he look at her like that? What's his motive?”

“He's just a strange man,” Goma said. She'd finished eating and was extracting threads of goat meat from between her teeth, her palm covering her mouth. “He means no harm.”

“How do you know that? He's lived alone too long.”

“Calm down,” Goma said. “Why are you so hot? Is the food heating up your brain?”

After they were finished, they washed their hands and mouths at the sink. Ramchandra looked out the window toward Mr. Sharma, who was rocking as he chanted. He looked up and waved at Ramchandra, who didn't wave back.

They all sat in the bedroom and settled into a game of carom. The board had been a gift from the Pandeys to Sanu when she turned six, and over the years the paint had peeled off, so some spots were rough. Often one of the small counters would zoom across the board and get stuck right before it hit the mark, so Goma brought some powder and sprinkled it on the board's surface. Ramchandra asked, “Okay, who is whose partner?” Both Sanu and Rakesh wanted to partner with Malati, and there was a brief argument before Sanu gave in to her brother. “I'll watch,” Goma said, because only four could play.

The counters were arranged and the game began. Malati turned out to be an expert player. She'd align the master counter with great care, hit the designated piece, and it would deftly plop into the corner hole. Rakesh was delighted with his partner's virtuosity, and they won every game.

“Where did you learn to play like that?” Ramchandra asked.

She said her father was a big fan, and they'd had a large board at home when she was a child. “I might be a math monkey, sir,” she said with a smile, “but I'm certainly not a carom monkey.”

Liking the sound of those words, Rakesh turned to Ramchandra and started chanting that it was his father who was the carom monkey. It was true; Ramchandra was clumsy at the game.

The baby started crying, so Malati hurried to the children's room. Goma said she was feeling sleepy, and, with a yawn, lay down on the bed. Sanu and Rakesh went down to the courtyard to skip rope. Ramchandra sat on the floor near the bed, one hand massaging Goma's foot. “The meat feels heavy in my stomach,” Goma said drowsily. Soon, she was snoring, the faint rasping breath that had lulled Ramchandra to sleep so many times. He kept rubbing her foot, aware that he and Malati were the only ones awake. From the next room came the soft gurgling sounds of the baby Ramchandra let go of Goma's foot and stood up. A truck whizzed by outside, making such a ruckus that Goma's eyes fluttered. She shifted and went back to sleep. In the courtyard, Sanu and Rakesh were counting as they skipped rope.

Ramchandra stood near the door of the children's room, which was slightly ajar. Malati was softly singing a lullaby. As he pushed the door open, she looked up from the floor, where she sat nursing the baby. For a brief moment, she attempted to cover her breast, but then her face relaxed, and she smiled. Ramchandra put an index finger to his lips, shut the door behind him, and sat beside her. Leaning his head against her shoulder, he dosed his eyes and soon felt her palm on his chin. She caressed him. The baby was sucking hard on her nipple. “Where is everyone?” she whispered. He whispered that Goma was asleep. He opened his eyes and watched her breast, then reached out to stroke it. He could feel himself getting hard. The baby stopped sucking and fell asleep. Ramchandra bent down and took Malati's nipple in his mouth. His head was so close to the baby's that he could feel the up and down of her tiny chest. He sucked briefly, then sat up. The room seemed to be moving. He put his hand on Malati's chin. “What's happening?” he said. Her eyes became moist. “Sir, sir,” she said, “what are you doing?” He leaned over and kissed her fully on the lips. Goma might wake at any minute next door, yet here he was, smelling Malati, sucking her body.

 

Around four, after they had tea and pakodas, Malati left, and Ramchandra's mind became numb. The others kept talking about her, saying what a sweet girl she was. Goma said that she'd like to invite her again—she was so popular with the children. Sanu said Malati had invited her to her house to learn how to sew, and that she couldn't wait to go. She asked Ramchandra to take her to Malati's house one day soon.

Sanu and Rakesh sat down to do their homework, and Goma began to prepare the evening meal. Ramchandra told her that he needed some fresh air; he put on a sweater and left the house.

The evening was chilly. He walked around aimlessly. The dusky sky was filled with kites. As he traversed New Road, with its brightly lit shops, its shoppers carrying bags and looking happy and tired in anticipation of the festival, he knew he'd taken another step toward Malati. The significance of what lay ahead seemed immense. He stood beneath the large peepul tree, its long branches covering the sky, and looked around. Under streetlamps and shadows, newspaper vendors and shoeshine boys advertised their wares. Small groups of men milled about, discussing the rumbling of the nation. Ramchandra stood and listened. Last night, painted slogans decrying the Panchayat rule had appeared on the walls of alleys and houses in Patan, and bands of policemen had begun patrolling the streets to catch the culprits. Newspapers reported the mysterious disappearance of some political activists.

Before he was married, Ramchandra used to come here in the evening to smoke and discuss the politics of the day with friends and strangers. They would buy the local newspapers and argue vehemently about whether a certain politician was corrupt, whether India would barge into Nepal and declare it a part of its own territory, as it had done to Sikkim, and, in whispers, whether eventually the monarchy would be ousted from Nepal and replaced by the kind of democracy found in Western countries. Of course, at that time such vocal protests against the government and the king were unthinkable, so the evening arguments were conducted with secrecy. Ramchandra and his friends downed glasses of tea over the course of the evening, smoked one Gainda cigarette after another, and found great satisfaction in their own words, which blended with the smoke and circled up to the sky.

Even though Ramchandra and his mother lived in dingy apartments, life was uncomplicated for him then, as he struggled each evening to pay his share of the cigarettes and tea.

Now, his temples started to throb, so he walked into a small restaurant and bar in Indrachowk and asked for a glass of the local rum. It burned his throat as it went down. He drank another and laughed to himself as he doled out the money. My house is sinking into my stomach, he thought, and it'll stay there and eat my innards.

Gradually the voices in his mind became muted, and he walked home, on unsteady feet, as he hummed a tune from his younger days, a popular folk song:
rato bhaley kwaink kwaink
—about a red rooster and how the singer, while feeding it to a pregnant woman, gobbled down the head. The buoyancy of the song made him smile, but when he entered his courtyard, he thought of what had happened inside his apartment today, and the song took on a menacing tone.

Goma smelled the alcohol on his breath and was surprised. He told her he'd run into one of his old friends, who'd coaxed him into having a drink. She accepted the explanation with a degree of suspicion, and said nothing about the expense.

 

He woke around two, his heart beating wildly, his throat parched. He reached for the jug of water Goma usually placed beside the bed, but he couldn't find it. In the darkness, he got up, made his way to the kitchen, and, standing by the window, drank a glass of water. Mr. Sharma's light was on, and Ramchandra could see him move back and forth. The man seemed to be talking to himself, every now and then he lifted his hand toward the ceiling and said something. Ramchandra recalled Sanu's comments about him, and his disgust seemed to move physically inside him; nauseated, he stood by the sink and retched. In that moment, breathing hard, his eyes blurry, his hands clutching the side of the sink, Ramchandra knew he had to do something.