Tikkipala (9 page)

As days turned into weeks and still there was no sign of the missing child, Sangita started shouting louder and louder to the god, who, she thought, must have forgotten his promise to her. Lying prostrate before the Ganesh image, her hair lying loose and wild across the floor, she screamed, ‘Lord, burn my hands. Burn all of me but send my dear child home.' The whole palace echoed with her shrieks, though no one knew what she meant.

‘She has gone perfectly mad,' the Raja said to his servants and vowed that as soon as he had the energy, he would arrange for her to be transported to her parents.

Sometimes Sangita would pray all night, so that the Raja was glad the palace was large and her shrieks distant, for otherwise he would have had no rest at all. At intervals she would struggle up, hug her arms around her body, as though for comfort, her face still wet and running with tears and try to contact her little four year old boy with her mind. ‘Mama is thinking about you, Anwar. I have not forgotten you. Can you feel my mind loving you? Can you hear my thoughts longing for you?' He was out there somewhere, lost, alone, crying for her. The last words he had said to her
were, ‘I love you only Mama. I love you more than Papa.' How she had longed to hear him say those loving words to her. All those early months, when he refused to come to her, she had craved for him to say, ‘I love you, Mama.' But the price had been too high, far too high, for that is what he had given her in exchange for being allowed to go riding alone. It would be better if he had gone one hating her that now be somewhere out there, lost and alone.

She would go to his room and stand there, looking at the last toys he had played with, at his empty bed, and become unable to keep herself from crying.

The Raja never slept these nights, though it was not the sobbing cries of his wife that kept him awake. He lay, listening, thinking, hoping, despairing. Sometimes, when he could no longer bear it he would get up and go out onto the veranda. He never felt tired, these days, because every part of his body beat so fast with worry. He would stand in the jackal-howling moonlight and think he heard the sound of his little boy calling out, ‘Papa. Papa, help me, save me.' Then, as though he had gone mad, he would start to run, wearing only his night lungi, in the direction of the imagined sound.

During the day he would start running too, if he heard unexpected voices. Without bothering to put on slippers, thinking, for one heart leaping moment, that someone had come to say that baba sahib had been found, he would dash into the garden. He knew, really, that it would be just a beggar, a merchant come to try to sell or someone wanting work, but all the same he needed these little false hopes to ease the pain in his heart and without them, he would have died. Hopes were always swiftly dashed. Someone had heard the sound a child calling, ‘Mama, Mama.' A shoe was found. Once the Raja felt so certain that Anwar had been found that, when he encountered
Sangita unexpectedly in the grounds, he forgot he had ordered her to leave his palace and nearly spoke to her.

Then, after five weeks and three days a man came running. He was shouting long before he reached the palace ‘My uncle has found the Raja's son. The little lord has been found.'

At first the Raja could not believe it, for there had been so many dashed hopes. But the man convinced him. ‘This is definitely your son, Lord. My uncle, who found him, recognised him instantly.'

‘Where was he found?' pressed the Raja. ‘Why did your uncle not come to me earlier?'

‘Lord, this poor child had fallen from his horse and wandered, somewhat injured for several days before my uncle discovered him. It would seem that he had been stunned by the fall and did not remember who he was. But my uncle, who has worked here in this garden one year ago, knew instantly that this was little Prince Anwar and swiftly sent me to you.'

When the Raja still seemed unconvinced, the man pulled from a bag hanging by his side, a little silk turban with a peacock plume. ‘Here, Lord. This was on the head of the baby Lord when my uncle found him.'

‘Anwar's turban,' cried the Raja and nearly swooned in his relief. ‘The very one I gave my boy the day we arrived at the hill palace.'

Instantly a new atmosphere swept through the palace. The servants stopped looking pinched and anxious.

The Raja's face became calm and happy.

Sangita rose from the floor and threw her arms around her statue. ‘Thank you, my Lord. You are the greatest of all the gods and I shall give you fresh milk every day for
the rest of my life. I will shower upon you so many sweets and garlands from now on that you will be lost under the heap of them.'

The thags in the village crept out of their hiding places, relieved that they would not be beaten any more. Even the dogs of the palace became relaxed because the humans around them suddenly stopped hitting and kicking them.

The Raja ran all the way to the garage to summon his driver, shouting, ‘Put petroleum in the motor car this instant and as soon as the vehicle is ready I will set off to fetch my boy.' When the car was ready and Sangita got in too, the Raja made no protest, but even moved up a little to give her room. The man who had said that Anwar was found, sat in front with the driver. The Raja kept asking him, ‘Tell me about my boy. How is his health? Has he been crying for his Papa?'

‘Your boy is well and unharmed so you need have no fears,' the man assured the Raja.

As the car chuntered on down the hillside to the village, the Raja did not try to silence Sangita's happy sobs. He hardly heard her. All he could think of was the joy he was about to feel so soon. His arms were already tingling with the longing to embrace his child. ‘Hurry, driver. Why are you dawdling so. Get some speed into this machine or we will not reach the village before nightfall.'

Once he even turned to Sangita and said, ‘Our son has been found. We do not need to feel afraid anymore.' He had not spoken to her directly for more than two years so the sentence came as a joyful surprise. For the rest of the journey, Sangita could not stop remembering her husband's words. He had called Anwar ‘our son.' He had said ‘we' do not need to be afraid any more'. Everything was going to change from now on, she thought, and happiness went flooding through her like rays of sun in the monsoon.

They reached the hut at last. The Raja leapt from the car. Sangita followed him.

‘In there, Lord,' said the man, pointing. ‘That is my uncle and my aunt.'

A man and woman stood at the door and at the sight of the Raja and the Ranee, bent down with respectful namashkars.

‘Forget all that,' said the Raja, wild with impatience and rushed past them, thrusting the obeisances away. ‘Just show me my son. I cannot wait to see him.'

‘He is inside, Lord,' the man said. The Raja and Sangita followed him into the dark hut. A small hunched figure sat silent and still in the furthest, darkest corner. Sangita let out a thrilled cry and began to thrust her way through the debris in the room. The Raja pushed after his wife, crying,. ‘My boy, my very dear boy, is that really you?'

‘Yes, Papa,' came a nervous little voice through the dark.

‘For God's sake, fellow,' the Raja shouted to the uncle. ‘Can't you get some light in here. I can't see a thing. Anwar, Anwar, here comes Papa.'

‘My darling, my darling,' cried Sangita, scrambling past the things that littered the darkness. ‘Why do you sit there? Get up. Here is your mama, waiting to hold you.'

‘Now give the reward that you have promised,' cried the man, who stood at the Raja's back. He had made no attempt to bring a light.

By now Sangita had managed to get to the child. Reaching down into the dark she put her arms round the little creature and lifting him, hugged him. Then she put him down and let out a cry of dismay. The child started crying.

‘What are you doing to my son?' roared the Raja, groping through the dark. ‘Here, my boy. Come to your Papa.'

‘It is not your son,' said Sangita. She felt suddenly cold, as though winter had come early.

‘Of course it is.' The Raja could not bear more disappointment.

‘It is not Anwar. It does not feel like Anwar, it does not smell like Anwar and it does not even cry like Anwar,' said Sangita grimly. The child was weeping at her feet but she could not bring herself to comfort it.

‘Bring the child out into the light,' ordered the Raja. ‘Let me examine him. She is only the mother and therefore knows nothing.'

‘Sir, that is a bright light out there. The poor child has been through much. Please do not ask him to suffer further…'

The Raja let out the roar of a frustrated tiger.

‘Yes, Sahib. Right, Sahib,' said the uncle.

Sangita heard the man's flapping footsteps and things falling and he fumbled his way to the now bellowing child. The Raja and Sangita followed. The man carried it into the sunshine.

‘Don't keep hiding the child's face,' bellowed the Raja. ‘Let me see it. I will know if this is Anwar when I have seen his eyes.'

Reluctantly the man turned the child round so that the Raja could examine it.

The Raja stared and then a great shudder passed through his body.

‘The woman is right,' he said. ‘This is not Anwar.'

‘What about the turban?' cried the man. ‘I showed you the peacock feather turban.'

‘It must have fallen from my child's head and you were, no doubt, one of those searching the jungle and found it,' said the Raja ferociously. ‘I suppose you were expecting a big reward by pretending to return my boy.'

The man backed away nervously, as though he was being threatened by a wild animal but all the same, tried again, ‘The reason the child does not look like your son any longer is because of the hardships he has endured. But after some weeks of good food and bathing, he will surely look like baby sahib Anwar once again and….' He
never got a chance to finish the sentence. The Raja let out such a roar of fury that sent the uncle dashing away down the road as though he was being chased by a man eating tiger.

On the journey back to the palace, the Raja stared ahead of him and wept with noisy groans. His tears wetted his moustache and made its sharp points wilt.

Sangita stared ahead of her as well, though she and her husband seemed to be looking at different things. She did not cry and inside herself felt as though something had died. She thought she did not care about anything anymore, and perhaps would never care again.

Back at the palace, she went to the shrine of the god, Ganesh. Reaching among the flowers and milky sweets, she pulled the image out and hurled it to the floor where it smashed into a thousand pieces. She stood watching for a while, as little crumbs of the deity went rolling over the floor. A line of ants went scurrying away as a part of the god's trunk smashed among them. The broken image smelled sour, as of bad milk. So even that had been a trick, she thought.

In the days that followed, despair set in among the people of the palace. Every now and again the Raja, in his misery, even forgot he had ordered Sangita to leave and when he happened to encounter her, seemed to hardly know who she was. His mind was only on his missing son though he could think of nowhere else to look. He started walking aimlessly instead. With his hands clasped tightly behind his back he would stride up and down the verandas if it was too hot, or was raining and when the weather allowed it, march wildly round his garden. Staying on at the hill palace was pointless, yet he could not leave it either.

Sangita did not stride. She sat for hours, her face expressionless, staring out onto the landscape but not seeming to see anything. Sometimes a passing servant would get a sudden fright, thinking that she had died, because she was so still. The servants began to crave to leave the hill palace and to wonder if they would ever see Bidwar again. Perhaps they would be stuck here forever, with the Raja pacing and the Ranee frozen.

One day, three months after Anwar disappeared, the Raja rose at dawn after another night without sleep and went out onto his veranda to watch the sun rising. That might give him hope, he thought. He saw a woman apparently searching for mineral stones on the hillside as he had once done, when he was interested in them. With a shock he realised the woman was his wife, Sangita. He had not noticed her for such a long time that it took him a few moments to recognise her. He took up his binoculars and now he could see her clearly. She was scrambling up the mountainside, at intervals grabbing up stones and bits of rock, looking at them quickly then tossing them down again. Soon she would reach the overhanging brow, the rock that everyone knew could not be climbed, even by a monkey. He hoped she would try to go up that, then fall and kill herself. If she did not, he would make sure she was removed from the palace when she returned. Summoning his servants, he roared, ‘Bring the Ranee back. She is making a mockery of me.'

They went running through the woods and after an hour reached the place where the Ranee had climbed to. It took them a while to find her among the shadows of the bulging rock but when at last someone sighted her, they could not reach her. She had crawled too high and now was dangling upside down staring at something lying on her palm.

‘What colour do you think this is?' she called down to the embarrassed servants. ‘Do you think it is a chip from the stone the people of the village talked about?'

‘What stone, Madam?' they said, still not liking to look at her.

‘A blue one with a red heart that is called Ama that the people here say is the stone of life and can not only create life but also seek out the life you have made,' cried Sangita. ‘I'm sure I have found a little chip from it.'

‘There is no such thing as this stone,' sighed the servants. ‘These people here are all fools and tell stories but we, who come from the town and have received an education know that there is no such thing.'

But Sangita had stopped listening.