Dahanu Road: A novel (37 page)

Perhaps staying away was the only option he had.

Worried that no one would employ her, twice he sent Damu to her with a packet of money, but Damu came back on both occasions, the envelope unopened.

So Zairos sent her a brand-new bottle of ginger marmalade.

Even Damu looked at Zairos strangely when Zairos placed this lone bottle in the back of the tractor. The bottle came back too, but when it did Zairos smiled because the cap had been opened and a small chunk, no more than a finger-lick, was missing.

Then one day Damu came up to Zairos and said, “Seth, I think you should see the child.”

It had been born on that very day. One of the workers had told Damu.

Zairos knew exactly what that meant. It meant that the child was fair. The child was not Laxman’s.

Upon realizing this, Zairos hugged Damu, who turned bride shy and stared at his feet. But Zairos was off by then.

Kusum would surely see him now.

He raced to her hamlet, his heart beating loud enough to echo off mountains, but his hands were steady. That was a sign—of what, he could not tell.

The hamlet was empty. Even the chickens were missing. He stood outside her hut, called out her name, and waited. He waited in the way a man waits in a hospital, behind the white curtains, away from the metal bowls and sweat-soaked sheets.

He called Kusum’s name again.

The inside of the hut was dark, but that was always the case.

He looked around and wondered why there was not a soul in sight. It was evening, a time when people should be home, but then who was he to judge. Perhaps there was a festival,
yes, he remembered there was a fair nearby and the Warlis must have gone there to buy bangles and nose rings and have their fortunes told.

He took a few steps towards the hut and that was when he saw the first drops of blood.

And why wouldn’t there be blood, he thought.

It was to be expected. She had, after all, given birth.

Then Zairos saw her foot, the foot which was unmistakably hers, the soles rough and callused, but the shape dainty, and the anklet she wore he had not seen before, but the foot was hers for sure.

She was sleeping, exhausted.

The inside of the hut was dark, and normally the cooking fire or some sort of flame would be on, but then why would a flame be on when she was sleeping. She did not want the hut to burn. Even the child was sleeping, which is why there was no sound.

In a second or two, he wished he had never entered.

He was staring at her face.

Her face was bashed in, it was her jaw, and there was much blood around, especially on the rock, on the boulder that had caused this.

He tried to lift the boulder, but he had no strength.

It was pointless to do so because it was not on her face anymore. It was next to her face, and there were teeth on the thatched floor, and he looked around for a baby, but there was nothing, there was only this, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do.

He placed his hand on her forehead as though he was checking her temperature. That was all he could do. How Laxman
managed to pin her down, how Laxman managed to hurl the boulder on her, how Rami managed to get away with the baby in her arms was beyond him.

He sat by her side and shook.

She was so still.

After a while, even he went still, but around him everything kept moving. The wind, the leaves, particles of dust along the ground, they all moved.

Nothing stopped for her.

Zairos had crossed three ridges and was now on the final ascent of Bahrot. He was in the heart of the reserve forest, and he felt he was being watched by the eagles that sat amid towering trees, resting majestic on the branches that seemed like thrones in the sky. White tree trunks lay on the ground, and he ran his fingers along them, peered into their hollows, hoping to slip into another world.

It had been three months since Kusum’s death, and he had still not been able to say goodbye to her. Their daughter had come into his world, promising to find ways into the secret corners of his heart, but one truth still nagged him, made him anguish in the nights. He needed to bring it out into the open, among these hills.

My grandfather and I have something in common, he told himself.

We both killed the women we loved.

A sudden wind came, carrying his failure to protect Kusum the way it carried pollen. It forced Zairos to keep that knowledge
coiled inside him tight and secure, and in the years to come perhaps only Aban would have the power to unwind it.

He wished Kusum were alive to witness the sight that he was now beholding. A host of purple karvi flowers, shocking him, a sudden eruption of colour, but stretching upwards, providing a lilt to the path, just as they would have provided to the thirsty eyes of his ancestors centuries ago.

Whatever pain he felt at losing Kusum was only an ounce compared to what his ancestors must have felt, the weight they must have carried up these hills as their loved ones lay on the battlefield in Sanjan—the pillaged homes they had to leave behind, their spinning wheels, their wool, their needles and thread, goats and white bulls, quills and red ink, cutlery, shafts of moonlight, the amorous whispers of lovers that had soaked into the walls of their homes just like the warm soot of the oil lamps they lit, and saris with embroidered designs as intricate as the hymns of Zarathushtra himself.

“There are only a hundred and forty thousand of us left worldwide,” Aspi Irani had said of the Zoroastrians. “We are a dying breed, and I fear there will come a day when there is only one Zoroastrian left, fanning the flames of the sacred fire somewhere, half mad.”

Our past needs to be conserved, he seemed to be telling Zairos.

And Bahrot was an important part of that conservation. The real fight against the Muslim attackers did not take place on the battlefield in Sanjan. It took place here, among these hills, in the caves where the Iranshah was kept burning.

The preservation of light. That was how the Zoroastrians fought back.

A light men like Zairos would learn to honour.

He kept walking, parting the branches of trees, slipping slices of orange into his mouth, his hair sticking to his wet forehead, the sound of his own breath and the grunt of a wild boar the only things he could hear, until he finally came to the Bahrot caves.

Stone debris, what used to be the outer wall. Stones pressed deep into the earth over time, threatening to disappear. He had reached quite a height, and he looked back over his shoulder just as his people had once done.

Zairos wondered if the karvi flowers were in bloom then.

Bahrot’s back, purple with promise, inviting them into its nooks and crevasses, allowing them to stay for as long as they needed to.

There were fissures in the cave walls, the roof being held by large boulders wedged against each other. Three large pillars remained, grey and thick like the old, worn legs of elephants, under which occurred a final act of resistance from his people.

Here, amid the sobs and shudders of mothers for dead sons, the magi fanned the flames of their beloved Iranshah, feeding it sticks of sandalwood, their white mouth-veils preventing their breath from polluting the fire, which remained alive to this day in the town of Udwada, not far from Bahrot, as one of the oldest, purest, most sacred fires known to man. If it was hot in the caves now, Zairos could imagine men sweating underneath their white sudrehs, their sacred vests soaked with the sweat of devotion.

These were the moments that needed to be reimagined and venerated. The moments were holy—not the temples, not the caves, not the places of worship.

It was here that he needed to let go of Kusum.

Knowing that the caves were sacred to the Zoroastrians, the Warlis had built a shrine too, made of karvi twigs, with a small orange flag on the roof.

“We feel it is these hills that have given the landlords so much power,” Kusum had said. “So we worship it and hope that it will change our fortunes as well.”

To Zairos, it was a meeting place.

The clashing of centuries, two groups of people, both of whom had suffered in the past, one much better off now than the other—powerful, moneyed, with all the hope a ship could hold, the other tribe still lost, suffering less than before, but still losing its young, still sinking.

It was dark inside the shrine, something Kusum would not have chosen.

She had spent too many nights being beaten in enclosures like this one. There were coconut shells and chicken feathers on the ground, red vermillion marks on a cylindrical stone, and an old garland, signs that a Warli witch doctor had performed a black-magic ceremony.

Kusum’s ashes could not be released here.

He did not want to send her ashes flying across the grasslands below either, over the painted horns of the grazing cow and buffalo, and the straw roofs of huts. If he threw her ashes over the cliff, they might reach Sanjan.

He wanted her to remain on Dahanu soil.

That was when he heard it. The gushing of a stream down the rocks. When he went towards it, he saw that it was stronger than a stream, the way it rushed along with urgency, to reach someone, or somewhere.

From his knapsack, he removed the small red pot.

The last time he was with Kusum, she had not allowed him to touch her. She had not even looked into his eyes.

For many nights Zairos had dreamt of grace, of being forgiven by the woman he loved—that day would never come.

From the time he had met her, he’d struggled to accept her, to allow her to walk beside him in his world. Now he realized it was Kusum who had accepted him. She was stronger than he was, her love more selfless and powerful.

With that, he let her go.

He sank to his knees as he watched Kusum move, swift and fearless, finding her way around, going underneath twigs, splashing against larger stones in a happy burst.

He could not believe he would never see her again.

She was leaving him so rapidly, it hurt. She was already beyond his reach.

But he had Aban, he told himself.

He thought of how, when he held her face in his hands, it was as though he were holding a baby moon, or the sun before it knew it was the sun. Now it was time to return to her, to listen to her purr and gurgle, to mingle his scent with hers, for father and daughter to exchange whispers and let eyelashes meet.

My gratitude to God, my spiritual guides the Bhavnagris, and Shiamak for strength and inspiration; Maya Mavjee for her patience, insight, and humour - a true guiding light; Denise Bukowski for unflinching guidance and encouragement; the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for generous and timely assistance; Shaun Oakey for wise and thoughtful copy edits; Kelly Hill for the perfect cover; all the wonderful people at Doubleday, especially Susan Burns, Bhavna Chauhan, Kristin Cochrane, Val Gow, Martha Leonard, and Cathy Paine; Dr. Rooyintan Peshotan Peer of the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute, Bombay, for patiently answering all my queries on Zoroastrian history and religion; Prof. Denzil Saldahna at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay, for his time and for providing me with invaluable reference material; my parents for opening up hearts and memories; and finally, a special thank you to my cousin Kaizad Irani for sharing his stories, and for many adventures, few of which can be spoken of.

The following sources were extremely helpful during the writing of this novel:
A Zoroastrian Tapestry: Art, Religion & Culture;
edited by Pheroza J. Godrej & Firoza Punthakey Mistree;
Zoroastrians: Their religious beliefs and practices
by Mary Boyce;
Adivasis Revolt
by Godavari Parulekar; “The Kings of the Jungle” by Winin Pereira; “On Drinking and ‘Drunkenness’” and “Tribal Women in the Warli Revolt: 1945-47” by Indra Munshi Saldanha; the thesis by Prof. Denzil Saldanha entitled
A Socio Psychological Study of the Development of Class Consciousness
submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology, Bombay, Department of Sociology, University of Bombay, August 1984.

Anosh Irani was born and brought up in Bombay, and moved to Vancouver in 1998. He is the author of the acclaimed novels
The Cripple and His Talismans
and
The Song of Kahunsha,
which was a CBC Radio 2007 “Canada Reads” selection and a bestseller in Canada and Italy. His play
Bombay Black
was a 2006 Dora Award winner for Outstanding New Play. He was nominated for the 2007 Governor General’s Award for Drama for his anthology
The Bombay Plays: The Matka King & Bombay Black.