The Temple-goers (24 page)

She had even gone home, met her family and picked up her car. Her father was angry at first, but then pleased to see his little girl. He had said to her, ‘The problem is you’re too healthy. We’ve tried our best, but I suggest now that even when you go to the market, you try and look nice. You never know where an offer might come from.’ She also added that among the Aggarwals, there had recently been five or six love marriages. ‘Then there is the age factor and that I have had lipo. The doctor told my parents that I should wait six months before getting married. I’m twenty-six, running twenty-seven. So if I wait three months, twenty-seven will be complete. All this makes me feel that my parents will now be willing to hear my choice.’

Hearing this, Aakash leaned over and kissed her, softly whispering, ‘Appu.’ Then abruptly: ‘What did you tell them before coming here?’

‘Nothing,’ Megha replied jauntily. ‘Just that I was sleeping the night at my friend’s house.’

As we drove into the colony, past the community centre, Megha asked me how the food had been.

‘Very good,’ I replied.

‘You would say that. But it must not have been “very good” because not many are eating.’

‘What are you talking,’ Aakash exploded, ‘we’ve fed some six hundred.’

‘Oh, so you’re counting,’ Megha said, and laughed.

We returned to find that the power was back and the jagran was beginning. Bejewelled women, clutching their saris, rushed towards the tent. Aakash ran upstairs to try on the kurta Megha had designed and stitched for him in the lipo clinic. As the two of us waited downstairs, Megha explained her family’s position. ‘Now, if my father is going to spend two crore on the wedding, then at least the husband should be making fifty lakhs monthly. No?’ Aakash, I knew – though still a huge amount for a trainer – made only sixty thousand a month: a tenth of that amount.

‘I know!’ Megha cried. ‘Now what to do? Every day my mother comes to me and says, “Such and such person has had a son. And her husband went out and came back with a tempo full of stuffs. Refrigerator, microwave, laptop, jewellery, saris – you name it, he bought it.” Imagine how I feel, thinking when I have a son, who will go out and buy a tempo full of stuffs?’ She spoke with such feeling, her eyes beginning to glisten, that it was hard to believe she was talking about electronics and home appliances.

During this sharing of intimacies, I came out with something that had first occurred to me in the car. I had wanted to tell Megha and Aakash then, but had been prevented by some inexplicable feeling of loyalty. But now, fully won over by the cause of their marriage, I told Megha about my accidental meeting with her brother in Lodhi Gardens.

‘That bloody homo,’ she whispered viciously, ‘let him try. Kill me? I’ll make keema out of him and each of his little yellow-fingered friends.’

And though it had seemed a real threat at the time, returning now as an echo from Megha’s lips, it seemed absurd. Of the two, she was without a doubt the more unsinkable. She muttered angrily to herself for a few moments, and then, as if it were too much for her to contain, started yelling, ‘Aakash! Aakash! Listen to what Aatish is telling me my fajjot brother has been saying.’

‘Megha, no, listen,’ I said quickly, ‘don’t tell Aakash.’

‘Why?’

‘He’ll just get worked up over it. And there’s no knowing what he might do.’

I wasn’t sure myself why I didn’t want him to know. I think, bizarre as it might sound, that I had a superstitious fear of his dormant Brahmin’s powers.

And perhaps some of my nervousness was felt by Megha too, because when Aakash appeared, bare-chested on his balcony, having heard her voice but not what was actually said, she didn’t repeat herself.

‘Bas, nothing,’ she said, ‘we’re coming up.’ She gestured to me to follow her and marched up the stairs. At the first landing, in part perhaps from fatigue, she swung around and said, ‘And by the way, one other thing. My father, he doesn’t know that that brother of mine is a chakka.’ She used the Hindi word for hitting a six in cricket, which also meant eunuch, and flicked her wrist effeminately. ‘But he’s got a pretty good idea. If he finds out, he’ll not just cut him out of the will, he will also kill that half-starved gandu.’ With this, she swung back around and climbed the remaining steps.

In the now empty flat, Aakash walked around in his towel, his hair wet and messy. His nipples were small and high, and his body, expansive and well made. We followed him to the end of the flat, past cluttered sideboards where a telephone table, tooth mug and bedclothes were stacked close together. The kurta, a VIP kurta with a gold and white collar, lay on his bed. Aakash vanished, only to reappear a moment later in just a pajama, the drawstring hanging out.

‘Tie it, no?’ he said to Megha, seeming to enjoy the execution of this intimate gesture in my presence. Then he put on the kurta over the grey vest he always wore and experimented with hairstyles, messy, the eighties, which Megha vetoed instantly, settling in the end for something in between.

Megha looked adoringly at him and said, ‘Aakash, you’re looking very black today.’

Aakash looked hard at himself and replied, ‘Appu! Why do you say such things! It’s because I haven’t slept. You know, whenever my sleep is incomplete, I look blacker.’ Then scrutinizing his reflection, he added, ‘Actually, I’m not looking black. It’s your imagination. Sir, am I looking black?’

‘No,’ I replied.

Megha glowered at me, then smiled and produced some of the other things she had made for him from the green metal cupboard.

‘Pure linen,’ she said, showing me a short-sleeved shirt with many little pockets and straps, ‘and all for rupees five hundred. If you went to Giovanni, the same thing would be two thousand. No point spending too much on a kurta because he never wears it.’

‘I never wear it,’ Aakash confirmed, still fixing his hair and applying deodorant.

‘Then why to waste money?’ Megha said. ‘This way even if he wears it five times, it’s only rupees hundred each time.’

Downstairs, the tent was almost full. We made our way towards the stage, passing armies of children sitting cross-legged on the floor beside women in bright, hot synthetics. There was a smell of warmth in the tent, but it was not unpleasant. Aakash went to the front of the crowd and began ushering people backwards to make room. He was like a hero among the children, whom he would pick up and swing back, or run at, stamping his feet, causing them to shriek, laugh and retreat. The rest of his family sat solemnly on a white podium – Amit’s wife, the ‘sharp one’, had a pink mobile phone tucked between her legs – where a young boy had begun chanting in Sanskrit into a mike. He was identifying where the ceremony was being performed, beginning with Jambudvip, India, Isle of the Jambul tree, and zooming in on Bharatvarsh, Delhi, and finally, the little colony where we were.

‘What’s the name of this place?’ he asked, hardly taking a breath.

‘Chitrakut,’ the others answered in one voice.

‘Chitrakut,’ he repeated, working it into his incantations.

He was dark-skinned, with a pubescent moustache and pinkish lips. There was a confidence, bordering on a glint in the eye, about him. I thought it came from an awareness of his own fluency, the knowledge that, despite his youth, he uttered powerful things effortlessly, filling the people around him with admiration. As the prayers continued, the senior priest took over and his apprentice began going through the crowd, tying orange threads to our wrists.

At that moment, the master of ceremonies for the evening appeared. He was a great fat man in an off-white shirt with gold rings on his fingers and a gold medallion of Kali around his neck. His teeth were bright orange from eating pan, and like a cross between an Elvis impersonator and an evangelist, he reminded me of medieval friars in Europe, rotund and jovial, with a hint of corruption about him. As people stood close to the durbar, all holding their hands over the pyramid of lamps, a knotted red thread covered in butter and oil was set aflame. Ghee and fire dripped from it. And it was with this oily fire-dropping thread that the MC lit the central lamp. From its flame, men who had been crouched round the podium began lighting the other 107 lamps. Soon they were all flickering contentedly in the light breeze that came through the tent. The MC, who hadn’t said a word so far, now yelled into the mike, ‘Victory to the true durbar!’

‘Victory to the true durbar!’ the congregation yelled back.

The MC’s orange teeth gleamed and he began taking donations, speaking the donor’s name into the mike and blessing him in public.

Aakash and Megha were in line to receive the blessing. Directly behind them stood Amit and his ‘sharp’ wife. Everything was going smoothly until the MC leaned forward and seemed to ask Megha something. Megha took a moment to answer, but when she did, Amit’s wife, now sharper than ever, gasped aloud, ‘How can one lie in the presence of the goddess?’ Aakash’s face went pale even as Megha’s burned with anger. She swung around and there was a loud exchange between the two women, which spilled over into a fight between Aakash and Megha. Aakash seemed to be trying to cool the situation, but soon there was an opening in the crowd and Megha charged out, tears of rage streaming down her face. Aakash dived out behind her and the crowd closed again.

In the meantime, the MC, who had a powerful singing voice, launched into a devotional song, raising his hands over his head and clapping. The pyramid of lamps burned brightly behind him, the colourful mountains shone in the halogen light, and soon the tent-f of people were clapping along and joining him in the song, stopping only to say, ‘Victory to the true durbar.’ It was eleven thirty.

I always knew that I wouldn’t have lasted the night. Within an hour of the singing beginning, my bottom began to hurt and my feet fell asleep. I tried wiggling my toes, but it made no difference. The feeling would subside, only to return with greater force. My restlessness was heightened by Aakash, now with a red and gold Om scarf around his neck, coming in and out of the tent with an expression of deep worry darkening his face. So after another ten minutes of song and hand-raising, I slipped out into the cool night with its spokes of yellow street light. Uttam sat on a chair with his shirt open in the dark. I went up to him and said that we should leave. Aakash was standing near the tent. When I told him I was taking a break but would come back, he said, ‘You’re going now? Fine, go. Looks like everyone is letting me down tonight.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘What’s the point of telling you? You’re leaving, what help can you be to me?’

‘Where’s Megha?’

‘Does it look as though I know?’

He was like a man who had been struck at by his superior and was now striking down at the man below him. But I had been too low on this food chain for too long and I was beginning to tire of it. I had only myself to blame; I had allowed, I had welcomed my own diminishing. My belief that Aakash could rescue me from being an outsider in India had led me into a kind of self-effacement. The place had been so strong and yet out of reach that now that it felt nearer I wished it to wash over me, even as Aakash wished to define himself against it. But that night I felt my own particularity acutely, and tired of the crowds, and of Aakash’s antics, I questioned him no further. I promised to return, but he didn’t seem interested. It was from his father that I learned that I should return at three thirty a.m., when the story would begin. With this, I left.

21

When I returned at four a.m., Megha had returned too and the night was entering its second phase. Aakash still stood at the wings where part of the tent flapped open. The anger he had shown me earlier had gone and tiredness like that of a child, joined with some feeling of satisfaction, had taken its place. The red in his eyes brought out their mud colour. Seeing me walk up, his father, standing near Aakash, said, ‘He’s come at just the right moment.’ Aakash seemed pleased to see me and rested his elbow on my shoulder. Megha sat at the other end of the tent with the women of Aakash’s family. Their fight, Aakash explained, had been caused by the MC asking Megha and Aakash whether they had come as a married couple. Megha, feeling she could not lie in the presence of the goddess, had replied, ‘Yes,’ and Aakash’s sister-in-law had overheard. Aakash said that he had tried to cool the situation, but Megha felt he was letting her down. She had apparently got back into her car and driven home. Aakash had had to bring her back in person; and he was now worried that members of her family had discovered where she was. ‘Tonight’s final,’ he kept saying in English. An uneasy peace prevailed between Aakash and Megha, and its mood was mirrored on stage by two children, in liver-coloured satin, playing Krishna and Radha in a pageant of sorts.

The boy wore a black matted wig with painted sideburns and heavy make-up. There was something dark and tantalizing about his exposed armpit hair, seeming to emphasize his adolescence. The girl was plump and well formed, with a reddish-brown dupatta falling from a bun at the top of her head. They had a confrontational relationship, now dancing, now sulking, sometimes they were making up, sometimes she was attacking him with a rolling pin. His favourite expression was an appeal to the crowd, a stunned wide-eyed expression seeming to say, ‘Isn’t she mad?’ before retaliating himself. She never looked at the crowd, more like a soap opera wife than Krishna’s consort. There was a lot of Bollywood-style dancing, which ended with a freeze in godly postures. It was at this point that Sudama appeared.

A group of colony boys had collected at one side of the stage, slouched on chairs, laughing and hanging on to one another. One of them said, as though he’d seen it many times before, ‘This is really something to watch.’ Aakash suddenly became protective of me, and taking me by the hand, led me to one side of the tent, away from the blaring speaker. He gestured to me to sit down, then sat next to me. I felt, as I had many times with him, that in his moments of self-doubt and trouble, he rehabilitated himself through his friendship with me. In these moments he was tender, giving, eager to please, as if my approval could restore him to his normal levels of self-confidence.

A boy with a broken tooth and a thin, expressive face appeared on stage. He wore simple white clothes and his hair was tied with red rubber bands in a long cone. He was Sudama, Krishna’s childhood friend who falls into poverty. Barely able to feed his family, he goes looking for Krishna, who has by then become the King of Dwarka. But when he arrives at his doorstep, the guards prevent this near beggar from going in.

Standing outside a make-believe door, the teenage Sudama began singing a moving song, which at times had the audience in tears. Calling Krishna by all his different names, he sang, ‘Murli vala, your memory would trouble me, my faith in you must not break.’ In the end, he seemed to have succeeded in informing Krishna that he was standing outside his door, because Krishna, having dropped his godly freeze, now rushed out, and taking the broken Sudama in his arms, fell to the ground and began washing his feet. At this moment, Aakash, with tears in his eyes, put his hand behind my neck, massaging it as he once had at the Begum of Sectorpur’s. Forever able to see himself in exalted scenarios, whether it be Bollywood or Dwarka, he said, ‘Remember?’

‘Remember what?’ I said, not wishing to let him down.

‘Remember the time when I washed your feet?’

On stage, Krishna had brought Sudama into his palace and had seated him on his wooden throne with its red felt fabric. Radha had seen this and was enraged. But Krishna by this point had had enough of her and pushed her aside. Some great tension was expressed here, but it wasn’t clear what. The colony boys were both riveted, and judging by their scornful howling, repelled by Sudama’s story. It was easy to imagine how these Indian stories glorifying poverty were not always pleasing to them, easy to see how they were at once familiar and something young people, especially, were a little tired of.

I could hardly believe, given the hour, that the tent was full, and at least half full with children. They sat mesmerized, watching the re-enactment of these ancient stories. And for a moment it felt as if we were all children, with our tired, gaping expressions. The pageants in their medieval and ribald way brought out instinctive emotions – tears, laughter, sadness and joy. And this also deepened my feeling of childhood.

In his second act Sudama became a comedian. He had a mobile phone, which rang incessantly. He would answer it, saying, ‘Oh, hello, you’re such and such person from Madras. Funny, you should call right now, you know who I’m sitting with? Yes, Krishna, Krishna Kanhaiya, right here in Dwarka. Oh yes, he has a very nice palace. The wife’s a demon, but the palace is beautiful. What? You want to speak to him? Hold on one second.’ Then he would run among the crowd, handing them the phone. Each skit ended with him hugging and kissing the person he gave the phone to. He came over to us and gave Aakash the phone, and from the applause and hooting that came from the colony boys, it was clear how much they admired him.

When he had gone, Aakash, perhaps feeling better, began to tell me some of what had occurred between Megha and him. ‘She showed me her scars, you know?’ he said. ‘Her skin is bruised and dried up in many places. I can’t tell you, I felt such anger. She was saying, “Take me away from here. What kind of people are these, who don’t love me the way I am, but make me have lipo so they can marry me off?” I felt so bad. I could have made her lose the weight, but she said, “No, if you had, they would have married me off. You were right to leave the weight on. And anyway, anyone who marries me won’t marry me for my figure, but for me.” You know what her mother said to her?’

‘Her mother?’ I said, fighting my way out of this sudden outpouring. ‘What, does her mother know?’

‘Yes, man. Lul told her. Not about the marriage of course, but about the relationship. I told you before, tonight is final. Everyone’s finding out.’

‘What did the mother say?’

‘She said, “Pack your things and go. He’s eyed your money and that’s all. In a few days, when the money doesn’t come, he’ll start saying, ‘Come pick up your daughter, she’s waiting.’” She was ready to come then and there. I’d spoken to my father and he also agreed. He said, “Bring her. We’ll give her the full respect of a daughter-in-law.” But I consulted with some people and they thought it wasn’t wise. The family could have slapped a kidnapping case on me.’

‘But you’re legally married.’

‘Still, they can,’ Aakash said gravely. ‘You know, I’m not worried about myself. I think nothing of my safety. It’s my family I’m worried about. I don’t want them to endure anything on my account. I worship my father, you know? He’s done so much for me.’ Then his tone changed. ‘But if they lay a finger on me,’ he said, ‘I have some pretty good connections too. I’ve lived many lives. I know people who even make thugs shit in their pants, believe me. And they’ll never find me. I’ll quit Junglee; my address, they don’t know; my credit card is not linked to my home address; they’ll never find me.’ It was the first time I had heard fear and resignation in his voice. And it drew animal instincts like self-preservation from him. He said, ‘I love Megha. I would do anything for her happiness. But you know, I’ve come a long way too. I can’t throw it all away for love. I have to think of my family, their reputation in the colony…’

He was unable to say more because the MC, now full of fresh energy, had retaken the stage.

Though it was nearly five a.m., he said, ‘The second phase of the night is about to begin. All that has occurred so far has only been to awaken the night.’

The tent rang with cheers and applause. The MC smiled, showing bright orange teeth. ‘The most important segment of the night is the telling of the story of Tara and Rukmani, the two daughters of Raja Patras. I am inclined, as I tell this story, set over three lifetimes, to sometimes forget what I’m saying in the middle. Should this happen, you must come to my assistance.’

The tent thundered in approval, then a deep quiet fell over the crowd and the story began. But a few seconds into it, someone was heard speaking in the back. ‘Go home and sleep,’ the MC snapped. ‘Really, go home and sleep. This story is the jewel of the night. I will tell it even if there are only five people listening. If you’re going to utter even a single word, then please go home and sleep. This story is not for you.’ A shamed silence prevailed. A few people turned their head to see who had spoken. The MC, calm once again, restarted the story.

‘Raja Patras, content in his kingdom, had all that he ever wanted – money, power, the love of his people. The only thing he lacked was a child. He prayed to the goddess, performing the appropriate ceremonies, and soon he won her favour. He was told that within a fixed period he would be blessed with two daughters. And he was.’

At this, a stray cry from one of the colony boys went up: ‘Victory to the true durbar.’

The MC’s expression darkened. He held up his hand, with its many gold rings, threateningly, like a mother about to beat a child. The tent shook with laughter.

‘But when the daughters had their astrological charts sent to be read, the royal priests returned with grim news. They said that while Tara, the eldest daughter, was born with a great future and would make the kingdom proud by marrying another powerful king, Rukmani, her sister, was twice accursed and would live among fishermen, among scales, among boats and black water.’ The MC, with his special Hindu horror of the sea, dragged his words. The crowd howled with dismay.

‘The king was shocked to hear this news. But the Rishis consoled him, telling him that the girl was no ordinary accursed girl, but Bhargavi, the sister of Suraya.

‘ “Who is Suraya?” the king asked timidly.

‘ “Suraya,” the pundits began, “was a very pious princess who, about to make a ritual offering one morning, saw that there was no food in the house for the offering. So she asked her sister Bhargavi to go out and buy some. But when Bhargavi arrived at the market, she found that there was nothing available except for raw meat. Seeing no other option, she returned with the raw flesh, and putting a cover over it, left it in the kitchen. When, a few moments later, Suraya resumed her prayers, asking her sister for the offering, Bhargavi handed her the covered vessel. But it was only once Suraya had made the offering that she discovered her sister’s deception.” ’

The people in the tent, each with food anxieties of their own, emitted a collective gasp of horror. The MC, answering their consternation, picked up the pace: ‘Discovering her deception, Suraya was filled with fury. And in that instant she cursed her sister. It was a vicious curse: “In your next life,” she said, ”you will be born a creature that eats flesh its entire life and scavenges after tiny, many-legged creatures.”

‘And in her next life,’ the MC said with some resignation, leaving a pause for the crowd to wonder what creature Bhargavi would be born as, ‘Bhargavi was born a lizard, clinging to walls and eating spiders, insects and other many-legged creatures her entire life.’

Toning down the horror in his voice, and seeming almost to begin a new story, the MC then said, ‘Now, just at that very time, etasminn eva kaale, as they say in Sanskrit, the Pandavas were performing their great ceremonial sacrifice, their mahayagya. And our little lizard, by some happy chance, finds that she is a lizard on the wall just as the mahayagya is about to begin. Not only this; she is an eyewitness to the revenge of a sage whom the Pandavas had forgotten to invite to the sacrifice. The sage, blessed with the ability to take other forms, in his revenge adopts the form of a small animal, a mongoose, and sabotages the Pandavas’ sacrifice by polluting the offerings with the body of a dead snake. As it happens, our little lizard sees him do this. But what can she do? She can’t speak; she has no way to let the priest know that the offerings are polluted. All she can do is sacrifice herself and save the ceremony. So just as the priests and sages are beginning their incantations, she lets herself drop from the wall and lands in the offerings. The priests see this and are enraged. The ceremony is brought to a halt and they curse our little lizard, telling her that in her next life she will live among fishermen, among scales, among boats and black water.’

The tent roared with delight, being brought, two lives later, to where the story had begun.

‘When the priests,’ the MC said, begging the tent’s patience, ‘when the priests tell the servants to throw out the offerings, or rather bury them, so that no other creature should eat them, they discover the dead snake at the bottom. The men come running back to the priests, saying, “But this lizard has saved us: the offerings were polluted anyway!” The sages and the priests sadly confess that a curse once given cannot be taken back, but they offer an amendment: in her lifetime, the accursed girl will see the curse broken.’

The crowd in the tent murmured at the excitement of this fixed outcome, with the respectable depth of two lifetimes behind it.

Taking the voice of Raja Patras’s advisers, the MC picked up the story’s original thread: ‘ “This girl born to you,” ’ he said, ‘ “is that very same girl!”

‘But Raja Patras was disconsolate. “What can I do?” he asked. “I can’t abandon her. She is my daughter, and a royal princess.” The priests thought hard about what might be done and at last advised that she be placed in a gem-encrusted vessel, half-filled with jewels, and set adrift in the river to find her own fortune. And this was exactly what was done.

‘On the morning the vessel was set afloat,’ the MC said, ‘a Brahmin performing his ablutions on the banks of the river saw something glitter in the water and his heart was filled with greed. He asked a nearby fisherman if he would help retrieve the vessel. The fisherman said, “Why would I do that? With the time I waste retrieving your vessel, I could catch so many fish and feed my entire family.” The Brahmin answered, “All right, whatever is in the top half of that vessel is yours, whatever is in the bottom is mine.” The fisherman agreed and the vessel was retrieved. When the two men looked inside, they found the girl in the top half and the jewels in the bottom half. The fisherman was delighted. He said, “All that was missing in my life was a child and now I have one!” The Brahmin, also now cured of his greed, said that the fisherman should take the jewels, sell them and spend the money they would bring in on the girl’s marriage. And,’ the MC added pointedly, ‘her education.’