Last Labyrinth Read online

  ‘That is why I thought you should go with him,’ said Geeta. She had become very tense.

  ‘I am afraid I cannot be a party to this hounding of Aftab and Anuradha,’ K said.

  ‘You mean you won’t go with him.’

  ‘I mean exactly that.’

  Geeta started to cry.

  ‘This is a cheerful group,’ I said, trying to laugh it off.

  ‘We are all very pleased at your having acquired Aftab’s company,’ said K.

  I bowed in mock acknowledgement.

  ‘It is all very simple,’ I said.

  ‘Good luck,’ and K got up to leave.

  Of course, it was not simple. I knew that the moment I had set eyes on the detectives’ report.

  After everyone was gone — Geeta to her room, K back to the town — I took out an old pipe and a tin of smoking tobacco. The tobacco had dried a bit — I had bought it at Hong Kong a year earlier — and kept spilling out of the bowl of the pipe. When it was finally packed I went out and sat on the mound on the beach. I blew out several great puffs of blue smoke. Then the pipe went out and I put it down.

  No, there was nothing simple about this thing. There was nothing simple about Krishna. Had it been so, He would not have survived ten thousand years. He would have died along with the gods of the Pharaohs, the Sumerians, the Incas. Krishna was about as simple as the labyrinths of Aftab’s Haveli.

  PART THREE

  1

  I am back from a bizarre mission in the mountains. Back to the surf, the insomnia. To this minute-book to which I am as badly addicted as Aftab is to his cigarettes. The high-rise offices are back, too. Mr. Thapar has troubles and he wants me daily at the office.

  One misty morning, a month ago to the day, K and I sat beside a whirling stream that ran at the foot of the Guest House where we waited for the mountain-road to open. (K had come with me, after all, although I could not say what exactly had persuaded him at the last minute?) On the other side of the stream lay a vast boulder strewn expanse. Mist hung over the stream and the boulders. Beyond them, across a cold mountain, in an adjacent valley, lay our destination.

  Like a vaporous halo, the mist hovered around K who sat on a boulder ahead of me. I knew he was worried about my health. He expected me to drop dead any minute. So, at times, did I. That is the trouble with heart problems. You lived from millisecond to millisecond. You never know what is coming next.

  We had been waiting at the Guest House for two days. The road ahead was blocked with landslides. It was anyone’s guess when it might be opened to the traffic. The wait had been working on our nerves until we were barely on speaking terms.

  Through the swirling mist, K strolled back towards me. I said, ‘On a sunny day, when the mist clears, you can see the mountains.’

  ‘I can’t say I am dying to see them,’ he replied as he sat down next to me. ‘Look, Bhaskar,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you want to go through with this?’

  ‘Why not... when we have come thus far.’

  ‘The toughest bit lies ahead.’

  ‘Don’t worry. If I survived the heart attack, I shall survive this.’

  ‘You haven’t a clue how you survived the heart attack.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Never mind. Let us fish while we are here,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘We haven’t got the equipment.’

  ‘They rent them out in a shop in the market.’

  As we walked towards the market, K asked, ‘What is on that mountain, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘A temple?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe a cave. Maybe just a stone. God knows what.’

  The little man at the shop was all flurry and obsequiousness. Tackles? Yes, he had the best tackles in the world. K picked one and moved out into the sunlight. He stood trying it out thinking of something else.

  ‘I hope the damn thing works,’ he said.

  He was irritated. Little, unexpected obstacles had been irritating him during the trip.

  We went back to the stream with the fishing tackles. The mist had begun to lift although it was not quite clear yet. Somewhere in the sky, invisible to us, the sun battled his way. The light varies intermittently. We lowered the lines. We sat far apart, in tacit agreement to avoid conversation. I had seen a couple of trouts, although I doubted if we could catch anything in that swift current.

  Sitting there, I thought of good old Leela and her friend Descartes. ‘I think, therefore, I exist.’ Every thing could be reasoned out, she said. And I was on my way to reason out Krishna Himself. Descartes should have approved. Of course, Descartes was no agnostic. He granted the existence of God. Since the idea of God existed in men’s minds, he reasoned, it must have been God himself who had put it there in the first place. But the times had changed. Things were not so simple anymore. Children were brought up to believe they were born with blank minds. They were brought up to challenge everything. Whatever, ultimately, filled their minds first to be proven de nova, personally reasoned out. People had put their faith in too many things — monarchies, nation-states, decency of man, God — only to discover that they had been led up the garden path. They were not willing to take anything for granted. So the children of the West grew up doubting everything. And, now, it had come to the East, along with Coca Cola, IBM and the English language. I could see it all too clearly in my own case, even in my father’s case. Except that his faith in reason seemed to totter towards the end. Faith in reason was, after all, also a faith. Why not faith in a god? Was that what this ass-breaking trip was really about? To know if God existed? Surely, if He could hold shares, He could give other evidence of His existence.

  Another thought crossed my head. I toyed with it, wondering whether to tell K. Why was I being secretive about it? Could it be that I saw in what I had discovered at the Guest House a day earlier, a clue to the bigger puzzle of the trip itself and I did not want to share it with anyone lest the mystery be destroyed. I decided, finally, not to tell K. Anyway, he would probably put it aside as just one more dream.

  After a long interval, K said, ‘I don’t suppose we shall catch anything.’

  ‘We can go back whenever you like,’ I said.

  ‘Let us go back now,’ he said impulsively, pulling in the line.

  We went back. K looked discouraged. I did not know what discouraged him. He wanted to sleep. I sat in an easy chair on the verandah, watching the dark lowering sky. There was thunder across the valley. It started to rain. The wind whipped the rain into a frenzy until I could see neither the boulders nor the stream. The rain beat on the tin roof of the Guest House. Lulled by its drumming, I dozed off.

  It was late afternoon when I awoke. The roar of the stream filled the air. I walked down to it. It had swollen magically during the rain. The boulders we had sat on, were now islands several feet inside the stream. The sky was lighter, brighter, more hopeful. I decided to walk over to the tourist office and find out about the road.

  At the Tourist Office, a bespectacled woman sat at the counter, knitting socks. On the wall behind her, on a large poster, rose a mountain range, the snow of its peaks shining in the sun. The woman refused to lift her eyes from the socks. ‘Are you in charge here?’ I asked.

  For some reason this seemed to offend her. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to speak to the Manager.’

  ‘I am the Manager,’ she said, although she obviously was not.

  ‘I want to know about the road.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘When is it being opened?’

  ‘How are we to know?’

  ‘Who is supposed to know?’

  The girl who sat at the typewriter looked up. ‘If it clears up, the road will be opened,’ she informed.

  ‘It may not clear up for six months,’ said the woman who thought herself the manger.

  ‘You don’t say!’

  ‘In that case you will have to come next year.’

  She grinned as
though that was the happiest information she could give us. I turned to the typist.

  ‘Do you know anything about this shrine?’ I gave her the name.

  ‘It is a well-known place,’ said the typist.

  ‘Do you know who lives there?’

  It was a silly question. I drew a blank. ‘You must have some leaflets about it, some photographs.’

  ‘I’ll see,’ said the typist. She went to the back of the room, opened a rickety old cupboard and started to rummage through a dusty heap of papers. I sat down in a chair with a broken arm. Clickety-clack of the needles filled the room. The ‘manager’ scowled at me and her assistant by turns. An anaemic shaft of sunlight came in through the door and lit her heavy throat and jaw. Was the sky clearing up? My eyes wandered away from her and came to settle on the poster. I had a feeling I had seen it before. There was no caption to it. I must have stared at the poster a long time. The light had now shifted from the woman’s throat to her face. It was glinting off her spectacles. At the back of the room the typist quietly rummaged through the files. My gaze went back to the poster.

  Finally, the typist gave up.

  ‘I am afraid we have nothing on it.’ She seemed genuinely sorry.

  ‘I told you so,’ said the sock-knitter.

  ‘Maybe, you will have some next year,’ I said.

  ‘You came here last year,’ said the typist suddenly.

  She took me by surprise. I did not know whether it was a question or a statement. I kept quiet. ‘Did you know the woman who was staying at the Guest House?’

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘She came here once to ask about the road. She said she wanted to take you there. How is she?’

  ‘Good bye,’ I said. ‘And thanks for the information.’

  I started for the Guest House; then, on the spur of the moment, turned towards the mule-post. The proprietor was all salaams and smiles.

  ‘Mules, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When do we start, sir? Tomorrow?’

  ‘As soon as the road opens.’

  ‘It will open tomorrow,’ he declared confidently.

  I started to move away, then turned back.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘What do you know about this temple?’

  ‘Everything, sir.’

  ‘Who lives there?’ I mean who is in charge?’

  ‘It is a big temple, sir. Many people are in-charge.’

  I gave up.

  ‘Anyway, we leave tomorrow if it clears up.’

  Coming back, I walked beside the stream. I thought of the several summers that as a boy I had spent in similar mountains. My mother was alive then, young and beautiful. It had been a charmed world. After her death, I had passed another vacation in the hills, but the charm was gone, leaving in its place an unbearable loneliness. Until that summer with Anuradha, I had avoided the hills. That summer had left scars of its own.

  A passing peasant, a bundle of faggots on his back stopped me for a light. Backing up against a rock he lowered his burden, eyeing me all the while. I lit his cheroot for him. He took a couple of puffs, ‘You were here earlier,’ he said.

  ‘Three days ago.’

  ‘No. A year ago.’

  Once again, I was surprised. I looked at him closely. I could not place him. I did not know what to say.

  ‘You stayed at the Guest House.’

  I felt the stirrings of alarm as though a secret was about to be ripped off.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I saw you with your wife.’

  I kept quiet.

  ‘People said she was not your wife. But she was beautiful.’

  I turned and left. The sun disappeared behind some clouds. I came to a wooden bridge but walked on. There was another bridge further up. I knew. As the peasant said, I had been here before. This was the place where Anuradha and I had come the year before. We had stayed in the same Guest House, in the same room. During the afternoons, I had walked along the same stream, my arm around her shoulders. Above me, to the left, there was the copse of pines where, under a bright blue sky, I had made love to her. Later, blushing, filled with wonder, she had said, ‘I had never imagined it like this.’

  Nor had I.

  Those were six unbelievable days snatched somehow from the hands of eternity. Or, was it from the hands of Krishna?

  I did not understand why I had not told K about my visit here. I had come close to telling him that morning. Perhaps, it was the desire to cover up my trail. But why? And trail to where? Had I superstitions? Was I afraid a spell would be broken?

  It was getting late. A continuous stream of peasants, wood and children on their backs, met me coming from the other direction. I wondered how many of them recognized me. I came to the last bridge. It was deserted, dark brown, a little creaky. As I started to cross, I noticed the boy. He had walked down to the edge of the stream. He wore a yellow high-neck pullover and a red corduroy cap. I had seen him at the Guest House earlier. They had probably arrived that morning. He knelt beside the stream, one knee higher than the other. He had pebbles in one hand that he held, by turn, against the sky. He was thirteen or fourteen. Fair, very good looking.

  ‘Hello,’ I shouted above the din of the stream.

  He waved to me.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He could not hear me. I walked on.

  I looked at the sky. A yellow light suffused it. It grew in intensity. In the west, the overcast had dissolved. The light of the setting sun came in sharp and clear. The clouds were swiftly moving away, exposing an orange-green sky. The light could not last long but the sun, the next day, I knew, would come out bright and strong and the road would be opened.

  2

  It was cold the next morning but the sky had cleared. There was a hint of mist but it did not last. K wore a heavy cricketing sweater with the colours of the Bombay University. I, too, had dug out a wind-cheater. The road before us was treeless and empty. I wondered what could have made it so totally without vegetation because the altitude was not such where nothing would grow. There was the mountain to the left of us and boulders to the right. If we stood between two boulders we could look down a steep drop of hundreds of feet, at the bottom of which lay a valley. The green of the valley was overlaid with a blue haze. In the centre of it meandered a stream. From this distance it was no more than a shining thread of silver. We were followed at a distance by the mule driver and his mules.

  We walked in silence. K looked preoccupied. I knew what he thought of the journey and did not want to revive a new debate. It did not occur to me that he might have problems of his own. Anyway, I too needed the silence. What with the medicines and the waiting, my nerves were on edge and needed to settle down.

  A couple of hours later the valley had disappeared, its place taken by a narrow gorge. The stream was still there but the green terraced fields were gone. The gorge was not as deep as the valley. At times, I could hear the whirl of the stream. It was swifter here. As it rushed by, it made little waterfalls. We were probably approaching its source.

  And now we noticed a cluster of men on the road ahead. They were dressed in bright ochre robes and walked with a curious lopsided gait as though running a three-legged race. Slowly, we gained upon them. The narrow path had begun to twist and turn. The ochre men were visible one minute, gone the next. Then, suddenly, we ran into them, nearly crashed into the litter that they were carrying. The object that had jogged so awkwardly ahead of us was not, after all, men but a palki with ochre flaps. It was small and narrow and was meant for such mountainous journeys. It was carried by two men who were relieved by another pair every other mile.

  Women still observed purdah in these parts! Two silent men — one of them a priest — followed at a distance. Next to the litter itself I recognised the young boy whom I had seen on the river bank. He, too, walked in silence, hands locked behind his back. He wore the same yellow pullover and corduroy cap.

  ‘Hello,’ I said as I came level. />
  He looked up, broke into a grin. The smile brought out the child that he was.

  ‘Are you going to the shrine?’ I said.

  ‘We are going to the lake?’

  I wondered where that was.

  ‘Is that your mother in the palki?’

  ‘Oh no! It is my grandfather. We are taking him to the lake. We shall reach there this evening.’

  The boy and I walked on ahead. K fell in with the palki. We walked some distance in silence. The boy hummed a song. I said, ‘What were you doing at the stream yesterday?’

  ‘I was looking for pebbles.’

  ‘Pebbles?’

  ‘A special kind of a pebble.’

  ‘Did you find it?’

  ‘I did not. But I want to look again on our way back.’

  ‘It is not easy to find the kind of pebble I want,’ he added with some pride.

  ‘What kind of pebble is that?’

  He stared at me as though appraising me. ‘I have not told anyone but I will tell you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He nodded. ‘I am looking for pebbles that you can see right through, you understand? You can see right through them even if they are stones. You can see through them as you can see through glass. And in the centre of the stone,’ here he squinted through an imaginary stone, ‘in the centre of the stone is a star.’

  I looked at him in wonder.

  ‘Who told you all this?’

  ‘My grandmother.’

  ‘And what if you don’t find the pebble?’

  ‘Even then it is all right.’

  My God, I thought, here was another Pascal. The thought depressed me. What depressed me was that a child so young should have been contaminated in such a manner. This, too, was corruption, although of a different sort. For all one knew, he would spend the rest of the days searching for a crystal pebble with a star. And become a nut in the process.

  We talked of other things. They were from Jaipur, a family of jewellers. His grandfather was not well. The man walking beside the litter was his uncle. The other was the family priest. His father had stayed behind to mind the shop. He studied in the seventh class.