Last Labyrinth Page 18

  ‘Is there a special day today?’ K asked Vasudev.

  ‘Of course. It is a day for vows. Some come for new vows; others to thank for the old ones.’

  ‘And their wishes get fulfilled?’

  ‘It depends on their faith. Faith can move mountains, doctor sahib. Am I wrong? Please tell me if I am wrong. Modern people know so much more than we who have never stepped out of the village.’

  We came now to a narrow stream with a wooden bridge. It was at this point that all those meandering pilgrims converged. There was a crowd of them on the bridge looking up and down the stream in either direction. The water fell in little cascades, clear and sparking. Vasudev asked me for a coin, shouted ‘Jai Krishna’ and flipped it into the clear waters. Others followed him, each offering accompanied by a burst of ‘Jai Krishna’. I could see the coins scattered about the river bed. Some mahant’s boy would no doubt climb in later and forage for them. The water must have been icy cold.

  Beyond the stream, the plain narrowed rapidly, culmination in a steep pathway on which the pilgrims formed a steady upward moving escalator. A murmur, as though of the wind in a forest, arose in the distance. A young man, carrying a wizened old woman, her face a ball of white hair, asked for the time. It was almost noon.

  The strange murmuring of the wind increased until a wail broke lose from somewhere and I realized that it was not wind at all but human voices that made the murmur. And presently, they came into view, the lepers that lined the path on either side. The first of them was a woman, her nose eaten away, leaving behind two holes. She sat hunched, in a low wooden trolley. She had a shrewd look in her yellow eyes. She was a curiosity until a sudden panic seized me that she was going to touch me and I jumped swiftly aside knocking in the process the young man with the piggyback mother. The man tottered a little but found his balance.

  In a minute my curiosity turned into nightmare, although, neither Vasudev nor K seemed to take much notice of it. For Vasudev, it was nothing new and K, after all, was a doctor. The hard pavement now turned into a series of steps, rough and steep, hewn out of the hill itself. Wails and threats fell about us like ticker tape. I could not recall when I had seen such a grotesque collection of deformity and disease. How could these benign hills have produced so many lepers unless they came from the plains. A faint memory stirred at the back of my mind. What was it that Anuradha had said: A hill lined with lepers. She had been drunk and half-asleep at the time and I had taken it to be the fragment of a nightmare. Could this be the hill she had in mind? ‘There are a hundred steps like these,’ Vasudev declared.

  In another trolley sat a boy, his matchstick limbs wrapped around him. A young girl, her bright red tongue, like a snake’s, darting about in her lipless mouth, grinned at me.

  I turned to Vasudev, ‘I had never seen so many lepers before,’ I said weakly, as though conveying my admiration for a collection of rare painting.

  Vasudev said nothing.

  ‘Where do they come from?’

  ‘From all over the country. They come to be cured.’

  ‘Do they get cured?’

  He evaded a reply.

  ‘I suppose that depends on “faith” too,’ I said.

  ‘There is a tank behind the temple whose waters can cure.’ Vasudev had been disbursing small change. K had handed him some of his own. Near the temple entrance, at the top of the steps, there was a wild melee of stumps, as the lepers tried their last chance at coercion.

  We broke into a narrow corridor lined with flower sellers. Mountains of marigolds lay scattered in every form and shape — from petals to garlands. Here, too, our path was blocked by twenty tattooed arms, rather like the arms of brokers in the Stock Exchange; each holding a leaf cup of flowers. Vasudev bought a cup. K, too, bought one. The marigolds reminded me of the astrologer at the carnival.

  On the vast stone platform of the temple I could breathe again.

  ‘You were looking choked back there,’ said K.

  ‘It was bad, you’ll admit.’

  ‘Where to, now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  After a moment’s hesitation, we let the stream of people carry us. In the distance I could see another entrance. It was made of marble. In the middle of it hung a bronze bell which everyone jumped and clanged. I wondered why it had been placed so high. Children were raised on shoulders so they could ring it. It was while I was watching the bell, wondering what we were to do after we had passed under it, that someone said in English, ‘Come this way, please.’

  It was a short, stocky, middle-aged man who had spoken. He had closely cropped grey hair and light eyes like Leela Sabnis. Judging by his accent he might have been from around Bombay, too. He could have been a retired civil servant.

  All three of us stepped out of the crowd expecting a further explanation. None, however, was offered. Without a word he led us to the back of the main temple. We came to a two-storeyed building, recently white-washed, gleaming in the sun. There was a dharmashala on the ground floor. Three men sat on cot smoking from a hukka. We crossed the dharmashala, emerged in the open and started to climb a spiral staircase which, for some reason, had been left unpainted. The others climbed easily, I stumbled a little. The steps were steep and I had begun to feel the cumulated exhaustion of the previous week. On a landing above, K came to a halt. Silent and very still, one hand shading his eyes against the sun, he stared at whatever it was that lay in the distance. Presently, I joined him. Before us, in the dazzling light, across a narrow valley loomed the mountain that we had seen from the lake two nights earlier. It must have been hidden from view by the flank of the hill on which the temple stood. It seemed close enough to be within an hour’s walk although, in fact, it must have been much farther. The narrow strip of the intervening valley was a brilliant green dotted with several pinnacled Buddhist shrines. Before each shrine tall poles fl ew their numeros flags. The silence was total.

  We crossed another yard before entering a small room. The room was familiar. There were mats on the floor and a pitcher of water. There were the familiar coloured glass ventilators. The sun, percolating through them, threw a collage of lights on the floor. In the middle of this sat Gargi. Our guide bowed, did his namaskar, and departed. Gargi walked briskly over to where we stood and took my hand. ‘This is a surprise,’ I said, breathless, fumbling for words. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Gargi smiled her beautiful, enigmatic smile, led us to the cushions near the windows and settled us all down as though nothing could have been more natural than this visit. I wondered what Vasudev made of the whole thing. I whispered to him, ‘She is a friend of mine. She cannot hear or speak but she can read lips.’

  ‘I know. I know,’ he whispered back.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Everyone knows about her.’ His voice was subdued and full of awe. ‘I think I should go away,’ he continued. ‘I did not know you were coming here.’ He got up. I took his hand and tried to pull him down. He freed himself, also did namaskar to Gargi and departed.

  Gargi watched us amiably while we conducted this exchange. Once again the plump rosy face, the intelligent understanding eyes, evoked in me the overwhelming compulsion to talk and talk and talk. I could never understand why she had that effect on me. And so over the next half hour I talked without a break: of my illness, of our travels. I tried to talk about Anuradha but the pain was too great and I gave up. If I had known she was here, I said, I would have written to her in advance.

  ‘She must have known we were coming,’ interrupted K. ‘Or, why the guide.’

  ‘Were you expecting us?’ I asked Gargi.

  She did not answer.

  So once again, I was silenced by the intrusion of the unknown. Tea was brought in tall steel tumblers. I recognized the girl who had been Gargi’s companion in Benaras. She recognized me, too, and smiled. We drank the tea in silence. It was a neat cosy corner. At Gargi’s back were a series of narrow windows, their panels brightly painted. The windows w
ere open and looked over the same valley, the same Buddhist shrines with their poles of fl uttering flags. A Sri Chakra hung on the wall facing me. Belatedly, I thought of introducing K. ‘This is Dr. Kashyap. He saved my life.’

  K shifted uncomfortably, a rare thing for him, and once again the thought crossed my mind that he was aware of things about which I did not know.

  For the moment, though, I was too relieved to have found Gargi to worry much about other things. I realized now, all said and done, how edgy I had been all these days, like a man in a maze who, though on the right track, is apprehensive of what he might find at the centre of it. Gargi’s plump pink face was nothing if not reassuring. And once again, I felt, a I had felt many times before that she was the only one who understood.

  I did not talk to her about the shares because I did not think she would know about them. There had to be someone else on the precincts who would be accounting for such things. Mr. Thapar had been told as much by the secretary of temple. I found myself describing to her the lake, the glacier, the old man and his grandson. I talked at such lengths that she must have wondered what had come over me.

  ‘Now, what could be the significance of it?’ I asked.

  I stared at Gargi as though I expected her to reply. When she didn’t, I added, ‘I suppose it had significance for the old man who believed in it.’

  ‘Didn’t you find the boy amazing, though?’ I asked K.

  ‘He reminded me of you when you were a boy,’ said K.

  ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘It is hard to believe but he did remind me of you. Something happened to you when your mother died.’

  I kept quiet, in a way dreading what he might say. ‘I think you lost your nerve,’ K said.

  Gargi had been watching us. I knew she had understood every word that had been spoken. It was amazing how she could make people talk. She had made even K open up. Said he, ‘But, all in all, it is not death but life that you are bothered about. Or, so I think. You are like your father. He also wanted to know if there was a First Cause.’

  ‘Behind death?’

  ‘Behind life. In life.’

  ‘Depends upon what side of the coin you are looking.’

  ‘There is a profound difference in the two sides,’ K said.

  After a moment’s silence he continued, ‘Life to your father was the expression of a will, but he wanted to know “whose will”. I think you know all this.’

  ‘I do, but carry on.’

  ‘Was it his will, he wanted to know, or a divine will — the will of the First Cause? He knew enough to realize that it could not be his will alone. But he did not have the evidence to believe that there was a divine will. So he could not make up his mind.’

  ‘And slipped into melancholia?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  I wondered what had made us slip into such an odd discussion in this, of all places. It was as though in Bombay all these years we had never had the time. Gargi, who realized that our discussion had ended, now suggested by a gesture that we should rest. There were mats lying scattered about along the walls of the room. We lay down obediently. I realized how tired I was and wondered if exhaustion could bring on a heart attack as K had warned. Then I fell asleep and dreamt the same old dream — of the plane and the mountain and the terrifying crash. I had not until my illness believed people when they talked of their recurrent nightmares. For me it was not a nightmare any more but a depressing chore; a kind of a punishment, something like the fatigue that soldiers are sentenced to.

  I woke up to the tinkling of bells. It wasn’t bells, though, but utensils. Lunch had been brought for us by the same stocky grey-haired man. K was already seated and was calling my name.

  Dazed by the dream, I stumbled towards the meal which had been laid in the middle of the room. Gargi watched me curiously as I settled down. It was as though she saw something in my face which had not been there before. Instead of eating, I found myself relating the dream to her and telling her how sick I was of dreaming it over and over again, like having to repeatedly watch a bad movie against one’s will. Gargi smiled, took out her pad and ‘Your food is getting cold’ she wrote. ‘You will not have this dream again if you don’t want to.’

  After lunch, Gargi made paans for everybody. I wondered how to proceed about the mystery of the shares. Would she know? What would she say?

  In the event, it was K, of all people, who took up the unravelling of it. After some hesitation he had come to a decision. He addressed Gargi. He spoke slowly so she would understand him.

  ‘I did not save Som, as he mentioned some time back. In fact, by my understanding he was as good as dead when Anuradha came to see him the evening of his attack. This is important. Do you understand me?’

  Gargi nodded. K took time organizing the next set of thoughts.

  ‘Now, the night before we started on this journey Anuradha spoke to me on phone. She told me the following. She said from Som’s sick-bed she came to you. She told you what I had told her. That there was no hope for Som. She begged you to save him. You laughed her away, saying he was in good hands and what could you do that the doctors could not. You said you could not perform miracles. Anuradha persisted, wept, begged and threatened. She said to you she could not live without Som and she would eat poison if something happened to him. She said your father had given Aftab his eyesight so why could you not save Som’s life. She said she would not go home until you did something for Som.’

  There was another pause. Gargi had been listening carefully, attentively, trying not to miss anything he said. ‘Is all this correct?’ K asked her.

  Gargi made no response. K repeated the question. Gargi gave him her charming smile.

  K stared out of the windows. I could see his mind working, trying to tackle the question another way. ‘I am a medical doctor. I do not believe in things in which Anuradha believes. But I know for a fact that Som had no chance whatsoever and I want to know: did you save him? Anuradha says you did. And in return for what you did, she says, you made her promise that she would give up Som. For ever. That to her, Som would be dead, either way. Is this true? Please tell me.’

  There was great intensity in his question. It affected me. For a moment it affected Gargi as well. She took out a pad from under the mat and wrote out a few words. ‘I cannot tell you what you want to know,’ the note said.

  I could see the disappointment in K’s face. He carried on with his precise lawyer-like presentation. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘there is another thing. At the end of whatever it was that you did, as a gift for the gods, Anuradha left with you all her jewellery and a package of shares that this foolish man has been hunting for. That, I understand, was all the wealth that she had at the time.’

  Gargi wrote out her reply readily enough. After reading it K passed it on to me. ‘I have a package. I have been asked by the Secretary of the temple to hand it over to you. I do not know what it contains. I can give it to you tomorrow if you come in the morning.’

  I did not know what to make of what I had heard. For a second I thought K had made up the story on the spur of the moment. Except that it was a very odd story to cook up. Moreover, the matter, all said and done, was serious. Exchanges had obviously taken place between K and Anuradha; even between K and Geeta who, perhaps, had received information, in turn, from Anuradha. It really was ironic that both my wife and my mistress should gang up against me. Gargi’s note, of course, did not admit anything, which left the matter doubtful.

  There was a businesslike finality about Gargi’s note. It left little room for discussion. Her muteness which had always brought forth such streams of loquacity from me, now left me tongue-tied. Here was this package. I could take it or leave it. She was going to offer me neither explanation nor advice. I had the confused feeling that I was being put on a hook and she was going to do nothing to get me off.

  Yet, I did try to seek explanations but met with the same enigmatic smile that had earlier greeted K. One could believe that
this happened, that a miracle took place or one need not believe it. Gargi did not seem to mind either way.

  Minutes passed in silence. After a decline during the afternoon the bustle in the precincts of the temple was again on the increase. Suddenly, the idea of visiting the deity entered my head and I mentioned it to Gargi. She nodded, rang a tiny bell. The guide appeared again. He seemed to understand what we wanted. We took leave of Gargi.

  As we went down the spiral staircase I noticed the declining sun at the far end of the valley. The shadows of the Tibetan poles slanted the other way. Beyond, on the mountain peak, the light had already died. The silence was unbroken.

  ‘There is no deity as such in this temple,’ our guide explained. ‘Only a flame.’

  ‘A flame?’

  ‘These were volcanic mountains at one time. A jet of natural gas has burnt in the sanctum of this temple at least for a thousand years.’

  ‘And that is your deity?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The crowds were still thin. We were ushered into a circular chamber with a rockfloor. In the centre of the floor shot a dazzling blue flame. It was taller than me and burnt quietly. I now realized that it was only the authority of our guide that had enabled us to come so close to it. The pilgrims watched it from a distance of more than fifty feet.

  We looked at it in wonder. This, then, was Krishna, was it? The circular chamber reminded me of another place but I could not immediately recall it. And then the thought crossed my mind that if this was God and this was all that was God and if there was no proof that a miracle saved me, then, I was going to take the shares the following morning. And not just the shares. Kneeling beside that fantastic flame, my heart bursting with sorrow and my old demented love for Anuradha, I vowed I was going to reverse the whole thing: I was going to get the shares and Anuradha. No halfassed rigmarole was going to keep us apart.