Last Labyrinth Read online

  Was there a First Cause? He had wanted to know. And now? I wondered, had he found the answer by now?

  5

  Did Lal Haveli ever exist? Could it be a fragment of an overheated imagination, a vapour, like that little cloud beyond my window, crossing the face of the midnight moon? Were it not for the images — photographs of the soul — that pass time and again before my eyes, I might, indeed, have doubted its existence. A desolate garden; an alley; a brooding windowless facade; white-washed walls smudged with the hands of rickshaw pullers; a broken fountain, a ceiling full of unlit chandeliers; ventilators of stained glass. Where else could have I seen the sarcophagus of green marble that, even in my dreams, possesses the power to chill me? How else the idea of a labyrinth within the labyrinth of lanes that stretch westwards from the ghats of Benaras.

  I remember being fetched from the hotel by Tarakki, Aftab’s morose, reticent chauffeur. It was a warm evening. There were no avenues or landmarks or statues of statesman that I recognized. But I recognized the river and the river was always there, at every turn, disappearing momentarily from view only to reappear in a grander vista. It demanded notice — and got it. A long iron bridge, brown and red, leaned across a wilderness. Except for its black silhouette the vast evening sky was empty. On the other side of the river there were ruins and marshes, where the dacoits periodically, no doubt, plundered, also in the name of a god.

  The road narrowed down. There was no kerb to mark its margins. It dribbled into dusty footpaths which, in turn, vanished into a nullah, a ditch, a row of shops. Shops were everywhere, little wooden structures, as high as a man. Inside them, on little cushions, sat men in black caps, their paan-red lips open like unhealed wounds. They looked up as the car went by, their eyes wide in small-town curiosity. I loathed small towns.

  There were mendicants, a bewildering variety, caring neither for the car nor the other distraction of this illusory world. This was one class of humanity that Aftab’s chauffeur respected even if he cared little for the laws of traffic. Mesmerized, he started at their ash-smeared bodies, drugged eyes, offering even a smart salute if they seemed inclined to receive one.

  Presently, structures of brick and mortar appeared; not skyscrapers or even bungalows whose windows might shine with the reflection of the sun, but medieval facades with heavy wooden doors. They looked like the habitat of the rich. Beyond them stood little diminutive dwellings, thousands of them, perched on each other’s shoulders, white and yellow and an occasional green, their sun-baked walls waiting for the night. A turn blocked out the sun and the sky, took us back three hundred years. Buildings like these did not exist in Bombay whose destiny, I knew, was addressed to different purposes.

  The old Dodge twisted and turned in a maze of narrow streets. I was surprised that it could move at all. There was traffic about but it slid easily past the automobile. Before leaving, Mr. Thapar had said, ‘Personally, I don’t know if there is still such a lot of advantage in acquiring his company.’

  ‘But you agree there is some advantage,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’

  ‘Besides,’ I added, ‘I don’t believe he can manage it. If it is not us, it will be someone else.’

  So here I was, in an old Dodge smelling of gasoline and tobacco, rattled around by a reticent chauffeur. A fire-station, a sharp turn, and we were in a blind alley. There was a heavy antique door, its square panels studded with brass knobs. A courtyard paved with grey slate. Aftab beside a broken fountain. Dark glasses, white shirt, a striped necktie that might have belonged to a regiment of the Indian Army.

  ‘Welcome, Bhaskar,’ he said, extending his hand.

  I remembered Anuradha saying, ‘A Bhaskar! What is a Bhaskar doing in business?’

  In the warm April evening, near the broken fountain, Aftab and I shook hands. His hand was soft and I cannot say that I did not feel a certain affection for him.

  He led me inside, into a room that was cool. It was furnished in maroon. The sofas, carpets, curtains, tables, chairs, all were maroon. Anuradha sat on a maroon divan along with another woman. We exchanged smiles of recognition. She looked different from what I remembered of her: more relaxed, in control. Persian carpets lay scattered over a floor of marble. The other woman stared out of sad brown eyes. Dressed in a silk garara, its gold glittering in the semi-dark, she looked like a luminous extra on a film set. She stared but did not seem to take much in.

  I talked of this and that, not the business that had brought me. His head thrown back Aftab smoked without a break. He listened politely. In fact, he heard nothing. Anuradha watched me. Now and then she nodded, smiled.

  The Blue Room — for that was how that room of maroons was called by them — darkened, although it was still light over the fountain. The room remained unlit except for a brass lamp. A chandelier hung from the ceiling. There were other chandeliers. None of them was lit. Maroon curtains of old velvet hid the walls. There might have been windows behind them or doors or other rooms. There were no street sounds. The room had the authority of a separate creation. This was how it might always have been: a dark brooding presence inhabited by a man, his wife, and his mistress.

  While we waited for tea, I strolled towards the farther edge. There was a chess-table. A game of chess, half-way through a manoeuvre, lay upon it. A portrait of Anuradha, bright in spite of the darkness, stared down at me, the hint of a smile in her eyes. Her dress was unchanged since the days of the portrait. There were other portraits.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ Anuradha said at my back.

  I turned with a start.

  ‘You scared me. This is a fine portrait.’

  ‘Aftab did it.’

  ‘Oh, did he? You never know what all these plastic manufacturers do in their spare time. And who are the rest?’

  ‘Aftab’s ancestors, most of them.’

  Landowners, taluqdars, courtiers. She led me past the silent row.

  ‘They all seem to be the dancing-girl type,’ I said.

  She moved on impatiently. ‘This is the portrait of Aftab’s grandfather.’

  ‘He looks exactly like him.’

  ‘He was a great poet, a friend of... oh, what’s the point? You would only think of the dancing-girls he lived with. Let’s go for tea.’

  Turning a corner I was startled by an apparition. Careworn, holding a cigarette in one hand, it looked as though for many centuries it had lived in that bleak house. I stared breathless, realizing, suddenly, that I was staring at my own image.

  I turned around, laughed sheepishly. Anuradha had disappeared but there was Aftab.

  ‘Come this way,’ he said.

  ‘I did not know you painted portraits.’

  ‘Vanity of vanities. And like all vanities that, too, has passed.’

  He had a nice smile but its effect, because of the goggles, was odd. It seemed as though he smiled with half a face.

  We crossed a long dark corridor. Passing under a solitary bulb in the centre I turned towards him. A stray beam of light pierced his glasses and I thought I saw an eye, enormously magnified by the thick lenses. I was startled because the eye was watching me. The corridor ended in a small vine-covered patio. The vines were full of dust. Anuradha waited for us. Tea had been laid on a chipped table. We sat on black cane chairs. As I took my chair, a lizard, green and red, scurried off into the vines. Lal Haveli was an odd mixture of the decrepit and the affluent.

  In the deepening dusk we took tea.

  ‘Have you ever been inside a house like this?’ Aftab said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘There are things about such houses that you discover only with time.’

  ‘I am sure that’s true of all houses. I haven’t entered my father’s room for years.’

  ‘Your father was a very good man. A superior person.’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Everyone in the industry knew him.’

  Anuradha spoke: ‘Why can’t you visit your father’s room?’

&
nbsp; ‘Surely, Bhaskar is not here to discuss that,’ Aftab interposed.

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said.

  ‘I really want to know,’ she said ignoring her husband.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe because he died of melancholia.’

  She was visibly moved. ‘But why? Why that of all things?’

  I shrugged.

  After tea, Aftab led me into the middle of a ravaged garden. The grass was patchy and brown. Except for a monstrous peepul, it had neither trees nor shrubs nor even a bush of nettles. The peepul was very old. Long roots hung from its branches. A grinning, pink-faced, monkey hung from a branch.

  ‘Let me take you around the haveli,’ Aftab said.

  The place was bigger than its narrow facade would have led one to believe. Much bigger. It must have been built over a long period. A room here. A verandah there. You could spot the idiosyncrasies of the different builders. They were eccentricities more than differences of style. A variety of balconies and cornices and patios. Doors of all shapes and colour; some carved, others painted in ornate, fading enamel. There were rooms, bright and airy as a gazebo; others where sunlight never entered. Aftab explained nothing nor did I bother to seek explanations. Noises of the city rushed in with the opening of a door; equally suddenly, they were choked off. Occasionally, I caught a passing view of a spire against the evening sky. Bits of plaster fell on us as we went past.

  The house was built either with no plan or with a most meticulous plan, though directed at an elusive objective. We climbed and came down meaningless flights of stairs. Passages twisted and turned, ran through uninhabited rooms. There were terraces covered with moss, and courtyards so airless that no one could ever have sat in them. Vines had been planted in what might have been toilets at one time. There were rooms with windows of stained glass that was fashionable fifty years earlier. The rooms contained little furniture.

  There was a chunk of green marble against a mottled wall. On it was carved a tall vase. Long stemmed flowers spilled out of it. The flowers were coloured with bits of glass. There was a parrot on one side of the vase and a horse on the other. At the bottom, a verse in the Arabic script was engraved. The whole piece, so like a sarcophagus, stood extraordinarily sharp amidst the dead surroundings.

  We went through another set of rooms and corridors and, then, at the end of a passage, we came upon the same sarcophagus of green marble. And now the artifacts started to repeat themselves, until, I realized, that it was a maze that we were moving through. Perhaps, the entire haveli had been built as a maze. What an idea! Passing once again by the marble sarcophagus I wanted to ask Aftab what it was that the couplet said. I did not. It was as if the couplet was the seal to a mystery that would be destroyed if I were told its meaning.

  And, then, as though on the rebound, I became aware of the strange, intense sensuality that, like adrenaline, the decrepit and decadent surroundings had released in my blood. Standing in an empty mezzanine with a stream of coloured lights pouring in from the ventilators, its primal intensity nearly overwhelmed me. Heaven knew what acts men and women had consummated in the seclusion of these secret chambers. In this place anything could happen. Aftab was looking at me. The spasm passed. We moved on. Coming out on some other front, we stood on a platform.

  ‘It is all run down now, this haveli, but its labyrinth remains.’

  So, it was a labyrinth.

  ‘It certainly needs repairs,’ I said.

  ‘When we got married I brought Anuradha here. We stood on this platform. This garden was in bloom that winter. There was fruit on the trees. My father was alive and money was coming in from the lands. Things have dried up since, Anuradha stood here on this platform and cried. She could see perhaps what was coming.’

  He spoke again, ‘You know, Bhaskar, someone had been buying the shares of my company.’

  I kept quiet.

  ‘What should one do?’

  ‘You should be grateful.’

  He turned to look at me, fumbling for a cigarette all the while. ‘You think so?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘At times I do, yes.’

  I wondered if Anuradha had told him who the buyer was.

  ‘Why don’t you sell off the whole thing?’

  ‘One might. On the other hand, one could just scrape through.’

  One could also snatch the stars from heaven, I thought. ‘What’s the use of scraping through? You might as well have money in the bank.’

  ‘What’s the use of money in the bank?’ He seemed genuinely at a loss.

  ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘Anuradha does not want me to sell.’

  There was nothing to be said if they were bent upon ruining themselves. In the distance, a temple bell started to ring. Aftab said, ‘And yet, you know, I might sell it off if the right man came along.’

  ‘The only right man in business is the man with the money.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘What’s your right man?’

  ‘I don’t want to discuss. I find it difficult to argue with you.’

  I looked at him in surprise, a little ashamed. No one had ever said that to me.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You have such strong ideas. And you hold them so... so feverishly. Why do you do that?’

  He was piqued.

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right.’

  With that little outburst he clammed up.

  We wandered leisurely back through the building. ‘Did I tell you it is built like a labyrinth, this haveli.’

  ‘You did. But why?’

  ‘My ancestors baffled their enemies this way. There are rooms within rooms, corridors that only bring you back to where you started.’

  ‘I noticed that. Can you really lose your way?’

  ‘Of course. There are rooms where you could lock a man up and he would never be found. No one would hear his cry.’

  ‘And what is in the last labyrinth?’

  ‘In the last labyrinth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why, death, of course.’

  I looked at him, puzzled.

  ‘I meant the labyrinth of this house.’

  ‘Yes... yes...,’ he said vaguely and went ahead.

  We climbed up to a vast terrace. It was still light. Aftab introduced me to his city, for he was, ultimately, a child of Benaras, the Benaras of taluqdars and minor rajahs, as much as I was of Bombay. And Anuradha? Hers was a city without a name, a city set in an oasis, plundered a thousand times and waiting to be plundered again, by men like Aftab and me who forever lurked in its desert purlieus.

  I looked around. So, this was the city that had been famous before Rome was known or Cyrus had built the Persian Empire; whose craftsmen had provided silks for King Solomon’s palaces and gold for his temples? If it was so, the view from Aftab’s terrace gave no hint of it. We looked smack into enormous hoardings: one advertising a movie, the other aphrodisiacs. Around them sprouted other hoardings, small and big, offering bulbs, hotels, saris, typing schools, sweet shops, hair oils, sweaters, fans, diesel engines. Surrounding the hoardings, like a fisherman’s net, lay a maze of narrow lanes. The lanes were crowded, with people and with holy bulls. The houses themselves were nondescript, built in thick clusters but with a singular randomness as if they grew out of handfuls of seed that one of the city’s million gods had carelessly scattered. There was a skyline, though, an impressive one. Spires, pinnacles, minarets thrust into the evening sky. Kalashes gleamed in the light of the sun that was setting at our backs. Scattered among these, a striking row of white buildings jutted out at all angles. They had a strange sombreness in the fading light.

  ‘What are those buildings,’ I asked Aftab.

  ‘Widows’ homes, orphanages, rehabilitation centres.’

  ‘That is a grim list.’

  He turned and looked at me in surprise. I wondered what had so surprised him.

  ‘That is Aurangzeb’s m
osque. And that over there is Ganga.’ He put it as though indicating a personal possession. ‘They propose to build a new bridge over it.’

  ‘That should be good.’

  ‘One seldom knows what is good.’

  Epigrams in others had always annoyed me. But Aftab put them so genuinely, so without affectation that he seemed even unaware that they were epigrams. In fact, that was the only way he talked. Did he pick them up from men like Amjad Mian? Or, from his dead ancestors, all those obsolete faces staring from the walls of the Blue Room? Or, maybe, he coined them all by himself, in the darkness of his brain. He never looked at me when he uttered them and yet, I felt, they were somehow directed at me.

  ‘What does a bridge mean to me?’ he said. ‘Easier journey? But journeys to where? I dislike travel. When I was young I was expected to run about, conduct business. My father was never satisfied with what I did. I myself had the constant feeling that I was not doing enough. Maybe, I used to think, there are places I ought to see, action I should witness, decisions I should take. Now, I know better. It is a great relief to know that there is no new thing under the sun. At least, for me. For people like you it must be different.’

  ‘I am still running around looking for some new thing under the sun.’

  ‘I hope you find it, my friend.’

  ‘But you do worry about shares, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but that is because it concerns Anuradha. She is so keen to see me succeed.’

  ‘She wants you to be an industrialist?’

  ‘I don’t know. It is just that she can’t stand to see anybody fail. It breaks her heart. So, here I am, stuck with this industry and she wants me to somehow pull through.’

  A row of carts, their wooden wheels creaking, went slowly towards the ghats. The street directly below us must have been another alley because I hadn’t seen a soul there all the while we had been sitting on the terrace. Night crept over the city. The sky here had a clarity and a panorama that I had seldom seen in Bombay. That sky and that river might have produced poets and saints, even kings, but could they have produced an industrialist? Here was a void of its own kind and Aftab’s ancestors had filled it in their own way: with polished conversation and song and an occasional clash of arms. Could Aftab get away from the legacy and fill this emptiness with plastic powder?