ORANGE AND BLACK RICKSHAWS, pink and purple buses, black cars, white cars, bicycles, trucks and cows pressed close all around us. We were stuck in traffic. Drivers were honking their horns but no one was going anywhere. Radji and the rich man were so wrapped up in their game they never saw any of it.
I didn’t know why I wanted Radji to win so badly but I did. It felt like more than a game to me. The rich man held such an air of importance, as if his time, his money and his person were all more important than Radji, a ten-year-old boy who couldn’t even read or write, who just happened to have been born an Untouchable, who had run away from home and been living in a hole in the wall of an ancient warehouse, where I found him. Radji was a good person. I knew it. And he had his whole life ahead of him. He deserved so much more than he had, or that anyone seemed to want him to have. Somehow, if he could just beat the rich man at chess, it felt like that would prove to everyone that they were wrong about him.
But the worst possible thing happened: the rich man took Radji’s queen. It happened so quickly I didn’t have a chance to warn him. Radji had pulled his queen out to attack the rich man’s bishop, but the rich man very cleverly placed his own queen in such a way as to force Radji to choose between losing either a pawn or a bishop, and that distracted him; he didn’t see the real danger. He moved his bishop to safety, and the rich man rushed in and took his queen. He made a strange grunting sound as if he were an animal but he was just really excited. Radji was breathing so hard now I was worried about him. And yet he didn’t despair, and he never stopped trying. He did his very best to the end. And then, something wonderful happened.
The rich man had been on a roll. With Radji’s queen gone, he began attacking his other pieces and it didn’t seem possible for Radji to stop him. The end was coming soon. Radji was concentrating very intensely on the position of his king, though I wasn’t certain why. And then I saw what he had done: he had positioned his king such as to create a stalemate. The rich man didn’t see it coming; he was just so confident he was going to win. But he didn’t win. All he managed to do was force a stalemate so that nobody could win. The game ended a tie. I couldn’t help it; I burst out: “Woooo Hoooo!” The rich man stared in shock. “No! No! It can’t be! No!”
But it was.
The traffic moved a little and stopped again. Men pushing carts leaned close to the car and stared in out of fascination at the rich man sitting opposite the poor boy. The sun was high and it was hot but I thought I could smell water. Hollie’s nose was twitching wildly. It must have been the river. I raised my head to see that Seaweed was gone. I looked up and thought maybe I saw him in the sky. But perhaps he was already down at the water somewhere, mingling with other seagulls.
Radji cleared the game and set it up again. He always set the game slowly and methodically, as if it were a ceremony. The rich man was upset. I didn’t know why he didn’t just get out of the car now. It may not have been the best neighbourhood, but he could find a telephone and call someone if he wanted. But he didn’t appear to want to. He couldn’t seem to let the game go. And sure enough, as soon as Radji put all the pieces in order, the rich man moved his pawn and they started another game.
The traffic moved a little and we went down the street. While Radji and the rich man lost themselves in their game, Hollie and I stared out the window at the pretty pink buildings. The closer we came to the river, the more colourful the houses became. This city was old, really old, like thousands of years old. And it felt like it. Melissa kept her hands on the wheel with the patience of an elephant. She appeared to have something on her mind. I wondered what it was. She was squinting her eyes and it wasn’t for the sun. Was she feeling nervous about putting her brother’s ashes in the river?
I turned around in my seat to watch the game. Radji was in danger of losing his knight again. I leaned closer and tried to catch his eye. He looked up at me. We stared at each other for just a second and he said, “No quarter.” I smiled at him. He wanted no help. He wanted to play the rich man on his own. I respected that. I turned around and looked out the window again with Hollie.
The rich man beat Radji. It took him awhile though. Radji hung on for as long as he could. And though he tried to force a stalemate again, the rich man was ready for it this time. The game ended just as we turned a corner where a crowd of pilgrims were carrying a statue through the street. It had the head of an elephant, the body of a man, four arms and a big fat belly with a snake wrapped around it like a belt. “Ganesh!” Melissa said. “The god of new beginnings. His belly is full of sweets.”
We stared as the procession went past. The rich man was beaming. He seemed awfully happy for a middle-aged business man who had just beat a ten-year-old boy at chess. He couldn’t help himself. But as Ganesh teetered gently past us in the other direction, such that we were all given a close look, the rich man’s gaze fixed upon the god and his eyes went all dreamy. Then he glanced down at his watch and was pulled back into the real world. “Oh! Oh, I must go!” He stuck his head out the window and looked all around. “Where are we? Oh, yes, I know this place!” He pulled his head back inside and looked at us as if he were seeing us for the first time. “Where are you going now?” he said. “Why have you come to Varanasi?”
I didn’t know how to answer him exactly so I reached down and lifted the urn off the floor and raised it up so that he could see it. He nodded respectfully. “And Radji,” I continued, nodding my head towards Radji, “has come to bathe in the Ganges.”
The rich man no longer carried anger on his face. Now that he had beaten Radji, he was suddenly friendly and full of energy. He stared at Radji with curiosity. “You have come to bathe in Mother Ganga?”
Radji nodded his head.
“From where have you come?”
Radji didn’t know how to answer, so I did. “From Ernakulum.”
The rich man raised his eyebrows. “All the way from Ernakulum? Just a boy?” He looked down at his watch. “You know you must go to different ghats, to bathe and to spread your ashes?”
Melissa turned her head slightly. “Oh?”
“Yes, yes! You must! Different ghats for bathing and ashes.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll figure it out.”
He stared at his watch as if he were trying to make an important decision. He looked at Radji again and then he made it. “Turn here,” he said to Melissa firmly. “I will take you to the ghats myself. Turn here!”
Melissa did as she was told and followed his directions. We left the main road and drove through narrow streets lined with tall buildings. Even though it was sunny, the buildings cast dark shadows into the street. There weren’t many cars here but it was a challenge for Melissa to navigate through the rickshaws, people and cows. It became so narrow and crowded it felt like we were driving underneath things.
We came to a dead end. “We get out here,” said the rich man. He got out of the car. I put Hollie in the tool bag; we rolled up the windows, climbed out and locked the car. I saw the rich man talking to some young men on the street. He handed them money. He was paying them to watch the car for us.
Melissa, Radji, Hollie and I followed the rich man between some buildings and we came out at the crest of a hill. Below us lay the river. The Ganges. My first thought was that it flowed slowly like chocolate milk. It was brown and smooth and wide. There were lots of narrow boats, like dories, and swarms of people bathing in the water or standing on the steps next to it. The steps came all the way up the hill. The saris of women spread below us like colourful flames. Many people were in white, and many had pulled their pant legs up as far as they could go and were stepping into the river that was their goddess. It was such a colourful scene. I even wondered if the river could really be a goddess.
The rich man pointed down the steps to a platform beside the water. There were a lot of steps. “Down there,” he said. Then he pointed downstream. “Over there for ashes.” Melissa nodded to show she understood, but didn’t say anything. We were all a bit overwhelmed, for different reasons. I looked at Radji. He looked at me. His eyes were as wide as saucers. I wondered what he was thinking. The rich man turned to go. I watched him. He went about ten steps, stopped, turned around and stared at Radji, who hadn’t moved an inch. He was fixed in his spot. The rich man breathed deeply, stood as tall as he could and looked down at the little boy. Then he came back. “Come,” he said to Radji, “I will show you.”
While Melissa, Hollie and I followed, the rich man took Radji’s hand and led him down the steps of the ghat. He stood out from most people there because he was wearing a dark suit, and it was so expensive. But that wasn’t what made everyone stare as much as the fact that he was walking down hand in hand with a poor young boy. But the rich man didn’t care what anyone thought. He had made up his mind.
At the bottom of the steps he took off his shoes, socks, jacket, shirt and tie. He rolled up his pants and showed Radji how to do the same. Radji took off his t-shirt. The rich man held out his hand, Radji took it once more and together they stepped into the river. The rich man reached down, cupped the water with his hands and washed his face. Radji did the same. The rich man lowered his arm into the water and washed it with the other, then reversed them. Radji imitated him exactly. The rich man watched this, and then . . . he started to laugh. It was a small laugh at first, but it grew into a great big belly laugh, which reminded me of the statue of Ganesh, as if Ganesh were there in the river, rolling his big belly in laughter. The rich man lowered his head and scooped water over it. Radji did the same. Then he dropped his hands onto both of Radji’s shoulders and said something to him that I couldn’t hear. I saw Radji nod his head. Then they stepped out of the river and dressed. The rich man came past us, smiled, bowed his head, and kept going. We watched him climb the steps and disappear. Then Radji came. He had a funny look on his face, what I imagined a bird might look like the very first time it flew.