Vijay Lall was an early riser. He awoke to the harsh cawing of the first crows, and when he drew the curtains of his study window, he could see nothing except street lights glimmering in the distance. During the last few mornings of the waning moon, the apartment blocks around the square patch of lawn in his colony were bathed in soft moonlight. Then they made a pleasant sight. But at all other times they looked squat, staid and lifeless, like middle-aged women who had let themselves go. For some years now, the hour or two before sunrise was the only time he could gaze out of his window without being mildly irritated by what he saw.
Facing his window was a large mulberry tree, which had been planted at the time the apartment blocks were built and was over fifty years old, perhaps exactly as old as he. Vijay had developed a special relationship with this tree. Most of the winter it was without any leaves and its dry branches stuck out like the quills of a giant porcupine. During these months only the crows and sparrows visited it. Their cawing and twittering were his dawn chorus. Sometime in mid-February, usually the eighteenth, he noticed tiny green specks sprout from the seemingly dead brown branches. In recent years he had been watching out for this event and noted it down carefully in his diary. A week after they first became visible, the green specks turned into green leaves. And as spring turned to summer, the tree was covered with so thick a foliage that he could not see the branches. It became host to a variety of birds. Even before the eastern horizon turned grey and the call for the Fajr prayer floated in from the tall minaret of the mosque across the road, a family of spotted owlets set up a racket—chitter-chitter-chatter-chatter—and roused the crows and sparrows roosting there for the night. Then came the green barbets. They wound themselves up with a low kook-kook-kook before exploding into an incessant katrook-katrook. Most afternoons koels, as shy as barbets, hid behind the foliage and called intermittently till the sun went down and the call for the Maghrib prayer rose from the mosque. As it got dark, the spotted owlets set up their racket again, which was a signal that it was time for his sundowner.
The mulberry came into its full glory at the time of the water festival, Holi, in March. Its invisible flowers turned into light green caterpillar-like fruit full of sweet juice. Humans vied with parakeets to be the first to get them. Street urchins threw sticks and stones to knock them down. Within a week the tree was denuded of all its fruit and then all it had to offer man, bird and beast was its cool shade. Stray dogs were chased away by the people living in the block closest to the tree, who tried to grab space under it for their cars against the scorching sun. Since Vijay was an early riser and worked at home, he did not have much problem getting the shadiest spot directly under a huge branch for his twenty-year-old car, a beige-coloured, temperamental Fiat called Annie. Although his car was regularly messed up by bird droppings, it remained cool through the day. It was during the long summer months that Vijay strengthened his personal relationship with the mulberry tree. He greeted it with a ‘Hi’ when he went to take Annie out for a drive and a ‘Cheerio’ when he parked her there for the night.
The mulberry tree was a constant in Vijay’s life. He awoke to the bird-babble rising from its branches and had his first drink every evening at the hour when the owlets announced sunset. He brought out his woollens when its branches became bare, and began using his air-conditioner when they were heavy with foliage. It was a comfortable, sedate routine.
Then one day the tree almost killed Vijay, and his life was thrown out of gear.
*
It was the month of June; temperatures had soared into the forties. One way of remaining cool was to stay in an air-conditioned room. Another, and a healthier way, was to spend an hour or two in a swimming pool which cooled one off for the evening. Though Vijay felt lethargic after his siesta, he forced himself out of his apartment one particularly hot afternoon and walked to his car under the mulberry tree. It was oppressive and still. Not a breath of air; not a leaf stirred. The sky was a bleached grey. It looked ominously like a lull before a storm. He saw a wall of muddy brown advancing from the west, with kites wheeling above it. At this time of the year, dust storms were common; they blew in and out with blind fury, uprooting trees and telegraph poles and spreading layers of dust everywhere. Vijay thought it wise to get away as fast as he could. He had barely reversed ten yards when a dust-laden gale swept across the colony at devilish speed. He heard a loud crack, like that of thunder following lightning, and the enormous branch under which his car had been parked came crashing down on the tarmac. The earth trembled beneath him.
Vijay switched off the engine and sat still in the car for several minutes. The two chowkidars of the colony ran up to check if he was all right. He waved them away without rolling down his window, and just to prove that he was not rattled, turned Annie around and drove out. His hands were shaking. It was best to be somewhere else for a while.
The storm had blown away as fast as it came. Branches of trees littered the roads. An auto-rickshaw had turned turtle on Mathura Road and a small crowd had gathered around it. Vijay slowed down, wanting to know if the driver had survived, then changed his mind. By the time he got to the club pool, a cool, clean breeze was blowing. For an hour he had the pool all to himself. When other members and their children started streaming in, he came out of the water and stretched himself out on a poolside chair. He covered his face with his bath towel and went over the scene of destruction caused by the storm.
He had had the narrowest of escapes. Instead of being comfortably stretched out on a deck chair, he could have been in the morgue of some hospital with a smashed skull, and every bone in his body broken. What was even more unsettling was the manner in which he had escaped certain death: he did not remember a single day when his old Fiat had warmed up and started in less than half a minute at the very least, but today it had started instantly. A few seconds later and both he and Annie would have been crushed. Was it God’s will that he should live a little longer?
Vijay was not sure about God, nor about providence. He had never given these things much thought. Now he did. Half-forgotten stories of providential escape from certain death came to his mind. Some instances that he remembered reading about were extremely bizarre. One was of a plane flying from Dublin to London’s Heathrow Airport. It caught fire as it was approaching London. The pilot decided to make an emergency landing on an airstrip near a suburb called Mill Hill. As it descended, the plane hit the chimney of a house and broke into two. All the passengers and crew were killed, except a stewardess who was sitting at the tail end of the plane. She was thrown out of the burning aircraft and into the swimming pool in the garden of the house. Not a bone broken, not a scratch on her body. Why was she singled out for survival, and by whom?
Some years later there was the case of a man standing on the crowded platform of a London Underground station. He fell on the tracks as the train was coming out of the tunnel. The train came to an abrupt halt just as its wheels touched the man’s body. The authorities decided to reward the train driver for his vigilance, but he was an honest man and refused to accept the reward. He had not stopped the train, he said; someone in the train must have pulled the emergency cord, though he couldn’t imagine why, since no one in the enclosed compartments could have seen what lay ahead on the tracks. Enquiries were made, but no passenger claimed to have pulled the emergency cord. Whose was the unseen hand that had brought the train to a sudden halt in the nick of time? Why had the man’s life been spared? Was it to allow him time to finish some task left unfinished? Or was it to compensate him for some good deed he had done?
But the most mind-boggling was a case in Vijay’s own country. A man was travelling in a crowded bus along a narrow mountain road. He took a window seat in the last row. Since it was autumn and the weather had turned chilly, he wrapped himself in his shawl and soon fell asleep. He awoke a few hours later when he felt something slimy around one of his ankles. It was a small snake which had found the man’s leg a warm place to hibernate for the winter. The man screamed. The bus came to a screeching halt. The driver, conductor and passengers rushed to the back of the bus but shrank back at the sight of the snake curled around the man’s ankle. No one had any idea what to do about it. The driver ran out of patience and suggested that the man slowly step out of the bus and sit on the parapet of the road with his leg exposed to the sun. It would induce the snake to leave him and find another dark, warm place and he could then get on the bus following them. The man did as he was told. The bus moved on. The snake behaved as had been predicted: it uncurled itself and slithered down the hillside. The man got on the following bus. A mile or so ahead they noticed the parapet of the road knocked down. The bus ahead of them was lying upside-down in the khud at the bottom of the hill. There were no survivors. The only one to escape was the man who had got off the bus because of the snake curled around his ankle.
Vijay went over and over these incidents. He felt disoriented. He left the club as the evening came on. When he reached his colony, he parked his car just inside the gate and walked up to examine the damage the mulberry tree had suffered. The branch which had been wrenched out had left a nasty gash exposing a hollow trunk. The fallen branch had been hacked into pieces to be used as firewood and its leaves stripped off to feed goats. Lots of twigs were littered about the tarmac. No one had dared to park their cars under the tree. Though not superstitious, Vijay also avoided leaving his car near it. He found another place, close to his window. This time the old mulberry tree had failed to demolish him or his car, but he had an uneasy feeling that it had turned malevolent towards him. As he entered his dark apartment and fumbled for the light switch, the strange thought came to him that the tree was in the last leg of its life and had meant to take him with it.
By the next morning everyone in the blocks of flats around the square was talking of Vijay’s miraculous escape from what must certainly have been the end of his life. They were used to seeing Annie occupy pride of place under the mulberry tree; they now saw her parked alongside his apartment, without a dent or even a scratch on her body. His neighbours came to congratulate him and get details of the story. With every narration he made it sound more and more dramatic. ‘It was the will of the Ooperawala,’ some of his neighbours said, pointing heavenwards. ‘Inscrutable are His ways. If the good lord is your protector, no one can touch a hair on your head.’ A silver-haired great grandmother, whom Vijay knew to be close to a hundred years old, added, ‘No one can go before his time; no one can live a second beyond the span allotted to him.’ Most were agreed that Vijay must have done some good karma in his previous life and had been rewarded for it. God is your protector, they said. God is good and merciful. A faint smile came over Vijay’s face at this, as he recalled the lines of a popular film song:
Ooperwala—very good very good
Nicheywala—very bad very bad . . .
It was an absurd song. But what he felt was no less absurd: till this morning he would have described himself as an agnostic; now, though not quite a believer, he felt like God’s chosen one.
The morning papers had pictures of the havoc caused by the dust storm on their front pages. A huge neem tree had been uprooted in Chanakyapuri. It lay diagonally across the road and there was a Maruti under it, reduced to a crumpled sheet of metal. Fortunately, there had been no one in the car. A peepal stretched across another road in the Delhi University campus with three mangled cars under it. Four men and two women had been seriously injured and taken to hospital. A small child in one of the cars had escaped unscathed. The storm had taken a toll of five lives: two labourers sleeping under a tree, two cyclists hit by a hoarding which had collapsed on them, and an elderly lady who ran to save her pet Pekinese from a falling eucalyptus only to be crushed under it. Their deaths made news, but among his friends Vijay’s narrow escape was the bigger news. They came morning and evening, all with stories of their own: of people who did not get to the airport on time and missed their flights that went down; trains that people had missed that went off the tracks.
The more Vijay heard these tales, the more he was convinced that he was someone special, above the common run of humanity. This added to his state of disorientation, because for as long as he could remember nothing very special had happened to him.
From the block of flats in which Vijay lived, his story spread to the neighbouring Khan Market. The shops were agog with talk of his incredible luck.
Vijay was known to most of the shopkeepers as he was seen in the market almost every evening, peering into shop windows, flipping through magazines displayed on the footpath, going into one bookshop after another and browsing around the shelves but rarely buying any books—they had become too expensive, and, in any case, as a freelance newspaper columnist he got more books to review than he could read. In the two antique shops, he examined figurines of Hindu gods and goddesses, garnet necklaces and brass artefacts, asked their price but never bought anything. In the music shops he hung about listening to tapes being played at the request of buyers. At the greengrocer’s he gaped awestruck at monstrous Korean apples, small-sized honey-sweet Japanese watermelons, avocado pears from Bangalore, fresh broccoli, baby corn, asparagus and artichokes. Their buyers were largely European and American diplomats and journalists who in Vijay’s opinion drew unacceptably large salaries and spoiled the market rates.
Vijay did not like the shop-owners of Khan Market. They were single-minded in their pursuit of money: everything here was more expensive than in any other market in the city. There were other reasons why Vijay had no time for them. Most shop-owners were Punjabi refugees from Pakistan—in one of his columns he had described them as semi-literate parvenus who had converted their hatred for Pakistan to prejudice against all Muslims. They supported one or the other of the Hindu fundamentalist parties. Between them they had built a small temple behind the main market which represented their religious beliefs. Ostensibly it was a Krishna temple, Shri Gopal Mandir, named after the deity, and life-size statues of Krishna and his consort, Radha, were put up on the altar. But the temple also accommodated several other deities favoured by the shopkeepers who were masters at hedging their bets. So there was the monkey-god, Hanuman, on one side of the entrance gate and Goddess Durga, astride a lion, on the other. Inside, the left wall had the Sai Baba of Shirdi, with stubble on his chin, one leg over the other and peering into space, and next to him the Sai Baba of Puttaparti with his halo of fuzzy hair and a pudgy hand raised in blessing. There was also a black granite Shivalinga, and in the cubicle next to it, idols of Shiva’s consort Parvati and his elephant-headed son, Ganesha. ‘To every Hindu his or her own God or Goddess’ was the market motto. The only one on whom all were agreed as the supreme divinity was Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth.
Vijay did not need the blessings of the many deities housed in the temple, just as he had no need for much of what was sold in Khan Market. The only things he bought were a packet of cigarettes and a couple of paans. He put one paan in his mouth, kept another in his pocket to chew after dinner, lit a cigarette and launched upon his hour-long wanderings through the market. When anyone asked him why he made the rounds of Khan Market every evening, he answered, ‘To see the raunaq. I like watching the happy crowds.’ And he would quote the Urdu poet Zauq: ‘I pass through the bazaar (of the world)/There is nothing I want to buy.’
There were others who, like Vijay, came to Khan Market every evening for the raunaq of multicoloured lights, fancy cars and trendy people going from shop to shop. Vijay recognized many of the regulars and even exchanged smiles with a few, but rarely spoke to them. There was a woman, in particular, who attracted Vijay’s attention and curiosity. She was not a regular but came to the market two or three times a week, not to see the raunaq but to do her shopping. She came in a chauffeur-driven car which was parked at the end of the market, facing the temple. She emerged from the car, always carrying a plastic handbag, crossed the road and went past the temple to another market which had a liquor store. She returned shortly afterwards to dump the bag full of liquor bottles in her car. Then she took out another bag, this time of black canvas, and strolled along the shops at a leisurely pace, stopping at every bookshop window. The only shop she entered was The Book Shop, which was classier than the others and played soft Western classical music at all hours of the day. It warmed Vijay towards the woman, since this was his favourite bookshop too, though he only ever bought his weekly magazines from it. He never entered the shop while the woman was inside. He loitered near the entrance till she emerged, usually half an hour later, and tailed her as she proceeded round the market to the greengrocer’s and the butcher’s.
When she returned to her car, she handed over the shopping bag to her driver, leaned against the bonnet and lit a cigarette. She surveyed the scene around her as she smoked, unbothered by the looks some of the people coming from the temple gave her. When she had finished her cigarette, she stamped the stub under her sandals—the same bright red pair each time, Vijay had noticed—and ordered the driver: ‘Chalo’. Two doors slammed shut and the Honda City eased out of the parking lot and sped away.
Vijay could not make out why this woman attracted his attention more than other visitors to Khan Market. It was true that he was immediately drawn towards Indian women who smoked and drank: to him, they were liberated women, possibly amenable to entering into frankly sexual relationships, no strings attached. Yet there were several other women he met at parties who also smoked and drank nonchalantly but left no impression on him. What was it about this woman? She had cropped black hair, thicker than any he had seen on another head, and while it was true that he liked short hair on women, that could not be the only reason for the attraction. As for looks, though she had a pleasant face, shapely breasts and an impressive posterior that protruded invitingly, a good number of women who came to the market were better looking.
Why did he follow her around, then? And why was it that he looked forward to seeing her but did not want to get any closer to her and strike up a conversation? It was as if he was afraid of ruining something. His infatuation was a mystery to him. So was she. He tried to guess facts about her life. She usually wore a salwar-kameez, but no bindi on her forehead nor sindhoor in the parting of her hair. At first he thought she might be Muslim or Christian, till he noticed she had a mangalsutra around her neck. Evidently she was Hindu and married. He could not make out where in India she came from: she could be Punjabi, Rajasthani, from UP or Maharashtra. He gave her names: Usha, Aarti, Menaka. Some evenings, having his drinks, he thought of her and felt warm and mellow. But it never occurred to him to do anything more than follow her around quietly.
A few evenings after the branch of the mulberry tree tried but failed to kill him, things changed.
Vijay saw the woman in the market a little earlier than her usual time. He followed her, as usual, a few steps behind. She went inside The Book Shop. And without thinking about it, he walked into the shop after her. He pretended to browse, picking out a book, reading the blurb, putting it back and pulling out another, as he kept inching closer to her. He heard her ask the proprietress, ‘I’m looking for a suitable birthday gift for a boy of fifteen.’
‘We have quite a selection for his age group,’ replied the young proprietress. The proprietress was a tall and attractive young girl who wore a diamond nose pin. She reminded Vijay of another girl he had known in his youth whom he had wanted vaguely to spend the rest of his life with, but the romance had fizzled out at the prospect of marriage.
‘What are his interests?’ she asked the woman. ‘Stamps, photography, wildlife, shikar, computers?’
‘I’m not sure. He reads a bit of everything. Perhaps good fiction . . . about wildlife?’
‘What about Joy Adamson’s Born Free, about her pet lioness Elsa?’
‘I think he read that a couple of years back.’
Vijay heard himself say, ‘Why not Kipling’s Jungle Book? It has all kinds of animals: Sher Khan, the tiger, Baloo, the bear. And there is Mowgli, the wolf-boy.’
The woman turned towards him, ‘You must be kidding! That is kid’s stuff. He read it when he learned to read English.’ To soften the snub she beamed a smile at him.
Vijay persisted. ‘What about Jim Corbett’s books on his encounters with man-eating tigers and leopards?’
‘He has read all of Corbett’s books,’ replied the woman, cutting him short.
Vijay did not give up. He was feeling a little reckless. ‘I bet he hasn’t read Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals.’
The girl from the shop lent her support. ‘It has long been one of our best-sellers, ma’am. I’m sure the young man will enjoy it as well.’
So it was Durrell’s book that won the evening. Both the women thanked Vijay for suggesting it. He felt strangely elated. The woman paid for the book and as she was leaving, turned to Vijay and said, ‘Thanks for everything. Goodnight.’
‘My pleasure,’ he beamed like a schoolboy.
On his second drink later that evening, Vijay found himself thinking of the woman and felt restless. The mellow, quiet feeling of the past had vanished. Had it been a mistake to talk to her? He knew that he could not follow her around silently as he used to. He had crossed an invisible line and now he must get to know her better. He decided that he would do so. He was aware that she must be at least twenty, perhaps twenty-five years younger than him, and he could be snubbed badly, but life was too short not to take chances. The thought of taking chances excited him.
Vijay ran into her again three days later. He was not sure if she recognized him. He took the liberty of greeting her and asked, ‘So, how did you like Durrell?’
She gave him a broad smile and replied, ‘Hi there! Enjoyed it hugely—both of us. Thanks for suggesting it.’
‘You live around here?’ he asked. ‘I see you almost every other evening.’
‘Not far. I like to do my shopping here. I can get everything I want, and it is so cheerful. And you?’
‘I live in the block of flats across the road. A poky little flat crammed with books. I have no other hobbies. I’m a boring man. I’ll be honoured if you’ll drop by some evening for a cup of chai or whatever.’
‘Thanks, but not today,’ she replied brusquely. ‘I may take you up on your invitation some other time. Nice meeting you.’ She extended her hand to bid him farewell. It was the first time he touched her. He liked the feel of her soft, warm hand. He wanted to hold it for longer but she did not encourage him. Pulling her hand out of his discreetly, she said, ‘See you. I must get things before the shops close.’ And she disappeared in the crowd of shoppers.
Another surprise awaited Vijay in his pursuit of his newfound passion. One afternoon he was loitering in the Masjid Nursery looking at plants for sale. There were three such nurseries close to his apartment. Although he bought nothing as he had not enough space in his flat for plants, he liked looking at them, finding out their names and prices. Masjid Nursery, so named because it was next to a mosque, had the largest display of flowers and cacti. While he was going around the nursery, he spotted the woman come to the mosque. She came on foot, there was no sign of her car. She took her sandals off at the entrance and went in. Vijay had assumed that she was Hindu; what was she doing in a mosque? Perhaps he was wrong. But then, Muslim women did not come to pray in mosques. Perhaps her son was at the madrasa reading the Quran and she had come to pick him up. Vijay hung around in the nursery for over half an hour. He heard the call for the Maghrib prayer. Men trooped in, taking their shoes inside with them, and fifteen minutes later, streamed out. It began to turn dark. Vijay could not hold his curiosity much longer. He went up to the entrance of the mosque. Only the lady’s bright red sandals lay close to the threshold. He peered in. There was a lone man sitting close to the pulpit, reciting from the Quran. To his right was another small door. Possibly she had entered from the main door and left by the side door, forgetting about her sandals. Vijay paused for a few moments, then picked up the sandals and brought them home.
It was a curious, inexplicable sense of triumph—like a scientist making a breakthrough in his research for the lodestone by which base metal could be turned into gold. He now had an excuse to invite her to his flat and get to know her name, to find out who she was and what she did. He put the sandals in a gap in one of his book shelves, next to the leather-bound volumes of Inferno, Don Quixote and Rubaiyat that were his prized possessions. Strange things were happening to Vijay Lall.
The next three evenings he went to the market and spent longer than usual going around the shops. The raunaq of Khan Market was no longer enough. He waited, but there was no sign of her. He bought two packets of cigarettes and a couple of paans. He wandered agitatedly for some time. He returned home defeated.
He was luckier on the fourth day. Returning from The Book Shop with copies of Outlook and India Today, he saw her coming towards him with a bag full of groceries. She was barefoot. Vijay stopped right in front of her and greeted her.
‘Good evening.’
‘Hi there,’ she replied with a distant smile.
‘What’s happened to your red sandals?’ he asked.
She looked down at her bare feet, as if noticing them for the first time, and replied, ‘I have lost them. How did you know they were red?’
‘I am a very observant man. You must not walk barefoot on these dirty roads and pavements. You might step on a sharp pebble or piece of glass. Surely you must have other footwear at home?’
‘Nope. Maybe I should buy a new pair.’
‘You can save your money. I have your sandals in my flat.’
She looked him full in the face, visibly alarmed. ‘In your flat? Where did you find them? And how did you know they were mine?’
‘I am observant and I am also a good spy,’ he replied. ‘I happened to be in the Masjid Nursery when I saw you take off your sandals and go into the mosque. You probably went out by the side door forgetting about them. I picked them up and took them home. I’ve taken good care of them. Don’t you want them back?’
‘Of course I do,’ she replied. Her brow gathered in a frown. ‘I’ll send my driver to pick them up when I’m done with my shopping. Where do you live?’
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I will return your sandals only to you and no one else. I’ve told you, I live just across the road. Besides, you might forget to send the driver. I can tell that you are very absent-minded.’
He half expected to be told to buzz off. But she seemed to like what she heard and smiled. ‘That I am. A little off my rocker, as they say. Eccentric and moody.’
‘Sounds charming. So, do I have the pleasure of your company?’
She laughed and nodded her head. He accompanied her to her car. She asked her driver to turn around and take her and the sahib to the block of flats across the road. They had no conversation in the car as Vijay kept instructing the driver where to turn to park the car. ‘Wait for a few minutes,’ she told the driver as they stepped out. Vijay opened the door of his flat and ushered her in.
She looked around the room. ‘Books, books, books. You could not have read them all.’
‘No, it will take more than a lifetime to read all of them. I just like surrounding myself with books. Do be seated,’ he said, pointing to the sofa. ‘I’ll get your sandals.’
She sat down. She looked sheepishly at her dirty feet resting on the expensive Bukhara carpet. ‘I’m afraid I’ll dirty your kaaleen,’ she said.
‘Don’t you worry about that, it has suffered much worse,’ he assured her. ‘Stay right where you are, I’ll be back in a minute.’
Vijay came back not with her shoes but a basin of water and a towel thrown over his shoulder.
‘What’s this for?’ she asked nervously.
‘You’ll find out,’ he replied. ‘See what a mess your feet are—black with gravel and dust. Put them in the basin, I’ll clean them.’
A look of alarm returned to her face, but she submitted tamely and put her feet in the basin. The water was warm. He pulled a moorha and sat in front of her. ‘Relax,’ he said gently. She leaned back, rested her head on the blue sofa and shut her eyes. He soaped her feet and sponged them. He took his own time doing this. Then moving the basin out of his way, he put her feet on his knees by turns and rubbed them with a towel. ‘Lovely arches,’ he said, kneading her feet with his thumbs. ‘You may open your eyes. See how clean and soft they look.’
She opened her eyes. She saw the basin full of muddy black water and her feet looking fresh and clean. The thin gold chain around her right ankle was gleaming after the wash. So was the silver ring she wore on one of her toes. ‘You seem to be a nice gentleman. But why are you doing all this for me?’ she asked. ‘I don’t even know your name.’
‘All in good time,’ he replied with a grin. He picked up the basin of dirty water and soapsuds and took it to his bathroom, poured down its contents in the loo and pulled the flush. He washed his hands and came back with the red sandals. Once again he sat on the moorha facing her and slipped the sandals on her feet. ‘Don’t go about leaving them at the doorsteps of mosques again. They may never come back. Even I might not return them the next time, since they’ve brought me good luck.’
‘What do you mean? What luck have they brought you?’
‘Made you visit my poky den. I hope not for the first time, or the last.’
She blushed and brushed the hair off her forehead. ‘I don’t even know your name,’ she said, looking straight at him.
‘Vijay. And yours?’
‘Karuna.’
‘Karuna, meaning compassion. A lovely name. But Karuna what?’
‘Karuna, that’s all,’ she said curtly.
‘I only asked because I am curious. You have a Hindu name, so what were you doing in a mosque?’
‘Nosey, aren’t we? Anyway, if it is so important for you to know, I went because I had never seen the inside of a mosque.’ She rose abruptly. ‘I must go home now. Thanks for everything. I still don’t know why you took all the trouble, though.’ He walked her to the door. He hoped to linger there a while, to hold her back, but she was in no mood to oblige. ‘Bye,’ she said without turning back as she hurried away. He heard her car start up and go out of his block of apartments.
An odd character, this Karuna woman! mused Vijay. She was obviously somewhat soft in the head. Or why would a woman who went about in a chauffeur-driven car not buy herself a new pair of sandals and go about barefoot instead? She probably had a well-to-do husband and children. How was it that none of them bothered to notice her waywardness?
More difficult to explain was his sudden desire to get to know her. She was clearly unpredictable—warm and approachable one moment, brusque and distant the next. He would normally not have any patience with such people—he never did, and years of living alone had made him even less tolerant. But despite her erratic behaviour his infatuation with Karuna kept getting stronger. He was not entirely sure of what he wanted: Was he content to just have her around him to talk to and touch furtively once in a while? Or did he want her in his bed for wild sex, the kind he had not experienced in years? All that he was certain of was that the days when he did not see her were unreal and incomplete. Now he found himself thinking: The episode of the lost-and-found sandals must have conveyed my feelings for her. Will she respond?
He went to Khan Market every evening. He pottered around in The Book Shop, looking disinterestedly at new books. He peered inside other bookstores, the grocer’s and the butcher’s. She was nowhere. Then one evening, for no reason, he went to the Krishna temple at the rear of the market. It was time for the sandhya prayer. The scent of agar incense floated out of the temple and through the clanging of bells he could hear worshippers sing Jai Jagdish Hare! He had never been inside a temple before, or any place of worship for that matter, but something compelled him to enter the courtyard and take a closer look at what was going on. One side of the courtyard was lined with the shoes and chappals of worshippers. A caretaker sat on a stool keeping watch over them. In the second row was a pair of red sandals that Vijay recognized so well. He stayed in the courtyard till the prayer was over and worshippers started streaming out with prasad in their palms. As she stepped out of the crowd, he accosted her.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘One evening at a mosque, another evening at a temple.’
‘Hi there!’ she responded. ‘And what are you doing loitering outside?’
‘I spotted the red sandals but could not steal them. That man with the stick had his hawk eyes on them. So I thought I might wait for their owner and invite her for a cup of tea or coffee.’
‘You may not,’ she replied matter-of-factly. ‘I have another date.’ She took a quick glance at her wristwatch. ‘Omigod! I’m half an hour late!’ She slipped on her sandals and ran across the road to her car.
A month after his miraculous escape from death, Vijay heard of another miracle but did not witness it, though it happened no further from his little flat than Khan Market’s Shri Gopal Mandir. One evening when he went there, hoping to run into the elusive Karuna, he saw a long queue, starting at the temple and snaking around the entire market. Everyone in the queue was carrying a tin can, a tumbler, a lota or a thermos flask. He did not like this disruption of the market routine; besides, all these people would make it more difficult for him to spot the object of his affection. He broke through the queue to get to The Book Shop. It was closed for some reason. Disappointed, he walked over to another bookstore, owned by an earthy, robust man who sported a thick, curled moustache, like those worn by men in advertisements for aphrodisiacs. Vijay had named him Hakim Tara Chand. The bookstore owner greeted him affably and as usual asked, ‘Some coffee-shoffee, chai-vai?’ Vijay waved a ‘No thanks’ with his hand and asked, ‘What is going on here? Who are all those people outside?’
‘Andh vishvas, sir,’ Hakim Tara Chand said, shaking his head but wearing an indulgent smile. ‘Apparently the gods are accepting milk from worshippers. Those people are waiting to make their offerings to the idols.’
‘What? Stone and metal idols drinking milk?’ Already disappointed at not having found Karuna in the market, Vijay sounded more irritated than incredulous.
Hakim Tara Chand was taken aback by Vijay’s tone and was apologetic. ‘As I said, sir—blind faith. I know you don’t believe in these things, nor do I . . . but why deny people the right to believe in whatever they want to believe? My wife went to the temple with a jug of milk this morning and poured it on Ganeshji’s idol. The milk disappeared. Where, why, only Bhagwan knows.’
‘Good business for milkmen,’ sneered Vijay. ‘Who started all this?’
‘I don’t know. But a Hindi paper says that Shreeswamy claims he invoked Ganeshji to accept offerings of milk.’
‘Shreeswamy! That crook who has a dozen criminal cases pending against him and has been jailed a few times?’
Hakim Tara Chand put his hands together and replied, ‘Forgive me, but I won’t say anything against a man who is worshipped by so many—presidents, prime ministers, multimillionaires, film stars. Every other leader of ours goes to him for advice. So I think, there must be something to him . . . Not that I believe in these things.’
‘He’s said to provide call girls to Arab sheikhs.’
‘Tauba! Maybe the papers say so. I have no knowledge.’
Vijay sensed Hakim Tara Chand was not keen to talk on the subject, so he moved on: ‘Achha ji, I’ll see you soon.’ He decided to go back home, but then he thought there might be some chance of finding Karuna at the temple. She seemed to have an unusual interest in places of worship. He didn’t think she herself would offer milk as the others did, but she might want to witness the spectacle. So he went along the queue around the corner facing the temple. From the way they were dressed, the people in the queue seemed middle class and educated. Marching up and down, swaying his baton, was a senior police officer in uniform, perhaps a superintendent. There was a large red tilak on his forehead, indicating that he had already made his offering. He had four of his constables with him, walking briskly along the queue and asking people not to be impatient. ‘You will get your turn,’ the officer assured the eager worshippers. ‘Be patient, the miracle will go on for some days.’ Vijay thought of asking him how he knew, but he did not want to get into an argument with a policeman.
Pye dogs along the queue were licking up the milk that spilled out of the containers. A boy of seven or eight years was warding off a puppy jumping on his leg, wagging his tail furiously and yapping for a few drops. The boy tried to kick the puppy away and spilt some of his milk as he did so. The grateful puppy lapped it up, now wagging his tail in gratitude.
‘You can’t offer this milk to Shri Ganesh. It has been polluted by a dog,’ growled a man standing behind the boy. ‘Go and get another jug from the milkman.’ The boy burst into tears, poured the rest of the milk on the ground and gave the puppy a vicious kick before going off to look for fresh milk.
Briefly distracted by the commotion, Vijay walked on towards Shri Gopal Mandir. Three constables barred the way to the road that separated the market from the temple. When those who had made their offerings came out, the policemen stopped all traffic to allow a dozen or so people from the queue to cross the road and enter the temple. Vijay came to the end of the queue. Standing right in front, awaiting her turn to cross the road, was Karuna. She had a large steel tumbler in her hand.
‘I had a feeling I would find you here,’ he said happily, resisting a strong impulse to reach out and hold her hand.
‘Hi there!’ she said, genuinely surprised, then looked away. The policemen who had blocked vehicular traffic on the road urged the queue to move on: ‘Chalo, chalo, chalo.’ About twenty worshippers, Karuna among them, sped across the road to the temple.
Vijay’s spirits plummeted as abruptly as they had risen. She hadn’t even bothered to wave goodbye, or ask him to wait while she made her offering and returned. Or even suggest that he come with her—it was not the kind of thing he would normally do, but he would have gone if she had asked. He waited for close to an hour to catch her as she came out. Worshippers in the queue kept moving in batches of ten or twenty into the temple and came out with their faces beaming. There was no sign of the one Vijay was looking for. It reminded him of her disappearance in the mosque. She had found another side door.
It was already past his drink hour, a ritual he was very particular about. But today he did not go back home. He looked for her car. The police had ordered all cars to be parked on the road to make room for the crowd of worshippers. The queue seemed unending, as more people kept coming to join it. Vijay walked distractedly through the crowds.
He did not find Karuna’s car, so he hung about a paanwala’s kiosk, unable to decide what he should do next. His mood had soured. He felt like picking a fight. The paanwala was waxing eloquent about the miracle of the gods to a group of young men in saffron kurtas who were waiting their turn to be served.
‘Lalaji, your gods are moody,’ Vijay said to the paanwala, ‘I have a stone Ganpati outside my flat. I put a cupful of milk to his tusk and his trunk but he did not drink a drop.’
‘You have to have faith for miracles to happen,’ said one of the young men. ‘Faith can move mountains. Lord Krishna held up a hill on his little finger to save his village from a cloudburst. Hanuman uprooted a mountain to get the Sanjeevini herb. So what is unusual about the gods showing their pleasure by accepting offerings of milk from people of all castes, from the highest to the lowest—even mlechhas? It is indeed a chamatkar.’ He looked pleased with his oration.
‘This is what makes India great,’ added another man. Then he quoted the Urdu poet Iqbal’s lines: ‘Greek, Egyptian and Roman rulers have all been wiped off the face of the earth; there must be some reason that India still shines in all its pristine glory.’
Vijay felt his temper rise. ‘Greece, Egypt and Rome continue to flourish as they ever did in the past; only India remains buried under the debris of ignorance and superstition. Stone and metal imbibing milk is the latest example of our continuing backwardness. This trickery is the best our gods can do!’ he proclaimed in a loud voice.
‘Stop this bakwas!’ barked the young man with the caste mark on his forehead. ‘If you want to buk-buk, do it elsewhere, not so close to our temple. Are you a Mussalman?’
Soon the argument had become a shouting match. Vijay yelled, ‘You are a bunch of chootiyas, you make India a laughing stock of the world!’
The young man grabbed Vijay by his shirt collar and shouted, ‘Saale, you dare call us chootiyas! I’ll split your arse right here!’
The paanwala jumped down from his seat and separated the two. ‘Babuji, don’t create a hangama in front of my shop,’ he pleaded with Vijay. ‘Please go home. Here, take your packet of cigarettes. It is a gift from me. May God be kind to you and teach you to overcome your anger.’
Vijay felt humiliated. The boys were almost half his age. He had made an ass of himself by losing his temper.
Vijay had many pet hates, with religious superstition, astrology, horoscopy, numerology and other such methods of forecasting the future topping the list. But mostly he lived peacefully enough with the fools of his world. Even donkeys, he believed, had a right to have their opinions and bray about them. So he was surprised by his outburst at the paanwala’s, especially since it had degenerated into physical violence, which he abhorred. He could not understand what had come over him.
He also wondered at Karuna. It seemed strange to him that an otherwise educated, Westernized woman who smoked and drank openly and was seemingly free of religious bias would go about pouring milk over marble and bronze statues, expecting them to drink it up. Perhaps she was doing it for a lark. There was a news item in the papers about two girls who had offered whiskey to Ganpati. There was an uproar and the girls had to beg forgiveness. It was the kind of thing Karuna would do.
After the episode of Ganpati drinking milk and the altercation at the paanwala’s, Vijay stayed away from Khan Market for a few days. When he went back, he resolved to walk around the market without stopping outside or entering any shop. He wanted to avoid every place where he might lose his temper with the devout and end up embarrassing himself. He even found a different paanwala for his cigarettes and paan.
On the fourth evening after he ended his short exile, as he was walking past the less-frequented part of Khan Market occupied by a bank which closed its doors to customers, Vijay heard somebody call out, ‘Jai ho!’ He turned around and saw a bearded man with long shoulder-length hair carrying a brass plate with flowers, kumkum powder and a tiny silver oil lamp.
‘Something for Shani devta,’ the man demanded, thrusting the plate forward. Vijay realized it was Saturday and the exalted beggar was asking for alms to appease Saturn. There were many others of his ilk around railway stations and bus stands and at road crossings, making money from the gullible. Vijay was not one of the gullible. But what the man said next before Vijay could brush him aside made him pause.
‘You have someone on your mind, a young lady may be. So what is the problem? She is not responding, hain? I will give you something to win her affections. Close your fist.’
Almost despite himself Vijay clenched his fist and extended his arm.
‘Now open your hand,’ the man said. Vijay did so. There was a big black ring in the middle of his palm. ‘See: it is rahu, the evil planet. I can abolish him. Give me a little dakshina, say ten rupees, and I will give you foolproof advice on how to gain your heart’s desire.’ After a short pause during which the fellow transfixed Vijay with his kohl-lined sparkling eyes, he continued, ‘Janaab, I know you do not belive in jyotish or palm-reading. But I can read your face like an open book. Why not try out my predictions and formula for gaining what your heart seeks? Ten rupees won’t make you poor nor me rich.’
Without pondering over the matter Vijay took out a ten-rupee note and put it in the man’s brass tray.
‘Let’s sit down somewhere where we are not disturbed by people,’ suggested the Shani-man. The only secluded place they could find was a narrow passage between the public lavatory and the market boundary wall. It was malodorous but unfrequented. The man put his tray on the wall, the ten-rupee note in his pocket and asked Vijay to hold out his right hand.
Everyone enjoys being the object of attention. So did Vijay, even when the bearded Shani-man’s gentle prodding and squeezing of his palm, as he examined every line, thumb and finger, assumed erotic overtones.
‘There are two marriages in your life,’ pronounced the sage.
‘I had better get started soon. I haven’t a wife yet and I’m not young anymore,’ Vijay said.
‘A man is never too old for marriage and sex,’ the sage assured Vijay, then continued, ‘I see a large home, double-storeyed and with many motorcars.’
‘That’s nice to know. I live in a one-room flat and ride a motorcycle,’ Vijay lied.
Undeterred, the man went on. ‘There is money, lots of money, name and fame.’
Vijay snubbed him again: ‘I could do with both. My bank balance is very low and my name is not known beyond my block of flats and this little market.’
‘There is also phoren travel soon,’ the man went on.
‘When? Both the American Embassy and the British High Commission turned down my visa applications. Forget about name, fame, money and foreign travel. Can you tell me anything about my present problem?’
‘Date and place of birth,’ demanded the soothsayer as he pulled a pencil and small notebook out of his pocket. Vijay told him. He drew several lines, parallel and horizontal. He counted on his fingers and inserted figures in the squares and triangles he had made. Then he shut his eyes and pronounced, ‘Her name begins with K.’
Vijay was taken aback. ‘How did you know?’
‘It’s all written in your stars. She pretends indifference but she loves you. I will now give you a magic formula to make her hungry for you and you hungry for her.’ The man paused and looked meaningfully at Vijay.
‘I already am hungry for her,’ Vijay said impatiently.
‘But you must be hungrier, then she too will pant for you without shame. I can guarantee it. For that I charge fifty rupees. If my formula fails, I’ll give your money back with fifty from my own pocket. I’ll give you my card, with my name and address. If the formula fails, you send me the card by post and I’ll come and return the money.’ He fished out a grimy visiting card. It had the letter Om on top with a figure of Ganpati beneath and then his name: Natha Singh, World-famous Master of Science of Jyotish, Astrologer, Numerologist, Specialist in Love Potions.
Now that he had let himself in for the hocus-pocus, Vijay said to himself: What the hell, let’s go the whole hog. The fellow got the girl’s initial right. He may just get her to take more interest in me.
‘Okay, here’s another fifty rupees, and if it does not work I’ll get the police after you. Okay?’
‘Okay, janaab, okay. Hundred times okay. My formula is foolproof.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper, ‘All you have to do, janaab, is pluck two hairs from your jhaant and two from her jhaant, mix them up, swallow one pair yourself and give her the other pair to drink up with a cup of tea. Both of you will be on fire. Guaranteed.’
Vijay was speechless. He looked at the Shani-man disbelievingly.
‘You doubt my formula?’ the man challenged him. He patted his crotch and declared, ‘Don’t underestimate the power of the jhaant. It is the strongest aphrodisiac known to man.’
Blood rushed to Vijay’s head but he kept his cool. He did not want to create another scene. ‘What kind of love formula is this?’ he snapped. ‘If I could get close enough to pluck her pubic hair, I need no help from you. How do I get her to bare her privates before me, anyway?’
‘You can do that if you try,’ said the Shani-man as he picked up his brass plate and walked away.
Vijay realized it had cost him sixty rupees to learn that he was as big a chootiya as all those people offering milk to the idol of Ganpati. He weaved his way through the closely parked cars to make his way home and walked straight into Hakim Tara Chand.
‘You should be careful of charlatans like that man, Lall Sahib,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘He is not really a sadhu, just a thug who exploits people’s weaknesses.’
He had obviously seen Vijay talking to the Shani-man and handing him money. Vijay’s ears went red. He felt as if he had exposed himself in public. His humiliation was complete.
Vijay pondered over the events of the past few days and felt very depressed. He described his mood in his diary: ‘Pissed off with the world’ and then added, ‘Pissed off with myself.’ Khan Market had lost its raunaq; he avoided going there for another few days. But the itch to have it out with Karuna got the better of him. Did she know what she was doing to him?
After a week, one Saturday evening, he was back in the market hoping to run into her. He went around her usual haunts, the bookstores, the grocer’s and the butcher’s. She was not there. Ultimately he went to The Book Shop to get his magazines and ask the proprietress if Karuna had been around. He broached the subject very casually. ‘That lady who bought Durrell from you, has she been around lately?’
‘You mean Karuna Chaudhury? Yes, she came in one evening to settle her account. She said her husband had been transferred to some other city—she did not say where.’
Vijay was lost for words. He took his magazines and slowly walked back to his apartment. He sensed he might never see her again. And the name Chaudhury yielded no clue. Chaudhurys could be found across the country, from Punjab to Assam, down to the Southern states, and they could be Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, even Christians. The search would be as futile as that of Majnu sifting the sands of the desert to find his Laila. And that was what he felt like—a lovesick Majnu. Which made him an old fool: he was fifty-four. He tried to console himself—that it was an infatuation that would fade away in time. There would be other women. Or there would not.
It was still too early for his sundowner. Nevertheless, he poured himself a stiff one and switched on his TV to divert his mind to things other than a woman who had slipped out of his hands; a woman he should have left well alone. He pressed the buttons of the remote control and tried one channel after another. Nothing held his attention for more than a few seconds. Suddenly the lights went out and the entire complex of apartments was plunged in gloom. The sun had set but through the twilight he could see the outlines of the mulberry tree, already beginning to lose much of its foliage. The sudden darkness prompted a pair of spotted owlets perched on its branches to break into their pointless racket, chitter-chitter chatter-chatter.
*
Most residents of the apartment complex slept late the next morning. It was a Sunday. There were only two old ladies out in the lawn when Vijay returned from his walk in Lodhi Gardens. They saw him drive in and park Annie in her old spot under the mulberry tree.