Fish in a Dwindling Lake
As usual, all travellers arriving at the huge Kashmiri Gate bus station were plunged immediately into a state of confusion. Would her pre-booked ticket be valid? It wasn’t possible for her to rush about here and there with her luggage, all by herself. She wanted desperately to go to the toilet, but couldn’t go in, leaving her luggage abandoned outside. She stood there hesitating, with shoulder-bag, handbag, and a bamboo basket containing rose cuttings. Finally, she left the basket outside and went in, carrying her bags. When she came out again, the bamboo basket was still there, safe, a small boy standing by, looking at it in surprise.
“Auntyji, is this yours?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I carry it for you?”
“It’s not at all heavy; I can carry it myself.”
He stood there, watching her. She found an eight-anna coin from her purse and offered it to him. He refused to take it. She explained that she didn’t like putting small children to work. He argued that if she gave him eight annas when he had not earned it, that would make him a beggar.
“Very well, you can put me on my bus,” she agreed.
Immediately, it felt as if she was being protected by a Black Cat patrol. As soon as she told him she was bound for a small town on the India–Nepal border, he started ahead of her swiftly, parting the crowds and almost swimming forward. In a short while they stood in front of the right bus. The person who had booked her ticket had informed her that the bus would be air-conditioned. As for this vehicle, it was covered in dust and looked like an actor whose make-up was in disarray.
The passengers, carrying their sacks and their huge trunks, were trying to load their luggage and fight their way into the bus, calling out at the top of their voices. She asked the conductor who was trying to cope with all these people, “Is this the AC bus?”
“No, it’s not air-conditioned, but it’s the bus you want,” he replied, indifferently.
The small boy explained to her that this bus would stop in front of Anand Vihar in about an hour. There she must board the bus that would actually take her to her destination.
She asked whether the bus would stop conveniently for calls of nature. Certainly it would, the conductor told her. These would not be at proper toilets with running water. Instead, they usually stopped at deserted streets with an abundance of wild shrubs or tall trees nearby. Sometimes there wouldn’t even be those to provide any privacy, only the darkness. On one occasion, on a dark night, the bus had stopped at an unknown wasteland. She was the only woman to climb down. It was blindingly dark. There seemed to be some sort of building, locked up, nearby. She wandered about a bit, searching for a private place, and came to a wall where she squatted down. When she rose to her feet, a lorry hastened past, spitting its light in her direction. As she looked about her during that brief moment, her heart beat fast. She was standing next to a pedestal which carried a statue of Gandhi. There he was, his staff in his hand, one leg in front of the other, as if he were stepping forward. In her head, she asked him for forgiveness, “Bapuji forgive me. You said: India would be truly independent when at last a woman, wearing all her ornaments, could go about freely in the middle of the night. You might have thought it important to mention ornaments specifically. We don’t need a single ornament, Bapuji. We would be content if there were enough toilets for us, should we need to answer calls of nature, even at midnight. We’d be happy if there were toilets accessible in all the highways and chief places of independent India, so that women don’t ever have to suffer, controlling themselves. Our bladders have grown weak from the strain of it. The urine, splashed freely by men, has made its mark on endless walls, starting from the temple wall; it’s become a metaphor for freedom, indeed. The kings of long ago planted trees. They dug wells. They built inns and resting places. We don’t know whether they established toilets. It seems to me this was our loss throughout the generations, Bapuji.” Her imagined conversation with Gandhi had continued like this, during that journey. The small boy told her to climb in. He went in first and then called out to her. He had found her a window seat in the middle of the bus. He assured her there would be no problem with changing buses. The basket holding the rose cuttings slipped under her seat easily. The boy laid her shoulder-bag along the luggage rail above her. She held out a rupee note towards him. He ignored it and asked, “Auntyji, don’t you need some water?” She agreed she would, opened her handbag and gave him some money. He climbed out of the bus and ran. When he returned, he held in his hands a bottle of water and six bananas. Standing under her window, he held them out to her.
“Why the fruit?”
“You don’t know, Auntyji, you’ll get hungry. My village is right next to Mahendra Nagar,” he told her, like one who had been sent on many journeys.
She pulled off two of the fruit from the bunch and gave it to him. He smiled as he accepted it. This time she handed him a five-rupee note. He hesitated a bit, but accepted that too.
The bus was filling up with foreign tourists, carrying heavy bags, and the usual passengers who were returning home. As the bus was making ready to start, the boy said goodbye to her. He called to her above the noises that the bus was making, “Auntyji, in those parts, when the sky is clear you’ll see snow-covered mountain peaks in the distance…” The bus began to move as the wind brought this information to her.
It struck her that snow-covered mountain peaks, revealed when the skies were clear, were a good goal for this journey.
Journeys had become the symbols of her life. Journeys with objectives, journeys without; meaningful journeys, journeys made of necessity; journeys which were planned, but never happened; journeys which broke all decisions; journeys which had become rituals.
Her very birth was witness to her mother’s final journey. She was the sixth child. After that, she became her elder sister’s baby. When Didi married at the age of sixteen, and left her family on her bidai journey to her in-laws, she went with her, as part of her dowry. After that, her sister’s husband, her Jijaji, became her new father. At intervals, she returned, to see her real father, elder sisters, and elder brother. In spite of Jijaji’s disapproval, her father insisted on arranging a marriage for her as soon as she finished her schooling, claiming that he was ready for his own last journey. Her life seemed to be ruled by other people’s journeys, indeed. She set off on her own bidai journey with a man who had a slight frame and dim eyes. Later it came to light that he suffered from tuberculosis. As soon as he set foot on his final journey, before everyone could say she must break her bangles and remove her kumkum, her Jijaji arrived and took her away. There followed many journeys as she pursued her further education. Journeys to do with her profession, first as a lecturer in Delhi, then as she rose to become a professor. Journeys undertaken after Didi died, to look after her children and to educate them. Journeys with Didi’s youngest son, who had to have electric shock treatment for his psychiatric problems. Journeys with Jijaji when he had cancer, for radiotherapy. Journeys within the country and journeys abroad. A life threaded together by journeys.
After she retired from work, Didi’s sons and daughters, who were now United States citizens, had demanded affectionately that she go and live with them in California, New York, Washington, and Boston. She had made up her mind to do so. And now, all of a sudden, she was bound on this journey. Entirely by accident.
The arguments and counterarguments between her and those Indians who no longer lived in India had lasted for a whole year.
“So what is so wonderful in India, Mausi, apart from dust and noise and crowds? Why don’t you come and see what it’s like here?”
“You won’t have to roast in the sun nor be drenched in the rain. There will be a whole world within your home.”
“You won’t have to rush about for anything here. There will be no worries at all for you. This is a world which works at the touch of a button, without any problems.”
“You’ve been here as a postgraduate student, haven’t you? You know very well what it’s like.”
She had indeed lived in that world for a while. It was a world with many choices. Even when she tried to buy a sandwich, she had faced a number of choices. White bread or wholemeal? What sort of butter? With fat or without? Vegetarian or otherwise? What sort of salad or meat? Should they add gherkins or other relishes, or not? Grilled sandwich, or plain? Did she want cheese or not? After she had answered all these questions, there was the final one. Would she eat her sandwich on the premises or take it away?
Here life didn’t have so many choices. Nor many buttons to press. It was only after she arrived at Delhi that she even came across a doorbell.
At home, in the village, their front door was always open. Women carrying their water pots home would often set them down and rest in their front verandah. They’d pack their mouths with betel leaves and call out to Didi for a chat. Drivers of horse carts would help themselves to water from the big earthenware pot there, and quench their thirst. One of them was a great singer of folk ballads. Once he had drunk some water, he’d summon all the children in their family and sing to them in his resounding voice. Once, a patron of arts invited him and his group to Paris. He went there, wore his colourful turban, raised his voice and sang loudly, and then came back. After that, he drove his horses as usual. If asked, “What was Paris like?” he answered casually, “Not bad. Rather big.” There was no change in his lifestyle, apart from a picture of the Eiffel Tower in his cart.
Sometimes the cow, Kalavati, which had gone grazing, would come and stand at their front verandah. “Mma,” it would call out to Didi. It had once eaten a few pages out of Munna’s homework book. Jijaji scolded the child for leaving her notebook there. Now, many years later, in New York, Munna’s son did his homework on the computer. How would a cow turn up there? Nowadays, the milk, yielded by nameless cows, arrived pasteurized, anyway.
Stories, all of them: the bridegroom arriving on an elephant; the camels padding across the desert sands; the annual camel races; the children dressed as brides and grooms, with laddoos or jalebis in their hands during Akkha Teej; peacocks spreading their dark green and blue feathers as they flew to the low-lying branches of the trees and sat there; comfortingly warm razzais made of old saris sewn together; saris knotted and dyed dark blue and indigo and red, the colours spreading as soon as the knots were undone and the saris shaken out. Stories, all of them, from beginning to end. Stories she told their children, and the children of friends and relatives. And the children assumed that they were tales of magic, like Harry Potter stories. Many of the heroes and heroines of those stories were no longer alive. But some of them were. The horse-cart driver still sang in the evenings, after his drink of toddy. The horse was no longer there, nor the cart. He told his grandchildren the tale of his journey to Paris. They were special magic tales to them. Some months ago, walking along a path dense with trees and bushes, she stumbled over a peacock which lay dead, obstructing her path, its feathers shorn. Was it magic or real? It was all magic; it was all true.
In this bus which tore through the night, sitting with her bamboo basket of rose cuttings together with unknown individuals, sacks, trunks, foreign bags, cloth bundles, cloth bags full of clothes, on this sudden and accidental journey, she didn’t know what was real, what was magic.
A couple of days after she decided to live abroad permanently, she received a letter from Bimla Devi. It had been written on paper headed with the name and address of the Lok Seva Sangh which she ran. The letters were printed in saffron, on a white background. Bimla had written in her usual dark blue ink. She asked her please to visit, and to bring some cuttings from a rose nursery in Delhi when she came; she, Bimla, would be looking forward to her arrival. She had been a little surprised by the letter. It was now some years since she had lost contact with Bimla Devi. She had withdrawn herself after everyone began calling Bimla Devi “Mataji” and “Sadhviji.” Bimla had not shown any disapproval when people addressed her like this. Neither did she ask that she should be addressed thus.
Bimla Devi and she were classmates when they were at university. Later, for some time, Bimla taught history in the same college where she was employed. She was the first, in a family of agricultural labourers, to seek out higher education. Mid-brown skin. Long hair, combed flat. Eyes which darted about everywhere, like fish swimming around in a glass bowl. A dazzling smile. Strong arms and legs. A strong body, not afraid of toil. Because the two of them found it difficult to speak English fluently, they became roommates and friends. During her holidays, with Jijaji’s permission, she went to stay with Bimla Devi’s family. Although, by that time, they owned sufficient land, they worked on it themselves. She had never seen Bimla’s father in laundered clothes. In her memory his legs were always mud stained, his face sweaty. Bimla and her mother worked in the fields and at home untiringly. They were constantly at work, weeding, carrying loads, cleaning out the cowshed, looking after their poultry, cooking meals. Besides, she would go to graze the goats, along with her brothers. The background music in that household was the jingling of Bimla’s mother’s green glass bangles.
She was not one who shirked hard work, either. Didi, too, was one who laboured hard and tirelessly. But there were servants in their house as well. When she visited Bimla’s family, she was eager to join in with the others in their daily chores. She failed abysmally at the task of grazing the goats, however. She admitted to Bimla and her siblings that it was not an easy task to gather the herd together, nor to separate it into smaller groups. They tended to laugh at her. It seemed to her that even the goats joined in with that laughter. Only one small black kid clung to her side and comforted her.
After she started visiting Bimla’s family regularly, she too picked up the habit of chewing tobacco. Bimla’s mother always had a wad of tobacco leaves tucked inside her mouth. Bimla often said to her mother, “Maji, please don’t go any further than the tobacco. Don’t go and get her used to toddy as well. She shares a room with me in the college…” When Bimla’s father came home in the evenings, tired out, he had a drink of toddy. He sat in the backyard, next to the cowshed, and drank his toddy. Her mother, too. Sometimes, her brothers joined them, squatting down and drinking. They usually had their drink away from the house, at the toddy shop. Only occasionally did they gather together in the backyard, squatting together. They avoided drinking inside the house, or in front of Bimla. Beyond the cowshed, there was a rose garden covering an acre of land. The toddy drinking took place there, when she and Bimla went out on their evening walks. When they returned they would just glimpse their backs, turned away.
It struck her, sometimes, that the rest of the family treated Bimla with a special respect. The others in the village — including those who were well off, and belonging to higher castes — appeared to speak to her with deference. When she asked Bimla about it, Bimla laughed it off. She spoke to everyone with ease, touching them. At college, once, when the daughter of a lowly employee was taken into hospital after a suicide attempt, Bimla spoke to the father, putting her hand on his shoulder to comfort him. He broke down then, and began to weep. He held her hand and wept aloud. Sometimes, the college lecturers spoke to Bimla about personal matters. Bimla never gave anyone any advice. She never preached any dogmas. She never attended any rituals or pujas in anyone’s homes. Yet she seemed to attract everyone in some way which was other than materialistic or mundane. She gave out a sense of comfort. Once their college mates had joined together to make up a farce about Bimla’s special nature, which they acted out at one of their evening celebrations. Bimla just laughed at that too.
Once she was sitting with Bimla’s mother, cleaning a chicken and cutting it up. When she thought about it later, that short conversation, and the background to it, returned to her mind like a scene in a play. Preparations for their midday meal were going on in the kitchen. The wheat flour had been kneaded and set aside. Dal was bubbling on the firewood hearth. Sliced onion, potato, and other vegetables. The chicken pieces had been marinated in curds. A smell of mingled onion, garlic, and ginger. Rays of light fell through the small window of the kitchen with its low, thatched roof. The cowshed could be seen through the window, outside. Bimla was cleaning it out. That was when she asked her the question, “Maji, when will Bimla get married?”
“Bimla? We’ll see,” said her mother, as if it were not a matter of concern.
She thought perhaps that Bimla’s mother hadn’t liked her asking this question. But in a while the answer came, “If ever Bimla wants a family or a marriage, then we’ll arrange it.”
“Why, doesn’t she want to get married?”
“It doesn’t seem so. Let’s see what Swamiji Maharaj will say.”
The conversation came to an end as the marinated chicken pieces dropped with a sizzling noise into the earthenware pot with its hot oil seasoned with cinnamon, clove, and fennel seeds.
They took Swamiji Maharaj by his hand and led him to a seat in the front of the house. He was blind, and bare-bodied, except for the small piece of cloth wound about his waist.
“Whose house is this, tell me.”
“It belongs to Madangopal Misraji. He has a hundred acres of land.”
“The land will be the land’s. How can it be his?” He laughed aloud.
They brought him a small water-pot full of water. “Please talk to us, Swamiji Maharaj.”
“It was terribly hot. A fiery heat that burnt the body. Later, the rain fell. Not a rain with blustering winds, but a rain that fell in straight strands. A rain like a shower of flowers. That was when it came and clung to my legs. I lifted it up. A puppy. It licked my face. This Govind told me it was black and white. It was he who named it Kalu. However many miles I walked, it would follow me. At nights it would sleep, rolled up against my feet. People began to call me ‘The Dog Maharaj.’ Now there’s no dog. Just the Maharaj.” He laughed again.
“Please, Swamiji Maharaj, say something that will be useful to us in our lives.”
“Something useful?”
“Yes, perhaps something from the Bhagavad Gita…” “The Bhagavad Gita? What do I know of the Bhagavad Gita? I am a wanderer, a constant traveller, a vagabond and gadabout. I drink water anywhere, eat everywhere, sleep and wake up wherever I please. I said I was thirsty; this Govind brought me here.”
“In that case, why don’t you come to my house too,” a shrill voice piped up.
Swamiji Maharaj turned in the direction from where the voice came. So did the others. A five-year-old girl with her satchel of books, leaning against a pillar, her hand at her waist. A girl who should not have stepped into houses belonging to people such as Misraji.
Swamiji Maharaj smiled. “Oh, you are here, are you, little girl? Come here and take my hand.”
She came running up and took his hand. She slung her satchel across her shoulder. Before anyone could stop him, the blind man followed as she pulled him along.
They were stunned when they saw him. Where should they ask him to sit? What should they give him to eat? A portion of the cattle shed in Bimla’s house was cleaned and tidied. He sat down there.
“Maharaj, what should we give you to eat? We have cooked beef in this house today.”
“Beef, is it? You eat and enjoy. Have you made rotis?”
“Yes.”
“A couple of rotis and a squashed onion will be enough for me.”
An onion was squashed by hand, seasoned with salt and pepper, and laid on top of hot rotis. They gave him this. He ate with relish, and slept soundly in the cattle shed. He stayed with them for fifteen or twenty days.
The people of those parts wanted a temple. Swamiji Maharaj was not interested in that. He arranged for them to gain ownership of the fallow land lying beyond the cattle shed, which lay unused. He went here and there and brought them the rose cuttings. He instructed them to plant the roses. Roses came up in the land which had been thought unusable. A cooperative farm for rose cultivation began to take shape, gradually expanding into other businesses such as manufacturing attar and making rose garlands and bouquets for shrines and dargahs. A small hut was raised for him, right next to the rose garden.
Those who once called him “Dog Maharaj” now began to call him “Rose Maharaj” instead. He still walked on his journeys.
These were all supplementary stories told about Swamiji Maharaj. Stories everyone told, with embellishments, or otherwise. He had said he knew neither magic nor magical spells. For those who came to him, refusing to believe this, he dispensed neither sacred ash nor kumkum. He could walk. For the sake of the rose garden. For the sake of educating the poor. A small piece of cloth around his waist. A face obscured by a white beard. Blind eyes. A loud laugh.
Bimla’s mother had told her in detail about the event that took place a couple of days after he moved in with them. It was dusk: that time of day when all the cows were returning home. The air was full of the call of birds flying home to their nests. At this time, people would gather to see Swamiji, in the hut they had put up for him. That day too, some people were sitting in front of him. As soon as Bimla came running up with her satchel of books and stood by the front door, he was aware of her arrival. He spread his hands towards her and said, “Come.” She set down her satchel and ran up to him. He stroked her hair and kissed her forehead. Then he leaned down and spoke softly into her ear. Just one second. Her expression registered shock and surprise. Then, gradually, her face began to blossom like a flower. As soon as he moved his head away from her ear, five-year-old Bimla hugged him and kissed his white-bearded face. Swamiji Maharaj gathered her tightly to his heart.
When she asked Bimla about that incident once, she didn’t get an answer immediately. Some of them used to sleep on the terrace, in the heat of the summer. There were charpoys there, for that purpose. That evening they both lay on their beds there, gazing up at the sky. When she asked her question, Bimla continued to look at the sky intently, as if her gaze were piercing through the stars. Then she said softly, “I’m not sure I can explain it clearly…”
“Why? Can’t dimwits like me understand, or what?”
She laughed. “No, it isn’t that,” she said in a low voice. “But language has its limits, doesn’t it?”
There was silence for a while.
“Kumud, what he spoke in my ear can’t be contained in words. First it was like the buzzing of a bee. Then the rustling of running water. After that, the sensation of a great flood on which I floated like a cork, weightlessly. Then the sensation of hurtling back and forth on a swing, and then gradually, very gradually coming to a stop and climbing off. The way you feel after those games we play, holding hands and whirling round. A feeling of unbounded, unlimited love flowing within me and stroking me, like the milk pouring down in consecration over the temple images…”
She fell asleep as Bimla went on with her description.
She, too, met Swamiji Maharaj on one occasion. She had no particular desire to meet him. In fact she shunned all so-called swamijis. When Roop Kanwar lay beside the corpse of her husband and set fire to herself, many of her college lecturers had taken out a procession to protest against the superstitious belief in sati. Without exception, all the swamijis who were interviewed on television had declared, “Women who go out on these processions are immoral. They have relations with more than one man.” They were all there, complete with their matted locks, their sacred ash and sandalwood paste, bald heads and religious forehead-marks. Even though a very few such as Swamiji Maharaj had supported them, on the whole she avoided all religious sages.
Once Didi had insisted she accompany her to see the head of a religious mutt from the south of India. The people at the door had asked them a hundred questions about their caste and sub-caste, and found out that Kumud was a widow. Immediately they said, “We can’t give you permission to go in; if he sees widows he will have to fast.” She had never before seen Didi so furious. “It would be a good thing if he were to look at her and then fast. We’re leaving. Tell him to eat…” she had said, and gone home. Later she had fought with Didi, attacking her for believing in swamijis.
When Didi was at the point of death, she had asked, hesitantly, “Please will you ask Bimla to come.” Bimla did come. She was still teaching at the college in those days. Didi’s eyes filled as soon as she saw her. “Bimla, Beti, I want to die in my sleep,” she said. Her face was twisted in an unbearable pain. Bimla began to stroke her forehead. In a while Didi had fallen asleep. Bimla never left her side. At about half past four the next morning, Didi’s breath fell away, gradually. All the wrinkles on her face had disappeared, as if they had been smoothed out. At once Bimla had her bath and prepared to leave. She said she was going to Rishikesh with Swamiji Maharaj.
It was ten or fifteen years after this that she herself met Swamiji Maharaj. Didi’s youngest daughter had finished her studies in the United States, and had decided to marry an American. Her fiancé’s family believed that India was a country full of snake-charmers, elephants, and tigers. They imagined it to be a country where the food was hot and spicy, the women dark and voluptuous, wearing brightly coloured clothes; the country of the Kamasutra and of the great sages, but also a country riddled with poverty, disease, and beggars; a land that could delight in many different ways. The bridegroom wanted to arrive in procession, riding on an elephant, and did so, amidst delighted cries of “Ohs” and “Ahs.” As she stood watching the procession, a sob rose in her throat, like a sudden stroke of paralysis. Before she could understand it, more sobs followed. Her eyes filled. Jijaji, who was doing an errand nearby, noticed her and came up. “Well, Kumud, your girl has grown up, hasn’t she? Hereafter she too will set up a home, a family…”
She nodded, quietly.
He looked at her again, and said, “What is it, Kumud, what has happened?”
Like a flash of lightning, the words which had been formulated at some time, somewhere, came out of her, shocking her. “Jijaji, you could have arranged another marriage for me, couldn’t you? Why didn’t you do it?”
Jijaji was utterly shaken. She was forty years old at the time. “You…you…” he stuttered in confusion. He put his arm around her shoulder and hugged her. Her eyes were blinded with tears, preventing her from seeing the bridegroom arrive in elephant procession.
During the course of a conversation, later on, she had told Bimla how, for that instant, her own words had taken her by surprise.
The next time Swamiji Maharaj was in town, Bimla insisted that Kumud accompany her to the place where he was staying. During those many years, Swamiji had set up Lok Seva Sanghs in several places. Adjacent to each ashram, but outside it, there was a rose garden, and a small hutment for him to stay. He had come to stay in Delhi, with a social worker. Kumud had gone with Bimla, at last, after she invited her several times. A number of people had gathered there to see the Swamiji. A couple of men who had failed in their Civil Service exams had turned up, saying they wished to become sannyasis.
“Then why don’t you do it?”
“Training…” The word was dragged out.
“Training? Can you stand hunger? Can you endure disrespect? Are you able to sleep in a space of two square yards? If you can, you are certainly a sannyasi.”
“Initiation…”
“If a hand is placed on your head, that is an initiation. Do it yourself.”
They had come prepared to renounce the whole world, and now stood aside, a little disappointed.
A woman, a singer, was eager to sing to him. He asked her to do so. The Mira bhajan that the woman sang seemed to echo her own state of mind at the time. She felt as if pushed down to the lowest possible state in life.
The woman sang, “Hey Govind, Hey Gopala, ab tho jivan haari, I have given away my life now.”
When she sang this, Kumud felt herself choking. Her throat ached as if a thorn were stuck there. She felt ashamed. That this should happen at a place where she knew no one other than Bimla.
Swamiji looked in the direction from where the voice came and said, “It was that Mira alone who was able to lose her life. Beat it as you will, it always bounces back, like a ball that returns to the hand. It is not so easy to give away your life.”
She went and made her obeisance to him and left.
People like him would never understand. It wasn’t spirituality that she needed at that time. A husband with a robust body at the right age. One or two babies who grew and hung heavy in the womb, and in due time pushed, shoved, and tore their way past the birth canal, covered in blood. Or even three or four babies. Breasts running with milk. It was all part of the body. The body was the only truth she knew. It was the body alone that was left, even as she went beyond the body. She needed an oar to begin that crossing. She needed a boat and a boatman. Her body was the river. It was itself the shore. It was the hunter and the hunted; the path and the goal.
After that came the rise in her career at college. Her worries about Jijaji’s health and of her care of him. So the years went past. A distance grew between Bimla and herself. Bimla came when Jijaji died. She was the same old playful Bimla. All the same, as she entered the house it seemed to Kumud that a flame of fire had walked in. Bimla wore a saffron shawl draped over her customary pale-coloured handloom cotton sari. Later Kumud thought it had been the sorrow of that moment and her eyes swollen with tears that had exaggerated her vision of Bimla.
Later still, many people asked her, “Do you know Mataji Bimla Devi?” “Is Sadhvi Bimla Devi a close friend of yours?” “Is it true she embraces everyone she meets?”
Gradually, she lost contact with Bimla, after that. Occasionally she received a postcard from her, with brief news such as which town Bimla was visiting, and when. And now, this letter. Kumud didn’t get a place on the train. Neither was there a direct train which would take her to her destination. This novel bus journey was the result.
The rains had failed that year. Everywhere along the way, she saw a withered green. Everywhere, a land that was thirsty. When she reached her destination, she was told she must travel some distance by rickshaw in order to reach the small town where she was headed. Asking the way at small shops scattered here and there, she finally reached the place where the Lok Seva Sangh was located. She went up to a man who stood at the doorway, and said she was Bimla Devi’s friend. Immediately she was shown into a small reception room and asked to sit down.
In a little while, she heard Bimla calling her by name, “Kumud.” And then she was there in person. She had grown very thin. At once Kumud rose to her feet, went up to her, took her by the hand and embraced her. “How did you know it was I? You must have so many people coming to see you.”
“But he told me it was my friend. And aren’t you my only friend,” she said. She smiled.
“Here are the rose cuttings you wanted. I bought them from the same rose nursery that you mentioned. But this bus journey has broken my back, I tell you. There were potholes and dips all along the bus route. We were well and truly flung about.”
“Come. Come and have a hot bath. I’ve kept some really good tobacco just for you. We’ll talk later.”
As they came out of the room Bimla said to the man they encountered, “Sukhbir, your rose cuttings have arrived. Look, she’s brought them.”
“Oh, very good,” he said, walking on.
Her health had been failing for some months, she said. It seemed she had begun to get better only recently, and very gradually. She hadn’t recovered fully as yet. A common friend of theirs, Urmila, had told her about Kumud’s intention to leave the country forever and live abroad. She spoke as she lay on her bed. She said her spine hurt. From time to time, her face was bathed in sweat. Even as Kumud wiped Bimla’s face with a towel tenderly, hot words came out of her mouth. As if she were continuing with an argument which started somewhere, at some time, she asked, “Bimla, in the end it is this pain that is the truth. Isn’t that so?”
“It too is the truth.”
“You always denied the body. Now, see, all that is left is the body.”
“Who denied the body?”
“You. You did. I lost mine because of the decisions made by all kinds of others. But the body alone is certain. The truth. You denied this truth. The body’s urine, shit, blood; its desires, hunger, and thirst are all truths.”
“It isn’t quite like that, Kumud,” Bimla said gently. “The body has several aspects to it. Its appearance, its everyday functions may seem to be common experience, but the truth of each individual body will be different from anyone else’s. The body is indeed an anchorage. But each body casts anchor in a different sea. Everything external — trees and plants, creepers, forests, beasts — all of it is the body. Only the body. Without the body, there is nothing. Everything is through the body. You can keep on stretching the boundaries and limits of the body. It will accept everything, contain everything. It will be able to mingle with everything.”
Once more her face was bathed in sweat. Kumud wiped it away.
She explained why she had invited Kumud to come there.
She arrived at this mountain village some years ago, entirely by chance, she said. A conference on spirituality was to be held at a small town nearby, to which several women had been invited. People from different groups were expected to participate: a great number, including Catholic nuns, Sufis, Jains, Parsis, Sikhs, people like Bimla, people who insisted on harmony amongst religions, activists. Bimla was travelling with some nuns, in two or three compartments. At about half past eight, after they had finished dinner together, a young nun left for her own compartment. It was only a couple of hours later that they realized she had never got there. Terrified, they looked everywhere for her, and found her at last, fallen down in the bathroom. She had been raped. All over her body were scratched with a razor-blade, the syllables “Om,” “Om.” They had written their religion on her body. It lay there, a symbol of the violence that religions are capable of. The conference took place against the backdrop of this tragedy.
They concluded that the only weapons they had against such madness were education and good health. To create healthy bodies and healthy minds. Many among them were skilled in these two fields. On their way back, she stopped at this village for a couple of days. She wanted to start a school here. To build a hospital. Swamiji Maharaj was at the last stage of his life, at that time. He told her she had made an excellent decision.
“So who is likely to come to this school then? There are only about fifty houses in this village, I think.”
“There are several villages hereabouts. There might even be children coming across the border.”
“Very well. You summoned me here because of your dream school. What about your hospital?”
“Why, there’s Sukhbir. He’s a doctor.”
“Really? And there was I, thinking he was the gardener.” Bimla laughed.
“Look here, Bimla. Why don’t you travel around to cities here and there, giving your sermons? Go abroad. Travel the world over and talk about your thoughts and the lifestyle you believe in. What is there for you in this place? Only ignorance and corruption, and a life lacking enough money to do what needs to be done. Why should you be confined to India? And in this village which doesn’t even appear on a map of India.”
“Kumud, did you see the book Ira Pande wrote about her mother, Shivani? It describes how Shivani went to visit her elder sister, who was failing in health. Shivani asked her, You have a house in a pleasant setting in the hills, why can’t you go and live there instead of staying in this place. The answer her sister gave her is the same answer I should give you.”
“And what was that?”
“You read it yourself. Or ask Sukhbir; he’ll tell you.” Bimla closed her eyes.
When the lake dwindles, the birds fly away,
seeking their nests elsewhere.
Yé Rahim! Fish lacking wings,
where can they go?
A poem by Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khana, who lived in Akbar’s time.
“In that case, Sukhbir, they are fish to be pitied. Fish that will die when the lake dwindles away.”
“No, not so. Fish that believe that the rains will come. Fish that are not afraid to die. Fish that wait for the lake to fill again. Fish that have become one with the lake…”
Dreams. Mere dreams. They were trying to entangle her in those dreams. But she was a free bird. The four people she had raised were all living abroad. She had a room in each of their homes. If she grew tired of one home, she would be welcome in another. She need not be imprisoned in any one of them. Bimla and Sukhbir may have very good reasons for their plans here. Sukhbir had studied medicine at a foreign university, and had worked in a big hospital in India on his return. One evening, when he was driving his car very fast, he crashed into a family, and all of them died instantaneously: husband, wife, and two children. One of the children was a baby in arms. Shocked, he stopped the car and rushed towards them. The woman, holding the baby to herself, called out with her dying breath, “Ei, you sinner, you destroyed my entire family.” The verdict at the court proved favourable to Sukhbir. But those eyes filled with panic at the moment of death, chased after him. “Ei, you sinner, you sinner…”
He took refuge with Swamiji Maharaj. During the first four years, he planted all of the Lok Seva Sangh rose nurseries, and cared for them. Four crore roses for four lives. Four Years. Then he established hospitals at all branches of the ashram, and appointed appropriate staff. He said that even now, he saw those eyes on some nights, accusing him. He was past sixty now. When she asked why he had not gone away and worked elsewhere, he said that no country had a border that would prevent those eyes from following him. They were eyes written upon his body, he said. He never stopped laying out rose gardens.
But Kumud was not held fast by anything. There was nothing that pulled her to itself.
Sunk in thought, she had walked some distance. Nothing was cooling to the eye. The mountains were at a great distance. During her bus journey, she had glimpsed, now and then, spotted deer, and peacocks with their tails outspread, even though there was no sign of rain. Here there was nothing at all.
A barbed-wire fence stopped her from going any further. Beyond it, a pond. A little girl stood at its further shore. Bare-bodied, except for a small skirt about her waist. A stick in her hand. She too was like that as a little girl. Didi could not cope with all the children. Kumud would run off towards the fields, a stick or a doll held in her hand. She’d sit under the shade of a tree and think of the photograph of her mother which hung in their home. What had her mother been like? Was she as loving as Didi? But Didi never had any time. Everything was done in a hurry. Bathtime was a rush. Making the rotis was a rush. Serving the food was a rush. She had to go to school, didn’t she? When Didi returned home in the evening, there were more constraints. It wasn’t possible for her to sit on Didi’s lap. But her mother must have had lots of time. Her mother would have laid her on her lap. Stroked her hair. Hummed a song to her in a low voice. At the thought, tears would gather in her eyes.
Grasping the barbed wire in her hands, she wept. The tears came, in great sobs. In an unfamiliar town, in this unknown place, these tears in the presence of a barbed-wire fence. The pond was witness; the little girl the spectator. She felt someone touch her hand. The little girl was standing next to her, on the other side of the fence. Her hair had been plaited in five sections. The plaits stood out, like sticks.
“Mausiji, why are you crying?”
“Some dust in my eyes. How did you get here?”
“The pond isn’t deep. I waded across.”
“Don’t you have school?”
“Our house doesn’t have a door.”
“I asked why you haven’t gone to school.”
“That’s what I’m telling you. Our house doesn’t have a door.”
“Where’s your house, then?”
“Over there. Quite far off. Now Mataji is going to build a school for us. I can come and study there in the evenings. Babuji and Maji will have come home by then, won’t they?”
“So who’s at home now, in your house?”
“Dada’s there. Otherwise the dogs will come and upturn all the food. We don’t have a door to our house, you see.”
A girl who couldn’t go to school, who safeguarded a house without doors from prowling dogs.
“What’s your name?”
“Chunari.”
“Would you like to go to school?”
“I want a notebook, pencil and everything.”
“And then?”
“Mausiji, I know lots of stories. I want to tell them all to the teacher. Mataji promised us. She’ll build a school.”
She crawled underneath the fence and came beside her. “Mausiji, do you know this? You can walk all the way to Nanda Devi from here.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, and after that, if you walk and walk and walk a long, long way, you’ll see the Panchuli Mountain range. There are five mountains in all. The five Pandavas made a hearth out of all five mountains and cooked their food.”
“When was this?”
“Before they went up to heaven.”
“Who told you all this?”
“I just know it by myself.”
“Very good.”
A cool breeze blew. A couple of raindrops splashed on Chunari’s cheek. Then they fell on her head too. It began to drizzle.
“Rain, rain,” sang out Chunari. She too, wanted to sing aloud.
Chunari had been laughing, chuckling, and snorting. Suddenly she stopped. “I must go,” she said. “Dada will scold me.”
She was just about to step forward and crawl under the fence, but turned round and came back. “Mausiji, please don’t cry.”
“No, I won’t. I won’t cry.”
“When Mataji builds her school, you too will get a pencil and notebook and everything. You mustn’t cry.”
“I won’t.”
She crawled beneath the fence, and in an instant had crossed the pond and reached the other side, scattering water and drenching her skirt. Running, she disappeared.
Kumud stood there until she was drenched to the skin. The rain water seeped through her, with the chill wind. She felt as if she had been scoured clean. The barbed-wire fence she held, the withered trees accepting the rain, the pond which lay there like a thirsty mouth opening, Chunari with her little skirt, the small boy who had bought her bananas in that crowd-tossed bus station, anticipating her hunger, the snow-covered mountain peaks he said you could see when the skies cleared — everything entered her body and came out again, spreading, spreading everywhere and taking universal form. Her body diminished into a dot — a single dot among the several that were all strung together.
It was evening. Bimla Devi sat in an easy chair by the window, her eyes shut. The pale pink light of dusk fell on her face. Her spine must have ached. She grimaced very slightly, now and then. She looked as if she had lived through many centuries. As if she was beyond age. As if she had achieved eternal life.
“Bimla,” she called, gently.
She opened her eyes and smiled.
Kumud went and sat next to her. “Does it hurt a lot?” she asked.
“Rather a lot.”
“Bimla, the rains have come,” she said.
“Yes. We have been waiting anxiously.”
“Bimla, we can put up fences behind the ashram, and make a thatched shed. It will house the first five classes. We need to order from Bareilly, or some other town, blackboards, chalk, notebooks, pencil, textbooks, and everything. Bimla, we must have book bags, mustn’t we? And then, Bimla, would it be possible to give the children a cup of hot milk every day?” Her voice seemed to echo. Bimla was peacefully asleep, holding on to Kumud’s hands. She was breathing evenly.