Epilogue

The narrow street snakes and winds its way down. On either side of the lane are high, solid walls broken by small storefronts. Festooned with bright silks, they sell items for worship: flower garlands, sweet burfi and peda in large glass jars smeared with fingerprint. Dark, shiny Banarasi betel leaves are folded around fragrant, sweet, and acrid things that the vendor scoops up from the dozen or more shiny brass and glass containers arrayed in front of him. Tightening her hold on Meenakshi’s arm, Sowmya passes on the shopkeepers’ plea to come and do business.

As the women approach the ghat at the riverbank, a clutch of children converge around them. The children raise their spindly arms and shiny eyes toward her. They draw her into their circle that swirls with the hunger in their rag covered bodies and, because they are children, hilarity. They touch her sari and move closer. She picks up the pieces of sweets from the basket she has bought for the offering at the temple and places them one by one into their hands. But there are more hands than sweets, so she moves on when she runs out.

The sun sinks behind them among the temple towers. A group of six or seven Buddhist monks in crimson robes pass. The women begin to descend down to the Dashaswamedha Ghat. Jaya gets in front of them and goes down the steps first. Sowmya holds on to Meenakshi’s arm securely to steady her, and Janaki holds her other hand. The steps are broad, ancient, eroded but still solid under foot.

The river is seemingly tranquil on the surface. Only by the objects floating on its gray-brown massive waters is its rapid current evident. The river bends here at the temple for Lord Vishvanatha, forming a crescent shape before flowing north again, on its course toward the delta where it empties finally into the Bay of Bengal.

The west bank, where Sowmya stands, is choking with large and small temples, personal dwellings built long ago by wealthy merchants and maharajas, now offering free lodging for the pilgrims. The buildings, dressed in colorful paints, seem as though they have been here as long as the river itself. Wedged between these buildings are small forts, ashrams, a temple for some minor deity. Balconies hang precariously over the network of narrow gullies that run beneath them.

To her right the riverbank stretches for miles cutting across the city of Banares, towards the ghats of Harishchandra, Hanuman, Jalasi and on towards the end where the tributary Assi meets the main river. At this junction is the Manikarnika, where the dead are cremated. This is sacred ground, this west bank of the Ganges. This is where all quests end.

Across the river there is nothing but wilderness that spreads outwards towards a blond sky that is losing rapidly to the night. The woods remind her of a picture that she thought she had forgotten, a picture of the woods that opens out behind the divine Sri Krishna in the dimming evening light. Its details had once conjured up profound nostalgia in her young heart, a longing for a place she had never seen. And now here it is, this is the place! How did these woods become part of her memory before she ever saw them? She looks for a long time at the stillness of the gray-green density, where nothing moves.

A dozen pigeons coo and flutter, hop on the steps and cluster over the buildings.

The light offering for the river is getting underway below them near the water. A large stage that hangs partially over the water’s edge is being decorated with garlands. Sounds like that of an elephant’s trumpet but muted, come from the various small temples along the banks. They are blowing the conches inside. Tiny pennants on top of the several temple towers in the distance flutter in the wind, as though preparing to charge for battle.

Meenakshi and Janaki flank Sowmya and the women sit down at the steps of the ghat and rest their tired feet. Jaya skips down the steps to the river. Her sari ruffles in the wind and she smoothes it down, her hair coiled neatly at the nape. She buys a basket of clay lamps and a flower garland from a girl who runs up to her. She then approaches the boats moored on the banks and calls something to a man who is reclining in his boat. He flings his beedi, still smoking, into the sacred waters and jumps down.

“Watch,” Meenakshi says. “Nobody bargains like our Jaya. Poor man has no chance!”

They watch Jaya where strings of lights glow in the fluid darkness that is falling. Jaya looks up at them and calls from below, waving an open hand. Behind her a dozen or so women, all dressed in white, go down the steps and into the river. A moment later, their heads bob in the dark waters, saris clinging to their shaven heads.

Janaki suddenly sways and the women hold her between them. They descend the steps to meet Jaya for the worship of the river goddess, Ganga mai.

The light offering at the bank is led by ten priests. Fire burns in the cauldrons that are lined up against the ghat steps. Glowing strings of lights criss-cross above them causing a luminescent dome. They chant in unison the verses that adore the Fragrant Lord, in rhythmic aspiration and intonation like breath itself. The verses roll in the air, over the waters and across to the other banks, where the woods dark and silent absorb the text that had become sound and become silence again.

Om Tryambhakam Yajamahe

Sugandhim Pushtivardhanam

Urvarukamiva Bandhanan

Mrityor Mukshiya Maamritat

Like a ripe cucumber from the vine, let me separate tenderly from these bonds. Verses at once full of beauty and profound sorrow.

The women descend into the water’s edge where a boy helps them float the leaves bearing the lamp on the water. The leaves, tiny boats, carry the lights away and the river goddess glimmers as hundreds of flames float on her dark body.

The boatman is waiting for them when they arrive at four in the morning at the top of the ghat. He greets them and leads them down to the river and into his boat. He has a thin angular face, made handsome and younger than he is by a mustache and a mop of curly dark hair.

The sun is a shot of brilliance above the waters, gradually becoming a shiny disk, as it rises higher in the violet mist. Its elongated reflection shimmers on the waters.

Just as they are ready to push off the bank, a priest calls to them and runs towards the boat. Bathed and in his robes, his brows smeared with sacred ash, he briskly explains to the women why they need his service. He asks the boatman to give him a hand, climbs in and sits on the seat behind them.

“Always, there are ways to allow for life’s irregularities,” he says, as he arranges around him somehow the small brass plates and oil lamps that he brings out from an old and frayed bag, “such as the lack of a male heir.”

“It requires an extra propitiatory side step before proceeding with the main event,” he says, which is to send her father off on his voyage to the other world, beyond this one, floating on the waters of the sacred Ganga.

Starting with an invocation, he begins to recite the verses. He is middle-aged, his face holds the beauty that comes from his complete immersion in the certainty of his work. His competent instructions to them are soothing. Do this he says, like this, recite three times, pour the water over to the right after circling your head with it. The daughters do what he bids them. Janaki starts to cry a little, but it is a quick wave of grief that ebbs and then flows. The boatman turns his vessel around, faces east.

Sowmya touches the urn that she holds in her lap. She has so little of her father now, just this. She bites back her grief and fights off the waves of anger and tenderness that rise in rapid succession. If she sifts through the scenes that occupied her all these years, that of her father’s eyes the last time she saw him, the fear and anxiety in them, if she could for a moment set that aside, what does she have? Just glimpses that have faded, a slice of an expression, a bit of a voice, the feel of his hand. This is what is left of him. Her father would have wanted his past returned to him, something to assure him that his life had not just been fractured pieces, blown to dust. Sowmya’s hand slides over her abdomen, there’s a fluttering that she has revealed to no one, not even to Satya. A fragile and sweet thing, a miracle, and she has held on, counting and recounting days, keeping it to herself like a treasure. She could see the baby, her eyes blackened with kohl, silver bells tinkling on her chubby ankles. Sowmya sees her being passed from hands to loving hands, gladdening every pair of eyes that looks upon her—her mother breathing in her milk skin, Mallika’s ancient eyes, her sisters singing to her . . . Oh Satya!

The sun climbs rapidly into the sky, burning the mist, and suddenly the woods are in view and lit up as though somebody had turned the spotlights on them.

Dance to that heat, she would tell her little girl. Look slightly above their heads. Set the stage on fire, my Darling!

The End