A River Sutra (13 page)

Dr. Mitra had been away in Delhi attending a medical conference. Now we were sitting on the wide veranda of the bungalow having tea while I brought him up to date with Nitin Bose's story.

It was late afternoon and the sultry atmosphere that precedes the monsoons seemed to be lifting at last. A light breeze was blowing in from the river, bringing hope of rain.

"An interesting case," Dr. Mitra observed as I ended my account. "But probably not unusual."
A sudden bark of laughter shook the lanky frame on which the white cotton shirt and trousers seemed to flap as if suspended on a hanger. "Someone is sure to commemorate Nitin Bose's recovery by building a temple where he immersed the idol. It will become a place of pilgrimage, attracting hosts of lunatics to your riverbank."
"Have you ever had patients who claimed to be possessed?" I asked, unable to imagine anyone sharing Nitin Bose's ailment.
"Not possessed exactly, but pulled in two directions. Only to be expected when we are sitting on the battleground between the Aryans and the preAryans."
I idly watched a fallen blossom roll across the grass below the veranda. "What does that have to do with being possessed?"
"My dear fellow. This is where the war for the possession of India was fought—pitting Aryan reason against the primal beliefs of the tribals. Though they weren't tribals at all, really. As Nitin Bose noted in his diary, they had a civilization long before the Aryans arrived, with great cities and so forth. Called themselves Nagas and worshipped the Naga, the snake. In my opinion the Sanskrit word for city, nagara, comes from them."
He stretched out his long legs and leaned back into the cushions of the cane armchair, narrowing his eyes against the afternoon sun slanting across the river. "Did you know 'narmada' means 'whore' in Sanskrit?"
I was offended. "That's impossible. The Narmada is the holiest river in India."
He turned toward me, his lean face creased with amusement. "Ah, yes. I forgot. A mere glimpse of the Narmada's waters is supposed to cleanse a human being of generations of sinful births. Just think how pure you and I must be, gazing on this river every day."
I ignored Dr. Mitra's sarcasm. "So Narmada is unlikely to mean whore."
He shook a bony forefinger at me. "I hope you are not contracting the fatal Indian disease of making everything holy, my friend. The Narmada is already too holy by half. Do you know how many sacred spots there are supposed to be on her banks? Four hundred billion, according to the Puranic scriptures."
I didn't argue. Dr. Mitra is something of a scholar on the Narmada, part of the general eccentricity of his nature that has led him to run a six-bed hospital in the small town of Rudra in preference to the lucrative practice that his many medical degrees could have gained him in any of our large cities. He maintains that he encounters more interesting patients here than he could hope to find in Delhi or Bombay, and whenever he describes a pilgrim brought to him with only onethird of a body or some particularly horrifying form of elephantiasis, his eyes shine with excitement as if he is describing a work of art.
It is odd that someone as skeptical as Dr. Mitra should enjoy the stories of the river, but his wayward temperament seems to delight in unraveling the threads of mythology, archaeology, anthropology in which the river is entangled.
As if reading my thoughts Dr. Mitra said, "You know, the great Alexandrine geographer Ptolemy wrote about the Narmada. I suppose even the Greeks and the Alexandrines had heard about the Narmada's holiness and the religious suicides at Amarkantak—people fasting to death or immolating themselves on the Narmada's banks, or drowning in her waters—in order to gain release from the cycle of birth and rebirth."
He shook his head in disbelief at the extremes to which religious folly could take men.
"The ancient Greeks would probably have sympathized with the river's mythology, but at least they had to deal with only one set of myths, whereas Indians have never been prepared to settle for a single mythology if they could squeeze another hundred in."
I laughed at Dr. Mitra's expression of incomprehension as he expanded on the excesses of the devout.
"On top of all that mythology, there's the river's astrology. Her holiness is believed to dispel the malevolent effects of Saturn so all manner of epileptics, depressives, and other unfortunates rush to her banks. And yet, the Narmada is also a magnet to scholars. Towns on the banks of the river are renowned for the learning of their Brahmins. It is as if reason and instinct are constantly warring on the banks of the Narmada. I mean, even the war between the Aryans and the pre-Aryans is still unresolved here."
"After four thousand years?"
"My dear chap. What about the temple of Supaneshwara on the north bank of the Narmada?"
I reluctantly admitted that I had never heard of it.
"But you must have heard of the Immortal who sleeps in the forests near the temple."
"What is an Immortal?" I asked, faintly irritated by Dr. Mitra's heavy-handed display of mystery.
"An Aryan warrior."
"Are you telling me that a four-thousand-yearold Aryan warrior is asleep on the north bank of the Narmada?"
"Absolutely, my dear fellow." Dr. Mitra gave me a gleeful smile. "I can even tell you his name. Avatihuma."
"I've never heard such nonsense in all my life."
"Ask any local tribal. Your guard is from Vano. He'll corroborate my story."
I couldn't resist the challenge and shouted for Mr. Chagla. A round head appeared through the office window, happily nodding assent when I asked for the guard.
Dr. Mitra tapped my arm. "Now remember, the pre-Aryans had lived here peacefully for centuries, perhaps even millennia, before the Aryans arrived. Their philosophy was based on a profound respect for nature and the interdependence of all life.
"Then along came the Aryans. Restless nomads. Obsessed with conquest. Reveling in war. Placing the truths learned by the mind above all other truths, including the truths of nature. In other words, the war between the pre-Aryans and the Aryans was a classic conflict between instinct and reason. Rather like the conflict that drove Nitin Bose mad. In any case, the pre-Aryans slaughtered a number of Aryans. But the Aryan warriors had been granted immortality by their gods. And immortals cannot die. Ah, here's the guard."
A tall man in a khaki uniform was standing on the grass below the veranda, a stout bamboo stave held in one hand. With the other hand he saluted. Dr. Mitra clasped his own hands together in greeting before asking "Have you ever heard of a temple called Supaneshwara?"
"Yes, sahib. My father went on a pilgrimage there."
"Is it easy to find?"
The guard looked dubious. "It's not far from here. But the jungle is very thick in those hills where the river rises, sahib."
"I wonder if I could go there . . ." Dr. Mitra was only thinking aloud, but the guard became quite agitated at his words.
"Don't, sahib. My father nearly lost his life on the journey. Bandits and all sorts of bad elements live in those parts. There are no villages to provide shelter to the traveler so anyone can strike at will."
I was curious to know why the area had so many bandits. "Can't the police catch them?" "Impossible. A man can disappear forever in such jungles. But that is not the only reason bandits go there, sahib. They also seek the Immortal." "Who is this Immortal?" I asked with growing impatience.
"Of the race who conquered my people. Even though my ancestors severed his head from his body, he could not be killed. To this day the head just lies in the jungle, sahib. Sleeping because it cannot die."
Dr. Mitra's curiosity won over his triumph at proving me wrong. "What do the bandits do when they find it?"
"Honeybees are said to circle the Immortal's head, sahib. The bandits believe if they are stung by one of the honeybees, they cannot be killed in a police shootout."
Dr. Mitra stretched full length in his chair, grinning with pleasure at having learned yet another tale to add to the tales that seem to multiply around this astonishing river.
There was the deep rumble of thunder and the sun was suddenly obscured by scudding storm clouds. The guard walked back to his post lifting his face to the raindrops falling intermittently from the darkening sky. Then jagged lightning ripped open the black clouds, deluging the garden in the first storm of the monsoon.
Mr. Chagla hurried onto the veranda and began lowering the rolled cane screens tied between the pillars. The heavy downpour roused Dr. Mitra from his reverie. "I'd better give you a lift back to town, Chagla. The road will be slush in a few minutes."
Mr. Chagla accepted with alacrity. I could tell from the uncharacteristic glumness of his expression that he was already dreading the weeks ahead when he would have to cycle on flooded mud paths through the monsoon storms to get to work.

Even during a light monsoon the steep hill behind the bungalow traps the rain, sending torrents of muddy water down the hillside to inundate our grounds. Broken branches fall on the single electric line that connects us to the power station at Rudra, and the bungalow generator is so old it cannot cope with our frequent power failures. Poor Mr. Chagla is continually loading spare parts for the generator into a hired three-wheeler at Rudra and navigating his way through the deep puddles left in the mud path by bullock-cart wheels to restore the bungalow's power supply.

This year the monsoon was unexpectedly heavy and the generator had hardly worked at all, although Mr. Chagla had practically rebuilt it in order to run our lights.

One morning I was sitting behind my desk in the office, unable to work. With nothing to stir the air, the humidity was already making my clothes stick to my skin. I stared at the black rainclouds darkening the sky outside, resenting this season when the driving rain keeps me imprisoned indoors, and waited impatiently for Mr. Chagla to arrive and work some miracle on the generator.

At last the three-wheeler backfired at the gates and Mr. Chagla's oval form crossed the garden. Mud stained his trousers to the knees but his head was obscured by his large black umbrella, so it was only when he turned toward the house that I saw the elderly woman sheltering under his arm.

"Can we keep a visitor, sir?" Mr. Chagla asked as he entered my office, morosely shaking the leg of his sodden trousers.

Chagla. Nothing is working."
"Even only for a night or two?"
"Chagla, be reasonable. We are not prepared

for a guest."
"But the road is practically submerged, sir. My
three-wheeler stalled. Water flooded the engine.
Everything was a complete flop. Then I saw this
lady walking on the road. She told me she was on
her way to a temple north of here. I asked her to
help me push the three-wheeler but, poor thing,
she was too frail to do anything. She looked so
fatigued, as if she were going to drop any moment.
I couldn't just leave her there, sir."
"Where is she now, Chagla?" I asked in exas
peration.
"In the drawing room."
"I'd better warn her that she is not going to be
very comfortable."
The smell of damp upholstery overwhelmed me
as I entered the high-ceilinged chamber built to
keep cool in the worst heat of summer. Now the
small windows threw the room into heavy shadow
so that only the colors of the butterflies and flowers that adorned the marble mosaics glowed. The
woman was standing in the middle of the room
staring at the mosaics. She turned at my approach, and in that shadowy light it took me a
moment to see that her mud-spattered sari was
white.
"How long do you want to stay here?" I asked
ungraciously.
"Just tonight, sir." Her face was so thin the
lines that creased her skin were more prominent
than her features. "Tomorrow I will come back
with my daughter to collect my belongings." A radiant smile suddenly brightened her expression and I realized she must have once been
beautiful. "Then, sir, I will take my daughter
home at last."
"Has your daughter run away?" I am always reluctant to allow the bungalow to become the
battleground for a family dispute.
"Oh, sir, if only God had been so kind." She
began weeping and I hastily changed the subject. "Where is your daughter at the moment?" "Near a temple called Supaneshwara. I looked
on the map. It must be quite close."
I did not remember where I had heard of the
temple or I might have been able to prevent a
tragedy. But I was only concerned to stop the
woman's weeping. Her next words aroused my
suspicions again. "I pray my daughter will not be
scarred forever by her experience."
"Experience, madam?"
"Oh, sir, my daughter was kidnapped two years
ago."
"Good God. We must inform the police immediately."
I turned to leave the room. The woman clutched
my arm. "No. You will put her life in jeopardy.
The police gave up the search months ago. They
are afraid of my daughter's captors. I was there
when she was kidnapped. I saw the men who stole
my daughter. If you had seen their faces, you
would know there is no cruelty of which they are
incapable."
She sagged, her weight dragging me down. I put
my hand under her elbow and led her to a chair. At that moment Mr. Chagla entered the room
with a tea tray. He solicitously poured a cup of tea
for our distressed visitor, and she wiped her tears
with the edge of her sari before sipping from her
cup.
I thought the tea had calmed her, but when she
spoke again it was clear she still feared I would
inform the police.
"I have lost my child once, sir. I beg you, do not
endanger her life again. Let me tell you how my
daughter was stolen from me. Then you will understand why the police have abandoned her."