A River Sutra (9 page)

"Prepare the north suite, Chagla. Apparently our visitor is interested in the tribals. From his balcony he will be able to see Vano village. And when you return to Rudra make arrangements to meet the train."

The noise of a motorcycle roaring down the path behind the bungalow interrupted my instructions, and Mr. Chagla followed me across the garden.

"But this is Shashi, my school friend from so many years," Mr. Chagla announced in surprise as a constable from Rudra police station parked his motorcycle at the gate. "What can he want?"

"You will have to accompany me at once, sahib!" the constable shouted at me. "There has been some trouble with one of your visitors."

Chagla cried. "Who is creating such a mistake?" "What can I do, Chagla? Your address was in
his pocket. 'Care of the Narmada rest house.' " "Shashi, you are not telling sense to my sahib.
Who is this he? Where is this he?"
"In a cell at the police station in Rudra." "A prisoner? ' I asked.
"Well, that's the problem, sahib. We think he
was trying to kill himself. We found him standing
on the very edge of a cliff, staring down into the
Narmada."
"Oof-oh. What a terrible thing!" Mr. Chagla
shook his round head in dismay. "Was he going to
jump in;
"We are not sure of his real actual intentions.
When we asked what he was doing there on the
cliff he only said, 'Bring me my oil and my collyrium. Sister, bring the mirror and my vermilion.' " Mr. Chagla stared at him dumbstruck. The constable looked away in embarrassment, and for a
moment we all stood there in silence. Then Mr.
Chagla recovered himself sufficiently to demand,
"And his good name, Shashi. What is the poor
fellow's good name?"
The constable turned to me, opening his hands
in a gesture of helplessness. "That is another
problem, sahib. He gives only a woman's name
but he is most certainly a man."
I couldn't control my curiosity. "What name
does he give?"
"Rima, sahib. We have confined him, but we
have not charged him. How can we charge a man
under the name of Miss Rima Bose?"
The telegram had informed us of the imminent arrival of Nitin Bose. I remembered my old friend had ended his letter by saying he depended on my discretion. I wondered if the constable's prisoner was my colleague's nephew, and why my colleague hadn't warned me that his nephew was
mad.
"Has your prisoner been seen by the doctor?" The constable was affronted. "Of course, sahib.
Very first thing. The doctor sent me to bring you.
He says he can do nothing."
"But what is wrong with him?"
The constable lowered his voice and Mr. Chagla
inclined his plump torso forward to listen more
closely. "The prisoner told to the doctor that he is
possessed."
Remounting his motorcycle, the constable
waited for me to climb onto the pillion seat behind
him. "Now, sahib, please hurry. My sergeant must
be waiting so anxiously for your arrival." Mr. Chagla unlocked the chain of his bicycle.
"Don't be alarmed whatsoever, sir. Shashi is a
capital driver, safe as anything. And I will be following close behind, to solve this mystery." The wind whipped past my face, making my
eyes water as we raced through the jungle toward
Rudra. By the time the motorcycle bumped onto
the tarmac road, my eyes were watering so badly the small painted houses were only a blur of limegreens and blues connected by bougainvillea bushes and rows of black crows perched on elec
tric wires.
The constable slowed down as we neared a
square building with iron-barred windows. I recognized Dr. Mitra's spare frame leaning down to
talk to a policeman at the entrance of the police
station.
"My dear fellow, what a business." Dr. Mitra
helped me off the motorcycle and led me up the
concrete stairs. "I have just come back from the
station with the poor chap's luggage. It was addressed to your bungalow. Were you expecting
someone by the name of Nitin Bose?"
When he saw my expression he placed a lean
arm around my shoulder. "Don't worry. It will
soon be sorted out. In any case, the young man is
not at all menacing. Come, see for yourself." We passed the police desk and entered a corridor that led to a solitary cell at the back of the
building. The police sergeant was sitting on an
iron cot talking to a young man who was pacing
silently up and down the cell.
The distinction of the young man surprised me.
There was an air of authority to his carriage, and
his well-cut cotton suit still flattered his body even though the cloth was creased. As he retraced his steps, through the stubble covering his dark skin I saw he had an aristocratic face with strong fea
tures.
The police sergeant got up wearily. "The prisoner won't talk to me, sahib. I can't even get him
to admit his name is Nitin Bose."
Dr. Mitra gently pushed me into the cell. "You
try talking to him. Perhaps you will have better
luck than us. Say you were expecting him." The sergeant followed Dr. Mitra down the corridor, leaving me alone with the young man. "Your uncle and I were deputy secretaries at the
same time," I began awkwardly. "In the Ministry
of Agriculture. In fact, he sent me a telegram, saying I should expect you tomorrow. But you are
already here."
I laughed nervously, unnerved by Nitin Bose's
silence. "For two years our offices were adjacent.
Right next to each other. Perhaps that is why he
suggested you stay in our bungalow. . . ." The young man suddenly gripped my shoulders. I was not frightened by the pressure of his
fingers when I saw the fear deep in his eyes. "You must help me," he whispered. "Read my
diary. You will understand why I must find the
shrine."
His voice broke and he sat down on the iron cot. "What shrine?" I asked, moved by his despera
tion.
He struggled to control himself. When he was
able to speak he answered, "They say there is a
shrine to a goddess in these jungles. A tribal goddess, who cures the madness of those who are possessed. Can you help me find it?"
His request was so simple I almost started
laughing again from sheer relief. The bitterness in
his eyes stopped me and I said soberly, "Our bungalow guards worship at that shrine. They can
take you there any time you wish."
"Then I must come with you."
I shook my head in alarm, unprepared to take
responsibility for a man in his state. To my horror
he knelt on the floor and seized my feet. "I will
cause no trouble, I swear it. If I cannot visit the
shrine I will have to kill myself. I can't go on like
this."
I backed out of the cell. "Let me consult the
doctor. We must abide by the doctor's advice." A policeman came to lock the cell door as I
hurried into the police sergeant's office, where Mr.
Chagla was helping Dr. Mitra go through the
young man's suitcase.
The police sergeant was describing each item to
the constable, Shashi, who was carefully recording
it in a lined ledger.

"Have you found a diary?" I asked. "He says it explains everything. And he wants to return to the rest house with me."

Mr. Chagla triumphantly handed me a leatherbound volume.
"Congratulations, my dear fellow." Dr. Mitra took my other hand between his bony fingers.
"For what?"
"You have brought the boy back to his senses. I knew it was a temporary aberration. He has probably been undergoing some severe emotional strain—overwork, an unhappy love affair, that sort of thing—and was suffering from momentary amnesia. I believe it happened to Agatha Christie once."
Hardly able to contain his glee at such a happy ending, Mr. Chagla threw his arm around his constable friend.
Dr. Mitra turned to the sergeant. "You haven't charged the prisoner with any crime. Release him into the capable hands of our friend and I will drive them all back to the rest house."
"No, no. Something might happen to him. We are too isolated." I looked to Mr. Chagla for support, but his plump face was stretched in a smile.
"What harm can come to him in our lovely bungalow, sir? We have guards. I am there. Shashi will arrive like a flash if we are in need of help."
"At least let me read the diary. We can collect him tomorrow."
Dr. Mitra objected. "If he stays overnight the police will have to charge him."
Seeing the dismay on Mr. Chagla's face, I accepted defeat and went to Dr. Mitra's car.
The police constables loaded the young man's luggage into the boot. Nitin Bose climbed in beside me, and Dr. Mitra steered the car onto the road.
All the way to the rest house Mr. Chagla chatted happily with Dr. Mitra. His good humor was so much stronger than the silent despair of the young man sitting at my side that I felt almost equal to the situation by the time we reached our gates.
To my relief, Mr. Chagla took immediate charge of our new resident. He busded about organizing Nitin Bose's luggage and issuing instructions to the cook and to the bearers. Leaving him to show Bose to his rooms, Dr. Mitra and I went to sit on the terrace.
The lights of Mahadeo's temples sparkled reassuringly at the river's bend, and above us Mr. Chagla's round shadow was visible against Nitin Bose's windows as he gesticulated to the bearer serving Bose his dinner.
"Do you think a man can be possessed, Dr. Mitra?" I asked.
"If a man believes strongly enough that he is possessed, then I suppose you could say he is possessed."
"Bose wants to visit a shrine that he thinks can cure him. The local villagers worship there. Will it be all right if he goes with them?"
"Certainly. In fact, I advise it. The young man has imagined his sickness. Let him imagine his cure."
He stood up, seeing Mr. Chagla walking down the garden. "Anyway, let me know what you discover in his diary. It may tell us more about this unfortunate situation."
"Our visitor is tucked up neat and tidy for the night," Mr. Chagla announced with satisfaction as I accompanied him and Dr. Mitra back to the car. "But I have left a guard outside his room, in case he becomes silly again."
As the car's headlights sliced into the darkness of the jungle, I returned to my house to read the young man's diary.

I suppose in a way my life really began when I came to live on this tea estate. Or perhaps it is ending here.

In any case I know something strange is happening to me, and I must keep a written record of the events leading to my present situation before I am no longer able to relate them.

First I should describe the world I inhabited before I came here. I was a young executive in Calcutta's oldest tea company. Like myself, all my young colleagues had been educated at exclusive boarding schools and obtained their jobs through family connections.

Outside our office Calcutta crumbled under the weight of neglect, exploitation, poisonous humidity, traffic jams, power failures, and roads plowed up like rice fields to make an underground railway, while a whole generation stoically waited for the city to return to what it once had been as more trainloads of refugees arrived to sleep on railway platforms already overcrowded with refugees from the partition of India fifty years earlier, the war in Bangladesh twenty years earlier, the devastations of nature that daily drew the desperate to a great metropolis itself desperately surviving as if a war had just ended.

But we experienced only claustrophobia as we stared through the darkened windows of our airconditioned cars at the crowds teeming across the broken pavements.

It was not that we were unfeeling. But we were young and we believed success lay in imitating the anglicized aloofness of our superiors who assured us the city had passed the point of no return.

They counseled us to make the best of a bad job. So we played golf at the Tolleygunge Club. Drank at the Saturday Club. Ate Chinese meals at the Calcutta Club. Raced at the Turf Club.

The drinking helped. And the meaningless adulteries. Also, we read avidly. On our bedside tables the novels of the moment were stacked on top of
Time, Newsweek,
the
Economist,
for those nights when there wasn't a woman in the bed. Or for dawn, when we returned from driving our women to their own homes and saw the sheets crumpled with humidity and sweat, saw the long black hairs lying like accusations on the pillow, and knew our lives were leaking away.

Occasionally the sluggish indolence of our lives was disrupted by the arrival of the boys from the tea estates. They were not prematurely aged by their life in the lonely tea gardens like the English tea estate managers described in eighteenth-century diaries, men without teeth or hair who came to Calcutta only to bid for wives when the ships from London discharged their cargoes of desperate Englishwomen trying to escape lives of penury back home.

Our tea garden colleagues were young, goodlooking Indians, bursting with alien energy. We listened to their boasts of rogue elephants tracked, man-eating tigers shot, hot-blooded women tamed, and envied the cowboy quality to their headlong pursuit of pleasure during the weeks they spent in the city.

Vying with each other to buy them drinks, we waved at the barman behind the long wooden bar at the Saturday Club. "A patiala peg for the sahib, Moses."

The tea estate boys obliged us by consuming whole bottles of whisky while we watched, fascinated by their careless self-destruction.