In the Shadow of Crows (16 page)

Bindra chuckled. So often she had to learn the very lessons that she tried to teach her sons. It was time to put away her pride and learn new wisdom.

***

I had lost all hope of ever making my escape from Delhi before the heat boiled dry any residual moisture from my veins, when out of the milling crowd the grinning soldier unexpectedly reappeared.

He was clutching my ticket. He had only gone to confirm my departure time and platform.

I expressed my gratitude and relief with such immoderate emotion that he took my arm and ordered a eunuch to make room for me to sit down. I offered a distorted face of apology to the
hijra
, who pulled herself tall and, with a swish of henna-reddened locks and a flutter of kohl-caked lashes, went to join her “sisters”. I had spotted a group of them earlier, working the platforms together. They had been vigorously slapping their palms in the faces of unsuspecting commuters. Unless handsomely paid, they had been noisily threatening to expose their unsightly, though undeniably unique, scars, while raining fearsome curses of misfortune upon the parsimonious.

The soldier hooked his little finger around mine for a moment and smiled broadly at the people surrounding us. I was evidently considered something of a catch.

A grinding, roaring hiss and the train pulled in. This was not one of the Reverend Awdry's bright and brassy “chuffas”. Rather it was a monstrous tank, which seemed to have only recently returned from the infliction of some apocalyptic destruction. The crowds grabbed their cases, boxes, churns, water-pots and children, and ran to mount the carriage steps.

The soldier remained firmly by my side, insisting upon carrying the rucksack, until I had settled in my seat. He asked me to make a note of his address, with the plea that I visit his village one day to admire his ancestral fields, then wished a warm farewell and waited outside the window to wave me off.

I turned to smile and nod at the solemn young Sikh, the diseasescarred Hindu and the two expressionless businessmen with whom I shared the carriage.

Only the solemn young Sikh returned my genial gesture.

***

Bindra looked into the cloth she had laid before her. It was scattered with coins and handfuls of rice. She tutted to herself.

“
Ama-apa
!” she thought with unease. “If Mother and Father could see me reduced to this!”

“May you know freedom by never learning to scorn the dust,” she recalled once being taught in blessing. “May you know freedom by never learning to yearn for gold.”

Bindra bit her protruded tongue and shook her head.

Jiwan was still in the temple. He had been seated before the
murti
image of Kali for hours. This too troubled Bindra. Every day she wondered what had happened in the cave of the
ban jhankri
. Every day she wondered what would become of her serious little boy.

Jyothi had taken another banana from his cloth, when a scruffy monkey with a near-bald baby clinging to its back sidled towards him. He picked up a small stone and raised it above his head in threat, at which the monkey bared its teeth in resentment and scampered away.

“Son,” Bindra said in a soft voice, “monkeys, bananas, stones and you are all expressions of the Mother. All forms of life are equal in their divinity. All are worthy of respect and compassion, whether man, monkey or mosquito. Would you throw a stone at me, if I were hungry?” she asked.

Jyothi was shocked. “Never,
Ama
!” he cried.

“Then in your life learn to call all men Mother before you hit them, curse them, steal from them,” she advised. “Call all creatures Mother before you hurt them, hunt them, kill them.” She drew him to her side. “My good, strong boy, choose now to gain nothing in your life by any thought, word or deed to the detriment of yourself or others. There is no more effective path to lasting peace. No greater gift of wisdom that, as your mother, I can give.”

Jyothi wrinkled his nose and touched his head to hers.

“I'll try,
Ama
,” he promised.

***

To escape the commotion of the city was a relief, although the heat of the vast Gangetic plains of Uttar Pradesh proved unrelenting and unbearable. Despite the movement of the train, there was no breeze, no air at all. And my water supply was fast diminishing.

Across India's most densely populated state with a predominantly peasant population of over 166 million, sun-singed families threshed and winnowed sun-shrivelled crops in the sunsodden fields. As the train slowed to change points and I fought off my urge to scratch the numerous swollen bites I had acquired in Shimla, I watched an old buffalo topple over in a field. I counted twenty-eight vultures shifting excitedly, stretching their wings and talons in eager preparation.

Eventually, from the awesome flatness of the Plains rose the tall spire of a roofless Anglican church, extensive time-tattered public buildings and dilapidated mansions. Nine and a half hours after leaving Delhi, we had arrived at Lucknow, once capital of the kingdom of Oude where, in the previous century, my Uncle Oscar and his Uncle Warwick had advanced their familial bond by shooting dead grylag geese and wild cattle.

By the time the train had heaved itself into the impressive, Mughal-style station, I was coated in a fine red dust, as was everything else in this Urdu-speaking city. I watched the cheerful mayhem of the crowded platforms from the safety of my open window, head flush with classroom memories of nawabs, sepoys and Enfield rifles. Beef fat, Residency and the haunting gore of a Cawnpore Dinner.

As the train pulled away from Lucknow, my compartment prepared itself for sleep. Upper bunks were unclipped and shoes removed, faces were washed and teeth rinsed. I watched entranced as the young Sikh removed his elegant
dastaar
turban, redressed his
kesh
uncut hair with his
kangha
comb, then rebound his head with clean, pressed cloth.

Three of my travelling companions had now retired to their beds. No such joy for me. The sombre businessman, who seemed bent upon hacking up his mucous membranes, had not yet arrived at his station and defiantly stayed seated on my bench seat, preventing me from lying down. My head was again splitting with the heat and my patience fast waning. When he left to use the toilet, the young Sikh indicated in energetic sign language that I should pull out my bed and quickly claim my stake before the miserable codger came back. This I did, only to have the said codger return to sit hard on my legs. To make his point, he then cleared goodness-knows-what from his throat, and spat copious quantities of it across my backpack.

Grumpily, I sat up again to stare out of the window, attempting to appease the tantrum threatening in my gut. Hazy through the film of dust clinging to the air like a mirage sea-mist, I watched a sultry dusk descend. The skies turned a livid opalescence as, across the paddy fields, sapphire kingfishers winged their way home. Sacred cows wandered nonchalantly towards bamboo thickets and coconut trees. Scrawny children ran behind belligerent buffalo, rallying them on with sticks and bleating cries. I watched as a family of ebon goats skipped across a well-worn path into their wicker work pound, whilst their young keeper leant against a lonely tamarind and breathed songs into his wooden flute.

Grandmother would have loved this, I consoled myself. She would have said it was a Tagore poem come to life before us, the sunset “
hiding its last gold like a miser
”.

The train had now slowed to such a lethargic pace that I could see, seated in a clearing, an attentive village gathered around a whitehaired elder who seemed to be unfolding the deeds of demon-defying deities. I was certain that he was still recounting the doings of longdead heroes, even as the bruised sky darkened into night. As ibis, heron and egret left their muddy ponds. As peacocks hid themselves amongst the sugar cane and a crested serpent-eagle silently winged towards the gaping moon.

***

Bindra had slept for many hours, despite the clamour in the bus.

She leant forwards to relieve the pressure on her back and peered through heavy lids beyond the dust-encrusted window. Still too hot. Still too flat.

As every withered tree, bullock cart and low mud hut passed by, she repeated, “I have never been so far from home . . . I have never been so far from home . . .”

Bindra placed a gentle arm around her sleeping boys and let her eyes drift close, in search of glittering streams, dark forest and distant snows.

***

It was early morning when the Sikh unwrapped a parcel of
chat
snacks. He automatically handed me two small oranges, a savoury pastry of whole black peppers, and a condensed milk sweetmeat. I was touched by his spontaneous generosity and, although he could not understand a word, thanked him heartily. I recalled my father telling me that Sikhs were admired in his day for their practice of tolerance and respect for all. They were still known for welcoming any visitor to their
gurdwara
temples with the offer of shelter, food and a place to rest or stay.

My other travelling companions were not to be outdone. The remaining businessman gave me a fermented-lentil cake to be eaten with a spicy
achar
and a fresh, green chilli. The sullen, pox-marked Hindu handed me a banana, even though, as I indicated to him, I already had my own.

As I swallowed my last mouthful, the Sikh indicated to his bare wrist. I shook my head. I did not own a watch. He in turn shook his head, smiled and, for my benefit alone, announced, “Varanasi!”

Eighteen hours after leaving Delhi, I had reached my destination.

***

Bindra woke with a start. She sat up.

The bus had exploded into frantic life. Luggage was being lifted from racks, boxes from floors, babies into arms.

Jyothi was beginning to stir, but Jiwan was already wide awake. “Look,
Ama
!” he announced with a look of triumph on his face.

“We are in Kashi!”

Chapter Twelve

The train station at Varanasi was teeming. All around me, pilgrims in their multitudes were bursting from the confines of innumerable railway carriages, spilling out beneath the beehive-shaped, Nagar temple towers of the terminus's theatrical exterior.

I was accompanied to the taxi stand by the usual rabble of rickshaw-
wallahs
, hotel touts-cum-pimps, cannabis sellers and beggars. It was no little relief to be able to finally slam the door of the old Ambassador and ignore the chorus of keenly knocking knuckles beyond the glass.

My driver, Vipin, was impressed by my efforts at “kitchen” Urdu and seemed to warm to me immediately. There was enough in common with his Hindi that we could maintain some semblance of an intelligible exchange. I had picked out a cheap hotel, down by the river, which promised a courtyard garden. Vipin, however, did not approve.

“No, no, Mister-sir!” he cried, suddenly revealing his English. “Most nasty place! Dirty, smoky hippies. No, no! Not nice for nice Mister-sir like you!”

Memories of dishonest drivers in Udaipur blew noisy horns in warning, but I dismissed them. I sensed that Vipin was different. When he suggested that he could take me to a private, friendly house near
Asi Ghat
, where rooms were clean and food was “most goodly tasty”, I happily agreed. When he drew up at the end of a dark lane, too narrow for cars, and pointed me towards an old and well-kept building facing the river, my heart sang.

An elderly woman and a plump child were undertaking morning
puja
at the family shrine to Hanuman, as I climbed the steep front steps. The woman bowed to me and graciously pointed towards the front door. I removed my shoes and entered.

The interior of the house was beautiful, every pillar finely carved, its decorated floors well polished. Windows were shaded by carved latticework and, at every turn, domestic shrines bore exquisite images of gods and consorts lovingly disfigured by generations of devotion.

A pot-bellied man dressed in pristine
kurta pajama
offered a courteous welcome, and a clean and airy room. It was perfect. When he led me out to my own balcony overlooking the river, I laughed with joyful astonishment. I had seen this view in my dreams. To my left, the vast, sweeping curve of the Ganges with its supernal bluff of temples, mosques and palaces. To my right, a misty Maharaja's citadel, boat-moored mudflats and an infinite wilderness beyond.

It was hard to believe that I now stood in Varanasi, one of the world's oldest inhabited cities. The Islamic and British rulers of India had called it Benares. Others still called it Anandavana, the Forest of Bliss. But most favoured of all remained its ancient epithet - the City of the Light of Liberation.

Kashi.

***

Jyothi and Jiwan clung to their mother as Bindra struggled to keep up with the pilgrim horde. Their companions had almost broken into a trot as they neared the banks of Ganga Ma, despite limps, senility and debilities.

“Kashi! Kashi!” Jiwan chuckled in triumph, beaming at every passer-by.

Jyothi was silent. He was intimidated by the crush of bodies and buildings. He had never seen so many people before.

“Stay close!” Bindra kept calling. “Stay close to me!” as on and on they hurried. Although to what, she could not say.

***

Having washed and changed my clothes after far too many days, I commenced my long-awaited initiatory stroll along the
ghats
, walking across great sweeps of steps and platforms that slipped beneath the surface of India's most sacred river.

I found the sun much higher and hotter than I had anticipated. With my father's warnings about sunstroke, my Grandmother's tales of aunts wasting to hollow shells and cousins going mad in the noonday blaze, I moved away from the water's edge. I made for the shadowed labyrinth of the old city and found myself entering another world.

The
pucca mahal
, the ancient heart of this City of Shiva, boasted one of the highest population densities on the planet. So tightly packed were the decaying, multi-balconied buildings at the centre of the antique metropolis, that I discovered there were no roads. There was also no sun, for centuries of rebuilding had plunged some of these dark thoroughfares a full six feet below the level of the houses. Many were too narrow to accommodate the meeting of even two pairs of broad shoulders, and yet I found many lanes to also be a
gali
, or market.

The mildly nauseating tang of rancid milk, the rows of terracotta bowls balanced on every available step and sill, announced the curd market. The shady routes blocked by herds of lethargic, foraging cows heralded the vegetable district, whilst the dominating pungency of jasmine indicated that a flower market was near. The turn of a crumbling corner and the stupefying explosion of butterfly brilliance that dazzled the mind and stole the breath, even amidst the deep shadows of the urban chasm in which it lay, declared that I had stumbled upon the quarter of the city's renowned sari sellers.

It seemed that at every carefully negotiated step, yet another bellheralded, incense-clouded temple arose. The air rang with chanted tributes to the tiger-riding Durga. The sounding of conch shells to the supreme yogi, Shiva. The beating of drums for the all-consuming Kali. The desperate propitiations of the goddess of smallpox, Shitala, bringer of fevers. And everywhere I rested my ever-widening eyes,
lingams
ancient and new, deep within inner sanctums and suspended around dark throats.

All day I drifted, entranced. Not until dusk did I realise that I had eaten nothing and that the sun had gone.

I was making my way back to the boarding house when I came across a group of shaven-headed widows dressed in their emblematic thin, white saris. They had gathered along the water's edge to light
akash deep
. I watched as they suspended their sky-lanterns on bamboo poles and muttered mantras to the waning day in hope that they might guide their departed husbands across the “river of rebirth”.

I lingered until all had finished their
puja
and had wandered back to the charity houses in which they awaited the lighting of their own pyres, before I approached the cluster of suspended lights. I looked to the mist of insects that billowed in the guttering glow of the
akash deep
, and placed my hand from heart to bamboo pole.

“For you, Priya,” I whispered.

And, for a single moment, dared to believe that she might hear.

***

Bindra had lost sight of the chattering crowds with whom they had shared their gruelling bus journey from distant Kakariguri. Every few, stumbling steps she looked down to ensure that both her sons were still beside her.

The streets here had grown so narrow and twisting that she had found herself disorientated. And all the time, Jyothi's plaintive cry, “Where are we going,
Ama
? Where are we going?”

Bindra had seen no Hill faces since her arrival. There would be no one here to understand her tongue. No one to understand her entreaties for assistance or advice.

“Stay close!” was all that she could say. “Stay close to me!”

Pressing on through the warren of dark and bustling passageways, the narrow strip of distant blue above suddenly split asunder the fortress of blackening walls. All at once, Bindra's eyes seemed to melt in the shimmering iridescence of mighty Ganga Ma. The choked lanes burst open onto vast, stepped
ghats
, pouring their chaos down stairs and platforms that tumbled into the waters, their foot-smoothed stones crowded with milling devotees and silent dead.

Stiff with rigor mortis and wrapped in cloth, a ceaseless stream of corpses was coursing through the congested lanes, around which Bindra was negotiating her sons. Bodies borne at unnerving speed on the shoulders of friends and family. Bodies balanced across planks and bicycles. And yet there were no tears, no wailing, for such sentimentality is only thought to prevent the knot of individual existence from unravelling back into the universe of which it is but one expression.

Such vibrant life and visible death colliding at the very brink of solid heaving earth and shining flowing water, afforded this place an extraordinary quality. The air was heavy with ash, every breath intoxicating with the sickly smeech of sandal, ghee-drenched wood, hair, flesh and bone. And yet, here there was a curious lucidity, an inexplicable clarity, in light, in act, in every thought.

“You see,
Ama
!” Jiwan announced, with a look of wide-eyed elation. “In this place, we are neither here nor there. Neither in this world nor the next!”

Bindra looked down at his face, shining brightly in the reflection of the water. She could find no words with which to respond.

She could only look down at him. Shining brightly.

***

I woke long before dawn and scurried down to the muddy banks of the river. I quickly found the low, narrow boat with its friendly oarsman whom I had met the previous evening. Sudeep's family had been boatmen on the Ganges for generations. With his dashing smile, his gentle nature and insistence that I pay him only what I considered his service worth, I had confidently hired him.

Sunrise on the sweeping, four-mile stretch of Varanasi's central riverfront was utterly astonishing. The city's palaces and pillared pavilions, mansions and temples, domes and cupolas, minarets and
shikharas
rose as an immense, tiered precipice from the eighty or so
ghats
. Never before had I been so acutely aware of India as the world's last remaining great, ancient civilisation. Whilst the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks and Mayans had risen and fallen, India's millennia-old customs and practices survived intact. I had already found myself utterly enchanted by its wondrous, and at times terrible, beauty.

I watched in captivated astonishment as innumerable flowerbearing pilgrims gathered at the water's edge, intensely employed in their oblatory ablutions. The air pulsated with mantras of consecration and liberation, mixed with the pounding of cloth against
dhobis
' stones, the low of buffalo and the percussive pop of skulls bursting open in the flames.

Naked
sadhus
gathered for communal
sadhana
. Masseurs and barbers plied their trades beneath broad bamboo parasols. Zealous young cricketers hit driftwood “balls” with driftwood “bats” and muscular wrestlers practised their ancient
garadi
tradition, for which the city was so famous. Whilst, in the waters, pilgrims and locals of every age anointed then submerged themselves amidst all the debris of urban life, inestimable
pujas
and the recently departed.

Not until breakfast, back at the lodging house, did I see the newspaper. The day before, the crowded passenger train on which I had been travelling had tumbled to its terrible end. The neglected, Raj-built bridge that lay beyond Varanasi had given its last, tired ruckle and had collapsed into the river below.

As I scanned the sobering statistics and the front-page gore, I found myself smudging the newsprint at the thought of the smiling Sikh, the kindly businessman and the pox-marked Hindu, who had so generously and unknowingly shared with me their last breakfast.

***

The previous night, Bindra had led her boys well away from the oppressive crowds, to the quiet of a broad stretch of worn stone near
Lalita Ghat
. They had boiled rice and the last of their daal on a little fire built from the swathes of refuse that cluttered modern Kashi's sacred heart.

Bindra woke at dawn. She placed her hand in blessing on the sleeping heads of her two sons and lay still to watch fishermen, pilgrims and tourists moving slowly on the dark waters.

As the sun began to rise above the distant trees on the far shore, she made her way down to the river's edge to wash. No sooner had she entered the shallows than she caught her breath. She had heard Nepali. She scanned the
ghat
, but could see no one but a solitary, naked
sadhu
busy with his morning
puja
to Ganga Ma.

Again she heard a whisper of the cheery, chatty tones she knew so well. She looked up. High above the great river wall stood a wooden temple, shaded by a single spreading tree.

Bindra hurried back to the boys. They had only just begun to stir.

“
Au
!
Au
!
Yaha hamro sathiharu cha
!” she called with

excitement, “Come on! We have friends here!”

Together, they clambered a steep flight of stone steps until they reached the temple compound.

“
Namaskar dajoo
!” Bindra bowed in eager
pranam
to an elderly priest, who was sitting on the ground with two young novices. The man bowed in courteous return, indicating with a nod of his head that they were welcome to enter.

“
Ke ramro
!” Bindra declared, “How beautiful!” as she surveyed the highly decorated building that rose before them. She eagerly led her sons to the entrance steps of the temple, but the doors were closed. Bindra bowed in respect and touched the base of an ithyphallic image of Shiva by her side.

“
Ama
?” Jyothi was staring with curiosity at the stone
murti
. “Why is Lord Shiva's
laro
sticking up?”

Bindra smiled. “Firstly, it tells us that this temple is of our Hill tradition.” Jyothi rocked his head from side to side in recognition. “But most importantly, his
thankieko laro
upright phallus indicates the unchanging stability of universal consciousness. The true power of continuous creation, ever-ready to express itself.”

Jyothi looked bemused.

“You'll learn to understand in time,” Bindra assured him. Jiwan was already circumambulating the temple, so Bindra and Jyothi followed in their own clockwise route. When they caught up with Jiwan, he was staring at a graphic carving of explicit, erotic play.