In the Shadow of Crows (20 page)

The walls of the “Reading Room” were a madman's map in old distemper, its warren of wormy bookshelves packed tightly with web-laced tomes. Flyleaves listed previous borrowers, with return dates from the days of the Queen Empress. All Lord this and Lady that. The signature of a Bonham-Carter, Yeatman-Biggs and Wrangham-Hardy. The flamboyant scrawl of a Ptolemy Carew-Hunt and the ever-so-thrilling W. F. Maguire-Luzeo-Péppé.

I disturbed dense dust to discover not only an extensive miscellany of reputable British writers - from Shelley to Stoker, Scott to Sackville-West - but all manner of Anglo-Indiana. The classic
Curry & Rice
by Captain Atkinson. Major Shadwell's all-essential
Economy of the Chummery, Home, Mess & Club
. The spirited rhythm and rhyme of Aliph Cheem's satirical
Lays of Ind
, on which I had been raised, with all those childhood favourites of the sullen Humptee Dumptee Frumtee Chundrer, the liberal Baboo Humbul Bumbul Bender, and good Rajah Kistnamah Howdie Doo.

The red-nosed Tibetan librarian, who sat behind a paper-piled desk, expressed delight at my interest in the damp-mottled volumes with the faulty beam of a tooth-depleted grin. She was evidently eager for me to borrow a book, just to have the rare chance of using her crumbling rubber stamp and arid ink pad, to enter a title and author into her mould-stained “books out” ledger.

The Club office was still not open. I returned to the verandah and looked down towards the town. It remained thickly enshrouded by an impenetrable fog. I decided to wait a while before venturing beyond the garden walls, so summoned a smiling servant for a blanket and settled down in a wicker armchair on the verandah. I would pass my misty morning in the company of the borrowed edition of Sir Henry Cunningham's
Chronicles of Dustypore
and a pot of scalding ginger tea.

The servants thought me
paagal
mad to be sitting out in the dank cold. And yet, alone with my book and with the town submerged in all-obscuring cloud, I could imagine that it was still 1920. I could imagine that Uncle Oscar was out there, in the bazaar, purchasing supplies for another campfire meet with his ferociously hedonistic planter chums, all ready to sit around open flames on elegant sofas and comfortable chairs hauled through deep jungle by an army of attendants.

I could have imagined that it was still 1920, except my flight of fancy had fundamental flaws. The paint of the Club was peeling, the windows all unwashed. The wicker and cane had been allowed to split, the floors left un-soda-scrubbed. The puffings of muslin in the rooms were long unlaundered, the damask and chintz untouched by flannel and bran.

I could have imagined that it was still 1920, except hidden traffic blew impatient horns beyond the garden walls, whilst the
mali
gardener, indolently weeding a herbaceous border, sported fake Adidas trainers, a baseball cap and over-sized polyester slacks.

***

Bindra had been just eight years old when her grandmother had first taken her to the old cave temple above Lapu
basti
.

They had arrived long after nightfall. In their carrying cloths they had wrapped
toriko tel
lamp oil,
batti
wicks,
dhup
incense,
sidur
pigment and
tori
mustard seeds. They had been laden with
parsat
offerings of
phalphul
fruit,
chamal
rice,
kapur
camphor and
supari
betel nut. Once settled, they had chanted together in the darkness, until sunlight had illuminated the peak of the Kanchenjunga.

They had spent all the next day sitting at the rock face. Bindra's grandmother had given her plant-infused water to drink, on which had floated scarlet hibiscus flowers. She had gently blown smoke from burning moss and dried herbs into Bindra's lungs that had made her sigh. She had bathed her in the fish-churned temple pool, from which rose Lord Shiva's weather-wasted
trishul
trident.

She had sat Bindra in the warmth of the sun, as she had slowly circled her, moving her hands in carefully chosen
mudras
to focus her intention and express her purpose. She had muttered indiscernible mantras as she had gently marked Bindra's young body with indelible symbols of supreme, universal union.

All day long, Bindra's grandmother had methodically taught her. She had given her knowledge that, when applied in daily life, she had promised would lead her to the wisdom for which she yearned.

As dusk had fallen, Bindra's grandmother had initiated her with her first mantra. She had told her that she was to repeat these Words of Power every day. Firstly, as the sun rose from behind the mythical mountain in the east, called Udaya. And then again, as the sun set behind the mythical mountain in the west, called Asta.

In time, Bindra's grandmother had imparted a second mantra to be whispered into the ears of each of her future children as they married. And finally, a third mantra, to be whispered into her own ears at the moment of her death.

Bindra had imagined that she would be an old woman herself before she would use the last. And yet, she was only in the third month of her womanhood when called upon by the
jhankri
to whisper the Mantra of Severance into the ears of her grandmother. To share the final breath. To bury a cloth-bound portion of charred flesh beneath the river sand.

And then to feed the crows.

***

The damp of Darjeeling had reached the hollows of my bones. I put aside my book, sifted the last dregs of tepid tea, and left the verandah to try the Club office once again. The door was open.

The ill-lit room was chaotic, clogged with bureaucratic excess. A stocky Nepali peered at me over a swelling sea of official forms in quadruplicate. He pushed files of flavescent papers and dried-out typewriter ribbons from a swivel chair. He cut a swathe through the jumble on the floor with his feet and bade me join him.

I explained that I had come in search of my Uncle Oscar. He listened intently and with sufficient interest that I felt able to ask if I might examine the old Club records. He was delighted to oblige and began to rummage unsystematically through drawers and cabinets.

Above his deliriously cluttered desk hung a faded photograph. However, this was not the likeness of the usual smiling, bespectacled Gandhi, or tightly buttoned Nehru. Rather, this was an English woman, who in her lifetime could easily have been mistaken for a young Larry Grayson. As to this
pukka mem
's identity, or the reason for her pride of place, the office-
wallah
was about to enlighten me, when he made a cheer of triumph. He had finally uncovered three leather-bound volumes of minutes dating back to the Club's establishment in 1868. Thrilled and impatient, I hurried to my room with the books, having been allowed to borrow them for “just as long as you do be guesting with us”.

Page after page was inscribed with the name of Uncle Oscar. I yearned to have been able to run to a telephone and share every word with my Grandmother.

At the regular reminders for him to pay outstanding Club bills she would have chuckled, as at his complaints to the sub-committee regarding the tinned plums in syrup, which he had found “utterly inedible”, and the kippered herrings, which he had deemed “quite unfit for consumption”.

She would have approved of his recommendation that electric light be introduced into the Club building, but would have given an explosive snort at his vehement resistance to the suggestion that women be admitted any more than twice a month, and then only to dinner or the public salons.

At Uncle Oscar's support for Colonel Roberts, who had protested against the posting of a sham telegram regarding the bombing of Alexandria, she would have yawned, but, being a talented musician herself, would have cheered his decision to punish members of a drunken rugby scrum who had damaged the “lounge” piano.

She would have dismissed his judgement on the bold accusation by Mr Bahrer that, one evening after cards, Mr Leg-Jacob had committed an “ungentlemanly assault upon his person in the Reading Room,” but would have applauded Uncle Oscar's persistent requests for the importation of tins of Jordan's Chocolate Imperials, and for the delivery of Italian sweetmeats and wafer
biscotti
direct from the celebrated restaurant of Signor Angelo Firpo in Calcutta.

And at his repeated appeals for the prompt shipping of a volume of Art Poetry, by “The Very Gay Company of the Seven Troubadours of Toulouse”, Grandmother would have stretched her eyes wide and cried, “Pot Herb!”

***

The row of silent crows perched on the ward window sill was undisturbed by the sudden agitation in the corridor.

Bindra sat up. She strained to listen to the excitement of voices beyond the open door.

Jyothi rubbed his eyes.

“
Ama
,” he croaked through an unmoistened throat, “is Jiwan back?”

Bindra stroked his face with the softness of fresh bandaging.

“I don't think so, my gentle, loving son,” she replied with regret. Bindra peered towards the corridor.

“But something new is coming that will bring changes for us.” She glanced towards the crows as one began to bob. “Something that will bring new wisdom.”

Jyothi quickly sat up and pressed his face hard into his mother's chest.

“I won't leave you,
Ama
!” he declared with fierce insistence. “I'll never leave you!”

Bindra tightened her arms around him.

“And one day, we'll all be together again,” she insisted with a determined smile. “Jayashri-
didi
, my good boy Jyothi, Jamini
bhaini
and Jiwan-
bhai
. Back in the Hills, back in our home . . .” She suddenly, desperately needed to believe that her words could come true.

Again noises in the corridor. Voices. Bindra looked up.

In the doorway stood a man with a single length of black cloth around his loins. His hair and beard were uncut and matted. His skin was caked with ash. His chest was heavy with long strings of gnarled
rudraksha
seeds. His eyes were full of sky.

“
Babajyu
!” Bindra gasped.

The
Aghori
had returned.

Chapter Fifteen

Settled on an old sofa in my private sitting room, with a smoky fire blazing in the grate and a chilling fog beyond the windows, I leafed through the musty pages of the Club minutes and felt my “Hindoo Uncle” drawing closer.

Oscar had been one of eight children born to well-to-do AngloSwedish parents. His father had boasted descent from no less than two red-headed royal mistresses, a noble illegitimacy the family proudly asserted through the liberal use on letterheads, rings and curricles of their crest of a broken lily rising from a crown. A collection of much-treasured Rococo and Gustavian silver bore witness to this august, if illicit, lineage, for snuffboxes, teapots and tankards engraved with regal seals had been given in dowry by kings to compensate lovers discharged in their gravidity. Oscar's parents had also retained a number of fine portraits depicting the imperial family, including an oil painting of the dashing Karl XIII, his left eye discreetly incised, it was claimed, for use in espionage at Stockholm's copper-topped palace.

Oscar and his twin, Olivia, had been born in 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny that had initiated the violent end of the Mughal Empire and the founding of the British Raj. However, despite his Scandinavian ancestry, Oscar had taken his first breath far from Nordic intrigue and palatine paramours, on the southern crest of Crouch Hill, in London's fashionable Northern Heights. He had been named after the popular and humane King Oscar II of Sweden, with whom his mother had danced at a celebratory ball to mark the royal engagement to Princess Sophia of Nassau. Eleven years later, on the morning of their shared birthday, Oscar had lost his twin sister to cholera.

Oscar had been educated at a boarding school for the sons of gentlemen in Oxfordshire, before taking a position - arranged by his mother's cousin and based on little more than a vague knowledge of rose pruning, the maintenance of toy engines and the care of sick pets - with the Upper Assam Tea Company. At the age of twenty, and with the “glamour of the East” upon him, as he had put it, Oscar had sailed from London's Victoria Docks for India.

Oscar had first paid his respects to an uncle at Lucknow, then had travelled on to Calcutta, where he had taken a train to Goalundo, close to the junction of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers. There, he had boarded a paddle-steamer and, thirty-three days later, arrived at Dibrugarh, near the Burmese border.

In time, Oscar had become manager of the tea-garden, and when, in 1883, a proposal had been made to build a railway into Upper Assam, he had offered a successful bid for the contract to supply the sleepers. It was thus that Oscar had made his fortune, just as his Swedish grandfather had in Britain half a century earlier - one with Germanic crosscut-saws and Scandinavian
skogshuggarer
, the other with Nepalese sawyers, Assamese elephants and
mahouts
.

In those days, the tea companies had forbidden their managers to marry until the age of thirty, in order that they might afford a standard of living worthy of a
sahib
. A polo horse was, naturally, far more important than a wife. It was, therefore, quite normal that Oscar had taken an Assamese mistress. The result was the beautiful and captivating Theo, of whom my Grandmother had so wistfully spoken.

Oscar had later moved west, across the Dooars from Assam and up to the temperate climes of Darjeeling, in order to manage an extensive tea-garden in the hills below the town. It had been there that the family legend had been carefully silenced.

However, my Grandmother had whispered to me that Oscar had once contracted dysentery from his plantation workers. She had hinted that he had been nursed back from the brink of death by a tribal princess, who subsequently bore him children.

If there was any truth to this tale, I had come to reveal it.

If there were indeed descendant generations, I was here to search them out.

***

The
Aghori Baba
smiled broadly as he approached the bed. Bindra placed her bandaged hands to her heart and bowed her head in
pranam
.

“
Namaskar babajyu
,” she greeted him in respect, reminding Jyothi to join her.

“
Behenji, aaj aap kaisi haiñ
?” he said to Bindra, respectfully asking how she felt today. She did not respond. “
Aap Hindi bolte haiñ
?” he tried, asking if she spoke Hindi.

Bindra laughed shyly. She had guessed his question. “
Ma Hindi boldaina
. I don't speak Hindi,” she replied.

“
E bahini
!” the
Aghori
grinned. “Sister, of course you are Nepali! I live many year in mountain with Nepali people. I speak
ali ali
little little.”

Bindra immediately burst into anxious, animated life.

“
Babjyu
, my son is on the cremation ground where he's joined the
Aghori Babas
and I would go to find him myself but I cannot yet walk and I fear to send my Jyothi as he speaks no Hindi and does not know this great city . . .”

She was barely taking a breath.

The
Aghori
put up his hand to quieten her. “
Behenji
,” he said softly, “sister, what you ask me?”

Bindra held her breath for a moment, but could not hold back new tears. In a single sob she burst, “Where is my son?”

“
Behenji
, you no need fear,” he offered in confident assurance, his eyes tender with compassion. “Sister, I send and find him. No problem.”

***

Mr Sengupta shook my hand warmly and offered the worn, green leather of his most comfortable chair. He sat back into his own seat, smiling benevolently. Billowing cigar wraiths haunted the air around him, clinging to his tweed cap and moleskin waistcoat, nestling into the burrows of his neck-scarf and the folds of his face.

Word had reached the Club office that their single guest had once counted family amongst their number. Mr Sengupta was intrigued and promptly offered to arrange an appointment with a Mr Duppa.

“This chap claims to be in his nineties,” he explained, “and is exceedingly knowledgeable in matters of tea history. This Mr Duppa was once a planter, you know, in olden times past.”

Mr Sengupta paused to slowly draw on his pipe.

“As for his longevity, you must be most naturally wondering,” he continued with smoke-shaped syllables. “Well, this he attributes to his not eating of meat, but,” he suddenly dropped his voice and craned his short neck towards me, “it is thrice that I have seen him dining on a fine Club sausage! Pinch of salt, young man!” he grinned through tobacco-tinged teeth. “Pinch of salt!”

I stood to shake his hand in grateful farewell, when Mr Sengupta placed into my proffered palm a piece of paper on which he had carefully inscribed an address. As I stepped back into the dense fog, he suggested I study an old photograph in “Billiards”, which he felt certain would prove of interest. I thanked him again and hurried back along the verandah.

Above the sooty mantle, against the smoke-stained wall, hung a heavy-framed print of the Club Committee. It recorded a formal gathering of starch-fronted
buckram-sahibs
, in 1928. And there was Uncle Oscar! He was seated with arms folded, his face a portrait of solemnity and distance, seemingly unaware of the photographic occasion to which the other twenty gentlemen had risen with appropriate pomposity.

“Please be excusing, sir,” a soft voice said beside me. I turned to meet the cheerful eyes of my Nepali room-boy standing in the doorway. “Mr Sengupta-sir is asking that I am guiding you-sir into bazaar.”

I was puzzled. I had no intention of doing any shopping.

“Yes, sir,” he continued with an unfalteringly mischievous grin, “bazaar is where we are finding Mr Duppa-sir. He most olderly. Such an olderly man you-sir never before seen! Not even anyone so olderly as he!”

Yashu followed me up to my room, where he insisted on helping me with my coat, scarf and woolly hat. As we ventured out into the blindfolding mists, he asked if he could take hold of two of my fingers, “to be most sure I may not be losing you-sir,” he impressed with earnest sincerity.

Darjeeling was not unlike Shimla, sprawling over a ridge and spilling down the hillsides in a complicated maze of interconnecting roadways, footpaths and narrow flights of stairs. The town itself was a jumble of Victorian cottages, villas, hotels, schools, churches, temples and small shops, all of which were disintegrating, slipping down the steep inclines and further into oblivion with every season. Surrounded by fast-diminishing forests, the town nestled beneath the Kanchenjunga range of the Himalaya, tempting Plains-weary tourists with the promise of views to Sagarmatha, the Head of the Sky, as my ever-attentive Yashu called Mount Everest.

I had asked Yashu to first take me to purchase a gift of sweets for Mr Duppa. He clasped my index and middle fingers tightly and led me straight to an extraordinary survivor of the Raj, named Glenary's, a bakery that faithfully adhered to the old recipe books left by the British. The elegant, Edwardian glass cabinets that lined the old shop were heavy with jam roly-polys, scones, tea buns, chocolate cakes, handmade confectionery, and all manner of Billy Bunter-worthy fare. I indulged in a bag of soft-centred chocolates to sustain us both on our foggy excursion, and a light fruit cake for my anticipated hosts.

As we stepped back into the street, a pair of urchins waved and grinned at me. I knelt down and offered them each a sweet. Their slanted mountain eyes widened in disbelief and they burst into a giggly gabble of chat. They nibbled at the dark coating and peered at the gooey sweetmeat within, showing each other and me their discovery. Never had I seen two children more grateful for, or as excited by, a bag of chocolates.

I looked up to find an elderly Buddhist monk standing over us, his grin as broad as those of the sticky-lipped boys. He indicated towards the children and chuckled away to himself in Tibetan, which earned him an exploratory rummage in the paper bag for his own moment of un-monastic indulgence.

As Yashu and I commenced our descent into the rabble of the bazaar, he pushed his fingers between mine to take hold of my whole hand, and I found myself smiling.

I was falling in love with these mountain people.

***

The
Aghori Baba
stayed beside Bindra as the nervous Bihari nurse unwrapped the heavy dressings on her feet and hands. He tutted in concern.

“Much hurt to your feet, sister,” he grimaced to Bindra. She nodded her head from side to side in resigned silence. “But now you eating good medicine, no problem.”

“
Babajyu
,” Bindra asked, her mind far from the poor condition of her remaining clawed toes and unhealing ulcers. “Is my Jiwan safe? Safe with the
Aghori Babas
?”

“Very safe, sister,” he smiled in answer. “No problem.”

“But I know of the
Aghori Babas
,” she persisted, “I have heard what they do. Such a life is not for my Jiwan. He is a gentle boy. He's too young for such a life on the burning
ghats
.”

The reputation of the
Aghori
was well known, even in the distant seclusion of Bindra's beloved Hills. She knew they directed their
puja
to Kaala Bhairava, Shiva in His fiercest form, to whom they offered a handful of scarlet blooms drenched in their own semen. They called Him Kapaleshvara, the Lord of the Skull, He who Assimilates All Existence, for Bhairava was not “fierce” in an ordinary sense, but rather an expression of the natural cycle of dissolution in the universe.

“Lord Bhairava is ‘fierce' only to those who identify themselves merely through the limitations of the material world,” her grandmother had once taught her. “To look into His face exposes the absurdity of our judgemental attitudes and worldly attachments, the futility of our obsessions with social conformity and habit. And as for the
Aghoris
' life on the cremation grounds, how better to acknowledge that we do not take our worldly wealth with us! That social station and prestige are worthless!” her grandmother had impressed on the young Bindra. “Such a life amongst the remains of the dead reveals that as the fear of death is exorcised, so the fear of life is dispelled.”

Bindra suddenly could not bear to think of her little Jiwan amongst the taboo-breaking
Aghori Babas
.

“
Behenji
,” the
Aghori
looked into her eyes, drawing her back from the dark anxiety in which she was losing herself. “Sister, no need for fear. No problem.”

***

“Young chap,” Mr Duppa announced, “I'm as old as the century! I had an English father, became a planter in 1919, and attribute my uncommon longevity to an unfaltering abstinence of salt, chillies, meat, alcohol and tobacco - in addition, of course, to the devotion of a loving wife.”

I nodded with an appreciative smile, and thought of his plate secretly piled high with lamb chops.

We were sitting in an old wooden house handsomely furnished with Victorian mahogany and teak, its walls and floors draped in richly dyed cloth and hand-woven carpets.

I looked up to meet the eyes of Mrs Duppa, who had appeared in the doorway. She bowed in greeting and offered me a plate of spiced egg sandwiches. Like her kindly husband, she had retained a remarkable elegance, even beauty, despite the stains of age.

“Now, Mister David,” he continued, “I am informed by the Club of your search for your Uncle Oscar.”

I nodded, my mouth full of peppery deliciousness.

“We knew him well,” Mrs Duppa added nonchalantly, thrusting a plate of sweetly scented sour-milk cake slices beneath my nose.

I was stunned.

“You knew him?” I spluttered, in such surprise that I momentarily lost co-ordination and inhaled my first mouthful of cake. “Oh my, yes! You did not realise this?” asked Mr Duppa.