Red Earth and Pouring Rain (2 page)

When the trees extended serrated shadows across the maidan, under a few gaily-coloured kites that hung almost motionless in
the air, tiny bits of red, green, yellow and orange against a vast blue, Abhay walked in a huge circle, over the tufts of
grass and through the teams of barefoot boys engaged in interminable games of cricket. To the south, in the crowded lanes
and bazaars of Janakpur, his past waited, eager to confront him with old friends and half-forgotten sounds and smells. But
Abhay hesitated, nagged by a feeling that he had been away for several centuries, not four years, afraid of what he might
find lurking in the shadows of bygone days, and suddenly he felt his soul drop away, felt it withdrawing, leaving him cold
and abstracted. So he watched himself, as if from a great height, watched himself describe two great circles and then trudge
back into the white house. In the same dream-like state, he watched himself converse with his parents and eat dinner. Much
later, he calmly observed himself scrabbling in the recesses of a cupboard, throwing aside yellowed comic books and once-cherished
novels, to emerge, then, finally, bearing a child’s weapon, a child’s toy, this: a rifle, bolt-action, calibre 0.22, a miniature
weapon, yet sleek and deadly. Hands caress it, linger over its contours, feel the smooth blue-black steel, hands trace the
lines of the heavy wood and test the action, snick-CLACK, these hands that belong to someone not familiar to the members of
the Misra household, these hands that feed the slim golden rounds into the magazine, click-click-click, these hands belong
to a stranger. This stranger sits in a chair next to a window, cradling the rifle, watching the roof. Far away, on the edge
of wilderness, a jackal howls, and the dogs from the city retort, but there is no indication that the figure by the window
hears any of this.

The monkey, propped securely in a fork high up on a banyan tree, was awakened by the first rays of the sun spreading warmth
across his back
and a sudden emptiness in the pit of his stomach. He recalled, fuzzily, having been hungry when the sun last set, but the
encounter with the fragment of brick had already begun to fade into the undifferentiated grey mist that constituted his past.
Ravenous, the monkey skimmed across the tree-tops and roof-tops of the city, to the white house at the edge of the maidan,
where a substantial meal could usually be negotiated without too much trouble. The house, the top of its walls beginning to
glow a rich pink, was silent, and the laundry line was bare. The monkey wandered disconsolately across the roof, pausing to
sniff at the crumpled remnants of a kite. He squatted at the edge of the roof, above the court-yard, feeling faintly, tantalizingly,
the lingering odours of cooking float up from the kitchen. Restless, he moves, and is momentarily silhouetted against the
pink-white wall where the staircase emerges onto the roof, and then, abruptly, a thin line of white light blossoms from a
dark window, and the monkey feels an impact against his chest, under his right shoulder, an instant before he hears the flat
WHAP, before he registers, with a baring of fangs and an amazed growl, that something very bad has happened; he feels himself
being spun around, sees suddenly the red sun, the pink-white wall splattered with red; the world spins and breaks into fragments,
red and white, red and white, another wall a glowing yellow, staggering to the side, the edge, slipping and stumbling, a slow
slide, a desperate grab at the edge of the roof, but already strength and balance are gone, and the monkey drops, turning,
and in the drop, within the space of that turn, a wholly unfamiliar image, a completely un-monkey-like scene flashes into
its mind, red and white, red and white, glowing yellow, three thousand lances, the thunder of hooves, and then the monkey
hits the red brick with a thick thump, to lie silently at the edge of the court-yard.

Abhay walked out to the still lump of flesh and fur, carrying the rifle, and stood over it, staring down, blinking, at the
neat round hole drilled into the fur, just beginning to fill with blood. A moment later, his parents burst out of the dark
recesses of the house, rubbing their eyes.

‘Abhay, what have you done?’ Mrs Misra said.

‘Abhay, you know there is a Hanuman temple not five minutes from here; if they find out they’ll start a riot!’

‘Is it still alive?’

‘Yes, I think so; help me get it inside.’

Abhay watched, his pulse suddenly vibrating and strumming hoarsely in his ears, as his parents picked up the limp animal and
carried it into his father’s study. His mother came out, then hurried back past him, carrying a pot of steaming water, her
eyes reproachfully averted, but he stood, paralysed, the stock of the rifle hard and heavy in his hand, staring with unbelieving,
stunned eyes at the stains on the ground, red on red.

For nine days and nine nights the monkey lay unconscious, its chest swathed in cotton, eyes closed, while Mrs Misra held handkerchiefs
soaked in milk to its lips, and Mr Misra paced up and down, hands clasped behind his back. The door to the room was kept closed
to prevent visitors from catching a glimpse of the wounded monkey, but often Abhay stood outside the room, a puzzled look
on his face, moving his head back and forth. On the ninth day the monkey opened his eyes and gazed uncomprehendingly at the
ceiling. The Misras recoiled, a little frightened, but the monkey didn’t seem to notice them. It lay, eyes glazed, lost in
an internal fog in which pieces of a life long gone drifted together, images colliding and melding to form a self, a ragged,
patchwork nothing, a dream, a person named Parasher. I know. I am he. I. I am the monkey. I am that diaphanous mechanism once
encased in human flesh and known as Parasher, or Sanjay. I am he, come back from the phantasmagorical regions of death and
the mists of animal unknowing.

I felt my soul settling into a shape, a form. Each day I remembered more, and each day I grew more conscious. At first, as
I lay paralysed, I could barely see the man and woman who kept me alive. When my sight cleared, I saw that they were dressed
in garb I could not put a name to but which seemed strangely familiar. There was a look of wariness on their faces that I
could not quite understand, and I strained my throat to tell them that I was Sanjay, born of a good Brahmin family. I could,
however, emit only sudden growls from the back of my throat, which caused them to retreat in fear. Then, you see, in my delirium
and shock, I imagined I was still swathed in the human body I knew so well, with its two scars on the forehead, its flowing
white hair and the missing finger on the left hand. So, I lay limp, seeing pictures coalesce in the motes of dust above my
head, and I saw a face appear again and again, a
broad, kindly face with sad eyes and a resolute jaw, greying whiskers, oh, my Sikander, those sad, sad eyes —I saw this and
other things, tumbled together and indistinct. On the sixteenth day I found I could move my left arm. Slowly, straining, I
raised my hand away from the soft cloth it had been resting on; slowly, my heart pounding —I believe I knew before I ever
saw the fur and the brown-yellow flesh —I brought it up, closer to my immobile head until I could see it, and then my blood
ran cold. In that instant, I remembered the last awful moments, I remembered my death, that terrible walk through the rain,
and the dark figure that walked beside me. In that instant I knew what I had done and what had happened, what I had become.
I brought the hand close to my eyes and looked at it, noting, in a wildly detached manner, the cracked skin of the palms,
the matted fur and the small black fingernails. I ran my hand over the contours of my face, feeling the fur along the cheek-bones
and the jutting jaw, the quickly receding forehead and the jagged teeth. Gathering all my strength, I raised my head and glanced
around the room, seeing first a little ivory statuette on a table, a delicately sculptured chariot drawn by six horses, bearing
a warrior and a driver under the banner of Hanuman, and seeing that familiar image I was momentarily relieved, but then I
saw the rest of the room, the shelves brimming with books and the strange white sheen of the impossibly fast punkah that rotated
overhead, the equally strange pictures on the wall, and I knew then that I was immeasurably far from home. Terrified, I tried
to get up, scrabbling weakly at the sheets, whimpering. Somehow, I managed to turn my body; I felt myself drop and hit a hard,
cool floor. Dimly, I sensed hands picking me up. My vision constricted, and I hurtled down a long, dark tunnel, and then,
once again —darkness.

As my body regained its strength, I slipped increasingly into a hazy narcosis induced by fear, by the terror of the unfamiliar
and unknown. Unable to speak to my benefactors, to produce the sounds of Hindi or English with my monkey-throat, I sat huddled
in a little ball, paralysed, listening to the strange inflections in their language and the wonderful and incomprehensible
things they spoke about. Consider, if you will, the hideousness of my situation. To be sure, I had once professed to despise
the condition of being human, and had longed for a life
confined simply and safely to the senses, but to be trapped in a furry, now-unknown body, fully self-conscious and aware yet
unable to speak and unwilling to communicate for fear of causing terror —this is a terrible fate. To construct an elaborate
simile in the manner of the ancients, my soul prowled about restlessly like a tiger caught between a forest fire and a raging
river; I was now immeasurably grateful for the gift of self-awareness but was terrified of the trials and revelations that
would undoubtedly follow in this strange new world. For a while, at least, I was content to sit in a corner and watch and
listen. I learned, soon enough, that the woman’s name was Mrinalini. With her greying hair, quick laughter, round face and
effortless grace she reminded me of my mother. He, Ashok Misra, was tall, heavily-built, balding, gentle, with a wide, slow
smile and a rolling gait. From their conversations I gathered that they had both been teachers, and now lived in retirement,
in what passed for vanprastha-ashrama in this day and age, more or less free from the everyday tasks and mundane worries of
the world. Apart from the natural respect one feels for gurus, for those who teach, I soon conceived a liking for this amicable,
gentle pair. Even for one such as I, it is comforting to see people who have grown old in each other’s company, who enjoy
and depend on one another after long years of companionship. Perhaps, despite myself, I communicated some of this feeling
to them, in the way I sat or the way I looked at them, for they grew less fearful of me. Soon, each of them thought nothing
of being alone in the room with me, and went about their business as usual, regarding me, I suppose, as a sort of household
pet.

On the twenty-ninth day, Ashok sat before his desk and pulled the cover off a peculiar black machine, which I was to later
realize was a typewriter. Then, however, I watched curiously from a corner as he fed paper into it and proceeded to let his
fingers fly over the keys, like a musician playing some strange species of instrument related vaguely to the tabla: Thik-thik,
thik-thik, and the paper rolled up and curled over, revealing to me, even at that distance, a series of letters from the language
I had paid so much to master. Intrigued, I lowered myself to the ground and walked over to the machine, causing Ashok to jump
up from his chair and back away. Fascinated, I hopped up onto the table and circled the black machine, running my fingers
over the keys with their embossed, golden letters. I touched a key lightly and waited expectantly.
Nothing happened, and I tried again. Smiling, Ashok edged closer and reached out with his right hand, index finger rigid,
and stabbed at a key, and an
i
appeared on the paper. Without thinking, delighted by this strange toy, I pressed a key and an
a
magically appeared next to the i; intoxicated, I let my fingers dance over the keys, watching the following hieroglyphic
manifest itself on the sheet: ‘iamparasher.’ Ashok watched this exhibition with growing uneasiness; clearly, my actions were
too deliberate for a monkey. I learned much too fast. Bending over, he peered at the sheet of paper. Meanwhile, I was engaged
in a frenzied search for the secret of spaces between letters, pressing keys and rocking back and forth in excitement. Finally,
I sat back and tried to remember the manner of the movements of Ashok’s hands over the keys. I looked up at him, and motioned
at the machine, gesturing at him to type something again. He grew pale, but I was too excited to stop now. He leaned forward,
and typed: ‘What are you?’ I hesitated now, but I had already stepped into the dangerous swirling waters of human intercourse,
tempted once again by a certain kind of knowledge and the thrill of the unknown. There was no turning back. I leaned forward.

‘i am parasher.’

When Ashok, his face pale, ran out of the room, I slumped to the hard wooden surface of the desk, suddenly exhausted. Drawing
my knees up to my chest, I let my mind drift, filled with an aching nostalgia and afraid of what I would discover in the next
few minutes, afraid of the bewildering depredations and convolutions that are the children of Kala, of Time. I let my mind
fix itself on one image, and clung to it —red and white, red and white, three thousand pennants flutter at the ends of bamboo
lances with twinkling, razor-sharp steel heads; the creaking of leather, the thunder of hooves; three thousand impossibly
proud men dressed in yellow, the colour of renunciation and death; the earth throws up dust to salute their passing, and in
front of them, dressed in the chain mail of a Rajput, the one they called ‘Sikander,’ after the rendered-into-story memory
of a maniacal Greek who wandered the breadth of continents with his armies, looking for some unspeakable dream in the blood
and mire of a thousand battle-fields; even the images we cling to give birth to other stories, there are only histories that
generate other histories, and I am simultaneously seduced by
and terrified by these multiplicities; I worship these thirty-three million three hundred and thirty-three thousand and three
hundred and thirty-three gods, but I curse them for the abundance of their dance; I am forced to make sense out of this elaborate
richness, and I revel in it but long for the animal simplicities of life pointed securely in one direction and uncomplicated
by the past, but it is already too late, for Mrinalini and Ashok and a dark, thin face I seem to remember hover over me, filled
with apprehension and awe and fear.