Shining Hero (19 page)

Koonty shook her head. ‘You must not kill him for then you will be sent to prison and your life will be ruined too.’

‘What shall I do then?’ asked Arjuna.

‘Perhaps you will find a way to humiliate him in front of all his followers,’ suggested Koonty.

Though police continued to investigate the killing of Pandu they had not found a single suspect and in the end concluded that the crime had been committed by goondas from Calcutta. DR Uncle assured them that Ravi was responsible but the police said they were unable to arrest him without evidence and witnesses. ‘Also he is becoming a big shot in Communist politics,’ explained the police officer. ‘You must understand our position. We are having to close this case since there seem to be no witnesses to the event.’

The misti wallah came to visit Koonty. He did not speak at all. He could not even tell her of his sorrow. He could not tell her anything. He could not ask her to forgive him because his son had killed her husband but only lay on the ground and grasping Koonty’s feet, wept in silence. Then he laid a basket filled with fresh-made misti at Koonty’s feet. One or two of the round white sweetmeats fell and went rolling through the scarlet dust and turned red as though they had been dipped in blood. But Koonty had lost her appetite for sweets.

Dishes of rice and milk sweetmeats arrived and a little cow with marigold garlands round her neck, bells tinkling on her horns, a new calf butting at her udder, was sent to Koonty as a gift. Her horns were as hooked as a pair of new moons. Her brindle coat shone like peanut toffee. The calf had a wide wet nose and it was so young it wobbled on its thick legs. But after the visit of the misti wallah, Koonty refused to come out to receive these things and the village knew that she could not forgive them. She would not buy anything in the village because it was the people there who had murdered Pandu.

‘You must help me find that boy again,’ Koonty begged her sister.

‘Keep calm, Koonty. You must put the whole thing out of your
mind, and concentrate on Arjuna, for he only has you now.’

‘I am unable to caress Arjuna because I keep thinking that that boy might after all have been my child and that he has no mother loving him.’ What woman would let her child wear a shirt that was full of holes and was too small for him? ‘I have got to find him again. Because I am a widow now and must dress only in white, I must go to Calcutta to buy saris and have blouses made. Please come with me and help me look for him.’

‘You can buy such things in Hatipur,’ protested Shivarani.

But Koonty refused to allow the darjees in the village to sew for her because they might have been among the people who killed her husband.

Shivarani, protesting that she was absolutely certain that Karna could not possibly be Koonty’s child, all the same agreed to embark on what was clearly a fruitless search. As they drove into Calcutta Koonty told her sister, ‘Now I think of it he did look like Arjuna, I know he did.’

It was Durga Puja. The streets were tight with festivities. Shrines and cotton temples stood in every street. A hundred goddesses cast cool smiles of aloof disinterest on the excited worshippers. Koonty threw herself in front of every deity they encountered. ‘Oh lead me to my child, most holy mother.’ All day long they looked among the children before the market. They stopped porters, shoppers, stallholders, describing Karna, asking if anybody knew him. Shivarani looked around her in despair, though, because there were a hundred children fitting the boy’s description; children grabbing taxis, polishing shoes, hunting through rubbish, selling shoelaces, guarding cars. None or all could have been Karna. ‘Let’s go home. I’m sure the child you saw is not the right one,’ said Shivarani. ‘From what Boodi told me he did not look at all like Arjuna.’

‘I saw a likeness,’ persisted Koonty. They drove into slums and up little alleys and through heavily packed markets. They thrust among sellers of spices and, sneezing with chillies, choking with ginger, questioned the pot bellied cross-legged merchants across their piles
of powdered turmeric, cumin and ajwain. They moved among the prostrate Durga worshippers demanding information. They entered temples and asked the priest to inform the people of their search. They asked among the porters and the beggars, they stopped the goondas and offered to pay for information, ‘These memsahibs must be mad,’ the goondas told each other. ‘For if there was such a little boy, his gold would have been stolen from him long ago.’

‘Look at me, look at me,’ cried Koonty to the beggars. ‘Have you seen a boy with a face like mine?’ ‘Have you seen a boy who looks something like the Sun God from the Mahabharata?’ she asked the trotting porters, as they went by with weighted baskets on their heads. She thought that if she could find the child and make life right for him, the goddess would take the curse from her and forgive her for her husband’s death.

‘It is not your fault that he died,’ said Shivarani. ‘I don’t know why you keep saying it.’

But Koonty insisted. ‘She cursed me by making me a widow because I threw my child away.’ Several times during the day Koonty looked near to collapse, and would have to lie in the car to recover from dizziness. At the end of this day of fruitless hunting Koonty looked so ill that Shivarani knew she would have to put a stop to it. ‘While you were waiting in the car an old man came up to me and told me that, six years ago, he found the body of a little baby girl lying dead in the floating hand of Durga,’ she told her sister.

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Koonty.

‘Would you like to meet the man who saw it?’ Shivarani would find some fellow and pay him to tell the story.

‘It is true then? My baby was dead all the time?’

‘It is true,’ said Shivarani.

Later she began to fear that the lie had been a mistake for though Koonty never asked to search for her child again, her sorrow seemed to deepen.

When the day came for the immersion of the goddess Koonty would not let Arjuna go to the river but made him stay inside with her with the windows shuttered and the blinds pulled down. Even
then she could hear the muffled sounds of people yelling joyfully and goddesses bursting into the water with a splash. Shivarani had gone away. She was giving speeches, persuading people to vote for her, from a place so remote that even letters never got there.

‘Because our patron is not here it is we who must try to bring Koonty Memsahib comfort,’ the widows who stitched the dolls told each other. But when they came to the Hatibari, Boodi Ayah told them, ‘Memsahib is too upset and sad to see anyone.’ The widows insisted. ‘We have made a gift for her and it helps a suffering person to meet another with those same sorrows.’ The seven widows squatted all day on the Hatibari verandah with the ends of their white saris pulled over their heads for respect while Boodi went to Koonty at intervals to say, ‘Why don’t you come? They will never go away otherwise.’ By nightfall they were still there and Koonty peeped at them through the carved marble trellis. ‘Come and talk to us, Koonty Ma,’ they cried at the sight of her. ‘We are widows too, like you are, and have much sorrow in our lives, but there are happy things as well.’

Even Gadhari was unable to persuade the women to leave. DR Uncle was sympathetic, saying, ‘I’m sure it will be a good thing for Koonty to meet these other women. She will not feel so alone, for, although I grieve for my beloved brother, Koonty’s suffering is so much deeper.’ After dark Koonty came down reluctantly though she did not expect to find comfort anywhere and only met the widows because otherwise they might stay on the Hatibari verandah forever. ‘Please come with us to the river,’ the widows said. ‘And when the goddess goes into the water we will all make prayers for the souls of our lost husbands and you can do one also for the Lord Pandu. And when Durga’s body is dissolving into our holy river and returning to her husband after her holiday on earth it will be a sign that we will be with our lords again when our next lives come.’ Then they gave her the present of a Pandu doll, complete with fat stomach, curl-toed shoes and a golden dagger at his waist. For a long moment she stared at the little moustachioed pompous toy without expression. Then a tiny smile touched her mouth.
Although her eyes were filled with tears as well, still the widows felt happy.

DR Uncle was pleased when Koonty agreed to come with them to the water. His sons and Arjuna, in spite of protest, were dressed in white starched kurta pajama, embroidered waistcoats and Gandhi caps for the occasion. ‘The whole village will be there and it is expected of you,’ Gadhari told her rebellious sons, who had hoped to go in jeans. Though the family was grieving, it was the puja and together they could do the final rites for Pandu’s soul. It would be a meeting of forgiveness and of restoring relationships with the village. It would be a chance to lay the hate to rest. The children, who had thought they would have to miss it all because of Aunty’s and their father’s sorrow, now laughed and shouted because after all they would be there for when their Durga, the biggest and the best in the whole district, would go crashing into the water. Even Gadhari only pretended to be scornful but really looked forward to the crackle and thunder of fireworks, the arcs of spat burning petrol and the plunge of the mother goddess. Arjuna danced and laughed among his cousins and told his family, ‘That is where the boy who said he was my brother squashed the flower bed.’ ‘This is where I learnt to swim with Durio holding me on a string.’ DR Uncle laughed and petted him and he hardly noticed his mother’s lonely silence. The widows were already at the waterside. ‘Oh, the little lords, they are so like the zamindar, their grandfather.’ They smiled at the sight of the four crisp-clad boys and because Arjuna was the youngest, they mussed his hair and pinched his cheeks lovingly. Shivarani’s maid, Laxshmi, was waiting there with her four daughters each holding a little bunch of marigolds. ‘And that is Bika, the little girl I rescued,’ said Arjuna. ‘Do you remember, Laxshmi, how I saved her?’

‘Arre, you batcha,’ scowled Durio crossly, still resentful that he had never received the credit.

‘Hush, hush you boastful boy,’ Boodi Ayah reprimanded Arjuna. ‘The goddess will punish you for pride.’

Koonty had never dared come here till today. ‘And this is where
I sat,’ she thought, ‘the day the Sun God came swimming through the water. And this is where I waded when I let his baby fall.’

The people from the village had already flooded in through the gates DR had made for them today. They were happy at the sight of Memsahib Koonty standing by the water and told each other, ‘This means she now forgives us.’

The boatmen brought out the great Hatibari dugout, the carved and gilded boat the first zamindar had had made to visit neighbouring zamindars, rajas and European officers to play games of chess with them. The punt men holding the great boat steady, one by one the family stepped in and, when all were seated on the silk embroidered cushions, were rowed to the middle of the river. The widows watching on the bank waved and cheered to see Koonty sit among the others. Koonty, holding onto her Pandu doll, smiled a little but did not wave back at them.

When darkness fell, the floating families became unable to see each other’s faces except in little flashes from explosions of a rocket or the glow of a passing flare or lamp. The water bobbed with lit clay lamps, the passing boats had torches flaming at their bows. Teeth would be abruptly illuminated and Arjuna, cuddled between his ayah and his cousins, felt excited to see so many faceless smiles flashing in the night. An air of expectation came upon the crowds when they heard the sound of running feet and panting and knew that soon the goddess would be there.

She appeared through the trees, bobbing on the shoulders of fifty invisible men, her own face glowing and bright because someone had fixed a hand torch to her bosom and four large flares burnt brightly at the corners of her palanquin. Among the men who carried her were those who had created her. The sculptor had the front pole because he had had the most responsibility. Behind him came the darjees who had made her clothes, the barber who had collected the long hair of new widows including Koonty’s, for the goddess’ head, the jeweller who had made her tinsel rings and necklaces, the artist who had painted in her eyes and lips and nails. A great cry rose from the throats of the people of Hatipur as their goddess reached the water and was
loaded onto rafts. They shouted prayers and picking up handfuls of holy water, threw it over their heads till the boats tossed and rocked and the people in them grew wet.

Silence fell while Durga was rowed to the deep part of the river and everyone held out torches, flares and little lights to see her. There came a pause and then in she tilted, the biggest splash and crash that had ever been made by the biggest Durga anyone had ever seen. Her body made a hole in the water that was brief but deep and there came such a shouting screaming ululation that the people of Dattapukur heard it and felt jealous and all the little bobbing lights leapt with the wave of Durga’s leaving. Arjuna and his cousins whacked each other over the head and shouted till their throats were sore. DR Uncle recited a poem from Tagore with much passion and emotion that was completely inaudible under the din. Gadhari forgot her dignity for a moment and clapped her hands The misti wallah tilted a whole jar of misti dahi into the water as an offering to Ma. Laxshmi told her daughters to throw their flowers and the orange heads went bobbing over the water among a rain of fireworks. The roar of farewells reached a crescendo as the goddess vanished. She paused briefly, halfway under, one hand outstretched as if in blessing, and then she slipped in totally and was gone. Moments later all that was left of her was bubbles rising from her hair and a little toss of blossoms that had escaped from her garland.