Shining Hero (41 page)

Dilip called a cameraman over and gestured to the charioteer. ‘Make sure you don’t get this fellow’s face in the shot. Only his back or blurred shots of him.’ He said to Arjuna, ‘We’ll do the
conversation scene between you and the real actor later, after the shooting of the battle scene is done. We’ll get the pair of you to act standing in the cart, but without the ponies. I’m hoping I’ll be able to hire the elephant again,’ and then to the stand-in Krishna, ‘Where’s your crown?’

‘I’ve got it here, sahib,’ said the man. ‘It’s a bit tight and gives me a headache so I’ll put it on at the last moment.’

Dilip nodded. Still standing the man took up the reins and told Arjuna, ‘You can get in now, Arjuna Sahib.’

Arjuna climbed in and stood behind him, feeling relieved that, after all, he had not been defeated and would not have to go into exile.

The Krishna syce put on his sparkling crown with its peacock plumes as the ponies were led onto the battlefield. The cart trundled heavily and an odd sound seemed to be coming from one of the wheels making Arjuna hope it did not fall off during the filming.

The commanders gave their signals to charge.

The syce loosed Arjuna’s lead pony, Krishna whipped up his team and they set off at a canter towards the enemy army.

Dizzily Karna began to wonder if his body had become the property of someone else and that was why it disobeyed him. Vague fantasies began to wander through his mind that he was both a man and a woman and that all he needed to do was to unite the two and then he would be able to move again, get out of the river and be freed of pain.

In a moment the air was filled with dust, the shouts of antagonists, the rumble of iron-shod wheels, the clatter of harness and hooves and roars from the satisfied onlookers.

Arjuna had problems with balance at first but eventually found a way of bracing his knees against the wooden side of the unsprung cart and raised his six-foot-high bow to shoot rubber tipped arrows.

At first Karna thought that night was falling because it had grown so
dark. But then sight returned and he realised that the river water round him was red from blood. And as time passed and his blood kept slowly running out and mingling with the holy river he began to look into the face of death.

As Arjuna stood pulling back his bow with tin-clad wrists, while his cardboard cart clattered in a cloud of yellow dust over the bumpy grass, the sensation of being the true Arjuna from the Bhagavad Gita stole through him.

‘Are you all right, Arjuna Sahib?’ asked the charioteer. He looked back anxiously at his passenger, who appeared to be fainting against the cart side.

Snatching up his bow and hastily firing, Arjuna assured the man, ‘Yes, yes, I’m okay.’

At the end of the filming there was still no sign of Karna. ‘Could he have had a crash?’ Arjuna wondered to Poopay.

‘He drove too?’

‘We were having a race,’ he muttered guiltily. He would tell her the whole story one day but not now. Not now.

‘Surely you would have seen it. Don’t keep worrying about Karna. He is the one person who knows how to look after himself,’ she laughed. ‘I’m sure he will turn up in entirely unexpected circumstances as usual. We need to celebrate so come on, let’s find somewhere where we can be alone together.’

Karna saw Dolly coming. At first he wondered why she came walking over the water like an apsara but then he remembered she could not swim, so had no other way of getting to him. She looked exactly the same as she had done thirteen years ago. The only difference was that she was not dead any more. Although she was walking on the water, her sandals and even the hem of her sari were perfectly dry.

The crowds kept such a close watch on Poopay and Arjuna that although they were heavily protected by gangs of Dilip’s goondas, they could not find anywhere to be alone. Even in Arjuna’s car, with the goondas running round and whacking anyone in their path, there were people clambering at the windows to have a look.

The excited couple tried to drive to the Grand Hotel, but they were stopped by mobs. Eventually, protected by Dilip’s goondas, they crept into Poopay’s van on the maidan, where for the first time they kissed, feeling as though they were in a small boat in heavy seas because of the way the crowd kept thrusting and shoving and scrambling up the sides.

The sun sank, owls began to swoop low over the water and the river became lost in darkness. Karna heard a bullock cart creaking by and caught a sideways glimpse of its swinging lamp. Some men went by carrying burning brands and shouting to each other for confidence. It was pitch-dark by now, and Karna could no longer see the trees or the bushes. The riverbanks and the water that ran between them was lost to his sight but he did not mind all that because Dolly was with him and she was smiling.

The battle was over. Shivarani stood looking over the littered battlefield, and although there were no bodies of dead soldiers on it there was other debris. As far as could be seen, among the empty Thumbs Up tins, popcorn packets, green coconut shells, lay bits of broken cardboard chariots and the tattered pieces of paper harness and rubber from men’s armour. The rubbish-littered battlefield and its tawdry debris seemed to symbolise the hollowness of life and the falseness of its promises. The great and roaring battle, that would look so real on film, was only an illusion, like the happiness of life, thought Shivarani. She felt so tired, her mind and body ached and she wished she could go and live in Canada with her parents, where
snow muffled sound in winter, and the nearest neighbour was twenty miles away. But she had to stay here, for it was her dharma to keep on working on behalf of women, most of whom had all the things she longed for. It hurt to go to other women’s weddings or be asked to cuddle other women’s babies but she knew she must keep doing it because that was her duty. In the morning she was interviewing candidates for the job of manager for a loan system she was setting up for women who needed capital to start a business. In the afternoon she flew to Kerala to dissuade Christian families from sending their daughters to Italy to become nuns when they were too poor to give the girl a dowry or an education. They saw taking the veil as a way of giving their daughter a future but Shivarani would tell them, ‘It will be better for your daughters to be poor, uneducated and even unmarried here than far from home, in another culture and without the language.’ She would have preferred to be able to say, ‘You do not need to offer a dowry and she will be educated free,’ but things had not progressed so far as yet. One day, one day, thought Shivarani, if I still have the energy. She sighed. She was forty-two, the only man she had ever loved was engaged to marry someone else, and now there was no hope for her anymore. She would have liked to weep but like all the other things inside her, her tears had dried.

She began to walk across the maidan towards the river, trying to get away from noise, the people, the pointless celebration, for in this city there were too many people and too much going on. She wished that the bomb had killed her in the road that day. Or better still she had died in Naxalbari while Bhima held her and before she understood that she would never have happiness.

When she reached the river she stood listening by the water, but even here there came the sound of the city clamour. She heard someone walking towards her and felt annoyed that even here she was not left alone.

She turned to face the approaching person, frowning, ready to explain her need for solitude, to request whoever it was to go away, to leave her for a while. The sky behind the intruder was glowing with city lights and a white mist was rising from the ground, so that
the oncoming person was hardly visible, and she could not even see if it was a man or a woman.

When the person came close to her, however, she did not ask him to go because it was Bhima. He did not speak but came and stood beside her. For a while the two of them stood, staring silently at the dark water, then Bhima said, ‘I could not stand the bank job.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Shivarani.

‘I want to be working with the children. I want to help people. I could not bear it inside there, insulated from them all.’

‘I understand,’ said Shivarani.

‘So I left the job.’

‘Oh,’ said Shivarani.

‘And now it is over between Malti and me,’ he said.

Shivarani waited. She did not know what to say.

After a long time Bhima added, ‘We are not getting married after all.’

‘I see,’ said Shivarani and kept staring out at the river. There was something odd in the water. It looked as though a car had crashed in.

Then she understood. Gasping she pointed. ‘Bhima, that’s Karna’s car.’ She went leaping down the bank, with Bhima following her. She began shouting, ‘Karna, Karna,’ but there came no answer. She scrambled into the river and waded through it till she could see the car. ‘Bhima, quick, go for help. He’s badly injured.’

As Bhima went running back, Shivarani scrambled through the mud. The car was jammed nose down in the water and Karna’s head and shoulders protruded through the shattered windscreen, and hung down so that water lapped his forehead. His eyes were closed, there was a terrible gash in his throat, and blood ran over the sides of the bonnet continually staining the water red. She ripped a strip off her sari end and tied it round Karna’s throat in an attempt to staunch the bleeding then, putting her arms round him, tried to hold him up. ‘It’s going to be all right, Karna. Bhima has gone for help.’ He opened his eyes and looked at her blearily. She smiled at him. ‘I’m with you. Don’t be afraid.’

Karna whispered, ‘Ma, even though I never got the luck, I did my best. I tried my hardest to make you proud of me, but it never worked out.’

‘I know, Karna, I know,’ his mother said. ‘I have been so proud of you.’

The last thing Karna heard on earth was the voice of Dolly saying, ‘I know, Karna. I know. I have been so proud of you.’ He knew everything was all right then and that he had not let her down after all. She did not look at all like Poopay Patalya but was more like the goddess, Durga, very tall and with a beautiful dark face. He knew it was Durga because she had risen out of the river and instead of offering just her hand, put her arms round him and eased his pain away. Then the goddess lifted Karna from his broken car, very gently carried him down to the bottom of the river and holding him in her holy arms, took the world away.

Because Karna was dead, Arjuna won the election. Dilip Baswani wanted to throw a party to celebrate Arjuna’s success but Arjuna refused. ‘No one knows which one of us has really won.’ He added, ‘I did not realise when he was alive that I would miss him.’ So Dilip threw an engagement party for Arjuna and Poopay Patalya instead, to which anyone who was anything was invited. It was even grander than the one to which Arjuna, all that time ago, had arrived on foot because Karna had caused his car to break down. All the most famous Bollywood stars turned up and the most powerful politicians too. Even the Prime Minister of India accepted the invitation.

Bhima was there. He and Shivarani had met a week before at Karna’s funeral but had not had a chance to speak because of the hundreds of people who had come to mourn their hero. Beggars, goondas, kigalis, prostitutes, smugglers, dealers, and people from Bollywood and Hatibari too, everyone that had ever met or heard
of Karna seemed to be gathered round his funeral pyre. The only thing Shivarani had had a chance to say to Bhima was, ‘His little pony, Poopay, died on the very day that Karna did, as though she knew.’

He handed Shivarani a glass of champagne then took one himself. ‘Look,’ he said, balancing his own on his head.

‘Oh, Bhima,’ Shivarani laughed as the glass crashed in a stutter of spilled drink. Nearby ladies glared at him and leaping out of the way, dabbed at their precious silk saris.

‘Usually I can do it,’ he laughed. ‘And I can balance it on my nose if I am feeling really steady but today I am feeling wobbly.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Because I am to get a salary for my work at the children’s centre. I have a job again, Shivarani.’ He studied her face. His dark eyes shone. Another glass toppled, spraying both of them with champagne.

‘The Prime Minister is looking,’ said Shivarani, and tried not to laugh.

‘Sometimes I can even balance a filled glass on my tongue,’ said Bhima.

‘Bhima, I have to tell you something,’ she said suddenly.

He raised his eyebrows. Drops of champagne fell from them.

‘DR Uncle has asked me to marry him.’

‘You can’t do that,’ laughed Bhima.

‘Why?’

‘Because you are marrying me.’

Poopay wore a clinging blue chiffon sari trimmed with gold and round her neck an uncut diamond on a heavy chain that was Arjuna’s engagement gift to her.

She looks so beautiful my eyes can hardly bear it, thought Arjuna, as he watched his wife-to-be over the rim of his champagne glass.

Dilip called him. ‘Come with me, Arjuna. There is someone here who wants to talk to you.’ He led Arjuna to a small private sitting room, with Poopay following. There stood a little boy, flanked by Bika and her mother, Lakshmi.

Laughing, Dilip gestured to the boy. ‘Come on, tell him.’ The boy, who looked about six, came towards Arjuna and, standing before him, did a gracious namaskar.

‘My name is Abhimanyu,’ he said.

Arjuna stared and into his mind sprang the memory of a young man emerging from Janci’s stable, followed by a straw-tangled Bika. Turning to Bika he said, ‘Then you are married to my groom, Bika? I am glad,’ he said. ‘This little boy looks exactly like that charming young man.’