The Assassin's Song (31 page)

We never dated each other again. I mention her here only because she did come back into my life, so many years later.

But why did she sleep in my room that night? As a dare to her friends, I always thought, and to herself; and perhaps also because one of her friends needed her bed for some reason. And I too, I suppose, had dared myself. (I could easily have gone to a friend's room, as could she.) I had added to my store of experiences that were unthinkable in the world I came from. I had skirted closer to the edge and come out none the worse for that.

My father would have differed from that verdict.

The call of the shrine.

The phone rang.

It had been a quiet evening, this last Friday of March break, most of the students and all of my friends having gone away; an occasional jingle from the radio, turned down low, surfacing like an odd bubble to break through the room's stillness. Come tomorrow and the academic life cycle would resume, through to the climax of final exams, which prospect loomed like the Damoclean sword over our daily joys. Outside the window, sporadic student calls, sharp and clear and far; in the farther distance, somewhere, the familiar whine of the Dudley bus, the odd car or two.

And Karsan Dargawalla, budding intellectual (it was hard not to observe oneself thus, sometimes), bent over a Keatsian ode, Plato's allegory of the Cave, Camus's
L'Etranger
.

And then the phone, drilling a hole into that repose, that thought, that world. My life.

“Karsan-ji?” the voice at the other end spoke softly. “I want to speak to Karsan Dargawalla, please.” A very Indian voice.

“I am Karsan. Hello?”

“Karsan-ji, how are you, beta; this is Premji from Worcester; you may remember me from Pirbaag, where I come to visit every year.”

This was the call I had been dreading, which Bapu-ji had promised, to remind me of my vocation in life. I had never had any intention of contacting Premji or any of the other devotees of Pirbaag in America; I had never even inquired where exactly Worcester was.

“Yes, Premji Chacha, kem-chho?” How are you? I asked respectfully.

“Arré you should have called me before, beta! You've been here so long now, and I am right here in the neighbourhood!”

“I have been very busy.”

“Yes, yes of course. I realized that. That is why I did not myself call you. But your Bapu-ji has requested that I look after you. I hope you are free tomorrow. I want to come and meet you. We will have lunch and then I will show you around!”

The next morning at nine there duly came his knock on my door. Premji was a well-built man of medium height, with close-cropped hair. He wore a windbreaker and scarf, a man armed against the weather, so unlike himself when he appeared in milk-white dhoti in Pirbaag and spent so much time near my father that Bapu-ji once had to tell him to please take his leave, he was tired. Premji was beaming broadly, and he gave me a warm embrace.

“You're a man, now. Wah! And Harvard! You are our pride and joy, Karsan-ji. Come, let's go.”

We had breakfast nearby, when Premji reminded me that this was the time of year when he went to India, specifically to visit the shrine. “I would like to send some things home,” I told him. Premji was happy to be of service. And so we went to Filene's basement store in downtown Boston where I bought a shirt each for my father and brother; for my father it had to be large enough to wear like a kameez over pyjamas. Upstairs, I looked for perfume for my mother, and despaired over the prices. Once I had bought attar for Ma from outside the mosque in Ahmedabad, and it had cost a mere few rupees. Premji came to my rescue, however, assured me he would buy a bottle duty-free from the airport and present it to Ma on my behalf. Afterwards we did some sightseeing. We walked the Freedom Trail, which I had already walked once before with my friends, starting from the house of Paul Revere, who had rode at midnight to warn John Hancock of the coming of British troops to arrest him. Premji was in excellent physical condition, leading on with a spring in his step and not a trace of fatigue or boredom. He did yoga every day, he informed me, immediately after his meditation at the hour before dawn, on the mantra he had received from the Saheb at Pirbaag. Thus the spectre of the shrine was with us, thanks to these constant promptings from him.

In the afternoon, after a late lunch we drove to Worcester. Premji was divorced, I had learned by now, and his house did look somewhat messy. There was a rank odour of unwashed dishes coming from the open kitchen. We both took a nap, then had tea with Sara Lee cake and watched a basketball game on TV; partway through he went to the kitchen to attend to the dishes. The game was not quite over when we departed for the prayer meeting, which was held in a second-floor suite of a modern office building.

Having taken my shoes off in a foyer, I stepped into a brightly lit broadloomed inner sanctuary. Then paused, took a long breath. Where was I? Staring up from a low table in the front was a large, framed portrait of my father waist up in the formal costume of the Saheb of the Pirbaag shrine, turban and all. He was smiling openly, rather uncharacteristically, with a warm permanent glow on his face; the close-up revealed details— light eyebrows, dimpled chin, large flat ears on the long face—in a manner I had never noticed on him before. It gave me an uneasy feeling, this image of my father; it seemed threatening, and yet it seemed so false.

There were about fifteen people in the room, mostly men and only two women, sitting quietly on the floor. I was invited to sit beside my father's portrait, facing the congregation, and beside me came to sit a suitably sombre and officious Premji. To one side, on a separate table, had been placed some offerings—flowers, coins, and a bowl of fruit—together with a book of ginans. This represented the gaadi, the throne of Pir Bawa. Premji, having sat down, gave a nod, and a young man recited a ginan. He was followed by another. Then Premji gave a small talk, relating an exemplary episode from the life of Nur Fazal, the Wanderer, our Pir Bawa. The proceedings were closed with a prayer, which I the designated successor had to recite from what I could recall.

Afterwards, when we stood up, the devotees all came and bowed humbly before me and warmly shook my hand. Some of them kissed my hand. Unlike Premji, these were simple folk, working at low wages, clothed awkwardly even to my eyes. They loved the Saheb, and they loved me, the son. I was deeply touched; these were my people, and I felt a pang of guilt at having ignored them and dreaded the thought of being with them. I promised I would come again, insisting I had to return to my room that night to study. But I agreed to have dinner with some of them, and so
we drove in two cars to an eatery downtown where we shared a large vegetarian lasagna.

We emerged from the restaurant into a dimly lit, deserted street, ready to part ways, when a strange incident happened. A man called Dervesh ran over to a convenience store across the street and returned with a bag of apples, which he held up for me. “Bless this offering, Karsan-ji,” he pleaded in a trembling voice, his eyes liquid with emotion. “My wife cannot bear children … when she eats these apples blessed by you she will surely conceive.”

I was dumbfounded, came out only with “Arré … but …,” aware though that my father blessed offerings of this sort quite regularly. I had seen him do it in the temple and on the pavilion.

Premji, who stood beside me, firmly picked up my hand and placed it on the paper bag. Instinctively, I muttered, “Let your wife conceive, then … Pir Bawa bless her … her womb.”

“Thank you, Karsan-ji,” Dervesh said, and to add to my amazement he pressed into my hands a hundred-dollar bill and one apple.

Before I could even begin to refuse this astronomical sum, Premji again intervened, stepping between us. He put his hand on the man's shoulder and said, “Pir Bawa blesses you, go now. She will conceive.”

Dervesh joined his hands in farewell and left.

I still recall him, looking somewhat comical, in brown checkered pants and blue windbreaker, his thin hair pasted down with gel, and bearing the recently put on flab of the new immigrant. He would have been from the potmakers' community behind the shrine, people who had worshipped there for centuries and—from the stories I had been told—bore persecution for their beliefs.

Premji explained to me, “If he didn't pay, he wouldn't believe your prayer would work for him.” He smiled and added, “You have to get used to your status, Karsan-ji.”

“We meet every Saturday, all of us who live in the area,” Premji informed me in the car on the way back. “But it is all right for you to come once a month, to the big gatherings. At those times we get people from as far as New York. You are your father's successor, now is the time to begin your calling!”

I couldn't reply. Bapu-ji had without fail mentioned this calling of mine in his letters; but far away from Pirbaag his reminders had seemed abstract and dutiful, and neither urgent nor demanding. I had felt grateful for that. My succession to the throne was a distant eventuality, and I had time enough in America, so I had led myself to believe, to reflect further upon it. Now suddenly here I was almost conscripted as viceroy to a small overseas community. This was his doing.

My head felt heavy and my stomach queasy; I opened the window and let a rush of cool air pummel my face. Premji threw a glance in my direction. I loved my people, this I had affirmed today. They were, mostly, simple people. Tonight I had been reminded in the starkest terms of where I came from, and I was touched. But I couldn't help a feeling of my world closing in on me to suffocate me. My father catching up with me. I had to be careful, I told myself in that speeding car on the highway, I should make my position very clear very soon. I would not be anybody's godman in America. The experience with Dervesh had already tainted my newfound independence, my growing sense of my world.

More and more I had begun to entertain the thought, the suspicion, that the ways of Pirbaag might be mere superstition, based on an historical episode become vague and coloured with mythology. I dared not let my father in on this speculation, of course. Perhaps he had had his doubts when he was younger and been cured of them, as I might be in due time. But for now the golden apple of fertility which Dervesh had pressed into my hand felt awkward and sticky to my touch. I needed time to reflect on my destiny, I wanted to be left alone. How to do that, when they all respected and loved me as a young god and expected me to behave a certain way? I mumbled that I would try to do as asked. Premji gave me another quick look in response.

When we arrived on campus, Premji parked and took me to have tea, after which he walked with me inside the Yard, towards my residence. It was late.

“Can I also give you a book to take for my father?” I asked him on a whim.

“Certainly,” the man replied, and we went up to my room. I opened the door, proudly turned on the light to reveal my domain. There was my table with my papers and assignments awaiting me; and there stood beside it the bookshelf that was my pride, containing the book I had just thought
of sending to Bapu-ji, the Norton edition of the poems of John Donne, replete with critical essays. And there was my chair, on the back of which was strung, to my anger and utmost embarrassment, a black brassiere. “These guys,” I muttered, in a hopeless bid to explain to the elder that I was merely the victim of a prank, and threw the object into my trash can. Outside, I could hear my friends tittering. Evidently they had returned from their holidays.

Taking the book, Premji, red in the face, went on his way, saying he would take my well wishes and prayers for the Saheb and his family and Master-ji the teacher and everybody else at Pirbaag. He would take my respects to the mausoleum and to the patron saint of travellers, Jaffar Shah. He gave me a long, sad look as we parted, and I had a distinct sense that something had broken that could not be fixed.

Premji returned two months later.

It was late spring and festive in spite of the ongoing war and the protests against it. This was the season of shorts and T-shirts, loud happy music blaring out from the windows of student houses, entertainers vying with protesters for attention from the crowds in the Square. Prospective students were taking their tours of the campus, led by student guides, among whom was one Karsan Dargawalla of India, pleased to meet you, and alumni strolled about nostalgically, held parties, bought souvenirs. With much fanfare and laughter I popped open my first champagne bottle as an attendant at the president's reception for the alumni in the Yard.