The Two Krishnas (21 page)

Tonight she must swallow her pride and end the stalemate. Take matters into her own hands, turn the game on its head, anti-chess, and pluck them out from the paralysis of their relationship. She stretched out on the expansive bed. Sleep came but without its expected succor, holding her in an unsteady embrace. Savita Bhatt laid out de-boned fish with rotis for little Pooja while Hari, peering disapprovingly at Pooja over a copy of
The Standard
, waited for a generous helping of beef
kheema
. Bells rang in the distance and Pooja, drawn by the cry of a reed flute, got up and ran in that direction.

Savita Bhatt called after her daughter, “
Arre, kya jaye chhe?
Pooja! Eat your food!”

Pooja floated into the
puja
room, her feet barely touching the ground, hypnotized by the relentless melody. Incense burned all around as if a cloud had descended into the white marble room. But there was something different about this room. An entire wall was missing, opening it up to the talcum white beach of the north coast. It was autumn and moonlight poured down celestially, illuminating the sand. The ocean was like a bed of dazzling jewels. There Pooja saw him, under a palm tree, with one leg over a piece of driftwood and the reed poised at his lips. Others came too, like in a trance, forgetting families, wisdom, belongings. They all wanted to be touched by him, to be dissolved into him. Pooja’s heart leapt with joy. This was reality. Everything else had been a dream. How could she ever have doubted it? She hastened and falling to his feet, clung to him tightly, so tightly that he would recognize his favorite, so that others would not take him away from her.

Only after he had pulled her face up by the chin, smiled at her reassuringly, did she relax her grasp on his ankles. He began playing the flute again. She rose and hovered like a bee around a blue lotus craning out from the swamps of life. The melody ascended and she twirled around him, clapping when her arms swooped up and met over her head and then again when she bent forward and clapped below her knees. And although everyone around her joined into the dance, rejoicing, transforming the once inert shore into a dizzying pool of helixes, she felt that she had him all to herself, just as they all must have.

But then she heard the commotion. They were calling her back. Voices from her dream, trying to reclaim her. And she struggled not to look back, to listen, but they got louder and louder, more demanding, and the spell began to break like the silken threads of a web thoughtlessly demolished by probing fingers. Slowly she stopped moving. The music died. She looked over her shoulder and saw her parents and next to them, a strong, young man with whom she felt an affinity, yet whom she was blocked from recognizing. They were angry, demanding that she come back but she shook her head, refusing to leave. And that boy, how could she know and yet not know him? Confusion.

When she turned away from them and looked back at him, her beloved, she was gripped with horror. Rahul stood motionless, his reed limp in his hand. The rich blue was draining from his face, quickly moving down the barrel of his body, leaving behind chalk as it bled into the white sand like blood. She thought she would die, and cried for her parents and the young boy to go away, to stop their commotion, but even as her mouth moved, nothing came out of it and the air seemed to amplify their protest. There was nothing she could do as they destroyed him. Others around her, equally grief-stricken, looked at her with accusing eyes. It was all her fault that this was happening.

Her hands clawed at her face and she wailed out without a voice. She threw herself at his feet, seeing the last of his indigo run out from him, as if the sand was sucking it, and was now soaked with ink.
Stop them! Stop them! Don’t take him away from me!
But it was already too late. Slowly, the chalk crumbled, hunks of it falling off like lath and plaster off a building, and his magnificent body collapsed into the sand under her grasping hands.

That’s when she awoke, drenched in sweat, and realized that the shouting was coming from downstairs. But even after she had rushed out in her confusion, even after she’d been reassured that everything was okay and returned to bed, she was unable to coax the comfort of sleep.

Normally when Rahul entered the room, Pooja, fully aware of his entry, pretended to be asleep. Lying on her left side, her back to the door, she grew completely still and concentrated on deep, slow breaths. She was never entirely sure why she did this anymore since he never seemed to demand anything of her. Perhaps it was because it made things easier. Now, turning around, she looked up at him, and even in the darkness, as his figure neared the bed upon which he laid down his suit coat, he looked to her beaten and taxed.

“
Janu?
” she said tenderly, not having used the endearment in as long as she could remember.

He sat by the edge of the bed, creasing the jacket beneath him.

“Everything’s okay, isn’t it?” She thought she saw him nod, and the fact that he didn’t utter a word confirmed that it wasn’t.

The light coming in from the hallway silhouetted his handsome profile with the strong jaw line and straight nose. But Rahul looked like he was in a state of suspension, as if a bullet had pierced his heart and he was moments away from keeling over.

“Rahul?” She moved her foot across the bed and touched his back, the little bells on her silver anklet chiming lightly. Still he was unable to speak.

Sitting up, she reached out for the lamp on the side of the bed. Without turning to look at her, his hand struck out and he caught her by the wrist, pulling her arm down, halting the light. She touched his shoulder, thinking this must be about their son’s brawl. But still his reaction seemed a little excessive. This wasn’t the first time Ajay had been disruptive and in the past, Rahul had always been infuriatingly nonchalant. “He’s a boy, Poo. What, you think you gave birth to a girl? Boys get into trouble. That’s what boys do.”

Why then was he taking this so severely? What was different about this particular incident that it crushed him like this?

She sensed a mixed blessing in his state. Earlier she had resolved to end the distance between them, to rekindle some intimacy, no matter how hard or awkward. He seemed needy and despondent now and this made it somewhat easier for her to do what she must. With one swift wave, she pushed the copy of
India Currents
she had been reading off the bed and it rustled to the floor like a wounded bird. Her slender arms enveloped him and she kissed the stubble on his cheek, noticing its silver glinting like filaments of light.

What was it about the people you loved
, she wondered. Just a hint of pain on their faces and everything was forgiven, every slight erased. How young they had been when they first met. She rested her head on his shoulder as she had when they had sat above the sun-baked ruins of Fort Jesus and looked out at the Indian Ocean. For a brief moment they returned to their past. She saw him, dressed in white, bringing her roasted maize pressed with chilies and lime. Again she shared sweet coconut juice through a straw with him and then watched him scrape the hunks of white meat from its inner core for her to relish. She remembered his tenderness on their wedding night. Her eyes welled up.

He clasped the arms that had enveloped him and when he looked over at her, she noticed the glistening in his eyes too. Their foreheads touched. She kissed him, encountered the alcohol on his breath but hesitated only momentarily. His scent filled her with an emotion that went far beyond lust or desire. It was the memory of her youth, of her innocence. A whole life thrummed in the notes of his aroma.

When her lips searched him out again, he moved his face away, his body straining away from her. Despite the fortitude she had amassed up to this point, she felt embarrassed at her brazenness, but was not ready to give up. In that evanescent moment when a woman can transform from wife to mother, she pulled him back into her arms with some persistence, this time placing her hand maternally on the back of his head.

He capitulated, falling into her with the need of a child seeking protection. She had seen him this way before, when he had lost his family, and had hoped never to see him so broken again. Although she had long ceased to be the wife he had circled the fires with and in whom he found sexual pleasure, in that moment she became much more. She was the sister he had bullied and played with; she was the mother who had raised him, whom he had looked up at from the folds of her sari and whom he would always search for no matter how old he grew.

We’re lost,
Pooja thought, tasting the salt of tears and holding on to him with all her might.
Unable to go back and struggling to stay. We belong nowhere now. Perhaps not even to each other.

After a lifetime apart, she found Rahul enveloped in her arms, felt his face against the softness of her breasts, watched his stony disposition crumble, found the tears like precious, silver drops of dew on his eyes. She took it to mean that he had returned to her.

* * *

By the time the sun had begun its ritual ascent in the morning sky, Pooja was already at the feet of the divine couple to pay obeisance and offer gratitude. She placed two small wooden platforms on the floor, sitting on one of them and placing the instruments of her worship on the other: a clay lamp, a small bronze bell, a silver bowl half full of distilled water and a tray of dried fruits and nuts. From a little brass holder, incense fanned out like a peacock’s tail and tendrils of sandalwood smoke danced up to the figurines of Radha and Krishna, smiling down at her with their pink cheeks and rosebud lips from the altar she had made in a corner of the kitchen. Radha, Krishna. This is how they were to be acknowledged always, with her name before his. When Krishna had left Vrindavan, he had promised Radha that no matter where he resided physically, she would always dwell in his heart, and pledged with her that her name would always precede his.

She removed their silk outfits—Krishna’s golden robes, Radha’s crimson sari—and placed the statues in a silver
thali
of rosewater with three basil leaves. Slowly, she bathed them with the love and care of a mother for her infant, patted them dry with a plush cotton towel, re-dressed them and returned them to their throne. She dipped her finger in a canister of dark red powder and applied it to their foreheads, leaving
tilaks
that looked like small open wounds.

Even as she ardently observed the ritual, something within Pooja danced euphorically. She remembered, when in the beginning stages of their courtship, Rahul had joked with her with the mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “Your Krishna had so many
gopis
and he got away with it. Why can’t I have many girlfriends and get away with it too?”

“If you can lift a mountain with your little finger, if you can turn the poison that was offered to Meera into nectar, if you can dance on a thousand fanged cobra like Krishna, then you too can have a million
gopis
like him and see if I care,” she had said, snorting and tossing her head back.

Smiling to herself, she lit the lamp and its flickering glow made the gods come alive. Ringing the bell with her left hand, she picked up the tray with her right and moved the burning
diya
around the gods, not in a perfect circle but something more irregular, as if she were delineating a presence that she saw before her adoring eyes. She began her
slokhas
:

Om Jaye Jagdish Hare

Swami Jaye Jagdish Hare

Bhagt Jano Ke Sankat

Khshan Mein Dur Khare

Om Jaye Jagdish Hare

Deenbandhu Dukh Harta

Thakur Tum Mere

Apne Haath Badao, Apni Sharan Lagao

Dwar Para Tere

Om Jaye Jagdish Hare

Glory be to thy name

The Sovereign of the Universe

With thy grace

The evils of the worshipper vanish instantaneously

Friend of the meek, Annihilator of evils

Thou art my master

Grant thy grace and take me into your fold

I pray knocking at your temple door

Pooja scooped some of the bathwater into the palm of her hand and drank it. Then she ran her wet palms over her head for blessing, touching the wreath of jasmine at the back of her head. She ate some of the
prasad
—raisins, almonds, sweet
halwa
—and warmed her hands over the flame of the dancing
diya
. When she pressed her fingers to her eyelids, she thanked the gods for their benevolence, felt in her heart that finally everything would turn out okay, that she had been fortified with patience. After all, if it’s a miracle you’re waiting for, you must also know how to wait.

* * *

A whole world can begin and end in one day, sometimes taking pitiably little to make it happen. On the morning of their planned day together, Atif awoke elated, as if his world had been created anew. Every sense was heightened from the anticipation of what lay ahead. He had pictured them at the Promenade, lunching in a sun-dappled patio shaded by a large umbrella, later cocooned in his apartment, making love endlessly, followed by a languorous siesta with complete disregard for the clock. But with each passing hour, his heart grew heavier.