A Pair of Mismatching Slippers

 

It’s the second week of April and the heat is building up. A brief spell of rain in the morning allows a bit of reprieve from the oppressive heat during the travel. I reach Haridwar in the afternoon. The two-kilometre stretch of road from the railway and the bus stand, facing each other across the road, to Har ki Pauri is a busy thoroughfare. It’s a religiously busy world heavily laden with towering facades of dharamshalas, hotels, lodges, restaurants, pavement food stalls and shops full of religious souvenirs.

I am flatly denied shelter for the night. As per rule, the dharamshalas give rooms to families only. Even hotels and lodges have a big problem in giving rooms to solo travellers. Try to convince them and they will hide under the order of the local administration in this regard. There have been few suicides, of course. Solo travellers are assumed to be depressed souls looking for moksha here in this part. The final departure from holy places is believed to take one straightaway to heaven or even liberation. So the suspicion about the solo travellers isn’t completely groundless. People fear that these lost souls are tottering on the brink of committing suicide. A lot many people presume that Indians hardly venture out alone and be happy at the same time. It is firmly believed that the depressed souls set out to call it quits, especially at holy places like these where leaving one’s body near the holy river ensures a direct landing in heaven.

One lodge owner asks me to get him to talk to my family members to verify that their ward isn’t depressed and is in fact happy in going out alone. I try calling my brother, an IT professional, but he is caught in the rigmarole of software designing. The call having gone unanswered, the lodge owner looks more suspiciously at me. Most probably he thinks that I am just pretending to make a call. I am denied the accommodation and move on, only to face the same dilemma in the reception lobbies of many lodges in the locality. I try my best to appear the happiest soul on earth in order to allay their fears about harbouring a depressed soul who may culminate his journey in their room, thus unleashing a barrage of police inquiries at their place, resulting in loss of business in addition to getting bad name for the property, or maybe even a ghost stalking their place.

Practice makes a man perfect and after one hour of continuous smile and glint in the eyes, accompanied with energetic movement of limbs, I am able to win the trust of the owner of a less than modest accommodation. It is at the far end of a narrow and not-so-clean street, beyond the footfall of most of the visitors. It’s a depressive set up, the owner himself looking ill at ease with life. So here I’m able to impose my cheerfulness upon him. I beam with enthusiasm and light their gloomy, musty set-up with my exaggerated verve and energy.

I’m safe here because even a suicide seeker will look out for a better point than this suffering, sulking place. There is a risk that even a happy person may get depressed here. It’s evident they don’t get many guests so someone who has been turned out from at least fifteen places is welcome here finally.

After hitting the jackpot, I freshen up in the staid, sulking tiny bathroom and set out with a spring in my gait as the evening builds up.  Hundreds of pilgrims are walking to Har ki Pauri for the famed ritual of evening Ganga Arti.

On any normal day you can expect a big fair kind of festivity there. The steps along the shores are crowded with pilgrims. Bells chime, mantras vibrate, incense smoke take monopoly of the air, people bathe, huge butter lamps with dozens of burning wicks sway like fiery torches, devotees float leaf bowls containing flowers and oil lamps as an offering to the holy river. Armed commandos are looking every inch here and there. Faith is no longer free.

When so many people congregate at a place and surrender, this slaying of ego confirms the presence of some higher meaning to life than what we can perceive with our ordinary senses.

Finishing the famed Arti, people slowly disperse and move along the crowded bazaar. The restaurants are ready for dinner. And people surrender to the spicy aroma with even more fervour than they had shown during the prayers. Bhojan has a big role in sustaining bhajan.

The next morning has dull sunshine. I am relieved to see the morose owner of the place still alive and try to cheer him up. ‘All of us have to die one day,’ is all he can manage in response to all my efforts at being joyful. I leave for the bathing ghats with serious doubts whether I will find him alive or not after returning.

Bathing in the cool torrents at Har Ki Pauri is piously gratifying. The first thing that strikes you is that the people shed their insecurities, inhibitions and suspicions. Nudity is no longer a scandalous flashpoint. All are children in Mother Ganga’s lap. Everyone is seeking purification from their sins, so egos are rapidly melting, at least for the time being. All are feeling adventurous like playful children. Young, old, children, boys, girls, men and women shed their reserved routine, abandon their fears about appearances, body shapes and status and wallow in the holy waters like funny, naughty children. Nobody stands out. Everyone is yelling, speaking and shouting and still you don’t have a particular protagonist. This merging with something bigger gives a sense of ease and comfort, a kind of lightness that stands in glaring contrast to the tensioned heaviness that we carry usually while fighting our lone battles on the path of survival. Around you many loudspeakers blare with chanting of mantras. Many pandits are loitering around those sitting on the steps overlooking the bathing ghat. They offer their prayer services.

By degrees, little, little private spaces for which we fight so rabidly get pushed away from the centre stage of our egos. You are in public. The ownership of bodies and worldly things is gently shoved away. Your private space gets a dose of sunlight. The doors and windows are opened. You feel life and soothing sunshine.

After a long, adventurous and cascading journey through the Himalayas, testing its zeal to the limits, the Ganges surrenders to pause at the foothills, creating swirly pools for rejuvenating rest and poise for the humbled humanity at her feet. The holy waters symbolise the mother river’s ‘giving and forgiving nature’. The holy stream endlessly flows for the cause of humanity.

After youthful wilderness, it’s the beginning of taking responsibilities, moving slowly, meandering more purposefully. Flowing down south, flanked by tiny ridges on the east and west, it reaches a milestone, of coming of age, of becoming a mother from a careless, flirtatious girl.

The eastern ridges are more wooded. The western ones are under the pressure of human build-up.

Haridwar is majorly sprawled north to west along the river’s western bank. To the north, before the town begins, a sluice dam has been erected to tame mother Ganges, to help it bless the countless who throng its bathing ghats. That is the point from which the mighty river is saddled with the responsibilities of being an uncomplaining mother, the giver, at the cost of its own existence.

The sluices divert almost half of the waters westwards, leaving the debilitated main stream meandering over the greyish floodplain to the east. From the sluices, half of the water circuits back to join the original stream to the east, while the rest moves along a well-made broad canal along the city to its west. Of this canal, a further distributary runs along the extreme west bank, circuiting along bathing steps and little shrine temples, forming the most auspicious Har Ki Pauri.

The city lies rectangular, north to south along the well maintained canal, flanked on the west by low, sadly denuded ridges, on the highest of which stands Mansa Devi temple. Cable cars go to the temple. More arduous is the flight of stairs all the way to the top of the hill. Halfway to the steps, a tar road loops around to take your tiring steps to the destination in case you can no longer keep climbing the steps.

Cleansed by holy dips, as the sun is building up the arena for a bright noon, I am trekking to the holy temple of Ma Mansa Devi. An uneventful walk and then I see him. The mass of his right leg may come more than the whole of the rest of his body. The deformity seems a miracle of God, rather than a curse. He has a small face and frail torso. But his elephant leg can compete with a medium-sized tree’s trunk in girth. It’s bent at the knee and the further part twisted to protrude out a huge foot having massive toes. It’s beyond the measurement of humanly acceptable pain. God has His own mysterious ways of showing his omnipotence. Nothing seems impossible for Him.

A piece of cloth is spread out in front of the boy. His mountain of helplessness is bigger than the hill above. You cannot look into his eyes. You feel ashamed of all your cribbing born of routine problems. Your pride gets a jolt. While putting a coin on the cloth, you obviously bow down before him. There he stands, sits or crouches down like a God. Only God can punish His own self to take a form like this. He does it to pass on some messages possibly. An old man bows down with folded hands in front of the boy.

I walk to the sacred temple and pray for the better spirits of the lodge owner. Faith can move mountains. I walk into the small, musty, smelly lobby in the afternoon. He sees me coming and smiles. ‘Mother has listened to my prayers,’ I think.

‘You have two different slippers on your feet!’ he points. Both of us laugh. Throughout the day I have been walking around in a pair of green and red slippers. It’s a routine thing to go walking with mismatching slippers, or even no footwear at all, from the bathing ghats where hundreds of pairs are spread out and things get mixed up.

Well, even mother’s blessings need worldly cause to come into effect. Mismatching slippers, for example.   

A Nobody's Notebook

 It’s the notebook of a small-time writer. No big efforts at super-heroism, no ironies of heart-breaks, no bombastic romance, no gooseflesh rippling drama, no thunder-stricken rigmarole of saving the planet from the aliens. It’s not about chafing thoughts, it’s all about the frolicking gaiety of common emotions in the life of common people.Beyond the grinding millstone of bigger caprices, it’s about sublimated emotions. It creeps genteelly like a flowery vine. It’s just a fragile moment capturing the kernel of eternal truth in it like you see in a painting of beautiful hills, smatterings of snow on the slopes, chatty streams, green pastures and a sense of virginal peace to tow all these along. There are no chivalric, lionized doctrinaires delving into deep mysteries of human existence. It’s a gently flowing painting on a self-absorbed canvas. The human characters simply add to the soft shades of the softly evolving painting. In this small world, I believe everyone is taking chiming steps to be a nice human being. Come, let’s all walk together for a greater collective good.

Fate’s Sweet Rigmarole

 It was a remote part of the world, smaller than the small, and still smaller. Geographical distance lost its meaning, as in this small world, yards stretched to meters and meters to kilometres. A dilution of specifics—a smallness. Alongside, the big got sucked into smallness as well; kilometres coagulated into little points of human destiny. The vision in crow-flight spanned one hundred kilometres from the nearest influential big city, dusty zigzagging tracks made it two hundred kilometres, and the distance acquired almost unfathomable proportions in the mind.

The smallest store, in the rudimentary form of the shops of today, was twenty kilometres away, at a bigger village, the lazily bustling Bhiwani of today. In hundred years, this small hamlet itself would become bigger than the district headquarters of those days. Well, that’s change. Small worlds become bigger ones over a period of time.  

The wedding party had travelled for a day and half, starting yesterday morning and reaching here in the afternoon, pulled by carts on dusty, rutted paths, skirting the semi-arid sandy loams, acacia trees and tufts of dry bunchgrass. At night the jackals howled and the spotted owlets hooted and ominously shrieked. The groom’s marriage party had stopped in the wee hours to give rest and fodder to the oxen. They started again, taking creaking slow steps to culminate a little girl’s childhood journey, the childhood that suddenly meets womanhood.

The twentieth century was just a decade old, so was Nannu, fondly called so because she was brought up at her nanaji’s place. That’s how people got their names during those days. As the cartloads of peasants, clad in cotton homespuns, dhoti, kurta and headgears, moved towards the ceremony that would make her Nannu Devi, with her childhood suddenly gone, they were more interested in country-made liqueur, laddoos, jalebis, puris, saag and lots of wedding fun. To these country-folks, to whom even plain sugar was a rare delicacy, these items defined what the brief glimpses of heaven can mean.

So Nannu became Nannu Devi and would continue to grow. The woman in her will continue to grow when her marriage would be consummated three years later, when she would become the mother of a girl child an year later, when she would become a widow at 15, would be remarried to her husband’s elder brother, would give birth to three more daughters before hitting the jackpot, a boy, and thus meeting the fulfilment of her purpose on earth, at the age of 23. A lifetime of experience, while all this time she was merely changing from a child to girl and then a young woman.

Her husband had a big acreage in his share, coming to roughly 200 acres of almost semi-arid land, most of it full of thorny thickets and bunchgrass. Agriculture was defined by the weather elements. There were no irrigation channels, and with just two bulls how much of land you will manage to till. So in effect it was just a dozen acres of arable land, on which the joint family, their total acreage going to 600 acres, toiled to get survival crumbs for them and their cattle.

During those days, simple diarrhoea was worse than cancer of today. Her husband passed away, his mortality claimed by the common disease of present times. The titular head of the land, in patriarchy, if she happened to be a widow with a daughter, was as good as non-existing. The younger brother-in-law was a land hawk. He wanted to add more and more land to his share just like he was eager to have more children.

He started bullying her into marriage and that too with the condition that his sons from the other wife will have equal portion from the chunk of land from her share as well apart from their already existing share. During those days, a widow was usually married to her husband’s younger brother even if he was married, a sort of convenient polygamy. But a tall and gaunt Nannu Devi, who was just Nannu till five years back, had grown in guts beyond his guesswork.

‘I have to retain all of my land for my own son that I will surely bear one day,’ was all Nannu Devi could think of. At that young age she needed a dream, a goal. She decided to go for it. Here daughters were excluded from the bargain, as neither law nor convention left them with any option in that regard. The success and meaning of her life was just about having a male heir one day and hand over all the land to him.

During those days murders for land were commoner than marriages. Her younger brother-in-law tried his best set of intimidatory tactics. As she was busy in her fields, and uneasy desultoriness sighed over many miles around, he beat her mercilessly. She fought back, gave him a bloodied tooth at the cost of bruises on her entire body. He tried to scare her by putting the deadly spikes of the hayrack on her throat. She but spat on his face, thundering that she would get married to a bhangi, the so called utmost disgrace in her community, rather than be his wife.

Her diseased husband’s elder brother was a better human being and could feel the fire in her to stick to her land. He had his own brood of sons. ‘I will allow your sons to have possession of all of your land,’ he promised. Holding onto her dreams to see her own would-be sons tilling all the land she had inherited, Nannu Devi became the second wife of her elder brother-in-law.

Almost 200 acres of land and no male heir! That was the most tragic thing to imagine as per the social norms of those days in the peasant society. It just didn’t make any sense during those days. Her eldest born from her first marriage was as good as not there in the first place because it was a girl. The mission now was to have a son. That would complete the journey of her life. Nothing will make it a successful life till then.

One after the other she gave birth to three daughters, making it four from both marriages. But all this was meaningless. The land waited for the male heir. A house was almost without light in the absence of a son. It was all darkness. The daughters, though they worked to the capacity of their little bones, were just there as an appendage to be cast off very soon. The casting off time was just a decade during those times.

And finally her miles-long prayers and efforts bore fruit and a boy was born. Not that it was smooth with the villain uncle all through these years. She had learnt how to defend herself. She wielded a well-oiled stick with more ferocity than any man around. The iron prongs of her hay-mover were sharp enough to deter any adventure on her rival’s part. So more than anything else that stalled her murder by her younger brother-in-law, it was the plain fear of getting himself murdered by her.

She could always smell that smouldering fire of hunger for land coming from her newborn son’s younger uncle. Jorawar Singh’s life was at risk, every day, every night. As she worked in her fields, the son tied to her back, her lethal hay-fork always lying at a hand’s distance, she had four eyes dedicated to the task of scanning all the sixteen directions.    

A child needs space as it grows up. Agile as a willow switch and outgoing like a free cloud, Nannu Devi soon realised he was no longer the little child she could tie at her back and continue working. Tiny Jorawar Singh, named after an adjective something to do with valour and bravery, was trying to claim his territory to wallow in childhood revelry. Little did he realise that his life was always at risk. He carried the ownership of a big chunk of land, which, even though was nothing more than a vast stretch of fallow land, was a literal crown of gold in the countryside where people hadn’t anything but the bare minimum. The land, after all, held the possibilities for the future. The poor people either live in the past or the future. The land means future.

His eldest real sister, Falguni Devi was married at the age of twelve. So to keep him away from the vultures eying his land, six-year-old Jorawar Singh was sent to the village of his sister’s in-laws, a place near Delhi, where the modern day Palam airport stands. During those days it was a forest, interspersed with the outcrops of the ridge, the tail end of the relict Aravalis.

His sister, though just six or seven year elder to him was almost a mother to her little brother. In addition, she was a wife as well. Like the brides of those days she too would continue to grow, carrying multiple responsibilities on her frail shoulders, as she changed to a woman from a girl, became a real biological mother on the way, apart from being a mother figure to her younger brother.

Even at such a long distance from his native village, they just couldn’t let him out freely like other children because there had been scary incidents like some stranger staring at the boy, or the sight of some unknown figure, or some unfamiliar face seen in the neighbourhood. So even here he was kept under the strictest guard. He was a little prince and he had a tiny kingdom to inherit. His life was precious to the women around him.

There at his native hamlet, Nannu Devi’s defiance and gutsy march continued. She came to earn a reputation where even the basest males would think twice before taking a panga with her. She knew that the uncultivated fallow land means ownership in letter and name only. She wanted it in spirit. Day in and day out she worked in the semi-arid lifeless soil, trying to put the vestiges of agriculture, even if for one season, some sign that the land had been ploughed, to show to the world that there are owners and they are ready to tame the wild land. It was a sort of message boldly declaring: ‘Private property, stay away!’

Quite surprisingly, even as a tiny child, Jorawar Sing retained the purity of his mature, big name. His name was never twisted to some affable, convenient, mollycoddling pet name. Though very big and serious for the name of a small child, it remained so. But the boy did full justice to his name, grew strong, reddish and square shouldered. As an adolescent he appeared to do full justice to the mighty name he carried.

His sister, with whom he stayed, very soon forgot when she was a child herself. Within a decade and half even the mother in her started to grow old. During those days, girls stared getting old the moment they stopped to grow. She had four children. Her husband, a mighty, majestic, reddish, fine-featured giant standing couple of inches above six feet, having a bright future serving as Naib Tehsildar, suddenly collapsed like a mighty fort caving in suddenly. Even here there were eyes trying to grab the land of the young widow with four children. So again Nannu Devi arrived at the scene with her well-oiled stick and sharp hay-fork, working with her daughter, stamping their ownership like a lion marks its territory with its urine in the woods. Even at a distance of two hundred kilometres, stretched over dusty rutted cart-tracks, she worked as an effective deterrent.

In any case, the daughter-mother widowed duo held their ramparts. They just stayed there and hid their sons more preciously than the gold in their possession. The land had meaning as long as there was a son. Without a son the land became meaningless. Also the life of a woman was meaningless without a son. A woman could survive without her husband, but life without a son was impossible, the brutal most punishment. 

Jorawar Singh grew lanky and strong. Broad-shouldered, he had keen starry eyes which appeared to look beyond the evident meaning on the surface. His eyebrows were bushy and his lips were finely cut. The upper lip reservedly shut over the lower one. His squarish jaw evinced his masculinity to a decent degree. On top of that he stood well over six feet.             

Not so much for the safety of British India, as for his own protection from his hawkish uncle, Nannu Devi was relieved to a huge degree when the long-limbed lad joined army. Now he became a part of mighty sarkar. He will be having his own weapon. All this vouchsafed his safety. Jorawar Singh stood out as a dashing recruit.

No sooner he completed his training than he was married. Nannu Devi had diligently secured the legacy for one generation. Now it was her duty to prepare the bed for the next generation. Even if a woman lived for thousand years, during those days, the dream of seeing one more son in the next generation would still continue.

A family that hadn’t a son almost ceased to exist. Daughters existed in proxy as somebody’s wife from the day of their birth.

As Nannu Devi blearily peered into the son-full of a future, a culmination of her life-long struggle to get a foothold in the chronically patriarchal society, the Second World War was sucking people’s lives into its muddy, bloody deluge. The star of her eyes had hardly any time to sow the seeds of Nannu Devi’s dream. He was sent to the eastern front where war intrigues were opening up in South East Asia between belligerent, resurgent Japanese and recalcitrant allied forces.

News travelled very slowly during those days. As Jorawar Singh’s fate was lost in the gloomy, smoked South East Asia, Nannu Devi, oblivious to the risks to her son’s life, not knowing to what extent the wars put up threats to millions, her definition of danger being limited to life threat to her son from his land-hungry uncle, put her ears to the womb of her daughter-in-law, a mere girl of fourteen, to get some hope, to get some initial hints of germination.

As the war sucked her son into its bloody guts, she lay sulking that the first and the only cohabitation of the young couple had been fruitless. She wasn’t bothered about larger issues any more. To beat her disappointment, she worked more tirelessly in the fields to bring more and more chunks of lands under cultivation from the vast tracts of the semi-arid barren land of which her soldier son was the titular head, thus adding to the land under their real possession.

She never lost hope about his return to sire many sons who in turn will have their sons to rule over the land they would inherit some day in future.    

It was the balmy air of winters in South East Asia, but it couldn’t have been worse for those who happened to be a part of the war. The 19-year-old Jorawar Singh was stuck up as part of the struggling British Army in Burma. The British forces were already weak after the Battle of Bilin River. Theirs was the 17th Division, a new formation yet to taste the real blood. Well, it tasted a lot between 14 to 18 February, 1942. Two days of jungle combat at close quarters had left many dead, still more injured and the rest in still more dead-cast and broken spirits. The Japanese soldiers were crazy in their excitement for the war. The Indian soldiers fighting for their British rulers could never make out how can someone fight so crazily and willingly to die. The Japanese soldiers owed their souls to the King. The Indian soldiers owed just their professional duty to the Britishers in lieu of the salaries they received. Well, it doesn’t mean the latter didn’t give their best in the battles. They did, but it still fell short of the crazy zeal to die for the Emperor of the land of the rising sun.    

Deep into the grey of his old decades, Jorawar Singh would always remember the Battle of Sittang Bridge (February 19-23, 1942) as vividly as one remembers just a day old happenings. They were pounded really hard. The Japanese pushed for a decisive victory. The British Indian Army (BIA) suffered heavy losses.

Brigadier JG Smyth commanded the BIA at Sittang. The few hundred yards long Sittang iron railway bridge was near south Burma’s coastline. The 17th Indian Infantry Division was in disarray and retreat. On the night of 19 February, they disengaged and retreated under the cover of night to fall back to Sittang bank about 50 kilometres westwards. The Japanese regiment advanced to cut the retreat off and outflank them. On 21 February, Japanese aircrafts bombed the retreating units. The British Indian soldiers were forced to abandon their vehicles and equipment.

Jorawar Singh, bearing many scars and bruises of war, along with many injured soldiers escaped into Bogyagi Rubber Estate. Their ammunition was spent. The rifles were no more than sticks to fight with. And it was not a war of sticks anymore.

Meanwhile, a dispirited detachment from disarrayed units fought to secure the bridge. A major part of the BIA Division was cut off to the east and still in retreat. There were Japanese paratroop landings but a unit of Gurkhas bravely combated to secure the bridge-ends so that the remaining BIA division could cross the river.

Jungle fighting at close quarters ensued throughout the day. The BIA still held the bridge till the evening of 22 February. But as darkness progressed the futility of defending the bridge loomed large. More than half of the British Division was still stranded on the eastern side. But the bridge had to be destroyed to stall the Japanese march to Rangoon. The setting sun saw an explosion as Smyth’s sappers blew the bridge.

The Japanese would have easily wiped out those stranded on the eastern side, but they were more interested in taking Rangoon. So they stopped short of mopping out the 17th Division. The Japanese disengaged to cross the river at some point further north.

The survivors of the 17th Division crawled out of the forest intending to swim to safety and slip away to the north on the opposite bank. Only a handful of their rifles, Bren guns, Tommy guns, anti-aircraft Lewis guns and FWW vintage 18-pounders remained in their possession. Their uniforms and boots were torn and so were the sagging spirits.

The river was in spate and appeared beyond the energy left in the defeated soldiers. But even a river in spate is relatively calmer in the early morning around four or so. There is peace and harmony at that time when the day is conceived in a marvellous equanimity of elements in nature. Somehow Jorawar Singh knew this fact. He suggested this to his fellow soldiers. They had a bunch of papers to salvage to the other end. Being relatively gutsy and in better health, the onus fell on Jorawar Singh.

The enterprising soldier got an earthen pitcher, put the important papers in it, secured the opening with a canvas piece, tied the pitcher to his chest and jumped into the river at a time when he supposed it to be relatively calmer. Using the buoyancy of the pitcher he swam to reach the opposite bank. Putting the papers in safety, he made a few rounds both ways, still keeping the pitcher tied to his chest, and drew a double rope line across the river to enable the rest of his colleagues to cross over.     

From there they crawled forward to merge with the BIA units to the north. Somehow the 17th Division with its paltry remnants was replenished and they continued in skirmishes till July 1944 when they were taken out of the frontline before the Battle of Imphal.

Jorawar Singh was away from home for almost three years, any news about him as hazy as you see the faintest vestiges of horizon on a burning hot day. Thinking him to be dead but assuring each other of his being alive through solacing words, the womenfolk would now and then, when the pain inside burst the dam, would start with sighing whimpers before letting loose a full-scaled spell of howls, making it virtually a mourning for the missing soldier. But then they would realise it, would wipe away Nannu Devi’s tears, put up smiles through their wet eyes to assure her that her son will definitely return.

Destiny sometimes plays a too dramatic a cameo. It was one such spell of howls, the womenfolk totally surrendered to the agony of losing a young son of the clan, who left without leaving behind a male heir, thus rendering the existence of land and women all meaningless, that a battle-broken, haggard Jorawar Sing materialised at his native village. The mourners could hardly believe. More than anything they tried their best to hide their embarrassment.  

But the war for Jorawar Singh was far from over. Nannu Devi had to have her grandson. At any cost. ‘These goddamned angrezs go to hell!’ she declared.

During those days, the best chance for a soldier to become a father was during once-in-a-year vacations, when he returned home, when his half-widow became a full bride. Each had to give their best to be a father and a mother.

As India burst out in joy over independence, Nannu Devi was sulking. Her soldier son’s annual homecomings hadn’t availed any fruit. She even prayed for a girl to set the ball rolling at least. To make it worse, he found himself posted in the volatile parts of Kashmir as the Pakistanis attacked in 1948. ‘As if they can never fight a war without my son!’ Nannu Devi muttered angrily.

That year his annual leave was cancelled. Being robbed of another season of a child’s prospects, Nannu Devi cursed the new masters in India. ‘With the angrezs gone, now they will fight all the time!’ she just felt flabbergasted. In desperation both the mother and the daughter-in-law worked tirelessly in the fields. They put more and more of their fallow land under cultivation. Not that they could maintain a big acreage under regular cultivation. They had hardly any means for that. But as long as you sow some furrows in the fallow patch, even four or five years after the last cultivation you had this satisfaction that the land was once tilled and will be done in future as well.

Nannu Devi was so happy that the fifties chugged ahead without any war and her son could come annually to get a son. And regularly he came, once a year, for a vacation of around two months, to try his luck across two or three cycles of procreation. He but went luckless.

During those days, childless first wives happily gave consent to their husband’s remarriage, accepting their status as that of a first wife, a kind of titular head, and pampering the second wife, keeping her happy so that the new wife won’t throw her out after bearing children. So in the warless decade, Jorawar Singh was happily remarried and straightway started his innings as a father. Even a girl child was welcomed because she carried the prospects of a son down the line. 

Some soldiers are lucky as well as unlucky to be there in multiple wars. Subedar Jorawar Singh, father of a girl, and another child growing in his wife’s womb, was there in the western sector along Aksai Chin during the war of 1962 with China. It was a humiliating defeat. It highlighted the lack of political foresight apart from the shortcomings of military leaders. Carrying a splinter injury in his leg, he was taken as a prisoner of war by the Chinese. Missing for many months he limped home at a sultry dusk. Couple of days after his arrival, his second daughter was born. Nannu Devi didn’t mind it this time. At least her son had returned from the war. And there was another time.

It won’t be before 1967, with a third girl child on the way, and the war with Pakistan coming in 1965, where Jorawar Singh as the lucky soldier again went and survived with his luck, that fifty years of Nannu Devi’s struggle bore a fruit finally.

A son was born. All the cruelties of life were forgotten and forgiven. Nannu Devi could hardly believe that she could be so lucky. Now she could send her son to wars with less fear. The light had been transferred. The land had its master. To rub red chilli down the old arse of her foe, she made grand celebrations.

As they said during those days, ‘One son is like the sole eye of a one-eyed man. It gone, the light goes out.’

So when Captain Jorawar Singh missed his annual leave due to the war of 1971 in Bangladesh, another baby was growing up in his wife’s womb. As the war thundered in the east, Nannu Devi prayed with the fervid power of her soul for another grandson. ‘After this I will never ever ask you for anything more in life,’ she promised to God.

Disapprovingly it will be a girl.

And there at a railway check-post, Jorawar Singh would get sentimental as a trainload of war prisoners halted at the check-post under his command. The Pakistani war prisoners were being hauled inland to be kept in detention, before being set free within two years as per the terms of Shimla Agreement.

Jorawar Singh entered the crammed, stinking compartment. The Pakistani soldiers gave wounded looks, barely able to hide the rage born of defeat and surrender. Like helpless, injured little animals they looked straight in the eye. But there in the corner there was a handsome figure, the majestic trappings of his high-rank uniform dusted and dishevelled. He was sitting resignedly with his head turned sideways. It struck Jorawar Singh that he was avoiding his look.

The Indian Captain reached the Pakistani officer. He was a Brigadier he could make out from his epaulettes. The war prisoner turned his head. Their eyes met. And the bloody history and separation of three decades melted. Brigadier Khan had fought with Jorawar Sing as a sepoy of the British Indian Army in Burma. They had fought as Indians. After the partition he had gone to Pakistan to rise high in the ranks as a soldier. Now the differences critically mattered. Both recognised each other immediately. There are certain personalities that somehow stand out and can be spotted even across decades. Both of them were like that.

Forgetting the war between India and Pakistan, and animosity between a Hindu and a Muslim, the Indian Captain asked what he could do for him. The Pakistani officer, both of them sharing traces of moisture in their cold, battle-hardened eyes, mumbled with a smile, ‘You are doing your duty. I don’t require any special facility. Just allow me to stay with my soldiers.’ Jorawar Singh nodded, stopped himself from saluting, waved his hand at the enemy official before jumping out of the compartment.

Later, Nannu Devi died not so happily over missing a second grandson. The land was too big for just one son, she calculated.        

After retirement, Captain Sahab shifted to Bhiwani, the district centre, which was struggling to beat the bucolic bearings of a big village to have some urban swag.    

Nothing is a bigger teacher in life than the battle between life and death, when you hold your life in your fist, out of which the sand-grains slip out. The soldiers, who have seen death from the closest quarters, either go impassive, a sort of weird ennui, later in life, or become so calculating as to take each step, every breath with so much caution like it’s a matter of utmost urgency to ward off grave risks all along.

Captain Jorawar Singh, lucky to see the normal light of a familiar sun, after spending decades in the army, lucky to have escaped by the blessing hand of providence, and unlucky to be a soldier during the most turbulent phase in the Indian military history, took slow, measured steps for the life beyond the barracks. But it was very difficult to shake off the shackles of war from the after-war life. It was always war in some form or the other, soft war though, fought across numerous fronts in mundane life. It was about winning over tiny obstacles with calm, composed deliberation. Of course the people whose skins got bruised because of his extra caution would take harmless revenge by calling him a ‘miser’.

With no fault of his, he had become extra cautious on account of his realisation that the things which come naturally to us carry mammoth value on a different plane.

Emerging from the turbulent dust of military days, wearing the boots of domestic life, he maintained the tempo, countering each step with measured calm, making every movement with perfect discipline.

Counting his pennies, and bringing more and more of the fallow land under cultivation, he appeared an old titular head busy in kingdom making. Based at the quaint town of Bhiwani, he pushed his daughters and the son towards the best manageable education in the circumstances.

The girls, as was the custom, were married early, but not before they had enrolled for graduation courses.

Some stories simply straighten out of confusion like a jumbled mass of rope, losing the tangled knots, leaving the rope unspooling with effortless ease.

All his daughters would go into happy domestic life, three of them in fact married to military officers, of whom two would retire as colonels and one still higher as a brigadier.

The older he became, the tighter he held the reins of the cart of his affairs, bearing the practicalities of carrying domestic load with silvery, age-old charisma. The progress was measureable through the increasing acreage of the cultivable land from the fallow land he inherited.

Dozens of acres of his land was acquired by the government to develop a thermal power plant at his native village. Though heartbroken over the fact, like a typical Haryanvi landowner who esteems landholding dearer than life, he invested the compensation money in purchasing plots of land in the neighbouring villages.

‘Land’s money must be invested in land only. Otherwise it’s as good as total waste,’ was his principle.

His son Suresh was selected as a commissioned officer in the army. They but decided to keep him away from the risks carried by a military life.

Taking one fistful at a time, using the each and every hour of the peaceful post-retirement time, Jorawar Sing built up a little fortune. It was completely unwise to leave it unattended by the heir apparent. We have our little kingdoms, more in mind than actually in the real world around, to hand over to the next generation. Further, he had given more than their share for the cause of Mother India. He must have calculated his contribution to be enough for the next two generations.

The old soldier managed to pull his life’s cart well into his nineties, till the age of 93 to be precise. His first wife completed her journey a few years back. She lived a life of dignity and respect because the second wife treated her like her elder sister. The second wife, considerably younger to him, is in her seventies now.

It’s the happiest of a family. Touch wood. Happy to the extent that the moment you inhale the air in the unpretentiously elegant house imbued in its quaint majesty, you feel it in your heart. They are natural in their inclination to share their happiness with others. The inherent grace in the old family matriarch goes polishing with age. Smile comes most naturally to her. It’s her trademark expression.

Apart from the rent from the agricultural land, Suresh operates a petrol pump. He has spread his wings to fly in the bonhomie of peaceful times and stability. He travels with as much enthusiasm as he earns money. With his group of happy, well-off friends he sets off for forays into the Himalayas in their SUVs. Of late he surrendered to the Scandinavian charm, which surpassed the Canadian adventure when he went backpacking across the vast country with his wife. There are many other mileposts in his footloose journey driven by independent winds. Of course culturally he liked Rome the best. His eyes stare at the ceiling as he recalls the Vatican, the Coliseum and the paintings.

He stays in the same house his father bought four decades back. At the age of 50 he is as happy as it is possible to hold by his portly but agile physique. A nice flow of money has seen some regal alterations to the traditionally built simple house. It carries a touch of the aura of heritage hotels where the artistic streak gets pleasantly dissolved among the modern conveniences. A world in which past is safely cradled in the present.

Jorawar Singh’s big framed portrait in military decorations looks with probing, disciplining eyes from the living room’s walls. Well, he deserves to keep a watch.

Suresh’s son and daughter have studied at Lawrence School, Sanawar, the famous institution where royalty was groomed for the governing responsibilities.

The well-groomed and polished mannered daughter, carrying all the possible etiquettes with a natural ease, is presently pursuing English honours at Miranda House in Delhi.

The son, tall and hefty for a 15-year-old, gives you the attention and care like he has known you since birth.

Suresh talks to his mother like a child with lots of sweet-toothed exclamations.

Well, let every story be a happy story! 

Perfect Nights

 

He doesn’t try to see the entire sea; he merely looks at a drop. It’s not that he isn’t happy about the sea. The little fact is that he simply understands the value of a drop. Drops make the sea, not the vice versa. In the same way, he isn’t worried about millions; instead he is bothered about a single rupee. Lots of one rupee coins make a million, not the vice versa.

In addition, being busy like a bee collecting tiny bits of pollen gives him a clear conscience and a satisfaction and belief that hard work gives one a long, peaceful and undisturbed sleep, so much so that a new dawn looks like the freshest chapter of life, a new life literally. And he would always remark that a sound sleep is the main takeaway from all the honest drudgery during the day.

‘I sleep like a King!’ he says to anyone who brings to mention the role of hard-working nature in defining one’s life.

He is in early forties, but like anyone lynched by poverty and deprivation, looks a decade older on any day. Short, thin and black, he is easily recognised with his Bhojpuri accent in this Haryanvi town where he stays in a rented accommodation with his wife. His little children stay with their grandparents in native Bihar.

He is a kabadiwala, a small-time scrap and garbage collector who roams around in the streets of the villages around the town. His carrier rickshaw is full of cardboard boxes, newspapers, redundant stationary, recyclable plastic, bottles, iron discards and much more. It’s a huge pile. One may wonder how this small kabadi manages this kind of load on his rickshaw. While he roams in the streets, shouting kabadiwala, he can go to the last ounce of his strength to get more discards. After all, it is no small matter to earn a living from something that has lost its utility. It’s like drawing life out of the dead.

Mention this big-hearted effort on his part to scuff out morsels of economic survival from the trash and he proudly smirks, ‘Oh, these few hundred rupees are nothing; my main reward is my perfectly undisturbed, long sleep after the day’s work! My nights are perfect despite so many imperfections of the day. But I’m lucky, not too many people have perfect nights, especially the wealthy people have very poor nights.’

He fights at many fronts. He has to squeeze out each and every faculty managed by his brain to beat the scrap owner in terms of price and measurement. The per kilogram price has to be low, but not so low that the owner kicks him out straightway. It has to be the lowest in the acceptable range. His fight is not over rupees, but over paisas per kilogram. Even from the rounded figure he tries to nibble away some 50 paisa, a small cut, to make some rupees at his end. Well, that’s what a small-time scrap dealer is all about, creating the chances of some odd rupees from the junk piled in front of him.

As he moves with his huge pile on his carrier rickshaw, heaving it like a huffing-puffing skinny bull struggling with its laden cart, commend him on his laborious endeavour and promptly comes the reply, ‘Honest hardwork cleanses the soul, one gets the best of a sleep, like I do.’

Well, listening to his main takeaway—the best of a sleep—people sometime even wonder it surely must be a ‘special’ sleep.

Apart from his bargaining tongue, it’s the rusty iron scale that helps him like a faithful instrument in his humungous task of drawing pennies out of the gutter. He has worked very hard on his weighing scale. It’s a subtle trick to save him from a direct measurement scandal. Here again it is a small kitchen knife that helps him to cut the owner’s pocket in small amounts, bit by bit, like a mouse nibbles at the bread that you come to know in the morning.

During the absorbing and highly engaging phase of bargaining, sorting, weighing and calculating, the talk between the two parties has intermittent reference to that special sleep of his. He is really proud of it. Let there be no doubt about it anymore.   

The hand-held weighing scale’s pan where he prefers to put the purchased discards, in normal condition hangs above the other one where he puts the iron measurements. This slight off-balance saves him many grams without being caught. Then during the act of holding the scale aloft, he ensures that the commodity pan gets a bit more of the discards in lieu of the measuring weight put in the other pan. It’s done by expert manoeuvring with his fingers.

In this way he earns a bit of extra profit among the showers of curses and abuses by the farmer. Even a kick cannot turn the scales in the other direction. That is his sacred law. After all to earn a living from dead things is no small matter. To all the accusations of tricks during weighing, he says matter-of-factly, ‘I am honest, just hardworking in my elaborate task. If I cheat, I won’t get such a sound sleep.’

Suppose he is weighing the discarded agricultural tools like sickles, shovels and scythes, he dupes the owner by exaggerating the weight of the wooden handle that won’t be counted with the iron. He knows how many grams he saves in that. He has the very same assessment in plastics. A cycle tyre pump, for example. He forces the owner to sell it at the price of cheap plastic because it is made of almost useless, thin sheet iron. In fact, he says that he has done the owner a favour in taking it at all.  

‘It’ll just add to my load without fetching me a paisa. I’m just taking it away to save your house from the clutter of negative energy,’ he elucidates the big favour he has done in taking it away.

He tries to assuage the scrap owner’s bruised self by saying, ‘And due to all these small bits of service, the God always ensures that I get a better sleep than most of the people possessing huge wealth. This is a proof of my good ways!’  

Then he scores the number of kilograms to even sums, thus saving a few hundred grams in that regard. After calculation, like a maths wizard, he rounds off late forties of paisas into perfect forty. His each and every thought and movement is guided by the goal to earn an extra paisa here, a paisa there, which would make a rupee, and some rupees would pile up to make a perfect hundred. He is very patient. He just doesn’t see anything beyond all this. It’s such a fight, a fight that gives him perfect sleep.

His wife is seventeen years younger to him and very fair. Being petite and delicate featured, she looks far younger than her years. She draws a special attraction from most of the persons of the opposite gender. Among the scarp lying around to be sorted she looks worth coveting. They stay in a rented room at the outskirts of the town where a village has merged with the urban sprawl. There is a longish yard and a row of tiny rooms. The owner is a portly sixty something farmer, who drinks daily, and allows them to dump the collection in the yard.

In the third room from theirs, there is a 30-year-old local man from some other district in Haryana. He works as a salesman in a wine outlet nearby. There is special bonhomie between the owner and this chap because of the common factor, wine.

The property owner takes his lecherous share by shamelessly staring at the kabadiwala’s wife. The poor scrap dealer is well aware of the old man’s tendency to have an eye-feast even at this stage of life.

‘He has a bad worm in his mind. I don’t think he can sleep peacefully like I do,’ he observes to his wife sometimes. The charming wife gets a faint smile around her lips and stays mum.

Well, the wine salesman has a bigger role in the scrap collector’s sound sleep, bigger than any purity of conscience born of hard work. All along he has been helping his neighbour sleep soundly after a hard day’s work by providing decent stocks of sleeping pills to his wife who in turn serves it lovingly to her husband. So the hardworking scrap collector sleeps very soundly while his wife and her paramour most often have busy nights, or we can say ‘poor nights’ in the scrap collector’s lingo.     

Runaway Husbands

 

And then one fine day, in the beginning of October in 2006, I decided to shed all hypocrisy, like a snake casts away its slough, to sleekly shine with the sparkle of truth. I knew that it will create multiple layers of personal, social and professional upheavals, putting me in critically sour soup. It even appeared like going naked out of the house. Clothing seems like a necessary and practical hypocrisy, saving our skin, helping us keeping the secrets safe, allowing us to pretend totally the other way around than what is really going inside.

I decided to be entirely true in my behaviour and words with my wife. She had been reasonably happy with my funny falsehoods and little lies so far. Sometimes I came very close to shatter the castle of her domination by uttering the heavy-headed truth but refrained from it, feeling it prudent to maintain the status quo.

To tell you the truth, I had started to get scared of her by now. It was no more that feeble irritation that most of the husbands feel while staying in close quarters with their wives. She was by now fully convinced that the only way to manage the household was through her iron fist and screeching voice. During the few physical scuffles that had taken place recently, she in fact gave it back the way you won’t expect even from the most fearsome of a female demon. The last skirmish earned me a bluish bump on my forehead.

‘I banged into the doorpost,’ there I went telling a lie to protect my honour.   

The life was thus turning into a big lie. It was suffocating. I wanted my freedom. I was craving for my truth to give me company right there in the open. So I prodded it out of the inner recesses where it had been hiding. 

I chose to bring my inner thoughts on parity with my behaviour in office. They held me in high esteem, so far, given my shrewdness, which I took as a shortcut to hard-work, but they viewed it as smart-work.

I resolved to be all truthful in my dealings with my social and friend circle also. So far they found me a nice gentleman to mix with. They could afford to have some expectations from me and I from them, a kind of socializing give and take in which none of the parties felt cheated.  

Then, out of the blue, the arrival of my sworn point-blank bullets of truth. Slayings happened, I tell you. In less than a month, I mean by the end of October, the world had changed irretrievably. The naked sword of truth, unsheathed from the shiny scabbard of civility, etiquettes and practicality, had cut through the moorings that had held me anchored in the bay of my life. Now I was drifting away, carried by the exciting waves of the open sea, a kind of morphed freedom.

The scene of war completely changed in the house. My wife was seen seeking escape from my barbed self. It was a sinister revolt against her sovereign entitlement to come out right regarding anything to do with the art and craft of domesticity. I immediately turned out to be the meanest fellow, the worst husband. She carried nice imprints of my fingers on her cheeks and I, in turn, carried finely patterned handwork by her rampaging brothers on my entire back. It was just on the verge of divorce.

With my fake self gone, I became the rascalest employee who comes to office to spoil the entire organisation, a severe challenger to the vast set of protocols and tomes of discipline. As if the protocols are only there to support the falsehoods! There were serious discussions of firing me outright, a kind of bloody beheading of my career.

My friend circle thought I had gone mad, insulting and selfish, my head gone into parleys with the demons. They found it advisable to avoid my bites.

Truth is a rasping slab on which the rough rusticities of one’s persona are whetted away to get a sharp edge. It then slays thoughts, emotions, sensibilities, conventions, and much more.

It soon turned into all the rest versus me. Lest they condemned me as a ‘gone case’ fit for a mental asylum, I ran away one night. The autumn was saying a gentle bye and the cotton soft flakes of an early winter lingered over the misty nights in Delhi. I sneaked away at night carrying just a light backpack stuffed with the bare essentials of a short trip in a hurry. As a mark of my freedom I left at night without informing anyone.

I don’t have any destination in mind. I am just allowing the deeper self to guide me of its own. It seems as if there are two me, one running away and the other taking me away.

I see myself reaching the ISBT and boarding a late night bus. I am not much bothered where it is heading to. Anything out of Delhi would qualify it as running away, a kind of my revenge against all of them for plotting against me. I also say ‘one Dehradun’ as the passenger on the seat in front says the same. To the hell with life’s calculations and planning, let it unfold of its own. The routine is stifling.

So to Dehradun I go by the rickety bus, its entire metallic length perilously buzzing on the not so smooth roads in western UP. The morning twilight sees me getting down to the same smoky, fried, yawning tea-smell at the bus station at the so called ‘destination’ of the bus. But to me it’s no coming home. When you are not after a particular destination, each step turns a new beginning and the next one a still fresher goal. I am not planning anything. The worried me now surrendered to the deeper me, the observer of all this drama in me and around.

I find myself having tea and a babaji looking at me expectantly. I offer him a glass of tea. Among sips of the piping hot beverage, uninteresting bits of conversation follow. I see him taking up his shoddy bundle containing few of his provisions. The deeper me sees me following the sadhu to a shared auto. He looks at me sitting by his side in the rickety three-tyred means of transport.

‘Where are you going bachha?’ he asks.

‘Somewhere,’ I reply nonchalantly.

‘Take care son, somewhere sums to be nowhere most of the time,’ he says wisely.

‘Nowhere is better than being at the wrong place,’ I say, not to win an argument but just as per the wild stream of the current of life that seems to have broken over the embankments and flow into the fields around, to taste a bigger sense of being, a kind of expansion.

I get down where he does, not with any particular intention, just that his getting down reminds me that I have to get down too. One cannot keep rolling around in a shared auto unless one has the sole motive of spending the entire purse in the fun rides in a jumping tin box.

I take the same direction as he takes and walk a few paces behind him. He is curious and even suspicious, a kind of tension creeps into him as if he is raked by the question: ‘Why is this stranger following me?’

I can sense this anxious feeling in him, so deliberately increase the number of paces between us so that he can move more freely. But strangely I know I will somehow follow the path taken by him. After all, his getting down here triggered my leaving the auto as well. There is already a kind of vague connection. No wonder, we are social animals.

He walks in a brooding manner, the surety and freedom of his steps gone. He peeps over his shoulder now and then to confirm whether I am still on the trail or not. I try to look sideways to make it appear like I have forgotten about him. See the power of habit! I have already forgotten the point-blank, naked truth. I am getting into the make-believe world where it isn’t even required.         

I read Garhi Cantt on a signboard. It clings to Dehradun’s margins like a child holding onto its mother’s lap. Now it gives me a sense of going somewhere. It’s a little peaceful world in a small market having tiny shops selling petty items. A quiet boulevard circuiting finely, almost imperceptibly. And the cutely undulating terrain at the threshold of the Himalayan foothills. It is remarkably free of noise. Maybe as travellers we are looking for likeable milestones on the sides. I but don’t consider myself a traveller. I’m a runaway husband at the most.

The sadhu isn’t now too much bothered about me. Maybe he thinks I’m someone in the initial stages of being someone like him, loitering around without any specific purpose before finally hitting the purposeless road full time.   

The place provides some solace to my impassive, benumbed senses. The houses on both sides of Tapkeshwar road, as I read it on a roadside marker, stand in a splendid isolation accentuated by vegetable and flower gardens. Small concrete houses, sheltering the cosy post-retirement world of army officials and many other decently standing civil servants. A groomed isolation so near the main hustle bustle of the capital city. One can surprisingly see wild flowers among the wayside bushes, ferns and clumpy undergrowth, the effect of the Himalayas looming over the horizon at just six or seven kilometres of crow flight.

The foothills seem to entice the journeyman from across the misty distances. I feel an urge to go running into them and surrender my bored, bruised self into their open arms. But then the great mountain seems daunting as well. It seems that I would be lost in its vastness. This little road at this small place, and someone with whom I had recently something to do—like sharing tea, having some words and then that auto ride—is also on the path. After all, the mankind is a social animal at the most. That seems a safe option for a runway husband.  

The road is named after a temple, so it must be a big place of worship, I think. I haven’t heard much about the temple.

‘It appears like Tapkeshwar temple’s majestic solitude and holy aura permeates through the surrounding area,’ I reflect.

The devotees are trickling in. They come slowly without shooing away the temple’s cool silence in this first week of November. Starting at a distance from the stone gate—biscuit coloured with dark strips of paint running artistically—the path is lined with tiny tea stalls and the vendors of puja provisions. In front of the main gate, at both ends, there are two massive trees, the trees of Indian spirituality and mythology: banyan and peepal. The peepal has given a good chase to the banyan in its many-trunked, mossy rise into the sky.

The sadhu tugs at my sleeve under the banyan tree.

‘Are you sure you aren’t following me?’ he asks with distinctly visible traces of irritation and suspicion.

All of us have something to run away from our past. Even on the free path of mendicancy, we prefer to avoid those past milestones coming hurtling from behind. He is worried. I can feel I have already given him enough reasons to smell something fishy in my walk that looks a pursuit to him. I deny to the capacity of my shake of head and reticent tongue. He doesn’t seem convinced though. He moves on and I try to appear absorbed in the tree’s canopy.  

The peepal’s radius has reached several meters. Its trunks, sub-trunks, branches, sub-branches and boughs shelter a horde of supposedly good and bad spirits. The main trunk is surrounded by a brick and concrete circular platform—the tamed religiosity. Little alcoves around its perimeter are used as the shrines of devis and devatas. The trunk has lost its colour and acquired a strange pigmentation, the colour of faith and prayers. People have smeared their offerings here. The colour of prayers is criss-crossed with red cotton threads, the mauli dhaga, the string of faith, holding the kite of prayers to keep it flying at a manageable height. My mind is reading all this information about the sacred tree.

On the platform, an old bespectacled sadhu, bearing a silvery beard, wearing a woollen cap, sits in half-worldly, half-contemplative mood. He finds me suitable for some free time and easier purse strings that can be opened with a bit of pious cajoling. He beckons me and slaps a hearty blessing on my back as I bow down to him.

‘You have a wife who prays to God to have you as her husband in the next hundred births. You have a job where they say the office will fall to pieces without you. There are friends and relatives who won’t be able to survive without your help,’ he expects a handsome big bank note for the glorification of the false in me.

I cringe under the impact of his verbal as well as physical strike at my back. I offer him a one-rupee coin and his eyes turn red and he takes away all the glories and I stand exactly as I am in reality.

‘No wonder, not many people like you,’ he summarises after deglorifying me.

For one rupee I get my truth but for hundred rupees I would have collected a bagful of lies about myself.    

The babaji whom I have followed to this point is standing under the banyan tree at the other end of the gate, keenly watching all the happenings taking place under the peepal tree.

The banyan tree has an ancient charm about it. It looks old and wise, its sturdy leaves carrying ears that can hear what we cannot. In the majestic hunky dory of its beard, it looks like a bridge between this and the other world. It has a squarish curb around the base of its main trunk. A vendor of puja provisions has managed to pitch up a tent on it. His little shop is stacked with framed images of Gods and Goddesses, puja thalis, flower garlands, ritual offerings, religious trinkets including cheap amulets, rings having glassed images of Gods and scores of small-time religious souvenirs. Nearby, on the curb itself, a crouching clay lion roars, its tail half in air, just about to jump at any other encroacher on the holy platform. It seems to be tamed by the vendor. And now by the babaji as he puts his hand on its back as the conqueror of all worldly desires and fears.

I don’t have the heart to just cross over and enter the main gate, especially as the much worried babaji is staring at each movement of mine. So to allay his tension and undo what I have done, I take the role of a firm believer in Gods and go to the vendor and purchase a full puja thali. Seeing me buying the thali, and a bit relieved, the sadhu sneaks into the temple premises.   

I walk in tow, I mean I don’t mean to follow him, just that his choosing of the twists and turns comes to precede my time and space by just a few seconds and some paces. Just marginally ahead of mine. Idiosyncrasies of the power of coincidence is all we can say about it. Now if that comes to confine my endeavour to be viewed by him as a deliberate following of him then I cannot help it too much.

One thing is pretty clear now that both me and him have become very conscious of each other’s steps. The onus is on me to make my presence here just like any other pilgrim moving around without any motivation other than seeking God’s blessings.

A very old sadhu is somehow managing his shaky steps with a crooked stick. A bright red cloth with golden trimmings at its borders is tied around his neck. An open-fronted soiled-grey woollen jacket is keeping him safe from the traces of early winter. He does not look homeless here. He can claim his ownership just by spreading a raggish cloth on the floor and lie down on his back for a cool, solid support for survival mouthfuls, rest and even respect. The shade of religion saves many a homeless soul.

I stop by this sadhu and have a few words about Gods and prayers and puja so that the other sadhu, I mean my sadhu (see how effortlessly our sense of belonging evolves), would find it normal. I just forgot that my sadhu had done exactly the same in order to while away time as I bought the puja thali. Now I also do the same to bide some time, expecting him to move in the mean time. Too much of coincidence, agreed. Now he has stronger reasons to spot me as a black sheep. He doesn’t move and waits for me to approach as I move on a bit guiltily now.

‘You have been asking about me to that old sadhu, mister! Whatever you have to ask, ask me directly!’ there is tartness in his voice.   

Nearby, at the head of a little row of stalls, there is the Tourist Information Centre. Neat, clean and whitewashed, it’s a cotton imitation of Victorian architecture. There is a perfect replica of the red-tiled sloping roof of the British Raj period. The interiors are clean. Surprisingly. More surprisingly, it has internet facility for the visitors. Internet access was a rarity during those days. 

I have hardly any words in reply. To evade him, and make it appear the case of an educated but lost soul from the cities who is grappling between faith and reason and doesn’t have much clue about temples, I take brisk steps to the tourist information centre and thrust my head into the peep window, contriving serious inquiries about the place.

It’s a big temple complex. An institution of faith of its unique kind; a holy trade of its own type. Near the both sides of the main gate, there are two little shrines. The marble tiles inside add to the spiritual respectability. A better seat of God in comparison to those outside on the platforms. As the sun peeps through the misty morning, some taxies come to halt and groups of tourist-devotees troop out. The day has begun.

I know that the baba and I can have our own separate ways without causing much inconvenience to any party. All it needs is a bit of common sense and support from the coincidental factors. So with my puja thali in hand I loiter around the information centre, waiting for the baba to move on his path. Little do I realise that I appear more of an ill-advised detective, holding puja thali and standing near the information centre with ulterior motives. 

Things take their own course. Presently he has a serious business to stop now and then and look suspiciously. I have the business to avoid a perception that I’m following him. I expect him to go, he expects me to cross over and move ahead. Neither happens. I see him standing at the end of the steps, keenly observing each of my movements.

From the main gate, a flight of broad marbled steps descends to again rise to the better parts, the main parts, the shrines of blessings. On the side walls, each step has a marble plaque bearing the names of the devotees who donated money for building that particular step. Each step has a name. I have read books and know that these commemorative plaques make a nice reading. So I simply start reading the names and dates and years. The puja thali is still there in my hand. The little backpack is on my back.

‘There is something really fishy about this chap,’ the sadhu must have thought.

Above the commemorative slabs there is a series of covered terraces having cement floors, with shelves along the back walls. Anyone bearing the invisible coupon of mendicancy and beggarship can take a free shelter here. Almost all the places have been claimed. Their humble belongings bundled in sack-clothes are put in the shelves. Proper houses in order. They have a common roof but no partition. Lines of trust hold the domesticity. Violations lead to verbal and sometimes physical fights. An iron hand-rail runs through the middle of the broad flight of stairs, separating those to-be-blessed from the blessed ones coming the other way.

My reading is over and he is still waiting at the end of the steps. So I decide to talk to a few of the mendicant friars resting under the sheltered terrace by the side, looking at him now and then to see if he has moved on. He but is now rooted to the spot. He isn’t even bothered about any alms that people offer. Finally, I myself decide to cross him and melt into the crowd of the pilgrims.

‘You have been asking those beggars about me! Ask me straight I tell you!’ he is nervous.

I pretend that I haven’t heard him.

As one steps down the descending entrance way, religiosity seeps in through chiming bells, murmuring crowds and buffets of incense smell. There are sadhus on both sides, very poor semi-mendicants asking for alms, and scores of plain beggars. Well, in reality all of them might be simply beggars, just sadhus in the name of having some saffron colour on their clothes, haggard looks, long beards and flying locks of hair. I hope to be lost among their hackling voices.

I have already mentioned about the absence of destination in my journey. I am footloose and no destination binds me. I just try to move on with hurried steps. I find myself near the holy stream that gurgles through the temple complex. There are raised covered platforms running along the staircase. Idols of Gods line the wall to draw attention of the visitors to turn them firm believers and pilgrims. Some alms or donations are expected to be the kindest act. It is about salvation. Donation to the poor brings salvation. It is a huge belief.

I increase my pace. I know he is following me. On a wooded slope, visible through the break in the series of terraces, a sadhu is cooking something on a coal stove. He is rubbing something on his palm. Fraction of a beneficent smile is visible on his bearded face. His clay smoking pipe is awaiting a fill. The smoke of liberation waits in anticipation. Nearby, on the back wall of the series of terraces, the framed pictures of Gods stare down at him. Close at hand, another sadhu, wearing cheap thick-framed spectacles, is engrossed in chanting hymns from some scriptural pamphlets. He seems to be practising some mantra recitation. Probably some assignment is at hand for a private religious ceremony.

I take refuge in their company. The babaji waits at a distance. I have forgotten to use the puja thali in my hand. He must be sure by now that I am a detective who is after him for some reason. After a while I cannot see him, so feeling it safe I move on.   

Further on there is a little marble shrine by the side. Through the grilled opening the mythical writer, the ancient writer sage Balmiki looks at you. It does justice to the reputation of the revered writer of Ramayana. It’s a full bearded face in spiritual trance. The eyes are very big and look at you with curiosity. The lips are painted red and a smile lurks with a know-all aura. His full squarish face is pinkish. Nose is perfectly straight, cheeks are healthy. The face of a very handsome man, indeed. His long locks of hair are tied at the top of his head with a string of holy beads. Time is frozen around him as he sits there in a meditative posture, a silky yellow robe covering his torso. There is a garland of wilting flowers around his neck. The flowers are few days old possibly. Flowers are mortal. So they cannot stay in the loops of frozen time in the little shrine. The shrine has been dug into the hillside along the flight of stairs. Its roof seems to be hanging in antiquity as mossy, muddled outcroppings of stones stare down, suspended in time to maintain the mythical aura of the holy figure.

I feel faithful enough to offer my puja thali to the revered writer. After all, I also once wrote to the extent of gathering a few dozen rejection slips from the publishers. My wife then saved the pile of rejection slips from acquiring further thickness by ordaining no more foolish scribbling as long as she was there in the house.

I respect the great sage writer, so genuinely do the best I can manage in performing the rituals. Life seems better without a suspicious baba peeping at you from around the corners. Coming home it feels, I tell you.

The flight of steps comes to an end at the doorstep of a towered shrine. It is built on a raised platform emerging from the bed of the stream cutting through the tiniest of a valley. The main complex overlooks the stony, rippling course of the water channel chiming musically, as if it is boosting the holiness of the place. The path reaches a fork. To the left, it goes along an almost vertically cut slope. Stony, mossy crags and boulders jutting out amidst the roots and the trees holding onto their perch almost miraculously. There are tiny shrines in the awnings below the overhung cliffside. In the maze of the stony roofs, one can see pigeons perched upon the littlest projections. There is a huge clay statue of Lord Hanuman in a meditative posture on the floor, His head almost touching the hillside. The expression on His face evinces an effort as if he is supporting this dugout like a mighty pillar. The alkaline rocks have bleached and look whitewashed.

And here my hopes are dashed. He is also trying to make it appear like he is busy in worshipping Lord Hanuman. He must have thought that I’m playacting to offer prayers to Sage Balmiki. Why would someone simply pray at the Balmiki shrine bypassing all the greater Gods of Hindu mythology, he must have thought.

A turn in the path goes along the stream’s upper course to pass over a tiny bridge over the stream and then continuing its course on the other side over an elevated platform erected on pillars raised from the stream bed. It has almost a roof of the overhanging thick foliage of trees. It then leads to the main temple shrine overlooking the gurgling brook. On this side of the path, leading to Tapkeshwar Mahadev temple, concrete is being dumped in huge foundation holes to erect pillars to support further construction.

I run among these modern ruins of continuous construction.

The mountain stream has cut its course almost vertically. Its channel is narrow and if you look upwards into the slim valley, you see trees on both sides almost shaking hands in spiritual unison.

The main shrine is dug into the hillside. Massive blocks of the stony hillside have been cut to make a path leading to the shrine. The path circuits the overhanging ledge of the upper slope. It looks dangerously overhung. But I look more restlessly behind to confirm whether he is following me or not. Now I feel only our faith shelters us from such pitfalls. I pray to the God that he gets lost in the maze somewhere. Given a choice, I would prefer meeting my wife at that moment but not him. Life is full of challenges. And not meeting him is the challenge now.   

Just opposite the main shrine, a huge block of bedrock creates a small waterfall in the course of the stream. The water falls with a murmuring thrill which mixes with the chimes of temple bells ringing nearby. Incense-dipped air blows across the channel and kisses the lapping water-drops. The air seems to have a dewy sip before moving heavenwards carrying the prayers and many a message for divine intervention. It’s a peaceful little world. But its meaning has lost its feel now as the mind is occupied about the pursuit by the sadhu.

The riverside foundation of the shrine complex is made of roughly hewn stone blocks. Further downstream, there is a pillared veranda at a height of one storey from the streambed. It serves as a balcony to the temple. The main shrine is visible through grilled doors and windows along the inner side of the veranda. The floor is cool, made of clean marble slabs. Atop the pillared veranda there are series of rooms for the resident friars. A row of glassed windows overlooks the stream from the residential dormitories. It is two-storey high and the view is great.

His eyes are peering at me from one of the windows. I see him clearly. I decide to set it square with him by talking out straight, just like I had talked it square with all those whom I knew before my escape. But before that I feel like bowing my head in full reverence to the Lord.

The main shrine comprises a low-roofed cave complex. The finely undulating roof has been artistically painted and seems like a cavity to the known and the unknown at the same time. The devotees need to keep their heads low against bumping into some jutting stone and lose faith there itself with the arrival of a bump. One is supposed to be humble, head bent, remember God and look at the ground.

The innermost part on the side, deep into the hill, is quite low-roofed. Along the inner recesses, small niches have been further dug into the sides to portray different aspects of Lord Shiva and Ma Adi Shakti. The flooring is made of exquisitely polished marble slabs. To the other side of the shrine hall, a flight of two steps leaves one with the roof hanging a bit higher. Here one can move without caring for the head. Two massive brass faces of Father Lord and Mother Shakti are indeed godly and draw reverence just from the mere look of it. There is a third plush section as well. Its roof is manmade after projecting out from the dugout. Here the priests rest, taking a nice break from their ritualistic labour.

With a far lighter heart I move now slowly without any effort to hide. I am sure he will come following me and then I would beckon him. He is but nowhere to be seen.

I am near the place where I had met the babas, one holding the chillum and the other reading scriptures.  There is a sobbing sound.

‘She wouldn’t allow me the peace of my soul! Now she has sent a detective after me!’ he is crying among the stormy hiccups of sorrow.

I present myself and he jumps in agony, brandishing his finger at me.

‘He is the one. She has sent him to track me and catch me!’ he seems to be at the sharp edge of a nervous breakdown.

I hold a parley with the sadhus and now it comes to light.

‘He was a well-to-do man but his wife is a tyrant so he ran away. She keeps trying to catch him,’ the easy-spirited, chillum-holding sadhu informs me.

‘I’m nobody’s wife’s ambassador. In fact, I’m myself running away from my own wife,’ I say in all seriousness.

But they cackle with laughter, taking it to be a joke.

I walk with slow steps and marvel at the coincidence, ‘Two men running away from their wives end up running away from each other as well.’