Ian McDonald - River of Gods

“Not far,” Krishan lies. His forearms are knotted, burning. “Soon be there.”

As they approach the station people emerge from the capillary galis and project streets, laden like them with bags, burdens, cycle rickshaws, carts, cars; rivulet joining to stream joining to flow joining together into a broad river of heads. Parvati clutches at Krishan’s sleeve. To slip apart here is to be lost for years. Krishan wades on, fists rigid around the plastic handles that feel as if they are made of burning coal, neck muscles tensed, teeth clenched, looking ahead, ahead, thinking of nothing but the station the train the station the train and how every footstep takes him closer, takes him nearer to the time when he can set these burdens down. He waddles now, trying to keep step with the surge of people. Parvati is closer than a shadow. A woman in a full burqa presses past. “What are you doing here?” she hisses. “You have brought this to us.” Krishan pushes the woman away with his suitcases before her words can spread and bring the wrath of the crowd down on them for now he sees what has been before his face all this long road: the Muslims are leaving Varanasi.

Parvati whispers, “Do you think we will be able to get a train?” Then Krishan understands that the world will not stop for their romantic notions, the crowds will not part and let them free passage, history will not grant them a lovers’ pardon. Theirs is not a bold, romantic flight. They are foolish and blind and selfish. His heart sinks deeper as the street opens into the approach to the station and the flow of refugees empties into the largest mass of people he has ever seen, more than any crowd that ever streamed out of Sampurnanand Stadium. He can see the spars and translucent spun-diamond canopy of the concourse, the gaping glass portals to the ticket halls. He can see the train at the platform, glistening under the yellow lights, already loaded to the roof and more climbing on all the time. He can see the soldiers silhouetted against the breaking dawn on their armoured vehicles. But he cannot see a way through the people; all those people. And the cases, those stupid suitcases, pull him down through the concrete into the soil, anchoring him like roots. Parvati tugs at his sleeve.

“This way.”

She draws him towards the concourse gates. The press is less at the edge of the plaza; refugees instinctually keep away from soldiers. Parvati hunts in the beadwork bag over her shoulder. She fetches a tube of lipstick, ducks her head briefly and comes up again with a red bindi on her forehead.

“Please, for the love of Siva for the love of Siva!” she cries to the soldiers, hands pressed together into a namaskar of entreaty. The jawans’ eyes cannot be read behind their mirrored, rain-spotted visors. Louder now: “For the love of the Lord Siva!” Now the people around her start to turn and look and growl. They start to jostle, their anger begins. Parvati pleads with the soldiers. “For the love of Lord Siva.”

Then the soldiers hear her voice. They see her soaked, dirt-smeared sari. They read her bindi. Jawans slip down from their vehicles, jabbing their weapon muzzles at the women and children, forcing them back though they scream God’s curse at the soldiers. A jemadar gestures briskly to Parvati and Krishan. The soldiers part, they slip through, the weapons go up again to the horizontal, a bar, a denial. A woman officer hurries Parvati and Krishan between the parked transports that even in the rain smell of hot biodiesel. Voices rise to a thunder of outrage. Glancing back, Parvati sees hands seize a jawan’s assault gun. There is a short, fierce balance of forces, then the soldier next to him casually swings up the butt of his weapon and smashes it into the side of the protestor’s skull. The Muslim man goes down without even a cry, hands clutched to head. The man’s cry becomes the crowd’s; it surges like a river squall. Then the shots rip out and everyone in the plaza falls to their knees.

“Gome on,” the jemadar says. “No one’s hurt. Keep your heads down. What were you doing there? What ever possessed you? This day of all days.” She tuts. Parvati does not think Bharati soldiers should tut.

“My mother,” Parvati says. “I have to go to her, she’s an old woman, she needs me, she has no one else.”

The jemadar brings them up the side steps into the station concourse. Parvan’s spirit turns to lead. The people, the people. There is no way through this. She cannot see where the ticket counters are. But Krishan bangs down the cases and jerks out the handles and lifts them up on their little frayed black plastic wheels and pushes determinedly into the rear of the crowd.

The sun climbs over the transparent roof. Trains arrive, more people than Parvati can ever imagine press onto the platforms. For every trainload of refugees that pulls out from under Varanasi Station’s spun-diamond canopy another presses into the foyer from the forecourt. Parvati and Krishan are pushed step by step toward the ticket desks. Parvati watches the flatscreens suspended from the roof. Something has happened to Breakfast with Bharti . In her place is a video loop of Ashok Rana, whom she has never liked, over and over. He is behind some studio desk. He looks tired and afraid. It is only on the sixth viewing that Parvati understands with a shock what he is saying. His sister is dead. Sajida Rana is dead. Now the streets, the shots, the crowds, the running, the Muslims, and the soldiers firing over their heads, all become solid, one connected thing. Ignorant and innocent, they have been running, suitcases in hand, through the death throes of Mother Bharat. Suddenly her selfishness consumes her.

“Krishan. We have to go back. I can’t go. We were wrong.”

Krishan’s face is perfect, drained, disbelief. Then the gap opens in front of him and it goes all the way to the ticket counter and the clerk looks at Parvati, just at Parvati and in a moment the gap will implode.

“Krishan, the ticket-wallah!”

She pushes him up to the counter and the ticket-wallah asks him where he wants to go and he doesn’t know, and she can see the clerk will brush him aside, next please.

“Bubaneshwar!” she cries. “Two singles! Bubaneshwar.” She has never been to Bubaneshwar, has never even crossed into ancient Orissa, but her mind is filled with the image of billowing orange and scarlet silk, the rath yatra of Jagannath. Then the ticket-wallah prints the tickets and gives them their train number and time and platform and seat reservations and spins the slips of paper through the hatch.

It is four hours until the train to Raipur, where they will change for Bubaneshwar. The slow conveyor of people takes them through the doors on to the platform where they sit on their luggage, too tired for words, each fearing that if the other speaks they will both leave the blue plastic cases and bolt back to their lives and lies, little adventure over and closed. Krishan buys newsprints from the stall—not many for what Parvati reads in them makes her afraid to be on the platform among the Muslims, despite the groups of soldiers that pass up and down. She feels the weight of their looks, hears their hisses and mutterings. Mrs. Khan from the Cantonment Set, so certain on the politics of the war at the cricket match, could be on this platform. No, not the Begum Khan; she would be in a first-class air-conditioned a hundred kilometres away, she would be driving south in her chauffeured car, windows darkened; she would be in business class on an airbus.

Rain drips from the fringe of the platform canopy. Krishan shows Parvati the headline, still smeary from the printer, announcing a great Government of National Salvation in coalition with N. K. Jivanjee’s Shivaji Party that will restore order and repulse the invader. This is what Parvati has felt blow across the platforms like a cold front. The enemy has gained the whip; there is no place in Bharat for Islam.