Raja Rao - Collected Stories

Life is so mysterious. Why should you, coolie with a number—87, 54 or 49—stitched on your shirt, alone carry our luggage? Why not one whose number is 55, 31 or 48? What connection of stars linking one with the other, Jupiter with Mercury or Saturn squaring the moon, have created this situation that Bhaiya Ram, Bhagat Ram or Durga Das, coolies of Mughal Sarai, carry our luggage and never will we see them again? How could this be? And the monkeys that were disturbed by our hagglings, the bats that were irritated and the two curs — yes, those two curs, Paul and I will never meet again. Only the Ganges flows, Mother Ganges carrying our memories away. Who could, Lord, who could carry the memory of the millions and millions that have been born since the beginnings began and where have all the dog-and-man-meetings, the bat and the travellers’ links, the coolie-and-the-pilgrim-contacts gone? Why was Paul here and he from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, son of my friend Bert who sent him with me to India — a graduation present! And who, I? And who indeed was this Moti Ram driving us into the wild darkness of the night? Where was he taking us? Did he have a licence? Did he know the road to Raj Ghat College? Silence in India is always wise. But over there on the Ganges bank it seems to sparkle. The darkness yields slowly to an unearthly luminescence. Man, do you know you would know if only you knew you knew? And Mother Parvathi presides over it all.

Anna Purné Sada Purné

Shankar Prana Vallabhé. .

Bhikshandéhicha Parvathi.

O filled with essence and ever in plenitude,

Beloved to life of Shankara himself,

O Parvathi, give me alms.

Yes, Parvathi alone gives. It is through Her we know Him. How could we know we know if the door of darkness remained unopened? She opens. She hears your cry, son. She hears because you weep, childless woman. She hears because you’ve lost your son, old father. In fact, hearing itself is She. And when hearing is just hearing nobody hears: so He is.

Moti Ram, our driver, indeed bore a palanquin. His car made a large variety of noises as we scudded and rode on, startled sometimes by the bright eyes of bullocks from the incoming carts. And then night again slipped by and enveloped all of hearing. Only once a horse-cart jostled past us with a chattering group of travellers inside, and the horse was getting a nice lash for every other breath — they had to catch, the travellers had to, the Gaya Express. Gaya is where the Buddha attained enlightenment. Kanthaka, his horse, was that which had arisen life after life, only to be the horse on whom the Buddha would ride to go to his enlightenment.

‘Moti Ram,’ I said, ‘how many children have you?’

‘Three, sir,’ he answered ever so reverentially. ‘I had four. And one of them died.’

‘Died of what, Moti Ram?’

‘He died of death, sir, that is all. One morning we awoke, and found him dead.’

‘Was there some black magic behind it, you think?’

‘Who would do magic against a grave good boy? He used to carry fuel from the fuel shop to the Ganga banks for cremations. He had seen too many souls die.’

‘No, he must have died of something.’

‘Well, sir, we must all die of something. Does it matter the manner he was taken away? His time was come, and he was taken away.’

‘And the other three. What do they do?’

‘One works at a primary school. He is a peon there. And he takes letters to your Raj Ghat College sometimes. He has seen that great Mahatma, Krishnamurti, sir. The Mahatma probably knows you.’

‘Yes, Moti Ram, I have met him once or twice. But I haven’t been to Raj Ghat College for many, many years — in fact for fifteen years.’

‘Oh yes, sir,’ mumbled Moti Ram to himself as if he had made a grave mistake in etiquette, and fell back to silence. The silence now simply whirled as solid space, as if the earth were but a turning top on Shiva’s palm. The earth whirls in the pure silence of akasha, of space essence. Man whirls with it too and his words become silences. As the Ganges dissolves all acts of man so does silence dissolve all of speech. Man is never more a pilgrim than when silence carries him from darkness into light. Mother Ganga bends as a moon, as a Crescent Moon, by Benares. Look at that still string of electric lights, a string through the awake night which seems to deepen the river’s truth. Once in a while a lean tongue of flame flares up — some dead whose body was being slowly turned to ash, which would finally be dissolved into the Ganga. Pyre, and pyre again, became prominent as we neared the river. The flames seemed so alive, the only nightly action in this visible universe. The string of lights seemed but reflections seen from the other side. Who were they, the one, two, or three, which had died, banker, virgin, retired police constable or Maharaja? And the yogis must watch these pyres as they open their eyes after their midnight meditations. The pyre makes death alive. He who has seen a body burn, knows he will never die.

The Dalhousie bridge burst like wide laughter while a funeral is passing by. The girders rippled off their silences but at each rib they seemed to get merrier. The Dalhousie bridge was not laughing at anyone. He was laughing at the immensities he linked, and his ever light burden. And he too having served millions of pilgrims, will one day be broken by flood or war, and he too will fall into the Ganga, though the steel had come from Cumberland or Glasgow. There’s hope for every thing on earth, man, beast, and iron ore.

One saw neither palace, temple nor minaret of mosque— one only saw the curve of the Ganga. Was Benares a city or a Sanskritic statement? Did not a million people live there? Were there not colleges, universities, judicial buildings, town hall, the palaces of the rich, where were they all? From the bridge there was nothing seen but the sacred river turning, bending in her legendary crescent form, and sprays of gathering upper luminosities, and then the stars. The silence was alarming. The Ford suddenly turned to the right (for, by now, the bridge was crossed over) and cautiously we entered the new suburbs of the city. Walls of plaster, mud or brick, huts, villas, and thatchments — there was not a human breath anywhere. At the railway crossing we saw the only thing awake, the red light, and we entered darkness again. The unreal and the real are so coadjuscent in Benares you lose trace of the one, while you are wholly with the other. Was there a Raj Ghat College? Did Moti Ram really know it? How could one trust a man with his peasant turban, his big belly, silver bangles on his arm, as Moti Ram? Did he have a licence? Did he too have a Thug ancestor?

Through listless curves and roads without end, which suddenly opened on broader roads, and narrow dips, we emerged at a gate. Moti Ram stopped the car, and a cur started barking. Moti Ram went, opened the gate wide, and the cur raised his voice higher. Who dare come in on this stark night? What man dare, on the Ganges bank, break this deadly darkness? The cur was indeed Yama’s dog, for he never stopped howling. Through many twists and chugs we came to another gate. We saw almost no houses or huts. Only trees everywhere, There’s the terror of Bhavani in every wood. Someone shouted in the night.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Guests for you, Jagat Ram. This is Moti Ram of the Taxi, speaking. Father of Sachit Ram.’

‘Guest? What guest?’ the dialogue started.

‘What do I know? Name, country? They are Sahibs and that’s all I know.’

‘How can I open the door,’ said the voice, switching on a garden light, ‘without knowing their names?’

‘Say Raja Rao,’ I said.

‘Raja Rao Sahib,’ cried Moti Ram as if he were announcing a king.

‘I know no Raja Rao,’ cried back the voice.