Bhola tapped his switch against his hips. He prodded us with it towards Guruji’s cottage. He kept stopping to chat with people he passed. Piku’s hand was hot and sweaty in mine. I held it tight. The dog paused to lift a leg against the bushes. Bhola hit it with his switch and it yowled. The dog had pointed ears and red fur. It looked like a fox.
We waited by Guruji’s cottage the whole morning. The other students, boys and girls, walked past giving us curious looks. We were left out of lessons and games. We stood in the hot sun like beggars. Everyone went off for prayers and we kept standing in the sun. I can’t remember how long we waited. When Guruji arrived, his hair was blowing in the breeze, a black halo. He kept his eyes on us as Bhola told him we had been found near the boundary, trying to cross the fence. I thought I glimpsed the shadow of a smile on his face and began to get my voice back. I opened my mouth. Guruji raised a hand to stop me saying anything. He told Piku to leave.
Guruji sometimes spoke Hindi with us, and sometimes English. People said he had never been to school, yet miraculously he could understand whichever language his devotees spoke in and he could speak them equally well. There were many stories about Guruji. They said he had divine powers even when he was a child. He could turn into a cat or horse or wolf, then come back to human form again. As a child he could tell what people were thinking and when he spoke out their thoughts a deep grown-up voice would come out of him even though he was only five or six at that time. Guruji’s voice was soft. He never had to raise it, not even when he had a hundred people around him. When he spoke it was as if all other sounds stopped so that his every whisper could be heard from far away — that is what his devotees said. Now he only said, “Come inside”.
I followed him into the inner room of his cottage. Padma Devi, who usually sat in the outer one, was not there that day. Guruji shut the door behind us. He locked it.
I remember every bit of that room. Its walls were covered with photographs of Guruji meeting people. They must have been grand people. I did not know who they were. In the photographs most of them were bowing to him and he had his palm raised to bless them. On one side of the room was a bed. It was low and wide, with carved animal paws for legs. It had white sheets and ochre bolsters and pillows. There was an equally low desk on another side with a square asan on the floor for sitting on. The desk had a book on it with a plain cardboard cover. A steel cupboard with glass doors stood against one wall and another wall had a row of pegs from which Guruji’s robes were hanging.
I saw that one wall of this room was dark blue, and had framed pictures of birds on it. I could recognise red and blue birds I had seen at the ashram. There was a bulbul and also a house sparrow. The painted birds were brightly coloured and beautiful, nestling in green leaves among ripe mangoes or red hibiscus flowers.
Guruji drew the curtains. He sat down on the chair where he had first seated me on his lap all those years ago.
I had already forgotten I was there to be punished. “Who painted those birds?” I asked him. I had to stand on tiptoe to look at them from up close. I knew I could never do these with my school crayons.
“I painted them, of course,” Guruji smiled. “Didn’t you know that? Birds eat out of my hands. I can catch any bird I want to. I only have to sit and chirrup, Choo, choo, choo — like that, and they come. See that line of birds there? They are exactly like the real ones. Go on, touch the feathers.”
He was pointing to a shelf in the room in which there were birds sitting in a row. I did not dare to touch them.
“They aren’t alive, child, they won’t peck you,” he said. “They’re stuffed. So that they are still enough to paint.”
At one of the windows was a bird in a cage. This one was definitely alive: it hopped about and screeched. It had glossy green feathers on its back and a red band at its throat. Maybe when I was out on the flowerbed that time, it was the bird making those strange screaming noises.
“That one’s next. It’s a parakeet. It’ll be a big painting,” he said. “Go on, give it a chilli to eat.”
When I did not go towards the bird he patted his lap and said, “Come here.”
I climbed on to his lap as I had before and he settled me there and said, “Tell me why you went to that fence. You know you are not allowed, and there is a reason why. If people from outside see you, they might report you to the police. And then what? Do you want to be taken away and locked up? You must do as I say or God will be angry and you’ll get into trouble.”
I pulled away from him and said, “I was only looking. I didn’t do anything.”
He pressed me back against his chest. “Some things are forbidden, you know that, don’t you? We need rules when we live together.”
His face was very close to mine. I could see where his cheeks had tiny black bristles from shaving and I thought of the way my father used to sit at a mirror tacked on the wall outside our hut in the morning and shave. When I was very small, my father would rub his bristly cheek against mine and I used to squeal when he did that.
Guruji said, “You don’t always understand the reasons why I tell you to do some things and not do other things, but there is a reason and one day you will understand it was for your own good. You have to hide for a while because there is a war. If you are found wandering outside now, they will lock you up in jail. Just wait a little, then you can do whatever you want to.” He said, “Do you trust me? Don’t you think I will always do everything for your good? Didn’t I save you from the war and from starving on the streets without your parents?”
He said, “Didn’t I tell you the day you came here that I am your father, mother and God? Can you disobey all of them?”
He stroked my hair and shoulders while he spoke. It was very cool in the room and the curtains had turned afternoon into evening. I could hardly hear his voice, it was no more than a murmur and the words sounded longer when they came from him because he stretched them out.
He stroked my arms and said, “You are like an insect. Don’t you eat?” He held my leg and said, “Let me see that knee. Look, there is a scar from the time you fell off the pomegranate tree. That should teach you not to be naughty.” He rubbed the scar and then another scrape with his fingertip and said, “What is this one from?”
“I was playing yesterday and I fell.”
“Does it hurt?” he said. “I don’t want any of my children to be in pain.”
As his hand moved from scar to scar, it went under the skirt of my tunic and began to stroke the part between my legs. His hand went up my thighs and down. He shifted my weight and slipped down my knickers and put his hand right between my legs. He lifted his own robes and he pulled my hand towards himself and said, “Hold this, it is magic.” It stuck out from between his legs like a stump.
Then he said, “Your hand is much too small, hold it with both.” I had to turn to be able to do that. I did need both my hands because the stump was really big now, but I thought I did not have to hold it because it would keep standing on its own. When I took my hands away to see if I was right, Guruji pushed them back. I grew tired of just sitting there holding a stump. I did not know why he was making me do something so stupid. I wanted to get off his lap and go, but he shut his eyes and sat there stroking me for such a long time I wondered if he would ever let me leave and eat lunch. All of a sudden he groaned and said, “Enough.” My hands had become wet and slimy. They felt as if I had squashed something. Guruji gave a deep sigh and opened his eyes. He picked me off his lap and told me to wipe my hands on a towel that hung from one of the pegs. I had to stand on my toes to reach the towel. When I removed it from its peg, I saw it had been covering a picture on the wall.
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