Anuradha Roy - Sleeping On Jupiter

Badal’s deep-set eyes glittered, and his ivory-coloured art silk kurta shone as he said, “The guide who holds that effigy on the elephant. . he always dies within weeks of the ceremony.”

He spoke to them, but he was far away, being churned in a heaving mass of pushing, milling, screaming, ecstatic pilgrims, watching the temple elephants lumber past, as huge up-close as hillocks, their gold headdresses gleaming in the light of flaming torches, their trunks swaying. It was at last year’s procession. He still had not worked out how he had done it or where he had found the footholds, but insensible with passion he had flung himself towards one of the elephants and tried clambering up its flanks to reach the effigy of the guide and to sit holding it, up on the back of the elephant. He had not managed, of course. He had been pulled away by other pilgrims who had cried out in the din that he would be killed. Later, he was sure he had been possessed for those moments by some divine insanity, some primal urge for annihilation that would have fulfilled a destiny he could neither escape nor understand.

But he had not been crushed by the elephants. He was alive. God had wanted him to live.

Would He want him to live now — after what he had done with Raghu? A boy. So young.

He was saved from his agitated thoughts by Latika, who had heard his last few words and let out an involuntary giggle, which she tried to smother with her handkerchief. Badal looked at her with a questioning frown.

“If the temple guide knows he’s going to die, how do you get any of them to do the ceremony?” she said. “How is the victim chosen?” Her voice had that mischievous lilt her friends dreaded as much as they enjoyed.

It was as if her words instantly rolled a set of iron shutters down Badal’s face. Latika knew right away she should not have spoken. She should never have spoken. But it was too late, as always it was too late. She had resolved to cultivate the kind of solemnity expected of an elderly woman at this holiest of temples, but she felt too angular here, her hair felt too red, her malachite necklace too green. She could sense her friends were exasperated with her. Gouri began to babble: “She doesn’t know much, she. . she has always lived abroad.” Vidya had moved away to the other side of the square and was feigning interest in a carved pillar. Latika felt her blouse stick damply against her shoulders. From beyond the courtyard she could hear the homeless widows chanting, and another guide’s voice saying, “Now come this way, this way, this holiest of courtyards is where a temple guide hundreds of years ago fell into a dry well. .”

Fury split Badal’s words into syllables hard as stone chips. “Madam, for us temple guides, it is the greatest honour to be chosen, to be assured a death so holy. To die for God is what we live for.”

It was true. He knew it to be so, had known it ever since his first lisping, toddling visit to the temple in his father’s arms. He remembered his own fierce intensity, his infantile scholarship. He had mastered every twist and turn in the epics, the intricate ancestries in the Mahabharata unknotted themselves in his childish mind when he was only eight. If someone said “Arjuna”, he would chirrup, “Born of Indra!” He knew even then that Vyasa was the father of Vidura and Gandhari the daughter of Subala. He could fast all day and never ask for a drop of water. Neighbours wondered if he was a child saint.

He longed to be with real seekers, those who would understand the depth and gravity of his words. He turned away from the women, knowing his contempt would show on his face. He cut short their round of the temple and shepherded them to another courtyard to watch the nightly pennant-changing ceremony. Hundreds of people waited there in orderly, patient anticipation. He showed them to a place where they could sit and then walked away, merging into the crowds.

*

One moment here, the next moment gone: had they not been warned never to lose sight of the man? Latika wondered where he had disappeared to. Perhaps to a toilet? Were there toilets at the temple? She wanted one with a sudden desperation and made noises about following him. But Gouri was now even more ostentatiously the expedition leader and paid Latika no attention. She had been in a state of otherworldiness since they had entered the temple, and it was impossible to communicate with her about matters as lowly as toilets. Latika clenched her muscles and hoped she would survive.

The main shrine had three connected towers, the tallest of which seemed as high as a ten-storey building. They stared at the flags fluttering at their tips, trying not to blink and lose the first glimpse. A man began to climb the stone peaks of the temple’s lowest tower. Latika saw Vidya clutch Gouri’s hand, so she clutched Vidya’s. Shouts and murmurs. How his yellow dhoti flared and fluttered against the black sky! As he climbed, unprotected by net or rope, his figure grew small, then smaller, until by the time he had reached the pinnacle of the tallest tower he was a tiny mannequin that might any moment be swept off by the gusts of wind gathering strength in the Bay of Bengal. Anxiety rippled through the crowd. There, on top, as frail as a scarecrow against the immense darkness, he began the process of taking down the old flag and unfurling and positioning the new. Would that flag billowing in the high wind twist around him and tug him into the sea beyond? Would it become his shroud?

With the new silk flag in its place at last, they realised that alongside the hundreds around them they had been holding their breath, which they let out all at once. The wind too seemed to sigh and die down. People began to exclaim and chatter, recognising an intermission. A child near them demanded a biscuit. Latika said, “Now I really must find a bathroom, or I’ll burst.” A few minutes later, at the end of an unusually hot day, it started to drizzle, the air grew dense with the scent of water meeting dry earth, and everyone fled for cover. Scurrying to the gates, saris over their heads to shield themselves from the rain, Gouri said to Vidya, “She has no sense of occasion. Couldn’t she wait two minutes before she said something so tasteless?”

*

It was still drizzling but with a powdery lightness. The night air was fresh and cool. It had taken Badal quite a while to find his three old matrons after the pennant ceremony and take them back to the Swirling Sea Hotel, but now at last he was free. In his breast pocket he felt the reassuring shape of the new mobile phone. He had put in the prepaid SIM card, already topped up with fifty rupees. Raghu would be wonderstruck. And he himself would never again have to wander the beach looking for him; it would be the work of a fingertip now.

He rounded a corner and turned into Grand Road, usually crowded with stalls and vendors, now windswept and rain-dampened. Too late for shoppers or merchants. But it was not empty. Not far off in the deserted street, he could see two tall figures and two shorter ones lit by the one streetlamp that was working. They were strolling, pausing at times to drink from a bottle. Coming closer, he saw that one of the men had dark, curly hair. The second man, in a kurta and pyjama, had white hair down to his shoulders and held a cigarette in one hand while his other hand kneaded a boy’s buttocks.

He stopped his scooter.

The boy was Raghu. He had to be.

Raghu had an arm around the dark-haired man’s waist and was begging for a swig of beer. Badal could hear his voice, unfamiliar in its archness: “Go on, just a few sips.” And the man replying, “Hey, you’re a kid, you know, it’s illegal.” His Hindi was strongly accented. He heard Raghu laugh as he ambled between the two, looking even slighter and smaller by contrast. He was not in his usual red T-shirt and grey shorts. He had on a black shirt tucked into tight black jeans. Badal had never seen those clothes on Raghu, did not know he possessed such clothes. His heart contracted at the thought, everything paused. And then he heard Raghu’s coaxing voice again: “Just a sip.”