Anuradha Roy - Sleeping On Jupiter

They did not know what to say, feeling their pent-up emotions drift clear of their bodies.

“I can’t bear to stay in my room, it suffocates me,” Gouri stated as she rose from her throne.

“Why didn’t you at least carry the cards I made for you?” Vidya’s voice rained hailstones when she was this furious. The voice that was said to detonate bombs under the chairs of sleepy clerks when she was Director General, Social Welfare.

It did not intimidate Gouri. She whipped out one of Vidya’s handwritten cards from somewhere inside the layers of her sari and waved it in her face. “I didn’t carry my handbag, that’s all. It’s so heavy.” She sounded even more smug now.

For a long time neither of them could speak to Gouri. It was only after breakfast, when they reached the bazaar, where they had to pool voices to discourage beggars, that they forgot their anger. They shopped, then found a restaurant to eat lunch in. Steaming mounds of white rice and daal and vegetables, too much for any of them to finish, were served by a waiter who seemed in a hurry to be somewhere else. Bells began ringing all over the town, bhajans battled each other on competing loudspeakers. From above, the first floor of the building, they heard voices chanting hymns, intoning the Sanskrit in exotic accents. A band of pilgrims passed them, singing kirtans, tinkling their cymbals. There were young women, men, even a child or two, all in saris and dhotis, their foreheads marked with the tilak of Vishnu. They smiled at the women through the glass front of the restaurant.

“Let’s eat quickly,” Vidya commanded. “We have other things to do.”

As they began their meal the singing stopped and half a dozen men and women came down the stairs. They were foreigners in saffron and yellow robes. Sprigs of hair sprouted from the backs of their shaven heads like stalks from berries.

Gouri noticed that the foreigners were being served only bowls of grapes. Why was that, she asked their waiter in a whisper, “Don’t they like the food?” He gave her a withering look. “They are fasting,” he said. Then more emphatically, “For Shivaratri. Some of them won’t touch water either all day. You’ve forgotten?”

The disdain in his voice, its air of authority, reminded her of home. It was how her son spoke when he said, “Your widow’s pension was to be picked up, didn’t you remember? The children were to reach their tennis lesson at two, didn’t you remember?”

She remembered her terracotta tea and told herself she must have that third cup before returning home. And she would go back to the temple. By herself.

*

On the morning of Shivaratri the great temple was more crowded than usual. Badal was escorting a man in his eighties who hobbled along, trying to keep his footing in the cavernous inner sanctum. As always it was half dark, lit largely with flickering lamps.

“Please hold on to my arm, you might fall.” Something about the man reminded Badal of his father. Perhaps the over-large ears. The sign of a good man, Badal’s father used to say, pulling at his own elongated lobes. Look at the ears on statues of the Buddha.

The man said, “I may look feeble, son, but let me tell you, in my time I’ve climbed the Himalaya and swum half way across the English Channel. I just didn’t reach the other side because. .”

Inside the sanctum sanctorum , the image of Vishnu glowed red and gold and black. In his infancy, Badal had felt a sense of dread in the temple, even though his father held his hand. The oil lamps cast black shadows everywhere, the air thrummed with chanting, and there were people in such raptures of devotion that they appeared insensible to the world. They frightened him then, with their swaying bodies, their dazed eyes, their delirious singing. He used to be frightened too by the temple’s priests in their white dhotis, bare bodies melting into the gloom, the image of the Lord looming above them all with the impassive might of a mountain.

But what mountains had he seen? He had never left the shores of the sea he had been born by. A few nights ago, he had dreamt of them: snow peaks and ranges of blue hills. He was following people who were trudging up the rocks and ice. They had a dog with them. It was cold, the sounds were muffled. Everything was happening very slowly, every step took an aeon. All at once he was transported to a long, red-carpeted corridor and someone was shouting at him: “The doors are shut. They won’t let you in.” The shouting voice had woken him.

Awake, he had felt with superstitious certainty that he had dreamt of his own death, and the people he had been following were the Pandavas on their long trek to heaven. In the Mahabharata , the Pandavas too had been stopped at the gates of heaven. Indra had appeared and ordered them, “Abandon your dog, dog-owners have no place in Heaven.” And Yudhishtira, defiant, had declared to the king of the gods that he would abandon heaven before he gave up a friend.

Badal would never abandon Raghu, whatever happened. He would forget what he had seen: the monk, the beer bottle, the tight black jeans. He had not been able to find Raghu since. He had to have him back, he would not ask any questions. All he needed was to hold Raghu so close that he would not be able to tell their heartbeats apart.

A din of voices and exclamations broke into his thoughts. Commotion everywhere, people pushing each other, stumbling on the slippery floor. Badal realised he had been standing in a dream, his eyes shut tight. The old man he was meant to be looking after had wandered off. He tried to find his way through the crowds in the half light, damp with instant sweat. You must not panic, he told himself. Keep your head, you’ll find him.

The old man’s daughter, who had lost sight of him as well, heard a thin, shaking voice from some corner, turned to look for him, could not see anything in the dimness until she spotted a huddle around a figure on the floor. “Papa!! Papa!” she cried out.

Terror snaked through the crowd. People began to push each other aside to get out of the shrine, thinking something was wrong. A man fell and cried out. A voice shouted, “There must be a fire! Something’s caught fire.” The pushing and shoving grew more urgent.

Badal managed to reach the old man. “There’s no fire. I have him safe,” he called in a raised voice. “He’s not hurt.”

He sat the old man down on the steps at one of the smaller shrines outside. A shrunken widow singing kirtans for alms interrupted herself to bring them water in a small brass pot. “At such a great age,” she said to the daughter, “it’s hard. It’s hard for us old people. The ground slips away.” The old man’s hands were shaking. Badal held the pot to his lips and tipped it a fraction. Most of the water dribbled down the man’s trembling chin to the front of his clothes. Over the man’s head, he exchanged a look of shared relief with the daughter, whose eyes shone with unspilled tears. She dug into her handbag and brought out two hundred-rupee notes which she pressed into the hands of the widow, saying, “Please. For all of you. Sing a kirtan for us. God has been very good, He has seen to it that my father is not hurt.” When they were leaving, she leaned out from the awning of their rickshaw towards Badal. “I don’t know what we would have done without you. I should never have let him come. But he doesn’t listen.” She had a chubby face and a lopsided smile that gave her a rueful expression. The old man, who had recovered his spirits, quavered, “The next time I’ll make sure you show me the whole temple. I want my money’s worth, I’ll be back!”

Badal waited, saw their rickshaw find its space in the crowds of cycles and rickshaws and scooters in the narrow lane. He stayed where he was till he lost sight of it. He met so many people in a year, his head had become a room filled with a faceless crowd. Even so, he knew he would never forget this woman and her father. He felt he had been responsible for the old man’s fall. He should have been taking better care of him. The irony of their gratitude! If the man had come to any harm — he did not want to think about it. He felt reduced by their generosity.