Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

And indeed, before he could back away, a naked sadhu, his trident pointed straight at Dipankar’s heart, said to him in a low voice:

‘Go.’

‘But I just—’

‘Go.’ The naked man pointed the trident towards the part of the akhara from which Dipankar had come.

Dipankar turned and almost ran. His legs seemed to have lost all their strength. Finally, he arrived near the entrance of the akhara. He was coughing — the smoke had caught at his throat. He bent over, and pressed his hands to his stomach.

Suddenly he was pushed to the ground by the thrust of a silver mace. A procession was going past, and he was an obstacle. He looked up to see a dazzling flash of silks and brocades and embroidered shoes. And it was gone.

He was not hurt so much as winded and bewildered. He looked around, still sitting on the rough matting that covered the sandy ground of the akhara. He became aware after a while of a group of five or six sadhus a few feet away. They were sitting around a small ashy fire and smoking ganja. From time to time they looked at him and laughed in high-pitched voices.

‘I must go, I must go,’ said Dipankar to himself in Bengali, getting up.

‘No, no,’ said the sadhus in Hindi.

‘Yes,’ said Dipankar. ‘I must go. Om Namah Shivaya,’ he added hurriedly.

‘Put your right hand forward,’ one of them ordered him.

Dipankar, tremblingly, did so.

The sadhu smeared a little ash on his forehead, and placed some in his palm. ‘Now eat it,’ he commanded.

Dipankar drew back.

‘Eat it. Why are you blinking? If I were a tantrik, I would give you the flesh of a dead man to eat. Or worse.’

The other sadhus giggled.

‘Eat it,’ commanded the sadhu, looking compellingly into his eyes. ‘It is the prasad — the grace-offering — of Lord Shiva. It is his vibhuti.’

Dipankar swallowed the horrible powder and made a wry face. The sadhus thought this hilarious, and began to giggle once more.

One asked Dipankar: ‘If it rained twelve months each year, why would the streams be dry?’

Another asked: ‘If there were a ladder from heaven to earth, why would the earth be populated?’

A third asked: ‘If there was a telephone from Gokul to Dwaraka, why would Radha be constantly fretting about Krishna?’

At this they all burst out laughing. Dipankar did not know what to say.

The fourth asked: ‘If the Ganga is still flowing from the top-knot of Lord Shiva, what are we doing here in Brahmpur?’

This question made them forget about Dipankar, and he made his way out of the akhara, disturbed and perplexed.

Perhaps, he thought, it is a Question I am looking for, not an Answer.

But outside, the Mela was continuing just as it had been before. The crowds were pouring towards or back from the Ganga, the loudspeakers were announcing the lost and found, the sound of bhajans and shouts was interspersed with the whistles of trains arriving at the Pul Mela Railway Station, and the half moon was only a few degrees higher in the sky.

‘What is so special about Ganga Dussehra?’ asked Pran as they walked towards the pontoon bridge along the sand.

Old Mrs Tandon turned to Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘Does he really not know?’ she asked.

Mrs Mahesh Kapoor said: ‘I’m sure I told him once, but all this Angreziyat — this Englishness — has driven everything else out of his mind.’

‘Even Bhaskar knows,’ said old Mrs Tandon.

‘That is because you tell him stories,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor.

‘And because he listens,’ said old Mrs Tandon. ‘Most children take no interest.’

‘Well,’ said Pran with a smile, ‘is anyone going to enlighten me? Or is this another case of chicanery disguised as science?’

‘Such words,’ said his mother, hurt. ‘Veena, don’t walk so far ahead.’

Veena and Kedarnath stopped and waited for the others to catch up.

‘It was the sage Jahnu, child,’ said old Mrs Tandon mildly, turning towards him. ‘When the Ganga came out of Jahnu’s ear and fell to the ground, that day was Ganga Dussehra, and that is why it has been celebrated ever since.’

‘But everyone says that it came out of Shiva’s hair,’ protested Pran.

‘That was earlier,’ explained old Mrs Tandon. ‘Then it flooded Jahnu’s sacrificial ground, and he drank it up in his anger. Finally he let it escape through his ear and it came to earth. That is why the Ganga is also called the Jaahnavi, born of Jahnu.’ Old Mrs Tandon smiled, imagining both the sage’s anger and the eventual happy result.

‘And,’ she continued, a happy glow on her face, ‘three or four days later, on the full-moon night of the month of Jeth, another sage who had been separated from his ashram went across on the pipal-pul, the bridge of pipal leaves. That is why that is the holiest bathing day of the Pul Mela.’

Mrs Mahesh Kapoor begged to differ. This Pul Mela legend, she believed, was pure fiction. Where in the Puranas or the Epics or the Vedas was any such thing mentioned?

‘Everyone knows it is true,’ said old Mrs Tandon.

They had reached the crowded pontoon bridge, and it was an effort to move, so dense were the crowds.

‘But where is it written?’ asked Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, gasping a little, but managing to remain emphatic. ‘How can we tell that it is a fact? I don’t believe it. That is why I never join the superstitious crowds who bathe on Jeth Purnima. It can only bring bad luck.’

Mrs Mahesh Kapoor had very definite views on festivals. She did not even believe in Rakhi, insisting that the festival that truly sanctified the bond between brother and sister was Bhai Duj.

Old Mrs Tandon did not want to quarrel with her samdhin, especially in front of the family, and especially as they were crossing the Ganga, and she left it at that.

North of the Ganga, across the crowded pontoon bridges, the crowds were sparser. There were fewer tents, and here and there the five of them walked across tracts of unsettled sand. The wind struck up and sand blew towards them as they struggled westward in the direction of the platform of Ramjap Baba.

They were part of a long line of other pilgrims who were bound for the same spot. Veena and the older women covered their faces with the pallus of their saris. Pran and Kedarnath covered their mouths and noses with handkerchiefs. Luckily Pran’s asthma did not cause him any immediate trouble, though there could have been no worse conditions imaginable. Finally the long trek took the company to the place where Ramjap Baba’s thatched platform, raised high on stilts of wood and bamboo, ornamented with leaves and marigold garlands, and surrounded by a great throng of pilgrims, stood on the gently sloping northern sands about fifty yards from the present bank of the river. Here he would stay even when, in a few weeks, the platform would effectively become an island in the Ganga. He would spend his days doing nothing but reciting the name of God: ‘Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama,’ almost uninterruptedly throughout his waking hours, and often even in his sleep. This was the source of his popular name.

Because of his austerities and because of what people saw as his basic goodness, he had acquired great merit and power. People walked for miles in the sand, faith written in their eyes, to get a sight of him. They rowed out to him from July to September when the Ganga lapped at the stilts. They had done so for thirty years. Ramjap Baba always came to Brahmpur at the time of the Pul Mela, waited for the water to surround him, and left when it retreated beyond his platform about four months later. It was his own quadrimester or chatur-maas, even though it did not coincide in any strict sense with the traditional four-month sleep of the gods.