Aatish Taseer - The Temple-Goers

That second temple, given to Aakash’s family by the old Nawab of Jhajjar, was no more than a house. It faced a Jhajjar backstreet split down the middle by an open drain in which black bead-like bubbles rose in even intervals. Still, strong sunlight fell on an afternoon scene composed of a fly-covered dog, half in sun, half in shade, the street’s blue doors and shutters, and a man on a stool, reading the paper behind half-filled toffee jars. The one sound was the jingling of a passing woman, in black, silver and red; the one smell, as powerful as the sunlight, as pervasive as the languor of the street, the stench of the drain. It eased its way past a PCO booth, through the blue grille gate and into the temple’s cemented sanctum.

But no one held their nose, the ladies did not worry about their saris getting dirty, no one minded taking off their shoes some metres before the temple’s freshly washed floors. We tumbled into its courtyard, fifteen of us, opening shutters and unlocking doors as if returning to a house that had been closed up for a season. Everyone headed straight for the sanctum and lay down, men, women and children, on an old carpet on the floor. Just ahead, half-buried in garlands of plastic flowers,were a black, beady-eyed Krishna and a white Radha in gold clothes.

Aakash took me aside and pointed to the painting of a sage in a glass case. In slow, broken English, he said, ‘He is my great-grandfather.’

Mr Sharma already stood next to the glass case, leaning lightly against its orange frame. The statue inside was of a large man with a paunch showing through his saffron robes. There were three turmeric streaks across his pale forehead; and his fierce, jowly face, in permanent afternoon shadow, bore a distinct expression of irritation.

‘I used to massage his legs,’ Aakash’s father said. ‘He was a great man. If not for him, faith in this part of the country might have disappeared altogether.’ Then an unexpressed sorrow, like that of the red rose against the black background in his flat, passed over his face.

I sat down on a low stool, despite the family’s appeals to join them on the carpet. I realized now that it was not so much the smallness of the Sharma flat or the smell but its communal quality that had unsettled me. And Aakash, as if responding to that, as if reaffirming that he didn’t want to live that way either, that he had meant what he had said about the peacefulness and privacy of my mother’s flat, got up after a few minutes and came to sit next to me, his head resting against my knees. The undeclared power I had had over him until now, gained in part from his being my trainer and in part from Holi, dwindled. I felt that there had been a reversal.

The toothless country cousin was taking orders, hardly an hour after lunch, for tea and samosas.

‘I don’t have the courage for a samosa,’ Aakash’s sister-in-law said from the place where she sprawled on the floor.

Aakash looked at her, then up at me with a contemptuous smile.

‘Kachori?’ the old woman asked with a smack of her lips.

‘No,’ Aakash’s sister-in-law moaned, rubbing her broad, dark stomach.

‘Then khir?’ the old woman shot back.

‘Yes, khir would be lovely!’ Aakash’s sister-in-law smiled, feigning childlike mischief.

‘Khir would be lovely,’ Aakash imitated and guffawed, looking up again at me for approval.

‘What?’ the sister-in-law snapped. ‘What’s wrong with khir? I can’t be like you, eating boiled food, boiled vegetables and protein milkshakes.’

‘That’s fine, but then don’t come running to me: “Aakash, make me thin; Aakash, tell me what to eat; Aakash, your body…” ’

‘Let her eat, yaar. What is it to you?’ Aakash’s elder brother, her husband, intervened.

His remark made me wonder about the tensions between them.

Aakash said to me in English, ‘See what I told you? She is very sharp.’

Then turning back to the family, he said, ‘Why don’t you stop thinking about eating for a second and pay attention to your son, who’s become a sweeper?’

The entire family, as if in an abs class, rose six inches to see what the child was doing. He was at the far end of the little courtyard, brandishing a short broom made of fine sticks.

‘Come here, you little jamadar,’ Aakash yelled.

The word he used was a caste word no longer in politically correct usage for cleaners and sweepers. A ripple of laughter went through the family of reposing Brahmins. The child, seeing he had the attention of his family, began splashing water in a metal bucket no bigger than him.

‘That water is dirty,’ Aakash said pointedly to his sister-in-law and walked across the courtyard to recover the boy.

‘Chee,’ he said, as he picked him up, ‘he’s smelling.’

His mother, now clearly humiliated in front of the family, rose with irritation. ‘It doesn’t matter. He’s wearing a nappy. We’ll deal with it when we get back.’

Aakash shrugged his shoulders and handed her the child. But as soon as he did, the child slipped away and clung to Aakash’s leg. He began touching his feet, saying, ‘Tey,’ every time he did. ‘He’s saying, “Jai”,’ Aakash said with delight.

Aakash’s father looked up at me and said, ‘See, unlike the Sikhs and the Muslims, we don’t have to teach them the religion. They learn on their own. For instance, no one taught him to say Jai. He just heard us saying it when we pray and picked it up.’

The boy, now in Aakash’s arms, was pointing unsteadily at the Nandi near the Shiva linga and saying, ‘Tawoo. Tawoo.’

‘He’s calling Nandi “Tawoo”,’ Aakash laughed, then, addressing the boy, said, ‘Not cow; “Nandi”.’

Tea and samosas arrived, along with a bowl of khir. Aakash put the boy down and rejoined the others.

We had all barely had a few sips of tea, Aakash’s sister-in-law had not touched her khir, when cries of ‘Chee, chee’, ‘Look what’s he’s doing’, ‘The little sweeper’ rose from the sanctum.

I had been facing the idols and turned round to see that the boy had removed his shorts, and now holding on to a tap as high as his arms could reach, was taking a happy pistachio-green shit in the courtyard.

‘His T-shirt will be ruined!’ Aakash yelled.

‘Let it be ruined,’ the boy’s father said with hollow aggression.

Within seconds, the family’s women, his mother and the old cousin, had pounced on him, while his grandmother looked on with a bitter smile. He eluded his mother and ran to Aakash, leaving a green trail behind him for his mother to clean up. Aakash grabbed him under the arms, swung him stomach down on to his lap and cleaned his bottom without any sign of squeamishness. Then along with his mother he inspected the child’s bottom closely.

‘Hai, look!’ Aakash’s mother said. ‘He’s got these big red dots there.’

‘Not cleaning him properly,’ her younger sister added slyly. ‘Have to put Soframycin.’

‘Have you seen the spots in his privates,’ Aakash exploded at the child’s mother, who was still sweeping up the mess.

She looked up, haggard. ‘I’m just coming,’ she managed.

Her husband, who had now taken the boy, was betraying her to the group. ‘I’ve told her time and time again that she’s not paying enough attention.’

Then Anil produced a wooden drum from within the sanctum. He started beating on it, and hearing this, the little bald child, who had been face down all this time, rose furiously and began to dance, shaking a small, angry foot unsteadily into the circle.

‘Put your right foot in, put your left foot…’ his grandmother sang, and the little boy danced as the group clapped and his mother swept away the last of the green trail.

We went home through flat land dotted with smoking minarets. The sky that had been pale in the morning was a pinkish brown on the way back. The thin, bumpy road that led past high, spiked walls, the ‘16 Base Repair Depot’ and keekar trees, as malevolent in the evening haze as in the dawn mist, finished at a sky-blue metal gate.