Amit Chaudhuri - Real Time - Stories and a Reminiscence

“I’ve always kept my distance from him,” said Kama fastidiously.

“So have I,” said Vishnu. “Anyway, think about it…”

“Have I a choice?” asked Kama, already thinking of how to extricate himself. Vishnu read his mind.

“I’m afraid not…,” he said somewhat lugubriously.

* * *

THE DAUGHTER OFthe Himalayas had thought of going out that day with two friends, of walking about and exploring the surrounding scenery. She was sixteen years old; less mature, in a sense, than other girls her age; impulsive, moody, and tending to depend too much on other people’s advice. She spent large tracts of time doing what she considered nothing; for instance, yesterday she’d had a music lesson that had lasted for hours; at other times, she daydreamed, which to her was more fruitful activity. She was preparing — but for what? No exam, certainly. She had two friends, Nandini and Rajeshwari, in whom she confided, but with whom she also quarrelled. And the workings of the palace went on about her (she was hardly mindful of them) with an immense, tiresome regularity.

Up she went the slopes now, followed by her friends.

“Parvati, wait!” said Nandini, panting. The three friends loitered occasionally beneath a tree to gossip, sometimes for as long as half an hour. When they felt hungry, they regretted that they hadn’t brought any food with them, or a ball, so that they could have spent the better part of the day here. They blamed one another.

“You, Nandini!” said Rajeshwari. “You never plan ahead!”

“ I don’t!” said Nandini. “I told Parvati yesterday that…” Parvati stared abstractedly at her nails; then she began to plait her rather unwieldy hair. After she’d finished, she insisted she plait Nandini’s hair, which she began to, admiring it at the same time. “I wish I had your hair,” she said, “so straight and simple.” A little later, they began to walk again, towards a higher slope. They didn’t know how long they’d walked, but it became noticeably cooler, and they came to a clearing where there was no shade. There, on a rock, in front of a hilltop covered with snow, a figure was sitting by himself, looking rather small and alone, completely still but for the cobras stirring about him. The girls hesitated, not wishing to intrude, because the figure was unkempt and seemed somewhat threatening, although there was no fence indicating this was private property. At the same time, Kama was hovering semi-nakedly in mid-air, without a single tree to hide behind, hoping to take correct aim. Parvati had advanced a little more than the other two, partly out of curiosity, to see if the man was a hermit, and she was the first to be struck, in the breast, by the arrow. She experienced an instant of discomfort, and then, oddly, she found this untidy man to be far more interesting than she’d first thought, and, almost immediately, she realized he wasn’t a hermit, but the Destroyer of the Universe. “So this is what he does all day,” she thought, feeling strangely protective towards the considerably older man. Meanwhile, Kama, after much procrastination and introspection, and weighing the dubious good and certain trouble that would come of this act, especially to him, released the second arrow, resignedly. Immediately, Shiv opened his eyes and, seeing the approaching Parvati, felt what every member of the male sex feels at one point or another, from the fourteen-year-old boy daydreaming or staring surreptitiously at a picture, to self-respecting pillars of society, although, admittedly, it had taken Shiv a much longer time to experience this than most others. Enraged at the interruption of his meditation, he looked at Kama. Kama felt an unpleasant tingling near his toes, going up to his head; and then he turned to ashes. His bow fell with a heavy, muffled sound to the ground.

A few days later, finding her daughter listless and thin, Parvati’s mother asked her, “What’s the matter, Paro, not feeling well?” Parvati shook her head; her eyes were small with sleeplessness. “If there’s something worrying my daughter, she can tell me, you know,” her mother said gently. Parvati looked at the floor; she said nothing. “Can’t I get a word out of you?” said her mother, pretending to be hurt. “If you can’t trust your mother, who can you…” Parvati said, “Mother, there’s nothing wrong,” angrily; and the next moment, crying a little, said, “I can’t tell you about it!” Now her mother attempted to bribe her and plead with her, ran her hand through her hair and massaged her arms, until Parvati finally admitted she wanted to marry and, on further obdurate prodding, said the word “Shiv.” Immediately, the palace went into mourning, as if a great calamity had occurred; loud wails were heard, and not everyone, in the midst of the noise, knew what the fuss was about. Eventually, Himalaya came to see his daughter; not so much to confront her, as to reason with her.

“Parvati, what’s this I’m hearing?” said the king. “I can’t believe that what I hear is true.” He was a short, squat man with a beard, with hair coming down to a little below his shoulders. “I know you to be a sensible girl.” Parvati deployed silence to indicate that what he’d heard was true.

“He can’t make you happy,” said her father. “He’s unclean, temperamental, and generally not fit for polite society.”

“He is,” said Parvati coldly, “the Destroyer of the Universe.”

“I don’t care what he is,” said Himalaya, equally cold. “I haven’t met him, but I’ve heard of him — of his damru, and his tiger skins, and his third eye. I know of far better suitors for you. As far as I know, he doesn’t even have any possessions, and he doesn’t seem to intend to acquire any. You’ll have to sleep on the floor, you know, if you marry him.”

Meanwhile, Shiv was sitting with the nandi bhringi, his cohorts, and smoking a round of ganja. The cheroots flickered in the dark. There was an air of tempered happiness and sadness in the congregation, not unmixed with nostalgia, that these quiet intervals of camaraderie and introspection should be about to end, and a sweet expectancy at the wedding. Someone, absently, began to hum a tune, not very melodiously.

“There’ll be glitter and there’ll be shehnai,” said one, who was lying on his back. “There’ll be payesh and yoghurt.”

Himalaya sighed as well; he’d been unable to persuade his daughter. How could he get out of this one? Then to give his daughter away to that … that … He’d always visualized the wedding as a grand occasion.

HE RANG THE DOORBELL ONCE,and waited for the door to open. It was an ornate door, with a rather heavy, ornamental padlock. When the old, smiling maidservant opened it, there was a narrow corridor behind her that revealed a large hall and further rooms inside, like shadows contained in a prism.

It was a particularly beautiful flat. He sat on the sofa, as the maidservant went inside and said, “Memsaab, guruji aaye hai.” He glanced at the Arabian Sea and Marine Drive outside; and then looked at the brass figure of Saraswati, from whose veena all music is said to emanate, on one end of a shelf. When ten minutes had passed, he briefly consulted his watch, its hands stuck stubbornly to their places, and then desultorily opened a copy of Stardust. Now and again, he hummed the tune of a devotional.

After another five minutes, a lady emerged, her hair not yet quite dry. “Sorry Masterji,” she said, but, glancing quickly over her shoulder, was clearly more concerned about the “fall” of her sari.

The “guruji” shifted uncomfortably. Although he was, indeed, her guru (and without the guru, as the saying goes, there is no knowledge), he had also the mildly discomfited air of a schoolboy in her presence and in this flat: this had to do not only with the fact that she was older, but with the power people like her exercised over people like him.