Sleeping On Jupiter Read online

  Bhola tapped his switch against his hips. He prodded us with it towards Guruji’s cottage. He kept stopping to chat with people he passed. Piku’s hand was hot and sweaty in mine. I held it tight. The dog paused to lift a leg against the bushes. Bhola hit it with his switch and it yowled. The dog had pointed ears and red fur. It looked like a fox.

  We waited by Guruji’s cottage the whole morning. The other students, boys and girls, walked past giving us curious looks. We were left out of lessons and games. We stood in the hot sun like beggars. Everyone went off for prayers and we kept standing in the sun. I can’t remember how long we waited. When Guruji arrived, his hair was blowing in the breeze, a black halo. He kept his eyes on us as Bhola told him we had been found near the boundary, trying to cross the fence. I thought I glimpsed the shadow of a smile on his face and began to get my voice back. I opened my mouth. Guruji raised a hand to stop me saying anything. He told Piku to leave.

  Guruji sometimes spoke Hindi with us, and sometimes English. People said he had never been to school, yet miraculously he could understand whichever language his devotees spoke in and he could speak them equally well. There were many stories about Guruji. They said he had divine powers even when he was a child. He could turn into a cat or horse or wolf, then come back to human form again. As a child he could tell what people were thinking and when he spoke out their thoughts a deep grown-up voice would come out of him even though he was only five or six at that time. Guruji’s voice was soft. He never had to raise it, not even when he had a hundred people around him. When he spoke it was as if all other sounds stopped so that his every whisper could be heard from far away – that is what his devotees said. Now he only said, “Come inside”.

  I followed him into the inner room of his cottage. Padma Devi, who usually sat in the outer one, was not there that day. Guruji shut the door behind us. He locked it.

  I remember every bit of that room. Its walls were covered with photographs of Guruji meeting people. They must have been grand people. I did not know who they were. In the photographs most of them were bowing to him and he had his palm raised to bless them. On one side of the room was a bed. It was low and wide, with carved animal paws for legs. It had white sheets and ochre bolsters and pillows. There was an equally low desk on another side with a square asan on the floor for sitting on. The desk had a book on it with a plain cardboard cover. A steel cupboard with glass doors stood against one wall and another wall had a row of pegs from which Guruji’s robes were hanging.

  I saw that one wall of this room was dark blue, and had framed pictures of birds on it. I could recognise red and blue birds I had seen at the ashram. There was a bulbul and also a house sparrow. The painted birds were brightly coloured and beautiful, nestling in green leaves among ripe mangoes or red hibiscus flowers.

  Guruji drew the curtains. He sat down on the chair where he had first seated me on his lap all those years ago.

  I had already forgotten I was there to be punished. “Who painted those birds?” I asked him. I had to stand on tiptoe to look at them from up close. I knew I could never do these with my school crayons.

  “I painted them, of course,” Guruji smiled. “Didn’t you know that? Birds eat out of my hands. I can catch any bird I want to. I only have to sit and chirrup, Choo, choo, choo – like that, and they come. See that line of birds there? They are exactly like the real ones. Go on, touch the feathers.”

  He was pointing to a shelf in the room in which there were birds sitting in a row. I did not dare to touch them.

  “They aren’t alive, child, they won’t peck you,” he said. “They’re stuffed. So that they are still enough to paint.”

  At one of the windows was a bird in a cage. This one was definitely alive: it hopped about and screeched. It had glossy green feathers on its back and a red band at its throat. Maybe when I was out on the flowerbed that time, it was the bird making those strange screaming noises.

  “That one’s next. It’s a parakeet. It’ll be a big painting,” he said. “Go on, give it a chilli to eat.”

  When I did not go towards the bird he patted his lap and said, “Come here.”

  I climbed on to his lap as I had before and he settled me there and said, “Tell me why you went to that fence. You know you are not allowed, and there is a reason why. If people from outside see you, they might report you to the police. And then what? Do you want to be taken away and locked up? You must do as I say or God will be angry and you’ll get into trouble.”

  I pulled away from him and said, “I was only looking. I didn’t do anything.”

  He pressed me back against his chest. “Some things are forbidden, you know that, don’t you? We need rules when we live together.”

  His face was very close to mine. I could see where his cheeks had tiny black bristles from shaving and I thought of the way my father used to sit at a mirror tacked on the wall outside our hut in the morning and shave. When I was very small, my father would rub his bristly cheek against mine and I used to squeal when he did that.

  Guruji said, “You don’t always understand the reasons why I tell you to do some things and not do other things, but there is a reason and one day you will understand it was for your own good. You have to hide for a while because there is a war. If you are found wandering outside now, they will lock you up in jail. Just wait a little, then you can do whatever you want to.” He said, “Do you trust me? Don’t you think I will always do everything for your good? Didn’t I save you from the war and from starving on the streets without your parents?”

  He said, “Didn’t I tell you the day you came here that I am your father, mother and God? Can you disobey all of them?”

  He stroked my hair and shoulders while he spoke. It was very cool in the room and the curtains had turned afternoon into evening. I could hardly hear his voice, it was no more than a murmur and the words sounded longer when they came from him because he stretched them out.

  He stroked my arms and said, “You are like an insect. Don’t you eat?” He held my leg and said, “Let me see that knee. Look, there is a scar from the time you fell off the pomegranate tree. That should teach you not to be naughty.” He rubbed the scar and then another scrape with his fingertip and said, “What is this one from?”

  “I was playing yesterday and I fell.”

  “Does it hurt?” he said. “I don’t want any of my children to be in pain.”

  As his hand moved from scar to scar, it went under the skirt of my tunic and began to stroke the part between my legs. His hand went up my thighs and down. He shifted my weight and slipped down my knickers and put his hand right between my legs. He lifted his own robes and he pulled my hand towards himself and said, “Hold this, it is magic.” It stuck out from between his legs like a stump.

  Then he said, “Your hand is much too small, hold it with both.” I had to turn to be able to do that. I did need both my hands because the stump was really big now, but I thought I did not have to hold it because it would keep standing on its own. When I took my hands away to see if I was right, Guruji pushed them back. I grew tired of just sitting there holding a stump. I did not know why he was making me do something so stupid. I wanted to get off his lap and go, but he shut his eyes and sat there stroking me for such a long time I wondered if he would ever let me leave and eat lunch. All of a sudden he groaned and said, “Enough.” My hands had become wet and slimy. They felt as if I had squashed something. Guruji gave a deep sigh and opened his eyes. He picked me off his lap and told me to wipe my hands on a towel that hung from one of the pegs. I had to stand on my toes to reach the towel. When I removed it from its peg, I saw it had been covering a picture on the wall.

  “That picture is of a sculpture from an ancient temple’s wall. Do you know how old?”

  I shook my head.

  “Nine hundred years. Can you see what the woman in the sculpture is doing?”

  A nine-hundred-year-old woman. I stared at the picture. She had big, curved eyes and plump, curved lips an
d she was sitting at the feet of the man in the sculpture. Her fingers were as long as pencils. They were holding the cucumber between the man’s legs just as I had been a few minutes ago.

  Guruji hung a fresh towel from the cupboard on that peg. The picture was hidden again. I felt his hand caressing my head. “Go for lunch,” he said. “Say nothing. I do not reveal myself in this form to anyone else. You are the chosen one. Not a word about this. I will call you and you will sit on my lap again.”

  I left his room. I scrubbed my hands at the kitchen tap for a long time, but I could not help feeling they had that ooze on them still. The dining room was empty. Everyone else had eaten and gone. I did not know where Piku was or whether she had eaten. I had a terrible, gnawing hunger after all that time. There was one piece of fish left in the pan, an especially big piece, and the cold gravy shuddered on it like jellied glue.

  *

  Badal had lost his scooter as inexplicably as he had found it, and that thought troubled him as he directed it towards the Swirling Sea Hotel that evening. How had it gone and why had it come back? Was it Raghu playing a prank? Or was his memory playing tricks? Perhaps he had left it at home that morning, never taken it to the beach at all.

  He arrived at the hotel plagued by such thoughts. The three women were already outside, scanning the road for him. He was not late in the end, but they made him feel as if he was. He parked his scooter, taking a long time to lock it even though he knew he would be setting off on it again in a few minutes. He told himself he had put the key, as always, in his right-hand kurta pocket. Left pocket: comb, wallet, handkerchief. Right pocket: scooter key. At last he looked up towards his group for the evening. His uncle insisted he talk to clients and make them feel welcome, convince them they were in good hands, authoritative yet gentle hands that would direct them through the great temple in a manner that gave them to believe they were the chosen few. “Your father managed it, can’t you? If you lose clients, you lose the roof over your head,” his uncle would snarl. It did not come naturally to Badal, he was a man who spoke little, whose words came out wrong when he did speak. But still, in his taciturn way, he folded his hands in greeting, set his jaw muscles into an authentic-smile position, and mumbled something about saving them every sort of trouble. He sensed that the evening would be difficult. Clients like the bearded slob of that morning were bad enough, devout old women were disaster. They were always patronising, interrupting him with corrections, as if they knew better.

  He summoned a rickshaw and Vidya and Latika clambered into it. Then they realised it had space only for two, and exclaimed, “What about Gouri? She’s all alone. How will she go?”

  “We can get her another rickshaw,” Badal said. “Or she can come with me on my scooter.” He felt deliriously oblivious of the mundane – of the rickshaw-wallas waiting at the hotel gates, the sensation of his shoes pinching at the toe, the old crone urging people, buy key rings only ten rupees I’m hungry Babu need rice Ma – as if here, outside the Swirling Sea Hotel, arranging transport for his clients, he was no more than the shell of a coconut whose flesh was far away, in Raghu’s mouth. Soon, soon he would give him that mobile. Such a fortunate windfall! As if God knew exactly what was needed, when.

  He heard the three women clucking on about who would go with him on the scooter.

  “Oh no,” Vidya said. “Of course she can’t, she’ll fall off.”

  “But she can’t go alone in a rickshaw either, what if we lose her?” Latika said. “Have you ever sat on a scooter, Gouri?”

  They looked at her standing on the pavement in her too-young orange sari, and her pearl studs, round and unsteady as she balanced her bulk. Smiling at the thought of her on a scooter, Vidya volunteered in the brisk manner that came naturally to her at moments of crisis. “I’ll go in another rickshaw. Gouri, you come into this one with Latika.”

  But Gouri had hoisted her sari and begun the process of sitting side-saddle on the scooter. “These old knees aren’t gone yet!” she announced with glee. She leaned on Badal’s shoulder to haul herself up and he had to dig his heels into the ground to keep the scooter upright. It was too tiny for the woman, what had he been thinking? Even so, she squeezed her flesh onto the pillion and clutched the front seat for safety.

  There was a tense moment when Badal kicked the scooter to life and it tilted to one side, almost unseating her, but to feel the wind on her face and hair on that scooter was like going back to her village, running through fields of rushes. Weaving past buffaloes and children at play and flower stalls through such narrow lanes as even North Calcutta didn’t have: she was flying! The rickshaw with Vidya and Latika was too large for those alleyways. It took a different route and they could not keep Gouri on the scooter in view for long.

  They were reunited at the gateway of the Vishnu temple and hovered on the pavement, too nervous to push through the mass of people jostling for the shack where everyone had to leave their footwear before going in. Near them a blind beggar paused his singing to rattle his tin and assess how many coins he had collected. He made a face, then tapped his way towards them. “Ram, Ram. Spare a few coins, a few coins for one cursed by God, haven’t eaten all day . . .”

  Gouri fumbled for coins in her handbag. She unzipped one pocket after another, and one of the cards with her name and phone number fell out to the litter-strewn pavement.

  “Close your bag, there are pickpockets here,” Latika said, putting a protective arm around her. “What a relief you’re here safe. We wondered what we’d do if the guide whisked you away somewhere! Stranger things have been known to happen in temple towns.”

  The beggar rattled his tin again. “Spare a coin, God will bless you, haven’t eaten all day, Ma . . .”

  “Ssh,” Gouri said to Latika in a whisper, gesturing towards Badal. “He’ll hear you!” But she was smiling.

  *

  The women walked barefoot on bricked paths and dirt tracks, buffetted by other pilgrims who pushed past them to get ahead. Inside the shrines the stone floors were so slippery with grease and water that they had to edge along the walls, holding them for support. They bowed their heads at a dozen altars. In the sanctum sanctorum, lit only with flaming torches, priests brought oil lamps towards them, dispensing benediction, their shadowy faces menacing in the flickering light. Latika wanted to find her slippers, run away, scrub her feet, never return, but she trudged behind the others admiring whatever she was told to admire: the austere grandeur of the stone Narasimha; the richness of the brocade that clothed an image of Krishna. Her legs were aching by the time Badal took them into a secluded square where an old banyan tree sheltered a tiny circular shrine. A particular guide to the temple many centuries ago, Badal said, a man who did the same kind of work that he did, had fallen into a dry well there. At that time this banyan tree was no more than a few leaves. Immediately the earth at the rim of the well had collapsed inward and buried the man alive, as if God wanted to keep him close to Himself, within the temple forever. The shrine marked where the well had been. The tree had let out dozens of branch-thick aerial roots, enclosing it within a forest. Every year, when the caparisoned temple elephants were taken out in a holy procession, the dead man’s effigy was mounted on one of the elephants as a reminder of his sacrifice. The temple’s most respected guide was chosen to sit on that elephant, holding the effigy.

  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.”