Fasting, Feasting Read online

  'Oh, Ramu-bhai,' she hiccups, 'you are so-o fun-ee!'

  'I am so fun-ee,' he sings the line, improvising to the tune of 'My Darling Clementine'. 'I am a bunn-ee—'

  'Ra-mu!' Uma squeals, spluttering into her glass.

  'Hop, hop, hop,' warbles Ramu, making his fingers dance across the tabletop towards her.

  'Stop, Ramu, stop!'

  'Stop, stop, stop,' he sings, making his fingers dance backwards. 'Funny bunny, funny bunny.'

  Uma is choking with laughter. She has laughed so much, she has tears in her eyes. They run down her cheeks.

  'Don't cry, Uma,' Ramu breaks off to say in concern. 'You remember I looked after you when you ran away, I fetched you home that time? I want you to enjoy yourself. Have another drink.' He snaps his fingers at a waiter who has propped himself up against the bar and will not move. 'Waiter!' he calls again, 'another round!'

  His voice rings out across the restaurant, unexpectedly loud because at that moment the band has stopped playing. The musicians are laying down their instruments with an air of finality. 'Oh, no,' Ramu calls, 'don't do that. Come on, play us another tune. Look, you've still got customers here, you can't go away'. He is standing on his feet, leaning forwards against the table. 'Come on, play us a tune. We want to dance. Play "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain"—'

  But the musicians pretend not to hear. They are packing up their instruments, shuffling out. Only the bandmaster turns to wave at them. "Bye 'bye,' he calls, 'cheerio!' He won't listen to Ramu's pleas, or threats. Then the lights go off—snap, snap, snap. A waiter is coming towards them, napping his napkin about as if to sweep them away with the crumbs.

  They stand on the pavement together, bits of cigarette paper and cinema tickets and empty icecream cups at their feet. Uma is crying because the evening is over, Ramu is trying to find a bicycle rickshaw. They are riding past him, refusing to stop because it is late and they are on their way home. He has to take out a ten rupee note and wave it over his head, there under the lamppost, before one agrees to take them all the way to the Civil Lines at this time of night. They climb in and Ramu holds onto Uma's arm. 'Uma, Uma,' he calls into her ear because she seems to be so far away, 'remember funny bunny? Funny bunny, Uma?'

  She giggles then and they are still giggling when they fall out of the rickshaw at the gate where the mali stands waiting for them, a small withered man with a giant-sized flashlight in his hand, having been ordered to do so by Papa who is pacing up and down on the terrace and comes thundering towards them with a face as black as the night.

  'Get into the house, you two!' he hisses at them. 'Get in at once!'

  'Yes, uncle, we are getting into the house, we have come to get into the house,' Ramu tries to placate him, but finds himself being manhandled towards the door where Mama is waiting in her white night sari.

  Uma finds herself grasped by the shoulder and pushed into her room so that her handbag and her flowers fall out of her hands. Still, she insists on turning around and telling her mother, 'I had shandy to drink, Mama—and the band played—and Ramu and I danced—'

  'Quiet, you hussy! Not another word from you, you idiot child!' Mama's face glints like a knife in the dark, growing narrower and fiercer as it comes closer. 'You, you disgrace to the family—nothing but disgrace, ever!'

  ***

  UMA had failed somehow to notice, on Mira-masi's visits, that her aunt was growing older rapidly, that her youthful energy and her glossy black hair (that seemed to Mama—and many other relatives—such an affront in a widow) were no longer what they had been. Her face began to look muddy and was streaked with deep lines like a river bed that has run dry, and her hair was turning thin and grey. Of course she still wore her widow's garments of white, she still performed the same rituals, and even continued to make milk and sugar treats for the family, but all a little less enthusiastically, less energetically.

  She was unpacking her altar objects with a tired sigh when Uma noticed, and cried out, 'But where is your Lord, masi?' for the familiar brass figure, rubbed smooth over the years, was missing. Mira-masi's lips crumpled into a crease of sorrow. 'Stolen, child,' she muttered, 'stolen from me on my last pilgrimage to Rishikesh. Can you believe that one pilgrim would steal from another? And that, too, God's image? That is what happens in this kala-yuga, this dark age,' and she struck her forehead with the heel of her palm, so hard that Uma was awe-struck by the force. 'But I will get it back,' Mira-masi vowed, striking once again, still harder. 'I will travel to every place of pilgrimage, every temple and ashram, till I find the one who stole it from me, and get it back. I won't rest till I have my Lord back,' and her eyes glittered with both rage and a fervent desire that made Uma draw back, frightened: she had known how important the image was to Mira-masi, but had not understood the quality of her passion.

  From now on Mira-masi's pilgrimages were less the holiday excursions they had been, visiting relatives on the way, carrying family gossip from one to the other, staying on for weddings or a pleasant spell of weather. Now she seemed to storm through the country, stomping along the pilgrim routes, her back bowed, a staff in her hands, her large feet plodding grimly and determinedly the worn earth of those paths.

  Once she came to them quite ill, and gaunt. She lay on her rush mat, feverish, getting up only for the ritual ceremonies. She was on her way to an ashram in the foot-hills. Mama tried to dissuade her—'There are no doctors there, no medicines'—but her mind was set. What she said was, 'I will get better there. Let Uma come and help. Let Uma come with me.' Uma heard her, and her eyes went round as those of a fish, with disbelief, but Mama was caught in a trap: having voiced concern, now she could not refuse; and Uma was allowed to go.

  ON the bus, Mira-masi revived. She was clearly in her element now. She ordered the other passengers to make room for Uma. She cajoled them into letting her bring a little bundle of belongings into the bus with her instead of tying it up on top along with the others' tin trunks and baskets and bedding roils. She leant out of the window and beckoned the fruit seller and the peanut vendor and bought provisions to share with Uma and their fellow passengers. When the bus finally lurched into motion and trundled on its way, she even burst into an excited shout of 'Har har Mahadev!' The others were so infected by her enthusiasm that they echoed the call, over and over, in triumphant shouts, and Uma was so embarrassed that her own throat refused to utter any sound at all. It was soon parched as well, with thirst and dust and the heat of the bus, not to speak of the unfamiliarity of the situation itself which would never have come up in the world presided over by MamaPapa. She reminded herself of its uniqueness, its adventurousness, trying to use that to repel the onset of travel sickness to which she was prone and which engulfed her now. But she was not strong enough and failed to defeat it and reduce it to the illusion that Mira-masi assured her it was for true pilgrims. Instead, she had to climb across Mira-masi's knees and lean out of the bus window to vomit, ignominiously, into the dusty ditch along the road. Mira-masi did not even pretend to sympathise, she was so horrified by the uncleanliness, the pollution. 'We must bathe at once, we must find a tap and bathe,' she said agitatedly, and covered her nose with the end of her sari while Uma tried to wipe herself clean and become somehow less revolting. The bus did stop every now and then, not at a tap where they might wash but to collect more and more passengers—there were now people practically sitting on their laps, and necks and shoulders as well. The heat of midday circulated amongst them sluggishly. The bus seemed barely able to proceed, it was so overloaded with people and luggage, and there were more people with more objects on the street to prevent them from proceeding even if it could have done.

  Nevertheless, they did arrive, late in the afternoon, and were disgorged at a bus depot in the middle of a bazaar that looked exactly like the bazaars and depots at all the towns they had passed on the way. But Mira-masi recognised the place, and knew exactly what to do. Hailing a tonga hitched to the sorriest nag of all in a row of shabby, decrepit carriage
s over which flies hummed and hovered as if they were edible, she climbed in with Uma and their baggage, and directed the driver to the ashram. Uma sat clutching at the awning, and concentrating on keeping from sliding off the narrow sloping seat made her wakeful. The open carriage at least admitted air freely even if that was foetid and polluted with the exhaust of buses and motor rickshaws that roared around them. It was not very often that she rode in a tonga and she found the bumpy, rattling drive exhilarating, although Mira-masi had lowered her face into a fold of her sari and refused to look at the driver—with his short beard dyed red with henna and a small embroidered cap on his head he was evidently a Muslim—or the leather whip he wielded over the nag's sore and skeletal haunches, and Uma heard her muttering 'Hari Om' under her breath as if to keep away the devils of pollution. 'Are you all right?' Uma enquired, now fit enough to look after her. 'This is fun,' she added encouragingly, only to have Mira-masi roll her eyes at her, appalled.

  Yet the tonga did get them out of the town and to the ashram, and from the relief in Mira-masi's eyes, voice and gestures, Uma understood that there were no more rigours to be faced. The gatekeeper seemed to recognise Mira-masi for he opened the tall sky-blue iron gates to her, and even carried their bundles to the ashram buildings which lay scattered around a large courtyard at the foot of low, scrubby hills. There was no one else around, just a yellow bitch sleeping in the shade of some pink-flowering oleanders. The temple at one end of the courtyard was brightly painted pink and blue and green but seemed deserted. Mira-masi went straight up a gravel path neatly edged with shrubs to the long low building with its deep veranda and flat roof shaded by an immense banyan tree in which parakeets were contentedly picking at berries and scattering them down in the dust.

  This was where Mira-masi and Uma were to stay, together, in a room at the end of the veranda. The room was bare. It had a cement floor on which they set down their bags. There was a broom propped up in a corner with which to keep it clean. Outside, on the veranda, stood an earthen jar of drinking water. Every morning the water carrier would fill it with water from the river below, down at the edge of a path that twisted through the scrub and rocks of the low dun hills, across the sand to the riverbed where a narrow green channel of water ran between parched clay. Enormous fishing eagles circled languidly in the sky above the still landscape. Only during the morning and evening prayers was there a beating of cymbals and ringing of bells and a coming together of people on the temple precincts. For the rest of the day there was silence.

  Mira-masi sat cross-legged on the veranda, holding her string of wooden beads in her hands, her lips moving soundlessly. When fever overtook her, she went in and lay down on the mat she had spread on the floor, and her lips continued to murmur prayers till she fell asleep. Only occasionally did she open her eyes and glance at Uma, almost as if she were surprised by her presence. Uma was perfectly happy not to be noticed. She had never been more unsupervised or happier in her life.

  UMA was expected to join the others—priests, pilgrims, widows—and sit in a row on the floor to eat the rice and vegetables they were served. She would have preferred to take her food out under the tree and eat alone—she was the only young person there—but this was clearly not possible: Mira-masi's look told her so.

  Sometimes she trailed along with Mira-masi to the temple for the evening prayers and sat on the terrace for a while, listening to a priest with blazing, fanatical eyes, play the harmonium and lead the others in singing impassioned hymns:

  'O blow the conch,

  Light the incense,

  As the Lord,

  Holding fire in his hand,

  Dances to the sound of the drum,

  On the burning ground...'

  Uma tried not to look into the priest's face, or listen to the words of the hymn either: there was an air of abandonment about them that made her feel uneasily as if MamaPapa, those enemies of abandon, were standing behind her and watching her and all of them, with scorn. She was reminded of the time she had run to the convent and Sister Teresa had brought her back to deposit her with Mama, and Mama's rage. She felt uneasily caught once more between powerful forces pulling in different directions, and it was no good looking to Mira-masi for guidance; her guidance would clearly lead only to trouble.

  Fortunately, for most of the day, she was left to herself and spent it in wandering down to the river. It was too hot during the day to venture out across the baking sand to the water, but it could be approached very early in the morning when the light was still pale and translucent, or in the evening when the sun withdrew and a little breeze stirred. Otherwise she stayed on the hillside where she picked berries too hard and green to eat, watched insects making their way across the path and into cracks, or sat in the sparse shade of a thorny grey tree and watched the fishing eagles soar into the vast sky.

  On a distant spur, an ancient grizzled hermit had built himself an underground cave in which he lived, and Uma sometimes crept half-way to it to spy, then lost nerve and ran all the way back in a panic.

  When she returned, usually late in the evening after hours of walking barefoot through the sand along the river, Mira-masi looked at her as if she did not recognise her. Once she seized her by the shoulders, held her down, kneeling in front of her, and stared into her mud-smeared face, at the sandy streaming hair and torn, stained clothes of the child. Her eyes narrowed, and Uma flinched, expecting a reprimand.

  Instead, Mira-masi whispered, through dry lips, 'You are the Lord's child. The Lord has chosen you. You bear His mark.'

  Uma was much more terrified than if Mira-masi had merely threatened her with punishment for staying out so late. Perhaps she was also giddy from too much sun, too little food. Perhaps Mira-masi's stare was hypnotic. In any case, she found she could not stir. She knelt, gazing back into Mira-masi's eyes, held down by her shoulders, and began to tremble. Shooting pains crept up from her knees. She tried to draw away, to throw herself on the ground. Mira-masi held on, making Uma pull away more strongly so that she succeeded in falling. Agitatedly, the woman tried to lift Uma but Uma made herself rigid. She had turned quite cold. She clenched her teeth together and bit her tongue so that the blood ran, lurid, scarlet. She began to roll on the floor, from side to side, throwing her head about and moaning, while Mira-masi tried to hold her, crying, 'Child, child.'

  Some of the priests, who had been pacing in the courtyard, heard and came at a run. They found Uma on the floor, rolling and tossing her head and drumming her heels, Mira-masi helpless and awed.

  They were frightened. They stood at the door, crying in alarm.

  Mira-masi said, 'She is possessed. The Lord has taken possession of her.'

  Uma let out a shriek on hearing this, and the shriek continued for so long that her face went blue, then purple. She could not stop. She could not get her breath back. It was leaving her, in one long, shrill exhalation.

  The others stood watching, enthralled.

  Then the priests at the door were suddenly bundled aside. The pilgrim who lived in the room at the other end of the long veranda, bustled in. Seeing Uma blue and purple on the floor and fighting for breath, he bent and lifted her up as if she were an infant newly born, and struck her on the back, banged and thwacked her with a mighty arm. He had been a doctor once and given up his practice in Calcutta to learn and then teach yoga, but now he was a gynaecologist again, delivering an absent woman of a reluctant child. And, like a baby, Uma gasped with shock, and so drew in a breath. Then another gasp, another breath. Her lungs began to pump again. She was compelled to breathe. She hung over the doctor's dark, muscular arm, gulping air.

  She had an audience. They all watched her, open-mouthed, till suddenly Uma was very sick, all over the floor.

  Then they scattered, Mira-masi shrieking, 'Tchh! Oof! Aré!' and Uma sank down on the floor, mortified.

  THEY became very respectful of Uma now, watchful and curious. She was still the only young person at the ashram— and they could not deny she was childi
sh when they saw her laughing at the monkeys up in the banyan tree or eating green berries from the bushes on the hillside—but they became shy of treating her as one, or even of speaking to her. When she followed Mira-masi to the temple at her request, the head priest beckoned to her, inviting her to come in. Uma drew back and dropped the end of Mira-masi's sari which she was holding. So they let her be, but the young priest who played the harmonium gazed directly at her when he sang, and his voice was no longer steady but quavered emotionally:

  'My eyes see the golden form

  Of my Lord,

  And the crescent moon shining

  Amidst his tresses.

  Joy wells up in my heart,

  As honey in a lotus...'

  Uma looked down at her knees. She scratched at a scab there till Mira-masi nudged her. Then she lowered her knees, tried to sit still, and stared up at the ceiling that was painted blue and from which strands of tinsel and faded paper streamers dangled as if left over from a birthday party.

  At night she lay quietly on her mat, listening to the ashram dog bark. Then other dogs—in distant villages, out along the river bed and over in the pampas grass, or in wayside shacks and hovels by the highway—barked back. They howled long messages to each other. Their messages travelled back and forth through the night darkness which was total, absolute. Gradually the barks sank into it and drowned. Then it was silent. That was what Uma felt her own life to have been—full of barks, howls, messages, and now—silence.

  ***

  THE gate to the ashram opened. A tonga had drawn up. Out of it unfolded two dusty, bedraggled figures, one large, the other small. One limped forward, the other hopped. They came up the gravel path. They were Ramu and Arun.