A Suitable Boy

  Postcard 6

  Now I have filled up a whole stack of postcards, and I can’t decide how to send them. Because if I post them separately at the post office here—they even have a Pul Mela post office! The administrative arrangements are quite amazing—they will arrive in random order, and I am afraid that will cause confusion. As it is, they look confusing with their mixture of Bengali and English, and my handwriting is worse than usual because I have nothing to rest the postcards on except my Sri Aurobindo. And I am afraid of causing you disquiet by the direction I have decided to take, or, rather, have decided I cannot take. Please try to understand, Dada. Perhaps you can take over for a year or two at home, and then maybe I will come back and relieve you. But of course this may not be my final answer because I am learning new things every day. As Sanaki Baba says, ‘Divyakar, this is a watershed in your life.’ And you have no idea how charming Pushpa is when she says: ‘The Vibrations of the true feelings will always reach the Point of Focus.’ So perhaps, having written all this, I don’t need to send it after all. Anyway, I’ll decide about all this later in the day—or maybe it will be decided for me.

  Peace and Love to all, and blessings from the Baba. Please reassure Ma that I am well.

  Keep smiling!

  Dipankar

  11.13

  Darkness had come over the sands. The city of tents shone with thousands of lights and cooking fires. Dipankar tried to persuade Pushpa to show him a little of the Mela.

  ‘What do I know of all that world?’ she insisted. ‘This camp of Baba is my world. You go, Dipankar,’ she said, almost tenderly. ‘Go to the world—to the lights that attract and fascinate.’

  This was a dramatic way of putting it, thought Dipankar. Anyway, it was his second night at the Pul Mela, and he wanted to see what it was like. He walked along, pushed here or there by the crowds, or pulled here or there by his curiosity or instinct. He passed a row of stalls—just about to close for the night—where handloom cloth, bangles, trinkets, vermilion powder, flossy candy, sweets, rations, and holy books were being sold. He passed groups of pilgrims lying down on their blankets and clothes or cooking their evening meal before smoky, improvised fires embedded in the sand. He saw a procession of five naked ash-smeared sadhus—carrying their tridents—wandering down to the Ganga to bathe. He joined a large crowd that was watching a religious play about the life of Krishna in a tent close to the handloom stalls. A lively white puppy rushed out at him from nowhere, and snapped playfully at his pyjamas; it wagged its tail and tried to bite his heel. While not vicious like Cuddles, it appeared to be equally persistent. The more Dipankar whirled around to avoid it, the more the puppy seemed to enjoy the game. Finally two sadhus, noticing what was going on, threw clods of sand at the puppy and it ran off.

  The night was warm. The moon was a little over half full. Dipankar walked along, not quite knowing where he was going. He did not cross the Ganga, but wandered along the south bank for a long time.

  Large areas of the Pul Mela sands were demarcated for various sects or orders of sadhus. Some of these large groups, known as akharas, were famous for their tightly knit, militant organization. It was sadhus from these akharas who formed the most striking part of the traditional procession that took place each year at the Pul Mela on the grand bathing day after the full moon. The various akharas vied with each other for proximity to the Ganga, for precedence in the procession, and in the splendour of their display. They sometimes became violent.

  Dipankar chanced to wander through an open gate into the huge covered area that marked one such akhara. He felt a palpable sense of tension. But other people, clearly not sadhus themselves, were wandering in and out, and he decided to remain.

  This was the akhara of a Shaivite order. The sadhus sat in groups at dull fires that stretched in a line deep into the smoky recesses of the akhara. Tridents were stuck into the ground beside them, sometimes wound around with garlands of marigolds, sometimes crowned with the small drum associated with Lord Shiva. The sadhus were smoking from clay pipes which they passed around from hand to hand, and the smell of marijuana was thick in the air. As Dipankar wandered deeper and deeper through the akhara, he suddenly stopped short. At the far end of the akhara, in a pall of the thickest smoke, several hundred young men, wearing nothing but short white loin-cloths, their heads shaven, sat around huge iron pots like bees around a row of hives. Dipankar did not know what was going on, but a sense of fear and awe seized him—as if he had come upon a rite of initiation, to view which meant danger to the curious outsider.

  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.

  11.14

  ‘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 els
e 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.

  11.15

  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.

  What people got from him was difficult to say. Sometimes he spoke to them, sometimes not, sometimes he blessed them, sometimes not. This thin man, as withered as a scarecrow, burned to the colour of dark tanned leather by the sun and the wind, gaunt, exhausted, squatted on his platform, his knees near his ears, his long head faintly visible over the ledge of the parapet. He had a white beard, matted black hair, and sunken eyes that stared almost sightlessly across the sea of people, as if they were so many grains of sand or drops of water.

  The crowds of pilgrims—many of whom were clutching copies of the Shri Bhagavad Charit, a yellow-covered edition of which was on sale here—were held back by young volunteers, who were in turn controlled by the gestures of an older man. This man, who in some sense appeared to officiate over the proceedings, had thick spectacles, and looked like an academic. He had in fact been in government service for many years, but had left it in order to serve Ramjap Baba.

  One scraggly arm of Ramjap Baba’s frail frame rested on the parapet, and with it he blessed the people who were brought forward to receive his blessing. He whispered words to them in a weak voice. Sometimes he just stared ahead. The volunteers were holding the crowds back with difficulty. They were almost hoarse with shouting:

  ‘Get back—get back—please only bring one copy of the book to be touched by Babaji—’

  The old holy man touched it exhaustedly with the middle finger of his right hand.

  ‘In order, please—in order—yes, I know you are a student of Brahmpur University with twenty-five companions—please wait your turn—sit down, sit down—get back, Mataji, please get back, don’t make things difficult for us—’

  Hands outstretched, tears in their eyes, the crowd surged forward. Some wanted to be blessed, some just to have closer darshan of Ramjap Baba, some to give offerings to him: bowls, bags, books, paper, grain, sweets, fruits, money.

  ‘Put the prasad in this shallow basket—put the prasad in this basket,’ said the volunteers. What the people had given would be blessed, and having been made sacred would be distributed among them again.

  ‘Why is he so famous?’ Pran asked a man standing next to him. He hoped he had not been overheard by his companions.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the man. ‘But in his place and time he has done many things. He just is.’ Then he tried to push himself forward once more.

  ‘They say he takes Rama’s name all day. Why does he do so?’

  ‘Wood burns when rubbed and rubbed till it gives you the light you desire.’

  While Pran pondered this answer, the thickly bespectacled man who was in charge of things came up to Mrs Mahesh Kapoor and did a very deep namaste.

  ‘You have brought your presence here?’ he said in surprise and with deep respect. ‘And your husband?’ Having been in government service, he knew Mrs Mahesh Kapoor by sight.

  ‘He—well, he was detained by work. May we—?’ asked Mrs Mahesh Kapoor shyly.

  The man went to the platform, said a few words, and returned.

  ‘Babaji said, it is kind of you to come.’

  ‘But may we go forward?’

  ‘I will ask.’

  After a while he returned with three guavas and four bananas, which he gave Mrs Mahesh Kapoor.

  ‘We want to be blessed,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, I’ll see.’

  Eventually they got to the front. They were introduced in turn to the holy man.

  ‘Thank you, thank you—’ whispered the haggard face through thin lips.

  ‘Mrs Tandon—’

  ‘Thank you, thank you—’

  ‘Kedarnath Tandon and his wife Veena—’

  ‘Aah?’

  ‘Kedarnath Tandon and his wife.’

  ‘Aah,
thank you, thank you, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama. . . .’

  ‘Babaji, this is Pran Kapoor, son of the Minister of Revenue, Mahesh Kapoor. And this is the Minister’s wife.’

  The Baba peered at Pran, and repeated tiredly:

  ‘Thank you, thank you.’

  He leaned a finger out and touched Pran on the forehead.

  But before she could be hurried along, Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, in a beseeching voice, said:

  ‘Baba, the boy is very ill—he has had asthma since he was a child. Now that you have touched him—’

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ said the old wraith. ‘Thank you, thank you.’

  ‘Baba, will he be cured?’

  The Baba pointed upwards to the sky with the finger that he had used to bless Pran with.

  ‘And Baba, what about his work? I am so worried—’

  The Baba leaned forward. The escort tried to plead with Mrs Mahesh Kapoor to give way.

  ‘Work?’ The voice was very soft. ‘God’s work?’

  ‘No, Baba, he is looking for a position. Will he get it?’

  ‘It will depend. Death will make all the difference.’ It was almost as if the lips were opening and some other spirit speaking through the skeletal chest.

  ‘A death? Whose, Baba, whose?’ asked Mrs Mahesh Kapoor in sudden fear.

  ‘The Lord—your Lord—the Lord of us all—he was—he thought he was—’

  The strange, ambiguous words chilled her blood. If it should be her husband! In a panic-stricken voice, Mrs Mahesh Kapoor implored: ‘Tell me, Baba, I pray you—will it be a death close to me?’

  The Baba seemed to register the terror in the woman’s voice; something that may have been compassion passed over the skin-stretched mask of his face. ‘Even if so, it would not make a difference to you. . . .’ he said. The words appeared to cost him immense effort.

  He was talking of her own death. That was what he must mean. She felt it in her bones. Her trembling lips could barely form the next question: