The Selector of Souls

  “His name?”

  He gives an exaggerated sigh, and glances at his Timex. “Why you need to know his name?”

  “Why are you protecting it?”

  “He has a good family—Kohlis.”

  “It’s Vikas Kohli, right?”

  His expression changes to interest. “You know Vikas-saab?” A shade of wariness in his tone. “How do you know him?” The wariness has changed to arch insinuation.

  The SDM already assumed Father Pashan was Anu’s lover, to fit his views on Christian women and nuns. He’s now leaping to the same conclusion about Vikas. What would he think of the truth?

  “I have met Vikas-saab,” she says carefully. “His wife and I are friends.”

  “Then you can understand the problem I am in.”

  “What problem?”

  “Aman-ji told me he will bring charges in a criminal case. He’s accusing Vikas-saab of conspiracy, property damage. He says his lady-wife saw Vikas-ji giving Suresh a large sum of cash in the chai-stall, right there in Gurkot. He says Vikas-ji told his lady-wife that it was a donation, but she is sure it was a bribe. So this is why Aman-ji is alleging involvement in instigating people to riot.”

  “And?”

  “This is one case Aman-ji cannot win. Too much difficult. You see, Vikas Kohli was nowhere near here—he denies any connection.”

  “But why is that your problem?” says Sister Anu. “Let the case take its course.”

  “It’s that way only. Aman-ji is my friend, and your friend Vikas Kohli is now my friend. The district magistrate is not here, the district commissioner is in Shimla. Only I am here to save the good names of Amanjit Singh and Vikas Kohli. Both are continuously applying pressure, very much pressure.”

  “And do you find this pressure tempting?”

  He looks surprised, then hurt, then wounded. “How could you think so, Sister?”

  Gurkot

  DAMINI

  DAMINI WEARS HER THICK BROWN SHAWL FOR THE climb to Lord Golunath’s temple. There are no forgiveness chairs under its conical dome, but everything is alive and when she reaches up and strikes the bell, vibrations echo as if joining a celestial song. The pujari, who was dedicated to the god of justice at thirteen, emerges. His eyes are narrowed against the sunset, his voice firmed by twenty years of chanting at marriages, puja ceremonies and death rites. He is the pandit who refused to officiate at Chunilal’s funeral, but the hair on his oiled chest ripples with his muscles today, when no danger is present. Despite the cold, he wears only a white cotton dhoti. He sinks into a slingback chair outside the shrine and nods encouragingly.

  Damini sinks to her haunches before him and keeps her gaze on the scuffed toes of her boots as she skims the surface of the story, ending with that part of her problems that he can understand: Suresh is in jail. “Why did this happen?” she clasps her arms around her shins. “Always I thought I could rely on my son in my old age.”

  “It is plain: you looked at another woman’s misfortunes and thought they could never happen to you.”

  Yes, she had thought that Mem-saab’s misfortunes could never befall her. How did the pujari know? She had thought her Suresh a more dutiful son, a more brotherly brother, a more spiritual man than Aman. How did the pujari know?

  Some holy men hear the past you carry with you.

  The pujari’s scent is comforting—sandalwood incense and cannabis. But the beedi he lights is tobacco. Damini takes one from the knotted end of her sari and lights up too.

  “No” she says, eventually. “It was my fault. I let my son believe he could do no wrong. I let him believe women exist to do his bidding.”

  “He was misguided by many, not only you.”

  “The swami who misguided him is free, the saab who misguided Suresh is free, the men of Gurkot who protested with Suresh are free. Only my Suresh is locked up.”

  “Those people are not locked up,” the pujari says, sucking on his beedi, “but they cannot be free till they escape samsara. Who can be free till he never takes birth again?” He blows hot air and smoke into her eyes. “And you, ji? I have not seen you here before.”

  “I mostly go to the gurdwara.” She twirls Mem-saab’s steel kara about her wrist.

  “But today you are needing something from Lord Golunath?”

  “Oh, no need, ji—I don’t need,” Damini says immediately. But she does need. If she goes to jail like Suresh, there will be no one left to help Leela. She lifts her chin. “You please tell Lord Golunath, he should come down from his mountain, come out of his temple, and just see, just look: what is happening in his village.”

  The pujari suggests ceremonies of varying lengths and complexity—he too has to make a living. The least expensive is a jagar, an awakening for those who believe they are awake. Damini says, “Maybe a jagar.”

  “Don’t think it’s easy,” says the pujari. “The ojha must travel into the spirit world to supplicate Lord Golunath to wake. He doesn’t do it often, or for just anyone.”

  “Tell him it is for Damini who gave him madhupatra to sweeten his wife’s tea and make her kinder.”

  “I will. But you must understand: when Lord Golunath awakens, or when he awakens us, who can say what can happen?”

  “Will he punish those who have done wrong?” says Damini faintly.

  “He has many ways to bring about justice, most of them unseen.”

  “Then is there danger?”

  “The same as always, behen,” he says, calling her sister. “Whenever you open a gateway to the unseen world, other spirits also can enter.”

  “As in a time of birthing,” says Damini.

  “Yes.”

  Damini stubs her beedi beneath her boot heel. She reaches into her bodice, retrieves a pair of gold flower-shaped earrings, the same that Mem-saab gave her.

  The pujari rolls them in his palm. He looks away at the snow-clad mountains and shakes his head. “Mountains,” he says, “cannot be brought together. Only people can.”

  Her donation is insufficient. Damini takes a folded khaki envelope from between her breasts. She counts out three hundred rupees more. The three hundred rupees her Piara Singh died for, the bribe that tore his heart open. “Whatever comes,” she says, placing the rupees in the pujari’s outstretched hand.

  “Jai Golunath!”

  Beginning at dawn the next day, women call the ojha’s message uphill from one house to the next. He will invoke Lord Golunath at Tubelight’s home midway down the mountain, so that some will have to climb for the jagar, others will have to descend. Lord Golunath will speak to everyone. Even outcastes, even if it will embarrass the upper-castes to sit cross-legged beside them. Bajantris set out, carrying their drums and instruments to Gurkot, walking from two villages away.

  Soon after morning tea, Damini lets herself in at the nun’s house. Sister Anu is lying on her back on a yoga mat on the terrace in setu bandhasana pose. Shoulders, palms and feet flat on the floor, pelvis lifted like a small bridge. “Where is Sister Bethany?” asks Damini.

  Sister Anu lowers her hips and sits up. “Already at school. Actually not at the school—it’s padlocked until the stay order is lifted. She’s holding classes in a tent on the clearing. I will go and help her later, but I’m leaving for Shimla in a few days time. We still don’t know when the clinic can reopen. The bishop says he can’t send another priest to Gurkot after what just happened. Aman-ji says he will turn Bread of Healing over to an NGO.”

  “What will you do when the enjiyo comes?”

  “I don’t know yet. I want to be where I’m needed.”

  Damini delivers the ojha’s message, telling her that she is needed at the jagar ceremony. “Come tomorrow,” she says, “and see me keep my promise.”

  “I will,” says Sister Anu, wiping her face with a towel. “Though there’s not enough time for me to get permission from my superiors. We don’t have such awakenings in our Church, you see. Even when I was Hindu … city Hindus don’t observe such ceremonies.”

/>   “Muslims don’t either. It’s we who have the need.” Damini picks a book off the table beside the wicker chair, wipes it with a corner of her sari, opens it. It’s in English. “What is this?”

  “A story book.”

  “About maharajas.”

  “No, just ordinary people. A woman.”

  “Who could be interested?”

  “Another woman can be. A man can be.”

  “Why?”

  Sister Anu rubs the towel over her neck. “To compare to her own life. Or compare to his own.” She rises.

  No one I know has a story like mine, so who would be interested in reading my story?

  Damini takes her leave of Sister Anu and continues to the Big House.

  She enters via the kitchen. Khansama ushers her into the receiving room, and disappears behind a screen. He’ll be listening to every word.

  Amanjit Singh is sitting at Sardar-saab’s desk in a straight-backed chair, writing in a leather-bound notebook. A beautiful young Mem-saab smiles up at him from a silver-framed photo. Sardar-saab, in a rose-coloured turban gazes steadily from his gilt-edged frame on the wall above the desk. Kiran reclines on a sofa beneath the central skylight. Today she wears a peach cotton kaftaan, no makeup, no sunglasses. The baby girl in the rocker beside her looks up at Damini with shiny brown eyes.

  “She is well, na?”

  Kiran tilts her chin—yes.

  “What is her name?” Damini holds Kiran’s gaze, demanding respect as an elder.

  “Angad,” says Kiran. “Angad Kaur.”

  Amanjit Singh looks up, “Are you here for the money? I sent the cheque for thirty-five thousand, but Leela sent it back.”

  “No,” says Damini. “I’m not here for money.”

  “Mohan signed the deed. To whom can the boy sell if not to me? Leela and you can’t farm that land. Let’s not waste more time—take the cheque, Damini-amma.”

  “Maybe someday,” says Damini, determined that day will come after moksha, when her soul has nothing more to learn, when she’s freed from birth and rebirth.

  “I’m giving this much because you were my mother’s maidservant for so many years. Look, I’m not even holding you or Leela or Mohan responsible for Suresh’s actions, because I heard you saved the patients.”

  Damini drops her gaze to the Bokhara carpet, and says nothing.

  “I’m going to build a more modern clinic, you know, as soon as the NGO people persuade the government to lift the stay order,” Aman says, sounding as he did when he promised Mem-saab he would look after her. “It will have an operating theatre, a full lab, an MRI, an EEG, an EKG …” He checks off these wonders, moving a forefinger from the pinky of his other hand to his thumb. Now he’s back to his pinky, “… an ECG and an ultrasound machine.”

  Damini looks up. “An ultra-soon here in Gurkot?”

  “Villa owners will find it very convenient,” he says. “We can have some charity cases as well.”

  “And Sister Anu?”

  “Oh, Dr. Gupta will continue to work for us. And if the nurse wants to remain, she and the teaching sister can rent the residence cottage.”

  Damini delivers the ojha’s message. Interest flickers in Kiran’s eyes. She looks at Amanjit.

  “I’ll attend if I have time,” says Amanjit. He shows Damini squares covered with small writing in his notebook, to make her understand how very busy he is.

  Damini nods, then says, “No notebooks.” She does not want Aman to tell cocktail party stories to his pink buyers and fellow Sikhs about Hindu ceremonies. For Kiran’s benefit she adds, “And the ojha-ji says no cameras.”

  “Leh! Why, Damini-amma?” says Amanjit.

  “You should remember what people do and say, Aman, not only their photos,” says Damini. She glances at Kiran, “And with your own memory.”

  DAMINI

  ON THE DAY OF THE JAGAR CEREMONY, DAMINI WAKES feeling worthless and empty, as if nothingness is her normal state. It could be grief over Chunilal, over Suresh in jail without bail. Or it could be her own great paap. She hasn’t felt such hollowness since the day she tried the forgiveness chair.

  May the jagar be successful.

  Damini’s feet feel heavy as her heart, and today even her combat boots offer no cheer. She wears the violet phulkari-embroidered shawl Mem-saab gave her, for violet is the color of spirit.

  Spending too much on one god can offend another. Could it displease Anamika Devi that Damini asked for a jagar for Lord Golunath and not for her? But Anamika Devi existed before all 333 million gods, yet few worship her—who can even try and appease her?

  As the sun sinks past the hills of Gurkot, the villagers remove their shoes and file into the centre room in Tubelight’s home. Supari and Chimta cover their heads with their saris, and take their seats on the jute dhurrie with all the other women, facing the ojha’s unclean left side. Matki carries a toddler on her arm and wipes his nose with her dupatta. The Toothless One is helped to the ground by her two daughters-in-law. Even Vijayanthi arrives, having ridden up the mountain on her grandson’s back. Kamna props a textbook on bent knees between her forearms and tries to finish her homework. A Petromax lantern flares, turning her bangles to prisms. Goldina squats a few feet away from the rest, the set of her shoulders defying anyone to object to her presence.

  Sister Anu places her shoulder bag on the windowsill, covers her head with a heavy black shawl and takes a spot on the dhurrie, beside Damini. Samuel bows over folded hands to the ojha, then retires to an adjoining room, so no one will notice his presence.

  Amanjit is ushered to a space where he can sit cross-legged in his white kurta pyjama, and lean against a wall as backrest. A moat of space forms around his lime green turban, though more and more men arrive. Mohan spies Amanjit as soon as he enters, and knocks several knees and toes as he leaps over cross-legged men. When he reaches Amanjit Singh, he leans over and envelops him in a bear hug, as if he were a long lost friend, instead of the would-be evictor of his family, then he takes an open spot a few feet away.

  Kiran comes in, looking appropriately solemn. She places a platter of uncooked rice beside the ojha as Amanjit Singh’s donation and crosses the room to the women’s side. She looks more comfortable than cross-legged Amanjit, one hip on the ground, folded legs to the side. She takes off her sunglasses, polishes them and puts them away.

  The dark, wiry ojha sits on his heels, hands on knees. He rocks back and forth, he rolls around his waist. When he holds up his arms, his sleeves fall back and his tattoos change shape. The drummer beats his nagara, the singer calls to Lord Golunath in Pahari. The bow slides on the ektara; its melody resonates in men and women alike.

  The ojha begins to tremble. He runs his fingers through greying hair. A voice too large for his slight frame emanates from him. “I come when seen and unseen energies resound.” His voice fills the small room. “Why do you ask this poor ojha to bring me?”

  The pujari leads the puch-session. “Golunath-ji, this old woman has questions.”

  No one turns to look, but everyone might as well be staring at Damini.

  “Golunath-ji,” she says, “I am not very old, but no longer young. I have two children—this daughter, Leela, and one son. I came to visit Leela for a little while, but then I committed a great paap. I have tried to erase it, but all the good deeds I have done are not enough.”

  “What was your paap?”

  She can’t speak it. Who can understand her crime, her heinous crime?

  “Tell,” says Sister Anu, her voice both encouraging and firm.

  “Tell!” shouts Chimta as if she’ll wrest it out of Damini.

  Damini gropes for words in any language: Hindi, Punjabi or Pahari, then tells. About that night, that baby, that beautiful creation of her creation, her granddaughter … the cold … tobacco … “I returned her atman to brahman. I said it was a mistake. I said it should have decided to be a boy.” She omits nothing, not even the eyes like twin fireflies; her telling creates the tale. “
I did it,” says Damini, looking around at everyone, “though I didn’t want to.”

  Damini’s story could be the story of other mothers, other baby girls, but Leela cries because it is her story, her mother’s story, and her baby girl’s tale. Leela tells Lord Golunath, “She did it for me, because I wanted it.”

  “No, Chunilal wanted it,” Damini tells Lord Golunath, in Leela’s defence. “He wouldn’t even hold the baby. He would not give it his name.”

  Tubelight says, “Even I, who am not very bright, can read a man’s wishes.”

  Chimta says, “Aren’t you ashamed to tell this?”

  “No,” says Damini. “The time to be ashamed was when I was doing it.”

  Kamna says to all, “That night my papa sent me again to the cow’s room to sleep, and he said he would beat me if I came out before morning—he knew what my nani would do. And,” she says to Leela, “the next morning, he didn’t cry.”

  Sister Anu wipes her eyes.

  Mohan says, “Men don’t cry,” as if he understands he is defending his father.

  “Of what use is this telling?” says Vijayanthi. “Which woman can do what she wants? The shysh-tem is like this only. We do what men want done.”

  A man responds, “Mata-ji, we too do what you women want done. You want a brick or cement home, you want a bit of land, you want grain in the storeroom, you want food and clothing for the children. We sacrifice for these. You blame us men for all your sorrows, but all must do our duty, regardless of consequences, as Lord Krishna told Lord Arjun in the Gita.”

  The women’s side of the room erupts as each tries to respond. Chimta shouts loudest, “You men don’t care if we suffer so long as you do your duty. That way your karma stays clean—but what of ours?”

  Supari aims a stream of betel-juice at the corner of the room, wipes her mouth on the back of her hand and says, “The taste of anger never leaves me.”

  The room hushes.

  Goldina says, “I’m the one everyone blames when babies die, because I cut their cords and dispose of the Lotus that comes afterwards. But it’s not only you, Damini-ji, who does as a man wants. Kiran-ji too, knows what Aman-ji expects and does it—even if it stains her karma, even if another woman will be hurt, even if her own baby would be hurt.”