The Legends of Khasak

  ‘Do you know me, stranger?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  Ravi looked at the gorgeous silk she wore, at the thick glasses grown a good deal thicker, and then for a long while at the beaming face.

  They held hands and moved towards the railway restaurant, and sat facing each other, too burdened to talk, hungrily, greedily, taking each other in.

  ‘Come,’ she said, ‘some place where we could rest ...’

  ‘I can’t take you to my seedling house ...’

  ‘Seedling house?’

  ‘Where they used to stock seedlings before transplanting.’

  ‘You live with them?’

  ‘Yes. With a different kind of seedling.’

  ‘Ooh, Ravi!’

  ‘We could try the guest-house at the dam site.’

  ‘Then let us go.’

  In a cab, on the roads of Palghat town. The sullen pre-monsoon air heavy-laden with the damp. The sweat, the discomfort.

  ‘You need to wash, Padma.’

  ‘And you ...’

  ‘I need more than a wash, I need a change of clothing.’

  ‘Why didn’t you bring some along?’

  ‘There weren’t any clothes back in the seedling house.’

  ‘What do people wear back where you are?’

  ‘Tree bark.’

  ‘Let us buy something less fancy than tree bark. Shirts and dhotis.’

  ‘I am stone broke.’

  ‘We shall take care of that.’

  ‘Okay. Buy me something in flaring red and green. Something really loud and obscene.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the women back there will gasp in wonder.’

  ‘Ooh, Ravi.’

  They fell silent. Then Ravi spoke, ‘Did I hurt you, Padma?’

  ‘This world is full of hurts. The other world too, if there is one.’

  ‘There is. That is what my pupils have taught me.’

  The cab left the town behind. They were on the road to the dam. Deep-hued landscape. A lone bus grinding along, senile. A migrant tribal with beads on her bare breasts. A bulldozer, timid like a temple elephant, meekly giving way to a rattling cab ...

  In the suite in the guest-house, Padma threw the window open. It looked out on the vast lake of the dam, sunny, scintillant and cool.

  ‘Ravi!’

  ‘Yes, Padma?’

  ‘You didn’t ask me about my bizarre search—for you.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Well, then I’m not going to tell you.’

  ‘Oh, tell me.’

  ‘Months of tedious investigation, that’s how I closed in on your sanctuary. God! What is it called?’

  ‘Khasak.’

  ‘Yes, Khasak.’

  In a Matth in Kashi, beset with lepers, in the sarais of Prayag, in the Quaker Centre in Madhya Pradesh; the trail threatened to fade ever so often. At last in Bodhananda’s ashrama. Meanwhile Jyoti had alerted the vast network of bureaucracy.

  ‘In the Ashrama,’ Padma said, ‘a Swamini asked about you.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Do you remember anyone called Nivedita?’

  ‘Nivedita. I remember.’

  ‘A stunner!’

  Ravi smiled bitterly.

  ‘Has America turned you lesbian?’

  ‘I’m not going to tell you. Get the glasses.’

  Ravi took the glasses out of a cupboard and placed them on the table.

  ‘This is rather good whisky,’ she said, ‘I hope the prohibition cops don’t worry us here.’

  Ravi heard the metal cap crackle open. He broke the ice.

  ‘Cheers, Ravi—for the Tambaram evenings!’

  ‘Cheers, for the night birds in Luz!’

  ‘I could cry ...’

  ‘That’ll be messy.’ Silence for a while.

  ‘Bourbon on the rocks, as they say,’ she said. ‘Like it?’

  ‘Not particularly. It isn’t as good as our spirits.’

  ‘Your spirits?’

  ‘Yes. Khasak’s moonshine.’

  ‘Oh God, I could curse those spirits!’

  Over the lake a cloud bank darkened, clouds the lake sent up and took back as its own rain. A catamaran sailed heavily over the lake towards the mountain.

  ‘Ravi,’ she said, ‘don’t you want to know what has happened to me?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I went to Princeton. Remember our guest at Tambaram?’

  ‘I remember. And what did you do at Princeton?’

  ‘Research. All these seven years.’

  ‘Playing with prisms.’

  Ravi filled the glasses again.

  ‘I went to your house in Ooty,’ she said. ‘They don’t know where you are, Ravi. This is cruel.’

  He was raising his glass, but put it back on the table.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  ‘I stayed there. I slept in your bed.’

  Moonlight over the mountains, jasmine creepers outside the windows, creepers entwined like mating serpents.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘The next day I went out with your Chittamma for a swim.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘We swam a lot. And, Ravi, what a beauty she is ... Ravi, where are you?’

  ‘I’m listening, Padma.’

  ‘Your father is very ill. Ravi, do you want me to go on?’

  ‘Go on, Padma.’

  ‘The Luz evening. The letter you made me read. I have never forgotten his mention of the twilight. The twilight has consumed him.’

  What is remorse, Ravi asked himself. The dying sunlight on distant palms, on the mountains. The wind was cool, the breeze from the lake.

  ‘Ravi!’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Come away with me.’

  A long silence. Sunset gave way to the early stars.

  ‘I hate to say it, but he may not be with us for long. Plan something for the future. I have a job in Princeton. I can support you, and you can resume your studies where you left off.’

  Ravi laughed.

  ‘What studies, Padma? What research?’

  ‘You mock me, Ravi. I hate this.’

  A cry rose within her. And he spoke inside his own impenetrable silence—there is nothing to learn by looking at the galactic desert outside, turn the spectroscope inward, to where He has set his bow in the clouds within as a sign of the covenant between Him and the earth. Break the Galilean lenses’the Florentine was wrong, he tempted men with a finite calculus. The confessor and the inquisitor were right, for the earth is not round but an experience of the fallible human mind.

  Ravi lay on his back, he lifted her over him and saw her breasts and waist paler than the rest of the sun-rich body.

  ‘Ravi—’

  ‘Yes, Padma—’

  ‘Tell me you’ll leave Khasak.’

  With incredible lightness came the answer, ‘I will!’

  ‘Is that a promise?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And you’ll come with me to Princeton ...’

  ‘I don’t know, Padma.’

  She began to sob. Ravi received her sorrow like a desert does the rain.

  ‘What are you running away from Ravi?’ asked the despairing voice.

  I wish to escape nothing, Ravi answered from within his silence, I want to be the sand of the desert, each grain of sand; I want to be the lake, each minute droplet. I want to be the laya, the dissolution.

  The Journey Begins

  Great clouds dissolved over Chetali. The monsoon swept over Khasak. In the pouring rain the School Inspector’s peon came to the seedling house. The front door was locked. Appu-Kili sat cross-legged in the veranda, watching the rain water run down the eaves.

  ‘Hey, you there—’ the peon called out.

  Appu-Kili neither saw nor heard, so deep was his absorption in the running water.

  ‘What rudeness is this?’ said the peon. He climbed on to the veranda and tapped the cretin with the tip of his umbrella.
Appu-Kili leapt up, startled.

  ‘Etto,’ he lisped, ‘aaa yoo a pootham?’

  ‘Where is the Maeshtar?’

  At the mention of the Master, Appu-Kili smiled soulfully and said, ‘He gon catchin daagon fies.’

  The peon turned away in a towering rage, and came to the square looking for the tailor.

  ‘You insult me—’ the peon said.

  Insult the peon? Madhavan Nair was taken aback.

  ‘I don’t understand—’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t mean you in particular. I meant the whole lot of you, the Maeshtar, and the strange caretaker who made faces at me and called me a pootham.’

  Madhavan Nair reconstructed the scene and in a moment fear of catastrophe cleared from his mind.

  ‘O Peon,’ he said laughing, ‘that must have been our cretin Appu-Kili.’

  ‘I don’t care who it was.’

  ‘We shall make amends.’

  ‘But tell me, O Tailor, where is the Maeshtar?’

  ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘First you tell me—where is the Maeshtar?’

  Madhavan Nair stepped out of his shop, and said, ‘Come, Peon-Saar. Let us go some place where we can sit and talk in comfort.’

  In Aliyar’s teashop, seated close to the hot samovar, he said, ‘Tell me, O Peon, is something the matter?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Where is the Maeshtar?’

  ‘He is away for a few days.’

  ‘Then let him find out for himself when he returns.’

  ‘Aliyar,’ Madhavan Nair said, ‘aappams for our respected peon. And what do you have there? Steamed bananas—’

  The peon ate and drank with relish. He softened.

  ‘These youngsters,’ he said, ‘how they invite needless punishment.’

  ‘Certainly you can tell us what the crime is,’ Madhavan Nair said, ‘whatever be the punishment. After all we live in neighbouring villages.’

  The peon leaned forward and said in a hushed voice, ‘There is a report lying with the Inspaetar Yajaman ...’

  An anonymous letter, but one containing grave charges: Ravi spends his time telling stories instead of teaching, his morals are unsound, he keeps a false admission register, he is fanning religious hatred, he spreads it with the help of a black magician named Nizam Ali.

  One more steamed banana, and the peon became still more communicative. The charges, if they weren’t disproved soon, could cost Ravi his job, and might result in the school’s closure.

  A new inspector had taken over, a young and impetuous officer, one picked up after his tenth class as an inspector-trainee. Beneath his severe exterior he was kind and helpful, and appreciative of good food and the good life.

  ‘What kind of good food?’ the tailor asked hiding his disgust.

  ‘Chicken—’

  ‘Would he like quail and partridge? The Pandarams will massacre a whole flight of wild birds, if we just give them the signal.’

  The peon made obscene noises, chewing the birds in anticipation.

  ‘And about the good life,’ Madhavan Nair said, ‘I suppose we have to explore ...’

  ‘Ask your Maeshtar to go and fall at his feet. I shall take care of the rest.’

  The Khazi who came in for a cup of tea was told of the anonymous petition.

  ‘Foul lies!’ the Khazi said, ‘Treachery!’

  ‘We will meet higher officers if need be,’ said the gentle Aliyar flaring up, ‘we will give affidavits.’

  ‘An anonymous petition!’ the Khazi said. ‘Verily, Sayed Mian Sheikh will not permit this.’

  ‘But the Inspaetar permits this,’ the peon said unthinkingly, and was seized with terror the very next moment. He stole a fleeting glance at the mountain—it wore an ominous hood of clouds, and seemed more formidable than all the clerks of the Inspectorate put together. He left, sorely disturbed at this new intrusion by a spirit. On his walk home he chanted the ten names of Arjuna for protection against lightning, he looked over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t haunted ... The little crowd at Aliyar’s stayed on. The Khazi’s anger had not cooled; he muttered to himself, ‘Which dog has done this?’

  ‘Let it be anybody,’ the tailor said, ‘And Aliyar, I go on credit. Two aappams, two steamed bananas—’

  Aliyar smiled. ‘Let it be on Aliyar. Mollakka would have called it Allah’s credit.’

  Ravi returned. He had been away ten days, a solid third of a month of unexplained absence. It was a pause in the rain, and Appu-Kili was wandering along the fringes of the village. He caught sight of Ravi and came prancing to the seedling house.

  ‘Etto!’ he cried in the joy of reunion, ‘whe ha yu been?’

  ‘To Kashi, my pet,’ Ravi said.

  As he mopped the rain water from Appu’s hair, Ravi choked for a moment. The touch of the cretin’s hair brought back vivid memories—the Aryans and the reborn children, the karmic lice lost in grief.

  ‘Did anyone tease you when I was away?’

  ‘Pootham. He beat wid umb’ella.’

  ‘Don’t worry. We will drive him away. Now, here is something for my Parrot.’

  Appu-Kili grabbed the packet of chocolates from Ravi with grunts of thanksgiving.

  ‘Etto,’ he said, ‘catch you goo big daagon fie.’

  ‘Where have you been, Maash?’

  Madhavan Nair was settled comfortably on a bench, while Ravi unpacked his bag.

  ‘Where have you been?’ the tailor asked again.

  ‘To Kashi,’ Ravi jested.

  ‘All the manes doing well?’

  Then, with great circumspection, lest he upset his friend, Madhavan Nair told Ravi all about the latest plot against the school.

  ‘Don’t be upset, Maash. The whole village is united—’

  ‘But, Madhavan Nair, I’m not upset.’

  ‘If the Board closes down the school, we have worked out alternatives.’

  Ravi was not listening, his mind was on the cockroaches which had come meekly by their inheritance; he had returned again to violate their mildewed spaces. I am sorry, my little brethren, said Ravi. Children burdened themselves with reading and reckoning here, and I sought a sarai, a place of rest on a long, long journey. A black hairy spider which had returned to the seedling house during the absence of its human resident raced on the wall in circles, dismayed. I intruded on this sarai, said Ravi, for too long, desecrating its primeval nights with lamps and incense, while Time, untamed and awesome, cried beyond the timepieces, cried out as dark blue winds. Roach and spider lay in wait in these winds.

  ‘I was wondering, Maash ...’ said Madhavan Nair, ‘A visit to the Inspector’s office, an apology, a settlement.’

  Ravi said gently, ‘No.’

  Madhavan Nair struggled to find words, ‘But ... Khasak has taken decisions ...’

  They would raise the money needed for a school of their own, and the communists of Kozhanasseri would teach them how to organize a committee.

  The day after, the comrades came to the seedling house.

  Ravi was telling Appu-Kili a story.

  ‘We are from Kozhanasseri—’

  ‘Welcome, comrades.’

  One of them was thin as a leaf, and the other dark and stocky as a mountain troll.

  ‘I work with peasants’ unions,’ the thin one said.

  ‘Sankaran is the name.’

  ‘Kanni Moothan,’ the troll said. ‘Secretary of Kozhanasseri’s Peace Council.’

  ‘Happy meeting you, comrades. And to know there is a peace council close by. What does the council do anyway?’

  ‘Oh, nothing in particular. Occasionally we outlaw nuclear war. Right now our concern is the school—’

  ‘It is a conspiracy,’ the thin comrade put in. ‘We shall deal with it.’

  Appu-Kili did not like the story being interrupted.

  ‘Etto,’ he said, ‘thel stoyi.’

  The Parrot could not take a story in instalments. So, to s
pare him the discomfort, Ravi said, ‘The story is over.’

  The cretin stood before Ravi and the comrades, sullen and dejected, then moved on to the veranda to watch the water run down the eaves. The story had ended without meaning or resolution.

  The comrades were telling Ravi another story. Of Kelan the compradore bourgeois, Sivaraman Nair the feudalist, of the peon from the bureaucracy.

  ‘There is no national bourgeoisie here,’ Kanni Moothan concluded his class analysis. ‘Khasak is a fortress of reaction.’

  ‘National bourgeoisie?’ Ravi asked. ‘What is that?’

  ‘I was speaking generally. For example, the outcaste women are not allowed to wear blouses while transplanting the paddy seedlings. Just imagine! Women stooping bare-breasted—’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Ravi. ‘Must be gorgeous.’

  The words were spoken in play, and sensing the awkwardness, he tried to explain it away. He said, ‘I was speaking generally.’

  That made it even worse, and ruined the conversation. The comrades rose after an abrupt tailpiece, ‘Maash, you should be in the forefront.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Later, in the Mosque of the King’ ‘Comrade—’

  The visitors were promptly corrected, ‘Call me Khazi.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ the peasant leader said. ‘Our Khazi is no stranger to the situation.’

  ‘Of course not,’ the Khazi said.

  ‘It’s a conspiracy.’

  ‘What doubt is there?’

  ‘Imperialist forces are at work,’ the troll said. ‘We in the peace movement know it only too well.’

  ‘Be not afraid!’ said the Khazi, and chanted a spell against imperialism leaving the comrades mildly disconcerted.

  ‘The movement would be greatly strengthened by the Khazi’s return—’

  The Khazi ended the chant with the mystic al fateha. The comrades grew nervous in the haunted mosque.

  The rain mingled with the steam of the earth and curtained off the seedling house. Kunhamina came through mist and rain, with a tiffin carrier.

  ‘Umma sends this, Saar,’ she said, ‘patthiri and meat curry.’

  ‘Sit down, my little one,’ said Ravi. She wouldn’t sit. As in days gone by she came and stood close. Ravi took her hands in his. His thoughts went to the girl bewildered by herself on the peak of Chetali, to the covenant of the mountain. She swayed closer, now she was seated on his lap, her eyes brimming with tears.