Bhava

1

When Vishwanatha Shastri's eyes fell on the amulet around the neck of the man sitting opposite, he felt as if a demon had entered him. Had a sign suddenly been revealed to him? The man wearing the amulet was sitting, legs folded, in an easy posture, delicately picking sprouts from a steel box. One by one, he would place the sprouts between his slightly open lips and move his chin as if he were eating ambrosia. Shastri also observed two other men sitting on the torn cushions of the first-class compartment. But the man wearing the amulet sat as if unaware of anyone else, his eyes looking out on thorny bushes, crows crying thirstily, and buffaloes dozing in the scant shade of their own making.

Clearly the man opposite Shastri had taken the vow of Ayyappa — he was wearing a black kurta, a black dhoti, a small black towel over his shoulder; and against these black clothes the amulet around his neck compelled attention.

Shastri occupied the window seat. He had a scraggly white beard, since he shaved only once a month, and he wore a green-bordered white cloth shawl wrapped around his upper body, as well as a dhoti with a matching border. He looked to be about seventy. The other two men wore pants and shirts. Only Shastri and the Ayyappa pilgrim, because of their traditional dress, appeared remarkable in the first-class compartment.

It was afternoon. The two men dressed in pants and shirts had got their food from the station. One man in jeans, a meat-eater, did not want to discomfort either the Ayyappa devotee in his black clothes, or Shastri (who wore tulsi leaves in his top-knot), so he had climbed to the upper berth and, bent double, stealthily sucked at the bones. The other man who wore pants — but had kumkum on his forehead — was mixing rice with sambar, kneading it into a ball, popping it into his mouth, and chewing noisily.

Shastri brought out a steel box from the deerskin-covered bundle in which he kept his ritually pure things. He began sweating and trembling so badly that he could not open the cover of the box. His eyes kept staring at the amulet, trying to comprehend the sign that teased him like a riddle.

Was the wearer of the amulet middle-aged, or younger than that? There were one or two white hairs in his black beard. He looked fit for the role of Rama or Krishna in a play, such were the qualities of his face. Drained, yet full of lustre. His well-shaped nostrils, the colour of his large eyes, the attractiveness of his indifferent gaze — these were so like Saroja's that Shastri, recognizing this, was thunderstruck. A deep tenderness welled up in him, and even many days later he would call this moment to mind as a way of warding off evil omens.

As the Ayyappa pilgrim sat chewing sprouted lentils, he looked to Shastri like a tender calf passively receiving sunshine and rain on its body. And now his cup must be empty … his eyes looked down expectantly. Shastri could not bear it. He was surprised at the compassion which rose up in him. So, opening his own round steel box, he braced himself on his left arm, shifted on the seat, brought the box closer to the younger man, and held it out. Not comfortable addressing him with the intimacy of the singular, he said, using the plural, ‘Please take some’

From the questioning way that the man looked at Shastri, it was clear that he did not know Kannada. Shastri felt relieved: the man must be someone other than whom he imagined. All at once, it occurred to Shastri that he could use his Hindustani learned in Bombay some forty or forty-five years ago in his days of wayward living. But he hesitated to speak in such a rough language to an Ayyappa devotee.

Then came another surprise. The devotee began to move his fingers in his beard and seemed suddenly unsettled. As if slowly recognizing what was held out to him he said, in a wavering voice, Kut-ta-va-lak-ki.

Shastri felt his hair stand on end when he heard this word, which came to him, as if from an ancient cave. In the manner of someone beginning a conversation with an assumed familiarity, Shastri said, ‘Then you know what this is. If you know this as kut-ta-va-Iak-ki then you must be from South Kanara, or at some time must have got mixed up with somebody like me. When I do harikatha, I sometimes say: “Kuchela must be from South Kanara, because although he was a poor classmate of Krishna's, he brought Krishna not just avalakki but kuttavalakki.”’ Although Shastri felt confident using the language to which he was accustomed, he also felt uneasy because his words did not connect to what he was feeling inside. But the young man folded his hands respectfully, like one who did not understand anything, and his self-absorbed eyes communicated to Shastri, ‘Leave me alone.’ But just as those distant eyes began once again to discomfort Shastri, the young man said ‘Achcha’ and held out his hand for the kuttavalakki Shastri poured it affectionately into the palm of his hand, and the young man put it in his mouth. As he chewed the kuttavalakki with closed eyes, he seemed to be trying to recover some distant memory … and this created in Shastri both hope and fear.

∗

By this time, the man in jeans had finished his meal and said in English, ‘May I know your name?’ to the Ayyappa devotee. But the devotee did not respond. Only for Shastri did he open his eyes and Shastri, seeing tears in them, asked anxiously in Kannada, ‘Was it too hot?’ Then he repeated the question in Hindustani. For the first time the young man smiled and shook his head.

The meat-eater went out of the cabin, and came back drying his hands on a handkerchief which he took from the pocket of his jeans. Then he repeated his question more politely, ‘May I please know your name?’

But the Ayyappa devotee wiped his eyes, pointed at his black clothes, and said ‘Swami,’ adding flatly, ‘I have lost any other name’

But the man didn't give up. ‘Do you think I cannot recognize you in that dress? You are Dinakar, you are famous because of your TV shows — for my brother you are a big hero. Everyone has seen your interviews of Asian leaders. I was staring at you all along in disbelief because you didn't seem to be the sort to go after gods. But then, it seems that even Amitabh Bachchan has had darshan of Ayyappa. As soon as you got on the train in Madras, I began to wonder because you looked familiar. You must have been visiting the temples around Madras. You must be from Delhi. It is at least a whole month since I saw you on TV. I kept quiet so long because I thought it was impolite to stare at you. I am from Bombay. I deal in designer clothes. I had come to Madras to buy stock.’ With this, the man wearing jeans held out his hand and, pleased with himself for having recognized Dinakar, lost none of his enthusiasm when the Ayyappa devotee failed to reciprocate. He simply continued his chat with the smooth-shaven, smiling hero who wore lovely shirts on TV.

‘My daughter is doing MBBS. I must get your autograph for her. You are getting down in Bangalore, aren't you? I will take your autograph later on.’

Confident that he would eventually get the autograph, the jeans-clad man opened an English magazine and sat in the seat opposite.

Shastri kept looking at the Ayyappa devotee without blinking his eyelids, holding out the steel box as if waiting for some further signs. Now he understood that this devotee who preferred to be called only ‘Swami’ was a famous man from TV. He was pleased that the man was looking with interest at his kuttavalakki. Shastri opened up another container, one full of curds, and said, ‘Wash your feet and hands and eat this.’ Although Swami didn't understand Shastri's language, he understood the intention. He went out of the cabin. Shastri then took out his rudraksha beads and began to do japa, feeling solace that what had entered him was not an evil spirit.

∗

The other man sitting in the compartment, having finished his meal and now applying lime to his paan, began to seek conversation with Shastri. ‘I know that you are the famous kirtanakar Vishwanatha Shastri. I am also from your area. My grandfather, in his time, lost his areca-nut garden and left home. You might have heard the story of the Emden Boat. Because of this we had to give up agriculture and take to business. My business in Malnad is buying and selling areca. If you are a Shivalli Smrta, I am a Shivalli Madhva. I have heard your harikatha. The way you sing and describe Sri Krishna Paramatma, we can just see him. It is my punya that I saw you’ So saying, he offered the bag with the paan utensils to Shastri. Opening his eyes, still holding his rudraksha beads, Shastri said, ‘I have not yet finished my night meal.’

‘But you are giving away your food to him — what will remain for you? Shall I bring some idlis for you when we reach the next station?’

‘I don't take food from hotels. When I travel I carry some curds and avalakki. Even after sharing with him, I will have some left over. Anyhow, I'm grateful to you for your offer. May I know your good name?’ Shastri said, happy to return to his own language.

2

Later, in moments of need, Shastri would get strength from remembering how — in pain he couldn't fully understand — he had watched Swami eating, with great appetite, the plateful of curd and beaten rice. Some door which had been closed was suddenly open. He began to feel afraid. While Shastri was searching for bananas in his deerskin bundle, the Ayyappa devotee, who was looking more and more like a true swami to him, searched in his own bag for bananas and apples and grapes. He took them out with his left hand, placed them on the seat, and with his right hand gestured to say, ‘Take these.’ ‘Must be from a good traditional family,’ Shastri thought. Shastri couldn't be certain whether his reply to Swami in the rude Bombay Hindi of his previous life was appropriate for the feelings that Swami's Hindi expressed. ‘Are you full, Swami?’ he asked.

There was a pause. Then Swami said softly, ‘You must call me Dinakar, you are my elder.’ Shastri, hearing these soft hesitant words, felt as if he were receiving punya from a previous birth, and it swept away his fear of hell.

‘From your kuttavalakki I remembered the name Mother used to call me, “Putani,”’ Dinakar said. ‘What does Putani mean? If the name suits me, call me by that name.’

When the man dressed in fashionable jeans heard this conversation, he closed his India Today, laughed and said, this time in Hindi, ‘Achcha, my guess was right, then.’ Then he returned to his magazine.

Dinakar, to enable Shastri to understand, began to speak in Hindi slowly and simply.

‘I have heard that my mother was from Kannada country. When I was five, she died in the Ganga at Hardwar. Many years later, because of a friend's mother, I remembered that my own mother fed me kuttavalakki, for I loved it very much. And now your kindness has brought that back to me. As for my father, I don't know who he was. I might have lost him earlier than I lost my mother. Now, I have been trying to lose my name these past two months or so’

Dinakar smiled in a beguiling manner. With what effortless intimacy he spoke. His words seemed to Shastri like a sudden gift of grace.

‘For your sake, I will return to my name. If you like, I will even return to the pet name that Mother gave me.’

This time, Dinakar spoke as if making fun of himself — he had made this part of his engaging TV manner — and then continued with some seriousness, ‘Achcha, I need help from you. Twenty-five years ago, in Hardwar, I got acquainted with someone from Mangalore. I hear he is now a famous advocate. For a whole long month, we were close friends. This was also because of his mother — her name is Sitamma — the only person I ever felt was like my true mother. If Amma is still living, I want to meet her again’

Taking from his bag an old address book, Dinakar showed Shastri the address of one Narayan Tantri. The sign that his whole life would change became stronger, and again in anguish Shastri forced himself to return to his everyday personality. ‘Ayyo! These people are very dear to me, I know them very well. I always stop for a day at their place on the way to my village. Your friend's mother is still there. Every time I go, she makes me recite from a Purana. In these ten or fifteen years, I must have recited the same Purana many times to her. I myself will take you to them. This train reaches Bangalore in the evening and then at night there is a luxury bus to Mangalore.’ Shastri surprised himself with his own volubility.

As he used his Bombay Hindi to speak of his present calling, Shastri remembered that he had learnt that language half a century ago, when he used to wear a shirt and pyjamas and a black cap to hide his brahmin tuft, with no caste mark on his forehead, while wandering like a lost spirit on the streets of Bombay. Therefore he felt that it was not he who was speaking. but the demon that had entered him. Yet Dinakar looked at him with such earnest hope that Shastri spoke on without holding himself back.

‘“Putani” means a dear son. I have no children now. The one daughter I had, walked out of my house two years ago. It is all my fate. You could have been my son.’

When Shastri risked saying those words, Dinakar replied with unaffected courtesy.

‘If you feel like calling a bearded bumpkin like me your son, what can I call you? Shall I call you Chikappa, or Dodappa, or Mama?’

Hearing Dinakar speak in this way, Shastri was so shaken that he felt himself drained and insubstantial, like a wraith. But Dinakar was cheerful and, when the man in jeans took his autograph book out from his briefcase, he scrawled in Hindi, ‘Not from the Dinakar of TV, but rather an ignorant putani who is now reaching Bangalore.’

Then, looking at Shastri, who had become pale, Dinakar spoke as sweetly as a putani. ‘Chikappa, your Hindi sounds good to me. But please don't address me in the plural’.

Shastri kept staring at the amulet around Dinakar's neck, and what Dinakar now said in explanation made him even more fearful.

‘Look, Chikappa, this amulet was tied around my neck before my mother went into the river Ganga. She never came back again. The food you fed me made me remember what happened. For forty years I have worn this amulet as matra-raksha.’

Hearing this, Shastri closed his eyes, grasped his rudraksha beads and silently prayed, ‘Shiva, Shiva, protect me.’

3

Shastri was stupefied, as if he had been stricken. The language embellished for the pleasure of others which he had cultivated for recitation of the Puranas; the lewd language which he had learned in Bombay as if in a previous birth — neither could express what he was beginning to understand in his anxiety. Dinakar was insisting that he accept a ride in his hired car to Mangalore.

‘Look, Chikappa. Although I may be an Ayyappa bhakta, still I have a credit card.’

‘Ayyo, it is not a question of expense. It is not safe to travel in the Ghat section during the night. I myself have plenty of money. I earn not less than five lakhs of rupees from growing areca. And have I children or grandchildren to spend it on? Why then should I bother about money, why bother about expenses? No, in order to work off my karma, I have cultivated this addiction. I keep on wandering, keep on doing what I do.’

Speaking these words with effort, Shastri found himself desiring to address Dinakar as Putani, his dear child, but the endearment stuck in his throat. ‘What if he is the son of Pundit, what if he is that prostitute's son?’

∗

The taxi shared by Shastri and Dinakar wove this way and that, through narrow lanes, climbing up and down, and finally stopped in front of the bungalow of ‘Narayan Tantri, Advocate’. Dinakar, whose eyes had become jaded from living in Delhi, was cheered at the sight of the Mangalore-tiled roofs, the many tones of faded brick-coloured tiles, the little porches jutting out from the faces of the old houses.

‘Don't tell them who I am, Chikappa. I would like to see whether “Mother” will recognize me after twenty-five years, especially dressed as I am now. If Amma does recognize me, it will mean that Dinakar has not yet become nameless.’

Dinakar had become very light-hearted. Walking easily, the bag swinging from his shoulder, he opened the gate. Green hedges, mango trees and coconut trees had half hidden an old bungalow to which winding paths led, as if the bungalow were playing hide-and-seek on its two acres of land.

Shastri, counting his rudraksha beads, followed Dinakar.

An old woman was standing in the veranda outside the, house, her white hair neatly combed. The eyes in her wrinkled face caught the light of the pole lamp; they shone in expectation of discovering who the visitors were. If a person is thin, it is said, you cannot tell their age. Sitamma looked not very different from her Hardwar days. She had more wrinkles and more white hair, that was all. Her white sari and her wet hair knotted at the end showed that she had just finished her bath.

The rangoli box in her hand made plain why she stood in the veranda. That black stone box must be the one she had bought in Hardwar when, along with other pilgrims, she had come to stay in the dharamshala built by Tripathi, Dinakar's foster father. Within a couple of days, the lustre in Sitamma's face had endeared her to Tripathi, and she had come to stay in their house. Every day she would get up at dawn, sweep and sprinkle the veranda, and after a bath in the river Ganga, she would spread her hair on her back. Then, with great concentration, she would take up pinches of different-coloured rangoli powder and, slowly sifting it between two fingers, draw on the earth of the veranda. So the ancient house of Tripathi suddenly acquired the charm of new prosperity. Sitamma had taken the vow of cooking for herself, and she insisted on doing all of the cooking. When the rangoli-laying was over, she would go into the kitchen to make upma or kesaribath or idlis, and feed everyone in the house as if she were their own mother.

She was at that time in her middle years, a widow of about forty-five. Tripathi was already seventy-five, a rich man from a good family, and a well-known charitable soul. With great affection, he would call Sitamma ‘little sister.’

‘Little sister, we too are brahmins, we don't even eat onions. You don't have to do all the cooking, you can eat what we eat.’

Since Tripathi spoke in Hindi, Sitamma couldn't understand him. But her son Narayan Tantri had learnt Hindi in school as a result of the zeal of the Hindi movement, and also because he loved debates. Therefore, he became her constant interpreter.

∗

Dinakar now stood before Sitamma and said ‘Amma’ and Sitamma, with narrowed eyes, gazed at the amulet as Shastri had done. Then she looked into Dinakar's face. Her eyes slowly began to shine with the compassion of a mother and, as she went back in time, it seemed she was recreating him. Dinakar, in sweet pain, watched apprehensively.

‘Ayyo, isn't it Dinakar?’ she said. Because she was in a state of madi, having just bathed, she did not embrace him immediately. But her eyes gave him all the pleasure of a mother's touch. A moment passed like this. Then Sitamma turned to Shastri and said, ‘What, Shastri-gale, why shouldn't I bathe again and then make your food?’ So saying, she came and took Dinakar's hand, not even asking why he hadn't come to see her all these years. She cried out, ‘Nagaveni, bring coffee!’ Then, when she started to go inside to bring the rattan chairs out to the veranda, Dinakar said, ‘Amma, lay your rangoli, I want to watch.’ Although she didn't understand the words, Sitamma guessed his meaning.

‘You always liked that, didn't you? Sit down. I will draw what you used to like in Hardwar. Watch while you drink your coffee. And you, Shastri-gale, go and have your bath. There is hot water if you want.’ Smiling to herself, she squatted down to lay the rangoli.

With her thumb and index finger she took a pinch of rangoli powder and rubbed it to make it firm, moving her fingers just enough for the delicate thin line to appear. In a moment, at the very center of the swept and cleaned veranda, she had drawn two intersecting triangles, one upward-pointing and the other downward-pointing. In one, god's grace descended from heaven to earth; in the other, the soul ascended, aspiring toward god. Because of Sitamma's faultless eye, both met in perfect harmony.

Dinakar drank his aromatic coffee from a silver cup, becoming immersed in Sitamma's creation, as he used to do twenty-five years before. What for thousands of years took form on the walls of temples and in the verandas of cottages, no matter how poor, had begun to manifest this morning on the veranda swept with cow-dung. A vine where one was necessary, and a leaf on the vine; for every leaf a flower, and a swastika to guard it all, and then peacocks, and then — look — there was Lord Ganesha, and even his mouse to ride on.

As she drew the mouse, Sitamma smiled and said to herself, not bothering that Dinakar didn't understand Kannada, ‘This has gone a little crooked. My fingers aren't strong enough. My hand shakes a little. Tomorrow I will do it better. Tomorrow Ganesha will come in the center. Tomorrow he won't be sitting, he will be dancing.’

4

‘My Nani always gets up late. But his son Gopal is up very early. When we went to Hardwar, Gopal was a very small child. He had lost his mother. A girl called Gangubai used to look after him, you may remember her. She was crazy for getting bangles fitted, wherever she saw bangles she had to have them put on. Do you remember all this? She has a son now, younger than Gopal by a year. Gangu went to school again and has become a high school madam. Her child's name is Prasad. Our Nani got a house built for her. Gangubai got married from her mother's side. Her husband doesn't understand much, but he's a gentle one, like a cow. He also looks after cows himself, and he milks them. Some milk he keeps for the family, the rest he sells. You see?

‘My grandson Gopal has begun to run about a lot these days. My son became president of this municipality — my big son did such great work — and now my grandson wants to save the whole nation. For appearance's sake he got “lawyer” put beside his name on the signboard along with his father's name. But does he care for his father's advice? Today he's in one party, tomorrow he is in another. Early morning he gets up and begins to phone while listening to Subbulakshmi's Venkatesha Stotra. You will see for yourself how he will buzz around when he sees you. Whenever we have seen you on TV we have talked about you. Nani says you must have forgotten us. But I always tell him, “I will not die before seeing him again.” I say to Nani, “Why don't you write to him?” but Nani is lazy. “He has become a big man, he must have forgotten us years ago,” says my son. What big man you are I don't know.’

As Dinakar sat on a stool in the kitchen listening to Sitamma, not understanding a word, she came to pinch his cheek — then remembered that she was in madi and laughed, stepped away, and squatted again before the earthen oven. She went on talking in the same way, waiting for the kadubu to be steamed.

Sitamma always cooked squatting at the firewood stove. She herself mixed the mud and built it, the main oven opening sideways into another, and then another. Every morning she would clean this stove, sweep it with cow-dung mixed with coal dust, and lay rangoli on it. Nobody else could arrange the pieces of firewood in the way she did, to make them burn with such a glow. In the main oven it would be bright and hot, and in the other two the flames would be diminished. On each one of these outlets Sitamma put whatever was the proper thing to cook there. She would sit before the stove and become as absorbed as when she was laying rangoli — here, lifting a little piece of wood to let fire catch in it, or pushing in or pulling out or placing one piece of wood on top of another, so that the fire would cooperate with another piece of fire, making the fire grow. Watching her skill in building the fire, Dinakar again remembered the Hardwar days.

In Hardwar she had got the right kind of mud and built a stove for Tripathi's house, and she who had come for ten days stayed for a month.

‘What was I saying?’ she said to herself, and kept on talking, even though Dinakar didn't understand.

‘As soon as I saw the amulet, I knew it was you. Let us see whether Nani recognizes you in your new attire. And what about Gangu? But how could they forget you, they have even seen you on TV. How could they forget your eyes? If you had not taken this vrata, I would have waved drshti over you’

Sitamma noticed Shastri at the kitchen door, listening intently as she spoke.

‘Do you see how mad I am, Shastri-gale? How I am chattering away, forgetting that this boy doesn't know Kannada? In Tripathi's house, my belly felt as if on fire when I looked at this orphan boy. What a great man Tripathi was. He didn't let this boy down. Only five years old, they say, when his mother came to Tripathi's house, herself like an orphan. She came with a trunk and a bag full of clothes. Tripathi knew only that she was from the South. He was such a large-hearted man. Seeing what state she was in, he didn't ask, “Who are you? What about you? Why did you come?” and all that. He just gave her a place to cook her food and stay. He got her all the materials for setting up a kitchen. Just one time he asked her, because of the kumkum on her forehead, “Shall I go and search for your husband?” But when she stood there, not answering, her eyes full of tears, he never asked that question again. He even warned the other women not to ask her any such questions. Isn't one woman always curious about another?’

Seeing Shastri growing pale, Sitamma asked, ‘Aren't you well? Didn't you sleep last night?’ and she gave him a wooden plank so he could sit in the kitchen.

‘Some five or six months passed like this. Then, I am told, early one morning the boy's mother got up and went to Tripathi. He was meditating in his puja room. This boy's mother was said to be a very graceful woman. Her eyes were exactly like the boy's. She wore the marriage-thread around her neck as well as this amulet. Tripathi told me all this, you see? — I started wanting to say something but I am telling you something else now — this boy's mother set down her trunk before Tripathi, touched his feet, and opened the lid of the trunk.

‘Tripathi couldn't believe his eyes. There were at least two maunds of gold. A necklace, ear studs, bangles, and a gold belt. Not only that, there were also bars of gold. Tripathi showed it all to me. He guarded that trunk like a cobra.

“Think of my son as your grandson, and think of me as your daughter,” Dinakar's mother said, bowing down to God and then to Tripathi. Tripathi touched her head, blessing her, and locked the trunk in his iron safe. Could my two eyes alone be enough to see all that gold? The ornaments were from the days of the Vijayanagar Empire. They were on top, and the bars of gold were below.

‘A month passed after this happened, and Tripathi became attached to Dinakar. He was like a child of the house. Tripathi had him and his mother live in his house, got him educated with his own money. He never touched the gold. But that is another big story …

‘One morning, Dinakar's mother went to bathe in the river Ganga, and she never came back. They found her corpse some distance away. People said she could have slipped into the river. But everyone in Tripathi's house wondered why she had put the amulet around her son's neck just before she went to bathe. Why did she wake her son so early that day, and give him milk to drink?’

Sitamma had begun to cry. Dinakar guessed whose story she was telling. Shastri, sitting with closed eyes, counted his beads.

‘As soon as I saw the amulet, I knew that it contained a Sri Chakra and was from our parts. From which house is this boy, who is his father, why did his mother leave home with a little child? Shastri-gale, you may recite from the Purana, but only Veda Vyas could have written a story like Dinakar's. The whole country thinks this child has grown into a very intelligent man, but this man doesn't even know who is his mother, who is his father, which is his town, so perhaps he wants to believe that God himself is his mother and father and that is why he wears these kinds of clothes and goes wandering here and there.’

Then Sitamma looked over at Shastri and became alarmed.

‘What is it? What is wrong?’ she said, and quickly brought him water to drink.

5

As he listened to Sitamma's words, Shastri felt as if two pairs of red eyes were staring at each other furiously in his head. At times his second wife, Mahadevi, had looked at him silently with just such hatred. And at times he had looked at her in the same way. Later, he would feel puzzled, wondering why such fury burned in him without any reason.

His daughter had looked at him with that kind of hatred when she left home. When he had heard that she was in love with somebody in college, he had felt that burning fury and had said words that should never have been spoken. She too had spoken terrible words to her father. ‘Can I be the same person,’ he had asked himself in wonder, ‘who in reciting a Purana can describe Prahlad or Dhruva with such moving tenderness?’

He wanted to know, yet he felt as if he was always running away from himself. Would the amulet around Dinakar's neck stop this running away? Seeing it had somehow brought him face to face with the my sterious rage inside him. Suddenly realizing that both pairs of furious staring eyes were his own, he felt fresh terror and again tried to turn his mind somewhere else.

Then he said, ‘Sitamma, keep Dinakar in your house for two days. When I come back I will take him to my house in the jungle. He has agreed to stay with me for a couple of days before going to Kerala. I will go now, I won't eat anyway, because it is Ekadashi.’ Although urged not to leave, Shastri went, hired a taxi from the stand, directed it away from the proper road, and entered a forest in which was the ruined temple of a goddess whom he had chosen for special devotion. The taxi had to travel on a path fit only for bullock-carts. ‘I'll give you twice the fare,’ he had said in the tone of the local landlords, and so the driver agreed to venture on the narrow bullock-cart roads. Shastri stopped the taxi in a thick jungle. He told the driver, ‘Wait for half an hour,’ then he pushed his way through bushes, making a path for himself until he stood before the ruined shrine of Bhagavati.

Shastri had been paying two hundred and fifty rupees each month to a poor brahmin from a nearby village to come daily and light a lamp for Bhagavati. At one time he thought of building her a new temple, but had held back from doing so because he feared that the aura of the Devi would suffer if he interfered with the existing shrine. He believed this in spite of knowing that the Shastras allowed the rebuilding of a shrine once the proper rituals were performed. He believed that this very Bhagavati was the fierce goddess who presided over the eyes that were burning in his head.

About a year earlier, unable to stand the daily quarrels with his wife, he had made a vow to Bhagavati and then brought Mahadevi to this place. She had stood before Bhagavati and begun to stare as if in a trance. Then she gave such an intense shriek that it slashed the silence of the forest. Looking at Shastri with her piercing eyes, she started to babble. Her accusations terrified him. How could she know that he had killed his first wife by smashing her head with a wooden lid? Mahadevi roared that she had become the ghost of that wife, and would go on haunting him.

Mahadevi became Saroja herself. ‘Oh butcher brahmin, you killed me by beating me on my head! And were you not about to kill your daughter by your second wife?’

Shastri closed his eyes before Bhagavati and said, ‘Bhagavati, did you make Mahadevi say a lie? Why did you have me believe until now that I was a murderer? Is Dinakar my son or is he the son of that Malayali pundit? Give me a sign so that I may know the truth. Don't make me keep wandering like a wraith.’

But Shastri did not receive any sign, and the blood-red eyes in his head kept on staring in fury.

∗

He made his way out of Bhagavati's forest to where he had left the taxi. Then he directed the driver to take him to another village, some ten miles from Udupi.

In that village, there was only one big house, the one that Shastri had got built. When Shastri was in this house, the burning eyes in his head got cooled. It was the house of his mistress, Radha.

∗

In Shastri's family, his elder brother had hated him, and Shastri hated him too. That brother suffered from asthma, didn't have any children, and his wife had died.

Shastri's elder brother never married again. He begged Shastri to marry and save the family, but Shastri would not agree. He did not like living in a jungle, cultivating the garden, eating — all throughout the rainy season — jackfruit palya, or sambar made with cucumber. And he did not want to live under his miserly brother's control, every day hearing that asthmatic breathing. So, fifty years ago, he had taken his share of the property and gone to Bombay, where he began squandering money. He also opened a hotel, the Bhagavati Krupa. But although he owned the hotel, he had somebody else sitting at the cash counter. Shastri had no care for what he earned or what he spent.

Nobody who had known him in his Bombay days would now say, ‘This is the same Shastri.’ In Bombay he had taken to wearing pyjamas and a shirt, and with a cap on his head seemed transformed into a Sindhi or a Marwari, even though he hadn't had enough courage to cut off his brahmin tuft.

It was also in Bombay that Shastri developed a taste for women. Pimps became his friends. He got into the habit of playing cards the whole day. His eyes were always red from going without sleep. Constant smoking had given him a cough, and he began to worry that, like his brother, he would get asthma.

∗

One day, in a rich prostitute's house, Shastri saw a young girl. She spoke both Kannada and Tulu, and was seventeen or eighteen years old. Shastri was twenty-five. A pimp dressed in silk dhotra, trying to look like a respectable householder, had recommended ‘a fresh high-school girl of your own side,’ and taken him to look her over.

Shastri learned that the girl had been enticed away from a poor family in a village not far from Shimoga.

He was surprised at the compassion he felt for her, although he was a libertine and full of crude sexual desires for women. The madam who had bought the girl could not be won over by three of the four upayas — sama, bheda, danda — so Shastri then used the fourth upaya — dana — and gave the madam four times the money that she had paid. He also gave the name Radha to the grateful girl, and took her to the Bhagavati Krupa, where he kept her in one of his rooms as his woman. He gave up cards and gambling and instead began to keep an eye on her.

When a telegram came saying that his brother was not keeping well, Shastri took Radha with him. He left her in a Mangalore hotel with someone he trusted, and went to the village. By then his relatives were waiting for him to do the funeral rites.

The mouth of his asthmatic brother, which had always been open for breathing, was now closed. There were flies around his short pointed nose, that nose he had often felt like smashing. Even seeing his brother's corpse did not bring tears to his eyes. They had spoken such cruel words to each other. Now, remembering this, it seemed to him that they were a cursed family. He had never enjoyed his mother's love, she had died giving birth to him. His father, in old age, had married another woman. This stepmother thought that she was cursed, being the wife of an old man, and she made it her aim in life to give pain to everyone. Finally, she died after getting bitten by a snake in the garden. The father died of dog-bite, and Shastri's brother's wife of pneumonia. Shastri's brother then lived alone, a miser who dug up every corner of the house searching for gold which might have been buried there by ancestors.

There was already a lot of wealth which had been bequeathed to them — a trunk full of gold which must have been looted by some ancestor during the fall of the Vijayanagar Empire. The brother, looking for more, first dug up the whole house, then began digging in the garden. One day while digging, he died.

Shastri now owned the entire property. After his brother's funeral rites he took out the trunk from the iron safe to satisfy himself that his brother had not squandered the gold, and he felt relieved. Then he brought his ‘dear parrot’ Radha from the hotel and had a small cottage built for her on the bank of a river near an arecanut garden. Then, considering who could look after her safety, he remembered Radha saying that she had an aunt in Shimoga. This aunt's husband was a tailor. Radha's mother — who had been mistress to a rich man in Chennagiri — had grown old and unwanted, so Shastri brought the mother as well. He bought a tiled house for Radha's family, and set up a cloth shop in the town for the tailor.

Shastri had no neighbours of his own caste near his house and gardens in the forest. His relatives who lived at a distance acted distant as well. They would have to come when there was a funeral rite in the house. Apart from this, nobody wanted to be anywhere near his place, and so Shastri could carry on his relationship with Radha fearlessly and unabashedly. He also bought a cloth-topped Ford car and took to wearing a draped dhoti with a shirt over it, and pump shoes; he drove his car on the cart tracks. All these things separated him still more from his relatives.

Two years went by in this way. Radha began to tell him, ‘I am anyhow your mistress, but you must also marry.’ He had no child by Radha, and this worried him. ‘Am I cursed to be without issue in this house as well?’ he thought.

‘It may be my fate to be without a child,’ Radha had said. ‘You should marry and see.’ In this way she kept after him.

Shastri had never in his life met another spirit like Radha. It was not that she was without desires, but that all her desires were contained within the limits of family life. If she could get coconut milk for her gruel and, on top of that, mango pickle, this was what made her happy. And Shastri, who went around burning in anger, would always soften before Radha, enchanted by the charming words which came from her sweet mouth. Unable to say no to her, and also curious to know whether he could father a child, he went in search of a bride.

Nobody in those parts would give a girl to this wealthy, cursed house. They would raise some objection about the household and then refuse. There was no family elder with whom Shastri was close, someone who could go about arranging his marriage. And who respects a man who goes on his own to ask for a girl? But at last, Shastri came to know of a girl in a poor family near Chikmagalur. Wearing a gold-bordered shawl and draped in a dhoti, with a turban on his head like a Mysorean and kumkum on his forehead to make him look like a proper, traditional person, Shastri went to ask for a bride.

Having produced eight daughters and desiring to get at least the first one married, the parents — noting the prospective son-in-law's wealth, lineage, his family, his horoscope — and showing no desire to know any other detail about him, agreed to give their daughter Saroja in marriage.

Saroja was a beautiful, classically-featured girl. With her large, heavenly, indifferent eyes, Saroja got married without ever saying what she wanted. In the beginning, it had made Shastri proud that she liked reading books, that she was good at reciting the Mahabharata. Radha too was pleased that the girl was educated.

Radha even attended the wedding. Dressed like goddess Gauri, she came in splendour, the only loving member of the bridegroom's party. Radha's relationship with the wealthy Shastri wasn't unknown to Saroja's parents, but they acted as if they didn't know. Their only concern was where to seat Radha for the wedding dinner. Radha, using all the savings from the garden Shastri had given her, had bought gifts for the bride: a sari, and coral-studded gold bangles made by the famous craftsmen of Mangalore. No one else on Shastri's side had taken such delight in this marriage. No one else had given a present. Saroja's father and mother, worn out by being parents to eight girls, were comforted by Radha's affectionate nature, by her wealth and her expensive gifts, and felt that their daughter didn't have to worry.

To all their close relations they could boast, ‘My son-in-law has a car, and he has a hotel in Bombay. Someone looks after it and sends him cash every month. He owns hundreds of acres of areca-nut garden. What's best, my daughter has neither a mother-in-law nor a father-in-law. She can manage things exactly as she pleases'

The house-entering ceremony was over, the bride's party went back. Shastri remembers clearly even now that his beautiful wife never lifted her face and looked at him. He came to understand this was not shyness but contempt. If he took her hand playfully, she would stand like a statue of stone. In his memory, her eyes never met his eyes but passed over him as if he did not exist.

Shastri chided her, beat her, but nothing he did could change Saroja's indifference. She slept by his side dutifully, allowed him to enter her, but no fruit came of their contact.

Five years passed in this way, without Saroja becoming pregnant. Radha had supplied many medicines. She even counselled Shastri how to win over his wife in bed. But whatever erotic play he attempted did not loosen Saroja. He repelled her, and when the sexual act was over she would go to the bathroom; pour water over her head, then come and lie down on the bed with wet hair. In order to let his rage escape, Shastri would drive his car to Radha's house in the middle of the night.

The surprising thing was that Saroja was friendly with Radha, although without any touch of intimacy. Radha was fond of books, and she would send to Saroja stories and novels which she had read. In return, Saroja would send to Radha books she had got from her mother's house. Radha sent Saroja jasmine flowers which she had grown, delicately woven in banana fibre. After first offering them to Sharada, whom she worshipped, Saroja would fix them in her braided hair.

Radha would make excuses to visit the house, saying that she needed banana leaves, or rope, or rangoli powder. She would bring beaten rice that she herself had made, and tonde grown in her garden. Saroja always welcomed her politely, saying, ‘Come in,’ and would make her coffee. But she spoke no more than was sufficient for the occasion. The two did not address one another by name. If Shastri was there when Radha came, he would straightaway call the servant, go to his car, and supervise the cleaning of it. If Radha stayed for a long while, the car which had been driven in the dusty village tracks would become so clean and spotless that it shone like the statue of a God.

6

Meanwhile, something happened that would change Shastri's whole life. A Kannada-speaking Malayali whose name was Karunakara Pundit opened an ayurvedic shop in Udupi. He was almost as old as Shastri, but he had a moustache and beard, and these enhanced the glow on his face. He had not cut his hair, but wore it in a big tuft. On his forehead he had a large sandal-paste mark, and his face had a quality of equanimity. His car was a better one than Shastri's. His clothes and demeanour made him appear a man of fortune. His Hindi was better than Shastri's, and he even spoke English. He had knowledge of allopathic medicine, and also of Sanskrit. For him, Sanskrit was as easy as drinking water.

Shastri and Pundit became acquainted, proceeding from asking one another, ‘Of what model is your car?’ Finally, Shastri confidentially obtained some aphrodisiac preparations from Pundit. Their acquaintance grew, they became friends, and one day Shastri took Pundit home for a meal.

As soon as Pundit entered the house, he looked around, and then stood meditating. His gaze became more serious and contemplative and Shastri, worried, lit a cigarette and stood before him in humility. Then Shastri gestured for Karunakara Pundit to sit down on a modern sofa that Shastri had bought after his brother's death, when he became the master of the house. Again Pundit closed his eyes and began to do japa, touching with his thumb the joints of his fingers. Then he opened his eyes and said to Shastri, ‘Don't feel bad if I tell you something. I have some knowledge of tantra and astrology, which I have received from the traditional learning of my family.’

Shastri's regard for him doubled. He said, respectfully, ‘Yes, please speak …’

‘There is an evil in this house. Don't misunderstand me. It is that in some bygone time a woman was murdered here. That is why there is no progeny, no peace, for those who live here now. Some lowly spirits hover over people living here. As soon as I came in, I felt two burning eyes open in my brain. And when two other eyes opened to stare back at them, I began to do japa.’ Hearing this from Karunakara Pundit, Shastri was stunned.

‘A tantric rite must take place in this house. It should be performed jointly by husband and wife. Towards the end of the rite, the lady of your house will have to sit naked and offer worship.’ Karunakara Pundit spoke as if he were prescribing the manner in which to take a medicine.

Shastri sighed and asked, ‘Will you arrange to get it done?’ Karunakara Pundit agreed and, consulting the almanac, found an auspicious day for performing the ritual. ‘It will have to be done secretly,’ he said.

7

Everything was made ready for the ritual. Saroja's eyes, usually blank with indifference, became totally intent as soon as Karunakara Pundit, wearing his silk dhoti, began laying the mandala on the floor using rangoli powder, kumkum and turmeric. Piously, she made cotton wicks for him. She shelled a coconut. She brought oil in a polished bronze long-spouted jug. Shastri felt happy, thinking that these were all good omens.

A sprightliness appeared in Saroja which Shastri had never observed before. The uneven parting in her hair was made straight. She put on all her bridal ornaments. After the ritual, the coffee she prepared was just the right temperature, and had not lost its aroma. Now she did not make coffee by heating an old decoction. It seemed to Shastri as if she were gradually developing a respectful attachment for Karunakara Pundit.

Of the prescribed month's puja, fifteen days were over. As it happened, the ritual had begun after the purification bath marking the end of menstruation and the beginning of fertility. When Saroja menstruated again, Shastri would have to do the ritual alone. And after another purification bath she would, for the last three days, have to sit naked and do the rites.

According to Karunakara Pundit, this was how it had to be done, even if others might perform it in a different way. Shastri felt confident that Saroja, because of her reverence for Pundit, would agree to the last stage of the ritual.

During this whole time, Shastri was not to sleep with a woman. He obeyed Karunakara Pundit and didn't even visit Radha. Saroja went through her menstruation and the sacred bath, sat naked and did the rites.

Karunakara Pundit would not accept any money from Shastri. But he did consent to accept a rudraksha mala in gold, and silk clothes, and he blessed the couple. Touching Saroja's head, he said ‘May you become a mother of ten children.’

Shastri, who was very pleased, told him, ‘You should come and go more often.’ So Karunakara Pundit began coming and going more often. One evening when Shastri had gone to Radha's house, Pundit came and then waited for him.

Shastri said to Saroja, ‘Tell Pundit that he should come in the morning, because I won't be here in the evenings.’ After a couple of days, Shastri grew suspicious and asked, ‘Has Pundit come?’

‘Yes,’ Saroja said with indifference, Pundit had come.

Shastri controlled his rising anger and with mocking politeness asked, ‘You gave him coffee, of course?’

‘Yes.’

‘Didn't you tell him that I wouldn't be here in the evenings, that he should come in the morning?'

Shastri remembers again and again how Saroja didn't reply to him, but turned and went into the house. The manner in which she stepped across the broad high threshold, raising her leg in utter disregard, straight-backed, pulling the end of her sari tight around her proud long neck, all that created a fire in his heart. Shastri got in his car and drove to Udupi. With a smile, Karunakara Pundit welcomed Shastri's burning face.

‘What, Shastri-gale, you insist that I should come, but when I come you are not there. Every day you disappear. But your wife treats me with great courtesy.’

Karunakara Pundit took a pinch of snuff, then continued in an intimate tone, ‘Your wife didn't reply to me when I asked her whether you have changed your bed-chamber. Perhaps I shouldn't have asked that question when you were not there … But tell me, do you find that the house is more peaceful now?’

The charm of Pundit's words calmed Shastri's mind. Pundit went on, ‘I have asked you this because whenever I come to your house I see an angry spirit hiding in some dark corner or other, lying in wait to get hold of you. It is no ordinary spirit, but a bloodthirsty one. So you must keep meditating on the mantra that I gave you.’

‘I came to ask you not to come in the evening, but in the morning. I am rarely at home in the evening — I have another garden that I have to look after. There is some disease in the coconut grove.’

Shastri tried to say this in a friendly manner. Earlier, he had imagined that Pundit did not know of his relationship with Radha. Yet now he felt frightened because, if Pundit could hear a spirit hiding in a corner of the house, wouldn't he know everything?

‘Do you see something red burning in your brain?’ Pundit continued. ‘If, by God's grace, everything goes well, you will feel cool eyes opening in your heart. Until then, you will never be free from the bloodthirsty spirit. Such spirits make you roar “me me me” and so there is no peace for you. Think of the blue sky, imagine yourself floating in it, and meditate. I have prayed to my ishtadevata that she should warn me if either you or your wife is in danger. You requested that I come in the morning, but that's not possible for me. I have my own vows to keep, and patients come to see me.’ He took another pinch of snuff and said, ‘Look here, I too have a weakness. As long as we live in the body, we are all human. Kama, krodha, moha, leave no one untouched.’ Pundit laughed and gathered his dishevelled hair into a knot. Shastri remembers that he burned, seeing how attractive Pundit looked as he tied up his hair.

Feeling he was under a spell, Shastri wanted to shout, ‘Don't come home when I am not there!’ If only he could say this, Pundit's spell would be broken. But he could not make the words come out of his mouth. ‘If this Pundit has such a spell on me, what about Saroja?’ Worrying over this, he drove his car back to the village. ‘Pundit looks like a great connoisseur, perhaps he eats some special thing to make his breath smell so intoxicating … and what sandal-paste does he put on his body?’ he wondered.

As soon as he reached home, Shastri began to fidget, thinking ‘Saroja cooks and serves my food, gives me coffee whenever I want, but without speaking or looking at me, and even when she does look, her eyes still seem to be gazing far away. But when she sits with a book, her eyes appear to fix on something. Then she seems so absorbed, it's as if she is communing with herself. When she is stringing jasmine flowers her teeth bite her lower lip and she smiles as if sweetly conversing with the stem of the flower. Sometimes she puts her hands on her hips and, gazing at the parijata tree, hums to herself. All these things she does when she thinks that I am not looking at her. Otherwise, she is like another ghost in this house.’

Shastri began to feel anguish whenever he prepared himself to sleep with Saroja. After lying by her side for a while and finding himself unable to do anything, he would get up and go to Radha. One night, telling himself that Pundit probably would not come, he went to Radha, who made him drink almond milk and advised him not to come to her house, but to sleep with his wife.

She tried to teach him ways of seduction by showing him what he should do around the thigh, around the yoni, how to set the scene to win over Saroja. Shastri felt very envious, thinking that some other man must have done all these things to Radha. ‘It's not as if you have no such knowledge. Why should I have learned it from anyone else?’ Trying to console him, she continued, ‘Have you forgotten? What have you not done to me when you brought me to this house, and what have you not got me to do to you? It seems a wicked spirit has entered you and made you dull’ she laughed. Shastri was shocked to hear her speak about the spirit in the same words that Pundit had used.

The next day, wanting to test his suspicions, he went at his usual time in the evening to Radha, but waited until eleven o'clock before coming back home. Pundit's car was in front of his house. His heart began to pound heavily. He feared that he might murder two people that night.

Trembling, he pushed the door to his house. It was not bolted. ‘What guts!’ he thought, wondering in his rage at their boldness. His ears were ringing from the blood that was rushing into his head, and along with the ringing in his ears he heard the alap of music. ‘The bastards must be going at their work together with the music on the radio,’ he thought. His legs felt weak. The music was coming from the puja room where Pundit had conducted the ritual. He must have already made her naked there, telling her she would become sacred. Now the bastard must be giving her womb his gift of seed. Shastri groped his way to the door of the room. It was closed. He pushed it open.

Ten buds of light were burning in two brass oil-lamps. Between them sat Saroja, hair over her breast, one leg folded under her, playing on the tamboura. Although Shastri had pushed open the door noisily, her eyes remained closed. She kept on playing the tamboura brought from her mother's house as if his coming there was of no consequence at all. He knew that she had been taught music, but he had never heard her sing like this.

In front of her, Pundit was sitting in the lotus posture. Not looking at Shastri, yet aware that he had come, he signalled for Shastri to sit beside him. Pundit began to join the alap. Now his voice would merge with hers, continue where she stopped, and she would anticipate and join him again …

‘Arrey, he's playing host to me in my own house!’ Not knowing what to do, Shastri sat. Saroja finished singing, touched the tamboura to her eyes, and put it down. In the soft cool light of the oil-lamp, nothing was clearly visible. Shastri held his breath, feeling the red eyes hastening to open in his brain. At the same time, he thought, ‘No, I would not be able to beat and kill either Pundit or Saroja. I have become impotent.’

When the music ended, Pundit said to Saroja, ‘I will come tomorrow,’ and left the room. Shastri heard him slip on his chappals. Then heard the sound of his car starting. Then the drag on the first gear, and then the silence of all sounds receding. And then, in the cowshed, the now-and-then sound of the cows’s bells as they chewed. And then no other sound. He thought, ‘There must be only ghosts now, silently walking back and forth on their turned-around feet’

Saroja got up and, as if nothing had happened, went to the bedroom. Shastri collapsed where he sat, as if he had died and become a ghost.

Then a strange thing happened to him — a fearful sound arose in his closed mouth, as if he had become a cruel beast secretly wandering among the deep bushes of a thick jungle.

The sound he made was a long sound, going higher and higher, then falling and falling into silence, terrifying him even when silent … and then it began rising again. It was a moan, and it was the bellowing of a cruel animal.

No human animal could produce such a sound.

Shastri felt that his body was making a sound more terrible than the cruellest language, something like the empty husk of a language. Inside him now there swelled a huge prideful demon that could eat language, that would destroy the waves of alap created by Saroja's divine throat a little while ago. It was something that could destroy all beautiful and tender things, kill the earth's inborn urge for good, for what nurtures the roots of plants and trees, for what makes birds build nests for their young, for what gives insects the power to move. Moaning, full of the enormous malevolence inside him, he moved with long strides to his bedchamber. He lighted a lamp and looked down at Saroja as she was drifting into sleep.

Even demons could not have engaged in such a violent coupling. He tore the clothes off Saroja and fell on her, shrieking and moaning. The way in which he took her was meant to destroy the cold untouched core of her, that unearthly indifference which negated him. That she did not suffer like he suffered, that her eyes did not flare in anger, that she endured him as if all his tantrums were irrelevant — all this fed the demonic rage in him even more.

But he has wondered over the years whether at the last moment, somehow, she could have given way …

Now, getting down from the car at Radha's house, this is what came from nowhere into his mind.

8

It was a terrible moonless day. That day he killed Saroja. Or so he had thought for forty-five years, until he saw the amulet on Dinakar's neck.

Pundit had begun to come every evening. He seemed to have no inhibitions on account of propriety. That he was teaching music to Saroja was some sort of excuse for him. Also, he was growing medicinal plants in Shastri's backyard, where there was a deep pit of red earth. Even after digging up to a man's height, there was still fertile red earth left in it. Pundit himself had dug some up and kept it at the edge of the pit, using it for planting his new medicinal plants. He had given Saroja the job of watering the newly-arrived ones.

Shastri even saw her carrying red earth on an iron pan. But the great noise within him which had pierced him in his swollen fury had settled gradually to a tortured pitch, a quiet, tormented moan that stayed with him constantly, like a pulse-beat.

Then one evening, in the backyard, Pundit had his dhoti tied up around his waist and, as if no one else existed, was explaining to Saroja, ‘This is the scent of Vishnu.’ He stood close to her, giving off his fragrance. He had put the leaves and roots of the plant on her palm, crushed them, asked her to smell them, and helped her hand to her mouth so she could taste them. Even when Shastri came and stood in front of them like a devil, Pundit took no account of him. Seeing Pundit's straight hairy legs, Shastri's heart began to pound, his whole body reverberating and wailing like a tamboura.

He felt he was growing impotent. Sometimes he would get sexually aroused when Pundit sat in the puja room and joined his pitch to Saroja's, intensity growing wave after wave, the two bodies, male and female, joining in alap — and then he would go to Radha's house. But even with Radha he remained impotent. Radha had taken to lighting ghee-lamps for the gods, and she also prayed to a private spirit in which she believed. She prayed that Shastri should be blessed with a child, that the ghost which haunted his house should leave, and that Saroja should be liberated from her coldness and flower into womanliness — that her hostile womb should welcome Shastri's seed. Shastri knew all this.

‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow’ he would tell himself, ‘I will denounce the evil enchanter, I will spit in his face,’ and he built up courage talking to himself like that. But he became timid again, while that Pundit, with his hairy chest and hairy legs, grew like a great-striding Trivikram. Yet when he saw the two of them in the puja room, he would say to himself, ‘Let him go to hell and teach her music,’ and abandon his resolve.

One night he came home very late and saw that Pundit had parked his car in Shastri's accustomed place and was sleeping in his office. And in the bedroom Saroja slept, looking peaceful and remote.

Shastri became excited, imagining how Pundit would have had Saroja — if he did — and then he woke her up and took her. After it was over, she went out, took a head-bath, and came back. That made Shastri want to kill her. Unable to sleep by her side, he went and lay down on a mat in the room where Pundit was asleep. All through the night he ground his teeth, thinking that he had become a ghost in his own house. He watched every small movement of Pundit's as he slept, spent the whole dark night in this way.

Saroja probably gave coffee to Pundit when he was still half asleep in the morning. The bedding on which he had slept was neatly folded. Saroja must have done that. By now Pundit must have reached Udupi, bathed, applied sandal-paste on his body, and begun meditating on the art of seduction.

At the back of Shastri's house was a big hill, and on the hill was a jungle with leopards. In front of his house was a large veranda. Half a mile away was his nearest orchard. He owned many other orchards, and he also owned paddy-fields. Even his workers did not like to come anywhere near his house. The manager who looked after his estates had a plain tiled house near the workers' quarters. Shastri now went to these hutments, sought out the manager to scold him for not sending the men to work, and then went to oversee his other estates.

He visited Radha's house, ate some bananas, and drank hot milk. When he said that he would eat the dosas which she had made, she laughed, saying, ‘Such a thing is not permitted here.’ Shastri, observing the way she guarded his orthodoxy, forced a smile, thinking that he had not yet completely become a wraith. When she saw him smile so disturbingly, Radha went to the puja room, adjusted the burning wick, made the light burn brighter, and prayed for protection.

Shastri didn't feel like eating more than he had eaten already. So he wandered here and there, then came home at about three o'clock in the afternoon. He saw a pariah in the veranda and scolded him, ‘What work have you here? Go and graze the cattle.’ The pariah bowed and said, ‘Mother said she would give me the leftovers.’ Just then, Saroja came out and gave the pariah the lunch she had cooked for Shastri.

Shastri, waiting for Pundit's arrival, became aware that he was wailing again inside. He sat in his office, looking for the wailing to intensify, and willed, ‘Today should be the end.’ He received an omen from a lizard on the wall. It was then that the big clock struck and drummed its four hours into his brain.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of retching in the bathroom. He went to look and Saroja was there, trying to vomit but unable to do so. His vision darkening, he intoned like a wraith, ‘Have you become pregnant, whore?’ Afterwards, he often recalled the way she moved her neck as she stood there, bent over: was it to bring out the vomit, or to say ‘Yes’? That day, he had thought she was saying yes. Then Saroja stood straight, took water from the pitcher, and washed out her mouth. And the way she stood in front of him!

‘O you adulteress, have you become pregnant from that bastard Pundit?’ The demon inside him began to wail and laugh grotesquely. Didn't Saroja then stand calmly, unmoved, the amulet lying on her left breast as both breasts heaved with her breathing?

‘How could I have completely forgotten myself at that moment?’ he wondered. ‘Was it because I could never bear how her beautiful eyes looked at me with such indifference? Or did I imagine then that those eyes were saying, “Who are you, bastard, to ask me such a question?” Or did this bhava of mine cause itself to think so, in order to prepare itself for what was to follow?’

Shastri lifted the heavy wooden cover of the big brass pot that was kept for hot water. Saroja had put both her hands on her head and bent it, but it seemed to him that her gesture was not from fear or pleading for mercy. It was more like a cow shaking its head, struggling to free itself when you are about to untie its halter. Before realizing that he would do it, he had smashed her head three times with the wooden lid. He felt her blood splatter his face. Lifting her slumped body, he strode like a gloating demon on his two great legs, from the bathroom to the backyard. She had seemed dead, and he had thrown her into the red earth pit. Then he had come inside, wailing; had changed his clothes, thrown his blood-soaked clothes into the red earth pit on top of her, and driven away quickly in his car. ‘Why didn't I suspect that Saroja might not have died? I had beaten her only at the back of her head,’ he thought. But then he realized that if such an idea had come to him, he would have beaten her further and made sure to kill her.

∗

‘Soon Pundit will arrive, see what has happened, and inform the police,’ Shastri thought. Then he decided he would kill Pundit too and throw him into the pit. After that, he would go to Kerala for a few days. So, although he had set out for Kasargod, he turned the car around and when he reached home again it was eight o'clock, with the oppressive darkness of a moonless night. In his frenzy he had left without locking the door, and when he entered the house it seemed frighteningly silent. Had Pundit already come and gone? Or was he about to come just now? Fearfully, Shastri made his way in the dark to the pit, took a hoe, and dragged all the dug-up earth back into the hole. Breathing heavily, he worked for an hour. ‘Tomorrow morning I will get up, level this place, and plant a jackfruit sapling there,’ he told himself. He sat on the steps of his house with a sickle in hand, waiting to kill Pundit. But Pundit did not come. ‘Arrey, has the enchanter come and gone? Has he already complained to the police?’ Without sleeping, Shastri waited. But nobody came.

In the morning he added more earth and levelled the pit. Then he left, this time not forgetting to lock the door. He drove to Mangalore and stayed in a hotel. After two days of fearful waiting, surprised that he was still safe, he returned home.

The red earth pit was just as he had left it. But in front of the house there were tyre marks from Pundit's car. ‘Were those marks left behind by Pundit after I killed her and drove away in my car?’ he wondered. Then he went into the puja room and saw the door of the iron safe standing open. The trunk full of gold was gone. All at once, the horror of having done murder vanished in the rage against Pundit that began to howl in him.

‘O the enchanter robbed me and ran away! His eyes were not on Saroja, but on gold. Yet he even made her pregnant.’ Calculating, considering whether he should report to the police that Pundit had killed Saroja and run off with the gold, Shastri drove to Udupi and stopped the car in front of Pundit's shop.

Pundit's door was locked. Shastri, widening his bloodshot eyes, asked the neighbouring shop owner, ‘Where is he?’

‘Ah, yes. One evening, it must have been three days ago, yes, on the new moon day — Wednesday evening — he left and has not returned since. I thought he had perhaps gone to your house.’ Did the shop owner Kamath smile falsely, as if there were some hidden meaning in his words?

‘No, he's a householder like me,’ Shastri told himself. ‘He is my age, has children, and he even keeps a lorry.’ Shastri felt fully reassured that Kamath did not see him as a murderer but only as a customer when Kamath said, ‘I have got excellent toor dal from Hyderabad, only one bag left. Shall I have it put in your car?’

Refusing the dal, Shastri had gone to Radha's house. He had not seen her for some days. She touched his forehead and said, ‘Ayyo, you are feverish.’ She opened a bedroll and made him rest on it, and for the first time ever he told her a lie.

‘That useless one ran away with Pundit three days ago. The whore also took the trunk of gold.’ His scheming mind had decided not to complain to the police and risk getting into a criminal suit.

He went back home, took more earth from the paddy-field, and added it to the pit. In the center of the pit, he planted a jackfruit sapling. He told people that the fruit would be as sweet as honey, and people were surprised at the unfamiliar friendliness in Shastri's hostile, ever-burning face.

9

Shastri got down from his taxi and asked the driver, who was whistling away merrily, to wait. He went into Radha's house with his bag.

‘Look, here is a Madras sari for you,’ he told her. Although Radha was pleased, she knew there was something else on his mind. ‘What is the matter?’ she asked. Shastri was surprised by the relief he felt when he found himself replying, ‘I believed I had told you a lie. But after forty-five years, I see that what I told you may be true.’ Then, in great detail, he explained to her his present state of uncertainty.

‘I had last seen the amulet on Saroja's neck when I was in a state of utter fury. When I saw it yesterday, it seemed to me a sign that I could die and be born again’

‘But how can I say whether he is my son or Pundit's? When Mahadevi had a daughter from me, I realized that Saroja too might have been pregnant from me. Then I feared that I would rot eternally in hell for killing not only Saroja but my own child, so I began to work off my life in this new costume of reciter of Puranas. Yet it seemed this body into which the demon had entered has never learned anything. Had I not felt that very same kind of rage towards my own daughter? I might have killed her, but she escaped. Now Mahadevi feels rage like that, and wants to kill me. And I feel the same. But am I, speaking to you now like this, the same person who felt my heart turn over as I watched someone who might be my son eating the food I gave him?’

Shastri's throat choked with emotion. But then he chided himself, ‘I should not seek sympathy from Radha so that I neglect to observe my own hell.’

He looked at Radha, waiting for her reply.

‘I have not told you this,’ she said. ‘The servants here always gossiped that you killed your wife and buried her in the pit. They say that is why the jackfruit tree you planted there does not bear any fruit. I didn't tell you lest it would give you pain.’ Radha sighed, adding, ‘God has saved you.’ She went inside and brought milk and fruits, then sat down and pressed his feet. But Shastri drew his feet back.

‘Do you think Pundit lifted her from the pit, when she was half-dead, and then took the gold from the safe? Yet it doesn't seem he was a thief … when she was washed away in the river, all the gold she had brought with her was still untouched. But then why did he leave her? Or did he die, and did she take refuge in Tripathi's house because she was alone? She must have lived with Pundit at least until her son was five years old. And I heard that she had kumkum on her forehead when she went to Tripathi's house, so she didn't go as a widow.’

He fell silent for awhile.

‘I don't want to care whose son he is, yet that is how I feel. Couldn't he be Pundit's son? But then, I might have created him when I was howling like a demon. Now I am sure of nothing. Was it really Saroja herself who went to Tripathi for shelter, or could it have been someone who resembled her?’ Shastri began to pray, ‘O God, save me from these tormenting doubts which make me like a ghost in limbo.’

Radha came, sat by his side, held his hand tenderly, and said, ‘Believe that he is your son.’

‘One moment I believe so, but the next moment I think that Pundit made him, and I feel fire burning in my stomach.’ He got up without drinking any of the milk she had brought him.

When Radha asked why, he said, ‘Hereafter on Ekadashi I will not even drink milk.’

10

Radha saw signs of Shastri's release from the demon which tormented him. For a whole year she had been holding onto a secret, something which was essential for his liberation. Now she watched him, hoping that in a few days she could reveal to him what she knew.

Shastri looked at Radha's hair, which had begun to turn gray, and her lovely, still-unwrinkled face, which glowed with warm affection.

‘Why did I ever marry Mahadevi? Of course, you were urging me to marry. And I thought that if I had a child my troubles would go, and I would have peace. Saroja tortured me with her beauty and indifference. But Mahadevi was just like me. From the start she fell on me with her eyes burning. She is nothing like Saroja. She hates you too. And my daughter is truly my daughter. Stubborn. Marrying an idiot who wants to make revolution and destroy people like me with good family backgrounds. She left my house, I don't know where she went. Sometimes I feel a desire to bring her back home. Who knows what I become from moment to moment? Perhaps for people like me there is no release from this bhava, we stay entangled in this world. But at least Saroja has not died by my hand. I prayed to God to be released from bhava because, when my daughter was born, I suffered thinking that Saroja could have become pregnant from me. What God can give me solace? My fate is written here,’ he said, touching his forehead, suddenly feeling as if he were speaking well-rehearsed words in his role as puranik.

He returned to the waiting taxi and went home. He did not expect that as soon as he entered the house, Mahadevi would pounce on him without any reason. But, seeing her standing before him as if to devour him, seeing her flared nostrils in a contorted face, he felt, to his surprise, compassion welling in him for this helpless woman.

Mahadevi at once started to pick a quarrel over Radha's wealth and the gold bangles Radha had got made for a grandchild. She kept saying, ‘Because of your murderous nature …,’ working herself into a fury and screaming about the daughter she had lost. Shastri had never before touched Mahadevi in consolation. But now he embraced her although she tried to squirm away, probably thinking that he was going to strike her. But instead, very gently, he spoke her name over and over, ‘Mahadevi, Mahadevi …’

‘I have not killed anyone, Mahadevi. What the servants said was wrong. I myself once believed as they did. But yesterday in the train I came to know the truth.’

He knew that Mahadevi couldn't make sense of all he said. But, feeling the tenderness of his touch, she wept, and he caressed her and said, ‘Don't cry. I will find out where our daughter is and bring her here.’

Looking surprised, Mahadevi went inside the house, blowing her nose with the end of her sari. Shastri felt a faint hope that he might be healing. He looked at the parijata tree growing haphazardly in front of his house, the crooked-in-eight-ways tree which, by shedding on the earth all its delicate blossoms, fulfills itself. Saroja used to gather its flowers with the tips of her nails, careful not to wither them from the warmth of her fingers. One by one she would pick them up, collect them in a banana-leaf cup, and pour them over the snake pit which had formed in the backyard. Remembering this, Shastri again felt pain. Why had there been kumkum on Saroja's forehead when she was carried off in the river? Why was there a marriage thread around her neck? Had it meant that Pundit was not dead? Or did it mean that the one who had held her hand in marriage was not dead?

Feeling weak, the fragile signs of his recovery fading, he went into a bathing-room. It was not the same bathing-room in which he had smashed Saroja's head. That one he had got torn down, and he'd had another one built in a new place.