Piyush spent a few more minutes with Anand. Sipping coffee and saying little those minutes passed mostly in contemplative silence. What Piyush had just learned from the newspaper challenged his rational beliefs even as it reinforced the troubling things the apparition of Mangalesh Dabral had told him. Mangalesh Dabral, the apparition! How readily his mind had accepted that when presented with evidence that denied the evidence of his own perceptions. Anand offered no explanation, no rationalization for the things Piyush had experienced. That disappointed Piyush in a way, because if he needed anything right now it was an explanation from someone who understood more than he did, an explanation that would help to settle his disturbed thoughts. Growing up in England he’d often fallen under the spell of his grandmother and her total belief in gods and mysteries that man could not understand without an acceptance, first, of the essence of god in everything. She’d told him vibrant, life-filled stories, often invoking the magical names of one or more of India’s many thousands of gods. Much of what she said about life in India was beyond the comprehension of one so young and her stories, told in hushed tones that rose and fell with musical cadences, were like Western fairy tales to him as he listened wide-eyed. His parents had considered themselves modern and only observed a few major Hindu festivals because they were an excuse for feasting and parties. With this background it was a natural progression for Piyush to embrace atheism. He’d long ago shrugged off what he considered to be the restraining yoke of religion and any suggestion of an afterlife. Some of his friends had tried to persuade him that not believing in a supernatural entity influencing his life was only to replace one belief system with another. He accepted that, it was an idea he could live with. Now though, after the events at Marble Rocks, doubts were seeding themselves in his mind. “I think I’ll return to my room now,” he said, “I need to refresh myself, take a rest, it’s been a wearying day.” “Yes, yes, of course,” Anand said as Piyush rose to leave. “Will you join us for dinner again? I think my wife may have some things to say that will help you understand. Like you, I find it difficult to believe in these things myself, but sometimes something happens that makes me hold onto the last threads of my faith. What happened to you makes me think! It makes me think!” Piyush hesitated for only a couple of seconds before accepting Anand’s invitation. He had nothing else to do but go into the dusty evening heat of Jabalpur and he enjoyed the company of Anand and his wife Anasua. ****** After taking a shower Piyush put on clean chinos and a collarless cheesecloth shirt he’d bought in a Delhi market, it was a natural ecru colour and light and cool to wear. He turned on the bedside lamp, stretched out on the bed and picked up his paperback book. ‘Le feu au royaume’ was a slender volume, and one of half a dozen French language paperbacks he carried in his luggage. He thought he would improve his grasp of French by forcing himself to read French texts. In English the title was something like ‘The Fire Kingdom’. He read a few paragraphs but gradually his attention wandered. He thought that was due more to his state of mind than to his enjoyment of the book. On the ceiling of his room shadows cast by the bedside light were doing battle with those cast by the setting sun. It was a strange battle, because although the shadows from the lamp were in entrenched positions, motionless for now, the shadows from the sunlight gradually retreated. Soon they were only small, black fingers holding feebly to the edges of the darkening room. At some point they vanished completely, but Piyush didn’t notice precisely when that was. In his mind the shadows from outside had already become the advancing and retreating shadows of the dead in the Narmada River, wanting so badly to be in a place among the living where they were not permitted to be. It had not been his intention to sleep, but his eyelids drooped nonetheless. It was a fitful doze, disturbed by images of people drowning, of upturned boats, of sudden inundation, of bodies sinking into the dark beneath the water. He was beside a river, watching as people stripped to their undergarments, dropped into the swirling currents and swam from the shore to rescue others. They became victims, just as the passengers in the boats were victims, but still more pressed forward, stripped and followed them. He remembered how, as a child, he’d learned that lemmings rushed to their doom en masse. That was a misconception of course, but it’s what these people were doing. No matter how many of them vanished beneath the water there was a press of others eager to follow. He even felt the urge to help, to embrace the water himself. He wanted so much to help, but he was fixed, immobile, a witness without a role to play. A dark mass began to form just beneath the river’s surface, its shape shifting, evolving as he watched. Soon it stretched as far as he could see. The movement of the river halted and the mass rose clear of the water and drifted into the sky. The river resumed it’s motion but his eyes followed the course of the mass. It was like a large thunder cloud against the incredible blue of the sky. Even as the heat of the day began to nibble at its edges and diminish its size, it started to spit water droplets at the earth. As they struck his skin they were needle sharp and soon his bare arms were prickling. Piyush came to with a start, unaware that his reverie had turned to sleep, unaware that he’d dreamed. His paperback slipped from his hand. His fingers were numb and his right arm tingled with pins-and-needles caused by propping himself at an awkward angle. On the coverlet of his bed the title of his book rearranged itself to ‘feel you are’, the spare letters blurring to nothing. It was a cryptic message he didn’t understand, perhaps didn’t want to understand. He blinked his eyes and the title restored itself, ‘Le feu au royaume’. Slipping his shoes on he left the room and ambled along the corridor to the entrance lobby. He was looking forward to dinner, Anasua was a good cook, and after that he hoped Anand’s whisky would again be offered. For some reason he felt that he deserved a stiff drink.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 13:03:55 +0000
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