12 Abandonment, 13 Arrival, 14 Love

Chapter 12 - Abandonment

"Chitra! Chitra! Where is that wretched girl? Bimla-ji, I really can't keep coming to teach her if she is never around to teach. Don't you think I have other pupils? My time is not to be dallied with, I am a busy man."

"I'm sorry, Teacher-sahib. Please be patient with her. Remember that poor Chitra is virtually an orphan, brought up without a mother or father... Chitra, sweetie! Chitra! Where are you baby?"

"Nonsense, no child could have had a more devoted mother and father than you and Ram – I have watched her growing all these years and seen how you have struggled to give her everything she needs in life. And how does she repay you? Running around wildly everywhere... You will forgive me, Bimla-ji, you know I do not say these things to give you pain, but it is as well for you to face the truth. They are saying in the town that...."

"I don't care what idle, good-for-nothing gossips in the town are saying! Neither should you! You are an educated man – you can imagine what it is like for her growing up in this crazy house. We may have looked after her, but a child knows when she has been abandoned by her parents and no amount of kindness from others will make that up to her. Of course she rebels. Her mother and father are not here for her to show them her grief, so she shows it to us in other ways."

"You are too soft on her Bimla-ji. I know you love her and do what you think is best, but you are so kind hearted that you cannot see the... the..."

"The what? Go on, you might as well say it"

"The wildness in her... I wouldn't say evil, but... you know her father..."

"Her father was a holy man."

"Yes, holy. But what kind of practices did he indulge in as part of that particular branch of holiness?"

"Who knows? Who knows anything about him. He came in the middle of the night and he left in the middle of the night. No one saw him before he came and no-one has seen him since... nobody knows anything about him, so just like water flowing into an empty hole in the ground, they fill the gap with all sorts of nonsense."

"Bimla, why are you defending him? I know you are angry with him for what he did to your mistress..."

"Nobody did anything to my mistress. She was... is the mistress of her own fate. The child's father was a holy man. If my mistress had his child and followed him, there must have been a reason."

"They say – no don't stop me, not all gossip is idle and false, it's worth considering what people say, and then deciding if it may be true – they say he was a powerful magician. That he cast a spell over your mistress. She may have lost her senses over him... Bimla-ji, why do you stare at me like that. You make me afraid..."

"My mistress lose her senses? Tutor-sahib, I bow before your education and your breeding, but, sir, while you were still a little boy playing with marbles in the dust, my mistress was already the most famous Tantric courtesan in the whole land. Her powers were known by kings and scholars who came from the four corners of the earth to seek enlightenment in her embrace. She could stop the wind blowing. She could walk through a bed of ashes without leaving a footprint... who dares to say a penniless, mud-smeared holy man could make her, her, lose her senses? I... I..."

"Please, please calm yourself, Bimla-ji! I did not mean to offend you or your mistress. You are right. Your mistress was powerful too, she was well known, well loved in this city. No-one knows who the holy man was... but it is true, isn't it, that he was also a Tantric master? They practiced together... people say that strange constellations would form in the sky over the house when they lay together, that the water from the well outside the house started tasting like honey... all kinds of strange things... and Bimla-ji, don't be angry, but you know that to attain power like that these Tantrics subject themselves to the most shocking practices... they have no respect for caste or social norms... I've heard that they make love in the burning grounds of the dead, and..."

"That's enough, sir! I'm sorry, but I cannot listen to you any longer. Please leave."

"Ok, Bimla-ji. I'm going. I'm sorry. I say again that it was not my intention to offend you, but merely to remind you of the blood that the girl has running in her veins. To remind you of who – or what - you may have been nurturing all these years. Please take care, take great care. I am going."

Bimla watched the back of the tutor's white kurta receding as he cycled away down the long, dusty path to the front gate. He passed through the serpent archway, still rather magnificent looking if you ignored the parts that had crumbled away with age and neglect. There was no actual gate in it any more, or a fence for it to make a gate in, but it still made an elegant sight.
She stared for a long time as the dust settled in the tutor's wake. Is he right? she thought.

"Is he right?"

The voice above her head – echoing her thought - startled her. Chitra dropped from the rafters landing gracefully on her feet and the tips of her fingers before straightening herself up. She was taller than Bimla now, although she was still only fifteen – she had shot up and was even slightly taller than Bimla. Chitra’s gaze was unsettlingly direct, challenging. Her beauty was unsettling too – there was something dangerous about it. She was lithe, her movements flowed as though she had no bones in her long, supple limbs. She had a habit of swaying her head slightly on the end of her slender neck as she fixed you with a steely stare. Bimla reached up and took her lean, chiseled face into her hands.

"Why have you been hiding, child? Have you been eavesdropping?"

"Oh yes, of course. Didn't you see me dropping from the eaves?!" Chitra's smile glittered, but her eyes weren't smiling. Bimla felt – as she had sometimes felt before - a little afraid of her, and had to remind herself that this was her mistress' child, that she was virtually her own child.

"Well?"

"Well, what, baby?"

"Is he right? Is my father an evil Tantric demon that screws with whores amongst the corpses in the graveyard and drinks the mingled waters of their coupling? Did my exalted mother turn into a simpering sot at the sight of this fine gentleman's maha lingam?"

Bimla's arm twitched with the effort not to slap the girl. She repeated to herself what she had said to the tutor to excuse her behaviour. Chitra was angry – you could see it blazing in her green-gold eyes. She wanted to shock and hurt people, because of the shock and hurt she felt all the time. She almost wanted them to hurt her back, to slap her so that the pain she felt through the deep core of her being was drawn to the surface. She walked barefoot on the sharp stones of the riverbed in the summer, daring the other children from the village to do the same. She teased cats until they scratched and bit her arms. She would knock her head rhythmically against the wall or a tree until someone came along and distracted her.

What had started as childish tantrums had evolved into more dangerous behaviour. She would disappear in the middle of the night and come home covered in dirt, her hair matted and full of grass. Cuts and bruises all over her beautiful, olive skin – though she never winced when Bimla bathed her. Bimla knew exactly what they were saying in the town. That Chitra was mad - paglee. That Chitra would go with anyone. That Chitra would do anything. Bimla was the chief maid of a courtesan – she was not shocked by the practice of the sexual act. But she was deeply worried about Chitra (despite what she had said to the Tutor). She could see that Chitra was trying to follow a path which would lead to her own destruction, her annihilation. She could see that she wanted to punish her parents for abandoning her, that she wanted to punish herself for not being lovable enough, good enough, worthy enough to make them want to stay with her. So she would fulfil her lowly opinion of herself by submitting herself to humiliation, to pain, and eventually, if Bimla didn't do something drastic to stop it, would put herself in a life threatening situation. But what could Bimla do? She couldn't tie her up. She couldn't bring her mother back...

"It's not true, my love. Your mother was... is a strong, powerful, beautiful, good woman..."

"Oh, yeah?" Chitra pulled a small, green guava out of her choli and, squatting on the top marble step of the veranda, tore a chunk out of it with a row of sharp, icy white teeth. "So it's good to be a whore and sleep with half the men in the world and then go off chasing after a beggar leaving a new-born baby behind is it?"

Bimla squatted beside her and leaned her aching back against the pillar. She smoothed Chitra's matted hair, picked out a twig...

"No. Leaving your baby for no reason, that's not good. For us that's not good."

"What do you mean "for us"?"

Bimla said nothing for a few moments. Then she gestured towards the gateway...

"Look at that tree over there"

"Don't try to change the subject, Maashi"

"See the tree?"

"OK, OK, that one by the gate?"

"No, further away – where the road forks to go towards the town. What colour are the leaves?"

"Leaves are green."

"Green? Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Except when they go brown."

"OK. Let's go and see."

It took them several minutes to walk to the tree, the girl slowing to the older woman's dignified pace. Despite her chin being cocked at an arrogant angle, Chitra's eyes kept sliding sideways every now and then to check she wasn’t overtaking the older woman, which would have been disrespectful. When they got to the tree, the girl looked up, the light and shadows dappling her upturned face,...

"OK, Maashi-ji. So they're not just green, they’re green and gold and bronze and reddish and yellow. I was wrong. What's your point?"

"My point is that things look different depending on where you are looking from."

"Maashi, from where I'm standing all I can see is a big, screaming empty hole where my family should be. Forgive me, I know you’ve ‘been a mother and father to me‘ (she mimicked the singsong tone of the tutor), but..." her voice tailed off and she stared at the ground. Then she looked sharply up again and in her eyes Bimla watched bitter anger burn away the beginnings of self-pitying tears. "What's the use of telling me she must have had a good reason? How does that help me? She abandoned me to follow that dirty sadhu, she abandoned me, the slut, they both did, she left me and has never ever visited or sent word, not even to ask if I am alive or dead. Whatever her reasons it's clear that I matter nothing to her, nothing."

And with that, she spat in the dust and strode off down the road towards the town.

Chitra sat on a wall swinging her legs and tearing off strips of sugar cane with her glistening teeth. She chewed slowly surveying the evening market crowd through smouldering, black eyes. Daring little kids with spindly black legs and dusty knees ran out from under one of the stalls every now and then and made swaying snake movements or the lewd gestures they'd seen some of the older boys making behind her back and then ran off screaming with hilarious terror as she hissed and spat balls of chewed sugarcane fibre at them.

Presently three or four lads who had been manning their fathers' or uncles' stalls packed up and beckoned to her as they headed towards the dhaba. She glared snootily at them but after they had passed, jumped off the wall and swayed nonchalantly after them. The little hut in which tea and fried snacks were served to the market traders was so dark inside that, coming in from the evening light, it seemed pitch black. But gradually your eyes got used to the dark and the flickering red glow from the coals on the cooking fire filtered into the cavern behind it. A smell of frying oil, bodies, bidi smoke, and an acrid smell of alcohol hit you as you passed through the doorway. The walls were blackened with decades of cooking oil fumes and smoke and cockroaches scuttled away from your advancing footsteps on the compact mud floor.

From the even blacker recesses of the dhaba, the owner sang out a warm greeting to his old friends though he had only said goodbye to them in the small hours of the same day. A little boy was squirting orange jelabi dough squiggles into the vat of oil at the entrance to the dhaba. His boss slapped the back of his head and told him to serve drinks to the fine 'gentlemen'. This triggered a shout of laughter at this ironic title. The lads knew they were very close to the bottom of society's complicated ladder – not by virtue of their birth or caste, but because they chose to drink and gamble and sleep with cheap prostitutes, and they revelled in their infamy. They settled down in two rows on the long planks which served as benches on either side of the single plank which served as a table as the little boy poured a warm, sweet liquid from a clay pot into little clay cups which would later be smashed on the ground so that no other lips would be sullied by them.

Within a couple of hours they were all slightly tipsy. The dhaba owner had slipped them some of his infamous rice-brew and was leading them in the rousing chorus of a shockingly improper song, for which Chitra was obligingly girating and fluttering her eyelashes. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that everyone was laughing at her and not with her, but she didn't care. The booze, the laughter, the singing chopped away at the ropes which held her always like an ever-tightening bear trap – so she sang louder, moved more lewdly, drank more liquor and worked her audience up into a frenzy of hilarity and lust.

They started teasing her and saying that if she felt so aroused why didn't she go home with old Bhasker – a skinny little toothless, cross-eyed old man, bent and blackened by years of toil in the sun scorched fields who was nevertheless joining in the songs with leering delight and literally drooling over Chitra. Chitra snapped her fingers at them and flared a gold-ringed nostril at Bhasker.

"This old fellow? I would, sweetheart," she panted, glistening from her exertions, and tickled him under the chin "but the poor old man wouldn't last an hour with me."

The crowd roared. "Yes but what a way to die! After years of ploughing the fields he would finally die of ploughing Chitra!"

Bhasker's delighted laughter screamed louder than anyone.

"Oi, never! I know they say she would go with anyone, but that's just an idle boast, Chitra wouldn't have the nerve to sleep with that hideous creature, would you, little girl?" Jeered one man.

Bhasker's toothless face fell.

"Are you kidding? You have no idea how far I would go. My mother was a famous whore. If she would sleep with anyone, why wouldn't I?" As she said it Chitra felt a stab of pain, literally, in her chest – but like every other trace of feeling she suppressed it. She tossed her head and shouted...

"Bring them on! As ugly as you like, I'll bed them all..." and leaped on the table to dance a dance of pure, furious, lustful self-destruction while her "friends" screamed encouragement, howled and hooted and thumped the table and rubbed their crotches.

"Ok, ok," one of them shouted, wiping tears from his eyes... "See that old leper sitting on the ground out there? Him. Go with him if you're so indiscriminating... I heard your father was a Tantric master, I believe the Tantric philosophy is that no social rules apply where sex is concerned. That old guy is an untouchable, too – he should suit your family perfectly!"
Again the stab of pain in her chest – but again she shoved it down. She would defy the memory of her parents, she would defy her jeering drinking mates, defy Bimla's pity and her pathetic belief in her mother's goodness, defy society and the whole bloody world even if it killed her... and she hoped it bloody well would.

"Bring him on" she snarled and her eyes glittered like dying coals.

Whooping with hilarity the party rushed out and grabbed the beggar (with cloths wrapped round their hands so they wouldn't have to actually touch him), ignoring his cries of pain and fear. They draped his head in rags snatched from the dhaba wallah’s kitchen like a parody of a bride groom and covered Chitra's face with a filthy cloth like a beggar's bride – knotted their garments together and carried the two of them to the edge of the market, banging tin plates with their hands, thrusting coins at the beggar – more than he had earned in the whole month – and exhorting him to go enjoy himself with the biggest whore in the country "our treat". As they went, the beggar staggering, Chitra swaying unsteadily on drunken but still defiant feet, the group danced and whistled and made filthy gestures while they sang rude versions of wedding songs. Chitra's eyes began to sting with tears and this time, she didn't seem to be able to overpower them.

They walked some distance, down the dark, dusty road – with only the half moon lighting the way. The sounds of the market – still busy by the flare of torches - receded and other sounds came into focus - wild dogs snuffling in ditches, nightbirds hooting like ghosts, crickets and lizards crackling and licking the darkness... the sound of their footsteps on the road - bare flesh padding on impacted dust and stone – and the harsh wheezing breath of the leper ahead of her.
The cool night air started sobering Chitra up and she began to think about chickening out. She was deathly tired, and a little frightened, now. Anyway, this was not fair to the beggar. She felt a sting of shame for letting him be dragged into this. After all, no-one would know she hadn't slept with him and afterwards she could boast that she had. She would pay him to say the same.

Swiping the shameful tears away from her cheeks, she turned to look at him properly for the first time. The half moon cast a sickly flat light over them, but even by this she couldn't see his face. He still wore his mock-bridegroom's turban which dangled in front of him like the forelock of a horse. She noticed now that he was no longer cowering (she assumed he had been cowering before... hadn't he?) but was marching along with – she now realised – angry strides. She was having to trot to keep up with him, tied as she still was to his garments.

"Hey, wait," she called. He didn't answer and kept on walking. Maybe his sickness made him deaf. "HEY!" she shouted louder and yanked at the cloth that knotted them together.

He stopped suddenly and spun round. She stopped too, stopped dead in her tracks and covered her mouth, muffling a whimper of horror. It wasn't just that half his face had been eaten away by his disease so that he had a half grin as though his skull was trying to climb out of his face, it was the look in his eyes... the hatred, the humiliation, the determination blazing through those yellowed eyes (even in the sickly moonlight) to inflict as much pain and humiliation on her as had been visited on him - spat on and shat on, treated as less than human, less than animal.

"Don't you shout at me, bitch!" he hissed. "I'm not your bloody donkey for you to pull on my reins. I'm your husband, now. You do what I bloody say, not the other way round."

"I'm sorry" Chitra stammered. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude, I'm sorry about those men... please, please..."

""Please" what?! Now you plead with me, huh? How many times have you walked past me with your little nose stuck up in the air and ignored my pleas for a few coins, eh?” She looked blank - frantically raking her mind to remember. “You don't even remember, do you? I didn't even exist for you until today, did I?" It was true, she had no memory of him begging from her. He'd just been a sort of landmark in the corner of the market place by the food stall.

"I'll give you money. I have lots of money, here. Take it, and then let's just forget about this, ok, bhai?"

He shot out a club-ended arm from the folds of his garment and snatched the money from her.

"I'm not your brother, I told you, I'm your husband. All your money is mine anyway. Now come on, save your energy for your wedding night, little wife!"

She tried to escape then, as he dragged her along, wrestling with the knotted garments to try and free herself, but he shot his hand out again and this time used it as a club, striking her hard across the face so that she gasped with the pain and shock of it. She was quiet after that and walked behind him like a criminal walking to the gallows. "I have only myself to blame" she reminded herself "I am a dirty whore. Nobody wants me, anyway, what does it matter what this man does to me? I hope he kills me... and then this pain will be over. I will probably be reborn as a dung beetle, but what the hell? Next time maybe my dung beetle mother will stick around..."

By the time they reached the beggar's hut, a dark little dwelling like a termite mound in the scrub, beside an acrid smelling ditch. Chitra was dazed with fear and pain (her feet were torn and bleeding from the sharp stones on the road). Her "husband" threw her into a corner of the hut, pulled his upper garment off (his torso was surprisingly smooth and whole) and tied it, still knotted to hers, to the central post holding up the coconut frond roof. Then he strode out, leaving her alone.

She stared up into the darkness, trying not to breath the evil air, thick and foetid with rotting flesh, unwashed bodies - desperate, despairing poverty. Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest her whole body shuddered with each beat and the blood sang in her ears. Slowly her eyes started getting used to the dark and her heart slowed and her breathing quietened. She could see stars through the chinks in the palm frond roof, little pieces of the moon. Tiny sparks of cold, clean air filtered through to her and she tried to breath only these. Suddenly, with renewed horror, she remembered where she was and why... She whimpered again and started struggling against her bindings, but they were too tight to budge... and anyway, here he was, crawling through the doorway of the hut, like a beast crawling towards a tethered goat kid...

"Oh stop your whimpering, girl!" he muttered. And despite his words, his voice had lost its anger. "I'm not going to do anything to you. That pack of hyenas back there couldn't really marry us, I was just trying to frighten you to pay you back for your arrogance. Here." He handed her a little clay pot. She stared disbelieving at him. It must be some kind of trick. "Take it" he said again. Then she realised how thirsty she was and, trick or no trick, she had to reach out and take the little pot and drink the sweet, slightly acrid tasting cold water. She wanted to keep her eyes on him all the time, but she couldn't. She was repulsed by his disfigurement, and more afraid of what she might see in his eyes again.

When she'd drained the cup, head flung back, pale throat gleaming in the starlit gloom, he patted her on the head (like a child!) and said "Sleep" and crawled out again. She lay awake for a long time – curled-up tightly as if in the womb - expecting him to come back in at any moment and leap on top of her. But he didn't. And after a while she heard him snoring on the other side of the wall. With amazement she realised that he was sleeping on the ground out in the open to give her privacy... And all the tears that she had fought down that day – all her life - leaped up and rushed the new breach in the wall of her resolve, burst through the broken dam, tore down her face, wrecking the edifices she had painstakingly built up to protect herself, the pride, the arrogance, the daredevil abandon...

She felt like a little girl again, weeping in Bimla's lap because some of the town children had come and shouted names at her over the garden wall, and she felt Bimla's soft hand smoothing away her tears, her pain. Only it wasn't Bimla's hand, she realised. Someone, something was holding her, gently, powerfully, kissing away the terror and fear. But there was nobody there, she was alone in the darkness. And now she noticed that it had become cold in the hut, colder than anything she’d ever known before. Frosty lips pressed themselves on her forehead and chilly hands rubbed her back. She leaned her head against the soft chest, which was cool as a rock in a river, and yet somehow still comforting, and the arms drew closer around her. She heard the heart beating, a deep, powerful throbbing hum that seemed to come from the very centre of the universe. Her own heart echoed it, accompanied it, was subsumed by it.

"Why?" she whispered "Why did you leave me?"

And a voice that was not a voice hummed through her body, through the core of her being...

MY HEART ACHES FOR YOU, CHILD OF MY BODY. I HAD TO LEAVE TO PREPARE....

There was a long silence. Chitra wanted to ask, prepare for what? But she knew that the rest of the sentence was coming... in good time... she waited, silently, not tense, breathing easily, keeping pace with the rhythm of the great heart.

...TO TURN ASIDE THE GREATER DANGER. THE DANGER THAT COULD CONSUME EVERYTHING.

Chitra trembled, with fear, with joy, with the terrible cold, and the goose flesh stood up all over her skin…

MY HEART HAS ACHED FOR YOU, LITTLE ONE. YOU DID NOT DESERVE SO MUCH PAIN. ALL MY CHILDREN SUFFER... IT IS THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. BUT YOU, CHILD OF MY BODY, I HAVE WANTED TO COMFORT YOU.

Another silence followed. Chitra wasn't sure, but she thought she may have drifted into sleep for a little while – amazing to fall asleep in the middle of something like this – but she was simply drifting in the vast, all-enclosing tide of this... this love, a small leaf drifting through light and shade on the surface of a swelling river, and asleep or awake, the love was still there, buoying her up. Would always be there. Had always been there.

...WANTED TO COMFORT YOU. MY ATTENTION WAS ELSEWHERE FOR A TIME. I HAVE BEEN GATHERING STRENGTH. SOON EVERYTHING WILL BE ALRIGHT. SLEEP, LITTLE ONE. SLEEP.

Then the iciness thawed and the whole hut was filled with a delicious warmth, like the warmth of a bed in the morning which the sleepy body feels melted into, like the warmth of milk. And Chitra felt a deep, healing sleep starting to overtake her, she started to give in to it, but then suddenly thought – or said, she wasn't sure which – "So, that means you're coming back...?" But there was no answer. No words, anyway. Just the knowledge the deep, certain knowledge, that the love had never gone away. She just hadn't been able to get to it through all the "self-protecting" edifices she had built. So she let herself sink deep, deep into the dark core of the love, and slept.

Outside the leper shifted on the hard ground, and smiled in his sleep. Tiny shards of love had leaked through the holes in the hut wall and dusted his dreams – he was back in the palace, the tanpura alive under his fingers, long and slim and whole, singing its eternal song, and his mistress was looking down at him, smiling. Sweet boy!


Chapter 13 - Arrival
As the plane touched, or rather bumped down, a burst of cheering and clapping erupted from the passengers. How quaint! Thought Kamala, and turned to share a smile with the lady scientist beside her - they’d chatted a little during the flight - but the lady had her head bowed, eyes closed, whispering into her folded hands. Kamala raised an eyebrow. According to the details which were circulated to all passengers before each flight, the lady was returning from a convention on climate change in Brussels, so it came as a shock to see her praying.

Culture shock begins thus, as one small icy drop that makes you widen your eyes a little, then grows to a slow trickle, then a flood... As soon as the plane had landed and the cheers died down, everyone ignored the fasten seatbelt signs and leapt up. The cabin crew - with a dizzying combination of charm, impeccable hair-dos and terrifying strictness - slapped people back into their seats and slammed overhead locker doors shut again. Kamala followed the rules. At least the visible rules. She was not aware of the invisible ones, and caused great annoyance to the large business man on the other side of her who was itching to join the visible rule breakers and wrench his bag from the overhead locker so that he could stand in the queue for half an hour waiting until the plane doors were opened.

Once the seatbelt sign was pinged off, Kamala rose calmly and retrieved her hand baggage (of the correct dimensions and weight as specified in her travel documents). She went through the mental checklist again; Bag. Check. Passport. Check. Identity card. Check. Ticket. Check. Travellers cheques. Check. Cash. Check. Greenfields representative name. Check. Greenfields contact address and telephone number in case of non-arrival of Greenfields representative. Check.

And then she was at the door of the plane and something hit her full in the face. Hot and heavy and ancient as mountains. Rich and complex, tinged with the breath of more than a billion people, with incense, cow dung, diesel, spices, wood smoke, faeces, marigolds, jasmine and carbon monoxide... The heat was a physical presence, it hugged Kamala in a fierce embrace, huge, close and intimate... Aunty Seema times infinity. It welcomed her and held her prisoner. It was 2.30 am. What the hell was the heat going to be like in the daytime?! She had a moment of panic. This thing was too vast for her to cope with. Too strange and huge and complicated and it was coming at her too fast. She hesitated, but the fat business man tutted and shoved his brief-case into the small of her back so that she was forced onto the steps which had been wheeled up to the side of the plane.

The airport terminal was a vast, mercifully cool vault of marble, steel and glass. Airport officials, flanked by guards even more heavily armed than in England, clustered at doorways and ushered the bedraggled passengers into long queues. One for Health, one for Immigration, One for Security… Once at the Security desk, the official pored interminably over Kamala’s papers and the computer screen - he suddenly got very agitated and glared at Kamala. He called over another official and they both jabbered loudly stabbing fingers at the screen, the passport and identity card, glaring at Kamala. “Is something wrong?” she asked, alarmed. But they completely ignored her question and continued staring at her and talking to each other, as though she was a llama in a cage in the zoo who had just mooed at them (Do llamas moo? she wondered). Eventually they came to some decision, and with a final, ferocious stare, flung her passport and card over the counter at her. “Thank you, so much.” she said with an icy sarcasm which was utterly lost on the official, who merely waved her away and glared at his next victim, a young English woman in a tight fitting shocking pink t-shirt.

Earlier, Kamala’d heard her muttering to her boyfriend,

“That’s the trouble with these third world countries! So bloody inefficient. We’re going to be here all night at this rate” .

An elderly Indian man in the queue ahead of them had turned around and said, very courteously, in an American or Canadian accent,

“As a matter of fact, my dear, the Indian airport security system is highly effective, the US system is modelled on it, I believe. I’m sure you would prefer to show a little patience that to be blown up by terrorists, wouldn’t you?”

The young woman gave a tight little smile, but her boyfriend, embarrassed, agreed and got chatting to him. The older man reminisced about the days when you could travel by air quite easily without having to go through all the hassle of biometric identity checks three months before, the paperwork, the searches. When fuel was in such plentiful supply that you didn’t have to apply for one of the allocated number of air travel spaces a year…

“People would even fly around the world just for holidays“, he said, “We could visit our relatives in other countries as carelessly as if we were popping next door!” The young couple looked sceptical, but Kamala thought about Aunty Seema’s visit - probably amongst the last of those careless joy rides - and smiled.

“It must have been terrifying, the chaos!” the younger man murmured “Never knowing who might be sitting next to you on a plane… knowing they hadn’t been police checked? ”

“We never used to think so,” smiled the older man “We rather enjoyed chatting, getting to know each other.”

The young couples’ eyes widened in outright disbelief.

“You enjoyed getting to know people who might be suicide bombers?”

“This was before suicide bombing became fashionable.”

“Yes, but there must always have been some danger of hijackers, terrorists, air rage…? ”

“Not really. Or if there was it wasn’t noticeable. It’s like a noise in the street when you are trying to sleep. You don’t really notice it, but once it’s been brought to your attention that sound is all you can hear and all hope of rest is gone.”

Kamala thought about the news bulletins she'd listened to over the last few weeks. After he'd heard she was going to India, Jerome had made her promise to listen to the news - Really listen, Kam - at least once a week. He said you can't afford to ignore what's going on in the world of humans, even if you're only really interested in the world of trees. So every day she listened to reports of suicide bombings, hijackings, sabotaging of foodstuffs, violent coups, assassinations...

She'd complained to Amelia that Jerome was really doing her head in making her listen to all this depressing stuff. Trees were so much more peaceful and logical and beautiful. Amelia had looked at her with genuine pity. "Kam, there won't be any trees, or any people if you don't listen... if you just pretend the world is all peaceful and logical and beautiful. It isn't. Not all of it, anyway. Some people - Big News Flash - are greedy and violent and dishonest... and it's up to other people, who care about more than themselves and their own little lives, to listen to what's going on underneath, beneath the lines, to what's causing all the aggro and to be a force against it."

Kamala had laughed. "Oh, come on Meelie, how can you and me and Jerome, and even all those hippies and old ladies on the march ever be a force against terrorists and bombers!"

Amelia let out a strangled cry of exasperation, "You don't get it at all, do you Kam?! It's not the bombers who are the danger - they're a symptom, they're the black boils on the skin of society... what we should be finding, and fighting, is the bubonic plague that causes them..."

Kamala had nodded seriously, her eyes thoughtful, a little crease of concentration on her brow. "I see!" She said, slowly. Amelia beamed and gave her a big Amelia special bear-hug... never suspecting that Kamala didn't see at all, that she'd developed these specific facial and tonal responses which she'd found were very effective in shutting Amelia up before she went off on one of her rants. She loved Amelia and Jerome to bits - but they were so bloody earnest sometimes!

Kamala jerked back into focus, almost surprised to find herself in an Indian airport. She was almost asleep on her feet, she could not imagine that she would ever get to the end of all these queues. Then a movement above her head distracted her. A sparrow whirred and chirruped, stirring tiny hurricanes over the heads of the armed security guards, freewheeling through the open space above the taped-off security zones where the aching human feet shuffled in great, shambolic, articulated queues.

Kamala found her suitcase near the bottom of a vast pile of luggage beside the empty conveyor belt. She went through the 'No Dutiable Goods’ exit and the airport, having held her prisoner for so many hours, having shown her where to stand, what to do, which papers to produce and when, having protected and processed her - unceremoniously spat her out into the teeming, baking, black chaos of the Indian night.

She found herself facing a wall of humanity, the first wave of a barely restrained sea of people all staring intently at her. She quickly looked down at herself, wondering if they were staring because she’d left some buttons open or something. She felt the sweat leaping through the pores of her forehead, her back, her scalp. Then men were surging towards her, shouting Taxi? Taxi? Hotel? Change Money? Come, madam, come. This way. Where was the Greenfields rep? What if he didn‘t come? What on earth would she do? She knew she had the Greenfields office address, but it was the middle of the night. Where would she find a telephone? Where were the signposts? What were the rules? Kamala realised with rising panic that despite all her meticulous preparations and exhaustive checklists, nothing - nothing - had prepared her for this.

A man wearing a dirty white turban and a long, khaki shirt grabbed her luggage trolley from her and was now rushing down the concourse with it, elbowing away the other touts who were shouting abuse at him. She started following him, and was already half way down the concourse when she noticed a sign with ‘Miss Kammel Stil’ scrawled on it. She hadn’t recognised it as her name before, but now she realised that the wrong man had her suitcase. She stopped and watched, horrified as all her possessions - her precious books, her laptop, her papers, everything - disappeared with him into the throng of people, then turned and looked helplessly at the man with the sign and the Greenfields neatly logo embroidered on his breast pocket. He smiled at her and namastéd.

She wasn’t sure exactly what happened next, but in what seemed like the next moment she was sitting in soft, cool interior of a white car with the three green leaves of the Greenfields logo reassuringly printed on its flank, her suitcase strapped safely onto the seat in front her. How had it got there? What happened to the man who took it? How had the Greenfields driver known it was her? Not a word had passed between them. But at least she was safe now. Safe, clinging to this one little shred of familiarity - the Greenfields logo. Even though she was sitting in an unfamiliar car with a complete stranger, hundreds of thousands of miles away from everything and every one she’d ever known, in a the middle of foreign (yes, foreign for all her half-Indianness) and pitch dark country - the logo was a chink of light, a little link, an umbilical cord. She sighed and settled back to watch the strange new world go by in the flash of the headlights.

A tiny boy sat on the raised island in the middle of the road, between two torrents of traffic. What on earth could he be doing there? He must have run away from home… did his parents know? A man shrouded in white robes from head to toe rushed through the darkness. A lorry piled higher than a house with some billowing, dough-like load stood stranded at the side of the road, two men prodding hopelessly at it. None of it was real. None of it was possible. Kamala waited to wake up in her bed back at Uni under the green parasol to the sound of Amelia‘s flying-crashing alarm clock, or at home, with the forget-me-not print curtains and the smell of coffee curling up the oak stairs to her.

But she woke up in the Greenfields guest room, to the quiet hum of the air conditioning. A tray stood on her bedside with a white china teapot, a little milk jug with a lace cover, tiny white shells weighing down its edges, a white sugar bowl, a saucer with an upturned cup and a silver spoon with the Greenfields logo sprouting from its handle. Who had brought it? The tea was hot. How had they known when she would wake up? She looked around her. The room was dark, but blazing slithers of sunlight were knifing their way in round the edges of the blinded window - Kamala leaped out of bed and seized the bottom of the blinds with both hands and threw them heavenwards… a gesture of celebration, of surrender… and was blinded by the light.

Coloured kites made pinpoint mosaic pieces in a blank white hot sky. A troupe of little girls in pristine blue and white uniforms and brilliantine black plaits tied with big red ribbons climbed into the back of a sardine-tin like cycle-rickshaw. A beautiful white cow with a hump and huge, mascara-ed eyelashes tore lazily at some cabbage leaves in a pile of garbage by the side of the road - the traffic flowed, un-irritated, around it, a river round a rock. A five-storey building was being constructed opposite - the scaffolding was all made of bamboo and rope. Kamala’s mind involuntary flew to the Flintstones, where everything in the stone age world was just like in the modern world - except it was made of stone and string and wood, where mammoth’s trunks were shower heads and birds’ beaks gramophone player needles… she immediately felt guilty. Why shouldn’t they use bamboo? It was perfectly suited to the task and in plentiful supply - it was what Jerome called 'appropriate technology', she supposed.

And after all, what was she here to do? Work with Indian scientists to develop some of the vast potential of their forests, learn from them, and if she was really lucky, be privileged enough to contribute to the amazing discovery they seemed close to making… think of the possibilities if it really happened! And that she, Kamala, should be allowed to be part of it - here, in India! Kamala realised she was breathing hard, misting up the window in front of her, blotting out the reality of the India outside her window in her excitement about the future. She drew the outline of a little Greenfields three-leaf logo in the mist and grinned at her own childishness.

Chapter 14 - Love

He’d told her she could go, said he’d accompany her, show her the way - but she felt a sweet, lazy heaviness weighing her down, holding her there and now it was late in the morning and still she sat there, on the patch of hessian laid on the dirt beside the doorway of the hut, gazing out over the plain, the warm breeze lifting strands of her bedraggled hair. He’d apologised for the things he'd said last night, for striking her, but she’d refused to accept, saying that it was she who should ask his forgiveness. She glanced over at him - just at the exact moment he was glancing at her… they both quickly looked away, he up over the hills in the distance, she at the ground by her toes. Her dusty, crusty toes. She wanted a bath. She wanted to cleanse herself of her whole life and start again. She asked him.

“There’s nowhere to wash around here. Go home and take a bath” he said. “Use your mother’s silver water pitcher…”

“How do you know about her silver water pitcher?” There was no accusation in the question - merely curiosity. She even surprised herself with the lack of edge to her voice now. She marvelled at the sweetness that it was capable of, she heard it like someone noticing for the first time the sound of a stream which had been running over its stones outside their window all their lives.

“Doesn’t everyone know?” he murmured, the stream was sucking at his toes.

Chitra started humming a song, an old song that Bimla used to sing to her. Cicadas crackling in the heat of the day provided the percussion. The wind played the tanpura tones on the thorn bushes around them. The stream was washing over his skin, its sweetness was suffocating him… and that song! How his fingers itched (even the ones that had parted company with his hands years before, even they itched) to caress the long, slim neck, to hold the smooth curve of the body in his thigh, to feel the tanpura hum again under his hands. To be surrounded by beauty instead of filth and disease.

“Why have you stopped? Go on singing. You have a beautiful voice.”

“You’re crying.”

“No, no. It’s just some dust. This wind… Go on.”

“What about the stream over there?”

“Out of bounds. That’s on the Brahmin’s land.”

She sucked her teeth and curled up her lip in a snarl of contempt.

“Oh, nonsense! What land does the Brahmin have now? Caste discrimination is not allowed any more. I know all about it - I keep my ears open in the dhaba, you know. Brahmin's are all washed up. And soon we’re going to be all washed up too!”

Suddenly she jumped up and grabbed his arm. He gasped at the shock of it. No-one had voluntarily touched him for so many years.

“Come on!”

She was running across the road, up the dusty path through the thorn bushes, he panted after her, loping on uneven legs. She was laughing, looking back over her shoulder at him, her feet left perfect little imprints in the dust, her garments flew behind her like birds’ wings.

“Where are you going? We aren’t allowed here.”

She was already calf deep in the stream now, bending double and splashing the water on her face, looking up, beckoning him to join her, laughing at his hesitancy.

“Come on, dusty man! Come and wash away your cares!” She started dancing, a child-like, playful, beckoning dance.

“You bathe. Maybe it’s ok if you do, your father after all, was a holy man…” his voice trailed away as he caught her sharp glance. “I’ll just sit here with my back to you and watch out for any intruders. You can bathe in pe…. Aaaaargh!”

The torrent of cold water over his head was like the slap of cold air to a new born baby. Chitra stood beside him, laughing like a child, mopping her face with the sopping end of the sari, which she’d used to scoop the water over him. He thought about the first time he had tried to bathe in the stream, when he first came here, racked with his new disease, driven out of the boundaries of the city. Remembered the beating the Brahmin’s henchmen gave him, the cracking of his bones, the tearing of his already lacerated flesh. The days of lying alone under a straw mat (that later became part of the hut), terrified he would die, and then the greater terror of realising he would not die and knowing that this was to be his life from now on.

But his thoughts were drenched again by a second torrent - of water, of laughter… and he looked down at the shiny rivulets running through the film of grime on his legs, at the glistening trickle running off the stumps where his toes used to be, at the dark stain sinking into the earth, back into the stream. It was already tainted now, there was no going back. What the hell! With a whoop straight from his boyhood he leaped in with both feet and gave Chitra as good a drenching as any she had given.

Afterwards they lay on the rocks and let the sun dry their clothes, their hair, their bodies. For a moment or two he completely forgot… He looked at her, so young, so graceful, so perfect and joy welled up in him at the sight of her. And then crashed into the realisation that he was a monster. He got up and said roughly.

“Come on. They will be worried about you at home. We must go now.”

There was something in his tone that made her realise she couldn’t argue this time. And it was true, poor Bimla would be out of her mind with worry by now. Poor Bimla, how much worrying Chitra must have caused her over the years. He insisted on accompanying her home, although she swore she could find her way and was quite used to wandering about on her own.

“It is not seemly for a young lady to ‘wander about’ on her own” He said firmly but gently. And she smiled - young lady! - and fell into step beside him.

When they reached the big house, Bimla was calmly picking stones from the rice on the veranda. She didn’t seem a bit worried or surprised when she looked up to see Chitra coming down the path with a leper. She was very surprised, however, when Chitra ran forwards and flung her arms round her neck.

“I’m so sorry, Maashi! You must have been so worried! I promise I won’t run off again.” Bimla pulled the girl away from her to get a good look at her face, to check for signs of drugging, of madness, of possession by spirits - but whatever signs she saw, they made her relax and smile.

“Don’t be angry with my friend here, Maashi. It wasn’t his fault. They forced him… he looked after me. He said I should come home earlier but I wouldn’t listen, you know what I’m like Maashi, but I’m not like that any more, something’s happened. I don’t know what. Actually nothing’s happened. Not really, but everything’s different now. At least I’m different….” Chitra realised they were both staring at her, half smiling, as she babbled on.

“I-I’m sorry, I don’t even know your name or I’d introduce you.”

“Ravi”. It was Bimla who said it. Chitra gaped. Come to think of it, how come Bimla hadn’t seemed worried? Chitra had been missing for almost two days. And how come she hadn’t been angry with the… with Ravi? She must have sent people to the market find out what had happened, she must have heard. All the way home Chitra had been worrying that Bimla would have Ravi (‘Ravi‘! What a nice name!) arrested for “abducting” her. But here she was smiling and calmly cleaning rice and introducing Chitra to her own new friend who should be a stranger to Bimla. It was all very perplexing.

“Come, Ravi, beta. Sit. Have something cold to drink.” Ravi sat in the shade of the old familiar veranda again. Bimla noticed his eyes reddening before he looked down at the floor. “Why have you stayed away all these years, beta? You know there was always a home for you here.”

“A home for the old Ravi maybe, Ma-ji. But not for this monster. I am unclean. I would have tainted the house and everyone in it.”

“Achcha?” Bimla arched an eyebrow. “So how come you’re here now?” The ghost of a smile haunted the corner of her lips. Ravi glanced at Chitra “Well, you know. I had to make sure the child got home safely…”

“Not so much of a child now.” said Bimla.

“No.” said Ravi gently. “No.” he repeated, sadly.

“Are you two going to torture me forever with your prattling?” said Chitra, something of the old edge back in her voice. “How do you know each other? What’s going on? Isn’t anyone ever going to tell me anything?”

So they told her. About the music, about Ravi's ancestral calling playing for the great courtesans of the palace right up to Chitra's mothers time, about the incense and the embroidery, about her mother’s dignity and mystery, her kindness, her wisdom, about the suitors and the gifts, about the Art… About the Sadhu. And Chitra listened, without bitterness or jealousy or regret. Just drank it all in, and looked at Ravi and thought about how he’d been part of her mother’s life, how he’d created a part of the atmosphere, the backdrop to her art, how she had loved him. And she couldn’t help loving him a little bit herself. Just a little bit.