"Ravi followed the sadhu and his little girl out of the gates of the House. He saw the sadhu pick the child up by her upper arms, his filthy nails making deep, bloodless dents her pale skin and laugh into her face. He heard him tell her what he was going to do to her when they got well away from here, and how kind it had been of her mother to give her to him and that she must have been a really filthy little slut if even her mother hadn’t wanted her. He heard him laugh again and scream over and over again, “God will provide!” And then Ravi knew that this ‘sadhu’s curses were impotent. But when little Meera’s eyes rolled back in her head with terror and the warm trickle ran down her legs and onto the dead lorry driver's shoes, he stopped laughing and screamed in anger. He threw her on the ground and kicked her, then picked her up again and dragged her behind him like a bundle of meat. Rage like a red storm filled Ravi’s eyes and he wanted to kill the sadhu - but trembling and sweating with the effort, he controlled himself. He couldn’t take on the vicious looking younger man by himself. He needed to use cunning. And if he made his move too soon, he could lose his baby forever.
The station was crowded with people and baggage and goats and dogs and chickens and bundles of fruit and vegetables and trays of pakoras and steaming vats of tea... The noise and frenetic, surging movement made Ravi feel sick - he hadn’t been out of the mellow shadows of the big house for many months. He saw again how people’s faces crumpled in disgust at the sight of him, how children ran crying to their mothers, and how their mothers scowled at him as though he had deliberately lost half his face, his fingers and toes to bother their children. He saw all this, but he barely noticed it. He was focused on Meera, on keeping her in his sight so that he could find the right moment to snatch her back.
He mustn’t let her see him, or she would cry out and the sadhu would realise what was happening and he would get away, he would run faster than Ravi’s stricken legs could carry him, or talk his way out of it - the crowd would take the 'holy man's' side, and see Ravi as just a disease-ridden beggar. He saw the sadhu push Meera down onto the ground in a dark corner of the platform, beside a pillar plastered with peeling cinema posters and streaked with blood-red betel nut spittle. The sadhu squatted beside her. They were settling down to wait for the train. Ravi on the platform on the other side of the track, found a pile of wicker baskets full of chickens and hid behind them - from there he could peer through the wicker and feathers and keep an eye on his quarry.
The sadhu pulled something out of the bundle he was carrying and put it to his lips. He lit it and started smoking, coughing and spitting phlegm on the platform in front of him. Meera cowered and started to cry, he pinched her hard on the leg and told her to shut up, and then laughed. Again Ravi had to fight the urge to rush out and smash the sadhu’s face against the pillar. He must wait, he must bide his time. He would wait until the train was steaming into the station, he decided, and in the noise and confusion of people getting on and off, he would leap across the railway line, grab Meera and then melt back into the crowd. He would have to take her away, somewhere far away from the house (the sadhu would only go back there and demand that she be returned to him, and those credulous fools would give in). He would have to get her away from the town altogether. They would have to live by begging - that was one good thing about his disease at least, a leper and a frail looking young girl would probably do ok from begging, they’d be able to survive. At least she’d be with him, and not with that filthy stranger with the demonic gleam in his eyes.
But Ravi’s plan didn’t work. At least not the way he’d intended it to. When he heard the train coming, he got ready to jump… But he left it a fraction of a second too late. His toe-less legs turned the majestic leap across the line he visualised into a fumbled hop, a scream of metal on metal, sparks showering in all directions, of metal on flesh, on bone… a scream of horror from those who saw what was happening, too fast for them to do anything to help. His last thought before he died was that he had failed to protect his little one. But you hadn’t, you hadn’t failed. Your courage and your sacrifice did save her, so that she could go on and play her part.
The sadhu had leapt up at the first scream, and grinning with excitement at the sight of the blood and flying flesh, he had craned to get a closer look. Meera had seen her chance and darted away from the sadhu. Her heart beating like a hunted rabbit’s she looked wildly round the platform trying to think what to do next. She knew she couldn’t go home - they had betrayed her once, they would do it again. Then she saw him. The pale skinned young man striding out of the station doorway with a rucksack on his back, shielding his eyes from the horror on the railway line. She pushed her way through the legs of the crowd and caught up with him and pulled at his sleeve. He looked down to see a slim, pale, young, girl with big, frightened brown eyes looking up at him. He started to reach into his pocket to get out a coin to give her - but she shook her head and whispered, in English, as though she was reading it from a book; “Please. Sir. Please. Help. Me.”
Then a wild-looking, half naked man rushed out, screaming in a language he couldn’t understand and the girl threw her arms around him, whimpering “Help. Sir. Me. Please. Please. Sir. Me. Help. ” like a mantra. For a fraction of a second he wondered if they were both operating some clever hoax designed to rob him of all his possessions, but he knew the look of deep and genuine terror in the girl’s eyes could not have been faked... So he shouted back at the wild man to back off or he’d call the police. At that word, even though it was in English, the man did back off, the tone conveyed everything that the language could not. Then he spat, a bullet of blood red saliva, glared and muttered something, before striding off back into the station and jumping onto the train which was just starting to pull out of the station.
Meera clung to the pale skinned man like glue. She trailed after him to the station master’s office, the police station, through all the municipal offices that he scoured to try to find out who she was or what he was supposed to do with her. She refused answer any questions, to tell him or anyone else anything about herself except her first name. She had no papers, nobody had filed a missing person claim. Nobody could explain her existence. She wouldn’t leave his side, and if ever he tried to leave her (to go to the bathroom for example) her big, brown eyes filled with tears and she whispered “Please. Sir. Help. Me. Please. Help. Me.”.
What else could he do? He shelled out the necessary bribes, got her a passport and a plane ticket and took her home with him to England. She was about twelve, he was twenty three, so he wasn’t exactly old enough to be her father. And since she would never leave his side, day or night, there was nothing to be done but to marry her as soon as she was old enough. He looked after her right until the day he died of cancer ten years later, when their little daughter Kamala was only three years old.
"Me!"
Tears are streaming down Kamala' face too and she's shaking. Meera puts her arms round her daughter and the dark chasm of pain and secrets that has held her apart from her child, from everyone, all these decades - closes.
"Yes, darling, you. Whatever horror brought your father and me together, at least it resulted in you. You were our destiny. You make it all ok."
You were everybody's destiny, I murmur. Nobody speaks, each wrapped or trapped in their own thoughts.
I didn't try to soften the details. They deserve to know the truth, they are strong women - as women have to be - and they already know much of it in some part of their hearts. It is only by knowing the truth that the healing can begin.
Seema curses and pounds her fist into the bolsters - bangles clashing. "No wonder you never wanted to see us again - you must have wished us dead! I would have! I would have come back and murdered us all in our beds, burnt the bastard house down to the ground! Oh god, Meera, how can you ever forgive us?" And she hugs her sister fiercely. Her sister hugs her back. Now at last she is able to put that frightened, betrayed twelve year old girl to bed, and be the mature, clear-sighted, independent 44 year old woman she really is.
Telling this last part of the story, bringing the circle closer to closing, has been exhausting for my little earthly shell of a body. I can't keep its eyes open any more. Seema notices and quietly hustles everyone out of the room.
Minutes after they are gone, I sense that someone is still lingering by the door.
"You want to ask me something, child?" I manage, with eyes still closed.
"Did any of it really happen, Great Grandmother...? The tree, the lightening, all that - you know - with Andreas White... You see, I have these weird dreams sometimes and I don't know if all that was...."
I take a deep breath, mustering the energy which is slowly but surely draining out of me. It's the least that she deserves...
"Did it 'really' happen? Are you sure that's the right question, child?"
"What do you mean?"
"Did King Lear have three daughters?"
"What?"
"Well, did he?"
"Er, I... yes... I guess, yes, he did."
"Really?"
Kamala is silent. She is quick to recognise the question beneath the question.
"OK, so there are different kinds of reality, but you know what I mean, Great Grandmother... Lear is fiction, the reality of his daughters is only in the context of that world."
"Yes, child, but can that world exist without this? Isn't that world threaded through this, or glinting off it...? You're looking at me like I'm a mad old woman, like Seema does, bless her! Ok, let's consider science, then - that makes sense to you, doesn't it?"
Kamala nods "It's the only thing that does anymore!"
I nod too. "'Science - knowledge ascertained by observation and experiment, critically tested, systematised and brought under general principles.'"
Kamala relaxes. This is known territory.
"Ok - tell me about neutrinos, they're real, aren't they? 'ascertained by observation and experiment' and all that?"
"Neutrinos?"
"Yes, what are they? Where do they come from? Describe them."
"Well, they're particles, aren't they? Created during the Big Bang, they think. They're almost impossibly small - they go right through everything, slip right through the atoms of other, bigger particles. Trillions of them are falling through our bodies right now! They come from the sun, don't they? And they travel pretty fast... if they don't have any mass, which they virtually don't, they'd be going faster than the speed of light... I think."
"Wouldn't that mean that they'd be travelling backwards in Time?"
She smiles, "Maybe..."
"So go on, describe their properties, density, dimensions, all that..."
"Well... they... they don't really have any to speak of, they've only been sort of mathematically predicted - detected through the trails of collisions with other really micro-micro-particles in deep underground labs..."
"Sooo... invisible particles with barely any physical properties travelling through solid matter backwards in time... Really?" I even manage a faint grin.
She stares back at me, there's a look in her eyes like she's just come to the top of what she thought was a small hill and is seeing the mist start to clear from a whole new mountain range looming in front of her...
But she's still clinging to the safety of her little hill... I need to give her a couple more little shoves...
"Now describe dark matter..."
"What?"
"You heard me, child, describe dark matter. The universe is full of the stuff, padding out all that space between the stars, squirming about behaving more like chunky matter, than a big pool of nothingness... Scientists talk about it all the time, it's real, isn't it?"
"Yes, but..."
"So what is it?"
"Well, they don't know, not yet..."
"Maybe it's in another dimension?"
"Yes, maybe..."
Ok, then, how many dimensions are there?"
"What? Dimensions? Three, of course! Well, five, if you count time and space. But there may be more - and that would explain lots of things we don't understand about neutrinos and dark matter..."
"Really? More dimensions? How many more? And what would another dimension be like? Can you observe it? experiment on it? Bring it under 'general principles'?"
"I don't know!" wails Kamala.
"Use your brain, girl!"
"I'm trying, Great Grandmother, but those extra dimensions are just a theory, they're not real...I mean they are real, they're just not... arrh! What's the use, scientists have been trying for decades to find out what dark matter is with mega computers and everything... How could I work any of it out just by sitting here using my brain?! "
"That depends... how much are you using?"
"How much what?"
"How much of your brain, stupid!"
"What d'you mean? I don't know, I'm just using my brain... Oh, ok, ok, you mean how humans use about, um, eight to ten per cent of their brain, right?"
I shrug. "So what's the rest of it doing? Dancing backwards in Time with Monsieur Neutrino in a ball gown of glittering dark materials in the Seventh Dimension?"
"I don't know..." she cries, then again more quietly, thoughtfully "I don't know..."
"Really?" I say, more gently this time.
"Oh Great Grandmother, I just don't know anything any more."
"You know a great deal, child. After the last few weeks, you have started to know more than most humans ever will. But you can't know everything... and you don't need to. There are other ways of understanding, aren't there? You know all about those other ways, don't you? You've been using them all your life... they've got even sharper since you woke up Kundalini..."
Kamala blushes furiously "I don't know what you mean, Great Gr..."
"Yes, you do!" I snap "Don't be ashamed, Kamala! Your powers of perception are your gift... You are in tune with parts of your brain that scientists can only dream about! And your brain is in tune with parts of the universe that scientists are not even capable of dreaming of. Science has its place, child - but it's not the only lens to look through... Huh! What do you think your precious scientists discovered by putting thermometers up the bottoms of half-naked yogis surviving sub-zero Himalayan temperatures? Only that they were looking in the wrong place, that's what! Only that they were asking the wrong bloody question, that's what! Don't stifle that power, child - use it! Treasure it!"
"Yes... I suppose you're right."
"'Suppose'? What 'suppose'? Of course I'm bloody right. Now go away and let me rest in peace, child."
"Don't say that, Great Grandmother" she flings herself down beside me and hugs me.
"Hmh. You know what I mean. No, go, child. Run along..."
All night a rhythmic whirring noise throbs down the corridor from Deepak's room. Kamala's breathing keeps time with it as she sleeps a long, deep, dreamless sleep. The next morning, she wakes to the blush of warm sunshine on her cheek and the moist, warm smell of new life sun-sucked up through rain-pummelled earth. She smiles, though she doesn't know why. Automatically, she reaches out to her bedside table and draws her laptop into bed with her.
You have mail. Kamala laughs - there are 36 messages! One is from Mother saying that she's decided to come to India, she doesn't know why, but she suddenly feels that she can face it - and more than that, that she needs to come, to tie up loose ends, face her demons... Now that White Enterprises is releasing the fuel they've apparently been stockpiling all these years to drive up the price, airlines are operating again. There are several more from her asking why Kamala hasn't replied? Is she alright? Doesn't she want Mother to come? And finally, that she's coming on the next possible flight to make sure Kamala is safe if nothing else.
There's a message from Gervaise saying he's back from the Philippines (had to leave there in a bit of a hurry actually - bit of trouble with the law), and does she fancy meeting up for a drink sometime? (When the laptop asks her if she's sure she wants to send this message to the trash can, she clicks 'yes' with particular relish). There are several messages offering her septic tank cleaning and breast enlargement services, and one offering her discrete introductions to Russian brides. They follow Gervaise's invitation into the trash can, where Kamala feels they are appropriate company for each other. There are many, many messages from Jerome and Amelia in ascending pitch of concern and hysteria - but the last one is dated today. It says
"What's going on out there, Kammy? That boss of yours taken one look at your gorgeous mug and decided to be a good boy?! Check these out..."
There's a link to a website. She opens it and bites her lip, her hands flutter to the snakes at her throat. His face is in front of her again...it's an old photo - The Smile beams steadily, confidently - no trace (to the less sensitive eye) of that deep, cold ocean of unlove that she had fathomed that night, that she had swum within, that she had filled with all the power of her empathy, with all the vastness of her true warmth. She saw now the ice-chip in those blue eyes, the one she knew she'd melted.
She reads...
www.handbag.com/gossip
Has wealthy industrialist and playboy, Andreas White, gone gaga for a goddess??!! Rumours are rife of steamy sex scenes in the jungle - with White cavorting with a bevy of dusky beauties reputedly belonging to the local Ice Goddess cult!!! So is he going to trade in his hot-off-the-production-line Lotus Electron for the lotus position?! His press flunkies deny all, so perhaps after all he is sticking by his one true god, Mammon!!! We can't tell you what White himself says, as no-one's seen or heard him since the incident.
Kamala runs full tilt down the corridor, her laptop clutched in both her hands and bursts into Deepak's room, shouting...
"Deepak, Deepak, look! Something did happen....!"
She stops dead, eyes wide, jaw falling open. There's a warm, chemical tinge to the air and Deepak's printer, on a table in the corner, is smoking slightly. Every wall, every surface, every inch of floor, every inch of him, lying snoring on the bed, fully clothed, is covered in A4 printouts - and on every print-out is a picture of Kamala. Kamala bent over her reports on the veranda of the Greenfields bungalow, Kamala leaning wistfully on the window ledge of the Sumo, wind and dust in her hair. Kamala glowing with the effort of climbing the hill path, or listening intently to Dhanmatbai, or pouring water over her hair from a pregnant clay pot, or holding a piece of fruit glistening in anticipation of meeting the moisture inside her parted lips. There's one - smudged and grainy - of Kamala, a naked wood nymph, gazing beatifically out from the shadowy hollow of the tree.
It seems like every minute they had been together, Deepak's camera had been leaning in and caressing the curve of her shoulder, the gleam the dream in her eye, the haze of morning sunlight through her eye lashes, even - once - one of the raw, questioning looks of yearning she flashed at him before he hastily blanked it or thrust it aside with a put-down.
Sweeping the printouts off his body she climbs onto the bed beside him. Sleepily he turns to her... backs off, surprised for a moment, then surrenders, draws his arms around her... "O-oh, you've found out my little secret?" She doesn't answer. She doesn't need to. Her body's saying it all.
Kundalini re-awoken, sets off slow, sensuous fireworks at the base of her spine/his spine - rises and unfurls and grows in brightness and beautifulness as she spreads through their limbs their blood their nerves. And finally she erupts above them, fuses with the pool of pure consciousness that's waiting there, here, everywhere. A lotus of unearthly brightness unfolds above their heads with the sighs of a thousand lovers.
"Why didn't you say anything?" She asks afterwards.
"My job was to watch over you - be your protector. I'm so much older than you. Your cousin. Adopted, yes, but all my conscious life Ma has been... well, Ma. And to be in love with this niece of hers - this child - that I've heard her talk so wistfully about ever since her visit to the UK, this young girl I've been charged to protect, felt wrong. Impossible."
"But it doesn't feel wrong, does it?"
"No. It feels like... the only thing possible."
Deepak and Kamala hold each other close. Between their bodies, the twined golden snakes on their silver chain are sealed and warmed - their form is imprinted, mirrored, on the soft skin below Kamala's throat and on the smooth curve of Deepak's chest - a figure of eight, horizontally aligned with their bodies, the symbol of eternity.
