A River Sutra Read online

  One by one I pull out the long hairs left by the barber, gritting my teeth against the pain. I can feel the blood trickling down my scalp, Each time I wrench my hand away from my scalp, the crowd screams as if sharing my agony.

  The monks enclose me in a circle until the crowd no longer knows which of us has renounced the world today. In that closed circle I can hear the monks chanting:

  “You will be free from doubt.

  “You will be free from delusion.

  “You will be free from extremes.

  “You will promote stability.

  “You will protect life.”

  My father is looking for me but he will not find me. I have become a stranger, my features hidden behind a muslin mask.

  AND NOW, MY friend, my brother monks are waiting for me in Mahadeo.

  No, I cannot stay longer. You must find someone else to answer your questions.

  If I am late, they will leave and I shall have to join a new sect of mendicants.

  Don’t ask me to do this, my friend.

  I am too poor to renounce the world twice.

  3

  For some time the memory of the monk disturbs me. When I sit on the terrace before sunrise with my face turned toward the source of the river, I find I cannot concentrate, seeing the monk’s intense eyes above the white mask covering his mouth as clearly as if a photographic image is being projected onto the darkness.

  In the silence I can hear waves lapping at the riverbanks and I think of the ascetics meditating by the holy pool at Amarkantak, seeking through their meditations to liberate themselves from the cycle of rebirth and death.

  At this hour I have sometimes seen the dull glow of something being swept downstream and known it was the corpse of an ascetic thrown into the river with a live coal burning in its mouth. I cannot stop myself from wondering if some day while I am sitting here in the dark I will see the monk’s body floating beneath the terrace.

  On entering the jungle for my morning walk, I loiter under the trees until it is time to visit Tariq Mia, anxious to avoid the caves for fear of finding myself in conversation with another stranger. To dispel my morbid thoughts I admire the red blossoms shaken from the flame trees by clambering monkeys. Or I pause between the branches rooted in the soil around an immense banyan tree like pillars in an ancient temple to watch birds guarding their nests from the squirrels streaking through the flat leaves.

  By the time I climb the summit of the hill, my preoccupation with the monk begins to evaporate like the dew receding all around me in the sunlight. On the far bank of the river the morning sun is striking the canals that irrigate the fields, and I can see farmers moving behind their buffaloes through flourishing crops interlaced by silver ribbons of water.

  Now I am full of anticipation at being with my friend. Although Tariq Mia often teases me, sometimes even suggesting I am pretentious, there is a lightness to my step as I descend into the valley that separates us.

  A narrow bridge spans the stream that flows past Tariq Mia’s mosque. Extending on one side of the mosque is a marble platform leading to the sixteenth-century tomb of the Sufi poet and saint Amir Rumi. Another platform leads to Tariq Mia’s residence. Behind the mosque the whitewashed village houses form a pleasant jigsaw up the incline of the hill.

  There is a placidness to the scene that suggests the calm of simple lives ordered only by the passing of the seasons and the call to prayer.

  But once a year the calm is broken by Sufi singers from all over India who congregate at Amir Rumi’s tomb to pay homage to their saint and poet on the anniversary of his death. For ten days and nights the marble platforms are covered with carpets, campfires flicker on the hillside, the hills echo to ecstatic singing. Then the singers are gone and Tariq Mia’s mosque is enclosed once more in its habitual tranquility.

  Today, by the time I reach Tariq Mia’s house, the cane mats are already unrolled on his veranda, the bolster pillows propped against the pillars, and on a small wooden table the chess pieces have been readied for our game.

  Tariq Mia stands on tiptoe to kiss my cheeks, his thin white beard brushing my chin. “What an unexpected pleasure! How surprised I was to see you on the bridge!”

  A young divinity student with the scholar’s black cap on his head enters the veranda with a tea tray. Tariq Mia is an acknowledged Islamic scholar, and there are always young clerics studying under him. I can see the student trying to hide his grin. I do the same. We both know Tariq Mia enjoys the solemn ritual of surprise although he watches for me every day.

  “You should not have troubled to order tea. Your students will resent me for delaying their instruction.”

  “My students will thank Allah for their good fortune, knowing they must endure me the rest of the day. Come, little brother, bring your cup to the chess board.”

  Although I am past middle age, Tariq Mia is nearly eighty years old so I am not offended that he calls me “little brother,” or that at the chess board he often conducts a gentle tutorial as if I, too, am his pupil.

  The old mullah seems able to read my mind. If I am downcast he will suddenly banish my gloom by breaking into song. Too conscious of my own dignity, I never fail to be moved by the uninhibited delight in that quavering voice as he sings his Sufi songs of love to God.

  “My heart is tangled in the locks of Your hair.

  I swoon in the gaze of Your narcissus eyes.

  My whole being circles You.

  Can’t You see my blood turning into henna

  To decorate the soles of Your feet?”

  Or he will tell me stories while he waits for me to move a knight. I concentrate so hard on evading capture, I do not grasp what he has told me until I am retracing my path to the bungalow.

  In our early encounters I could not see the pattern in Tariq Mia’s musings, attributing them to the changes of mood brought on by his age. Now, when he stares at the chessboard for too long I know those eyes, as alert as a panther’s in that lined face, are about to fix on me, and I affectionately watch creases appearing on the high forehead above the hooked nose, already reconciled to my checkmate.

  Today Tariq Mia is not pleased by my gloomy thoughts about dead ascetics.

  “India’s greatest poet also floated down this river,” he remarks with some acerbity. “Kabir, the man whose poems made a bridge between your faith and mine. Meditate on Kabir’s toothbrush. You will find it more useful than thinking about an ascetic’s corpse.”

  Dismayed by Tariq Mia’s disapproval, I confess that I have never heard of Kabir’s toothbrush.

  He shakes his head in irritation. “Don’t you know the story? How Kabir was sailing down the Narmada, cleaning his teeth with a twig? He threw the twig onto a mud flat in the river. The twig put down roots and grew into a huge tree, the Kabirvad. Poets and singers and mystics have come from all over India to praise God by his many names under the shade of the Kabirvad, even in the worst times of religious slaughter.”

  Then Tariq Mia asks me why I am suddenly so concerned with ascetics. I tell him about my encounter. Tariq Mia is too wise to question my distraction over the Jain monk. He keeps his eyes firmly on the chessboard, allowing me to reveal the monk’s story as I recollect it until I surprise myself by discovering the source of my confusion.

  “The fault was mine, I suppose. I was so fascinated by his lavish renunciation ceremonies that I never asked him to explain his first words, ‘I have loved only one thing in my life.’ Now he has gone without telling me what it was.”

  At last Tariq Mia raises his eyes from the chessboard. “But of course he told you.”

  “What was it? The prayer of the Hindu ascetic who asks for eyes in the soles of his feet so he can keep his own eyes on the face of God?”

  Tariq Mia puckers his lips in disappointment. “He followed in the footsteps of a man, not a god. What good would eyes in the soles of his feet be?”

  I plead with Tariq Mia not to play with me and tell me what the Jain monk loved.

&n
bsp; “The human heart, little brother. Its secrets.”

  “What secrets?”

  “The human heart has only one secret. The capacity to love.”

  Seeing my perplexed expression, Tariq Mia sighs. “Oh, little brother, are you so unfortunate? Have you never been scalded by love?”

  I consider the question. I know I was a dutiful son. As for my wife, she was a familiar presence in my house and in my bed, but I had no recollection of burning desire.

  “Children! Come here, children!”

  Tariq Mia’s call brings two young scholars running into the veranda, their loose white pajamas flapping at their ankles.

  “Fetch the gramophone. You will find it on top of the green almirah. There is a record in a brown folder on top of the gramophone. Don’t drop it. The gramophone needles are in a box in my desk.”

  Tariq Mia lays a thin hand over mine. The skin is so transparent I can see the pulsing veins beneath as we wait for the students to return with the gramophone.

  A scholar hands Tariq Mia an old brown folder, and he releases my hand to slide the record from its cover. He gently polishes the vinyl disc with his sleeve while the students crank the gramophone and fix a new steel needle into the ancient arm.

  The turntable revolves, then a high voice pierces the morning silence.

  “I prostrate my head to Your drawn sword.

  O, the wonder of Your kindness.

  O, the wonder of my submission

  “In the very spasm of death I see Your face.

  O, the wonder of Your protection.

  O, the wonder of my submission.”

  The clarity of the voice, even through the hissing of the old record, is so extraordinary, each note hanging in the stillness like a drop of water, that it is some time before I decipher the savagery of the lyrics.

  “Do not reveal the Truth in a world where blasphemy prevails.

  O wondrous Source of Mystery.

  O, Knower of Secrets.

  “I bare my neck to Your naked blade.

  O, the wonder of Your guidance.

  O, the wonder of my submission.”

  Seeing my reaction to the song, Tariq Mia laughs and removes the arm from the record. “Drink some tea, little brother. How can you say you have given up the world when you know so little of it?”

  He places a fresh cup of tea by my side. For a moment he stands at the edge of the veranda watching the water flowing under the bridge. Then he turns back to me. “Let me tell you another story, little brother. Perhaps it will help you understand the ways of the human heart.”

  He walks back to the chess table and slowly lowers himself onto his cushion. “This tale begins two years ago during the festival that celebrates the anniversary of Amir Rumi’s death. I am an old man and can no longer keep vigil with the ecstasies of our Quawwali singers. You know how they can continue all night— nine, ten singers at a time. When one tires the other takes the song, inebriating them all with his devotion until they become drunk with singing and no longer remember fatigue in their praise of God.”

  I nod in understanding. Tariq Mia often speaks to me about the ecstatic songs of the Sufis, which can even move their listeners to dance with religious rapture.

  “But, as I say, I am an old man and too close to meeting God myself to exhaust what little energy remains to me in singing to him all night, so I was fast asleep in my bed, my dreams filled with the richness of the music, too tired to hear the knocking at my window. Also, it was not a loud banging, just an insistent tapping on the glass that must have been going on for some time before it finally woke me.

  “I opened my eyes and saw a face peering at me through the glass. I reluctantly got out of my bed to open the window. A man was standing outside, dressed in a close-collared jacket and a white dhoti. His thin gray hair was receding from his forehead and heavy-rimmed spectacles magnified the frightened expression in his brown eyes as he apologized again and again for disturbing my rest.

  “It was some time before I was able to convince him to come inside. When at last he entered my room, I lit the lantern and poured him a glass of water, unable to understand why he was here. From his dress I could see he was not from this part of the country. Also, grief seemed to seep through his clothing although he was not weeping. I urged him to tell me what was troubling him.

  “ ‘The boy!’ he whispered.

  “ ‘Your son? Have you lost your son in these hills?’

  “He handed me a record, saying ‘The boy always wanted to sing at the tomb of Amir Rumi.’

  “ ‘How can I help you unless you tell me what has happened?’

  “ ‘No one can help me. I am a murderer. But I must give the boy’s music to Amir Rumi. Can you do this for me?’

  “I took the record, assuring him I would see it was treasured as a valued offering to the saint’s memory.

  “He looked relieved and I could see the gentleness in his eyes. Thinking to ease the man’s mind a little, I encouraged him to tell me about the crime of which he accused himself.

  “Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour, or the ecstasy of the singers pouring through the open window, which gave him the strength to speak. But once he began it was as if he could not halt himself.”

  4

  The Teacher’s Story

  Master Mohan was not a bitter man. Although he led an unhappy life, his gentle nature disposed him to small acts of kindness— helping a stranger to dismount from a rickshaw, reaching into his pockets to find a boiled sweet for a child—and when he walked down the narrow streets leading to the avenue where he boarded the tram that took him to his music students, he was greeted warmly by the neighbors sitting on their tiny verandas to catch the breeze.

  “Good evening, Master Mohan.”

  “A late class tonight?”

  “Walk under the streetlights coming home, Master Mohan. These days one must be careful.”

  Near the tram stop, the paanwallah smearing lime paste onto his paan leaves always shouted from inside his wooden stall, “Master! Master! Let me give you a paan. A little betel leaf will help you through the pain of hearing your students sing.”

  Even though it meant losing his place on the queue, Master Mohan stopped to talk to the paanwallah and listen to his gossip of the comings and goings in the quarter. And so he was the first to learn the great Quawwali singers from Nizamuddin were coming to Calcutta.

  “You should ask Mohammed-sahib to go with you. You are a teacher of music, he is a lover of poetry. And they are singing so close, in that mosque on the other side of the bazaar.”

  “But my wife will not go even that far to hear—”

  “Wives! Don’t talk to me of wives. I never take mine anywhere. Nothing destroys a man’s pleasure like a wife.”

  Master Mohan knew the paanwallah was being kind. His wife’s contempt for him was no secret on their street. The small houses were built on top of each other, and his wife never bothered to lower her voice. Everyone knew she had come from a wealthier family than his and could barely survive on the money he brought back from his music lessons.

  “What sins did I commit in my last life that I should be yoked to this apology for a man? See how you are still called Master Mohan as if you were only ten years old. Gupta-sahib you should be called. But who respects you enough to make even that small effort!”

  Her taunts reopened a wound that might have healed if only Master Mohan’s wife had left him alone. The music teacher had acquired the name as a child singer when he had filled concert halls with admirers applauding the purity of his voice. His father, himself a music teacher, had saved every paisa from his earnings to spend on Master Mohan’s training, praying his son’s future would be secured with a recording contract.

  But it takes a very long time for a poor music teacher to cultivate connections with the owners of recording studios. For four years Master Mohan’s father had pleaded for assistance from the wealthy families at whose houses his son sang on the occasion of a wedding or a
birthday. For four years he had stood outside recording studios, muffling his coughs as tuberculosis ate away at his lungs, willing himself to stay alive until his son’s talent was recognized, urging the boy to practice for that first record which would surely astonish the world.

  When the recording contract was finally offered, only weeks before the record was to be made, Master Mohan’s voice had broken.

  Every day his wife reminded him how his voice had not mellowed in the years that followed. “Your family has the evil eye. Whatever you touch is cursed, whatever you are given you lose.”

  Sometimes Master Mohan tried to escape his wife’s taunts by reminding himself of those four years of happiness that had preceded the moment when the golden bowl of his voice had shattered and with it his life. As her shrill insults went on and on, drilling into his brain, he found himself only able to remember his father’s anguish that his son would have to abandon a great, career as a singer, becoming just another music teacher like himself.

  Master Mohan’s father had made one last effort to help his son by engaging him in marriage to the daughter of a rich village landowner who loved music. He had lived long enough to see the marriage performed but not long enough to celebrate the birth of his two grandchildren, or to witness the avarice of his daughterin-law when her own father died and her brothers took the family wealth, leaving her dependent on Master Mohan’s earnings.

  Prevented by pride from criticizing her family, Master Mohan’s wife had held her husband responsible for the treachery of her brothers, raising their children to believe it was only Master Mohan’s weakness and stupidity that had robbed them of the servants, the cars, the fancy clothes from foreign countries that should have been their right.

  “How can I ever forgive myself for burdening you with this sorry creature for a father? Come, Babloo, come, Dolly. Have some fruit. Let him make his own tea.”

  With such exactitude had she perfected her cruelty that Master Mohan’s children despised their father’s music as they despised him, allying themselves with their mother’s neglect.