A River Sutra Read online

  After giving music lessons all day Master Mohan was left to cook a meager meal for himself, which he took up to the small roof terrace of the house to escape his household’s contempt. But he could not escape the blaring film music from the radio, or the loud noise of the gramophone echoing up the narrow stone stairwell leading to the terrace. It set him coughing, sometimes so loudly that his wife, or his daughter and son, would run up the stairs yelling at him to be quiet. Though he tried Master Mohan could not stop coughing. It was a nervous reaction to his family’s ability to silence the music he heard in his own head.

  So when the paanwallah told him about the Quawwali singers, Master Mohan found himself daydreaming on the tram. He had never heard the singers from Nizamuddin where Quawwali music had been born seven hundred years ago. But he knew Nizamuddin had been the fountain from which the poems and songs of the great Sufi mystics had flowed throughout India, and that even today its teachers still trained the finest Quawwali musicians in the country. He could not believe his good fortune—seven nights spent away from his wife and children listening to their music. And what is more, the music could be heard free.

  On his way home that evening he stopped outside Mohammedsahib’s house. Finding him on his veranda, Master Mohan asked shyly if he would be listening to the Quawwali singers.

  “Only if you accompany me. I am a poor fool who never knows what he is hearing unless it is explained to him.”

  So it was settled, and the next week Master Mohan hardly heard his wife and children shouting at him as he cooked himself a simple meal, relishing the taste of it while they listened to their noisy film music.

  “Make sure you do not wake up the whole house when you return!” his wife shouted behind him as he slipped into the street.

  By the time Master Mohan and Mohammed-sahib reached the tent tethered to one side of the mosque, the singing had begun and curious bazaar children crowded at the entrances.

  Mohammed-sahib peered over their heads in disappointment. “We are too late. There is nowhere for us to sit.”

  Master Mohan refused to give up so easily. He squeezed past the children to look for a vacant place in the tent filled with people listening in rapt attention to the passionate devotional music breaking in waves over their heads.

  He felt a familiar excitement as he led his friend to a small gap between the rows of people crushed against each other on the floor. The fluorescent lights winking from the struts supporting the tent, the musty odor of the cotton carpets covering the ground brought back the concerts of his childhood, and a constriction inside himself began to loosen.

  On the podium nine performers sat cross-legged in a semicircle around a harmonium and a pair of tablas. An old sheikh from Nizamuddin sat to one side, his white beard disappearing into the loose robes flowing around him. Every now and then a spectator, moved by the music, handed the sheikh money, which he received as an offering to God before placing it near the tabla drums sending their throbbing beat into the night.

  The more the singers were carried away by their music, the more Master Mohan felt the weight that burdened him lighten, as if the ecstasy of the song being relayed from one throat to another was lifting him into a long-forgotten ecstasy himself.

  Twice Mohammed-sahib got up to place money at the sheikh’s feet. Master Mohan watched him stepping over crossed legs as he made his way to stage, ashamed his own poverty prevented him from expressing gratitude to the singers for reviving emotions that he had thought dead.

  After two hours Mohammed-sahib’s funds and patience were exhausted, and he went home. Gradually the tent began to empty until only a few beggar children remained, asleep on the cotton carpets. Master Mohan looked at his watch. It was three o’clock in the morning.

  In front of Master Mohan a young woman holding the hand of a child suddenly approached the podium to whisper to the sheikh. The sheikh leaned across to the singers wiping perspiration from their foreheads.

  The lead singer nodded wearily and the young woman pulled the child behind her up the stairs. The boy stumbled twice, struggling to recover his balance. Then he was on the podium, both hands stretched in front of him. Master Mohan realized the boy was blind as the woman pushed him down next to the singers.

  The lead singer sang a verse. The other singers took up the chorus. The lead singer sang another verse, his arm extended to the boy who could not see him. The singers prodded him and the startled child entered the song two octaves above the others.

  “I prostrate my head to the blade of Your sword.

  O, the wonder of my submission.

  O, the wonder of Your protection.”

  It was a sound Master Mohan had only heard in his dreams.

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

  O, the wonder of Your protection.

  O, the wonder of my submission.”

  Until this moment he had believed such purity of tone was something that could only be imagined but never realized by the human voice.

  He crept forward until he was sitting by the young woman.

  “Who is that child?” he asked.

  The young woman turned a pleasant face pinched by worry to him. “My brother, Imrat. This is the first song my father taught Imrat—the song of the children of the Nizamuddin Quawwali.”

  Tears glistened in the large eyes. Under the fluorescent lights Master Mohan thought they magnified her eyes into immense pearls. “Last year I brought Imrat with me to Calcutta to sell my embroidery. While we were here, terrible floods swept our village away. Our father, my husband, everybody was killed.”

  Master Mohan glanced at the stage. The singers were already intoxicated by the power of their combined voices, unable to distinguish the singular voice of the child from all the other voices praising God.

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

  O wondrous Source of Mystery.

  O Knower of Secrets.”

  The woman covered her face with her hands. “I have been promised a job as a maidservant with a family who are leaving for the north of India, but I cannot take my brother because he is blind. I hope the sheikh will take Imrat to Nizamuddin until I can earn enough to send for him.”

  Master Mohan felt tears welling in his own eyes as he heard the high voice sing,

  “I prostrate my head to the blade of Your sword.

  O, the wonder of Your guidance.

  O, the wonder of my submission.”

  The next evening Mohammed-sahib confessed, “I am not as musical as you, Master. God will forgive me for not accompanying you tonight.”

  So Master Mohan went alone to hear the Quawwali singers. The young woman and the blind child were sitting under the podium, still there when the other spectators had gone.

  He waited all evening, hoping to hear the child’s pure voice again, but that night the boy did not join the singers on the stage. The following night and the next, Master Mohan was disappointed to see the young woman and her brother were not present at the Quawwali.

  On the fourth night Master Mohan found himself the last listener to leave the tent. As he hurried through the deserted alleys of the dark bazaar, he heard someone calling behind him, “Sahib, wait. For the love of Allah, listen to us.”

  He turned under the solitary street lamp at the end of the bazaar. The woman was pulling the child past the shuttered shops toward him.

  “Please, sahib. The Quawwali singers are traveling around India. They cannot take my brother with them, and in two days I must start work or lose my job. You have a kind face, sahib. Can you keep Imrat? He is a willing worker. He will do the sweeping or chop your vegetables. Just feed him and give him a place to sleep until I can send for him.”

  A drunk stumbled toward the street lamp. “What’s the woman’s price, pimp? Offer me a bargain. She won’t find another customer tonight.”

  The woman shrank into the darkness clutching the child in her arms. “For the love of Allah, sahib. Help us. We have nowhere to
turn.”

  To his astonishment Master Mohan heard himself saying “I am a music teacher. I will take your brother as my pupil. Now you must return to the safety of the mosque.”

  The woman turned obediently into the dark alley. Master Mohan was grateful she could not see the expression on his face, or she must surely have recognized his fear at the offer he had made.

  At the entrance to the tent he said, “I will come tomorrow evening to fetch the child.”

  The woman turned her face away to hide her gratitude, whispering “Please, sahib, I have a last request. See my brother follows the practices of Islam.”

  The next morning Master Mohan went to the corner of the avenue to consult the paanwallah.

  “You did what, Master? Do you know what your wife and children will do to that poor boy?”

  “They would not harm a defenseless child!”

  “Your wife will never permit you to keep the boy. Make some excuse to the sister. Get out of it somehow.”

  As they argued Mohammed-sahib joined them.

  “I couldn’t help myself,” Master Mohan pleaded. “The girl was crying. If she loses her job, how will she feed herself and a blind brother? This is no city for a young woman alone.”

  Mohammed-sahib pulled at his mustache. “You have done a very fine thing, my friend. Prohibit your wife from interfering in your affairs. It is you who feed and clothe your family and put a roof over their heads. Your decision as to who shall share that roof is final and irreversible.” He slapped Master Mohan on the back and turned toward the tram stop.

  The paanwallah shook his head. “That fellow is as puffed up as a peacock. It is easy for him to give advice when it costs him nothing. Don’t go back for the child, Master.”

  But Master Mohan could not betray the young woman’s trust, even when he returned to the tent that night and saw the sobbing boy clinging to his sister’s legs. Master Mohan lifted the weeping child in his arms as the sister consoled her brother. “I’ll write often. Study hard with your kind teacher until I send for you. You’ll hardly notice the time until we are together again.”

  The child was asleep by the time Master Mohan reached his silent household. He crept up the stone stairs to the terrace and laid Imrat on the cloth mattress, pleased when the child rolled over onto his torn shawl and continued sleeping.

  Well, you can imagine how his wife shrieked the next morning when she discovered what Master Mohan had done. As the days passed her rage did not diminish. In fact, it got worse. Each day Master Mohan returned from giving his music lessons in the city to find his wife waiting for him on the doorstep with fresh accusations about the blind boy’s insolence, his clumsiness, his greed. She carried her attack into the kitchen when Master Mohan was trying to cook food for himself and Imrat, chasing behind him up the narrow stairwell so that everyone could hear her abuse raging over the rooftops.

  When Master Mohan continued to refuse her demand that Imrat be thrown out into the street, Dolly and Babloo triumphantly joined in their mother’s battle, complaining they no longer got enough to eat with another mouth sharing their food. In the evenings they placed their gramophone on the very top step of the stone staircase just outside the terrace, so the child could not hear the fragile drone of Master Mohan’s tanpura strings giving the key for Imrat’s music lesson. They teased Imrat by withholding his sister’s letters, sometimes even tearing them up before Master Mohan had returned to the house and was able to read them to the waiting child.

  Somehow Master Mohan discovered a strength in himself equal to his family’s cruelty to Imrat. He arranged for the child’s letters to be left with the paanwallah, and on the rare occasions when he entered the house and found his family gone to visit friends, he gently encouraged Imrat to stop cowering against the walls and become a child again. He would cook some special dish, letting the boy join in the preparations, encouraging him to eat his fill. Then he would take the child onto the roof terrace. After allowing his fingers to play over the strings of his tanpura until he found the note best suited to the boy’s range, Master Mohan would ask Imrat to sing.

  Hearing the clear notes pierce the night, Master Mohan knew he had been made guardian of something rare, as if his own life until now had only been a purification to ready him for the task of tending this voice for the world.

  Then one day the music teacher returned late from giving a music lesson and found his daughter holding Imrat down while his son tried to force pork into the child’s mouth. The child’s sightless eyes were wide open, tears streaming down his cheeks. For the first time in his life Master Mohan struck his children. “He’s only nine years old. How can you torture a child so much younger than yourselves! Get out of this house until you learn civilized behavior!”

  With those words war was declared in Master Mohan’s household. His wife accused Master Mohan of striking his own children out of preference for a blind beggar, unleashing such furious threats at the child that Master Mohan was worried Imrat would run away.

  Mohammed-sahib would not agree to let Imrat live in his house, despite the music teacher’s eloquent pleading. As he listened to Mohammed-sahib’s elaborate excuses, Master Mohan realized his friend wished to avoid the unpleasantness of dealing with his wife.

  “I warned you, Master,” the paanwallah said with satisfaction when he heard of Mohammed-sahib’s response. “That man is just good for free advice. Now there is only one thing to do. Go to the park in the early mornings. Only goats and shepherds will disturb you there. Don’t give up, Master. After all, there is a whole world in which to practice, away from the distractions of your house.”

  So the music teacher woke his young charge before dawn and they boarded the first tram of the morning to reach the great park that is the center of Calcutta city.

  When they arrived at the park, Master Mohan led Imrat by the hand between the homeless men and women wrapped in tattered cloths asleep under the great English oaks turning red each time the neon signs flashed, past the goatherds gossiping by their aluminum canisters until it was time to milk the goats grazing on the grass, toward the white balustrades that enclosed the marble mausoleum of the Victoria Memorial.

  The music teacher lowered his cane mat and his tanpura over the side of the balustrade before gently lifting Imrat onto the wall. After climbing over himself, he lifted the child down, both so silent in the dark the guard asleep in his sentry box was left undisturbed.

  With a swishing sound Master Mohan unrolled his cane mat, still smelling of green fields, and seated Imrat next to him.

  Then he played the first notes of the morning raga on his tanpura. To his delight, Imrat repeated the scale faultlessly.

  Master Mohan explained the significance of the raga, initiating Imrat into the mystery of the world’s rebirth, when light disperses darkness and Vishnu rises from his slumbers to redream the universe.

  Again Imrat sang the scale, but there was a new resonance in his voice. He could not see the faint blur of the picket fences ringing the race course in the distance, or the summit of Ochterlony’s Needle breaking through the smoke from the illegal fires built by the street hawkers around the base of the obelisk. He could not even see the guard looking through his sentry box, his hand half raised to expel them from the gardens, frozen in that gesture by the boy’s voice. He only saw the power of the morning raga and, dreaming visions of light, he pushed his voice toward them, believing sight was only a half tone away.

  Afraid the raga would strain the child’s voice, Master Mohan asked Imrat to sing a devotional song. The boy obediently turned his head toward the warmth of the sun’s first rays and sang,

  “The heat of Your presence

  Blinds my eyes.

  Blisters my skin.

  Shrivels my flesh.

  “Do not turn in loathing from me.

  O Beloved, can You not see

  Only Love disfigures me?”

  Master Mohan patted Imrat’s head. “That is a beautiful prayer. Where did you lear
n such a song?”

  Tears clouded the clouded eyes. “It is a poem by Amir Rumi. My father said that one day he and I would sing it at Amir Rumi’s tomb together.”

  The music teacher took the child in his arms. “You will still sing at Amir Rumi’s tomb, I promise you. And your father will hear your voice from heaven. Come, sing it once more so I can listen properly.”

  The child blew his nose and again shocked the music teacher with power of his voice.

  “Do not turn in loathing from me.

  O Beloved, can You not see

  Only Love disfigures me?”

  At that moment a sudden belief took root in Master Mohan’s mind. He was convinced God was giving him a second voice, greater than he had ever heard, greater than his own could ever have been. He was certain such a voice must only be used to praise God, lest fate exact a second revenge by robbing him of it.

  Sure of his purpose as a teacher at last, Master Mohan asked the boy, “Did your father ever teach you the prayers of Kabir? Do you know this hymn?”

  He played some notes on his tanpura and Imrat responded with excitement, opening his throat full to contain the mystic’s joy.

  “O servant, where do you seek Me?

  You will not find Me in temple or mosque,

  In Kaaba or in Kailash,

  In yoga or renunciation.

  “Sings Kabir, ‘O seeker, find God

  In the breath of all breathing.’”

  And now a most extraordinary thing happened. Someone threw a coin over the wall, and it fell on the grass in front of Master Mohan. The music teacher stood up. On the other side of the balustrade, just visible in the first light of dawn, he saw a group of goatherds leaning on the wall.

  By the next morning people were already waiting for them, and the guard waved Master Mohan and Imrat benevolently through the gate. Word had spread in the park that a blind boy with the voice of an angel was singing in the gardens of the Victoria Memorial. In the darkness goatherds, street hawkers, refugees with children huddled to their bodies, waited patiently for Imrat to practice the scales of the morning raga before Master Mohan permitted him to sing the devotional songs that would give them the endurance to confront the indignities of their lives for another day.