Arresting God in Kathmandu (21 page)

I knew what my master was saying. When Laxmi’s body touched mine, I had become aroused, and this was wrong, especially for an old man like me. Often in bed at night, I worried that my impulses sometimes got the better of me, but just thinking about my impulses aroused me even more. I had never felt this way when my wife was alive or before I came to work in my master’s house, and was perplexed that my desires grew as I got older. What could I now say to my master? So I said, “Shall I make you some tea, hajur?”

My master shook his head and left. His words did open up a possibility I had not allowed myself to consider, but I knew that going back to the village and searching for a wife would be too great an effort. It didn’t, however, prevent me from imagining what a new wife might look like (if, indeed, I were to marry, which I knew I would not), but every time I tried to visualize her, I saw the face of Nani Memsaheb, who had, at this time, visited the house only a couple of times. I found this disturbing, so much so that once, while I was standing in the kitchen, a saucer slipped out of my hand and shattered on the floor.

On Saturday afternoons, when the relatives left at around four, I would set up comfortable chairs on the big balcony upstairs and a wooden platform with cushions for my master to sit on. I would clean the house and prepare it for the arrival of the evening guests. The guests were invariably men, often as old as my master. Once in a while I’d spot an elderly woman in the group, but no woman ever came on a regular basis.

Nani Memsaheb started coming by herself to these evening talks. She would sit quietly in a corner, with that shy look on her face, while my master spoke. I served the guests tea and remained as much in the background as possible. Every now and then, a guest would politely ask a question or make a comment, but mostly my master talked, his voice clear, soothing in the evening air. The first evening she came, all the men looked puzzled, and some raised their eyebrows. But my master offered no explanation; he didn’t even introduce her to the rest of the group. He continued his talk as if nothing unusual had happened, as if the beautiful woman who just sat down, dressed in a black sari, with long, heavy silver earrings glinting through her hair, her face glowing like a full moon, was not a distraction. I wondered whether she wore black clothes to hold my master’s attention.

Those who attended these sessions were men whose minds surely constantly dwelled on deep philosophical subjects; they listened attentively as my master spoke, interrupting only to ask questions. I watched Nani Memsaheb as she gazed at my master’s face. When their eyes met occasionally, she quickly looked down, crimson spreading across her cheeks. Once, her eyes filled with tears, and I remember thinking—the thought came from nowhere and disappeared instantly—she is going to be the death of him. My master often talked about the impermanence of thought, and how meditation could make us aware of this. That’s what happened to me: my thought came and vanished. But, as I remember to this day what I thought then, perhaps thoughts are not fragile and fleeting after all. Perhaps they are solid, rooting themselves in our brain even while giving the impression that they are no longer there.

Soon, Nani Memsaheb became a regular part of the household. She helped me cook food and prepare for the Saturday afternoon gatherings, which annoyed my master’s relatives, because they saw that as a sign of her increasing authority in the house. “Ram Mohan dai,” Laxmi said in the kitchen one day while Nani Memsaheb was using the phone, “this house is not the same as it used to be.”

The other servants nodded.

“I don’t want to come here anymore,” Laxmi said.

One of my master’s cousins, an enormous woman with a swinging walk, came into the kitchen and said, “What’s happening in this house, huh, Ram Mohan? What’s going on?”—as if I’d invited Nani Memsaheb to join us each weekend. “Just because someone new comes in, does that mean we are to be ignored?” She said this loudly, and everyone knew that she meant my master and Nani Memsaheb to hear. My master hadn’t exactly been ignoring his relatives, but in Nani Memsaheb’s presence he often seemed to forget that others were around. I shrugged my shoulders and kept washing the dishes. In a few minutes Nani Memsaheb came in and asked me to peel the fruit for the evening guests. Everyone was quiet. “Did you hear, Ram Mohan?” Nani Memsaheb asked, and I wiped my hands on a towel and took the fruit from the refrigerator. My master’s cousin fingered Nani Memsaheb’s earrings and said, “Where did you buy these? I want to get some for myself.”

Day by day, I watched Nani Memsaheb move around the house as if she had lived here a long time. She spent time in the kitchen, helping me or giving me instructions. She sat on the living room floor and, with her small, square glasses perched on her nose, read from my master’s collection of books. In the hallway, she rearranged and replaced the black-and-white photographs of temples. One night, she did not go home after spending the day. She went into my master’s bedroom, bolted the door, and stayed all night. That night I did not go to the small outhouse in the garden assigned to me but used my master’s bathroom. Although I listened intently, I couldn’t hear any noise coming from his bedroom. Soon I was ashamed and hurried back to my room.

From then on, my master and Nani Memsaheb were inseparable. Whenever he looked at her, he seemed to forget who was where and what was what. She began to call him “my old man,” but in a sweet voice. She even accompanied him to the hotel, and soon she was named the general manager, much to the dismay of many relatives, who had been after my master for years to get them jobs there. Since I never went to the hotel, I don’t know what the staff thought of her, but I heard from the relatives, who now came to me regularly to complain about her, that she was not popular, that the hotel was falling apart because of her bad management. I knew, of course, that there could be no truth to these accusations. First, my master would never have allowed such a thing to happen, and second, she had made several improvements in the house. She’d had the walls painted white, hired two gardeners to make the garden bloom with flowers and leaves, extended the kitchen so that I would have more space to work, and built a balcony upstairs that afforded a tremendous view of the Pashupatinath Temple and the Shivapuri Mountain. After a while, I became accustomed to her authority, and went to her instead of to my master if I had a question. Sometimes I resented how quickly she had established power in such a great man’s house, but most often I admired the way she’d done it.

“I know what she wants,” my master’s cousin whispered to me one Saturday afternoon. “She will eventually have the hotel and this house put under her own name, throw him, and you, out of her life, and then marry a young stud.” She leaned closer to me so that I got a whiff of her stale-radish breath, that mouth into which she stuffed food all day. “This old man-young woman thing never works. And she, she has all kinds of plans for herself.”

I kept quiet, for I didn’t feel comfortable talking about Nani Memsaheb with jealous relatives. But I did recall the premonition I had had when Nani Memsaheb first visited the house, and later that night I wondered whether she had attached herself to my master for money.

On the evening of their marriage, red, green, and yellow lights blinking on the roof made the house look joyous. A large tent was set up on the lawn, under which a buffet of twenty-two dishes was laid out. An army band played popular songs in a corner, and some children danced, drawing laughter from everyone. Relatives of my master, many from the village where he was born, came to celebrate. The relatives who knew Nani Memsaheb sighed and looked at one another as if to say, “What can we do?” But in the presence of the couple, they too acted happy. “You are a lucky man, hajur,” his cousin told him, gobbling a large piece of cake. “Such a beautiful wife, one who loves you so much.” The rest of the relatives nodded, their faces beaming.

During the wedding ceremony, I got such painful stomach cramps that I had to leave the lawn many times. Nani Memsaheb’s mother teased me about gorging myself on the food, but I told her I hadn’t eaten much, that it was something else.

After everyone left, I watched my master and Nani Memsaheb retreat to their bedroom. Sitting on the veranda, I listened to the noises of the night, the frogs, the occasional blare of a horn in the distance, people shouting one another’s names. I tried to concentrate on these noises and block out the muffled voices coming from my master’s bedroom. My stomach cramps had subsided, and I could more easily focus on the sounds of the neighborhood. I tried not to think about anything else, and before long I realized that I was actually attempting to meditate. For the first time, meditation came to me, perhaps because of the tremendous sadness in me, sadness for myself for having reached an old age with nothing to show but my service to my master, who now was in the arms of a woman half his age, a woman who would, I was convinced, bring pain and suffering to the house.

After the marriage, Nani Memsaheb started calling me Ramey, a nickname I disliked. It did not have the dignity of Ram Mohan. My master smiled when he saw me wince at the nickname. “It’s her affectionate name for you, Ram Mohan,” he said. “She has made you her own with that name.”

That night, in my room, my mind kept repeating the words “made you her own.” I whispered them aloud, and, oddly, began to like the sound of them. Before long, I realized that I was getting aroused. An incredible feeling of shame washed over me, and I quickly got up from my bed and went outside. The Ghantaghar clock tower in the city’s center announced midnight. A full moon was shining. I reached my arms behind my back and strolled through the garden, trying to calm myself. I was troubled by this excitement and the shame that accompanied it.

I heard the balcony door creak open, and I looked up to see Nani Memsaheb, wearing only a petticoat and a bra, leaning against the railing and gazing up at the moon. Her long hair ran down her shoulders and her back. I couldn’t help staring. When she took her eyes from the moon and saw me there in the garden, she froze for a moment, then quickly went inside.

The next morning when I brought tea to their bedroom at the usual time, Nani Memsaheb and my master were still asleep, her arm on his chest and her thigh beneath her petticoat over his legs. I set the tea by the bedside, my legs shaking slightly, my eyes riveted on Nani Memsaheb’s thigh. My master opened his eyes and said, “Isn’t it early for tea, Ram Mohan?”

“It’s already eight o’clock, hajur,” I said.

My master patted her thigh and said, “Nani, tea.”

She yawned and said, “Was that you last night in the garden, Ramey?”

I shook my head, trying to show surprise.

“It wasn’t you?” She was watching my face closely.

“I was in bed all night.”

“I could have sworn it was you,” she said. “Or someone who looked like you.”

“You have a twin brother, Ram Mohan?” my master said and laughed.

I forced a smile and left the room.

A few weeks after the wedding, my master’s weekly meetings resumed, and Nani Memsaheb joined the older men, as she had done before. As usual, my master spoke at length, and the others interrupted only to ask for clarifications or make brief observations. During one session, about two months after the wedding, while I was serving tea to the guests, Nani Memsaheb interrupted my master while he was speaking. My master had been talking about the nature of the mind, how it moves from one place to another like a monkey, and how in order to reach a higher level, one has to control that monkey. Put it on a leash, my master had said, so that it cannot run around. Then the mind will become one with the Brahman.

“But when once we have the monkey on a leash,” she said, smiling faintly, “then we too are tethered to the leash, aren’t we?”

My master smiled, affectionately, understandingly, as one smiles at a child. “Yes, we are. The trick is to be tethered to that leash while also controlling it.”

“But how is that possible?” she asked. “It seems to me that the trick is not to have the monkey on a leash at all. Let the monkey do whatever it wants. Why become attached to it?”

An old gentlemen with a mustache, a high government official, said, “Let’s listen to him fully before we offer comments.”

My master was still smiling, and he didn’t speak for a short while, until the old gentleman said, “Please go on.”

Throughout the rest of the session, Nani Memsaheb said nothing. A deep crease had appeared on her forehead. My master glanced at her a few times while he spoke, but she didn’t look back at him; her eyes roamed the faces of the men who were listening to her husband.

After they left, the two sat down to dinner as if no disagreement had occurred. She kept offering him more food, and he kept thanking her graciously.

From then on, Nani Memsaheb continually interrupted my master during the sessions. Once she even muttered, “Rubbish,” in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. My master lost track of what he was saying, and his eyes turned cloudy. The other men frowned at her, and one guest coughed. Another time she let out a giggle, which she tried to a disguise as a hiccup. My master paused, a concerned look on his face, and said, “Why don’t you drink some water, Nani?”

I was disturbed by the way she challenged his authority, the vast knowledge he had acquired through years of reading and contemplating. I despised the strident manner in which she offered her opinions, and the crease, now permanent, on her forehead. But late at night, when I lay in bed, when my mind quieted and I could hear my own breathing, it seemed to me absurd that in a group of learned men, it was a much younger woman who didn’t buy the high-minded thoughts of my master’s. Even stranger, once the guests left, Nani Memsaheb and my master would joke and laugh, talk about the hotel, as if nothing had happened. They never discussed spiritual matters, as if some unwritten rule forbade them from such debates outside those sessions. Now I think that, had they talked about their disagreements in the privacy of their bedroom, some of the resentment and the tension would have cleared.