Darshan (15 page)

In his final letter, Yashbir had left his shop to Khushwant, who had no other means of support. Baba Singh had somewhat withdrawn from his brother after that, feeling displaced and disinherited. Sada Kaur and Desa’s letters, which had always been lifeless in comparison, became even more so in the five years following. They contained only data. The children were growing and healthy. The farm was thriving thanks to the money he sent. The bathroom sink in the hotel had sprung a leak. But not to worry, they fixed it. Prem was tired. Lal was not well. Even when Lal passed away in 1928, it had been just another bit of information. Baba Singh knew they had tried, but he had read their correspondence without enthusiasm, frustrated with their inadequacy, with all the emotion lost while translating events to paper.

Baba Singh had written obligatory replies, and this is perhaps why he did not like the ones he received. He wondered if his wife had written them in the same dispirited frame of mind. How could he explain to her what it was like? How could he tell her about his job and his days and months and years in China when she had not experienced it with him? His letters, like hers, were perfunctory, businesslike, a list of changes. No life to fill them out.

Baba Singh turned away from Yashbir’s storefront window. “It is too dark,” he told Khushwant. “I cannot see much.”

His brother jiggled the doorknob, but it was locked. “Let’s keep going,” he said. “I am sure Desa has the key.”

They strode past Dr. Bansal’s on their way to Hotel Toor. “Still boarded,” Baba Singh noted with regret.

“No one ever replied?” Khushwant asked. “They couldn’t tell you anything?”

“Some of the prisons replied to my inquiries,” Baba Singh said, “but they did not know, or would not tell me, where he was.”

Khushwant placed a gentle hand on his brother’s back. “Let’s go, Baba,” he said, heading toward Hotel Toor.

The hotel was still ugly, yet affection rushed upon Baba Singh like the salty, stormy sea that drowned ships off the coast of Hong Kong. He had missed this derelict lump of stone and wood.

Simran opened the front entrance before they even had the chance to reach for the knob, a radiant smile on her face.

Khushwant grinned. Even after so much time, his wife was still young and glowing. She exhaled slowly, like she had been holding her breath for the past eight years, and took her husband’s bag, placing it on the floor by the entrance.

Khushwant glanced toward the kitchen and sniffed the air. “Lamb?”

She laughed nervously. “We made a feast.” She scrutinized them both. “You two have gotten old.”

“You are still eighteen,” Khushwant replied.

Simran’s face was bright. She pulled her chuni over her hair and led her husband to the lobby.

“Hello Baba,” Desa said from the kitchen doorway. Her voice was distant, as though she had spoken across a wide valley and he was only hearing a faint echo. She had patches of gray in her hair. He was sad to see that she was no longer beautiful.

“Nothing is the same as it was,” he said, glancing around at the hotel, which truthfully did not seem so different. But it was the
sense
of the town and of the hotel, the absence of people that made it feel changed.

“For you I suppose.” She looked over at Simran and Khushwant. “She wanted everything to be perfect. Ever since we got your letter. Sometimes I hated her. I could not understand her patience or her optimism. They are very lucky.”

Baba Singh nodded tentatively, disturbed by the blunt indifference in his sister’s tone.

She wiped her hands on a dishcloth, came close, and hugged him. She pulled away before he could return her embrace. “Why don’t you put your things down?” she said. “I am almost done here.”

He went to his father’s room. Squatting next to Lal’s chest, he paused for a second, laying his hands lightly over the wooden lid. He opened it. The scent of metal bullets and the faint hint of death drifted out and upward. Memories gathered in his mind like a crowd of mourners. He laid each item on the floor, his mother’s clothing, her broken-toothed wooden comb, her ivory wedding bangle, the doctor’s vial of mint extract, Mr. Grewal’s debt ledger, Ranjit’s maroon turban, and now Yashbir’s chisels and his father’s opium pipe. Desa had added those, he knew.

He frowned, searching for Avani’s elephant. He checked once more inside the chest.

It was not there.

~   ~   ~

“Have you ever drawn anything?” Junjie asked Baba Singh, who made a habit of visiting the artist in the afternoons.

“When I was little. But nothing like that,” Baba Singh said, indicating the artist’s latest masterpiece, an old woman with youth and naughtiness etched in her fine wrinkles.

Junjie nodded at the compliment. “What did you draw?”

Embarrassed, Baba Singh hesitated. “Birds and trees, animals sometimes. On a slate board. All children draw.”

“Did you like it?”

Baba Singh considered the question. He had loved it. He had perceived things more clearly when he drew. The world had been more logical when he dissected it and recomposed it in chalk. “Yes, I think so.”

Junjie continued to work. “Then why did you stop?”

“Things changed.”

“That is just an excuse.”

“I am not an artist.”

Junjie glanced up, wiping paint the color of milky Chinese tea on his tunic. “That is obvious,” he said in that infuriating way of his. “Did you do anything else?”

“A carving once.”

“What did you make?”

Baba Singh self-consciously adjusted the baton in his pant loop. “I carved an elephant. For my sister.”

~   ~   ~

Baba Singh’s eight-year absence gave the view of the flatlands a surreal splendor. Striding down the dirt path on his way to Barapind, he stopped for a moment to remove his chappals and grip the warm earth between his toes. He was glad to be away, from Hong Kong, the ships and trains, and even from Amarpur. The town had expanded; about ten new shops had lengthened the main strip beyond the open market. He felt the need to escape cities and towns, to find a reprieve in the eternal open air.

He had not stayed long at the hotel. Simran and Khushwant retired to their room after lunch. Baba Singh heard them laughing, exchanging stories. He was left alone with Desa, who had grown taciturn and cold. He had wanted to ask her about the elephant, but he had gotten the distinct impression she would be cross with him for implying she had been negligent, or for thinking he had any right to ask at all.

He kicked a rock, watching it bounce and roll into the weeds. He felt his body loose and free in the airy cloth of his kurta pajama, no longer confined by the strict fit of his uniform. His eyes adjusted to the plains, the yellow mustard seed flowers, and the slight dusty haze in the spring air.

The rough waters and the smallness of Hong Kong were two things Baba Singh had greatly disliked about the city. The only visible distance had been out over the water—beyond the confusion of sailboats and steam liners—to the horizon. He had often focused on the line itself—the cut of the world where the ocean met the gray skies—trying to achieve a feeling of home. But the cold and choppy waves had usually just reminded Baba Singh of his months at sea, the nausea, the diseased passengers, the raucous children, the maze of passageways confining him to a tiny bunk with Khushwant. It was good to be home now, to stretch his gaze over firm land glowing with golds, greens, and hints of red.

He had spent most of his time in Hong Kong patrolling Des Voeux Road, where Junjie worked. The street was lined with tightly-packed, two-story shop buildings, some of which had tall spires protruding up into the sky. White banners with Chinese characters hung from jutting poles and fluttered about in the wind. Wires crisscrossed above the street, and the double-decker trolleys attached to them clanged by on tracks gouged into the concrete, the veins of the city. People walked, cycled, and pulled carts alongside the tram tracks and shiny Model Ts, Model Ks, and Business Coupes. Fresh and dried catch hung in open storefronts, the manta rays flat and lifeless. Behind the shops rose tenement complexes full of families crowded into small spaces, the white plaster on the outside peeling into dirty black streaks of decay from the cool, salty sea winds. Even before the Japanese invaded, taking advantage of the riots that forced the British out of China—Baba Singh and Khushwant along with them—Hong Kong had been a constant chaos that often seemed to compress and squeeze his mind.

Now, his spirits brightened as the sweet smell of burning molasses coated the breeze, freeing him from Chinese smells, the heavy odors of fish sauces and urine that had seemed to permeate through his clothing and into his very skin. He rolled the sleeves of his kurta up higher to wash those smells from his body, to bathe in the air of molasses and mustard seed flowers.

He continued on barefoot. The day was getting warmer, his brow sweating under the open sun. It was nearly noon when he approached the outskirts of Barapind, his feet coated with gritty dust.

“Baba!” someone called out.

He shaded his face with his hand and squinted toward the voice.

“Baba!” a villager shouted again.

In the distance he saw several men running toward him through the fields.

“It is so good to see you, Baba!” one of them said breathlessly as they all came nearer.

Smiling, Baba Singh shook their hands. “And it is so good to see you all, so many familiar faces.”

“You came back,” said a man named Onkar, a faint hint of bewilderment and amazement in his voice. Sada Kaur had written that Onkar’s son had also joined the British Colonial Police Force and was now stationed in Singapore.

Baba Singh adjusted his bag on his shoulder and clapped his friend on the arm. He understood Onkar’s disbelief. Returning was rare. The world gulped the men of the Punjab down with an inexorable hunger. “Yes, I came back,” he replied. He looked around, opening his arms expansively. “Everything looks the same. It is like I never left.”

“It is not the same, Baba,” one of the men said, shoving his way in front of the others. “The government extended another canal to Barapind as well as two other villages because of the drought.”

Onkar seemed suddenly tired. “But the water bosses followed the canals,” he said. “They guard the water and demand payment for something the government already taxes us for.”

“No one told me,” Baba Singh said, disturbed.

“What is the point for you to worry?” Onkar asked. “For you and your family it has been no problem.”

“But doesn’t your son also send money?”

Onkar picked some dirt out from under his nails and did not reply.

Baba Singh was reminded of the humiliation Ratan had long ago suffered. “I am sorry, ji.”

Onkar shrugged, then forced a laugh. “Maybe I will move to Singapore.”

Having no words for such futilities, Baba Singh nodded with pity, pulling away.

Navigating the footpaths past rows of mud huts, others waved and shouted to him. He searched for his wife, wondering if she would also come out to greet him, but he could not find her.

Turning around a bend in the footpath, he finally approached his mud hut. Three bicycles were piled against the outer wall, which had been recently sprinkled with water. Two sun-bleached wooden chairs he had not seen before were set under a small awning. A water pot was by the front entrance.

A young, grinning boy, perhaps ten years of age, flew around the opposite bend, coming from the village center. The boy’s dhoti was soaked, and his topknot was logged with water. It dripped down his face and onto his adolescent chest. He stopped short and stared at Baba Singh with big, terrified eyes.

Baba Singh knelt slowly before the boy. “Did you come from the pond?” he asked in a low voice.

Still frozen, the boy continued to stare unblinkingly. Baba Singh waited, not moving.

“Bebe!” the boy suddenly cried out, darting into the hut.

Baba Singh followed him inside.

The boy was standing in the rear of the hut, in front of the open cupboard filled with spices and pots. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he glanced nervously at the door leading to the other room.

Baba Singh smiled. He sat on a chair and waited. He shifted his gaze to study the hut’s interior. The same painting of the ten gurus hung on the wall, more faded than it once was. A picture of himself in uniform had been tacked up. He remembered sending it, nearly six years ago. He had forgotten how much he had aged since that picture was taken, a popping flashbulb capturing his younger self. Looking at it now, he felt much older than thirty-two.

Prem’s bedding was now soft cotton rather than the rough wool he had once used. And Baba Singh noticed a shelf that had not been there before, installed by the front door. On it was a row of wooden carvings, a cow, a bullock cart, a rudimentary depiction of a farmer pulling it, one horse, and even what looked to be Hotel Toor.

“Are those yours?” he asked. But a movement caught Baba Singh’s eye before the boy could answer, and they both turned as Sada Kaur stepped out from the other room. Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair had just been brushed and freshly tied back. He noticed a comb in her hand, which she discreetly set aside on a small shelf. She had a hopeful but guarded look in her eyes.

“Hello,” she said.

Baba Singh pushed himself tentatively out of the chair. “Hello,” he replied.

She did not seem to have aged much. She still reminded him in many ways of the girl he had married. She had that same youthful sparkle, the no-nonsense primness in her lips. He wanted to touch her, remembering the silk of her skin.

Instead, he walked over to the shelf. “What are these?” he asked.

“Those are Satnam’s,” Sada Kaur replied, inclining her head toward the boy. “Satnam, say hello to your bapu.”

Satnam, doubtful, stared intently at her for reassurance.

A twinge of jealously surfaced. Baba Singh had gone away, had become an invisible hand stretched across continents to fend off moneylenders and water bosses. His children did not know him.

She pushed the boy forward.