Darshan (20 page)

“I cannot imagine that to be possible.”

“It was a horrible day,” Khushwant agreed, continuing to iron the wrinkles out of the envelope. “The gunshots were loud and never ending. People were trampling each other in their panic. But I could see by Ranjit’s face that he did not even notice all the feet and dust and screaming around him. People were kicking me, scrambling over my head, and I shouted at him, grabbing his hand, but he did not speak. He looked at me as if I was the only thing worth seeing. There was no fear, only peace.”

He fell silent, not wanting to share more.

Baba Singh had many questions about what had come next. He did not, however, ask them. He stifled them, shoving them into the folds and creases of his memory.

Khushwant returned the letter. “You should open it.”

“There is no need,” Baba Singh said. “It is too late.” He gestured at the temple. “Come. They will start soon.”

They circled the lake to a bridge, unfurled like an outstretched, welcoming hand for the steady stream of pilgrims who numbered in the thousands. They entered the main complex through a gate, a portal from the roaring metropolitan hum to the sweeping quiet of reverence and the murmur of prayer.

They found a place to sit in the enormous hall, the priest’s voice echoing through the cavernous space as he read from the Holy Book. Baba Singh set the envelope down in front of his knees and bent his head, praying not to God, but to that letter.

His two portraits came to mind, the two that Junjie had drawn of him and which had long ago been stampeded into Hong Kong’s concrete footpaths, crushed under enraged feet, charcoal staining the pavement, paper ground into oblivion. Both drawings had spoken of a bleak future, a hunt for contentment and liberation, a hauntingly regrettable realization that neither would be found. Junjie had seen more than the people he drew; he saw that all of them were on trajectories, unable to veer to avoid calamity.

Still, perhaps it was possible to change direction, if one possessed enough strength and courage. Not all men were doomed, as Junjie would have had his subjects believe. There had to be those whose lives ended in good fortune, if for no other reason than to provide balance in the universe. Baba Singh realized that he would simply need to earn it, to force himself on a journey of absolution so he could be worthy of the many blessings in his life.

In the swell of prayer he saw clearly what would have to come next. He had been living the last twenty-five years as if with a fever, his wife and three sons so far from him, existing only beyond the fog of his illness. He slept in a mud hut like so many others, so commonplace, the walls surrounding him containing no record of the unique hardships he had endured. There were so many of these unremarkable dwellings, fanning out towards the fields, all of them brown and ordinary, caked in dung, easily melted by storms, easily washed away by the tide of time.

He needed to make a statement of perseverance, of longevity and durability. A vision of a new and distinguished house came to him. It would be two stories supported by blue pine brought from the base of the Himalayas. It would have high ceilings, cement floors, a fireplace for crisp winter nights, corrugated iron gates to partition the livestock and waste away from the house, a room for the boys, another for Prem, one for him and Sada Kaur, and one to store foodstuffs. There would be an elegant archway at the entrance, a balcony above for sleeping on hot nights, a row of charpoys comfortably arranged where they would be able to feel the cool breezes. The exterior was the most critical detail: lime-washed outer walls, bright like sunlight, easily identifiable from afar, washing its own reflected miracles over the flatlands. He would need that. He would need to be able to find it.

Khushwant lightly touched his shoulder, and Baba Singh raised his head, disoriented. Glancing around, he saw that the service was over. Worshippers were already standing and filing out of the temple. He watched them go as the world continued to yawn, its maw growing wider, beckoning to him. He would build his house, something solid and able to endure, and then he would leave again.

It did not matter where.

~   ~   ~

Barapind’s pond was muddy. The potter had been there to collect clay while they were in Amritsar, stirring up the sediments, clouding the water into a brown soup. Baba Singh kicked at the surface with his sandaled foot, watching it ripple and stir, briskly wiping his eyes. Dr. Bansal’s letter was still in his hand.

“Just open it, Baba,” Khushwant said.

Baba Singh closed his fist harder around the paper. “Onkar is talking of going to Fiji,” he said, remembering the last time he spoke with his neighbor, the two of them squatting under the rosewood across the lane from the Toor’s mud hut. Onkar had been subdued, his knees pressed into his armpits, arms lazily dangling monkey-like to the ground as he traced patterns in the dust with his two forefingers.

“My son married a Singapore lady,” the old farmer had confessed. Despite his poverty, he was a very clean man when not out in the fields, his white turban always starched, his simple clothing unwrinkled. When he spoke, even to relay his own misfortune, it was always with dignity. “He never sent much money. Now he refuses to send any. He says everything has its limit.” There had been a grey look about him then, his eyes losing focus.

Khushwant shook his head, picking off a sliver of bark from a nearby tree. He was irritated now, his once boundless tolerance no longer boundless. “If you go, you will take it all with you, all these problems of yours.”

“Fiji is full of Indians, more Indians than Fijians, they say. The possibilities are enormous.”

Khushwant grimly regarded his brother. Baba Singh felt as though he was shrinking, melting into the mud beneath his feet, but he narrowed his eyes in feigned anger to disguise his doubt.

They heard the sound of a military-issue motorcycle engine, a quiet rumble in the distance. Manmohan was arriving.

Khushwant tossed away the bark shaving and pushed his way through the trees to the lane. “You have not seen him for months,” he said, iron in his voice. “Say something to him.”

Baba Singh followed, glancing in the direction of the motorcycle. “He has never listened. What is left to say?”

“The British chose only five out of three thousand to do his job,” his brother replied as they walked home. “It did not surprise me when he was selected. I have never seen a young man work so hard to be just like his father. Be thankful that he was stationed here, with you.”

The rumble of the motorcycle grew into a roar that echoed across the farmland as Manmohan finally pulled around the corner, meeting his uncle and father in front of the mud hut. He cut the engine, leaving behind a vacuum of quiet.

“Sat sri akal, Bapu, Chacha,” he said, removing his helmet, swinging his leg over the seat, and stomping his booted feet to remove the excess dust.

“Successful run?” Khushwant asked him.

Manmohan grinned. He had just been out delivering sensitive government messages across the Punjab, a nineteen-year-old boy gone for months on end in an abyss of hostile land where the possibilities of adventure were endless. “Always,” he said, slapping clean his uniform, which was much like the one Baba Sing had once worn as a police officer. He then sat on one of the sun-bleached chairs to unlace his boots.

“Good man,” Khushwant smiled. “I will be waiting to hear about it inside.” Pushing aside the curtain, he greeted Sada Kaur and Prem.

As Manmohan pulled off his boots Baba Singh approached the motorcycle and gripped one of the handles, imagining the rushing air, the speed that was far more intense than riding a train to Amritsar. Touching the leather seat, he had the urge to climb on, to pretend that he was flying through the countryside. There would be no thoughts of Dr. Bansal, of whatever painful kindnesses were undoubtedly written in his letter, of betrayal, of the excruciating, deep-down ache of missing his friend who had uselessly sacrificed everything to save him. No complications, no one else, just the wind and the growl of the engine.

“It is loud,” he finally said, impressed.

Manmohan clapped the bottoms of his boots together. “I will walk it through next time,” he said, misunderstanding, smiling with a forced politeness before disappearing inside the mud hut.

~   ~   ~

The shape of Baba Singh’s new house wavered ghostlike before him in the space where he would build it. He knew now that he had always had the heart of an artist, but he had been stunted by the events of his life. Now he would change this. Just as he had once carved an elephant from a block of wood, he would sculpt his new house.

It almost made him want to stay.

But there was time yet. A house of this magnitude would take at least a year, perhaps longer, to construct with his own two hands, with the seasons dictating his progress. He decided to relish the slow process, to appreciate each detail as a prolonged farewell in which every second was precious, every spread of mortar a part of what he would one day return to when he properly deserved this place.

Not everyone, however, understood the need for this sudden change, and there was a sort of restrained, non-confrontational dissent within the household ranks. His plan to first tear down the mud hut’s second room in order to make space for the house’s frame—squeezing them all into one room—followed by a period in which they would all be required to live under the tarp-roofed frame of the partially-built structure while Baba Singh pieced the entirety of it together, was not received well. The boys nodded bravely at the idea of losing their childhood home, smiling joylessly, clearly pained. Prem pointedly mentioned his age and how the onset of so much turmoil would only further aggravate his back, which was slowly bending him over into a permanent slouch. And Sada Kaur remained bleakly silent, suspicious of his plans at the conclusion of the endeavor. Baba Singh had known she would not be fooled, and this he regretted very much because they had finally reached a tentative understanding after years of uncertainty.

“Why?” she asked him.

“Because I need to see the results of the life I have worked for.”

“Is that all?”

He touched her hair, something he had not done since before going away to China. “I am only trying to make peace.”

The mood was further soured when, once they had torn down the mud hut’s second room and crammed the livestock into the small courtyard where Sada Kaur did her cooking—all in an effort to clear space for the building’s frame—there was very little time for construction. It was the fall planting season, and Baba Singh was forced to spend most of his days in the fields. The others could not, or would not, contribute: Prem was in no condition for physical labor, Satnam and Vikram were both in school in Amarpur and not inclined to help when they got home in the afternoons, Manmohan was often on duty delivering military messages, and Khushwant was far too busy running the blacksmith shop. Negotiations with the carpenter in Amarpur were also proving lengthy. It took several months to obtain cement mix and wood to be delivered by train from Amritsar. And just as Baba Singh had finally managed to lay the foundation, winter arrived, forcing them all into the tight space of the hut’s remaining room for warmth.

The monsoons of 1935 were brutal and frigid. The project was entirely halted, and the pile of blue pine Baba Singh had purchased seeped up moisture from beneath tarps that did little to protect it. The family suffered through an uncomfortable several months, during which time they huddled together in the hut’s confining quarters. Baba Singh dreaded every inescapable, empty moment of this period, alone with the doctor’s still-sealed letter that dredged up the sludge of anguish, sharpening his nightmares and making him sweat under his covers when he slept. He also dreaded the forced nearness of his family, which amplified all the things unsaid among them, the hostility, and the defensive anger lurking beneath the surface. They should be grateful for this house, he often thought whenever his dreams and the cold nights woke him.

“It will be better,” he once told the family as they clutched mugs of hot tea before bed.

“We know, Bapu,” Manmohan replied. “Thank you.”

But he was quickly rebuked by a sharp look from Satnam.

“Can’t you imagine it?” Baba Singh asked his son. “It is more than any of us has ever had.” But he could see that for Satnam—for all of them—it was not true.

Sada Kaur began to unroll the boys’ mats.

“What could be wrong with wanting to give you a new house?” he asked her.

“There is nothing wrong with it,” she said. “I am sure it will be lovely. We simply did not
need
it.”

When the ice began to thaw and flowers forced their green shoots through the saturated soil, Baba Singh freed himself from the hut. He was eager to begin again, to shake off the thick blankets and shawls and his family’s unwarranted indignation that had been suffocating him.

His plans to begin the moment he had seeded the fields, however, were again postponed when an old friend of Yashbir’s approached him to propose a marriage between his granddaughter and Manmohan.

“Yashbir spoke of you,” the man said to Baba Singh. “I cannot imagine a better life for my granddaughter than one with a family he loved as his own.”

“It is a good match,” Baba Singh told Manmohan.

“If you think so, I am happy to marry her, Bapu,” his son replied.

“Yashji was a good man.”

“I remember,” Manmohan replied, which discomfited Baba Singh. He had forgotten that his children had once called the blacksmith their grandfather.

The girl’s name was Jai, a tiny and demure sixteen-year-old creature, pretty in a plain and industrious way, her features square yet soft. She had dark, smoothly matted skin, the only mark on her face a small mole on her chin.

The wedding was scheduled for May, and after another month of preparations—during which time the foundation of the new house remained untouched—Jai and Manmohan were married in Amarpur’s gurdwara. After she had moved into the mud hut, Baba Singh discovered that, despite her petite size, his son’s new wife was surprisingly tough. She brought water in large clay pots from the well in the village center, seemingly without any effort at all, her breath as even as it had been when she left with the pot empty. She lifted heavy spice bins and carried them out back where she could more easily mix masala for curries, never asking for help. And her smallness more easily allowed her to maneuver the crowded hut that now housed seven people, lifting and leaning charpoys along the wall to create space for sitting, cooking, and weaving.