Heat and Dust (8 page)

"I know," Olivia said miserably. She had no desire to recommend widow-burning but it was everyone else being so sure - tolerant and smiling but
sure
- that made her want to take another stand. "But in theory it is really, isn't it, a
noble
idea. In theory," she pleaded. Without daring to glance in Douglas' direction, she knew him to be sitting very upright with his thin lips held in tight and his eyes cold. She went on rather desperately: "I mean, to want to go with the person you care for most in the world. Not to want to be alive any more if he wasn't. "

"It's savagery," Dr. Saunders declared. "Like everything else in this country, plain savagery and barbarism. I've seen some sights in my hospital I wouldn't like to tell you about, not with ladies present I wouldn't. Most gruesome and horrible mutilations - and all, mind you, in the name of religion. If this is religion, then by gad!" he said, so loudly and strongly that the old head-bearer with the hennaed beard trembled' from head to foot, "I'd be proud to call myself an atheist."

But Major Minnies - perhaps out of gallantry - rallied to Olivia's side with an anecdote that partly bore out her point of view. It was not something that had happened to him personally but a hundred years earlier and to Colonel Sleeman when in charge of the district of Jabalpore. Sleeman had tried to prevent a widow from committing suttee but had been defeated by her determination to perish together with her husband's corpse.

"That really was a voluntary suttee, " Major Minnies told Olivia. "Her sons and the rest of her family joined Colonel Sleeman in attempting to prevent her, but it was no use. She was determined. She sat for four days on a rock in the river and said that if she wasn't allowed to burn herself then she'd starve herself to death. In any case she wasn't going to be left behind. In the end Sleeman had to give way - yes he lost that round but I'll tell you something - he speaks of the old lady with respect. She wasn't a fanatic, she wasn't even very dramatic about it, she just sat there quietly and waited and said no, she wanted to go with her husband. There was something noble there," said the Major - and now he wasn't being tolerant and amused, not in the least.

"Too noble for me, I fear," said Beth Crawford - as hostess, she probably felt it was time to change the tone. "Fond as I am of you, dear man," she told her husband across the table, "I don't really think I could - "

"Oh I could!" cried Olivia, and with such feeling that everyone was silent and looked at her. Douglas also looked and this time she dared raise her eyes to his: even if he
was
angry with her. "I'd want to. I mean, I just wouldn't want to go on living. I'd be
grateful
for such a custom. "

Their eyes met across the table. She saw his hard look melt away into tenderness. And she felt the same way towards him. Her feelings became so strong that she could not go on looking into his eyes. She looked down at her plate, meekly began to cut the hard piece of chicken in floury sauce that had replaced the hard piece of fried fish of the preceding course: and thought that really everything was quite easy to bear and overcome just as long as she and Douglas felt the way they did for each other .

· · · ·

30 March.
I had to go to the post office so afterwards I waited as usual to go home with Inder Lal. We had got as far as the royal tombs - near the lake and Maji's hut - when we heard some strange sounds coming out of one of them. They seemed like groans. Inder Lal said "It is better to go home." But when we reached the next tomb - there is a whole cluster of them, all of one 14th century royal family - we again heard the same sound coming from behind us. It
was
a groan. Despite Inder Lal's protests, I turned back to investigate. I ascended the steps; although these tombs have no side-walls but are closed in by arches and lattices, they are very dark inside. At first all I could make out was the vague mass of the sarcophagi in the centre: but when the groaning noise was repeated, I noticed that it came from another shape huddled in one corner. This was human and dressed in something orange. I went up close - Inder Lal gave a warning shout from outside - and got down to peer at the groaner. I recognised him as the white sadhu, Chid, whom I had once met outside the travellers' rest-house.

He had all his possessions with him - a bundle, an umbrella, prayer-beads, and a begging bowl - and they were scattered around him where he lay propped against a latticed arch. There were also some bits of dried bun on a newspaper. He said he didn't know how long he had been lying here - sometimes it was dark and sometimes it was darker, he said. He had been thrown out of the travellers' rest-house when his two companions had moved on. He had then tried to continue his pilgrimage, but feeling very ill on the road, had dragged himself back to Satipur. He said he was still very ill. He had been lying here alone, and no one had bothered him because no one had found him except once a pariah dog had sniffed at him and gone away again.

Inder Lal, standing inside an arch at a cautious distance, warned me "Be careful. "

"It's all right," I said. "It's someone I know." I felt Chid's forehead and found it to be hot.

He groaned: "I'm thirsty ... and hungry," he added, patting his stomach hard like an Indian beggar so one could hear the hollow sound.

Inder Lal had now come up cautiously and stood looking down at Chid: "Why is he dressed like that?" he asked.

"He is a sadhu," I explained. "How can he be sadhu?" "He's studied Hindu religion',"

It was horrible inside the tomb - there was an acrid smell of bat droppings and also I think Chid must have been disrespectful enough to use the place as a lavatory. I wondered what to do with him: he couldn't be left, but where should I take him?

"What has he studied?" Inder Lal asked; he was now keenly interested. "What have you studied?" he probed . "Do you know the Puranas? What about the Brahmanas?"

Chid did not hear these questions; he was looking at me with pleading, fevered eyes. "Do you live near?" he asked me. "I could walk if it's very near."

I was reluctant, but Inder Lal seemed to fancy the idea of taking Chid home with us.

10 April.
Although Chid recovered from his fever after a few days, he has given no indication of leaving. I suppose it is restful for him in my room after all his travelling across India. It is not very restful for me though. I have had to lock up all my papers - Olivia's letters and this journal- not because I mind his reading them (I don't think he'd be very interested anyway) but because of the way he ruffled through them and left them scattered about with dirty finger-marks on them. These finger-marks are on everything in my room now. He makes no secret of going through my possessions and taking whatever he needs: in fact, he has explained to me that he doesn't believe in possessions and thinks it is bad for people to be attached to them. He is not very demanding, actually - he eats the food I prepare and is satisfied with everything he is given. He spends a lot of time walking around town and has become a familiar figure so that even the children have got tired of running after him. Some of the shopkeepers allow him to sit in their stalls with them and occasionally he collects quite a crowd as he sits there crosslegged and expounds his philosophy.

Everyone considers it a privilege for me to have him in my 'room. It seems I have been presented with an excellent opportunity to acquire merit by serving a holy man in charity. The question as to whether Chid is holy may remain open, but as far as the town is concerned, he has made a promising first step in shaving his head and throwing away his clothes. For this they seem ready to give him the benefit of many doubts. I've seen them do the same with Indian holy men who often pass through the town with their ochre robes and beads and begging bowls. On the whole they look a sturdy set of rascals to me - some of them heavily drugged, others randy as can be, all it seems to me with shrewd and greedy faces. But as they pass through the streets, some half naked, some fully so, rapping their pilgrim staffs and shouting out the name of God as pedlars shout their wares, people come running out of their houses to lay offerings into the ready begging bowls. Chid also has a begging bowl and often people put something in it - a banana or a guava - which he eats by himself in a corner of my room, afterwards leaving the peel on the floor. When I tell him to pick it up, he does so quite meekly.

Inder Lal is much impressed with Chid. As soon as he comes home from the office, he climbs up to my room and sits there for hours listening to Chid. Chid tells him about the centres of energy within the body and the methods to be employed in order to release them. He points now to his skull and now contorts himself so as to dig himself in the base of his spine; and then he weaves his hands; about in the air as if drawing down spiritual forces to be found there. I get very bored with all this. It seems to me that ~hid has picked up scraps of spiritual and religious lore here and there, and as he is neither an intelligent nor very educated boy, it has all sort of fermented inside him and makes him sound a bit mad at' times. Perhaps he is a bit mad.

I still don't know anything about him. Sometimes he gives me accounts of himself, but they are always different and it is impossible to reconcile one with another. Anyway, as/they deal mostly with the development of his spiritual life, they are abstract rather than personal. Inder Lal tells me this is quite all right because Chid has no personal past. When someone becomes a Hindu ascetic, all his former life indeed, his former lives - everything he has ever thought or done or been is burned up: literally burned up, for a funeral pyre is lit and the aspirant's clothes and shaved hair consumed in it in a symbolic cremation. Chid has undergone this ceremony, so that now, according to Inder Lal, h~ is nothing but the Hindu sadhu we see before us. However, he has retained his flat Midlands accent which makes everything he says even more weird.

He is always hungry, and not only for food. He also needs sex very badly and seems to take it for granted that I will give it to him the same way I give him my food. I have never had such a feeling of being used. In fact, he admits that this is what he is doing - using me to reach a higher plane of consciousness through the powers of sex that we are engendering between us. I don't really know why I let him go ahead. I'm much bigger and stronger than he is and could easily keep him off. But it seems as if there -really is something", some emanation, that does not come from him but from some powers outside himself. Because he himself is quite sexless: his cheeks are smooth except for some scattered tufts of blonde hair, and he is terribly skinny like a boy who has just got up from a sickbed. But he has constant erections and goes to a tremendous size, so that I am reminded of the Lord Shiva whose huge member is worshipped by devout Hindu women. At such times it seems to me that his sex is engendered by his spiritual practices, by all that chanting of mantras he does sitting beads in hand on the floor of my room.

15 April.
Typical of the way things get mixed up in India is the story of Baba Firdaus' shrine. As the Nawab had explained to Olivia, this had originally been built by his ancestor Amanullah Khan in thanksgiving to a Muslim faqir who had given him shelter. It is now sacred to Hindu women because it is thought that offerings at this shrine will cure childlessness. But it is sacred to them for only one day a year. The reason why is open to various interpretations. Some believe that a childless woman had been driven away from her husband's home so that he could marry again. On the day of this second wedding of his she came to hide her shame and grief in Baba Firdaus' grove. Here she had a vision that within nine months of this date she would bear a child; and so it happened. The day of the festival is called
Pati ki Shadi,
or the Husband's Wedding Day. But there are, as I say, various other interpretations, all of them widely differing from and indeed contradicting each other.

Yesterday was the Husband's Wedding Day and I accompanied Inder Lal's mother and her friends to the place of pilgrimage. We went on a bus crammed with women bound for the same destination. Most of them were elderly, and obviously the object of their pilgrimage was, like ours, to have a pleasant outing. Everyone had brought a lot of food which was shared out with many jokes. Some of them had brought barren daughters-in-law, but these remained silent and in the background. Ritu, who had enough children, was left at home.

I have been wanting for some time to see Baba Firdaus' grove, but I didn't get to see much ofit yesterday. It was not at all as I had imagined the Nawab's favourite picnic spot! There was a merry little fair going on with rickety roundabouts and a wooden wheel turning round and rows of barrows selling fly-specked food. Devotional songs blared from a loudspeaker attached to a tree. I couldn't even see Baba Firdaus' shrine because there was a tight mass of people wedged in front of it all trying to get near it. We too joined them and pushed in the same direction. By the time we got there, perspiring and struggling within the crowd, it was impossible to have a thought in one's head except to join in whatever was going on. It never became clear to me what this was. There was a priest sitting there receiving offerings. Some of the women - old ones, so they couldn't be invoking the particular blessing of the place - became very devout and shouted out the name of God as if in pain and some of them tried to prostrate themselves though this was difficult on account of there being no room. I didn't know what I was supposed to do but, in any case, just to have got there seemed to be enough.

Our little party found a place under a tree where we all sat in a circle and ate and drank as we had been doing steadily since leaving home. One of the old ladies had a story to tell of a young woman who had been advised an operation on her fallopian tubes but had instead been brought here by her mother-in-law after which conception took place. (Actually, the story ended badly - the woman's husband had had a spell put on him by another woman and this made him drive his wife and her new-born child out of the house). There were more stories, and I liked listening to them, just as I liked sitting here with; my friends in the middle of this festive scene. I felt part of it all - absorbed as I had been absorbed by the worshipping crowd packed into the shrine.