Spiral Road (19 page)

Under the shade of a tree I enjoy a second mug of tea. Omar comes over to sit with me. ‘Well, what do you think?’

‘I’m impressed by what you do for the tribal people,’ I say with genuine admiration. ‘Have you been to Alya’s workshop?’

‘I’ve heard about it.’ Is there a note of contempt in his voice?

‘Have you considered talking with Alya about the way you both run your businesses?’

‘Why?’ he asks. ‘Her ultimate motive is to make as much money as she can. Be a successful business person.’

‘And your motive?’

‘Alya and I have different agendas in life,’ he says slowly. ‘It’s not that she’s not a generous employer. She has looked after the women of Manikpur. But she’s also taken care of her own interests. Her workers will need some safeguards, in the future.’ He springs to his feet. ‘I’ve got to see people in a nearby village. I’ll be back this afternoon. Then we have a long walk ahead of us. Or would you prefer to ride on a mule?’

‘Of course not!’

I know better than to ask where the walk will take us.

‘Have a rest,’ Omar advises.

I head towards the shack. At the tube-well I push the handle of the pump up and down. A gush of water streams out of the nozzle. I soak a towel and squeeze the moisture, wetting my head and face.

D
ESPITE THE STIFLING
heat, sleep comes instantly. I slide along a tunnel of fog and stumble into a dimly lit house. I recognise it as our family home. There are people gathered in a room. Years have been shaved off my father. Ma sits in a chair, weeping. He’s gentle with her as he explains why he must leave. He has to be honest with everyone, Abba explains. He’s in love with another woman. I shout out her name from a corner where I’m huddled with Zia and Nasreen. And from behind a screen, Sumita appears. She’s younger and prettier than Ma. She takes my father by the hand and leads him away. Abba turns to look at us. He begins to speak and then changes his mind. We gather around Ma in a state of confusion and anger.

‘Traitor!’ I shout. ‘You’ve betrayed us!’

It takes me a few moments to realise where I am. It’s as if I’ve made a soft landing on the bed. I’m covered in sweat.

Outside, the sun is still glowing fiercely. I feel lethargic, without any desire to get up. All I want to do is find a seat on a plane, heading towards a scorching desert sun, with all these experiences bundled into a deep recess of my memory.

It’s nearly three o’clock. Omar appears with two plates heaped with unrefined rice, dhal, and pieces of cooked spinach. Did I manage to rest in the heat? Do I feel refreshed? Is there anything I need? I’m wary of his solicitude.

He sits on the chair and observes me as if I’m some kind of an experiment whose result cannot be predicted. I resent feeling that I cannot match his cunning.

‘What happens now?’ I ask, more for the sake of saying something than expecting a straightforward reply.

‘We’ll leave before sunset. We can stop when you feel tired.’ From the trunk he takes out a pair of cotton tracksuit pants and a full-sleeved T-shirt. ‘Shorts won’t do in the forest.’

In the yard, men are already gathering with emaciated mules loaded with supplies. As the afternoon lengthens, Omar takes my backpack and wedges it firmly between two wooden crates. More men—with sacks of rice, wheat, potatoes, onions, tins of cooking oil and ghee, balanced on their heads—arrive at regular intervals over the next hour.

Omar talks to the guide who will lead the pack animals. Disagreement flares between them. Omar shakes his head vehemently. The other man doesn’t look pleased, but he puts away what looks like a cotton scarf.

Eventually the line of mules begins to move slowly towards the trees behind the shack. We follow, though I can see no path there. But the animals disappear as though there’s a cleft in the forest.

I turn to look behind me. Only teak trees are visible. The light suddenly changes to a shade of light purple. Several hours seem to have disappeared, as though dusk has lost its patience and asserted a sudden presence. The only sound is of leaves and twigs crackling under our feet.

Soon we’re on a steep decline. The peaks of hills loom like sentinels ahead of us. Omar points to a thick plume of smoke rising lazily from the trees to our left. ‘That’s
jhum
cultivation of the land. The slash-and-burn method has been used for centuries by tribes here,’ he informs me.

Near the bottom of a ravine we stop briefly. There’s panic ahead of us. Omar rushes to the front. His voice is taut and cracks like a whip. Although his anger is controlled, it’s like being jabbed by the pointed ends of icicles. One of the crates hasn’t been properly tied and has nearly slid off the back of a mule.

It’s a cue for everyone to take a break.

No one lights a smoke. Raw tobacco and bottles of water are passed around. Omar comes back to sit beside me on the damp ground. He’s breathing heavily. This is the only time I’ve seen a crack in his composure.

I’m left wondering what’s in the crates.

My legs have stiffened. Stubbornly I still refuse to ride on a mule.

‘It’ll be another couple of hours,’ Omar warns.

We continue walking.

Darkness filters rapidly through the forest, creating an illusion of distance among us. A rope comes down the line. Omar winds it around my waist and then ties the other end to his own wrist. I tug the other lead of the rope, and the man in front of me pulls up. We’re like a chain gang being led towards prison.

The ground’s slippery. We grope our way through the layered thickness of night.

‘There’s a torch in my backpack,’ I whisper.

‘No light. Just hold the rope and follow.’

In a peculiar way, this is an exhilarating experience. The air is clean and cool. I breathe easily. There’s a tactile quality about the darkness. It’s like being caressed with a velvet brush, and I cannot help feeling here lies more than the senses can detect. The night is a breathing presence, full of the mysteries of a primordial world. At irregular intervals the moonlight breaks through the gaps in the interlocking branches, heightening the strangeness.

Time has no significance here. Another two hours, Omar had said some time ago. I don’t particularly care. I seem to glide on invisible wings.

We hear a muffled voice in the distance.

Someone replies.

A thin ray of light appears ahead of me. The mules slow down. Silhouettes converge on the animals.

‘Gently!’ Omar calls. He unties the rope and hurries to the front of the line, into a flurry of activity.

Above me, the night sky bears down on us, blazing with clusters of stars.

I stumble forward. Afraid.

A Saturday awakening.

My thoughts linger on hot croissants and creamy scrambled eggs sprinkled liberally with fresh chives. Plunger coffee and the feel of the crisp pages of the newspapers. An aimless wander around my house.

But this? My legs are sore and my back is stiff, like wet cardboard left under the sun.

Did I groan just then?

Sketched through the grey confusion of the mosquito net are the sides of a small khaki tent. I’m lying on a lumpy mattress. There’s a plastic basket and a water bottle next to me. Now I vaguely remember. Last night was a crosscurrent of hushed voices. Barked commands. The
melancholy footfalls of the mules as they were led away. The swishing noise of brooms, clear at first and then fading into a distant echo. Dazed with tiredness, I sat on the stump of a tree until Omar led me to a tent. I fell on the mattress and instantly went to sleep.

I listen. A stream nearby. The crackle of burning wood. I could be camping alone in the Grampians, or with Amelia up in northern Victoria, somewhere by the Murray River. I step outside. The tent’s on the rim of a small clearing, surrounded by bamboo trees that must be effective windbreaks in a storm. A man bends down to place a cast-iron griddle on the flames of a small fire. There’s a large lump of dough on a battered aluminium tray next to him. Other tents are visible among the trees.

‘How far is the stream?’ I ask.

‘What stream? It’s the flowing mane of the giant forest god,’ the man says without turning. ‘Don’t upset him.’

I follow the sound and within minutes I’m at the grassy edge of a corridor of silver water, winding its way down a lichen-covered slope. Three women are bathing in the stream. They see me and giggle. I turn my back, so they can scramble out of the water and scoot away.

All around me, wild orchids bloom among dense ferns and mosses. I sit on the log of a fallen teak tree and scoop up a handful of water to wash my face. It’s ice cold. The haze begins to lift from the distant hills. Mist drifts past me like pieces torn from a bale of muslin.

‘A delightful place, isn’t it?’

The words are like sandpaper scraping my nerves. For an instant, I almost hate my nephew. Omar carries mugs of tea and
ruti
on plastic plates.

He sits on an end of the log and then edges towards me. We eat silently.

‘Does your organisation have a name?’ I ask when the plates are empty.

‘No.’

‘That’s unusual.’

‘Makes it more difficult to trace us.’

‘Do you miss anything about your life in America?’ I ask.

‘My girlfriend, Sarah,’ he replies. ‘The times we spent together.’

‘Do you sometimes wish you’d never left?’

‘No.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Lots of fun. She loves life.’

‘And you?’

‘Yes…Maybe too intensely.’ He shifts uneasily. ‘Some of the trees in those hills are ancient. They’ve survived because they’re too difficult to reach.’

‘Did you tell her you were leaving?’ I drag Omar back to his point of seeming vulnerability.

‘No.’

‘Have you written to her?’

He shakes his head.

‘It’s not a weakness to love, you know. It takes courage to care about someone.’

‘Then I’m not brave.’ Omar looks away. ‘Have you ever regretted not being married?’

‘How far is it to Myanmar?’ It’s my turn to be evasive.

‘You could walk all the way to Yangon.’ Omar points to the hills. ‘Except now it’s dangerous. The Myanmar army has mined the land on their side of the border to prevent people from going over.’ He looks north-east. ‘It’s easier to enter India.’

‘Mines wouldn’t stop smugglers from finding their way across.’

‘We have local guides who can weave their way through.’ Omar sounds boastful. ‘Without them, we’d be severely handicapped…You can go for walks anywhere behind us.’ He twists around and makes a sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘But not there.’ He nods towards the forested area in front. ‘Not beyond these trees, just as yet.’

‘Why?’

‘Guess.’

‘Later then?’

‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

Omar jumps to his feet. ‘I’ll be bringing someone to meet you. We can talk then, about the future. In the meantime, enjoy the wilderness. Have a swim. You won’t find cleaner water anywhere in the country.’ He begins to walk away in the direction forbidden to me. ‘And…’ He turns. ‘Welcome to Spiral Road.’

I’
VE STRAYED DEEP
into the forest. The dappled sunlight is fickle and plays hide and seek. It abandons me occasionally to eerie premature twilight. Dense shadows hum with invisible life and draws me further in.

I can understand why so many of the locals are animists. The rational mind discovers its limitations in these depths and layers. I feel that I can almost reach out and touch the trees on the hills.

They’ll find me if I can’t get back. Anyway, I suspect I’m being followed: I’m not to see what I should not know. I assume I shall be treated well as long as I cooperate. And I’m to be tested soon—‘about the future’. How presumptuous of Omar.

I manage to find my way back to the stream, and set off for the clearing.

I sense a reptilian coldness in Omar. How could that considerate and timid boy, not particularly devoted to religion, living in a capitalist society driven by expressions of individuality and freedom, be so radically transformed into this disengaged young man? Even when Omar appears to be caring, I’m suspicious now of his motives. But in the factory his warmth and generosity with the workers were spontaneous. Maybe his aloofness with others is a strategy for survival? It drops into place like a barrier. Doesn’t he trust those he’s involved with? Or is he projecting ruthlessness purposely, to command a fearful respect?

I
T’S DIFFICULT TO
pretend that I don’t recognise the clattering bursts of sound coming from the forbidden zone. Savagely they puncture the silence of the landscape.

I stroll to the edge of the forest, roughly where we entered the clearing last night. I cannot see a track which might have led us here. Those noises again. Sharper and closer. A wooden sign nailed to a tree catches my attention. It points at an angle towards the sky. Spiral Road, it reads. I fail to see its significance.

A man, armed with a rifle, appears from behind a tree. He caresses the nozzle of the gun. I’m intimidated by his smile. I turn around and walk back to the tent.

I begin to feel caged and bored. Then I remember the diary.

I think about Zia and me as boys, about grazed knees and elbows, about sliding down the banister of the staircase and bumping my head on the floor. Placing a dead worm in Zia’s lunchbox. The severe faces of the Catholic priests who taught us. Ma’s cry of panic when, at Zia’s taunting, I climbed up a tree to take a close look at a beehive. I remember protesting against what I considered to be the lightness of Zia’s punishment: he wasn’t allowed to go to Gulistan cinema to watch the Sunday morning western the following week. That year I smoked my first bidi and became the proud owner of a brand new cricket bat, imported from England. It was a gift from Abba after he returned from one of his overseas trips.

I had a carefree childhood in a house of plenty that would later produce Omar too. For me, the kitchen was
the place of learning. When Ma wasn’t around, the servants whipped out a packet of limp cards stained with ghee and spices. They taught me how to gamble with matchsticks. They told spellbinding stories of ghosts and
pethnis
, djinns and fairies. Horned beasts and firebreathing giants.

And how would a young boy question his father’s absences? Abba was one of the top specialists in fungal diseases in the subcontinent; he was often asked to visit prominent medical centres in Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi. And he always returned with gifts and laughter.

I flip through the diary to the second half of 1963. In July Abba records two trips to Kolkata, each lasting a week. He and Sumita met often for lunch at the Grand Hotel. There were dinners at ‘Mocambo’ and ‘Chung Wah’. He took Sumita shopping at the New Market and lavished her with gifts. They frequented ‘Minerva’, ‘Elite’, ‘Metro’ and ‘The Lighthouse’ to watch Hollywood’s best. Rani accompanied them on most occasions. But in the meticulous detailing of these days of pleasure, tension is growing.

Abba wrote with a thick-nibbed fountain pen. The black ink has faded to a bleak grey. There’s an exaggerated flourish in the formation of the letters, and at no stage does the cursive handwriting become uneven with emotion. I can see my father sitting at a table, hunched over the diary. Did he become bitter about his decisions, his duties?

On July 28th, he went to meet Sumita at the Victoria Memorial. She was late.

I wandered inside Lord Curzon’s monument to his late Queen. The Royal Gallery has paintings of the royal couple by Winterhalter and Verestchagin’s fascinating depiction of the entry of the Prince of Wales into Jaipur. Procession of elephants, rich in colour and texture, along the Ambar Chaupar. Seated on the first elephant are the Prince and Maharaja Ram Singh Jaipur. The gallery’s centre is occupied by the pianoforte on which the Queen practised as a young girl. Her armchair and writing desk are from Windsor Castle. Everything here suggests elegance and order, another world.

Outside, the gardens were lovely. Red and yellow cannas in bloom. In the cooler months there will be roses…Silky and delicate. I stood on the steps, marvelling at the whiteness of the marble shimmering under the sun. Sumita had still not arrived…Back inside, I stood in the Queen’s Hall under the central dome, admiring Sir Thomas Brock’s statue of the young Victoria. From the height of the stained glass cover on the central dome gleamed the message: ‘Heaven’s Light Our Guide’. If only I were blessed with such guidance!

Nearly an hour passed. Sumita never hurries. Even as she walked across the lawn, there was a methodical slowness about her steps, a precision that suggested that she had decided what had to be done. No sign of
recognition as she saw me and waited at the bottom of the steps. She had come alone. I asked about Rani. Sumita was vague. We walked in the gardens, wandering away from the giant tribute to the imperial power that is no more. Do the anguished ghosts of our once white rulers walk the grounds on moonlit nights?

Sumita wants to make something permanent out of our relationship. She said it was too risky this way. She already has to tell enough lies about how she spent her months of pregnancy in France, doing an advanced language course and travelling in the countryside to become more fluent in colloquial French. She sounded so casual, so devoid of feeling, as if she had scraped off every vestige of any emotion that she may once have had for me. Between Hindus and Muslims there are centuries of prejudice, too formidable for us to overcome, she said, as though goading me. She could not abandon her family. But Rani? How much did I love her?

It turned into an ugly quarrel. I would be allowed to see Rani if I chose to visit Calcutta in the future, Sumita decreed. She is bringing our daughter to lunch tomorrow. The least I can do is provide for them. We shall discuss the matter…I want to be generous to my child. What regrets will I have twenty years from now? Is it cowardice which takes me back home in a couple of days to continue in the role of the good doctor? I shall return to the staidness of family life. The years will roll on. Will I ever stop wondering? Even now I can call her…Tell her that
I shall take her and Rani far away. Begin again. Some place where memory dies and the past becomes a blank. But in my heart I know that such a place does not exist. What have I done? Who will cure me?

It’s almost as if my father photographed himself in that most tormented moment and captured the most elusive expression of his soul.
Dusk in Chowringhee is melancholy…
The feeling of a dwarfish triumph is unpleasant. At last, I’m able to meet him as an equal.

Is it possible to reinvent your own father? Slash the image that you’ve carried for so long? Bruise and cut him, make him bleed and then stand back, like a painter surveying a picture he has just completed, and say:‘There! He is now human.’

My curiosity about Rani continues to grow. I visualise her with many faces and in different moods. How much did Sumita tell her as the years passed?

In Abba’s weakness, I find consolation. Seeing such familiar echoes of flawed judgement and guilt makes me want to reach out to him and say that he’s not alone in his frailty.

There are regrets we live with until the end. These come not from the error of the decisions made, but in the silence which must follow and which weighs on the soul.

I
BECOME AWARE
of Omar’s presence. I cannot tell how long he’s been standing behind me.

‘How did you find them?’ he asks. He’s wearing khaki army trousers and a full-sleeved, black T-shirt. And sweating profusely.

‘Do you know what’s in them?’

He looks uninterested. ‘No. My father wanted them to be burned among a whole lot of things. I packed them in an old trunk with some of Dada’s papers when the house was sold. Don’t know why. Probably to defy my old man.’

‘Has Zia read the diaries?’

‘Probably. You know how he becomes authoritative when he’s angry? I clearly remember him ordering me in that flat voice. It was like the shot of a pistol. “Get rid of them!”’

Omar steps closer. I’m clutching the diary like a precious, living presence. He stands stiffly, hands buried in his pockets, breathing impatience. This has no significance in his scheme of things. He wants to talk of other, more urgent matters. But I’m equally determined.

‘I feel closer to Abba than ever before in my life.’

‘Because of what’s in the diaries?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could it be that you’re giving the past a significance it doesn’t deserve?’

‘It’s the immediate present that I want to deny,’ I blurt defiantly.

‘You’re not a coward.’ He avoids looking at me. Possibly it’s an insincere remark.

‘Help me to try and understand you. Why, Omar?’