The Age of Shiva (18 page)

AT THE START OF
the second term, Paji launched another of his letters into my world. “You never had very good study habits, so it's no wonder you did so poorly in your first-term exam. I have come to the conclusion that you need to spend more time with your classmates so that their work example will rub off on you as well.”

A good friend of his, Dr. Jamshed Dastoor (the same Dr. Dastoor reputed to have been Lord Mountbatten's personal physician in Delhi), had just moved to Bombay. “By a fortuitous coincidence, his daughter Farida has joined Wilson this year. Please introduce yourself to her forthwith, since she could be just the role model you need for inspiration.”

I had seen Farida—or Freddy, as she was called by everyone (even the professors reading out the roll call)—in two of my classes. With her startlingly pale complexion and the brazenly plucked eyebrows that climbed high up her forehead, she was difficult to miss—for good measure, she often appeared with an extravagant scarf tied around her neck, as if she had just breezed in from a Hollywood romance. Each morning, a gleaming white Mercedes pulled up to the front entrance of the college to deliver Freddy to her classes. The car remained parked all day under a tree next to the beach, the driver ready to whisk her away to where she wanted at a moment's notice.

I ignored Paji's letter. I had no desire to befriend Freddy. I reasoned that she was much too popular to approach anyway—there was no way to penetrate the protective circle of friends always surrounding her.

Paji must have contacted Dr. Dastoor as well, because one morning, the Mercedes pulled up beside me as I was crossing Laburnum Road. The door opened grandly, to reveal Freddy, in dark green goggles, waving to me. “I know it's only a short distance, but why don't I give you a ride?” I hesitated, then reluctantly got in—it would have seemed too rude to refuse, and besides, people were stopping to look and leer in the street. “I'm Freddy, as you must know—our fathers have decided we must meet. You're Meera, am I correct? Before I forget, do remember to vote for me in the election tomorrow.”

Freddy was running to be the president of the English-speaking student union at Wilson—I had seen the cyclostyled handbills that her friends had been passing out. Although the lectures at Wilson were all in English, the college catered to a large population from poorer areas like Mazgaon and Dombivili, with a majority of the students having graduated from vernacular medium schools. Some of the teachers had even started peppering their explanations with Marathi and Gujarati phrases to ensure they were being understood. “Keep Wilson College English-medium!” Freddy's handbills urged.

“We made jokes about you being so quiet because you didn't know enough English,” Freddy told me after we had chatted a bit. “But now that I'm hearing you speak, it's all so clear—only a convent school could have produced that accent. It's good I'm here—just in time to rescue you from the hordes of vernacs all around. Sometimes it feels like we're stuck in a zoo, with all these beastly languages and guttural sounds.”

It seemed to take only hours for Freddy's solar system of friends to start orbiting around me as well. I was invited to play in the badminton courts, drink cups of tea in the canteen, assist in the annual play that the English Club put up (
Love's Labour's Lost
that year). The day the Cream Centre restaurant opened, I furtively hid my jam sandwiches in my purse and walked over with everyone else—Freddy wanted to be the first in the city to sample the sundaes they had been advertising all week in the newspaper. On Fridays, I trooped with the group to the Eros or the Regal or one of the other Hollywood theaters—I would have rather seen a film in Hindi, but was careful not to let my preference be known. Belying Paji's expectations, the only activity that never seemed to find its way onto the roster was studying.

DEV WAS QUITE AMUSED
the first few times he spotted the Mercedes dropping me off. “I see you've made some new friends. Our Meera's moving up in the world.” Soon, though, his mood darkened. He complained I was not paying enough attention to the meals I cooked and didn't have time anymore to iron his shirts. He was furious one evening when he came back from work without going to Auntie's, and found I hadn't returned. “This Freddy person with whom you've fallen in—does she have boys as well riding in that Mercedes of hers?”

Things came to a head when I told him about the class picnic to Elephanta Island. “Why not?” he said. “I can take the third-class train to Jogeshwari for voice lessons while you cruise off to the island. Perhaps in Freddy's own private yacht—does Mercedes make yachts as well?”

“If you don't want me to go, just say so.”

“Since when have you needed my permission for anything? I thought you only asked your father for that. And why wouldn't I want you to go?—it'll be nice for you to cavort with all your friends from college, especially the men.”

My first impulse was to respond in kind, to show I would not be cowed. But things had not been going well lately for Dev—despite his perseverance at lessons, even the newer music directors had turned him down in tryouts of his revamped singing style. Besides, there was my pledge to conform. I decided I would approach Freddy to explain that I was different from other students—being married, I could only go along on a picnic if my husband was invited as well.

“Oh, please bring him along. The more the merrier,” she said. Perhaps I imagined the heavenward look she seemed to exchange with her friends.

We left for the island at 10 a.m. on Sunday, a boatload of English-medium college students and Dev. “Who'd like to sing a song for us?” Freddy asked, and Dev volunteered before I could stop him. He burst into “Awara Hoon,” one of the new Mukesh songs his guru had been teaching him. People clapped politely when he had finished, but while he was singing, nobody joined in. “Who else—in
English
this time?” Freddy said, and I felt doubly mortified because Dev kept smiling without realizing the slight.

It was a long climb up the hill from the jetty to the temple caves. The weather was unseasonably warm for December—each step we ascended seemed to offer us up closer to the sun, to be withered by its rays. Dev appeared to have developed an obsession for Freddy in the time taken to make the water crossing. He hurried me along to keep pace with her, a foolish grin fixed on his face in case she happened to look back. Every time we passed a group of monkeys, he loudly mimicked their growls in the hope of attracting her attention. At one point, he asked me if I thought she might be thirsty, if he should buy her a glass of water from the girl winding her way down the steps with an earthenware pot on her head. “Freddy only drinks water that's been boiled,” I informed him.

We had lunch before going into the cave. There were circles of people forming on the grass, and of course Dev wanted to sit in the one with Freddy. “Would you like to try some kidney pie?” she asked us. “Daddy had our cook take lessons from the chef at the British Embassy.”

I didn't want to accept, because we had only the usual jam sandwiches to trade in return, but Dev helped himself to Freddy's offering. “It's very good,” he said, even though I knew how he hated non-Punjabi fare. “Tastes a little like mutton samosa,” he added, and some of Freddy's friends tittered into their napkins.

Surely even Dev must have noticed the glances and winks that passed between Freddy and the other girls. He chose to ignore them all, lumbering on with his attempts to make an impression. Although clearly mocking him, Freddy made no effort to disengage herself from Dev's transparent courtship. Rather, she preened and flaunted herself under the attention, as if it was a waterfall cascading over her body. “Some more pie?” she purred, holding out the plate.

As we gathered at the entrance to the caves, Dev slipped away from the group. I spotted the shine in his eyes at once when he returned—I knew he had taken a few nips to fortify himself. I stood there mortified—what if Freddy or one of the girls smelled his breath? Fortunately, there was no obvious bulge or outline of a flask visible through the pockets of his pants. “Shall we go pay our respects to Shiva?” Dev asked, as if the congregation had been marking time just for his return.

One of the girls from my history class, Aarti, led us through the courtyard and up the stone steps. “My father's brought me here so many times that not only every panel but even the story behind is chipped permanently into my head.” She paused at the top of the steps, each arm pointing towards one of the enormous reliefs flanking the entrance. “The two most opposite aspects of Shiva, as my father always declares. All his energy and action in the dancing Natraja on your right, and the stillness of his yogi pose on your left.”

I tried to concentrate on the images, to tear my attention away from Freddy and Dev. Here was Shiva the yogi, seated in such a way that his lap seemed to be both emerging from and dissolving into the rock. Both his arms were missing and the stone was worn away from his nose and lips—his obliviousness to these mutilations only accentuated the trance he was in. And on the other side, another trance-like expression, but now the king of dance jumping out of the relief. Arms flailing around, legs crossing and uncrossing, his body in such exquisite balance that motion had to be inevitable. “The reason he looks so serene even as entire cities and continents are being obliterated under his feet is that he knows destruction will simply give him a chance to create once again,” Aarti explained. Surely if I held my breath, and stared at Shiva's poised hand, I would catch a stirring, at least at his fingertips.

“Which one is your Dev more like?” Freddy asked, breaking my spell. Dev's face spread into a delighted grin—there was a chorus of giggles from her friends.

I tried to stay next to Dev as we followed Aarti into the cool interior of the cave. But it was as if Freddy had trained her friends, like a captain might his team for a soccer match—I found myself blocked at each step, and gradually, deftly, displaced to the outskirts of the group. “It's so dark in here. So romantic, isn't it?” Freddy said.

Aarti took us back and forth across the cave, showing us the tableaux on the walls in chronological order. Shiva marrying Parvati after years of asceticism, with Vishnu and Brahma and gift-bearing angels floating in to celebrate their cosmic union. The married couple playing dice, with Parvati closing her eyes to let Shiva win by cheating, so that he wouldn't sulk and stalk off and darken the universe. Shiva as the destroyer, teeth bared, sword raised, eyes white with anger, impaling his own son Andhaka for falling in love with his mother Parvati and trying to carry her off. “What Shiva's really destroying is the lust in Andhaka's heart—giving him an opportunity to conquer his passion and redeem himself. Which Andhaka does, finally, after a hundred thousand years of penance.” Dev murmured something into Freddy's ear, and I saw her smile and coyly shake her head.

“And this is where the goddess Ganga descends from heaven and Shiva catches her in the locks of his hair. Notice the trace of unease Parvati displays at the arrival of her rival Ganga, who she knows will become Shiva's other wife.”

Parvati's expression wasn't uneasy, but rather knowing, graceful, wise. She stood to one side of Shiva, her body arching elegantly away from him, a hint of indignation in the tilt of her head, and on her lips, the barest of smiles. “What I want to know is whether there's someone here for me as well, to catch me should I fall,” Freddy said.

The most imposing statue in the cave was a giant trimurti next to the Ganga relief, towering several times taller than the copies I had seen made by the sand sculptor on the beach. Even Freddy and her friends interrupted their banter to gaze up at the three faces, crowned with intricate headgear rising into the darkness. Aarti reached up with her hand to show how she could barely touch one of the beads in the necklaces carved into the breast. “People sometimes claim that this shows the trinity of Shiva with Vishnu and Brahma, but it's really three images of Shiva alone. See the right face with the mustache, the lotus poised next to the one on the left—they're Shiva's two sides, masculine and feminine. And in the center, he's at his most contemplative, eyes closed, face devoid of expression, looking deep within himself. Imagine—he's been here since the seventh century—watching dynasty after dynasty pass by, his face always turned sightlessly towards the same patch of sea. Waiting for the right era to start participating in the universe again, when his eyes will finally open and he'll spring free.”

I hung back as Aarti led the crowd away to see the image of Shiva as half woman, half man. The chatter died down and I was left alone with the trimurti. I looked at the diffused light burnishing a soft glow on its cheeks—was it trying to communicate a lesson to me?
Remain unperturbed by what might be happening,
it seemed to say—
accept my gift of serenity
. Even if Dev and Freddy grew more adventurous when they noticed I was no longer trailing them, why, the trimurti asked, should it really matter to me?

I turned towards the mouth of the cave to align myself in the same direction as the trimurti. Light filtered in from the outside and made the faintest of impressions against my shut eyelids. I followed this light, padding towards it through the dark, opening my eyes only when I heard the people admiring the reliefs at the entrance. Then I went down the steps and walked past the wooden fence, all the way to the railing that overlooked the motley collection of islands strewn across the water. Somewhere above me, a monkey made a strange rhythmic noise, like a bird chirping, then swung away through the branches. I stood there in the breeze, waiting for Aarti to lead the group out of the cave.