The Guru of Love (12 page)

Ramchandra entered a building and walked aimlessly through the corridors, occasionally peeking into classrooms, where teachers were lecturing and students were listening, with bored expressions. He should have been in one of these classrooms, teaching college students, and once again this thought pulled him toward that dark pit where he frequently fell these days. But now he stopped in the corridor and recalled Malati—not the battered and bruised Malati of this morning but the one who'd come to his door asking for help, the one who'd told him that she'd heard he was a good teacher. On the second floor of the building, Ramchandra saw three girls in a corner, giggling. If Malati passed the S.L.C. exam, she would become one of these girls.

A noise startled him, and he saw one student chasing another. The chaser, passing close to Ramchandra, held a knife. Suddenly, three students appeared quickly and tackled the man. They threw him to the ground so violently that his head struck the floor with a smack. They kicked him, and one of them wrenched away the knife and held it close to the face of the man on the ground. “Motherfucker,” he said, and slashed the man's right cheek. Blood poured from the gash and covered the man's face.

Ramchandra ran down the stairs. Others ran past him up the stairs, shouting, “Where are those panchays?” He quickly walked down the corridor toward the main entrance, as streams of students, all talking at once, left the classrooms. On the lawn, more students were craning their necks, trying to see what was happening on the second floor. “Who was that student with the knife?” Ramchandra asked one of the students.

“How would I know?” the student said. “I can't tell the difference between a panchay and a communist and a Congressi. They all look alike to me. I came to the city to get a degree, but the village was better.”

Ramchandra left the campus just as a police van drew up and some helmeted men ran into Tri Chandra. He went to the park and sat on the platform of one of the stone umbrellas that were scattered in the park. A few people were reclining on the grass, dozing or reading a newspaper. Two homeless boys, with jute sacks on their backs, were fishing for empty cans and bottles. They jostled each other, then one smacked the other on the head and fled, and the chase began. Ramchandra, watching the two bedraggled and toughened boys, thought that they were much like his own children, who fought and kidded with each other in similar ways. Impulsively, Ramchandra called out to them, and when one of the boys came over, he dug into his pocket and took out two rupees. “Go eat some ice cream,” he said in a stern voice, as if he were scolding. The boy looked at the money in his hand and said, “With two rupees? We couldn't even get peanuts with this.” Ramchandra gave him another rupee and said, “Go. I don't have any more.” The kid shook his head and showed the money to his companion. “He said it's for ice cream.” And they both chanted, “Ice cream man,” and ran away. “Donkeys,” Ramchandra muttered to himself, but he felt good, having given them even that small amount of money. The two boys had run out of the park and were crossing the street toward some fritter stalls. The sun's warmth was at its peak for the day, and Ramchandra felt its heat on his shoulders. He reclined on the platform. The sun hovered in the sky like a soft simmering yolk, and soon he felt drowsy.

 

He woke to the sound of his name and was startled to see Goma standing in front of him. “What are you doing here?” For a moment he thought he was dreaming, but there she was, holding a plastic bag, wearing that familiar dark-green sari she wore when she ran errands.

“Why are you sleeping here? What happened to school?”

“I don't know what happened,” he said, his tongue thick with grogginess.

“You haven't been drinking?” It was more a statement than a question. In their thirteen years of marriage, he'd rarely had a drink.

“No, no,” he said, wiping his face with his hand and hopping off the platform. “There was an accident at school, so the classes were canceled.” He was in the process of concocting an elaborate story about the accident when she asked him why he didn't simply go home. He hadn't been feeling well, he said, and wanted to catch his breath but had ended up dozing. He asked what had brought her to the park, and she said that she'd spotted his daura suruwal from the pharmacy near Bir Hospital, where she'd gone to get cough medicine for Rakesh. He'd been sent home early from school because he was coughing. Ramchandra recalled his own fake cough this morning when he'd lied to Bandana Miss, and wondered whether his lying had made his son ill. He dismissed the superstitious thought.

“How much did it cost?” he asked Goma. “For the cough syrup?”

“Don't ask,” Goma said. “The children's health is important.”

And so they walked home together, and as the sun's warmth waned, a cool wind blew across the city, and women tightened their shawls, and men put on the coats they'd taken off. Light fell on Ramchandra and Goma at an angle when they entered the courtyard; as she preceded him up the stairs, Ramchandra watched his wife's behind, shifting with each step, and he assured himself that she had no suspicions or doubts about him. Instead of feeling guilty, he was pleased and proud, not because he was getting away with something, but because Goma accepted him as a complete man, someone who needed no tinkering to be perfect. And he knew, even as Malati brought him so much pleasure, that she would never see him the way Goma did, that even if Malati began to love him, there'd be gaps and holes in her perception of him that her love, no matter how genuine, could never fill.

 

To his surprise, Malati did come. She had red blotches on her face, and a scratch that ran all the way from her left eye down to her chin. When Goma asked her what had happened, Malati said that Rachana had done it in a fit of rage. “Quite a feisty girl,” Goma commented. “She'll be a handful when she grows up.” During the lesson, when Ramchandra asked Malati how she was feeling, she laughed softly. “Wasn't that incredible?” she asked. “I'd never imagined something like that happening to me. Bad luck seems to have a particular liking for me.” And she laughed again. Ramchandra was relieved by her ability to bounce back. “I thought you wouldn't come,” he whispered to her, running his finger up her arm. Her eyes followed his finger, a faint smile curving her lips, and when his finger reached her chin, she locked her eyes into his. “I am determined to pass the S.L.C.,” she said. “If anyone can make me pass, it's you.”

Half an hour later, after the children were dressed and sent to school, Rakesh's cough a bit better, Goma left for the market to get kerosene, saying that she'd probably have to stand in line and wouldn't be back for a long time. A few minutes after her departure, there was a crash on the street below. Startled, they both rose from the floor and rushed to the window, where they stood shoulder to shoulder. A crowd had gathered around a three-wheeler, the side of which had been smashed by a car now off to the side, its left bumper dented. People shouted and gave instructions, and soon a bloody body was lifted out of the three-wheeler. The injured man was groaning. The people holding him set him down on the street, and someone called for water, which the tea shopkeeper brought over in a jar. The driver of the car, a man in a business suit, was being held by three young men, who were also jabbing him with their fists. “Just because you're wearing a suit and tie and driving a car doesn't mean you can destroy poor folks,” one of the men said. The driver, while battling the fists, attempted to offer an explanation.

“That could have been me,” Ramchandra said. “These days I seem to be taking three-wheelers all the time.”

“You shouldn't say such things.”

He saw that she had on a large chandan tika. Had she gone to the Pashupatinath Temple this morning?

The commotion below lessened after the young men made the driver take the injured man to the hospital. Some people still milled around, going over the details of the accident. The shopkeeper looked up and said to Ramchandra at the window, “This is more interesting than tutoring, isn't it, Ramchandra-ji?”

Ramchandra and Malati sat down on the floor again, but they'd lost interest in tackling the math.

“Do you want to study?” he asked.

“What do you want to do?” She was smiling.

He slid closer to her and took her hand. She'd chewed her fingernails, which looked frayed.

“That's a bad habit,” he said.

“I do it when I worry.”

“What are you worried about now?”

“So many things,” she said. “But I don't want to bother you with them.”

“Tell me one thing you worry about.”

“About passing the S.L.C. But here I am, not studying.”

“I'll make sure you pass.”

“But how? You're holding my hand right now.”

He let go and said, “Okay, let's do another couple of problems.”

“I'm in no mood.”

“See? How can it work this way?”

They fell silent for a while. He found it hard to believe that the thin body beside him had harbored and finally pushed out a living, breathing baby. He eyed her belly, and, pretending to pick lint from her kurta suruwal, ran his hand across her stomach and noted that it was flat. After Goma had given birth to Sanu, she'd put on about twenty kilos, and had had to hold his arm while climbing the stairs. Her cheeks had become puffy, and her fingers had swollen. He'd paid no attention to her weight gain, although he missed sleeping with her; tradition demanded that mother and baby sleep together.

“Why don't you tell me about Rachana's father?” he asked.

“There's nothing to tell. He's not in our lives anymore.”

“What happened?”

She seemed reluctant, but he waited patiently. Her eyes measured him, checking to see whether he would judge her.

At first she spoke with some difficulty. Gradually, she relaxed and spoke with ease. Ramchandra listened intently, watching her face: how her nose twitched when she conjured up an image, how she lowered her eyes when a thought saddened her.

Rachana's father was a taxi driver who had followed Malati from a bus stop near her house to school. He was very handsome, with curly hair and a mustache that ran down to his chin. He wore rings on all his fingers, and he sang Hindi songs through the window of the taxi:
mere sapano ki rani kab ayegi tu
—oh, the queen of my dreams, when will you come to me? He whispered that she looked very pretty in her uniform—the red frock and white blouse—and offered to give her a ride to school. He'd feel like a king, he said, if she'd allow him to chauffeur her to school. Since the school was only a few neighborhoods away, she merely smiled and walked on. One day he didn't appear, and she kept turning back to see if he'd come. The next day she waited at the bus stop until she saw the taxi. “Did you miss me?” he asked, his elbow on the window. The cigarette on his lips moved up and down as he spoke.

This time she got in. As they reached the school, he asked whether she really wanted to go to her classes that day. She saw her friends by the gate, waiting for her, because they had a habit of walking in together. “If I don't, where will we go?” she asked. He smiled and pressed the accelerator. They drove to Balaju, sat near the water spouts, and he told her of his dying mother and his tyrant brother, and she told him that she was fatherless, that she had a stepmother who sometimes treated her as stepdaughters were often treated. From his back pocket, he produced a gift: a small mirror. She would be able to see herself throughout the day to remind her how beautiful she was.

Every day he gave her a ride, and eventually she stopped going to school. They roamed the city all day in his taxi. He took her sightseeing in the valley: the top of the Swayambhunath Temple, the woods of Gokarna, even all the way to the Dakshinkali Temple, where they stood in front of the goddess and proclaimed their love for each other. Then they started making love in the jungles of Balaju, a few hundred yards up from the very place where they'd come the first time she'd gotten into the taxi with him.

When she discovered she was pregnant, she considered an abortion, but she didn't have the heart for it. She told him she was pregnant, and at first he said that he'd marry her, that he'd come and see her stepmother soon. But he didn't come at all for a few days. She waited for him near the bus stop, her hands in front of her belly as if to hide her shame, even though it was too early for her to show. His absence forced her to attend school again, and she managed to take her final exams, and pass, just before her belly started to bulge. One afternoon she went searching for his house near the banks of the Bagmati River in Thapathali. After two hours of knocking on different doors, she found it. A woman opened the door, and when Malati told her whom she was looking for, the woman said, “My husband has gone to Birgunj for a few days. Who are you?”

Malati made some excuse and walked away.

“That's it,” Malati said to Ramchandra. “And I haven't heard from him since.”

She rose from her cross-legged position, and started looking at the pictures on the wall. She eyed them closely, spending time in front of each. She didn't ask him any questions about the people in them, but her absorption prompted Ramchandra to go into the other room to get the photo albums Goma had kept over the years.

“This will be our math for today,” he said, and they sat down once again. She flipped the pages, lingering on the photographs of Sanu and Rakesh when they were younger. She spent time with the photos as if she were looking at pictures of her own family. She asked a few questions about when and where the pictures were taken, and he'd answer and sit back to watch her face. When she became aware of his gaze, she asked solemnly, “Why are you looking at me like that?” He was about to touch her face, to trace her lips with his finger, when he heard footsteps on the stairs. He started to collect the albums, and Goma appeared at the door, holding a plastic container of kerosene. Outside, a truck honked its horn.