The Guru of Love (33 page)

One of the young men was holding Mr. Sharma from behind while others pummeled him. The man's face was bloody. “Call the police,” Ramchandra shouted at the crowd and tried to pry off the arms of the man who was holding Mr. Sharma, even as his own leg was burning with pain. “Why are you beating this old man? Don't you have any shame?”

“This old man, this baje, touched our sister,” one young man said. “We'll kill him.”

The man holding Mr. Sharma let him go, and he collapsed to the ground. “Save me, Ramchandra-ji! Please save me from them!”

Ramchandra knelt beside him, wincing as the pain shot from his leg to his hip. He looked up at the young men. “What happened?”

One of the men's younger sister, barely fifteen, had come to fetch water at the tap early this morning, thinking there wouldn't be a line. Mr. Sharma had come down and yelled at her, then pushed her to the garden, where he touched her breasts and tried to kiss her. The man got angrier as he related this to Ramchandra, and his feet flew up and landed on Mr. Sharma's face. Mr. Sharma fell to the ground, clutching his face, howling.

“Enough, enough! You can't beat someone like this,” Ramchandra said.

“What? And he can go around molesting little girls? Are you like him? Is that why you're defending him?”

“Enough,” Ramchandra said. “If he did it, he's learned his lesson.” It took a while for him to placate the men, but he finally did, and they left, though not before threatening Mr. Sharma that they'd gouge his eyes out if he even looked at their sister again.

Holding Mr. Sharma's arm, Ramchandra limped up the stairs to his room, where he applied some iodine to the cuts on Mr. Sharma's face.

“I think my nose is broken,” Mr. Sharma said. “And something is wrong in here.” He pointed to his stomach. “It hurts so much.”

Ramchandra wet a towel and began cleaning the man's face. “I'd better take you to the hospital.”

“No, no,” Mr. Sharma said. “What will I tell the doctors?”

Ramchandra looked at his own ankle. It was swollen. “Why didn't you think of that when you took the girl to the garden?” His voice was cold.

Mr. Sharma looked up at him. “Ramchandra-ji, I...” And he began to weep.

“Control yourself,” Ramchandra said.

Mr. Sharma kept weeping.

Later, Ramchandra enlisted the help of the shopkeeper to take both of them to the hospital in a taxi. They sat in the emergency room until a nurse took Mr. Sharma away. It was another half-hour before Ramchandra was called. The doctor who examined his ankle said that he'd need an X-ray before he could tell whether it was broken or sprained. Ramchandra had to limp all the way to the other end of the hospital to get an X-ray and had to wait almost two hours before he was given the folder. Then he spent another hour on a rickety bench outside the doctor's office. The swelling didn't appear to be getting bigger, and he found some consolation in this.

The doctor examined the X-ray and said the ankle was only sprained. A cloth cast was wrapped around it, and a strange feeling came over Ramchandra as he limped out of the hospital. “This is good,” he found himself saying. “I needed this.”

 

He didn't go to Pandey Palace for a couple of days. He called, but said nothing about his ankle. He hobbled around the city, sometimes even after the curfew, as if he dared the police to do anything to him. And then, back in the apartment, he'd scold himself for being so foolish. What was he trying to prove? At night, when he couldn't sleep, he'd walk around the flat, his ankle numbed by the painkiller the doctor had prescribed. Sometimes he'd stand by the kitchen window and look across the courtyard, half-expecting to see Mr. Sharma at his window, chanting. But Mr. Sharma had gone into hiding, probably too ashamed to show his face in the neighborhood.

Ramchandra sat by the window in his room and watched the street. Often he saw drunks, zigzagging across the night, humming to themselves. Sometimes he saw prostitutes, back from their nightly duties, perhaps hurrying to their children at home. At times, a gang of orphaned children walked by, making a ruckus, banging on old pots or singing loudly the latest cinema song. Ramchandra was filled with a longing that he couldn't describe, nor did he feel the need to. It swirled inside his head, and he recalled some of the intense pleasure he'd experienced when he'd first been with Malati. Then his memories went back even further, to the early days of his marriage, when the mere brush of Goma's finger against his in a public place would make him dizzy. Goma was the most beautiful woman for miles around, Ramchandra was convinced, and he'd watch her until she said, “What are you staring at? Haven't you seen me before?” And he'd say, “Not really.”

Ramchandra began to miss his children and Goma and Malati and even his mother. He remembered the hardships she and he had endured during their first few years in the city, and how close he'd felt to her then. He remembered the joy Goma had brought into his life, despite the criticism from her parents, and how happy he'd been when both Sanu and Rakesh were born, their tiny faces shining at him.

He got up and dressed. The night was cool. He walked, with a limp, toward Pandey Palace, even though he knew it'd take him at least an hour to reach it. There was no taxi to be found. The streets were deserted. One policeman approached him in Naxal and asked who he was and where he was going. Ramchandra said he was going home after spending some time with friends. The policeman eyed him suspiciously but let him go.

The dog barked and ran toward Ramchandra as he opened the gate and walked in. He patted the dog and was about to go inside when he saw Goma's figure in the garden, sitting under the umbrella. He walked toward her.

“Somehow I knew you'd come tonight,'' she said.

“How?”

“Just a gut feeling.” She noticed how he grimaced when he sat down. “What happened?”

He told her, but didn't say that he'd been running down the stairs to help Mr. Sharma.

She reached down and checked his ankle. “You should have been careful. I'll go fetch some ointment.”

He stopped her. “That can wait.” He asked her to sit on the adjacent chair, took her hand, and said, “Listen, you don't have to answer this, but it's been bothering me all the time we've been married. Tell me, why did your parents marry you so late, and to me?”

She laughed softly. “You walked all the way from Jaisideval, with that ankle, at this time of the night, to ask me that?”

“Please, give me an answer.”

“What good would that do?”

“It'll satisfy my curiosity.”

Under the light from the naked bulb on the side of the house, she twirled the end of her dhoti. “It's really simple. I'd said no to everyone they proposed.”

“Why?”

“I didn't like their names or their faces in the photographs I was shown.”

“You based your decision on that?”

“Yes. I've always trusted my feelings. And I knew there was someone out there in this wide world for me.”

“And that was me? How did I get your approval?”

She smiled. “I fell in love with you when you came here to tutor Nalini. The first day, the moment I saw you sitting on the living room carpet with my sister. There was something about your face—your belief in the world, as if you viewed it with an innocence that would drown all sorrows. At the same time, you looked tired, almost wise beyond your years. I was smitten. I used to walk past the living room just to see your face. I knew you didn't notice me, and that was fine. I had no intention of revealing my feelings. After you left, I'd lie on my bed and fantasize about you. I'd repeat your name. In my dreams you came and held my hand, smiled at me. I fantasized that you'd take me away from Pandey Palace, that we'd elope to India and live in a small hut, and that we'd be constantly in love. But even then I knew that my fantasies would be shattered, that I'd be married to someone of my parents' choosing.”

She went on to tell him of the day when a lami woman came to Pandey Palace and showed her parents a picture of a doctor, a successful heart specialist in the city. From behind the living room door, she heard her parents say yes, even though the doctor was a widower and was nearly forty. But Goma was getting old, and her parents were desperate. “What if she says no to this one too?” her mother said after the lami woman left.

“This has gone on too long,” her father said. “We won't get a better offer. I don't want to have a daughter who'll spoil our name by being an old maid.”

That night Goma didn't sleep. She was wracked by nightmares about the doctor. In one of them, he opened her belly and left a surgical instrument there. The next morning her mother came to her room and showed her the doctor's picture. “Please say yes, Goma. Please. We've already said yes.”

That's when Goma told her that if she married anyone, it would be the math teacher.

“Who? That Ramchandra?”

When her mother realized that Goma was serious, she put her head in her hands. “My God, I can't imagine what your father will say.”

“Father can say whatever he wants,” Goma said, “but that's my decision. You either negotiate with him, or I'll remain unmarried for the rest of my life.”

Her mother left the room, and a few moments later her father barged in, made Goma stand up, and slapped her. “So far I've tolerated everything, all your drama about I won't marry this one, I won't marry that one. But I will not tolerate this. I don't want to spend the rest of my life seeing you work as a servant. That puny tutor. Did he make moves on you?”

Goma held her cheek and said that the tutor didn't know anything about her feelings.

She stopped eating.

Days later, her parents gave in. Well, her mother gave in, and persuaded her husband to save their daughter, who, she said, would waste away and die, and no one married a dead woman.

Ramchandra sat still, hardly breathing. Then he slid off the chair and knelt in front of Goma. He held her hand, and a great sob escaped from him. She reached out and tousled his hair, then drew him close to her breast.

“I am nothing compared to you, Goma,” he said.

“Shhhh.”

“I don't deserve you.”

“I've never idealized you. I just knew what I wanted.”

“And I betrayed you.”

She held him, and he remained kneeling before her, his face buried in her chest. A breeze circled around them.

T
WO DAYS LATER
a communiqué from the king's press secretary declared that the king had dismantled the one-party Panchayat system; there would now be a multiparty democratic system in the country. The swiftness of this change surprised many. “You mean it's over?” people asked one another. In Pandey Palace, everyone stared in disbelief at the television set.

“What does it mean for us, Ba?” Rakesh asked. Perhaps because of the softness of his mother's expression when his father was there, he'd become polite toward Ramchandra.

“I don't know,” Ramchandra said. “More freedom, I suppose.”

“Can we have a house of our own now?” Rakesh asked.

“You think the new prime minister will buy you a house?” Sanu said. “Is that what you think? You're so stupid.” She often used the English word
stupid
these days, sometimes to refer to herself. She no longer spent time with Kamal; Ramchandra had seen the sadness on her face when she came home after seeing the boy for the last time. But he was certain there would soon be another boy in the picture. Then he would again have to struggle with his overprotective attitude. For now, there was an unspoken truce between him and Sanu. He'd been pleased when, a few days ago, she came to him with a math problem that would be on her forthcoming exam. She didn't make conversation with him as they solved the problem together, but he could sense the change in her feelings about him.

When they heard the shouts of celebration on the street, all of them went down to the gate. People were streaming onto the streets, shouting, “Panchayat system murdabad,” “Long live multiparty democracy,” “This is the people's victory.” They tossed red powder into the air. Lighted candles appeared on the windowsills of the surrounding houses. A procession passed by the gate. People in an open truck shouted their triumph, clapping their hands above their heads. Some people danced in front of the truck, and a hand reached out and grabbed Ramchandra. It took him a moment to recognize the face; Mukesh, the student who'd thrown the dead rat at him. “Sir, sir,” he shouted above the noise. “Salaam, sir. I won, you lost. Your Panchayat is gone. The rat is buried.” He was laughing, so Ramchandra wasn't sure whether he was serious. Ramchandra said, “Are you going to pass your S.L.C.? Are you going to college?” But Mukesh pulled him over and coaxed him to dance, which he did, much to the amusement of Goma and the children. He soon returned to them, out of breath.

The celebrations continued into the night. Sometimes they heard fireworks; at other times, shouts of victory.

 

That night in bed Ramchandra watched Goma figure out, on a piece of paper, the household budget. Warm glasses of milk sat on the bedside table. Ramchandra's nightly banana, which he claimed he took for its potassium, lay close by.

“We can't stay here forever, Goma,” he said. “This is not our house.”

Since that night in the garden, he'd slept here with Goma. Every night he told himself, and Goma, that he'd walk over to Jaisideval, because the rent was going to waste. But every night after dinner he wanted to sleep with Goma.

“What will I do with this big house?” Goma said. The Pandeys had bequeathed the house to her, leaving their land to Nalini.

“I hate it,” Ramchandra said. “I've always hated it.”

She stopped her calculations and looked at him. He'd half expected her to get angry, as though he'd violated the memory of her parents. “But I have to deal with it,” she said. “I grew up here, and my parents lived here.”