Travelers (14 page)

“Asha's calling you,” Raymond said.

“This is Promila,” Gopi said. “She is called Pam for short and she is studying psychology at Miranda House. She has promised to psychoanalyze me.”

“Oh, no,” said the girl. “I wouldn't like to hear your dreams.”

“They are beautiful dreams,” Gopi said, looking into her eyes. She giggled and shifted a bit farther away from him, setting up myriad little tinkling noises from her earrings, her bracelets, her anklets, her toe-rings, and tiny bells inserted into her hair.

“Asha's calling you.”

“I think I would be a very interesting subject for you,” Gopi told the girl.

“Yes, I can see very well what sort of a subconscious you have. Oh, bearer, bearer!” she cried to a passing figure with a tray. “I'm dying for another lovely apple juice.” The man stopped and she stretched out her hand for it. But she withdrew it again, for just then Sunita came up and announced that the hymn singing was about to start.

Strains of music sounded from the garden. Raymond saw Sunita's hostess smile fade and give way to a look of amazement and premonition. She hurried out and Raymond followed her. They found the sitar player at the expository stage of his recital. His accompanists sat behind him, swaying their heads to the music and nodding significantly at each other whenever he plucked a particularly exquisite note. Asha, the sole audience,
had disposed herself regally in the middle of a carpet; she leaned against a bolster and with an extra cushion propped under her elbow for comfort. When she saw Sunita, she at once shut her eyes and was too absorbed in the music to see or hear anything.

The guests came streaming out of the house. Their party clothes glittered under the illuminations from the trees. The lady minister clapped her hands and they all sat in a circle on the grass. Sunita, with a last despairing look at Asha and the musicians, hurried to join them. But Raymond stayed behind; there was nothing he could do, so he thought he might as well enjoy the music.

It was very enjoyable. Liquid notes melted out of the sitar and trembled on the night air. There were no illuminations in this part of the garden, only moonlight; the fine white clothes of the musicians glimmered and so did the white flowers that bloomed like jewels on surrounding bushes. The raga had now reached the stage where the maestro was showing his skill at ornamentation. He strung and restrung his notes like pearls and each pearl had been rounded by generations of artistry. Such music demanded a quality of the ear as refined and a sensibility as delicate as the music itself. Raymond desired to give these but could not help being distracted by what was happening in the lit-up part of the garden.

Led by the lady minister, they had begun to sing hymns. They started off with Gandhiji's favorite hymn—a rousing tune and heartening words about the Oneness of God whether worshipped as Ishwar or as Allah. Unfortunately most of the guests did not know these words and they trailed behind the leader, who sang in a loud, manly voice, sometimes clapping her hands to rally the others along. They kept tripping up and some of them giggled at their own ineptitude, which made others sing louder in order to cover up. They sounded terrible.

Asha saw Gopi sitting in the circle on the grass. He was singing vigorously and sometimes he turned his head to smile at the
girl in gold tissue beside him. “Go and get him,” Asha whispered to Raymond, though at the same time she continued to sway her head to the music to make it appear that there was no slackening of attention on her part. Raymond also went on swaying his head, pretending he hadn't heard her, but she nudged him so that he had reluctantly to get up.

As he approached the other circle, the lady minister waved him into it. She rounded her mouth to sing the words more clearly and nodded at him to try and repeat them after her.
“Ishwar Allah Tere Nam,”
she sang, and the others sang—Rao Sahib and Sunita both trying to look as if they were enjoying themselves, singing wholeheartedly though like everyone else stumbling over the words. Gopi, however, seemed quite familiar with them and was able to sing out lustily; he was also one of the few people there to whom it came naturally to sit cross-legged on the grass. The girl next to him kept shifting uncomfortably, arranging her voluminous gold skirt this way and that; and although Gopi tried to teach her the words as they went along, she kept getting them wrong and that made her dissolve in giggles. Gopi too was amused. He seemed really to be enjoying himself, and not at all pleased when Raymond whispered Asha's message to him.

“Sabko Sanmati De Bhagvan!”
the lady minister ended with a flourish. She turned to Raymond and translated the line for him: “Give us all good sense, O Lord!” she said, adding humorously, “Yes, and I think we need it—we Indians are not very famous for our good sense.” That was a good joke spiced with truth and everyone appreciated it; and amid the general laughter she cried, “Come now, once again!” and in exhilarated mood began to lead them from the beginning:
“Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram
—louder!” she cried. “With all your heart and soul! Let Gandhiji himself hear us from up there!” Then they all raised their voices with hers, drowning the delicate strains that came softly sobbing from the other part of the garden, where Asha reclined alone against her silken bolster.

When Raymond came back without Gopi, she looked at him inquiringly. In reply Raymond shrugged. “He won't come.”

“He
won't
come?”

“Sh.”

The tabla player had now begun to accompany the maestro, and they were working themselves up to a contest where each tried to outwit the other with superior skill. The sitar flung a phrase of unmatchable beauty toward the tabla, which responded by not only matching but even surpassing it, so that the sitar was forced to try again: and so they continued to cap triumph with triumph, challenging one another to soar higher and higher and up to heaven if possible. Each of them secretly smiled to himself, and sometimes they also exchanged smiles in a mischievous way, for each knew what pride there was in the other's heart. They were too engrossed to be conscious of their audience, and by this time they had also reached a crescendo of noise under cover of which it was easy for Asha to question Raymond.

“What's he doing there?”

“Singing.”

“Who's that girl? . . . Don't shrug like that! You look stupid. What did he say?”

“Nothing. How could he? He's singing.”

Asha said a bad English word. After a moment she said, “Tell him I want him to come at once.”

Raymond didn't answer. He smiled at and with the musicians, wishing he could be allowed to listen in peace and let his excitement mount with theirs.

“If you don't go, I shall go myself.”

“Don't be a fool, Asha.” He laid his hand on her knee to soothe her. “Why don't you just sit here and listen. It's so marvelous.”

She pushed his hand away and got up and walked away. Once she looked back at him as if defying him to stop her. But he made no attempt to do so, and only looked after her in despairing
resignation. He saw her step over several people in the circle and make her way toward Gopi. He saw those people stop singing to look up and gape at her. Rao Sahib started to his feet and tried to reach her but too late, for she had already got to Gopi and was standing over him. She appeared to be tugging at his hair; Gopi put up his hands to defend himself—she tugged harder—was she trying to pull him up by his hair? Whatever it was, it was sufficiently disturbing to stop the singing and the lady minister, who had been clapping in time with the hymn, remained frozen with her big arms held apart in mid-air.

Now the sitar and the tabla had reached their highest crescendo—higher than this it was not possible for human beings to go. Then there was nothing left but to cry “Enough!” in surrender and bend across playfully, gloatingly, triumphantly to slap each other's instruments and laugh. And Raymond cried “Bravo!” and they turned toward him, those two courtly artistes, and acknowledged his applause with humility and grace.

Asha Packing

“Don't let her go!” Bulbul cried.

She flung herself flat on the floor and grasped Rao Sahib's feet in supplication. Rao Sahib tried—in vain—to shake her off, and at the same time looked helplessly at Asha, who was throwing things into a suitcase with grim abandon.

“Why are you doing this?” Rao Sahib appealed to her. But she didn't stop. “There is no need,” Rao Sahib appealed again.

Asha turned on him for a moment. “You yourself should be telling me go away, get out of my house!”

Rao Sahib suppressed a sigh. How many scenes of this nature he had gone through with his sister! As always on these occasions, he was affected with mixed but strong feelings; to relieve them somewhat, he turned on Bulbul and kicked his feet in a renewed attempt to free them. Asha also turned on Bulbul, cursing her for a mischievous, wicked old woman, but in fact Bulbul rather enjoyed being the center of their attention. She released Rao Sahib and raised herself from her horizontal position on the floor to a more vertical one on her knees. She stretched her hands folded in prayer into the air and turned now this way to Rao Sahib, now that way to Asha, to implore them both. To Rao Sahib she said, “Don't let her go.” To Asha
she said, “Take me with you, don't leave your old Bulbul behind.” She moaned in distress but all the same there was a glint in her eyes which looked not unlike enjoyment.

Rao Sahib and Asha knew it was not possible to stop her, so they ignored her instead. Rao Sahib sat down on the bed and said, “Why do you want to go?”

“I have to go,” Asha said. She left off packing and became quite calm and sat next to him. “Not only because of what happened—oh, God!” she cried, remembering.

“It doesn't matter,” Rao Sahib said. Actually, it did matter—the lady minister had been much offended—but for the moment, seeing his sister suffer so, Rao Sahib was prepared to forget.

“I want to go away,” Asha said. “I want to leave everything behind. Give it all up.”

Rao Sahib had heard her talk like that before. So had Bulbul. It threw the latter into a new paroxysm of distress and, pointing at the small suitcase Asha had been packing, she cried, “This is what she is taking!”

Asha had packed only her plainest, simplest saris, and just a few of them. Everything else was left behind. She said, “It is all I need from now on.”

Rao Sahib asked, “Are you going to Banubai again?” He argued, “What use is that? You know what happened last time.”

“Last time I wasn't ready yet.”

“And now?”

Asha cried out loud, “What
else
is there!”

Rao Sahib wanted to help her only he didn't know how. He had never known how. Asha was so different from him, from Sunita, from everyone he knew: nevertheless he loved her. He said, “Why don't you learn Russian? It's good to learn different languages,” he urged in reply to her look of surprise. “It needn't be Russian. Any language will do: for instance, Persian or Arabic would also be very good. Or Turkish. Don't cry, Ashi. I'm saying this only for your own good.”

“I know,” she said, crying more.

“You should have something to occupy your mind. And learning a new language is a very fine discipline.”

She kissed his nose, making it wet with her tears, and said, “Let me go to Banubai. At least let me try with her.”

Rao Sahib sighed in resignation. “Should I book your plane ticket to Benares?”

“No, no plane. I shall go by third-class train.”

“Aie!”
cried Bulbul in shock and horror.

“I don't care at all,” Asha told Rao Sahib. “What does it matter if I travel third-class or first-class air-conditioned? That's nothing. Really, I'm so tired of it all. Of all this,” she said, plunging her hand among the silks billowing all over the bed and the floor where she had tossed them in her frenzy of packing. Now she tugged at the first one that came to her hand—a rich orange sari with a gold border—and threw it toward Bulbul. Bulbul caught it skillfully. Asha pulled out another one and was about to throw that as well when Rao Sahib put his hand on her arm to restrain her. He said soothingly, “You can do this later. Tell me about the ticket first.”

“Tomorrow. Tonight. As soon as possible.”

“Will you take Bulbul?”

“No. I don't want her. You keep her. Let her stay here in the quarters.”

“If you want her, you can write.”

Bulbul took no interest in this exchange, though it concerned her so intimately. She was busy folding the orange sari that had come her way. She turned it this way and that, stroking it lovingly, and also scratched her finger along the border to test the pure gold thread.

Gopi the Gay and Gallant Bridegroom

One of Gopi's uncles had come with a momentous proposal, which threw the family into a turmoil of excitement. Only Gopi
refused to be excited; in fact, he refused to discuss the matter at all. This necessarily dampened everyone's spirits, for without Gopi's cooperation nothing could proceed.

The proposal the uncle had brought was for one of the sisters—aged nineteen, and certainly high time for her to be married—and it was from a prosperous family in Benares, the owners of a sugar mill. The boy was eminently suitable, twenty-two years old and after studying for a B.A. had already entered the family business; a tall boy, a little dark in complexion perhaps but otherwise handsome, healthy, and sober. The uncle had brought a photograph, which was scrutinized by all the family, and the sister in question managed to get a peep too, after which she became very quiet and introspective. The boy also had a younger sister whom her family desired to settle at the same time; and what could be more desirable than a double wedding, for as everyone knew such double ties within a family strengthened the bonds of mutual interest and affection. The uncle had also brought a photograph of the girl and everyone looked at it eagerly except Gopi, who refused to look at all.