‘Hiss mammary berry shurp,’ said Sanaki Baba to Dipankar in English. ‘Old, old, old man. Like a stick.’
‘So now, I’ll go and visit Sanaki Baba,’ said Mr Maitra, getting up.
Sanaki Baba looked nonplussed.
Mr Maitra frowned, and explained again: ‘On the other side of the Ganga.’
‘But I am Sanaki Baba,’ said Sanaki Baba.
‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Maitra, ‘I meant – what’s his name?’
‘Ramjap Baba.’
‘Yes, Ramjap Baba.’
So Mr Maitra left, and after a while the pretty Pushpa showed Dipankar to some straw lying on the sandy ground in one of the tents: this was to be his bed for the next week. The nights were hot, so a single sheet would do.
Pushpa went off to escort the Raja of Marh to Sanaki Baba’s tent.
Dipankar sat down and began to read from Sri Aurobindo. But after an hour or so he became restless and decided to follow Sanaki Baba around.
Sanaki Baba appeared to be very practical and caring – happy, bustling, and un-dictatorial. Dipankar looked at him carefully from time to time. His little eyebrows were sometimes knit in thought. He had the neck of a bull, dark curly hairs on his barrel-chest, and a compact paunch. His hair grew only in a forehead tuft and on the sides. His brown oval pate gleamed in the June sunlight. And sometimes, when he listened, his mouth opened in concentration. Whenever he saw Dipankar looking at him, he smiled back.
Dipankar was also very taken with Pushpa and found himself blinking furiously whenever he spoke to her. But whenever she spoke to him it was in a very serious voice, and with a serious frown.
From time to time the Raja of Marh would appear in Sanaki Baba’s encampment and roar with rage if Sanaki Baba was not in. Someone had told him of Dipankar’s special status, and occasionally during the sermons he would glare at him murderously.
Dipankar felt that the Raja of Marh wanted to be loved, but found it hard to be lovable.
11.10
DIPANKAR sat in a boat on the Ganga.
An old man, a brahmin, with a caste-mark on his forehead, kept up a loud commentary to the splash of the oars. He compared Brahmpur to Banaras, to the great confluence at Allahabad, to Hardwar, and to Sagar Island where the Ganga met the sea.
‘In Allahabad, the meeting of the blue waters of the Yamuna and the brown waters of the Ganga is like the meeting of Rama and Bharat,’ said the old man piously.
‘But what about the third river of the Triveni which meets them there?’ asked Dipankar. ‘What would you compare the river Saraswati to?’
The old man looked at Dipankar, annoyed. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.
‘From Calcutta,’ said Dipankar. He had asked the question innocently, and was sorry he had annoyed the man.
‘Hmmmh!’ snorted the old man.
‘And where are you from?’ asked Dipankar.
‘From Salimpur.’
‘Where is that?’ asked Dipankar.
‘It is in Rudhia District,’ said the old man. He was now bending down and examining his disfigured toe-nails.
‘And where is that?’ persisted Dipankar.
The old man looked at Dipankar incredulously.
‘How far is it from here?’ asked Dipankar, seeing that the old man was not going to reply without further prompting.
‘It is seven rupees away,’ said the old man.
‘All right,’ yelled the boatman, ‘here we are. Now, good people, bathe your fill and pray for the good of all men, including myself.’
But the old man would have none of it. ‘This is not the right spot,’ he shouted. ‘I have been here every year for twenty years and you cannot fool me. It is there.’ He pointed to a spot in the middle of the line of boats.
‘A policeman without a uniform,’ said the boatman in disgust. Reluctantly, he pulled on the oars a few more times, and took the boat to the indicated spot. Here there were quite a number of bathers already. The water was shallow, and it was possible to stand. The splashing and chanting of the bathers merged with the sound of a temple bell. Marigolds and rose-petals floated in the muddy water, together with bits of soggy pamphlets, pieces of straw, the indigo-coloured wrapping of matchboxes, and empty packets made of stitched leaves.
The old man stripped down to his lungi, revealing the holy thread that stretched from his left shoulder to his right hip. In an even louder voice than before he exhorted the pilgrims to bathe. ‘Hana lo, hana lo,’ he shouted, spoonerizing the syllables in his excitement. Dipankar stripped to his underwear and plunged in.
The water did not look clean, but he stood around splashing himself for a minute or two. For some reason, this holiest of all spots did not attract him as much as the spot where the boatman had halted. There he had had the impulse to jump in. The old man, however, was transported with happy excitement. He squatted, ducking himself completely in the water, he cupped it in his hands and drank it, he pronounced ‘Hari Om’ as deeply and as often as he could. The other pilgrims were equally ecstatic. Men and women alike, they were delighting in the touch of the Ganga as babies delight in the touch of their mothers, and were shouting: ‘Ganga Mata ki jai!’