A Suitable Boy(514)

She moistened the red powder, then leaned forward intently and touched it with her finger to the foreheads of the gods, and then, leaning forward once again and closing her eyes, applied some to her own forehead. In a quiet voice she said: ‘Veena, matches.’

‘I’ll get them, Nani,’ said Bhaskar.

‘You stay here,’ said his grandmother, who planned to say a special prayer for him.

Veena came back from the kitchen with a huge box of matches. Her mother lit the lamp and the candle. Noisy people, the endless guests who stayed at Prem Nivas, were walking around talking on the verandah outside, but they did not distract her. She lit the lamp and candle, and placed these two lights on the tray. Ringing the bell with her left hand, she picked up the tray with her right, and described a motion in the air around the portrait of Krishna – not in the form of a circle but something much more irregular, as if she were circumscribing a presence that she saw before her eyes. Then she got up slowly and quite painfully from her confined posture, and did the same for the other gods in the statuettes and calendars scattered around the little room: the statue of Shiva; a picture of Lakshmi and Ganesh together, which included a small mouse nibbling at a laddu; a calendar from ‘Paramhans and Co., Chemists and Druggists’ of Rama, Sita, Lakshman and Hanuman with the sage Valmiki seated on the ground in front of them writing their story on a scroll; and several others.

She prayed to them, and she asked for comfort from them: nothing for herself, but health for her family, a long life for her husband, blessings on her two grandchildren, and ease to the souls of those no longer here. Her mouth worked silently as she prayed, unselfconscious of the presence of her daughter and her grandson. Throughout she kept the bell lightly ringing.

Finally, the puja was over, and she sat down after putting the things away in the cupboard.

She turned to Veena, and addressed her with the affectionate word for ‘son’: ‘Bété, get Pran on the line, and tell him I want to go with him to the Radhakrishna Temple on the other side of the Ganga.’

This was shrewd. If she had phoned Pran directly, he would have tried to wriggle out of it. Veena, however, who knew he was well enough to go, told him quite firmly that he couldn’t upset their mother on Janamashtami. So in a short while all of them – Pran, Veena, Bhaskar, old Mrs Tandon, and Mrs Mahesh Kapoor – were sitting in a boat that was making its way across the water.

‘Really, Ammaji,’ said Pran, who was not pleased to be dragged from his work, ‘if you think of Krishna’s character – flirt, adulterer, thief –’

His mother held up her hand. She was not annoyed so much as disturbed by her son’s remarks.

‘You should not be so proud, son,’ she said, looking at him with concern. ‘You should humble yourself before God.’

‘I may as well humble myself before a stone,’ suggested Pran. ‘Or… or a potato.’

His mother considered his words. After a few more splashes of the boatman’s oars, she said in gentle rebuke: ‘Don’t you even believe in God?’

‘No,’ said Pran.

His mother was silent.

‘But when we die –’ she said, and was silent once more.

‘Even if everyone I loved were to die,’ said Pran, irked for no obvious reason, ‘I would not believe.’

‘I believe in God,’ volunteered Bhaskar suddenly. ‘Especially in Rama and Sita and Lakshman and Bharat and Shatrughan.’ In his mind there was no clear distinction yet between gods and heroes, and he was hoping to get the part of one of the five swaroops in the Ramlila later this year. If not, he would at least be enrolled in the monkey army and get to fight and have a good time. ‘What’s that?’ he said suddenly, pointing at the water.

The broad, grey-black back of something much larger than a fish had appeared momentarily from beneath the surface of the Ganga, and had sliced back in again.

‘What’s what?’ asked Pran.

‘There – that –’ said Bhaskar, pointing again. But it had disappeared again.

‘I didn’t see anything,’ said Pran.

‘But it was there, it was there, I saw it,’ said Bhaskar. ‘It was black and shiny, and it had a long face.’

Upon the word, and as if by magic, three large river-dolphins with pointed snouts suddenly appeared to the right of the boat and started playing in the water. Bhaskar laughed with delight.

The boatman said, in his Brahmpuri accent: ‘There are dolphins here, in this stretch of the water. They don’t come out often, but they are here all right. That’s what they are, dolphins. No one fishes them, the fishermen protect them and kill the crocodiles in this stretch. That is why there are no crocodiles until that far bend, there beyond the Barsaat Mahal. You are lucky to see them. Remember that at the end of the journey.’