‘He’s gone away,’ said Lata. ‘Perhaps we’ll find another one.’
Kabir shook his head. He said: ‘We’ve spoken. He’ll return.’
The boatman, after rowing upstream and to the far shore, got something from the bank, and rowed back.
‘Do you swim?’ he asked them. ‘I do,’ said Kabir, and turned towards Lata.
‘No,’ said Lata, ‘I don’t.’
Kabir looked surprised.
‘I never learned,’ explained Lata. ‘Darjeeling and Mussourie.’
‘I trust your rowing,’ said Kabir to the boatman, a brown, bristle-faced man dressed in a shirt and lungi with a woollen bundi to cover his chest. ‘If there’s an accident, you handle yourself, I’ll handle her.’
‘Right,’ said the boatman.
‘Now, how much?’
‘Well, whatever you –’
‘No,’ said Kabir, ‘let’s fix a price. I’ve never dealt with boatmen any other way.’
‘All right,’ said the boatman, ‘what do you think is right?’
‘One rupee four annas.’
‘Fine.’
Kabir stepped on board, then stretched his hand out for Lata. With an assured grip he pulled her onto the boat. She looked flushed and happy. For an unnecessary second he did not release her hand. Then, sensing she was about to pull away, he let her go.
There was still a slight mist on the river. Kabir and Lata sat facing the boatman as he pulled on the oars. They were more than two hundred yards from the dhobi-ghat, but the sound of the beating of clothes, though faint, was still audible. The details of the bank disappeared in the mist.
‘Ah,’ said Kabir. ‘It’s wonderful to be here on the river surrounded by mist – and it’s rare at this time of year. It reminds me of the holiday we once spent in Simla. All the problems of the world slipped away. It was as if we were a different family altogether.’
‘Do you go to a hill station every summer?’ asked Lata. Though she had been schooled at St Sophia’s in Mussourie, there was no question now of being able to afford to take a house in the hills whenever they chose.
‘Oh yes,’ said Kabir. ‘My father insists on it. We usually go to a different hill station every year – Almora, Nainital, Ranikhet, Mussourie, Simla, even Darjeeling. He says that the fresh air “opens up his assumptions”, whatever that means. Once, when he came down from the hills, he said that like Zarathustra he had gained enough mathematical insight on the mountainside in six weeks to last a lifetime. But of course, we went up to the hills the next year as usual.’
‘And you?’ asked Lata. ‘What about you?’
‘What about me?’ said Kabir. He seemed troubled by some memory.
‘Do you like it in the hills? Will you be going this year as usual?’
‘I don’t know about this year,’ said Kabir. ‘I do like it up there. It’s like swimming.’
‘Swimming?’ asked Lata, trailing a hand in the water.
A thought suddenly struck Kabir. He said to the boatman: ‘How much do you charge local people to take them all the way up to the Barsaat Mahal from near the dhobi-ghat?’
‘Four annas a head,’ said the boatman.
‘Well then,’ said Kabir, ‘We should be paying you a rupee – at the most – considering that half your journey is downstream. And I’m paying you a rupee and four annas. So it’s not unfair.’
‘I’m not complaining,’ said the boatman, surprised.
The mist had cleared, and now before them on the bank of the river stood the grand grey edifice of the Brahmpur Fort, with a broad reach of sand stretching out in front of it. Near it, and leading down to the sands was a huge earthen ramp, and above it a great pipal tree, its leaves shimmering in the morning breeze.
‘What did you mean by “swimming”?’ asked Lata.
‘Oh yes,’ said Kabir. ‘What I meant was that you’re in a completely different element. All your movements are different – and, as a result, all your thoughts. When I went tobogganing in Gulmarg once, I remember thinking that I didn’t really exist. All that existed was the clean, pure air, the high snows, this rush of swift movement. The flat, drab plains bring you back to yourself. Except, perhaps, well, like now on the river.’
‘Like music?’ said Lata.
The question was addressed as much to herself as to Kabir.
‘Mmm, yes, I think so, in a way,’ Kabir mused. ‘No, not really,’ he decided.
He had been thinking of a change of spirit brought about by a change of physical activity.
‘But,’ said Lata, following her own thoughts, ‘music really does do that to me. Simply strumming the tanpura, even if I don’t sing a single note, puts me into a trance. Sometimes I do it for fifteen minutes before I come back to myself. When things get to be too much for me, it’s the first thing I turn to. And when I think that I only took up singing under Malati’s influence last year I realize how lucky I’ve been. Do you know that my mother is so unmusical that when I was a child and she would sing lullabies to me, I would beg her to stop and let my ayah sing them instead?’