But try as he might Shankar could not go to sleep. How go to sleep when this cosmological event is taking place, as it were, before your very eyes: like the creation of a planet or a galaxy, like some star-spark broken from a planet and falling into empty space, one minute sperm has got stuck with one oviodal cell in the nowhere of space, and there’s going to be a splendid son, a great son. ‘We’ll call him Vishwanath,’ he said to himself. ‘Vishwanath Shastri, hé Vishwanath Shastri?’ he queried, caressing her stomach, ‘will you be a pandit or a scientist or a businessman?’ ‘A pandit like his grandfather, a scientist like his father, and a businessman because of himself,’ she said. ‘No, no, Padma, I am restless. I must do something immediately!’ And before she knew where he was he jumped out on the veranda. After all she could not run after him. It’s just not done. Where was he going? What is he doing?
He came back late, late in the silences of the night. He’d gone to the temple straight and had taken peda and jasmines with him. There was a large crowd because it was a processional day of some sort. He sat with the pilgrims, and sang his part of the Shiva stotram: ‘I may be no orthodox Brahmin,’ he shouted to Padma later, ‘but I know how to articulate my anya and my jnya,’ and he started his stotram again.
Kashika puradhi natha
Kalabhairavam bhajeth. Kalabhairavam bhajeth.
The Lord of the city of Kashi
Kalabhairavam I praise.
‘And I went to the Ganga and said: Mother Ganga you will have to give me a son. He must be better than me. He must be much much better than me. He must neither smoke nor drink nor womanize. He must be pure (aparna) and great. And I threw some flowers at Mother Ganga. And you know how the Mother does, when she answers. She hissed her two-lipped hiss, as if she said the same thing twice over. When Mother Ganga is there what lack of greatness,’ he remarked and wept between his knees. Then he added as if to himself: ‘I am a sinner, and I am going to have a son. I hope he has neither gonorrhoea nor syphilis. I am cured of both.’ ‘Oh slowly, slowly?’ pleaded Padma. ‘The elders are asleep.’ ‘I speak to the walls, to these ancestral walls,’ he cried. ‘They know me and I know them. Walls, walls, makes my son good. Make him eminent. Don’t make him a Gandhi-gander. He must be virile and bright. Make him worthy of Padma,’ he said, and as if in a sudden frenzy took hold of his wife’s two feet, and sobbed and sobbed. ‘A sinner, Padma, touched his wife’s holy feet.’ ‘Oh, may They not do such inauspicious things. Please, please, I’m just a country chit.’ The Vishwanath temple gongs struck and cleared the air, as if for all time. A large lit emptiness fell over holy Benares. Then something suddenly happened to Shankar. He hurled himself on the bed and fell fast asleep next to his wife. The Temple prasad lay at their head. He felt for the first time intrepid.
It was the next day he sent his younger brother Ramu who lived at the university campus to Madhobha. Madhobha always lent him money whenever Shankar needed any. ‘It’s God’s money and anybody can return it as long as he returns it to God,’ remarked Madhobha. As everybody knew Madhobha would one day retire to his village and build a temple to Shiva, and with marble steps going down to the deep transparent temple tank, and four big marble lions at the four entrances to the waters. There would be a large Sadhu’s quarters, a pilgrim house, and maybe even food for the travellers. It all depends on how much silver there would be in the box, and he just does not know. And then lying on the steps of the temple he would hear his Mohini sing. It should be the full moon and the waves of the tank would gently caress the marble steps. Hé Shambo.
‘My wife,’ shouted Shankar, as if it was a truth so big all Benares should know: ‘My wife is going to have a son, and I need money for the third-month ceremony, the seventh-month ceremony, and the delivery, and where will I find it till the university students return after the holidays and I have a worthy pupil? Next year I’ll take two,’ he said, ‘for my wife must have all her pregnancy-desires fulfilled.’ Whenever it concerned women, Madhobha had a generous heart. ‘Come tonight, not now,’ said Madhobha, ‘and if I’m not here, wait for me. I will have the hundred rupees ready. You give it back to me before the child is born. Understood. That is by November or December. Latest. Before the Shiva festival. Understood. That gives you enough time.’
Shankar shouted: ‘You are a saintly fellow, meant to be looking at your nose and navel and not be selling firewood for the dead. The world, brother, is all upside down.’
‘Somebody has to sell firewood for the dead,’ said Madhobha. ‘I or another Madhobha, it’s just the same. As long as you have Shiva in your heart, all’s well.’
‘When is your next bout?’
‘Next Wednesday.’
‘Grand show?’ asked Shankar.
‘Perhaps. I face Manilal of Rampur.’
‘That rascal. He deserves to be in prison. The way he does all the wrong slips and hits. He’s no boxer, he’s a butcher.’
‘The good have to be going on being good. The rest God takes care of,’ said Madhobna and that’s when the boss called, so Madhobha said: ‘We’ll meet tonight,’ and disappeared. Then Shankar went to all the shops of the city. He wanted to buy a ruby nose-ring for his wife. She had one in diamond, people had given her at the wedding. But for the gift of the child, a husband should give at least a ruby nose-ring. He wandered all afternoon as if he were the richest man in Benares. He was going to be a businessman, of this there could be no doubt now, and the sound of factories would send him to sleep. Hé, what do you say to that, brother? Speak! He now consulted jeweller after jeweller, and one shop had it. Just it, the right ruby for Padma. You know a ruby must say, ‘I belong to Padma,’ just as a horse says, ‘I belong to Moti Ram.’ Despite physics and all that Shankar believed in the personality of precious stones. The true ones brought good luck, and the evil ones calamities. So this ruby nose-ring, and for thirty-five rupees, he would take it this evening, place it before Annapuma Devi at the temple, have a thousand-and-eightnamings-of-the-name done. And with the prasadam and the jewel you go home as if you have drunk the milk of the white cows of Vrindavan.
‘Mother,’ he said, coming in after he had washed his feet and placed the prasadam and the jewel (in its neat little carboard box) before the family deity. The lamps burned cherub bright, and all seemed such true peace. ‘Mother, your daughter-in-law is going to have a baby.’ And Padma hearing this came and fell at the Mother-in- law’s feet.