‘May you bear a hundred sons,’ she blessed and she blessed again touching the back of the daughter-in-law’s head. Then Padma went in and fell before the family deity.
‘Open the box,’ shouted Shankar.
‘Why? There’s no hurry,’ whispered Padma.
‘There is hurry. I am a 3B but I know how to recognize the worth of my firstborn. Open and see, Padu.’
‘Open, daughter,’ cried the Mother-in-law. The daughters of the house — Shankar had two sisters, one five and another nine years of ago — they were chanting their studies. They were studying geography in Hindi, and an English poem.
‘Open and see,’ repeated the Mother-in-law.
Padma opened the box, fell before the gods and coming to her husband in pride, fell at his feet again.
‘May our son be pure,’ he said as if it was the language of his ancestors. Yes, what more could man need? And going before his family deity he fell prostrate and sobbed, ‘Mother Annapurna, take away my sins, my million, million sins. O mother!’ Then he rose and fell prostrate before his own mother. ‘Where is father?’ he shouted, rising. ‘Coming back from Rai Singha Singh Bahadur!’ No sooner the father came he fell, did Shankar, at his father’s feet and said: ‘My wife is pregnant.’
‘May she bear a hundred sons,’ blessed the father. Padma now came and fell at his feet. He repeated: ‘Daughter, may you live a hundred years and bring prosperity to your husband.’
The truth of life is just this. After the meal Shankar went back to his room and started reading his big book on chemistry. Strong in physics, he was weak in chemistry. He blamed his professor, but the fact was he liked numbers better. You could work magic with numbers, but chemistry was so much fireworks. All this messy test-tube business was too dirty and dangerous. Poisonous fumes and coloured gases, they looked like breathings of the very devil. After the show is over you have only the empty shells left. In mathematics you climb mountains. Mathematics is therefore like the Himalayas. The higher you go the holier it becomes. And near Kailas, on the snowy heights, and from Gangotri does the Mother Ganga emerge. ‘Zero is Ganga, Ganga is zero,’ he shouted as if he’d discovered a Vedic mantra. I tell you, you could grind castor pods at the hell-mill, the Ganga beside you. The Ganga purifies all. She gives song to the songstress, limbs to the brave, paddle-push to the boat, and child to the wife. ‘O giver of gifts Ganga Mata,’ says Shankar to himself, and in prayer, closes firm his eyes.
Padu came in late tonight, the Mother-in-law had rheumatism and so Padu cleaned up the kitchen all alone. Padu brings the glass of milk for the night. A pregnant wife and silver tumbler of milk, Lord, what more does a man want? ‘And the ruby is so right,’ he says as he looks gratefully at her. And the milk smelt of almonds and of saffron and of fine good camphor. ‘A civilized wife civilizes a barbarian,’ he said and laughed. The walls seemed warmed and quiet. His son would have no name. No, he will have a name: ‘E=MC2.’3
‘How do you like that, Padu?’ he shouted, and hearing no answer listened to the flow of the River, and deeply fell into sleep.
VII
Bholanath was from Rajgarh, district Ghazipur. He was one of eleven children — ten boys and one precious girl. She was born some years before Bhola, and, Shiva-Shivah, was Sati not arrayed in red, mirror-worked cholis and skirts, with a nose-ring of ruby, and earrings of corrugated silver? They bought her a sari when she was but seven years old — such her natural felicity.
Father Goraknath was a wheelwright by profession, and on the Benares — Ayodhya road, in those days, were there not, tell me, many, many bullock carts? And he also helped in the shoeing of bulls. The stars were good, the roads were active and all went well, and soon good Sati was married off to the son of a neighbouring peasant, Rajnath. But Sati was not meant for living. She died giving birth to a puling little boy that later grew up to be a stalwart of the village; he could fight every pugilist in town and down the adversary in the beat of an eye. They called him Bhim because he was so valourous, and soon everyone forgot his real name — for he was in truth called, on birth, Banarasidas.1 And Bhim was in every party that went on marketing expeditions up to the elephant-fair at Sonapur, in Bihar — one took twelve days of the bullock cart to reach there, but it was so gay, and Rai Krishnadas of Rampur village, the elderly zamindar next door, sometimes bought an elephant, and Bhim was the zamindar’s faithful hero and guard. Thus Bhim drove the bullock-cart, and Rai Krishnadas went in this huge, noisy, creaking vehicle, with two white bulls, and a merry procession it was that went, past Ghazipur and Ballia and then on to Sonapur. You drank a lot, and you meddled with a woman or two, here and there, and you brought back an elephant and a horse or even two elephants and many horses, according to your purse or your phantasy— and this was always much fun. Bholanath too (some three or four years younger than Bhim — for Bhola, the uncle, was born after many miscarriages of his ailing mother, and that’s why they called him Bhola, the brave) — accompanied his nephew, but one day while the two stalwarts who looked so like the Pandava brothers, Nakula and Sahadeva, well then, when they were returning from the Sonapur fair (but, this time, Rai Krishnadas bought no elephant), some uniformed men overtook them a few miles out of Gauripur, drafted them, giving them big shoes, uniform and gun, and sent them soon, very soon, across the darkling waters. And how Rati sobbed when she heard this, for they had been married but for three thin months. Bhim, however, died somewhere on the sand dunes near Bizerte, and Bholanath became expert in fixing car wheels (and remember, he was a wheelwright’s son, and some good company commander discovered this caste-craft of Bholanath), and when the company was sent to Italy first and then on to Flanders (a small company of machine men), he went with them, and being far in the farthest camp, and not in the trenches, he escaped death. After all death had taken his dues with the three stillborn before him, and with Bhim, his twin as it were dead, Bholanath would live a hundred years. And there would always be Rati for him.
Bhola had one passion, however. He used to love songs— not filmy songs, no, but kirtans, songs of God. He remembered his Tulsi Das in Flanders, and Pandit Viswanath who was the company cook, big tummy, sacred thread, great temper and all; though a Brahmin, he cooked everything yet was he not a safe vegetarian? He also possessed an ancient and much-worn copy of Tulsi Ramayan. So day after day after starting campfire on those cold autumnal nights, Bholanath and Vishwanath read out the holy story to the assembled soldiers, and people wept on the Flanders plains, thinking on the suffering of Sita in exile, and under Ravana’s power. You remember the text, don’t you? where Hanuman, the monkey-god, from up the Asoka tree, sees Mother Sita, and she so seated in grief and thinking on the lotus feet, the Padmapada, of her husband, Sri Rama, while Ravana arrives there promising that Mandodari and all his queens, would be her handmaids, if only Sita would look on him but once, and how, posing a blade of grass, as partition, between this ten-headed monster and her withdrawn self, she mocks at that absurd and vain scoundrel, replying in answer, could a lotus ever blossom because of a firefly’s glow? And here all the soldiers laughed and laughed. But Ravana rushes towards her, in a paroxysm, his sword lifted bright, shouting, ‘I will cut off your head, you understand.’ But Sita Devi, when she addresses the sword prayerfully, saying, ‘You sharp and cool and kind blade, please dispel my grave weight of dukha, sorrow caused by this desperate separation from my Lord, the Lord of the Raghus,’ and hearing which how all the soldiers began to sniffle and sob into their blankets, while the fire shot up in pure celestial worship. ‘He who touches Devi Sita’s footsteps even in thought is freed from a thousand births,’ wrote Tulsi Das, and Ravana, the wretch, knew it. Yet such is human existence: you vomit on what you worship. Who can protect you ever from your primal destiny, unless it be Sri Rama himself. Ravana had to be killed to attain liberation, so Ravana had to abduct Sita. Thus alone could Ravana’s head be on Sri Rama’s feet. And this was all the play of Sri Rama himself, he, Sri Rama, the very fount of compassion, explains Pandit Vishwanathji, that gave greenness to the trees, and the long waist for the mother-monkey to carry her young, he also gave Ravana such love that Ravana feared and hated his Lord. Has not Tulsi Das said, when Mandodari asks him, he, Ravana who could take any shape he wished, such his magic powers, why, she asked, did he not impersonate Sri Rama himself to seduce Sita, and tell me, did not Ravana the monster reply, ‘The moment I think of Him, Sri Rama, I become his devotee and lie at his perfumed feet.’ For hate is only love standing upside down — get it back on its feet, like a single-footed lead doll that you can buy at any village fair, which returns on itself, explains Pandit Vishwanathji, do what you will do with it, such too is love, it returns always on itself. And the soldiers always wept for Mother Sita, and prayed that evil Ravana be forgiven. Thus they prayed for Hitler too across the enemy lines. They had heard Hitler was a vegetarian and a celibate: tell me, what more could one need to be called a devotee of the Lord?