‘It is a terrible picture,’ said Pinky. ‘He has not even combed his hair. You can see the birthmark on his cheek. And he is wearing nothing but his undershorts. How can you say it is a good picture?’ A good picture was one where a man posed with perfectly oiled and coiffed hair, with a nice tight shirt and nice tight trousers, sitting on a moped.
But anyway, despite Pinky’s disapproval, these pictures were sold from Mr Chawla’s cart and proved to be very popular. Soon they made their appearance everywhere, permeating the shops and houses of Shahkot and travelling much farther afield.
In February, this picture was even printed in the Times of India, together with the headline ‘The Baba of Shahkot in his Tree Abode’. This peaceful orchard outside Shahkot, it read, has been transformed by a glut of visitors rushing to see the hermit of Shahkot, whose rare simplicity and profound wisdom are bringing solace and hope to many who are disheartened by these complicated and corrupt times. ‘There is a spiritual atmosphere here that I have not seen anywhere else in India,’ Miss Jyotsna, a postal worker, told this reporter. She professes herself a frequent visitor to this hermit, whom disciples affectionately call ‘Monkey Baba’ or ‘Tree Baba’ in reference to his fondness for animals and the simplicity of his dwelling place. While admitting all who come to see him, he limits the hours when he is available to protect his secluded lifestyle …
After the appearance of this article, letters by the thousand began to arrive for Sampath from all over the country. Mostly they bore no address, just the photograph of Sampath in his tree pasted trustfully upon the envelope. Inside were pleas for help and questions from ardent wisdom-seekers galore.
Delighted by this excuse to visit the orchard even during work hours, Miss Jyotsna from the post office took to making regular trips in a scooter rickshaw to deliver these enormous quantities of mail, while Mr Gupta sulked back in Shahkot, for he had decided he did not like it when he was not the centre of attention.
At the annual meeting of the Atheist Society in a neighbouring town, the spy addressed his colleagues. ‘Did you see the newspaper article about the Chawla case? It is completely outrageous. Even the press in this country goes along with this rubbish. In fact, they are the ones who propagate it. They take a rumour and put it into official language and of course everybody who reads it promptly swallows it as the whole truth. This madman belongs in a lunatic asylum and just look at how everybody is running to him bringing him presents.’
He went on for so long and in such an impassioned way, it grew past dinner time for many people in the audience. One member leaned over and spoke into the ear of another: ‘He is going a bit overboard, don’t you think? Why is he so upset by all of this?’
But the spy now felt personally involved and personally outraged, and continued upon his tirade for yet another hour. It was precisely people like Sampath who obstructed the progress of this nation, keeping honest, educated people like him in the backwaters along with them. They ate away at these striving, intelligent souls, they ate away at progress and smothered anybody who tried to make a stand against the vast uneducated hordes, swelling and growing towards the biggest population of idiots in the world. Even minuscule little countries like Taiwan and the Philippines were forging ahead. If he had any sense, he would leave this blighted country and emigrate. But no, he had chosen to stay back and do his bit to change things, even though he had once been knifed in the arm with a metal hairpin by the sister of the Baba for this sacrifice. Who could tell what permanent effect this would have on him?
He began an additional elaboration upon his suspicions of what Sampath was being fed, how his food was so carefully guarded nobody was allowed near, how he might be drugged, his spirits raised or lowered to abnormal levels, the spy was not sure which. He talked of how he was going about his research regarding this topic, of the book on hallucinatory substances he had procured …
The roars from the stomachs of the audience rose to a deafening level. Really, this man was too much. Talking of food when they should all be sitting down to their own nice hot dinners that very minute.
‘Did he say he was stuck in the arm with a hairpin?’ asked the member of the audience who had been restless an hour and a half ago. ‘Or was it in the head? He is quite right, though, it has had a severe effect on him.’ And this time the man did not talk in a whisper, but as loudly as he could. ‘Oh, sir,’ he shouted directly at the spy, ‘don’t you think your time is up?’
The spy was interrupted midstream. For a second he was thrown off balance. ‘Before the mosquitoes are killed the night is uncomfortable,’ he replied.
‘Well, that is certainly true,’ said some other individual.
‘Thank you,’ said the spy. ‘Once you open a bottle of soda water, you should drink it before it goes flat.’ But the blood rushed to the spy’s face. Without thinking, he was repeating things he had heard under the Baba’s tree. And now he was taking credit for it! He didn’t have the courage not to.
Later, he tossed and turned in bed.
What did he want in his life?
The emptiness that stretched like the black night about him made him all the more determined to expose Sampath as a fraud.
13
One afternoon, about a month after their first appearance in the orchard, the monkeys found five bottles of rum while rifling through the bag of a man who had stopped to see Sampath on his way to a wedding. They drank it all up and that afternoon, when they resurfaced in Sampath’s tree, where they were accustomed to joining him for a little siesta at 3.00, they felt unable to slip into the general state of stupor that overtook the orchard like a spell particular to this time of day.
Sampath stretched out drowsily upon his string cot. He held his hands up so their shadow fell upon the illuminated trunk in front of him and he watched his fingers move, creating a lotus blossom with petals curling and uncurling, a swimming fish, a lurching camel. He was amazed at the sophistication of the shapes he made. He let his fingers wriggle like a spider to scuttle across the impromptu stage of the sun-stamped tree. These scuttling insect legs caused a shiver to course down his spine and he shook his hands as if to get rid of a spider inside him. He remembered the way he had sometimes scared himself in their home in Shahkot, flicking his tongue in and out in front of the mirror — a snake’s tongue, not his own. He thought of human beings with bird-beak noses, people with swan necks, cow eyes, bird-heart terror or a dolphin’s love for the ocean. People with sea-water tears, with bark-coloured skin, with stem waists and flower poise, with fuzzy-leaf ears and petal-soft mouths. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. The Chawla family and various visitors, including the spy and Miss Jyotsna, lay scattered throughout the orchard. But the monkeys refused to settle down.
‘Do keep quiet,’ said Sampath sleepily. ‘You are making me nervous with all your jumping.’
But, pulling faces and hooting, they leapt about the tree and carpeted the ground below with twiggy flotsam.
‘Stop this,’ said the spy, who was hit with a little twig. He was trying to think through his thoughts and put them all in order, since they had become so jumbled lately.
‘Yes, keep quiet,’ shouted several other devotees. There was something truly wrong with these monkeys.
‘They are acting very strangely,’ said Mr Chawla.
‘Perhaps it is the full moon,’ said Ammaji.
But when Mr Chawla discovered the empty rum bottles near the outhouse, it became apparent that it was not the moon at all.