‘Your prayers will be answered, Bhabhi. But a good husband and father is one who provides an example for his dear ones to follow. BB’s example is more persuasive than most common men can give. He can inspire the world if only you allow him to follow his path. A good wife will not stand in the way of her husband’s destiny.’
She did not answer this with further words, but with lowered gaze which indicated that she was preparing to submit to the undeniable strength of Rajesh Battacharjee’s argument.
At the same moment I was trying to assemble in my mind ideas for my next record attempt. I knew that the next record must be something equally special or more so if I were to confirm for all time my place in long history of my country. I said these words to myself in forceful tone of determination: I am Bibhuti Bhushan Nayak of Cuttack, proud resident of Navi Mumbai, Limca World Record holder, Guinness World Record holder. I will share with the people my message of love through discipline, sports and vegetarian diet, and my achievements will be an inspiration to the common man and young generation alike.
Thank you.
9
I look out of the window and see a circus closing in. The road is blocked by some disciple’s car and an ambulance mounts the grass to get past. When it meets the slope its doors swing open and a woman on a trolley comes soaping out and freewheels across the lawn. She hits a lamp-post and rests there. Breaking orderlies toss their cigarettes and rush to her aid. They carry the trolley into the emergency department. The woman doesn’t stir throughout. She’s old and she’s lived through indignities more damning than this one. She sleeps peacefully.
In the car park familiar faces are raised to the sky, looking for the window where their fallen idol is niched. Everyone who saw me strike Bibhuti down is there. There are the Vijays and Harshad. There’s Amrita and the ping-pong monks. The Turbanator is zipping up his camera bag against the prying fingers of the beggar children. Kavita is ferocious in her Dora the Explorer T-shirt, sparring with her father, unloading all her little sorrows on him in a blur of arms and legs. She thinks her sensei’s already dead. She thinks the world has ended.
Someone needs to put her somewhere high up where she can’t cause any damage, sit her in a tree until the thunderstorm passes. But no one wants to risk their hands. She’s a wolverine. I broke her heart.
They came in a pilgrim’s trail, following the cavalcade that brought us here after Bibhuti stopped moving. His friends first and then the AXN cameraman and the beggar kids who’d stopped by the temple to see what was happening and to catch the spectators in distracted generous mood. They came in trickles, pulled by the prospect of a glamorous death. Now their mouths are open and their eyes are searchlighting the building for a glimpse of their villain. Pitchforks are hidden behind their backs. I’m their monster and I don’t know how it happened.
I hide behind the curtain.
‘They must know it wasn’t my fault,’ I say.
‘Whose fault was it?’ Ellen says, her voice cracked and scolding, standing at the door waiting for Bibhuti’s wife and Jolly Boy to come back from their meeting with the doctors. She didn’t want me there. Ellen leans on her stick and the stick wobbles. The victim of a disability, she’s stronger than I remember her.
‘I only gave him what he wanted. I didn’t know it’d turn out like this.’
‘How could you not know?’
‘I thought he could take it. He told me it’d be alright. I was only doing what was best for him.’
Bibhuti’s piss bag is full again and I should change it but I don’t know how. I tell Ellen to call a nurse and I swab his lips, wipe the crust off. I tell him to wake up. His eyes are swimming in their sockets. He’s dreaming. He’s dreaming so he must still be a man. A vegetable doesn’t dream. He’s still a man and everything will be alright. Wake up.
Wake up.
I whisper it in his ear. I get close enough to smell his breath. Rotten eggs. I close his lips again. I was never a father but I know how it feels to have a child. Right now I’d give anything to die in his place.
I might still get my wish. It’s a race to the death between the two of us and there’s no telling which one of us is the closest. Only you know that.
The pain is getting worse.
It went away for a bit when I thought Bibhuti might save me. Then it came back and it’s growing into something I can’t shake off with fresh perspectives or new breathing. It’s a scorching sand that’s filling me up, getting into everything. Every grain a wrong turn or a harsh word or a compliment left unsaid, and I can’t breathe for them. Regret is burning through my bones. Now I know what that pheasant must have felt as I watched him die, the first time I killed something. He must have been reliving every moment of flight and cursing his stubby wings for the taste they gave him of a sky too big to let go of.
I’d been on my way to work, taking the country roads to avoid the motorway traffic. It was winter and the sun was just coming up. The road sparkled. There was still frost on the windscreen. Sometimes I’d go this way just to try and spot some nature before the day got started and human toil took over. I used to see pheasants quite a bit. I saw a deer once, nibbling at the bushes by the side of the road. I could get quite close and if there was nothing behind me I’d slow down for a good look. There was quiet on these roads and the trees hid the industrial parks and let me forget what was going on in the world, whatever wars were still stretching out and Ellen at home singing baby names to herself. Something scared him up and he came flapping out of the hedges and I hit him full on. The noise pulled the wind out of me and I braked hard. I sat there for a while watching him twitching on the road. Then I pulled over to the side and got out to be with him.
I went to him slowly, watched over him as he waited for the pain to stop. There was nothing I could do for him. He was broken all over and leaking into the dawn. I thought about reaching out to try and reshape him but I didn’t want to hurt him any more than he was already. He looked at me, his little eye blinking. I looked for understanding or forgiveness, a soul maybe, but there was just dumb waiting. Tears came. I wiped them away and shrugged aside the cold to wait with him. The air tasted fresher than I’d ever known it. The quiet was beautiful, and I saw the true colour of the trees. I saw cruelty and wonderful disorder. I didn’t see you. I thought everything was an accident, everything good and everything bad.
I told him I was sorry. I asked him to forgive me if he could. He shivered. Important pieces of him dripped on to the road and shimmered in the early light. He blinked three more times, quickly, and then he died. The world contracted a tiny amount and I felt something in me drop away. I went and pissed in the bushes and then I got a blanket from the boot to wrap him up in. I couldn’t bring myself to touch him. Feeling his body through the blanket as I picked him up I cried again. I thought of myself as a sickness. I laid him down in the boot and let him sleep while I lumbered through a working day. His face kept coming back to me and I left early, having heard none of what had been said to me and having felt none of the things I’d picked up, pens and dockets and a coffee cup stained brown on the inside.
Ellen watched me dig the hole and she didn’t say a word about the state of the garden. She knew I had to do right by him. She knew as well as I did. I picked a good spot up at the back under the crab apple tree. He’d like it there. There’d be shade in the hotter months and the songs of other birds perched in the branches above him. While I shovelled in the dark she fussed over the bird, cleaned as much of the blood up as she could and made him look comfortable. She replaced the rough blanket with something softer, a woollen crocheted thing Mum had given us for the baby that never was. Lemon yellow and still creased where it had been folded and left at the bottom of the drawer where cufflinks and premium bonds lived. She stroked his dead face and plied the grit from his feathers.