'''And when her torso rises above the water, her breasts bared, her hair hanging black to her knees, her arms fling an arc of water high into the air, and she screams: 'She saved me; she saved me,' and at once all the other bathers plunge in, their feet churning the silky brown water into a frothing bog, and taking her by the arms, they drag her ashore, while she goes on screaming, through mouthfuls of water: 'She saved me, saved me.'
'''When she is lying on the grass, they pry open her fist and see that it has fastened upon an object, a polished grey stone with a whirl of white staring out of its centre like an all-seeing eye. She screams, spluttering through jets of swallowed mud and water; she will not part from that tiny shape that gave her the handhold she needed to keep from drowning, but the others tear it from her, for they know that the rock that saved her, that the small, life-giving lump of stone was none other than a miraculous manifestation of… of what? They do not know; believing only in the reality of the miracle… '"
Pausing to catch her breath, Urmila turned to Murugan. 'And then,' she said, 'one day, many years later, Phulboni was going past a park and what did he see but a little shrine, decorated with flowers and offerings. He stopped to enquire, but no one could tell him whose shrine it was and how it had come to be there. Determined to find out he went to Kalighat, to one of the lanes where these images are made. And there he found someone who told him a story that was very much like his own, yet the man had never heard of Phulboni and had never read anything he had ever written, and by the time he had finished, it was Phulboni who was no longer sure which had happened first or whether they were all aspects of the coming of that image into the world: its presence in the mud, the writing of his story, that bather's discovery or the tale he had just heard, in Kalighat.'
Murugan ran a fingernail through his goatee. 'I don't get it,' he said.
Urmila put out a hand to test the rain. It had thinned to a light drizzle now. She gave Murugan a sharp prod in the ribs. 'Come on,' she said, 'let's go.'
'Go where?' said Murugan.
'To Kalighat,' she said. 'Let's go and see if we can learn anything about that image you saw.'
Chapter 35
ON THE WAY to Kalighat, watching the rain-slicked streets through the misted glass of the taxi's window, Urmila had a vivid recollection of the lane they were going to: she remembered a narrow alley, winding through low, tin-roofed sheds, pavements that were lined with rows of grey-brown clay figures, some just torsos, full-breasted but headless, with tufts of straw blossoming out of their necks, some legless, some without hands, some with their arms curved in phantom gestures around invisible objects weapons, sitars, skulls.
She had an aunt who lived nearby, in a big, old-fashioned house that towered above the lanes around it. As a child she had often walked through the lane, to visit her aunt. She had watched in amazement as breasts and bellies took shape under the craftsmen's kneading fingers, wondering at the intimacy of their knowledge of those spectral bodies. At her aunt's house she would go to the balcony and look down on the lane and its rows of clay images, watching the image-makers at their work; noting details of the different ways in which they modelled heads and hands; observing how the images changed with the seasons; how phalanxes of Ma Shoroshshotis appeared in January, each embellished with the goddess's swan and sitar; Ma Durgas in autumn, with the entire pantheon of her family ranged around her and Mahishashur writhing at her feet.
The taxi came to a halt at the corner of the lane, and they stepped out into the fine foglike drizzle. Murugan paid and then Urmila led him quickly towards the low, bamboowalled workshops at the end of the lane. Hundreds of beatifically smiling faces floated by them as they hurried past, some draped in tarpaulin, their eyes unpupilled, their arms outstretched in immobile benediction.
Urmila laughed.
'What's up?' said Murugan.
'I often had a dream when I was a child,' Urmila said, with a laugh in her throat. 'I dreamt I would open the front door of our flat one day and find a small group of gods and goddesses outside, ringing the bell with the tips of their clay fingers. I would open the door and welcome them, hands folded, and they would float in on their swans and rats and lions and owls, and my mother would lead them to the little Formica-topped table where we ate. They would seat themselves on our chairs while my mother ran in and out of the kitchen, making tea and frying luchis and shingaras, while we watched in awe, our hands joined in prayer. We would offer sweets to the swan and the owl, and Ma Kali would smile at us with her burning eyes, and Ma Shoroshshoti would play a note or two on her sitar and Ma Lokhkhi would sit crosslegged on her lotus, holding up her hand, looking just as she does on the labels of ghee tins.'
She paused at the open door of a workshop. 'Let's try this one,' she said, leading him in. They stepped through the open doorway, into the workshop's dimly lit interior, and found themselves staring into a teeming crowd of smiling, flesh-coloured faces.
Urmila spotted a moving figure somewhere among the stationary images. 'Is somebody there?' she called out.
'Who is it?'
The figure vanished as quickly as it had appeared, behind a six-foot dancing Ganesh.
'We just wanted to talk to you,' Urmila said.
An elderly man materialized suddenly in front of her, detaching himself from a pantheon on a plinth. He was wearing a dhoti and a string vest and his thin, ill-tempered face was screwed into a scowl. Stepping away, Urmila very nearly impaled herself on a spear, upraised in the hands of a serene Ma Durga.
'Careful,' the man snapped. He looked her over suspiciously as she straightened her damp, dirt-streaked sari. 'What do you want?' he said. 'We're very busy right now; no time to talk.'
Urmila stiffened, falling immediately into her professional manner. 'I am a reporter for Calcutta,' she said, in a crisp, firm voice. 'And I'd like to ask you a question.'
The man's frown deepened. 'What question?' he said. 'Why? I don't know anything. We're not involved in politics.'
'It's not about politics.' Urmila thrust Murugan's drawing into his hands. 'Can you tell me what kind of image this is?'
The man narrowed his eyes, directing a sharp glance at Murugan. 'I've never seen anything like this in my life,' he said, handing the drawing back. 'I know every divine image there is and I've never seen one like this.'
Urmila turned to Murugan to translate, but he cut her short.
'I got that,' he whispered. 'But something tells me he's in denial mode.'
'You don't know anything about this image, then?' Urmila said to the man in the dhoti. 'Are you sure?'
'What did I tell you?' the man said, his voice rising. 'Haven't I said "no" already? How many times do I have to say it?'
A couple of younger men had gathered around them now. Urmila held the drawing out to them but the older man cut her short.