‘Why?’
Margayya handed him over to his wife with: ‘Take this fellow away. If you let him come near me again –’
She snatched him up as he protested and shouted and carried him away, muttering: ‘This is only a trick to send me off. You don’t like me to see what you are doing. I suppose. I don’t know what you are up to! So mysterious!’
‘Women can’t hold their tongues, that’s why,’ Margayya replied. Little Balu made a good deal of noise in the other room and Margayya muttered: ‘She has completely spoilt him, beyond remedy; I must take him out of her hands and put him to school. That’s the only way; otherwise he will be a terrible scoundrel.’ As he rummaged in the contents of the box his mind kept ringing with his wife’s weak protests and grumblings: ‘Seems to be bent upon worrying me – she’s getting queer!’ he said to himself. He took up every envelope, gazed on its postmark, examined the letters, became engrossed for a while in by-gone family politics, and finally came upon a couple of horoscopes tucked into an envelope addressed to his father. A short note by his father-in-law said: ‘I’m returning to you the originals of the horoscopes of Sowbhagyavathi (ever-auspicious) Meenakshi, and your son Chiranjeevi (eternally-living) Krishna. Your daughter-in-law is keeping well. Any day you ask us to fix the nuptial ceremony I shall bring her over.’ Margayya (he hadn’t yet attained that name) felt a sudden tenderness for his wife. She seemed to become all at once a young bashful virgin bride.
‘Meena!’ he cried. ‘Here are the horoscopes.’ She came up, still bearing her son on her arm. Margayya flourished the horoscopes. ‘I’ve found them.’ He clung to them as if he had secured the plan of approach to a buried treasure. ‘What is it?’ she asked. He held up the letter and cried: ‘This is a letter from your father about our nuptials.’ She blushed slightly, and turned away: ‘What has come over you that you are unearthing all this stuff?’ Little Balu would not let her finish her sentence. He started wriggling in her arm, and showed an inclination to dash for his father’s horoscope. ‘Take him away,’ cried Margayya. ‘Otherwise we shall find all this in the gutter before our house – so much for this son of ours.’
Presently she came without their son to ask: ‘What exactly are you planning?’ Her face was full of perplexity. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, looking up at her. He still felt the tenderness that he had felt for her as a virginal bride. He told her: ‘Don’t worry. I’ve not been hunting out my horoscope in order to search for a bride.’ He laughed. She found it difficult to enjoy the joke with him. It was too puzzling. She merely said: ‘By all means, look for a bride. I shan’t mind.’ He was disappointed that she sounded so indifferent: he was proud to feel that she guarded him jealously. However, he bantered her about it without telling anything. He could not exactly say in all seriousness what he was trying to do. ‘You will know all about it very soon.’ When he started out that day, she asked rather nervously: ‘Will you be late again today?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What if I am late? I’m only out on business, be assured.’
His son said: ‘I will come with you too,’ and ran down the steps and clung to him. Margayya could not shake him off easily. He carried him up to the end of the street and lectured him all the way on how he should behave in order to qualify for biscuits and chocolates. The lecture seemed to affect him since he became quite docile when Margayya put him back at his house and left.
That night, in his shack, the priest scrutinized the horoscope with the aid of an oil-lamp. He spread it out and pored over it for a long while in silence. He said: ‘Saturn! Saturn! This God is moving on to that house. He may do you good if you propitiate him. Why don’t you go and pray in that other temple where they’ve installed the Planetary Deities? Go there with an offering of honey.’ ‘Where can I get honey?’ Margayya asked, looking worried. He suddenly realized that he had never bought honey in his life. It was just one of those things that one always had at home, when the household was managed by one’s parents. Now he recollected that ever since he became an independent family head he had managed to get along without honey. Now the testing time seemed to have come. The priest burst into one of his frightening chuckles. He remarked: ‘Margayya shows the whole world how to increase their cash – but honey! He stands defeated before honey, is that it?’ ‘I will manage it,’ Margayya said haughtily. ‘I was only saying –’ The priest arbitrarily cut short all further reference to the subject. ‘On Saturday go to the temple and go round its corridor thrice. Do you know that Saturn is the most powerful entity in the world? And if he is gratified he can make you a ruler of this world or he can just drown you in an ocean of misery. Nobody can escape him. Better keep him in good humour.’
‘All right; I will do as you say,’ Margayya said, with quiet obedience in his voice. He felt as if Saturn were around him, and might give him a twist and lift him up for the plunge into the ocean of misery if he did not behave properly.
It was four o’clock when the priest had finished giving him instructions: a course of prayers and activities. He recited a short verse and commanded Margayya to copy it down in Sanskrit, and side by side take down its meaning in Tamil. He saw him off at the door and said: ‘You need not see me again, unless you want to. Follow these rules.’
‘Will they produce results?’
‘Who can say?’ the priest answered. ‘Results are not in our hands.’
‘Then why should we do all this?’
‘Very well, don’t; nobody compels you to.’
Margayya felt completely crushed under all this metaphysical explanation. He bowed his head in humility. The priest closed one door, held his hand on the other, and said: ‘The Shastras lay down such and such rituals for such and such ends. Between a man who performs them and one who doesn’t, the chances are greater for the former. That’s all I can say. The results are … you may have results or you may not … or you may have results and wish that you had failed –’
‘What is your experience with this mantra?’
‘Me!’ He chuckled once again. ‘I’m a Sanyasi; I have no use for it … Don’t do it unless you wish to,’ said the priest and shut the door. Margayya stood hesitating in the road with the stanza in his pocket, and all the spiritual prescription written down. He looked despairingly at the closed door of the temple and turned homeward. He felt it was no use hesitating. He might go on putting questions; the other could answer, yet still the problem would remain unsolved. ‘Problem? What’s the problem?’ he suddenly asked. It was a happy state of affairs not to remember what the problem was. The priest had been saying so much incomprehensible stuff that Margayya felt dizzy and fuddled. He stopped in the middle of the road and resolved: ‘He has told me what to do. I shall do it honestly. Let me not bother about other things.’
Margayya’s wife was overawed by his activities. He told her next day: ‘Clear up that room for me,’ indicating the single room in their house in which she slept with her child, and into which all the household trunks and odds and ends were also thrown.
‘What are we to do with these things?’
‘Throw them out. I want that place for the next forty days.’
‘Where am I to sleep?’
‘What silly questions you keep asking! Is this the time to think of such problems?’
She became docile at this attack and begged: ‘Can’t you tell me exactly what you want to do?’
He told her in a sort of way: he’d been advised not to talk of his method and aim even to his wife. The priest had said: ‘Even to your wife – there are certain practices which become neutralized the moment they are clothed in words.’
She asked: ‘Is this what people call alchemy, changing base metals?’
‘No, it is not,’ said Margayya, not liking the comparison.
‘They say that it is like magic – black magic,’ she wailed, looking very much frightened.
‘Don’t get silly notions in your head … it is not that … the priest is not a man who dabbles in black magic. Don’t go
talking about it to anyone –’
The little room was cleared and all the odds and ends – broken-down furniture, trunks and boxes, stacks of paper, spare bed-rolls, and pillows and mats were pulled out and heaped in a corner of their little central hall. Balu became ecstatic. He pulled down the things and mixed them up and generally enjoyed the confusion. Their neighbours heard the noise of shifting and thought: ‘They are doing something in the next house; wonder what it is?’ They tried to spy on them, but there was a blank wall between them. Margayya had the room washed clean, chased out the rats and cockroaches, and swept off the cobwebs that hung on the wall and corners. It was a very small room, less than eight feet broad, with a single narrow window opening on the street. If the shutter was closed the room became pitch dark. Margayya drew up several pots of water from the well and splashed the water about. He then commanded his wife to decorate the floor with white flour designs, a decoration necessary for all auspicious occasions. He had a string of mango leaves tied across the doorway. He took from a nail in the hall the picture of the Goddess Lakshmi, put up a short pedestal and placed the picture on it: the four-armed Goddess, who presides over wealth, distinction, bravery, enterprise, and all the good things in life. When he carried the picture in, his wife understood something of his plans: ‘Oh, I see, I now understand.’
‘That’s all right. If you understand, so much the better – but keep it to yourself
He had two hundred rupees in his possession still, which he had to use up. He gave his wife a list of articles she should supply him with – such as jaggery, turmeric, coloured cooked rice, fruit, refined sugar, black-gram cake, sweetened sesamum, curd, spiced rice and various kinds of fruits and honey. He would require these in small quantities morning and evening for offering – and most of them were also to be his diet during the period of Japa. He gave his wife a hundred rupees and said: ‘This is my last coin. You have to manage with it.’
‘What about the provisions for the house – and the milkman?’
‘Oh, do something … manage the milkman and the rest for some time and then we will pull through. This is more urgent than anything else.’
A couple of days later, at the full moon, he began his rites. He sat before the image of Lakshmi. He shut the door, though his son banged on it from time to time. He kept only a slight opening of the window shutter, through which a small ray of light came in but not the curiosity of the neighbours. He wore a loincloth soaked in water. A variety of small articles were spread out before him in little pans. He inscribed a certain Sanskrit syllable on a piece of deer skin and tied it round his neck with a string. He had been in an agony till he found the deer skin. The priest had told him: ‘You must carve out this on an antelope skin.’
‘Antelope!’ he gasped. Was he a hunter? Where did one go and find the antelope skin? ‘You search in your house properly and you will find one. Our elders have always possessed them for sitting on and praying,’ said the priest.
‘Very well, I will look for one,’ said Margayya.
‘And then, have you seen any red lotus?’
‘Yes, I have,’ Margayya said apprehensively, wondering what was coming next.
‘Where?’ asked the priest. Margayya blinked and felt disgusted with himself: ‘They usually sell them in the street for Vara Lakshmi festival.’
‘Exactly!’ said the priest. ‘But now you will have to go where it is found. Formerly, you could pick up a lotus from any pond nearby – there were perhaps ten spots in a town where you could pick up a lotus in former days, but now … our world is going to pieces because we have no more lotus about. It’s a great flower – the influence it has on a human being is incalculable.’ After a dissertation on lotus, the priest said: ‘Beyond Sarayu, towards the North, there is a garden where there is a ruined temple with a pond. You will find red lotus there. Get one, burn its petals to a pitch black, and mix it with ghee.’
‘Ghee! Oh, yes –’ Margayya said, feeling that here was at least one article which you could find in the kitchen. Even if the store-man was ill-disposed, one might still win him over in view of the impending change of circumstances.
‘It must be ghee made of milk drawn from a smoke-coloured cow!’ said the priest.
‘Oh!’ groaned Margayya, not being able to hide his feelings any more.
‘You probably think all this is bluff… some fantastic nonsense that I’m inventing.’
‘Oh, no, I don’t feel so for a moment, but only how hard … what a lot of –’
‘Yes, but that is the way it’s done. It’s so written in the Shastras. You have to do certain things for attaining certain ends. It is not necessary to question why. It’ll be a mere waste of energy and you will get no answer…. Well, follow my words carefully. Take the blackened lotus petal, mix it with ghee, and put a dot of it on your forehead after the prayer, every day, exactly between your eyebrows.’
‘Yes,’ Margayya said weakly. He was feeling more and more in despair of how he was going to fulfil these various injunctions. ‘Redlotus, grey-skinned cow, and antelope … where am I? …what a world this is –’It seemed to him an impossible world. ‘How am I to get all these?’ He groaned within himself.
‘Have trust in yourself and go ahead… He will show you a way. Did you imagine that riches came to people when they sat back and hummed a tune?’
A whole day was spent by him in going after the red lotus. It took him through the northern part of the town, past Ellamman Street and the banks of the Sarayu. He forded the river at Nallappa’s Mango Grove. A village cart was crossing the river. The man driving it recognized him and shouted: ‘Oh, Margayya!’ He jumped out of the cart, sending up a great splash of water, which struck Margayya in the eyes and face; it also cooled his brow after the exertion of the day. The villager was an old client of his. He said: ‘What has come over you, sir, that we don’t see you? Without you, we are finding it so difficult.’
‘You can’t expect me to be at your beck and call all the time. I have other things to do.’
‘But you cannot just abandon us –’
‘I have other business to look after, my dear fellow. Don’t imagine this is my only task. I used to do it more as a sort of help to my fellow men.’ They were both standing knee-deep in water.
Margayya said: ‘Let me ride with you up to the branch road.’ The villager was only too eager to take him and asked his son, who was in the cart, to get down and walk so as to make room for Margayya.
He asked: ‘So far out! May I know why you are going this way?’
Margayya said: ‘You must never ask “Why” or “Where” when a person is starting out: that’ll always have an adverse influence.’ He felt he was beginning to talk like the temple priest.
‘All right, sir,’ the villager said obediently. ‘We have to learn all these things from learned people. Otherwise how can we know?’
The wheels crunched, roared, and bumped along. Margayya wondered if he was expected to reach his lotus by walking and not by riding in a cart. Would that in any way affect the issues and would it violate the injunction laid by the priest? ‘I don’t think there is anything wrong in it. He’d have mentioned it. Anyway, better not raise the question. Perhaps this cart was sent here by God.’
He got off at the crossroads, and waited till the cart disappeared down the road. He turned to his left, and cut across a field. The sun was already tilting westward. He looked up and said: ‘Heaven help me if it gets dark before I discover the lotus; I may not be able to know whether it is red or black or what – and then it’ll be fine, having to start the whole business again tomorrow!’ He cut across the field and walked half a mile, and came upon a garden, hedged off with brambles and thorn. His legs ached with this unaccustomed tramping, and his feet smarted with the touch of thorns. He passed through the thicket expecting any minute a cobra to dart across and nip at him: ‘This place must be full of them – supply the entire district with cobras from here.’ There was a small narrow gap in the hedge and
he passed through it into a large wood, semi-dark with sky-topping trees – mango, margosa, and what not. The place looked wild and deserted and an evening breeze murmured grimly in the boughs above. Down below fallen leaves were ankle deep, and he passed through them with his feet sending out a resounding crick-crick. ‘This is just where cobras live – under a blanket of dry leaves –’ Here flower gardens had gone wild – all kinds of creepers, jasmine bushes and nerium growing ten feet high, were intertwined and mixed up. ‘Some fool has let all this go to waste,’ he reflected. ‘In fruit alone one might make ten thousand rupees out of this soil.’
He arrived at the pond. Its greenish water had a layer of moss, occasional ripples were thrown out by warts or some other darting water creature, and mosquito larvae agitated the surface here and there. Margayya felt very lonely. The steps of the pond were broken and slippery; half the bank on his side had fallen into the pond. On the other side there was a small mantap, its walls covered with cobweb and smoke. Three blackened stones in a corner indicated that some wayfarers had sojourned and lighted a fire here, it might be last year or a century ago. In the middle of the pond there were lotus flowers – red as the rising sun. They were half closing their petals. ‘They know better than we do that it’s nearing sunset,’ Margayya reflected. He stood on the somewhat slippery step thinking of how to reach the lotus. He’d have to wade through the greenish water. He stood ankle deep in it and wondered if he had better take off his clothes and go in. ‘If this dhoti gets dirty, it will not merely be dirty but it’ll acquire a permanent green dye, I suppose. And it’ll be difficult to go back home wearing it. People might stare and laugh. Better take it off… there’s no one about.’ He tucked up his dhoti and looked round in order to make sure. ‘If a man lives here, he will not need a square inch of cloth,’ he reflected. Far in a corner of the little mantap on the other bank he saw someone stirring. He felt a slight shiver of fear passing through him as he peered closer. ‘Is it a ghost or a maniac?’ He withdrew a couple of steps, and shouted: ‘Hey, who are you?’ vaguely remembering that if it were a ghost it would run away on hearing such a challenge. But the answer came back. ‘I’m Dr Pal, journalist, correspondent and author.’ Margayya espied a row of white teeth bared in a grin.