Distorted Mirror Read online

  ‘Have one for the road,’ Kailas pleaded, desperately trying to keep him back and finding a perverted sense of safety in the company of his own murderer-to-be.

  Daga stood up unsteadily and asked: ‘Where is it . . .?’

  Kailas took a lamp and conducted him to the toilet.

  Kailas busied himself, clearing away the glasses, pushing the chair out of the way, picking up the scattered magazines and papers.

  The newspaper sheets lying on the floor reminded him sharply of the day when they proved nearly fatal, flying about like evil spirits inside his speeding car.

  He quickly gathered half a dozen of them and rushed out. Luckily, the doors of Daga’s car were unlocked.

  ‘It is only a chance in a million,’ he told himself as, with trembling hands, he neatly spread out the sheets of a newspaper all over the rear seat at various strategic points and angles.

  Then, taking care to lower the windows a little, he returned to the sitting room at lightning speed.

  Daga had not come out of the toilet and was still making loud noises, clearing his throat and nose.

  Finally he came out, wiping his face with a kerchief and cursing. ‘Bloody darkness,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Tomorrow you will be dead if you don’t have the money on you. Remember that and don’t try to run . . . I will get you wherever you go . . .’ he said with chilling casualness and stepped out into the dark.

  Kailas heard the car start and saw briefly the trees bleached in the car’s ghostly headlights, as if woken up from an ancient slumber. Then they vanished as it swung round and pulled away.

  Kailas staggered into a chair as the significance of Daga’s visit slowly descended on his mind like a load. The lamps fluttered and went out one by one and he sat crushed, staring into the darkness.

  He had no idea when he had fallen asleep. The next morning he woke up with a start when the milkman called through the window: ‘Sir, sir!’

  The room was bathed in daylight and his watch showed 8 a.m.

  ‘Why are you so late? Have the lorries come?’

  ‘There was an accident on the highway. So I was delayed . . . A lot of crowd and police . . .’

  ‘Where?’

  The milkman flung his hand out and indicated a vague distance.

  ‘A car had smashed against a tree. Luckily, there was no one in it except the driver. He was dead.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Don’t know. I could not see the face. The police had covered it with a newspaper.’

  THE DAY THE VICEROY CAME

  THAT MORNING Gopal’s mother took out from a wooden box a little brown coat with brass buttons and yellow piping and put it on him; this happened only on great occasions. The smell of camphor and teak wood lifted his spirits; he smelt like his father, he thought, and that gave him an immense sense of importance. He picked up his slate and proudly strode out of the house. At school he joined the other children bubbling with joy in their own Sunday best.

  The Viceroy of India was passing through the small town. He was to alight at the railway station with his spouse and immediately get into an elaborately decorated open coach drawn by well-groomed horses and drive straight to the Residency. From there, less conspicuously, in a sedan car, he was planning to escape to the hills for the summer.

  Circulars had gone to all schools months in advance instructing the authorities that all children should be presentably dressed and arrayed on either side of His Excellency’s route on his arrival to cheer and welcome him appropriately. The headmasters and teachers were in a state of nervousness for fear that something might go wrong on that day and their institution betray a lack of loyalty in any respect. Special drill classes had been ordered and intensive and fatiguing training had been given to the children to participate in the great event.

  Gopal, of course, was quite unaware of the importance of his role and the duty he was to discharge towards the Crown even as he was being marched to the railway station along with the other children. He was happy with the little chunk of sweet distributed to celebrate the occasion and liked the festive mood that had infected everyone in the school; even the drill master wore a smile and went about, his muscles relaxed.

  At the railway station the children were lined up on the footpath according to their size and shape, the better dressed ones in the front row.

  Gopal was giddy with expectation and suspense. The drill master strutted up and down the line as if he was reviewing an army parade. He talked to people with the air of a liaison officer; even the headmaster consulted him and took his advice on many points connected with the arrangements. Every few minutes he looked at his huge wristwatch and announced the exact position of the approaching Viceregal party. But approaching Viceregal party. But an hour passed without anything happening. The children began to get restless and clamoured for His Excellency’s arrival. The drill master admonished the noisy ones and sauntered away to find out the cause for the delay.

  But as time wore on the sun grew irksome. The whole assembly began to droop. The teachers, one by one, sought the cool shade of the avenue trees. The children squatted on the ground in groups and wilted in the heat.

  As Gopal viewed his companions languidly and was about to resign himself to boredom he felt a ticklish sensation in his left leg. He was startled to see a big black ant crawling up. He jumped about as if he had stepped on a live coal and managed to shake it off. It gyrated blindly and came towards him again.

  Gopal pushed it away with a small twig. But it returned brandishing its whiskers with vicious intent. He became annoyed with its obstinacy and flicked it away a little more savagely. The ant landed far away and rolled in the dust.

  Gopal was pleased; he waited for its next move with fascination. It recovered immediately and seemed to go mad with frustration. It picked up the scent and moved towards him like an enemy tank in a battlefield.

  So expressive was its fury that Gopal had a momentary misgiving about his own strength to cope with it. He hurriedly gathered a handful of sand and emptied it on the charging ant.

  It came out of the temporary burial vastly puzzled by Gopal’s new tactics.

  Gopal felt a mixture of triumph and compassion. He gently picked up the bewildered ant on the twig. It clung to it and remained still as if admitting defeat.

  Then it began to pick its way carefully along the slender stick. It came very close to his fingers; it would have climbed on to him, actually, if he had not let go his fingers at that moment and held the stick by the other end. The ant suddenly faced an abyss. Then it turned round and started walking back towards Gopal’s fingers. But Gopal repeated the trick, shifting his fingers in time to the other end of the stick. He liked this game and it went on unvaryingly for a long time.

  Then suddenly he heard a blare of trumpets and the band striking up ‘God Save The King’. There was a lot of rush and bustle around him. He turned his attention from the ant to his friends; they were already at the edge of the footpath standing in a line.

  He was about to drop the twig, ant and all and rejoin his friends when he discovered to his horror that the ant which ought to have been somewhere near his finger was nowhere to be seen! He shivered with fright at the thought that it could have climbed over his fingers and got lost in his sleeves. He frantically looked for it all over his coat and on the ground.

  It had completely vanished.

  With an uneasy feeling he joined the group. But His Excellency, the Viceroy of India had already gone.

  The gathering dispersed rapidly. ‘I saw him so close,’ announced one of his friends.

  ‘I liked the horses,’ said another.

  ‘He is no doubt a man with a great personality,’ Gopal heard the drill master remark.

  At home his mother asked as she removed his coat to fold it and put it back into the wooden box, ‘Did you have a nice time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you have a good look at the Viceroy?’

  ‘No.’

 
; ‘Why?’

  ‘I was busy.’

  A TOUCH OF FEVER

  SHANTHA’S MOTHER felt her forehead and declared, ‘You have fever. Go and lie down quietly somewhere, and stop following me around.’

  Lie down quietly, where? Shantha wondered. There was not an inch of space in the house which was not occupied by guests who had been pouring in for the wedding, crowding the house from the garage, fuel room and kitchen in the rear to the main hall and veranda in the front, according to their status. The kitchen was buzzing with cooks who stamped about with heavy feet, carrying amazingly big vessels with boiling liquids in them. They glistened with sweat and themselves looked boiled in the heat of the kitchen. Shantha’s mother was part of a busy force of women slicing an enormous quantity of vegetables or shaping fancy eatables. Shantha realized wearily the futility of trying to draw her mother’s attention.

  The main hall had totally lost its familiar look. There was even some sort of a little mud construction in the middle surrounded by an elaborate floral design in rice paste. The rest of the space was occupied by men drinking coffee, chewing paan and chattering away. Shantha moved to the front veranda. Here, old men sat completely relaxed, reading the newspaper or just fanning themselves. Shantha avoided these people. These people had an annoying tendency to call little children of her size at sight and ask them to fetch a glass of water or their spectacles or to find out the whereabouts of somebody. She stood concealed from their view behind a pillar and watched the children of all ages and sizes jumping, running and screaming madly out of joy under the cool shade of the huge colourful wedding pandal. Her head throbbed, her eyes burned, her limbs seemed heavy as lead. Somehow, looking at all the energy of the children overpowered her with fatigue. Her immediate need was to quietly curl up somewhere and sleep. She found a place in the hall between a huge basket of flowers covered with a wet cloth and a heap of coconuts in brown paper bags. Hardly did she lie down when a voice called out, ‘Hey, Shantha, couldn’t you find a better place to lie down? You are in the way. Go and find another place.’ The half a dozen places she tried after that were no better; she was in the way, she was told, and was asked to find another place. It was maddening. There seemed to be no alternative left to her but to withdraw to the centre of the busy hall and start crying as hard as she could. It was the only way to pass on to her mother the job of finding a place for her to sleep, she decided. But just then it occurred to her that she could go upstairs and find a quiet and comfortable place. The proposition, besides, contained an element of thrill of doing something she was forbidden to do; she was not allowed to climb the narrow steep steps unescorted by an elder.

  Actually, the top floor contained no rooms. There was just a small landing with a door leading to an open terrace. The landing was generally used as a sort of a family ‘bedroom’; all the beddings of the members of the family were rolled and piled up one on top of another out of sight here during the day and brought down and spread out for sleeping at night. Shantha noticed that the landing was choked with rolls and rolls of bedding. ‘Wedding guests,’ she murmured with a frown. But she was relieved to find the place free of people. Here, at last, she could rest her aching limbs and throbbing head and, above all, go to sleep. She wanted to make doubly sure that her hard-won seclusion would not be lost if someone happened to come upstairs. So she climbed over the rolls of bedding like a little mountaineer, risking tumbling down at every step. The spirit of adventure freshened her up a little. Panting with excitement, she levered herself on to the topmost roll of bedding. Shantha felt triumphant that none of her friends had scaled anything so high. She lay down and adjusted herself snugly in the gentle depression between the wall and the mattress. Now she was totally hidden from any chance visitor upstairs. She felt completely relaxed. She listened to the sounds from below: someone was arguing violently, some elderly female was describing the most economical way to see certain holy places which she had just been to, a music lover was demonstrating how to sing a particular song as well as how not to sing it, many children were howling in various parts of the house. All these sounds gradually merged and lulled Shantha to sleep.

  When Shantha awoke the sun had set. The room was dissolving into the soft half-tone of dusk. For a moment Shantha could not make out where she was. She would have continued to sleep if she had not been roused by voices very close to her, just on the other side of the hump of the mattress concealing her from view. She could make out a male voice and a female voice. Both were engaged in conversing in suppressed agitation: ‘I called you here; I have something to tell you and I can’t do that down there without a hundred lounging louts overhearing me.’

  ‘Be brief and tell me what it is.’

  ‘I have nothing to tell. I have something to show. Look!’

  ‘Oh! Where did you get it?’

  ‘I found it. In the bathroom as I was washing my hands after lunch in the afternoon. It was on the rack where the soap . . .’

  ‘Whose is it?’

  ‘What a question! How would I know? Must belong to some queen rich enough to throw it away in the bathroom every time she takes a bath.’

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘Nice question to ask me! That is just what I want to know. Why did you think I called you here?’

  ‘Return it, I suppose.’

  ‘Return it to whom? Do you expect me to render free detective service to this house? As if the expense we have incurred in coming for this grand wedding was not sufficient.’

  ‘And at the end of it how will you be sure it is the right owner you will be returning it to?’

  ‘Exactly. If I had not discovered it, some smart guest surely would have quietly appropriated it and would have more than recovered the expenditure of coming to this grand wedding . . .’

  ‘What about the cost of buying some suitable gift for the bride and the groom? It will not at all look nice if we do not place something on the tray and offer it to the couple. After all, whatever it is, we have to save face on occasions like this . . .’

  Shantha, by now, had become quite curious to have a glimpse of the people who were talking in such mysterious hushed voices. But instinctively she felt the need for caution. She could judge their identity from their voices. They were relatives of some sort on her father’s side. But they were objects of much discussion and quarrels as long as Shantha could remember.

  ‘Where are you going to keep it—in your pocket?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Of course, in my trunk.’

  ‘But there are about a thousand people around your trunk in that hall at the moment. How are you going to put it there? Don’t blunder and make a fool of yourself. Already people are jealous of us, you must remember.’

  ‘If you are so wise why don’t you take charge of it?’

  ‘What, me? I certainly won’t. Please leave me out of it.’

  ‘If you feel so afraid, go and leave it in the bathroom where you found it . . .’

  ‘Then suggest some way out. We can’t spend the whole evening talking here. They may soon miss us downstairs.’

  ‘Anyway, my box is out of the question. A hundred curious eyes peep into my box whenever I open it as if they expect to find all the property of their grandfathers in it.’

  ‘I am asking you to suggest a place to keep it—not the impossibilities.’

  ‘Keep it in your pocket till nightfall. When everyone goes to bed you can open your box and pop it in.’

  ‘Suppose it falls out or somebody sees it? I can’t take that risk . . . Ah, I have an idea! My bedding must be somewhere here. There it is. I will keep this inside one of these pillowcases now and roll it up in the bed and leave it here. At night anyhow I have to take the bedding down. When everyone goes to sleep, I can transfer it to my box easily . . .’

  For the next few minutes Shantha heard a rustle of bed sheets and thumping of pillows. Suddenly she saw a huge roll of bedding settle with a thud a few inches from her. A dark thick hand appeared a
nd patted it twice for safety and withdrew. Then she heard footsteps going down the stairs. The place became quiet again except for the noise of the wedding house which was gathering tempo for the event in the morning.

  Shantha extricated herself from the corner into which she was wedged and sat up. She surveyed the awesome roll of bedding with fascination. The rug it was wrapped in was chocolate in colour with yellow diamonds running along the border. She discovered other geometrical shapes and colours as she came closer and closer to examine it.

  Everyone was fussing around Shantha. She had not been seen the whole day. All the guests had finished their dinner and had gathered in the central hall. Shantha was lying luxuriously on her grandmother’s lap. Her grandmother was coaxing her to drink milk from a spoon. Shantha was resisting. ‘You are a good girl. Come and drink it up. You have not had a thing to eat since the morning. Where will you have the strength to participate in the wedding tomorrow? You must get well and put on the new blue skirt for the wedding. Come on, drink it up. You are a brave girl . . . I will tell everyone you are a good girl.’ The grandmother put the tumbler and spoon down and clapped her hands and drew everybody’s attention. All the men and women turned to her with mild expectation.

  ‘Shantha is a good girl. Look at this gold chain! It is made of ten tolas of solid gold. You will not get this sort of thing nowadays. It was given to my mother by her uncle when I was born. I left it in the bathroom this morning and totally forgot about it. Little Shantha told me she found it there and brought it back to me. Ten tolas! God is truly great . . .’ Shantha reached for the glass of milk while her grandmother was still making the speech and concentrated all her attention on drinking the milk.

  THE LETTER

  BHASKER SAT cross-legged on the ancient chair in front of his roll-top desk and slid back the top after a brief tussle with its rusty mechanism. The inside revealed a fantastic arrangement of pigeon-holes, drawers and tiny doors. With a little creative indulgence he could have even seen in it mysterious passages, dark corridors, narrow alleys, balconies and house-tops, as he used to do some sixty years ago perched on his grandfather’s knee as the old man busied himself with the papers in a pigeon-hole of the same old desk.