Eddie’s double life was almost second nature to him by now. What was it that prompted him to keep the Sabha part of his life a secret? How do we know even as children what is taboo? There was no law against reading story-books during leisure time in Eddie’s house. Then how had he sensed that the Mahabharata stories would not find favour with his mother? The Sabha had never been referred to in his home. It is doubtful if Violet knew that it was called the Sabha, let alone what its programme and agenda were. Coming right down to it, nobody on the fifth floor ever mentioned the Hindus in the other four storeys.
Gut feeling, instinct, the atmosphere in his home, his Catholic upbringing, call it what you will—and no explanation will ever be sufficient—Eddie kept his secular Hindu incarnation separate from his Catholic life.
He got four annas every week as pocket money. With that and the two rupees twelve annas he had left over from the money Granna had given him on his last birthday, he bought a red loincloth and two pairs of khaki half-pants. The loincloth he washed daily after class and hung up on the latch of the locker in the corridor of the gym. The half-pants he washed every Saturday with soap he filched from home.
Chawl No. 11, where the gym and the Sabha corner of the open grounds were, was not in Violet’s direct line of vision had she stood in the kitchen window and looked out. But even if it had been, Violet had no interest in what was going on outside. She had looked out once, a long, long time ago, from the balcony on her landing and lived to regret it. Once in a while, Eddie saw Pieta walking past in the distance but neither she nor any of his Catholic neighbours had reason to pass by the Hindu Gym.
The one person who watched him, Eddie preferred to think he was spying on him, was Ravan. At such times Eddie went into overdrive. His chest filled out, he wielded his staff with exaggerated zeal and on a couple of occasions almost hurt himself. He yelled Jai Hind louder than everybody else and gave Ravan sidelong glances filled with contempt. But Ravan’s visits were aimless, a matter of habit and for lack of anything better to do.
How many times had he seen the picture? Yet every time he was about to flip the page, he stopped, mesmerized. There were ten other pictures of Lord Krishna in the book. The child Krishna standing on an unsteady pile of vessels and stealing curd from a clay pot hanging from the rafters on the ceiling. Krishna at eight years of age smiling mischievously from the branches of a tree while maidens bathing in the lake below pleaded with him to return their clothes. The same child Krishna holding up Mount Govardhan on the tip of his finger and protecting his people from the deluge. Shri Krishna invisibly frustrating Dushyasan’s attempt to disrobe Draupadi in the presence of the august elders in Dhritarashtra’s court.
There were four or five others, all of them favourites. But the killing of Shishupal was in a class by itself. It was the only one where you saw Shri Krishna as an active warrior. Shishupal was an evil man who had committed every crime under the sun. The patience of God is great. Besides Shishupal was family, Krishna’s cousin. Krishna gave him plenty of rope to hang himself by. He swore that he would not touch Shishupal till he had committed a hundred sins. Hundred was a big number. Besides, who was keeping count? No one. Except Shri Krishna. Years passed. Suddenly one day, Shri Krishna appeared before Shishupal, his eyes glittering with a light even brighter than the halo around his head. Shishupal realized that his time was up. In the picture he had begun to reach for his sword and Krishna was smiling. There was a serenity in Krishna’s face that was breathtaking, it was also a face that was strong, decisive and unforgiving. ‘Ninety-nine crimes, yes. A hundred, no.’ Even as he spoke, he let loose his sudershan chakra, the missile disc that spun at phenomenal speed around his little finger. In the illustration the chakra had already severed Shishupal’s head which was lying on the floor and was arcing back.
Jesus was and always would be Eddie’s Lord God. There was never any doubt about this in his mind. And yet what was that thought that had slipped through his mind like a fish out of a net? Oh Lord God, was he committing sacrilege? Was his cup of sins brimming over? He shut his eyes tight but the thought darted through again. Was it the devil, was his soul lost forever, the perdition that Father D’Souza always talked of, whatever it meant, had it claimed him already?
Why didn’t Jesus ever laugh or play a practical joke? Did he never have any fun in life, not even a day of it? Why was he always so glum and long-faced? Did he never have a fist-fight as a child? Did he ever throw a stone at a clay-pot hanging high from the ceiling, knock a hole through its bottom and drink buttermilk from it? Oh, he knew Jesus was stronger than the strongest but why was he not tough and muscular. Why was he so goody-goody? Now that the dam had burst, he might as well spill it all.
He remembered his first communion. The day coincided with his birthday. His mother had always sewn his clothes but they were school uniforms or daily wear. She was a seamstress. She was at her sewing machine from ten in the morning till eight at night, sometimes even later. But they were mostly women’s clothes, dresses, tops, skirts. This time, for his first communion, Violet had become far more ambitious. She had sewn him a white silk shirt with a frilled front and a pair of soft and glossy white trousers made of some material called satin duck.
He had seen a white peacock in the zoo at the Victoria Gardens. Its long feathers and tail trailed behind, a little ruffled and tacky. The monsoons were imminent and under the darkening sky, right there in front of his very eyes, as if someone had pulled a string lever, the peacock’s feathers fanned into a shimmering white orb. It picked up its right foot, held it up daintily for a few seconds and then walked towards him. The whole magnificent edifice of taut and snowy lace undulated in fluid waves as it tensed and relaxed. Eddie wasn’t quite sure why he felt a little faint and breathless with the beauty of it.
He felt like that peacock on the day of his first communion. All around him was a tremulous glow of electric white. Everyone’s eyes, he was convinced, were on him even though there were eleven other boys and girls walking towards the altar with him.
Now it was his turn. Father Agnello D’Souza dipped the thin white wafer in the wine in the polished silver chalice and placed it lightly on Eddie’s protruding tongue. That wave in the peacock’s feathers was building up in him. It rose and it rose till it was higher than the stone steeple of St Sebastian’s Cathedral. The body and blood of Jesus Christ. Not real. Just make-believe. Symbolic, Father D’Souza had said. He felt worse than a cannibal, eating and drinking God. The wave gathered itself to a towering height, pierced the heavens and broke. His vomit had spattered all over his shirt and Father D’Souza’s embroidered, gold and silver chasuble.
Whenever Eddie went for the sacrament of the communion he gagged, his intestines churned and he choked. He could never get over it. The Romans had killed Jesus almost two thousand years ago, that’s twenty times hundred, and they were still drinking his blood and eating his body and forcing him to do the same.
After that first communion, Eddie could never touch meat. Whatever the vices he was to develop later, he would never become a drunkard. He would wake up at night screaming in utter terror that someone had slipped the Host in the bread or a little wine in the cold kokum soup. Even his mother, who had never forgiven him for the fiasco in church, was shaken by the depth of his despair though she had no idea when and where and how it came to be.
He lay with his eyes shut tight, his fists balled up into his wrists, his mouth clenched lipless as they tried to open his lips and force the wafer down his throat. Then he asked the one question he knew he could never ask: was it not possible to commune with God without spilling his blood any more?
His eyes were still shut when lightning fell and burnt a hole, a cavernous hole in Eddie’s back. He was slammed awake so abruptly, he nearly threw up and fell out of his chair. His mother was blabbering like a demented woman. But that was the least of his problems. She had planted such a singeing slap on his back that the imprint of all the five fingers of her right hand stood out in relief on his chest.
‘Idol worshipper.’ Eddie could barely decipher her hysterical words. ‘Where did you get this satanic book? Did that Hindu boy, the devil himself, give it to you?’ She was beating him like a woman possessed, slapping him, boxing his ears, pulling his hair.
‘It’s a story-book, Mom, that’s all.’ Shouldn’t have opened his mouth. She was outraged by that simple statement.
‘It’s a passage to hell lined with thirty-three million Hindu gods and goddesses. Wait till I talk to Father D’Souza.’ She grabbed the book and stared at the technicolour miracles Shri Krishna was performing.
‘Give me back my book.’
Violet walked into the kitchen and flung it out of the window. It was so unexpected an action, Eddie ran past her and stretched out across the window to grab it. It sped down five storeys and landed with a little muted thud. The binding came undone and a couple of sections detached themselves from the rest of the book. Shri Krishna’s sudershan chakra was still on its flight back. Oh, to recall the missile and send it spinning to his vile mother.
He straightened up, walked to the door and unlocked it.
‘Don’t you dare leave this room.’
Eddie opened the door. Violet was screaming now.
‘That’s it. I don’t ever want you back in this house.’
Granna came and took his hand and drew him to her.
‘You stay out of this, Mother.’
‘That’s enough, Violet.’
Ravan had taken to going to the St Theresa’s School grounds near the Byculla bridge. He was afraid of the teacher’s temper but the memory of the man floating weightlessly kept coming back to him at odd times, and every evening he found himself hanging around St Theresa’s School pavilion.
It took him seven days to ask but finally he accosted the man as he was leaving the large one-storeyed stone building with the sloping roof that housed the gym, the tae kwon do room and all the sports equipment of St Theresa’s.
‘Will you teach me?’ The words came out frightened and indistinct.
‘Are you from St Theresa’s?’ the teacher asked.
‘No.’
‘Speak English?’
‘What’s that got to do with teaching me?’
‘In this place I ask the questions. Do you?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a hundred rupees for six months. You’ve got that kind of money?’
‘No.’
That settled matters. Ravan started to walk away.
‘It’s seventy rupees for the 5.30 classes in the morning.’ The master spoke to his back.
Seventy, hundred, a thousand, it was all the same, where was he going to get the money from? Ravan shook his head and kept walking.
‘I’m going to the St Theresa’s School gym from tomorrow. Will you wake me up in the morning?’
‘What time?’ Parvati asked.
Ravan was sure his mother knew that he wasn’t attending the Sabha any more, even though Lele Guruji had not sent an emissary or a note saying that her son had been chucked out of class for good.
‘Five o’clock. The master is going to teach in English.’
‘That’s nice, isn’t it? You’ll become strong and healthy and get to learn some English on the side.’
The clock in the tae kwon do room said 5.28. But all the students were already there. They had changed into the white on white suit and were warming up. At 5.30 they had fallen in place. Ravan craned his neck over the window-sill to see what was going on.
For a while he stood still and watched the boys exercising. It began to drizzle. He couldn’t contain himself for long. He started to mime whatever they did. It seemed easy till you started to do it yourself. Within minutes he was drenched. He had made up his mind that he would imitate every action and gesture but not the staccato sounds they let out. Before he knew it, he too was barking. It came naturally. The one didn’t seem possible without the other.
His timing was a little off. His ‘huh’ was a fraction of a second later than theirs. He shut up for some time but he had the feeling that the master was aware of his presence. It was pouring now.
‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’
Ravan was so engrossed he hadn’t noticed the peon from the gym. It was the fourth day and he was getting the hang of things. Bloody careless of him. ‘Just watching.’
‘You think this is a free show? Mr Billimoria is not running charitable classes. You want to learn tae kwon do, you pay for it. Otherwise get the hell out. Sala, bhag.’
‘Learn what?’
‘What?’
‘Learn what did you say?’
‘Tae kwon do. Don’t even know what you are learning?’ This time he pushed Ravan.
I told you to remain in the dark, Ravan muttered to himself, did you listen? Now stay out for good. But five minutes after the peon left him, Ravan was back.
It was raining pretty hard when Ravan left home. By the time he was halfway to the St Theresa’s grounds there were gale winds that broke every single rib in his umbrella. The storm drains and the gutters were completely choked. The water from the bridge came racing down. In a matter of minutes the road was flooded and the water had risen to his calves. The wind howled and keened. And the rains crashed down as if the sky had caved in. Monster raindrops pelted him like hail. You could hardly call them raindrops, they were sheets of swirling dark glass with ragged ends.
He was fond of the rain and getting wet in it was one of the high points in his life but the thunder unnerved him today. It bombarded him from all sides and left him light-headed. Lightning pulsed through the sky and lit up the hairline fractures in it. It rolled on the tar road and slithered off it onto the crossed grill of the railway bridge about a furlong away.
As Ravan reached the maidan, there was a shivery sound of tinfoil in his ears. It made the eardrum resonate to its own frequency and jangled his nerves. His fifth or sixth step into the field and he began to get an idea of what it must mean to be caught in quicksand. His foot felt weightless as it sank into the tall grass and kept going into the squelchy earth. When he tried to lift it, there was a sucking hiss in his canvas shoe and he was trapped. He would have to dislodge the whole earth to get his foot out. There it was, that erratic vibration in his ear again. He trudged on. He knew there was no way that the class would be held in this cyclone but it became a matter of honour for him to make it to the gym.
He suddenly understood what the sound was. The wind was lifting off the corrugated tin sheets nailed to the sloping roof of the Mazagaon Cricket Club next to the St Theresa’s gym and sending them hurtling across the open grounds. Now he was truly frightened. He tried to run and duck the missiles of death which whizzed past him. They were birds of prey and they were playing with him in that vast and abandoned field. But the running didn’t take him far since his feet got caught in the quagmire under him. Exhausted, he stood still and watched this sound and light show with the flying objects. He saw a monster sheet headed straight for him. He was felled violently to the ground. He was sure he had been decapitated when someone lifted him in both arms and sprinted to the gymnasium.
Mr Billimoria opened the lock of the tae kwon do room with his keys and switched on the light. He brought out two towels from one of the cupboards and handed one to Ravan. Ravan was not sure what to do with it.
‘Open it and dry yourself.’
Ravan followed Mr Billimoria’s example, stripped himself to his underwear, vigorously rubbed himself dry and tied the towel around his waist. Mr Billimoria went to the cupboard again, took a tae kwon do suit off a peg and slipped into it. He took another from a neatly folded pile on the shelf and handed it to Ravan and proceeded to light a kerosene stove. He showed Ravan how to tie the belt and asked him to bring over two stools from the corner. ‘Sit,’ he said and handed a mug of tea to Ravan. ‘Feel better?’
Ravan nodded. There was a smile on Mr Billimoria’s face. ‘What were you yelling when you opened your arms in the field?’
Ravan kept mum.
‘I know you were defying the emissaries of death but I couldn’t catch the words.’
Ravan looked positively embarrassed.
‘I prayed to God not to kill me because my mother’s going to make my favourite dish, puranpolis, today.’
‘Do you realize you would be dead if I hadn’t knocked you flat when I did?’
‘Yes.’
‘I like puranpolis too. Get me some tomorrow.’
Ravan nodded his head again.
‘Now that you are here, we might as well start classes. You will come here every day at 5.15, not at 5.23 or 5.25 as you’ve been doing. Change into this suit and do warming-up exercises till 5.30. Classes are held every day barring Saturdays and Sundays and go on till 6.30. You will not be absent except for a month in summer. My class is not free. Tell your mother to pay me whatever she can afford every month.
‘I know Hindi but I will speak to you in English. That way you will pick up the language and the other boys in the class won’t act superior.’
You could count the number of black belts in India on the fingers of one hand in those days. It was a long time before the Bruce Lee craze would hit the world and karate become a household word. There were few institutions in the country which taught the Far Eastern martial arts in India. Mr Billimoria had done a bit of judo at Fergusson College in Poona when studying there. Later he went to Hong Kong to develop contacts in the region for his father’s business and switched to tae kwon do. His Korean masters taught him that tae kwon do was like a Zen discipline, a matter of mind dominating the body.
Ravan was to win many prizes in tae kwon do competitions over the years, but as his master often pointed out, that was not of much consequence. He grasped the message of tae kwon do intuitively. It entered his bloodstream. Perhaps it steadied him in later life so that, however much he was rocked, he always regained his centre of gravity. Perhaps.
Ravan’s mind did not always triumph over matter. His hit-rate would have averaged the same as most people trying to muddle along in life. But for the first time he felt a sense of belonging. He believed in his master. At a time when the guru tradition was on its last legs in India, he had found his guru and his guru had found the ideal pupil.
Ravan would have done almost anything for Mr Billimoria. That Mr Billimoria did not ask him for the moon, sexual favours or to smuggle contraband is not relevant. If he had wanted any or all of them, he would have taken them as the guru’s prerogative. It was the guru’s mind that took precedence over the pupil’s mind and matter. What it did for Ravan was to make him aware of perfection and to hunger for it. Whether that consciousness would make him a master-craftsman or an artist is a grey area. One thing was certain. A journeyman he would not be.
He practised. Not night and day but as often as he could. The neighbours in the chawl had always kept their distance from Parvati. Now they were convinced that she was either possessed or doing black magic. Ha! Ha! Ha! It was half a derogatory laugh and half a hiccup. Obviously, her voice had turned hoarse and masculine as she blew hard and gustily into a brass pot over the years, inviting the Goddess Amba, who rode a tiger and brandished a sword in her hand, to take charge of her mind, body and soul and do with them as she would.
Ravan drove his mother up the wall. On more than one occasion she would have liked to stab him, strangle him or throw him out of the window.
Ravan’s aim was not always very good, at least not in the early years. On one occasion his foot went straight into the rice that was cooking on the kerosene stove. The bubble on it was the size of a decent balloon. Parvati could not contain her joy. She was a great believer in deterrence. He lay there writhing in pain and sizzling agony while she delivered her homily. ‘That will teach you a lesson you will never forget,’ she told him without making any attempt to commiserate with him. She was wrong. The boy was undeterred.
When his foot healed, he almost succeeded where his mother had failed all these years. He nearly ejected his father from the house. Ravan’s contention was that if you moved when he was in action, you not only begged to be hurt but, more to the point, upset his timing.
It started out innocuously enough. Ravan asked his father to stand still, just stand still, okay, while Shankar-rao was transferring himself from his armchair to the bed. Shankar-rao must have been thinking of the news in Bittambatmi that day: about the man who pickled the fingers and toes and other limbs of his victims and stored them in the fridge, because how else could you explain his tacitly acceding to Ravan’s request? Ravan circled his father, his hands aiming, unfolding, doing figures of eight over his father’s head and all the while continuing to stalk him; he then flung himself sideways into the air as he let out a piercing scream. Did his father move, dodge his head, step back half a centimetre, blink his eyelids? These are academic issues. Shankar-rao’s specs were lying smashed on the ground and he was bent over double. He didn’t say a word because he couldn’t. His diaphragm had climbed up and stuck to his throat. His testicles had grown so big, it was a wonder he wasn’t floating into Eddie’s house.
The weight of the silence in the outside room finally bore down on Parvati. She came out of the kitchen. She went back. She returned with a glass of water with sugar in it and tried to feed it to Shankar-rao. He flung it away with his left hand but brought the hand back to his groin in a hurry.
‘I told him not to move. He moved. What do you expect?’
Ravan was as usual keeping a clear line of defence but there wasn’t much conviction in it.
Shankar-rao spoke after forty-five minutes. They were his last words on this planet. At least they sounded that way. ‘Either he goes or I go.’
That put an end to Ravan’s war-games at home. For once he had penetrated his father’s habitual torpor and for a while, it was chancy for him. He couldn’t risk it again. From now on he decided to go to his gym after school and practise there.
Later on, much later when Eddie and Ravan were grown-up men, Eddie would ask: What happened to us in school? Were we border-line average students? Even they pass, maybe we were just dullards? Or were we stupid? Why did we fare so badly?
There were other questions that gnawed at Eddie’s peace of mind from time to time and exasperated him because he had no answers. But today was not such a day. Today he was not an underachiever.
It was the twentieth anniversary of the Mazagaon Sabha. Leaders from all parts of Bombay and a couple from the Central Committee were gathered to celebrate the occasion. They were seated on a raised platform under a festive shamiana. As Lele Guruji would have put it, everything was going like clockwork. The loudspeakers crackled occasionally but at least this time the man from whom they had hired the electrical equipment was making sure that there was no dog-whistle feedback from the amplifier interrupting the speeches.
After Vande Mataram, the Sabha anthem and welcoming speeches, there were various competitions: running, yoga, wrestling, malkhamb (they had dug a deep hole in the ground and fixed the tapering ten-foot wooden pole in it with concrete), the fights with the wooden staff, the lezhim dance. There wasn’t an item in which Eddie did not participate. The loudspeakers called out his name to pick up a prize in almost every category.
It was time for the elocution competition. Two boys spoke about Veer Savarkar and his exploits; another about Nathuram Godse and his last thoughts before he was hanged and martyred in the noble cause of Hinduism. One of the older boys recited a soliloquy from the play Manapaman. As usual there were three or four boys who dealt with Shivaji and how he founded a Hindu kingdom in Maharashtra and his great escape from Agra where the mighty Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, had kept him under house arrest.
It was Eddie’s turn. He looked far and wide so long that even Lele Guruji began to get worried about his favourite student. Just as the audience’s restiveness was about to become a murmur, Eddie said in a quiet and natural voice as if he was speaking to a friend on the phone, ‘This is Sanjay speaking.’ Eddie was thirty seconds into his speech before the elders or anybody else understood that this was the Sanjay from the Mahabharata, telling Dhritarashtra, the blind father of the hundred Kaurava princes, how the father and mother of all wars was shaping up.
Eddie’s strategy was simple and one with which every Indian could identify. He was the commentator of a cricket match. He observed the ultimate game, the game of life and death itself and told it as it was. His voice was a supple instrument. It reflected the tensions, the speed, the sudden drama, the heroism, the betrayal and the sorrow of the war. One minute he was with Arjun’s son Abhimanyu, the teenager who knew the secret of penetrating a military maze so complex that even the greatest warriors did not know how to negotiate it. Then he was with the Kauravas, struggling with Karna to heft his chariot wheel out of the churning mud in the battlefield. Even from the great distance that separated him from his arch rival Arjun, Karna could tell that Lord Krishna was urging Arjun to shoot, to shoot now, before Karna’s deadly arrow pierced his heart and the battle went to the enemy.
And now Eddie was back with Abhimanyu who had reached where no man had, the very core of the convoluted circular formation; but here he was trapped by his own incredible skill, for while he knew how to penetrate the human maze he had no idea of how to get out. And the arrows fell upon him like sheet upon sheet of rain till there was not a millimetre of unpierced skin left in his youthful body.
The bell rang and Eddie withdrew from the mike. There was such a tense silence, he thought something had gone wrong. Had he hurt their sentiments, had he gone too fast, had he lost them because they were bored? He looked at his peers, the young boys with whom he exercised and wrestled and laughed and competed. Had they heard the bell or not? He saw their mouths open. All right, so he had messed up, but what were they waiting for? For him to say sorry? He realized how tense he was. His palms and feet were cold, something that had not happened even when he was on the malkhamb or trying to flip his opponent so that he would land with his back on the floor.
It was a strange sensation this, his blood seemed to be racing while everything around him had slowed down. He saw Appa Achrekar take forever to get up. Was he going to denounce Eddie? Appa brought his hands together, he was clapping ever so slowly, then the others on the stage were on their feet and so was the audience and everyone was clapping. Appa smiled and said, ‘And then?’
Lele Guruji was beside him now. Eddie was his prodigal son and he loved him dearly. Ravan would not have believed the change this one pupil had wrought in Lele Guruji. Lele’s wife and children, who had been trained by Lele to be almost bereft of all emotion in personal dealings and who had become as dry and desiccated as cinder over the years, were a little ashamed of the warmth and friendliness that seemed to glow from the man now. He put his arm around Eddie’s shoulder and said, ‘I am going to ask our beloved chief guest, Appa Achrekar, to address us now.’
‘Two years ago, I had predicted that Eddie Coutinho would be the star pupil in the locality. I was wrong.’
Just by itself Appa’s rabble-rouser voice would have echoed in the four corners of the CWD chawls. With the mike and speakers, it resounded like the voice of God Himself calling man to heed Him while there was still time.
‘Eddie Coutinho is the finest pupil of the Sabha in the whole of Bombay state. Nobody in the past, not a single student, has got the grades he has got in every single subject. Gym, drill, physical exercises, martial arts, spiritual singing, lezhim, he’s got the highest scores ever. As if all this were not enough, just a few minutes ago, he gave us a rendering of the Mahabharata, the likes of which I have never heard before. And all this in a language, our dearly beloved Marathi Maiboli, that he had not spoken till he joined our Sabha. When I heard him talk of Abhimanyu and the rain of arrows that fell upon that great hero in the very flower of youth, I said to myself, Eddie Coutinho is Abhimanyu brought back to life. There is no doubt in my mind that Eddie Coutinho is the reincarnation of not just Abhimanyu but of all our glorious Hindu traditions.
‘In my seventy-five years of life I have not, I have to admit, ever been so moved. I had goose-flesh on my body.
‘Eddie Coutinho, mark my words, for my prophecies have always come true, will be one of the great leaders of the Sabha. Our tradition and our future are safe in the hands of people like Eddie Coutinho.’
There was thunderous applause. In the distance, Eddie saw a dot. Actually, it was two dots, a big dot accompanied by a small one. The big dot seemed to cast a shadow on Eddie even from that distance. The shadow grew bigger by the second just as it had in the story of the prodigal son that Appa had told two years ago.
There’s a time to dawdle and a time to run. Eddie knew that it was time to run for his life. He shot out but Lele Guruji’s hand clamped him firmly on the shoulder.
‘In appreciation of the extraordinary work Eddie Coutinho has done, we have had to create a special new award for him.’
The big dot was running now. The little dot had difficulty keeping up with it.
‘He is our first Star of Hindustan.’
Even now there was time to escape. He jerked his shoulder and tried to push Lele Guruji’s hand away. There she stood life-size, his mother Violet, and panting behind her was his sister, Pieta. As Lele Guruji steered him to Appa, Eddie caught a glimpse of Pieta trying to pull his mother away. There was dismay and sympathy in Pieta’s eyes. Eddie loved her then as he had never loved anybody before. He knew that Pieta’s gesture was futile and he loved her all the more for it.
‘Strange, I thought I heard the words Eddie Coutinho reverberate in our chawl. Sewing night and day makes me feel giddy at times. I must be imagining things, I said. Then I heard it again and again and again. I looked out of the window trying to trace the source of the loudspeaker. How can it be, I said, it’s a Hindu gathering.’
Appa’s hand was not as steady as his voice. He was having trouble pinning the 22-carat gold medal on Eddie’s shirt.
‘I should have known better. That woman downstairs has performed black magic on him and sold him to Satan. But I won’t rest till I’ve exorcized the devil even if it means taking him apart, limb from limb.’
Hurry, please hurry. What was the point, she was already on the dais, she was pushing people aside, now she had the medal in her hands and it was on a parabolic flight over the heads of the audience who watched it as if it were a wondrous talisman. And so it was. It was Lord Krishna’s sudershan chakra flashing through the cosmos on an intergalactic mission. But Eddie knew that it had lost its homing instincts and would never come back.
And now Violet was hauling her prodigal son down the dais. Eddie’s foot slipped, got caught in the jute matting that covered the steps and twisted, but that didn’t stop her, she marched into the crowd and past them on to the road, her strides had become gargantuan, she seemed to be in a terrible rush, Eddie was no longer trying to keep pace with her, she had him by the wrist and she was never going to let go, passers-by and people in buses and cars and cabs stared at them and the girl running after them, with tears the size of the Kohinoor diamond, sobbing, ‘Let him go, Mamma, please.’ She turned the corner and was in the compound of St Sebastian’s Church, another set of steps and they were inside, Father D’Souza was in the nave talking to some elderly woman, and Eddie was flung at the foot of the altar.
If he could have, Father D’Souza would have asked, ‘What now?’ Instead he said, ‘What can I do for you, Mrs Coutinho?’
‘Please carry on, Father. I do not wish to interrupt.’ Violet folded her arms and stood intrusively, pointedly ignoring Father D’Souza’s companion.
‘It was nothing of consequence, really,’ the elderly woman said a little too eagerly and backed away.
‘Exorcize him,’ Violet commanded the priest. The elderly woman left in a hurry. ‘He’s joined the people downstairs and become an idol worshipper.’
Everybody can excuse herself or himself and get away. Not me though. Why does she always come to me? She behaves as if there isn’t any other priest in the parish. Father D’Souza sometimes wondered whether Violet Coutinho thought he was Eddie’s father merely because he had been present at his birth. For every little thing—unfortunately for every big thing too—she marched into the church with her son. If he was not there, she came over to the school. And if he was not there either, she sent a peon to fetch him from his room in the priests’ quarters. It didn’t matter whether he was taking a class, talking to some other parent, hearing a confession or lying stone dead with overwork, she stood her ground. She stood politely enough. She had dignity and presence. But there was no way you could ignore her. As always, he knew she was on the premises long before he saw her. That strong palpable bouquet of unspoken grief and grievance preceded her. She was like a fine fish bone stuck between your teeth. There was no relief, you couldn’t pay attention to anything else until you had attended to her.
What was it with her boy, always getting into trouble, doing things he wasn’t supposed to do, asking questions to which he, Father D’Souza, had no answers. But the problem didn’t end there. It was an odd sensation chastising Eddie, for he often made Father D’Souza feel as if he had victimized an innocent.
Father D’Souza listened to Violet’s tale with growing alarm. He had to admit that the matter was more serious than life and death, for it was obvious that Eddie’s immortal soul was in jeopardy. You had to give Violet credit. She was seized of the gravity of the situation and had acted with admirable dispatch to contain the damage.
‘Are you telling me that your mother is lying? That you never said Hindu prayers?’ The anger rose in him like red steam but again he had the impression that Eddie had forced a reversal of roles, leaving him with a sense of guilt.
‘I did, but they meant nothing to me. I wanted to learn to use the wooden staff, both to attack and to defend. I like wrestling and I loved to hear the stories that Lele Guruji told.’
The instant he volunteered that last bit of information Eddie realized that he had crossed the taboo line and revealed what his mind had automatically screened out all these years.
‘What kinds of stories?’
‘Stories from the Mahabharata.’
‘And?’
‘Stories of Krishna.’ Eddie remembered to drop the title Lord in the nick of time. ‘Rama, Shankar, Ganesh, Indra, Shivaji, hundreds of stories.’
‘What did I tell you? He has sold his soul and worshipped pagan gods.’ Violet said this almost triumphantly.
‘I didn’t. I didn’t.’ Eddie was close to tears.
‘Did it never occur to you that you were committing a heinous sin listening to these stories?’
‘No, they were stories, just like any other stories. Even the Bible has stories. Lele Guruji told us those too.’
‘How dare you compare the Bible with these idol-worshippers’ tales? The Bible is the word of God, the one and only true God.’
‘Those people say the Gita is the word of God.’ With the stabbing pain of betrayal, Eddie realized that he was already referring to his former friends as those people.
‘And you believe them?’ Father D’Souza’s wrath now knew no bounds. He looked at Violet. It was as if he needed her to corroborate and seal Eddie’s guilt. ‘Or are you going to believe me and your mother? And Jesus our Saviour who gave his life to save sinners like you?’
Eddie looked up at the statue of Jesus way above him at the back of the church. It had never occurred to him to betray this gentle Son of God whose suffering he could never bear to look at. Why then were his mother and Father D’Souza so angry with him and making such a terrible fuss?
‘Do you know the price of worshipping anyone but our Lord God Jesus Christ? Excommunication.’
That word had been explained to Eddie several times. There was nothing worse that could happen to you. But he knew something worse than that word. It was the awful sound of it. That ‘X’ seemed to shut him out. It was like a sound-proof, one-way glass door. He could see everybody but they couldn’t see him. They never would, though he was just an outstretched hand away from them. There was a finality about it that seemed to press down and crush the very essence of his life and asphyxiate him. It was an inflatable word that grew bigger and bigger. It spilled over and pushed out the moon and Mars and Venus and Jupiter and the sun and all the galaxies till there was no space left and then it squeezed him out over the edge.
Father D’Souza must have realized that Eddie did not understand the full implications of the word. ‘You know what that means?’ He proceeded to give him a vivid exegesis which paradoxically shrank the word and brought it under control.
‘Your soul will burn in hell forever.’
A sob escaped Eddie and then he couldn’t stop crying for the sheer relief it gave him.
‘Repent in front of our Lord and promise never to go to any other Hindu meeting and never to worship any other god but the true God, our Lord Jesus Christ.’
Eddie hesitated for a moment, wondering what was expected of him.
‘Go down on your knees.’ Father D’Souza pressed down on Eddie’s shoulder till he sank to his knees; and then he retrieved for Jesus Christ a soul that He had never lost. ‘Repent and promise. Or I’ll excommunicate you from the house of God and the life hereafter.’
‘I promise. I promise.’ Eddie spoke with such fervour and conviction that even Father D’Souza was pleased.
‘Promise to strangle and break the neck of that viper who was responsible for banishing us from paradise, Satan himself, every time he raises his head in your bosom.’
‘I promise. I promise.’
‘Promise to ask Mother Mary to intervene on your behalf with our Lord Jesus Christ and beg her to ask his forgiveness every day of your life.’
‘I promise. I promise.’
‘Now say a hundred Hail Marys, every day for a whole year. May the Lord find it in his heart to forgive you.’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Rise my son.’ Father D’Souza felt good. He had that rare sense of a job well done. He felt cleansed. He put his hand on Eddie’s head as he rose.
‘Is it true that Ravan, the boy who stays below us, killed my father?’
Father D’Souza had the fleeting thought that if he didn’t withdraw his hand it would attach itself to Eddie’s head as with a resinous glue and nothing but sawing it off at the arm would ever separate them. He wasn’t taking any chances. He pulled his hand away harshly. You couldn’t ever be off your guard with this boy. Even when you had just saved his soul and begun to trust him, he would spring a rotten question on you and drag you all the way down to perdition.
‘Who told you that?’
‘Mummy.’
Father D’Souza looked at Violet reproachfully. She stared back at him defiantly.
‘It was an accident.’
