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‘I try to interest my children in spiritual matters, but they turn a deaf ear.’

‘There is no sign of the fruit when you buy the shoot. A watermelon does not exist unless it is the watermelon season. Before you cut it open you should always put your ear to the rind while tapping on the side. In this way you can make sure it will be completely ripe.’

The spy made notes in a school notebook and scratched his head dubiously. This was his first important mission since he had joined the society that boasted of such distinguished members as the man who had revealed the mechanism that gave rise to the electric-shock guru, the woman who had uncovered the exploding-toilet scam, the clerk who had hidden himself in a vat of sweetened curd to overhear a conversation that led to the indictment of the BMW guru for everything from money-laundering and tax fraud to murder by poison. In fact, it had been a lucky thing the clerk had not eaten any of that curd.

The spy was determined that he too would thus distinguish himself. He was lonely in Shahkot; his village was far away and he was as yet unmarried. He hated his job as a teacher at the public school, hated the boys who drew unflattering portraits of him in their notebooks and pulled faces behind his back. Often he gave them exercises to do and escaped to the staff room, where he sat staring out of the window and smoking cigarettes. One day he would
show the world; he would rise above his poverty-stricken childhood, the hovel he had grown up in with eleven brothers and sisters, his drunken and drugged father, his worn-out mother. One day the world would turn its attention to him at last. Applause. Prizes. Newspaper reporters. He would hold his face out to the light and, in the midst of adulation, discover his poise, discussing fluently and with the seriousness of an intellectual on television his opinion of things. ‘Well, you know, liberation, as I comprehend it, comes from freeing yourself from the tawdry grasp of superstition. This is not a simple matter, you understand, for it is embroiled in historical issues, in issues of poverty and illiteracy.’ Yes, his life had been hard. But he would overcome.

‘What should I do, sir?’ he ventured once more. ‘I do not know what path I should take. I do not know what questions to ask. In fact, I do not even know what I want.’

‘A child cries for its mother’s milk, doesn’t it?’

‘I do not understand.’

‘A baby bird cries for an insect.’

‘But, sir … milk and insects?’

‘A mother knows what its child wants and recognizes her child from the noises it makes. Consequently, you will be quite all right if you stop asking questions and wait for your mother to come to you. Be patient.’

‘But –’ he persisted. ‘But, sir-’

Sampath’s head began to buzz. What on earth was this man being so annoying for? He looked out into the leafy avenues about him and gazed moodily into the distance.

The spy from the Atheist Society looked happier. Clearly Sampath was at a loss for a reply to his clever questioning and was trying hard to avoid him. He went behind a tree and made more top-secret notes in his school notebook.
‘Avoids questioning by pretending otherworldliness. Unable to discuss deeper matters of philosophy.’

Below Sampath the hallowed silence grew until Ammaji became uncomfortable with the quiet so loud and so big. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘sometimes his mind leaves the earthly plane. Don’t be offended.’

It had not occurred to anybody to be offended.

‘I myself have seen many holy men like this,’ said Lakshmiji. ‘Sometimes they sit completely still. Nothing can move them. They are like a bird on her eggs. Sometimes, though, they are frivolous and laugh, leap and dance. Yes, they can be like a child or a madman. Other times, instructing others, they return to the plane of consciousness to share their wisdom.’

‘Yes, it is the face of a vijnani, no ordinary countenance at all. Look, just look at his face.’

Sampath’s normal usual face! Pinky listened with astonishment to the things she was hearing.

‘Oh,’ said Ammaji, chiming in delightedly as she rolled a betel leaf, ‘he was born with spiritual tendencies. Everybody was saying maybe he is a little mad, maybe he is a little simple-minded, but it is just that he could never interest himself in the material world. One time I gave him five rupees to pay the milkman and the next thing I heard was the milkman shouting: “Oi, ji. Look, ji, what your grandson has done.” There was a strong breeze that day and while the milkman was measuring the milk, he had made a boat out of the bill and floated it into the canister. And hai hai, when it came to school what a terrible time we had. All the time: fail in Hindi, fail in Sanskrit, fail in mathematics, fail in history. Never could he concentrate on his studies.’

‘Ah! For one like him, it is hard to keep the mind on such
petty and mundane matters. He will look out of the window and everywhere there is the glory of God.’

‘It is true,’ said Ammaji. ‘I cannot tell you what a terrible time we have been having. It is very hard for a family. There we would be begging him: “Please study a little; at least pass; we are not asking for any miracles.” But he would continue as he was, sitting for hours, looking at a flower, staring at the sky …’

‘I knew of a sadhu from Rishikesh,’ said a schoolteacher who had travelled all the way from Chittagong, ‘who every day would emerge from his hut, look at a hot spring and meditate. He never practised any other austerities or study. Just the sight of the hot spring would send him into samadhi.’

‘Oh, what terrible trouble we had in the post office.’ Miss Jyotsna, who had become a regular visitor, was happy to claim intimacy with Sampath’s formative years. ‘Sometimes he would make an attempt, but we all said better not to do anything. Better let one of us do it or else there will be such a mess, we will never be able to sort it out.’

‘And such a pretty girl we found for him!’ said Ammaji, getting more and more carried away. ‘But no, he would have nothing to do with her …’

‘What use can a hermit have for ladies? For such a person, it is an affront even to suggest marriage.’

At this everyone nodded their heads. In that moment they too would like to be sitting like this, clean and pure, in such pleasant surroundings without their husbands and wives and extended families. How beautiful the Himalayan foothills were! How bountiful and lush! Butterflies fluttered through the landscape, tree pies and flycatchers flew from tree to tree, lizards sunned themselves on the tin roof of the watchman’s shed, sliding down in a stupor during the
warm afternoon, and the breeze rustled the leaves. Here and there were sprinklings of wild flowers, flowers with the colour and fragrance of fruit; flowers with gaping mouths and tongues that left the devotees tiger-striped with pollen as they passed by; that waved their anthers and brandished their stamens, that sent such scents up into the air, nobody could help lowering their noses into their fragrant petals.

Quietly, but in a sure, pleasant voice, Miss Jyotsna began to sing:

‘There are footprints entering my house, but I have no visitors.
There is the sound of music in the trees, but the wind is still.
There are fingerprints over all my belongings,
But they don’t match those of anyone in this household!
O Lord,
This hide and seek
Would tire even a patient man.’

How pretty she is, thought Sampath, looking down. He had always found her pretty. She was sweet too and had a beautiful voice. Eyes closed, swaying from side to side, she seemed genuinely lost in the words that flew from her small, round, ruby mouth. In a while, he joined her, all the devotees chiming in one by one. They had a wonderful time singing together.

How could he fool all these people? wondered the spy from the Atheist Society peeping out from behind the tree. What hold did he have upon them? What was it about him? He sniffed the air. The scent of cardamom and cloves wreathed up into the leaves from a cooking pot somewhere. Cardamom and cloves and … what else? He sniffed again. The smell entered his nostrils and wormed its way into his brain. Yes … he sniffed. Something else … He made some more notes in his book.

In the mouse-hole-sized room he rented in a house full of lodgers, he drew up a plan for his investigation of the case that included research into Sampath’s past and a list of all the basic information he should know about his suspect: when he slept, whom he talked to, what he ate and drank.

Then the spy remembered the mysterious smell in the orchard that day. A whiff of it still clung to his skin and clothes.

Could Sampath be drugged?

What had been cooking in that pot?

No doubt he was smoking ganja – it grew wild all over the hillside. But perhaps he was taking opium as well? And who knew what else?

The spy thought late into the night.

Far on a hillside roamed the lady responsible for Sampath’s nutrition, a tiny figure on the crest of the university research forest, disappearing and reappearing among the trees, emerging at the point where the forest bordered the fields so as to check the cane traps she had set for pheasants and other wildfowl. They lived in the forest but ate from the grain crops and were as fat and delicious as wildfowl could be. When she spotted one in the trap, she pounced upon it and, without flinching, wrung its neck with a grip of iron. The profusion of greenery and space exhilarated her. And while it reduced her son to a happy stupor, it incited her to a frenzy of exploration.

Making her way into the deepest parts of the woods, losing herself amidst the bamboo groves, the sal forests, the towering moss-laden trees, she climbed higher and higher, taking paths made by goats foraging about the steepest slopes, barely wide enough for her small feet.

‘Beware of the wild cats,’ said the goat herders she met, surprised at seeing this delicate-looking town woman out alone in the forest. ‘Beware of the snakes, the scorpions and leeches.’ But she didn’t care. She waded out into the muddy ponds to collect lotus stems, raided bird’s nests, prised open tightly sealed pods, nibbled at the grasses and buds, dug at roots, shook the fruit from the trees and returned home with her hair wild, her muddy hands full of flowers,
her mouth blue and red from all she had sampled. The corners of her sari were tied into knots containing ginger lilies and rain-fever mushrooms, samples of seeds and bits of bark. Sometimes she brought back a partridge or a jungle quail, strung on to a stick and carried over her shoulder. She returned via the steep path that led to the back of the watchman’s shed so as to avoid the visitors and the talk which had ceased to interest her.

In the tin-covered porch Mr Chawla had constructed at the rear of the house she had set up her outdoor kitchen, spilling over into a grassy patch of ground. Here rows of pickle jars matured in the sun like an army balanced upon the stone wall; roots lay, tortured and contorted, upon a cot as they dried; and tiny wild fruit, scorned by all but the birds, lay cut open, displaying purple-stained hearts. Ginger was buried underground so as to keep it fresh; lemon and pumpkin dried on the roof; all manner of things fermented in tightly sealed tins; chilli peppers and curry leaves hung from the branches of a tree, and so did buffalo curd, dripping from a cloth on its way to becoming paneer.

Newly strong with muscles, wiry and tough despite her slenderness, Kulfi sliced and pounded, ground and smashed, cut and chopped in a chaos of ingredients and dishes. ‘Cumin, quail, mustard seeds, pomelo rind,’ she muttered as she cooked. ‘Fennel, coriander, sour mango. Pandanus flour, lichen and perfumed kewra. Colocassia leaves, custard apple, winter melon, bitter gourd. Khas root, sandalwood, ash gourd, fenugreek greens. Snake-gourd, banana flowers, spider leaf, lotus root …’

She was producing meals so intricate, they were cooked sometimes with a hundred ingredients, balanced precariously within a complicated and delicate mesh of spices – marvellous triumphs of the complex and delicate art of
seasoning. A single grain of one thing, a bud of another, a moist fingertip dipped lightly into a small vial and then into the bubbling pot; a thimble full, a matchbox full, a coconut shell full of dark crimson and deep violet, of dusty yellow spice, the entire concoction simmered sometimes for a day or two on coals that emitted only a glimmer of faint heat or that roared like a furnace as she fanned them with a palm leaf. The meats were beaten to silk, so spiced and fragrant they clouded the senses; the sauces were full of strange hints and dark undercurrents, leaving you on firm ground one moment, dragging you under the next. There were dishes with an aftertaste that exploded upon you and left you gasping a whole half-hour after you’d eaten them. Some that were delicate, with a haunting flavour that teased like the memory of something you’d once known but could no longer put your finger on.

Pickled limes stuffed with cardamom and cumin, crepuscular creatures simmered upon the wood of a scented tree, small river fish baked in green coconuts, rice steamed with nasturtium flowers in the pale hollow of a bamboo stem, mushrooms red – and yellow-gilled, polka-dotted and striped. Desire filled Sampath as he waited for his meals. Spice-laden clouds billowed forth and the clashing cymbals of pots and pans declared the glory of the meal to come, scaring the birds from the trees about him. Kulfi served her son with an anxious look, watched his face like a barometer. Turning blissful lips to the sky, or at other times looking down in pain, with tears pouring from his eyes, his ears exploding, barely able to breathe, Sampath would beg: ‘More! Please, some more.’ And triumphantly Kulfi would rush back to get another helping.

‘You will poison him,’ said Mr Chawla, genuinely worried when she embarked upon these efforts at a new cuisine.
She would manage to ruin their fortunes entirely. ‘If it were not for the family name, straight away I would take you to the mental home,’ he mumbled. As the years passed, he found he understood her less and less instead of more and more. What went on in her mind? he found himself wondering sometimes. Did she think like a human being? He saw expressions of anxiety, of happiness, of peacefulness upon her face, it was true, but was she
considering
how she felt, analysing and reasoning?