Free A River Sutra by Gita Mehta Page B

    Cheered by an opportunity to give pleasure, Mr. Chagla moved toward the kitchen with his rolling walk.
    My house had already been swept and dusted. The green-painted wooden shutters were open and the papers on my table rusded in the breeze. I sat down to work but found I could not concentrate on the list of accounts Mr. Chagla had prepared for my approval.
    The teasing of the women had left me restless. Behind me I could hear the rushing of the waterfalls. I pushed the papers away and walked to the end of my small lawn to look down at the Narmada River.
    At noon the sun is so strong its harsh light gives the river the appearance of beaten metal, but at this hour the morning light catches every nuance of the water's movement. Below me the wind was tossing the rippling waves up so that they sparkled in the light, before disappearing into the shadows below. I watched the water sparkling and disappearing, sparkling and disappearing, like the anklets encircling a woman's foot, and thought of the Ascetic watching the dancing woman formed by the rivulets from his own penance.
    A flock of parakeets, messengers of Kama, God of Love, settled in a green cloud on the mango tree shading my head. I smiled, remembering how the Ascetic had sneered at Kama's power, even though the gods had warned the Ascetic that he too must feel Desire for without Desire the play of the worlds would cease.
    But still the Ascetic had sneered as he was pierced by the five flower-tipped arrows unleashed by Kama from his sugarcane bow—the Enchanter, the Inflamer, the Parcher, the Paroxysm of Desire, the Carrier of Death.
    Then Maya, the Illusion of the Worlds, had appeared—the only woman capable of arousing the lust of the Destroyer of Worlds. Enraged at the destruction of his meditation, the Ascetic had opened his third eye, the Lotus of Command, and reduced Kama to ashes, even as he himself was being consumed by Desire.
    Suddenly I was alarmed by the prospect of our new visitor. My colleague's letter had said his nephew was interested in tribal customs, but what did the young man really know about the beliefs of the tribals?
    Did he know the goddess who had incinerated even the Great Ascetic in the fires of longing, the goddess whose power had been acknowledged by the ancient sages with such fearful names as the Terrible One, the Implacable Mother, the Dark Lady, the Destroyer of Time, the Everlasting Dream—did he know the goddess had been worshipped by the tribal inhabitants of these jungles for thousands of years?
    Now the teasing of the Vano women seemed more threatening than Tariq Mia's tale of murder and suicide. Would a brilliant mind be enough to protect the young mem from the dark forces of the jungles, from the tribal worship of that Desire which even their conquerors had acknowledged to be invincible, describing it as the firstborn seed of the mind?
    "Sir, taste this." Mr. Chagla was standing at my side with a glass of sugarcane juice. "You will definitely find it up to the mark, sir."
    His eager face smiled encouragingly at me, pulling me back into the day.
    A full month passed before I heard from my colleague again. By then the clusters of mango blossoms had hardened into fruit and I had long forgotten my brief moment of anxiety.
    Those varieties of mangoes not sweet enough to eat were already sliced and pickled, marinating in lemon juice in large glass jars on the ledge outside the pantry. Mr. Chagla had arranged for the delivery of bundles of sugarcane and I had myself stirred the boiling cane juice. Now there were enough hard rounds of brown cane sugar sitting in the dark, net-covered larder to last us through the monsoons.
    Mr. Chagla laughed when I passed him the telegram from my old colleague, informing me that Nitin Bose was arriving by train the next day.
    "We will have no juice for him, sahib. But don't worry. The cook will some way revive Mr. Bose from his dusty journey."
    "Prepare the north suite, Chagla. Apparently our visitor is