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  As he approached the house, his mind swung back to Rahul. Why didn’t he hate him, this painful remembrance of his wife’s infidelity? But that was beyond him, he knew. Even amidst the din of traffic, en route to Darya Ganj, he imagined himself hearing the child’s last words.

  ‘Yes, I’m coming to you, my dear,’ he said to himself, as he knocked at the door. He hadn’t realized that it was already a little after twelve.

  Purnima, who’d somehow reached the house ahead of him, answered the door. Quickly, he walked through the drawing room, looking momentarily at Jamini Roy’s ‘Beggar Girl’ with her agonized blank stare. He turned into the bedroom where, on a leather sofa near the double bed, lay Rahul, dressed in the sailor’s uniform he’d brought him from Bombay. The child looked as though he was just asleep, tranquil and happy, after the day’s hectic play.

  All around the sofa ran little rills of water dripping from the large slabs of ice, heaped one on top of the other. Petals of roses and jasmine lay strewn on the sofa, and all over the floor. Since Gautam had removed his shoes out of respect for the dead, he felt the viscid wetness under his bare feet.

  As his eyes lingered on Rahul’s face, he remained oblivious of Sarita’s presence in the room. Sitting on a stool, far away in a corner, she watched him deeply engrossed in the child. Indeed, Gautam loved him very much—his wan face bore ample testimony to it.

  Then, as Gautam looked into the corner, their eyes met: a cold, silent encounter, neither of them uttering a word. This woman whose raucous, nagging voice had always rocked the house, now sat mute, almost vanquished. A riffle of compassion ran through him.

  Gautam now sat on the sofa, near Rahul, caressed his face and head. But just as he bent to kiss him on the forehead, he heard a knock at the door. Purnima rushed to answer it, but the person had already walked in. Mohinder! Two pairs of glazed eyes collided with each other.

  Gautam looked at his watch; it showed a half past twelve. Well, wasn’t he himself to blame for first coming late and then overstaying? Hadn’t Purnima discreetly assured him that there would be ‘nobody’ around ‘till noon’? Now that he’d stayed on well beyond the deadline, ‘Mr Nobody’ had made his appearance on the scene—as Rahul’s father and Sarita’s paramour. Gautam felt a stab of revulsion for this man and that woman.

  Immediately, he got up from the sofa and turned towards the door. He must clear out at once, he thought, and let the real parents take over. Wasn’t he like a neighbour who, after offering his condolences, should promptly withdraw? As the three of them looked at one another, it appeared as though they were acting in a pantomime—two men, a woman and a sleeping child.

  Then Gautam swung out of the room. Once out of the house, he felt the hot sun beating down his neck. The afternoon heat was sizzling like a furnace. How cool it had been in there, he recalled, near those slabs of ice. But then the other blaze now overtook him—of intense loathing.

  He had hardly gone a few yards down the street when he saw Mohinder running after him, breathlessly.

  ‘A moment, p-l-e-a-s-e!’

  The words blared into the air; the silence of the past half hour was shattered. What was this man up to? Gautam braced himself for the confrontation.

  To hell with this man, he thought; if only he could bash his head against some lamp post.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to have a word with you, alone.’

  ‘Will you drop the prologue?’ Gautam shot off. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I know I’ve wronged you but, really, I’m not to blame.’

  There was strange pathos in his voice. He’d stopped in the middle of the street, his right hand nervously fidgeting with a curl near his forehead.

  ‘I have no time to listen to all this. What’s done is done.’ Then, after a pause, he resumed, almost hissing: ‘Why don’t you marry her now?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Surely you understand, you deadly viper,’ Gautam blared out.

  ‘Maybe I deserve to be called that … But you loved him.’

  ‘Who?’

  In his anger, Gautam couldn’t fathom what Mohinder had meant.

  ‘Rahul.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gautam almost stuttered and strode away.

  A man from the house opposite peeped out. From the street’s bend, Gautam looked back to see Trivedi talking to Mohinder.

  7

  Designed as an inverted charpoy, almost like the King’s Chapel at Cambridge, and built three years after the Indian Mutiny, in 1860, St. John’s Cathedral stands at the northern end of Mahavir Street, about half a mile from the Red Fort. Its steeples tower high above a marketplace cluttered with hardware merchants, drapers and wholesale dealers in stationery. Except for two painted glass windows on either side of the main entrance, depicting scenes from the Bible, all other windows are bare.

  But what strikes even a casual visitor to St. John’s is its sturdy massiveness, its impregnable strength. After the end of the British rule, on 15 August 1947, this cathedral acquired a unique significance, as though the Englishman, who first landed on the Indian soil as a mere trader, and later ruled as the absolute monarch of this subcontinent, had now assumed his new role as a missionary. So, all the affluent Anglican missions in England started pouring generous donations into this church which, they believed, was now destined to ‘annex’ India’s spirit, if not her body. No wonder, Father Jones felt himself unequal to the new burdens and responsibilities; so much had happened within the brief span of a few weeks only.

  On a quiet warm Thursday morning, Father Jones walked across the vast courtyard, holding a pocket Bible in his right hand. He was draped in a white silken robe, his velvet hood dangling at the nape of his neck. At the main entrance, he was joined by two of his junior churchmen, while inside the cathedral were Gautam and Berry, already seated, looking like two nervous candidates about to be interviewed for some post.

  As Father Jones saw Gautam, he walked towards him.

  ‘Good morning Mr Mehta,’ he greeted him with a gracious smile.

  ‘Good morning, Father,’ Gautam responded; then, turning to Berry, he added, ‘This is my friend, Birendra Dhawan. He’ll be my witness.’

  ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr Dhawan …’

  Then the bishop beckoned Gautam to follow him up the rostrum. To its left stood a large bronze statue of Christ on the Cross, while to the right was a mural painting of the Madonna and the Child. As Gautam went down on his knees, Father Jones began to read from the Bible. Gautam was particularly touched by a passage from Joshua in which Moses asks his followers to cross the river Jordan into the land of new promise. Wasn’t he too about to cross over to freedom!

  This was followed by the sprinkling of holy water on his head and shoulders. As Gautam rose to his feet, the bishop said: ‘Since you are now one of Jesus’s flock, the Lord shall take care of you.’

  There was a brief silence. Then the bishop asked the small congregation to join him in prayer.

  ‘O Lord, this man has come to you for your blessing. Let him share your glory, partake of your divine grace. All these years he has wandered about seeking you, and now that he kneels at your feet, accept him, O Lord—help him, guide him, forgive him all his past sins. He seems to have suffered endlessly. What joy can there be without you? So for every moment of pain he has undergone, let him have years of happiness. Lend him courage, for that’s what he’ll need most hereafter. Fill the remaining years of his life with love, light and song. Amen!’

  After this simple ceremony, Father Jones led everyone into his office in the rear wing of the cathedral, where Gautam signed in a large brown register. Berry put his signature as his witness. The other two churchmen signed on behalf of St. John’s Association. Immediately thereafter, Gautam received a large golden card, which looked like a wedding invitation.

  After shaking hands with the bishop and thanking him profusely, Gautam and Berry hurried across the churchyard to the front gate. Here Gautam showed him the spot wher
e he’d seen Abdul Rahim’s body lying in a pool of blood.

  Hardly had they stepped out of the cathedral when Berry turned on his banter: ‘How do you feel, Mr Moses Kaufmann?’

  ‘I’m not Jewish, I’m Christian,’ Gautam replied, smiling.

  ‘Not that I’d know the difference … Still, do you feel any different?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Gautam answered, solemnly this time. ‘But how did the bishop’s prayer strike you? … Wishing me years of happiness and all that. If only he knew how much I needed such a blessing. Of course, pain for Father Jones is merely living without Christ, not the trauma of a wife’s betrayal.’

  ‘Religion never gets that far anyway,’ said Berry. ‘But the prayer was certainly very moving, even for someone like me. These people, however, are quite professional, you know,’ he continued. ‘They know how to spout such mouthfuls.’

  ‘Oh, you unbelieving thing!’ Gautam said, nudging him. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing. How would your Hindu priest have done it? He would have just chanted a few Sanskrit mantras, asked you to sit cross-legged near the sacred fire, and thrown spoonfuls of ghee and camphor into the flames … These pundits are real ringmasters, you know, mumbling incomprehensibly all the time.’

  ‘Bravo!’ Berry exclaimed. ‘Already gone overboard! You’ll make a blooming fanatic Christian, surely.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Gautam. ‘But you can’t deny that Jesus has been my real saviour.’

  ‘Here’s then an occasion for celebration,’ Berry said. ‘Even a hot cup of tea should do since the bars wouldn’t serve whisky at this time … I wonder, though, what’s wrong with drinking whisky at noon? Stupid conventions!’

  ‘I know if you had a pool of Scotch in your house, you’d be swimming about like a Chinese goldfish, from dawn to dusk, till you’d boozed it all off.’

  ‘What a thought! I wish I had the money to do it, really.’

  As they stopped by a wayside tea-stall, further down Mahavir Street, an outburst of shouting hit their ears—‘Allah-ho-Akbar!’ There appeared from the street’s bend a large mob of Muslims armed with knives, swords, spears and sticks. The crowd was led by a young tough who was blaring away through a microphone: ‘Khoon ka badla khoon! Blood for blood!’ The others joined in: ‘Kill the bloody kafirs! Castrate them! Rape their women!’ It was all rounded off with a piercing yell: ‘Ya Ali, ya Mohammad!’

  The tea vendor, a Hindu, at once pulled down his shutters and disappeared into the house behind his stall, leaving Gautam and Berry alone on the pavement. Before they could flee, a middle-aged man from the crowd had already spotted them.

  ‘There—catch those kafirs!’ he bawled.

  Instantly, three hoodlums, brandishing their knives and swords, closed in. The first, a moustached fellow, caught Gautam by the collar and nearly lifted him off the ground like a sack of rice, while the other two pounced upon Berry.

  ‘Spare us please—we’re Christians!’ Berry pleaded.

  The moustached creature now dropped Gautam and turned to Berry.

  ‘We’ll find out if you’re lying.’

  A fourth man who’d joined the others shouted: ‘Strip them!’

  But before they could do anything, Berry called out to Gautam: ‘Show them the card, brother’, then, looking at the assailants, he said, ‘or, you may ask Father Jones at St. John’s, just across the street.’

  ‘All right,’ said a bystander, holding a long spear in his left hand. ‘Let’s see the card.’

  At once Gautam pulled out his certificate of conversion and handed it to the moustached fellow, who appeared to be utterly illiterate. Turning it over in his hand, he looked blankly at the words.

  ‘Let’s go—they’re Christians all right,’ he said.

  The mob hustled onward, leaving Gautam and Berry dazed and unnerved. They knew that if they tried to bolt they’d again arouse suspicion. No, they should walk away casually into some bylane.

  Suddenly a side-door on the pavement opened and a hand pulled Berry inside.

  ‘Ask your friend in too,’ said the man, in a whisper.

  ‘But we’re Christians,’ Berry mumbled, his face losing colour.

  ‘Never mind,’ came the prompt reply. ‘I’ve heard it all through my window. I’m only trying to help you both.’

  ‘Thank you, but …’

  Berry’s eyes fell on a wall calendar showing a massive-chested Swami Dayanand, a stump in one hand and the Satyarath Prakash in the other. ‘Ah, an Arya Samajist!’ he said to himself, in a spurt of recognition.

  At once Berry stepped out and pushed Gautam inside, who was looking about stupefied.

  ‘It’s all right,’ whispered Berry.

  But Gautam too had seen the calendar.

  ‘Is your friend really a Christian?’ the man asked Berry.

  ‘Well, sort of …’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That’s a long story,’ said Berry.

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to tell me. But then neither of you looks Christian. It’s just my instinct!’ the man said, with a sparkle of omniscience in his eyes. He then turned to Berry. ‘And is he your brother?’

  ‘A friend. And I’m a Hindu—sort of.’

  ‘Quite amusing,’ the man said. ‘Two sorts!’ After a brief pause, somewhat puzzled, he asked, ‘Your names, please?’

  ‘I’m Birender Dhawan,’ Berry replied, ‘and he’s Gautam Mehta.’

  ‘That has cleared up a lot of mystery.’ The man smiled.

  ‘Has it?’ Berry would have laughed out but for the gruesomeness of the situation.

  ‘Well, I’m Gopinath Trivedi and, since we’re just a few Hindu families around here, I always put up a large green flag with a crescent, whenever a Muslim mob passes by.’

  ‘Very ingenious,’ said Gautam, who had so far kept silent.

  Gopinath felt somewhat exposed before these young men. Was he, after all, any different from them? But in these turbulent times, announcing one’s identity on any occasion could be sheer foolhardiness. Perhaps, he thought, even Swami Dayanand would have condoned such a subterfuge.

  Gopinath now ushered them into his drawing room. ‘You may have to wait here awhile,’ he said, ‘The mob is still prowling about. They’re out to avenge the killing, a few days ago, of an old Muslim, near St. John’s.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Gautam said.

  ‘Heard about it?’

  ‘I was there when it happened.’

  ‘Do you live around here?’

  ‘No, I live,’ then suddenly Gautam realized that he should have said he used to live until a few days ago, ‘in Darya Ganj, down Geeta Street.’

  Gopinath’s face brightened up.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘I have a cousin who lives out there—Padamnath Trivedi.’

  ‘Of course, I know him very well,’ said Gautam. ‘He’s my neighbour.’

  ‘Is he? God help you,’ he said. ‘Well, I’m a little scared of him—he’s too meddlesome.’

  ‘Then you should know him better,’ Gautam said, thinking it unwise to speak out about this scandalmonger.

  Since Gautam didn’t hear any other voice in the house, he wondered if this man lived alone, like his cousin. But he certainly sounded quite different, so gracious and helpful.

  There was a brief silence. While Berry and Gautam sat near the window, Gopinath took a seat in a corner, under the mantelpiece. Suddenly, there was another outburst of yelling in the street. As Berry drew aside the curtain, he exclaimed: ‘Oh God!’ and looked away. Then Gautam and Gopinath also peered through, only to look stunned.

  An old shaggy cow, that was muzzling into a heap of garbage for something to chew, had been hemmed in by a few Muslims.

  ‘The kafir cow!’ one of them shouted, and hurled his spear at the animal.

  The weapon pierced through its emaciated belly, letting out a jet of deep, red blood. It was amazing to see how even this skeletal animal had hoarded up so much blood. The cow bellowed out in pain,
almost a heart-rending human cry, then slumped to the ground, bashing its head against a lamp post.

  The others now swooped down upon it with knives and spears, tearing apart its body, limb by limb. On their faces, glowing with demoniac rage in the blazing summer sun, was the lust for blood—the blood of even a ‘Hindu cow’. As the animal lay still in its pool of blood, a vulture flapped down from a nearby tree and began to tear apart its intestines.

  The sight nauseated Gautam so much that he nearly threw up.

  ‘What satanic butchery!’ he said. ‘Strange, how even the animals have been branded Hindu.’

  ‘Is it the aggrieved heart of a Hindu?’ asked Gopinath.

  ‘No,’ replied Gautam. ‘It has nothing to do with my being a Hindu or a Christian. The sight of any killing, of man or animal, sickens me.’

  ‘Even the killing of a pig?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Gopinath asked, smiling.

  Gautam was too deeply agitated to let this man turn on his banter amidst such a grim spectacle. He stood up and asked Berry: ‘Shouldn’t we be moving on?’

  ‘It seems the cow has done it for you,’ Gopinath pressed on. ‘But you know you can’t leave—the coast is not yet clear.’

  ‘It looks all right now,’ Gautam said, looking through the curtain. ‘Only a few stragglers out there—all unarmed, I guess. The fury has spent itself out.’ Then rising, he said to Berry, ‘Come, let’s go.’

  But Gopinath, who was now afraid of remaining alone in the house, again tried to dissuade them: ‘I think it’s only a lull before the next storm,’ he said. ‘It may erupt any time.’

  ‘Not so soon,’ said Berry. ‘Both parties will need a little time for the next round. So this is the moment to sneak out.’

  But hardly had they moved to the front door when they heard a poignant cry—a woman’s. Rushing back to the window, they looked through the curtains again and saw a few assaulters pulling away at a young woman’s sari, while a man in dhoti and kurta stood close by with folded hands, beseeching them to let her go. Suddenly, one of the ruffians turned around to kick him in the stomach.