‘Dipankar, Babaji.’
‘Dipankar.’ He said the word very lovingly, and Dipankar felt suddenly happy. ‘Dipankar, you must speak to me in English, because I must learn it. I speak only a little. Some foreign people have come to listen to my sermons, so I am learning how to preach and meditate in English too.’
Mr Maitra had been containing himself longer than he could bear. Now he burst out: ‘Baba, I can get no peace. What shall I do? Tell me a way.’
Sanaki Baba looked at him, smiling, and said: ‘I will tell you an unfailing way.’
Mr Maitra said: ‘Tell me now.’
Sanaki Baba said: ‘It is simple. You will get peace.’ He passed his hand backwards — his fingertips scraping the skin — over Mr Maitra’s forehead, and asked: ‘How does it feel?’
Mr Maitra smiled and said, ‘Good.’ Then he went on, pettishly: ‘I take the name of Rama and tell my beads as you advise. Then I feel calm, but afterwards, thoughts come crowding in.’ His heart was on his sleeve and he hardly cared that the Professor was listening. ‘My son — he does not want to live in Brahmpur. He took a three-year extension in his job, and I accepted that, but I did not know that he was building a house in Calcutta. He will live there when he retires, not here. Can I live like a pigeon cooped up in Calcutta? He is not the same boy. I am hurt.’
Sanaki Baba looked pleased. ‘Did I not tell you that none of your sons would come back? You did not believe me.’
‘Yes. What shall I do?’
‘What do you need them for? This is the stage of sannyaas, of renunciation.’
‘But I get no peace.’
‘Sannyaas itself is peace.’
But this did not satisfy Mr Maitra. ‘Tell me some method,’ he pleaded.
Sanaki Baba soothed him. ‘I will, I will,’ he said. ‘When you come next time.’
‘Why not today?’
Sanaki Baba looked around. ‘Some other day. Whenever you want to come, come.’
‘Will you be here?’
‘I will be here until the 20th.’
‘How about the 17th? the 18th?’
‘It will be very crowded because of the full moon bathing day,’ said Sanaki Baba, smiling. ‘Come on the morning of the 19th.’
‘Morning. What time?’
‘19th morning. . eleven o’clock.’
Mr Maitra beamed with pleasure, having succeeded in getting an exact time for Peace. ‘I will come,’ he said delightedly.
‘Now where will you be going?’ asked Sanaki Baba. ‘You can leave Divyakar here.’
‘I am going to visit Ramjap Baba on the northern shore. I have a jeep, so we’ll cross Pontoon Bridge Number Four. Two years ago I visited him and he remembered me — he remembered me from twenty years before. He had a platform in the Ganga then, and you had to wade out to see him.’
‘Hiss mammary berry shurp,’ said Sanaki Baba to Dipankar in English. ‘Old, old, old man. Like a stick.’
‘So now, I’ll go and visit Sanaki Baba,’ said Mr Maitra, getting up.
Sanaki Baba looked nonplussed.
Mr Maitra frowned, and explained again: ‘On the other side of the Ganga.’
‘But I am Sanaki Baba,’ said Sanaki Baba.
‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Maitra, ‘I meant — what’s his name?’
‘Ramjap Baba.’
‘Yes, Ramjap Baba.’
So Mr Maitra left, and after a while the pretty Pushpa showed Dipankar to some straw lying on the sandy ground in one of the tents: this was to be his bed for the next week. The nights were hot, so a single sheet would do.
Pushpa went off to escort the Raja of Marh to Sanaki Baba’s tent.
Dipankar sat down and began to read from Sri Aurobindo. But after an hour or so he became restless and decided to follow Sanaki Baba around.
Sanaki Baba appeared to be very practical and caring — happy, bustling, and un-dictatorial. Dipankar looked at him carefully from time to time. His little eyebrows were sometimes knit in thought. He had the neck of a bull, dark curly hairs on his barrel-chest, and a compact paunch. His hair grew only in a forehead tuft and on the sides. His brown oval pate gleamed in the June sunlight. And sometimes, when he listened, his mouth opened in concentration. Whenever he saw Dipankar looking at him, he smiled back.
Dipankar was also very taken with Pushpa and found himself blinking furiously whenever he spoke to her. But whenever she spoke to him it was in a very serious voice, and with a serious frown.
From time to time the Raja of Marh would appear in Sanaki Baba’s encampment and roar with rage if Sanaki Baba was not in. Someone had told him of Dipankar’s special status, and occasionally during the sermons he would glare at him murderously.
Dipankar felt that the Raja of Marh wanted to be loved, but found it hard to be lovable.
11.10
Dipankar sat in a boat on the Ganga.
An old man, a brahmin, with a caste-mark on his forehead, kept up a loud commentary to the splash of the oars. He compared Brahmpur to Banaras, to the great confluence at Allahabad, to Hardwar, and to Sagar Island where the Ganga met the sea.
‘In Allahabad, the meeting of the blue waters of the Yamuna and the brown waters of the Ganga is like the meeting of Rama and Bharat,’ said the old man piously.
‘But what about the third river of the Triveni which meets them there?’ asked Dipankar. ‘What would you compare the river Saraswati to?’
The old man looked at Dipankar, annoyed. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.
‘From Calcutta,’ said Dipankar. He had asked the question innocently, and was sorry he had annoyed the man.
‘Hmmmh!’ snorted the old man.
‘And where are you from?’ asked Dipankar.
‘From Salimpur.’
‘Where is that?’ asked Dipankar.
‘It is in Rudhia District,’ said the old man. He was now bending down and examining his disfigured toenails.
‘And where is that?’ persisted Dipankar.
The old man looked at Dipankar incredulously.
‘How far is it from here?’ asked Dipankar, seeing that the old man was not going to reply without further prompting.
‘It is seven rupees away,’ said the old man.
‘All right,’ yelled the boatman, ‘here we are. Now, good people, bathe your fill and pray for the good of all men, including myself.’
But the old man would have none of it. ‘This is not the right spot,’ he shouted. ‘I have been here every year for twenty years and you cannot fool me. It is there.’ He pointed to a spot in the middle of the line of boats.
‘A policeman without a uniform,’ said the boatman in disgust. Reluctantly, he pulled on the oars a few more times, and took the boat to the indicated spot. Here there were quite a number of bathers already. The water was shallow, and it was possible to stand. The splashing and chanting of the bathers merged with the sound of a temple bell. Marigolds and rose petals floated in the muddy water, together with bits of soggy pamphlets, pieces of straw, the indigo-coloured wrapping of matchboxes, and empty packets made of stitched leaves.
The old man stripped down to his lungi, revealing the holy thread that stretched from his left shoulder to his right hip. In an even louder voice than before he exhorted the pilgrims to bathe. ‘Hana lo, hana lo,’ he shouted, spoonerizing the syllables in his excitement. Dipankar stripped to his underwear and plunged in.