The boy looked at Dev, as if asking permission to speak. “Arun,” he said.
Arun, then. Arun would get a big tip.
Arun rowed north, announcing the names of the ghats: Bachhraj, Panchkot, Shivala. Huge murals on the walls: blue-skinned gods in repose, a red-lettered exhortation to “Please Do Sri Ram Jay Ram Jay Ram / Jay Ram Ram Jay Ram Ram” against a yellow background. At the top of the steps sat a clump of saffron-turbaned men, three of them naked and white from head to ankles with ash. No doubt holy. What would it take to reach the state of being heedless to the world? To have nothing — not even clothes? No attachments whatsoever.
Dev took in everything with a bemused smile.
“Some of those men look Caucasian,” Ted said.
“Sadhus,” Dev said. “Holy men are called sadhus. And there may be some Caucasians among the sadhus.”
“Interesting.”
“Not particularly,” Dev said. “Westerners put a spiritual gloss on their charas smoking. But what they do is drop out of society, abdicate their responsibilities. They appear as Shaiva sadhus but are little more than beggars. They cannot find themselves at home, and therefore think they can find themselves in Hinduism, Jainism. I did my residency in New York and could have stayed in the States if I wanted. But India is my home.”
Dev uncapped a plastic bottle and dipped it into the Ganges, and for a second, Ted didn’t understand why. Then he remembered: the wife.
“How’s the water?” he asked. He tried to keep his voice light, playful.
Dev screwed the cap back on. “See for yourself.” What Dev had in the bottle was almost clear. It looked almost clean.
Ted dipped his hand into the river. It was warm.
“I pray you don’t have cuts or open sores on your hand,” Dev said.
“Nope.”
“I would advise against putting that hand near your eyes or mouth. All the sewers in the Old City drain into the Ganges. And factories upriver deposit heavy metals and toxic chemicals. The water is nearly anoxic. It’s driven the Ganges dolphin into near extinction. They are so rare that it’s considered good luck to see one.”
And yet, none of this stopped the bathers. Women washed themselves fully clothed. They splashed the tops of their heads and let it run down their faces. They didn’t fear the water. They had a spiritual and physical fortitude that Ted did not. Dev had called him a tourist. Not exact, but not incorrect, either. He was more than a tourist, less than a pilgrim. He thought again about calling Avartis to see if they had an India branch. Or better yet, once the WTO ruled in favor of India, he could come to work with the manufacturer of Triacept. The WTO ruling would embolden other countries — Brazil, Thailand, the African nations — to produce their own generics. India could be a hub, a major exporter of Triacept. Their factories were already in production; it’d be a matter of ramping up production, marketing worldwide. That was where Ted could come in.
Ted’s life stretched before him — not the one he was living, but the one he could be living. He and Dev, living in a modest New Delhi apartment. He saw it as clearly as he could see Dev sitting across from him, Dev and his curious smile, the one Ted could not decipher. He saw a lifetime of smiles, and he saw himself peeling away their mysteries, one by one. The nuances, the permutations: the position of his lips, where his eyes focused, how his cheeks puffed. He saw himself waking to that smile every morning and forecasting, from it, the course of the day.
The sun was low, hanging just above the scalloped temple spires and the flat roofs of the guesthouses. The city looked as if it were built of pink stone. Religious chants collided midair with Bollywood rock songs as each balcony provided its own sound track. The ancient world and the modern, simultaneous. Everything here was a contradiction.
Ahead in the river, something bobbed, breaking the surface as if gasping for breath. Arun batted it away with an oar.
“Body,” Arun said. He grinned, as if he’d just played a prank.
“The poor cannot afford cremation,” Dev said. “So they cast bodies into the water. The situation deteriorated to where the government released snapping turtles into the Ganges to devour the corpses. But the turtles couldn’t survive in the water, and when the dead turtles washed up downstream, the poor villagers ate them. Those villagers too grew sick and died, and their bodies were released into the Ganges. And so the great wheel turns.”
Ted wanted to lay his hand on Dev’s, to remind Dev that he was there. To share pleasure was also to share burdens. But not with Arun looking on. Other boats floated by, ones carrying a single Western tourist and longer ones with Indian women who lined up on the rim like macaws. A motorized boat, lit up like a dinner cruise. Everywhere: witnesses.
Dev fiddled, absentmindedly, with the cap of the Ganges water bottle. Ted could not imagine Dev’s wife — she was hazy, featureless. How could he compete with an unknown force? He was the other woman. Maybe Ted could have his own apartment for Dev to come and go as he pleased. Maybe—
Ridiculous, he could hear Dev saying. It was ridiculous to live in the future; it was ridiculous even to try to guess at it.
An encompassing quiet overtook the area. The river reclaimed its voice, its sloshing, its pull and tow. Another blackout. Dev reclined, fingers laced behind his head, the water bottle forgotten for now. From the shore, disappointed shouts, though people didn’t panic or cease their activity. This was a way of life.
“Burning ghat,” Arun said.
This was the second ghat, the larger. Manikarnika. At the other, Harishchandra, there had only been one or two bodies burning at a time. Here, Ted counted at least seven, with room for more. The hillside was blackened, as if it could not eat enough wood. Logs were stacked twenty to thirty feet high, balanced precariously, and some had spilled down haphazardly, until the land looked striated, scarred. At the river, boats brought more logs, and men in dirty T-shirts carried logs atop their heads, threading past the bodies that had just been bathed in the river and past the burning bodies. Colorful, noisy processions brought new bodies covered in marigold garlands and orange cloth.
Arun spoke. “He wants to know,” Dev said, “if you know how this ghat got its name.” Arun, giddy as if telling a joke, blurted it out. One day, Shiva and his wife, Parvati, were sitting by a water tank when one of Parvati’s earrings fell in. Shiva dug in the ground until a deep well had formed.
“Mani means jewel,” Dev said, “and karnika means well.”
If Dev were to drop, say, his wedding ring into the river, how far could Ted dive before he ran out of breath, before he was carried away by the current? Would Dev notice him slipping into the water?
A man waded in the water near the base of the ghat. He held a large pan.
“What’s he doing?” Ted asked.
Dev transferred the question to Arun.
“He’s looking for jewelry or gold teeth that may have been in the ashes,” Dev said. “He feels for them with his feet.”
“Hard way to make a living.”
“There are worse ways,” Dev said. “He could be a pharmaceutical-company lackey.” Again, that smile.
The sun had now set, and Arun rowed them back the way they had come.
“Here’s what I wanted you to see,” Dev said.
“What am I looking at?”
“Ganga Aarti,” Arun said.
A jumble of boats had gathered around Dashashwamedh Ghat, and Arun jockeyed for position. Along the steps, two older women laid out leaf bowls. Five platforms stuck out from the steps like diving boards, and a young priest sat on each. Each wore a yellow cloth draped over his hip and left shoulder.