If we had stayed quiet we would have got away with it. But Piku tried to make one of the foreigners notice her by standing up and shouting. She could be so stupid. The man turned. He was tall, with yellow robes, and he had a long beard and long hair and held prayer beads. I have never forgotten his face because he was young, but his hair was snow-white, his eyelashes were white, and his eyes seemed white too. He looked around, trying to find where the shouts had come from. I pulled Piku to the ground and behind the bushes. I knew there would be trouble if we were spotted. I led her away through the grass at a crawl. I thought we had made it. Then we heard a snuffling and growling and there, behind us, was Bhola and with him on a chain was one of the dogs that roamed the ashram’s grounds at night.
Bhola’s teeth were yellow and red because he chewed tobacco all day. Below his shirt he wore a lungi. Seeing us at the boundary he dropped the dog’s chain to the ground as if he had forgotten there was a fierce animal at the end of it. He only stepped on its chain at the last instant, when the dog was very close to us. He rolled his lungi to his knees and put his hands on his hips. One of his hands held a bamboo switch.
“So, shall I let him go?” he said. He said many more things, but for some reason this is what I recall. Maybe I thought I would be eaten alive by that dog.
Piku was smiling at Bhola, showing all her teeth. As if smiling would get us out of trouble. Bhola picked up the dog’s chain and poked her with his freed foot. He said, “Hey, nothing to smile about, you dolt. Nothing at all.”
I think of myself then, standing up very straight, hands on my waist, daring him to do his worst, saying, “We haven’t done anything, you can’t hurt us.” Was I really so brave? My head must have been just about level with his waist. My hair was still in two plaits. I knew that only a fortnight had passed since Bhola burnt all Champa’s things. I didn’t care. I had no box full of things for him to burn.
Bhola tapped his switch against his hips. He prodded us with it towards Guruji’s cottage. He kept stopping to chat with people he passed. Piku’s hand was hot and sweaty in mine. I held it tight. The dog paused to lift a leg against the bushes. Bhola hit it with his switch and it yowled. The dog had pointed ears and red fur. It looked like a fox.
We waited by Guruji’s cottage the whole morning. The other students, boys and girls, walked past giving us curious looks. We were left out of lessons and games. We stood in the hot sun like beggars. Everyone went off for prayers and we kept standing in the sun. I can’t remember how long we waited. When Guruji arrived, his hair was blowing in the breeze, a black halo. He kept his eyes on us as Bhola told him we had been found near the boundary, trying to cross the fence. I thought I glimpsed the shadow of a smile on his face and began to get my voice back. I opened my mouth. Guruji raised a hand to stop me saying anything. He told Piku to leave.
Guruji sometimes spoke Hindi with us, and sometimes English. People said he had never been to school, yet miraculously he could understand whichever language his devotees spoke in and he could speak them equally well. There were many stories about Guruji. They said he had divine powers even when he was a child. He could turn into a cat or horse or wolf, then come back to human form again. As a child he could tell what people were thinking and when he spoke out their thoughts a deep grown-up voice would come out of him even though he was only five or six at that time. Guruji’s voice was soft. He never had to raise it, not even when he had a hundred people around him. When he spoke it was as if all other sounds stopped so that his every whisper could be heard from far away — that is what his devotees said. Now he only said, “Come inside”.
I followed him into the inner room of his cottage. Padma Devi, who usually sat in the outer one, was not there that day. Guruji shut the door behind us. He locked it.
I remember every bit of that room. Its walls were covered with photographs of Guruji meeting people. They must have been grand people. I did not know who they were. In the photographs most of them were bowing to him and he had his palm raised to bless them. On one side of the room was a bed. It was low and wide, with carved animal paws for legs. It had white sheets and ochre bolsters and pillows. There was an equally low desk on another side with a square asan on the floor for sitting on. The desk had a book on it with a plain cardboard cover. A steel cupboard with glass doors stood against one wall and another wall had a row of pegs from which Guruji’s robes were hanging.
I saw that one wall of this room was dark blue, and had framed pictures of birds on it. I could recognise red and blue birds I had seen at the ashram. There was a bulbul and also a house sparrow. The painted birds were brightly coloured and beautiful, nestling in green leaves among ripe mangoes or red hibiscus flowers.
Guruji drew the curtains. He sat down on the chair where he had first seated me on his lap all those years ago.
I had already forgotten I was there to be punished. “Who painted those birds?” I asked him. I had to stand on tiptoe to look at them from up close. I knew I could never do these with my school crayons.
“I painted them, of course,” Guruji smiled. “Didn’t you know that? Birds eat out of my hands. I can catch any bird I want to. I only have to sit and chirrup, Choo, choo, choo — like that, and they come. See that line of birds there? They are exactly like the real ones. Go on, touch the feathers.”
He was pointing to a shelf in the room in which there were birds sitting in a row. I did not dare to touch them.
“They aren’t alive, child, they won’t peck you,” he said. “They’re stuffed. So that they are still enough to paint.”
At one of the windows was a bird in a cage. This one was definitely alive: it hopped about and screeched. It had glossy green feathers on its back and a red band at its throat. Maybe when I was out on the flowerbed that time, it was the bird making those strange screaming noises.
“That one’s next. It’s a parakeet. It’ll be a big painting,” he said. “Go on, give it a chilli to eat.”
When I did not go towards the bird he patted his lap and said, “Come here.”
I climbed on to his lap as I had before and he settled me there and said, “Tell me why you went to that fence. You know you are not allowed, and there is a reason why. If people from outside see you, they might report you to the police. And then what? Do you want to be taken away and locked up? You must do as I say or God will be angry and you’ll get into trouble.”
I pulled away from him and said, “I was only looking. I didn’t do anything.”
He pressed me back against his chest. “Some things are forbidden, you know that, don’t you? We need rules when we live together.”
His face was very close to mine. I could see where his cheeks had tiny black bristles from shaving and I thought of the way my father used to sit at a mirror tacked on the wall outside our hut in the morning and shave. When I was very small, my father would rub his bristly cheek against mine and I used to squeal when he did that.
Guruji said, “You don’t always understand the reasons why I tell you to do some things and not do other things, but there is a reason and one day you will understand it was for your own good. You have to hide for a while because there is a war. If you are found wandering outside now, they will lock you up in jail. Just wait a little, then you can do whatever you want to.” He said, “Do you trust me? Don’t you think I will always do everything for your good? Didn’t I save you from the war and from starving on the streets without your parents?”
He said, “Didn’t I tell you the day you came here that I am your father, mother and God? Can you disobey all of them?”