When one of the men had taken him back to the tea stall he found his clothes in a heap on the bench, where he had left them. The phone was gone. Johnny Toppo said, “Babu, what do I know? I didn’t touch that bundle. You left it, I was serving customers. The bundle was there — nobody came near it.” Then something seemed to occur to him and he yelled “Raghu!”
Far down in the other direction, Suraj could see that the boy who had been struggling with an iron bucket was now talking to a man — he could not be sure, but he thought it was the surly guide with the long red fingernail, the fellow who had taken him through the temple. They paid no attention to Johnny Toppo’s shout. Suraj felt a deep fatigue overtake him and sat down on the sand to wait.
Johnny Toppo strode forward, cupped his mouth with his palms and yelled at the top of his voice. “Raghu! You little prick. Are you deaf? I swear today’s your last day with me, I swear it. I’ve had enough.”
This time the boy appeared to hear Johnny Toppo. He left the guide in mid-sentence and ran towards the tea stall, arrived panting. Johnny Toppo snarled, “Take your time, you’ll have plenty now that you’re sacked. This Babu left his telephone with his clothes here, have you seen it?”
Raghu shrugged and said, “I’ve got better things to do than look after someone’s old clothes.” Johnny Toppo flung his arm out and hit the boy’s head. “Rude bastard,” he said. “Better things to do, eh?”
He turned the boy around and patted his clothes. His hand stopped when he reached a pocket on the boy’s shorts.
The boy shouted, “I haven’t taken his phone! This is my phone! I just got it, this minute.”
Johnny Toppo picked up his iron ladle from the pan steaming with tea. The stall was hot and smoky, he was sweating from being at the stove.
“Your phone, eh?” he said. “What d’you take me for? An old donkey? Your phone, you lazy scum? Where did you get the money for a phone?”
He slammed the ladle into the boy’s back. “Did you steal the money from me, or the phone from him?” he shouted. “My shop’s got no place for thieves.”
The boy howled with pain. “I haven’t taken it, I haven’t taken it! This is my phone! That temple Babu gave it to me!” He pulled out the phone from his pocket. “See Babu,” he begged, holding it towards Suraj, “is this your phone?”
Johnny Toppo had the boy by a tuft of his hair. He hit him again. The more Raghu howled, the harder came the ladle until Suraj snapped out of his stupor and managed to stand up. He held Johnny Toppo’s arms back and shouted, “Stop! Stop right now. That’s not mine! Leave him alone! He’s a kid!”
He turned away from the tea stall and started towards his hotel, but his knees buckled, his stomach cramped, and his feet kept sinking into the sand.
*
Vidya and Gouri were still troubled that they had forgotten to fast yesterday on Shivaratri. A day which their mothers, and their mothers’ mothers before them, had spent without food or a drop of water till their prayers at sundown, fasting first for a good husband; then for the health of that husband; and after his death for their children’s well-being. “Instead we were eating heaped plates of food! At a restaurant full of pilgrims,” Vidya exclaimed. “Of all places.”
How could they have forgotten the faith of a lifetime?
“Oh, the breeze from the sea blew away all of that. You’re allowed to break rules on a holiday!” Latika sounded impatient when the discussion showed no signs of ending. They were being driven to the Sun Temple in a car from the hotel. The driver was a handsome man, who looked “not a bit like a driver” — Latika had whispered this almost as soon as she entered the car. The man was in his mid-forties, his clothes were not inexpensive, and he did not have the slightest hint of subservience. He was courteous but not ingratiating, obliging without appearing servile. A prince in disguise, not a driver on hire. When the thought crossed Latika’s mind she hid her mouth behind her hand and smiled to herself. She had always been self-conscious about her prominent teeth.
They drove for two or three hours down tree-shaded roads, with the ocean sometimes on their right, sometimes obscured by trees, then filling the horizon with its miraculous blue. By mid-afternoon they were at the Sun Temple. They looked at each other for confirmation. Vidya, mustering the appropriate tone of voice — neither too eager nor too peremptory — said to the driver, “Would you like to see the Sun Temple too?” This temple was a ruin, a tourist sight and not a religious place, so it seemed correct to offer. The man agreed with a smile, and she felt she had got it right, her tone and how the words had come out. They bought him a ticket and a green coconut to drink before starting the walk to the ruins.
The sun was furiously close here, its white heat wanted to burn and destroy. Walking down the corridor formed by tourist stalls that bordered the road on each side, Vidya and Gouri bought themselves straw hats and looked questioningly at Latika, who shook her head. “You’re bound to regret it,” Vidya said. “The sun will give you a headache in two minutes.” They put their hats on, settled the elastic bands into the folds of their chins. Some way down the road to the ruins, Latika turned back and started off at a brisk pace to the stalls they had just left behind. “Don’t wait,” she cried, “I’ll catch up.” She disappeared into the throng of tourists and shops.
Vidya gave an exasperated shrug. Given Gouri’s stately pace, she thought, it would not be that hard for anyone to catch up. She and Gouri walked ahead. The driver followed at just the right distance, telling them he was there, but he was not going to intrude.
Past the shops came an open area fenced in by railings that held the cliff back from the sea that flung itself at rocks hundreds of feet below. Looking down over the edge, Gouri was visited for a moment by the sense she had had of flying into the sky on the wings of a kite — was that years ago or just days ago? Among eternity-old ruins, it was hard to tell.
The temple’s central shrine rose straight from the cliff like a monumental rock. They had paused to look up at the tower when Latika came back to them holding a red parasol with a yellow frill. “Isn’t it pretty? So Japanese!” she exclaimed, twirling it this way and that, holding it over her shoulder, making them feel foolish in their clumsy straw hats. “She’s acting eighteen,” Vidya said in an undertone to Gouri when Latika was out of earshot. “She always does when there’s a good-looking man around. The way she repeats stories of her college conquests. And keeps mentioning how people say she looks half her age.”
“At almost seventy!” Gouri said. “Really!”
Their misgivings were confirmed halfway through their tour of the ruins. At each shrine they had to climb rock-cut steps to look at the sculptures. And all the while, the blazing, blinding, ever fiercer sun radiating off the stones. Confronted by the tallest of the shrines with the steepest stairs, Gouri dropped onto a bench below a tree and said, “Oh no, that really is too high, the sun is too strong. My head feels as if it’ll split open.”
“No escape from the sun at the Sun Temple,” their driver said, his first contribution to the afternoon’s conversation.
“You go ahead and have a look,” Vidya said to him, sitting down beside Gouri. “We’ll rest here and wait for you.”
“I don’t want to rest,” Latika said, spinning the handle of her parasol. “I’m not going to leave without exploring the whole place!”
Vidya heaved a tired sigh, and said, “Latika. .” She started to get up from the bench, holding a knee with one hand. Was that twinge her back pain coming back?
“Why are you getting up?”
“Well, you can’t go alone, can you? What if you fall?”
“Nonsense, I won’t fall. If it makes you feel better, I’ll go with. . him.” Latika darted a quick look at the driver. “You stay here with Gouri.”