Room in our Hearts and Other Stories

  ROOM

  HEARTS

  and Other Stories

  Published books by the Author

  Of Gods, Men and Militants

  A Thousand-Petalled Garland and Other Poems

  Enchanting World of Infants

  Homeland after Eighteen Years: A 48-Hour Travelogue in Kashmir

  Faith and Frenzy: Short stories from Kashmir

  Why Don’t You Convert and other Short Stories

  The Final Frontier: Dialogues between Mother and Son

  Contribution to Other Publications

  From Home to House

  A long Dream of Home

  Humans on the Run - of exiles and asylum

  Once we had everything

  ROOM

  HEARTS

  and Other Stories

  KL CHOWDHURY

  BLOOMSBURY INDIA

  Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd

  Second Floor, LSC Building No. 4, DDA Complex, Pocket C – 6 & 7,

  Vasant Kunj, New Delhi 110070

  BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY PRIME and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  First published in 2019

  This edition published 2019

  Copyright © K L Chowdhury, 2019

  K L Chowdhury has asserted his rights under the Indian Copyright Act to be identified as the Author of this work

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes

  ISBN: 978-93-88912-95-2

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  Copyright Acknowledgments

  The Nadimarg Survivor has appeared under the title The Survivor in From Home to House (Harper Collins) 2015

  Yousuf has appeared in Miraas, Vol. XI, No I&II, 2018

  A Forgotten Vow has appeared in Shehjar, March 2014, Issue #72

  These stories are dedicated to the memory of my parents from whom I imbibed the passion for story telling. Our father, Pandit Jia Lal Chowdhury, a lawyer by profession, would entertain us with his witty narratives of interesting anecdotes at the law courts and riveting stories of his clients; while mother, Shrimati Dhan Rani, held us spellbound with her vast repertoire of tales from the great epics, as well as real life stories.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  I am a practicing physician. My consulting chamber is like a window to humanity; rather, the world comes walking inside it every day. I see all types of people of every stratum of society – the common citizen and the elite, the intelligent and the impaired, the nervous and the composed. There are stories sitting deep inside each one of them like rough diamonds. One needs to have the inclination, patience and the passion to mine them, and to cultivate the art to cut and polish them. That is how my stories are born. They are stories of universal human circumstance, many of them extraordinary tales of ordinary people.

  March 31, 2019

  K L Chowdhury

  CONTENTS

  Note from the Author

  Acknowledgements

  1.A Forgotten Vow

  2.The Mind of a Terrorist

  3.Yousuf

  4.A Craving for Clay

  5.Precious Son

  6.The Pledge

  7.Veena’s Orchard

  8.Kumodhini

  9.Of God, Religion and Ritual

  10.Room in Our Hearts

  11.Dumbstruck

  12.Nagraj’s Wish

  13.The Nadimarg Survivor

  14.A Matter of Conscience

  15.The Mysterious Ways of Tripur Sundari

  16.An Indian Connection

  17.The Ring of Suleiman

  18.Virji’s Dream

  19.Over a Cup of Coffee

  20.Krishna is Hurt

  21.The Poet with a Jaundiced Eye

  22.The Bird Flew Away

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  When I was in college, I would carry Bodhji on the crossbar of my bicycle; drop him at his school and ride on. I was fifteen and he was eight. Hardly would I imagine then that he would recompense me in full measure for what was a joyful experience that came out of a sense of duty and unbridled love for my little brother.

  Surender (his official name) has once again lovingly and painstakingly edited all the stories in the present collection as he did in my two previous volumes. My love for him has only grown over the years. I don’t have enough words to thank him.

  A FORGOTTEN VOW

  Tulsi Nath lives the life of a retiree at Bhavani Nagar, Jammu. He spends his days in prayer and ritual worship, browsing journals and newspapers, reading the epics and other scriptures. Greying lightly at the temples, looking much younger than his years, he retains sharp memory and loves to reminisce about interesting events of his long tenure in the Telecom Department.

  During his last nine-year stint as a vigilance officer, he had the rare opportunity to travel to different cities, investigating cases of fraud, false claims, and scams. In the process, he got to fulfil his wish of visiting several places of pilgrimage. But there is one pilgrimage he can’t forget, which he recounts with great enthusiasm. It was a pilgrimage that he performed with his family very early in his career. Although his colleagues and relatives credit his belated engineering degree, and his rapid rise in the department to the fruits of that pilgrimage, he feels that would be trivialising an incredible experience whose temporal design, meaning, and significance transcends the concept of piety and reward.

  Tulsi Nath was born in 1939 at Rainawari in Srinagar in the Kenue Mohalla. He has no recollection of his father who died when Tulsi Nath was four and his unborn younger brother just a three-month foetus. His mother nurtured him with a sense of extra responsibility, bringing him up rooted in the religious traditions of the family. Like hundreds of other devotees, she would send him for the morning circumambulation of the Hari Parbat hillock dotted with several temples at the base, in the heart of Srinagar. On the way, he would pay obeisance at each place of worship, often climbing to the fort on top of the hill where goddess Durga, seated in her temple, kept vigil on the denizens of the city. Traversing the hallowed four-mile trail every day inculcated in him a sense of discipline, a deep religious feeling, and a passion for morning walks.

  When he was nine, while walking to his school one morning, Tulsi Nath saw his older cousin engaged in a lively discussion with his friends near a small bookstore. They were looking at pictures of deities and gods on display. The cousin was holding a picture in his hand and looking at it with deep interest. It was a black and white photograph of an exceptional figure, somewhat like the gods in the epics and religious texts at home, yet different.

  ‘‘May I see it, bhaisahab?’’ he asked his cousin.

  ‘‘Go to school, kid; you are getting late,’’ Baisahab snubbed him.

  ‘Please tell me about this picture. I have never seen anything like it.’ He was an inquisitive, impressionable young boy.

  ‘It is Balaji. Now push off or your form master will ask for another navishta and mother will be mad at you.’

 
; ‘Balaji? Who is Balaji?’ He would not go without knowing.

  ‘Lord Balaji, the great god Vishnu.’

  ‘But we have a picture of Vishnu at home in our Thokur Kuth, don’t we? He doesn’t look anything like this. This is a strange face. I can’t see the eyes at all; they are covered. Is it really the picture of a god?’

  ‘Yes, it is god Vishnu. This is how they imagine him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The denizens down south.’

  ‘Doesn’t god look the same everywhere? Why should the people there imagine him differently?’

  The cousin shook his head in exasperation. His friends looked on amused.

  ‘Look kid; don’t get into a discussion on gods. You are still a baby; when you grow older you will know,’ one of them said sarcastically.

  But the kid was unfazed. ‘Where in down south?’ he asked.

  ‘Tirupati.’

  ‘Tirupati?’

  ‘Yes, there is a grand temple of Balaji at Tirupati.’

  ‘I will go to Tirupati. I will see Balaji.’

  Everyone laughed.

  He was cut to the quick. ‘Why do you laugh?’

  ‘Because you make us laugh. Tirupati must be a thousand miles from here.’

  ‘Is it in some foreign land?’

  ‘It is in India, deep south, beyond your comprehension. Have you ever been anywhere more than a couple of miles from here?’ he taunted him.

  This was a deep affront to the kid. He did not like the mischief in his eyes, the arrogance in his tone.

  ‘If it is in India, I will visit the place one day,’ he retorted.

  They roared with laughter.

  ‘I will; you all will hear about it,’ he shouted as he trotted toward his school.

  Even as he smarted under the insult, no sooner than he reached school, he forgot about the incident.

  Tulsi Nath grew up into an intelligent boy, passed the Matriculation examination with credit and joined S. P. College to graduate in arts. He had his heart set on engineering but the family lived from hand to mouth. His younger sibling was in high school and mother deserved a reprieve. He accepted the job of a clerk in the Telecom Department and settled down in married life to sire two children in five years. His superiors liked him for his keen intellect and sharp wit, for his devotion to his job, and an exceptional flair for problem-solving. More than these attributes, there was something striking about his bearing that made him stand out in a crowd. It was his large square head with a thick crop of slightly wavy hair, solidly sitting on a short thick neck and a stocky frame, a genial smile playing in his eyes behind the thick-rimmed glasses. Over the years, he rose in the department to become a supervisor.

  Winter of 1975 started on a chilly note right from the second week of November. Tulsi Nath had appeared in the entrance test for an engineering degree, a burning desire that had remained unfulfilled even as he was approaching his thirty-sixth birthday. He had done well and hoped to secure admission into a prestigious college. If he could get into the merit list, he would seek permission from his department for study leave. He had never gone for a holiday and hardly ever taken his family out to see places. Here was the chance before he enrolled as a student for the second time in his life. Now that his children had grown up and would have a break for winter vacations, why not go out for a few weeks to the Indian plains to escape the harsh Kashmir winter? By a coincidence, starting that year, the Government of India had accepted the recommendations of the First Pay Commission on LTC – Leave Travel Concession. It entitled central government employees and their immediate family to free travel anywhere in the country once every four years. Tulsi Nath looked at the map of India and chose the southernmost tip as his destination. He would travel by bus from Srinagar to Pathankote, and by rail from Pathankote to Kanyakumari via Delhi.

  It was the first such experience for the family, the first time they were travelling together beyond Kashmir, the first time they were travelling first class to which Tulsi Nath was entitled. The journey was comfortable. There was no pushing and jostling for space and no scuffles; the rail functionaries were courteous and the food was clean and tasty. They savoured tea and snacks at different railway stations where the train stopped. Tulsi Nath enjoyed the newspapers and journals from the book stalls, the kids their comics. Fellow passengers were friendly and courteous. They were mostly people from the southern states whom the Kashmiris referred to as Madrasis whether they were from Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Karnataka, or Kerala, for they looked darker, spoke with a heavy accent, dressed scantily in a dhoti and shirt, and smeared their foreheads horizontally across with ash or vermilion.

  At Vijaywada, a ticket checker in a short black coat and white trousers materialised in their carriage and walked straight towards them. Tulsi Nath hastily produced the tickets from his pocket. The ticket checker gave him a friendly smile and sat beside him.

  ‘You are from Kashmir?’ he asked.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘From your looks, and from the dress of this lady, your wife I suppose.’

  ‘You are right.’

  ‘What do you call that ornament hanging from her ears?’

  ‘Dejhour.’

  ‘I have not seen anything like it; is it special to your women?’

  ‘Yes, it symbolises a woman’s married status.’

  The ticket checker looked at their tickets. ‘Travelling LTC and going to Kanyakumari?’

  ‘That is as far as we can go on LTC.’

  ‘Kashmiris make the best use of LTC, travelling the furthest distance from the north to the south for free,’ he beamed.

  ‘I have never travelled beyond Delhi,’ Tulsi Nath said almost apologetically. ‘It is time to see the south. We have heard about the beautiful temples, the great architecture.’

  ‘Since you seem interested in temples, and now that you have come all the way, you might as well visit the Tirumala Venkateswara Swamy Temple. It surely is one of the holiest pilgrimages. You may not get another chance to come this far with your family.’

  ‘I never heard about it. Where is it?’

  ‘Tirupati.’

  ‘What do we have in the temple at Tirupati?’

  ‘Lord Balaji, the incarnation of Vishnu.’

  Tirupati, Balaji, Vishnu, deep south. The words rang in his ears as if from a distant past, from a faraway planet.

  Suddenly, he heard the mocking laughter from his cousin and his friends. Suddenly, he saw that teasing and the arrogant look on the face of his cousin’s friend. Suddenly, the black and white picture of Lord Balaji, eyes camouflaged behind a long flap, floated in front of his eyes. He had never thought again of that childhood incident. Now it came clear like the early morning sun throwing into sharp relief the shimmering snow peaks cradling the valley of Kashmir. Suddenly, he was reminded of his vow, his daring declaration as a boy of nine that he would visit Tirupati one day.

  Tulsi Nath smiled as he recalled the incident. If he had forgotten about it, so must have everyone else. Now to boast to his cousin and his friends that he had made good his promise would not be of much meaning. They had all moved on in life. Except for his cousin, he did not even know anything about the others who had taunted him. Besides, he would have to break the journey, find connecting routes, make new bookings, and go through a lot of hassle. The whole schedule would get disrupted and he would not like to drag his young children and wife into all this, just to fulfil a resolution that he had made on the spur of the moment when he was nine, and then forgotten all about it.

  ‘What are you smiling about?’ the amused ticket checker asked. ‘You seem to have drifted into a reverie?’

  ‘You are right; I was reminded of an incident nearly three decades back. But it will be of no interest to you. In fact, it has lost its relevance to me.’ Then, pointing to his wife, ‘Even she doesn’t know anything about it.’

  His wife looked at him in curiosity. ‘Why don’t you tell us?’ she asked him fondly.

  The ticket
checker was in a genial mood, sitting there like any other passenger, ready to listen. ‘Tell us,’ he urged.

  Tulsi Nath related the incident in minute detail. His children looked on in admiration, his wife in awe, the ticket checker with deep interest.

  ‘After hearing your fascinating story, it seems to me that Lord Balaji has ordained it long back and he wants you to visit him,’ declared the ticket checker.

  ‘Let us. Let’s fulfil the vow you made as a boy,’ his wife pleaded.

  ‘Yes, we want to visit Tirupati,’ the children chorused.

  ‘Look, I have forgotten all about it. I was just a kid then. It was nothing but bluster.’

  ‘Yet I feel it was not without purpose. There is a force greater than we can imagine that sees the past and the future as clearly as the present. Your visit to the temple has been listed when you were a child,’ she explained.

  ‘It will be bothersome to break the journey and reroute it. It will disturb our whole schedule.’

  ‘It was not bluster. It arose from the depths of an innocent boy’s heart. It remained there in hibernation all these years, to awaken at the first opportunity. That opportunity awaits you now,’ the ticket checker spoke like a sage. ‘Besides, you don’t have to change any trains. You can get down at Renigunta. From there it is barely 16 kilometres to the abode of Balaji.’

  ‘Do you mean we have to just make a detour of 16 kilometres?’

  ‘Exactly. The whole temple complex is on a hill, something that will remind you of Kashmir. You can visit the temple, return to Renigunta and continue your onward journey.’

  ‘You said something about a hill?’

  ‘Yes, the Tirumala Hill. It is about 2,500 feet above sea level and comprises seven peaks. The Venkateswara Swamy Temple is on the seventh peak, also known as the Temple of Seven Hills.’

  It was tempting to hear about the locale. ‘We have a temple on top of a hill which I would frequent in my childhood.’