“Why won’t he come? He needs the work,” the taxi-driver said. He got into his cab and drove off to Mall Road to spread the word: anyone who saw the Ohjha was to tell him to come at once.
Ama said, “You don’t believe any of this, Teacher-ni, you city people, but someone’s put a spell on that cow, or an evil wind is blowing curses over it. Or else why did it wander so far this time?”
“Yes, only the Ohjha can do something,” the clerk nodded in sombre agreement.
I said, “Don’t let Charu stay out there all night, it’s too cold and too dangerous.” But her grandmother, realising it would be pointless, did not try calling Charu back home. That evening, she took down a stack of rotis for the cow and food for the girl, helped her make a fire, then hobbled back up. She would do all Charu’s share of the work herself and ask her no questions, however long the cow remained alive; and who could tell, perhaps Charu’s devotion would work a miracle?
The Ohjha came the next afternoon. He lit a fire near Gouri Joshi and threw all kinds of things into it. Little boys from the neighbourhood were made to run up and down the hill many times to cater to the Ohjha’s demands: Ghee! Turmeric! Some uncooked rice! A lemon. Green chillies! A piece of yellow cloth. And so on. He waved his peacock feathers over the cow, chanted, swayed, and shrieked again and again, shaking his head so hard it looked as if it would snap and fall off his neck. Then he went still and quiet. After an interval when everyone waited, respectful and expectant, he gave his verdict: “When the time comes to return to the world of ghosts and spirits, nobody can stand between death and life.” He shook out his robes and feathers, picked up his trident, and walked away. By then, he had deposited charms all over the hillside, eaten three meals at Ama’s house, and pocketed twenty rupees.
Charu remained with the cow all the next day and the day after that. During the day, between grazing their other cattle, Puran came and sat by the cow, stroking it, pressing his own concoction of ground-up herbs to its wounds, and muttering his gibberish into its ear. For some of the time that Puran was there the cow’s eyes appeared to flicker with a suggestion of life, its pain seemed briefly soothed. Then it sank back into a stupor.
Charu had another visitor too. Every evening, when there was no danger of other people, Kundan Singh came stealing down the slope to the forest and sat with Charu till it was time to serve dinner at Aspen Lodge. He collected wood to make a fire near her to keep leopards away. He bought noisy little fireworks from the market to frighten off animals. He went away at mid-evening to resume work and then, after he had served dinner, and his duties were done, he came back with a torch, down the dark slopes, weaving between tree trunks and brambles. He brought whatever food he had been able to squirrel away from the hotelier’s dinner and laid open steel tiffin boxes for her to eat from. He wanted Charu to have the best bits, things she had never eaten: meatballs the first day, chicken the next, then fried rice and egg curry. After eating, they held each other close by the fire, wrapped in a blanket thick enough for the chill of summer nights. Only when sunlight crept up over the ridge did he leave to serve the hotelier and his wife their bed-tea and Marie biscuits.
Kundan Singh thought he might never be as happy again, despite Charu’s tears, the gasping sobs that interrupted her numbed silence, and just below them, the pain-filled eyes of Gouri Joshi, which on the fourth day clouded over and closed.
16
My house was very small. It had two rooms, and a tiny kitchen with two doors. One of the doors opened towards a rockface that in summer was covered with wildflowers. There was so little space between the rockface and the door that you had to walk between them sideways. The larger room, on the ground floor, led out to a north-facing veranda where I had hung geranium overhead that trailed pink and red when it flowered. Every afternoon, after I finished with the school and factory and had