Through the Forest Darkly

by Ranjan Kaul

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Aseem, naïve and earnest, has just returned to Delhi to look for a job after completing his business studies. Disillusioned with his father Avinash?s uninspiring life, and desperately trying to carve a path for himself independent of his overbearingly interfering aunt, Menaka, and her ad-man husband, Aseem finds himself drawn to Swati, a Maoist sympathizer working in Delhi?s slums. As his life takes one surprising turn after another, Aseem comes face to face with a Maoist revolutionary and an adivasi commander fighting a covert battle in the forests of Bastar, discovers facets of his father?s past that he could not have imagined, and finds himself working with Menaka and her husband to market a godman. Rich in vivid imagery, Through the Forest, Darkly is an uncompromising yet poignant depiction of love and ideals betrayed, violence and cruelty, and a society torn apart by irreconcilable divides.

Release date: March 12, 2012

Publisher: Hachette India

Print pages: 318

Sample

MENAKA STOOD IN FRONT of the bathroom mirror applying the last touches of copper-coloured dye to her hair, humming an old Bollywood melody. She was excited. She’d finally be meeting her nephew Aseem for dinner. She’d noticed a considerable change in him over the two years he’d been away, pursuing a postgraduate diploma at a business management institute in Pune. The added muscle, the arms and shoulders sinewy and strong, was much like many of the Bollywood hunks with their smooth-shaven chests. But the change was not just physical: it seemed to her that he had undergone a near-complete transformation from a diffident, callow youth to a mature, confident man.

What had piqued her was that he’d spent no time with her since his return to Delhi: just a fleeting visit the day after he’d arrived. He had not been not like that earlier. During his schooldays he was at her house every other day, reading, watching television, gorging on his favourite foods. Through college, too, he’d been a frequent visitor; in fact, he’d often stayed the night at her place if he attended a late-night party in her part of town. It was a house where all his needs were met and, more, a house where he could ask for anything and was never denied.

She remembered waiting anxiously on a wintry December morning in the corridors of a government hospital while her sister Ritika underwent a Caesarean. The infant was entrusted to her care in the first few weeks after his birth while Ritika recovered from the surgery. She’d taken up the responsibility with ardour and devotion.

Over the years, her involvement in Aseem’s life had grown into an obsession. Menaka rued the day she’d hustled Ritika into letting her fund Aseem’s business school education after he’d graduated with miserable scores. ‘You don’t want him to be a failure, stuck in a lousy job all his life like his father, do you?’ she’d said to her sister. Truth is, she’d missed Aseem horribly during his seemingly endless absence.

While she was elated that Aseem was back and they’d be meeting for dinner, what irked her was that Ritika’s husband, Avinash, would also be there. Menaka cursed aloud at the thought, even as she spotted a distinct mark left by the dye on her manicured left hand. Pulling the plastic gloves off hastily, she examined the tiny hole in the glove that had allowed the viscous dye to seep in and stain her hand. She cast the offending pieces of thin plastic into the refuse bin.

Relieved at having accomplished the delicate task of converting her tell-tale strands of grey into a fashionable copper colour, Menaka stepped out of the bathroom in her bathrobe. Sitting in front of her dressing table, facing a large mirror framed with polished mahogany, she parted her hair with her fingers, looking for the perfidious signs of white at the roots. As she peered closely in the mirror, she noticed crow’s feet around her eyes. Oh, oh! Time to go to Dr Nawalkar for another round of Botox.

She moved her gaze to Ritika’s reflection in the mirror. Her sister was sitting cross-legged on the bed, surrounded by school notebooks, which she was checking with a red pencil stub. Menaka strode across the room and plonked herself on the bed, with her back to her sister. Taking the hint, Ritika rose on her knees and peered at her sister’s coloured hair to check for white strands.

‘It looks fine,’ Ritika said, completing her examination, moving away from the foul odour of the dye, and back to her work.

‘When did Aseem say he’d come?’ Menaka drawled after a while. She’d been trying to cultivate an American accent for some years now.

Too engrossed in work, Ritika didn’t answer.

‘When did Aseem say he’d come?’ Menaka repeated irritably. ‘You did ask him to come early, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Ritika, looking up.

‘Let me call him,’ Menaka said, whisking out her new swank cellphone and clicking on Aseem’s contact number. ‘Hi! You remember, don’t you, that we’ve a dinner date?’

‘Oh damn! I clean forgot,’ Aseem spoke from the other end. ‘Actually, one of my buddies is celebrating his birthday and is taking all of us out. I’m really sorry.’

Menaka was careful not to allow her voice to betray her disappointment. ‘Of cour-rse, dar-rling, no pr-roblem. Have a good time.’ Switching off the cellphone, she turned to Ritika: ‘Aseem always does this.’



Aseem was taking a shower before leaving home to meet his friends from college. He wasn’t enthused at the prospect. The only reason he’d agreed to go out with them was to avoid meeting Menaka and her husband Aroon. He quite knew how the evening with his pals would unfold: after gathering in the Central Park at Connaught Place, they would all go exploring its basement market, Palika Bazaar, which boasted of the best bargains in the city. The market was a veritable labyrinth in which any first-time visitor could easily get lost, with subways leading to it from all directions. This was perhaps also what made it alluring to its inveterate shoppers: they’d discover new shops with every visit, from jewellery and trinkets to iPods and pirated porn.

Palika Bazaar had been Aseem’s favourite haunt as a college student. He’d visit the market almost every week with his pals, mostly to pick up x-rated pirated CDs, which they’d later watch in the confines of a hostel room. Of course, a lot of their time would also be spent in the pursuit of pretty college girls.

Some experiences while he was at the business school had transformed his thinking. Pursuits of the amorous kind or scouring Palika Bazaar for low-resolution visuals of crude lovemaking were no longer activities that interested him. His main aim now was to set his life on an even keel, confronted as he was with the choppy waves of unemployment and indecision. It’d been more than four months that he’d been looking for a job, sitting long hours on the Net, scouring newspapers for vacancies, contacting placement agencies, sending résumés. The business school hadn’t provided any help. ‘Times are bad,’ the placement in-charge had said, shrugging his shoulders.

The shower didn’t help to sort out his mind. What he felt frustrated about was that he was no longer sure about pursuing a career in business management; he’d begun to get the gnawing feeling that going to business school might’ve been a mistake. He’d explored the possibility of working for a development agency but the only job that had come his way had offered a mere five thousand rupees. He couldn’t possibly live on that. He didn’t wish to remain a burden on his parents any longer and he was equally desperate to break free from the cords of his dependence on Menaka and her husband Aroon. But presently there was nowhere for him to go, no map to navigate by. He felt helpless, like a novice visitor lost in the bewildering passages of Palika Bazaar.

The only decisive thing he’d done so far was to consciously avoid meeting his uncle and aunt, who would’ve liked to see him join Aroon’s advertising firm. He saw this as a plot to ensnare him and control his life. As it was, Uncle Aroon had paid a hefty donation for his admission to the Pune business school when he couldn’t make it on his own because of his low college marks and poor CAT scores. He didn’t want to begin his professional life with another falsehood: getting a job because of avuncular contacts.

Aseem had been thoroughly spoilt by Menaka as a child. Uncle Aroon had contributed no less, forever buying him toys and gifts to win his affection and keep Menaka in high spirits. During the summer breaks, Aseem would spend weeks together at the Kumar home. Doting Menaka would lavish love on him, measured in huge helpings of culinary delights, and give him unrestrained access to the giant television in her bedroom and an endless supply of comics. Aseem would lose himself as in the fantasy world of the picture books, imagining himself as a superhero rescuing the planet from crimes heaped upon it by creatures from an alien world. Accustomed as he became to wallowing in the luxurious splendour of Menaka’s home during his schooldays, he was disinclined to go out to play. Naturally, when his mother Ritika would come to fetch him in the evenings, he’d refuse to budge. So it came to pass that the Kumar household became a second—and preferred—home for Aseem, much to the chagrin of his father.

Menaka’s home was also a place that offered him other exciting experiences. Once, when he was barely twelve years old and indulging in his favourite pastime of watching Walt Disney cartoons and munching oven-fresh cookies, Menaka came out of the bath wearing only a petticoat and a towel barely covering her upper body. Aseem made to get up, but only just: the scene on the television was reaching a climax. She asked him to stay on. Holding one end of the towel loosely with her hand against the curves of her ample bosom, she went across to her cupboard and pulled out a lacy pink brassiere. Sitting with her back to him, she let the towel fall and began wearing her bra. Pulling the straps behind together, she asked Aseem to hook them on. As he reached for the hook, he caught a glimpse of her generous breasts from the side, loosely confined within the cups of the brassiere. The sight excited him terribly, and for the first time in his life he felt the stirrings of manhood. It required a monumental effort on his part to turn his gaze away.

During the summer break at the end of his first year at business school, Aseem went as part of his project work to Prabhas village in the Western Ghats, which his institution had adopted with the aim of transforming it into a model village. The students were sent there every year to hone their management skills by carrying out various development activities.

It so happened that the year Aseem visited Prabhas a severe famine had affected the entire district. The fields were dry and barren, caked and criss-crossed with fissures. Along with a couple of his batchmates, he visited a farmer’s hut. The farmer’s two starving children had just been served their evening meal of rationed-out portions of a thin gruel of millet. The elder child quickly finished his meagre meal, and before his younger sibling could eat hers, he reached out and scooped up the leftover portion from her plate and put it in his mouth. The younger girl screamed and attacked her brother, running her little head into his body like a torpedo and biting his arm. Before anyone could intervene, the two children were fighting like wild cats; they only stopped when their mother lashed out at both of them.

The sight of the two hungry children had a profound impact on Aseem’s young and impressionable mind. He realized that there was a world out there that was different from his own; it set him dreaming of doing something that would alleviate the misery of the poor.

But now, dispirited with the way life had treated him so far, Aseem frigged away his frustration under the shower. Life was bloody hard.



There was a bark accompanied by a scratching sound at the bedroom door. ‘It’s Rambo, my shweetums,’ said Menaka, easily recognizing the sounds made by her pet and getting up to let it into the room. The dog bounded in gleefully, rubbing its wide muzzle between her legs.

Rambo was a hyperactive spaniel with long ears, a round head and a silky, light brown coat. Its tail, which had been docked to two-fifths its length, was wagging with joy, in constant motion like a fast-moving pendulum. Acquired from an American diplomat, Rambo had become Menaka’s passion. She dressed him in designer clothes and shampooed his buff coat with Isle of Dogs in her bath tub.

Hearing the ringing tone of the landline, Menaka went across to pick up the receiver. It was her father on the line.

‘Hello, Dad,’ said Menaka. ‘No, Aseem won’t be joining us for dinner … What? … Aseem said he was going out with his friends … No, Dad, we’ll not go out for dinner now. But why don’t you come. We can have early dinner. Ritu is already here and Aroon said he’ll come on time. Shall I send you the car?’

‘No, beta,’ said Girdhari Lal. ‘I’ll make it on my own.’

‘I don’t know what his problem is,’ said Menaka irritatedly, as she put down the phone and turned to Ritika. ‘He never allows me to send the car for him. As for Aseem, the less said the better. He conveniently forgets a date even after confirming it.’

Ritika didn’t reply. Menaka bent down to fondle Rambo, holding his ears and rubbing his back.

GIRDHARI LAL WAS GETTING ready to go for dinner to Menaka’s. He took out a starched blue-and-white checked Arrow shirt and a pair of grey Arrow trousers from his old wooden almirah. He was particular about what he wore whenever he went to meet Menaka, knowing how particular she was about brand names. He normally got his clothes stitched by an old bespectacled tailor in the neighbourhood, whose long black beard had slowly turned grey and then completely white over the years.

How time had flown. Girdhari remembered how, when he was barely twelve years old, he had to flee the land of his birth when the country was partitioned. He lived with his parents in the old city of Rawalpindi, where people of all ages and religious hues gathered to hear Baba Rode sing Sufi verses in the blue-domed mosque and Pandit Pukhraj sing bhajans inside the Hanuman temple. Every evening he’d pester his mother to allow him to go to the halwai to drink hot milk laced with a thick layer of malai and crushed almonds.

On the day the news came that the country was being partitioned, he was at the halwai’s. Suddenly, he heard sounds of a commotion and saw dozens of men pounding down the street. Brandishing knives and daggers, the men rent the air with spine-chilling screams, ‘Maro! Sab ko maro! Ek bhi haramzade ko zinda nahin chhodo!’

Now, as he buttoned his shirt, the ear-splitting screams of death echoed in Girdhari’s mind and a shiver ran down his spine. He’d managed to escape with his parents and cross the newly demarcated border, sitting on the metal floor of a train toilet secured from inside and packed with other terror-struck passengers like shrink-wrapped frozen peas. The smell of human excreta and perspiration was overwhelming, the only whiff of fresh air entering from the hole of the toilet seat. And when the marauding men had barged into the train, it was this strategic hiding place that had saved his life. The nauseating stench of that horrifying night drifted back to him.

Girdhari picked up the bottle of the Armani cologne that Menaka had presented him on his last birthday and liberally sprinkled it all over his clothes. He then moved to the mirror on the dressing table in the room to check on his appearance one last time. His eyes went to the dresser next to the mirror, to the photograph of his wife Champa holding baby Menaka in a white frilly frock in her arms with Ritika by her side. He fondly wiped the glass of the frame.

Girdhari’s parents had married him off to Champa when he was barely twenty-one. By then, he’d begun to sit in the grocery store with his father, which his father had opened near their home in Patel Nagar in west Delhi soon after they’d crossed the border. Champa was petite and shy, with large eyes and skin the colour of freshly brewed tea. Girdhari loved his young wife from the day he set his eyes on her on the wedding day, all of her, including her dark complexion. Ritika was born within a year of their marriage, a spitting image of her mother, and he had now not one but two people to love.

Menaka arrived two years later. She was chubby and beautiful and fair-skinned like her father. Girdhari’s joy at Menaka’s birth, however, had been overshadowed by his grief at Champa’s death during childbirth. With two small girls to take care of, Girdhari had little time to mourn. His father had died of tuberculosis soon after Girdhari’s marriage and he had to manage the grocery store. With the help of his widowed mother, Girdhari raised his daughters with great love and care.

Ritika grew to be a small-built pretty girl, with large eyes like her mother’s. Though Menaka was younger by two years, she began looking the older of the two once she turned thirteen, because of her fuller figure and larger frame. Girdhari wanted to marry off Ritika once she completed her BA and got a job as a schoolteacher, but her dark complexion came in the way of attracting a suitable match. Finally, after six months of futile search, he received a proposal from one Inder Bahal, a college teacher of English literature residing in the neighbourhood, for his son Avinash.

Avinash had had a fairly tumultuous time in college, but had nevertheless managed to complete his MA. A studious boy right through his years in a missionary school, he’d been made to read Dickens and Shakespeare and Tennyson at a very young age by his father. His father had told Avinash, ‘You can recall what you read when you grow up and understand it then.’

Avinash had performed brilliantly in his school-leaving examination and gained admission in one of the most elite colleges in the city. But in his final year of BA, his studies took a back seat, and he developed a revolutionary fervour, influenced by his reading of the works of Marx, Lenin and Mao.

But fate had willed that Avinash would not become a revolutionary. One dark night, when the only sound that could be heard was the barking of stray dogs, Avinash had rung the doorbell of his home. Trembling and barely able to stand, his right arm crudely bandaged with a piece of cloth caked in congealed blood, he’d stood there, dazed and disoriented. A distraught Inder Bahal had brought in his son and sat him down and removed the makeshift bandage. On Avinash’s arm was a deep gash that reached almost to the bone. A shocked Inder had dressed the wound without uttering a word, while Avinash’s mother watched the two of them with tears streaming down her cheeks.

No one in his family could ever get him to disclose what had happened that night. After the incident, he became a different person altogether, as if the stab had touched him deep inside. He became a recluse and lost interest in life and together with it his self-esteem and confidence.

At his father’s behest, Avinash had registered for an MA and after two uneventful years scraped through the final examination. Two years of postgraduate studies didn’t shake off his despondency or restore his self-confidence. So, it devolved upon Inder Bahal to find a job for his son, which he managed successfully with the help of a close friend who had connections with the bigwigs in the bureaucracy. It was not a high post, but it was a permanent job in a semi-autonomous, obscure government organization involved with some kind of research and statistics. Inder Bahal had hoped that the office routine would help to get his son out of his depression. But this didn’t happen, and Avinash remained a recluse. Relatives and friends then suggested marriage as a possible solution, with the expectation that the responsibilities of a householder would draw Avinash out of his shell.

It was under these circumstances that Inder Bahal, who lived in an adjoining lane and knew Girdhari, came to visit him. After exchanging pleasantries, Inder Bahal came straight to the point. ‘I’ve come to ask if you’ve found a suitable boy for your elder daughter. Her name is Ritika, isn’t it?’

‘No, Inderji, we haven’t found someone for Ritika yet. Do you have someone in mind?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, I was thinking of my son.’

Girdhari hadn’t taken long to agree. He’d known Avinash since he was a child, and knew him to be a responsible and bright boy, though he was unaware of his revolutionary leanings. Moreover, Avinash had a permanent job and the family didn’t want any dowry. What more could a father ask for?

Aseem had been born within a year of Avinash and Ritika’s marriage and, when he turned two, Girdhari decided it was time to get Menaka married. When word got around that Girdhari was looking for a match for his attractive second daughter, there was a queue of suitors. But Menaka didn’t like the young men who came to see her, dismissing them all with petulant waves of her hand. She set down her terms to her father: ‘I want him to be like you, Dad.’

‘Like me? I’m old.’

‘But still handsome,’ Menaka had said, smiling.

She also put the additional condition that her suitor should be fabulously rich and yet not be in business, or at least not someone sitting in a grocer’s shop: ‘Not like you, Dad.’

Girdhari was most worried that at the rate she was going she’d be left on the shelf like an unsold item in his store. So it came as a welcome relief when Menaka finally accepted the proposal from a certain Aroon Kumar, a young management professional working as a client service executive with an advertising firm. His father was a wealthy man and owned several properties in Delhi.

With both his daughters married off, Girdhari found more time to attend to his store. He was a good businessman and courteous with his customers, and within a space of five years his business grew enormously. He lived a parsimonious life, and put all his savings into buying a largish plot on the main road and constructed a three-storey shopping complex with a basement. He let out the first floor to shopkeepers and retained the remaining part of the building for himself. He converted the basement and ground floor into a general store, while the second floor became his residence. He named the complex MeRi Plaza, an acronym derived from the first two letters of the names of his daughters: ‘Me’ and ‘Ri’. ‘I have two Lakshmis,’ he’d say, referring to his daughters. The name was a masterstroke and his sales quadrupled—it appealed to customers who wanted all things Western and to those with a newfound nationalistic fervour, it read ‘mine’ in Hindustani.

Menaka was pleased with Girdhari’s achievements. ‘Very good,’ she said patronizingly. ‘I can now proudly say that my father owns a shopping mall.’

Girdhari left his flat on the second floor of the MeRi Plaza complex and slowly climbed down the four flights of stairs to the ground floor, trailing his fingers along the cement banister. He walked out of the complex and stepped on to the pavement. A hot May wind was blowing, unsettling the dust and litter on the street. Even though it was late in the evening, the dusty haze of a lengthened summer day lingered like an illness. He waited for a while for the traffic to pass before crossing the main road to hail an autorickshaw. He didn’t own a car though he could very well have afforded it. Sitting in the autorickshaw he looked around at the changing vistas of the city. Roads had been dug up and resembled the excavation site of an old ruin. There were traffic snarls every day. Concrete constructions abounded and there were half-completed flyovers and the floating slabs of the metro rail under construction. Even the footpaths had not been spared: they had been broken down and were being given a facelift—streetscaping they called it—in preparation for an international games event.

There were new shopping malls with brightly painted billboards juxtaposed with the older small retail outlets, all vying with each other to sell the same branded goods. To attract more footfalls, the billboards had become more alluring, with flashing signs and darting lights to entice the budget-conscious customers during the economic downturn. The shopping landscape had really changed since the time he started sitting in his father’s grocery shop.

Girdhari asked the autorickshaw to stop near a taxi stand a short distance away from Menaka’s home in the posh colony of Vasant Vihar. He disembarked and got into a cab. Menaka would be incensed if she saw him driving up to her house in an autorickshaw.

AVINASH WAS SITTING ALONE, sunk into one of the sofa chairs in the massive living room of the Kumar household, switching channels intermittently on their large LCD television. The room was chock-a-block with curios and artefacts of cut glass, brass and silver placed on all possible surfaces—on glass shelves, on side cabinets, on the glass centre table with elephant-shaped legs. Looking obtrusive in one corner was a horse-shoe bar with a projecting hood like a cobra’s, holding upturned wine glasses hanging from grooves on its inside.

Avinash wore a cream shirt over brown trousers, with a worn-out leather belt fastened below his bulging stomach. One of the buttons of his shirt had come undone owing to his wide girth. At fifity-five years of age, his hair had greyed prematurely and almost all of it was white. His face was round and there were dark circles around his puffy eyes. He looked uncomfortable in the chair, and Rambo, growling near his feet, didn’t make it easier for him. He abhorred visiting the Kumar home. Given a choice, he’d have stayed at his own flat, but he’d always relented because this was one of the few things that the usually undemanding Ritika had asked of him.

As footsteps shuffled at the entrance, Rambo barked and ran to the door, leaving Avinash much relieved. Escorted by the excited dog, Girdhari entered the living room. Avinash rose from his chair to greet his father-in-law. Hearing Rambo’s gleeful barks, Menaka came to the living room, with Ritika in tow. Seeing his daughters, Girdhari Lal’s face immediately lit up.

‘Hi Dad, you’re looking very smart,’ said Menaka effusively.

‘Hello Papa,’ said Ritika.

Girdhari placed his hands in blessing on his daughters’ heads and sat down opposite Avinash, at one end of a three-seater. ‘So, . . .