Seeking Shiva

“It is your last chance, I hope you understand that”, Papa’s voice was deceptively soft. I was no stranger to the implications. The angrier he got, the softer his voice grew, and the more it cut me to the quick.  Truth be told, it was a ‘Wake Up Sid’ moment for me. I was famed for vacillating between this and that, being here or there, doing something or nothing, but hardly ever making my mind. Back in unblemished childhood, I had driven Mom dotty by never being sure about what I wanted to eat. Thus, there was little chance that I would have firmly decided on my career path.

To be perfectly honest, Papa had put up with my meandering ways with considerable fortitude, an unlikely trait in a typical middle-class Indian parent. Most of my friends’ parents had been obsessively plotting the career trajectories meant to launch their respective offspring into the firmament from the day they had been born. I had escaped all this so far, but now, my streak of good-luck had finally run out. Three solid years of scraping through a management bachelors, much of which had been spent in searching for the elusive ‘hit single’ which was meant to be my glorious entry into the world of music would have worn anyone’s patience thin.

Papa had never been as madly ambitious as I was. Perhaps, he could not afford to be. Having lost his own father to the Indo-China war of 1962, at the tender age of two, much of his childhood had been spent being at the mercy of his paternal uncles. While Dadi had been fiercely protective, there was something sapping about survival on a war-widow’s pension, accompanied by constant taunts and jibes from much of her family. Dadaji had fought on a single war front and been rewarded by medals, albeit posthumously. Dadi still soldiered on, fighting her battle of the two fronts with not much to show for it. Thanks to the small pharmacy which Papa had set up in Hajratganj, we had come through the pandemic relatively unscathed. But even my hopelessly optimistic eyes could no longer house the dream of Papa’s store turning into the Poonawala headquarters overnight and making a mint by selling the Covishield vaccine to a grateful populace.

And thus, I was given an ultimatum, to find something I really wanted to do and to begin doing it pronto, or joining Papa at the store and begin learning the ropes. This trip to the Monpa stronghold in Tawang, in a final search for musical inspiration was to either make me or break me. I was following Dadaji’s footsteps, but there was little chance that I would return covered in glory. Ignominy was more my forte.

The day before I was to leave for Guwahati, I was taken aback to see Dadi lurking furtively by my door. “Did you want something, Dadi?” “Haan, beta. I wanted to give you this”. ‘This’ turned out to be a small bundle, which smelt of moldy muslin, mothballs and memories. It had two gold guineas, a letter of commendation from Dadaji’s commanding officer and a telegram from the army headquarters about Lieutenant S.S. Pant missing in action, presumed dead while battling the Chinese in the Lumla sector of NEFA. “Some things from the past to help you in the future”, she smiled tremulously. “I never knew whether he was captured or killed….my…my…my Shiva.” The fact that she had dared voice Dadaji’s name aloud was enough to stun me into silence. Lieutenant S.S.Pant, Shiv Shankar Pant, who now stared down at us from the large garlanded portrait on the wall of the drawing room. Who had been snatched away when he was only twenty- five.  Whose fate was relatively ambiguous even sixty years later. Whose widow had never been granted permanent closure of an old wound and whose son had grown up craving this very permanence instead of dreams at the end of a mythical rainbow. Yes, S.S.Pant’s destiny cast a shadow far longer and darker than evident at first glance.

“I know Ravi has given you a fortnight to get back, but beta, stay a little longer if necessary. Find out about what happened to your Dadaji. These gold coins should help you tide over things”, again the watery smile. “I will explain things to Ravi and hold the fort for you.” Her confidence in my seemingly Feluda like sleuthing abilities were definitely misplaced. But I could only think of what the extended time meant for me. I could stay longer and work on my music, perhaps even visit Shillong. I was no longer Manish Kumar Pant, but Rahul of Chennai Express fame, singing “Goa is on, Goa is on”, only Goa had been replaced by Tawang in my case.

It was thus in a happy haze of anticipation and filled with good intentions that I arrived in Tenga, on my way to Tawang, hoping to make short work of Dadi’s task for me. My mind was already thrumming with all the tunes that I had overheard on the way……

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I woke up and stretched as the early rays of the sun fell directly on my face. I had lost count of the number of times I had told Ma to keep the curtain in my room pulled over the window. But she continued on her merry way, to make sure that I awoke at the crack of dawn. That east-facing window was the bane of my mornings. I doubted whether there was any other twenty-five -year- old in the whole of Tenga who awoke at four thirty every morning. I had to be different. It had always been this way, ever since I was a child. Keshav, my younger brother had been the conventional one. Following Ma and Baba’s instructions to the letter, always the ‘good boy’, the one who could do no wrong, now a respectable forest officer, working day and night in the wilds of our untamed forests.

Ma blamed my name for every unconventional thing I did. She blamed my name for my nomadic ways, for my love of music and for my unpredictability. She blamed it for everything that went wrong in my life, from my being caught by forest officials while catching Mahaseer in the Kameng river, for my being caught with a joint in my hand by the principal of my junior college before being booted out for good and of course for my ‘risky’ job of driving tourists all around the north-east. Baba listened placidly to her tirades, finally muttering “Thank Shiva, we did not name him Bhairav. He would have murdered someone every day to fulfill his role as destroyer”, when she ran out of breath. Yes, life for me was like the twisting mountain roads which drove me as mush as I drove them: arduous, but full of adventure.

Exploring the unknown was the only way I could tame my restless spirit. Now that Keshav was a forest officer, I had given up my more reckless ways like fishing in prohibited waters or taking photographs where they were banned for fear of my misdeeds catching up with him. But despite being the chalk to his cheese, we were very close to each other. It had always been an unspoken pact between us to have each other’s backs at all times, to stick up for each other and to keep each other’s secrets even on pain of death. We knew everything about each other: liquor and cigarette stashes, crushes and girlfriends, several misdeeds, secret ambitions, hopes and dreams.

Lost in my thoughts, I almost forgot that I had to pick up a new guest and drive him first to Lumla and then Tawang. Cursing under my breath, I noticed that it was almost 6 am. He must have been cooling his heels in Tenga Haat for at least half an hour now. A glance at my mobile showed that there had been no missed calls. Had he forgotten, or had I? I hastily pulled out the details I had been given by the agency. Manish Kumar Pant, twenty- two years old. Hmmm…it would be interesting to ferry around someone so close to me in age. Or would he be a typical loud and proud plainsman? Disparaging of everything? Calling us ‘Chinky’ or ‘Chili Chicken’? Asking us when we would be helping the Chinese take over India? I hoped not. I had already been chastised for a few verbal duels and a close-to-a fist fight with a couple of such specimens. If I had not been such a good driver, the agency said, I would have been out in the blink of an eye. As it was, I was on my last chance.

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“Stupid sleepy driver!”, I had forgotten the number of times I had cursed under my breath which was freezing in the bitter winds blowing down the hill. A native of Lucknow, I was no stranger to cold. We approached near-freezing temperatures many times in the harsh winters of the North Indian plains, but this mountain wind was something else. It whistled its mournful moan like a ghost about to possess you and then it did creep into your very bones, chilling not just your marrow, but also your soul. As I stamped my feet on the narrow path in front of the Tenga Haat war memorial, I felt as if I would never be warm again. Maybe this was Dadaji’s idea of a joke. Or maybe he was messing with my Rahul-like plans of not expending much time on finding out what had really happened to him and utilizing all my resources on my music instead. If this was the kind of place that he had had to stay with next to nothing to keep him warm, he had every right to be cranky with me as I assumed he was trying to be. In his shoes, I would have gladly pushed anyone over the nearest hill just to get at his jacket to keep me warm.

When I had begun to believe that my breath would finally escape my body in a frozen chunk of ice, I saw the dim headlights of a beat-up Innova wavering towards me in the semi-gloom. The car shuddered toa stop and a tall, lanky figure clad in thick jeans and a leather jacket jumped out and rushed over to me. “Good morning”, said the young man who appeared to be a few years older. His leathery, weather- beaten face was wreathed in smiles and his eyes twinkled with mischief. Despite being quite disgruntled, I couldn’t help being warmed by his obvious charm and my grimace thawed into the ghost of a smile. “I am unforgivably late, but I overslept. I am sure you must have done it yourself sometimes, Sir”, I was taken aback at his obvious command over English. He thrust out his driver’s license and the letter from the travel agency by way of further introduction. Shiva Tamang said both. He was my long- lost driver and guide and as he hurried my semi-frozen carcass into the car and poured out a cup of sweet chai from a small flask kept in the drink holder, I could not sulk anymore.

By the time I finally fully returned to the land of the living, Tenga Haat was just a collection of lights fighting a losing battle against the rising sun. My spirits gradually rose with each twist of the road which carried us higher and higher into the Eastern Himalayas. The music system in the car warbled incessantly as Shiva tried to find the perfect combination which could be soothing enough to uplift my flagging spirits. Although the conversation was decidedly stilted at first, I decided that it would be idiotic to stay uptight and aloof if Shiva was to be my friend, philosopher and guide through this previously unexplored terrain. My management course had tried to teach me sales and marketing well and after listening to Papa’s shop-floor patter, I was a confident enough conversationalist who could even coax a few words out of a statue. People liked to talk about one thing in particular: themselves and Shiva was no exception. Soon, we were chattering away like old friends. The bleak mist of the morning had fallen away before the rising sun after all.

When Shiva heard that I was here to hunt chiefly for music among other things, he was overjoyed. “Music hamara bhi favorite hai, Sir”, he said. “Tum kya sunte ho?”, I asked. In reply, Arijit Singh’s warbling was replaced by the earthy tune of a Nepali folk song. The words were alien, but then, music transcended language. I could feel the emotions of the song through the plaintive tune which spoke of love and longing, but also of loss. I could picture Dadi singing it when Dadaji was posted far away. Lost in my thoughts, I allowed myself to drift for some time, until colorful bunting and a blindingly white tower announced the presence of the Nyukmadong War memorial.

I wandered around the memorial, heart full of pride, but empty at the same time. Lieutenant S.S.Pant, the name ‘led all the rest’ as far as Garhwal Rifles was concerned, but even the JCO who led us around the place explaining much of the Bomdila battle in great detail was unable to throw much light on the actual fate of the small company of soldiers who had set out for patrolling, had sent back messages until possible only to disappear suddenly in the thick forests which ringed the region, never to be seen again. That they had been led by Shiv Shankar Pant was known, but they were missing presumed dead as with too many soldiers in this part of the world in 1962.

As we moved on, I was more consumed by the thought of meeting a few Monpa artists than the fate of the soldiers. Perhaps Dadi would be disappointed once again.

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Tawang monastery loomed over us as Shiva drove us to the small homestay which would be ‘home’ for the next couple of weeks or perhaps longer if I could get my way. I had been canny enough to avail a ‘gold loan’ against Dadi’s gold guineas back home in Lucknow just before I left. It had been with many qualms that I had looked for a small jeweler in a slightly seedy part of town, where I could be confident that no one would recognize ‘Pantji ka beta’ and had ended up having to accept slightly less than what I would have got for them at a more reputed place. But who cared?  I had the means to live as I wanted to and that was all that mattered. Befitting my grandiose plans, I had spoken to the travel agency and hired Shiva ‘exclusively’ for the next fortnight, paying well above the expected rates. I had quickly discovered that I could have no better comrade-in-arms for the many escapades which I had planned, all of which included going local: befriending the pretty girls, getting drunk on the local beer and of course, dancing clumsily to the many local tunes. The progress from Sir and Shiva Ji to Manish- Shiva Bhai-Bhai had been gradual but steady. The only dark cloud was that we were near Chinese territory and we both knew how Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai had ended.

Before I knew it, a week had flown past and though I had added a few new brews to my almost encyclopedic knowledge of different beers and a few more pretty girls to my list of ‘conquests’, I was no closer to finding the tune for my ‘hit single’ than I was to finding out what had happened to Dadaji. Days were spent ‘sight-seeing’, which meant visiting the monastery, the Bumla Pass, the Tawang war memorial and several other touristy spots. The nights…the nights were different. Visiting local settlements and taverns, sitting under a sky filled with so many stars that I felt capable of reaching out and picking a few, the glow of the beedi dangling from Shiva’s mouth or mine, moths fluttering around our heads and walking for miles through the darkened streets, playing hide and seek with shadows.

Each new day dawned early enough to bring several promises, but each night also came earlier and earlier, accompanied by incessant and increasingly frantic phone calls from home, which I tried to avoid because I couldn’t face either Papa or Dadi. Too many hopes and great expectations seemed ready to crush my fragile dreams. About ten days later, I realized with a shock that even Dadi’s supplies were running low and I only had the resources to stay for precisely eight more days. Now, another emotion added itself to the vortex: despair, for time knew to travel only in one direction, forward and at a single pace, which was too fast for me.

If Shiva noticed the gradual bleakness of my mood, he didn’t say much. But I knew he felt for me. His way of dealing with difficult stuff was to think up wilder and wilder capers to take my mind off things and that is what he did. We were to go hiking near the Jang waterfall and then catch Mahseer in the river if we could escape the eagle eyes of the guards, one of whom happened to be Keshav. But all that was happening tomorrow. Tonight, our haunt was the tiny hamlet of Shyo, situated in the thick pine forests which ringed Tawang. Moonlight on our heads, moonshine in our glasses and pretty girls to sing some more Monpa songs. It was enough to make Papa and Dadi fade into the background for the time being.

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As Manish and I trekked through the thick undergrowth, heads pounding almost in unison with the mother of all hangovers, I wondered what he was thinking. For once, I had seen the serious side of him. For the past two days, he had haunted the Tawang War Memorial and spoken to every army man who would listen to him. He had even managed to unearth an old photo of his grandfather after haranguing the officer at the headquarters, but everything seemed to have now reached a dead end. A closed file was a closed file and it looked as if Manish would bid goodbye to our part of the world with just an old photograph as keepsake. No amount of Monpa music could rouse him from the rut he seemed to be stuck in. What surprised me was his remarkable tenacity for authenticity. “The tune has to appeal to the heart, Shiva Bhai”, he said “I am not so shallow as to market remixes as my own”. “Or lie to Dadi”, he added in such a quiet undertone that I thought I must have imagined it. Well, his idyll would be over soon and we would both return to our humdrum lives. He to the shop and me to the road.

Just as I was about to call him to the water’s edge, we heard it simultaneously, a flute and a drum, echoing out from the end of a dark little path which lost itself in the bushes. Manish seemed to be in a trance as he started walking down it. I tried valiantly to pull him back, the woods watching us with a million eyes. Left with no choice but to follow him even though commonsense told me to take to my heels, I crept forward. Now, Hindi words seemed to be accompanying the haunting music and Manish was drawn to them like a filing to a magnet.

I caught the gist of the song which seemed to talk of walking many roads at once but the need to pick the one which led to what you wanted the most.  A dilapidated hut loomed out of the trees suddenly, its windows glowing like the glaring eyes of an evil monster. The door was open. We caught a glimpse of two ancient bent figures, one with a flute at his bloodless ghoulish lips and another playing a drum with withered fingers which looked like curved talons, while singing in a raspy yet strangely tuneful voice. I grabbed Manish just as he was about to climb the rickety steps to the crumbling verandah. “Pagal ho gaye kya, Manish Bhai? Jante bhi hai, ye insaan hai ki bhoot?”, my voice sounded as dry as sandpaper, thanks to a throat parched by fear.

He blinked. Looking more like himself and less like sleep-walker, he stopped, if only to glare at me. “I have heard that song sometime in my childhood”, he whispered angrily. I dragged him away with a strength born of utter desperation. If anything happened to him, it would not just be my last chance with the agency, but with the police as well. “Let us scout around first. Let me call Keshav. He was going to be patrolling in the vicinity. He will have some back up”. Luckily, he listened and we backed further away. As was expected, there was no signal in this neck of the woods and I adamantly retreated further and further until I found one. “Near the waterfall Bhai? Don’t worry, I am near chota tila. Don’t explore until I reach you”, never had Keshav sounded so grownup or so reassuring or so authoritative.

Sure enough, he turned up half an hour or so later, by which time the music had died away leaving us in a silence which was more eerie than the sound. “Thank God you did not venture into the hut”, he said no sooner he saw us. “Budhe Baba ka jhopda we call it, up at the ranger station. The two old men who live there seem harmless enough, but they have been known to attack strangers who barge in suddenly. Recently, an American barely escaped after one of them decided to take a pot-shot at him with an ancient .303 rifle. They have been living there for as long as anyone remembers.”

A rustling made me turn towards where Manish had been standing only a moment before. He was now making a dash towards the hut like a man possessed. Keshav and I hurtled after him but, he had covered too much distance for us to bridge the gap. As we watched in wordless horror, he dived headfirst into the hut and sitting down with the two silent ghostly figures, began singing as if he had been accompanying them all his life.

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                                       SIX MONTHS LATER

As the band tuned up to play my hit single for the jawans, I could not help glancing at the Tawang War Memorial rearing its majestic head in the distance. Any Rahulesque and rebellious tendencies which both Shiva and I had harbored had been laid to rest because we were offered another chance not just at music, but at building the lives we loved. Shiva appeared totally at ease with the guitar and as his raspy voice rang out with the familiar story of many roads, I could not help recalling the path through the forest which we had walked together. Which had led me to two ancient villagers who had been with Lieutenant S.S Pant through thick and thin, until he had fallen to Chinese bullets not far from where they now chose to live, keeping his memory alive in that most ancient of all languages, his music…

While seeking one, I had found two Shivas, one in the past and one in the present…..