The Immigrant by Manju Kapur

Author:Manju Kapur [KAPUR, MANJU]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9788184002713
Google: lb1NQVv2HZQC
Amazon: B008MXWYNS
Publisher: Random House India
Published: 2012-07-15T18:30:00+00:00

viii

Early mornings were the hardest. Often Nina stayed in bed, not happy, not unhappy, scenes from home floating in her mind, jostling next to images of Spring Garden Road, the Halifax Shopping Centre and the Public Library. Sometimes she read, sometimes she put the clock radio on to introduce the sound of human voices.

One morning as she was twiddling the radio knobs she heard voices in Hindi, background to the commentator’s British accent. Her hand trembled.

He was reporting the Kumbh Mela, held in Allahabad every twelve years, for the devout Hindu an extremely auspicious event.

‘Today is the day of the Maha Kumbh, the day the spiritual blends with the ordinary, when the muted murmur of millions of pilgrims, marching to the Ganga, are matched by the early morning war cries of the Naga sadhus. Two crore faithful will bathe in this river today. The confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna and the mythological Saraswati has turned into an ocean of human beings immersing themselves in the holy waters to the chanting of Vedic hymns, blowing of conch shells and beating of drums.

‘Now, it is the naked sadhus who are waiting for their dip. It is four thirty in the morning, the auspicious hour started at three. The atmosphere here is simply incredible; as far as the eye can see, there are pilgrims from all four corners of India gathered on the banks of the Sangam, waiting their turn to immerse themselves. There is the Maharajah of Kapurthala, mounted on a horse. Previously he mounted an elephant, but after last time’s stampede elephants have been discouraged. Over there are the akharas, bearing their standard in front of them; on the right has just passed a very colourful procession of village women, balancing sacks on their heads. The naked sadhus are getting restless, they want their turn—oh, now it is their turn, they are descending into the water. It is a bitterly cold morning, there is a mist and the sun has yet to rise, but nothing deters these pilgrims from the icy river.’

The words reverberated through Nina, though she was as much a stranger to the Kumbh Mela as anyone in Canada. Educated, secular and Westernised, she had never had anything to do with ritual Hinduism. From so far however, the crowds, the pilgrims, the piety, the cold river, the morning mist, the sadhus, all called to her. Somewhere they beat in her blood and now, in a foreign land, she was as guilty of exoticising India as the tourist posters in the Taj Mahal restaurant.

Over dinner Nina told Ananda about the Kumbh Mela.

He grunted.

‘Do you know it?’

‘Of course.’

‘Oh. Well, hearing about it over the BBC made me realise how special it was.’

Unlike Nina, Ananda knew firsthand how special it was, because he had gone there as a pilgrim when small. ‘Once my mother insisted on going,’ he offered, willing to share a memory, something he rarely did if it was set in India.

‘And?’

‘My father didn’t want to brave all those crowds, but my mother was very insistent.

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