Doing Wrong by H. R. F. Keating

Author:H. R. F. Keating [H. R. F. Keating]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2020-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

At the Hotel Relax, Ghote sat waiting, counting the hours till he could set out from this safe haven for the Manikarnika Ghat and its incalculable dangers. They were hours passing with excruciating slowness. If, he thought, I have looked at my watch once, I have looked at it one thousand times.

He had returned from his long daylight vigil at the ghat feeling the sharp smoke of its fires engrained in his skin. The interminable soliloquy of the ancient sannyasin seemed still to be shrilly ringing in his ears.

“Such is the story of Durdhara. Now let me tell you the story of Mandapa.”

He could have said, “No, I do not wish to hear one other story.” But it would have offended that good old man. And, besides, there had been nothing else to do. Until midnight.

“I would like to hear.”

“Now, Mandapa, although he was the son of a man renowned for his piety, was himself both wild and wicked. With some friends he was drinking liquor and committing various crimes. He appeared to be, as you might say, an all-bad man. So sunk was he in his wickedness that, even when he and his co-riffraffs had stolen gold from the maharaja, he then swindled those friends out of their share and hid himself in the house of a certain prostitute. Whereupon his father, learning the full extent of his wickedness, disowned him. Those riffraffs, however, found Mandapa while he was walking out from that prostitute’s place and beat him with great severity, leaving him for dead on the bank of the River Asi, which is, as you may know, just within the border itself of holy Kashi.” Beat him with great severity. The old man’s calmly trotted out words came back to him now with a shiver of foreboding. Was he risking a beating of great severity himself? Once he had left the hotel? Risking even being left for dead? Death itself?

Once more he looked at his watch.

“When at last,” the old sannyasin had continued, “this badmash Mandapa was recovering consciousness what should he see but a happy party on the Panchkroshi pilgrimage, the long walk round Kashi that takes, as you can tell from its name beginning five, five days and five nights to perform. Being at loose ends, wicked Mandapa thought to go along with these pilgrims. Now, even setting out on a pilgrimage with such good-seeking people had a somewhat transforming effect on Mandapa, and when they had reached to their next halting place he joined them in singing and dancing before the image there of God Shiva. And so it went on, day by day, night by night, till at last Mandapa was meditating upon Shiva with every step he was taking. Burning also with remorses, he neither ate nor drank. So they came at last to conclude the pilgrimage by bathing here at Manikarnika, just where we are sitting now. There his co-pilgrims were praising and proclaiming that Mandapa was now a sinless fellow, and, hearing so much, his father claimed him again as his son.

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