Dhoori - A Singapore-India travel mystery

The holy Ganges River was freezing against my skin, and a faint smell of urine hung in the morning air. From the corner of my eyes, I saw Uncle Rajesh shivering as he folded his chapped hands in prayer and bowed his head in reverence. He had been telling me of the river’s significance this morning – stories of how a bath in it could wash away thousands of one’s sins. But now my thoughts were only on my backpack on the riverbank. My phone, water bottle and sanitiser were in there, and losing them would feel like losing limbs, and I glanced around tactfully to make sure it was still there. Thankfully, Uncle’s sins washed off quickly, and he was ready to bring me lunch.

“Are you sure this is the best place around?” I demanded, swatting flies off my arm. “The flies are having a better meal than me.”

Uncle Rajesh chuckled as he fanned his plate of rice and dhal with his hand.

“Come on, I’ve only been living in India for two years. It’s your fault for thinking that I would be a good tour guide for you,” he replied.

“First the cold river, now this food,” I remarked. “You must be trying to give me a tour of India’s hospitals.”

He burst out laughing again. We never used to joke together like this in Singapore, but here I felt like we could talk about anything.

“You see, if you truly want to experience India’s spirituality, you must first give up your attachment to your body,” Uncle Rajesh explained. “Accept that this body of yours is just a shell that stores your true self, the soul.”

“Ok, but if anything happens to this shell, you pay the medical fees,” I grumbled.

Uncle Rajesh leaned over and patted my shoulder, smirking. In my head, I ran through an itinerary of what I wanted to do in my final three days. Though I enjoyed his company, I was looking forward to some alone time to take pictures that would make my life look interesting.

Today was the spring festival in India, Basant Panchami, and that evening I left alone to visit a temple to get some shots of the festivities. Shophouses and lamps along the road were decorated with yellow flowers, and I had borrowed a yellow kurta from Uncle Rajesh to blend in. This was only my third or fourth time wearing one, and it felt like I was wearing someone else’s skin.

Hundreds of pairs of footwear were strewn outside the temple, and I did my best to hide mine where they would not be stolen before snapping a quick picture. Jubilant roars like those I heard at sports games greeted my ears as I entered, and the clash of cymbals and drums added to the fanfare. The temple’s exterior walls and pillars, faded and peeling from age, were draped with strings of bright yellow chrysanthemums. Inside, a sea of yellow-clothed bodies blocked the temple’s architecture, but I was not paying much attention to the statues. The people were more interesting.

“Jai Krishna! Jai Radhe!” the crowd bellowed, and they pushed and shoved each other to get a glimpse of the front. Their behaviour disturbed me, and I remember being terrified of crowds in India as a child. But today I felt a tinge of jealousy as well. I could not remember the last time I felt as connected to something as they did. It must have been nice to feel so strongly about one’s culture.

Maybe they were all putting on an act, like how we used to sing the anthem every morning back home, I reasoned. It had to be.

The smell of incense overpowered the stale odour of the bodies around me. Normally, finding personal space would have been my main priority, but I decided to challenge myself today. This body was just a shell after all, I thought and willed myself to be part of the crowd. After minutes of squeezing, I made it somewhere to the front where I could see the temple’s main two stone deities, draped in yellow garments. I bowed my head, wary of offending the crowd around me, and a couple in the front caught my eye. They were young and beautiful, around my age, and were performing aarti by circling the deities with a gem studded lamp they held together. Their yellow kurta and sari were embroidered with shimmering details, and they wore gold jewellery around their wrists and neck.

My gaze was drawn to the man. He looked just like me. He had a full beard while I was clean-shaven, and his hair was soft and flowing while mine was short and straight. But everything else was so familiar, his nose, his eyes, his eyebrows, even his height. I stared shamelessly as he bowed his head towards the deities along with his wife, having completed their aarti. His expressions, the shape of his lips, the way he blinked. I felt a chill suddenly. It wasme. I could not explain it, his features and his face were exactly my own. It was as though I was looking into a mirror.

A shove from behind shook me out of this trance. I hurried out of the way of the scowling worshippers behind me and found another point where I could continue my observation. There’s no way he could look that much like me, I told myself. It must be that I was just not used to seeing so many Indians. His posture was straight and firm, and he looked much more muscular than me, too. But when I looked at him again, the similarities were unmistakable. His head shape, his chin, his ears, the combination. And the way he pushed up his hair reminded me of when I used to have long hair two years back.

The man now took a sip of water poured into his palms by a priest, and the way some of the water dripped off his chin was too familiar. The smile he gave his partner after made me feel a sharp pang in my chest. It was my smile, the way I pushed out my gums and parted my lips to the right side. I was always conscious of that smile, but on him, it looked bright and beautiful. Feeling suffocated suddenly, I squeezed through the crowd and pushed my way out.

Outside, I caught sight of my reflection in the windows of a dusty car. It was the same face I saw in the mirror every day, but now it looked more ordinary than ever. Just a mash of features on skin. This combination was not me. And yet, this combination was the only thing that connected me to this place.

Forgetting about calling Uncle Rajesh to pick me up, I decided to wait outside to see my face again. I wanted to see how it would react when it saw me.

Priya closed her eyes and lowered her head before the murtis, and I copied her actions. The din of the crowd behind us filled me with pride, glad that I was not a part of that mess. The decorations for Basant were beautiful, and I knew my wife was going to bring that up on the way home. We had argued about coming in the first place, and I eventually conceded to avoid telling her the real reason why I was apprehensive. I tried to think of something else, and tried to feel grateful for what I had gained in my life since then. But I could not shut out the sickly hole in my chest, and I allowed the memories to come rushing back.

It was just outside this very Mandir when I was in my last year of college. I was brisk walking by the temple that evening, after having dinner with Priya’s family for the first time. I was starting work at her father’s company in a month, so it had been a doubly stressful experience. But I think I succeeded in impressing him. He laughed at some of my jokes and smiled at the rest, and even called me into the living room to see if I could help him to fix some display grain on his TV. I should have taken his offer to send me home, but I felt that I could increase my value by lying that I had someone picking me up. Winter was coming to an end, and I should have worn more than just my down jacket, but that would have made me seem weak. The stench of sewage was overpowering as I neared the Ganga river banks, and I hastened to find a way out before dark.

As I looked around for a Rahi, I caught sight of a single beggar lying near the river. This was uncommon these days, as the authorities had been clearing them off the street. His condition was so horrendous that I immediately looked away in disgust. His ribcage was protruding from his torso, and he had no limbs. There were only stumps where there should be legs, and where there should be arms there was a small clump of flesh and skin.

“Priya Ju!” I heard him shout, and I was forced to turn and look.

There were clumps of flies crawling over his body, and he could not move enough to shake them off. He lay still and let them suck his blood like he was a corpse. He was young, and there was little life on his face. When I looked into his eyes, I got a shock.

His eyes… they looked like my own. Though his ears were puffy with blood clots and his hair was ragged and oily, his head shape and his jaw combined to make my face.

It was getting dark, so I was sure I was mistaken. But when we locked eyes, it was clear that he saw something too. He stared relentlessly, as though I owed him something, and remained silent.

Snapping out of this trance, I walked on. But his face would not leave of my mind. The way his eyes seemed to droop in sadness, his blank stare. My eyes. They reminded me of the sullen eyes I wore throughout my college years. For years I worked to push that pathetic youth deep into the depths of my mind.

I caught a glimpse of my face in the windows of an empty bus, and already the features which I had struggle to teach myself to appreciate were dulling.

Oblivious to the Rahi stopping in front of me, I briskly walked back. He was still staring in my direction, and I went closer. He continued staring, and this time the resemblance to my face was uncanny. He was tanner, and his body was wrought with bites and bruises, but his face was unmistakably my own.

His pungent odour filled my nostrils as I got close, and his peeling lips parted slowly into what seemed to be a smile. Pushing what was left of his teeth out, he showed his gums like I usually did, into what . He began muttering, still with a smile, and his eyes eventually turned away from me to the sky above. I no longer had doubts about what I had to do. Fate had brought us together.

I rolled my pants up, then picked him up by his bony shoulders like he was a sack. The night was quiet, and I did not bother to check if anyone was looking. He stayed silent as I entered the chilling water, and as I lowered his torso into the water, he started to call out to God.

“Krishna! Radhe!”

Priya nudged me and I looked up at the murtis again. She instructed me to stretch out my hands towards the priest so that he could pour some water into my palms.

“It’s Gangawater,” she whispered, and I drank.