The Temple-goers by Aatish Taseer

flat. And just before I pulled the flush, a detail impressed itself on me. On a narrow cement windowsill below the paint-splattered glass, there was a thick accumulation of a hard yellow and red substance. Its colour and appearance made me curious enough to touch it. It was smooth and layered. When I dug my nail into it, a little flake came off easily. Wax! The remains of candles, red and yellow candles that had burned to their base. Their blackened wicks were embedded in the pat of wax. No sooner had I realized what the coloured substance was than a looming feature of life in the flat occurred to me: blackouts. It was to long hot nights dotted with red and yellow candles, burning into the morning, that Aakash returned.
    I opened the door and found him waiting. He turned the tap in the little sink for me with one hand and held a towel in the other.
    In the room outside, the family was ready to go. Five bags of food, offerings and water had been brought out. There were three women, Aakash’s mother, aunt and sister-in-law; and three men, his two brothers, one younger, one older, and his father. And there was the toddler, whose hair was to be offered up, sitting heavily in his father’s arms. I waited for the room to empty. Besides the religious hanging, there was a painting of a Chinese scene, fluorescent green palms, pagodas and bridges on a black felt background. The only other decoration on the pink powdery walls was a narrow framed picture of a red rose, which for all its shabby sentimentality, was somehow affecting.

9
    Aakash’s father, as a testament to its importance, knew every stage of the fifty-kilometre journey from town to temple. He knew the last of the city’s satellite towns with their single-storey constructions gathered close to the road and their multitude of chemists, automechanics and call booths. He knew when the land would become fields dotted for as far as anyone could see with the clay minarets of brick furnaces. He knew the Air Force base with its high walls of bougainvillea that came just before the Haryana border. He knew the flat green fields and pale blue sky of Haryana, once bare save for the odd red-brick construction, but now covered with uncooked bricks drying in the sun and chimneys evenly emitting black smoke. As if in homage to his destination, he spoke of magic on the way.
    He spoke at Aakash’s prompting. Since we’d left Delhi, Aakash had become protective of me. He put his elder brother, mother, aunt and sister-in-law in one car, and in my van-like car he put himself in the front next to Uttam, his little brother Anil far in the back and his father and me near each other in the middle row so we could talk. He would turn back every few moments, facilitating the easy flow of conversation and checking that I wasn’t getting bored of the stories. When, occasionally, I looked ahead, I saw the side of his face pressed intently against the seat, his bright, arched eyes ready to wink.
    The stories were not simply religious. At the heart of them was not just a reward or a moral intervention from the gods, but rather an emphasis on the powers of Brahmins, the Siddhis, continuing to this day despite the decay of modern times. They seemed designed to expand on what Aakash had said a few days before at Junglee: ‘There’s something in us.’ The message, beyond proving the existence of these powers, was not always clear. In one story, Aakash’s grandfather, killed in war, went to his father before leaving on his fatal mission. The father was old and perhaps sensed something. He asked his son to ask whatever he would of him. The man said, ‘I have so many daughters and only one son. I am not rich. How can I be expected to marry them off?’
    ‘Over the next six months,’ Aakash’s father said grimly, then chuckled, ‘one of my sisters died every month.’
    ‘My aunts?’ Aakash asked not with horror but simple curiosity. ‘I have an aunt in Rohtak…’
    ‘The only one!’ his father