Deep in the hills of Madikeri, Sharmaji and his wife Neela were standing over the top of a small look-out with their tour guide, awaiting for their son to arrive via bus with his family. This was not a trip that Sharmaji was looking for, though Neela had been planning it with his daughter-in-law for several years after Sharmaji had decided to stop speaking to his son, and he finally agreed for it only because the cost of the plane ticket from Delhi to Bangalore was surprisingly low, but in the lush expanse of teak trees and sandalwood, with the layer of fog between them and the ground, Sharmaji was feeling that staring out of the treehouse with binoculars, and in the clefts of his eyes was the tender happiness that came out of being one with nature.
‘Yes, sir, please, look that way, you will see it, yes,’ interrupted the guide named Maheshwara, a barely twenty-something most likely barely paid by the hotel staff, barely competent in English and Hindi too, but charming, at least when it came to his smile, and his clumsy body language. Sharmaji had the curved nose of a hawk, and so when it came away from the binoculars and he looked out, with the black stains under his eyelids, he looked angry, even when his intention was to look nothing but grateful for his experiences. It did not help that he yelled at the boy, reminding him that he was on a trip, he wanted to enjoy it at his own pace. He cursed something in Hindi that made his wife shout at him to be polite, and then he went back to appraising the view with his binoculars. The boy did his best to apologise, and his wife did her best to calm him down, but neither did anything to satiate Sharmaji’s temper. He yelled at them once more, ‘Did I pay you to talk so much? I am here to enjoy my view.’
For some time, the only chittering in the treehouse was that of the birds.
Sharmaji marvelled at the colours of the hornbills and the parakeets and began to stare out at the world with a manic smile, in such a way that both Maheshwara and Neela could not help smiling, because when Sharmaji smiled, others felt equally such a need to smile, and when he pouted or frowned, others felt a part of their own heart sinking down. He had enough, and as he gave the binoculars to Neela, he shouted any and every fact he might have known about any bird at Maheshwara, who nodded and said, ‘Accha, accha, haan, yes ji, yes sir.’ Neela had been enjoying the view herself, but the sun was starting to peek through the fog, and it was getting hot. Sharmaji had decided it was time to step down, so he took the binoculars away from Neela and told the two of them that they must go down. Neela had been a Sharma long enough to know that it was fruitless to say anymore. She had smiled at Maheshwara, complimented the boy on the view, and then meagerly asked for a second round once the tour was done.
They were driving towards the city of Madikeri when Sharmaji’s son Dinesh had called. Sharmaji saw who was calling and did not want to take it. He let Neela answer on his behalf.
‘How are you, beta? Has the bus finally started?’ Neela said. The answer must have been affirmative, as she responded then. ‘Accha. So we will see you soon, beta. Mummy and Daddy love and miss you. See you soon.’
Sharmaji told her, ‘Don’t tell him lies like that.’
Neela said, “He is your son, and you are about to see your grandson for the first time, so don’t say stupid things.’
Maheshwara had been overhearing and interrupted in his broken Hindi, ‘Sir, grandson you have? Bohut accha! How old is he?’
Before Sharmaji could answer, Neela said, ‘He is only a few months old,’ and she showed some pictures on her phone from the back seat.
Sharmaji scolded them both, ‘Neela, he is driving! And you, keep your eyes on the road. I do not like it when people drive this fast when the road curves like this.’
The road was in fact slithering and bending up and down a hill, and with the fog, and the cars darting on both sides of the line, it could have been easy for them to drive off the cliff. Maheshwara’s way of resolving this was to stop the car at a viewpoint and look at the pictures. ‘Come on, come on, we are getting late!’ Sharmaji yelled as Maheshwara stared at the baby pictures and bobbed his head to himself and smiled. Then, he remembered he did not know where they were going in the first place. ‘Hey, what is the next destination of our trip?’
Maheshwara said, ‘Sir, I can take you to a waterfall, very nice it is. Super. Or, there is a wonderful temple you must have been wanting to see. If Madame is very particular, we will go immediately.’
‘Let’s go to the temple first,’ was what Neela said, at the same time Sharmaji had said, ‘It has been many years since we have seen a waterfall.’
They stared at each other, but Sharmaji always won these bouts. Neela turned on some bhajans from her phone and sang along as Maheshwara hurried downwards.
What was considered to Maheshwara a glorious waterfall was the pitter-patter of a stream off of the rocks, and the walk for almost twenty minutes up and down had made Sharmaji’s knees hurt.
‘You dragged us all the way here for this? I have seen better waterfalls in Delhi when the monsoon season comes.’
Sharmaji cackled at his own joke, albeit the tourists in front of them were looking back, not necessarily assumed. Dinesh had been calling, and so Neela stowed herself away to talk to him. Maheshwara and Sharmaji sat over some stones by the waterfall and stared at the water coming down.
‘Ji’ Maheshwara said, ‘In other seasons, it is very nice. Like a waterfall properly it is flowing. You have had bad luck, ashte. You must come some other time.’
Sharmaji responded, “There were some beautiful waterfalls we saw a few years back when we went to Sikkim. Looking at this, I am convinced we must go back.’
Maheshwara asked with bright eyes, ‘Sir, how is Sikkim? I would love to go someday.’
Sharmaji was kissing the air when he said, ‘Sikkim is the most beautiful place. Snow-capped mountains, the freshest air, monasteries you will not see anywhere else in India. It is nothing compared to Coorg. Sikkim makes Coorg look like a slum in Delhi.’
Sharmaji was laughing, but Maheshwara was drooping his face.
Neela had come back, and told the two of them that Dinesh and family was getting close. Maheshwara asked if the two of them wanted to go somewhere else. Neela said that they might as well stay close to the waterfall and wait for their son to get back, but Sharmaji made it a point to claim that they didn’t know in fact when the bus would arrive, and he wanted to see the temple.
‘I want to be there to greet my son the moment he gets off the bus,’ Neela said.
‘I want to see the temple, and I want to see it now,’ was what Sharmaji responded with.
Shrubs surrounded the paved roads like gates, the oaks were tall to the point they could no longer see the horizon in the foliage. When the clouds dampened like this, Neela was always worried that rain would come, and she ordered Maheshwara to drive slower. Sharmaji barked at him, ‘No, drive quicker, don’t you want to finish the temple before your precious son comes?’
Neela moaned, ‘Dear, I don’t want to get into an accident. Think of our safety, think of the both of us.’
Sharmaji snickered. ‘You didn’t care the least of our safety when you were showing those pictures off. Why do you care now? Did you miss him that much?’
Neela was close to crying, and it showed in her voice. ‘Of course I did. He is our son, and we haven’t seen him for so long.’
The temple was slabs of stone painted white overlooking a pond. The gate was closed, forbidding people to take videos of the site, but they were the only tourists in the vicinity, and Sharmaji needed to pray, as did Neela. They stood around the fence with their hands clapped together and said to Shiva what they both needed to say. These were the thoughts they would never say to each other but would release back into the cosmos every morning, and as if it were their suburbian mandir, they took some steps away from the fence, let their hands drip to their sides, and then stared not at each other, but outwards, into the weight of their own thoughts. They walked around the structure for several rounds, until finally Dinesh called his mother. Sharmaji was right, they had been delayed by an hour once more.
They eventually made their way to the bus station, though not without argument.
‘He told you he is reaching late. Why are we starting up now?’
‘Do you really have anything else to do? You are trying to torture me to an early grave. It is bad enough that you decided we should never speak to them after he married that girl. Do you remember how many nights I protested with my hunger? It was when I realized you didn’t care a moment that I suffered that I stopped.’
‘Stop being dramatic. Your nagging has finally dented me, you will see that boy now. But, I told that boy what would happen if he married that Muslim girl, and he didn’t listen, so he only has himself to blame for I cut him off from our funds. Don’t talk to me as if I am wrong when I am not.’
The bus stand was close enough to the temple, and so as Neela waited outside of the car and put her sunglasses on, Sharmaji reclined his seat and took a nap. He couldn’t help reminiscing of the fights he had with his son when he proclaimed he was having a love marriage, and to a Muslim girl, at that. Sharmaji went to bed every night with tears in his eyes, and he assumed his own son did as well. His eyes were shut but felt veiny and red with the flickers of a thousand fires. He could hear it over and over in his head, Dinesh shouting, How can you be so backwards? I hate you, I hate you so much. Sharmaji had awoken and shouted, ‘I hate you too!’ Maheshwara looked up, but looked away, as he also knew the special disdain in a father’s eye reserved only for a misbehaving son.
Neela knocked on the window, implying that Sharmaji ought to roll it up.
‘They are coming,’ she said.
‘You go greet them,’ he responded. ‘I will wait in the car.’
‘Please, come. It has been so many years. Do not make this the first impression your grandson will have of you.’
‘I said, I want to rest. You go greet them.’
Sharmaji did not rest in the least. He did not roll up his seat, but he felt the anxiety that came with waiting for something or someone who was not eagerly anticipated. I hate you, you’ll never understand what love means, and you will never understand what someone of my age thinks at all. He banged the window with his fist, which did in fact cause Maheshwara to look. Sharmaji shouted, ‘No good Indian boy talks to his own father like that. He deserved to be kicked out of my house, and no one was wrong except him! So, what, he has a grandson? I won’t even look at the boy. I won’t even mutter a word!’
Maheshwara had something to say, but he didn’t say it. He had noticed someone was coming with their luggage, and so he opened the trunk and came out of the car to help. Sharmaji rolled up his seat, but he was not going to look at Dinesh, his wife, or this baby boy. He stared at the man in a lungi sitting over his car and spitting out betel nut instead.
The bags were stowed into the trunk, the door was open, and the chatter of Hindi mixed with Gujurati was flooding the van. Dinesh was saying something, most likely talking to his wife, as they were entering the car.
‘Daada, look at who has come all this way to wave at you,’ Neela said. Sharmaji wasn’t looking in any other way but the front, but out of all the noises he was hearing, the one that was the most profound to his ears was the sound of a little hand smacking against the car window. Sharmaji didn’t want to look, he really wasn’t going to look, but a part of his conscience gave in, and he turned his head, just a little to the right. There was a baby boy wearing a diaper and a blue blouse, his forehead smeared with the red and gray kumkum from a prayer. He had the chubbiest face, and his lips waddled up and down over his mouth. Was he gooing at his grandfather? Sharmaji opened the window. No, he wasn’t saying anything, his mouth was only open to let out some waddles of spit. The boy hit his grandfather over the cheek and smiled. He also had a somewhat hawkish nose.
Something about seeing the boy made Sharmaji feel inexplicably better. A weight lifted off his body, he didn’t feel a need to feel the anger of his grudge as well. Sharmaji held the baby in his hand, cuddled it over his chest, and did not stop complimenting him for his looks for the remainder of their ride back to the hotel.
About the Author
Indian-American Author, Globetrotter, and Polyglot, KIRAN BHAT is known for his literary masterpiece ’We of the Forsaken World’. His books have been published in five languages. His writing has been published in journals, such as The Caravan, Outlook India, Sahitya Akademi, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Brooklyn Rail, The Colorado Review, to name some. Currently based in Mumbai, he is the Co-chair of the Environmental Sustainability Subcommittee of the Global Indian Council.
