Chapter Twenty-Eight
At the base of the mountain Abdullah led me away behind the valley of the sandstone Buddhas and its well-cleared paths. We followed a jungle track through thick forest for a few minutes, and then entered a tree-lined approach, rising on a gentle slope to meet a concrete and hardwood house, three storeys tall.
Before we reached the steps leading up to the wide ground-floor veranda, Khaled walked out of the vestibule to greet us.
Dressed in a voluminous yellow silk robe, and with garlands of red and yellow flowers around his neck, he stood with his fists locked onto his hips.
‘Shantaram!’ he shouted. ‘Welcome to Shangri-La!’
He’d changed. He’d changed so much in the years since I’d seen him. His hair had thinned to the point that he was almost bald. The fighter’s frame had expanded until his hips and belly were wider than his shoulders. The handsome face that had frowned its rage and recrimination at the world was swollen, from temple to vanishing jaw, and his smile all but concealed his golden-brown eyes.
It was Khaled, my friend. I rushed the steps to greet him.
He extended his hands, holding me two steps below. A young man in a yellow kurta took a photograph of us, let the camera fall to a strap around his neck, and pulled a notebook and pen from his shirt pocket.
‘Don’t mind Tarun,’ Khaled said, nodding his head toward the young man. ‘He keeps a record of everyone I meet, and everything I do and say. I’ve told him not to do it, but the naughty lad won’t listen. And hey, people always do what their hearts tell them to do, isn’t it so?’
‘Well –’
‘I got fat,’ he said.
It wasn’t regretful or ironic. It was a flat statement of fact.
‘Well –’
‘But you look very fit. What have you been doing, to get all those bruises? Boxing with Abdullah? Looks like he got the better of you. No surprise, eh? Certainly, you both look fit enough to make that climb up my mountain, to see Idriss.’
‘Your mountain?’
‘Well . . . this part of it is mine, na? It’s actually Idriss who thinks he owns the whole mountain. He’s such a chudh. Anyway, come here, let me give you a hug, and then we’ll take a look around.’
I climbed the last two steps, and fell into a fleshy cloud. Tarun flashed a photograph. When Khaled released me he shook hands with Abdullah, and led the way inside.
‘Where’s Karla?’ I asked, a step behind him.
‘She said that she will meet you again on the path,’ Khaled replied breezily. ‘She is jogging, I think, to clear her mind. I am not sure whether it is you or me that disturbs her peace, but my money is on you, old friend.’
The entrance to the huge old house opened into a wide vestibule, with staircases left and right, and archways leading to the main rooms of the ground floor.
‘This was a Britisher’s monsoon retreat,’ Khaled announced, as we moved beyond the vestibule to a sitting room featuring walls of books, two writing desks, and several comfortable leather chairs. ‘It passed to a businessman, but when the national park was established here, he was forced to sell it to the city. A rich friend of mine, one of my students, has rented it from the city for some years, and he gave it to me, to use.’
‘Your students?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Oh, I see. Is this where you learn how not to contact your friends, when you come back from the dead?’
‘Very funny, Lin,’ he replied, in that flat tone he’d used when he’d described himself as fat. ‘But I think you’ll understand my need for discretion.’
‘Fuck discretion. You’re not dead, Khaled, and I want to know why I didn’t know that.’
‘Things are not as simple as you think, Lin. And anyway, what I teach people here has nothing to do with the outside world. I teach love. Specifically, I teach people how to love themselves. I think you’re not surprised that for some people, that’s not easy.’
We walked through the sitting room, opened the louvred French doors and entered a wide sunroom, running the whole width of the house. There were many wicker armchairs, with glass-topped tables between them.
Softly whirring overhead fans disturbed the slender leaves of potted palms. A wall of glass panels looked out into an English-style garden of rosebushes, and neatly clipped hedges.
Two pretty young Western girls dressed in tunics approached us, bowing to Khaled, their palms pressed together.
‘Please, take a seat,’ Khaled invited, pointing toward two of the wicker chairs. ‘What will you have, hot drinks, or cold?’
‘Cold,’ Abdullah answered.
‘The same.’
Khaled nodded at the girls. They backed up a few steps, before walking away out of sight. Khaled watched them leave.
‘Good help is so easy to find these days,’ he sighed contentedly, as he lowered himself into a chair.
Tarun made notes.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘What . . . happened?’ Khaled repeated, mystified.
‘The last time I saw you there was a dead lunatic on the ground, and you walked into a snow storm, without a gun. Now you’re here. What happened?’
‘Oh,’ he smiled. ‘I see. We’re back to that.’
‘Yeah. We’re back to that.’
‘You know, Lin, you got harder, since I saw you last.’
‘Maybe I did, Khaled. Maybe I just like the truth, when I can get it.’
‘The truth,’ he mused.
He glanced up at Tarun, who was still making notes. The assistant stopped, caught Khaled’s eye, sighed, and put his notebook away.
‘Well,’ Khaled continued, ‘I walked from Afghanistan. And I walked. And I walked. It’s surprising, really, how far you can walk, when you don’t care if you live, or if you die. To be precise, when you don’t love yourself.’
‘You walked where, exactly?’
‘I walked to Pakistan.’
Tell me about Pakistan, a voice said in my head.
‘And after Pakistan?’
‘After Pakistan, I walked to India. Then I walked through India, to Varanasi. By the time I got there, word had spread about me. A lot of people were talking about the Silent Walking Baba, who never spoke a word to anyone. It took me a while to realise they were talking about me. I didn’t speak, because by then I actually couldn’t speak. Physically, I mean. I was quite sick, from malnutrition. Almost died from it. The hunger, for so many starving months, caused my hair to fall out, and many of my teeth. My mouth was swollen with ulcers. I couldn’t say a word, to save my life.’
He laughed softly, chuckling motes in a sunbeam of memory.
‘But people took my silence for wisdom, you see? Less really is more, sometimes. And in Varanasi, I met an Englishman, Lord Bob, who claimed me as his guru. As it happens, he was very rich. A lot of my students have been rich, in fact, which is funny, when you think about it.’
He paused, staring out into the English garden, a smile of wonderment pulling at the edges of his mouth.
‘Lord Bob . . . ’ I prompted.
‘Oh, yes. Lord Bob. He was such a kind and caring man, but he was in need of something. Desperately in need. He spent his whole life searching in vain for the one thing that would give his life meaning, and then he finally came to me for an answer.’
‘What was it?’ I asked.
‘I have no idea,’ Khaled replied. ‘I had no idea what he was searching for, frankly. Not a clue. He was stinking rich, after all. What could he possibly want? But I don’t think it mattered much to Lord Bob that I couldn’t help him, because he left me everything, when he died.’
The girls returned with two trays, and set them down on tables near us. There were drinks in long glasses, and several dishes of dried papaya, pineapple and mango, and three varieties of shelled nuts.
Bowing deeply to Khaled, their hands pressed together reverently, the girls backed away and then turned, gliding across the tiled veranda on bare feet.
I watched the girls out of sight, and turned to see Khaled, staring dreamily at the garden, and Abdullah staring fixedly at Khaled.
‘I was there, in Varanasi, for nearly two years,’ Khaled reflected. ‘And I miss it, sometimes.’
He looked around then, and picked up one of the glasses. He handed it to me, passed another to Abdullah, and took a long sip himself.
‘They were good years,’ he said. ‘I learned a lot from Lord Bob’s willingness to subjugate himself, and surrender to me.’
He chuckled. I glanced at Abdullah. Did he say subjugate? Did he say surrender? It was a strange moment, in an already strange hour. We sipped our drinks.
‘And he wasn’t the only one, of course,’ Khaled continued. ‘There were many others, even elderly sadhus, all of them too happy to kneel and touch my feet, even though I said nothing at all. And that’s when I understood the power that comes into us when another man, even if it’s only one other, bends his knee in devotion. I understood that men sell the power of that dream to women, every time they propose.’
He laughed. I stared at my drink, at the lines of moisture that zigzagged through the silver filigree design on the surface of the ruby-red glass. I was becoming increasingly uneasy. The Khaled who spoke so complacently about others kneeling before him wasn’t the friend I’d loved.
Khaled turned to Abdullah.
‘I think our brother, Lin, is rather surprised that while my English has improved, in the years with Lord Bob, my American sensibility has declined, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Every man is responsible for his own actions,’ Abdullah replied. ‘That law applies to you, and to those who choose to kneel before you, as it does to Lin, and to me.’
‘Well said, old friend!’ Khaled cried.
He placed his glass on the table, and lifted himself with some grunting effort from the chair.
‘Come! I want to show you something.’
We followed him back into the house and through to the staircases flanking the entrance vestibule. Khaled paused at the foot of the stairs for a moment, his hand resting on the turned wooden pommel.
‘I hope you liked the juice,’ he asked earnestly.
‘Sure.’
‘It’s the drop of maple syrup that makes the difference,’ he pressed.
There was a pause. I understood, at last, that he wanted a reply.
‘The juice was fine, Khaled,’ I said.
‘Good juice,’ Abdullah echoed.
‘I’m so glad,’ Khaled said flatly. ‘You’ve got no idea how long it took me to train the kitchen staff on the juices. I had to flog one of them with a spatula. And the drama I had with the desserts, don’t let me go there.’
‘You have my word,’ I said.
He took one step, but then turned quickly to speak to Tarun, who’d been following us.
‘You can wait here, Tarun,’ Khaled said. ‘In fact, take a break. Get yourself a biscuit.’
Crushed, Tarun ambled away. Khaled watched him leave, suspicion squinting in his eyes.
The old Khaled could’ve taken the steps three at a time, and beaten any man in Bombay to the top floor. The new Khaled paused twice on the first flight.
‘This floor,’ he puffed, as we reached the first floor, ‘has all of our main meditation and yoga halls.’
‘Do a lot of yoga, then?’ I asked, channelling the impish spirit of Gemini George for a moment.
‘No, no!’ Khaled replied seriously. ‘I’m much too fat and unfit for that. I was always a boxing and karate man, anyway. You remember that, Lin.’
I remembered. I remembered when Khaled could fight any man in the city but Abdullah into the ground, and still have energy to spare.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘But yoga is very popular, with my people. They’re at it all the time. They’d do it all night, if I let them. I practically have to hose them down to make them stop.’
Through the nearest door in the corridor, we could see a class of a dozen people, sitting on mats. Flute music came from speakers fixed to the walls.
Regaining his breath, Khaled led us to the second floor.
The corridor at that level showed many closed doors, running the length of the building.
‘Dormitories,’ Khaled wheezed. ‘And single rooms.’
He gently eased open the door to the nearest room. We saw several girls, sleeping on single beds under tent-pole mosquito nets. The girls were naked.
‘My most devoted students,’ Khaled said, in that same bewilderingly flat tone.
‘What the fuck, Khaled?’ I snapped, but he put his finger to his lips, silencing me.
‘Please, Lin, be quiet! We won’t get a minute’s peace, if you wake them up.’
‘Okay, bye, Khaled,’ I said, leaving.
‘What are you doing?’ Khaled asked, a puzzle stamped on his forehead.
‘Well, I’m gonna keep on walking until I’m not here. That’s what goodbye means.’
‘No, Lin, what’s the matter?’ he asked, pulling the door closed gently.
‘The matter?’ I said, stopping at the top of the stairs. ‘What’s that in there, a harem? Have you gone nuts, Khaled? Who do you think you are?’
‘Everyone here is free to leave, Lin,’ he said flatly, his frown darkening at the edges. ‘Including you.’
‘What a coincidence,’ I sighed, turning to go. ‘I was just leaving.’
‘No, no, I’m sorry,’ he said, rushing forward and putting a hand on my shoulder to stop me. ‘There’s something you have to see! Something I must show you! It’s a secret. A secret I want to share with you.’
‘I’ve had enough secrets for one day, Khaled. Call me, when you come down off the mountain.’
‘But Abdullah hasn’t seen the secret yet. You can’t deprive him, as well, can you? That would be cruel. Abdullah, wouldn’t you like to know the secret?’
‘I would, Khaled,’ Abdullah replied, all fascinated innocence.
‘Then, tell Lin. Convince him to stay. Whatever the case, I’m going up to see the secret, and you’re welcome to come along, if you want, my brothers.’
He released his grip on my shoulder, braced himself with a deep breath for the climb to the third floor, and then trudged up the stairs.
I held Abdullah back.
‘What are we doin’ here, Abdullah?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A room full of naked girls? What’s the matter with him? There’s plenty of girls. The world’s full of girls. Having your own roomful of girls is what gives creepy a bad name. Come on, brother. Let’s go.’
‘But, Lin,’ Abdullah whispered. ‘What about the secret?’
‘Are you kidding?’
‘It is a secret. A real secret.’
‘I don’t like the secret I heard already, Abdullah.’
‘How can you not want to know?’
‘Let’s just say I’ve got psychic asthma, and right now, I need fresh air. It’s medicinal. Let’s go.’
‘Please stay with me, Lin, just until the secret is unveiled.’
I sighed.
‘Are you guys coming?’ Khaled called out from his resting place, halfway up the flight of stairs. ‘These stairs are killing me. I’m getting an elevator installed next week.’
Abdullah gave me his pleading frown.
‘Okay, okay,’ I called back, heading up the stairs.
Plodding wearily, Khaled followed the elbow turn of the stairs and finally came to a closed door. Fetching a key from the folds of his kaftan, he opened the door, and ushered us inside.
It was dark. The light from the stairwell revealed an attic room, with the folded arms of roof beams above our heads. Khaled closed the door, locked it, and clicked on a suspended light bulb.
It was a hoard of objects in gold and silver: jewelled necklaces and chains, spilling from little wooden chests, scattered across several tables.
There were candlesticks and mirrors, picture frames, hairbrushes, strings of pearls, jewelled bracelets, watches, necklaces, brooches, rings, earrings, nose-rings, toe rings and even several black and gold wedding necklaces.
And there was money. A lot of money.
‘No matter how I tried to explain this,’ Khaled said, breathing through his open mouth, ‘nothing could ever be clearer than seeing it for yourself, na? This is the power of the bended knee. Do you see? Do you see?’
There was a softly breathing silence. Pigeons brooded in a distant corner of the roofline, their warbled comments echoing in the long, closed room.
Finally, Khaled spoke again.
‘Tax free,’ he wheezed.
He looked from Abdullah, to me, and back again.
‘Well? What do you think?’
‘You need more security,’ Abdullah observed.
‘Ha!’ Khaled laughed, clapping the tall Iranian on the back. ‘Are you volunteering for the job, my old friend?’
‘I have a job,’ he replied, even more seriously.
‘Yes, yes, of course you do, but –’
‘Your students gave you all this stuff?’ I asked.
‘Actually, I call them students, but they refer to themselves as devotees,’ Khaled said, staring at the hoard. ‘There was even more than this.’
‘More than this?’
‘Oh, yes. A lot of other gifts from my devotees in Varanasi. But I had to leave there rather quickly, and I lost everything.’
‘Lost it how?’
‘To the police, as a bribe,’ Khaled replied. ‘That’s why Lord Bob set me up here, in this house, just before he died.’
‘Why did you have to leave Varanasi so quickly?’
‘Why do you want to know, Lin, my old friend?’
The jewels from the treasure were glittering in his eyes.
‘You brought it up, man.’
He stared at me for a while, hesitating on the glacial edge of cold-hearted truth. He decided to trust me, I guess.
‘There was a girl,’ he said. ‘A devotee, a very sincere devotee, who came from a prominent Brahmin family. She was beautiful, and ultimately devoted to me, body and soul. I didn’t know she was below the age.’
‘Come on, Khaled.’
‘I couldn’t know. You live here, Lin, you know how precocious these young Indian girls can be. She looked eighteen, I swear. Her breasts were swollen like ripe mangoes. And the sex was fully mature. But, alas, she was only fourteen.’
‘Khaled, you just officially freaked me out.’
‘No, Lin, understand me –’
‘Understand sex with kids? You want me to see it your way? Is that it, Khaled?’
‘But it won’t happen again.’
‘Again?’
‘It can’t happen again. I’ve taken measures.’
‘You’re making this worse every time you open your mouth, Khaled.’
‘Listen to me! I make every one of them show me a birth certificate now, especially the younger ones. I’m protected, now.’
‘You’re protected?’
‘Let’s stop all this serious talk, yaar. We all have things in the past that we regret, no? We have a saying, in Arabic. Take counsel from he who makes you weep, not from he who makes you laugh. I haven’t made you laugh today, Lin, but that doesn’t mean my counsel is worthless.’
‘Khaled –’
‘I want you to know that you, and Abdullah, my only remaining brothers, will always be safe, now. This power, this money and my inheritance, it’s all ours.’
‘What are you talking about, Khaled?’
‘Money, to expand the business,’ he unexplained.
‘What business?’
‘This business. The ashram. The time has come to franchise. We can run this together, and spread out through India, and eventually to America. The sky’s the limit. Literally, in fact.’
‘Khaled –’
‘That’s why I’ve waited so long to contact you. I had to accumulate this fund base. I brought you here to show you something that’s yours, as much as it is mine.’
‘You’re right about that,’ I said.
‘I’m so glad you understand.’
‘I mean that this stuff you’ve got here isn’t ours, Khaled, and it isn’t yours.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It was given to something bigger than we are, and you know it.’
‘But, you don’t understand,’ he insisted. ‘I want you both in this with me. We can make millions. But the spiritual industry is a vicious business. I’ll need you, as we move on.’
‘I’ve already moved on, Khaled.’
‘But we can franchise!’ Khaled hissed, all teeth. ‘We can franchise!’
‘Khaled, I must leave the city,’ Abdullah said suddenly, urgency rasping his voice.
‘What?’ Khaled asked, shaken from a tree of plans.
‘I want to ask you, one more time, to leave this place, and these people, and come back to Bombay with me.’
‘Again, Abdullah?’ Khaled said.
‘Take your rightful place at the head of the Council that was Khaderbhai’s. We are in a time of trouble, and it will become much worse. We need you to lead us. We need you to push Sanjay aside, and lead us. If you come now, Sanjay will live. If you don’t, one of us will kill him, and then you will have to lead anyway, for the sake of the Company.’
In that new avatar, Khaled was the opposite of what I considered to be a leader of men. But Abdullah, an Iranian who’d tuned his heart to the music of Bombay’s streets, didn’t see the man who stood with us in the attic room. Abdullah saw the prestige that attached itself to Khaled’s long and intimate friendship with Khaderbhai, and the authority that bled from the many battles and gang wars Khaled had presided over, and won, for the Company.
I was done with the Sanjay Company, my mind was made up, but I knew that New Khaled’s taste for subjugation would add fire to Old Khaled’s unhesitating use of power.
Crime mixed with anything is fatal, which is why we’re fascinated by it. Crime mixed with religion redeems saviours with the sacrifice of sinners. I didn’t want Khaled to accept Abdullah’s offer.
‘Once more, I tell you that I can’t accept,’ Khaled smiled. ‘But with friendship and respect, I want you to consider my offer. It’s a golden opportunity to get in on the ground floor, before the spiritual industry really takes off. We can make millions from yoga alone.’
‘You must think of the Company, Khaled,’ Abdullah pressed. ‘You must follow your destiny.’
‘It will not happen,’ Khaled responded, the little smile still on his lips. ‘But I do appreciate your kindness, in considering me again. Now, before you take a final decision, I ask you to think on all my treasures, and join me at lunch. I’m starved, I don’t mind telling you.’
‘I’m done,’ I said.
‘You’re . . . what?’
‘Khaled, I was already done when you showed me the harem. I’m leaving.’
‘Does that mean you won’t be taking any food?’ Khaled asked, locking the door.
‘It means goodbye, again, Khaled.’
‘But, it’s bad luck not to eat food that has been prepared for you!’ he warned.
‘I’ll have to risk it.’
‘But it’s Kashmiri sweets. A Kashmiri sweet chef is one of my devotees. You have no idea how hard they are to get.’
I crossed the entry hall, Khaled bustling behind me. Tarun joined us, trotting at his master’s side.
‘Oh, well,’ he puffed, walking with us onto the front veranda.
He gave me a damp, spongy hug, shook hands with Abdullah, and waved as we walked the gravel path.
‘Come back any time!’ he called. ‘You’re always welcome! We show movies, on Wednesday nights! We serve ice-cold firni! And we dance, on Thursdays! I’m learning to dance. Can you believe it?’
Beside him, Tarun made new entries in his notebook.
At the first bend in the path we found Karla waiting for us. She was sitting on a fallen tree, and smoking a cigarette.
‘So, did you piss on his pilgrimage, Shantaram?’
‘You could’ve given me a little more warning, before I saw him,’ I said, feeling beaten by the truth. ‘What the hell happened to him?’
‘He got happy, more or less,’ she answered softly. ‘In his case, a little more than less.’
‘Are you happy to see him like this?’
They both stared at me.
‘Oh, come on!’
They continued to stare.
‘Okay, okay,’ I conceded. ‘Maybe . . . maybe I just want my friend back. Don’t you miss him?’
‘Khaled is here, Lin,’ Abdullah replied.
‘But –’
‘Save your breath for the climb,’ Karla said, heading back toward the path. ‘Do you gangsters ever shut up?’
We approached the ascent to the first caves, and she began to run at a slow jog. When we reached the steep climb she was still ahead of us.
As we struggled upwards, I couldn’t help staring at the sand-line curves of her body, contoured by the climb.
Men are dogs, Didier once said to me, without the manners.
‘Are you staring at my ass?’ she asked.
‘Afraid so.’
‘Forgive him, Karla.’ Abdullah said to cover somebody’s embarrassment. ‘He simply stares, because you are climbing like an ape.’
Karla laughed, clutching at the vines on the path to hold her place. That big, true laugh rang through domes of branches risen with the cliff. She held her free hand out to Abdullah, warning him not to say another word until the laughter rushed away from her.
‘Thank you, Abdullah,’ she said at last.
‘Don’t mention.’
And laughing, and joking, we three exiles climbed the mountain that would change everything, for each of us, forever.