India by V. S. Naipaul Read Free Book Online

been the first time in his own life he had associated Ganpati with something good?
    He scratched his thin hair. The tiger-striped ginger cat or kittenwas now sitting below the chair on which the police inspector had sat, and was looking delicately around. Mr Patil’s mother, sitting on the terrazzo floor in the doorway, which appeared to be her own place of sitting, lifted her head, as if thinking herself of the first time her son had been blessed by the god; the thick lenses of her glasses created pools of light over her eyes.
    On the wall above the bed with the symmetrically set bolsters was a fluorescent electric tube; fluorescent tubes were used in India because they were cheap. There were two little windows in that wall. In one window the iron bars were set vertically; in the other window – for the variation and the style – the bars were set horizontally. Both windows had similar curtains, each curtain gathered up with a sash in two places.
    The little pink-walled room was really quite full of things to look at: much thought here, much pride. There was a wardrobe, and there was also a black-framed glass case or cabinet about three feet high. On top of the cabinet was a very big multi-coloured candle, to balance the doll on the Sony. Among the things on the shelves were a set of stainless-steel tumblers and eight china cups with a flowered pattern. The glass cabinet and the things in it – leaving aside the aluminium tumblers – were like things I had known in my childhood. They were still here in a kind of wholeness: my heart went out to them.
    Mr Patil said at last, ‘I never used to go to school. I used to just roam around, play cricket. I was finally told that I would be thrown out of the school. So I prayed to Ganpati. I was about fifteen or sixteen at this time. I told Ganpati that if I wasn’t thrown out of the school, I would make the pilgrimage to Pali. And I wasn’t thrown out. The headmistress had a change of heart. When she called me she said she was only going to warn me that time.’
    Having remembered that, he remembered other occasions of Ganpati’s grace. ‘Three or four years ago my mother fell ill. High blood pressure. She went to hospital. She was on oxygen. She couldn’t talk. I went to Pali to the Ganpati shrine and I made an offering of a garland and a coconut. When I came back, my mother was much better.’
    And his mother – sitting in the doorway, not flat on the floor, as I had thought, but on a thin piece of wood, perhaps an inch high – put her palms together while her son spoke, and said, in Nikhil’s translation, that she folded her hands in gratitude to Ganpati.
    Even at his birth there was some element of mercy and blessing. This was in 1959. There were very bad riots in the locality. People were throwing stones. Taxis were not easy to get, but his father managed to find a taxi-driver who said he would try to take Mrs Patil to the hospital. The taxi had to drive five kilometres through the riots to the government hospital. It got there safely, and as soon as his mother went in, she was delivered of him.
    Mother and son told the story in relay, and the mother, sitting on the floor, again put her palms together and said that it was Ganpati’s mercy.
    And then, two years or so ago, there was a serious crisis for him. The crisis was in his political life, and it lasted nine days. That was a very long time to be on the rack. He made a pilgrimage to Pali, and vowed to Ganpati that if he came out of his crisis, he would make an offering of 101 coconuts.
    Wasn’t that like trying to buy something from the god?
    ‘My faith is rooted in reality. I am not in the habit of offering 101 coconuts and asking to be made prime minister of India.’
    Was this faith in Ganpati something deep in himself, always there? Or did he, after he had prayed, look for some sign from the deity?
    He said, in Nikhil’s translation, ‘Even when things look bad I hear a voice inside. I suppose you can