The Interlopers

THE INTERLOPERS
(SHORT - STORY)

MARTHA HAD ALREADY been en­amoured of India for a couple of months when he chanced on Talkota. That was a decade be­fore the idea of selling India to all sorts of tourists from abroad had struck a few brains in New Delhi personally selected by Devil. Talkota of those days had nothing more to boast of than its palm-studded semi-circular beach cutting into the sea like a giant-sickle and this solitary man­sion of the Maharaja of Manaspur just turned into a hotel, “reminisced Khanna, the founder ­manager of the hotel. He had retired, but had settled down at Talkota. The hotel he once managed had grown ten times bigger. His sons were doing well in different trades all con­nected with tourism, but Khanna was never tired of bemoaning the loss of the serenity and tranquility of the place, perhaps somewhat en­vious of the elegant Talkota of bygone days.

This was not unusual. Those who initi­ate a process of destruction are always the most vociferous ones to lament when the process meets its logical culmination. But I had no heart to tell this to Khanna’s face. We were out for a leisurely stroll.

“But why should Martha die here?” I asked when he pointed at her insignificant tomb in the cemetery adjacent to the church.

He did not answer straight away. He could not have, I realised, soon. He showed me to a rock and sat down on another facing me. We were at a height from which the beach and the newly-built fashionable cottages, under the smoky twilight, looked like a fading Persian carpet. Once the rock of tourists, the fishermen and the picnickers were blotted out of our vision, we were left with only the old church standing behind us like an unearthly sentinel, the silence of the cemetery – broken only by an occasional gust that sounded like very voice of silence.

There was an uncanny compatibility be­tween the atmosphere and Khanna’s narration – so much so that I took his narration almost as a genuine report.

Pravin, the only ‘guide’ available at Talkota in those days, honest and charming like a child, shuffled between the city and Talkota and secured customers for the hotel. Khanna liked him very much and let him occupy a small suite in one of the outhouses of the man­sion. But Pravin suddenly became a stranger! The unfortunate change occurred after an acci­dent which killed four tourists when their boat sank while returning from an islet some five kilometres off the shore. Pravin alone has sur­vived the catastrophe. Remorseful and depressed, he stopped working and passed his time, sitting, sprawling or sometimes even rolling on the sands where the tidal waves had hauled up the dead bodies of his companions.

One winter night Khanna was woken up by repeated knocks on his door. He was surprised to see Pravin in a glittering nightgown.

“Do you like it? I bought it at a Paris sale, rather cheap. Bon! Now to business. I have a desire to draw your sketch” said Pravin, almost forcing his way into Khanna’s room.

Khanna obviously believed in the phe­nomenon of the dead possessing the living. He concluded that Pravin had been possessed by M. Ramond, a French artist. In fact, Ramond had proposed to draw his sketch only hours be­fore being drowned.

Khanna had to sit down. He watched Pravin as Pravin watched him – and Pravin surely surveyed his contours with Ramond’s eyes. The rooms the foreigners occupied had not been disturbed, for if not their relatives, of­ficials from the nearest consulates of their countries were expected to arrive any moment and take charge of their belongings. But Pravin had taken the key of Ramond’s room from the dozing receptionist and had opened it and slipped on the dead artist’s gown.

And in the morning Khanna learnt that the receptionist was not without his share of the amazing experience. Half-asleep, he was under the impression that the key was taken by Ra­mond himself and he had gone to sleep with that idea. He had clean forgotten all about the fatal accident.

Pravin drew Khanna’s figure several times and then gave up, annoyed that he could not draw as accurately as he ought to. Perhaps the spirit could not tame the untrained hands of Pravin beyond a certain degree. Khanna did not know what to do. But one morning, while on a stroll along the beach, he heard a tune that had been familiar to him, for it used to be often hummed by Mr. Barrett, drowned along with the other three. That day Pravin greeted him exactly in Mr. Barrett’s style and spoke very close to the accent of an Englishman. Even his voice seemed to have undergone a change.

The consulate officials arrived and Mr. Khanna kept busy. The third one to die in that accident was a young man from a northern In­dian city, son of a wealthy man. Along with his parents came a young lady who wept almost continuously. Perhaps she had been betrothed to the dead man. Khanna observed that Pravin often stalked her silently, shedding tears. Had he by then come to be possessed by the young man’s spirit? No doubt it was so, felt Khanna. He grew anxious particularly when the young lady too began casting her glances at Pravin. He did everything possible to check any meet­ing between them. Luckily, the young man’s parents, besides making some casual enquiries about the guide who had survived the tragedy, did not show keenness to talk to him, after being confidentially informed that he had grown crazy.

The visitors left and all was quiet again. Pravin looked sober. He was again becoming himself, thought Khanna and heaved a sigh of relief. He would not like the nice guy to be cast away as a lunatic.

It was at this stage that Martha descended on Talkota. Soon she was seen spend­ing hours in Pravin’s company. Khanna was not unhappy. After the trauma Pravin had suffered, he needed a woman’s love. Khanna did not care even if she was a Scottish divorcee trekking in India in search of a crash course in Nirvana.

Pravin still avoided Khanna, but Martha took Khanna into confidence rapidly. Love brought visible changes in her demeanour and looks.

“Now I realise why Swmi Turyananda tenderly declined to initiate me,” she told Khanna one evening. “I revolted when he told me that I was not yet ready for an ascetic way of life. Alas, I wasn’t. Pravin was yet to come in my life.”
She violently blushed after making the confession.

“Not going to. He already means every­thing to me.”

“You have said what any girl in love would say,” Khanna quipped smilingly, with­out pretending to be excited.

“Probably yes,” she nodded, a little dis­appointed over Khanna’s matter-of-fact reaction to her romance. “And I also propose to do what other lovers would do. I am taking him out to a few places.

“Bon voyage!” said Khanna with a pa­tronising nod.

Khanna saw Pravin only the next day when, along with Martha, he was hurrying to board a taxi for the town.

Even though Pravin did not have the courtesy to take leave of him, Khanna almost forcibly took him aside and said, “Pravin, I am happy that our guide is now out on a guided tour! I had no opportunity to talk to you all these days. The fact is, you were hardly in a mood to listen to me. You were - I don’t know whether you know it or not - a sort of possessed. I am so happy that you are yourself once again. Perhaps a bit of exorcism has been performed by love            .

Khanna’s effort at arousing a little hu­mour in Pravin somehow did not click. Pravin just cast a sad look at him. Martha, unwilling to slacken her total hold on her lover, stopped to reclaim Pravin.

Khanna swore mildly and waved at them lifelessly.

It was a quiet noon, a month later, when Martha suddenly popped up before Khanna, looking the ghost of herself.

“But won’t it be more realistic for me to put that question to you?” asked Khanna.

Martha did not contradict him. From what she mumbled on without the least zeal to make a coherent statement, Khanna understood that Pravin stealthily deserted her, once they had reached Rishikesh!

Martha lived only for a month more. The doctor attributed her death to a certain vi­rus fever. But Khanna diagnosed it as a sheer lack of the slightest will to live.

A few days later Pravin appeared before him and greeted him with a smile as he used to do in the past after every temporary absence.

“Get out!” shouted Khanna. “I never ex­pected you to be so heartless and treacherous. I have no interest in any explanation, you brute.”

Pravin cast a blank look and then walked out without a murmur.

That should have been a comfortable fi­nale to the episode. Khanna’s conscience was as clear as the autumn sky after his admonition to Pravin, but for his discovery of a small diary on a tall book-rack. It had been left there by Bob, the fourth member of that fatal voyage. Khanna had almost forgotten him so quiet and unobtrusive the man had been during his stay at the hotel.

The last written page of the diary read: “Talkota is fine, but I must leave for Rishikesh. From there begins the mysterious abode of the gods .....”

Poor Pravin: I was unnecessarily rude to him. I wonder if he was at all aware of the fact that his body and other faculties had be­come Bob’s agency and that it was Bob who deserted Martha! I have continued to look for Pravin, but to no avail and for me that is no small cause for regret!” Khanna told me as we began descending towards the hotel, almost groping our way in the dark.