The Mountain Shadow

A horn sounded behind us and we turned to see another truck, approaching from the left. It was flying green banners.

Allah hu Akbar! was the chant.

We all glanced back at the orange truck, and then back to the green. It was clear that the trucks were going to pass one another pretty close to where we were standing, in the middle of the road.

‘Okay,’ Dominic said calmly, putting the motorcycle on the side-stand. ‘Hail Mary, full of grace.’

‘Narayani,’ Mahan muttered, also praying to the feminine Divine.

I stood together with the cops. We looked left and right at the approaching trucks, which were slowing down to a crawling pace.

Mahan, the cop who’d manned the wide intersection alone, had a police radio and a bamboo stick. I looked at him, and he caught my eye.

‘All is okay,’ he said. ‘Don’t take tension. Sir is there with us.’

‘And sir has us,’ I said in Marathi.

‘True!’ Mahan replied in Marathi. ‘Do you like country liquor?’

‘Nobody does,’ I laughed, and he laughed with me.

The drivers had decided to test their skill, passing one another as closely as they could. Truck-cabin helpers tilted mirrors and pulled banners upright. Others leaned over the sides, shouting instructions to the drivers, and banging the wooden panels.

The trucks, elephants on turtles, crawled turtle-slow toward one another, closer than anything but faith would tolerate. Not far from us the trucks paused and stopped beside one another, singers for singers. There were at least a hundred chanting men in the back of each truck. Their faith was frenzy. Their sweat baptised them. For a few bars, their chants enfolded and merged, the words echoing the words, and then becoming orange praising green, and green praising orange, singing one God.

I was tense, and ready for anything, but there was no anger in the trucks. The young students had no eyes but for their brothers, and devotion, and they chanted without pause.

They were on a mission. Fire brigade units had been prevented by mobs from responding to fires in Hindu and Muslim neighbourhoods. The young men in the trucks were citizen witnesses, putting their lives in harm’s way to make sure that harm didn’t stop civilian authorities from doing their jobs.

Their mission was sacred work, saving communities, and was beyond provocation. The trucks eased away from one another in frantic chanting, but without a single frown of violent intent.

As the trucks pulled away, driven on by chanting, she was there, Karla, standing alone on the far side of the intersection. She had hitched a ride on one of the trucks.

She was dressed in black jeans, a sleeveless black hot-rod shirt, and a thin red coat with a hood pulled over her black hair. Her carry bag was over her shoulder. Her ankle-strap shoes were clipped to the bag. She was barefoot.

I watched her wave the green banner truck away, and I ran.

‘I’m so glad to see you!’ she said, as I hugged her. ‘I thought it would take me forever.’

‘Take what forever?’ I asked, holding her close.

‘Finding you,’ she said, streetlights on green queens. ‘I thought you might be stuck somewhere with unsavoury types. I came to rescue you.’

‘That’s funny. I thought you were stuck somewhere with savoury types, and I came to rescue you. Kiss me.’

She kissed me, and leaned back, looking at me again.

‘Have you been practising?’

‘Everything is practice, Karla.’

‘Fuck you, Shantaram. Holding my own lines against me. Shameful.’

‘That’s not all I’d like to hold against you.’

‘I might hold you to that,’ she laughed.

‘No, really. I don’t know what your plans are, or what you’ve gotta do, but until this all settles down, please come back with me, Karla. Just, you know, so you’re sure I’m safe.’

She laughed again.

‘You’re on. Lead the way.’

‘Come and meet Dominic. He’s a friend, and he’s been helping me.’

‘Where’s your bike?’

‘It’s a total lockdown,’ I said. ‘I’m double-up with Dominic. It’s the only way I could get around and keep looking for you.’

‘Are you really riding behind that traffic cop?’

She looked across the empty field of light at Mahan and Dominic.

‘He’s also our taxi home,’ I said, ‘if you don’t mind riding three-up.’

‘Long as I’m in the middle,’ she said, taking my arm.

‘How’d you hitch a ride on the truck?’

She stopped us in the deserted intersection before we reached Dominic. She grabbed the collars of my vest, and pulled me into another kiss.

When I came out of it she was a step away, and I was still leaning like there was a reason. The cops were whistling, singing and dancing.

I scooted back to them, and introduced her.

‘A pleasure, Miss Karla,’ Dominic said. ‘We have searched in places very high for you, and very low.’

Discreet, in India, means not interrupting you to tell you something indiscreet.

‘How nice, Dominic,’ Karla sultried. ‘I’d like to hear your report on those low places, whenever you’re not saving the city.’