Amaal startled.
The silence of the warm night was broken by the click of his knee as he limped into the hall. She tore her eyes from the dark street below and turned in time for him to come closer to her in the dark space. His chest was covered in a thin dark T-shirt but the space of his neck was open. His skin was visible. Light and red streaks like it had been torched to melting. Wrinkled, like he had lived for a hundred years. Leathery, like it wasn’t skin anymore. Was it painful? Of course it was. New skin pieces had been pasted all over him to patch the gaping holes left by burnt skin. She knew the theory better than most experts after how much she had read and heard about it.
“Hmm?” He asked, tipping her face up to his with his finger.
Amaal gazed into his eyes — dark, but here. Sleep made them milky, but his voice was sharp.
“Why the question suddenly?”
“You said you prayed for me to come back to you.”
She nodded, needing to take a peek at his neck again but aware of how it made him self-conscious.
“I believe there is god,” she cleared her throat, turning back to the window. The street under them was so quiet, no human in sight. No stray animals. No sound. Just small streetlight spots. Stillness, which she craved in their relationship now. Some semblance of calm.
His heat came closer to her back and she broke the silence between them before he could break it with something that would shake her night any further.
“When I was little, I used to see Mom do pooja in our small temple in the house and Dad go to the masjid every Friday for Juma Namaz. And I asked her one day, which one is the real god? She took me to the temple, and showed me the photos and idols there. There was a Shivling, a little Bal Gopal, my favourite, a frame of Hanumanji, a tiny miniature Ganpati and a large frame of Sharda Mata. She asked me, which one is the real god?”
“What did you say?”
“I said all.” Amaal smiled at a moth flying closer to the streetlight. It buzzed there, went farther, then came back again. “All were gods after all, in different forms. That’s what Mom had taught me. So then, she said, all are gods. Allah is Dad’s god. These are her gods. I asked her what are my gods and she said, all of them, and whichever I choose for myself, whenever I need them. She said, all roads will lead to god, as long as I walk them with faith that they will.”
“Which god did you pray to for me?”
She chuckled. “It’s strange that as I grew up and became a busy adult with life going just as I had imagined, I did not see god in different forms but as one being. And that being was in any god I looked at.”
Samar’s hand touched the ball of her shoulder. His fingers squeezed. She could feel the unevenness of his palm on the bare skin of her arm.
“Do you believe in god?” Amaal turned her head and asked the curve of his hand.
A moment of silence lingered.
“I didn’t, all my life. Now… I keep hearing my mother singing Shiv’s name to me.”
“Tonight also?” Amaal turned. The glow of the light outside kept his face in fairly clear vision for her. Samar nodded, his hair mussed on his forehead and falling forward. She palmed it and pushed it back up, caressing the curve of his forehead and down to his temple, stroking his cheek that had roughened with a heavy stubble. His eyes fell closed.
“What does she sing exactly?”
“Ashutosh shashank shekhar…” he chanted, half-crooning. “Chindambara… Koti naman digambara… jagat sarjak pralay karta shivam satyam sundara.”
Amaal reached for her mobile on the sofa and Googled the broken words.
“It’s a Shiv stuti from Puran, from Shiv Puran,” she read out. “Are you sure you have never heard it in your life?”
Samar shook his head.
“Do you know the meaning of these words?”
He shook his head again.
“Ashutosh is the one who is easily pleased, Shashank is the one who holds the moon, Chandramoli is the wearer of the crescent moon, the dweller of Chidambaram,” she read. “Nirankar is unchanging, Omkar means the eternal sound of om, Avinashi is indestructible.” Her voice settled, as the meaning of the hymn settled into her. “These are all names of Shivji. Devadhidev is the god of all gods. Jagat sarjak is the one who creates the world and pralaykarta is the one who destroys it. Shivam, satyam, sundara… the auspicious one, the truth, the beautiful.”
Amaal raised her eyes to his. He was staring at her mobile.
“Your mother was a Shiv bhakt?”
“Can’t remember.”
