THE SUFI'S CURSE

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

THREE months ago I took a room in a remote fort in Rajasthan. The fort was surrounded by a high machicolated wall which faced out over a lake. In the morning, light would stream into the bed- room through scalloped arches, and reflec- tions from the lake would ripple across the ceiling beams. There were egrets nesting on the lake, and peacocks in the trees at its side.

The fort was the home of a thakur — a Rajput gentleman landowner. Locked away in his own oasis in the middle of the Thar desert, he had managed to preserve the quiet, ordered way of life he had inherited from his feudal forebears; a way of life not dissimilar to those reclusive Tsarist landlords immortalised by Turgenev. To enter the gate of Pali Garh was to walk into a world immediately familiar from A Month in the Country or Sketches From a Huntsman's Album. Lap- dogs careered over croquet lawns. Long- widowed great-aunts held court from far- flung turrets. Unmarried daughters would blush into their silks while their father loudly discussed their suitors and arranged marriages. Everyone dressed for dinner.

Only the fortnightly expedition into 'town' would break the ebb and flow of daily routine in the fort. The entire family, along with wheelchairs and zimmer- frames, lapdogs, labradors and a full com- plement of servants, would pile into the family mini-bus. Then they would set off, over the dunes and scrubland, to the town house in distant Jodhpur. There the great aunts would be wheeled to their rival temples, the unmarried daughters would buy new saris, and the boys stock up with cartridges for their partridge shoots. Thakur-sahib would visit his bank mana- ger, and his club.

When the family set off to 'town', I would be left in the old fort. An ancient, saffron-turbanned chowkidar used to squat by the gatehouse. I would never see him unless the electricity failed; then he would .climb the staircase and leave a paraffin lantern flickering outside my room. Other than the chowkidar I was utterly alone; and I used to relish the solitude.

I had my jars of pencils, and piles of ring-bound notebooks. From my desk you could see the egrets' nests, but beyond the lake there was nothing. The desert was flat and dry and monotonous, and its very harshness concentrated the mind. In the course of the following weeks the pages of the new manuscript began to pile up. Only when the electricity went did I use to long for company; for the fort was very old, and at night its boards used to creak.

There were few visitors at Pali Garh. The fort was not on the way to anywhere, and Thakur-sahib, a careful man, did not encourge the extravagance of visitors unless, like myself, they were paying guests. The only regulars were the suitors of the unmarried daughters; and foremost among these was Uday Singh.

Uday was a tall, hard, muscular boy. You knew his face: it was that of the young prince from a hundred Kishengarh minia- tures. He had coal-black eyes and he wore his hair cut short, which emphasised his fine Rajput bones. Like everyone in Pali, he was a character from a different age though I imagined his period to be the 1920s rather than Thakur-sahib's mid- Victorianism. He wore jodhpurs, played polo and talked — at great length — of horses. He affected that slightly hearty, backslapping manner that Indian public schoolboys seem to have derived from Biggles or P.G. Wodehouse; and from the way he played with the curlicues of his moustache you could tell that he thought himself something of a playboy. Although he was only 27, he could be as abrupt as a peppery colonel of 72. He was offhand to the Pali servants, and over-fawning to Thakur-sahib. He was not an intellectual.

Uday's first language was Mewari, a courtly language related to Hindi, but preserving many ancient flourishes lost to its plebian cousin. It is a good language for talking about polo; but it translates badly into English, and can make the speaker appear pedantic and pompous. Certainly, Uday's English vocabulary preserved in- tact the idiom — though not the accent - of a pre-war officer's mess. He had his eyes set on the youngest of Thakur-sahib's daughters, Panna, but he was quietly dis- approved of by Thakur-sahib, and none of the great aunts — authorities on these matters — rated his chances very highly; besides, as one of the more senior aunts once confided to me, his horoscope was quite incompatible with that of Panna.

Still, he was not dislikable, and he provided a diversion from the daily round. His visits were always looked forward to, particularly by Panna's sisters. You always knew when he had arrived from the peal of giggles which used to ring out from the zenana courtyard.

Five weeks after I arrived at Pali the family disappeared on one of their trips to Jodhpur, and I was left alone in the fort with the chowkidar. The winter had not yet set in, and it was still possible to sit outside at night without a shawl. One evening, I was reading on the verandah by the flicker- ing light of one of the chowkidar's lanterns, when I heard a jeep pull to a halt on the gravel below. Looking down, I saw Uday striding over the lawns towards the house. With him was Ram Lal, his elderly syce.

`Where is everyone?'

`Jodhpur.'

Parma too?'

`Yes.'

`Damnation.'

He and Ram Lal joined me on the wicker chairs of the verandah. I poured Uday a peg of fierce Indian whisky. The geckos were screeching in the shadows. In a few minutes we had exhausted most of Uday's conversational topics — Panna, her wardrobe, the recent highlights of Uday's progress across the polo fields of India, Uday's new dog, Panna's old one, the film music show Chitrahar, the actor Amitabh Bachchan (Uday claimed some distant kinship), a recent dearth of sand grouse around Udaipur and, via a series of shoot- ing anecdotes, back to Panna and, inevit- ably, polo. Striking out for new conversa- tional topics, I asked Uday the reason for his visit.

`It's nothing really,' he said. 'Just a spot of bother at my dairy.'

`What sort of bother?'

He frowned, then looked embarrassed. He lowered his voice: 'You'll probably think me an idiot to worry about this sort of thing,' he said. 'But my chaps have got it into their heads that the place is jinxed.'

`Very bad things are happening, sahib,' said Ram Lal, breaking his silence and wobbling his head frantically from side to side. 'Somebody do magic. From the greaves are coming very bad airs.'

`Greaves? Airs?'

`He means spirits. Coming from graves. They are very superstitious, my labour. Not educated. To keep them happy I've come here to see a bhopa — a kind of medium or exorcist. He's a shepherd. Lives in the desert 40 kilometres from here.'

I asked Uday to tell me about it. This was the story: his dairy was attached to the silver mine at Zawa in the hills above Udaipur. There was a legend about the mine: its position was said to have been revealed to Rana Pratap Singh, the great Maharana of Udaipur, in the prophecy of a Sufi Holy Man. The earth of Zawa would turn to silver, the Sufi had said; and for half a century the mine had provided undreamt of wealth for the Mewar Mahar- anas. Then something went wrong. In 1614, Rana Pratap's grandson, a strict Hindu, destroyed a famous Muslim shrine near Ajmer and brought upon himself the Sufi's curse: henceforth, said the Holy Man, none but Gujars — gypsies — would ever again inhabit Zawa. A month later, after a series of bad accidents, the mine was abandoned. The Sufi was later buried by its mouth; and it was said that because of his curse, the shafts would never be worked again.

`It's all stuff and nonsense, of course,' said Uday.

Only in 1988 had Hindustan Silver sunk new bores; and the first results had bEen very positive. The mining company had installed equipment, and lodged 4,000 miners in Rana Pratap's old slave barracks. Uday had won the contract to supply milk to the miners and his dairy had been set up in a small fort adjacent to the mine. A retired army captain acted as deputy when Uday was present, and as manager when Uday absented himself — as he often did — to go riding, play polo, or visit Pali.

It had been during one of Uday's abs- ences that the stones had begun to be thrown: great volleys of rocks crashing down on the tin roofs of the byre. The captain assumed it was one of the rival dairies making trouble, so he jumped up onto the battlements — in his pyjamas and fired off his 12-bore into the darkness.

Did he hit anything?' I asked.

`Nothing,' replied Uday. 'Nor on any of the other occasions. According to the captain it was always as if there was nobody there to hit.'

Thereafter, every Friday it was the same: stones would start crashing through the fort windows, showering glass every-

where. The captain set man-traps. He patrolled the perimeter wall. He toured the villages offering money in return for in- formation. He didn't come up with a single lead.

`The staff started creating trouble. Said that the stones were coming from nowhere. Course they were just after more money. They're wily buggers, my workers, always quick to think up some excuse to go and visit their wives or something. But no sooner had that first scare died down than we had the rains; and with the rains came the snakes.'

`Too many snakes,' said Ram Lal.

Snakes, said Uday, flourished during the monsoon. In Rajasthan there were un- usually good rains that year and as a result there had been a virtual plague of cobras. There was nothing odd about that, but the fort and the mine had been badly hit — the snakes were everywhere: in the trees, crawling out of drains, writhing in the fodder, slithering onto the battlements. Several cows were killed before the cobras started going for the labourers. A dairy hand was bitten in the byre, but managed to get serum. Then a pair of herdsman taking their siesta near a snake hole were attacked by a great tangle of King Cobras. They bit the dairymen everywhere: legs, thighs, buttocks, faces. When the other labourers found them they had already swollen up, bright green: 'colour of crème de menthe,' said Uday.

It seemed as if there really were a curse on the dairy. Calves started dying regularly, one every Friday. At the post mortems the vet could find nothing wrong with them. The chowkidars reported seeing lights hovering in the courtyards at night. And the staff started having acci- dents. One night, Uday's head dairyman fell from a loft and broke his leg. Another lost his memory and had to be admitted to hospital. A third committed suicide. He was found hanging from the rafters of one of the fort outhouses. He had strung himself up with a halter used for securing the cows during milking.

I have always been mesmerised by such stories. As a boy in Edinburgh I read voraciously through the Tales From Scot- tish Keeps and Castles before graduating to M.R. James and Edgar Allan Poe. But now, in a 16th-century fort in remote Rajasthan — the perfect setting — I found myself turning suddenly sceptical:

`But Uday,' I said. 'Nothing you've said — the stones, the snakes, the accidents or the suicides — none of these are exactly inexplicable. Boys throw stones. There are snakes in India. Labourers have accidents.'

`Sure,' said Uday. 'I agree. But after what happened to my incharge last Friday the dairy has been paralysed. I've got to convice my chaps that if there ever was a curse it is now broken.'

Uday refilled his glass, and continued: `My incharge — the head cowherd — wasa very old Jat. Tough as old boots. His grandfather had been Colonel Todd's bear- er during the Mewari expedition of 1826, and my chap had picked up a lot of esoteric folklore from the old man. He suggested that we could solve our problems by planting a peepul tree: in this country peepuls are sacred — we believe that they have the power to ward off spirits and demons. Just as garlic keeps away your vampires in England.' Uday had planted a peepul and appointed the old man to water it. Im- mediately things quietened down. All had been well until only three days before. That evening, a Friday, the cows were seen wandering back to the fort in twos and threes, without the cowherd. At nine o'clock Uday had sent out a search party. They found the old man on a ridge above the mine. He was lying spreadeagled on the ground, gored all over, with his turban lying half unwrapped over his torso, he looked like a Rajasthani rag puppet, but with the strings cut, crumpled, discarded. It was the dairy's prize stud-bull which had attcked him: the herdsmen later found blood still wet on its horns. The bull was not a Friesian or any of the more aggres- sive European breeds — it was a humped white Brahmini, as gentle and docile as only Indian cows can be. The cowherd had weaned the bull as a calf, and it had never before, or since, shown any violent tenden- cies.

`But I'll tell you the strange thing,' said Uday. 'We finally found the bull grazing in the inner courtyard, next to the old man's peepul tree. Except that the peepul tree was no longer there. The first thing the bull had done when it returned was to uproot that tree and trample it into the ground. After that the bull sat down and calmly began to chew the cud as if he killed his herdsmen every day.' Uday paused, and shrugged his shoul- ders: 'I can't explain what happened. But it was quite clear that unless I did something quick I was going to lose my entire staff. Every one of them was threatening to resign.' `Hence your visit to this medium?' `Hence my visit to the medium.'

`He sounds like something out of Blithe Spirit.'

`You should come along,' said Uday. 'It might give you material for a story.' `I doubt it,' I replied. 'Doesn't sound like my kind of subject. I've grown out of ectoplasm.'

OUR departure the following morning was delayed by the return of Thakur-sahib and his mini-bus. Over lunch, Uday told his story again. Thakur-sahib was sceptical, but the great aunts were hugely excited. The incident with the snakes was deemed particularly significant, and they took it in turns to tell their own ghost stories. A few of the great aunts were from the purdah-generation that had never needed to learn English, and their stories were told in slow, precise, courtly Mewari. Most of the tales, howev- er, were in English and were set in the Rajputana of the Twenties and Thirties.

There was the story about the spirit of an itinerant reaper who could take the shape of a hyena. There was the story of the possessed ayah who, when seized by a fit, used to bounce around the zenana, some- times jumping higher than the curved bangaldar windows. There was the story of the ghost of the wicked Rani Reshmi of Dudu who used to lurk in the pantry of her fort near Jaipur. Once she attacked a pantry girl with a bowl of mango pickle. On another occasion she appeared at a marriage, wandering through the vedic ceremony stark naked, and scaring away all the female guests. Her screams kept everyone awake at night. There had been

an attempt to exorcise her, but she had attacked the exorcist and stolen his talis- man, a shining white boar's tusk.

Opinion was divided about the powers of our bhopa. Thakur-sahib, who was his landlord, said the man was a fraud, and had not paid his rent for two years. The great aunts were more positive. The senior aunt, who was said to be over one hundred years old, claimed to have consulted him long ago, before Independence. His pow- er, she said, came from Papuji.

`Who's that,' I asked.

`He's a god.'

`What sort of god?'

`A local one,' explained Thakur-sahib. `He was a Rathore Rajput — some time in the 14th century. Fought against the Delhi Sultans. After his death it was decided that he was an avatar of Shiva. The lower castes, and particularly the shepherds, think very highly of him.'

`The bhopa is a normal villager until Papuji comes to him,' said the senior great

aunt. 'Then he has great power. People bring the possessed to him. Village women are brought in screaming or tearing their eyes out, talking in men's voices, and Papuji cures them.'

`How?' I asked.

`Sometimes the bhopa just says a mantra over them. He tries to make the spirit speak — to reveal who he is. Sometimes he has to beat the possessed person with his rods, or cut them and draw their blood. Through his chants he tries to shatter the spirit's soul. he also has the power to make men mad.'

`Insane?'

`Yes,' she replied. He can break a person's mind as if it were a twig or a piece of straw. He is very powerful. You must humour him.'

`It's like voodoo,' said Thakur-sahib. `He has to have some object belonging to the victim. If he cracks or breaks that object, the villagers believe that he des- troys that person's spirit. It works through terror. The villagers are so frightened that they die of heart failure. I've heard several cases of such deaths. Also of permanent insanity.'

`It's all tommy-rot, of course,' said Uday.

The great aunts wished us luck, and we finally set off after a siesta that afternoon. The jeep track led past the lake and out into the sand-scrub beyond. Dust rose in clouds and powdered our hair. Uday and I soon began to resemble stage octogena- rians, particularly Uday, who was wearing his old-fashioned tortoisehell driving spectacles.

Occasionally we passed a tree or a camel-thorn, but for most of the journey the track passed on straight and unbending into a dust-void. All you could see was the dark, volcanic outcrops of the Aravallis rearing out of the liquid heat haze, some- where in the far desert distance. Although the sun was sinking lower, it was still hot: a dry, withering, Indian heat, throbbing up from the ground as much as beating down from the sky.

In the back of the open jeep Uday had placed a large heavy-looking package, roughly rectangular, wrapped in a sheet. When we were out in the open desert I asked him what it was.

`It's a gravestone,' he replied. I leant over into the back seat, and drew back the covering sheet. Underneath lay a white marble cylinder. It was about four feet long by a foot wide, and it's top was bevelled into the shape of five open lotus flowers. Below that, the stone was divided into three square panels, surrounded by a border zone of arabesque interlace. Each panel contained a medallion of dancing Kufic script. It was superbly cut: imposs- ibly angular and intricate, and so com- pressed that it seemed to be on the point of bursting from its panel, swirling and thrashing outwards in an effort to break through to the beckoning tendrils of the arabesque. It seemed to move before your eyes, to be alive. It was difficult to read, but working slowly right to left I read: HAZRAT KHWAJA SYED AHMAD QU'TBUDDIN HERATI, SUPPORT OF THE MUSSULMANS, HELP OF THE POOR, SCOURGE OF THE INFIDELS. In the middle panel, the message was shorter: MAY ALLAH ILLUMINATE HIS CONSTANCY! Below that the third panel was inscribed with a Persian couplet: AFTER MY DEATH NOTHING SHALL COVER MY GRAVE OTHER THAN MUD. AS NONE BUT GUJARS WILL INHABIT THE FAIR HILLS OF ZAWA.

`The Sufi!' I said. 'So there really was a curse.'

`You're beginning to sound as gullible as my labour,' said Uday.

`It's superb,' I replied. 'I've never seen such Kufic. You just stole it?'

`Why not? I got Ram Lal to dig it up.' `You must replace it,' I said, a little limply.

`My chaps blame the Sufi's curse for all the events at the dairy. I'm hoping that if we can get the bhopa to do his mumbo- jumbo over this, we can persuade the labour that the crisis is over. It's high time they got back to work.'

We heard Gadwada, the shepherd's vil- lage, before we saw it. There had been death. Far out into the desert we heard the shepherd-women mourning. It was a strange, eerie sound: half-way between the distracted wail of genuine grief and the choreographed ululating of a formal chant.

Gadwada, when we got there, was a drab place: sand coloured, its huts made of compacted sand, and surrounded by flat sand wastes. It smelt strongly of goat. The shepherd-women wore Rajasthani prints, and covered their heads with scarlet hoods which rose to a peak, like a witch's hat. You couldn't see the sheep, but you could hear their muffled treading as they were driven in from the scrub, shrouded by a pall of dust.

Outside the first hut, five shepherds were gathered on a hessian mat, squatting on their hams. They wore white turbans, and they trained their beards in the Mewari fashion: parted outwards at the centre of the chin. In deference to the dead they sat in perfect silence; and at our arrival the women too broke off their wailing. One went off to fetch the bhopa, and while we waited, the shepherds offered around a small plastic bag full of sticky brown opium. Everyone tore off a lump and popped it under their tongues. In the silence you could hear the first sounds of the coming night: the first gratings of the cicadas, the bleating of distant sheep, goat bells.

The bhopa was indistinguishable from the other shepherds. He took his place quietly on the edge of the mat, squatting with his armpits cupped over his knees. He was very old and he dressed in a tatty white kurta-dhoti. He had a cataract in his left eye. We had explained what we wanted. and in the gathering gloom we walked over to Papuji's shrine.

It was a simple structure: a small breezeblock cube, damp-stained by the monsoon rains. As we stopped to remove our shoes, the bhopa's assistants went in ahead of us and began lighting a line of shallow clay lamps and small clusters of incense sticks.

The lamps illuminated a claustrophobic interior. In a recess by the door there were two hide-bound kettle drums, tethered with jute-twine. Propped against the oppo- site wall, elevated slightly above the floor level, were a line of fetish objects: a peacock fan, a large stone image of Papuji on horseback, a great domed Shiva lingam, a rusty spear head, and a pottery bowl brim full of dead cockroaches. Above these objects, suspended on a hook in the wall, were a pair of steel rods, bent and crooked as if someone had beaten them repeatedly against a lamp-post. They tapered towards a pair of wicked-looking flanged terminals. Uday, who had helped drag in the Sufi's gravestone, was sitting cross-legged oppo- site me. He was fiddling with his specta- cles, which he had laid on the ground in front of him.

`That old fraud uses those rods to beat the possessed. He tries to make the spirits confess. Usually they say that they are people who died wanting something de- sperately or who suffered a very terrible death. Occasionally they claim to be dead villagers. They say they are angry because their bones have not been submerged in the Ganges — or some nonsense like that.'

Outside, the assistants were now squat- ting by a mud hearth. They were building a dung-fire, and warming their hands on the first licks of flame. Suddenly the light was blotted out and the bhopa was filling the doorway. Both his hands were outstretch- ed and in each he held a charcoal burner. He brought the burners around to describe a perfect circle, then placed them in front of the image of Papuji.

The room was so small that I was forced to sit within touching distance of the bhopa. He settled himself cross-legged in between the braziers with his back to the fetish objects. He took a ladle of ghee and poured its contents onto the flames; im- mediately the room began to fill with a sweet, sickly, smoky smell. The back of the bhopa's hands were covered in thick black hair. He began to chant a mantra.

Unseen, the assistants had come in behind the bhopa, and at a signal from him they took up their sticks. Slowly, gently, they began to beat the kettle drums. The bhopa folded his hands, and in the flicker- ing firelight you could see him begin to tremble and rock from side to side. The drum beats rang out faster and faster, louder and louder, and in the enclosed space of the shrine they seemed to take physical form, to hit you in your chest, to vibrate through your whole body. Ants and cockroaches scuttled into the shadows. The

flames in the braziers took hold and rose ever higher, throwing a lurid yellow light on the quivering figure of the bhopa.

As I watched, the bhopa's chin jutted out, his forehead drained of colour and he

bared his teeth. You could see his gums glinting in the flames. The drums were now very loud, and I was feeling nauseous with the thick, soiled, goaty stench of the

dung-smoke. Then, just as the drummers reached their climax, the bhopa let out a

great wail. He plunged his hands into the burning flames, one fist into each brazier and kept them there for several seconds. He withdrew them and smeared his face with the carbon. The drums stopped, and silence fell on the shrine. No one moved.

After a minute had passed, one of the assistants, after first bowing reverently to Papuji, bent over and whispered some-

thing to Uday. Uday cleared his throat and began telling the bhopa the story of the

Sufi. But he made no effort to immitate the reverential manner of the assistants. In- stead Uday told his story in a jokey, sarcastic, almost mocking tone, looking the god straight in the face, unabashed. When he had finished he flashed a wink at me. I

looked down at the floor, embarrassed. For a whole minute the bhopa did not react.

Then, without turning, the bhopa reached behind him with his left hand, and

grabbed the rods. With a single movement, he swung his arm in an arc, lifting the rods off their hook and bringing them down with a sharp crack on the marble gravestone in front of him. He raised his hand for a second time and again he brought it down. There was a sharp metal- lic clang of steel on stone. A marble chip came flying off the central panel and shot

off into the darkness. On the third strike a crack appeared, running the whole length of the cylinder. The bhopa raised his hand for a fourth time.

This time the rod came down on the side of the stone, but, glancing off, fell with a crack on Uday's spectacles. The spectacles shattered. Uday raised his hands to his face and let out a loud, piercing yell.

AT THE beginning of December I got a call from Thakur-sahib. He had come to Delhi on political business, and was staying at the Gymkhana Club. Would I join him for a cup of coffee before he caught the mid-morning flight to Jodhpur? In December, Delhi mornings are icy- cold. Winds sweep down from the snow peaks of the Himalayas, freezing the plains of the Punjab and brushing the streets clean of people. Delhi-wallahs withdraw into themselves, both mentally and physi- cally. They lift up their knees to their chins and wrap their heavy Kashmiri shawls around both. Around their heads they wind thick woolen scarves; you can see only their dark eyes peering out into the cold.

I found Thakur-sahib bravely sitting out on the verandah of his room, a soft

shahtoosh shawl draped over his shoulder. In summer, the terraces of the Gymkhana

Club are crowded with members and their children, but on a winter's morning the whole neo-classical enclosure is deserted, the pool is drained and empty, and the flower beds are raked and bare. A club bearer brought us coffee in a pair of silver pots. While we waited for the liquid to cool we chatted about Pali, gossiping about the events of the autumn and our news since then.

'I have a surprise for you,' said Thakur sahib. 'Panna is engaged.'

'To whom?' I asked.

'A very nice boy,' replied Thakur-sahib. `His family are Rajputs from near Jaisal-

mer. His father was in the same house as me at Mayo. They have a very beautiful old haveli.'

'When was this announced?'

'I have been negotiating with the family for some months. We introduced the boy to Panna soon after you left. She gave her consent a fortnight later.'

We sat in silence for a while, and Thakur-sahib sipped loudly at his coffee. 'Does Uday know?' I asked eventually. 'No,' said Thakur-sahib, frowning. 'We thought it better not to tell him.' He paused. 'Not until he recovers, anyway.' 'He will recover?' I asked.

'The doctors are very optimistic,' said Thakur-sahib. 'They say quite a simple operation could cure him: a quick flash of a laser and he'll be right as rain.'

'Doctors always say that,' I said. 'Can he see anything at all?'

'Nothing. His right eye finally clouded over a week ago. He is in complete darkness now.'

'How is he coping?'

'As well as can be expected. My aunts went into Jodhpur to see him last week.

They said that he was very depressed. Kept saying that it was the bhopa who had blinded him.'

'Poor Uday,' I said. 'After this, he'll end up more superstitious than any of them.'

'With reason. The doctor tells me there is nothing inherently unusual in a traumatic 'We've got an indoor birdbath.' cataract. What is very odd is the way it happened. Normally it takes a serious physical accident; that or pure terror: total horror can blind a man. Somehow the bhopa must have put the fear of God into Uday."

A gardener — heavily shrouded in a thick Kulu blanket — passed along the verandah watering the pots of skeletal Bougainvillaea. He salaamed us both. When he had moved on Thakur-sahib continued: 'What about you?' he asked. 'What did you think of the bhopa?' 'He put on quite a show for us. I felt as if I'd wandered into some Rider Haggard film set: She or King Solomon's Mines. By the end I was half expecting the shrine to be struck with divine lightning or for the earth to open and swallow us all up. Half of me feels we got off lightly with cataracts.'

'But did you think he had powers?' said Thakur-sahib, persisting.

I thought for a second, then said: 'Yes, I do. He must have.'

'But he wasn't powerful enough to take on the Sufi,' said Thakur-sahib.

'What do you mean?'

'You've heard about the mine haven't you?'

'No.'

'It was in all the papers. Hindustan Silver closed it down.'

'What?'

'They said it was a technical problem flooding. The mine is built on a spring. The ore is there but they've decided its not going to be economic to bring it up. It's too far down, and too waterlogged. That may have been why the Mewar Maharanas abandoned the mine in the first place.' 'But that still doesn't explain the rest . .

'No,' said Thakur-sahib. 'It doesn't.'

In the shrubberies, a pair of mynah birds were shrieking. They flew at each other and fell tumbling onto ground. We watch- ed them clawing at each other, before the weaker flew off leaving the other in posses- sion of the tree. I broke the silence: 'What will happen to Uday now?' I asked. 'Even if his eyes do recover he'll have no job to go back to.'

'He'll fall on his feet,' replied Thakur- sahib. 'When he gets his sight back, he'll probably continue with those mounted safaris he was organising. Another cup of coffee?'

'Please.'

'My aunts were very excited when they heard about Uday and the end of the mine,' said Thakur-sahib, 'But you know how much they love their hocus-pocus. In my experience there's usually a perfectly rational explanation for this sort of thing' I stared at Thakur-sahib, unsure whether he was being serious or not: 'But every so often,' he continued, 'one does come across a case . .

Thakur-sahib finished pouring my cof- fee, and looked up.

'Do you take milk?' he asked.