Mirhan

Malloi, Arorā 355 Varhiya, since the Flood The afternoon sun came through the daris in long white bars, and a bald, bulky man ran through them. He took the Asan stairs two at a time, caught his foot on the last one, and went down on one knee. He got up without feeling it. Inside, the air was cool and thick with old smoke. The terracotta Pahans stood in their rows along the walls, as they had stood since before anyone’s grandfather, and their clay eyes watched him come. His sandals slapped the stone, and every step came back to him from the walls. Nobody told him to be quiet. Nobody said anything at all. The Datar Banhis stood in a ring at the far end, hands folded, heads bowed. Behind them, in the shade of the Datar Pahan, lay Sasa. Bhota stopped at the edge of the ring and held his breath to listen for his Saeen’s. It came, thin and slow, after a long time. One of Sasa’s fingers twitched against the floor. He bowed to the Datar Pahan. “Oati, Oati.” His voice cracked on the second word. Then he crossed the last few steps on his knees, took his Saeen’s feet in both hands, and held them. “Saeen,” he whispered. “Wake up.” The eyelids moved first. Then the eyes opened a little, sunken and clouded, and found him. “Are they all here?” Sasa asked, in a voice like dry reed. --- He kept his eyes down as he pressed Sasa’s weary feet. “They will be here by sunrise, Saeen.” Sasa sighed Datar’s name, and a tear slid from the corner of his eye. Bhota’s hand went to wipe the tear from his Saeen’s face. He stayed at his feet, and then Sasa’s hand touched him. Bhota turned his head. “Command me, Saeen.” Sasa’s lips moved slowly. “Order the recital.” Bhota looked towards the Banhis. “Recite.” The Banhis raised their duffs high and beat them in rhythm. “Khem, Khem, Datar.” Sasa answered, his closed lips shaping a smile, and then his eyelids shut again. The sun went down. The chants stopped, and the candles were lit. Bhota rubbed his eyes and lay down beside his Saeen to wait for the convoy from the Sapt Asan. The doors boomed open. The convoy filled the Asan, and the chants came with them. Bhota stood up. Sasa lay beside him with his hands folded on his chest, and the chest did not move. The Banhas were all looking at Bhota. Nobody knew whose name he had been about to say. Bhota woke up gasping, his hands on his head, and looked at Sasa. His chest was rising and falling. He turned to the Datar Pahan with a reverent nod and folded hands. The Banhis were still awake, still standing. He decided not to sleep again. He walked from Pahan to Pahan, back and forth, and the candle flames made the clay faces seem to move. He looked into their eyes to get through the long night. Before dawn, the clatter of hooves broke the silence of the night. The convoy was here. “Oati, Oati, Oati” entered the Asan before they did. --- Under the dim moonlight, the seven Banhas filed through the Asan corridor, their sandals whispering on the stone. They bowed to the Datar Pahan and greeted Bhota. “Sukho.” The Banha of the Asan of Sijh Bhan, Sanj Basat, raised his voice. “Place yourselves.” The Banhas sat around Sasa in a crescent. Silence settled over the chamber once more. The candles had burned low, and the air smelled of melted wax, old smoke and cold clay. Every eye was fixed upon the resting Sasa. Only Zarn’s lips kept moving, murmuring a prayer of his own. Bhota heard it as a faint hiss beneath the stillness and wondered what it asked for. Bhota blinked hard against the sting in his eyes and nudged Sasa’s foot. “Saeen, they have come.” Sasa’s eyelids parted slowly. He looked up at the Datar Pahan, and the corner of his mouth lifted. Bhota called for a Banhi to bring water. He slid an arm behind Sasa’s neck, his palm supporting his shoulder, and carefully lifted him against the stone beneath the Datar Pahan. She brought the water, and Bhota held the cup to his dry lips, his hands unsteady. The rim clicked once against Sasa’s teeth. Sasa sipped. His breathing eased. Then, with the little life he had left, he spoke. “Datar is Truth. Soon I will stand before him, as every Tehlyo before me has.” He paused to catch his breath. “Basa promised Datar our absolute devotion to Dhamma. Datar said the waters of the Sindhu would never rise again. Uphold the vows. Surrender yourselves.” His eyes moved across the Banhas before resting on his cousin, Zarn Varha, Banha of the Asan of Alor. “A Tehlyo must carry more than service. More than knowledge.” Zarn’s shoulders stiffened. Sasa struggled for breath. “Devotion. Fortitude. Humility. These matter just as much.” Bhota counted the three words against himself and could not tell whether he came out whole. Sasa’s voice weakened. “As Basa taught.” Around the crescent, lips began to move with his, for every Banha in the room had learned the words as a child. “Tehlyo is not power. It is responsibility.” A faint smile appeared on Sasa’s face. “Uphold Dhamma as the one undivided truth. It is my firm belief that Datar has chosen Bhota.” Bhota’s eyebrows rose. He smiled for a moment, and then the smile was gone, as though he were ashamed of it. He searched every face in the room. His eyes met Zarn’s, and then he looked upward, in thanks to Datar. Relief came first, and under it, quietly, the old fear of the water. Zarn’s lips stopped moving. He sat motionless, his jaw hardening. Sanj was already looking at him. Bhota held the gaze as long as he could, until Sanj lowered his eyes and said nothing. Bhota had expected anger. This looked more like grief. Sasa spoke his final words. “Khem Khem Datar.” A murmur ran through the Asan. Sasa let out his last breath. The voices fell silent again. There lay his still body, and with a trembling hand, Bhota closed his lifeless eyes as the first ray of sunlight touched Sasa’s face. White drapes rustled as, one by one, they bowed to him. He rose and stood frozen, lips pressed together, answering each bow with a slow blink and a small nod. Sanj came at the end. He bowed slowly, his eyes fixed on the floor. Zarn did not bow. Bhota watched him rise from the floor, turn his back on the new Tehlyo, and walk out of the Asan. His footsteps faded down the corridor, and Bhota listened until they were gone. --- The iron bell struck three times, and Bhota felt each stroke in the stone beneath his knees. The note went out over Malloi like a pot breaking on stone, and somewhere beyond the walls a real one broke with it, dropped from a woman’s hands. A crier’s voice rose thin and ragged. “Oati, Oati, Oati! Blessed people of Malloi, beware! We have lost the Noble Man!” Then the bazaar fell quiet. Only a goat’s bell went on ringing, because nobody thought to stop it. Hooves clattered out of Malloi and faded along the roads of the Raaya. Inside the Asan, Bhota led the Banhis in the final reets before the body was given to the ground. The Banhis began reciting. The Banhas stayed behind him with bowed heads. Bhota covered Sasa in a white drape, swaying his head as he prayed. With every fold it grew harder, and when he reached Sasa’s face he leaned back and turned around, looking for a hand. His chin was raised, and his eyes clouded like river water after rain. “Sanj.” Sanj stepped back two paces, drawing his robes up. “You were chosen for this.” Bhota let out a slow breath. He swung around for a final look at his Teacher, tightened the drapes, took the urn of sacred Sindhu clay from the Banhi, and coated the remains. With the last layer he pressed his palm against the cold floor and pushed himself up. The ritual was over. The hour had arrived, and Sasa’s sacred remains were to be paraded before the weeping masses. He peeped out from a dari. The courtyard was full. House Basat and Varha stood in front, and the Kangal at the back. The gates opened. Bhota led the funeral with low claps of his hands, reciting the sacred chants. On his right walked Sanj Basat, mouth shut, reciting nothing, and Bhota felt that silence at his shoulder like a cold hand. On his left walked Baku Varha, Banha of the Asan of Indu, and every few steps his chant broke on a sob and he picked it up again, for his uncle. Behind them four Banhas carried the departed, and behind them walked the Banhis. Halfway down the stairs, Bhota caught the eyes of an old Kangal woman at the edge of the crowd. She did not bow with the others. She only looked at him, the way one looks at a stranger who has walked into one’s house. Then the Samaaj closed in to touch the body as it passed, and he lost her. The sound of mourning had turned into questions. Members of House Varha searched one another’s faces. Bhota kept his head straight and did not answer. Then he heard it. “Sasa never named him.” “Why not Zarn?” “No Basat? No Varha? A man from Debal?” “Datar would not choose an outsider.” Debal. He had heard the word in their mouths before, said just that way, as if it were a stain. The voices drowned out everything else. The chant caught in his throat, and for the length of one breath he said nothing at all. Then he found the next line and went on, a half-beat late, and felt the Banhas behind him stumble to catch up. At the edge of his sight, Sanj’s eyes slid towards the elders of House Basat, and away. The body was brought to the riverbed, where the grave had been dug. The boats on the river had lowered their flags. The drummers began beating their drums, and an enormous crowd watched as Sasa was lowered into the ground. The sacred soil was cold and damp in Bhota’s palm. He poured the first fistful onto the white drape, and after that the Banhas filled the grave. The crowd drained away up the bank. Where it had stood, the clay was stamped with hundreds of footprints, already filling with river water. The new Tehlyo and the Banhas stood among them at the grave. Bhota saw Haam Varha, Sasa’s brother, come towards them across the loose earth, leaning on a staff. The old man did not look at Bhota. He stopped before his son, and his voice shook. “Baku, where is Zarn?”