Pilgrimage

Fiction

The day Elizabeth retired from job she placed a demand: “Let’s go on a pilgrimage.”

“Why not?” said Paulo, her husband, who had retired half a decade earlier. When he retired as a banker, Liz wanted to retire too.

“Anyway, my job doesn’t pay much,” she said. She was a teacher in a CBSE school.

“It’s not the pay, darling,” he told her. “It’s about how we spend the time. Life will be terribly boring without work to do.” So she continued to work till the ripe age of 60.

The two of them were alone at home. Their son had chosen to settle down in Canada with a Pakistani wife, after completing his graduation in mechanical engineering. Their daughter married one Sharma who lived in Fiji after falling in love with him on Facebook. “When children grow up and become adults, they should be granted the liberty to choose their destiny,” Paulo told his wife as their son and then daughter moved out of their life almost entirely.

“We’ll go to Ponmala for our pilgrimage,” said Paulo when Liz expressed her desire.

“Where’s that?” she asked.

“In the Sahyadris. Hardly anyone goes there. Legends have it that Saint Thomas lived for a short while there. We’ll have to do a little bit of trekking to reach the place.”

Liz was not pleased with the idea of trekking. But the idea of walking with her husband through a forest trail sounded romantic and with a little persuasion from her loving husband she complied quite readily.

That is how they came to stand admiring the Anamudi Peak from the plateau of Ponmala. “That’s the highest peak in our state,” said Paulo.

“Quite a bare place, just a mass of rock,” said Liz who was not particularly enchanted. “But I wish I could climb that,” she added.

“It’s not impossible. There are trekking paths. Do you wish to go?” Paulo asked knowing that she wouldn’t undertake the hardship.

“Why are you here?” Both Paulo and Liz were stupefied by the strange voice behind them. They turned to see a man with long grey hair and an equally long grey beard. He wore a black dhoti and a black shirt. His eyes were fixed on them, moving rather rapidly from one to the other.

“We are pilgrims,” said Paulo. He explained that they had visited Ponmala and had walked ahead a little to enjoy the delights of the forest.

“Go back, that’s better.” The man said rather peremptorily.

“Why?” asked Paulo who was not used to taking orders from strangers even if they looked like sages.

“You are husband and wife, aren’t you?” The man asked.

“Yes,” Paulo said.

“Do you love each other a lot?”

“Of course,” said Paulo remembering how the people of their village used to say that they were the ideal couple, a couple that never had a quarrel in all of their long married life, a couple that was the envy of other couples in the village.

“Has any one of you ever been unfaithful to the other?”

“You mean adultery?” Paulo asked with a smirk.

“Not necessarily,” the man said ignoring the smirk. “Infidelity can be in thought or word. For example, you may have shared something about your spouse to a friend, something that you never dared to tell the spouse himself or herself. That’s just an example, of course.”

“Well, what if we did?”

“Don’t go ahead then. Not this way. Many spouses have gone ahead, never to come back, unless they were absolutely faithful to each other, which is not quite likely.”

Paulo laughed gently. “Then we should definitely go, if only to belong to a rare community of absolute fidelity.”

“Don’t joke about it,” the man warned. “Look at your wife.”

It was then that Paulo looked at Liz for the first time ever since the stranger had started talking to them. She looked pale.

“Liz, are you all right?” Paulo hugged her with one hand.

“Er… I’m not feeling all too well, Paul.” She never liked the name Paulo and always called him Paul. “Let’s go back.”

Paulo looked at the stranger. Did he smirk? Before Paulo could make out the expression on his face, the stranger turned and walked away into the woods.

Paulo looked at the Anamudi Peak. A cloud was descending on it with a delicate caress. It was a black cloud.

“It might rain soon,” he said. “Let’s go back.”

“Yes, let us, quickly,” said Liz.

“Why would Saint Thomas ever come to a place like this?” Paulo wondered as they walked back through the forest.

Liz did not say anything. She never liked her husband’s usual scepticism and occasional sarcasm about religious matters.

“Probably, he never came here. Much of what we believe may be terrifyingly wrong after all.” He hugged his wife once again and they walked together, close to each other.