In The Shadow of Crows

Charles Manners David

Description

When Bindra contracts leprosy, she is driven from her home in the Himalayan foothills with her two small sons and embarks upon a seemingly impossible course in search of salvation. David's first journey to India is driven by devastating loss, and yet he finds unexepected solace in the discovery of an exceptional family legacy, and insights offered by an unorthodox mountain tradition. As these individual journeys progress their stories are woven together, cultural differences are dissolved, and an extraordinary relationship is formed which forges unanticipated changes in both their lives.In the Shadow of Crows is a remarkable account of love and loss, a lyrical ode to the wonderful and terrible beauty of India, and a masterly meditation on the interweaving of separate lives.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Travel writing
• Memoir
• Himalayas

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 30 avril 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908493125
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
IN THE SHADOW OF CROWS


David Charles Manners



Publisher Information
First published by
Signal Books Limited
36 Minster Road Oxford OX4 1LY
www.signalbooks.co .uk
Digital edition converted and distributed in 2012 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© David Manners, 2009, 2011, 2012
The right of David Manners to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. The whole of this work, including all text and illustrations, is protected by copyright. No parts of this work may be loaded, stored, manipulated, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information, storage and retrieval system without prior written permission from the publisher, on behalf of the copyright owner.
Cover Design: Devdan Sen
Cover Image: © Arash James Iravan/istock



About the Author
David Charles Manners enjoyed an eclectic education in Epsom, Lichfield, Bath, Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm and Kalimpong. He studied Music and Physical Medicine, and has long maintained an international reputation as a physical therapist with professional musicians, a teacher of Shaiva Tantra Yoga and an inspiring public speaker. He is the co-founder of Sarvashubhamkara , a charity that provides medical care, education and human contact for socially excluded individuals and communities on the Indian subcontinent. For the past eighteen years, David has spent his life between the Sussex Downs and the Bengal Himalaya.



Praise for ‘In The Shadow of Crows’
‘David Charles Manners is an inspirational, thoughtful, and compassionate writer, softly reminding us all of our common humanity.’
Toula Fosclos, The Monitor , Montreal
‘Beautifully written.’
Gus Christie, Telegraph Magazine , London
‘Manners’ appetite for experience, as well as his humour and bigheartedness, are palpable on every page of In the Shadow of Crows . Having spent the better part of a quarter century interviewing people, mostly for CBC Radio, I have been on the fortunate receiving end of many, many personal and remarkable stories, and his is one I will always remember.’
Bill Richardson, broadcaster & author
‘A journey into another world that tells a story which is at once accomplished, intriguing and moving.’
Gilda O’Neill, author of My East End
‘Highlights with compassion an Indo-British connection that has always been swept out of sight.’
Chandralekha Mehta, author of Freedom’s Child
‘I was so moved by this extraordinary story, and by the spiritual strength of the rejected people it describes. We have material wealth but are lost: they have nothing and are found.’
Dame Felicity Lott, CBE

‘Very moving and well written ... In the Shadow of Crows was a book that I found hard to put down. I learned.’
Brian Doyle, author of Angel Square
‘A volume to provoke true soul-searching ... A must read.’ Professor Dhirendra Sharma, Concerned Scientists & Philosophers, India



Dedication





In memory of Marie-Paule Mourik - inspirational tutor and extraordinary friend - who taught and loved me fearlessly.


At the moment of a man’s death, all knowledge acquired, all wisdom learned through the living of life is liberated from the confines of his body. With the final, exhaled breath, it passes first to the gathered crows, who, for ten consecutive days, are respectfully fed by the family of the deceased. Only then do the grateful birds share his learning with earth and sky, stone and wind, fire and water.
It is thus that nothing and no one is lost. It is thus that the universe forever changes, learns and grows. Therefore choose well the knowledge you acquire in life. Seek out and nurture wisdom.
Kushal Magar , jhankri of the Eastern Himalaya



Chapter One
I was not a nervous child.
Only the prospect of plunging stockinged feet into red Wellingtons caused anxiety to rise. My mother would insist I wore them if the barometer even hinted at the possibility of Change.
My single demand was that we delay our daily excursions for the ritual banging-of-the-boots on the kitchen step. I would drop in stones and give them a shake. I would poke in a long stick and wiggle furiously. I would peer into the musty darkness and give a short, sharp blow.
One could never be too cautious when dealing with scorpions.
My mother would patiently watch and wait, straightening the finger seams of wrist-gloves, tending to the powder on her nose.
It was all quite unnecessary, she would impress.
We lived in Surrey.
The legacy of my father’s upbringing in the Punjab and along the North-West Frontier during the struggling death-throes of the dinosaur Raj touched every aspect of my life. I could ask the time in Urdu, even before I was able to read a clock in English. I could have told the chowkidhar to tiptoe, the mali to hurry with his hoe, or the khansamah to bring me eggs “rumble-tumble”, had we had staff. I could have confidently talked about mahouts and moonshees , bhisti mussaks and missy babas , ping-jams and burra sahibs had anyone shown an interest.
I would roll my eyes and smack my youthful lips in longing for chapati doused in creamy ghee and palm-sugar jaggery, or for hot, crisp jalabies dripping with syrup, even though I had never tasted either. And had I come across a Salt March, I could have spotted Gandhi in the crowd and knew to avoid National Congress supporters in their tidy, khadi homespun caps, even though India had been a republic for over twenty years.
My mother understood.
When I lifted the cloth during dinner to check for cobras around the table legs, she would smile. When I interrupted our walks in the park to scan the poplar trees for full-bladdered langurs, she would forgive me.
My little white legs may have been stuffed into red Wellingtons as I waddled across Epsom Common to feed ducks with stale Hovis, but my head was filled with monkeys and tiffin-tins. My heart was in Simla, Peshwar and Rawlpindi.
***
It started with a birthmark.
Bindra first noticed it as she took her morning bucket bath. She thought the pale patch on her slim, dark leg was dust. Perhaps the last of the atta flour from the roti breads she had made for her family the night before.
She rubbed it with her thumb. It did not smear. She rubbed it with the ball of cooked rice she used in place of unaffordable soap. The new, pallid birthmark did not change.
Bindra pushed the bamboo door of the wash house with her foot to let in more light. The sun had not yet broken over the mountains and the children were still sleeping. Her cockerel was unusually slow to herald the new day. This was inauspicious. Instead, the crows were arguing in the dawn.
“Kali Ma,” she whispered, in honour of the Dark Goddess, “what news do your black-plumed messengers bring?”
There was a sudden explosion of life as every crow on the hillside simultaneously took flight. They filled the air with wing and claw, tearing apart the stillness, scratching out the sky.
“Kali Ma,” Bindra whispered again. “Dark Mother, protect my children.”
At that moment, the new day burst its brilliance across the eastern peaks that mark the border with Bhutan. Bindra looked back to the indelible mark on her left shin. She ran her palm across it. Smooth, though slightly raised.
There was another on her right leg. She pinched both marks. She pinched them hard, but they were numb.
A growing panic, of which she could make no sense, began to submerge her chest. Some distant memory, so deeply hidden that she had lost its name, was cleaving through her core.
Bindra threw her cotton pharia sari around her wet torso and stumbled out into the yard, suddenly, inexplicably unable to breathe. She turned her face towards the sun, seeking comfort in its emerging warmth.
Instead, her eyes were drawn to the crows. They were reeling in a vast mass above her hut. A whirling, ominous veil. Screeching squadrons were tearing away from the looming mass to plummet to the ground and rip into a ruptured pillow of bloodied feathers.
“Oh, Kali Ma!” Bindra cried aloud. “Not this!”
But even she could not say to what she referred. The dead and broken body of her cockerel, or the instinct of an unspeakable discovery of her own.
***
My maternal Grandmother was a witch.
Or so the villagers claimed. They said she cast spells to make them pregnant. She caused their hay bales to spontaneously ignite. She spoiled their butter.
Grandmother would have none of it. She did not cast spells, she would scoff in contempt of her ignorant neighbours. She cast “hoodoos”.
Grandmother only augmented her reputation by keeping a malformed runt of a cat, called Cesspit. “Familiar” or not, never once did Cesspit catch a mouse or bird. His deformed nose had afforded him an interminable snore.
Grandmother also kept a big black crow, called Bird, who slept balanced on a tea-towel rack in the kitchen. He spent his mornings perched in the lowest branches of the walnut tree, from which his tiny eyes would follow her every movement through the windows of the centuries-old cottage. Bird was always watching, always plotting.
Bird would accompany Grandmother on afternoon errands, riding through the village on her bicycle handlebars, head down, wings outstretched, chuckling at the pedal-born breeze between his quills. Only if he spied a queue of prim, prinked ladies at the bus stop would he free his grip to molest their shopping and tangle their hair.
Back at home, Bird would terroris