The Vendor of Sweets

The next day, the bearded man brings Jagan to a remote shrine by a pond in overgrown, wooded surroundings. When Jagan notes how silent the area is, the bearded man replies that you can hear traffic noise now—it used to be that you wouldn’t meet a soul in these mountains but would only see people if you walked all the way into town. Jagan asked why he and his master lived up here, and the bearded man explains that the stone available nearby was good for carving.

When Jagan asks how the master fed his family up here, the bearded man explains that the master had no family—he adopted the bearded man when the man was five. Jagan suspects that the master may have fathered the bearded man with a sex worker but keeps this thought to himself. He also wonders why the bearded man lets his beard grow so white if he makes hair dyes—but, rather than asking that, he asks after the bearded man’s business. The man says it’s fine, as he hasn’t yet dealt with tax inspectors. Jagan recalls his own disturbing encounters with tax people and tax evasion; he thinks that he would have paid his sales taxes if Gandhi had told him to, but as far as he knows Gandhi didn’t talk about that.

The bearded man jokes that the tax people will notice his business once they “notice fewer gray hairs around.” At this point, Jagan comments on the man’s white beard. The bearded man says he has no desire to dye his beard and would never have worked in hair dye if he could have been an image-maker—but his master was supporting him financially, and after his master died, he walked into town and started his business. He feels his life was much better before.

The bearded man walks into the sanctuary, points out an empty alcove to Jagan, and tells him that his master wanted to carve the goddess Gayatri for the space. In fact, his master had already chosen the stone for the statue. Abruptly, the bearded man goes looking for the chosen stone. Jagan, walking after him, feels as though he has traveled back in time, far away from his own business and Mali’s ventures. As the bearded man searches, he points out to Jagan various empty pedestals and broken pieces that used to contain or be gods’ images—and Jagan has a sudden, overwhelming feeling that his humdrum existence has been incredibly “narrow” and that he is approaching “a new janma.”

The bearded man offers Jagan a piece of fruit from a nearby guava tree. Jagan takes it but tells the bearded man he doesn’t eat sugar or salt. When the bearded man asks why, Jagan begins to talk about his book and the printer Nataraj, which doesn’t at all interest the bearded man, as he is more “used to inscriptions on stone and on palmyra leaf.” Jagan takes one bite of the guava and drops it, recalling how he ate fruit all the time as a child until his father chopped down the guava tree in their own back yard.

Wrapped up in these thoughts, Jagan loses track of the bearded man until the bearded man asks whether Jagan is paying attention. When Jagan claims he is, the man bewails that they haven’t found the stone—and then remembers where it is. They go down to the pond—and as they do, Jagan suddenly worries that the bearded man will drown him in this remote spot and then tell the townspeople he vanished. Jagan is almost tempted by the idea of dying to avoid his problems. He wonders how he will be reincarnated and concludes, “Anything but a money-making sweet-maker with a spoilt son.”

The bearded man orders Jagan to reach into the pool and feel around. Beneath the water, the bearded man grabs Jagan’s hand, startling him, and places it on the stone—which, he explains, his master put in the pond for “water treatment.” He bullies the rather weak-feeling Jagan into helping him lift the stone from the water and carry it up some steps to the grass. When Jagan has recovered from the exertion, the bearded man shows him the outline of the 10-armed goddess that his master had sketched on the stone. The bearded man begins telling Jagan a story about the goddess; when Jagan interrupts, saying he knows the story, the bearded man says that everyone does—but it’s good to hear it repeated.

The bearded man says he’ll die happy if he can spend the rest of his life carving this statue. When Jagan asks how old he is, the bearded man asks him to guess—but when Jagan, confused, demurs, the man announces that he’s 69 and prepared to die at 70 if he can complete the statue and put it on the empty pedestal. He and Jagan discuss whether he’ll be able to finish the statue in a year—and then he breaks into an excited description of the goddess and the objects she holds in her 10 hands, a description that leaves Jagan wonderstruck.

Suddenly, the bearded man tells Jagan that only Jagan can help him complete the goddess—by purchasing the property and installing the statue. When Jagan hesitates, the bearded man points at him threateningly and said that it seemed having “a retreat like this” would help Jagan. Jagan agrees that he would like a retreat and a drastic change. The bearded man expands on this idea, claiming that eventually, all old people must retreat from the world, ceding it to new generations. Jagan wants to say more about what he wants, but he is unwilling to explain the pain that Mali has caused him.