Shekhar’s life became so vacant, which was why he wanted to wring out the last drop of pleasure from everything that came into his life. If it was laughter, he would laugh more than was necessary; when he went out for a walk, he’d run around like a mad dog; when he fought, he would remain hostile even when he forgot why he was fighting . . . As a result his life acquired a false freshness, the delusion of progress, when in reality he was standing absolutely still.
Shekhar is standing on top of a hill, surrounded by ruins, and his dog is at his feet. Fields of pulses spread out in all four directions. Sometimes a gust of wind blows and the stalks of pulse bend and then straighten themselves out, like scores of soldiers on watch dozing off simultaneously and then standing back up at attention when they wake up.
The dog was called Taimur. Shekhar didn’t care for him especially, but the dog still followed him everywhere; he had made Shekhar his master for some unknown reason.
Shekhar was just standing there, but Taimur must have seen something in the distance because he ran straight down into the fields of pulse. Shekhar ran off after him, too. He had no inner impulse to do anything, but the push that he got externally was enough to make him flow forward . . .
Shekhar made a path for himself through the pulse with his hands and then discovered what had made the dog run. Several quails were running about in all directions, and Taimur chased after one and then after another, but couldn’t catch any of them.
Wherever Taimur ran, Shekhar followed. Gradually, the stalks of pulse became denser. Shekhar pushed his shoulders forward and bent down and sliced through the pulse with his hands, advancing like a crazed bull, and still he couldn’t catch Taimur. His shirt was torn, his arms and legs were scraped up and his face was scratched all over, but he couldn’t catch a single quail. Shekhar went on even more fearlessly than his dog; his naked feet left bloodied prints as he went forward, but still he couldn’t catch a single quail . . .
Taimur grew bored and abandoned the game—accepted defeat. Shekhar had to do the same.
The sun rained down gold over the tops of the ruins as it set. Shekhar was headed back on the road home, covered in blood, exhausted, head hanging; Taimur, who was always in front, was coming behind him, head drooping . . .
They caught no quails, but the game was over and the day had ended.
*
Again, the fields of pulse. Again, Shekhar in front and behind him his dog, Taimur. Now Taimur is Shekhar’s brother, his teacher, his companion and servant. Shekhar’s mother has gone to her father’s village with Saraswati, and he is under no one’s jurisdiction.
Shekhar is wandering aimlessly, but his aimlessness is not without suspense. He’s waiting for Ganesi.
Ganesi is a Dalit weaver by caste. He works as a coolie in Shekhar’s father’s employ. Whenever he gets free time, he makes fireworks. That’s why he’s Shekhar’s friend, because he usually takes Shekhar along and puts things together while he watches. He makes gunpowder, fills it into firecrackers, wraps them, all the while explaining to Shekhar how the saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal all have to be ground separately; how you need to use wooden tools when mixing them together so that they don’t ignite; and how the paper you use to wrap ‘the musk rat’ has to be doused with a solution of saltpetre and vinegar and then dried . . . Sometimes when Shekhar insists he lets him grind the gunpowder, and sometimes he gives him a few firecrackers. Their friendship has grown so much that sometimes Shekhar asks his father to give Ganesi the day off and then goes out with him.
Today Shekhar is waiting for Ganesi because he has sent him to get an iguana. It was Ganesi who had told him that iguanas can climb any kind of wall and stick to it. Even if someone grabs it by its tail it wouldn’t let go, and in the olden days, people used to scale walls by tying ropes to their tails and using them for support. After he heard this, it was only natural that Shekhar wanted to see one. When Ganesi told him that he couldn’t bring back one alive because its bite was poisonous, Shekhar demanded that he kill one and bring it.
Shekhar crossed through the fields of pulse and saw Ganesi coming towards him—a skinny, black ghost with a staff in one hand and a chameleon-like thing in the other. As soon as he came to him he said, ‘Young master, here, take this iguana.’
Shekhar looked at him for a while. He was a little disappointed. This is an iguana! Then he said, ‘Skin it. I’ll keep that.’
Ganesi laughed and told him that an iguana’s skin is so thin it couldn’t be skinned. But Shekhar wasn’t going to take his word for it. If you could skin a cheetah, and he regularly sat on a cheetah skin, then why not an iguana! He said, ‘I am telling you, skin it!’
Ganesi realized that he’d have to do it. He took out a knife and sliced open the iguana’s belly. Shekhar caught hold of his dog and stood there.
It took half an hour for the skin to be peeled off completely. Shekhar said, ‘Set it in the sun to dry. After it’s dry, we’ll wash it.’
Ganesi didn’t say anything and smiled as he spread it out to dry.
What Shekhar saw there three days later doesn’t have to be said. That was when Ganesi laughed and asked, ‘Young master, now you can see for yourself whether or not the iguana’s skin has dried.’ Then he said in dismay, ‘What skin? What iguana?’ The wise Ganesi smiled and stayed quiet.
Shekhar noted that everyone had a skin, but a cheetah was a cheetah, and an iguana was an iguana.
*
The house that Shekhar lived in had a mango orchard. The mangoes were local and of poor quality; there was only one tree that bore hybrid mangoes.
The fruits were just about to ripen. Shekhar would go there every day and look longingly and dream of the day when they wouldn’t be on the trees but in his hands . . .
One day, when he saw a few ripe mangoes on a solitary tree, he said to the gardener, ‘Give me a mango.’
But the gardener was unsympathetic to this completely reasonable request. He said, ‘Young master, I’ll pick those mangoes tomorrow and send a basket of them as a present to the master.’
To the master! Shekhar thought it completely unfair that the mangoes be snatched from him, who actually wanted the mangoes, and given to his father who didn’t care about them. He said, ‘Will you give them to me or not?’
‘No, young master.’
Shekhar started to climb the tree himself. The gardener stood back and laughed because he knew that this child couldn’t climb the tree.
But Shekhar’s hands and feet had the strength of his anger. He got to the top, comfortably sat on a branch, picked out the ripe mangoes and started eating.
The gardener’s smile turned into worry. Watching Shekhar, he was even more convinced that the boy would eat up all the mangoes.
But his stomach gave up on him. So he started picking all kinds of mangoes—the unripe, half-rotten and ripe ones—and throwing them around after spoiling them by biting into them. With each mango he threw, he yelled to the gardener, ‘Take that! And take that! And take that!’
The gardener couldn’t take that, and he began to climb the tree to get a hold of Shekhar. Shekhar looked at him and said, ‘Come on, yes, come on!’ and he climbed further up and sat at the end of a branch which would clearly break if there was even the slightest increase in weight on it. The gardener shouted, ‘Come down or you’ll fall!’
‘No, come and get me. Let’s see.’ And he climbed further up.
The gardener was scared. He left. Shekhar gradually got down. He hadn’t touched the ground when he saw the gardener return with Father.
He became philosophical. He gave his plucked mangoes a once-over and then stood ready. He did a calculation in his head about how many slaps per mango or how many mangoes per slap he’d get. That he might not get slapped was not a thought that entered his head.
But he didn’t get slapped. Father laughed after he heard the whole tale. He said to Shekhar, ‘It was fine if you wanted to eat them, but why did you throw them?’ And then to the gardener he asked, ‘Why did you tell him he couldn’t have them because you were giving them to me as a present?’
This was the only time Shekhar expected a slap and got laughter instead. Normally, the opposite used to happen. Still, he had boundless love in his heart for his father.
*
Shekhar’s father bought a new house—in Patna, on the banks of the Ganga. Now Shekhar’s chief occupation was to cut down the banana trees in their orchard and use their trunks to float in the river (one has to call it ‘floating’ because he still hadn’t learned how to swim). Often, he would slip off the trunk and struggle in the water, but each time someone would see him and drag him out. Despite Father’s prohibitions he never gave up this habit because the idea of floating down such a big river without using his arms and legs was so attractive that he couldn’t shake it from his head.
He tied three trunks together and made a raft. He took it to the Ganga, laid down flat on it and used his arms to row it into the moving stream. Then he brought his hands in and lay still as he looked sometimes to one side and sometimes to the other.
The slower movements on either riverbank made it seem to him like they were going backwards. After he had looked at both sides for a long time, he started looking up at the sky. It had rained and small bits of clouds were running around every which way. Sometimes they would run into each other and become one. And he watched the vastness of the sky dissolve into azure. Oh, how beautiful it would be to melt into that vast azure sky and become nothing . . . Absent-mindedly, Shekhar thought, ‘This is how I will die, where there will be no obstacles . . .’
Obstacles . . . he felt as if the life he was living was nothing more than an obstacle. Today he got the chance to escape from its clutches. Today, with the help of three felled trees, he was going to that distant land where the Ganga flows, where it merges with the ocean, where there is an island of sunset-gold and where there lived a princess dressed in clothes made from clouds that had dissolved into the very same azure expanse . . . Shekhar would go to her and say, ‘I’m Shekhar. I’ve come from the land of attachments,’ and she would seat him next to her and say, ‘You are free here. You will live in that palace of sirissa flowers and you can do whatever you want . . .’
But maybe the princess wouldn’t notice him. Why would she waste her time on an insignificant boy from the land of attachment?
But there would be others there and other girls. Wasn’t everyone a princess in the land without attachments?
Shekhar closed his eyes . . .
Then he realized, ‘Goodness, that place is really far away. It will take days to get there, and the Ganga flows so slowly . . .’
But he had already passed beyond the point where worry had any power over him. The sky, the liberated atmosphere, the unobstructed vastness had all filled his veins. He was unobstructed, too, vast, liberated and reality was far behind . . .
He thought of a line of poetry in English:
O mother Ganges, vast and slow!
And slowly, with great concentration, he began to add lines to complete the poem . . .
The moment he realized the poem was finished was the moment he realized that his back had grown stiff from the cold and his hands were white and numb. He knew he had come very far from home.
Fear lives in the world of reality, not on the way to that island of sunset-gold. Shekhar slowly and unwillingly rowed himself to the riverbank. He somehow got on to dry land and lay face down in the sun.
When he awoke from his sleep, the sun had already set. He got up and dragged his tired body home. As he neared home, the moon was rising, and the house was completely quiet, even though the lights were on. As soon as he went inside, he saw his mother and father standing in the courtyard, looking outside with fixed gazes, as if they had suddenly grown old—there were so many lines on their faces . . . As soon as they saw Shekhar, their anxiety-ridden faces relaxed. There were tears in Mother’s eyes; Father turned right around and went upstairs.
Shekhar followed them and saw that the house was completely empty. The next day he learned that people had taken lanterns and gone quite far down the side of the river looking for him . . . Somehow, his parents learned that he had gone down the river on a raft of banana trees and everyone panicked. When he heard the news, Shekhar forgot himself to such an extent that even after a great effort he couldn’t remember the poem he had composed on the bosom of the Ganga, only the trace of the first line remained in his memory:
O mother Ganges, vast and slow!
*
How did one get to the island of sunset-gold when it was far away, when it took so many days to get there, so many days like the first one where in the first few hours your back grows stiff and hands go numb? How did one manage to see the princess who would put you up in a palace of sirissa flowers and sit next to you?
Shekhar knows that it will never happen, but he also knows that it has to happen, inevitably, something would have to happen to fill the emptiness in his life. And helplessly he’d think, why doesn’t something happen which would get me closer to that island? When he’d go out for a walk, when so many cars passed right next to him, why didn’t a princess peep out from one of them and say, ‘Shekhar, come with me to my island where there are no obstacles.’ All right, maybe not a princess. When he was walking in the field where there were so many girls playing, why didn’t some island-loving girl hidden in their midst come up to him and say, ‘Come. Why don’t you play in our carefree game?’ All right, maybe not even that. But how about when he bumped into something while walking, why then didn’t a girl from this very world come up to him and say lovingly, ‘Come, Shekhar. I can’t do much but I can bring something new into your monotonous world.’ Or if only she just asked, ‘You aren’t hurt too badly, are you?’
Secretly, he would draw colourful flowers and leaves on pretty paper and in the space in between he’d write a letter. To whom? He didn’t know. But he poured out the hunger in his heart into that letter, and the anxiety of being able to welcome that stranger . . . He wrote, ‘O imaginary one, O stranger, whom I can’t even see in my mind, will you read this letter and understand? I am Shekhar, I’m alone and I’ve been searching for you for I don’t know how long, waiting for you, only for you. You are on a heavenly plane, but does that heavenly plane want you as much as I do? O unknowable, O unimaginable!’
Then he would seal the letter in an envelope, put his full address in one of the corners and tie it to a stick before he placed it into the Ganga so that it wouldn’t sink as it travelled down. And wait expectantly for several days in the hope that someone would read it, they’d read it—and then he’d get a reply. Even if it wasn’t from a girl in the dreamland, at least it would be from someone he didn’t know! And when nothing happened for the next several days, he wrote another letter and tied it to another raft in case the first one sank . . .
But nothing ever happened, and he never lost faith . . .
Sometimes a butterfly would get trapped in his room. At first it would crash into the glass of the window or the door because light was coming in through them and it thought it was the way out, and then crash into it some more. Then, admitting defeat, it would make a few circuits around the room and then come back to the same spot and again crash its head against the glass and flail its wings helplessly, and even though falling wouldn’t completely fall . . .
Shekhar was in an identical situation. In his search for freedom, first he tried dealing with material things, things that he could see, and when he failed there, he tried to work in the realm of imagination, and when that frustrated him he came back to reality, to material and visible things.
*
Shekhar’s father is ill from typhus, and sometimes Ishwardutt gets on the phone to call the doctor. That’s how Shekhar came to learn a few things about the telephone. He realized that things that he couldn’t find elsewhere could probably be found by using a telephone—because it was new, mysterious.
Father was sick, and so the offices were closed. The watchman would lock everything up and give the keys to Shekhar to take to his father. But those were not keys to the office, but keys to Shekhar’s secret world.
It was about 5 p.m. The office was closed and the key was in Shekhar’s hand. The watchman had left.
Shekhar opened the door to the office and went straight to his father’s room. He picked up the telephone receiver and put it to his ear.
Those days they didn’t have an automatic exchange. From the receiver came a voice, ‘Number?’
Shekhar gave the number of a pharmacy.
‘How can I help you?’
‘Do you have thermometers? How much are they?’
‘___’
‘Tell me the prices of all of them.’
‘___’
‘And what about medical gloves?’
‘___’
‘Do you have a catalogue?’
‘Yes, sir. Should I send you one?’
‘Yes.’
‘What address should I send it to?’
Shekhar hadn’t expected—or feared—this question. He had been told that the person being called didn’t know the number of the caller until the caller himself revealed it, and it was on the basis of this belief that he had the courage to make a phone call. As soon as he heard the question, he panicked and didn’t know what to say. He said, ‘Send it to the office,’ and ran away leaving the receiver dangling.
Second time.
Shekhar again used the keys to unlock the office and sat next to the telephone. This time he called the fire station. He wanted to know whether what his brother had told him was true or not, that a fire engine could get there within five minutes of being called.
He screamed into the phone, ‘Fire! Come at once!’
A deep voice asked, ‘Where?’
As soon as he realized the consequence of his prank, he got scared. He put the receiver down on the table and quickly locked up the office and returned the key.
The next day, a report arrived from the exchange that someone had been misusing the telephone. Father questioned everyone, but got no answers save silence. That’s as far as things went. From that day on, the guard brought the keys to Father himself.
*
Shekhar started flying kites.
He didn’t know how to fly kites. But that wasn’t an obstacle in his path; it actually made it even more attractive. And besides, there was another pleasure in flying kites—he had been told not to. His father used to say that it was a dangerous game, that while flying kites several boys had fallen off the rooftops.
The way Shekhar would fly his kite was that he would go out into the garden by his house and call someone and ask them to launch it for him, and when it was soaring high in the sky, he would take the kite reel into his own hands and tug the string to make the kite dance and to convince himself that he was flying the kite (or rather, that he had launched it).
One of his chores was to sit next to his father and give him his medicine at the proper time. Not because he was particularly good at this job, but because his father wanted to keep him close by. But when he was flying his kite he forgot about everything else.
Father’s peon came and created an obstacle.
‘Master Shekhar, you’re wanted upstairs.’
‘Just wait, let me finish flying this kite,’ he said and then forgot.
‘Let’s go, Master Shekhar!’ the peon said after about a minute.
‘I already told you, wait!’
The peon kept nagging him.
‘Go, go and tell him that I will come once I’ve brought the kite down.’
The peon left, but came back in a short time.
‘Master Shekhar, the master has ordered that I’m to carry you if you don’t come by yourself. Let’s go.’
The peon called another servant to take hold of the kite string and bring the kite down, and then he carried Shekhar away. Only Shekhar’s legs were free; he began kicking them but they only struck air. Then with all his might, he tried to free his arm from the peon’s grasp, and when it came free, it struck the peon across the nose. The peon dropped him on the ground quickly, as if stung by a wasp, and ran upstairs because his nose was bloody.
Halfway up the stairs, Shekhar grabbed hold of the banister. He stood there, petrified, thinking about the consequences of that accident.
Father was quite ill, couldn’t get up from his cot, but his anger . . .
That’s when Shekhar saw his father coming down the stairs. A cane in his hand. His hands are trembling. He was bracing himself with his elbows against the wall and carefully stepping down. How thin he’s become! His eyes were not looking here or there, not at the ceiling or at the stairs, but were fixed on Shekhar. Behind him, Saraswati was standing at the top of the stairs, and she had an expression on her face that was making her unrecognizable. Her wide eyes were staring straight into Shekhar’s trying to tell him something, something that she couldn’t say with her lips. Shekhar understood that he had to stand there, not move, not raise his head, not talk back and not save himself.
He stood there. Six times the cane rose and fell, six times a shock went through his body, but he didn’t move. The cane stopped. Father cast an angry look at Shekhar’s face. The peon was the only one standing there who didn’t understand what it meant but who for some reason was embarrassed.
Shekhar couldn’t go upstairs. A little later, when Saraswati said, ‘Shekhar, tell the peon to get the doctor,’ he was unable to ask her what had happened . . .
Two hours later, his father called Shekhar upstairs. To make peace. He never forgave; one only forgave one’s lessers. When he was angry, he didn’t consider his inferiors to be inferior, and when the anger subsided he still didn’t . . . His generosity was so pure, free from any hint of mercy, so expansive and all-encompassing! That’s why Shekhar worshipped him even when he got beaten, just as he never worshipped his mother. She never beat him, but when she forgave it always came mixed up with guilt or obligation or debt . . .
*
Shekhar got permission to go and see a play.
There was a troupe of actors in the village who put on performances twice a year—for Holi and for Dussehra. Shekhar’s father was an important man, the most important man who lived near that village, and so it was natural that the play would only commence after receiving his blessings and his permission. He wasn’t going himself, but because the play was ‘Harishchandra the Honest’ the boys were able to go.
In a theatre hall made of thatched walls, Shekhar sat next to his brothers in the front row. When the curtain rises and reveals a twenty-foot-by-ten-feet backdrop of heaven (Indralok) Shekhar was certain that it was close to his island . . .
Scenes come and go. And they take Shekhar’s critical abilities, his powers of judgement, with them. Enchanted, gullible and absorbed, Shekhar sits and keeps watching. Somewhere beyond this world where the drama of life is more realistic than life. A great conflict lies before him, an original opposition, and a mother’s lamentation for her dying son . . . When a dying Rohit tells his friends:
Tell Mother what happened—
A snake bit me, O tyranny, outrageous tyranny!
He isn’t indifferent at that moment. He doesn’t laugh, but he chokes up and begins to cry—very softly, so that no one can see his defeat . . .
The play ends, and they set off for home. But Shekhar can’t bear to be with his brothers. He walks separately, without paying attention, heavy and dissatisfied . . .
*
In those dark times, several of those scenes flashed like fireflies, but they were all only scenes. They all came and went; nothing remained fixed, except for that dissatisfaction which appeared and grew, and even when repressed, kept growing . . .
The butterfly made another round . . . But where was that open window, where was that path to freedom?
A tide of non-cooperation welled and the entire nation was swept up in it. Shekhar, too, tried to get carried away by it and when he couldn’t he began to paddle with his own arms and float . . .
He took out all of his foreign-made clothes and threw them out, and began to wear the few coarse swadeshi clothes that he owned. He stopped going out and meeting people because he didn’t have enough swadeshi clothes to wear. Every afternoon he would go and stand by one of the windows upstairs and look out. And sometimes from a distance the call of hundreds of voices in unison reached him:
‘Victory to Gandhi! Down with the enemy!’
And then, with every fibre of him being thrilled, he also called out from his window:
‘Victory to Gandhi! Down with the enemy!’
He couldn’t go any farther; he didn’t have permission to leave the house. But the lack of permission was a kind of prod that constantly compelled him to try and find a way . . .
Except for Mother, everyone had gone out. Mother was upstairs, sitting in the rooftop. Shekhar gathered up all of the foreign clothes from all of the rooms in the house and made a pile of them in an open area downstairs. He brought out the lanterns and poured the kerosene from them over the pile (the containers of oil were with the servants, and he didn’t have the courage to get them) and set it on fire.
The fire flared up immediately. Shekhar’s joy similarly flared up. He danced all around the fire and sang at the top of his lungs:
‘Victory to Gandhi! Down with the enemy!’
Mother came down a short while later. And soon after, it was as if Shekhar’s cheeks were also foreign—burning . . .
But the whole pile had turned to ash . . .
*
Shekhar began to hate all foreign things. He saw that it was not only the influence of foreigners that flowed through every vein of their bodies, but their terror, too. He remembered old things and some new things, too. He began to see. He began to notice that Father asked him to speak to his brothers in English at home, and that he could speak in English from a young age, but he was still learning Hindi. His first ayah was Christian and only spoke English; and his first teacher, with whom he had to spend all his days, was an American missionary, who may not have taught him to read anything, but taught him English all day long. Shekhar thought that if one’s mother tongue was the first language one learned, then his mother tongue was English and his mother was a foreigner . . . His self-respect took a heavy blow—I am obliged to call maternal the very foreigners I hate. From that day on, he began to study Hindi with a deep affection, and he tried to eliminate all English words from his vocabulary. He started to remove foreign practices from his habits . . .
In order to prove his knowledge of Hindi, and to show his devotion to Gandhi—which he had no other means to make apparent—he began to write a nationalist play. The memory of the only play that he had seen was still fresh in his mind and so he didn’t have any particular problem writing one. The prologue was lifted verbatim, though he had to make a few small changes. And then the play started—a beautiful dream of a free, democratic India whose President was Gandhi. The way to win it was unceasing spinning and weaving, the repudiation of foreign goods and men and turning the other cheek at each opportunity. And the heaven that was at the beginning of ‘Harishchandra the Honest’ was moved to the end—bearing the imprint of Shekhar’s sunset-golden island.
The last scene of Shekhar’s play had a free and unoppressed India—a material and visible dream . . .
The play was complete. Shekhar made a clean copy with beautiful swadeshi ink and hid it under the rest of his books. He could still remember what had happened after his first literary endeavour, and that was why he didn’t show the play, that priceless gem, to anyone—not even Saraswati! And all the time, wherever he went, a voice echoed in his head—I am Shekhar, the author of a novel play, ‘Chandrashekhar’. And I created it by myself, without anyone’s help, with my own hands, this picture of a free, unoppressed India, I did.
*
Shekhar’s father was on tour for a day, and Shekhar was going with him. They locked their luggage up at the station at Bankipur and father and son were strolling outside the waiting room—Shekhar a little ahead, Father following him.
A boy appeared next to them and he looked up at Shekhar and said to him in English, ‘What’s your name?’
Shekhar looked him over head-to-toe. The boy was wearing a nice suit, with a British hat on his head. His voice had a tone of arrogance in it, perhaps because he wanted to show off his knowledge of English.
Shekhar found the question mean and insulting. He didn’t respond. Partly, also, because his father was right there behind him, and he was nervous about speaking in his presence.
The boy thought that there was no one to challenge him, that this boy probably doesn’t know English at all. With a little more haughtiness he said, ‘My name is _____. Do you go to school?’
Had Shekhar’s father not been there, he would have definitely responded (in Hindi), though he might not have answered that question. He also suspected that the boy was repeating some memorized lesson, that he didn’t know English that well. He simply stared at the boy hatefully, and didn’t say anything.
His father’s angry voice boomed—perhaps to prove to that boy that his son knows English—‘Why don’t you answer him!’
Shekhar became even more upset, even quieter. The boy smiled and walked on.
Father said, ‘Come here.’ Shekhar followed him into the waiting room where his father caught him by the ears and asked, ‘Why didn’t you answer him? Has your mouth stopped working?’
And the train arrived just in time to save Shekhar from giving a reply—or from the impishness of not giving a reply.
The next day, at home, Father said to Mother, ‘All our boys are idiots. They don’t know how to speak to anyone.’
Shekhar heard him.
*
No, nowhere was it to be found, that unrestraint, that release, that freedom! Neither in intelligence nor in stupidity; neither in isolation nor in companionship; neither in poetry nor in drama; neither in work nor in idleness; neither in hate nor in love—not even in the love of his immense, oppressive, generous father . . .
Shekhar’s father was tall, fair-skinned, well built and able-bodied. His keen eyes, crooked nose and fat but pressed lower lip were all markers of his proud and angry Aryanness that was carried by a greedy and thieving race of barbarians, in some ancient past, when it entered India and stayed on after it had established its mastery over it. He was generous by nature, but after getting hurt once or twice he developed a suspicious disposition. And when someone becomes suspicious after being hurt, then nothing in the world escapes his suspicion. So despite being honest himself, he considered the rest of the world to be dishonest and thieving—as if he were saying to himself again and again, ‘See, you were honest, and that’s why you were tricked. The whole world is dishonest. Don’t trust anyone!’ So despite being a pure-hearted person, he became bent on believing in the faults of others at each turn. When he became older, Shekhar used to say to him, ‘Look, human nature is trusting. And since it’s trusting, it takes sides and acquires prejudices. So why not believe the world is good? It’s not a matter of judgement at all, and when one side makes us happy, we can at least live in peace. We are not forced to spend our days lying in bed.’ But Father would respond, ‘You’re a child. What do you know! You were the one who bought a ten-paisa whistle for half a rupee!’ Shekhar would say, ‘Let’s say that I did, but I am still happy. Thinking about that whistle makes me happy to this day. Even though you weren’t the one who lost half a rupee, you still remember that fact today because you can’t trust anyone, right?’ And Father would cut the argument by saying, ‘You are too idealistic. When will you learn?’
He was an Aryan, and so he admired strength and ability. Perhaps that’s why he liked to be called ‘Sahib’, although his pride had never allowed him to put on a hat; he always tied a turban. Shekhar remembers several such incidents, like once when his father beat a coolie who had deigned to address him as ‘Babu’ instead of ‘Sahib’. This was the same father who had on another occasion refused to meet with an officer because his invitation letter carried the stench of something like, ‘You can come meet me, although I may or may not meet with you, depending on my wishes.’
One form his worship of ability took was that he liked to feel as though he were powerful. This was the sentiment that led him to intervene in his children’s play. It wasn’t that he wanted his children not to play or not to study, or that they not do this or that; he wanted them to play or study only because he told them to. Spontaneity—that the only reason that something was happening was that it was happening, or because the person doing it was doing it—had no value for him. Consequently, whenever he arrived, the child would become silent in terror, the game would end, the book would be set aside, the legs would be brought underneath and beds and chairs would be immediately abandoned . . . No one ever knew when something would be outlawed. It wasn’t a matter of them being good or bad, proper or improper; rather it was a matter of two other criteria, namely, whether he liked it or not. And that was that. Neither reason nor argument held any sway before them.
‘These boys are mine, and only mine, and so I have complete authority over them’—that was his fixed standpoint. And partly for this reason, he named his children in the foreign fashion (to him), in which the father’s name is joined to the child’s name. If Shekhar had to write his full name, then he would write, ‘Chandrashekhar Haridutt Pandit’, or in English, ‘C.H. Pandit’. Shekhar first saw this fact come to light when he saw that his father had taken a red pen to his book on which he had written his name, completely naturally, ‘Chandrashekhar Pandit’. His father had drawn a caret between the two names and written ‘Haridutt’ above them . . . And another time, when he saw the cover page of a compilation of poems that he had written himself, on which in a moment of ecstasy he had signed ‘Shekhar, son of nature’, ‘nature’ had been crossed out and ‘Pandit Haridutt’ written in its place. On that day Shekhar felt as if his father had destroyed a pure moment and, unable to bear the tyranny, he destroyed the notebook . . .
It’s not clear whether he derived pride from the demonstrations of his boys’ successes or because he had an unbiased interest in the progress of his boys, but whenever he was pleased by something one of the boys had done, it would make him enthusiastic. He would praise his son more than necessary, would boast about him to everyone, just as his anger would take his opposite feelings to an extreme point . . .
But just as it is natural for some people to flare up in anger quickly, he was naturally a generous man. He didn’t hold on to grudges or ill will for very long. And even two minutes after he had beaten his boys hard he could say, ‘No matter what, my boys are a thousand times better than the rest.’
It was over this last point that Shekhar’s parents fought repeatedly. Shekhar’s mother held strongly to the idea that her children were much worse than other children. Whenever the boys did anything that could be criticized, she was always ready to say, ‘Other people’s children behave much better.’ What she meant by ‘better’ could be that they enjoyed themselves while playing peacefully; or that they sat obediently; or that they got up in the mornings, washed themselves and started on their chores without being asked; or that they didn’t complain about unfairness when they did their work, and they each did the work that was assigned to them . . . Father would argue, ‘You always say such things,’ and that would make Mother even angrier, ‘Yes, I’m coming to you, too—you have spoiled them. Do you know anything about your boys? I am the one that has to deal with them night and day! Look at so-and-so’s sons.’ And then the catalogue of all the sons of all of the families in the neighbourhood would begin, and poor Saraswati and her three brothers knew that there were no virtues left in the world for them to claim as their own—all had already been seized by other people’s children . . .
Shekhar’s mother was of average height, heavyset and somewhat lazy by nature. A short forehead, eyes placed too close to her nose and bulging out of their sockets, a straight but small nose, beautifully shaped lips, a mouth that was a bit big and ears that were rubbery, small and set a little far back. Her whole face had been designed to show vivacity and loquacity, but because there was no seriousness or generosity in it, it couldn’t be called beautiful. And this deficiency of character and grace was visible in every gesture, in every mannerism, in her whole personality . . .
Mother wasn’t well educated. Nor did she have any great admiration for education. After all, women are more practical and realistic. But Shekhar’s mother had more than a special love for hands over heads. Anybody could tell you in less than three seconds how many paisas there are in 871 rupees and thirteen annas. That was not as impressive to her as, for instance, a person who could feed a family of three on four and a quarter annas and still have two paisas left . . .
This was another source of debate between Mother and Father. Mother wanted the boys to be energetic, clever and fit while Father thought all of that was pointless . . .
Mother wanted her boys to meet people, learn about their doings, keep track of how much so-and-so makes, what so-and-so is cooking and what so-and-so’s sister-in-law’s uncle’s son does for a living; Father said, ‘Don’t go to anyone’s home and don’t talk to anyone. What is all this nonsense to you?’ Sometimes Mother would send one of them secretly to a neighbour’s house saying, ‘Go do this one thing’ or ‘Go find this out’; if Father ever got wind of this he’d subject them to a lengthy interrogation: ‘Why did you go there? What did you go to do? Who gave you permission to go? Why couldn’t you send one of the servants?’
Mother wasn’t generous. She wasn’t wrathful. No one ever saw her beside herself with anger. But she also never forgot a transgression. Her disposition wasn’t expansive enough to become excessively angry, and for the same reason she wasn’t that compassionate either. Father would even ‘reconcile’ with the wrongdoer after he got angry with him, but Mother wouldn’t even do that when she was in the wrong, and would remain angry with the person she scolded.
Mother held appearances to be very important. Sometimes, the boys would be taught how to perform their dawn and dusk prayers. Father realized that it was impossible for them to concentrate on the rituals in their current state, so he eventually stopped forcing them to perform them. He got quite angry and said, ‘What’s the point if your heart’s not in it? Don’t do it.’ And after the boys heard him out and stopped doing their rituals, he didn’t ask them to perform them again. Then it was Mother who began to force the boys to sit as prescribed in the proper place for prayer and perform the appropriate rites.
Father was emotionally excessive; Mother was cruel because of a lack of emotion. When Father’s anger rained down on him, Shekhar felt as though they were friends again; when his mother said nothing, Shekhar felt as if he were being baked by a sweet flame.
And from the union and friction between these two divergent temperaments were born six offspring: Saraswati, Ishwardutt, Prabhudutt, Shekhar, Ravidutt and Chandra. These were the products of that friction, and the playground of its evolution.
*
Life is another name for strangeness. Those whose lives have been crushed into nothingness by the weight of conformity also endure enough challenges to make a beautiful novel. If every human being were to write his own autobiography the world would have no shortage of beautiful books.
But only when everyone has learned to write.
We learned in college that the reason that there are so many stories written these days is because the material for them is readily available. I can still picture it, my skinny English professor, his wide frog-eyes splayed open behind the lenses of his thick horn-rimmed glasses, and the way his voice used his nose more than his mouth when he spoke: ‘Each and every one of you has had at least one important challenge in your life that is different from everyone else’s, which stands apart and is special. And that’s why each one of you has at least one good story in him. Few people have life stories that are thrilling enough, heavy enough, and special enough to produce a good novel . . .’
But it seems to me that all the challenges that I could remember in my life were mine, were original, were complete stories in themselves, and my life was a brilliant novel. I may have been the only one who felt this way; fascination with one’s own life turns it into something unique. But at the same time I realize that it wasn’t so unique, so idiosyncratic that others couldn’t derive pleasure from it; my private experience contained enough of a germ of collective experience that the collectivity would be able to understand it and see a glimpse of itself in it. My life is a solution in which individuality and ‘type’ are mixed together, without which art is impossible, and without which the novel is impossible.
It’s completely possible that even with the right material I might not be able to produce a novel. But when do I intend to write a novel? I only want to rid myself of this weight on my shoulders; I don’t want to give my life over to anyone else. I want to realize it myself because I want to offer it up such that after it’s been offered I won’t get it back. It will be completely destroyed—nothing will be left . . . Then there won’t be a Shekhar; there will only be me. This Shekhar, who dreams of being an artist, a fool chasing the fame of poets, will have ended, and what will be left over will be me who will go to the gallows; it will be me, who I call ‘me’, and even while I say it I don’t know what ‘me’ means.
*
People, generally speaking, forget what their lives were like. That’s how society finds it possible to lay down laws such as ‘Those mothers and fathers are best who teach their children to live like adults.’ The blow that this single sentiment delivers to youth is possibly greater than what any other law or custom or order has ever done. When they teach their children to behave like adults they forget what their own lives were like, that they were once children, too, that they also had the same innocent mischief in them and that they embarrassed their parents, too, with their tricks. If parents could remember their childhoods their whole lives, their children, and they would be so happy!
Parents generally think that childhood is a very happy time because it is free of all responsibilities. And this notion makes them commit so many injustices towards childhood. And because of this notion, they keep telling themselves, ‘If only those days would come again!’ If only their wish could be granted for a few days—they might learn an extremely useful lesson.
Sometimes, in your helplessness, you have to ask what they think children are. Because on the one hand they say that children are all imps and rascals, but on the other hand they act as if children are lumps of clay. They act in such ways in front of children, which if they understood them at all, they would be embarrassed to even imagine! Who hasn’t heard, ‘It doesn’t matter, say what you want in front of him, he’s a child!’ or ‘What does she understand? She’s a kid!’ But how could they understand that this ‘free-of-all-responsibilities’ child bears the heavy responsibility of honesty. That malleable, underdeveloped brain is on account of its malleability very dangerous. When we walk on paved roads our feet don’t leave prints, but when we walk on wet dirt, or dust, or sand, our feet leave deep marks. Water flows off paved surfaces, but on unpaved roads the marks left by deep footprints turn the road to mud . . .
Sometimes I wish these pages would reach my father! What would he feel seeing his son happy this way? What would he think now of all of those moments when he didn’t understand his son’s heart and so he ripped him to pieces and pushed him away? And those moments where on account of being a son he was unable to understand his father’s fatherliness and he traded in hurt?
And Mother . . . a mother who thinks of him as a burden, and a very prickly burden at that . . .
It’s for the best that they won’t see him. I am now separated from the world. Who am I to steal away another person’s happiness? For millions of years, humans have had only one desire—either to find happiness or to give up the desire for it; and they’ve been unsuccessful in both . . .
Shekhar worshipped his father.
People often talk about a mother’s influence on her children. Most people believe that exceptional individuals are particularly influenced by their mothers. But as far as I can tell, a mother’s influence over her boys and a father’s influence over his daughters are of a negative kind. It gives a stability and constancy which is just as much a hindrance in times of rise as in times of fall. It would be better to say that boys who are attached to their mothers and girls who are attached to their fathers tend towards conformity and ordinariness, while boys attached to their fathers and girls attached to their mothers are exceptional.
In the first group you will find law-abiding, gentle people, ordinary women, who have no special faults, who are generally happy and content, who grow up, live and die; in the second group you will find influential writers and poets, reformers who change the nation and the world, revolutionaries, bandits, gamblers, the ghosts of the worst of the worst sinners . . . good or bad, ordinariness is not for them. They don’t smoulder, they only explode . . .
Who is the arbiter of good and evil? Shekhar isn’t ordinary.
And he worshipped his father.
*
Slowly, Father realized that Gandhian ideals had made a home for themselves in Shekhar’s heart. One day he called Shekhar to him and asked, ‘Why are you always shouting Gandhi’s name?’
‘I believe in Gandhi! I am going to follow the path he’s set.’
Father laughed and said, ‘You’re going to follow his path? Do you even understand Gandhi’s teachings? If someone slaps you on the cheek, what are you going to do?’
Shekhar responded without hesitation, ‘I’ll show him the other cheek.’
Hearing an arrogant Shekhar say this made Father quite serious. He said, ‘Go and play, this is not the time to get involved with such matters. When you get older, you’ll be able to do all of this, but now it’s time for you to play!’
Shekhar had heard this refrain many times and knew that there was always some doubt or frustration hidden behind it. He also knew it was pointless to press the matter any further.
One day one of Father’s friends was visiting. He was a barrister who always wore fancy clothes, looked like an extremely bloated mountain rat and claimed to be a connoisseur of Indian art. With him were his son and his daughter who wore a short dress.
As soon as they met each other and the instant the two children said, ‘Good evening,’ Shekhar seethed. But he didn’t say anything; he took them to the garden and showed them his pet rabbit. The barrister left with Father.
But they had only come for a short visit. Shekhar and the two children had only been playing with the rabbits for a few minutes when they came back downstairs. Shekhar the Gandhian went to the door to see them all off.
At the door, he folded his hands in the pure swadeshi style, bowed his head a little and said, ‘Namaste!’
The boy smirked a little and said, ‘Good night, dear.’
Shekhar forgot his Gandhianism. The haughtiness of that smirk was something that Shekhar couldn’t stand. And that final ‘dear’—this, this nameless organism dares to call me ‘dear’! Shekhar lashed out in English, ‘You dirty rascal! You sneak!’ and many other such things and then slapped him across the face.
He began shrieking like a frightened puppy.
Later Shekhar was beaten, too, beaten a lot. But he said to himself, ‘I am no puppy, I don’t squeal,’ and took his beating.
Since the day Father had Shekhar say the thing about turning the other cheek, he would make him put on a demonstration whenever they had visitors. In front of his own friends, he would call Shekhar and ask him, ‘If someone slaps you on the cheek, what are you going to do?’ And everyone would laugh when they heard his answer, and then he would be allowed to leave. Partly it was that he wanted to show his son off, but it was also that he hoped Shekhar’s arrogance would lessen at having to repeat this over and over, that it might make him humble. At first, Shekhar hated these forced performances, but slowly he acquired a philosophical indifference. He would come, answer the question and leave without looking at anyone. He knew that they didn’t need him for anything else; whatever talents he possessed, or the skills that these people wanted to see, they’d been displayed already . . .
One day the barrister returned. This time he was alone. He didn’t ‘see’ Shekhar and Shekhar didn’t ‘see’ him. He went upstairs.
But a little later Shekhar was called for. He went and stood next to his father, and he didn’t even look at the barrister.
Father asked, ‘Well, Shekhar, if someone slaps you on the cheek, what are you going to do?’
Shekhar saw that the barrister’s eyes were fixed on him, as if they were saying, ‘I know what you’re about to say, but still . . .’
No, not in front of this mountain rat. He’s an animal; he should be on display. In front of him? No, Father, no. Don’t force me to!
Father repeated the question. And then, especially for Shekhar, he said in a soft voice (the softness didn’t mask the anger), ‘Speak, you donkey!’
Shekhar stared back at the mountain rat and said, ‘I’d slap him on both of his cheeks.’
There was violence in his voice, rage in his eyes, as if he had struck the barrister’s puffy cheeks with two imaginary slaps, but as soon as he said it, he let out a deep sigh. Who could detect the deep despair, the overwhelming frustration it contained?
Shekhar descended the staircase. As he had just completed his task his stride should have contained a commensurate pride, but he came down the stairs as if he were weary, broken . . .
Shekhar went to his room, took his books out from his cupboard, threw them on the ground and removed his play from the pile. He thought for a while about what he should do. He saw the cow standing outside the door. He went to it and held the notebook containing the play out to it. The cow seized it in its mouth and wrenched it from Shekhar’s grip, and it looked at Shekhar with its enormous, innocent, stupid eyes as it ate it whole . . .
Shekhar went back to his room and sat down, and stared at the wall in front of him and began to cry—without tears, without making a sound, but his whole body, his whole frame, was shaking . . .
It was evening. Shekhar was still sitting there. His shaking frame had become still. Not a single tear had been shed. And he had no idea whether he was still alive or dead.
His despair had grown so deep that he no longer despaired. It was beyond his perception.
Saraswati came into his room with a light. On seeing Shekhar sitting there like that, she left the light outside the room, went to him and lovingly said, ‘Shekhar?’
Shekhar didn’t hear.
Saraswati placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Shekhar?’
Again, he didn’t hear.
Saraswati slowly raised his chin with a finger and said, ‘Not going to talk, Shekhar?’
Had he been angry he would have brushed her hand away. But he didn’t raise his head. He just looked at her with blank eyes.
He didn’t see Saraswati.
Saraswati uncertainly said once more, ‘Shekhar,’ and then moved away. She went and sat in another corner of the room, completely still.
For a long time the two of them sat in opposite corners of the room.
Then a voice called from upstairs, ‘Saraswati!’
She didn’t move. The voice called again, and still she didn’t move. It called again and added, ‘Are you dead?’
Shekhar said, ‘Sister?’
She didn’t speak.
He said again, ‘Sister?’
Then he got up and went to her and said, ‘Sister?’
‘You won’t talk, sister?’
‘Are you angry? If you won’t speak, then I won’t speak either. Say something, sister?’
Saraswati got up and went upstairs.
Shekhar got up, too, a little while later. He washed his face and left, and ate his dinner.
In this one little incident something broke inside Shekhar, and whether it also saved him from something, who knows?
But Gandhi was gone, and Gandhianism was gone, too. And Shekhar’s godlike father was never a God again.
*
I am looking out at the quiet wall outside my cell. A few lines from Rossetti are echoing inside me:
Who shall dare to search through what sad maze
Henceforth their incommunicable ways
Follow the desultory feet of Death . . .1
Death. A calm-inducing event. An unsolvable riddle.
Those who are in pain, who suffer, always cry out for death. They plead for it, but still death remains a horrifying thing for them, they tremble at the mere thought of it. But I think that death is an operation, like having your teeth pulled. You have to sit in a chair, the doctor jerks hard, a sharp pain shoots through you and then there’s peace, a release. Death is just like that . . .
But pulling healthy teeth means a lot of blood, and there’s swelling. And then, when a life is taken too early . . .
Perhaps the knowledge of death and the desire for life are the same thing. One often hears it said that only those who know what it means to die know what it means to live. You never hear it said that those who know what it means to die love life more than the rest of us. But this is an eternal truth. People think that those who love life fear death. Totally wrong. Those who fear death are incapable of loving life because they don’t experience even a moment’s peace in life. The real test of whether one loves life or not is if you can give it up without regret; because the best kinds of love can only be silent; those who can speak their love, love emptily . . .
The desultory feet of Death . . .
The wandering, weary feet of death knock at every door, and youth wilts, and life wastes away, and suffering is endless . . . Then a moment of silence descends in which one can hear the fluttering of dark wings, which if seen, mean sleep . . . Everyone dozes off and goes to sleep, every person and everything; except for this never-stilled hunger, this crazed demand for the ultimate end, this involuntary drive for freedom, this never stops . . . The wings of death pass over it, but the shadow doesn’t absorb it, leaving it illuminated just as it was . . .
Death’s wings harbour the darkness of an endless midnight, but freedom is an incompatibly brilliant light . . .
But I don’t want to die. I tell the walls, I tell the bars, I tell the wind, I tell the deaf, heartless indifference, I don’t want to die. I love life. I don’t want to die!
*
I have been so ground down by the world of hate that love and I have become estranged. But when I look in my mind’s eye, and imagine a voice calling to its lover in ripe fields of wheat in the dim moonlight of winter, then a hibernating echo in my heart awakens and says, ‘You have also found love!’
I have been so besieged by pain that peace and I have become estranged. But when I imagine I see the image of two entwined bodies on the screen of the dark sky. A wordless voice recognizes itself with a start in my heart of hearts, ‘You also knew happiness once!’
Dawn . . .
A divine light in the east, an evaporating mist, a cool breeze, laughing drops of dew, conceited jasmine blossoms, bumblebees buzzing madly, countless birds flying over the woods towards a settlement—I can see all of these things in my mind, in a square shape cast by the scattered red light on my naked walls . . .
It’s enough for me that the night is over, and that I can watch this red shape. I build my dreams on its foundation . . .
Jasmine blossoms . . . their sweet fragrance . . . but where is the fragrance of the neem tree—that fragrance that I can never forget, which fills me?
Neem leaves taste bitter but smell sweet. That’s how love is, with a beautiful colour and a sharp texture.
But what are life and love to me? They end in the bitter reality of death.
*
By calling God and his life ‘non-existent’ it was as if Shekhar were stripped naked for all the world around him. As if he had recently emerged from his shell, vulnerable to every wound, every blow, every wound . . . as if he were a mere spectator of life, or not even a spectator, but a machine that makes impressions, is impressionable. Only, he has no strength left, no shield, no armour, no defences; and it’s as if he has no sensation left, not even any life left. It was as if he had merely become a vast eye that could see everything, acknowledge everything, but was affected by nothing.
Truth be told, he was exactly as the poet described:
I am a reed through which thy spirit breathes: it cometh and it goeth . . .
But there was a sorting office in some dark corner of his brain where each scene, each image, was separated and sorted, named and labelled, and filed accordingly . . .
The spirit’s breath came and went, and a new seed planted roots into the untouched earth . . .
Shekhar had turned into what his mother would have called the ideal child—if she had ever been in the habit of giving compliments. He didn’t speak much, didn’t ask questions; when there wasn’t enough to eat, he didn’t ask for food; he would uncomplainingly bathe in cold water in the winter; he would finish his studies on time and, moreover, if there was even the slightest delay in studying he would call Saraswati and say, ‘Sister, it’s time to study’; he performed the twilight rites both times as prescribed—in short, he behaved in such a way that his mother felt that she only had five children, as she never had to worry about Shekhar.
On the slate of his life, Shekhar wanted to erase, just as he had erased mistaken or incorrect letters, himself.
But there were so many things that he wanted to know that he had stopped himself from asking! Whenever a question came to him, he ground his teeth together and when the compulsion still didn’t vanish he’d bite his lips—until he bled . . . And then he wouldn’t ask the question. Whenever his father saw him biting his lips he’d tell him to stop and when he saw that repeated attempts at asking him to stop had no effect he said, ‘Well, shall I fix you then?’ and he pinched his lips together and twisted hard. To him, it didn’t feel like pain, but afterwards each time he looked at his father it was as if he didn’t recognize him at all . . .
First, he wanted to know why Mother would sometimes sit apart from everyone, wouldn’t go into the kitchen, would eat from separate dishes and if someone went to her—usually people didn’t go to her except for Shekhar’s younger brothers—she’d say, ‘Don’t come near me, go and play!’ Who knows who told Shekhar that Mother was ill, but he couldn’t see any signs of illness. And then, after a few days, he would get up and see that Mother had bathed and was sitting in the kitchen working. If she was sick last night, what happened this morning?
Second, Shekhar recalled that such things hadn’t happened for a long time. But recently, Mother did seem to be ill. Her face was pallid, and she didn’t do much work. She was generally depressed and weak.
Third, one day he instinctively asked Saraswati, ‘Is Mother sick?’ Saraswati gave him an angry look and left without saying a word.
He won’t ask—what’s it to him?—but he does want to know, like . . .
There’s so much he wants to understand. The room that Mother usually stays in has a cupboard with a lock on it.
Shekhar had seen his mother open it occasionally. She kept her jewellery and other things on the bottom shelf. Sometimes tins of biscuits or containers of sweet rose preserve2 and gooseberry jam3 and a number of other things that she wanted to protect from her boys were kept there too. But the two shelves above were filled with books—what are those? The whole house is filled with books, the best kinds, priceless, and when the encyclopedias are allowed to be kept in the open, then why are those books kept locked up? If they are good, why aren’t others allowed to read them? If they are bad, why are they kept at all?
And where did Shekhar come from? How did he get here? He remembers those days leading up to Chandra’s birth. He had asked his mother, ‘Mother, where did he come from?’ And Mother had said, ‘The midwife brought him.’ And when he had asked the midwife why she had brought one that was so small, couldn’t she have brought a bigger one, she said, ‘I didn’t bring him. The doctor that was here, he brought him in his bag. And that bag can’t hold one that’s any bigger than him.’ Shekhar didn’t believe either of them, but he kept quiet about it. Many days later, when he saw a baby bird hatch from an egg for the first time, he knew that Mother had lied to him. And to test his mother, he went to her and asked, ‘Mother, does the doctor visit the birds, too?’
Mother didn’t understand his question. She said, ‘No, why?’
‘Then where do baby birds come from?’
‘They hatch from the eggs.’
Mother was telling the truth up to this point! Shekhar pressed on with a renewed hope, ‘And where do eggs come from?’
‘God sends them.’
That same wall—the biggest obstacle in the way of knowledge—God! Then he asked his sister, ‘How does God send eggs?’
‘They probably come down when it rains.’
A few days later Shekhar realized that was a lie, too. Rain falls the same way everywhere, but how did eggs end up in specific nests, all different from each other? Then one day he found a nest that was empty, and the next day there was an egg in it, though it hadn’t rained the night before . . .
Shekhar knew that everyone was lying to him. And this fuelled his desire to know the truth . . .
*
A special room was sequestered from the rest of the house. It was cleaned, swept with dung patties and its windows were locked. Mother went there to live. A midwife came to stay with her and everyone was prohibited from going there. Remembering what it was like when Chandra was born, Shekhar knew that the midwife, the doctor or some other power was going to grace their household again with another favour. And so he began awaiting the arrival of the doctor.
In the middle of the night, Shekhar awoke with a start. He didn’t know why he had woken up, but he knew something had happened; the air was heavy with muffled quiet . . .
He sat up and looked around. He saw that the cot next to his was empty and that Saraswati was gone. He got down from his cot and went to the other room where his father slept.
Father wasn’t there. A light was on downstairs.
For some reason, Shekhar didn’t have the courage to go downstairs and see what was going on. Any other time, he would have definitely gone downstairs to investigate, but not this time. He wanted to be snuffed out, this time, he didn’t want to be seen. If someone had asked him what he was doing there—no, he hadn’t the courage to bear the question, let alone give an answer. He no longer had any confidence in himself.
But curiosity . . . He stood there like a drawn bowstring, taut and twitchy . . .
Then a sharp, piercing, but weak, and slightly agitated scream . . .
Shekhar realized that whatever power had been responsible for this had evaded him. And he still didn’t have an answer to his question . . .
The staircase creaked from Saraswati’s steps. He wasn’t afraid of her, but still his heart began racing, and he ran to his cot and lay back down.
Saraswati entered. She sat down on the cot, lifted her feet, wrapped her arms around her shins and leaned her chin on her knees.
Shekhar couldn’t keep still. He asked, ‘What happened?’, as if he had just woken up.
Saraswati was startled. Then she said, ‘Shekhar, it happened—you have another sister.’
Sister? Were sisters things that ‘happened’? Shekhar asked, ‘Like you?’
‘Don’t be silly. She’s tiny at the moment, like a baby bird. When she grows up—’
Gravely, Shekhar said, ‘Saraswati!’
Taken aback, Saraswati asked, ‘What is it?’ Shekhar never called her by her name.
‘If I ask you a question will you answer it? You don’t have to answer it; just don’t lie to me.’
Suspiciously, Saraswati asked, ‘What?’
Shekhar steeled himself to ask, ‘Where do babies come from?’
Saraswati didn’t respond immediately.
As he watched and waited, a flood of words welled up inside him. He said, ‘The midwife brings them, the doctors bring them, God gives them—I’ve heard all of these things, so don’t tell me that! I know those are all lies. So tell me, if that was how they came, then why did it have to happen so secretly? Why don’t either of us get them? And she said that she didn’t want any more children, so why did she get one? Why didn’t she send it back? Why does God send them? When I kept asking for a sister, why did he send me a brother? I’ve seen it with my own eyes how baby birds are hatched from eggs. The mother has to crack the eggs to get them out. Where do the eggs come from? And now we have a sister. But why did she have to come in the middle of the night? Why couldn’t she come during the day? And why can’t we go over there? Why does everyone lie about it? Tell me, I know you know.’ And then suddenly, out of embarrassment, he stopped. He had, perhaps, never given a monologue of that length . . .
Saraswati tried to be evasive. She said, ‘Wait, doesn’t God send them?’
‘Don’t lie to me, sister.’
Somehow, Saraswati managed to say, ‘They come from a mother’s body.’
Shekhar sat up.
‘From where? How?’
‘I don’t know!’ She wrapped her head and face in the blanket and lay down. Shekhar called to her repeatedly, even went to her and shook her, but she didn’t speak, didn’t say a word.
Shekhar lay back down and stared at the ceiling. It was as if he were willing himself up to the ceiling, hanging from it, so that he could speak to himself, ‘Think, Shekhar. Don’t ask anyone else, just think. You tell me, where did you come from? How did you get here?’
It was morning and Shekhar was still interrogating that double hanging from the ceiling whom he had pinned there with his eyes.
‘Children come from a mother’s body.’
Saraswati hadn’t lied to him. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been so embarrassed. After so much pain and strife, he had finally got hold of one thing that was true, that was and simply was—that couldn’t be changed.
‘Children come from a mother’s body.’
But then what?
Beyond that there is a wall, and for its bricks it has God and society, and family, and mother and father, and tradition, and the substance which binds them all together and gives it significance is fear.
Shekhar looks at every woman who walks in front of that wall and thinks, there must be one hiding in her body somewhere, too. But where?
*
Shekhar has started stealing.
Earlier, it hadn’t been possible for him to sneak around doing mischievous things. Because when he was by himself, the principles of his soul, more than others, restrained his actions. But now he was respectable, cultured and noble on the surface—who was described as ‘a son who is like a daughter’—while on the inside he was falling.
Increasingly, he was being asked to take on more responsibilities. When he was younger he would be so excited to take on even small tasks and would do them so enthusiastically that more often than not he would make a mess of it, but now he schemed at each opportunity, trying to find ways of spoiling things secretly.
Sometimes he was given the keys to the trunk, and he’d take a few coins for himself. Not because he wanted them, but only because he had the key, and he could abuse the privilege. In the evenings, he was tasked with bringing milk for Ishwardutt and Prabhudutt’s teacher (they were currently studying for their exams), and he would drink a few gulps of it along the way. Not because he didn’t get milk at home, but because he could do something wrong without anyone seeing him. It got so bad that whenever he’d go into the storeroom, he would spill some ghee behind a box. Every time he did such things it was as if he were thinking, ‘You all think that I am good, but I am still rotten. You are fools to call me good, as if it were a boost to my ego.’
No one got wind of any of the things he was doing and his reputation kept improving at home, and with every increase in his reputation, he slid a little closer to his downfall . . .
He was given the keys to the cupboard with the books in it because he had been asked to get almonds or some such thing from it.
He opened the cupboard, took out a few books and hid them under the cupboard, took out the almonds and returned the key.
Later, when he had a chance, he picked up the books and read them in secret.
Shekhar looked over these books printed on cheap yellowed and pink paper with big Lucknow typeface, but he couldn’t figure out what was so important about them that they had to be kept hidden away.
The Gardener’s Daughter; The Husband with Two Wives; The Widow of Baghdad; Three and a Half Lovers; Seven and a Half Murders; The Beautiful Robber; The Twenty-Five Tales of Baital; The Tale of the Parrot and the Mynah; Thirty Stories of the Throne; The Magic Ring; The Mysteries of Egypt.
He put them into piles of twos and threes as he inspected them all. They were so cheap, filthy and crude that he felt nauseated and couldn’t read them, but because he knew that they were forbidden and that by reading them he would be doing something wrong, he forced himself to read until he finished the last one. And it made him so happy when he could address his mother in his mind and say, ‘You think that I am good and decent, don’t you? But I’m a scoundrel, corrupted, and I read all of these novels that you were keeping from me . . .’
Shekhar began tattling.
If ever one of his brothers did the slightest of things they weren’t supposed to, Shekhar would run to his mother and say, ‘Mother, Mother, look at what so-and-so did!’ Sometimes he would complain even when no one had done anything and then when that person was getting slapped or beaten Shekhar would think to himself, ‘That’s right. Good, he deserves a beating. I’m bad but everyone respects me, thinks highly of me. Why are you being good?’
And when his brothers looked at him with apprehension or suspicion he would feel that he was something, too . . .
One step higher.
Shekhar became a rhymester. Nothing vulgar—Shekhar hadn’t learned what vulgarity was yet—just crude and cruel. He could never read them to anyone, but when he was by himself he would read them out loudly. And on such occasions he would even curse into the air—curses whose meaning he didn’t even know, but which he had overheard and which he knew were bad things to say . . .
Being good or bad held absolutely no meaning for Shekhar. It only mattered to him that he was something—and that he could feel that he was something. This feeling became a very important crutch for him.
*
Chandra had thrown stones and broken the flowerpots outside the house. He ran innocently to his mother and said, breathlessly, ‘Mother, Mother, I didn’t break the flowerpots.’
Mother asked, ‘What flowerpots?’
‘I didn’t break them.’
That’s when Shekhar got there. ‘Mother, you know those flowerpots outside, the ones with the blue flowers in them, the ones that Father ordered from the office? Chandra broke them by throwing stones at them.’
Chandra said, ‘Mother, I already told you I didn’t break them,’ as if by saying it first it made his point more credible.
Shekhar turned to leave as if he were content at having finished his obligations and had nothing more to do with the matter.
Mother asked Chandra, ‘Are you lying to me? Let me see which flowerpots you broke.’
She took him by the hand and dragged him outside with her.
Chandra was beaten repeatedly. Who knows what kind of things Mother threatened him with to get him to admit that he had broken those flowerpots, but he wouldn’t confess. It was intolerable to Mother that someone would flout her authority; in her order of things, he should have confessed even if he hadn’t broken the flowerpots because she had determined that he had broken them . . .
For a while Shekhar sat with a book open in front of him and watched the spectacle. He was amazed at his mother who didn’t appear angry or sound enraged, but still kept beating the boy, for whom this was a matter of pride, that a child should say what she wanted him to say . . .
When children are beaten by angry parents, they bear the beatings because their spirits aren’t wounded by them. But when they are beaten without anger, dispassionately, righteously, a crack opens up in their psyches. Shekhar didn’t know this at the time, nor did his mother know it, but this didn’t make it any less true.
Mother called out, ‘Saraswati! Bring me a live coal with the pincers.’
Saraswati brought it.
Mother took the pincers in her hand and said, ‘Tell the truth or else I’ll put this on your tongue.’
‘I am telling the truth.’
Shekhar thought to himself, ‘Will Mother really put the live coal in his mouth?’ He couldn’t believe it, but that anger-free, expressionless face . . .
‘Confess that you broke the flowerpots.’
‘I didn’t break them.’
Mother pressed Chandra’s cheeks together with one hand and forced his mouth open and she brought the coal very close and said, ‘Confess!’
Saraswati was standing right there, but she wasn’t looking. The coal was so close to Chandra’s face that he could feel the heat and his head was shaking like an epileptic’s. Mother was still pressing his cheeks together and his mouth was still open, waiting for the coal.
Only children believe completely. Adults have the privilege of distinguishing between pretence and truth. Shekhar, all of a sudden, believed . . .
‘Confess!’
Shekhar got up with a jolt, pushed his mother with one hand and slapped the pincers away with the other, and roughly said to Chandra, ‘Get away from here.’
And to himself he thought, ‘Well done, Chandra. Drown yourself, Shekhar.’
Perhaps something came over Mother. She didn’t say anything, not even to Shekhar. She just went inside. The matter was over.
Half an hour later.
Shekhar was trying to concentrate on his studies. He had his pen in his hand. He stared at a line he had written in his notebook and was trying to copy that very same line a second time. But words were echoing in his head, and all he could see was that open mouth, sometimes it was Chandra’s, sometimes it was Shekhar’s, sometimes it was Mother’s, and right next to them was a burning coal . . . Every time Shekhar thought, ‘That’s Chandra’s mouth,’ it would suddenly turn into Mother’s, and when he thought, ‘Mother,’ it would turn into Shekhar’s. Saraswati was standing there, facing away from him, trying not to look at him . . . And in his ears, ‘Confess’, ‘Well done, Chandra!’, ‘Drown yourself, Shekhar!’, ‘I’m telling the truth’. Without any order or connection, they kept coming and going and coming back . . .
Still, Shekhar was trying to write . . .
Chandra came to him and said, ‘Give me the pen.’
Shekhar came back to reality and said, ‘I’m writing.’
‘Give it. I need to write.’
‘Take another one.’
‘No, I want this one. Give it.’
‘Give me a little while and then you can have it. Let me finish writing.’
Chandra went to Saraswati to complain, ‘Sister, brother won’t give me the pen.’
Saraswati was reading. Without looking up from her book, she said, ‘Shekhar, give him the pen!’
Chandra came back and said, ‘Give it.’
Shekhar got a little annoyed and said, ‘I already told you, let me finish writing.’
Chandra screamed at him from right there, ‘Look at him, sister, he won’t give it.’
Saraswati responded just as before, ‘Give it to him, Shekhar! Don’t give me a headache.’
‘I’ve already told him that I’ll give it to him once I’m done writing. He won’t listen to me. And on top of it, you’re scolding me!’
But Saraswati was engrossed in her book, and Chandra had already gone to complain to Mother. No one heard Shekhar’s reply.
Mother screamed from somewhere inside the house, ‘Shekhar, just give him the pen!’
Shekhar started to say, ‘Mother, I’ve explained to him—’
Mother darted into the room. ‘What?’
‘I’ve explained to him—’
‘I don’t care. First give him the pen.’
‘Mother—’
Mother slapped him across the face and said, ‘Are you going to give it to him or not?’
‘Mother—’
Mother emphasized each word in her sentence this time, ‘I said, first give him the pen. Then I’ll listen to what you have to say.’
Shekhar, too, emphasized each word in his response, ‘I’m not giving it to him.’
Mother gave him three or four slaps across the face in quick succession and said, ‘Came just now to save him, didn’t you? And now—’
Shekhar felt as if this last argument made his action even more justified, but who would listen to him?
‘Where is the pen?’
Chandra quickly chimed in, ‘Brother is hiding it in his fist.’
Mother started trying to pry his fist open. She was unsuccessful so she put his hand on the table and began hitting it, first with her fists and then with the edge of a ruler. He didn’t give up.
Shekhar couldn’t bear the pain or his frustration at his own helplessness.
He said, ‘I’m not going to give it to him. I told you I wouldn’t, even if you try and kill me!’
Mother let go of his hand all at once, and stared at him, flabbergasted. There was something about his voice, in the way he said ‘try’, that embarrassed her. She took Chandra by the arm, led him outside and said, ‘Come with me. I’ll get you a new pen.’
Shekhar got up and went out of the house. He wandered around all day like a stray dog. He came home in the evening, exhausted, and Father said to him, ‘So keen on giving up this life, are you?’
Shekhar responded lifelessly, ‘Yes, I am.’ And he kept walking. Father stared at him bewildered.
Shekhar didn’t eat dinner. Nor did anyone worry about him. It was night, everyone was asleep, and he, too, lay down on the cot in exhaustion and then tried to burst the darkness . . .
An uncertain voice spoke to him from the head of his cot, ‘Shekhar?’ Saraswati came and sat down at the head of the cot.
Shekhar put his head in her lap.
That’s when the tears began . . .
Saraswati lifted his head and gently placed it on the pillow. He fell asleep.
*
That night, Shekhar had a dream.
A vast desert. The scorching heat of midday.
Shekhar was racing on the back of a camel, slicing through the desert, racing . . . He had been racing since morning, or was it last night? He was still racing at the same pace.
Someone is chasing him. Shekhar doesn’t know who, but he knows that someone is behind him, and each time he looks back, he sees dust being kicked up by the feet of many camels chasing him . . .
Afternoon. It isn’t any less hot; it feels worse, in fact. Shekhar is still racing and that ‘something’ behind him is getting closer.
Suddenly, an orchard of apple trees ahead of him. It’s enclosed by a tall mud wall on all four sides. In several places, there are holes in the wall, and also several plants that look like irises. Shekhar gets down from the camel, climbs over the wall and goes into the orchard.
The trees in the orchard are heavy with flowers. So heavy, in fact, that the entire ground is covered with flowers, and it is absolutely gleaming white . . .
Shekhar breathes a tired sigh and lies down on a bed of flowers and goes to sleep . . .
Evening. The entire sky has turned a deep red. The reflection from the scarlet-hued sky makes the whole earth look red, and the apple trees now look like they are wild rose bushes—each flower has taken on a beautiful blush . . .
Shekhar sat up. The terror of danger came over him again. He knows that ‘something’ has surrounded the orchard and is attempting to enter it. And the dust from its camel’s feet is being thrown up in all directions, filling the skies . . .
Shekhar gets up and runs in one direction and leaves the orchard.
A gravelly road, steep. Shekhar keeps on climbing. That ‘something’ has been left behind, but he still has a long way to go . . . a long way . . . in search of something, although he doesn’t know what he’s looking for . . .
The evening grows dense. Shekhar is still going. He’s thirsty, but there’s not a drop of water anywhere. Although there is something in the distance, like the din of a waterfall . . .
He climbs on top of a boulder and looks out ahead of him, and comes to a complete stop.
Thundering below is a mountainous waterfall, brilliant, pure, clear . . .
Shekhar sits on his haunches, rests his arms on the ground in front of him and bends his head forward like a woodland creature about to take a sip of water. But the water is too far down and he can’t reach it . . .
Saraswati’s hand is on his. She’s sitting next to him, in the same way, on her haunches, although she wasn’t there a second ago. And the two pairs of thirsty eyes are looking longingly at the water below . . .
Shekhar observes a flower standing up on a thin stalk, somehow completely unaffected by the rapids in the middle of the water. Very big—a single white petal wrapped all around, and a pistil, the colour of hot gold, extending out from the middle.
And as he watches, a mystical peace descends over him and he realizes that this is what he has been looking for, the thing that he was racing towards . . . The peace is so gentle that it makes his hairs stand on end. He squeezes Saraswati’s hand tightly . . .
He wakes up. The dream was so vivid, so real, that Shekhar extended his hand to take Saraswati’s. He didn’t find it.
He got up from his cot. Looked around. Got up and went to Saraswati’s cot. She was sleeping. Shekhar tried to look at her face but couldn’t. He went back, drew a long, contented sigh and lay down, and became lost in a dreamless sleep.