Loneliness was not a new thing for Shekhar. Ever since he could remember he had become accustomed to being lonely all the time, and one could even say that ever since he had come to depend only on himself. But when he got to a big city like Madras, he suddenly felt that he was extremely lonely.
He was fifteen years old. And in those fifteen years he had never really crossed beyond the shadow that his house cast.1 The core of an individual, the domain of the soul—there Shekhar had always been alone, had never let anyone in, or at a minimum, no one had ever entered it. So his soul had never felt the need to depend on anyone else. But on the other hand, he had never had to worry about what he would eat, what he would wear, how much to spend and how much to save. He had never had to worry about such ‘small’ details, he had never had to fend for himself and he had never had even a little bit of money in his life to have ever had to exercise any control over it. He had money only twice in his life—once when he had an eight-anna piece which he happily spent on a ten-paisa whistle and once more when his older brother Ishwar had stolen money to buy cigars and he had been asked to hold on to the money for a little while after his brother had been caught stealing . . .
He had, it’s true, gone to Lahore for his exams, but he had his tutor there with him and then also because his aunt, Vidyavati, was there, he never really felt as though he was away from home. Vidyavati wasn’t a blood relative, but no one had ever felt the difference. She had this ability to make everyone feel like a relation; and still, more than her mother, Shashi’s presence made staying there a pleasurable experience for Shekhar—Shashi who was younger than him and not; who never played with him, but who was slowly becoming his playmate . . .
As he sat in the rickshaw nearing his college, this was what Shekhar was thinking about, and in his heart of hearts he was filled with terror. What would college be like? What about the dormitories? What kinds of boys? And the servants and the cook? How would they eat? What about his room? That day the weather was of no help, either—it was depressing, too. It was June and the sky was littered with clouds. There was neither rain nor wind and the heat was oppressive, and . . . and then, Shekhar was coming from mountainous climes . . .
After he enrolled in college, paid his fees, put his things away in his room and, without even making his bed, Shekhar collapsed on to his cot, let out a long sigh of relief and said, ‘Uh-oh.’
From another direction came a voice, ‘Rama, looks like we’ve got another new animal.’
Shekhar didn’t realize that they were pointing at him, but he heard the footsteps of two or three people coming towards his room and he waited expectantly.
Three boys entered his room. Shekhar was about to give them an annoyed look when he was hit with a flood of questions:
‘Where are you from?’
‘Where did you finish your schooling?’
‘What class are you in?’
‘What’s your name?’
Had these questions been asked one at a time, Shekhar still wouldn’t have responded to them because first of all he didn’t like their tone of voice and second, those kinds of questions carried an air of humiliation about them. He didn’t say anything, just kept staring at them.
‘Don’t know how to speak?’
‘He’s probably a first year, that’s why.’
‘It’s not as though he’s royalty; he’s just a man, after all.’
‘Well, you hit the nail on the head. Man? Then we’ll all have to start calling you a “man”, too, won’t we?’
Shekhar said, ‘I’m tired. Please let me rest. You’ll get the answers to all of your questions tomorrow.’
‘Oh, so that’s it.’
‘Let’s go, boys. Let’s let him rest, he’s tired. We’ll get the answers to all of our questions tomorrow.’
‘It’s not as though we were twisting your arms. Go ahead and rest.’
‘Some manners. Hey, all we did was ask your name—no one’s going to eat you alive.’
Angrily, Shekhar said, ‘Get out of my room, all of you!’
One of them said, ‘Well!’ But when they saw the expression on his face they all left. The criticisms that were on the tip of their tongues were only uttered after they left the room. Shekhar tried not to listen to what they were saying and turned his face towards the wall. But he wasn’t able to block their voices . . .
Shekhar became quite depressed. He unconsciously began comparing this welcome to the one that he had received in Lahore. Shashi with her big, innocent eyes, that candle held in one hand, those two hands joined together in greeting, her insistent disobedience and many other things . . .
He started feeling as if his parents had banished him from the house because he was a criminal in their eyes . . . because he had been contemptible since the beginning, because he hated his mother because she didn’t trust him, because he had stopped loving his father, because . . . don’t know . . . what . . .
Whom did he believe in—no one! Those whom he could find worthy of respect, whom he could admire, they had all become vile criminals for him now, ever since he had read in that book how children are made—through such wile, sinful acts . . . His mother and father, brothers and sister . . . he, himself . . . Shashi . . . and yes, Sharda, too—all of them were products of sinful actions . . .
It was wrong, despicable, loathsome, but . . . Then God made women for—then why were women made? Why?
Shekhar thought that since there were already women in the world, one had to accept them. But why were they?
But . . . Then he remembers, although he has faced many hardships because of the existence of women, still had there not been women, then perhaps he would not be alive . . .
But was it necessary that one only look at women with a singular intention, was there only one question to ask them? He had read somewhere that when a robber meets someone new the first thing he thinks about is whether that new person is a friend or a foe. Will he participate in his crime or will he be an obstacle? Was it necessary that women had to be regarded from a robber’s point of view—thinking that either she will be a companion in man’s specific sinful act or that she will be an enemy, a terror?
Could man not live without women in a world with women . . .
He was so lonely. In a big city like Madras, in the midst of throngs, he found himself alone for the first time, worn down; there was only opposition and enmity in all directions here; all of the men here were his adversaries, and he wanted—he did not know what he wanted, but he didn’t want any women present there, but he wanted . . . wanted . . . don’t know what . . .
He began to fall into an anxious sleep . . .
He woke with a start at the sound of a knock.
There was a young man at the door, waiting for permission to enter. He had a courteous smile on his face.
Shekhar said, ‘Come in.’ He began looking around for a place for him to sit.
The young man went and sat on the trunk next to Shekhar and said, ‘Don’t worry—I’ll be fine here. Your name is Ch. Pandit?’
Shekhar, a little surprised, said, ‘Yes.’ He scrutinized the young man with curiosity.
The young man had a beautiful face, his eyes were big and bright, blue, constantly laughing, his nose was straight and small, lips that were thin, long and playful. He had long curls on his head, which he had styled well.
He had no hair on his face—it didn’t seem as if they had even come in yet. From his height and his build he didn’t seem to be older than fifteen or sixteen.
Shekhar was about to ask something when the young man said, ‘My name is Kumar. What does Ch. stand for in your name?’
‘Chandrashekhar.’
‘I see! That’s my older brother’s name, too. What class are you in?’
‘I just enrolled as a first-year student.’
‘Oh—well then we’ll be in the same class. I’m a first-year, too.’
Shekhar was surprised again—because this boy didn’t seem to be the least bit anxious or scared, even though he was just starting college as well. He said, ‘That’s good.’
The boy asked, ‘Have you seen the whole dormitory—introduced yourself to people here?’
‘No, I haven’t done any of it. Plus, I’m exhausted.’
‘All right, we’ll leave it for now. If you want I can introduce you. I already know everyone.’
Shekhar wanted to ask, ‘How?’ but he kept his mouth shut. He thought, ‘I’d be facing serious problems if it weren’t for his help,’ and then this, ‘I should show him how grateful I am.’ He said, ‘If you can wait a little bit, I’ll go with you. I know it’s an inconvenience for you. I would rather talk to you, and that’s why I think that I’ll wait until later to meet the others. I’m grateful for your kindness, Mr Kumar.’
‘It’s no big thing. But why are you calling me “Mr Kumar”? If classmates start calling each other “Mister” we’re all in trouble. Just call me “Kumar”. That’s what everyone calls me.’
Shekhar said, ‘All right, Kumar.’ He paused for a bit and then said, ‘You’re the first person here who has been courteous to me . . .’
Kumar laughed.
Shekhar’s mind filled with gratitude for this young man. All of a sudden he felt that if Kumar hadn’t been in Madras, he might have had to drop out of college and run away . . . Kumar hadn’t done anything other than speak to him, but still, in the condition that Shekhar was in, he felt as though his happiness and his life depended on that conversation, and that was what Kumar had given him. Before long, he discovered that he was telling Kumar about his home, his homeschooling, his loneliness, his frustrations, everything. His trusting heart had accepted Kumar as though he were a brother—that inconceivable brother whom he didn’t have at home, and whose position couldn’t be filled in any way by sisters . . .
Kumar introduced Shekhar to everyone. He went with him and made sure he had dinner and then took him back to his room and made Shekhar promise that whenever he needed anything he would call on Kumar. As he promised, Shekhar asked, ‘It seems as though you’ve lived here a while, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, I have been here since last year.’ Embarrassed, he continued, ‘This is my second year being a first-year.’
‘Really? You seem quite young.’
‘I’m sixteen. What about you?’
‘I’m fifteen. But I look older than you,’ and then he laughed. ‘And I can’t believe that I’m younger.’
‘That’s fine—from now on you can be my older brother—what do you say?’
Shekhar was too grateful to say anything. He took Kumar’s hand and gently pressed it.
Kumar left. Shekhar closed the door and sat down on his cot and began to think whom should he thank for this random gift, that in a city as big as Madras, on the first day, without searching, he had found a friend—to which mysterious force . . .
‘Shekhar, do you want to go see a film?’
Shekhar responded with a note of indifference, ‘Who can watch films every single day? We just went the day before yesterday.’
Kumar said, ‘You’re right. And it’s not as though I can afford to go all the time. But the film today was quite good, and so I thought, I should take Shekhar with me—’ He let out a long sigh.
There was a feeling of disappointment in that sigh, and it stung Shekhar’s heart. He recalled that one day Kumar had told him that his parents were poor and that it was a real struggle for them to cover the cost of his education. Last year, he didn’t have the slightest bit of fun—and it was so bad that he wasn’t even able to study properly because he was always worried and, as a result, he failed. Ever since that day, Shekhar had resolved that whenever he could, he’d try to keep Kumar happy, and that at a minimum he wouldn’t let him feel any financial hardship. His heart melted today when he remembered that and he felt that it was such a wretched existence to have to depend on someone else for your happiness, and to have reminded Kumar of that fact was worse than a wound on the flesh—it was an unpardonable offence. He quickly said, ‘Then let’s definitely go, Kumar. But don’t ever tell me that you—’ he stopped and then spoke again, ‘It hurts me deeply.’
Kumar said, ‘What’s wrong in saying something if it’s true? But if you don’t want me to, I won’t.’
Both of them went out.
A month passed.
One day, Shekhar went to Kumar’s room and said, ‘Kumar, let’s go to the ocean today. I’m sick of going to the movies every day.’
Kumar said, ‘All right, let’s go.’
They sat on the tram and set off.
Once there, they began walking. Beyond the residential areas they came upon a deserted street. It was almost evening—on the path were the long shadows cast by the trees planted along the sides. It seemed as if someone had painted on the golden slopes of the earth made uneven by the dust . . . Shekhar kept walking silently as he looked at the ground, holding Kumar’s hand in his. Who knows what he was thinking? Kumar kept looking at him directly as if he wanted to say something, but he would remain silent when he saw the expression on his face.
By the time they could hear the grave roar of the ocean, evening had fallen, the rosy glow of the sky had grown dense until it was tenebrous. They began walking faster and soon reached the water’s edge. They sat down on the flat sand under the cover of a large rock and watched the waves. As they watched, the last light of the evening sky was extinguished.
It was peaceful. The wind wasn’t stirring. People had also gradually headed back—that part of the shore was quite far from the residential areas. Looking out at the ocean in the darkness Shekhar felt that he was completely alone with Kumar there and that the ancient roar of the ocean had enveloped them . . .
Because despite the fact that the air was still, there was a deep disquiet in the ocean—foamy waves weren’t coming in over great distances, but there was a foamless commotion in the distance that was growing . . . Who knew where that vast, deep thunder arose—more powerful than the voice of the waves, and resolute . . .
There was a full moon out, and on the other side of the ocean, in the east, the moon was about to rise—and to steer it through the sky was a lone cloud, standing on the horizon, laced on all sides with a fringe from the moon, and behind it, just about to manifest, the breaking dawn of some unprecedented treasure of beauty . . .
Shekhar was quiet, and Kumar was quiet because of him.
Shekhar was slowly tousling Kumar’s long hair by running his fingers through it. It seemed to Shekhar that Kumar’s hair returned his touch with a tremble, just like a dog sometimes shows its gratitude to its master’s loving touch . . .
When Shekhar spoke, Kumar was startled. ‘Look, Kumar, it’s as if there’s no one else in this world.’
Kumar didn’t respond.
Shekhar bunched up Kumar’s hair into his fist, pulled gently and said, ‘Why aren’t you saying anything?’ Even though he didn’t think it was particularly necessary for Kumar to say anything . . .
Shekhar spoke again, ‘That’s all right, too. Everyone’s world is only as big as what they understand. Because how could we fathom the existence of those things that are outside of our experiences? I know that I have left several worlds behind, and I am certain that there are many ahead of me, but I don’t know, the one and the other seems like a complete lie to me—I feel nothing for it. At this moment the boundaries of my world are that rock behind us, that cloud in front and the moon about to rise behind it, me over here and you over there . . .’
He stopped talking. Kumar still hadn’t said anything. Shekhar took his hand out of Kumar’s hair and pressed it against the ground and became contemplative.
After a little while, he spoke again, ‘Kumar, nothing seems real today, like it’s all a dream. Still, the dream that I am a part of at this moment, doesn’t it seem lovely? Why do I feel as though you are younger than I am, that I am your protector, your guardian angel2 (protective goddess),3 and that you depend on me?’
Kumar responded quickly, ‘You’re right . . . I do depend on you.’
The response was in line with Shekhar’s line of thought, but it felt wrong to him. As if there were some hastiness in it, some aversion, some pretence; as if it were dragging him back to a mean reality from the world of his splendid dream. He said, ‘Kumar, it doesn’t seem as if you’ve heard a word I’ve said.’
Kumar was taken aback, ‘How did you come to that conclusion? If I hadn’t been listening, how would I have answered you?’
Shekhar became even more serious and said, ‘Tell me the truth, what are you thinking about right now?’
‘I’ll tell you—but you can’t get upset.’
‘Me—upset with you?’
Kumar hesitated over the words, ‘The thing is that my mother was really sick and Father spent his entire income on her treatment—it’s likely he even took out a loan. They haven’t sent anything for me this month and probably won’t be able to next month either. I haven’t even been able to pay my fees, and college . . . I’ll probably have to . . .’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’
Even more anxiously than before, ‘I ask you for help all the time—who else is there who cares for me? But—I worry sometimes about how much—’
Shekhar was offended, ‘Am I just anyone to you?’ And then, ‘How much money do you need?’
Kumar stumbled over his words, ‘I don’t know exactly. Maybe fifty—maybe some—probably fifty or sixty . . .’
‘Will a hundred be enough?’
Shyly, ‘What will I do with a hundred . . .’
‘It’s settled—now let’s talk about something else! Everything will be fine tomorrow. Don’t ever think such things again.’
‘Shekhar, I am your—’
Shekhar knew what the next word was going to be and so he stopped him—‘Enough, now quiet! I’ve already said there will be no more discussion about this!’
They fell into silence again.
Slowly, the moon rose. Shekhar saw as the tiny cloud that had been adorned with a silvery fringe until now suddenly became dark as soon as the moon emerged.
In the moonlight, in the slipperiness of the sand of the nearby beach, scattered stones became visible, like black stamps. Shekhar looked at Kumar, who was looking at the moon.
Shekhar blurted out—and as soon as he spoke he was surprised at what he said—it had taken so little time to find words for his thoughts and make them manifest—‘Kumar, if you ever become someone else’s, other than mine, I will choke the life out of you.’
Kumar responded with a note of fear in his voice, ‘What are you saying, Shekhar!’
Shekhar pulled Kumar towards him and kissed him on the mouth. But at the same time a doubt welled up in his mind—‘Why this fear?’ He also felt that whatever he was feeling wasn’t being returned; like his own reflection on the surface of a lake, which shudders, not with life, but with illusion. But he suppressed both of these doubts immediately . . .
Kumar said, ‘Come, let’s go now. It’s getting so late.’
It took Shekhar some effort to avert his eyes from the ocean, and he said, ‘Come.’ He didn’t want to leave, but when he thought about the thing that he had just said, and the compulsion which had made him say it, he didn’t think he could challenge Kumar’s request.
They went back to the hostel. Neither of them said a word.
*
Shekhar gave Kumar 100 rupees. A few days later he gave him twenty more. Of these, fifty rupees had been given to him to save—so that he could use them if the need arose. What remained was his monthly allowance. And having disbursed money in this manner, he wrote a letter home asking for more money.
Two days later a reply to his letter arrived, but money did not. Father had written that Shekhar was wasting his money, the money was for necessary expenses, not to be squandered on friends, and—more things like that . . . And also that next time he should think it over seriously and write how much money he needs and—it would be sent to him.
With wounded pride, Shekhar wrote back that whenever he wrote, he took care to think about what he wrote. He needed that amount of money and he didn’t need to think it over again. If his father wanted to send the money, he should, otherwise he shouldn’t.
That letter got no response—nor did money arrive. Shekhar stopped leaving his room.
Kumar went to him and said, ‘Come on, let’s go to the circus today.’
Shekhar said, ‘I really don’t feel like going today.’
‘Why, what happened? You don’t go out at all any more. What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing, just because I don’t feel like it.’
‘You just have to come today. Your mood is just going to get worse sitting here all day. It’s even been ten or fifteen days since you’ve gone to the cinema.’
Shekhar turned away and said, ‘I don’t have any money. And it doesn’t seem likely that any will arrive soon.’
Kumar waited for a moment and then asked, ‘What happened?’
‘Father wrote that I was spending money on trivial things and that he wasn’t going to send that much money. I wrote back that if he was going to send a lesser amount then he shouldn’t send any at all. That’s all.’
The two were quiet for a while. Then Kumar got up and said, ‘I’m going now. I have something—’
‘Come on, sit down! I can’t concentrate. Let’s just sit and talk this evening. Or let’s go to the ocean.’
‘No, I just remembered, I have something important to take care of. It’s good that we didn’t go to the circus, otherwise—’ He said it as he was leaving the room.
Shekhar was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling.
What is poverty? What is wealth? Why is it that one man who is looking for entertainment cannot go to the cinema or the circus, and why is it that another man prevents him from going despite having the ability to allow him to go?
But was entertainment just cinema and theatre? Could a person not be happy without going to those places? There had been days before when he didn’t go to the cinema—was he not entertained then? When he had gone to Lahore for his exams, he’d get bored studying all day and want some entertainment, but it was enough for him if Shashi walked by him without saying anything and he could tease her by saying ‘Sisterji?’ and if not even that, just to be able to hear her laugh from a distance . . . Why couldn’t he do that any more?
Had Kumar been there, perhaps he wouldn’t have thought such things. Kumar’s closeness, Kumar’s conversation, Kumar’s laughter—all of that would be enough for him . . .
But for Kumar?
But for Shashi?
What is this unexpected accident of love which makes a man dependent on someone else like this, but at the same time also gives him strength, also becomes his protector . . . And what was that unexpected accident which was greater than love, a force greater than love, which made love possible, which created new circumstance, in which love could exist, in which two souls could meet?
But were he and Kumar one? Wasn’t there an emptiness in that oneness, somewhere deep down? Did they want the same thing? Did they desire in the same way? Did—
But was it necessary in love for any two people to be sold by one another’s own hands and become each other’s slave? Was there no love without servitude?
And if so, why was there this condition that love had to exist between two individuals? Was it necessary that one had to have someone to love—was it impossible to separate the feeling of love from some crude, isolated object? Was it necessary that the sentence ‘I am in love’ was unerringly followed by the question ‘With whom?’ and did that ‘whom’ have to be only one? Couldn’t all humanity be loved, all love be loved?
He had always brooded; he had never tried to step outside of himself, embrace life, make the world his own, he had never tried making himself the world’s. He kept asking for love; he had never known how to give love . . .
But the condition that he found himself in at this moment, was it his fault, or Kumar’s, or someone else’s? Was the desertion that he was feeling at that moment a result of his incapacity to love or the result of his inability to receive it?
A verse of poetry danced in Shekhar’s mind. He got up and started writing:
O Man, O you formless, dense feeling of which I am a part, I want to forget myself, forget my loves, and become only yours; I love you; I love the desire to love you and my ability to . . . O you, give me the strength that I might love only you and that I might endure your love . . .
That night, Shekhar went downstairs to eat dinner and asked the hostel peon, ‘Hasn’t Kumar come?’
‘Now? No, he has gone to the circus.’
‘With whom?’
‘With Krishnamurthy.’
Shekhar went back upstairs without eating dinner. He sat on the windowsill in his room and watched the various tramcars racing outside, listened to their gears, the horns of the motorcars and the screams of the rickshaw-wallahs, but when he found himself unable to observe, hear or understand anything, he began repeating the verse he had written like a meaningless rant—‘O you, give me the strength that I might love only you and that I might endure your love . . .’
*
For two days, Shekhar didn’t go to class. He sat in his room, waiting for Kumar to come to him and ask for his forgiveness, or at least come clean to him, but Kumar never came.
On the third day, a very bored Shekhar emerged from his room. He had decided that he would go sit by the ocean and clear his muddled head. He wasn’t even thinking about Kumar—nor did he have any desire to enter his room and see him.
As he was descending the stairs, he heard two or three voices laughing from a room and when he recognized Kumar’s voice among them he stopped in his tracks.
One voice—‘Shekhar doesn’t leave his room these days. What’s the matter?’
‘Haven’t you heard? His father’s cut him off,’ Kumar spoke.
‘Then it’s probably for the best,’ and then a loud guffaw.
‘That’s why Krishnamurthy’s so lucky these days, right, Kumar?’ and then another chortle.
Then Kumar’s voice, ‘Come on, man, don’t blather on like a fool. Shekhar was an idiot.’
Shekhar leaned on the railing for support as he slowly descended the stairs. At the bottom, he composed a message and gave it to the servant, ‘Please give this to Kumar—I’ll be waiting here.’
The message read, ‘It’s true, I am an idiot and a fool. But do you know which day I became a fool? I said to you on the ocean shore, “Kumar, if you ever become someone else’s, other than mine, I will choke the life out of you.” I was a fool for not understanding my own words . . . Insects belong to no one.’
It didn’t take long for Kumar to show up and say, ‘What’s the meaning of this, Shekhar?’
‘Meaning? Didn’t I make myself clear enough?’
‘I’m your debtor, and it’s because of the fact you have that power over me that you’ve insulted me so deeply, isn’t it? If I—’
Shekhar was enraged, ‘Debtor?’ But he immediately became calm and said, ‘It’s all right. I won’t take offence if this is the only thing that your soul-for-sale can come up with.’
He turned around and walked towards the edge of the ocean in long strides.
It was dark, the sky was thick with clouds. The beach was deserted, desolate. The air was completely still. And the ocean, too, was uncommonly still, still and hushed, although it seemed as though a light were burning somewhere inside it, or veiled lightning were dancing—the early stages of an explosion . . .
Shekhar felt that had the ocean appeared any other way to him, he wouldn’t have been able to stay at the water’s edge for even a second . . .
*
When Shekhar awoke from that sleep, he began to hear all manner of things being said about him throughout the hostel—a give and take of opinions.
He was a Brahmin, moreover his name was Chandrashekhar Pandit, but where was his topknot? Where was his sacred thread? When and where did he perform his prayers? He may very well have received God’s greatest gift—being one of the twice-born—but he had forsaken it with his conduct, he was fallen . . .
The hostel where Shekhar lived was for Brahmins. That’s why Shekhar, according to his father’s wishes, lived there. Before now, no one had even raised any questions about his Brahmin-hood. Several students lived according to the rules set for Brahmins and practised the rituals, but on the inside, they didn’t really have much respect for them. Their dining hall was enclosed on all sides so that their meals wouldn’t be polluted by the ‘sinful glance’ of a passer-by—so that it wouldn’t become polluted by being looked at by members of the lower castes. If ever that happened, they treated their food as though it had become as disgusting as if a dog had partaken of it. Although sometimes a dog would wander into the dining hall and it was considered sufficient if it was chased away with a, ‘Get!’
It didn’t take Shekhar long to figure out the source of these criticisms. But he never had the desire to talk to Kumar or even to look at him. He realized that all the students were looking at him as if he were some alien creature, and it seemed to him that they were all thinking to themselves about what Shekhar would be in his next life—a dog, a crow, an insect—as if they felt pity for his fate. Sensing their ‘pity’ enraged him, and he thought, ‘Even if I go to hell, what’s it to them?’
But their ‘pity’ was never strong enough that they were moved by thoughts of his damnation to forget their future heaven. They had all decided that they wouldn’t eat with Shekhar, and one day Shekhar learned that the principal had received a petition from all of the students, which demanded that separate arrangements be made for Shekhar’s meals, otherwise they would be forced to leave the hostel.
They also told the people who ran the mess that until they had reached an agreement, Shekhar should be seated apart from the rest.
Shekhar found all of this completely unacceptable. But he didn’t want to drag the staff at the mess into this argument; so, he decided that until some kind of agreement was worked out, he would go and eat at a restaurant.
A decision had been made. The principal had decided that the hostel was for Brahmins, and that determinations of Brahmin-hood could only be made by members of one’s own clan, since there were a variety of traditions amongst Brahmins; Shekhar had been born a Brahmin and so he would remain there and continue to eat there, and no one could force him to leave.
Shekhar won. The other boys also saw no benefit in continuing the fight. The matter ended there—though the boys never forgave Shekhar his victory, and they never lost an opportunity to remind him that irrespective of what the principal said, they didn’t consider him a Brahmin.
This victory gave Shekhar no satisfaction—not even when he thought about it as a victory over Kumar. It no longer meant anything to declare victory over him. He asked for a week off from college, and he took off to explore Malabar. He had money since he had asked his father for forgiveness after the fight with Kumar.
Malabar is an incredibly beautiful region, but Shekhar hadn’t gone there to observe the beauty. In college, the stories he had read about untouchability in Malabar—these things were so unbelievable to him that he couldn’t consider them to be anything other than stories—were the things that drew him there. The untouchables there—the fifth or the outcastes—could not come too close to a Brahmin—they had to stay a few yards away; there were separate roads for the Brahmins on which the outcastes couldn’t walk; the outcastes had to cross the river in a boat because the bridges over the water were reserved for the upper castes; untouchables couldn’t buy land next to a Brahmin’s; and if ever a Brahmin and an outcaste were to cross paths, the outcaste had to announce himself as an outcaste so that his shadow didn’t inadvertently fall on the Brahmin . . . He had heard all of these things, but even after he heard them he couldn’t believe them. Since the fight at college had been about the question of his untouchability, after he had won he wanted to go to Malabar to see what it was like there.
When he got there, he settled in at a mission run by the Arya Samaj. He spent some time waiting to find a worker at the mission so that he could talk to them, but all of them had gone out. Finally, when he saw that the rain that had been falling all day had stopped for a while, he quickly changed his clothes, put on a common Madrasi outfit and went out walking barefoot.
Evening had fallen. Aimlessly wandering, Shekhar found himself on a deserted road and was trying to decide which way would be the most convenient to go. The roads for the most part had turned to slush—in some places, they were completely submerged under water, and some of the roads that went into the paddy fields had been lost to the waters that flowed over the embankments. Shekhar hung his head and walked on, deep in thought.
It was twilight, and the reflection of the now hazy sky sparkled in the waters. A coppery red spread out over the foliage of the trees, and over the paddy fields a melodious melancholy slowly condensed like drops of dew. Everything was completely still. The birds were crying out and the frogs croaked interminably in their sharp, cracking voices. It wasn’t completely silent, but there was a profound stillness.
Shekhar got off the muddy road he was on and moved on to another path. It was drier—and so Shekhar’s feet had turned towards it on their own—but he wasn’t sure if this was the shorter way back to where he was staying. Water flowed on both sides of the path.
His concentration was broken by the sounds of someone groaning. He stopped to listen closely and discern where the voice was coming from. A moment later, he heard the groaning again, and Shekhar went over to a bush that covered the small stream flowing on one side of the path and looked: there was a heap of flesh and blood, half covered with a dirty red sari, that once was perhaps a woman—and there was still life in that heap, and it could still feel pain . . .
For just a second, but for many reasons, one of which was the fact that the heap of flesh was a woman, Shekhar hesitated. Then, he somehow got that body on his back and turned around and, going from one path to the next, carried it all the way back to the mission. There the body was treated and bandaged, but by dawn, she was dead. The people at the mission made preparations to cremate her—she was an untouchable.
The police were notified. But Shekhar didn’t stay; he packed up his things and immediately left for Madras—he began to feel it was impossible to stay there for even a second longer . . .
On the train, he read in the newspaper that after the body had been examined, it was announced that ‘Death was the result of a blow from a blunt instrument; no reason could be found for the murder.’ But there was also this bit of reporting, that the body had been found on a ‘segregated’ road, and that the woman was an untouchable.
Shekhar recalled how that woman’s body, her clothes, were dripping with blood and mud—and a shiver ran through his body . . .
She was an untouchable, and he was a Brahmin, and he had been bathed in her blood . . . And her killers had been Brahmins who had probably gone up to her themselves and beaten her to death with stones so that they could avoid being polluted by her coming too close to them . . . Brahmin . . . Shekhar, too, was a Brahmin . . . and untouchable . . . The kind of untouchable that Shekhar had carried on his shoulders . . . And her blood . . .
When he got back to the hostel, Shekhar packed all of his things, called for a rickshaw, loaded his things into it and told the rickshaw-driver where to take his things while he got on to a tram to go to another hostel—one for untouchables, where all of the workers were untouchables as well. At first, everyone there looked at him with suspicion, but quickly the day came when Shekhar knew that all his friends and companions and comrades were untouchables, his brothers were untouchables . . .
And also, the community that he was supposed to be a part of considered him an untouchable, and it couldn’t stand the fact that he had an identity separate from it . . .
*
‘They say that everything will change eventually; that eventually ignorance will fall away, that this fog that has descended over our souls will dissipate. They say a lot of things, but they are all sitting on their hands, and eons pass in waiting, and nothing happens. The fog can be lifted, the veil, too, can be lifted, but walls can’t be lifted, they have to be torn down, they have to be made to fall, otherwise they don’t go away . . .’
That was Shekhar speaking. He was naturally a quiet person, but there was something inside him that wouldn’t let him stay quiet, something that ceaselessly stabbed at his reluctance and compelled him . . .
Shekhar has begun making friends among these ‘untouchables’. And he allows them to see the compulsion inside him, every change in its veils. He’s got a few boys together and created a committee, which doesn’t have a name or rules but which always convenes in his room, in which ideas and exchanges, tastes, dispositions and feelings are constantly being debated . . .
Shekhar isn’t their leader—he doesn’t consider himself to be, nor do they—but somehow leadership seems to emanate from him—this formless committee that only runs because of Shekhar.
*
In the middle of the flat wasteland, which the students in the hostel call their ‘playground’, stands the untouchables’ hostel, and four boys are lying on the cement floor of the roof without spreading anything out under them. These are the cadres of Shekhar’s nameless committee. All that ‘cadre’ means in this instance is that all four of them have an inner disquiet, they are awakening and are naturally concerned as they look around them. There are two or three other members of the committee who don’t have the tumult, the rapids coursing inside them; for them, the waves only rise up when someone else’s hand stirs them, or if someone from afar throws a rock into the peaceful tranquillity that normally reigns over them . . .
Besides Shekhar, the others are Sadashiv, Raghavan and Devadas. Of them, Sadashiv was the shortest in stature but in intellect, he was the brightest. On top of his usually unbuttoned tennis collar was his thin neck, and on account of his tousled hair on top of it, his looking-bigger-than-normal head casts a shadow over his peaceful, egg-shaped face, whose small but usually opened-quite-wide eyes were filled with a feeling of wise compassion, as if his eyes were saying, ‘I don’t want to trouble you, I just want to take a closer look to understand you’—and when he looked at all of this together, Shekhar recalled a picture of Shelley, so he started calling him ‘Shelley’. The name really embarrassed Sadashiv, he felt it was a joke about his self-abnegating love of nature—and that’s why the name became permanent.
Raghavan and Devadas were different. They both came from cities in the Madras Presidency, and the influence of the cities on them was considerable. Raghavan’s eyes sparkled like flighty fish and Devadas’s eyes were always on the lookout for trouble. There was no poison there, all there was was a feeling of love for the human race, but Devadas’s love wasn’t naturally of that kind, which living in isolation could motivate the self out of its proud silence; he found that kind of ‘sentimentalism’4 obnoxious. He preferred hiding his love in constant fidgeting, conversation, laughing and joking. Whenever someone would accuse him of ‘heartlessness’ he would laugh and say, ‘Brother, there’s one kind of love that prostrates itself across a road and another kind which is always tickling and pinching people as it goes. I don’t have the first kind of love in me.’ This wasn’t an excuse; there was truthfulness in it. A natural fault—or a virtue—prevented him from speaking the truth plainly.
Because of his shy yet sharp intellect and because of his love of the generous beauty which grew in the vast greens and blues of Travancore, Sadashiv was quite close to Shekhar. Still, Shekhar knew that life wasn’t complete without Devadas and Raghavan, and it made him happy that they were in his committee, too, because the objective of the committee was to find completeness in life.
Lying on the rooftop, Shekhar would intermittently look over at Sadashiv to make sure he wasn’t lost in the sunset. He said—‘In that book by Stevenson, there’s a story of four reformers who sit down to think about how they will change the world. One of them explains all that is wrong about society and says that we should destroy society altogether. The second one revises the ideas of the first and argues that societies are ruined when religion becomes orthodox, religion was the source of all the problems and that was what had to be done away with. The third says that religion was just a set of governing principles set up by culture, and if the culture was wrong then how could the religion it set up be right, and that’s why culture was the problem. Ultimately, they come to this conclusion: wherever humans tried to move forward they found culture already there, and so the human race was the original criminal and it had to be destroyed completely! The conclusion makes perfect sense on its own terms. Let’s destroy the human race! Then we wouldn’t be here discussing reform, nor will Sadashiv lose himself in the setting sun and insult me, nor—’
Sadashiv said, as if to demonstrate his attentiveness, ‘Nor will Shekhar be able to abuse someone whose attention he thinks has drifted elsewhere.’
Everyone laughed. Shekhar started again, ‘I think that there’s a danger in not undertaking a fundamental change like this. I’m not saying that one should only reform superficially—that’s foolishness, too. If there’s going to be a change, it has to start at the root, but only in those places where the problem can be clearly discerned, not one that only comes to light through reason.’
Raghavan said, ‘For instance?’
‘Look at that story. Religion is a set of governing principles set up by culture, and so the problems of religion are born in culture, and so culture is the problem. All of this is just a juggling act of the power of reason. If we want to see the problems in culture, then we have to look closely at culture. We can’t prove them from afar like this. Otherwise, there isn’t anything that’s good—all there is are problems, and our restlessness, too, is an emotion that is born out of that problem, that if humans are bad how can they think good things? If you want to get rid of the darkness, then all you can do is find a light; you can’t rid the darkness of its dark.’
Sadashiv interrupted him to say, ‘But, Shekhar, your thinking is also dangerous. From a political point of view, you are advocating establishing a principle of violence. If we do what you’re suggesting, all we will do is destroy real problems, in a theatre of destruction, and according to you, it’s foolish to find a way to stop these problems from developing in the first place.’
‘Umm, no. Up to a point, what you are saying is right. I don’t think of destruction as a bad thing, nor do I think of it as violence.
‘It’s only violence when the impetus is violent, when there’s an attempt to do harm. Murder committed for love is not violence, provided that love is not personal but for all of creation. But it’s wrong to say that this doesn’t contain room to stop these problems from developing. What I am saying is that attempts to solve these problems can only happen when you understand what the problem is. Which is to say, only when it appears right in front of you will you be able to try to stop it. Your self-preservation instinct will rise with a primitive aggression. Because without that, what will you save yourself from? Organizing a defence against an unknown nothing is like a sword fight with shadows.’
‘Hmm, that sounds right. But the first point still doesn’t sit well. Do you think that in matters of love it’s so difficult for people to deceive themselves? There are people who visit prostitutes in the name of keeping society pure. A man who doesn’t go to visit prostitutes could perhaps say with an objective5 perspective that prostitutes are the invisible mechanisms of social purification. But what right does a man who can be called a slave to his subjective6 desires have to look at society with an objective perspective? But there are still people who try to convince themselves of this fact and in your estimation these people are blameless. Love and harm—who could possibly adjudicate between personal love and world welfare?’ Sadashiv kept talking softly and slowly and was looking out towards the setting sun as if he were asking it his question.
Raghavan said approvingly, ‘Hmm, that is the question.’7
Shekhar began talking as if he were thinking about something, ‘But there shouldn’t be a difference between personal welfare and world welfare . . .’
Sadashiv sat down and said, ‘That’s the same mistake as before—there is no difference only when it’s looked at with an objective, universal perspective. But when the observer is a lone individual, and the question is about his welfare, how could he possibly take such a broad view of the matter?’
Devadas said, ‘It seems to me that you all are no better than the reformers in that story. All of this arguing that you people are doing may very well increase your self-respect, but it doesn’t amount to anything. It is personal welfare, not world welfare, no matter what perspective you take. World welfare takes action. A hundred mistakes made in the course of activity are better than one good deed done by inactivity, because in the course of activity there are opportunities to correct your mistakes, while inactivity can’t even establish its own virtues anywhere. So if you want to do something and agitate, set up a programme. If you want to take advantage of this entire argument and use it for world welfare, then don’t think of any programme as final and incontrovertible. Humans have a right to uncertainty, but if it doesn’t give rise to generosity, it also becomes the curse of humanity.
‘That’s what Shekhar is always shouting out. Act when there is necessity. Create a programme and make the first project on the list generosity, because that inspires everything else. The oracle has spoken.’8
Devadas’s words brought the discussion down to earth, where it could wash its hands and feet not in the brackish waters of raw logic but in the sweet nectar of activity. The four reformers got up and moved in close together. Shekhar said, ‘All right, tell me, what shall we do first?’
Ultimately, they came to the conclusion that the primary work could only be the awakening of the youth, giving birth to a seriousness within them and providing a purpose to their lives. They realized that the kind of fundamental transformation they sought would have to be of that type and they would definitely avoid any acts of violence. And with Shekhar’s love of literature, Sadashiv’s love of art, Raghavan’s love of science and Devadas’s love of history they also concluded that constancy in life doesn’t make its purpose stronger, but rather proves deadly for it, just as a wall built on a single brick can never be stable. In order for one’s purpose to be firm, for one’s activity to be lasting, it’s necessary for life to find a piece of earth and plant roots, like a banyan tree, with tongues hanging down in every direction, lapping up sustenance and strength from the earth. They began studying all of these issues seriously and started expounding their ideas to others.
But for Shekhar, this steadily progressing line of work became a burden. Who knows why his disposition was such that he was never happy when he only had a reasonable quantity of work. He wanted so much work, so much work that he wouldn’t be able to lift his head, so that a moment’s rest could wreck his work, so much that the thoughts, doubts and impossible dreams that shook him to his core, that all of these would wilt and die for lack of opportunity . . . Even from the experience of his meagre sixteen-year-old life he could feel that his pride, his impatient, youthful estimation of his abilities was in reality the mark of his failure, because he wanted faith—and the questions that welled up inside him were there so that they would vanish, would be resolved, when he reached somewhere. The entire course of his life was so that he could reach that ‘somewhere’ . . . He felt as if the society’s programme from its very inception began as if they had already arrived somewhere, and he couldn’t bear the idea that the dream of going beyond that point was impossible! One day he set out by himself and the first place he went to was the colony of untouchables about a mile away from the hostel. When he got there he saw that a Hindu middle school had been built with brick and mortar at its entrance, while the other homes were either half or completely made of mud, and next to them and in between them flowed an open sewer.
Evening was about to fall. The water in the sewer glowed like old brass. Except for the stench, it would have been difficult to call the water dirty at that moment. As he stood at its edge, Shekhar suddenly realized that he was alone; there were no children nearby. It was something of a shock to him that there were no children playing outdoors in the evening. Why weren’t they outside? And especially because in that untouchable colony no matter where ‘inside’ was, it was no place for children.
As he pondered new directions appeared to him, as if one more wall was crumbling under his accumulated strength. He remembered the stories from the Bible about Jesus’s messenger, John the Baptist—that young man with those wild eyes, coarse, tousled hair and hardened body clad in deer skin stood in a place just like this and called, ‘Come! Let me baptize you with the water of life!’ And in a similar rust-stained twilight the members of the rejected lower castes of humanity turned a deaf ear towards him, perhaps said he was crazy, but upon hearing his interminable caterwauling probably came out of their houses to see what this water of life business was all about . . .
Shekhar was pleased with the fact that he had remembered that incident here because what was the water of life anyway? Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Krishna, Narmada—the waters of all of these rivers had become lifeless from being washed over and over with religion and devotion. Life, if ancient, life was anywhere it was in an open sewer like this in which the boat of society had been flowing down obliviously from time immemorial, through this colony of untouchables . . . The waters of those so-called ‘sin-purifying’ rivers were just as dead as the erudition of the pundits; that was why they were so useful for putting out funeral pyres, washing away the remains of the dead . . .
It was now clear to Shekhar that within a week he would open a school for the untouchable children in that neighbourhood and teach them himself. He hadn’t worked out yet how the arrangements would be made or where the books would come from or the rest. Having come to a decision he no longer felt the need to wander any farther; he went straight back to the hostel.
On the way, he spotted a middle school building and immediately cried out, ‘Guard!’
Exactly five days later, Shekhar’s night school opened in that very middle school building. The Hindu patrons of that middle school gave permission for untouchable classes in two of the rooms on the condition that the watchman was given three rupees a month—so that he could get up early and do the extra work of cleaning, sweeping and sprinkling water in those rooms so that the taint of the dirty children would not rub off on the regular students.
There were only two books, both of which were picture books. There were two instructors—Shekhar and Sadashiv. The blackboard was used to teach the alphabet; all other instruction was done orally or through many kinds of games. There were seven students.
*
Those people whose minds are restless, who always enjoy battling new problems all the time, the first problem that seems to arise for them is always the same—the problem of suffering. The first revelation of the world is always a revelation of its afflicted form.
The next problem that comes up is also always the same—the first problem is a sort of preamble for it—and that problem is the condition of women. The second revelation of the world is a revelation of the idol of woman.
Shekhar’s mind was very soon standing face-to-face with this second problem.
Shekhar had gone home for the week-long holiday during Dussehra and was returning. In the atmosphere created by the reverberating din of four or five Dravidian mothers in a railway car crammed with throngs of Madrasis, Shekhar’s mind was absorbed with matters concerning his night school, his young and adult students and their textbooks. There were now twenty-five students among whom were several adults who could already read. The small gauged railroad engine groaned as it moved forward, struggling to carry the weight of its load. The undulations of its progress comforted Shekhar’s thoughts and he could rise above the commotion that had descended around him. Whenever the train stopped, he would stop thinking for a while and watch the crowds getting on and off.
The train stopped at a major station, and Shekhar saw that behind the throngs of men getting on the train through the doors and windows was a woman who was watching the crowd helplessly. She has two bags in each hand, and a coolie stands behind her with a trunk and some bedding. The woman occasionally steels herself to move forward, but then stops. Sometimes she looks over at another car with an even greater crowd and it is now time for the train to leave. The guard has sounded the first whistle, too.
Shekhar got up, stood next to the window and said, ‘Here, give me your luggage.’ He pulled the bag inside and took the trunk from the coolie and put it on the floor. Then just before the train started moving he went to the door and opened it and pushed the crowd aside and said, ‘Please, this way.’
Nervous about being thanked, Shekhar gestured towards his seat and said, ‘You can sit there.’
‘No, you took great trouble to get me on to the train, that’s more than enough. It would be ill-mannered to take your seat after that.’
‘I will be fine,’ Shekhar said as he sat down on the trunk and bedding and looked out the window so that the woman would see that his attention was in the opposite direction and would sit down on her own.
He guessed right. She sat down. Shekhar turned around to look in her direction and she was about to offer her thanks, but Shekhar immediately turned around as if he hadn’t looked over there and she became quiet. After a while, she took out a book and began reading. Shekhar drifted into his thoughts about his school.
But he was suddenly startled. At some distance stood an Anglo-Indian whom Shekhar had stopped from taking the seat next to his because he had come on board the train by pushing a few men out of the way and had even cursed at one. He was now muttering to himself on seeing that woman sitting there. He was saying something in his vulgar British imperialist language about Shekhar having given up his seat. Shekhar saw that the woman turned bright red on hearing that man’s mutterings but she hid behind her book and pretended not to hear.
Shekhar also utilized the White imperialist (though a very mild version) language and said as he got up, ‘Shut up, you cad!’9
It was fuel to the fire. The Anglo-Indian began cursing even more. Shekhar moved towards him and said, ‘So you’ll have to be made to shut up,’ and punched him very hard on the left side of his jaw. He fought back but Shekhar pulled him towards his chest and landed a second punch on his chin which had the effect of making him stare up at the ceiling of the car, and then his back collided with the back of his seat and he collapsed with a thud and didn’t get up for a while.
The train slowed; the police arrived when they heard the commotion at the station. But the Punjabi sub-inspector at the station knew Shekhar; he heard the narrative of what happened and said, ‘You did the right thing, should have landed a couple more on the scoundrel.’ He then took the white man off the train and let the train go on its way.
That should have been the end of the story, but this is actually where the problem began. Shekhar now had a place to sit down, and he even got to know the woman well enough that she told him her name and also told him that she was a teacher in some school, and Shekhar told her that he lived nearby. Then the two fell silent and the schoolteacher began reading again. Shekhar wanted to get lost in his thoughts again but he now realized that people were looking at him with strange, terrified eyes, that he was being assessed in multiple languages, in hushed voices. One of them said that he was Punjabi (because he was dressed as a Madrasi, his Punjabi-ness hadn’t been detected until now) and in all that staring and assessing no one had been able to see that Shekhar had upheld common decency in seating that woman on the train and ending the ravings of that white man.
In the eyes of some he was a lustful young man who wanted to use this small matter as a pretext to get closer to that woman; for others he was a stupid youth who would remain trapped in the clutches of modern, educated and immoral women; for others, Shekhar and that women were both immoral and wanted to mask their shameless crimes with this deceitful action . . . All of this was not something that was heard, but their gestures—their glances and their whispers—said it for them. They weren’t saying it for Shekhar’s benefit; they were trying to conceal their conversation from him and so it stung Shekhar even more . . .
Shekhar turned away and put his head out the window. The wind from the cloud-covered mountains whirred past his overheated ears and he began to wonder about what was wrong. He had never experienced such deep moral suspicion before. He had seen sin in many places, committed it, too, but the terrible doubt—such certain suspicion—that sin was the root of all of man’s desires was never something he had held in his heart. He didn’t understand how someone could go on living, how anyone could have peace when worms were writhing around in the vessels around his heart . . . The relationship between man and woman—not the relationship between individuals but between men in general and women in general—appeared before Shekhar for the first time as a form of brutal suspicion; today he realized that even more important than the problem of the suffering in the world was the problem of the suspicion in the world, this very serious matter which humanity has focused on that one individual who Shekhar had until now only understood as being a support—woman! And this thought began choking him as if worms were crawling into his nostrils, his lungs . . .
In his committee, Shekhar’s views began slowly acquiring clarity. As important as it was to nurture feelings of grave dissatisfaction and a desire for change in young men, it was equally important to nurture them in women. The self-satisfaction of this male-centred civilization would need to be broken, the falsity of its claims to propriety would have to be exposed, so that we can find the way forward. This mistrust of womankind, this collective conspiracy to view only the feminine as sinful, would have to be destroyed. Crazed by the intoxication of their own virility, our philosophers and thinkers say that understanding women as driven by sin is a relic from the Romantic10 period; when we start losing confidence in old conventions, old religions, old ways of thinking, old divine laws, the rationale for our new ways of thinking seem insufficient and false, the first time we realize that our previously well-ordered world contains something chaotic, even out of place, that’s when we call it a sin; but when we also think of it as sweet, when it draws us to it, we become Romantic and hide the impropriety of our attraction.
We say that beauty is attractive. It shackles us, turns us into slaves of fate and pushes us into an abyss. And if woman isn’t the best, the pinnacle, the most powerful symbol of beauty then what is? This is why woman is the root of sinful thought, is a great delusion, is fallen, and in this way we make ourselves content. And we erect the walls of collective mistrust. We will have to fell those walls.
It was Shekhar speaking. Sadashiv occasionally offers praise, but otherwise remains silent. Shekhar understands his silence to be agreement. Devadas laughs but he still diligently performs whatever task is assigned to him. It’s only Raghavan whose enthusiasm wanes. As the objectives of the society grow in number, so do the number of its members since they want to attach their dinghies to the steamboat of an extremely clear principle and be dragged along to cross the realm of society. But it didn’t seem as if this made any substantial improvement in their work. Rather their detractors now had an easy time finding something that they could oppose.
Still, the steamboat continues to move along, cutting through all kinds of snares and nets, billowing plumes of dark smoke, and its captain, Shekhar, considers himself lucky to have a first mate like Sadashiv.
One day, all of a sudden, Shekhar and his friends had their naming ceremony, ‘Antigonon Club’. This is what happened . . .
After much debate, the society came to the decision that their youth group would relate to women in the same way one would relate to a respected guest—even if they were strangers, they would still be respected, would receive help in times of trouble, would get protection in times of danger, and even after all of that they would still be independent and would in no way feel obligated to men. As for himself, Shekhar had also decided not to marry, wouldn’t even think about the matter. It was only after coming to that decision that he called for a smallish meeting under a vine that grew on one side of the hostel and that’s where he shared his views. And by the time he got to explaining about remaining unmarried and maintaining an emotional distance from women the audience had got bored and began leaving in ones and twos.
The only ones who stayed were his three friends. Shekhar was still going on:
‘Look, in our literature, in stories, in novels, in plays, on stage and screen, everywhere you will find that writers create false models of ethics—girls who are enduring the torments of hell will give lengthy, eloquent speeches11 to demonstrate that they are dying in order to fulfil their marital vows because marriage is their greatest resource, their most important duty, for which hundreds have died, hundreds have performed sati12 or jauhar13 and immolated themselves, hundreds have been crushed under the feet of elephants14 . . . A mirage created by men for male spectators! Drunk on his own vaunted image and self-importance, the stupid bull of a man watches, listens, reads and becomes heady . . . why? Because what after all are the marital obligations of the heroine of the story or the play? It’s another kind of slavery, even if it is a slavery that is voluntarily accepted, by which she subordinates herself to her husband, or rather to the spectator, to all mankind, and so to an infinite number of spectators! Because by virtue of being a man, the spectator is vicariously15 the husband, and the disgusting spectacle of the heroine’s cruel suffering is all for him, confirming the arrogance of his own personality . . .
‘This is ruination, it’s the greatest of sins. It is a vast conspiracy to manufacture an original sin and perpetuate it—in order to maintain the privileges of men.’
Sadashiv interrupted, but not out of disagreement, ‘But women accept this fact, after all.’
‘We beat them into acceptance. That’s why women’s literature doesn’t have the same power. When they write, they do so by chaining themselves to the models set by men, and that’s why their prose is always false and lifeless, even when beautiful—like flowers made from paper.’
‘But—’ Sadashiv started but trailed off into thought.
Devadas said, ‘Hmm, your ideas will make life impossible. How are we going to accomplish anything if we try to be idealistic all the time and in everything we do? And what will happen if some woman asks you something? You won’t even be able to give her an answer since you’ll be stuck thinking about whether or not there’s any male chauvinism in your response! I promise you, you’ll make a fool of yourself in no time. You won’t be able to move.’
Shekhar clutched the vine in his hand. A faint smile crossed his lips as he heard what Devadas said, and then he became serious and said, ‘So why should I be afraid of turning into a fool? If you’re going to do anything, you’ll have to be a fool at some point. Rather I want to be able to be proud of that fact—to wear my embarrassment like this vine bears these red flowers.’
As he finished speaking, he broke off a bunch of flowers and placed them in the buttonhole of silently sitting Raghavan.
In jest, the others also plucked some flowers and fixed them to their buttonholes. The meeting broke up in laughter. The four of them went back to the hostel, when someone spied the flowers of the antigonon vine and said, ‘Here comes the Antigonon Club.’
And in an instant, the name became famous, and accepted, too, and as it was accepted the sting of ridicule contained evaporated.
But it wasn’t the case that the ridicule itself evaporated.
The membership of the club began to expand. Shekhar began to suspect that the reasons for this growth were not the club’s principles but the club’s symbol—that antigonon flower. A number of times he had seen that when you called people out in the name of the nation, no one came, but when you waved the national flag around many people would come to stand underneath it, and there would even be a tricolour badge on the lapel of their coats. At the same time, Shekhar didn’t have any means to discriminate between them; there was no trial save a trial by fire, and to his mind, fanning the flames just for a test was such a great sin that he even found it impossible to respect the God Ram.16
After much deliberation, Shekhar decided to publish a handwritten newsletter that could disseminate the principles of the club. He asked for articles from the members and began writing himself. He assigned Sadashiv the task of illustration—a red antigonon bouquet for the title page, and whatever he wanted on the inside.
The issue was nearly completed and people were anxiously awaiting it. So much, in fact, that a few of the students in the hostel were plotting to snatch the manuscript from Shekhar’s room, since it would be passed among the members of the club for several days before they would get a chance to see it. Shekhar was pleased by the fact that there was such interest in the newsletter, but his happiness was also the source of a problem in his work. The editorial piece wasn’t finished, and as the expectation grew so did Shekhar’s uncertainty, because he wanted there to be an uproar when people read the editorial—that would silence those who had opposed his club, that would make them swallow their ridicule . . .
Then one day something happened.
Raghavan came back from class and began packing his things. When Shekhar asked, he learned that he was going home on ten days’ leave.
‘What’s the matter? Is everything all right? You’re leaving so suddenly.’
‘Everything is fine—there’s some work I have to do.’
‘Well, come on, tell me what it is.’
After much interrogation, Raghavan haltingly replied, ‘Look, I’m getting married.’
Shekhar was taken aback, ‘Huh?’
After a little while he had composed himself and he began asking questions—when, with whom, how was it decided, why and so on. At first Raghavan was quiet, then he began to explain that his father had got him engaged five or six years ago, that the girl was from a wealthy family, that he had never seen her nor did he want to get married, but his father was pressuring him and that the date had already been decided and so he was going.
‘How old are you?’
‘I’m old enough—twenty years old. But I still—’
Shekhar couldn’t contain his rage any longer. ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, saying you’re old enough? You’re twenty years old and you still don’t have it in you to say no to a forced marriage! If you don’t want to get married, then why don’t you say you don’t want to get married? Does it really take that much courage to say “I won’t do what you ask”? Are you some sacrificial lamb with a rope around your neck being dragged to slaughter? You’re a man, you hear me, a man! And you keep talking about how we’re going to strengthen the resolve of the youth! You became my comrade in this project—we were going to empower women. You—your wife, how will she ever respect a man who couldn’t keep himself from being braided into her tresses? Because I don’t consider that a marriage. It’s only a marriage when you enter into it of your own free will, choose your own mate, and you are willing to fight the entire world in order to attain her. You—’
Raghavan didn’t care for this hectoring. Irritated, he said, ‘Talk is cheap. How am I supposed to go against the wishes of my parents! They cared for me, raised me, got me an education. Don’t I have any obligations towards them? I can’t hurt them like this in their old age. You might think this cowardice, but I don’t. I’m not heartless like you are nor do I ever want to be.’
‘Obligation! They raised you for twenty years so that you would be the kind of person who could stand on his own feet, be independent, or don’t you feel any obligation to that fact? Don’t you have obligations towards humanity? Imagine, after twenty years your parents now realize that they haven’t raised a man but have raised a sheep. Imagine, after being married for twenty years your wife realizes that the only reason the two of you are together is because your father chained her to a sheep. Were I either the unfortunate husband or wife, I would kill myself. Raghavan, you—’
‘Look, stop talking to me. I can’t do what you’re asking. I can’t go against them. You’ll see for yourself when you have to face such helplessness.’
‘Helplessness. Yes, helplessness. Then why blame your parents? They aren’t the ones who are helpless; you are. Hidden inside those clothes is the helplessness of a bleating sheep.’
Shekhar stamped his feet as he stormed out of the room. He went to his room and took out his club’s newsletter and put the blank page that had been set aside for the editorial in front of him. He picked up his pen and began writing. Until that point, all of the articles had been first composed, then proofed and then rewritten in excellent penmanship, but at this moment, a furnace was blazing inside Shekhar and his thoughts were boiling over like molten lead, spilling and pouring out, with no need for proofing or refining. There was hardly an opportunity to . . .
. . . in literature, in society, in art, in life, everywhere it’s the same captivating beginning, the same captivating course of events and, in the end, the same deep abyss! The bird of life takes flight. It seems as if it will be able to touch the roof of the heavens, but it suddenly breaks and falls, as if it has been destroyed by a bolt of lightning. We make such spectacular structures, put rocks together one by one and erect beautiful temples, but when we go to apply the plaster, the whole thing becomes the dense dust beneath our feet, is ground into the dirt . . . and why? Because our ideals are built on walls of fear, the foundations of our immense buildings are hollow and, just as it is written in the scriptures, the feet of our gods do not reach the surface of the earth . . . We wrap the decaying bones of society in gaudy, red silk and say—Look, our young people . . .
Shekhar still hadn’t finished writing, but as it was dark, he got up to turn on a light when he realized that there were large beads of sweat on his forehead and his nose. He went outside to get a bit of fresh air and began to stroll around on the balcony.
A few other boys were going home. He realized that it was the auspicious time of the year for weddings. It would be a few months before there would be any more. He also realized that none of the young men had ever seen their future wives nor did any of them seem in any rush to get married.
Shekhar took a deep breath and went back inside and started writing again.
. . . Each Indian youth regrets his marriage and every one of them blames his own parents. ‘I don’t want to, but my parents are pressuring me, and the situation is such that . . . and so on.’ What this means is that every Indian youth is his parents’ slave. And he wants to escape from enslavement to foreign rule, enslavement to society, to escape from the enslavement to ignorance and nature—but he only talks about escaping the enslavement to the Almighty! Those who have been crammed into the dark well of life and who have put family-shaped lids on top and made those dark wells darker and even more deadly . . .
The ink in the pen had run dry. But the editorial was finished. Having completed its last lines by somehow dragging the drying pen, Shekhar put the pen down. Then for a second, he suddenly felt alone and wanted a companion. He put his head down on the pages of his editorial spread open on the table and drew a long breath. Then he got up, he took some money out of his coat pocket and put it in his wallet and descended the staircase in the hostel. Downstairs, Sadashiv was standing in the middle of a few boys outside the ‘common room’.17 Shekhar went up to him and said, ‘“Antigonon” has been published. It’s there on my table. Take it.’ And without paying attention to the curiosity that this news awakened, Shekhar went outside.
He plucked a bunch of flowers from that teeming antigonon vine and then set off towards the ocean.
*
Shekhar now saw that he was a fool, and not just the hostel, but the entire class and the whole college also knew that he was a fool. When he went from one classroom to another in the college, it felt to him as if all the people who passed him were staring at him, and that all of those looks were filled with ridicule. Was it because of the antigonon flower? But many of the boys wore them, and no one laughed at them. It was as if people knew that no matter who wore the antigonon flower in his lapel, it was there because of Shekhar. And everyone knew about the club and also its newsletter. Even a few upperclassmen who came from another college would look at him and smile, and from their smiles Shekhar could discern that they, too, knew that he was a fool. Occasionally someone would startle him with a yell, ‘Mr Celibacy!’ or ‘There goes the guru!’18 If a few boys were walking together, one would speak loudly enough to be overheard, ‘Friends, you’re all just sheep! Sheep!’ And the rest would start bleating like sheep. Shekhar was filled with hurt and dejection, and he thought to himself, ‘What do all of these people have against me? So what if I’m a fool? Or if all of them know it, why do they have to remind me of the fact all the time when I can never forget it?’
And to hide his wounded pride he would walk even taller, as if the antigonon blossom in his lapel were glowing an even brighter red, which is when he realized that perhaps the women who studied in the college were also ridiculing him.
But that fact didn’t hurt him; it made him furious. He could understand it if men thought him a fool and laughed at him because he was trying to demolish their deeply held beliefs, but these women? If they didn’t value their own liberation couldn’t they at least forgive him for his good intentions? Sometimes he would think to himself, ‘It’s men who have made them so petty and vile that there is no generosity left in them.’ But for some reason this conclusion seemed false to him, and he would think, ‘Even if men had given birth to the pettiness, this mockery was natural to them . . .’ He couldn’t bear the fact that there was this inherent cruelty in women, in the women of India in whom he could see hope for the future; nor that . . .
But one day a classmate said to him, ‘Man, you’ve thought it all out.’
Shekhar responded with some surprise, ‘What?’
‘All of this talk about uplift and reform, not getting married, staying away from women, et cetera . . .’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Yes, it’s a fantastic trick, man.’
‘What are you trying to say?’ Shekhar asked, somewhat annoyed.
‘Please, man! There’s me who can’t get anyone to even look my way, hoping for any attention, and then there’s you, whom everyone is talking about all of the time. All of the girls at this college are on the lookout for you, and the girls in your class are absolutely smitten.’
Shekhar became more irritated and even more taken aback. He said, ‘You’ve been fooled. Please, why would they be interested in someone like me? I don’t go anywhere near them, nor do I—’
‘Stop it, you’re not fooling anyone! Do you think girls like those people who chase after them all the time? They don’t give men like that a second thought. They consider such men to be slaves they can buy on the cheap. They prefer men whom they can enjoy hunting while winning them over—with a little danger, a little challenge. No one has ever even seen you anywhere near a girl’s shadow, so any girl who is able to make you carry her books on your head and drag you behind her will know that she can seriously rival Queen Christina. You can count on that. You can have your cake and . . .’
Shekhar was instantly enraged. But at the same time he remembered that a few days ago a girl from his class had asked him, ‘What are your thoughts on society? It’s for an essay I want to write about it—’ Shekhar said, ‘I’ll give you my article, you should read that.’ But she insisted that she wanted to hear it from Shekhar.
So Shekhar sat with her in the library and explained his views to her with considerable effort and much trouble, and he gave her several books to read. He had said some very harsh things, but when he was leaving it puzzled him that when he folded his hands in farewell a sweet laugh was offered in return . . . And as he recalled this episode he was filled with a doubt that perhaps what his classmate had said was true. Angrily, he said to him, ‘You can keep your filthy thoughts to yourself, understand? I am not interested in this nonsense.’ But he was overcome with an anxiety that people were looking neither at his ideas nor at his intentions but merely at him . . .
He tried to avoid the girls in class even more than before. As much as possible, he would show up to class at a time when it was impossible to talk to him, and he would leave through the back door before anyone else. In order to dispel attention, he even stopped wearing antigonon blossoms, but it appeared to him that it had the opposite effect. The first day that he arrived without the flower he looked up and saw—there were three or four bouquets of antigonons hanging from the chalkboard, and someone had also put a few flowers on the girls’ bench. The next day, someone had written on the board, ‘Where are Shekhar’s flowers? Ask the back bench.’ The back bench was where the girls sat.
He knew there was no place to hide. Sometimes he wanted to run away, and sometimes he wanted to ask a girl, all of them even, what were they thinking, what did they want from him? Was it true that they really were thinking the things that the boys imagined they were, which were expressed by the words the boys had written? And other times he felt that if this were in fact the case, he would be even more foolish for asking . . .
This never-ending dilemma began eating at him. One day he realized that he was always thinking about those girls for no reason—whenever he asked a question in class or answered one of the professor’s questions, he found himself thinking about the effect it was going to have on those girls. The first day he became aware of this fact, he was stunned for some time—Have I really lost? Were the Romantics right, and did women become Fate and unconsciously turn men into slaves and take their lives? He couldn’t accept that! He wasn’t a slave to Fate; he was its antagonist.
At that very moment he got up and walked out of class, wandered around for two or three hours and ultimately, as if defeated, he set out for the ocean.
But on that day, the ocean didn’t console him; so he turned back and went to the night school and started talking to the children.
The exams were approaching and Shekhar’s college was going to be closed for the study break, and it had been decided that as soon as the break started the night school would also be closed down and restarted when the college reopened. The children were a little upset about the fast-approaching four-month-long break and so they greeted Shekhar with extra enthusiasm, and for a short time Shekhar was able to forget about womankind and his own misfortunes. Amidst those children, he felt protective, even capable, and he forgot that he was an encumbered, exhausted fool named Shekhar who was being set upon by hunters . . .
*
After wandering for the entire afternoon, bare-chested, at the edge of the ocean, in the cloudless heat, Shekhar returned home in the evening. He had gone for a swim, but when even after swimming his mind remained restless he threw his shirt over his shoulder and began roaming on the baking sand; when his skin had been burned from the blistering sun he went for another swim, put his clothes back on and went home.
As he ascended the staircase in the hostel, he saw that two of his students from the night school were standing outside his room. He went to them quickly and asked, ‘What’s the matter, Shamb?’
Shambshiv quietly extended an envelope towards him. Shekhar opened it and began reading.
It was a card that had been crafted with visible effort and the writing on it was in large, childish letters that said that the students from the night school had organized a farewell party for the teachers that night, and that they hoped that their teacher, Shekhar, would come.
Shekhar’s heart was moved by a sweet tenderness. He asked, ‘Have you invited the others, too?’
‘Yes, sir, everyone’s been invited, but except for Sadashiv, no one else is coming.’
‘Why?’
The boys didn’t answer. So Shekhar asked, ‘What has been planned for the party?’
‘There will be a celebratory speech.’
‘And?’
The two boys looked at each other and stopped. They didn’t speak. Shekhar smiled and asked, ‘Why, is there a surprise or something? Is there some mischief being planned?’
The boys said, ‘We aren’t supposed to tell you.’ But seeing Shekhar smile opened something up in them and they said, ‘Dinner is being prepared.’
‘What?’ Shekhar said and fell silent. It occurred to him to ask where they had got so much money, but he was so moved by an appreciation of their affection that it seemed insulting to ask that question. He said, ‘You two go on ahead. I’ll be there in a little while.’ The boys left.
Shekhar hadn’t learned how to be suspicious, but for some reason today it occurred to him that the people who had rejected the invitation had done so out of fear of having to come to dinner. The hostel was full of students from untouchable families, and even they seemed to worry that the schoolchildren were untouchables, and perhaps also that they were poor and dirty . . . In his own mind, Shekhar decided that next year he wouldn’t ask those people to be his associates. Instead, he would refuse to meet with them.
Then he took a bath. Wore fine, white clothes. He took three photographs out of his new album, collected a lot of flowers from the antigonon vine when he came downstairs, and then set off for the night school. Sadashiv had gone out somewhere and was going to go directly to the school.
While they were eating dinner, Shekhar and Sadashiv gently chided the twenty-six or twenty-seven male and female students—three young girls also attended the school—for taking up a collection amongst themselves to pay for dinner without asking them. After dinner, Shekhar distributed the photos and the flowers amongst them. But when their hands were joined together in a gesture of thanks, Shekhar took their hands and said, choking up a little, ‘Look, don’t be silly!’ And after Sadashiv thanked all of them in a few words, the children saw that Shekhar was getting ready to leave. One of them said, ‘Brother Shekhar, aren’t you going to say anything?’
Having been transformed from ‘Teacher Shekhar’ to ‘Brother Shekhar’ he found he couldn’t remain silent, but he was already finding it difficult to say anything; moreover, Shekhar only knew enough Tamil to teach the alphabet and get very basic things done. He certainly didn’t know how to express his feelings at that moment since he wouldn’t have been able to do so in his own language, but on account of all of the innocent eyes that were fixed on him he began to acquire a new language of expression, and constructing a stew of Hindi, English and Tamil this is what came out of his mouth:
‘At first I thought that I had come here to help you, that this was my gift to you. But you all have taught me that this was a mistake. We’ve reached dotage by living in our own arrogance, gnarled like dry pieces of wood. Now we have to learn humility from you, to acquire your gentleness, a new life and a new youthfulness.
‘Today, I have on my lips those tiny meaningless letters that we teach you from your primers, but one day your lips will carry the words of a new language which will have meaning, which will have the strength to create a real upheaval and which will destroy both caste and religious difference, will give birth to a new religion, in which all of us will be brothers, will be related by blood. If that day has not come, it is because it has not entered our hearts—but that day will come soon . . .’
Shekhar stopped and looked all around to give his choking voice a rest. Some of the boys understood what he had said, and some had not understood but were looking at him affectionately. This sight made something inside him well up and he called over to Sadashiv, ‘Sadashiv, they aren’t getting what I’m saying. Will you listen to me and translate it for them?’ And he started talking . . .
‘The people that I have chosen to live and eat with, all of them are untouchables, unseeables, but let me tell you, I have found friends among them, found brothers. No one consults them, looks at them, goes near them, that’s why their hearts are true, vital and filled with fire. No one talks to them, that’s why their senses are even sharper. You are those people, you are my only companions and my only friends, you are my only world and you are the source of my strength. I have adopted you, known you, and this has made me happy. But you should not feel gratitude for this. Don’t make yourselves smaller by doing that. I don’t feel as if I am a Brahmin who is leading you forward. I’ve only accompanied you. Somewhere inside, I’m an untouchable too, your brother, too. I haven’t given myself to you as a bit of charity, I have acquired you . . .’
Shekhar became quiet. Sadashiv stepped forward and began translating his speech. The boys started to listen; the older ones stared at Shekhar with compassion and love. Behind them, Shekhar spotted a boy with two garlands in his hands and all of a sudden, he was overwhelmed. He felt broken and exposed like earth that has been upturned by a plough . . . Before Sadashiv was finished he got up and walked out very quickly. He could tell that there was a commotion behind him and some people had come after him to stop him. He ran . . .
It was wrong to forget; it was impossible to forget; he was encumbered, exhausted, and a fool, and he was surrounded on all four sides . . .
*
Again at the ocean, only today it doesn’t look like an ocean to him. Today the gathering clouds inside him have filled up its horizon, advancing to devour him . . . He returns to the hostel, ties up a few clothes, some books and a towel into a bundle and goes to the Adyar River and gets on the night boat headed for Mahabalipuram. The beach in Mahabalipuram is deserted. There are several temples at the edge of the water, and there are tanks behind them, probably covered with lotus petals—perhaps he would find some peace there, be able to study a bit, could prepare for his exams . . .
It’s summer. It was impossible to sit inside the boat. There is no room to sit on the roof; the roof is slanted on both sides. The boatsmen lie somehow on the slanted roof, sleeping, too, and Shekhar tries the same after seeing them do it. He links his arms to the highest part of the roof, in the centre, and lies down. He is fine as long as his arms stayed in place. But when he loosens his grip he feels as if he will slip and fall into the river. The danger of falling somehow makes his spot seem more agreeable. Holding on to the roof with one hand, Shekhar moves to the edge and looks out over the river out towards the horizon.
The moon is rising. Small fish rise to the surface of the water by the course of the boat, sparkle in the moonlight and then move aside, as if they are calling. Tiny fish flashing like lightning below the surface dart hither and thither as if they are writing something in green flames. And because of their commotion, the churning waters also sparkle with an unknown light, as if those green flames have caught it as well . . . The boat, too, is washed in moonlight, and this makes its progress seem even more silent. The boatman is quiet, too, because of the heat . . . Mystery, mystery, mystery . . . It was as if Shekhar was slowly leaving his body, opening out, joining up with that vast, mysterious silence and settling into it . . . The boys from the hostel, the girls from college, the people in the city, all began to disappear from his consciousness, and the blows and wounds he had received from them began to wash away like dirt in that pure moonlight . . . His arm is getting tired, so he puts his neck where his hand used to be, and hooking his feet into a knot of the rope attached to the top of the roof he lies flat and realizes he won’t slip off, that he can lie down . . . Fatigue overtakes him, a very pleasant fatigue, but his head is filled with those schoolchildren, their captivating eyes, this captivating moonlight, and who knows why today but thoughts of Sharda, too . . . It had been two years since he had last seen Sharda—who knows where she was. Shekhar hadn’t kept in touch, but today after all this time, after all this turmoil and bitterness, in this one clean, tranquil, love-filled moment she revealed herself a part of this vast mystery . . .
Sharda . . . Fatigue . . . Moonlight . . . Sharda . . .
If he could only sleep—he could see Sharda in his dreams—sleep . . .
Mahabalipuram is called the land of a thousand temples, and not inaccurately. But the crown jewel of those countless temples is that Shiva temple built on the bank of the ocean, whose door faces the ocean, from whose crude, stone doorway the vastness of the ocean can be seen as well as the dawn of the sun and the moon beyond that . . .
Shekhar saw both of them on the first day. All night long, he lay down on the threshold of that temple and watched the gradual rise of the moon and its concurrent shrinking, as if it were getting farther and farther away. And as he watched it, Sharda’s memory drenched him with sweet caresses like dew . . .
On the second day in Mahabalipuram, Shekhar left the temple only after he had watched the sunrise and then went to sleep. He got up at 10 a.m. or 11 a.m., cleaned up and ate breakfast, and then he strolled back to the beach again. He had taken a book with him, even though he knew he wasn’t going to read it.
He sat in the shadow of a temple on the beach and looked at a stone column standing in the ocean. That column would have been a part of the tower of a temple, but as the ocean advanced it swallowed the temple and its tower and came up to the Shiva temple. That pillar stood as a memorial, unvanquished like the Shiva temple, unflinchingly suffering the ceaseless attack of the ocean for 200 years . . .
Shekhar felt an overwhelming urge to swim out to that column. The view of the temple from that spot would be so beautiful, and when the sun would set behind the temple, how enchanting would be the play of the golden-crested waves on the temple steps . . . It was 3 p.m. He stayed there for an hour convincing himself he was staying so that he could study, then he took off his clothes, tied them into a bundle and went into the water.
He still hadn’t learned how to swim properly. He somehow managed to get out only a short distance. He was panting by the time he had covered half the distance, but the thought that he had just as far to go forward as he did backward kept him moving forward. Finally, when he was completely spent, when it became a challenge to raise even one arm, he somehow found himself next to the column, and with his remaining strength he gripped the flat part of the column and pulled himself up until he was sitting atop it.
But even after sitting there, he couldn’t recover his strength. The tide was rising, the waves were coming in faster and the flat part of the column was sinking into the water. In order to maintain his position Shekhar clutched the column while he sat but it was as if every wave lapped at him more angrily in order to shake him loose. It didn’t take long before Shekhar realized that the energy it would take for him to stay there would quickly wear him out, and then he would certainly drown.
It dawned on him with a certain detachment that he didn’t want to die there, that he was supposed to die in some other way, and that he still had things left to do.
Shekhar let go of the column and began swimming back to shore. There was still time before the sun would set, but the light from the sun was turning reddish and on the shore, the naked children of the fisherfolk had got together and were dancing. Shekhar could hear their voices, but he felt as if they had seen him standing by the column and were calling out to him. And as he swam he began to feel as if he was one of those children . . .
He was exhausted. His hands refused to move and he began to sink under the water. He remembered that one wasn’t supposed to panic in situations like this, that one should sink under the surface and then come up for breath. He sank under a wave, came up after a little bit, when the lack of oxygen made his entire body feel like it was being stabbed by needles. He opened his mouth for a huge breath of air . . .
When a wave crashed over him and he couldn’t get to the surface, he took in water with the air and then sank again . . .
He came back above the surface, opened his mouth and took a deep breath . . .
And immediately was lost in a wave, stunned, drowning.
Then suddenly he let go of himself. There was no point in holding on. Death stood before him. I’ll come up for air again, my lungs will fill with water, I’ll become unconscious and then I’ll die without knowing it. Senseless. Why should I breathe? Death is certain—death. I’ll finally understand what death is, I will experience it. I shouldn’t be afraid now. Someone had probably said that—don’t be afraid . . .
He opened his eyes. The brackish water stung them. A vast, bitter blue. I’ll see death. I shouldn’t be afraid—death . . .
The commotion of children. Are these angels?
Shekhar tried to get up, but he was only able to panic and force the briny water out from his mouth and nose. His back was killing him, it felt as if there were boulders crushing his chest and his entire body was rattling.
He was dying for sure. But why hadn’t he died yet?
He tried to get up again. Opened his eyes.
The children of the fisherfolk had gathered around his flayed body and a man was pressing down on his chest.
The ocean didn’t need him. The waves had picked him up and thrown him out.
He got up with a painful effort that burned deep inside.
He wanted to go back to Madras that night. But it was impossible for him even to stand up. The fishermen had taken him back to the rest house; that’s where he was lying. His entire body hurt terribly, but he felt as if whatever had happened had happened for the best. Now he could live, could go forward. It was as if he were reborn, and now he was ready to face life again. It had been senseless, had been wrong to try and drown his sorrows in beauty, to save himself from struggle. Beauty was nothing if it wasn’t a force, a stimulant. This is what the ocean, that original teacher, that original truth, that original divinity, that original beauty the ocean had taught him! Beauty exists where there is conflict, and only he could see it who had power within him. And he who had seen that primal power even once, had made himself ever capable, he would never stray off course; he could die but would not bow; he could be destroyed but would never crawl through the slush . . .
*
But for some unknown reason, life became a wasteland. Shekhar pulled himself away from any interaction with the people in the hostel and gave up on the Antigonon Club. He shut down the newsletter and dispassionately began poring over his textbooks. He had been over that nothingness again and again until it started to say, you can hide from people, but how will you hide from me? By studying all day or by subjecting yourself to the hard and nearly pointless penance of studying? In the evenings, he would go and sit sad-facedly at the edge of the ocean, sometimes behind a temple built in the middle of a lake some distance from the hostel, where one could hear the sound of the temple bells and the evening prayers, and where one could see the reflection of the oil lamps in the lake, but one would not see the people coming and going. He had been stamped with pain, even though he didn’t know what hurt him, couldn’t comprehend it. Sometimes he feels as if he desires beauty. Beauty is power but he doesn’t want power, he wants beauty. Sometimes he feels that he wants a companion, but that companion isn’t Devadas, nor is it Sadashiv, and Sharda—it isn’t Sharda either, although . . . He wants something more, something different from these, something greater than these—but what is there that is like that? Frustrated with himself, he asks, ‘Do I want a God when gods don’t exist, cannot exist?’
One day, Sadashiv said, ‘Look, Shekhar, we still have three weeks until the exams, right? We can get a lot of studying done. Why don’t you come back home with me? We can study properly in the peace and quiet of Travancore.’
For no rhyme or reason, Shekhar responded unhappily, ‘Do you think that I don’t study?’
‘You do read. But you don’t get any studying done. You’ve always done well in class. But now it seems . . .’
In a sad voice without any sense of confrontation, Shekhar asked, ‘I’ll pass, won’t I?’
Sadashiv didn’t respond to that question. He said, ‘I was thinking about leaving tomorrow or the day after. It would be good if you came with me. And if we’re together, we’ll be able to encourage each other. You really should be able to pass with high marks, right Shekhar?’
Shekhar was quiet for a long time. He could tell that Sadashiv’s invitation was genuine and that his faith was genuine as well. And Travancore—it was Sharda’s birthplace, her childhood playground and perhaps her current residence, too . . . He was suddenly embarrassed at being so abrupt with Sadashiv. But he couldn’t bring himself to say ‘yes’, not even for Sharda. And especially not because of that temptation. The ocean had tossed him back here and this is where he would stay, in this half-dead condition, alone . . .
‘No, Sadashiv, I won’t go.’
‘Why won’t you go?’
‘No. I’m an ill-tempered man—I’ll fight with you and won’t let you study. Also I don’t even want to pass. I’m finished, and I’ll end up taking my anger about that out on you.’ Shekhar turned around and started walking.
Sadashiv put his hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Shekhar, tell me, what’s bothering you?’
Shekhar melted. He wanted to slap that hand off his shoulder, that hand that Sadashiv had used to get so close to him, but he wasn’t able to do that. The touch of the hand changed his mind and the coldness of rejection turned into agreement. Limply, Shekhar said, ‘All right, I’ll come. But I have one condition.’
‘What?’
‘That we leave today—on the evening train.’
Sadashiv smiled tenderly and said, ‘Let’s go. Pack your things.’
When they got to Trivandrum Sadashiv set Shekhar up in a separate room in the house and told him that he could have as much privacy as he wanted, and that Sadashiv would only come when called. The servants would come, though, to do their work. Shekhar turned and looked around the room. He gazed out of the big glass window and looked out at the eucalyptus tree and the canvas lounge chair standing underneath it, and satisfied, he asked, ‘Whose room is this?’
‘It used to be mine, but now it’s yours. It will be good for getting some studying done.’
As if just waking up, Shekhar said, ‘Sadashiv, you are a real friend!’ He felt embarrassed at the excitement in his voice. Sadashiv left.
The studying was going better. He felt that in addition to Sadashiv, the other people in the house also cared for him. He had decided that he would start joining them for dinner, and for a little while after that he would spend some time in conversation with them—with Sadashiv’s elderly and a little crazy but loving mother and with his younger brother. (Sadashiv also had a sister whom his mother loved very much. The painful memory of her death had driven her a little crazy and ever since her mental health hadn’t completely improved.) It was only when he went for his evening walks that he couldn’t bear anyone’s company—he would go alone, wandering who knows where and come back by night, and if ever anyone asked where he had gone, he would say, ‘Around, towards the city’ or ‘Just out, don’t know where, all I saw were shops and more shops.’
After six days of studying, he received another shock.
As he walked around, he would generally read the boards on the shops so that he could remember his way, but not very carefully; and generally he would forget them right after he read them. That day, too, he was absent-mindedly looking at the signboards when his heart missed a beat, and reeling from that jolt he read the signboard again—Sharda’s father!
He was stunned. He went up close to the board and read the name again. Then he just stood there. He started to go inside but he was so agitated that he couldn’t do it. Then slowly, he made his way back.
That evening and the next day he didn’t talk to anyone. He went out for a walk in the evening again and went straight there.
He opened the gate and went inside and saw that there was no one there. He went to the porch of the building and knocked on the door.
A servant opened the door and asked for his name. Shekhar told him. After a little while he realized that he was standing in front of Sharda’s mother.
Her mother made all manner of small talk. She asked how he was, how he had done in his exams, how his studies were going, whether his parents were well, why had he come and where was he staying, and did he want any tea; Shekhar had only wanted to ask one thing, but he couldn’t muster the courage, all he could do was answer question upon question . . . After half an hour, he went back.
When he hadn’t been able to get any studying done on the eighth or ninth day, he remembered that Sadashiv had said that they would only be here for ten days. Would they have to return tomorrow?
He quickly put on his clothes and went over there again. As soon as he entered the gate, he saw that Sharda was standing on one side of the balcony. He also noticed that Sharda had seen him as well, recognized him, and without waiting for even an instant, she quickly went back inside . . .
He went inside and sat down. Her mother was there and he began talking with her. He didn’t turn down the offer for tea today—that would require a little time after all!
Sharda entered the room, and now it was as if she had seen Shekhar for the first time, and in a surprised voice she said, ‘What are you doing here? When did you arrive?’
Before Shekhar had a chance to respond, her mother sweetly asked, ‘Daughter, go and have some tea made and sent for him!’ Shekhar could tell that the sweetness in her mother’s voice was the result of the experiences of decades of civility . . .
He drank the tea and left. He didn’t see Sharda again.
When he got home, he asked Sadashiv, ‘Do we have to leave tomorrow? Couldn’t we stay for two more days?’
‘Forget two, we’ll stay for three! I take it that your studies are going well?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many hours are you spending reading? I haven’t seen you the whole week. Leave some of it for when we go back to Madras!’
‘Hmm,’ said Shekhar and he retreated into his solitude.
Shekhar went back there every day, but he didn’t go inside the house. He had gathered that there was a polite, sweet, but firm opposition being raised to Sharda meeting him. He stood at some distance from the gate and waited for her . . .
On the third day, Sharda emerged by herself. She held a satin purse in her hand; perhaps she was headed to the market.
Shekhar was standing in the shade of a tree. When Sharda approached close by he emerged and shouted, ‘Sharda!’
Sharda’s face lit up, but she immediately turned around and cast a terrified glance back at her house.
Shekhar said, ‘You’re acting as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
Sharda didn’t respond.
‘You came to this place and didn’t tell me,’ Shekhar said with sweet reproach.
‘And where did you disappear to without telling me? I had no idea where you were.’
Shekhar observed that they were walking in the direction of a nearby park.
‘What are you doing these days?’
‘Preparing for the exams! There are only ten or fifteen days left.’
‘Matriculation?’
‘Yes.’
‘My exams are about to happen as well.’
‘Intermediate?’
‘Yes.’
After a few quiet moments Shekhar said, ‘Come to Madras after your exams. You should study at the college there.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ll be there, too . . .’
‘And if I don’t come?’ Sharda smiled a little, perhaps.
‘Then I’ll take it that I am no one to you.’
‘Who are you to me?’
In that dim light, Shekhar couldn’t tell if Sharda was smiling or not. He began swinging the gate at the entrance to the park.
But Sharda said, ‘No, not now. I’m going. Mother will get upset. I’ll come back in the morning.’ And she hurried back.
Shekhar also walked back slowly.
They met at the park again in the morning. The conversation began haltingly, but gradually the dam burst open. Sharda revealed that they had returned for her older sister’s wedding, and that her father had been transferred there at the same time, and they had been here ever since. She also revealed that after Shekhar had left for his exams, she had cried quite a lot. She had cried so much that it made her ill, and that’s when her mother began to surmise what had happened. Ever since then her attitude towards her had changed. She stopped thinking of Sharda as a little girl. Now she treated her politely, like an equal, but there was such discipline lurking beneath that politeness . . . As she was talking, she suddenly burst into a smile and said, ‘I’m a grown-up now, no?’ Then Shekhar started telling her about himself, how his mother, too, was a strict disciplinarian but there was not even any politeness there, how he made friends in college, stories about his Antigonon League19 and its principles, his night school, his frustrations, his friend, the ocean, and the temple and the lake and the lotus petals . . . And then he began narrating how he went to Mahabalipuram, how he went swimming in the ocean and drowned . . .
A faint yelp escaped from Sharda’s lips, which pleased Shekhar—she was so worried about Shekhar . . . Then he began telling her even more romantic stories—about his running away from home, about falling into the waterfall in Kashmir . . .
Sharda interjected, ‘Stop this! I don’t want to hear talk like that.’
‘Why?’
‘Make me a promise.’
‘Tell me what first.’
‘I want something from you. Promise me that you’ll give it.’
‘I will.’
‘Promise me that you won’t treat your life so casually—you won’t put it in any danger—’
Shekhar’s heart welled up in happiness, and at the same time, a courage coursed through him as well. But his heart was racing so fast that it was about to burst . . . All of a sudden he blurted out—‘Sharda, do you love me?’
Sharda didn’t answer.
‘Tell me, Sharda, do you love me?’
Sharda was agitated and she got up and said, ‘I’m going home—it’s very late. Mother will be angry. I won’t be able to go out again. All this time—’
Gradually, Shekhar’s heart stopped racing. He had already started and going forward was not that difficult. Sharda’s avoidance of the question discouraged him a little, but he insisted, ‘I didn’t know what love was, but now I do. I will cherish you, Sharda. Tell me if you love me.’
‘And what if I say that I don’t?’
‘Then . . . then . . .’ Shekhar couldn’t find the words. He was quiet for a long time. Who knows what he was going over and over in his own mind . . . Then he said, ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t ask this now, but you will come to Madras, won’t you?’
She almost certainly didn’t care for this change in the direction of the conversation, but Shekhar didn’t notice that. Disappointed, Sharda said, ‘And what if I don’t come?’
‘What do you mean you won’t come? You’ll have to come,’ said Shekhar somewhat angrily and with a little laughter in order to hide his anger from himself.
Gradually the threads became entangled. Sharda said, ‘I won’t come. I’ll study here. There’s no point in going there. Besides, where will I live all by myself? And—’
‘If you don’t come, I’ll know it’s because you don’t care for me at all.’
Even more frustrated, Sharda said, as if repeating what he had said, ‘Then it seems as if I will have to give you an opportunity to think that I don’t care for you at all.’
‘Sharda?’
Sharda, silent.
‘Sharda!’
She, still silent.
‘Sharda!’ This time, his voice trembling, ‘Sharda, do you remember those days?’ Shekhar rapidly recounted so many of the things that had transpired two years ago—waiting for Sharda on her way back from school, their meeting in a forest of pine trees, sitting together and reading the Gitanjali, plucking flowers and finally that moment when he had suddenly got up and covered Sharda’s eyes with both hands and hidden his face in her hair, intoxicated by the fragrance . . .
Sharda, too, had turned away and haltingly said in a tormented, trembling voice, ‘I don’t think that there is any point in remembering those things that shouldn’t have happened.’
Shekhar stepped closer and clutched both of Sharda’s wrists. There was a desperate plea and a consciously suppressed rage in his sudden movement, in his touch, in his voice, all together. ‘Sharda! What’s happened to you? You love me. Say that you love me—’
‘Let go of my arm!’
‘Why won’t you say it? Say it—’ Shekhar tightened his grip even more.
And then in a voice suddenly straining with rage and tears, ‘You? Love? I regret ever having spoken to you!’ Sharda jerked her hands free, and worrying the dark marks that Shekhar’s fingers had left on her wrists, she ran home!
Shekhar stood there, paralysed, for a long time, trying to understand what had just happened, and then slowly made his way back home.
The next morning and evening, and then the next morning and evening, Shekhar waited for her in the park. Sharda didn’t come. Then, suddenly, Shekhar realized that everything was at an end. He wasn’t surprised. The ocean hadn’t accepted him, the ocean which accepts everything into its blue, it too had rejected him and thrown him out!
He was defiled. If Sharda didn’t accept him, what was surprising about that?
Shekhar told Sadashiv, ‘We should go back now.’
‘You’ve finished preparing! You—’ Sadashiv stopped suddenly and was left speechless, left staring into Shekhar’s eyes. After a little while he said in a hurt voice, ‘All right, let’s go. We’ll find out when we get back just how prepared you are.’ He started packing.
‘Sadashiv, you didn’t ask what happened.’
‘You’re upset. You’ll want to be alone while you’re upset. You won’t like getting close to me.’
‘Sadashiv, how did you come to be so wise?’
Softly, Sadashiv said, ‘I’ve learned a lot from my mother’s insanity. People who have suffered are qualified to be gurus.’
When they were leaving, Shekhar bowed to pay his respects and Sadashiv’s mother said, ‘Son, you haven’t told me when you’re planning on coming back.’
Shekhar was overcome with emotion. He immediately bent down and touched her feet.
With tears in her eyes, she placed her hand on his head and blessed him.
Shekhar noticed—filled with a feeling that was very similar to gratitude—that she didn’t give him the regular blessing—‘Be well.’ She had said, ‘Be glorious . . .’
*
For a few more days that meaningless, pointless effort, studying with those eyes that didn’t see anything; and then dispiritedly taking the exams; and then even they were over . . . Shekhar knew that he would pass, but he would barely pass and not more than that. He said goodbye to his friends and classmates.
And then to say goodbye to Madras he went to the ocean shore.
He no longer had any attachment to the region around Madras. He knew that he would never come back. Now his struggle with nature, the pageantry of his contamination, would take place on some other battlefront. Farewell to Sharda, farewell to Sharda’s land . . .
He watched the tide ebb and flow for a long time, and its unfathomable mysteriousness . . .