Between Knowledge and Ignorance
We spent some four years in that tiny, cockroach-infested Kafkaesque room in RK Puram. We didn’t have a television nor any fancy cutlery or clothes. But at the end of the month I’d bring home a hundred rupees worth of books picked up from bookshops. I was paid my wages in cash on the last day of the month and it was not all that easy to spend a hundred rupees out of a salary of around 700 on books. The moment I had the cash in hand, I’d rush to explore the Connaught Place bookshops. Quite a few books had already been earmarked by me.
One evening, before I was to get my salary, Sudha handed me a slip of paper. ‘I also want a book,’ she said. The title was Married to a Genius.
I was not a little upset and said as much, ‘Are you trying to make fun of me?’
‘Not at all, Sudhir, I actually want to read this book.’ So I brought the book and inscribed it: ‘To dear Sudha, who couldn’t marry a genius.’
Another evening, Sudha told me, ‘Our neighbour Mrs Nagpal is an entertaining talker. We go out for a walk every evening. Today, she told me to keep a close eye on my husband and said that these bloody writers had a roving eye and must never be trusted.’
‘Then what did you say?’
‘I told her that whenever my husband begins to take an interest in other girls or women, his mood perks up. So I don’t care if he has an affair. Sweets at home, sweets abroad.’
‘Mrs Nagpal has a very sexy figure, but is this the kind of nonsense she talks?’
‘Then why don’t you start an affair with her?’
‘I have a womanizing journalist friend, Subhash Sandhir. He has a simple rule – never get involved with a neighbour or an office colleague.’
Sudha had a good laugh. Indeed, she and I had a good time until Neha’s birth. She wasn’t a highly educated girl with intellectual pretensions but she had an astonishing native intelligence and an unmatched sense of humour. To this day, it makes me sad to realize how her world suddenly turned topsy-turvy.
Four years after our marriage, when Sudha became pregnant, I rented an airy room on the open terrace of a large house in Vasant Kunj with a kitchenette and an attached bathroom. The terrace was quite large. In a moment of euphoria, Sudha even gave a name to her coming daughter – Neha.
‘How do you like the name?’ she asked me.
‘Did an astrologer tell you that your firstborn is going to be a daughter?’
‘You see, all your friends have a daughter as their firstborn. And mark my words, ours will be too. If you fancy another name, then do tell me.’
‘How about Ramkali, or for that matter, Shyamkali?’
Sudha’s giggles would enable me to take the cares of workaday life off my mind. But after Neha’s birth she virtually stopped laughing. After a while, the doctors revealed to us that Neha was a mentally challenged child and to ensure that she grew up normally, we’d have to work with a lot of patience, hard work and hope. They also warned us she’d grow up differently.
Those were the most difficult years of my life. By then, Sudha had stopped socializing altogether; she now lived only for Neha. She took up a job in a school and that, along with the home, became her entire world. She wouldn’t meet anyone, wouldn’t laugh and wouldn’t speak much either.
By the time Neha had turned five, Sudha herself began to behave more like a neurotic patient.
In any case, fearing she might conceive again, she stopped having sex with me a long time ago and would angrily throw away packets of Nirodh. The trouble started when she began to frequent sadhus, tantriks and babas to consult them about Neha’s future. She also began to wear all kinds of charms and amulets or would put them on Neha. She insisted that I wear them too but I could never bring myself to believe in such mumbo-jumbo. On Sundays or other holidays, I’d religiously stay with Neha, take her out for a walk and play with her.
As for the Prarambh office, while nothing earth-shattering occurred there, things had come to such a pass that despite repeatedly requesting, one couldn’t get a new file sanctioned easily and had to wait endlessly even to get a broken-down chair replaced. Madhavkant too had become stoic if not indifferent. He’d give a lot of time to the weekly but the enthusiasm of the pre-Emergency days was gone. And while I got a lot of time and space to read and do my writing in the office, the general atmosphere was now sick and lifeless.
No one expected a promotion. The management had been sitting on my application for the reporter’s allowance for two years. Sanjay Srivastava had been assistant editor for eighteen years and saw no prospect of a promotion either. One afternoon, Madhavkant came out of his cabin and went up to Sanjay to discuss an article when, all of a sudden, a shy and diffident man like him, who spoke to everyone very humbly and politely, could be heard screaming, ‘Madhavkantji, journalism isn’t practised like this. I’ve been an assistant editor for eighteen years and have no passion left to go on working diligently. You have turned this magazine into something which is barely alive and you have no dialogue whatsoever with the management. The consequence is that all of us are suffering.’
Madhavkant heard and watched Sanjay’s outburst, then bowed his head and went back to his cabin.
Under new company rules, some trainee journalists from Bombay were sent to Delhi as interns. Madhavi was one of them. She came up to my table and pushed a piece of paper across. ‘Sir, is that how the editor and a staffer hold a dialogue in your magazine?’
Madhavi ate a lot of cardamom. She kept a beautiful silver box full of it.
‘Why do you eat so much cardamom?’ I asked her one day.
‘It’s a secret. To have a cigarette, I have to go to the toilet and cardamom comes handy both before and after.’
Madhavi had a boyfriend who lived in Bombay whereas she was supposed to stay in Delhi for three months. She was staying with some relatives in Janakpuri and six weeks of her training were already over.
Then I learnt that our typist Ramesh was getting married. I rarely attended marriage functions but Ramesh had somehow made me swear I’d attend hers so I was committed to go. She insisted that Madhavi also attend. ‘Didi, you must come too. Amar Colony is not far. You can come along with Sudhir sir. Don’t disappoint the new bride.’
Our upcoming issue had been okayed on the very day of the marriage so the office was empty by 5 in the evening. The editor’s PA was there, of course, and so was the office peon. No staffer was keen on attending the Amar Colony marriage. After all, Ramesh was merely a typist. But Madhavi had agreed to come along with me. We were expected to reach only at 7.30 and therefore had a lot of time to kill.
I had a quarter of vodka tucked away in a secret recess of my magic bag. I walked up to Madhavi’s table and pulled up a chair across her. Then I asked the peon to fetch a glass of water, mixed some vodka in it and quickly squeezed a slice of lemon into the peg. All this while, Madhavi stared wide-eyed.
‘Would you also like a drink or make do with your cigarette?’
‘I can have a peg, but only one.’
‘I don’t have much of it anyway.’
She downed the peg in one go, then went off to the toilet to change into her shiny sari she had brought along for the occasion. When she reappeared, she looked stunning.
As we stepped out to head for Amar Colony, Madhavi suddenly said, ‘Sir, I think the vodka fell short.’
‘I am not sir, just Sudhir. There’s a shop close by. I can fetch a bottle if you want.’
‘But where shall we drink? We certainly can’t go back to the office. The peon must be closing it.’
‘Let’s go to Jantar Mantar. There, we could have it at a leisurely pace. No one is likely to notice either, once vodka is mixed with a soft drink. In any case, in this sari, you look like a sophisticated housewife.’
That’s how the journey to the marriage reception of a lower middle class family in Amar Colony took us to another world called Jantar Mantar.
It was becoming darker. Madhavi told me she was embroiled in some serious tiff with her Bombay boyfriend. She was quite drunk by now and raring to talk and talk. I was in a fix.
There were no cigarettes left in her purse. I warned her, ‘It won’t be possible for me to go to a cigarette shop.’
‘Do you see that elderly gentleman puffing away sitting there. Please go and get one from him.’
‘I’ve never smoked. How will I bring you a lit cigarette? You don’t even have matches.’
‘What kind of a writer are you? A lady is looking for a cigarette and you are denying her the pleasure. I’ve never bestowed this honour upon anyone.’
‘Fine. I can bring the cigarette but on one condition,’ I said, as I got up. ‘In return, you’ll have to give me a small kiss.’
‘How small?’ Madhavi was giggling.
I hurried up to the man and told him that if I don’t give my girlfriend a cigarette, she’d be quite cross with me. He promptly lit one and handed it to me. I brought it over to Madhavi and when she had smoked it, I asked, ‘Memsahib, what about my reward?’
Instead of a small kiss, she gave me a very long one lasting some ten minutes. She hadn’t had too much of the vodka but emotionally, she was in a very bad shape. I didn’t have enough cash to consider dropping her to Janakpuri in a cab but we somehow managed to get onto a bus. Madhavi had dragged herself up to the bus stop throwing all her weight on my shoulder and I could hear people whisper, ‘Come on, if there’s no room at home, why don’t you hire one in a hotel. We’d be happy to pool in for the bill.’
Eventually, Madhavi threw up in the bus. I tried to explain to the conductor rather sheepishly, ‘You see, my wife is pregnant.’
Mercifully, there weren’t very many people on the bus now. We got down at the Janakpuri bus stop at 10 at night. I now needed an autorickshaw to drop Madhavi home and was in the middle of a heated argument with a Sikh auto-driver about the fare when a policeman walked over and rather gruffly told me, ‘Hey, both of you must come with me to the police station.’
I was carrying a P.I.B. (Press Information Bureau) card which had a Home Ministry seal on the back. I showed it to him and somehow managed to save my skin. The policeman now turned to the auto-driver, ‘Go and drop the saheb.’ Then he said to me, ‘Saheb, what to do. We also need to perform our duty. On many occasions, people have been known to drug girls to abduct them.’
I arrived at the office rather early the following morning whereas Madhavi turned up at 3 in the afternoon. Sanjay Srivastava asked her, ‘Where were you? I was stuck in the Amar Colony marriage all alone. You were supposed to come there, weren’t you?’
I was intrigued Sanjay hadn’t asked me anything even though I’d been sitting in the office since morning. I was now afraid Madhavi would spill the beans. But in a typically wayward manner, she replied, ‘And thereafter, Srivastavaji, the lamps became bereft of light. I can recall nothing.’
During her remaining days of training, Madhavi and I found opportunities to chat up a lot. She was a liberated woman and highly educated. But she would never again go out with me. One day, I had some vodka in my bag and gave her a hint. ‘Respected writer sir, please don’t turn the office into a bar. The police may not come handy this time around,’ she said with a laugh.
I kept the bottle in the bag only for special occasions. I had this feeling that maybe the lamps might again lose their light on that day. But it didn’t happen. In a moment of dejection, I gave away the vodka quarter to the peon. I was to attend a cocktail party at the Polish embassy that evening where the bag would have been searched by the security staff.
The next day, I arrived at the office rather late in the day, around 2.30. But as soon as I arrived, I was in for a big jolt. The management had packed off Madhavkant on long leave. He was to get his full salary and perks, of course. Our new editor was the notorious stage poet and apprentice journalist Girdharilal ‘Nirdosh’.
After his appointment as the Prarambh editor, Nirdosh felt rather out of place. He called me into his cabin and handed me a letter granting me the reporter’s allowance, something I’d been wanting for ages. ‘Listen, Sudhir, I’ve had no role in Madhavkantji’s removal. It was the management’s decision. Kakkar saheb gave me the responsibility and I couldn’t say no.’
Mithilesh Kakkar was on a Europe tour during this time. I was aware that she hated ‘Nirdosh’. Of course, I got my promotion but at the same time, I could see that the new phase of Prarambh’s decline had begun.
In those days, I had numerous compulsions for continuing with Prarambh. After Mother’s death, Father had sold the large Phaphamau house and bought a tiny one in its place. With the money he gave me after that, I bought a two-bedroom flat in Patparganj. To move into the flat, I had managed to make a down payment of a large sum but still had to pay the balance in monthly instalments for ten years. It was decidedly humiliating to go on working under an editor like Nirdosh but quitting the job meant looking for a place in the world of television reporting, where I considered myself a complete misfit even though many journalists were getting good offers from that quarter.
In the meantime, a nosey journalist managed to get to the bottom of the truth about Nirdosh’s rise to editorship. I learnt that at a poetry evening organized at Kakkar Sr’s residence on his birthday, Nirdosh had recited some of his new ‘hit’ poems in the Mehngai Puran series. Sethji was floored and informally asked Nirdosh, ‘What do you do for a living? Do you manage to get by on poetry alone?’
‘By God’s grace, I am much in demand at poetry evenings, Sethji, but if you ask me, I really want to try something new. If you give me a chance, I might create a flutter in the world of journalism.’
With the daughter-in-law away on a foreign trip, on Kakkar Sr’s one signal, Madhavkant was told to go on long leave and Nirdosh was handed a lucrative contract for five years. Nirdosh’s network included a number of ministers since his poesy and sonnets followed the style so dear to the members of that totally non-literary and virtually illiterate class. Once the daughter-in-law returned to Delhi, she seemed totally indifferent to the present or the future of Prarambh. She now spent most of her time among sants and swamis.
In the office, my reporting allowance had become the subject of debate and it was assumed I was close to becoming the new editor. But the variety of derogatory remarks I had made about Nirdosh while sitting in the coffee house had reached his ears that very evening. The following day, as I was looking for a clippings file in the library, Sanjay Srivastava confided in me, ‘What am I hearing, Sudhir? I am told Nirdosh is very upset with you and your name figures first on his hit list.’
I immediately barged into Nirdosh’s cabin. I had to save my job. Nirdosh thought I was there to apologize but I was ready to attack. ‘If you wish, you can have me transferred right away. Journalism is not practised on the strength of coffee house rumours. You better clearly understand, sir, that I haven’t carved a place for myself in journalism on the strength of flattery.’
Nirdosh was a novice as an editor. He probably wondered why he should antagonize me. He knew how to play politics. ‘Come on, I’ve always been among your admirers. The touching piece you wrote after Dhumil’s death had reminded me of Jainendra Kumar’s article on Meena Kumari. Indeed, I had even referred to that remarkable piece of yours on the radio.’
I fell silent. Nirdosh was recalling a piece I had written seven years ago. I was also puzzled by his juxtapositioning of Meena Kumari and Dhumil. But he promised me complete freedom and advised me to bring any complaints directly to his notice since, according to his reckoning, inimical elements were quite active in the coffee house.
I was now left to writing all those literary-cultural columns. I had realized that that’s where most problems were bound to crop up. My first cover story under Nirdosh’s tutelage was on Delhi’s ‘star’ wrestlers. In the course of my career, my interviews with international celebrities like Roman Polanski couldn’t get me the reporting allowance or any other perks but my interviews with the wrestlers came quite handy. Even Brajeshwar uncle phoned in to congratulate me. ‘Nephew dear, have some mercy on my wrestling pit as well. Give some publicity to me too.’
Around this time, while we lived in Patparganj, Sudha’s closeness with Savita Nigam turned out to be decisive in my personal life. Sudha now slept in a room of her own with Neha. One day, she told me, ‘I do realize that you have certain needs. You’ll have no trouble from my side. You are a free person. I release you.
‘What do you mean by release?’ I asked, askance. ‘Do I now start frequenting call girls?’
‘I never said that. There are many other possibilities in the world of literature and journalism. And you are quite smart when it comes to doing the talking.’
‘There are no possibilities in Hindi literature or journalism. Listen to me, if we have another child, that’s bound to have a soothing effect on you. Everything will fall into place. I also love Neha very much but life has to go on.’
‘No, I’d never again like to be a mother. I don’t have the will. I’m sorry, Sudhir, but don’t you realize how much I’ve changed as a person?’
Our flat was on the seventh floor of a building which had a lift. Savita Nigam lived on the fifth floor. She was two years younger than Sudha but had no children. In the seven years of her marriage, she had become something of a burden to her journalist husband Ashok. She was a lovely creature, always neatly dressed, a faithful housewife who would make scrumptious pakoras in the romantic rainy weather, would pick up new recipes on the TV and address everyone from the liftman to the security guard as bhaiyya. She was quite close to Sudha and doted on Neha, often taking her to her house and looking after her like her own.
Our flat now also had a colour TV. After all, the sports editor was supposed to watch a good number of matches. Sudha said to me, ‘How far you have come, Sudhir. You hated television … Remember what you asked me when we first met at Church Gate?’
But after Nirdosh took over, I came to look upon journalism merely as a job. There was minimum interference from him in matters of sports. The cultural columns had by now completely transformed into garbage bins. In the 1980s, I did some very good work – like taking control of Prarambh’s sports pages. I had also discovered that a home-bound woman like Savita, living in a fifth-floor flat in Patparganj, was freer and far more liberated than any writer–intellectual of the day. Initially, the discovery came as more of a shock to me.
Sudha had told me about Savita’s dissolute husband. One day, he brought home a TV journalist and began to flirt with her in the bedroom. Ashok Nigam worked at the desk of a business daily and was quite smart and handsome. He also had a better personality than Savita and knew how to humiliate her at every step.
I realized Savita’s potential rather late in the day. One day, I arrived home completely drenched, only to discover the house was locked. Since I didn’t have the key, I headed to Savita’s flat thinking she must be busy making bread pakoras.
Her face brightened as soon as she saw me. ‘You’ve come just on time…’
‘Listen Savitaji, now don’t add bhaiyya after my name. This bhaiyya-style of yours has quite a following in the colony.’
‘In that case, you too better drop this ji business. I am younger than you so address me as just Savita … Do you notice the romantic weather?’
God knows what was on my mind but I walked into her kitchen and planted a peck on her cheek. There was no planning on my part. I was sure a housewife like Savita would remonstrate. But the weather and the aroma of the pakoras had infused me with a strange kind of intoxication. I may not have been a dissolute character like Ashok Nigam but I was certainly a clever rake pretending to appear an intellectual.
The surprising part of the scenario was not that Savita did not resist my peck. The shocking thing for me was that since the door was open, her young brother Raghav managed to inadvertently look through the kitchen precisely at the moment I was planting it. He had become a witness to what had transpired fleetingly. I became quite nervous but not Savita. She very endearingly told him, ‘Raghav, you’re a grown man. You must knock when you enter a door.’
From that day, I became her devoted fan. Now if I were to go over the minutiae of our magical seven-year relationship, the readers might claim I was trying to write pornography. Suffice it to say she had no guilt complex, had a remarkable sense of imagination when it came to sex, and nothing was out of bounds for her. Just before our first time, this frequenter of bhajan-kirtan assemblies had warned me, ‘I’ll scream a lot so don’t blame me later.’ I therefore increased the volume of the radio. ‘Now you are free to shout and scream to your heart’s content.’
I was unable to figure out whether Ashok Nigam ever benefited from the remarkable talents of his lawfully wedded wife. I questioned her one day, ‘Is there a difference in his style of kissing?’
‘He doesn’t kiss. He bites.’
Forgive me, but I cannot provide you with any graphic details of our relationship. Though I am dying to tell you how this magical relationship came to an end. Why, a whole tome can be written on our sweet spells spanning those seven years.
I once asked Savita, ‘Do you love me too or is our relationship merely grounded in sex?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Of course, it started out with sex but now love also has found space in this relationship. There is this James Lange theory that when an actor emotes on a physical level, gradually those emotions also come to take control of his mind.’
‘I’m not an intellectual like you and cannot talk big. I love you too. But if you want to know the truth, I love Sudha far more intensely.’
‘What do you mean? I know both of you are great friends. I heartily respect your relationship.’
‘And who has asked you to respect it? We don’t really care. Sudha means everything to me. She’s all that I have in the name of love.’
That evening, I came to discover some shocking facts. One was that Sudha knew all about the relationship Savita and I shared in all their graphic details. She even knew the colour of the innerwear I had gifted to Savita on Valentine’s Day.
I didn’t have the courage to ask her anything more about their relationship and perhaps, I wasn’t even keen on knowing the truth.
After that, I never met Savita alone. She’d come over to our house, we’d make small talk and that was it. On many occasions, I noticed though that she was raring to flaunt her bonding with Sudha, if only to tease me.
Eventually, I realized that Sudha needed Savita far more than I did. She was more lonely and depressed. Many a time, I felt like asking her about the time six years ago when I was away in Bombay for a fortnight to attend a film festival and Ashok Nigam was abroad. During those days, Savita would sleep over at our house. ‘How close had the two of you become at the time?’ That was what I wanted to ask. But I don’t know the answer even today.
I had read in the New York Times an interview with Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni, a very handsome man in his time. A woman journalist, during an interview, asked him, ‘Your image is that of a womanizer. You are famous for your affairs. How would you feel if you came to know about your wife’s affairs?’
Marcello’s reply was, ‘I’ve never wanted to know anything about my wife’s affairs. It’s better if I don’t come to know about them.’
How right you were, Marcello.