Our Favourite Indian Stories (21 page)

Often she remembered the living shadow of the strong, healthy, disease-free limbs and would hear the seductive whispers from the past.

Often, sighs mingled with waves of philosophy and sought to overpower her.

Her friend understood this. After the birth of her second child she had fallen victim to various ailments of the body and was soon reduced to a frame of bones. Her husband, on the contrary, a Foreman in a plant fabricating steel, looked as strong as Bhima.

She always agreed with Kamala. 'Really, who knows about all the pain inherent in housekeeping and raising children? Where does one lose one's shine, one's strength?'

Kamala would nod quietly. She could never think of Surababu as greedy or cruel. She had the keys and he always brought to her whatever he earned. He had also no expensive habits. He could never be compared to her friends' husbands. She would negate her own words and console her, 'It is all destiny, dear friend.'

Kamala could guess her friend's economic condition from her crumpled clothes, uncombed hair and weak body. But she knew that the
paan
-chewing bony figure was a rebel. Her friend sustained her secret spirit of revolt but yet once again she became pregnant. However, this time she could not live to see the baby's face. Before the doctor's guilty eyes her Foreman husband stood with the baby boy in his arms while the mother lay on the bed like a dirty, cast-out piece of linen.

Kamala had heard about this tragic finale from Surababu. With tears in his eyes, the sympathetic professor had given a graphic picture of the event. Through his elegant words the event had come alive. Kamala had felt the loss inside — not as a writer but as a woman. Her consciousness looking for deliverance had, as it were, met her friend somewhere in the sky. She had a sudden vision of the bony face with a curve of a smile, ridiculing life. Kamala used to pity that. Today, she herself was an object of pity. She felt as if it was her friend who had won. She felt like asking, 'All of us shall depart some day. Why then this unbearable existence?' Her pain boiled over as she remembered details and pieced them together.

That evening, Surababu introduced her to a "new person," Srimati Chandra Midha
alias
Usharani Devi from Siam. He told her that she was a professor in a Ceylonese women's organisation. She had come under an exchange programme for teachers. She taught English but was also at ease with Hindi, Bengali and Tamil. She had spent two months at Puri before her arrival and in this time had become fairly fluent in Oriya.

She was guileless, almost like a child. Surababu added, 'I am now proving to her that her ancestors hailed from Kalinga and hence her knowledge of Oriya has been acquired by past deeds.'

Chandra Midha kept smiling. But there was a suggestion of sharpness in the movement of her arms, which she kept crossing and extending. Surababu said, 'Swagatam,' she said. 'Welcome.' Surababu tried to explain to her not only the meaning but the origin and derivation of words. Chandra Midha winked and tried to compare the words for love in respective languages— English, Hindi, Bengali and Oriya. Kamala laughed. Surababu said nothing.

Kamala asked, 'Devi Chandra Midha, how many children do you have?'

Surababu stared hard at her. Chandra Midha laughed strangely, and the ripples spread all over her face and along the pearls of her teeth inside the oval lips.

She asked Surababu, 'Wachat,' meaning 'What is that?'

Surababu took good care of her reception; Kamala did not struggle to get up again. From the drawing room, their laughter floated in. Kamala understood that Chandra Midha was quite fascinating and her laughter was music. She was the symbol of unembarrassed, strong and free life. It was something to be envied. Kamala has never had either that health or that freedom. From her narrow, tradition-bound bylane, she stared at Chandra Midha's unhampered highway. For the first time, she felt a secret shiver of fear inside. No one explained anything to her, but her woman's mind picked up the meaning from a refined level. That evening, she prayed to God to release her from life.

The meaning of an event depends on one's attitude, and that attitude depends on one's mental condition, which in turn depends on several other situations. She recalled the events he had narrated to her and his analysis of them. She was not illiterate, even though she hailed from an interior rural area. She had studied up to primary school and had read out scriptures to please her mother. For her own pleasure she had also read some novels which prepare one to seek out a partner in life.

Looking back at her past, she now felt that Surababu had never loved her, that he had loved only himself and, in order to let that self-love grow and spread out, he had used her only as a support. From the beginning he had attempted to teach her further, had failed and given up hope. She had been taken out on social rounds only when it was unavoidable. Otherwise he remained lost behind his pile of books.

The selfish meaning of his monologue sometimes came back anew to her, 'If only someone had helped me a bit in my work I would have gone much farther in life. Doing a D. Litt. would not have been that difficult.'

She remembered her cooking, her household worries, looking after children — surely these were of little use for his D. Litt.

However, now that Chandra Midha had come, she could surely help him in his D. Litt.

She was after all a dwarf in knowledge, and what could she have done for him?

Often, he gave his opinion on womenfolk in our society. He felt they were good housewives but no good as life-partners.

'Do you understand, Kama?' he would say.'
Dharma
is not idol worship; it is activity according to one's ideal. If the husband is a doctor and the wife's
dharma
is the kitchen, do you think that makes for a good partnership?'

She also recalled his comments on life and society with literature as the model.

'Look at ethics. Many people ascribe new meaning to it and hide many lies, much false pretence behind it. There is no faith in the heart, but the name of Rama is on the lips. Our womenfolk take pride in their ethics but live in the dark, narrow cubicles of the mind. Trying to be careful, they end up being selfish; sometimes the dullest passes off as liberal-minded. And those who revel in sordid rumours and whose minds run in dark directions put on dazzling vermillion marks on the forehead and a broach with "Husband is the greatest guru" inscribed on it. True ethics does not consist in merely reserving one's body for the husband and storing a lot of garbage inside.'

To all these she had nodded. He must, after all, be right. All that must be in the books which he taught to others. She never questioned or raised any arguments concerning the truth of those theories.

Bisibabu, a senior student, often used to come to consult his "Sir." He was handsome, with thick eyelashes peeping out of his eyeglasses. He was a lovable person— ever smiling, and bright, and one always felt comfortable and happy in his presence. Sometimes, when Bisi was closeted with Surababu she had brought in tea and snacks for them.

But suddenly one day, Surababu had poured venom against him, 'Don't trust that guy. He is a camouflaged devil. Please remember this.'

Since then, she had never even come out when Bisi visited. He had such complaints against many other people. Looking into the past she realised that whenever anyone had tried to come close, Surababu had always spoken against him or her. That was perhaps his way of putting shackles on her feet. Behind his genial temper there lurked a lack of trust. So much about ethics, affection, and housekeeping. To her it all appeared to be an empty staying together, only gilt, edged by ideas. Life had taken a back seat. She would never regain her adolescent days, she thought sadly.

Sometimes she felt like blurting out, 'Sure enough your Chandra Midha has globetrotted, known many people and her mind is not narrow. But she has no husband, no son. She does not depend on anyone for a living. Is she like us that she should be afraid of anyone?'

But she always held back these words. She had never been able to say them. She recalled his anxiety-ridden face, his sleepless nights. Was it not after all only for her? The memory of the spring of yesteryears always put her with her husband on a swing where there was no envy, no meanness, no selfishness, only the scattering of flowers of happiness. Let him be happy, let everyone be happy, let my life's lamp burn out before him.

It was as if her body was dying away slowly from the feet upward. Like an empty vessel the mind resonated even with a slight hurt. She always felt that now the body and the mind had become mutually dependent and both were surrounded and pressed down by time. She had danced uncontrollably, but not the dance of youth, but that of a half-dead leaf trembling precariously on a branch in the cold northern wind. It was a dance bereft of hope and forgiveness. How could she forgive another when she wanted to die, not forgiving even herself? How healthy he was even now! Like a stone with rain lashing on it, he had overcome all life's experiences.

Years had rolled by. Age had increased along with poverty. But he too had gone ahead and enviably, had kept his head high. Even now he would get up in the morning, do his exercises and go a mile for his walk. In the morning the earth and the sky would be open before him to seek out poetry. He also read a lot and even played the
sitar
late into the night. And her own world? It was one of physical suffering and pain, a burnt-out mind, the routine of somehow crawling to the toilet and back. When she looked out of the window, she saw a hedge of small and big trees, and in the distance, the back of a house. Leaning on them was the curve of the sky, the water towers, the chimney of a sugar mill, the tall trees and the heads of tall buildings. And enclosing them all, the sky. The lonely, empty sky. Would she go there? When? But inside the body the last drop of life force still cried out to live, to see the changing seasons, the familiar crows, house sparrows, the kites, their movements and changing winds. But when the sky looked deep blue and the drumstick tree bent down with flowers, she tended to forget her disease.

She would call out to Indra, 'What beautiful drumstick flowers! Why don't you cook them for Babu? He is so fond of them.' The sound of human voices outside, brought happiness. When it was quiet all around she felt the dewfall on her chest and tears trickled down her eyes. Like a lunatic or a weakling discovering strength in anger or envy, she gathered strength from a hidden sense of being lost or ignored. With an effort, she brought her endless coughing to a stop. It was foolishness to think that the healthy could go on looking after the sick endlessly. That was a deception, a delusion.

So she would tell him now and then, 'I have troubled you a lot. Please get married again.'

And the reply would inevitably be, 'Do keep quiet. Are you crazy? People will only laugh at this.'

It was true that she had lost her head since the coming of this Usharani. He insisted on calling her by that name rather than her original name. Her name came up everyday. He sang her praise in various ways. And lying in her bed Kamala realised that a healthy man looks only at the rising sun. She often repeated to herself that the desires of the flesh were a mistake.

Only the servant and cook Indra anxiously listened to her.

'This is the way of the world, Indra, never trust a man.'

Indra hardly saw the meaning of the statement. He too had a permanent anger against menfolk. He wanted to be born a woman. Sulking, he said, 'You will become alright, sister.'

The two decrepit boats touched each other through inadequate words and then floated along. Kamala derived some peace from her loneliness. But she could not help noticing the changing mood of her husband and realised how he looked brighter everyday. In his face, in his eyes there was the sparkle of new youth, sometimes in charmed silence, sometimes in sudden startles. There was a new symphony in his
sitar
. Sometimes he returned late from college and then went out again for a walk after dark.

In the beginning once or twice he had said, 'I have to go to Chandra Midha to discuss a paper in Comparative Linguistics which I have written.'

Gradually he forgot to even mention her name. He only kept getting delayed "somewhere outside."

Kamala understood that life would always win over death. That day, once again, she noticed that fragrance on him. Once again he was out late in the evening. What was that streak of fire in the sky? She looked up. The round, large moon came up smiling and even the drumstick tree looked like a beauty in its glow. That was her hope, her pitiable desire. Suddenly, on her consciousness she felt huge waves of a tide encircling the horizon. She felt that she had found something. She had now something to say—hut the words were leaving her. In any case, of what use were they now? And yet her mouth remained half-open. Surababu returned at half past nine. He too was thinking of life all the way. He felt certain that life and happiness were inseparable. So too were death, misery and narrowness.

Kamala lay face upward, bent towards the moon. The mouth was slightly open in a gesture of not having completed what she had wanted to say.

Translated by
Sitakant Mahapatra

Kishori Charan Das

The weatherman had announced that we were likely to have snowfall towards evening. It was the midday news: one John Douglas had conveyed the news to us along with a recipe for New Frontier nail polish. It was his usual hour that runs as follows: a lady's tender and long fingers unfold on the television screen and accept a liquid poured from above. The nails begin to shine, the owner of the hands stretches them languidly towards a packet of cigarettes and smokes away the exquisite moments of leisure. An appropriate music score provides the background to a caress and its culmination. Then enters John Douglas to tell you smilingly that you too can buy these delights if you use such-and-such product of so and so. The story is over, he introduces himself—my name is John Douglas, your weatherman. Today's weather has taken an interesting turn... etc. Similarly we got our evening news, courtesy of a firm devoted to the extermination of white ants, and the late news from a firm dedicated to the care of kitchen sinks.