The Cat and Shakespeare (13 page)

Two months later Shantha gave birth to a lovely child. From the moment he was seen, we said, ‘Why not call him Krishna?’ He was so blue, and her father was called Krishna Pillai. She loved her father, so she loved me. I loved the child, so the child loved her. The father, did he love me? Poor man, he was dead and so long ago. Was he reborn as the child to love me? Who knows? Shantha’s mother said our Krishna looked just like his grandfather. After all, you see what your eyes see. That is the root of the problem, said Shantha. So we gave the child no name.

I should be happy with the child, with Usha who had returned to me after spending the Christmas holidays with her mother, and the cat. But I can never be happy. How can you know you are an Indian? You must know India. If I am to be happy I must know happiness. What is happiness?

Govindan Nair’s definition is, of course, simple: The mind that is not when the cat carries the kitten, that is happiness. That’s not very clear. It is just like saying, my nose is that which I catch by carrying my hand behind my head, and turning round quickly hold a facial projection which could be called my olfactory organ. Strange, such roundabout definitions. Man, do two and two make four or not?

‘First tell me what two is, and I shall answer the rest,’ he said, and laughed. ‘You
is
one. I
is
one. Where is the two?’ he asked. I heard the baby cry, so I went to give the feeding bottle to him. And I sang a song and sent the baby to sleep:

Jo, jo, push the cradle, jo,
push the cradle of Sri Rama,
push the cradle of Victorious Rama,
push the cradle of Sita’s Lord, Rama,
push the cradle, jo.

I sing of man because he is my neighbour. After all, one’s big neighbour is oneself. The neighbour’s neighbour is always the Self. I speak of the wall and the cat which make the world I live by. Usha is my daughter, and she has a bad cold and is in bed. Shantha’s child is two months old, and still we’ve given him no name. ‘Call him man. Mister,’ says Govindan Nair. For him, nothing is particular, a chair means all chairs, a knife means all knives, a clerk means all the clerks that go on bicycles to offices, sneezing and wheezing like Abraham. Even a bicycle for him means only a B.S.A. Shall I call my son man? I have made a secret vow. If Govindan Nair is acquitted (for alas, he was arrested by Rama Iyer, not on a charge of attempted homicide, which would have been legitimate, but on a charge of bribery with the one-hundred-nine-rupees document), I’ll call the boy Govinda, Govinda, but from the way Govindan Nair laughs and teases Rama Iyer one knows the case is lost. As I told you, Govindan Nair had passed his first year in law. Besides, he was born as it were for argument. He could never see anything except in definition of its situation. If I said, for example, the
bilva
tree, his mind would not think of Shiva and the hunter, as it would occur to you and to me, but he would think of the manure the tree must have had (rotten banana leaves, of course), and of the man who planted it and was it morning or evening when it was planted. The man who had planted it became so important that I teased him often and said the mother is more important than the son. Yes, he said, that is so. The kitten is held at the scruff of the neck by the cat. Who is more important, sir? How can you argue against that?

In fact I used to send food to Govindan Nair at the Central Jail. He said, ‘When you were ill I sent you food (and Shridhar came to you), and now I am ill (for what is jail but a philosophical illness?), you send me food, and Usha.’ The face of Usha made Govindan Nair happier than anything on earth. He was convinced Usha was Shantha’s child. That was again the way with him. If he saw black and found it brown, he could prove it was brown because he saw only brown. His argument was so simple: ‘Is there seeing first, or the object first? If I have drunk a glass of coffee with milk and in actual fact I have not, but believe I have, which is more real, my exhilaration or the coffee that was drunk? Proof is only oneself. Proof simply means I know. So brown is brown. Don’t you believe you exist, even though you know you will die? How do you say that, Mister? When you know this rotten fat thing, with pus, blood, excreta, with semen for procreation, and bile for digestion, with the five sheaths and the nine supports (called
dhatus
by our forebears), the blood that oozes to the heart and the urine that is thrown out—this filthy sack of the five elements, what does it become? It stinks, sir, it stinks when it is laid on fire. It not only stinks, but as in the case of Bhoothalinga Iyer, it sits up suddenly in the middle of its end, it sits up, and one would think it was going to shout an order: Hey, there (sneeze, sneeze, two sneezes are good)! Hey there, bring me the Ummathur file and seventeen sacks of rice gone—and yet it’s a half-corrupt, half-burned thing purring with many fluids. “Chee-Chee!” This body. And this mind, with its encaged gramophone record, another His Master’s Voice, and all it needs is a white dog listening to its music. Yes, that’s the mystery, sir. The dog listens to this mechanical music. Hey, ho, you say:

I see waterpots,
Going to the Ganges, my love
I see my maid going to
The morning of marriage, etc., etc.

And you hear the gramophone. The difference is not only that you have to change the record. You have to change the needle as well. But whether you sing a cinema song or you sing a hymn to Shiva, the box is just the same, only the needle talks to the record. Who made the record? Eventually you made it, for you go to buy it, and he who sells it made it because you will buy it, and he who sings knew there would be a buyer, so you are the cause of the song. Now sing, Man:

I am empty as a tamarind seed,
The lord plays the square and
four with me.

That is right. When you are reminded that you are empty as a tamarind seed, you see it and say it again, you know the tamarind seed is empty. And begin to think of the play. And where play begins, reality begins. Reality is only where you go to prison and say, close the door and open the door. Any door can open and any door can close. What is special about a prison door that you call it prison door? In dream you must have gone to a house from which you could not escape. The staircase fell off and the upper wall had gone somewhere. On waking up, do you say, I am falling, I am falling? You say, I played in the dream. You go to the office and go up the staircase with the ration shop below (and its huge scale), and you put your coat down and sharpen your pencil and say: Let me look into the Ummathur file. Then suddenly you remember that in the dream Bhoothalinga Iyer was shouting, “Nair, Nair, I missed my train to Coimbatore. What shall I do?” Did he miss his train to Coimbatore? Is that what he wanted to say on getting up and sitting on his pyre? Where has he gone? Where has Bhoothalinga Iyer gone? Lord, do you know?’ etc., etc.

There is no argument against a man like Govindan Nair, who will bring a staircase from his dream to prove that Bhoothalinga Iyer has gone to Coimbatore. His further argument is: Prove to me that Bhoothalinga Iyer is not in Coimbatore.

You may say he is talking nonsense. No sir, he is talking sense. You never saw a man talk more sense than Govindan Nair. Even Usha says she can understand him. I cannot. Shantha can, and the cat seems to understand. But I read
The Hindu
too much, that is the trouble with me, and I cannot understand. What can
Malayalarajyam
say, except what its correspondents see? But Govindan Nair talks of only what he sees. That means he does not talk. And this is the secret of his state.

The white-clad judge, Mr Gopala Menon, said in the palace-like court by the railway line which every advocate knows so well—the name-boards of the advocates look like coconuts on a tree, there are so many in the building across: Vishwanatha Iyer, BSc, LLB; Ramanujan Iyengar, MA, ML, Advocate High Court; Mr Syed Mohammed Sahib, Advocate; R. Gangadharan Pillai, High Court Advocate; S. Rajaram Iyer, Advocate; etc., etc.—the judge said: ‘I cannot follow your argument, sir. Will you repeat?’

‘Mr Bhoothalinga Iyer, of blessed memory,’ Govindan Nair started, ‘used to visit certain places whose names are not mentioned in respectable places.’ (‘Ho, ho!’ shouted one or two persons in the gallery.) ‘If I do not mention the name, it is because many persons whose faces I see before me now, if I may say so, betake themselves there.’

‘My Lord, such insinuations are not to be permitted in open court,’ shouted a member of the bar.

‘The sun shines on the good and on the wicked equally, like justice. Please go and close the sunshine before you say: this should not be discussed in open court.’

Court: ‘The Accused is free to do what it likes.’

‘I was only saying: Whether you close the door and sit like photographers in the darkroom or you come out, the sun is always open. The Maharaja of Travancore, sir—’

‘Say His Highness.’

‘Yes, His Highness the Maharaja of Travancore is there, whether his subjects—say some fellow in the hill tribes—knows his name or not.’

‘So?’

‘So what is real ever is.’

‘That is so,’ cried the Government Advocate.

‘Yes, but we never want to see it. For example, that a worthy man like Bhoothalinga Iyer (of blessed memory) used to visit places of little respectability.’

‘So?’

‘So, he met there, one day, a lady of great respectability.’

‘Your statements are so contradictory.’

‘Your Lordship, could I say Your Lordship without the idea of an Accused? Could I say respectable without the ideas of unrespectable coming into it? Without saying, I am not a woman, what does the word man mean?’

‘Yes, let us get back to Bhoothalinga Iyer.’

‘Mr Iyer used to visit such a place.’

‘And then?’

‘One day after visiting such a place, he met me at the door.’

‘Yes, go on. Did he?’

‘Of course. I went there regularly. My wife will tell you.’

‘Oho,’ exclaimed Advocate Tirumalachar from the bar table.

‘And at the door he said: “Every time I commit a sin, I place a rupee in the treasure pitcher of the sanctuary. I tell my wife this is for me to go to Benares one day. But the treasure pitcher is tightly fixed with sealing wax. There is here in this place a respectable woman. I like her and she likes me. When I went in, as usual, this time, however, a new woman, a Brahmin woman, I think an Iyengar woman, came. She said her husband was dead. I knew I was going to die soon, being old. But I was in a hurry. So I told her: Do not worry, lady. I will go and tell your husband everything. He will understand. She became naked and fell on the bed. Her breasts were so lovely.”’

‘This is sheer pornography,’ said an elderly advocate with a big nose.

‘I am quoting evidence, Sir,’ continued Govindan Nair.

‘And she played with her necklace that lay coyly on her bosom.’

‘And what did he do?’ asked a counsel for the Government.

‘He did nothing.’

‘Ha, ha, ha,’ laughed many of the advocates.

‘The dignity of the Court demands better behaviour,’ said the Government Advocate. He had never had to argue against so strange a man. He got terrifically interested in his opponent.

‘He not only did nothing, sir. Mr Bhoothalinga Iyer was a man of generous heart—’

‘To propose immorality as a generous thing!’ mumbled Advocate Tirumalachar. Tirumalachar, who looked fiftyish and fair, was known for his deep religious sympathies. He was president of the Radha-Soami Sangh, Trivandrum.

‘What do advocates defend?’ asked the judge.

‘Morality,’ said Tirumalachar, rising and adjusting his turban.

‘You defend man,’ said the Government Advocate. ‘But law says we defend the Truth. The law is right.’

‘The Government Advocate has said the right thing. Now, Accused, continue.’

‘My Lord, I was saying: One day after the whole office was empty and Bhoothalinga Iyer was alone, he said: “Govindan Nair, stay there. I have a job for you.” And he produced the Benares pot that he had hidden deeply in the sample rice sack. There was one sack always in the office. Who would look into it? So he produced the Benares pot and said: “Go to Mutthalinga Nayak Street and in the third house right by the temple Mantap there must be a widow called Meenakshiamma. Please hand over this one hundred and nine rupees. That is all there is in it. I told my wife yesterday to go to the cinema with my son-in-law. She went. I stole this and came here. I opened the office. I had the key. Today I have sent her to the zoo with my son-in-law. Then there is Pattamal’s music at the Victoria Jubilee Hall. Therefore they will come late, but I must return home quietly. I know you are a man with a big heart, so please do this service for me. She will wait for you.”’

‘In English you call this a cock-and-bull story,’ said Tirumalachar.

‘You could, if you so want, call it a hen-and-heifer story,’ said Govindan Nair, and laughed.

‘Who then was the witness?’

‘As one should expect in such a cock-and-bull story, a cat, sir, a cat,’ said Govindan Nair seriously.

The Judge rose and dismissed the court. He called the accused, and said: ‘Please speak the truth.’

And Govindan Nair, with tears running down from his big black eyes, answered: ‘Your Lordship, I speak only the truth. If the world of man does not conform to truth, should truth suffer for that reason? If only you knew how I pray every night and say: “Mother, keep me at the lotus feet of Truth. The judge can give a judgement. The Government Advocate can accuse. Police Inspector Rama Iyer can muster evidence. But the accused alone knows the truth.’

‘How right you are,’ said the judge, flabbergasted. He had never thought of this before. ‘Tell me then, Mr Govindan Nair, how can a judge know the truth?’

‘By being it,’ said Govindan Nair as if it were such a simple matter. After all, he had cut a passage in the wall where Shridhar used to talk to Usha. After all, who could say Bhoothalinga Iyer had not gone to Coimbatore? For example, Abraham could not, as he would lose his job (and with it his green B.S.A. bicycle) if the boss returned. Suppose Shantha’s child were really Bhoothalinga Iyer reborn? Who could know? The cat could, was Govindan Nair’s conviction.