by Manil Suri
“And there will come a day, when all attachment is relinquished, when there is no memory of desire, of hunger, of pain, and then, only then, will he know what true freedom is.”
Vinod wondered if people still went into the forest to renounce the world. He wondered if that was what the Swamiji would recommend for him. He never felt bold enough to go up to the dais. As the line of devotees filed past to touch Swamiji’s small, perfectly formed feet, Vinod would stay where he was and try to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.
One day, Swamiji came up to Vinod and asked his name. “I’ve been seeing you day after day, sitting in the back. What have you come here for?”
Up close, the Swamiji looked much younger than the gray of his beard suggested. Vinod was flustered by the intensity in his eyes, an intensity that belied the serenity with which he spoke, and seemed to make transparent the most sheltered enclaves in Vinod’s mind.
“I’m just an observer,” Vinod said. “It’s more peaceful than sitting at home.” Then, seeing that the Swamiji’s gaze was still boring into him questioningly, he added, “You don’t have to worry about me. There’s nothing that ails me, really, nothing that needs curing.”
Swamiji did not press the matter. “I like what your name stands for. Happiness. Come sit closer to me tomorrow.”
The next morning, Vinod found a place on the floor right near the dais. After his sermon, the Swamiji came up to him. “Last night, I prayed for the person you have lost,” he said, as he handed Vinod his peda.
Vinod was stunned. “Do you have supernatural perception?” he asked.
Swamiji laughed. “There are no gods in this ashram. I am a man, just like you and everyone else. I do, however, notice, when someone your age comes alone so many times, and each time so sad, so empty of vinod. Though I think it is not sadness that brings you here, but anger.”
“My wife passed away seventeen years ago, Swamiji. I don’t think I’m sad about her any longer, and I’m certainly not angry.”
“If you’re not sad, and you’re not angry, then you must be at peace. Are you at peace? Is that why you come here, because you’re so at peace with yourself?”
Vinod was silent. The Swamiji shook his head.
“No, it’s anger—anger hidden so deep you don’t even recognize it. Anger that your wife has been taken away. Anger that you have been forced into this path that is not of your choosing. Anger that you were not asked to choose, though you know in your heart that if you had been, you would have chosen the easier way, not this way, my son, not this way, so full of pain, and yet reaching such heights that you have yet to see.
“Lucky are those that have no choice but to go on this path, but don’t tell me you are not angry.”
Vinod found the Swamiji too presumptuous. He got up and left.
FOR MANY DAYS afterwards, Vinod thought about the Swamiji’s words. He looked into his heart, his mind, but could not find the anger the Swamiji had predicted would be hiding there. There was no doubt the man was very holy, but how could one single person be expected to administer to everybody, to be always right?
Then one morning, while he was listening to the record, something happened. He found he could not bear to listen to the words anymore. He lifted off the needle and set the speaker in its stand, then took the record off the spindle. He held it between the thumb and forefingers of each hand. The contact was precarious—a slight wrong movement, and the record would most certainly break on the tiled floor below. He wished a strong gust of wind would come and do the job. Perhaps he should smash the record on purpose, fling it across the room—maybe that would be the solution that would liberate him, set him free. Set him free from Sheetal.
He was surprised at this sudden thought—this idea that he still needed to be set free from Sheetal. It had been so long since he had lost her. Surely he had progressed enough since his years of grief.
Vinod twirled the record by twisting his forefinger and thumb. He felt a thrill as it spun around, as he wondered if it was going to fall. It didn’t. He twirled it again. And again. And again. The record fell.
But it did not break. It wobbled around on the floor, like a giant coin spinning to rest, and stopped with the logo side up. Vinod looked down and saw the familiar red label, the dog still peering with curiosity into the gramophone horn.
He picked up the record. It did not seem to have been damaged. He rubbed it on his shirt and blew on it, then set it down on the turntable. The sound had not changed, the words came out as clearly as before. But now, with each lyric, he sensed something move inside him, some strange and alien force, like a wind changing course, or a gear shifting in machinery. He felt a void opening up where flesh and feeling had been packed in before. He felt anger, a steady, even-tempered fury, aimed at something just beyond his cognition. He felt like screaming, and did, several times, only stopping because he did not want to alarm the Jalals downstairs.
Then his rage subsided and Vinod collapsed into the chair by the gramophone. …this, the night of our first union, came the refrain as the song ended.
LATER THAT DAY, Vinod made his way down Warden Road, past the tall mute buildings facing the sea. It had been months since he had been to Breach Candy. He thought that watching the tide recede would soothe him. When he got there, however, he found that the benches had been ripped out, and a sign announcing the construction of a new park had been erected on the pavement. The water was still visible in the distance, but only through a wire fence in between.
He was about to turn back when he noticed there was a gate in the fence, and it was open. There was nobody around, so he entered through the gate and descended down the stones leading to the sea. The stones turned to rocks, and he picked his way across the slippery surfaces and the moss-green pools until he was at the water’s edge, and the tide was gurgling at his feet.
Vinod squatted on his haunches and leaned his face forward over the sea. He waited for a wave to spray him with moisture. How many times, he thought, licking the salt off his lips, how many times had he and Sheetal…
He remembered the time they had clambered over the rocks to the furthest point they could reach on land. Sheetal put her head on his shoulder and they shared a paper cone of roasted gram bought from a hawker on the shore. When the cone was empty, she smoothed out the paper and showed him how to fold it into a boat. He set it on the water and they watched it bob away on the waves.
Vinod wondered if he still remembered what Sheetal had taught him, if he could still make a boat. He searched his pockets for paper, and came up with a used envelope that had contained a bill. On the back was a shopping list he had scribbled. He tried folding the envelope into a boat, but it was too thick, and in addition, he realized he was no longer sure how to do it. His eye fell on the canceled stamps stuck to the paper—they were all quite colorful—a bird, a butterfly, and a fish.
He gazed at the water spreading into the distance, at the clouds gathering melodramatically at the horizon. He thought of Dilip Kumar standing at the banks of the Ganges, of Mohammed Rafi singing his sad song. A wave of emotion swept over him. He needed something that would float, something that wouldn’t sink when he consigned it to the sea. If not a boat, perhaps just the envelope itself.
Vinod pressed the envelope against the surface of a rock and tried to smooth out as many crinkles as possible. He repeated this several times over until he was satisfied the envelope was flat enough. Then he reached down and set it on the surface of the water. The moisture crept up the paper and colored it a darker white, and Vinod shivered, as if it were his own skin against which the sea was advancing.
He watched the envelope twirl around lazily where he had released it, and then be pulled away by a retreating wave. It stopped at a rock rising out of the water, its edges catching the afternoon sun as they nudged and pushed against the outcrop. Then it cleared the obstacle and spun towards the open sea.
Vinod tracked its whiteness as it bobbed through the waves. Occasionally it wou
ld catch a crest and come closer to shore, but mostly it floated away further in the receding tide. He watched it until it was a speck in the distance, indistinguishable from the countless other specks that danced and glittered across the surface of the Arabian Sea. As he made his way home, as he climbed the steps to his flat, as he lay down that night in his bed, he imagined the envelope continuing its journey towards the horizon. The water dissolving the glue on the stamps, so that the menagerie detached itself upon arriving at the line between sky and sea. The envelope embarking on its voyage across the oceans, the fish and the bird and the butterfly floating free.
AS TIME WENT by, Vinod found his anger spent. He felt a tranquillity he could not remember having experienced before. He wondered about returning to the Swamiji, but was embarrassed to do so, in light of the abrupt way he had walked off almost three years ago. He suspected, though, that he might have attained what the Swamiji had challenged him about, so he did not think it crucial to return.
Now, when Vinod tried to clear his mind, he found he could. He would concentrate on the syllable om, and feel the force that it embraced. He would feel the energy from the trinity that flowed through to fill all of him. He would see the universe being created in a single exhalation of Brahma’s breath. He would understand the delicacy with which Vishnu balanced everything between creation and death. The physical would subside as Vishnu’s cycle came to an end. The lasting resonance of the syllable would sound inside him as Shiva’s sphere began to ascend.
During the day, he sat on the balcony facing the street. Sometimes he saw the bullock-pulled watermelon cart roll by. He remembered how Sheetal would whistle at the melonwalla from the balcony and haggle with him using sign language. He remembered how he ran down the stairs to get the watermelon if the transaction was successful. The cart would turn the corner, and with it, the memory would fade from his mind.
When it became dark, he ate the vegetables and three chapatis the ganga brought him for his evening meal. Sometimes he still felt hungry afterwards. When that happened, he took a biscuit from the tin he kept next to the tea things. He chewed it slowly on the balcony and listened to the sounds of the traffic at the signal downstairs.
On Sundays, he watched the worshipers congregate for mass at the church across the street. Once in a while he noticed Mr. Asrani among them. There were weddings on some days, and he looked at the young couples, so fresh and bright and innocent-looking, posing on the steps for photographs afterwards.
Mostly, though, like this afternoon, he just sat there and tried to hear the sea. Even though at fifty he was not yet an old man, he rarely left his flat anymore. He had not seen the sea for months now, not since the last time he had gone downstairs and decided to walk to Breach Candy. Instead, he would sit on the balcony, and try to remember the rocks there, remember the waves at high tide crashing along the shore, and the seagulls hovering above the foam. He would try to imagine that the occasional raindrop on his face was the spatter of sea spray, that the voice calling his name from somewhere today was the wind sweeping through the bay. Then he would close his eyes, and let the water seep out of his mind. In its place he would wait for the calmness of the sound to descend. Soon the cells in his brain would begin to light up or switch off, to form the familiar pattern, and he would transcend the limitations of the finite, of the physical and the perishable, as he lost himself in the vibrations, as he lost himself in the harmony and the eternal resonance of the beautiful sound om.
IT WAS ONE thing to grasp the base of Vinod Taneja’s balcony. It was quite another, as Mr. Jalal learnt, to get a grip good enough to pull himself up. He tried to prod himself on by imagining the bedroom door breaking open and the crowd rushing in with their lathis. He would make quite a target, suspended between balcony and railing, every inch of his body exposed. There was only one chance he had, and that involved edging his way along the railing to the front. From there he might be able to reach up beyond the base to the bars that formed the grille of Mr. Taneja’s balcony.
Mr. Jalal started inching along the metal bar, turning his feet this way and that, as if doing the twist. His hips swiveled and his buttocks swung, to give his body the momentum it needed. He danced his way along the railing, like a guest inebriated at a party responding to some particularly foolhardy dare. Once he reached the front of the balcony, he stood there panting, at the mercy of the wind. Feet perched on the railing, fingers scraping towards the overhanging balcony, body curving outwards, like a diver now, striking a pose before a jump.
He was at the moment of truth. He could not see the metal grille of the balcony above, but of course it had to be there. All he had to do was reach up on his toes and grasp it. The stone abraded his skin as he stretched up and grabbed around for the bars. He felt the tips of his fingers brush against metal. He managed to curl one index finger around a bar, but that was it. No matter how he strained, he could not get a more trustworthy grip.
Then a thought occurred to him. If he could wrap his index finger around, surely he should be able to do the same with his longer middle finger. And with the next finger as well, which was the same length as his index finger. Inspired by this logic, Mr. Jalal tried again, and was able to get not only the two extra fingers around, but the thumb and then the little finger as well.
Now that he had a grip with one hand, there was only one way to extend it to the other. Closing his eyes, Mr. Jalal propelled himself off his support, reaching up to grab the bar with his other hand. It worked—he opened his eyes to see his feet dangling over the courtyard below. Like those of a freshly hung prisoner swinging from a tree, he thought morbidly.
Only the final step remained, to pull himself up. Mr. Jalal hadn’t done pull-ups since he had been in the eighth standard. He had never got very good at them, his adolescent body always flopping against the walls of the gym as he strained to drag it up. The PT master, Mr. Kola, used to go around and strike the back of the students’ legs with a switch if they couldn’t perform the exercise. Mr. Jalal’s calves would be red and welted at the end of every PT period.
He remembered all the notes his father wrote out for him requesting he be exempted from PT. On some days, Mr. Kola would accept the notes, but on others, he would force Ahmed to run an extra lap around the field as punishment for trying to get out of PT. Mr. Jalal wished now he had not skipped any of the classes, and that Mr. Kola was there with his switch, to prompt him on to the next floor.
He struggled to bring his eyes up to the level of his hands. But he couldn’t accomplish even that. He tried calling out to Mr. Taneja again, but his upstairs neighbor still did not come. Mr. Taneja, he knew, liked to sit in the other balcony, the one that faced the street. He had often seen him there from downstairs, head tilted back against his chair, eyes closed, lost either to sleep or to thought. He imagined his cries reaching through the upstairs flat and rousing his neighbor. Mr. Taneja’s hands appearing like miracles from the air above, to powerfully grab hold of his own, and pull him effortlessly to safety. Perhaps Mr. Taneja would insist they have tea together on his balcony, while they waited for the police. They would chat about this and that, and Mr. Jalal would nibble on a biscuit, waiting for the opportunity to slip in some detail of the message he was trying to spread. Surely Mr. Taneja, with his superior education and background, would be easier to convince than the people from downstairs clamoring so irrationally for his blood.
But no magical hands appeared in front of Mr. Jalal. Perhaps, if he couldn’t lift himself up, he should go back to his other option, of jumping down. But to do that, he should be hanging from the railing of his own balcony, not Mr. Taneja’s, since the current position just added another floor to his fall. Now that he had launched himself off, how would he reverse the maneuvers that had left him suspended here? Mr. Jalal tried swinging his feet to reestablish contact with the railing, but all they touched was air.
He was stuck. It would just be a matter of time before they broke down the door and found him there, like some insect str
etched out in a web. Maybe he could plead with them. The cigarettewalla seemed a little more level-headed than the others, maybe he was the one to appeal to.
What had happened to Arifa? He hoped she was not badly hurt, that they had not directed their anger on her when they couldn’t get him. How attentively she had listened to everything he’d said earlier when they had lain together in bed. He had thought he was converting her, not realizing her attentiveness had been driven by skepticism, by guile. She had tried to find inconsistencies in his story, to listen for discrepancies that would prove him wrong. He had been surprised, but heartened at this reversal of roles. Arifa, his wife, finally learning to use his own weapons against him.
She had gone through so much at his hands. He was suddenly overcome with guilt—he had not been a good husband. Or perhaps he had just not been the right husband. Someone suitably matched, who could appreciate—who deserved—her innocence, her unspoiledness.
And what about Salim? Had he failed him as well? Had he been inadequate as a husband and a father? Mr. Jalal hung from the balcony and took stock of his parenting years. There had been a distance he had felt from the start, a removal from the day-to-day upbringing of his son. Why couldn’t he have involved himself more? Learnt the names of Salim’s friends, gone to his cricket and soccer games, sat with him when he did his homework, not let all the years go by? Why had he allowed aloofness to become the hallmark of their interaction? He supposed he could always lay the blame on his own relationship with his father. That would be the traditional Freudian theory, wouldn’t it—a bit crude in this day and age, but surely still valid. There must have been so many other theories proposed over the years—but was there anything really startlingly new, anything that wasn’t just a refinement of the original idea? Mr. Jalal resolved to try and keep better abreast of things.
