The Music of Solitude

by Krishna Sobti

  And your father?

  My father was the ascetic kind. Once he left home, he’d be away for months and my mother would wait for him to come back.

  Each time he left, she would ask: Do please let me know when you plan to be back.

  This son of yours pulls me back. Whenever he crops up in my thoughts, I leave the sadhus and take the path home. Don’t worry. I’ll come back.

  When I grew a little older, every now and then, on some impulse, he would quietly explain things to me.

  One day, he said: The soul has two doors. One to go in from, and one to come out of. If you keep looking at the glitter outside, Ishu, the one inside will be forgotten. You won’t even be able to recognize yourself. And if you keep crouching inside, then your ‘outside’ will become remote, so remote that it will be difficult to track it down.

  Mother would react crossly.

  What are you teaching your son, Pandit-ji. He’s small, so impressionable still. Under your influence, he’ll also wander off, like some lost sadhu.

  Aranya looked at Ishan with interest.

  Ishan asked: What was your father like, Aranya?

  My father was soft of heart and deep. Miles away from intrigues of any kind. He had emancipated himself from being an Arya Samaji and found a master in Ramakrishna Paramhans. He insisted on just one thing: Look to see that right is truly right, and to right a wrong is in the interest of right. Go on about your father. Let’s not pit the beliefs of the two fathers against each other.

  After that, I got married. One day, I was indisposed about something. My father came into my room and said without any preamble: Don’t ever think that your wife is outside of you, Ishu. She is a part of you, because you are a part of her; you are inside her not outside. She’s educated, your wife. Now put your household in order and learn to sustain it.

  My mother was peeling melon seeds on the balcony. Her hands stopped where they were. She seemed to be looking for something within herself. She was observing us intently.

  I’ve often been arrested by that moment, Aranya. She searched for something inside herself and then looking inside us both. As if she couldn’t fathom the meaning of this new stance coming from a man wearing the same old shell. She seemed to be asking herself—Has my simple straightforward husband managed to live in this way with his own wife?

  A simple sadhu like my father who left home so often for the mountains—what would my mother have thought about him?

  She must have been puzzled to hear him give the advice he gave me.

  Ishan couldn’t ascertain whether he saw sorrow or joy on Aranya’s face.

  I buy chocolates for you, but I never give them to you because of calories. Let’s have some now. We get to revisit childhood when we hear the word ‘chocolate’.

  Aranya began to munch. She seemed happy.

  Ishan glanced at his watch and said: There’s no need to sleep in that empty flat. Stay over in the guestroom here.

  Here.

  Ishan slipped a cushion under her head and brought a blanket to cover her.

  You won’t worry so much while you lie here. Sleep comfortably.

  I am feeling so much better.

  Good night.

  Good night.

  chapter sixteen

  Listened to Krishnamurti cassettes late into the night. My mind was running on two tracks at the same time. As if I was placing hurdles in the way of the majestic articulation and cadence of that philosophical voice. I was thinking about what you said. The logic and the mode peculiar to inter-relating. Last night’s experience moved me.

  It was unclear why I was so out of sorts at the meeting of the night with the dawn.

  When I left for my morning walk, it seemed as if my ancestors came along with me. Maybe because I know that I’ll leave no one behind me when I go. It will be a definitive full stop.

  I’ve never seen you rue this, Aranya. Are you really so indifferent to this? But yes, knowing you has also released me from my solitude. I was lucky to be born here and now, and it was fortunate that we met, you and I, at this bend in our lives. We know that neither of us is happy or unhappy, Aranya. We’re both outside our joys and sorrows. Because at this point, neither of us is waiting for any kind of joy. You had said in jest the other day that happiness is not a matter of the mind any more; it is one of financial capacity. If you have the money, it’s possible to buy any kind of comfort. Diamonds, jewels, farmhouses … whatever money can get you … Are comforts the same as happiness?

  You can talk acerbically about yourself, but I read and analyze myself with a kind of detachment. What isn’t there, Aranya, cannot be. Given what there is, need there be any kind of lack? It’s not me who says this; those who know the essence of being have seen the end of both being and non-being. You can’t take the body for the soul just because it resides in the body. And, in the existence of these two, I am.

  There’s also the belief that this is my body. This is I, this is my brain, my hands.

  That which pervades the body, is it not the soul? Is the soul an entity apart from the body? If the mind and breath are not the soul, intelligence and knowledge are not the soul, what is it? Why are these two experiences different from one another? Why does the person become extraneous to time and age and the potentialities of the soul come to an end? Why do mental and physical life come to an end? God cannot make another god. His laws are true and they are complete in and by themselves. That is why there is never any change in Him.

  I am saying all this, Aranya, so that you know what is going on inside me.

  You were saying the other day: Why don’t we argue about metropolises, municipalities and such things and forget philosophy for a while? Why don’t we talk of issues such as streets, water pollution, the sewer system, transport, electricity, water, and the aged citizens who will have turned into manure at the beginning of the next century? We’ll need to acknowledge not only spiritual discoveries but also the very basis of scientific discoveries.

  Yes, the successions of change never come to a standstill.

  The mind remains caught up in experiences. Each experience leaves a mark on it. The impression of experience can never let the mind know the intense bliss of innocence.

  As far as I have been able to gauge, you have little sympathy for those with a religious bent, though you understand the workings of human life .

  It was you who had said: I haven’t burdened my mind and understanding with too much clutter. Perhaps that’s why I still retain the ardour to learn something new, and I expect the same of others.

  I don’t know what I expect of myself, and what of you. Could you tell me what you expect of yourself at present?

  She picked up the pencil next to the phone and scribbled two lines.

  Many thanks, Ishan. I won’t stay for breakfast. I’ll meet you this evening. I will have read these pages by then.

  —Aranya

  Back in her flat, Aranya opened the door and gazed at the room with vacant eyes. She felt neither hostility nor friendship at this moment of parting. She just stood there, with the reality of having sold the flat.

  seventeen

  Aranya felt as if Ishan had placed his hand on her head. A non-physical, noncomprehensible tremor.

  The deep sleep of exhaustion overcame her.

  When she opened her eyes, the room seemed to be suffused with dim light, as if she were in a dream.

  She glanced at the clock. Three o’clock.

  Sleeping on the sofa is not just a skill; it’s a whole science. One can neither constantly turn, nor pull at the slipping blanket. It’s like sleeping while not really sleeping

  It’s strange, this world of dreams. Fish-like memories swim to the surface. Barely have they come into consciousness that they disappear again.

  For a while, the room and its walls had disappeared. There appeared a landscape stretching for miles. The room and Aranya were like shapes within that sequence of locations, as if emerging from a camera roll that had been waiting to
be developed into scenes woven into one another. Like links in a chain of fulfilled and unfulfilled relationships, appearing in a solitariness descending from above. Like tongues of flame that crash and splutter even in this fire that has begun to turn to ash. A while ago, she had seen a deep, dense darkness envelope her. The golden glow of this warm bundle had begun to die down under a darkening sky. Shining on the glowing embers were not the yellow flames of fire but ashen layers of blurred grey. And who knows who was sitting in the circle assembled around it? The faces also seemed woven into one another. The arms and hands of the people sitting around the fire were missing. What on earth were they doing there? Who were they?

  A form descended in her direction from the sky. With an unfamiliar gait, as if taking steps without using the feet, it came nearer and nearer—Who?

  Aranya recognized him. My father!

  The face and features were not distinguishable, but her eyes recognized him. How?

  Before Aranya could rise to meet her father, she saw him walk away, beyond the darkness. From one end of creation to another.

  Is this journey so short that in the blinking of an eye, my father can come from there to here, and then go back from here to there?

  The blanket covering her had slid off. Before Aranya could pull it up again, her father disappeared into outer space, beyond the world of dreams. Where there must also be whole settlements of subtle-bodied dead. And house agents and brokers.

  Aranya pulled up another cushion as, half propped up, she gazed out of the window. That’s the way by which the wind comes in. That’s the way by which my dreams must have blown in my ancient guests.

  In a state of half sleep, she heard the dense, tremulous sound of the violin, tiptoeing across the gallery and echoing through the house. Malkauns. This midnight raga—an invitation to the

  pleasures of music.

  Who was calling out to whom?

  Whose voice was this?

  There was something out there, turning narrative into counter narrative.

  The notes in their sovereignty were marking their proprietary right, knocking at the ancient body and soul, stretching across years.

  She looked at the clock. What? Four. No, three.

  Aranya rose. Throwing a shawl over her shoulders, she crossed the gallery, and knocked lightly at the door to signal her entry. She sat down in the corner chair. The cassette continued to play.

  The tremulous, heaving wave of sound played for a long time, intoning hidden spaces in the still room, caressing old souls in the intimacy of its reverberations. How hard to catch the melody, the beat and rhythm that span this interval in time, making both of them pulsate. The still solitariness of each seems to be undulating on the strings of the violin.

  Striking terror at the unwanted, untimely, unknown—this melody of time.

  The two ancients seemed like they were reliving old roles hidden in their bodies, minds, lives and souls. As if they were repeating the refrain of the base melody:

  There is happiness

  Because there is air

  There is sunshine

  There is water There is the unblemished sky

  There is breath pulsating in the body

  It is still enclosed in living

  When we get there outside it

  And are finally done

  In some portion or other

  In some form

  There will remain a memory.

  We’ll flow with the silences of this earth

  When we are no more—

  near memory

  hovering over mountain tops—

  In valleys, tanks, rivers, and waterfalls

  We’ll remain right here.

  Endless are births and deaths. We live to die and die to live. So that we can begin again, be born again. Rise, and live again. Be reborn, again and again!

  An ocean to be crossed, this universe.

  Rebirth.

  That which exists, wishes to be ever recognized.

  That which is conscious, wishes to know all there is to be known.

  It’s a bliss to remain forever fresh. Be content. Be.

  eighteen

  The crowd stretches far beyond the gates. Mahatma Sadanand Maharaj stands tall on his jeep. Luxuriant saffron robe, the daily dose of opium the size of a grain of rice gleaming in piercing eyes, locks of hair dangling on his shoulders.

  Mahatma-ji is explaining to his devotees: Dharma and faith are the deepest currents of this country. They’re not only the source of life power, but also of political power. Only dharma can root out sorrow. What can municipal committees and city administrations do to make civic life happy? Not even God gives everything to everyone!

  Victory to Maharaj Sadanand!

  Preach to us, Maharaj! Show the way to those who despair.

  The master speaks in deep, dark tones: We are all waiting,

  o devotees. We shall wait. Shall go on waiting. Caught between Beginning and End, till such time as we

  are absolved. Till we take a new birth. Which will happen

  when our number is called out in the Almighty’s office. Mother Fate will herself give the signal to the parents-to-be. Till then, we shall just linger.

  But once detached from the body, the soul will set out to circle the globe. To inspect the global market, going from nation to nation, without a passport. To draw up an inventory of new trades for the future.

  We’ll need to make some provisions for the duration between birth and death. After achieving tranquility this time around, when we arrive again to carry out our tour of this earth, we’ll find that our credit card, international visa card, house card have already been issued. And ration card? No, no, we won’t need a ration card. That is only dealt out to poor Indians.

  True, we may have to wait out the process of arrival and departure. There’ll be a long queue of Indians waiting at the borders of this world. At one end of it, they’ll be distributing condoms and at the other end, Indian children will be receiving polio vaccination—the drops.

  One will need to wait to take birth. The same kind of waiting again …

  But no worry. With the help of the relatives settled in the Beyond, we’ll firm up our public relations with the ministries of the Lord seated above us. Only then will He send us to bask once again in the joys of this world. We’ll need to take the required steps quickly. It is also possible that a bill against population growth may be passed in the Parliament Beyond.

  Devotees, leave this matter to us. After all, saints and sages were foreseen for this very purpose. Cut down on the traffic between heaven and earth. As such your new horoscopes will be issued by the Public Relations office of the Almighty. We’ve already pitched out tents over there. Souls of humans like us are occupied in the same pursuit there. We’ll bring them on board and have them facilitate this.

  At the very least, we’ve taken care of this—that we take birth only via the womb of a high-class mother. Why would we abandon our old chain of birth, cultural mode and the codes dispensed by our law books? Countless are the times that our illiterate countrymen have beaten their heads against this. But the difference between cultured and uncultured castes has endured through the ages. Brahmins have been the agents of the gods, the lower classes of the demons. Which is why the gods remain pure, and impure the servile yavanas.

  Our votes will be cast from this birth. They will be put in the same ballot box that our ancestors have kept safe, in order to protect their faith and beliefs. Whatever the powers-that-be choose to proclaim. It’s only through us and our kind that our cultural heritage can be preserved in a long, unbroken chain, within our own internal network of relationships. How will these illiterates, who don’t have even the alphabet, compete with us? How can these barbarians even approach the kind of threads that bind us together?

  Are you listening? These are hard words. But even if they carry a bitter flavour, they are true. Only too true!

  Forgive us, Maharaj, but truth no longer resides in this world. He�
�s become the adoptive son of outer space. He’s been legally adopted.

  Truth has many forms; in this world they circulate in the form of lies.

  Can’t daughters be adopted by the heavens, Maharaj?

  No, daughters must continue to stay on Earth. It is in the best interest of creation.

  Maharaj, they’ve begun to consider themselves exploited and oppressed. They have begun to hear the voice of some lost soul in their bodies.

  We know this denomination has been exposed to severe grief. That is the decree of fate. But now, some frightful force hired for the purpose, has cast a spell on it.

  We take into consideration only the woman struck by heartbreak and pain. What of the others?

  Mahatma, our law books have some passages, which bring out the nobler aspects of our mothers and daughters.

  But bear in mind that a horse is tethered to a woman’s body. Devotees, it is necessary to keep that beast under control. The truth is that it’s only a woman’s body. Its most profound sentiments are drawn from the bed alone. Thought is not its field. Which is why it is devoured by self-pity.

  Maharaj, are men free of all of this?

  It is through the soul of a man that the Greater Soul enters. Nature resides in the body of a woman. Maya is the second name of Nature. Please don’t enter into a long dispute on this. If allowed that space, it will continue to grow and fester. Suppress it as soon as possible.

  It’s not always good to enter into dialogue and dispute. You are an ordinary householder. It’s in your interest to hold onto belief and belief alone. Hold on to it.

  All together now—victory to Sadanand Maharaj!

  A devotee of Devi asked: Maharaj, may we also declare victory to the Goddess?

  Why not? The Goddess is always paramount. We have no quarrel with the one who is paramount.

  But, Maharaj, her electioneering thrives on other slogans.