Srikanta

by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay

  I am aware that my critics are getting impatient. ‘Why all this beating about the bush?’ they grumble at me. ‘Why don’t you confess the honest truth—that you were falling in love with Pyari? And since that is the truth don’t drag your Annada Didi into it. Whatever you may say, however you may say it, one thing is certain. The image of stoic idealism that you say was stamped in your soul, must have been as insubstantial as mist. Otherwise you could never have replaced it with that of a prostitute’s physical perfections.’

  I will not argue my case for I know that argument will get me nowhere. People will call me a humbug and a hypocrite and I must resign myself to hearing these words. Yet, I was not a hypocrite. The only sin I was guilty of was that of omission. I had not kept track of my unconscious motivations. Today, when one—the least worthy of them—rose up and proudly claimed the highest seat I was bewildered and could not control it. My head was bowed in shame but my soul danced on a wave of ecstasy.

  ‘Babu Saheb!’

  I sat up in bed. It was the prince’s servant. With a respectful salaam he bade me come to His Highness’ tent as a large crowd had gathered there, anxious to hear the events of the night.

  ‘How do they know I went?’

  ‘His Highness’ guard saw you return at dawn.’ I washed the sleep out of my eyes and, changing into fresh clothes, walked over to the prince’s quarters. As I entered I was welcomed by a chorus of voices clamouring all at once. The old man who had challenged me yesterday stood by the prince, his eyes burning with a fanatical light. Pyari and her musicians occupied one corner. I looked in her direction but she refused to meet my eyes. She sat in sullen silence, eyes downcast—face averted.

  When the clamour subsided, His Highness spoke. ‘Well done, Srikanta! You’re a brave man. What time was it when you reached the burning-ghat?’

  ‘Between twelve and one o’clock.’

  The old man spoke, ‘It was the most inauspicious hour. The moon had dropped its last digit by half past eleven and amavasya had set in.’

  Several people spoke at once but my host’s voice—anxious and frightened—rose above the others. ‘What happened then? What did you see?’

  ‘Human skulls and skeletons.’

  ‘Were you at the edge of the burning-ghat?’

  ‘I walked right in and sat on a sand heap.’

  ‘Could you see anything from where you sat?’

  ‘A vast sandy shore.’

  ‘And—?’

  ‘Tussocks and catkins and silk-cotton trees.’

  ‘And—?’

  ‘The river ….’

  ‘I know all that,’ His Highness broke in impatiently. ‘Didn’t you see anything else? Anything—you know what I mean?’

  ‘I saw a couple of bats. They flew over my head,’ I said, laughing at my host’s expression. The old Bihari came forward and asked in Hindustani, ‘You didn’t see any spirits?’

  ‘No.’

  My reply was disappointing to a tent full of people. The old man voiced the collective indignation.

  ‘What you are saying is nonsense,’ he cried passionately. ‘You haven’t been to the burning-ghat.’

  I smiled at this childish outburst. His Highness gripped my arm.

  ‘Tell me truthfully, Srikanta. What did you see?’

  ‘I told you I saw nothing.’

  ‘How long did you stay?’

  ‘Three hours.’

  ‘In three hours you saw nothing and heard nothing?’

  ‘I heard a good deal.’

  At this everyone in the tent sat up. Some of them crept up close to me, their faces avid with curiosity. I told them of the night-bird that had shrieked ba-ap; of the baby vulture that had whimpered for his mother; of the sudden gusts of wind that had set the skulls sighing and moaning and of the skeleton that had breathed a cloud of icy vapour over my neck and ear. I think I told my story well for long after it was over my audience sat silent—as still and grave as rows of stone figures.

  At last the old Bihari spoke. ‘Babuji,’ he said, ‘you are a true Brahmin, or else you would never have come back alive. But promise this old man that you’ll never take such a risk again. Blessed are the parents who gave you birth. It was their penance that saved your life.’

  He then proceeded to explain the phenomena I had described in terms of the supernatural, and so strong was his language and so great his histrionic power that even I—unbeliever as I was—felt runnels of ice-water trickling down my spine. I sensed a trembling body close behind me. I turned my head and saw that it was Pyari. She had left her place and had crept up to where I sat. Her eyes were enormous in a face as white as paper and her cheeks were streaked with unwiped tears. Whenever I thought of Pyari, in later years I thought of her like that. That white-flower face, rain-drenched and drooping, was welded in a flash to the deepest sources of my being. At the conclusion of the discourse she rose quietly and bowing to the prince, begged leave to retire. Then, without a glance at anyone else, she walked out of the tent.

  I was to have left the camp that morning but, overcome by a curious lethargy and depression—the result, no doubt, of my night’s vigil at the burning-ghat—I decided to take His Highness’ advice and postpone my departure. I returned to my tent and lay down but sleep wouldn’t come. I thought of Pyari and of how she had refused to meet my eyes. In the few days that I had known her she had been deep and tender, spirited and provocative, even sharp and shrewish at times, but never cold—never aloof and withdrawn. Yet her indifference did not hurt. It gladdened and warmed my heart. I knew little of the psychology of young women but something—the minutest fragment of the collective knowledge of the world that lay unbeknown within me—told me that this was another expression of Pyari’s love. Her indifference did not spring from pride or dislike but from a sense of injury. I had ignored her entreaties; had not thanked her for sending a search-party and had refused to meet her after my return. She was suffering—as only a woman can suffer—from what she believed to be a thwarted and unrequited love.

  I slept fitfully through the day—the hope that Ratan would come for me making me restless. But afternoon waned into evening and still Ratan did not come. The conviction that Pyari would send for me was so strong that I felt sure Ratan had come into my tent and, seeing me asleep, had left. ‘The fool!’ I thought angrily. ‘Why couldn’t he wake me up?’

  I was assailed by a sense of loss. The mellow green-gold winter afternoon could have been ours together and I had wasted it in dull, stupid sleep. There was no doubt in my mind that Ratan would come again after dark. He would leave a message or a note or an invitation to come to Pyari’s tent. The sun was quite low in the west but it would take some hours for darkness to set in. What could I do to fill in the hours before Pyari sent for me? Shading my eyes with my hand I looked out on the landscape.

  A vast sheet of shimmering water lay ahead, I walked towards it and sat on the crumbling bank. It was an enormous lake nearly a mile across—so old that no one knew its age or history. The locals believed that villages had once flourished around it and drawn their source of life from its waters. Then a terrible wave of cholera had devastated the land. There had been a mass exodus and the lake had been abandoned. Over the years large parts of it had been reclaimed by the forest swamp. From where I sat I could see deserted homesteads crumbling to dust and dark brooding tamarisks creeping over the lake on stealthy feet. The water was still and black except where the slanting rays of the setting sun turned it into liquid gold. Then the gold burnt out into ashes and the mauve-grey mists of twilight fell over the lake. A jackal slunk out of the jungle and stood for a moment silhouetted against the fading light.

  It was time I rose and went back to the camp. But some power beyond my control willed me to stay. I thought of the many people who had inhabited the land around the lake before pestilence had stricken their ranks. Gaunt, grim-faced men passed me like figures in a shadow show. Women, long dead and gone, rose from the lake and walked away, dripping water a
s they went. The ghosts of little children laughed and played as they bathed in the twilight. I saw innumerable men and women in the last throes of death, staggering to the lake on unsteady feet only to drop down—their thirst unquenched.

  ‘Babuji,’ the old man had said, ‘death is not the end. The unhappy soul lingers on, thirsting for the joys of the flesh long after the body is consumed to ashes.’

  In the morning light that had streamed into the tent, his words had fallen on deaf ears. Now, in this desolate darkness, they took shape and form and were imbued with a deeper meaning. I understood, in a flash of intuition, that if anything truly exists in life—it is death. We nurture our joys and sorrows, loves and hates, desires and renunciations through all our living years for the supreme moment of consummation that is death. After that—what? I had never asked this question before. Today, I did.

  A light footfall behind me shook me out of my reverie. I looked back but there was no one and nothing but the deep, dense gloom. I stood up and started on the walk back. What hour was it? By the look of the sky it was well past midnight. How long had I sat by the bank of a dead lake communing with creatures who had long since shed their mortal frames? Were my nerves playing tricks on me? Why else did I feel I had been walking for hours and hours? Something that looked like a gigantic bamboo clump loomed ahead of me. Had it been there when I walked to the lake? On reaching the spot I found that my eyes had deceived me. It was the shadow thrown by three immense tamarind trees which, entwined together for centuries, reared up hydra-headed to meet the sky. A thread-thin track serpentined below it. It was so dark that I could not see my own hand. A drumming sound filled my ears which I knew to be the beating of my heart. I shut my eyes and walked rapidly past the spreading tangle of trees. When I opened them again I saw something I dimly recognized—almost as if from another life—the bridge across the river on which I had stood last night. How did I get here? My legs trembled and almost gave way. But, driven by a force I did not understand, I ran till, my lungs fit to burst, I stood on the bridge viewing the mahasamsan at my feet. But the inexorable footsteps that had driven me from one land of the dead now led me to another. I climbed down the bridge as if in a dream, walked through the forest of silk-cotton trees till I came to the burning-ghat. Almost fainting with weariness I sank down in the dust and shut my eyes. The footsteps I had followed did not falter. They went ahead growing fainter as they entered the heart of the mahasamsan.

  Ten

  IF MY READERS EXPECT ME TO EXPLAIN THE EVENTS OF THE NIGHT I must beg leave to cry off. Why I walked those long miles from the lake to the burning-ghat and whose footsteps lured me on is a mystery—even to me and I prefer to let it lie undisturbed. This distaste for analysis does not indicate a regression in terms of my distrust of the spiritual. Far from it. In fact, my nightmarish journey from one dead man’s land to another puts me in mind of a strange character I had known in my boyhood.

  He was an old, half-crazed peasant who begged for a living during the day and played funny tricks on his benefactors at night. Draping a white sheet on a ladder he would walk about with it, to the terror of the villagers. Sometimes he covered his face with soot and, peeping through windows, called out to the occupants in a nasal voice. During the day he was the picture of humble obsequiousness. At night he transformed himself into a malicious imp—so clever that though many suspected him, no one ever caught him. When he lay dying he confessed everything and with his death the village was rid of its ghosts. But he never explained why he had played these pranks and what he had gained by them. That remained a mystery—perhaps even to him. Some such character may have been abroad on the night of my sojourn from the lake to the burning-ghat.

  To go back to what I was saying. When I dropped down at the edge of the burning-ghat, the footsteps I had been dogging grew faint and were lost in the sounds of the night. As they faded on the air they said to me, ‘For shame. Did you walk all these miles only to stop like a coward on the threshold? Take courage. Come all the way. Come right where our hearts beat. Become one of us.’

  I don’t know if I heard these words or only felt them in my blood as it pounded and pulsed in my brain. Then, for a long while, I sat motionless till my eyes glazed and the blood grew cold and heavy in my veins. But, even in that state of suspended life, a spark of consciousness urged me to turn back, to flee to the mortal world where I belonged. But I could not move. A lassitude, sweet and heavy, weighed down my limbs. I was content to sit where I was, alone with the night.

  I realized then, as never before, that night had a beauty unparalleled by any other universal phenomenon. Darkness flowed out of a vast vault of sky and I floated on its waves. How exquisite was this ocean of unfathomable darkness! I wondered who the fool was who first taught man to glorify light and discredit the dark. Darkness is the first, the primeval truth that lies at the heart of Creation, I thought. It broods over all that is deep, inexplicable, eternal and infinite in the Universe. Pervading darkness shrouds the source of all light and all life—that is God. Even Death—the one inexorable truth in the life of all created things—is a journey through chasm after chasm of impenetrable darkness. Just such a wondrous, awesome darkness must have filled Radha’s eyes with the love that flooded the world! My whole being quivered in ecstasy at the thought. I was in the midst of death and Death, like the eternal lover, was strange and darkly beautiful. I rose and followed Death’s silent footsteps.

  ‘Beloved,’ I murmured as I went, ‘release me from the pain and weariness of living. Carry me on your wings to that infinite darkness that is your domain. Give me a place with those you love.’

  I walked on like a soul possessed till, reaching the heart of the crematorium, I sank down among the dust and bones. I don’t know how long I sat there but after what seemed only a little while the darkness lifted from one end of the sky and Venus—star of the morning—rose, pristine and pure, from the other. Voices, low and muffled, were at hand. Gradually they grew louder and more insistent. Then someone spoke from out of the trees.

  ‘Srikanta Babu!’

  ‘Who is that? Ratan?’ I responded instantly.

  ‘Yes. Come away from there. Ma is waiting for you in the cart.’

  ‘Are you going away, Ratan?’

  ‘Yes. We left the camp before dawn.’

  I walked through the forest to the bridge where the cart with its bullocks stood silhouetted against the grey sky.

  Pyari pushed away the curtain that hung in front and said, ‘I knew it was you the moment the cart-driver said he could see someone among the trees. Get in. I have something to say to you.’

  ‘I can’t. I have to get back to the camp.’

  Pyari put out a hand and pulled me in. The cart moved on.

  ‘Don’t make a scene in front of the servants.’ She almost screamed the words. ‘Sit down for God’s sake.’

  Stunned by the passion in her face and voice I sat, quite meekly, waiting for whatever was coming.

  ‘Why did you come here again tonight?’ Her voice was sharp.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said and it was the truth.

  ‘That’s a lie.’

  ‘It isn’t. I didn’t wish to come. I don’t know why I did.’

  ‘Do you mean to tell me you were blown away from your tent by the spirits?’ Her voice had a sneering edge to it and her hot fingers gripped mine like a vice.

  ‘No. I walked all the way. But why and when I cannot say.’

  Pyari fell silent at these words. Her eyes, dark and frightened, stared into mine.

  ‘Rajlakshmi,’ I said gently, ‘let me tell you everything.’

  I described the events of the night as best as I could. As I did so I could feel the hand that still held mine grow cold and tremble like a leaf. But she didn’t speak a word. After a while I said, ‘I must go.’

  ‘No! No,’ Pyari murmured as if in a dream.

  ‘But I must,’ I insisted. ‘Don’t you see? People will think we have gone away together.’

&n
bsp; ‘Does it matter what people think? They are not your guardians. I beg you, Kantada—don’t go back to the camp. Another night there will kill you. Don’t come with me if you don’t want to. Go home or anywhere you please—but don’t, for God’s sake, go back to that terrible place.’

  ‘My clothes …’ I began helplessly.

  ‘Let them be. If your friends wish to, they can send them after you. If not—bear the loss. They are of little value.’

  ‘That is true. But you forget something. Can the loss of my reputation be borne as lightly?’

  As I said these words the cart turned a bend and the eastern sky came into view. I looked from one rose flushed face to another and it seemed to me that the two had something in common. Both faces—that of the morning sky and the prostitute Pyari—reflected the glow of a wondrous sphere of pure flame as it spun through darkness and chaos.

  ‘Why are you silent, Rajlakshmi?’ I asked gently.

  Pyari smiled. ‘You know why, Kantada?’ she said lightly, ‘I have signed so many false documents in my life that my hand stops at signing a true deed of gift. Go if you must. But promise me you’ll leave the camp before evening.’

  ‘I promise.’

  Pyari pulled a ring from her finger and placed it on my feet. Then touching her forehead to the ground she rose and dropped it in my pocket.

  ‘I have another favour to ask of you,’ she said. ‘Will you write me a letter as soon as you reach home?’

  ‘I will.’

  I climbed out of the cart and walked away. I did not look back even once but I knew, to a certainty, that the cart stood still in its tracks and a pair of dark agonized eyes gazed upon my form till it faded from view.

  The sun was well above the horizon by the time I reached the camp. My eyes fell on Pyari’s tent—deserted and reduced to cloth and bamboo. I felt a lump in my throat. Averting my face I walked purposefully on.

  As I pushed aside the curtain that hung in front of my tent, Purushottam stirred in his sleep and said, ‘You went out early, Srikanta Babu.’