The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories

by Stephen Alter

  After the body was removed, Gangubai went and sat under the jackfruit tree that was beyond the cowshed. The prospect of the womenfolk thinking of the pleasures her fair and tall body, still without a wrinkle, might have given Acharya, embarrassed her. If she took herself away, the others might weep or praise Acharya uninhibitedly. Let her presence not leave a bad taste in their mouths.

  She knew of Acharya’s boyhood life. He had told her everything. He had talked to her of the sky, of the legal system, of the son who was dear to him, and of Nair— nothing had been held back from her.

  Their twenty-year-friendship had begun when Acharya put up his office on the first floor of the hotel her mother ran in Shimoga. Then its name was ‘Landlords’ Association’. Acharya was its secretary. Later it had become ‘Malnad Cultivators’ Organization’. She then had a teaching job in a primary school. She first met him when she had to get papers drafted for pledging the house to someone. She was married too. But her mother did not know that she had given away her daughter to a cruel widower. Gangubai had left her husband to become a teacher. It was Acharya who had advised her on the ways and means of getting a divorce.

  Their relationship had started then. The hotel had to be closed after the passing away of her mother. With Acharya’s help and with the money that was left, she had bought a few cows and opened a dairy. Acharya had become closer to her than the man she had married. She did not want him to suffer more humiliation than he was already undergoing; and had, therefore, got herself aborted twice. However, at the time of his death he had accepted her and that gave a sense of grateful fulfilment.

  His was a life of adventure. His father was a priest at Sri Rama temple. The son was taught mantras and tantras at home. The temple itself was located in a village on the banks of the Tunga. There were some twenty brahmin families in the village. The annual car festival of the temple was a much admired event in the surrounding areas. Acharya’s boyhood was spent in performing rites and rituals in brahmin families or in assisting his father. Acharya was from the beginning a discontented man—a man of aspirations. He knew the names of many stars and would often sleep in the courtyard of the temple under the champak trees and study the star-studded sky. One day while returning after performing the Sathyanarayana pooja at somebody’s place, he met a padre who was riding a bicycle and from him caught a desire to learn English. The passion for the sky and the passion for learning English made Acharya dream strange dreams while engaged in making sandalpaste for the gods. He learned the alphabet from educated, Godfearing men who came to the temple to worship. He also learned to read. He got a Teach-Yourself-English and learned enough to be able to write English. The desire to go to far-off places grew in him.

  Acharya married at the age of sixteen. His wife Rukminiyamma was then eight years old. It seems when Acharya’s father went to see the bride, she was sitting on the branch of a mango tree. Acharya’s father asked her the way to Gopalacharya’s home and she said, while still on the tree and eating a mango, ‘See, there,’ and pointed the way. Now Rukminiyamma looked a woman to whom such pleasures were never known.

  Since she was still a girl, she had remained at her father’s place for about five or six years after the marriage. Acharya’s income, however, went up as he was now married and could officiate at various ceremonies.

  It was at this period that a most significant event took place in Acharya’s life. There was in the village a very rich desashta brahmin family. The temple honours went first to the master of the household. His wife was blind. He had no son, but only a daughter who was very beautiful. Naturally they did not want to give away the girl to somebody from outside the family and had her married to her maternal uncle.

  She stayed with him ten years, got tired and came back to her father’s place. The fact that she had remained childless made people wonder whether her husband was impotent. Her father died of worry and sorrow. After his death, in that palatial mansion, there were only two: the blind mother and her daughter. Of course, there were in various parts of the house, widows and destitutes who did the cooking and attended to odd jobs, and innumerable guests who came to worship at the temple. In the main hall of the house were pictures of gods in silver frames, and swings with silver-rimmed wooden planks. The house had a high roofing and was always cool.

  This girl was older to Acharya by about four years or so. Her name was Alaka Devi. After performing the pooja at the temple, it was part of Acharya’s duty to visit her house and perform the pooja there. He was then eighteen or nineteen. Alaka Devi always wore silk saris, parted her hair, as the fashion was in those days, to the left, and wore blouses with puffed sleeves. She too knew a little English. It was her father who had taught her. She would give Acharya books by Scott, Dumas, Goldsmith and others from her father’s library. He would read the books, hiding them from his father to whom English meant pollution. He would go with the books to Alaka Devi, begin to explain what he had read hesitantly at first, and then, as she sat on a swing and swung herself to and fro, he would grow bolder. His uninhibited narration of the stories would make Alaka Devi’s eyes dilate in wonder. This way, in the forest-surrounded village, under the silent presence of the temple god, Alaka Devi became the queen of his enlarging dream world.

  Alaka Devi would behave as if the two of them were characters from those tales of wonder. She thought of Acharya—dressed in priestly clothes and sporting a huge tuft at the back of his head—as a prince incognito or as a soldier. Wasn’t the mother of this beautiful lady blind? And who else was there to keep a check on this young woman? She wore a different silk sari every day, sat on the swing, talked to the parrot in the cage and waited for Acharya to bring thirtha and prasada from the temple. She would receive Acharya, make him sit on the swing beside her and talk of this and that.

  Acharya spent the whole day waiting for this moment. Whenever he had to go out of the village to perform a marriage or a ceremony, he would feel bored. Also Alaka Devi would get angry. It appears that she once said she would buy him a horse so that he could come back soon from wherever he had gone.

  There were several phases in their growing relationship: of the lady and her trusted servant, of the queen and soldier, of a goddess and devotee, of the heroine and the hero of romances. Acharya would convulse with a strange, ethereal passion when he heard in the evenings cows coming home, their bells tinkling; when, on moonlit nights, he heard the nightingale sing in ecstasy; when the Tunga, full to the brim, softly flowed and murmured in the December cold. And, the reasons for his convulsive hunger were the hunger to know Alaka Devi and the sky.

  Acharya, it seems, was afraid that even if his little finger touched her, he would be burnt to ashes. Alaka Devi, in an oblique and suggestive way, had told him everything. She told him that she had remained a virgin as her husband was deficient in manliness. Acharya, it appears, was much worried as to what ‘deficiency in manliness’ meant.

  One afternoon when Acharya made his usual visit, Alaka Devi looked at him with her large eyes and asked, ‘Will you do me a favour?’ Acharya’s face spoke of his willingness. ‘If you touch me, will you have to take a bath again?’ ‘Well, that is no problem.’ ‘Then, keep the pooja plate there and get me some sandalpaste. There is an abcess on my back. Please, apply some paste to it.’ Acharya grew red in the face. She looked at him and laughingly said, ‘You are a good man, aren’t you? Then, close your eyes and apply it, without looking at me.’ She turned, let down the pallu of her sari and unbuttoned her blouse. On the milk-white skin of her back, in a corner, there was a tiny red boil. While Acharya softly and with trembling finger was applying the paste, she suddenly turned round, took his face in her palms, as if it were the face of a child, and said, ‘I am wicked, aren’t I?’ It seems there was, on her face, a triumphant smile. Acharya felt he was perspiring all over. Before he knew what he was doing, he had pressed her to him. He felt his body slowly dissolving itself against her softly-pressed body; a shiver ran down his spine and his thighs became wet. Hoping t
o god that Alaka Devi would not notice it, he sank onto the swing, and she sat near his feet.

  From that day began his irrepressible desire for her, and with it a fear. The next day when he came from the temple, she stood before him, demure and like a little girl, inspiring love in him. With trembling hands, he gave her the prasada and returned without knowing what to say. The desire to have her grew in him the whole day. At night, while lying under the champak trees and looking at the moonless but star-brimming sky, the desire made him spring up as one possessed. In the dark of the night, gasping in excitement, he walked to her house. It was past twelve and there wasn’t a living soul around. He went and stood before Alaka Devi’s house. Knocking on the main door was out of the question. The men who were whitewashing the house the previous day had left their ladder at the back of the house. Acharya went up the ladder, got on to the balcony, and holding his beating heart with his left hand, ascended the staircase and came to Alaka Devi’s bedroom.

  She was lying on her cot. Beside her the lamp was still burning. On her breast was a book, half-open. The parrot in the cage fluttered and screeched. He thought it was not proper for him to touch and wake her up when she was asleep. For a long time he stood there, gazing at her peaceful face. Softly he whispered her name, once, twice, a hundred times as if he was repeating the name of a goddess. Slowly she opened her eyes and, without getting worried or confused, recognized him. She stretched out her hand and made him sit beside her, as if accepting the worship he offered as rightly due to her. Acharya was not himself, he was like a man possessed. She saw him trembling helplessly in passion, made him lie beside her, and stroking his body said gently, ‘I’ve wed you in my mind, but wed you in body I can’t.’ The closeness of her body made Acharya pass the extremity of his passion and he could no longer feel any desire for her. The next night, again he went to her, pleaded with her but she gently pushed him away. When, the day after, he saw her, he begged her to accept him. She asked him, ‘But what afterwards?’ Acharya said, ‘Let us get married.’ She said, ‘That’s not possible,’ and sighed. And, she had been right, it would not have been possible. Acharya was a priest at the temple and was married. Moreover, Alaka Devi herself was a married woman, and she was older than Acharya. After this incident, Acharya was like a man demented. Whenever he found time he would go and beg her to accept him. She would fondle him, but as soon as Acharya responded and became passionate, she would withdraw. This went on for two months and Acharya’s body wasted away. One day, it appears, she said, ‘Leave this place. Find a job for yourself. And, then, you can take me there.’

  It sounded right to Acharya too. But every time the day neared on which he had decided to leave, she would start nagging. ‘You want to go because you want to be away from me. You want to forget me.’ When Acharya, in reply, said he wouldn’t and that they should now live together, she would taunt him, ‘All that you want is my body, isn’t it?’

  One day, however, Acharya left the village. Alaka Devi had given him enough money to meet his travel expenses and had begged him to take her away. The previous night she had even expressed her willingness to sleep with him. Acharya wanted her to realize how truly he loved her and therefore said ‘No.’

  After his two years’ stay in Delhi and in Nair’s company he came back and saw Alaka Devi. She had changed. She had got her thin and emaciated husband back. He wore thick, soda-bottle glasses and his head looked like a malformed areca-nut. On the whole, he was a ridiculous-looking man. Acharya’s own wife was a woman now. His father was also happy that his son had returned as an educated man. Alaka Devi did not wear silk saris now. Her blind mother had passed away. She now wore plain saris and came to the temple herself. Her husband himself offered worship to the family god—the only manly thing he could do.

  Acharya was disappointed. He decided to leave the place. Alaka Devi, to show how devoted a wife she had become, would not even look at Acharya. One day, when he knew she would be alone, he went and told her, ‘I am leaving this village.’ Acharya now had his hair cut in the English fashion and wore shirts. Alaka Devi did not raise her head. She wept silently. Acharya held her hands, pressed them gently and said, ‘What else can I do now?’ ‘You don’t want me now, do you?’ said Alaka Devi and withdrew her hands. Her words again made him want her. He embraced her and Alaka Devi kept her face on his bosom and wept.

  Acharya became a postmaster in a nearby village. He gradually began to see how clever Alaka Devi was. Saying that her husband had little knowledge of the world of business, she appointed Acharya as a clerk, and requested him to manage her estate for her. She had an office built on a thickly-wooded hillock. Acharya would go there after his office hours. She would also come in the evening. As she was rich, people were afraid to talk. Yet, much of the energy and intelligence of the two got wasted in planning their secret meetings. What had once deeply haunted him as a profound passion had now become a body-and-mind-satisfying necessity. It was while settling the disputes connected with the estate that he became bitten by the law bug.

  A discontentment and a sadness began to leave hard lines on the face of his young wife. Acharya felt like running away from the whole thing. The hypocritical play-acting was becoming too much to bear. But Alaka Devi made her body yield new pleasures, and since the pleasures could be had only in secrecy, their sharpness was felt more keenly and her hold on him increased.

  Gradually, there began to grow a feeling in him that he was slowly losing his self-respect. Noticing this, Alaka Devi became more and more adept in the art of love-making and made her body yield a new and stronger taste. She gave herself to him every day but it was as if on each day she was a different woman. She taught him how they could come together in an ever fresh and unending mystery of the body, and the wonder bound him fast to her.

  Two years passed. Alaka Devi was with child. Her husband held his tongue but walked about proudly as if he had done it all. Acharya found his humility most disgusting. Alaka Devi, however, remained untouched and looked as if she was beyond all morality. With the child in her womb, she shone like a goddess. She again wore her silk saris and sparkling diamond earrings. She was least worried about what others might say and accepted Acharya’s love as if he really owed it to her. She gave him money so that he could buy for his wife saris and jewels. As the child in her womb grew, her body, like a bud, hid within itself all its unexhausted mystery. A sigh of relief escaped Acharya and he turned to his study of law and the sky.

  Alaka Devi died while giving birth to a still-born baby. Acharya was rudely shaken. He tried to become friendly with his wife, but failed and one day he left the place to settle down here.

  It is hard to say whether Acharya became an addict to law and legal disputes because he wanted to forget Alaka Devi or whether the pursuit of law became an inevitable necessity or whether the rich were only a pretext for his addiction. Whatever it is, Gangubai had been to him those twenty years an island of peace. Perhaps it was because of her that he could bear the shock of his dear son’s marriage.

  Gangubai saw men returning after consigning Acharya’s mortal remains to the flames. She got up from under the tree and walked into the house. She took 5,000 rupees from her trunk and gave it to Rukminiyamma. She was surprised and said ‘No.’ ‘I brought it to be of use to him. It belongs to him. Please accept it. Let me be of some help,’ she said with tears in her eyes. At home, there was little money. Rukminiyamma did not know if her son had any. She wondered if she could ask Vishnu Moorthy. And, so declining and saying ‘No,’ she took the money. When Gangubai said, ‘I am going to Shimoga now. I shall come for the fourteenth day ceremony,’ Rukminiyamma wiped her eyes and said, ‘The deeds of our past life have brought us together. Why don’t you stay on?’ Gangubai said she had little leave left and took the evening bus.

  Two years later Krishna Moorthy was sitting in an armchair and fanning himself on a summer evening in Delhi. It had been an unbearably warm and sultry day. His wife sat beside him and sewed buttons onto their
son’s shirts. After a long time Krishna Moorthy had found some peace, the main reason for which was his son’s recovery from diphtheria. Both husband and wife had kept watch over the boy, sat up together day and night without any thought of food or water. This had brought them closer. Money and other related problems had looked small and inconsequential. And, besides, Krishna Moorthy had worked for three months and written a Guide for the I.A.S. under an assumed name. Though he was ashamed of what he had done, it had brought him 15,000 rupees in a lump sum and he had cleared much of the debt. The money had solved his hundred and one small problems.

  Suddenly it struck Krishna Moorthy: Had father lived and died a foolish man and had awareness come to him only in his dying moments? How to answer it now? The words he had spoken just before he died had not, so far, appeared to him of any particular importance. But now they seemed so. Father had fallen asleep even as he was speaking to Nair. Krishna Moorthy had been half-awake. A cat had given birth to a litter, in the lumber room right on top of father’s room. Harikumara, his nephew, had gone up to remove them as they were making a lot of noise. The cat had seen the boy come up, had sprung at him, and tried to claw him. Father, half-conscious, had moaned in pain. ‘Hari, why do you bother the poor cat? Let it stay there, poor thing.’ These were his last words; compassion for the poor cat had brought a lump in his throat and the voice had quivered.

  Krishna Moorthy asks himself why, then, does he burn in anguish as if this was not enough.

  Translated from Kannada by D.A. Shankar

  Gopinath Mohanty

  The Somersault

  The day Jaga Palei of Sagadiasahi defeated Ramlawan Pande of Darbhanga to enter the finals of the All-India Wrestling Competition—being held in the Barabati Stadium—the sky was rent with the jubilant shouts of thousands of spectators. It was not the victory of Jaga Palei that excited them so much. It was Orissa’s victory. Orissa had won. This was the feeling everywhere.