I said, ‘You can’t withdraw into yourself a little, like the rest of us? You can’t shut out the world sometimes and be with yourself alone?’
‘My wife complains very frequently that I don’t care for the family and the children, that I’m always interested in others and their welfare. I’m afraid she’s almost right. I’ve defaulted in some respects. I’ve not lived a balanced life or a full personal life. I feel obsessed by my cause. It’s the state of affairs that made me live this life.’
I went to see Sugar again one morning. He was always in his little ground-floor apartment in the Raghavans’ house when he wasn’t asleep. He was always available. He received people all the time, except for a period in the middle of the day. He was a local seer; he counselled; and sometimes he just listened.
The furniture pushed together at one end of the drawing-sleeping had disappeared; the room was almost as plain as he had said he wanted it.
His visitors that morning were a middle-aged brahmin group. And perhaps – it must have been something I had always known, but hadn’t really thought about – all his visitors were brahmin. The group that morning looked grave but content. The reason for their content was that they had arranged the marriage of a girl in the family; and they were talking, with excited joyful sadness, about the wedding expenses.
The topic of wedding expenses was in the news: for some time the newspapers had been carrying reports from different parts of the country about Hindu brides being done to death by their husbands’ families – often by fire – for not bringing a sufficient dowry or valuable enough gifts. These days a boy’s family often required modern gifts, motor-scooters, or expensive electronic goods.
However, thoughts of bride-burning were far away from the group in Sugar’s drawing-sleeping. They were just ticking off the expenses of the great day, one by one, and it was as though the ceremony was being savoured, in all its details, in advance.
Sugar said to me, with an air of finality, and with the authority of his position, ‘They will have to spend a lakh and a half. I’ve told them. A lakh and a half.’
That was 150,000 rupees, £6,000. But a fairer measure of the cost was to be had if it was set against the salary of the girl’s father, on whom all the expenses were going to fall. He was a middle-rank excutive, and he earned between 7000 and 8000 rupees a month. The marriage of his daughter was going to cost him 20 months’ of his salary.
I had arrived almost at the end of the calculations, and the man and the women of the party, and Sugar, were quite happy to go through it again, for my benefit.
The first expense was the choultry, the wedding hall. The cost of that, for the two days you needed to hire it, was going to be 6000 rupees. And that was a modest choultry; there were choultries in Madras that cost 10 and 20 times as much. You had to add to that the cost of the electricity, and the cleaning-up afterwards.
‘And the sundries,’ Sugar said, using a word from his old, office life.
With the sundries, the maintenance of the choultry wasn’t going to come to less than 2000 rupees. Then the cook was going to charge 4000 rupees.
‘At the very least,’ Sugar said. ‘Preparing food for 500 people four times a day for two days – that’s not cheap. The cook will have to have 10 assistants.’
‘Vegetables,’ one of the women said.
‘Three thousand,’ the man said.
Sugar said, ‘Provisions. Provisions will be 10,000 rupees.’
I asked about the word. ‘Provisions’, as Sugar used it, seemed to be quite distinct from vegetables.
Sugar said, ‘Rice, condiments, Bengal gram, green gram, rice flour, tamarind, chili, pepper, salt – that’s provisions.’
‘Saris for the bride,’ one of the women said. ‘And clothing gifts for relations on both sides. Ten thousand.’
Sugar said, ‘I don’t see how you could do it for less. And clothes for the groom.’
The man of the party said, ‘Five thousand.’
‘Jewelry,’ Sugar said. ‘Fifteen 24-carat sovereigns at 3000 apiece.’
One of the women said, ‘Plus 12,000 for diamond ear-rings.’
‘Two k.g. of silver vessels,’ the man said. ‘Fifteen thousand. Stainless steel and brass vessels for the household. That will be another 5000.’
‘Honeymoon expenses,’ one of the women said.
Sugar said firmly, ‘Ten thousand there.’ He explained to me: ‘Furniture for the first night – cot, mattress, sheets, pillows, two or three vessels full of sweets. Dresses for the occasion for bride and groom.’
The man said, ‘And you have to give gifts during the first year of the marriage. You have to give dresses, and clothes for the groom. You also have to give the groom a ring or a watch. The request will be made after the marriage. If you give a diamond finger-ring, the Diwali gifts will come to 5000.’ Diwali, the festival of lights towards the end of the year. There are four or five other festivals. You have to give 2000 each time during the first year. Add it up.’
Sugar, shaking his dhoti-covered legs very slightly, said, ‘One and a half lakhs.’ A hundred and fifty thousand rupees.
I said, ‘I get a figure of 129,000.’
Sugar said, ‘It will be one and a half, by the time you actually start spending.’
I said to the man in the party, ‘Yet you look so happy.’
He said, ‘It’s a happy occasion. We know the boy. He’s a nice boy.’
‘How do people manage if they have two or three daughters?’
The man said, ‘That is why middle-class brahmin ladies are not marrying. They go for jobs instead. In our brahmin community, all our savings go to our daughters’ marriage. It gets balanced out if you have a son and a daughter. If you’ve got only sons, you’re lucky.’
‘How can people make these high demands nowadays?’
‘The parents of the boy – who’s getting all these things – his parents say, “We’ve educated him, and now he’s earning lucratively.” So, as a compensation for what they’ve spent on him, they want to make capital.’
Things were not easy for brahmin boys nowadays. Places in educational institutions and jobs with the government were reserved for backward communities, and scheduled castes, and scheduled tribes, and physically handicapped ex-servicemen. Fifty per cent of places were now reserved for backward communities, and there was talk of raising that figure to 70 per cent. That would mean that only five per cent of places would be filled in open competition: that meant that only five per cent of places would be open to brahmins.
The man said, That’s why we are migrating to other places, greener pastures.’
Mylapore was once famous as one of the two or three brahmin areas of Madras. Now only 40 per cent of the people in Mylapore were brahmins. The others were non-brahmins, including even some scheduled castes. Houses had come up for sale in the normal way, and the people with the money – not necessarily brahmins – had bought the houses. In the villages at one time there used to be brahmin agraharams, separate streets for brahmins, where no one else was allowed to walk. Now all of that was gone. Brahmins had moved out of the villages, to better themselves. They had left those village agraharams, and other people had bought the houses. There had been an upheaval, but brahmins were not people who fought back or demonstrated or complained, and people outside didn’t know about the upheaval that had taken place.
I said, ‘So Tamil Nadu is going to be a shudra place.’
I had spoken in innocence. But the man looked startled, and Sugar made a show of covering his face with his hands.
Sugar said, ‘Don’t write that. If you write that, they will come and burn your house. Don’t say “shudra” here. Say “Dravidian”. You know how they call us? In Tamil the correct word for a brahmin is parpannan. When they want to mock us they say pa-paan. To say “shudra” is like them saying “pa-paan”.’
The people with the wedding on their minds got up to go. The joy of the wedding in prospect made them talk of the position of brahmins
(middle class though they were, and vulnerable) with something like light-heartedness.
When they went away, Sugar looked tired.
He said, ‘You see. They come all the time. I heal people. Did you know that? I heal people by faith. I have seen about 1000 or 2000 people. Every day I see two or three or four or five people. Every day.’
His dhoti didn’t look fresh; nor did his yellow singlet. There was a slight dampness to the skin on his soft shoulders. He looked unexercised, unwell.
‘How do you heal them?’
‘You give them burnt cowdung, and chant mantras, and solace them by kind words.’
I was puzzled: he seemed to be setting himself at a distance from what he did for people. He sounded tired.
He said, ‘They come for marriages.’ He meant they came for advice about the marriage of their children or other relations. ‘I have to predict them.’
‘How do you do that?’
‘Something occurs in my mind, and I tell them.’
He crossed from the low seat where he had been sitting, facing me, and he sat down in the chair just beside mine, against the wall. We both had our backs to the door. We looked at the blue wall of the drawing-sleeping, with the religious pictures, and the centrally placed hanging shelves, cluttered behind the sliding glass panels.
He said, ‘Cent per cent correct.’ He was referring to the predictions he made for people, and again it seemed that he had changed his attitude to what he did for other people. ‘If I say 15th of the month, it may occur on the 10th or 20th – a few days this way or that way.’
‘When did this gift come? You didn’t have it in 1967.’
‘It suddenly came. In 1970. I don’t know how it came. One Mr R. told me I’d got this gift. And he said to me, “Use it in a proper way, so that you can be useful to many people.” From that day onwards I’m doing these things. I used to go to Mr R.’s house often. It was in Madras. A small house, a poor man. I cannot say he is my guru. He likes me, and I like him, that’s all. Birds of the same feather flock together, and he has these gifts as well. I can’t do miracles like Sai Baba – I don’t want you to think that.
‘What happened was this. A friend of mine, a businessman, a middle-class man, a good friend, a man about fifty at the time, he came to tell me that his brother is very sick, is running a 104-degrees temperature. “Sugar, give me something for my brother, to reduce his fever.” And other symptoms he’s got as well, like fits and other things. And this friend came to my house, and I received him, and asked him to sit for a while, and I took some cow-dung ashes and chanted Sudarsan mantra, and I gave it to him.’
‘What made you do that?’
‘Something. Some forces asked me to do it. At that moment, when I’m doing it, I’m not Sugar. I’m not myself. After a few seconds, I gave that ashes to my friend. He went home and gave it to his brother, and smeared it on his forehead. The brother was all right the next morning. He went to office. I was working myself at that time in an office.
‘After that, I cannot sleep for two days. I went to Mr R.’s place and asked him about this. “There is something wrong with me. I cannot sleep. I’m seeing some black figures in front of me. Human figures. Black figures.” He asked me, “What did you do yesterday?” I narrated the whole story. He scolded me. “Who asked you to give ashes and other things to your friend? In future don’t do it.” And he asked me to do the same Sudarsan mantra again. I’m all right in a day or two.
‘From that day onwards, I’m not doing anything like that, without getting permission from elsewhere. I see those black figures now, even as I am talking to you. Two figures. Horns on their head. Madan – cow-headed man. It is a malevolent figure. He may do so many things. At the moment he is very friendly with me. I have to get permission from him whenever anybody comes to ask for this or that. I will hear it in my head, his permission.
‘I want to get rid of this gift. I want to get rid of all these things. Temple, everything. I want to get rid of all these things. I want peace. People are coming and worrying me about their horoscope, and about not getting jobs for their sons, and not getting marriages for their daughters, and lost property. And: “I’m sick, Sugar. Do something for me.” I don’t know how to get rid of these things. I don’t like these things. You come and tell me your daughter is not well. “Do something for me.” What am I gaining?
‘You’ve not seen these people. It is for those people I’ve put up a sign on my door asking them not to come at a certain time – that’s when I have my rest.
‘It is only on account of these things I’m not well. I get a poor blood flow to the brain. I get giddiness often. I can’t climb stairs. Slowly I’m stopping these things, but I’m not telling them.’
I said, ‘What will you do when you stop?’
His life in the little apartment seemed built around receiving visitors, waiting for them. It was hard to see how he would occupy himself if he stopped seeing people.
He said he thought he would read. ‘Even today I’m reading books. Jack Higgins, Wilbur Smith. Haley, the Airport man. So many others. To while away my time I’m reading these things. Any book – whether it is Gita or trash.’
Twenty years before, I had noted that about him: his ability to read popular romantic fiction from England – so far away, in every sense, from his life and experience in Mylapore.
He said, ‘I want some books to while away my time. It keeps my mind occupied. Sometimes I chant mantras. Some mantras I chant 2000 times, 3000 times, the same mantra throughout the day.’
We were sitting side by side.
I said, ‘You will have to get rid of this gift.’
‘I will. I have confidence. I know myself. I will do it. I have no peace here. I want to go away from the city to some far-off place, but the doctors won’t permit. I must be within kilometres of my doctor.’
He pointed to a chair against the opposite wall, below the hanging glass-fronted shelves.
‘I can sit there and read your face, give full details, if you sit before me. But after that I will get a headache. I will suffer for two days.’
But the talk I had heard, the previous time I had come to the little apartment, was of the peace people found with him. One man had talked of emptying his mind, of spending four hours in the darkness with Sugar, during a power cut, and hardly saying a word.
Sugar said, with something like irritation, ‘They come here not for peace, but to hear what I may blab about them. It’s very good for them to hear about their difficulties and how to get rid of those things. They say they want peace. But they want advice.’
I remembered the landlord, the ‘moneyed man’, as Sugar had said, sitting patiently in his chair; and I remembered the young business executive, with his fine brahmin face, and the fresh holy marks on his forehead, sitting forward, his feet below his chair, the palms of his hands on the edge of his chair.
Sugar said, ‘But I’ll keep my mouth shut. And they’ll sit here, and talk about politics and other things, and then they’ll go away.
‘Mr R. knows what I’m going through. He himself is suffering. He is an old man of eighty-six. He will predict accurately. He will tell you about your house in London, how you keep your home. He will tell you all these things with you sitting here in front of him.’
I asked, ‘Why did you like me in 1962?’
We had met late one afternoon, at the end of the day’s march, after the tents had been pitched, not far from a mountain river. The temperature, even in August, was dropping fast; the colours of the mountain were grey and brown. And he had been there in the twilight, muffled up in his coarse woollen pullover. We had begun to talk just like that.
Sugar said, ‘In my last birth we both had met. You might have been my brother, friend, and father. I felt something up there in the Himalayas. I won’t forget your name. I will always remember your name.’
‘I thought you were a sad man. Were you sad?’
‘No sadness then. Nothing. My father was alive. M
y mother was alive. I liked seeing places in the Himalayas. I was the first in my family to go to the Himalayas.’
‘Is there anything I can do for you?’
‘God will look after me. I have faith in him. Raghavan charges me little for the apartment. I spend all day here, so you might say I look after the house for them, in a way. We have a mutual understanding.’
‘Tell me about this burnt cowdung you give people. Where do you burn it?’
‘I buy it.’
So it was a common item, on sale in shops dealing in puja goods. It wasn’t something special, something he had made himself.
‘It’s called vibudhi. You can buy it in bags, one kilo, two kilos a time. Mine is not scented. I give three rupees a kilo. Scented, they are selling for one rupee, or one rupee 50 paisa, for a packet of 100 grams. How to make it I don’t know.’
A slender young girl in dark clothes came in through the front door. No words passed between her and Sugar. She began to clear up and sweep in the middle space, the space between the temple and the kitchen, both of which places would have been barred to her, since she would not have been a brahmin.
There had been a revolution. The temples had been ‘looted’. The streets and walls were ragged and scrawled with election slogans and emblems. Mylapore was said to be only 40 per cent brahmin. But in the little space that was still Sugar’s the old world seemed to continue.
In Bangalore Kala had told me of her brahmin ancestor who had left his village and had come to the city of Madras, and had been so poor there that he and his mother had lived on the consecrated food of the great temple of Mylapore. That story – old gods, old temples, poor brahmins – had seemed to me to come from a far-off, fairy-tale time. But the story was of the new world, of a countryside becoming overpopulated, and of the dispersal of the brahmins. The story I had heard in Sugar’s apartment of the break-up of the brahmin agraharams or village settlements told of the same dispersal, the scattering of people from their ancestral homes.
But on this kind of journey knowledge can sometimes come slowly; the traveller can sometimes listen selectively; and certain things – because they appear to fit the country or the culture – can be taken too much for granted. When at the beginning of my stay in Madras I met Kakusthan, and heard that he was a brahmin who was trying to live as a full brahmin, I didn’t understand how unusual and even heroic this resolve of his was.
India: A Million Mutinies Now Page 31
