This victory gave Shekhar no satisfaction—not even when he thought about it as a victory over Kumar. It no longer meant anything to declare victory over him. He asked for a week off from college, and he took off to explore Malabar. He had money since he had asked his father for forgiveness after the fight with Kumar.
Malabar is an incredibly beautiful region, but Shekhar hadn’t gone there to observe the beauty. In college, the stories he had read about untouchability in Malabar—these things were so unbelievable to him that he couldn’t consider them to be anything other than stories—were the things that drew him there. The untouchables there—the fifth or the outcastes—could not come too close to a Brahmin—they had to stay a few yards away; there were separate roads for the Brahmins on which the outcastes couldn’t walk; the outcastes had to cross the river in a boat because the bridges over the water were reserved for the upper castes; untouchables couldn’t buy land next to a Brahmin’s; and if ever a Brahmin and an outcaste were to cross paths, the outcaste had to announce himself as an outcaste so that his shadow didn’t inadvertently fall on the Brahmin . . . He had heard all of these things, but even after he heard them he couldn’t believe them. Since the fight at college had been about the question of his untouchability, after he had won he wanted to go to Malabar to see what it was like there.
When he got there, he settled in at a mission run by the Arya Samaj. He spent some time waiting to find a worker at the mission so that he could talk to them, but all of them had gone out. Finally, when he saw that the rain that had been falling all day had stopped for a while, he quickly changed his clothes, put on a common Madrasi outfit and went out walking barefoot.
Evening had fallen. Aimlessly wandering, Shekhar found himself on a deserted road and was trying to decide which way would be the most convenient to go. The roads for the most part had turned to slush—in some places, they were completely submerged under water, and some of the roads that went into the paddy fields had been lost to the waters that flowed over the embankments. Shekhar hung his head and walked on, deep in thought.
It was twilight, and the reflection of the now hazy sky sparkled in the waters. A coppery red spread out over the foliage of the trees, and over the paddy fields a melodious melancholy slowly condensed like drops of dew. Everything was completely still. The birds were crying out and the frogs croaked interminably in their sharp, cracking voices. It wasn’t completely silent, but there was a profound stillness.
Shekhar got off the muddy road he was on and moved on to another path. It was drier—and so Shekhar’s feet had turned towards it on their own—but he wasn’t sure if this was the shorter way back to where he was staying. Water flowed on both sides of the path.
His concentration was broken by the sounds of someone groaning. He stopped to listen closely and discern where the voice was coming from. A moment later, he heard the groaning again, and Shekhar went over to a bush that covered the small stream flowing on one side of the path and looked: there was a heap of flesh and blood, half covered with a dirty red sari, that once was perhaps a woman—and there was still life in that heap, and it could still feel pain . . .
For just a second, but for many reasons, one of which was the fact that the heap of flesh was a woman, Shekhar hesitated. Then, he somehow got that body on his back and turned around and, going from one path to the next, carried it all the way back to the mission. There the body was treated and bandaged, but by dawn, she was dead. The people at the mission made preparations to cremate her—she was an untouchable.
The police were notified. But Shekhar didn’t stay; he packed up his things and immediately left for Madras—he began to feel it was impossible to stay there for even a second longer . . .
On the train, he read in the newspaper that after the body had been examined, it was announced that ‘Death was the result of a blow from a blunt instrument; no reason could be found for the murder.’ But there was also this bit of reporting, that the body had been found on a ‘segregated’ road, and that the woman was an untouchable.
Shekhar recalled how that woman’s body, her clothes, were dripping with blood and mud—and a shiver ran through his body . . .
She was an untouchable, and he was a Brahmin, and he had been bathed in her blood . . . And her killers had been Brahmins who had probably gone up to her themselves and beaten her to death with stones so that they could avoid being polluted by her coming too close to them . . . Brahmin . . . Shekhar, too, was a Brahmin . . . and untouchable . . . The kind of untouchable that Shekhar had carried on his shoulders . . . And her blood . . .
When he got back to the hostel, Shekhar packed all of his things, called for a rickshaw, loaded his things into it and told the rickshaw-driver where to take his things while he got on to a tram to go to another hostel—one for untouchables, where all of the workers were untouchables as well. At first, everyone there looked at him with suspicion, but quickly the day came when Shekhar knew that all his friends and companions and comrades were untouchables, his brothers were untouchables . . .
And also, the community that he was supposed to be a part of considered him an untouchable, and it couldn’t stand the fact that he had an identity separate from it . . .
*
‘They say that everything will change eventually; that eventually ignorance will fall away, that this fog that has descended over our souls will dissipate. They say a lot of things, but they are all sitting on their hands, and eons pass in waiting, and nothing happens. The fog can be lifted, the veil, too, can be lifted, but walls can’t be lifted, they have to be torn down, they have to be made to fall, otherwise they don’t go away . . .’
That was Shekhar speaking. He was naturally a quiet person, but there was something inside him that wouldn’t let him stay quiet, something that ceaselessly stabbed at his reluctance and compelled him . . .
Shekhar has begun making friends among these ‘untouchables’. And he allows them to see the compulsion inside him, every change in its veils. He’s got a few boys together and created a committee, which doesn’t have a name or rules but which always convenes in his room, in which ideas and exchanges, tastes, dispositions and feelings are constantly being debated . . .
Shekhar isn’t their leader—he doesn’t consider himself to be, nor do they—but somehow leadership seems to emanate from him—this formless committee that only runs because of Shekhar.
*
In the middle of the flat wasteland, which the students in the hostel call their ‘playground’, stands the untouchables’ hostel, and four boys are lying on the cement floor of the roof without spreading anything out under them. These are the cadres of Shekhar’s nameless committee. All that ‘cadre’ means in this instance is that all four of them have an inner disquiet, they are awakening and are naturally concerned as they look around them. There are two or three other members of the committee who don’t have the tumult, the rapids coursing inside them; for them, the waves only rise up when someone else’s hand stirs them, or if someone from afar throws a rock into the peaceful tranquillity that normally reigns over them . . .
Besides Shekhar, the others are Sadashiv, Raghavan and Devadas. Of them, Sadashiv was the shortest in stature but in intellect, he was the brightest. On top of his usually unbuttoned tennis collar was his thin neck, and on account of his tousled hair on top of it, his looking-bigger-than-normal head casts a shadow over his peaceful, egg-shaped face, whose small but usually opened-quite-wide eyes were filled with a feeling of wise compassion, as if his eyes were saying, ‘I don’t want to trouble you, I just want to take a closer look to understand you’—and when he looked at all of this together, Shekhar recalled a picture of Shelley, so he started calling him ‘Shelley’. The name really embarrassed Sadashiv, he felt it was a joke about his self-abnegating love of nature—and that’s why the name became permanent.
Raghavan and Devadas were different. They both came from cities in the Madras Presidency, and the influence of the cities on them was considerable. Raghava
n’s eyes sparkled like flighty fish and Devadas’s eyes were always on the lookout for trouble. There was no poison there, all there was was a feeling of love for the human race, but Devadas’s love wasn’t naturally of that kind, which living in isolation could motivate the self out of its proud silence; he found that kind of ‘sentimentalism’4 obnoxious. He preferred hiding his love in constant fidgeting, conversation, laughing and joking. Whenever someone would accuse him of ‘heartlessness’ he would laugh and say, ‘Brother, there’s one kind of love that prostrates itself across a road and another kind which is always tickling and pinching people as it goes. I don’t have the first kind of love in me.’ This wasn’t an excuse; there was truthfulness in it. A natural fault—or a virtue—prevented him from speaking the truth plainly.
Because of his shy yet sharp intellect and because of his love of the generous beauty which grew in the vast greens and blues of Travancore, Sadashiv was quite close to Shekhar. Still, Shekhar knew that life wasn’t complete without Devadas and Raghavan, and it made him happy that they were in his committee, too, because the objective of the committee was to find completeness in life.
Lying on the rooftop, Shekhar would intermittently look over at Sadashiv to make sure he wasn’t lost in the sunset. He said—‘In that book by Stevenson, there’s a story of four reformers who sit down to think about how they will change the world. One of them explains all that is wrong about society and says that we should destroy society altogether. The second one revises the ideas of the first and argues that societies are ruined when religion becomes orthodox, religion was the source of all the problems and that was what had to be done away with. The third says that religion was just a set of governing principles set up by culture, and if the culture was wrong then how could the religion it set up be right, and that’s why culture was the problem. Ultimately, they come to this conclusion: wherever humans tried to move forward they found culture already there, and so the human race was the original criminal and it had to be destroyed completely! The conclusion makes perfect sense on its own terms. Let’s destroy the human race! Then we wouldn’t be here discussing reform, nor will Sadashiv lose himself in the setting sun and insult me, nor—’
Sadashiv said, as if to demonstrate his attentiveness, ‘Nor will Shekhar be able to abuse someone whose attention he thinks has drifted elsewhere.’
Everyone laughed. Shekhar started again, ‘I think that there’s a danger in not undertaking a fundamental change like this. I’m not saying that one should only reform superficially—that’s foolishness, too. If there’s going to be a change, it has to start at the root, but only in those places where the problem can be clearly discerned, not one that only comes to light through reason.’
Raghavan said, ‘For instance?’
‘Look at that story. Religion is a set of governing principles set up by culture, and so the problems of religion are born in culture, and so culture is the problem. All of this is just a juggling act of the power of reason. If we want to see the problems in culture, then we have to look closely at culture. We can’t prove them from afar like this. Otherwise, there isn’t anything that’s good—all there is are problems, and our restlessness, too, is an emotion that is born out of that problem, that if humans are bad how can they think good things? If you want to get rid of the darkness, then all you can do is find a light; you can’t rid the darkness of its dark.’
Sadashiv interrupted him to say, ‘But, Shekhar, your thinking is also dangerous. From a political point of view, you are advocating establishing a principle of violence. If we do what you’re suggesting, all we will do is destroy real problems, in a theatre of destruction, and according to you, it’s foolish to find a way to stop these problems from developing in the first place.’
‘Umm, no. Up to a point, what you are saying is right. I don’t think of destruction as a bad thing, nor do I think of it as violence.
‘It’s only violence when the impetus is violent, when there’s an attempt to do harm. Murder committed for love is not violence, provided that love is not personal but for all of creation. But it’s wrong to say that this doesn’t contain room to stop these problems from developing. What I am saying is that attempts to solve these problems can only happen when you understand what the problem is. Which is to say, only when it appears right in front of you will you be able to try to stop it. Your self-preservation instinct will rise with a primitive aggression. Because without that, what will you save yourself from? Organizing a defence against an unknown nothing is like a sword fight with shadows.’
‘Hmm, that sounds right. But the first point still doesn’t sit well. Do you think that in matters of love it’s so difficult for people to deceive themselves? There are people who visit prostitutes in the name of keeping society pure. A man who doesn’t go to visit prostitutes could perhaps say with an objective5 perspective that prostitutes are the invisible mechanisms of social purification. But what right does a man who can be called a slave to his subjective6 desires have to look at society with an objective perspective? But there are still people who try to convince themselves of this fact and in your estimation these people are blameless. Love and harm—who could possibly adjudicate between personal love and world welfare?’ Sadashiv kept talking softly and slowly and was looking out towards the setting sun as if he were asking it his question.
Raghavan said approvingly, ‘Hmm, that is the question.’7
Shekhar began talking as if he were thinking about something, ‘But there shouldn’t be a difference between personal welfare and world welfare . . .’
Sadashiv sat down and said, ‘That’s the same mistake as before—there is no difference only when it’s looked at with an objective, universal perspective. But when the observer is a lone individual, and the question is about his welfare, how could he possibly take such a broad view of the matter?’
Devadas said, ‘It seems to me that you all are no better than the reformers in that story. All of this arguing that you people are doing may very well increase your self-respect, but it doesn’t amount to anything. It is personal welfare, not world welfare, no matter what perspective you take. World welfare takes action. A hundred mistakes made in the course of activity are better than one good deed done by inactivity, because in the course of activity there are opportunities to correct your mistakes, while inactivity can’t even establish its own virtues anywhere. So if you want to do something and agitate, set up a programme. If you want to take advantage of this entire argument and use it for world welfare, then don’t think of any programme as final and incontrovertible. Humans have a right to uncertainty, but if it doesn’t give rise to generosity, it also becomes the curse of humanity.
‘That’s what Shekhar is always shouting out. Act when there is necessity. Create a programme and make the first project on the list generosity, because that inspires everything else. The oracle has spoken.’8
Devadas’s words brought the discussion down to earth, where it could wash its hands and feet not in the brackish waters of raw logic but in the sweet nectar of activity. The four reformers got up and moved in close together. Shekhar said, ‘All right, tell me, what shall we do first?’
Ultimately, they came to the conclusion that the primary work could only be the awakening of the youth, giving birth to a seriousness within them and providing a purpose to their lives. They realized that the kind of fundamental transformation they sought would have to be of that type and they would definitely avoid any acts of violence. And with Shekhar’s love of literature, Sadashiv’s love of art, Raghavan’s love of science and Devadas’s love of history they also concluded that constancy in life doesn’t make its purpose stronger, but rather proves deadly for it, just as a wall built on a single brick can never be stable. In order for one’s purpose to be firm, for one’s activity to be lasting, it’s necessary for life to find a piece of earth and plant roots, like a banyan tree, with tongues hanging down in every direction, lapping up sustenance and strength from the earth. They began studying
all of these issues seriously and started expounding their ideas to others.
But for Shekhar, this steadily progressing line of work became a burden. Who knows why his disposition was such that he was never happy when he only had a reasonable quantity of work. He wanted so much work, so much work that he wouldn’t be able to lift his head, so that a moment’s rest could wreck his work, so much that the thoughts, doubts and impossible dreams that shook him to his core, that all of these would wilt and die for lack of opportunity . . . Even from the experience of his meagre sixteen-year-old life he could feel that his pride, his impatient, youthful estimation of his abilities was in reality the mark of his failure, because he wanted faith—and the questions that welled up inside him were there so that they would vanish, would be resolved, when he reached somewhere. The entire course of his life was so that he could reach that ‘somewhere’ . . . He felt as if the society’s programme from its very inception began as if they had already arrived somewhere, and he couldn’t bear the idea that the dream of going beyond that point was impossible! One day he set out by himself and the first place he went to was the colony of untouchables about a mile away from the hostel. When he got there he saw that a Hindu middle school had been built with brick and mortar at its entrance, while the other homes were either half or completely made of mud, and next to them and in between them flowed an open sewer.
Evening was about to fall. The water in the sewer glowed like old brass. Except for the stench, it would have been difficult to call the water dirty at that moment. As he stood at its edge, Shekhar suddenly realized that he was alone; there were no children nearby. It was something of a shock to him that there were no children playing outdoors in the evening. Why weren’t they outside? And especially because in that untouchable colony no matter where ‘inside’ was, it was no place for children.
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