‘How old are you?’
‘I’m old enough—twenty years old. But I still—’
Shekhar couldn’t contain his rage any longer. ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, saying you’re old enough? You’re twenty years old and you still don’t have it in you to say no to a forced marriage! If you don’t want to get married, then why don’t you say you don’t want to get married? Does it really take that much courage to say “I won’t do what you ask”? Are you some sacrificial lamb with a rope around your neck being dragged to slaughter? You’re a man, you hear me, a man! And you keep talking about how we’re going to strengthen the resolve of the youth! You became my comrade in this project—we were going to empower women. You—your wife, how will she ever respect a man who couldn’t keep himself from being braided into her tresses? Because I don’t consider that a marriage. It’s only a marriage when you enter into it of your own free will, choose your own mate, and you are willing to fight the entire world in order to attain her. You—’
Raghavan didn’t care for this hectoring. Irritated, he said, ‘Talk is cheap. How am I supposed to go against the wishes of my parents! They cared for me, raised me, got me an education. Don’t I have any obligations towards them? I can’t hurt them like this in their old age. You might think this cowardice, but I don’t. I’m not heartless like you are nor do I ever want to be.’
‘Obligation! They raised you for twenty years so that you would be the kind of person who could stand on his own feet, be independent, or don’t you feel any obligation to that fact? Don’t you have obligations towards humanity? Imagine, after twenty years your parents now realize that they haven’t raised a man but have raised a sheep. Imagine, after being married for twenty years your wife realizes that the only reason the two of you are together is because your father chained her to a sheep. Were I either the unfortunate husband or wife, I would kill myself. Raghavan, you—’
‘Look, stop talking to me. I can’t do what you’re asking. I can’t go against them. You’ll see for yourself when you have to face such helplessness.’
‘Helplessness. Yes, helplessness. Then why blame your parents? They aren’t the ones who are helpless; you are. Hidden inside those clothes is the helplessness of a bleating sheep.’
Shekhar stamped his feet as he stormed out of the room. He went to his room and took out his club’s newsletter and put the blank page that had been set aside for the editorial in front of him. He picked up his pen and began writing. Until that point, all of the articles had been first composed, then proofed and then rewritten in excellent penmanship, but at this moment, a furnace was blazing inside Shekhar and his thoughts were boiling over like molten lead, spilling and pouring out, with no need for proofing or refining. There was hardly an opportunity to . . .
. . . in literature, in society, in art, in life, everywhere it’s the same captivating beginning, the same captivating course of events and, in the end, the same deep abyss! The bird of life takes flight. It seems as if it will be able to touch the roof of the heavens, but it suddenly breaks and falls, as if it has been destroyed by a bolt of lightning. We make such spectacular structures, put rocks together one by one and erect beautiful temples, but when we go to apply the plaster, the whole thing becomes the dense dust beneath our feet, is ground into the dirt . . . and why? Because our ideals are built on walls of fear, the foundations of our immense buildings are hollow and, just as it is written in the scriptures, the feet of our gods do not reach the surface of the earth . . . We wrap the decaying bones of society in gaudy, red silk and say—Look, our young people . . .
Shekhar still hadn’t finished writing, but as it was dark, he got up to turn on a light when he realized that there were large beads of sweat on his forehead and his nose. He went outside to get a bit of fresh air and began to stroll around on the balcony.
A few other boys were going home. He realized that it was the auspicious time of the year for weddings. It would be a few months before there would be any more. He also realized that none of the young men had ever seen their future wives nor did any of them seem in any rush to get married.
Shekhar took a deep breath and went back inside and started writing again.
. . . Each Indian youth regrets his marriage and every one of them blames his own parents. ‘I don’t want to, but my parents are pressuring me, and the situation is such that . . . and so on.’ What this means is that every Indian youth is his parents’ slave. And he wants to escape from enslavement to foreign rule, enslavement to society, to escape from the enslavement to ignorance and nature—but he only talks about escaping the enslavement to the Almighty! Those who have been crammed into the dark well of life and who have put family-shaped lids on top and made those dark wells darker and even more deadly . . .
The ink in the pen had run dry. But the editorial was finished. Having completed its last lines by somehow dragging the drying pen, Shekhar put the pen down. Then for a second, he suddenly felt alone and wanted a companion. He put his head down on the pages of his editorial spread open on the table and drew a long breath. Then he got up, he took some money out of his coat pocket and put it in his wallet and descended the staircase in the hostel. Downstairs, Sadashiv was standing in the middle of a few boys outside the ‘common room’.17 Shekhar went up to him and said, ‘“Antigonon” has been published. It’s there on my table. Take it.’ And without paying attention to the curiosity that this news awakened, Shekhar went outside.
He plucked a bunch of flowers from that teeming antigonon vine and then set off towards the ocean.
*
Shekhar now saw that he was a fool, and not just the hostel, but the entire class and the whole college also knew that he was a fool. When he went from one classroom to another in the college, it felt to him as if all the people who passed him were staring at him, and that all of those looks were filled with ridicule. Was it because of the antigonon flower? But many of the boys wore them, and no one laughed at them. It was as if people knew that no matter who wore the antigonon flower in his lapel, it was there because of Shekhar. And everyone knew about the club and also its newsletter. Even a few upperclassmen who came from another college would look at him and smile, and from their smiles Shekhar could discern that they, too, knew that he was a fool. Occasionally someone would startle him with a yell, ‘Mr Celibacy!’ or ‘There goes the guru!’18 If a few boys were walking together, one would speak loudly enough to be overheard, ‘Friends, you’re all just sheep! Sheep!’ And the rest would start bleating like sheep. Shekhar was filled with hurt and dejection, and he thought to himself, ‘What do all of these people have against me? So what if I’m a fool? Or if all of them know it, why do they have to remind me of the fact all the time when I can never forget it?’
And to hide his wounded pride he would walk even taller, as if the antigonon blossom in his lapel were glowing an even brighter red, which is when he realized that perhaps the women who studied in the college were also ridiculing him.
But that fact didn’t hurt him; it made him furious. He could understand it if men thought him a fool and laughed at him because he was trying to demolish their deeply held beliefs, but these women? If they didn’t value their own liberation couldn’t they at least forgive him for his good intentions? Sometimes he would think to himself, ‘It’s men who have made them so petty and vile that there is no generosity left in them.’ But for some reason this conclusion seemed false to him, and he would think, ‘Even if men had given birth to the pettiness, this mockery was natural to them . . .’ He couldn’t bear the fact that there was this inherent cruelty in women, in the women of India in whom he could see hope for the future; nor that . . .
But one day a classmate said to him, ‘Man, you’ve thought it all out.’
Shekhar responded with some surprise, ‘What?’
‘All of this talk about uplift and reform, not getting married, staying away from women, et cetera . . .’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Yes, it’s a fantastic trick, ma
n.’
‘What are you trying to say?’ Shekhar asked, somewhat annoyed.
‘Please, man! There’s me who can’t get anyone to even look my way, hoping for any attention, and then there’s you, whom everyone is talking about all of the time. All of the girls at this college are on the lookout for you, and the girls in your class are absolutely smitten.’
Shekhar became more irritated and even more taken aback. He said, ‘You’ve been fooled. Please, why would they be interested in someone like me? I don’t go anywhere near them, nor do I—’
‘Stop it, you’re not fooling anyone! Do you think girls like those people who chase after them all the time? They don’t give men like that a second thought. They consider such men to be slaves they can buy on the cheap. They prefer men whom they can enjoy hunting while winning them over—with a little danger, a little challenge. No one has ever even seen you anywhere near a girl’s shadow, so any girl who is able to make you carry her books on your head and drag you behind her will know that she can seriously rival Queen Christina. You can count on that. You can have your cake and . . .’
Shekhar was instantly enraged. But at the same time he remembered that a few days ago a girl from his class had asked him, ‘What are your thoughts on society? It’s for an essay I want to write about it—’ Shekhar said, ‘I’ll give you my article, you should read that.’ But she insisted that she wanted to hear it from Shekhar.
So Shekhar sat with her in the library and explained his views to her with considerable effort and much trouble, and he gave her several books to read. He had said some very harsh things, but when he was leaving it puzzled him that when he folded his hands in farewell a sweet laugh was offered in return . . . And as he recalled this episode he was filled with a doubt that perhaps what his classmate had said was true. Angrily, he said to him, ‘You can keep your filthy thoughts to yourself, understand? I am not interested in this nonsense.’ But he was overcome with an anxiety that people were looking neither at his ideas nor at his intentions but merely at him . . .
He tried to avoid the girls in class even more than before. As much as possible, he would show up to class at a time when it was impossible to talk to him, and he would leave through the back door before anyone else. In order to dispel attention, he even stopped wearing antigonon blossoms, but it appeared to him that it had the opposite effect. The first day that he arrived without the flower he looked up and saw—there were three or four bouquets of antigonons hanging from the chalkboard, and someone had also put a few flowers on the girls’ bench. The next day, someone had written on the board, ‘Where are Shekhar’s flowers? Ask the back bench.’ The back bench was where the girls sat.
He knew there was no place to hide. Sometimes he wanted to run away, and sometimes he wanted to ask a girl, all of them even, what were they thinking, what did they want from him? Was it true that they really were thinking the things that the boys imagined they were, which were expressed by the words the boys had written? And other times he felt that if this were in fact the case, he would be even more foolish for asking . . .
This never-ending dilemma began eating at him. One day he realized that he was always thinking about those girls for no reason—whenever he asked a question in class or answered one of the professor’s questions, he found himself thinking about the effect it was going to have on those girls. The first day he became aware of this fact, he was stunned for some time—Have I really lost? Were the Romantics right, and did women become Fate and unconsciously turn men into slaves and take their lives? He couldn’t accept that! He wasn’t a slave to Fate; he was its antagonist.
At that very moment he got up and walked out of class, wandered around for two or three hours and ultimately, as if defeated, he set out for the ocean.
But on that day, the ocean didn’t console him; so he turned back and went to the night school and started talking to the children.
The exams were approaching and Shekhar’s college was going to be closed for the study break, and it had been decided that as soon as the break started the night school would also be closed down and restarted when the college reopened. The children were a little upset about the fast-approaching four-month-long break and so they greeted Shekhar with extra enthusiasm, and for a short time Shekhar was able to forget about womankind and his own misfortunes. Amidst those children, he felt protective, even capable, and he forgot that he was an encumbered, exhausted fool named Shekhar who was being set upon by hunters . . .
*
After wandering for the entire afternoon, bare-chested, at the edge of the ocean, in the cloudless heat, Shekhar returned home in the evening. He had gone for a swim, but when even after swimming his mind remained restless he threw his shirt over his shoulder and began roaming on the baking sand; when his skin had been burned from the blistering sun he went for another swim, put his clothes back on and went home.
As he ascended the staircase in the hostel, he saw that two of his students from the night school were standing outside his room. He went to them quickly and asked, ‘What’s the matter, Shamb?’
Shambshiv quietly extended an envelope towards him. Shekhar opened it and began reading.
It was a card that had been crafted with visible effort and the writing on it was in large, childish letters that said that the students from the night school had organized a farewell party for the teachers that night, and that they hoped that their teacher, Shekhar, would come.
Shekhar’s heart was moved by a sweet tenderness. He asked, ‘Have you invited the others, too?’
‘Yes, sir, everyone’s been invited, but except for Sadashiv, no one else is coming.’
‘Why?’
The boys didn’t answer. So Shekhar asked, ‘What has been planned for the party?’
‘There will be a celebratory speech.’
‘And?’
The two boys looked at each other and stopped. They didn’t speak. Shekhar smiled and asked, ‘Why, is there a surprise or something? Is there some mischief being planned?’
The boys said, ‘We aren’t supposed to tell you.’ But seeing Shekhar smile opened something up in them and they said, ‘Dinner is being prepared.’
‘What?’ Shekhar said and fell silent. It occurred to him to ask where they had got so much money, but he was so moved by an appreciation of their affection that it seemed insulting to ask that question. He said, ‘You two go on ahead. I’ll be there in a little while.’ The boys left.
Shekhar hadn’t learned how to be suspicious, but for some reason today it occurred to him that the people who had rejected the invitation had done so out of fear of having to come to dinner. The hostel was full of students from untouchable families, and even they seemed to worry that the schoolchildren were untouchables, and perhaps also that they were poor and dirty . . . In his own mind, Shekhar decided that next year he wouldn’t ask those people to be his associates. Instead, he would refuse to meet with them.
Then he took a bath. Wore fine, white clothes. He took three photographs out of his new album, collected a lot of flowers from the antigonon vine when he came downstairs, and then set off for the night school. Sadashiv had gone out somewhere and was going to go directly to the school.
While they were eating dinner, Shekhar and Sadashiv gently chided the twenty-six or twenty-seven male and female students—three young girls also attended the school—for taking up a collection amongst themselves to pay for dinner without asking them. After dinner, Shekhar distributed the photos and the flowers amongst them. But when their hands were joined together in a gesture of thanks, Shekhar took their hands and said, choking up a little, ‘Look, don’t be silly!’ And after Sadashiv thanked all of them in a few words, the children saw that Shekhar was getting ready to leave. One of them said, ‘Brother Shekhar, aren’t you going to say anything?’
Having been transformed from ‘Teacher Shekhar’ to ‘Brother Shekhar’ he found he couldn’t remain silent, but he was already finding it difficult to say anything; moreover, Shekhar o
nly knew enough Tamil to teach the alphabet and get very basic things done. He certainly didn’t know how to express his feelings at that moment since he wouldn’t have been able to do so in his own language, but on account of all of the innocent eyes that were fixed on him he began to acquire a new language of expression, and constructing a stew of Hindi, English and Tamil this is what came out of his mouth:
‘At first I thought that I had come here to help you, that this was my gift to you. But you all have taught me that this was a mistake. We’ve reached dotage by living in our own arrogance, gnarled like dry pieces of wood. Now we have to learn humility from you, to acquire your gentleness, a new life and a new youthfulness.
‘Today, I have on my lips those tiny meaningless letters that we teach you from your primers, but one day your lips will carry the words of a new language which will have meaning, which will have the strength to create a real upheaval and which will destroy both caste and religious difference, will give birth to a new religion, in which all of us will be brothers, will be related by blood. If that day has not come, it is because it has not entered our hearts—but that day will come soon . . .’
Shekhar stopped and looked all around to give his choking voice a rest. Some of the boys understood what he had said, and some had not understood but were looking at him affectionately. This sight made something inside him well up and he called over to Sadashiv, ‘Sadashiv, they aren’t getting what I’m saying. Will you listen to me and translate it for them?’ And he started talking . . .
‘The people that I have chosen to live and eat with, all of them are untouchables, unseeables, but let me tell you, I have found friends among them, found brothers. No one consults them, looks at them, goes near them, that’s why their hearts are true, vital and filled with fire. No one talks to them, that’s why their senses are even sharper. You are those people, you are my only companions and my only friends, you are my only world and you are the source of my strength. I have adopted you, known you, and this has made me happy. But you should not feel gratitude for this. Don’t make yourselves smaller by doing that. I don’t feel as if I am a Brahmin who is leading you forward. I’ve only accompanied you. Somewhere inside, I’m an untouchable too, your brother, too. I haven’t given myself to you as a bit of charity, I have acquired you . . .’
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