‘But that’s not true of all writers. The best writers have—’
‘Leave them out of it. Not everyone can be a Shelley or a Keats. And didn’t Kalidasa serve his time in court? Or are you talking about ascetics like Surdas or Tulsidas—those were special men. Not everyone can follow their example.’
‘Look, either I possess genius or I don’t. If I don’t possess it, then what makes you think that I will be any better after I pass my MA than all the other fools who have their MAs? And if I do possess it, then who knows, I could do something important in literature—’
‘Hmm, that’s spurious logic!’
The matter was closed.
A long time after that, suddenly, ‘What will you write in, Hindi?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmm. What’s so special about Hindi? If you write in English, it may even make you famous. Even if you don’t earn a lot, a man can at least get some satisfaction from his fame. What will Hindi get you?’
‘But there should be a purpose to the writing. One doesn’t write for mere fame, does one? Only a few people will be able to read books in English—Hindi will reach millions—’ (and then suddenly remembering that even if there were millions of Hindi speakers, there were substantially fewer readers!)—‘or at a minimum thousands will be able to read it.’
‘But what class of readers? Who values Hindi in this day and age?’
With a note of pride, Shekhar said, ‘Hindi is the language of the people. The spirits of millions of people speak it.’ And then, thinking that this line of argument would please his father, he said with deliberate mischief (although it was not as though he didn’t believe in this argument at all), ‘And our caste traditions are all in Hindi—our entire past is bound to this language.’
‘It may be. But when something isn’t useful for a man’s future, what good is there in holding on to it as a symbol of his past?’
‘I can only see the future in Hindi—if we lose Hindi, then it makes no difference whether there is a future or not.’
‘Of course you can see it—you have to contradict everything I say, after all. Your mother thought about you a lot. But you turned out to be so useless that you didn’t even come to see her. Even if the parents are rotten, no one acts like that.’
Shekhar was silent.
‘She thought about you until the very end. She had decided that when you were released from jail, she would get you married. She was even looking for brides for you.’
A memory struck Shekhar like an arrow, ‘Next time, when he comes back, marry him off!’ When his older brother Ishwardutt had run off, that’s what his mother had decided to do . . . Suddenly he felt as though all of his efforts—mental and physical—had been reduced to one spot in a respectable fantasy of life which had been set from time immemorial as a solution for all such efforts—when he gets back, marry him off! As if all of his thoughts were a familiar disease—with a clear remedy—formula number such-and-such! Shekhar wanted to reply, ‘Will each brother get the same medicine?’ But instead restrainedly, he said, ‘Why me? I don’t want to get married. And besides, I have older brothers.’
‘This has nothing to do with what you want. Marriages don’t happen because the children want them to. It’s a social obligation. A boy, a girl, the parents, the caste, everyone is involved. Yes, you’re right that your older brothers should be married first. But Ishwar is already engaged, and Prabhu’s will happen soon enough. Nothing happens anyway until there is an engagement; the engagement will happen when a suitable girl is found. And—’
Shekhar could tell that this issue was coming to a close too easily. He was emphatic, ‘I don’t want to get married now, so—’
‘Why? Prabhu is still studying; it will take him two years to become an engineer. You’ve abandoned your studies. You need to live properly. You need to think about the future. Make a home, earn a living, live a stable, separate life. If you can find a wife from a respectable home, she can make do with a meagre income. After all, half of what you need for running the home will come in the dowry. And I haven’t remarried, so whatever I’ve earned, I’ve spent on you all; and then whatever else there is left, I’ll leave to you as inheritance. I don’t need any of it after I’m gone—I will give to you as my father gave to me. If I can get you married, I’ll know that I’ve fulfilled one of your mother’s unfulfilled desires. The poor woman had no happiness in her life. We’re not talking about how wives used to be in the past—wives used to do so much back then—’ His father became distracted.
Shekhar said, ‘Look, I don’t have the slightest desire to get married. And I’m not ready to—I don’t earn anything, and I don’t have a degree with any promise of earning more in the future. I could get thirty or forty from being a clerk, but I would never do that. It would be wrong to pursue a relationship in such circumstances, and foolish. And then—’ He stopped for a moment and then pleadingly said, ‘And I’ve chosen a mission10 for myself, so why would I intentionally put up roadblocks?’
‘What mission? What kind of mission?’
‘I don’t want to earn a lot of money. I want to write, but not for money. It will be only to achieve an ideal—I am vowing to change the condition of my society, of the lives of the people around me—you have to agree that a major transformation is necessary. And if you don’t, then at least you agree that the country has to be free, no?’
Partly from irritation and partly from a paternal pride, his father said, ‘Look at how much you’ve learned!’ He laughed a little. ‘Let me tell you about my life—I’ve never told you these things, but there’s no point in hiding them now. You’re all grown up now.’ His eyes seemed very distant now and he started talking in a deeper voice, ‘When I finished my studies, a few of us took similar vows. We had studied in a traditional Hindu school, so when we left we all promised each other that we would spend all of the years between then until we turned twenty-five—I was eighteen at the time—in accordance with our vow, because one was supposed to be a brahmacharya [celibate] only until twenty-five. Our only possessions would be the clothes on our backs, a pitcher and a bag with a few books in it. You’re talking about changing conditions; our plan was very straightforward. To kick the British out and to organize a Hindu nation and finally establish a pure Aryan tradition . . . For four years, we wandered around, propagandizing and begging for food. We went to such wild regions that you can’t even dream of, let alone ever go to. And’—hesitating and laughing in embarrassment—‘the poisonous things that we did against the British would make today’s terrorists squirm! But in the end’—his eyebrows and shoulders gave away the end of the sentence—‘everything was in vain.’
His father looked at Shekhar. Seeing the clear look of curiosity on his face, he started, ‘We stayed together for a year. Then we went our separate ways. Our duty was so clear before us that if we ever saw a random Englishman along the way, we would beat them up. I—’ his nostrils flared from pride—‘was pretty well built—and my face would get so red! It’s not like now. I wasn’t a gentleman.’
For a little while, his gaze turned inwards, as if he were digging up a repressed memory and bringing it back up . . . ‘But it didn’t end well. Two of my friends were picked up along with a terrorist cell and were hanged. We never learned how the third one died—we only learned later that some missionaries had become angry with him and slipped him poison. The fourth—I was the fourth. After four years of this work, I began to feel that I was doing useless work—not only because the work was exceptionally slow, but primarily because propagandizing hate can never have a good result . . . Then one day something happened which completely opened my eyes and’—and then suddenly changing the topic—‘and this was the preaching of hate. What will you do? You will also propagandize about the destruction of things that are wrong, won’t you?’
‘Not only that, but also about what we want—’
‘Yes, yes. But the nature of the resentment will compel you to focus on destruction. I’ve seen that all propag
anda is the propaganda of hate; because there is power in hate, there is none in love. Just like there is in poison. When wars are fought, when jihad is conducted, it is all on a foundation of hate . . . And hate really is a poison. It kills others, and it doesn’t spare us, either. And if it is unable to kill others, it attacks us so fast that . . .’
He suddenly became quiet. Shekhar wanted to argue with him, and he even wanted to ask him about what had happened, but he was scared that if he asked him it might alter his father’s mood. Because he had never talked about his past before. In all honesty, Shekhar had never dared to imagine that his father had been such a youth. So he stood quietly. After a while, his father spoke again, ‘It will make you go mad, too.’ And then he seemed lost. And then, as if to wake himself up, ‘In three or four years, I lost all faith in my work. Then it seemed absolutely necessary for me to seek someone else’s advice. But who was there to ask! Then someone told me that there was a holy man who lived in a cave near Tehri in the Himalayas and that I could get excellent counsel from him. We had grown up with the idea that truly holy and wise men lived in the caves of the Himalayas, so I set out for there. After wandering for several months, one day, after passing through the forests, I decided to rest on a clear hill. At the foot of the hill flowed a mountain stream; its topmost part played recklessly with the stony ground as it flowed on, but the bottom part seemed to get trapped in a grassy pit where it was turning into a mire.’
His father drew a long breath and said, ‘A while later, I saw a terrible figure approach. A tall, glistening, black form, with matted locks, a lion’s mane, wearing a loincloth. He would sit down wherever the ground bubbled and dig up large clumps of mud with his hands and shape them into a mound. After he had gathered up a large amount of mud, he would pat it down for some unknown reason. I was quite a way away, and in order not to startle him, I went around the other side of the mound so that I could get closer, and I stood under the cover of a tree a little below the spot where he was sitting and watched him. What I saw left me stunned.
‘He had made a cannon out of mud. He would bend down to take aim and then light the cannon with a stick in his hand and then scream a word—“Bang!” Then the jungle echoed back a peal of laughter and echoed him . . .’
His father stopped to see what effect this was having on Shekhar. Then he said, ‘I watched, infatuated, for a long time. Then I noticed that all around that spot were several more mud cannons whose mud had dried and broken off . . . Two hours later, I got up and left.’
Now Shekhar couldn’t keep himself from asking, ‘Then?’
‘I asked around and found out that he was one of the rebel soldiers of 1857, who had run here to hide after the British began taking revenge barbarically. Ever since, this was his daily routine—he had been firing mud cannons for forty years!’
Shekhar remained quiet for a long time.
‘That event exposed the uselessness of my endeavours to me clearly. I abandoned the search for holy men and came back and registered at another ashram. This happened thirty-five years ago. I don’t think that I made a mistake.’ He stopped for a minute to think. ‘Hatred always ends the same way. It’s the only possible end it can have. Madness.’ And feeling that no objection could possibly be raised to this, he looked at Shekhar knowingly.
Dozens of objections immediately came to Shekhar’s lips. He said, ‘How can you say that? First of all, you don’t know that he went mad from hate—or that hate was the reason for his failures. The real reason that he was in the jungle firing mud cannons was that he was afraid—he was hiding and firing cannons, which is why they were made of mud. The rebellion was powerless—and powerlessness is self-reproducing—so the rebellion was a failure. If he hadn’t hidden, if he had fought and died, then would hatred still be seen as failure? Let’s say that the reason he went crazy was because of the rebellion. But how can you say that his life was less meaningful? Everyone is crazy. But his madness had an extraordinary intensity—isn’t that really all that we’ve established?’
His father was annoyed, ‘Forget about going mad, you are already crazy.’
His father said, ‘Security is very important.’
Shekhar couldn’t think of what to say in response.
‘You won’t understand its significance now. Security11 is very important in life. Even if you get a little money from writing, you won’t be able to depend on it. Income turns into wealth when it comes regularly and altogether, even if it’s not substantial. That’s why I’m telling you, set up a home, earn a living, live comfortably. A man only knows where he is standing when his life has some solidity.’
Again, Shekhar was quiet. His father said, ‘Why aren’t you saying anything?’
‘I don’t understand what I should say.’
‘What is there to understand? Is there anyone who doesn’t want to be secure in life? Why else would we have established institutions like insurance, provident funds and pensions?12 These days, people ask about whether there is a provident fund or a pension before taking a job. What do you think? Am I right or not?’
‘It’s right. But I don’t want to be secure. You’re talking about starting a home, earning an income and being secure. To me, these things sound like life’s illnesses—I’m trying to avoid these things. A comfortable life, a feeling of safety, the absence of day-to-day challenges—these are all termites that devour a life’s force. I want the opposite of these things. I want a world of endless instability and challenges so that I am always compelled to fight—to be able to tear it down with my own hands and destroy it and build it anew with my own hands.’
‘You will keep arguing for the sake of pointless argument. If you truly live like this for two days, you’ll have a nervous breakdown!13 One walks a challenging road when it comes along, but who asks for one? You like to make a show of your learning—isn’t it the course of the development of civilization that man ceaselessly advances towards a state of increasing prosperity?’
‘Civilization! This civilization is a fraud. What security, safety and prosperity all really amount to is the prolongation of man’s childhood. The more civilized someone is, the longer is his childhood. Civilization is another word for dependency. An animal’s childhood lasts a year, two years at the most. It probably lasts ten or twelve years with savages in the jungles. We’ve become so civilized that children remain children for thirty years or so, and they don’t stand on their own feet. Some people die before they escape childhood.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m twenty-one years old now. And today, you don’t think that I am ready to get my own place and live in a safe city like Lahore. It seems to me that you are saying that everything that you have taught me for the last twenty years or so is rubbish because it hasn’t prepared me for this. I think that we have become more civilized than necessary. And who knows what goes on in our joint families! Isn’t this the way that people are forced into dependency, their true personalities and internal strength laid to rest? Is the meaning of civilization supposed to be turning a deaf ear to the provocation of life, to grind out the strength to stand up and take it on? Tell me this, if the first Aryans were simply seeking comfort, would their culture have spread as far as Java, Cambay and China? Would they even be Aryans—they were only called Aryans when they went to new countries and settled there.’
Irritatedly but in admiration, his father looked at Shekhar, ‘Are these things you’ve read somewhere or are they your own ideas?’
Shekhar suddenly thought of Baba Madansingh. ‘You have to search your pain for your own aphorisms’ . . . His thoughts perhaps bore the imprint of Baba Madansingh’s ideas, but was it so deep that Shekhar was merely repeating these things like a parrot? Did the corresponding feelings to everything that he had said not course through his veins?
He became dejected and fell silent . . .
His father butted heads with Shekhar for a few more days. In between, he walked through town and met his friends a few times, and a few
of them even came there to visit. Three days later, Rameshwar came with Shashi for a visit—they had just come back to Lahore that day. When his father’s heart melted from all of the words of sympathy and he began to think about Shekhar’s mother, Shekhar quietly got up and left the room. He knew that in his absence Shashi would be able to offer him comforting words more naturally, something that he was completely incapable of doing—he didn’t know if he could console anyone else or not, but he got tongue-tied when he tried to do it with his father.
That night, Shekhar woke suddenly with a start. He hadn’t been dreaming. He didn’t understand why he had woken up so fearfully. His fear and unbearable restlessness were extremely discernible. He turned to look at his father and was startled again—he was awake, too, and sitting up. Suddenly a strange sound emerged from his father’s constricted throat which was neither a moan nor a shriek—and Shekhar realized that it was this sound which had woken him up in confusion . . . He trembled slightly. Perhaps his father had figured out that he was awake, so he got up quickly, put on his shoes and went outside into the courtyard.
Shekhar had never seen his father cry—and crying so desperately . . . He felt a deep pain somewhere inside, and a wordless sympathy overtook him. He didn’t know that his father could feel so much pain; nor had he imagined that no matter who, when or where, everyone pays the price for the daily toughness and meanness in private—that a father who was a tough disciplinarian with his children could also display a natural, human tenderness sometimes . . .
Outside in the courtyard he heard the hesitating sounds of someone sobbing and then the sound of someone clearing his nose . . . Then the sound of slippers told him that his father had come back inside; he quickly covered his face and lay down. He tried to breathe more regularly to hide the rapidity of his heartbeat . . .
A little while later, his father came and sat on the cot, drew a long but broken sigh and gently lay down.
Shekhar stayed up for a long time wondering if his father had gone to sleep or not. Eventually he fell asleep himself.
Shekhar Page 46
