The next day, his father had to head back. After washing up in the morning and getting his things together, at teatime, he drily asked, ‘So what have you decided to do?’
Because the memory of last night was still fresh in his mind, Shekhar didn’t want to let anything slip that might upset his father. He made his voice appropriately submissive, ‘Just what I’ve already told you. I’ve already sent a book off to be printed.’ This entire time, Shekhar still hadn’t gone to deliver his manuscript.
‘Really? What is the book about?’
‘It’s titled “Our Society”. In it—’
‘So you’re bent on raising cudgels against society. Do whatever you want, son. It’s not as though you are going to listen to reason.’ And then he relaxed a little, ‘I didn’t listen either. There’s something about the blood of youth. No one listens until they’ve actually been pushed around.’
Shekhar thought to himself—‘That’s how it should be.’ But he didn’t say anything out loud.
Just then, Shashi showed up. His father looked at her and said—‘Why don’t you make him understand? I’ve heard that he really listens to you.’
Shekhar asked, ‘Who told you that?’
‘Someone or another. Why? Did I get it wrong?’
Shashi said—‘He’s never listened to me—he just scolds me all the time.’
‘Who is he to be scolding you? Why do you pay that any attention?’
Shekhar was close to laughing at Shashi’s false accusation. He got up and went to the closet on the pretence of getting something and went past it and into the courtyard; he paced back and forth there for a long time. He was a little dismayed that no one had come looking for him. It was a mystery how Shashi talked to his father without any hesitation—and he, too, spoke to her adoringly without any trace of authority. The two of them could have an uninterrupted, natural conversation, but Shekhar and his father would start arguing in the middle, or there would be long, tense silences.
Suddenly Shekhar remembered that he still had his father’s money and hadn’t returned the change. He went back inside just as his father was calling him, ‘Shekhar!’
Shekhar took the notes and coins from his pocket, held them out for his father and said, ‘This is the rest of it; I’ve written down the expenses on a piece of paper.’
In a mild reproach, his father said, ‘All right, all right, just keep it. Big shot here trying to settle accounts with me!’
Shekhar was in a momentary dilemma. Then noticing that Shashi was giving him a sign to drop the subject immediately, he put the money back in his pocket.
The tonga arrived later. Shashi bowed respectfully and said goodbye. Shekhar went with his father to the railway station.
*
After delivering the handwritten manuscript of ‘Our Society’, Shekhar felt as if he had climbed one rung higher on the ladder to the goal he had set for himself. It gave him great satisfaction and he began trying to work more religiously. This time, he had decided to conduct a comparative study of the rights of men and women from various communities throughout the world. The thesis that he was developing was that very few of the beams which governed the relationships between men and women and the powers that they exercised over each other were built on foundations of logic, or rather, that the traditions which lay behind them were basically economic arrangements, economic arrangements that lacked notes of currency and so traded in lives instead. Moreover, he also wanted to establish that the prevailing argument amongst reformers—that the traditions of some past society were right because they were appropriate for the conditions of that time, but are no longer appropriate for today’s conditions—was fallacious, because many of the aspects of those beliefs were hardly necessary in any condition of the past or present—or more precisely, the logical consequences of those conventions bore no relation to the conditions of the past. Their real source was a complete blind faith or the irrational practices of magic and superstition. Many of these outmoded superstitious practices continue today, and we constantly try to create logical justifications for them. These attempts are like trying to fix new brass bottoms on to newly discovered ancient clay pots—and we perform such ridiculous endeavours daily.
Shekhar wanted to say that this was also the reason that the reformers were unsuccessful. They affirmed human arrogance by trying to justify these traditions of past societies—and they say with even more enthusiasm, ‘Dear Sir, all of these old customs were established by the sages—and you know that they were all historically specific!’ And from there, they easily move one step higher when they realize that many of our contemporary practices are not logical. Then they say, ‘Sir, they were sages. The things that they established were not only specific to the past, but are right for all time, because they were omniscient—if they could prescribe logical rules for their own time, couldn’t they also make rules for the future?’ And then that was that, no reformist argument stood a chance against that line of thought—it was the impenetrable armour of tradition.
Shekhar wanted his book to be proof of clear principles, and the arguments that he would develop would be based on a mountain of evidence from history, psychology, biology and especially anthropology as that would make each argument unassailable. He knew that his previous studies were not sufficient for this. He had been majoring in science in college. Even then he had read several books on various subjects, and the ten months in jail had allowed him to read much which had piqued his interest in sociology and anthropology; but he knew well that human knowledge was advancing at an incredibly rapid pace and it was difficult to keep up with it, especially for a man who had no guidance from an expert in the field. He wanted to become a member of the best public library in the city so that he could get hold of the necessary reading materials. After he had used the money his father had given him to pay off the restaurant bill, he still had twelve rupees or so left, but the annual subscription to the library cost eight rupees, and the books on the subjects that he wanted required an additional deposit of twenty rupees . . .
One day while he was sitting, he realized that while he had definitely lost many of his books he still had many of them. What was the point in displaying the books he had already read like some millionaire? They were very important to him, he even considered them to be a greater part of himself or more precisely his social persona, but why should knowledge be any less important? And how could knowledge be acquired without effort?—Knowledge was not an after-dinner mint that one could eat for free!
Shekhar went to his cabinet and began perusing his books. After he had looked at them all once or twice, he took out two or three of the most expensive ones; then he scanned his books again and put two back and took another one out; then he put them all back and started pacing . . . Then he removed one large book of a two-volume set—Wells’s A Short History of the World.14 He quickly flipped through its pages and thought to himself, ‘This is a reference book and I rarely need to make use of it—I’ve read it twice, too.’ He put it to the side. He walked back and forth twice and then took out an even bigger book—The Collected Paintings of Chughtai . . . He looked at a few of the images and, as if speaking aloud to the book, thought to himself, ‘When I don’t have the other volumes, what good will a single one do? And it’s not as though Chughtai is the world’s greatest painter—and then, a man should only have paintings when he has a proper place to put them. There could be moths here at any time.’ And he reminded himself that bugs had devoured his first creation and that a cow had eaten his second . . . But his mind was racing like a thief; he was completely indecisive . . .
Shekhar opened all three volumes once more. He had won these books as prizes in college, and the associated certificates had been affixed inside the covers. He looked at the certificates for a moment, then all of a sudden, with a steady hand, grabbed them at their corners and ripped them out. He wrapped the books in old newspapers and set out.
The books were worth approximately forty-eight rupees, but
he couldn’t get anyone to offer more than eighteen in the bazaar. He asked around and then sold Wells’s history at a second-hand bookseller’s for fifteen and a half—this was a fair price for it. No one was willing to give more than four rupees for the second book, because, as Shekhar learned, despite being worth seventeen rupees, new copies of the book were being sold at a 50 per cent discount in the market for eight and a half. So Shekhar took it to a college student whom he knew who was also interested in painting. Somehow, Shekhar stuck him with the book and got eight rupees for it—although he could clearly tell that the buyer was putting as much pressure on him as he was . . .
After he joined the library, on his first trip he checked out Frazer’s The Golden Bough, Crawley’s The Mystic Rose . . . and got a commentary on the Manusmriti and a clear, critical edition. The feeling of depression lifted from his brain, and he became completely absorbed in reading these books whose pages he read over and over as his enthusiasm grew. He set aside his reading and put his books in the cabinet and felt as if they were not strangers to him; they had become encircled by his soul . . .
One day while Shekhar was writing, he was shocked to discover that someone was standing at his door waiting for him to lift his head and give him permission to enter. Shekhar stammered, ‘Come in—come in—’ and gathered up the pieces of paper that were scattered everywhere and cleared a place on the cot.
The newcomer forced a smile. ‘My name is Amolak Roy and I am the president of the local Hindu Reform Society.’
Shekhar said, ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’ve heard that you want to make social reform work your life’s mission. You are also very educated—I can see that clearly for myself. Truth be told, the first demand of social reform is devotion. I—’
Shekhar was a little taken aback, ‘Where did you hear all this?’
‘You can’t hide brilliance . . . No matter how modest you are—’
This couldn’t be—there had to be something amiss. Drily, Shekhar said, ‘To what do I owe this visit?’
‘I came just to admire you. Very few people take a real interest in social service work—and you know how young people are these days—they aren’t interested in anything—they are allergic to the word “service”.—I have great hopes for you—’
‘Tell me, what can I do?—’
‘There is much that you can do. You have drive, dedication and the strength of the young. You should come to one of our meetings and see for yourself. Once you see our projects you will see for yourself how helpful you can be.’
Shekhar’s interest was piqued, ‘I will definitely come. But could you give me a general idea?—’
‘Yes, yes. There are many things that we want to reform, but we have decided to focus on the family as we feel that the family is the foundation of society, and society can be reformed only when family life is reformed.’
‘Very good—’
‘And the foundation of the family is marriage, so we want to reform marriage practices first.’
‘This is very important work. What is your programme?’
‘If it was just one thing, I would have told you, right? But such matters require a multifaceted approach. We require the cooperation of young men and young women and their parents; journalism is also important; then there is keeping political and religious leaders happy—’
‘Why?’
‘Because what’s the point of creating unnecessary antagonism? It’s best to get your job done with as little opposition as possible, don’t you think?’ Lala Amolak Roy laughed a little.
‘I suppose. All right, I will definitely come to your meeting. When is it?’
‘Don’t just come, you will also have to speak—’
Squeamishly, Shekhar said, ‘But I’m not good at public speaking at all. I can be more useful in conversation—’
‘Well, how about that? How can you run away from society and still hope to do social reform work? It’s not going to be a very large meeting—there will only be a few men who are interested in the work. You could say that it will be a meeting of our core members—all of our real work happens outside the meetings; the meetings are for an exchange of ideas—’
Ultimately, they agreed that Shekhar would come to the meeting and would say something and take part in the intellectual exchange. Lala Amolak Roy left.
Even though Shekhar had been very calm when he told Shashi about the invitation, and had very calmly also accepted her approval, on the inside his disquiet grew rapidly—on the one hand he had the excited feeling of new responsibility and finding a direction for his efforts, and on the other hand there was the fear and anxiety of participating in his first ideological debate—In college and particularly in the ‘Antigonon Club’, he would defend his positions with substantial flair, but that was completely different—there, he knew everyone or they were friends, and he was just one of the many leaders of the club; here he would be an outsider and bound by the formalities of being invited, and amongst the experienced social reformers he would be a neophyte ‘amateur’15 . . .
He immediately began preparing very diligently—and in the process of writing ‘points’ for his speech he managed to finish an entire article . . . He made full use of the things that he was currently reading and the examples they used—while discussing the reform of familial tradition, he examined the origins of the family and its development—He determined that there was no connection between that development and economics and that it was foolish to search for the economic bases of ancient familial structures. But gradually these traditions escaped the realm of magic and superstition and began to be influenced by economic conditions, and now they underwent substantial changes side by side with economic development. By quoting from the Manusmriti he proved that at the time of the composition of the smritis,16 ideas about the family were connected to contemporary economic theories—so not only the traditional logic of the Manusmriti, but also its style and its examples were dependent on the particular conditions of an agrarian civilization. That was why whenever the rights of woman were laid out they were established by making use of examples comparing her to cows, horses, camels, slaves and buffaloes—man was considered the ‘breadwinner’, and all of these and women were considered commodities to be bought and sold—and in the manner of agriculturists, all of their offspring were considered the property of the ‘breadwinner’, and all of their wealth, the wealth of the master. And even to determine paternity, the allegory of master, land and produce became customary practice. But saying all of this wasn’t meant to show contempt for the smritis—as long as the rules of society developed alongside the current form of civilization, society was fine; the rot inside it did not grow.
But (as Shekhar was arguing) in more recent ages this correlation was destroyed—the condition of our lives began to change with great speed but society stopped developing. Undeniably, one of the reasons for this was that foreign rule had established new and harsh laws—to maintain order in society, they collected together social customs from different places, created an aggregate from them, and made everyone bow down to it as law—all the while forgetting that customs have always undergone change and continue to change. The conditions in which those customs were accumulated became even more impermanent, indeterminate and fluid! When ice suddenly forms on a flowing stream—how would a new seed sprout and grow under that icy sheet? But this external cause was only one of the causes—the other cause that was incredibly important for our purposes was the weakness and paralysis in our society—that dynamism which is life’s crucial religion . . . After these ordinary ideological arguments, he evaluated the main parts of family life and offered necessary reforms so that equality could be established to the condition of life in other civilizations.
With each day the meeting drew closer, Shekhar grew more excited—he wasn’t as anxious after finishing ‘Our Society’ as he was for this meeting . . .
A smoky, slate-blue evening—the smoke from a city’s December crept
in through an open window of a lonely corner room of a four-storeyed building, cold, heavy, with a sting like poison, slick like dead and discoloured snakeskin. Piercing through the shroud of smoke, an unwelcome commotion rose like a ghost from the invisible city that spread out below and around, but its silent heaviness seemed to magnify the room’s stony silence. Shekhar is huddled in the corner of his bed and forcing his eyes open, blind from the smoke and even drier from the burning, he hazily feels that the picture outside is an excellent imitation of his internal state of being . . .
Shekhar has been back from that meeting for an hour already. He wants to convince himself that he has forgotten all about that meeting, but in the same way that the paralysis induced by the poisons unleashed by a stroke is the first indication that they have spread, Shekhar’s numbness repeated the sensations from that meeting . . .
When he saw that there were more than a hundred people at the meeting, Shekhar was shocked and thought, ‘Were there really this many social reform activists in the city?’ A new-found hope coursed through him, and his growing curiosity about organizational matters made him forget his anxiety about his speech. The meeting started haphazardly—Shekhar listened attentively, but gradually his attention drifted and after a little while he was completely turned off. He completely ignored the speaker and began studying the expressions of each individual member of the audience. Several were listening attentively—or rather they were so entranced that they moved their hands and nodded, changed the shape of their lips and brows not only as proof of their agreement but also as if they were translating the speaker’s incorporeal thoughts into physical actions. Shekhar suddenly couldn’t believe his eyes—because he was completely incapable of focusing on anything and was getting irritated with the speaker. He had a hazy sense that the speech had taken the form of a resolution—the sense of the resolution was that the increasing lack of Brahmin grooms was creating a grave crisis for unmarried daughters, so to help them and to relieve their parents the reform society would create a committee called Committee for the Arrangement of Marriages of Brahmin Bachelors, whose most important task would be to create and publish a complete registry of all eligible Brahmin bachelors, which would enable any father in need to locate a suitable husband for his daughter. It would have all the relevant information—age, income, lineage, character, father’s income, rank, height, physical attributes, hobbies, what kind of wife he’s looking for, future plans, et cetera . . .
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