Jewel Less Crown: Saga Of Life

by BS Murthy

  "Doctor saab, what has my life come to now?" she said as she sighed. "Oh, to save my son's life, I must kiss and tell in court! Can it ever get more ironical than that for any woman?"

  "I understand," he said holding her hands as though guiding her on the way to her destiny, "what a Hobson's choice it is, and it is the sadness of your life now."

  "I don't think you would ever get the full picture," she said, seized by an urge to be understood by him, "till I show you the other side of my demented mind."

  "How I wish to be of help,” as he said, he attuned himself to hear her.

  'Oh, why did it never occur to me before?' she began contemplatively. 'Thanks to you, now I realize that I myself was a victim of parental paranoia. As fate would have it, I was the first-born besides being the closest to my parents. We are five siblings—three brothers and two sisters. When I was born, my father, the youngest amongst his six brothers, was a petty clerk at the municipal office in Guntur. But all his brothers happened to be high ranking government officials. M y father never failed to remind us that his father had retired by the time he had completed his schooling, and that came in the way of his higher education. But for that, he felt, like his brothers, he too would have made it good in life. What's worse, as none of his siblings took up his cause; he came to see them as the source of his deprivation! Oh how he came to grudge them all his life. God knows the truth; my grandfather was wont to maintain that my father was no good at studies."

  "Whatever," she paused fora while, as though to get a correct picture in hindsight, "it forced him to settle fora clerk's post and remain in the ancestral home. Maybe, he needed my grandfather's pension to augment his own salary to support the family. Of course, all my uncles left Guntur and were on their own. But my mother was unable to reconcile to the facts of my father's life that denied her a nucleus family of her own.

  Thus, feeling trapped in the joint family that entailed her taking care of her aged in-laws, and envying the carefree life of her sisters-in-law, my mother came to grouse the crumbs of life that fate had dished out for us all. Well, her sense of frustration helped further my father's own sense of deprivation. All that insensibly cemented their joint sense of helplessness. Whenever my uncles came with their families to see our grandparents, my parents used to feel slighted for they believed that the visits were just for a show off. Now I realize to what lengths the state of imagined deprivation could take one."

  She stopped fora while as though in disbelief, over what she had said.

  "As if to protect their children from developing the poor cousin complex," she continued in dejection, "my parents built a cocoon of moral superiority around us. Now I realize with hindsight that my father wanted his children to score for him in the game of one-upmanship with his brothers that he had lost by a mile. My mother too felt the same way, vis-a-vis her sisters-in law. As my siblings and I came of age, they made us aware of the status gulf that separated our cousins and us. Besides, our parents were wont to pinpoint to us the nuances of our grandmother's differential treatment of them. How our young hearts used to boil with ambition to redress that parental lacking! Why, we used to assure our parents that we would make it bigger than our cousins one day. Well, that enabled them to derive a peculiar satisfaction, and that used to satisfy me and my siblings no end. Maybe that would've insensibly bound me to lift the stock of our flock subconsciously that is. That could've been the beginning of my undoing."

  "But as the dictates of life differ from the desires of man,” she continued with a sense of resignation after a long pause that seemed like eternity to Dr. Gupta, "and since ambitions are better realized by the well-heeled, we had to do with clerical education while our uncles' largess to the respective institutions, enabled our cousins pursue professional courses. Ordained by fate though we became the weak links of the grand family chain, our collective bitterness only got steely by the day. Yet there was a saving grace for the hurt family pride, and that was the perceived beauty of my sister and me. It has ever been the only joy of my parents. But, as I crossed nineteen, the thought of dowry seemed to dampen their spirits all at once."

  "When Gautam proposed to me," she said excitedly recalling their nascent romance, "our family jumped for joy. That he was handsome only added value to his being an engineer. All of us perceived the alliance as nothing but an accretion to our family pride. Oh, what a day it was, as everyone says to this day! But Gautam and I had a measure of it only through our wedding album. Well, we didn't have eyes for any but for each other then."

  At that, she broke down.

  "As I was in the seventh heaven," she began at length, "Gautam showed me visions of far away galaxies. And, finding him burn with ambition to reach the zenith, I goaded him to get there. Why, didn't I have my own poor cousin burden to shed there? For a start it was smooth sailing and then it seemed as if we were scaling the heights only to slip down the slope. Maybe, we grew too big for our shoes or we might have left our business flanks unguarded. Then came the moment of reckoning: to barter my chastity or embrace bankruptcy. Was it a choice any way! Oh, how I was averse to have anything to do with that shameful proposition. But then, how paranoid I had been to see my son's cousins become his poor cousins! So, driven by my over eagerness to score for my family, I scored a self goal and that was the beginning of our fall, mine as well as Gautam's. And from then on, severally as well as collectively, by degrees, we sank into the depths of depravity."

  As if their ladder to happiness had broken down at that very juncture, she wept inconsolably but the good doctor was at a loss for words to console her. M oreover, he thought it prudent to let her drain out her agony. In time, wiping her tears, she continued.

  "What a shame, I began bartering myself for the permits for petrol bunks for my siblings," she said with certain remorse. "You can figure it out how my moral downturn would have heralded their upward social mobility. Oh, what an irony! Why, is it not the way of life? Well, the crowing glory of our family, as we looked at it, was when I helped my sister get married to an IAS officer. As for the wedding, it is the talk of the town in Guntur even today. That announced to all, including our poor cousins, the arrival of my father's pedigree on the social stage in all style."

  She paused and looked at the doctor stoically, and discerning empathy for her in his demeanor, she turned sentimental.

  "When the bubble burst, my people stood behind us as one man,” she said proudly. "Who said friends are better than relations? Actually, it was our so-called friends who turned their backs on us! And coming to the media, oh, how unfair it had been to us. How it was made out that Gautam turned me into a sort of a sexual ladder to climb up to the top of the business world! Believe me, Doctor saab but for that shameful submission, he never used my charms for his business promotion, nor did I do on my own. He is a man of honor ruined by ambition and not the pimp pictured in the press.

  'Why blame others when I am to be faulted?' she continued in her choking voice. 'It was I who turned wanton and hurt him to no avail. I failed to realize it then and thus invited ridicule on him. But my poor man is all empathy for me in spite of my lewdness, is he not? Oh, how I wronged my god! But for his understanding and my siblings' support, wouldn't have my shame turned me insane? But as it appears, it's the filial puzzle that forked my destiny.'

  "Why regret about the past?" said the doctor impressed with her chequered life. "I know you're capable of living it down."

  "Wish I had the strength left for that," she said melancholically. "Now, it's clear that my impressionable mind was influenced by the parental deprivations to fuel that futile chase for wealth. How stupid can one be when it comes to the basics of life! Surely my parents erred in using their children as emotional dustbins to discard their own frustrations and biases. If not, maybe, I should've restrained Gautam from his overweening ambition and helped bring balance into his way of thinking."

  She stopped as though she were at the crossroads of her life all again and turned remorseful.

/>   "Besides, I wouldn't have felt the need to compromise as I did in chasing the twin mirages of wealth and status," she said regretfully. "And what a silly life I had led all these years! But, was I not a victim of the rat race into which my parents had pushed me insensibly? Though I won't like to blame them, yet I wish they had had the wisdom not to bias their children. Had it been the case, I could have been my own person, with my fair share of faults. But by imposing their emotional overburden on me in particular, it seems they complicated my psyche that ultimately led me to my moral nadir. After having lived the best part of my life in pseudo satisfaction thus, I found myself at the cross-roads of confusion when the scandal blew up in my face."

  "Though I never applied my mind to it, I am sure the emotional quotient of my siblings could be no better than mine," she resumed after a long pause. "I wonder how they are handling their lives! God forbid, should they have to face the stiffness of

  adversity, I am afraid they would all crack without a clue. Thanks to Gautam, at least, I am better off that way."

  She went into a prayer as though to appeal to God not to test her siblings.

  "But for that thoughtless upbringing," she resumed her analysis of her life, "I would have lived in mediocrity as a faceless practitioner of middle-class morality, all the while fantasizing life of high society. Maybe unwittingly, my parents readied me to be the glove on Gautam's ambitious hand to grasp the expediency of life. It was another matter that we lost track of our life itself before we were lost to each other in the end. Maybe I would never know why I became loose for no conceivable reason. Honestly, had I suspected in the least that I was pushing my son into the vortex of crime by my wayward ways; I would have been more circumspect. Who knows, I myself would've got out of the cesspool of promiscuity. Well, that's the regret with which I would've to live and die.”

  "If not for my disorientation, there was no way I would've gone astray," she said with an apparent regret. "Gautam was no mean a lover for all that. If not a victim of circumstances, I wouldn't have ended up the way I did. Surely, I shouldn't have. True, I am amorous but not amoral at all. Whatever I had undone myself, hurt my man and ruined my son. Now, I think it's time I help my son at least to get a chance to undo his past."

  "I know how hard it is for you,” said Dr. Gupta as he got up to leave. "M ay God give you the strength to handle your predicament."

  "Let's hope so," she smiled wearily seeing him off. "I can never thank you enough for your concern to my son. Had I shown him a fraction of that, perhaps, things would not have come to this pass. Well, it is time I show him that I care. How I wronged the man I married and the son I bore. Sadly, there is no way I can retrieve the shame I heaped on my man. But it's not the case with my son, let me see. Thanks for coming and goodbye to you."

  Chapter 7

  M oment of Reckoning

  'What a life it has been!' Sneha found herself thinking after Dr. Gupta had left. 'Oh, how it had shadowed my son's life! Can I ever look into his eyes which witnessed all that? Why was I not dead before I came to know of that? It's okay that others might smell rat of my peccadilloes but, oh, to be object of my son's voyeurism, why wasn't I wary when he grew up? How sad my carelessness buggered his psyche and ruined his life as well! Were he to be hanged, won't I be damned? But if I damn myself, he would be saved, how paradoxical!

  'Wasn't the rumor mill crunching my reputation for so long?' she thought as she recalled how her own name was besmirched. 'Well, as is with other scandals so is with my story; it would be passe in no time? Why, even when it was the talk of the town, some believed and others gave the benefit of doubt. Wouldn't people's short attention span favor even scandals in the long run? Whatever, as long as they are not aired in my ear, how am I bothered about them? But to testify to my shame would only amount to baring my body in the court, and soul as well, but would any credit me with that! How would that affect poor Suresh? As it is, my shame is shadowing him! If I were to kiss and tell in court now, that's bound to shatter him beyond doubt. Isn't it a frightful prospect to contend with?'

  As though her body and mind got synchronized by then, she turned dizzy and felt she could think no more.

  'If only he had spilled the beans in the court!' she thought at length, having realized the problem needed a solution. 'Would I have a place to hide my head by now? But with his head on the block he keeps mum about his mom. Oh, how people disown their near and dear if only to save the bother! And what of the betrayal of their benefactors for no more than a few bucks! How shameful, and haven't I seen all that? Yet, the press pictures him as a fiend, and all perceive him as lacking in character! Could there be a better character than his? And for that matter, what's wrong with my character?

  'Isn't it clear that it is either his head or my head that should roll now?' she felt at length, having reflected upon her life for long. 'And the choice is clear, isn't it? To what avail should I hang on after all? What would life have to offer me other than ridicule? How Gautam's empathy makes me jittery! Won't I feel that his blame game would've been rather solacing? What if even one of my lickers-in-scores of yore stood by me, it would have softened the blow. But where are they now? What a collective vanishing act that was!'

  'Don't I know what men are like!' she tried to sum up male proclivities. 'How paranoid man is for exclusive sexual rights over the frame of his spouse! But which man minds waiting in the brothel for his turn to satiate himself? Wonder where his sensitivity of lone possession goes! And what is the fuss about female chastity if it were not man's insecurity about his own virility? Oh what if his spouse thinks his rival seemed better in bed? But when it comes to a whore, why should man bother even if it were premature ejaculation? How does it matter for he is her faceless customer, and once out, won't he submerge in the crowd? In truth, man gives a damn to savor the so-called tainted wife of his but his only worry is how she might've felt about his performance in comparison. Thus, it's not the moral aversion but the perception of his inadequacy that is behind man's hurt when he hurts his woman who takes on another, so it seems. Besides, what the aggrieved man could do than divorce her under the guise of moral apathy if not kill her out of sexual jealousy? But then won't man learn to live with his wife paying a blind eye to her paramour.'

  'Now that my life became an open book,' she thought, applying her theory of sexual desertion, 'what a let down it could be for all of them to learn that they were not sharing me just with my husband but with all and sundry as well! But how would they ever know that I enjoyed every one of them for what they were worth? Well, they should've known that I didn't hold any scale of virility as they laid me. Had I done that really, how many of them would have measured up to Gautam? Let them go to hell and how does that matter to me now?'

  However, she could not help feel bitter about the fact of her desertion by all those who crooned eternal love into her exultant ears.

  'Gautam, how considerate he is as a man and loving as a husband, in spite of it all,' she continued to review her life and times. 'But, the inconsiderate world sees him as immoral! What is that society, which denies the genuine their fair share and yet damns the deviants as immoral? If only there were fair avenues for the upright! Well, being on the brink why think about the Utopia? Yet, it all feels like betrayal, but then I have had enough of it. And having savored the scandal for so long now, it's as if the world too is tired of me. Maybe my death might stir up the hornet's nest all again, to excite the people for a while. Won't time bury my memory in a hurry?'

  'How all crave to be remembered after they are dead and gone!' she thought. 'And what could suit me better than being forgotten, the sooner, that is? At least, that would take some shine out of the stigma sticking onto Gautam. Suresh, after all, is young enough to pick up the threads of life after a stint at the Tihar. After all, that's what the

  good doctor assured me. As and when he comes out a free man, surely, he would still be an eligible bachelor. At least, our wealth would ensure that.'

  'Why, a
m I not old enough to die, though young enough to live otherwise?' she began thinking, seized by a death-wish. 'I had everything going my way; both ways, always, and suddenly I find myself at a dead end! What an irony that is! Why not bring the curtains down before the scene turns too bawdy to stage? Well, it would have been a different story, had fate allowed me to age without bringing my past to the fore!'

  That night, soon after Gautam had hit the pillow, Sneha, with the denouement in mind, went to the writing table in the ante-room.

  My soulmate:

  Whoever thought of such a fall for us from the dizzy heights you took us to! Why, even my worst fears failed to push me to such a precipice. I’m sure neither yours would have.

  After all, you were sure that by the time the dust settled down, we would have ridden the storm. And my blind faith in your abilities failed me to see what was coming. Well, it appears that fate is averse to taking your dictation, at least in this case. Instead, it chose the well-meaning Dr. Prakash Gupta as the messenger to deliver the script it had fashioned to end our trauma.

  How could I've known that I was the cyclonic eye of the stormy life of our son! It appears that he was privy to my double life ever since he could understand what it was. I know that it would shock and shame you no less. What a payback for the freedom you granted me! Pardon me if you can. M aybe, its better that you fail to forgive me for that lessens my burden a little.

  How I wronged Suresh the apple of our eyes! What a hurt to know his mother is a slut!