by BS Murthy
How cruel of me to let him bear the cross of my debauchery! As for me, it’s just unpalatable even to think he had seen it all. Now, having known that I was his voyeuristic target all the while, I cannot imagine facing him ever again. It seems it was my amorality that induced the misogamist mindset in him. And we have the word of the well-meaning expert for that.
Maybe unwittingly, but inexorably, I had set our son on a ruinous course. That puts me in the dock, doesn’t it? Let me plead guilty in your court that I buggered our son’s life.
God forbid, if the apple of our eye were to die on the gallows, I would go insane. And I dare not see him even if he’s set free. What sense does it make for me to hang around here any longer?
What a congenial couple we had been! But, how stealthily had fate tampered with our wedlock! Don’t I know the pain you felt in having to forsake my womanly honor? But to what avail did I give in to my latter-day temptations? Why did I take undue advantage of your goodness to abuse my life that would have hurt you so much?
Now, more than ever, I can visualize what a pain it was for you seeing me turning into a bitch as it were. Oh, if only it had dawned on me then! Yet, it’s not with the intent to hurt you that I say this, but how would it have been had you put your foot down on my waywardness? But then, you are a gentleman, and I didn’t prove to be your worthy ladyship. And still, thanks to your large heart, I was cozy as your wife.
How the scandal changed all that! I am aware that the altered realities of our life would ensure that it could never be the same again for me and you as well. In a way, hasn’t our relationship become untenable, if not tenuous? Maybe, that is what life is all about. That things have turned sour now, it’s not fair to say that I regret my life, having led it consciously, rightly or wrongly. But if I were to do that, it might have some sympathetic accretion on the sentimental front, which I don’t want in my account anyway.
Well, I don’t intend to transfer my burden onto your conscience, as my hypocrisy would make you suffer even more in guilt. It’s you who strengthened my character and now I know its value as never before. M oreover, I have no taste to live like a curio for the rest of my life. You know, we always lived life the practical way and I want to end mine that way.
I’ve come to believe that you may be better off without me. As I have lost my shine, and I know it’s my own fault, it’s but proper that I don't let my shadow cast on your life. Besides, haven't I become a jewel-less crown on your troubled head? With the aura of the jewel gone, what for thou bear its weight, my dear? No, I won’t let you suffer for I love you more than I thought I ever did. With the dead-weight of me gone, I am sure it would make a little easier for you. I know I owe that to you.
Believe me; it’s not out of any pique that I want to end my life. What have I against you, my darling, that I should psyche you into guilt? If anything, I had wronged you though I loved you. Now, it is my genuine desire to make it as easy as I can that is prompting me to call it quits. If you ever feel guilty on my account, then my end would not have served the intended purpose.
But, it’s sad that I’ve to end it all with a troubled soul. I know that in a weird way, I was responsible for the misery of those, whom our son had violated, not to speak of poor Shanti who paid with her life as my unintended dupe. I wish I had helped Suresh grow up to make a difference to his self as well as to the society around him. But how I came to ignore him? While I showed the woman in me to many, yet I failed to let him see the mother in me. Why, it was all owing to my preoccupation with my physicality as woman.
I'm going to die with the hope what my life failed to do for him, my death would. It’s so sad, that my lifestyle led him astray by inducing misgivings about me as woman. It’s my last and the only wish that you make him understand me as woman. Maybe then, he might understand the mother in me as well. Know that I would be dying knowing that you can.
Hopefully, that might bring equanimity to his troubled soul, and were that to happen even my soul would rest in peace well above. Reminiscing about the joy of your love and care, I am going to have my last prayer for you as well as our son’s fruitful future.
In all our future lives, I hope to be your wife to give you what all I failed to in this one. I am ending this life with the conviction that you wish to have me in the coming lives as well. Let me tell you with all honesty that I see my exit merely as a practical way out for the three of us.
Forgive me for deserting you, midway.
Yours eternally,
Sneha.
Having finished the letter, she tiptoed into their bedroom and towards their framed wedding photograph on the dressing table. As she sat on the stool, she couldn't take her eyes off the picture. In time, dropping the letter in her lap, she took the frame into her hands. But, soon finding the light too dim to hold the picture, she took the frame closer to her. At that, as the memories of their honeymoon came in torrents, her eyes turned into waterfalls. When she realized that the farewell letter in her lap was getting wet, she placed it on the table along with the photograph. If not for her wish to let her man know her mind at the parting, perhaps, she would have wept herself to death and thus allowed her missive to smudge in the pool of her tears.
Wiping her tears, she stood near Gautam as he slept in exhaustion. As she looked at him lovingly, she was seized with remorse. But as her love for him came to the fore, she experienced a rare fondness for him. Sensing that her new found love for him would tempt her to develop a weakness for life all again, she went back into the ante-room wondering how a man could change woman for good or bad.
When she began popping up the pills, she wondered how each of them would be taking her that much closer to death. At that, as the ironical analogy of her lovers weaning her away from her man dawned on her, she wondered why she was unable to recall even one of them at the time of her departure. Sensing that she had a revelation of her life she rushed to Gautam to wake him up, but on second thoughts, she took her missive and penned the postscript thus:
As I am half way through, I realize that in the last hours of my existence I don’t recall any of those whom I let into my life. M ore than ever I am convinced now that even as I let many touch me, I etched none of them in my memory insensibly filled entirely by your loving persona. Oh, this late realization that I might have loved you and you only, heart and soul, makes it so easy for me to die. And I hope that it would make your future life less bitter after all. Goodbye, my love.
Feeling light, she went back into the ante-room and picked up the bottle all again. But, as she was about to empty the bottle, she thought about the emptiness beyond life, and felt frightened. Unable to come to grips with her fears, she struggled to reach for her man. At last, she managed to lay beside Gautam with that empty bottle as though he would fill it with fortitude. As she realized that at the core of it, her life was as empty as the bottle in her hand, she tried to speculate what her life would have been like, had she married someone who wouldn't have thought of crossing the Rubicon when it came to it. But, as if not to hurt her sensibilities at that point of no return, her faculties failed her. In time, her body too began losing its vitality to hold her restless soul any longer.
Chapter 8
End within the End
When Gautam woke up to Sneha's death in dismay, impelled by their paradoxical togetherness, he felt like following suit. But as the love of life infused hope in him, the pity he felt for her made him guilty, letting him wonder whether he deserved to live at all. And that made him feel remorseful no end.
'Having pulled her into my life, oh, how did I push her towards her death?' he cried in pain. 'Why did I seduce her soul with the lure of the lucre? Didn't she pay the price for my ambition with her body and soul as well, in life and death? Why didn't she make her intent to die privy to me? Had she lost faith in me, after all? How else could she believe I would be better off without her? If only she knew how I feel for her! But then, where was the time for our togetherness, busy as we were chasing the mirage
of wealth? What trophy had we won in the rat race of life?
'What else to expect after that fatal decision?' he went into a reminiscent mode. 'Why did the devil prompt me to make that deal with that son of a bitch? How did fate trick us into our own undoing? Or was it a test of my character? What a shame that I prompted her to prostitute herself! It was as if I had turned her into a sex ladder to reach the nadir. How naive I was to believe that we would be able to put all that behind us, and that life would be a sonorous song of married bliss. But then, how could I blame her if she lost her sexual balance in the process. Why, had it not affected my own sensitivity? Oh, how we lost out together! Didn't we realize soon enough that at its core, our make-believe world was hollow? How stupidly we tried to fill our emptiness with sexual newness! Wonder how we went about it as though by an agreement though we never discussed it? At least, we clung to each other mechanically, but now it's as if the coupling to the driving end itself got severed. Well, owing to the fatigue of our life, isn't it?'
'But could it have been any different?' he tried to analyze their life in the rewind. 'What was the starting point anyway? Was it not the moment I sent her to that brat? Didn't I feel then as if she took away my soul with her? Didn't I deserve it? Or did I really care for all that? But, didn't she herself have an axe to grind with for her family? Whatever it was, oh, how confused she looked as she came back! And how empty I felt receiving her! What an empathy I felt for her as I took her into my arms. How I wanted to assure her of my eternal love. But, lo, having hugged her tight, didn't I gauge the gulf between us? When my remorse made me crunch her closer, didn't I feel the rough of the invisible between us?'
'What about her?' he continued recalling that fateful event with a sinking heart. 'Instead of sinking deep into me, didn't she slip out on the sly? Didn't it seem an end within the end to me? How hurt I was for forcing that one-night stand on her! What a pain it was later to realize that she was going strong with that chap! And how she began distancing herself from me! Didn't that force me to seek refuge in my business? But, what a narcotic success is! How it helped dully the pain of her peccadilloes! If not for it, wouldn't I have put my foot down on her? What a longing I had for herthen! And by the time she rediscovered her love for me; didn't I myself develop a roving eye? That was that. And after that, was she not one of many, sexually, that was?'
Lest he should have been unfair to her in his reminisces, he began reading her letter all again.
Yet, it's not with the intent to hurt you that I say this; but how would it have been had you put your foot down on my waywardness! But then, you are a gentleman, and I didn't prove to be your worthy ladyship. And still, thanks to your large heart, I was cozy as your wife.
'Why didn't I reprimand her?' he cried inconsolably. 'Any man would've done just that with a wayward wife, wouldn't he? But then, was it not my misplaced sense of honor that made me ignore her waywardness? Oh, if only I had realized that it made no sense to keep my word in the face of her abusive ways. How did I fail my woman all the while believing I was more than fair to her? What if I end my life for having undone hers? But, is not life itself an end within the end? Why, won't youth bring an end to the childhood to start with? And how successively life ends its own phases till death ends it once and for all? Why not I let my old age end the waywardness of my middle age?'
All the same, as he came alive to the rituals of her death, he thought about their son.
'If anything he's the worst sufferer for my foolhardiness!' he began to think. 'At least, Sneha and I had a wild go at life but what about him? What if his life gets snuffed out before it blossoms? What a pity it is to die in the flower of youth. How I failed her as husband and him as father. Damn my success when I failed my family! What an irony, though we wronged him, he needs to perform her last rites now, and God willing mine in time to cornel'
When Suresh was brought home on bail midday that day, Gautam felt as though he was himself on trial. Seeing him enter with a sense of shame, immobilized as he was by guilt, Gautam could make no move himself. With his troubled conscience, as Suresh dragged his feet to his mother's body confusedly, overwhelmed by remorse, Gautam looked at him endearingly. But, Suresh stared at Sneha's body vacantly and felt she had closed her eyes as though to save them both the embarrassment of reunion. While the son found himself staring at his mother's body thus, the father was too embarrassed to even look at him.
Nevertheless, the irony of the moment opened Gautam's eyes to the collapse of his ivory tower. As though he had a revelation all of a sudden, shedding all his inhibitions, he went up to his son and showed him the damning letter. When tears blurred Suresh's vision, Gautam wiped them for him to see his mother in the dead woman.
When Suresh fell at his mother's feet in penitence, Gautam stared at his dead wife in repentance. While the son in Suresh wept silently, to solace his own embittered soul, the father in Gautam embraced him to console himself. In a way, their tragedy seemed to have induced a mutual empathy for each other that transcended the barriers of their grief. In their state of mutual reconciliation, insensibly they both felt sympathy for the departed soul.
When came time for Sneha's last journey, as though to stress that they shared the blame for her fall, Suresh insisted on being a pallbearer aside his father. But seeing his mother in all her nakedness on the funeral pyre, he saw the paradox of their relationship.
'What an irony that all along I was coveting the very body that I was destined to consign to the ritualistic fire!' thought the son melancholically. 'It's as though in death she assigned it to me, as it was unthinkable for her to entrust it to me when alive.'
As the purohit nudged him to do the needful, Suresh performed his duty in a caressing way as though to save her of pain to the extent possible. When her body was engulfed in flames, he prayed for her soul and vowed to fulfill her last wish were he to live. At that, he was surprised to realize that he neither feared death nor coveted life anymore. Though, the purohit signaled the end of the rituals for the day and that the ashes could be gathered on the morrow, the father and son were averse to leaving the place till the very end of Sneha's earthly existence. And, in time, as the sun sank into the horizon, the embers of the funeral pyre began to subside, bringing her ashes to the fore. As though to atone for their role in her death by ordeal of fire, they both braved the heat to gather her ashes from the remnants of the funeral pyre to the last molecule.
When they reached home, they reverentially placed the urn of her ashes before her life-size painting and kneeled before it for long. As they could hold no longer, they squatted on the floor there. At that, with his wife's ashes for witness, Gautam talked to his son, man to man.
"Though her body is no more to bear her grief," he said choking, "I'm sure her soul would be restless till you realize what she really was. You know it was her last wish, and I want to fulfill that by revealing the saga of our life. Let her soul vouch for the truth about the narrative.”
Chapter 9
Vestiges of Prestige
Once upon a time, the hollowed stock of the Prabhus was an envied lot in Amalapuram. While their palatial bungalow seemed unending, their landholding once covered the tehasil itself. It was into that ancient clan with the renowned surname that Gautam was born. At the time of his birth, his great-grandfather happened to be the head of that undivided family of six siblings. As was the wont of the gentry of his generation, he was a man of leisure and his brothers too were equally unoccupied.
However, unlike their ancestors, the siblings had to contend with the depleted landholding and the reduced stature that it afforded. It was all owing to the propensity of the men of the clan to cut a figure for themselves and the proclivity of their women to set their image in the jewels. Besides, the males were wont not to lose any bid for deflowering bogum girls of the hallowed brothels. In due course, their profligacy besides making the women shorn of their jewels in numbers dented their resources by degrees. And, the dowries for the daughters of the family to
o contributed to the downturn in no small measure.
By the time Gautam's grandfather, a namesake, was born, the resource crunch forced the elders to send their children in search of greener pastures. Of course, the clan had always been well educated, including the women. But, custom prevented Gautam the senior to desert the hearth and home. It was thus he came to reign in the ancestral house though not leading a leisurely life. Anyway, wiser to the strides made by those of that ilk in M adras by then, he did not come in the way of his three sons settling down there.
When he died at sixty, he could leave no family silver worth its weight for the extended clan to adorn their hallowed surname. With none of the clan members around in Amalapuram, his widow opted to stay with Suresh Prabhu, her first born and junior Gautam's father. At that time, he was a maths tutor in Pachaiapah's College. And to supplement his income to ensure the latter-day professional education to his promising son, Suresh used to double up as tutor for the evening courses. His drudgery contrasted with his brothers in the departments who made good of their positions to line their pockets. And his cousins whose fathers had provided them the head start in the metropolis were all well-heeled by then. It was thus that the once eminent joint family gave way to nucleus families of uneven incomes.
Gautam being his only child, in spite of his modest means, Suresh Prabhu brought him up without any feeling of wanting. It was when Gautam was five that his grandmother came to stay with them. And that pepped up his life to make his childhood a memorable one. As she began to bestow such love upon him that only grandmothers' can, he was insensibly drawn towards her. Being a gifted storyteller, she unraveled the heroics of the epics to his inquisitive mind.
But, what thrilled him the most was the hearsay of their family glory that she reveled in revealing. As she always turned nostalgic in her narration, Gautam was wont to boast that one day he would restore the past glory to the family name. Pleased to the core, the old woman used to assure him that she would be watching his success from heaven to rejoice at it. But all this did not amuse Gautam's mother for she felt it might put an undue pressure on his eventual psyche. Whenever she took up the issue with Suresh Prabhu, he dismissed her dubbing them as undue fears.
