Bhava

23

Radha was weaving a garland of jasmine with banana fibre. Shastri, watching her, said, ‘Saroja used to get completely absorbed when she wove jasmine flowers. When she sang, she looked like a Devi.’ Then, pacing around the veranda, he added, T wish Mahadevi could see her daughter again.’ Radha stopped weaving the jasmine and silently prayed, ‘Bhagavan, let the moment that I have been waiting for be now.’

It was morning. The young sun rode over clouds, and its early rays shot through now and then. The air was pleasant, and the tidied veranda clean and cool.

Shastri walked about the veranda twice more and said, ‘Radha? ‘He stood silently for a while, clasping his hands behind his back. ‘Is he my son? And even if he is my son, would he accept me as his father? He looks like one who may be searching for his father in God’. I can only pray that he should succeed. Whether he is my son or not, he seems to be one who can give me a new life. I wish, by God's grace, that the howling within me would stop.’

∗

Shastri's blossoming continued as Radha, weeping, revealed the secret that she had been hiding within her.

24

Being a rich landlord, Shastri had placed his daughter in Mangalore College for study. Mangala was an intelligent girl, and he desired that she should have a good education. Mahadevi, anxious to guard her daughter's virtue, had wanted her to stay with a relation. But Shastri had abruptly dismissed her worry. There wasn't anyone he cared to send his daughter to, therefore he put her in a hostel. As a result of this freedom, she became friendly with a boy who was a very good debater. She herself was a bold girl, good at debates, and in her zeal for debating she developed a passion for politics as well. The boy, born in a poor family of the Malnad Halepyka caste, was intelligent enough to have got a scholarship to study engineering. He was handsome, sported a beard, and dressed attractively in kurta and pyjama.

He had caught the attention of everyone by changing his name from Thimmaiah to Charvak. It was like an addiction for him to attract people's attention by doing something or the other. He would always use new, striking words to denounce landlords and casteism. Radha had no understanding of such things. She only knew that Mangala had told her that Charvak had gone even further than a Communist. Mangala was very impressed by Charvak's arguments, which also happened to give support to her dissatisfaction with her father. When she came home, even though urged by her mother, she wouldn't bow down to God. And she would argue that all brahmins were like leeches. Both Mahadevi and Radha took care not to repeat her ideas to her father.

The change in Mangala's thinking made her feel close to Radha. She even insisted on eating in Radha's house. Radha wasn't happy to encourage this, but she couldn't refuse her food. Mangala had also confided in Radha about Charvak. ‘We don't believe in marriage. We will work secretly to bring about a unity among all people and make revolution,’ she had said. In the beginning, when Mangala talked like this, Radha didn't believe her. But finally she became convinced that this mad girl was truly serious. She was not like other Mangalore girls. She had no interest in ornaments or clothes, and would make fun of people who were fashionable. She had even made Radha feel that it was shameful to wear gold bangles.

Mangala always dressed in a white sari and white blouse, and she wouldn't put on either earrings or a necklace.

One day, they were arguing and Mangala said, ‘Why do you have anything to do with my murderous father who, everyone says, killed his pregnant wife? People like you should be liberated.’ She had said this very harshly. Radha thought Mangala very sharp-tongued, just like her father, and kept quiet. In the house of her benefactor, everyone was dear to Radha.

Both Mangala and Charvak gave up college and ran away. God knows where they stayed and what they did for six months, or what they achieved in their revolutionary endeavour. Finally, Charvak came to Shimoga and took up the job of mechanic in a garage. Mangala wrote a letter to Radha saying that what he earned was not enough even for food. ‘Don't let my father know where we are. He might kill my husband because he's a shudra. If it isn't a hardship for you and you would like to, send me some money.

Long live revolution!’

Radha began to send at least one thousand rupees every month.

But after a few months, Radha noticed a discordant note in Mangala's letters. She regarded this as the ordinary occasional disharmony between husband and wife. But Mangala didn't see this as a question of ‘husband-and-wife quarrel lasts until they eat and lie down together.’ Instead, she had seen the quarrels as a complication to be found in the lives of all revolutionary activists. Although such explanations were beyond Radha's understanding, she was pleased by Mangala's readiness to confide such things in her.

‘Charvak doesn't come home on time, he has begun to drink, and he quarrels with me, saying that by tagging onto a woman like me and taking to family life, he has lost the opportunity to be part of the revolution. But he doesn't seem to realize the true nature of revolution. Only a woman who has become a householder can truly understand the meaning of revolution.’ Radha, who had abundant instinctive cunning in such matters, had replied, ‘Become pregnant and win over your husband. Everything will be all right.’ Mangala listened to this advice without giving up her revolutionary fervour.

‘And now your daughter is seven months pregnant.’ Radha told Shastri. If you allow me, I will bring her here. Let her deliver in her own mother's house. I will anyhow be there to help.’ She said this apprehensively, although adopting a manner of lightness. ‘Just because your son-in-law is not a brahmin, you don't have to keep your daughter at a distance. And the child to be born is innocent. What caste can it have? Am I not also a shudra?’ she teased him.

Shastri said, very gravely, ‘Bring her.’

Praying to Bhagavati that, by Radha's grace, his mind should keep its calmness, and hoping that the curse on him was at an end, Shastri added, ‘I will get a garage in Udupi for that wretched boy. If my daughter is far away from him and there is no one to control him, he will become a drunkard.’

∗

Impatient to tell all this to Mahadevi, and excitedly planning how to arrange the house so that his grandchild could be born there, Shastri suddenly thought, as he neared home, ‘If Dinakar isn't my son, the gold in that trunk is mine alone, and therefore should belong to my daughter's child.’

Then, as he entered the house, he found himself praying, ‘O Bhagavati, let me not think such unworthy thoughts.’

Later, whenever his mind was troubled by these old conflicts, he would remember that on this day he had entered the house praying that such thoughts should never again come to him.

25

Dinakar, having gone up the Shabarimala hill for Ayyappa darshan and come down again, was not surprised to realize that the whole experience had been like a picnic for him. After coming down the hill he bathed in the river and told himself,’ “That” is not to be won if you seek it wilfully.’ The river water was cold, and in brisk high spirits he rubbed his body before putting on the new red-bordered Kerala dhoti and white khadi shirt which he had bought before climbing the hill. As he was putting on these clothes, he thought of the winter evening in Mangalore which had shaken him.

∗

Prasad had been sitting in the lotus posture, fingering the strings of the tamboura resting on his arm. When Dinakar, who did not know who his own father or mother were, saw him for the first time, he was filled with desire to know whether Prasad was his son. Yet the image that slowly, gradually, prevailed was of Prasad's long eyes half closed, as if half asleep, in inward-looking contemplation.

The veranda he sat in was open to the skies, and in its soft evening shadow Prasad appeared like the young son of a sage, his lean, strong-muscled body straight-backed, seated in meditation.

Dinakar stood a small distance away, filling his eyes with him. Prasad must have shaved off his long hair and beard only that morning — the shaved portions looked pale, and it was clear that for a long time they had been hidden from the sun. The rest of his body, which was constantly exposed to the sun and wind, was even-toned, the dark Krishna colour which had intoxicated the gopis.

A white cloth was wound around his waist, another white cloth carelessly flung over his shoulder. Dinakar observed that Prasad's nose was long and straight, slightly curved at the tip, that his chin was firm and his forehead broad. Unquestionably, his ears were not Narayan's. But they were certainly not Dinakar's either. They were like Gangu's, the lobes small and delicate. If he wore earrings, the earrings would be perfectly displayed. His whole face had a beauty that would be irresistible to women.

Thinking this, Dinakar recalled his own erotic life and felt shame at his motive in examining Prasad's face so closely.

Then, moved by Prasad's music, he thought, ‘But why should I be ashamed? Adishankara must have looked like Prasad when he wrote the commentary on Brahma Sutra. And, although only a boy sanyasi, hadn't Adishankara described the goddess, head to toe, even better than anyone who possessed sexual experience?’

∗

Chandrappa, in undershirt and shorts, put aside his hoe and, disregarding the mud on his hands, listened in open-mouthed wonder to Prasad's singing. Dinakar had come and stood in the shaded front garden which was full of parijata, champak, jasmine and hibiscus. It was Chandrappa's labour that had made the whole place so fragrant.

Gangu saw Dinakar looking lovingly at her son. She brought hot milk in a silver cup and placed it on the edge of the pyol, saying in greeting, ‘Have you come?’ She invited Dinakar onto the veranda. With her pallu draped over her head and sandal-paste on her forehead, she looked like an auspicious married woman.

Dinakar didn't know how long he sat on the veranda. Shadows lengthened and it became time for lighting the lamps. Prasad was still sitting, singing to himself, motionless. His alap came in waves, returning again and again to the note from which it had emerged. Look, it is simple. Look, now it gathers into complexity. In the enchantment of its rising and falling, it seemed as if Prasad had touched what he wanted to touch.

∗

Dinakar felt that the unseen for which he was searching would be like what Prasad had found already. Stillness in motion. Still, even while moving. Because the motion is without resistance, there is stillness. But the sensation can only be fleeting for people like himself. ‘What does it matter if he is my son? Or if he is not?’ Dinakar thought. Prasad had touched what he himself had not yet touched. What was only a flash for him, Prasad must have gazed at steadily. His entire peaceful being spoke of it — he showed how a person can live in bhava without giving it much regard.

And so Dinakar looked at Prasad as if he were a guru.

It was a sacred moment. Dinakar felt, ‘Whether I am his father, whether I am not, I should touch his feet.’ Just then, Prasad — like one who lives in the world yet remains untouched by it — opened his eyes, which seemed to have been dwelling in a dream. Without wondering whether this man before him was his. father or not, as if curiosity and anxiety had no hold on him at all, he looked at Dinakar, bringing him totally, with complete attention, into his gaze. Dinakar became captive to Prasad's unshakeable calm, and for that moment at least he was fully open, free of any desire or expectation.

∗

Prasad touched the tamboura to his eyes and suddenly stood up. At that moment, Dinakar experienced the welling up of love for a child and he thought, ‘How sweet-natured and tall and beautiful this boy is.’

Prasad's eyes, which he had found so attractive, closed slowly. Then, standing with folded hands, Prasad went on to prostrate before him, as if to a god. Dinakar, feeling as if he had turned over, stood in awe, and could not find the words for blessing. Gently he touched Prasad's head, and Prasad came to his feet. Then, holding Prasad's face between his hands, Dinakar bent and smelt the crown of his head.

Gangu, watching from a distance, began to cry. She lit the lamp and said, as if to herself, ‘From now, my son is a sanyasi. He cannot touch anyone's feet after this. He has himself become the holy feet.’

Then she wiped her eyes with the end of her sari. Despite her sorrow in giving up all motherly hopes for her son, she did not neglect to treat Dinakar courteously, and saying, ‘Go, and come again,’ walked with him up to the gate.