by Ruskin Bond
A LONG DAY'S NIGHT
It is a very interesting portrayal of academic frustration and the problems India faces in retaining its best brains. I personally liked the end very much, it was imaginative and unusual. . . .
- Mark Tully
A most engaging piece of fiction, it engulfs you once you are there and then gradually takes you to the heart of the matter. The book is very serious, and takes on a new dimension during the discourse it narrates. . . .
- Amiya Dev
The formal satisfaction is impressive, especially for a first novel. I really liked the deliberate pace, the literary echoes and references, the structuring. There is a mastery of narrative here: voice, detail, restraint – and I loved the final 'pulling away' para. As for the thematic spine—Indian science/the experience of being a scientist in India—this is probed with new depth and with ambitious instruments: the pace, the constituents of the drama, the drama itself. . . .
- Susie Tharu
A LONG DAY'S NIGHT
Pradip Ghosh
Copyright © Pradip Ghosh 2009
Published 2009 by
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
p. 253 : The quotation is from Digha Nikaya, ed. Pali Text Soc. II (London 1903), pp. 116-117, as presented in Rajgir by M. H. Kuraishi (Revised by A. Ghosh), Fifth edition, Department of Archaeology, India 1958.
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ONE
ON THE TWENTY-FIFTH OF MAY, MONDAY, NINETEEN hundred and eighty-seven, Virendra Chauhan's early morning sleep was pierced by a peacock's loud call. In a half-asleep head Virendra faintly perceived that it was the beginning of his awakening. But he still did not open his eyes; he remained half-curled on his hard bed to let the feeling of sleepiness continue. Yet in that semi-conscious state he felt mildly unhappy that the sleep was terminating abruptly, because it was such a pleasant feeling when the waking up was gradual; it was almost like the birth and a gentle growth of consciousness. There was a faint melody associated with it; the process was akin to a glide of a slow float from darkness to light and from void to solid ground. But this was not such a morning. The peacock gave another loud call, and to Virendra Chauhan it sounded as if the bird was sitting right on his head.
He stretched out and lay straight on his back. Through the western window he saw the peacock with its long plume perched on the neighbour's roof against a half-lit sky. Regal looks, he thought, but what an outrageous voice! At one time they were not so many, but now this small university campus was full of them. Many years ago when Virendra first moved into the campus, they used to be all confined to the northeastern woody region, and one would hear their calls only occasionally in the night. But as their numbers grew, they spread out, and were now all over. It was a fairly common sight that packs of these birds roamed about on the campus—more peahens than peacocks—the latter usually wandered as singles.
The location of the campus was such that a large number of birds either inhabited or passed through it. It was about ten miles off a major industrial city, and there must be a hundred thousand parrots that lived on the trees near the centre of the city. One had to see it to believe it. The city did not have any signs of them during the day except at daybreak and twilight when there was activity. And a large flock of them—one could not be sure exactly what the size was—went out to some distant grazing field northwest of the city, and that flight path was right over the campus. Virendra rarely watched them in the mornings, but in the evenings he often enjoyed the sight sitting on the grassy plot in front of his house. They returned home in flocks of anywhere between twenty and fifty, and there were literally hundreds of such flocks, all heading home southeast.
And not just the parrots. The evening sky marked the path of the return journey of other birds as well such as kites and egrets; each rode the sky with its distinctive flying pattern and direction. The smaller birds flapped their wings vigorously; the larger ones cruised with less apparent effort and longer glides. It was remarkable how every evening the same scene was re-enacted. It seemed that the entire show was intimately related to the level of the ambient light. Virendra remembered that a few years ago there was a total solar eclipse; when the eclipse took place in the early afternoon, it seemed near twilight, and the birds started returning to their nests. The day scene with the birds was quite different. There were all kinds of small birds one found hopping around – sparrows, quails, mynas, hoopoes, and occasional crow pheasants. Crows were relatively few.
Another loud call from the peacock jerked Virendra out of these reflections. It struck him that this was a special day. He lifted his head to look at the table clock – it was half-past five. Those people were expected around nine. He gave a big yawn and sat up on the bed.
This was the advent of summer, and he was alone at home. His wife and daughter had gone away to her parents, and the son was still in college in a distant state. These were the cruellest months here; as the sun hit the zenith the earth became so hot that sometimes it seemed that even the sand would sublime. Most students were not here and many teachers were away on vacation. Yet for the past twenty years Virendra Chauhan had stayed back despite periodical urges to go away, because his research students were here. And because there was this mix of desire and dream that some additional work would get done when other involvements were less, although it had actually never turned out to be so. But he did not learn.
This was also the time when the house depended for its functioning entirely on the servant-maid Parvati, a Nepalese woman in her late fifties, who had been with the house for nearly twenty years – all the time the Chauhans had been on the campus. Hard working and stoic, she took care of all the household work and most of the outside work needed for the home – a gem of a person. Once when Virendra's wife had to be away for a long period, Parvati took care of his son like her own while Virendra was gone most of the time to the university. She lived quite a distance away from the house with her seven children; the three eldest daughters were married and gone away. One reason probably she had stayed so long with this house could be that unlike many households her children had the run of the house and some of them had grown up with his own children. This was partly due to Virendra's affection for children and partly due to his general indifference to such matters. Happily, in this matter, his wife had similar views. However, since Parvati lived away from the house, so, particularly in the morning, the household did not get switched on until she arrived. Virendra had to wait for breakfast until she came and prepared it.
Virendra got out of the bed, took a few steps to the window and looked sleepily through the vertical bars. The peacock took notice of him and flew away. The wings flapped noisily.
Virendra turned in and took a stroll inside the room and then went to the other rooms to open the windows. It was a four-room house and was quite spacious for a small family. When he was in the living room which opened through a
small porch to the southerly front lawn, he also opened the door to the porch. It was going to be some time until Parvati showed up; he dragged a low armchair from the living room to the porch and sat down facing the lawn.
The row of single-storey houses among which Virendra's was one, faced another across the street, and there were so many of these which constituted the living quarters of the faculty members. They were all look-alikes in size, structure and colour; except the inhabitants, monotony was in full glory. Yet, in time, one got insensitive even to monotony, and one simply lived through. Virendra looked out, this was such a nice time of the day. There was a cool southerly breeze, but little did it say what it would be like in blazing sun. Around the house and through the trees at the left there was a glimpse of the sun up in the horizon, but the rays had yet to touch the ground at the end of the porch. The lawn had collected some dew overnight, still Virendra felt like moving to the lawn. He lifted the chair, went down the steps of the porch and walked a few steps into the lawn and placed the chair facing the west near the eastern hedge of the lawn where the sun's rays would reach last.
He was not usually a very early riser, so rarely did he face these hours of the morning. But he enjoyed such early mornings. in fact he had often thought that the experience of life would be different and pleasurable if days consisted of only very early mornings and very late nights. The coolness, peace, serenity, and interaction with only a very few people. Before most people arose and after they retired. Before you knew what the day would be like and after you had known what the day was actually like. Before birth and after death, Virendra mused.
There was now a mild cool breeze, and branches of the trees that lined the street gently swayed. As Virendra looked west-wards, at a distance he could see the row of tall mango trees that went towards the northwest. These trees stood there before the academic settlement came into existence and probably were remnants of a historic road to the capital three hundred miles away. No one seemed to know how old those trees were. Virendra knew, however, that at least for the past twenty years the trees were not allowed to bear any fruit. A section of the series of trees was within the campus high school boundary, and the children did not allow the trees any peace during the months of March to May when the flowers turned into green fruits. Few, if any at all, climbed, but whenever they could get time off from the classes they hurled stones at the fruits incessantly, until the trees were denuded of the last fruit. Virendra had observed that for the past two decades, and this activity would probably continue as long as the local habits did not change.
In the evening, when Virendra returned home early enough and had time to sit on the lawn facing westwards—that was the direction he preferred to face—he could see the sun set behind the line of mango trees. Behind the tree line lay the students' playground, and their hostels. The hostels were not visible from his quarters; only long ago when the other trees planted by the university people were young, a glimpse of the other buildings was possible. The twilight hours were filled with the procession in the sky of birds returning home, on some days an occasional roar from the students' playground if there were some competitive sports on, the sky taking different hues of colour, the gradual dimming of the colours, and the sky darkening, followed by the appearance of the stars. Virendra used to enjoy gazing at stars. At one time in college he had taken deep interest in astronomy and almost decided to become an astronomer. His knowledge was so detailed and sense so keen that even in daytime he could point out precisely to specific directions of moving planets and constellations.
This being one of the side roads, there was practically no activity on the street. In an hour's time there would be at most two or three persons – health addicts, going on their morning walks. Virendra had quite an unfit body, but somehow he had never been able to mobilise the necessary determination to do something regularly to keep his body fit; he had discovered early that he was intrinsically too lazy to make a major effort for a cause like this. However, Virendra had noticed an interesting fact. Very few of those health workers had managed to change their body shapes. The fat remained fat, the lean lean. And each had his characteristic walk, which was often amusing to watch; some casual, some with freely swinging hands, some with aggression. Virendra felt at times that some physical activity would do him some good too now that he was near the turn of fifty, but he would not act; in many matters he was more of an observer.
Besides the dewy grass, the unfolding morning, the swaying branches of trees, the mild breeze, there was a mobile chirp of birds. They were mostly some kinds of babblers and sparrows, hopping from one part of the hedge to another, all over the garden. In the sky there were frequent traces of parrots, some other birds were flying criss-cross, each to its daily destination. Virendra's mind returned to his immediate surroundings – the lawn and the remnants of a garden. Fifteen years ago it used to be nearly a rose garden with about a couple of hundred rose plants interspersed with moderately tall conifers; but the rose plants were now nearly all gone, only some of their unkempt beds remained.
Virendra was young then, the children young, and there was so much joy. He developed this craze, because in this part of the country the soil and the climate were just right for roses. And they had an excellent gardener in their servants' quarters at that time. Though Virendra was not a natural gardener, he went all over the place to collect plants, read up all that could be read about the flower, could reel off accurately the attributes of a hundred different cultivars along with the do's and don'ts with the plants. And it was true that in the season when the flowers were in bloom, in the evening darkness Virendra was often touched by the fragrance of the rose in the air, and friends would come to visit to have a look at how the blooms were doing. When the cut blooms were taken inside the house, they would delight all for days. After the garden was created and established Virendra thought that hired help would be able to maintain it, but he was mistaken. For a long time, he made do with a helping hand, but it then became impossibly difficult to find a willing person, and the place was now totally unkempt with most of the plants dead, and the surviving ones in a weak state of health. For quality, it took much more than some nominal sunshine, air, and water.
The sun's rays shining from the east had now almost filled the front lawn, and through the trees and part of the hedge some rays fell on Virendra's head and shoulders. He felt that he could not sit with comfort there for much longer – it was not quite the midday winter sun when he could roll on the lawn and let the sun surround him for ever and ever. But he had a refuge, a second line of defence, to stay on some more time in the open air, to enjoy the freshness of the morning, from a different place where the sun's rays would not reach until much later in the morning.
Virendra did not quite like the effort of moving things from one place to other, but at this time of the day when there was no domestic help around, he had little choice. He somewhat reluctantly got up, picked up the armchair and walked across the lawn to the northwest corner where there was a niche shaded by the house, where the eastern sun did not reach. In a way it was a cosy spot – a rectangular area with four conifers at the corners and a few rose beds. Its attraction was enhanced by a jasmine tree which climbed along the house wall and a large purple bougainvillea that covered an arch that led to the main entrance to the house. He could sit there for the next three hours without the sunshine touching the area.
In fact, during the summer mornings when he was alone at home and also when he was up early, he often liked to sit here and have his breakfast. He knew that it was more than a bit of luxury, but Parvati had put up with small whims of every member of the family, each having his or her own kind of demands.
This niche that now protected him was not without its hazards. Virendra remembered well that last year on one such summer morning he was reading some papers while waiting for his breakfast to arrive, unmindful of the surroundings, when he suddenly heard some unusual rustle on the ground. When he looked up he saw a six-foot-long snake
. Its movement and posture were such that it seemed that it was coming towards the spot where Virendra was sitting, apparently to take a short cut to the neighbour's lawn, but finding Virendra right on its path, it decided to hurriedly turn around and look for an alternate path. For a brief while Virendra had a feeling of chill and numbness, but when that subsided he felt grateful to the serpent for such courteous behaviour. Early summer mornings were so nice for being out, but quite clearly, it applied not to human beings alone.
If one ignored these minor problems, it was very nice. The jasmine tree was full of clusters of flowers, each bloom having a slender stem and five to six petals. And hundreds of such bunches. The petals were white the previous evening; by daybreak most of them were pink, and some turned further towards salmon. And each flower stayed on for days. The bougainvillea tree now was in full bloom; the tree looked like a huge flowery umbrella. The shed petals rendered the ground near the entrance an attractive pink. Virendra had often felt the environment somewhat extraordinary, surrounded only by trees and plants, some of which were beautiful ones.
The entire campus was not like this. In fact, not all the houses had such carefully chosen plants and trees; roughly half of them were. Also the size of accommodation was not the same for every university employee. There were very elaborate rules about what one was entitled to, and it depended on one's rank, salary, and other bureaucratic considerations. What one saw around here were the teachers' quarters; these were among the best, the quarters for other categories of employees were mostly smaller. A fixed portion of a person's salary was deducted for the accommodation the university provided. So if one got more, one paid more; apparently equitable.