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It was strange to think of the two years Rani and Appamma had spent together in the latter’s small room, the unlikely confluence of paths that had brought them together, one of them ostensibly the caretaker and the other ostensibly the charge, even though each was unwell in their own way, even though a remedy was being sought in the arrangement for both of them. Krishan had worried initially that Rani’s trauma might actually be worsened by moving from her village to the south of the country, where she had neither friends nor relatives and could speak hardly a word of the majority language, but both he and his mother had sensed an improvement in her condition soon after her arrival, and even the doctor had said as much when she returned to Vavuniya for a checkup after two months in Colombo. Being in a different environment had helped her get some distance from her traumas, and having a job to do, however undemanding it was, gave her purpose and direction, prevented her from spending her days lying about as she had while living with her daughter. The fact she was earning more than her daughter and son-in-law too had an important effect, gave her new standing in her family, since far from being a burden she’d now become an essential source of financial support, lending money sometimes to her daughter, sometimes to other relatives who needed help too. She bought presents for her two granddaughters whenever she went back to her village to visit, dresses, hair clips, chocolates, whatever she could afford that took her fancy, and whenever she spoke on the phone with her daughter the two of them would grab the phone from their mother, demand to know when their grandmother would next be visiting. Talking about her granddaughters, Krishan noticed, one of whom was five and the other seven, both apparently very talkative, very intelligent, and very stubborn, was one of the few things that caused Rani’s face to visibly brighten. The fact she took up so much space in their minds was obviously a source of much joy to her, and it had occurred to him more than once that Rani was trying in some way to substitute her two lost sons with her two granddaughters, though perhaps the pleasure she took in her granddaughters was just the ordinary joy that anyone who’d come in contact with so much death took in the vitality of the young. The nightmares continued, of course, as did the bad days, days when Rani hardly spoke a word, burdened by a weight none of them could see, but for the most part this aspect of her condition seemed controlled, held within manageable bounds that allowed her to live with relative normalcy. It was only well into her stay in Colombo, after a year had passed and she’d become fully integrated into the household, inseparable from its routines and rhythms, that Rani’s trauma once more seemed to surpass these bounds, making its presence felt again in her mood and energy. The relapse had to do no doubt with the deaths of her husband and nephew within a span of a few weeks, her husband of cancer and her nephew in a motorcycle accident, but outwardly at least Rani didn’t seem greatly shaken by either death, not even that of her husband, who she hardly ever talked about and who, as Krishan learned later, she’d married at the insistence of her parents despite being twenty years his junior. He couldn’t help feeling that the deaths were only catalysts, that the resurgence of Rani’s illness had more to do with the depth and the pull of her original trauma than anything else, a trauma she could never fully escape, which the novelty of her new life in Colombo had temporarily concealed and which, as she became more used to her new situation, had begun once more to exert its hold on her. Whatever its source, Rani began to talk less, to sleep less in the nights and more in the afternoons, to take less care of her physical appearance. She began complaining about feeling unwell, about dizziness and a constant, dull pain in the back of her head, physical symptoms, Krishan came to suspect, that signified psychological distress more than any specific bodily malady. She spoke to the doctor a few times on the phone, and began at his suggestion going up to Vavuniya more frequently for sessions of electroshock therapy, traveling north by bus every month and a half to spend a few nights in the ward.
Krishan had known for a long time that Rani received electroshock therapy, ever since that afternoon in the ward when he first encountered her and first learned who she was, but the idea of Rani sleeping next to psychotic patients during the nights and receiving current to the head during the days continued to bother him, as if her need to continue receiving the treatment was a mark of their own shortcomings, a sign that they’d somehow failed her. Electroshock therapy was a form of treatment that was no longer in use, he’d believed for most of his adult life, an obsolete mode of therapy from the long-gone era of asylums for the insane. His vague sense of it had been shaped by harrowing scenes in old American movies he’d watched about the mentally ill, scenes in which the patient was strapped into a chair or bed with a bit in their mouth and electrodes attached to their temples, in which a switch was casually flicked and heavy current passed through the patient’s body like thunder and lightning, causing the eyes to widen, the jaws to clench, and the body to jerk, the veins on the neck and forehead to vividly distend. It was the most effective treatment for the severest, most recalcitrant forms of depression, the doctor had told him when Krishan first inquired about it, Rani was already taking several medications, medications for depression, anxiety, and sleeplessness, as well as for her liver, which was adversely affected by the other medications. None of them were having any significant effect except the electroshock therapy, the doctor explained, which wasn’t painful, lasted only a few minutes, and was administered only after the patient had taken a general anesthetic, ensuring that no pain could be felt while the current was being passed. Krishan continued to be suspicious of the treatment despite this justification, and when the topic came up with Rani of its own accord one day he’d asked her what the treatment was really like, whether there really was no pain or discomfort. Rani had looked at him, almost surprised by the question, then shook her head. She never felt anything while it was actually happening, she told him, since she was never actually conscious during the treatment, and she didn’t feel bad afterward either, mainly just a little groggy from the anesthetic. Krishan noticed that she did in fact seem better whenever she returned, more active, more talkative, and in a general way more present, though sooner or later she always seemed to return to her previous condition, taciturn, distracted, and lethargic, as if this condition possessed some magnetic hold over her that the electricity could only temporarily dispel. Each time she went back to the ward the doctor would deem it necessary to give her a slightly more intense course of treatment, so that whereas at first she received only one or two doses administered over two or three days, toward the end of her time in Colombo it had become three, four, or even five doses over six, eight, or ten days. In the months before she finally left Colombo she became increasingly forgetful as a result of the therapy, sometimes losing the thread of conversation, sometimes getting confused about whether or not she’d taken her medications, sometimes going down to the kitchen to get something and then forgetting why she’d gone. The treatment she received on her last visit to the ward was so severe that for several weeks afterward her hands and feet were shaking, leaving her unable to bring up Appamma’s afternoon cup of tea without spilling. He’d called the doctor to ask what to do, concerned about the side effects but also wondering whether the treatment as a whole was making any difference, whether it was really worthwhile given all the side effects. It had been almost six years since the end of the war and the death of her sons, she’d been doing shock therapy for almost four, and she’d still shown no sign of permanent improvement—was it really sustainable, he’d asked, for Rani to continue receiving current to the head like this indefinitely? The doctor had told him that nothing could be done—he’d increased her medications but they were having no impact, and the side effects of the shock therapy would only be temporary, whereas if she didn’t continue receiving treatment her condition would almost certainly deteriorate rapidly. It wasn’t so much a question of helping Rani get better, which was increasingly unlikely as the years went by, as simply of helping her cope with ordinary life a
s best as possible. She herself had been asking for higher doses of therapy, was finding ordinary consciousness increasingly intolerable, and it was his opinion, given the situation, that nothing else could be done.
It was shortly after this conversation with the doctor that Rani had had the accident in the kitchen, Krishan remembered, an accident he’d forgotten about completely till then and which seemed now, in light of the news of Rani’s death, to have carried with it a warning or omen that they hadn’t perceived at the time. His mother had started asking Rani to come downstairs to cook with her in the evenings, partly because she needed help but also because she felt it would be good for Rani to move her body, to be involved in some physical activity and have a break from Appamma’s endless chatter. Rani initially seemed to enjoy these hours in the kitchen with his mother, happy to have the opportunity to talk to an adult without Appamma’s constant interjections, but her thoughts also often drifted while she was in the kitchen, leading her on two occasions to accidentally cut her hands while using the coconut grater. One evening Rani had been cutting vegetables while Krishan’s mother was turned the other way, busy making batter for the thosa, the regular beat of Rani’s knife against the cutting board audible behind her. At some point the sound of the slicing behind her came to a stop, and turning around his mother had found Rani standing totally still, her left hand held up in front of her face, bright red blood dripping profusely from her hand onto the bright orange carrots she’d been slicing. Rani was silent, looking at her hand as though at a curiosity, and Krishan’s mother had screamed hysterically, asking what had happened, what had happened, rushing over to look and discovering that a chunk of flesh from the top of Rani’s middle finger, about an inch long, was dangling from the rest of the finger. She’d cut it accidentally while slicing the carrots, Rani told her calmly, it was probably best to just cut the whole thing off now, and screaming again Krishan’s mother had stopped Rani from picking up the knife, shouting that she was mad and calling for Krishan to come down. The two of them had taken her to the hospital immediately to get the severed piece of finger reattached, and all through the process Rani had been remarkably silent, as if she felt no pain or urgency, only an abstract embarrassment for having made herself the cause of so much concern. They had accepted Rani’s explanation that it had just been an accident, like the two accidents with the coconut grater earlier, a result of her distracted state of mind, her inability to fully focus on what was in front of her. The event had soon been forgotten, but reflecting on it as he sat on the train now, it occurred to Krishan that perhaps it hadn’t been accidental, that perhaps the incidents with the coconut grater earlier hadn’t been accidental either, that perhaps on all of these occasions Rani had actively been trying to harm herself, that perhaps she’d been asking for higher doses of electric shock for the same reason too, out of a desire to extinguish her consciousness and all the heaviness it involved. He thought again about what he’d learned from Rani’s daughter on Friday evening, about the way Rani had been found at the bottom of the well, and the thought came back to him that her fall had somehow been willed or intended. He’d tried to put the possibility out of his mind for the last two days, hoping it would fade away if he didn’t think about it, but he was realizing now that suicide was a real possibility, that he wouldn’t be able to rule it out till he went to the funeral and saw Rani’s daughter face-to-face, till he actually spoke to her in person and searched her eyes for some indication of what had really transpired.
Krishan looked out to see if he could get a sense of how close they were to Vavuniya, whether they’d made it out of Anuradhapura district yet, but nothing in the monotonous vegetation that lined the tracks or the brief glimpses of landscape beyond gave any indication where they were. There was no sudden change in ecosystem between south and north, he knew, both sides of the border region looked more or less the same, mainly scrubland with occasional stands of trees but sometimes denser, more crowded sections of jungle too. He’d never actually traveled anywhere in the North Central Province, always having associated that part of the country with ancient Buddhist temples and ruins, places he not only had no interest in but generally went out of his way to avoid. Growing up he’d associated Buddhism mainly with the Sri Lankan government and army, with the statues they constructed all over the country to remind Muslims, Tamils, and other minorities of their place, and it was only during his time in India, ironically, as he finally began learning more about its history, that he’d begun considering it a religion or philosophy in its own right. It was during his time in Delhi that he’d learned that Buddhism was viewed as a religion of emancipation among the oppressed castes of India, that at one time there’d been Tamil Buddhists in the south of India and even in northeast Sri Lanka, that what most Sri Lankans called Buddhism was in fact just one particular version of Buddhism. He himself had just as much entitlement to the Buddha as most of the Sri Lankans who called themselves Buddhists, he came to realize, and coming across a translation of The Life of the Buddha by chance in a bookshop in Delhi one day, flicking through it and deciding it was finally time to try to understand Buddhism with a more open mind, he’d bought the book on a whim and begun to read it on the way home. The poem, which was written by the north Indian poet Ashvaghosha in the first century, under circumstances that couldn’t have been more different from the Sri Lanka in which he lived, had begun with a moving and detailed account of the birth of the Buddha that was familiar but slightly different from the versions he’d heard growing up. The young prince Siddhartha, according to the poem, had appeared in his mother’s womb without any act of conception, and was delivered apparently without passing through her birth canal, his skin gleaming like the sun, his large, dark, unblinking eyes capturing the gazes of those around him like the moon. Shortly after his birth his father was visited by a highly revered seer who’d examined the newly born child, declaring that he would become either a conqueror of vast worlds or a conqueror of the soul. Conquering the soul meant taking the path of renunciation, meant leaving behind family, society, and the world at large, and the king was greatly disturbed by this news, not ever wanting to be parted from his son. Knowing that any exposure to pain or suffering could lead the young prince down the path of renunciation, he decided to raise Siddhartha in such a way that he experienced only the pleasures of the world, none of its bitterness, hoping in this way to ensure that he became a conqueror of worlds rather than a conqueror of the soul. As the young prince came of age, according to the text, he became a youth of startling beauty and intelligence, and the king assigned him chambers in the very top floors of the palace, where he spent the days and nights with male friends and female consorts. He was married at a relatively young age to a princess named Yashodhara, a woman of exceeding beauty and noble bearing, and not long afterward she bore him a son, which meant, his father thought happily, that the prince would be too bound to earthly life to ever renounce. Siddhartha continued to spend most of his time in his private chambers even after his son’s birth, taking his pleasure with the women his father had sent to entertain him. Listening to the soft sounds of the women’s golden tambourines, watching as their lithe bodies moved to the music, laughing and drinking with them in the evenings and sleeping with them in the nights, for many years he saw hardly any reason to descend from the cloud-topped chambers in which he lived.
It was only in his twenty-ninth year, according to the poem, hearing about the lush parks and groves in which his female consorts passed their time in the city, that Siddhartha began to wonder about what existed outside the confines of his chambers and the palace. Increasingly bored by his life of endless sensual and material pleasure, this curiosity slowly turned into yearning, and one day the prince asked his father for permission to venture beyond the palace grounds, something he’d never done before. The king was troubled by the request, but decided eventually to let his son be escorted around the city, though only on a predetermined route that would be shorn of anything that might upse
t the prince. He had the areas around the route beautified with flowers and banners, had all the poor, disabled, and sick removed from sight, and finally, at an appointed time, sent Siddhartha on his way with a trusted charioteer. Multitudes of people, women especially, who’d never seen a man so attractive, gathered around the road to try to catch sight of the young prince, and seeing the order and splendor of the city and the droves of respectful citizens, all dressed in clean, dignified clothes, the prince rejoiced, according to the text, as though he’d been born for a second time. Everything went according to plan till he caught sight, near the edge of the crowd, of a white-haired woman with a wrinkled face, her body slumped and her back unnaturally bent, holding a walking stick for support as she tried to catch a glimpse of him from the distance. Never having seen a person in such a condition before, he asked the charioteer what had happened to the woman and was told the woman had reached old age, a state in which beauty and strength were destroyed, in which memory dissipated and the sense organs deteriorated. Perturbed, the prince asked the charioteer whether such a thing could happen to anyone, or whether it was the fate of that particular woman alone. When the charioteer said it would happen to everyone who lived long enough, that it would without doubt happen to him one day too, the prince became dejected, and soon asked for the chariot to be turned around toward the palace, where he retreated to his chambers to be alone. Unable to find peace there, he decided after a few days to go on another trip around the city, hoping it would help him come to some clarity. On this second journey too however he saw a sight that upset him, a middle-aged man with a severely distended abdomen, his shoulders drooping, his limbs thin and pale, grunting in pain as he moved with the help of someone beside him. Siddhartha asked the charioteer what had happened to the man, and the charioteer explained that the man was afflicted by sickness. The prince asked whether sickness affected that man alone or whether it was something that could happen to all people, and the charioteer replied that sickness had many forms and that anybody could get sick, that there was no way to guarantee against it. Once more Siddhartha fell silent. Asking to be taken back to the palace, he stayed alone in his chambers for several days in a state of despondency. The king grew furious that his orders hadn’t been followed to the letter, and hoping that a positive experience might change the prince’s mind, he commanded that a different route be found, that it be decorated so as to be even more beautiful than the first, and that any person whose sight might in any way be upsetting to the prince be removed from the area. He pleaded with his son to go on one more excursion, to which the prince agreed, but on this occasion too he saw something he wasn’t meant to see, he saw, on an adjacent street, beyond the crowds that had gathered to see him, a motionless body being carried by a number of people in mourning. He asked the charioteer why the person was being carried in this way, to which the charioteer replied, reluctantly, that the person had died. The prince didn’t know what death was, and on being told that it was a state without consciousness, a state in which a human was no different from a log or a stone, unable to see or hear or talk or feel, the prince suddenly became inconsolable. The cheering, smiling, laughing people who’d gathered by the road began to take on a sinister aspect, and looking around at them he began to feel they must either be insane or completely deluded, for how, otherwise, could they go about their lives unaffected by the fact that they would get old, that they would get sick, and that eventually they would die? Returning to the palace Siddhartha continued to reflect on what he’d seen, unable to take pleasure in anything he’d previously enjoyed, neither wife, son, consorts, nor friends, unable to see the life he’d been leading as anything but a farce. It was his inability to move on from these facts, according to the poem, that had eventually led the twenty-nine-year-old prince to leave the palace in secret one night, embarking on that long and famous journey that led, finally, after six years of homelessness, penance, self-mortification, and meditation, to liberation from the cycle of birth and death, from the misery and bitterness of the so-called real world.
A Passage North Page 16