8
Buddhoo was jabbersome. ‘Yaar, I’ve got a book inside me. I can feel it coming up my throat. A basin, quick! I’ve got to write it down. The big book of my life. Confessions of the Indian Lotus-Eater. Portrait of a Former Flower Child. Diary of a Drop-Out. The Growth of the Middle-Aged Poet’s Mind. The Interlude …’
‘Inter-lewd?’
Guffaw. ‘Its going to be a book on LIFE. An approach to life. A reproach to thought. With footnotes and glossary. Its going to be called Eat and Excrete: An Elementary Tract.’
‘Alimentary?’
‘Shabash! That’s a good one! I’ve even got the first sentence in my head. Good, round, resounding line.’
‘Let’s hear it.’
‘Excretion is the better part of squalor!’ Buddhoo roared. ‘Ho, ho, ho, ho! Fact is, man, you’re giving me an inferiority complex, sitting there perspiring at your desk. I said I’ve got to write my book too. The big book of my life. So I, ha, cast a merciless look at my life as lived so far, and to tell you the truth, yaar, weighing the essentials, I found I’ve achieved just one thing. The Great Digestive Cycle.’
‘Great. You’re welcome to my PC in the afternoons,’ said Sravan with mock solemnity. ‘Or is it to be pen and ink? My old manual typewriter is free, too.’
Buddhoo regarded him with scorn. ‘None of your second-rate gadgetry. This is pure inspiration. Composed in the stomach. Consummated in the soul. By the way, have I told you of the time when I asked a memsahib the difference between consumption and consummation?’
‘Let it wait, will you?’ Sravan retreated studywards in haste. ‘I’ve got some of my own stuff to complete. No pure inspiration for me. I must say to the muse what the earl said to the nun—Go spin, you jade, go spin.’
‘Which earl?’
‘Pembroke,’ called Sravan from the study.
‘Which nun?’
Sravan bolted the door, switched on the lamp and took up his notes.
Mondira once spent a long, lazy winter with friends at their estate. The local zamindar family owned enormous farmlands and orchards. There was a visiting nephew. His name was Mihir. An old, remembered picnic at the Shitala Falls … Lentils boil on a wood fire. The smoke rises. Dumplings of crisp flour baked in hot ash. Brinjals and potatoes. The fragrance of powdered gram, sharpened with pickle oil, pungent with garlic and melted ghee … Mondira’s eyes sting with the smoke and the misery of Mihir’s indifference. Sugarcane and mustard fields, gold and green, and away, in a hollow of the valley, the low, wet dark of mango groves. Guava plantations. Near the fall, the land is rocky. Deep-fretted with seams of water. Raked with massive cloven ploughs. The boom and crash of water, its wide, electric bolt blasting its way down, sparks flying. Giant vapours rise from the boiling hell-brew in the basin beneath.
Five years later Mondira revisits the fall with Mihir on a family trip. The river is now reduced to a solo strum. A small pulse still beats in the rock. The cry of a solitary bird creates a disturbance in the still waters of the sky. And Mondira at last plucks up the courage to ask Mihir: Did you get my letter? That one I sent at Kali Puja, five years back? She has been rebuffed by his silence, his complete casualness. He answers: Yes. Her heart lurches in her ribs. Then he adds: I couldn’t read a word. It’d been drenched in the rain—every word washed off. She is left wondering how many words stayed legible and how much was washed away.
So Mondira’s motives are complicated. She arranges a match between Mihir and her sister, the little Devyani. She believes she has resolved the question, put Mihir out of reach. Paradoxically, she also manages to keep Mihir in the family, always available to her, and she knows that too.
What Sravan wished to create was a series of overwhelming pictures. No intrusion of authorial observation. A prolonged disappearance of self. In recent years he had at last learnt this disappearing act, switching himself off and staying carefully out of the story. As though it was necessary for book and author to keep themselves at arm’s length. The novel gained in direct proportion to the efficacy of his own dissolution.
He lit a cigarette. As if on cue, the phone rang. He clicked in annoyance, then realized it might be Malini and hulloed with some eagerness.
It wasn’t Malini. The voice that rose from the phone in a dim fog sent misgivings through him.
‘Congratulations. I read your new book.’ The voice paused uncertainly after each sentence as though it sought confirmation or approval and wasn’t sure of receiving either.
‘Yes.’
‘Saw you at Ranjana Devi’s place the other day. I was going to come speak to you but the place was too crowded. You left early.’
‘Yes.’
‘Didn’t wait for dinner. Or any of your old crowd.’
‘No.’
‘I was disappointed.’ The tone was cryptic. The voice leaned towards him, slunk its way slowly round his throat and slipped on its coils. Sravan steadied his own voice. When he spoke it was with an air of suave interest. He asked, ‘What’re you doing with yourself these days?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘What’re you writing?’ asked Sravan, feeling his way warily, relieved to find himself recovering his usual poise.
‘Just a textbook or two.’
‘Good money.’
‘Not so good, actually. Lots of middlemen. But it keeps the kitchen fires burning.’
Sravan had hit his stride by now, and the spark of a laugh ignited his voice. He put the next question with an air of jocular concern: ‘What about the creative fires?’
The voice paused heavily, then said, ‘I sometimes do short stories for magazines. Tried a potboiler—somehow couldn’t write the sort of thing the market wants. Not much good at it.’
A span of silence.
‘I learnt of this Golden Lotus windfall of yours.’
Sravan was surprised. The news had got round already! He uttered a non-committal murmur.
‘I wondered if I could do a feature on you. An interview, maybe?’
This was more than Sravan could take.
The voice went on, scrupulous about leaving nothing to inference: ‘It’ll pay me some okay cash, and frankly, I could do with it at the moment.’
Sravan had an uncontrollable impulse to put the phone down. He mastered it and said with some difficulty, ‘Sure. Any time.’
‘You must let me have the full scoop. And another thing. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t give anyone else the full-length account before mine sees print. Is it too much to ask? For old times’ sake.’
That last awkward phrase rattled Sravan. He said, very low and guarded, ‘Okay.’
There was another heavy pause. ‘Tell me, is it true that the Golden Lotus means a cool two-point-five lakhs?’
‘Something like that,’ answered Sravan, swallowing. ‘Pathetic, isn’t it? Considering the megabucks they shell out abroad. All those auctions. Rights going to the highest bidder. Our Indian scale is pitiful, no?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the voice. ‘Bit like the stock exchange, I think … but I’m no judge. I don’t belong to that club. Never understood market management.’
‘Can’t do without it.’
‘Oh, I’m managing. Not too well, but any old how. There’re two kinds of writers: macro and micro. I’m not just micro but mofussil as well. Gives you the freedom of the fakir.’ An uncanny laugh. Then a changing of subject. ‘I liked your new book.’
‘Thanks.’
‘There were things I could relate to—exactly.’
‘Good.’
‘Might have been written by me.’
‘Yes?’
‘In fact … in fact I suspect it was.’ What was this now? The old, sick panic came blundering back. The voice had renounced its caution, begun rising in a giddy curve. ‘Remember “Pravesh”? My old short story? Published in Lekhni ages back. No, I thought you wouldn’t. Considering that you’ve made quite a nice novel out of it, with a few changes here and there. And glib. Your special sort of
glitter. Your uncanny way with words. Your ingenious way of hacking up an original and rehashing it into something new. Exciting. Your award-winning best-seller …’
He was clearly raving. There were rumours that this man had turned alcoholic, and hadn’t altogether recovered after that disgraceful breakdown. Another minute and he’d be lapsing into abuse. An old scene replayed so many times. Sravan tried to interrupt with contempt. Dignity. A confidence he did not feel. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Exactly what you make of it.’
He decided to make light of the whole thing. Affect a bantering tone. ‘You’re imagining things, yaar. Come over one of these days for a drink and tell me my misdeeds in detail. I’m interested.’
There was now a distinct slur in the voice. ‘If I do, you’ll probably leave a message that you’re out. Well, maybe we’ll put together that feature on you. It’s one of the few things I can still manage.’
‘Oh, come on,’ said Sravan appeasingly. ‘You’ve managed to stay afloat.’
The voice turned suspicious. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘You aren’t writing in any prefigured frame. The dispossessed Dalit, the woman, the tribal, social violence. Not even those all-purpose evergreen clichés, sex and death. So next time you do a short story for a magazine, feel free to help yourself to a novel of mine. Take your pick. Snip it up. It’ll give you a dozen good stories. Good luck to you.’
Then he summoned his laugh. Sravan had a special thunderclap laugh, its sheer volume designed to silence opposition and put an end to inconvenient conversation. It worked specially well on the phone. That done, he slammed the receiver down. He noticed for the first time how dry his throat was, and how tight his head. His legs felt a desperate compulsion to walk. Up and down the study, round the desk, along the window overlooking the park, up to the bookshelves and back he walked, overcome by an old nausea.
But instead of working off the disturbance, the walking only recharged it. He looked in at the room next door. A biggish crowd was piled on Buddhoo’s mattress, on the chairs, on the Mirzapuri dhurrie. The kids, their friends, some neighbours, Pragya, even the maid. They appeared to be enjoying themselves hugely. The opening lines of Buddhoo’s literary venture had plainly captured an enthusiastic audience. Sravan stood a moment at the door, still a bit shaken by his phone conversation. Buddhoo caught sight of him.
‘Ah, there you are, Ravan! Just the fellow I need. Emergency! A ticklish point of poesy.’
‘It’s in verse?’ Sravan forced himself to speak in a hearty voice.
‘Reverse verse.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Wait and see. Can you tell me a word that rhymes with analysis?’
‘Paralysis.’
‘Won’t do.’
‘Dialysis.’
‘You’re getting too bloody medical, yaar. No others?’
‘Sorry. Not at my best and brightest.’ Sravan renounced the effort at merriment.
He went back to his study, called Malini, changed his mind before her phone rang twice, and resumed work with a sour heart.
Their first meeting, when Amalendu came to ‘view’ Mondira, was in a large guava grove. He offered her a ripe guava. She took it, grimaced, lip curling. She was lovely, he old for his age, gangling and gawky. The match was settled. She hated the sight of him. Their marriage has been a lifelong pact of hatred. She defies him. He beats her up, a surly man. All the same, Amalendu desires Mondira not from any love but from bitter detestation. For no other woman can he feel this exciting repugnance. He can stab her into silence with his thrusts. He keeps one hand firmly on her mouth till his climax resonates with her chokes. They only sharpen his pleasure. She seethes and plots. When he tries other women, he finds himself cold. Almost as though she has cursed him with impotence.
Sravan stopped. It just wasn’t coming right. Almost as though he shared Amalendu’s impotence, and it was happening with disquieting frequency. He found himself dragging the numb words across the floor of his mind like inert furniture. He could shudder at the grate of them, the nerve-distressing creak. This wasn’t what writing used to be—this hoisting words into position like ungainly weights, this strain. That’s it, he thought. It’s no longer what it used to be, an effortless emanation.
The journalist scene was proving specially stubborn. It had become a kind of bogey with him. He knew from experience that there were these bogey sequences. No matter how hard he strained, the form of the journalist who came to inquire about Mondira’s runaway kid just wouldn’t take shape. The dialogue wouldn’t move. There was an expression jam somewhere inside him. The policeman sequence was no better; those two scenes had become tests of some kind, and he was failing in some way.
His reflections were interrupted by what appeared to be muffled singing in the next room, accompanied by gusts of laughter. Buddhoo was giving a recital. Devilish, sing-song words. Suddenly Buddhoo’s vast vocal range displayed itself. Sravan felt the vibrations jangle unpleasantly on his edgy nerves. Tense as he was, he flung back his chair, stormed across and banged on the door to tell the bastard to pipe down.
The crowd seemed to be in splits. As he stopped at the door, Buddhoo’s eyes challenged him across the floor:
‘Presented herewith in your service, dear Ravan, my second songlet!’ he announced gleefully, and patted the mattress beside him in a motion for Sravan to sit.
I have two pairs of cheeks, you know.
One up here and one down below.
Betwixt the twain I have my lips.
The other dwells between my hips.
I use one set to smile and kiss.
I use the other to snort and hiss.
Don’t be surprised to hear me, friends,
Blowing my trumpet from both ends.
Sravan pulled a disgusted face, but all the others roared. Buddhoo wound up with a stagey flourish:
One speaks high words, the other low. But they’re great pals where’er they go.
Turning to Sravan with a wink, he twiddled an eyebrow. ‘Like you and me, na? High and low—right?’
‘So this,’ observed Sravan, ‘is what’s called Reverse Verse.’
‘Yeah. Deals with the reverse gear. The source of my emanations,’ crowed Buddhoo.
Hearing the word emanation, and contrasting his own solemn use of it with Buddhoo’s broad farce, Sravan had to grin in spite of himself.
9
Pragya sat showing Buddhoo a well-worn album. Old black-and-white photographs on thick black leaves.
‘Quite a college beauty,’ observed Buddhoo thoughtfully.
Pragya flushed with pleasure. ‘Also the college heiress,’ she added—most unnecessarily, thought Sravan. ‘I was a beauty, yes. I’m just an old woman now.’ For some reason she shot Sravan a sharp look.
He had always marvelled at her superb gift of equivocation, which could turn a simple sentence into a loaded accusation. The right stresses, combined with the appropriate body language—a bleak look or a bitter sag of mouth—could carry an enormous weight of reproach. What had begun years back as a hairline crack of disquiet between the two of them had grown into a sharp wedge of nastiness.
Sometimes he itched for a quarrel. He confronted her with that heiress bit as soon as Buddhoo was out of earshot. ‘Just what were you trying to put across? My great good fortune in marrying you?’
She looked straight at him, ready to take him on. Their eyes collided so hard that the impact hurt. They winced, and it was some time before they dared look at one another again. Both had proved masters at this guerrilla warfare. Then she laughed in his face. Her flawed laugh. Tarnished silver that had darkened with the years but that might still sparkle if polished.
‘You’ve never been ashamed to be indebted to me before.’ She spoke ironically, but there was a small mote of apprehension giddying about the air. ‘So what’re you so cut up about? He’s your friend, and I’m doing my best to amuse him.’
The doing-my-best line always irritated h
im. This achingly earnest act was a tactical strategy to put him at a moral disadvantage. Still, he knew that she strained after his approval, which he’d forever withhold—for the pure joy and power of denial. The truth was that he didn’t know what she was really like now, beneath her tumbling chatter. He knew her slack, cold body with its untended pubic hair, its flaccid, brown belly muscles, its formless pancake breasts. He’d watched it age and lose its proud cohesion. But he now knew nothing of her devious mind.
Her next words sounded an alarm in his head. ‘By the way, I spoke to Malini on the phone yesterday. I suppose it’s time to congratulate you … You didn’t think of telling me anything about it, but I guessed. Long ago. A wife always gets to know. As I told her …’
Her voice halted over each innuendo. Weighed the air. Checked his face. He studied her with distaste. The patch of sweat highlighting her armpits. Her stocky arms encased in the creased cylinders of their sleeves. The wad of flesh supporting her chin. Her broad, grooved neck nestling on squat shoulders. He let his eyes scrutinize her in open and intentional disapproval. Her classic good looks had gone. She’d softly ballooned with time, her eyes grown bulbous, and a strange air of unresigned ruin clung to her. Classic Indian sylph turned classic Aryan cow! Big, white, dewlapped, big-teated but liable to kick you in the face, he thought.
‘I suspected something was on, but I thought, If he wants to hide things, it’s his business—and his karma …’
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