Virtual Realities

by Neelum Saran Gour

  But always under threat from so many things. Like the phone call from the hospital saying the kid—the other one—had emerged from his coma. It would take time, Pragya said, probably months, but his spine would mend. The surgeons were hopeful. What was troubling was the brain. The MRI reports showed partial cerebral anoxia, which in lay terms was a lack of oxygen in the brain, and also cerebral atrophy of the temporal lobes. The speech centre.

  Now this sort of thing rattled him. Horribly. There was no easing off the nausea of that knowledge. No payment could be enough. This soreness in his soul. Unless he tried rinsing out his heart with words again. The old doubtful potion. Alternative healing. He looked at his son sitting there in the armchair. He didn’t know the guilt he’d inherited, but he would. Soon enough. All his life that brain-damaged kid would lurk in the hidden recesses. Sravan saw his son twenty years later, a young man with a dark responsibility. Visits to a mysterious ‘friend’ in hospital or asylum or suburban home.

  The idea began expanding in his brain, claiming all his concentration. He turned to it in relief, grateful for its distraction. The pain turned into a bait: an exciting theme and a demanding plot. It obsessed him. The protagonist’s sinister secret life, suspected by his family. Disappearances, bank drafts, telegrams, phone calls, railway tickets. Great. It was there, ready-made, just spinning forward the way the best themes did. He’d have to jot it down before it evaporated—as so many excellent ideas did now. It needed a climactic discovery, naturally. All the clues were already there, but capable of gross misinterpretation. The brain-damaged classmate of thirty years back.

  Sravan’s first reflex was to head for his study. He didn’t know what it was that intervened. An unpleasant subversive voice in his head, an idea he’d been offered on a silver platter, a hospital bed? Not this time—he stopped himself with an explosion of intuition. By God, this time I’m not writing it out. I’m going to act it out—watch me now.

  22

  ‘Don’t mince words,’ he told Pragya. ‘I understand what you’re getting at. You’re leaving me. Not a judicial separation—a situational one.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t use that tone,’ she bristled. ‘It isn’t anything so dramatic.’

  She looked him squarely in the eye, across the old battleground of the writing desk.

  ‘We can’t send Ashu to a local school. The story’s going to follow him round the town. You can’t quell these stories, Sravan. They cling to people like nasty smells.’

  He had to concede that.

  She went on in a reasonable voice that he’d come to regard as specially suspect. ‘We can’t even keep him in this colony. You know how the neighbours are. This thing needs careful handling. He’s got to start afresh. In a new sort of home environment, a new equation with …’

  ‘You could advertise for a new father,’ he interrupted bitterly.

  ‘Don’t be difficult. All I plan to do is put him in a good school in the hills. Not a boarding school; a regular day school. I’ll rent a house. Shift my design biz upcountry, that’s all. Mussoorie’d suit me fine. The right sort of market in the holiday season. In time I might even go in for a showroom. And Chand Mian, my tailor, is quite keen to shift and try his luck in a new city. And there’s another thing. Chetan’s going to be moved to Delhi for treatment and I’d like to be close at hand, helping out.’

  ‘Mussoorie’s not close enough.’

  ‘Closer than this.’ She was using her heiress voice now. Gone were the giddy-girlie tone and the sulky-sneering keeper-of-yourconscience voice.

  ‘Ah, the principal financier,’ he couldn’t help remarking unpleasantly.

  ‘That’s exactly how I want it to be,’ she answered. ‘I want to see both the kids through. Properly. It’s very important to me. Otherwise it’s going to be an awful feeling, Sravan—not having done one’s best.’

  It’s an equally awful feeling, not having loved enough, was the thought that crossed Sravan’s mind.

  ‘So how’re you going about it?’

  ‘Well, I’ve sent for application forms for the entrance tests at a number of schools. As soon as they arrive, I’ll be off with the kids. Coach them up a bit. I’ll look around for a nice place to rent and furnish …’

  ‘And all this you propose to handle alone?’

  ‘No. Once I’ve found a place, I’ll send for Buddhoo-bhai. He’s promised to come help me set up and get started …’

  ‘Good,’ he said, derisive. ‘Excellent planning.’

  She took no notice of the jibe. ‘Yes. Seems a practical sort of plan.’

  ‘Except for one niggling little detail,’ he mocked. ‘What’s to happen to this pile of lumber in the backyard, honey? This morally defective, old-model, non-functional husband?’

  She smiled. ‘Don’t be self-deprecating,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t suit you. You aren’t an old model and you’re extremely functional, I happen to know. You’re just a husband with the warranty period expired. And you weren’t ever a high-fidelity product.’

  His silence was active with protest. Then he asked. ‘Just what is the problem?’

  Her voice hesitated, hovered round a word but came to settle on another.

  ‘Okay, put it this way. I’ll tell you what my Shakuntala Bua once said to me. She said, “I could’ve left my husband four times in my life—the provocation was enough—but I didn’t. Now it’s too late—the chance is lost. But that’s what’s written here in the lines on my forehead.” I don’t want to be ruled any more by things like that. Lines on the forehead or genes or disposition or personal script, as you call it. To break out of them—that’s what I want.’ There was an undertow of emotion in her voice.

  ‘And you don’t want to let this chance go? The kid’s done you a favour.’

  ‘Try to understand me, Sravan. A marriage is like two gamblers counting their losses, you know. It’s what survives destruction when most of it is gone.’ She spoke in a strange, shredded voice. ‘What I regret most is that we—you and I—have lost our better selves. All these years—they’ve brought out the worst in us. I don’t regret losing anything else—my youth or you—but I regret losing my better nature. Like that time when I burnt up your novel … I know you hold it against me. You’ll never forget that thing. You’ll always go on punishing me. And why shouldn’t you? It was a terrible thing to do. I’ll carry that shame till I die. For years I haven’t been easy in my mind about that book. It was like … like killing a child. Your child.’ She uttered a wry laugh. ‘Medical Termination of Creative Pregnancy. Like a woman jealous because her lover has fathered another woman’s child. Now d’you get what I mean by better self? I just want to see whether going away might restore that to me.’ Her eyes grew troubled, braked on a word. As for him, his mind was in such an uproar, he was deafened by the clap of thought against thought. He saw that there was now no persuading her. She was perfectly calm, and now she turned flippant.

  ‘You can join me whenever you can get away. And we’ll come down when the schools close for the winter. You’ll be able to write much better with us gone. We were always disturbing your work. And when you come up every summer, think how well you’re going to write up in the hills in a mountain retreat. Maybe you’ll be able to write that burnt book again—from your notes and memories. Please. Nothing will please me better. I’ll do up your study for you—a room with a view, what say?’

  He lost his head. ‘Write! Write!’ he fretted. ‘Is there ever to be anything else for me?’

  She put on her innocent face. ‘I wonder. It’s what I’ve always been curious about.’

  He decided to try one more thing.

  ‘Look, Pragya,’ he began. ‘There’s something odd I’m going to tell you.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘Something funny’s happening to me. I hardly know how to put it. There’s been this problem with the kid. You’re taking him away. We’re going to live separately—on what terms, I don’t know. There’s guilt in the background. Someone’
s died—no, not in real life. But in my book …’

  She looked stricken. ‘Your book? That one?’

  ‘The one I’m on now. Don’t butt in. Let me speak. Someone died. In my book it was a young woman. She fell—jumped—or was pushed by her circumstances—into a well. Her death hangs like a threat to the peace of a family. There’s been infidelity, betrayal … And a man’s been pushed to his death as well, denied shelter …’

  ‘How exciting,’ said Pragya softly, thinking aloud.

  ‘The truth comes out and the family breaks up. The breakup’s brought about by the kid …’

  Pragya uttered a stagey gasp. ‘D’you mind going a bit slow?’

  ‘Pragya, what I’m trying to tell you is this—everything that’s happened to us lately—all this trouble—it’s all a rehash of my book. Yes, I wrote it all in a different order. But it’s happened to us. Organized differently. That family broke up through a kid. Ours is about to. This thing you just said, about murdering a child—or a book—because it’s been conceived—or fathered—by another—this too! This jumped-or-was-pushed question. This too is a situation in my book. I’ve begun feeling that I’ve got to pay for every word I ever wrote. I have to account for it somehow. Every story I ever wrote is going to rise against me and demand its due—in reality. There’s something funny going on. It’s closing round me like a curse.’

  She didn’t let him finish. She rose to her feet. ‘Hyper, that’s what you are. And who said we’re breaking up? I’m just going to live somewhere else for the sake of the kid.’

  ‘But that’s exactly what she did—Mondira.’

  ‘Who’s Mondira? Another of your women?’ She said that in a spasm of vengeance she couldn’t help. He gulped down his agitation, let it pass. She still hadn’t uttered Malini’s name, depriving him of the opportunity of lying his way out.

  ‘A character in my book.’

  ‘There you are. Hyper,’ she exclaimed, patience wearing thin. ‘Now you know what I mean. Writing’s driving you crazy. That’s what’s closing round you. Simple as that. What was that word Buddhoo-bhai used the other day? Ah, monomania. That’s it.’

  Long after she’d left the city, Sravan kept brooding on her words.

  When Pragya was packing up to leave, she carried out a thorough spring-cleaning of her room, leaving a heap of half-torn paper on the ground. Old recipe books, do-it-yourself manuals, design pamphlets, old magazines. The morning after he put her on the train he found, carelessly abandoned in the discarded mess, one of his early novels. A more fluent rejection wasn’t possible. Hurt, he picked it up and carried it into his study. His father had deliberately never read his books, probably didn’t even remember the titles.

  So there it is, he thought. Unbelievable but true. My life’s cracked apart, accurately along the line I plotted for my book! Like the earth’s crust, silently crumbling along a zigzagging fault. He went back to his work, disoriented at the strangeness of it. My mind made it happen on the page. Now it’s happening in my life. There I was in control. Here I’m not. He thought distractedly of Atreya’s words. A paragraph in a weekly assignment. With amateurish gravity she’d penned: ‘Every few years, the map of our life changes; the country of our consciousness comes to have different frontiers; its territories are redefined; and all our psychological selfadministration given a new slant of strategy.’ His remarks on grading the piece B+ had been: Ponderous. Avoid semi-colons. Shorten length of line. Reduce thoughts into simpler units.

  The thoughts in his own head now wouldn’t reduce to simpler units. He sat questioning his book for traces of prophecy. What’s going to happen to Mondira’s small son? His mind prompted the answer—Mondira and Mihir will part ways. The child will never return. The territories of their lives will have to be redefined, and all their whatwasit ‘self-administration’ given a new whatzitcalled ‘strategy’. He sat searching his book to read his own future. Trying to decant fiction for truth. Believing that the truth might be still there, settled at the bottom, and that the fiction might float up and be drained off. Then he rapped himself hard and thought—bullshit! My head’s caught in an idea warp, that’s all.

  The last two chapters. He felt such relief, striking each character off his soul. Detached psychically at last. Thank God I don’t have to go on feeding each character my own vital energy. But the damn idea kept returning, and he had to share it with Buddhoo.

  ‘You must take this seriously. By intuiting an outline for the book, I willed it to happen in my life.’

  ‘Then it’s simple,’ said Buddhoo. ‘Go ahead and rewrite it. Change the script, since it isn’t working too well for you.’

  ‘I haven’t any alternative drafts. And my novel’s as fixed upon the page as my life is fixed in time. Rewriting won’t be easy—my brain’s going to fight every word. By the way, there’s something on my mind. What’s going on—Pragya and you?’

  Buddhoo looked astounded. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’

  Sravan kept silent.

  ‘You’ve written so much about infidelity and betrayal in that wretched book of yours that you’re obsessing about betrayal, you’re enacting betrayal, imagining betrayal all around you.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Sravan, contrite.

  ‘Sure,’ said Buddhoo. ‘Come out of that book, for God’s sake. You’ll wander round and round your own pages without ever finding a way out.’

  ‘Until another book comes along.’

  ‘Like they say, it takes a spell to break another spell. But Sravan yaar, how do you get to free yourself? There’s nothing on between Pragya and me. What the hell! Don’t be a bloody fool. You’re imagining things. Actually,’ said Buddhoo, ‘we’re in the same boat. I’m either making things up in my mind or making things with my hands. I can’t live without an audience for my buk-buk. You can’t live without doing your buk-buk on the page and then spinning it all around yourself. We’re both trapped, we two buk-bukaneers. Or, in your case book-bookaneers.’

  ‘That’s just what’s bothering me. That out of all that suffering shall come not an action but a book. For me books may well be surrogate deeds. After so many of them, year after year, what I want to achieve is a real, consequential deed, not a mass of words.’

  ‘Don’t go and shoot yourself like those jackasses in your boring existentialist novels,’ laughed Buddhoo.

  ‘Well, my novel’s done and finished. I’m left with a blank quarter page at the end and my signature. At the end of one’s life there must be some sort of a karmic signature, you know.’

  ‘Your essential ISBN code?’

  ‘Yes. Okay, suppose I take your advice? Can’t rewrite my life so I might as well go back and rewrite my book. But not just yet.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I like this blankness. This post-signature emptiness. No obligation to spin another tale.’

  ‘Moksha?’

  ‘Absolutely right. That’s exactly what it feels like. But there’s another thing disturbing me. Ever been nagged by silence, yaar? As I wrote these last chapters I felt such a stillness close around me. I’m not used to it. This absence of people. And I wonder if I’m guilty—of rejecting them all.’

  ‘Let them go now.’

  ‘Will I get them back?’

  ‘I don’t think so … no, I really don’t know.’ Buddhoo forced a laugh. ‘Maybe if you write a reunion sequel. It’ll be one way to test your theory.’

  Sravan brooded. ‘It’s this writing of mine that’s always been in the way. I’ve always known it. Everything would be restored to me if this writing was abandoned. But that’s just what I can’t do. I let go the rest—so long as I preserved this. But I’m angry—that this choice had to be there at all.’

  Buddhoo kept silent.

  ‘Go on, say something. Haven’t you any of your stupid stories for me? Your Mithyopanisad or anything. You’ve been playing Krishna to my Arjuna long enough. I can just feel my pen fall from my hand … like Arjuna’s Gandiva fell from his. Only he was i
n a battlefield full of family and kin and I’m in an empty thought-field in which everyone’s gone and I’ve got to start fighting the page alone and I don’t see why I must.’

  ‘Yaar, you make too much of everything. That’s your fault. Too much of your family going away, too much of your books, yourself. I’ll tell you a fable I like. Suitable for a jittery writer at the end of his marriage and the end of a book. Narada once asked Krishna the meaning of maya. He was always doing that, you know. So Krishna took him walking across a desert waste.’

  ‘The page, was it?’

  ‘If you like to read it that way. The sun was hot, the sand burned. Krishna stopped suddenly and said, I’m thirsty, Narada. Fetch me some water.’

  ‘I’ve heard this one. But tell on—I’m waiting to see what twist you’re going to give it.’

  ‘So when Krishna asked for water, Narada set off, pot in hand, looking for water. Before I go on, I’m hellishly thirsty, Ravan. How about some beer? It’s a longish story and the throat needs moistening.’

  ‘Right. Get it.’

  When he’d poured the beer into mugs and settled down. Buddhoo went on. ‘At the verge of the desert, Narada spotted a village and a well. Beside it was a beautiful woman.’

  ‘But of course.’

  ‘Well, Narada, laying eyes upon her, fell headlong in love. (Confirmed bachelor though he was, he was always doing that.) Forgot what he’d come for. Went pleading for her hand. Her father insisted that Narada stay on as groom-in-residence in their village and help to till the fields.’

  ‘Another heiress.’

  ‘So Narada married the maiden and settled down as a householder. Years passed and they had many lively children. Then, one Shravan night, the river rose. Higher and higher. The flood waters came lashing and swirling into Narada’s village. Narada couldn’t protect his house, couldn’t save a pot or a cauldron or a casket of gold. All he could manage was a boat. He bundled his wife and his kids into the boat and tried to row them across the flooded river. Failed. The wind was wild, the waters choppy. Suddenly a child tumbled off. Then another. And another. Narada beat his breast and tore his hair in grief and despair. Then he lost his oars. Before his agonized eyes his wife was swept off, and he couldn’t do a damn thing. Then the boat capsized. Blinded by his tears, wailing loudly, Narada found himself sinking, too. Thrashing about, gasping for air, floundering, spluttering. Cursing the water he swallowed in gulps. It poured into his lungs and choked him. It closed over his head. He lost consciousness. And as he faded out, he heard a voice in his head—I’m thirsty, Narada. Bring me water. Narada was furious. Water! he shouted. Who is this that dares mention water to me when it is water that has wrought my ruin? From the deep river bed came a voice—It is I, Krishna. I’m thirsty, Narada. Where is the water you promised me? And suddenly Narada awoke from the spell—to behold Krishna smiling before him. He was bewildered. Where’s the woman, my wife? he wondered. Where is my home, my village, my family? The fields tilled, the hearth I tended? The river? The flood? To which Krishna replied, Now do you understand the meaning of maya? So that’s it, Sravan, mere bhai. Virtual reality, you could call it. You thought you held the oars. You thought you were rowing confidently across your book and your life. But your book’s overpowered you. You’re capsized and cast ashore. It happens. Here we are now. No family, no fucking book, no relationships, no characters. It’ll start feeling real by and by.’