A Girl & a River

by K R Usha

  If the many, disparate, tightly wound communities, cocooned in their unchanging ways, suspicious of each other and quick to take offence, were the bones in the spine of the country, the British to Mylaraiah were the gel-filled discs that separated the bones, defining them, giving them the space, the ease and the swing they required to live with each other. If the gel were to slip out of place, the body would be prostrate and aflame with pain; it was so easy for their dissensions to lose all sense of proportion. People could be strange; the most docile and compliant of them could go berserk if given half a chance.

  Then Mylaraiah had stood up, knowing that there was nothing more that the two of them could say to each other. ‘We cannot wish away our past, I know, but you cannot insist on looking at things through peepholes either. Here, I don’t know if you’ve seen this,’ he had handed the pamphlet with the scurrilous article to Narayana Rao, ‘but it’s just the kind of thing you’d appreciate. In fact I thought you had written it.’

  Narayana Rao had barely glanced at the newspaper. ‘Yes, I know that article. No, I didn’t write it.’ He had smiled slightly. ‘A fine piece of work. It was written by a scholar. He is not part of the movement or the party but he is a strong believer in our ideals. He teaches our sons, by the way, lawyer Nanjunda Kole’s brother, everyone calls him C.G.K. Sir.’

  ‘Oh, Kole’s brother? I know Nanjunda Kole very well. Pity his brother is so addled. Here is a man who still thinks Queen Victoria is the Empress of India. She’s long been dead and he is still in her thrall. We have come a long way since then. Even your Gandhi refers to our maharaja as a rajrishi and the whole country thinks of us as a model state.’ Mylaraiah had reached across, picked up Narayana Rao’s unresisting hand that rested on the table and shaken it, so that he would get up and leave. ‘And don’t mistake me Nani, I’m with you when it comes to social upliftment. Only, don’t be in such a hurry to drive the British away.’

  Rukmini had come into the office room to find her husband working his arms into the sleeves of his black coat, frowning thoughtfully. ‘There he goes, Rukmini,’ he had pointed in the direction of the gate, ‘the man in whose hands rests the fate of this town, if not the state and the nation, and in this man’s …,’ pointing to the pamphlet that Narayana Rao had refused to take with him, ‘the fate of our son.’

  ‘Never mind all that. Why had Narayana Rao come?’

  ‘To thank me, I thought. But what I got was a history lesson instead. I was made to stand up on the bench. Your Nani will not let go of the past, Rukmini. He continues to suck on the piece of rock sugar distributed back in the 1880s when the maharaja’s late father came to the throne, and it has turned bitter in his mouth. He also reminded me of our village amaldar’s English friend who had apparently been rough with him long, long ago. He still feels the imprint of the cane that inspected his tuft when he was a boy.’

  ‘Poor man, how he must have suffered …’

  ‘Well, he’s had a lifetime to get over it.’

  ‘He looks so thin and ill. Must be his frequent trips to jail. No wonder his practice is doing badly.’

  ‘Even otherwise he wouldn’t have too many cases. He just can’t apply himself to any job systematically. Can’t survive without excitement …’

  But Rukmini had just shrugged and gone inside And Mylaraiah had smiled ruefully at how determined she seemed to impute the best motives, even heroism, to Narayana Rao’s human failings. Well, he said to himself, you could win the skirmish but the war would never be yours.

  By the time Mylaraiah reached his office, the sun was up. His clerk had arrived ahead with the files in a tonga and his clients were already waiting for him. When Mylaraiah opened the first file and asked his clerk to summon the client into the room, thoughts of king, country, knave and wife had gone from his head. The only thing that mattered was the Modern Mills case.

  Four

  1987

  Before we return to Bangalore, we decide to visit a childhood friend. I am happy my father has acknowledged a childhood and at least one friend. And that he is allowing me to watch him skulk into his boyhood.

  I am not enamoured of this town. It is too crowded and dusty, what charming buildings there might be have been elbowed out by small, mean structures. Everything is so chaotic, as if every man, woman and child and stray dog and cow, not to mention the cars and bicycles, have a mind of their own directly opposed to the other. We are driving on knuckly stone roads still waiting to be dressed with tar, which might never be. On one of the side roads, the squabbling new buildings stand aside for a moment, and in the middle of a large field, surprisingly unencroached upon, is a stately building of perfect proportions. The white paint is peeling and many of the windows hang from their hinges but nothing can take away from its gravity. It has the equanimity of a witness of history, of one who has lived through many happenings and taken every turn in his stride. With a solemn forefinger it bids you closer. This was my father’s school.

  ‘We used to play cricket on this field,’ my father says. ‘Mahatma Gandhi once gave a speech here.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘I don’t remember. I was a boy then, about eight or nine, or maybe younger. There was a very big crowd, one of the biggest ever, and a lot of dust. I think I got lost … We also hanged a cat here once.’

  ‘What! Hanged a cat?’

  I catch a strange look on his face, as if a forbidden thought had crossed his mind.

  I smile to myself but keep quiet. I cannot imagine my father doing anything like that. Hanging a cat when he doesn’t even hang out his wet towel after his bath! At one time, I would have been full of questions. But it is too late now for these things. This trip is not half as nostalgic or painful as I thought it would be. I have turned my face westward now. If my local Sam Spade comes up with something, it will help me bring things full circle.

  We drive on the edge of a large green body. It is only after the smell seeps in that you realize it is a lake covered with weeds. The market square is so crowded and the lanes so narrow that at one point I suggest we abandon the car and walk. We are going to see Ramachandra Rao, retired head master of the Government Boys’ School, who now runs the Citizen’s Forum. My father is meeting him after almost forty years.

  ‘His father used to be S. Narayana Rao, leading Congressman of this town and freedom fighter. Minister in the cabinet of the first state government after Independence, but could not handle the caste politics. Got a raw deal and eventually faded away. He got in for one term and I think he tried standing for elections again but lost his deposit … I cannot imagine why Ramu came back to this town …’

  My father is getting positively garrulous now, after all these years. Memories lead to nostalgia and nostalgia is nothing but the dust of regret, he had told me once, and he believed in wiping his feet on the door mat before coming in.

  ‘Narayana Rao had organized a bonfire of foreign clothes here in the market square and I remember throwing my shorts in, in a fit of patriotic fervour, and going home in my underpants. I got such a scolding from the cook.’

  ‘The cook?’

  ‘Oh yes. Achamma pretty much ran the household. We were answerable to her for all our minor omissions and commissions.’

  My father uses some quaint expressions. Omissions and commissions, ‘bounder’ is another one. So and so is a bounder, he often says, but I can’t figure out what the qualities of a bounder are—someone cheap and tawdry, I think.

  We have stopped in the middle of what appears to be a wholesale market, judging from the vegetables and sacks that are piled into windowless sheds. Our car blocks the road. As I get out of the car, a bullock cart laden with sacks and coconuts jostles me. I see my father disappearing into one of the buildings—all the buildings on the road are uniformly dingy and one-storied—and I follow him quickly. A narrow flight of stairs with a wrought-iron banister leads to a corridor with several offices, each a single room. The double door has been newly painted in a greasy grey oil paint,
so liberally, that the small board saying Citizen’s Social Forum can barely be made out. The grey stone floor is cracked. From the high ceiling a fan is suspended, its pole and blades thick with cobwebs. In the far corner there is a stand with an earthen water jar, its mouth covered with an inverted plastic cup.

  A man rises from behind the desk. He is small, bespectacled and is wearing a much-washed khadi kurta.

  ‘Ramachandra … Ramu, it’s me, Setumadhav Rao …’

  ‘Oh Setu! After so many years! I got your message but I didn’t think you would …’

  They stand looking at each other across the desk. They don’t embrace or even shake hands and of course, they completely ignore me. I’m sure my father has forgotten I’m there.

  He walks up to the window and looks out. ‘The lake, it’s covered with water hyacinth.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a problem. I’m trying to do something about it.’

  ‘And the town, unrecognizable. All the old landmarks gone, and every road …’ he raises his hands.

  I’m sure he does not mean it, but my father’s manner seems to imply that it’s Ramachandra’s fault. Ramachandra just stands and shakes his head.

  My father is looking round the room, studying the high ceiling and the fan. ‘This used to be the Congress office, isn’t it …’

  ‘Yes, it moved out of here a long time back, right in the sixties. It’s shifted near the bus stop now, much bigger place.’

  ‘Your father …’

  ‘No more. Passed away in 1964—a little after Nehru, actually. And your father? I heard …’

  ‘He died a few years after we moved to Bangalore.’

  Quits now. My father for yours.

  They speak quickly, their responses coming a little too fast. They look at each other and look away, my father’s eyes searching the room, till they come to settle again upon his friend with a hungry reluctance.

  ‘You still live there … in the Agrahara block …’

  ‘Yes, the old house … It’s called Middle Class Colony now. I retired last year, took voluntary retirement. To think I was headmaster of the school …’ They catch each other’s eye and smile.

  ‘Do you hear from the others? Chapdi Kal?’

  ‘I lost touch with him after he left. I believe he is in Shimoga now. Shall I send for some coffee …’ his eyes shift hesitantly in my direction, but he doesn’t look at me.

  ‘No, no, we don’t have much time, must be going now. We want to get back before dark.’

  The air, turgid with things unsaid, clears up for a bit, but they take one breath and it closes again.

  ‘Your house …’

  ‘That’s what I came for actually. I don’t know if you know, but I sold it to Krishnaiah Shetty, Anantaramu’s son. Do you remember him? I came today to look at it … show it to my daughter,’ he half gestures towards me, ‘but he was in a hurry. Pulled it down already.’

  ‘He’ll probably build a cinema hall there.’

  My father just looks out of the window moodily.

  ‘And the Mission property? I saw cinema halls there too.’

  ‘They’re selling off the periphery but keeping the centre. Do you remember Alpine’s son? He used to play cricket with us. He’s gone off to Australia. And Morris, he sold his factory and went back to the US right in the sixties.’

  ‘And you? Didn’t you join the Congress party?’

  ‘Oh no,’ he laughs. ‘My father’s times were different. Moreover, I had a government job. Unlike C.G.K. Sir, do you remember, our Kannada teacher who used to train the Congress volunteers. Now I do some social work.’

  ‘Of course, he used to quite scold the maharaja in class … is he still around?’

  ‘Oh no, he passed away a long time back. Do you remember the student demonstrations that took place here, in ’42 I think … Quit India … his son was shot … C.G.K. Sir himself was arrested. He died in jail. My father was with him.’

  My ears prick up. This man has told me more about what I have been searching for in one sentence than what I have discovered in the space of half my life. Not a muscle moves in my father’s face.

  ‘The Congress is no longer what it used to be …’

  As a schoolgirl, I remember living through an emergency declared by the prime minister—when the buses and trains were on time and so were the clerks in the post office, and all the opposition leaders were rounded up and jailed—but ten years later, when she was assassinated, I was at the University of Chicago. India was in the news then and I had to explain the politics of the country in a special classroom session. My father had sent me several newspaper clippings then, and quickly consumable capsules of information on the complexities of our society and our religions. I wonder how much sense it had made to my physics class, a group of people who are trained to order things schematically and to whom ambiguity and muddle-headedness were interchangeable.

  ‘Those were the days …’

  ‘I was telling her about the cat we hanged in the high school field. She doesn’t believe me …’

  Ramachandra turns to look at me and stands staring. It is, I realize, to avoid looking at my father. ‘It wasn’t in the high school field, but your backyard,’ he says shortly. ‘And the cat … kitten was dead … one of O’Brien’s kittens which he used to drown routinely. We strung it up on the mango tree.’

  They stand in silence for some time. I listen to the noises from the street.

  ‘Right I must be going …’

  And then, finally, they shake hands and pat each on the shoulder for a bit. But the two bodies are not at rest.

  ‘The next time, you must come home for a meal.’ I cannot help but notice how relieved he sounds. ‘My sister would want to meet you. She used to be the headmistress of the Mahila Samsthan in Bangalore, of course retired now. She lives with me.’

  ‘Ah Kalyani, of course. How is she?’ Without waiting for an answer my father adds, ‘Tell her I asked after her.’ Perhaps he is afraid that Ramachandra will ask after his sister in return.

  I know he will not come back. There is a scrappy quality about the conversation and they are too awkward with each other. Too much water under the bridge. The past hangs too heavily here. I can feel its weight in the room, hanging from the ceiling like the disused fan, dusty with cobwebs.

  ‘Is there anything to see in this place?’

  Ramachandra starts at the sound of my voice. ‘See? In this place?’ He looks at my father doubtfully. ‘Well, there is the Shri Rama temple … and the waterworks … and the Martyrs’ Monument in the church square, if you can find it that is. Every year around Independence Day, they give it a facelift. The place is so crowded. Anyway, you have to drive past it on your way out.’

  The Martyrs’ Monument, of course. Quite by coincidence we stop across the road from the monument for petrol. I breast the traffic and enter a small park with dusty red crotons, dried-up grass and broken down cement seats. It is full of people and peanut vendors and all the seats are occupied. So is the grass. I walk to the structure in the middle of the park, enclosed by a freshly-painted grill. From the solid base of the cenotaph, pasted over with polished granite tiles, rises a pencil of cement. It doesn’t go very high. The lettering on the plaque is hidden with weeds. The script in Kannada at the bottom is completely obscured, but the words in English on top are visible. ‘In memory of the student martyrs who fell to bullets … 1942’ I decipher, after several attempts. No names are mentioned. Nothing to confirm my suspicion that I may know one of them. But even if any names were mentioned I would be none the wiser. I may have found another piece of the jigsaw but it is as inconsequential and isolated as this structure giving the finger to the sky. Already curious urchins have gathered round me. I leave before they can ask me for something.

  When I go back to the car I ignore my father’s impatient frown. I do not tell him either that that monument could be in memory of a man who could have changed his sister’s destiny, a man whom he might have condemned to bullets,
for he will deny all knowledge of it and anyway it doesn’t matter now.

  He hunches up in the corner of his seat and closes his eyes. I want to take his thickened fingers in mine and say something to comfort him, but there is nothing I can say; we have disappointed each other too long, too continuously for that. The ground that we share has turned barren now, not even the furry undergrowth of routine to mediate between us, as it does between him and my mother. Sometimes I think there is a layer of lard round our hearts, transparent but impenetrable, through which we can sense what the other feels but which will not permit an answering throb to go through; and finally, I presume that all feeling will die and we will only be left with the habit of it. He can see that, which my mother cannot poor thing, but there is nothing he will do. As always, he will do nothing, hoping to resolve things best by avoiding them. So be it.

  When we enter the city I ask the taxi to drive on Lal Bagh Road so that I can catch a glimpse of the old house. I always keep an eye out for it when I pass this way. This is the house my mother grew up in and was anxious to get out of, so anxious that she puts up with my father’s abominable behaviour in gratitude for having taken her out of it. When I have been away, I have had the time to think of her life, of what it must have been to be brought up by a houseful of women who are indifferently affectionate to you, as they would be to a stray kitten, indulging it only when it amused them. I used to haunt these pavements at one time, when I was eighteen, on the pretext of jogging in Lal Bagh. The house looks shabbier than ever, just waiting to be pulled down. (If I were an American millionaire I would buy it for my mother and present her with the deeds on her birthday, tied in a red ribbon.) The painted windows of the office buildings next to it gleam white, like new dentures, waiting to test their strength on this hapless shell next door. I wonder how the women are doing and whether the garden still smells of a mix of drains and the champak—I have been inside just once, before I left the country. ‘Before I left the country’ has a nice, self-important ring to it, it tells me that I am an exile. But then, I have to acknowledge that this is my home, which is contrary to what I feel. I am trying to establish my home elsewhere, far away from all this. Well, there is no point in letting my mind wander, now that I’ve decided it doesn’t matter. My father has not turned his head to look at the house, just as he did not get down to look at the Martyrs’ Monument. I will tell them both when we reach home, when the three of us sit down together. Of course, they must come and visit me.