A Girl & a River
Page 27
Her mother would know how she felt, her mother would understand. She was the one who had said that it was important to know what you want and not just what you don’t want, and now things had fallen into place with such a flash that she reeled from it. Shyam’s note, tossed off hastily no doubt—he hadn’t even waited to find a whole sheet of writing paper—had irradiated so many connections, so many streams of thoughts had started flowing. It was not just about the meeting, about singing a song, not even just about the precious tremulous thing that was stirring between them, it was much more; what she had heard as a faint monotonous buzz had grown into a thunderclap, the nebulous shades had yielded a burst of colour. The men in the photographs, whose proposals had come to nothing, were mere phantoms. Here, close at hand, lay her life, her future for her to decide. She would go to Mysore, to college. She would write to him from Mysore; they weren’t truly friends yet, they had to get to know each other. There were many dimensions to Shyam that lay dormant, waiting to be quickened—the life of the imagination, a certain softness, a breadth of mind. In knowing each other, they would unfurl; she would realize her own blueprint in the light and warmth of his tutelage.
When they had walked from the Samaja to the square, she and Shanta arm in arm, with the other women, she had been giddy with excitement. She quite believed that they were marching towards a new future, which was theirs to fashion as they liked. She had turned to Shanta many times to speak to her, but at the very last moment she had held back; she would write to him herself. On the podium, when they had tuned their instruments, just as they had done for College Day, and she had seen the different groups, each with its own banner, gather in the square she had exulted in her own nobility. The delegation of students had arrived and taken its place right in front. He had come at the last minute, but had been too preoccupied with the failed microphone to catch her eye and she wondered if he had noticed her at all. When they sang the invocation, never before had the notes rung out so clear and pure and high. Then he had started speaking.
‘Brothers and sisters of a free nation!’ he had begun and she had felt the rush of adrenalin in her veins.
And then before they knew it, the place had been swarming with an assortment of uniformed men—some on horse back—the crowd had begun to break up and run and shots had rung out, three in quick succession. She had looked around wildly, seen the people scattering across the podium and even as she tried to concentrate on the orders that Umadevi was shouting out, she saw him fallen on the floor. At first she could not recognize him, so small and stumpy did he look, his eyes closed with the whites showing, his hand still clutching the disabled microphone. It was when she saw Shanta distraught beside him trying to staunch the blood that she realized who it was. She remembered sitting next to Shanta and holding his hand, she saw his spectacles fallen nearby and even as she reached out for them they were crunched under a fleeing pair of feet.
She had felt no fear when they had herded all of them to one side and pushed them into the church to wait. They had waited in silence behind the solid wooden doors, listening to the sounds of horse hooves and people running, of stray screams and shouts. Sitting in the pew, watching the icons that looked silently upon them, the leather bound hymn books mute, the high stained glass windows letting in an eerie light, she realized the incongruity of the situation. She had sat in this pew before, with Dr King and Ella, and the icons had beamed as kindly upon her even then. And later, when she came face to face with the inspector general, she had felt again the start of displacement, and the first flush of shame had stolen upon her. She could tell that he recognized her vaguely, but could not place her as she was out of context. She usually met him when he was not in uniform, at the club where he and his wife played tennis with her parents, at home in one of her mother’s garden parties or with his daughters on a picnic, where he smiled indulgently at her and told her mother how unrecognizably tall she had become.
Once she came home—the inspector general had politely ushered her into the jeep when she had told him who she was—there had been no time to think, no space to ruminate, let alone grieve. For grief to swell and grow and then abate, it needs solitude; solitude for the cycle of memories, recrimination and wishful thinking to play itself out; an empty stretch of time to unburden your heart bit by bit and lighten the load. It could also do with a sympathetic ear and a closed mouth but that was not to be. The hectic routine intervened relentlessly. Thankfully, it had absorbed her father’s burning anger as well and prevented a further confrontation. Kaveri was not left alone even for a moment. Her mother’s health, which seemed to be improving, had taken a turn for the worse. The house was full of people. Her father spoke to her only to give orders.
Days later, on the train to Bangalore, en route to Madras to see another doctor, the whole incident seemed like a mirage, or the memory of a tragedy she had heard about, that had happened to someone else. At one time she had thought that in their brief conversations, they had exchanged wax imprints of each others’ hearts. But now, watching the fleeting landscape from the train, tending to her mother, measuring out her medicines and draughts, trying to listen to what her uncle Shivaswamy was saying, she realized that they had barely spoken to each other four times and never alone at that. The only letter he had written to her she had lost in her haste to keep safe. There had been just six lines in it and as for the nuances of the letter, she must have imagined them all. When she tried to think of him, to summon him to life, he evaded her, she could not remember his face or his voice, she only saw him lying on the floor, his eyes, sightless white crescents, his mouth twisted to one side. What remained was the sadness, an ache of complete disorientation and dull stupidity, but no memory of the man whom she had touched for the first time only after he was dead.
It was at this juncture that the proposal and the photograph came. This must be pre-destined, Mylaraiah breathed in disbelief when he opened the letter. It was from the district judge Vishwanath Rao himself, tipped to be chief justice, the man who had moved heaven and earth to get him the post of government advocate, and was holding out tantalizing prospects of future collaboration and mutual benefit. And now their official relationship was to be cemented by bonds of matrimony! It was his humble request. Would Mylaraiah consider his son as a possible groom for Kaveri? He did not believe in the matching of horoscopes and would not ask for the girl’s. However, if Mylaraiah was particular …
Mylaraiah stormed through the verandah into the house, holding the letter aloft like a flag, calling out, ‘Do you hear!’ to Rukmini in such excitement that she got out of bed and came into the courtyard.
‘He has written to me himself, Rukmini. Do you know what this means! I would not have imagined it. Two destinies being made with one letter! And his son is a rising star in the education department! What humility! He’s sent his son’s photograph—which should satisfy even our finicky daughter.’
The boy, it turned out, was the very same ‘young, dynamic, charismatic’ director of public instruction with whom Rukmini had corresponded when she had suggested a lowering in the age for girls to take the middle school exam, a suggestion that he had put through. They were a fine old family, not orthodox, which was such a blessing. They had a huge house in Bangalore near Lalbagh, and countless properties and ran some worthwhile charities, including a school. They were in a hurry as the judge’s father, the boy’s grandfather was ill.
And then Rukmini put forward the first note of dissent. The ‘boy’ was thirty-two years old, double Kaveri’s age.
Mylaraiah checked his anger with difficulty. ‘God has opened his eyes and thought it fit to be merciful, but you don’t seem to see it,’ he said. ‘Have you forgotten your daughter’s misadventure? Be glad that word of it has not spread. A man like Judge Vishwanath Rao has come to our door unbidden … we must clasp his feet with both hands …’
Moreover, he continued more temperately, if you wanted someone with an established career and who could afford all the trappings of a
household, he would have to be that old. It would be ridiculous if Kaveri married a stripling and continued living with them while he completed his education and then went on to search for a job. This ‘boy’ would steady her, he was a mature person. Kaveri’s opinions were forming without the backing of knowledge, experience or intellect, he replied. He was afraid she would turn out to be a shallow creature, with all the waywardness of one who wouldn’t ever be put to the test. Really, he thought, Rukmini’s health and intransigence seemed to be returning hand-in-hand. He wanted to be rid of the responsibility, Rukmini’s health was his main concern now and Setu’s education. They would be moving to Bangalore at a good time, he was looking forward to it. The Rao family was very progressive. Kaveri could study further if she wanted to or get involved in one of their family charities. And Rukmini should have no complaints, he added as the clincher. Even her Gandhi’s son had married a sixteen year old when he was thirty.
When Mylaraiah went next to Bangalore he met the boy in his office and pronounced him an ‘honest, sober man’ adding that it was a such a relief to meet someone who knew the art of keeping his opinions to himself in these squawking times.
The boy and his father paid a brief visit to ‘see’ Kaveri, and her loud refusal to be ‘seen’ while handing out the coffee came to no avail. She was not required to hand out anything, not even water, for the summons to ‘bring the girl’ did not come at all. She was Mylaraiah’s daughter and that was enough, Judge Vishwanath Rao declared. Finally, it was Rukmini who led Kaveri quietly into the room and made her sit in an unobtrusive corner. The judge filled the room quite effortlessly with his gold turban and his conversation. He was truly a splendid man and for once, Kaveri saw her own father dwarfed. He held forth on the political situation and other matters with the surety of one who was not used to being contradicted and Mylaraiah agreed with him that they were in for an uncertain future. We were not yet ready for dominion status and as for representative government, were we fit for it? Neither the boy nor his father stared embarrassingly at her, in fact she wondered if they even took a good look at her, not that she noticed, which, she convinced herself, was better than being stared at from beginning to end. The boy spoke little, possibly out of deference to his father and hers. He sat still, with his back straight and his feet under the seat of his chair, without fidgeting even once—splendid posture, especially for one with a desk job, did you notice, Mylaraiah said. And Kaveri, who was loathe to agree with her father on anything, had to admit that they seemed like decent people.
‘Rukmini,’ Mylaraiah said after they had left, ‘I want no fuss on this. They have given us a week’s time, but I’d like to go as soon as possible with flowers and fruits to their house. And then start preparations for the wedding …’
‘Well Kaveri,’ Rukmini said later in the evening, ‘Your father and I are both for the match. The boy is intelligent, educated and is doing well in his job. He would be a worthwhile partner for you. As your father says, you can even study further once you go to their house. Shivaswamy cannot stop praising the family and our luck.’
Some hope, it seemed to Kaveri, still remained. Safe passage could still be had perhaps. Ever since the photograph arrived, Kaveri had been looking at it often, slipping it out of its envelope every now and then. A young handsome man looked into her eyes and smiled. He sat on a rattan easy chair, in a tree-filled sun-dappled courtyard, looking up from his book, one hand resting on his dog’s head. Everything in the photograph conspired to make the man—the chair he was sitting on, the book, his posture, the dog. Especially the dog, for what can humanize a man more than a dog at his feet? Rarely, it appeared, had a photograph captured a person’s spirit as this one had. She had the advantage of comparing his arrested likeness in the photograph with what she had seen animated in the flesh. He was dark complexioned like she was. His round, gold-framed glasses glinted in the sun, and she knew that the eyes behind them were slightly myopic; they had met hers briefly across the room. The hands that held a book whose title she could not read, which had been alternately folded across his chest and steepled on his knees when he had sat in this very wicker chair she was sitting on, were well formed, the fingers long and slightly flattened at the knuckles. She recalled the prominent half moons of his finger nails arching into perfect ovals and his slightly curly hair, which suggested a certain fragility. The cut of his lips was deep and thoughtful; she gave him idealism and fire, with gentility, with restraint. The angle of his shoulders revealed both vulnerability and resolve. The gold edging of his kurta reflected in his face a certain regal splendour—it brought to her mind a faraway snatch of conversation, she imagined the governor of Bengal.
A certain young man’s shoulders winked and dazzled like gold in the sun, the muscles colliding in one smooth movement as he plunged into the waters. She heard a chorus of women singing softly in the background. She thought of the Scarlet Pimpernel kissing the spot on the parapet wall where his wife’s hand had rested. It had brought tears to her eyes to think that Marguerite would never know how much her husband loved her. She thought of Shyam, one moment standing next to her, pulsating with the promise of her whole future—on that podium she had felt that he was immortal—and the next, an ungainly heap in the dust. And the tears, which she had held back for so long, would not stop flowing.
When Setu came home late that evening he found the whole house in a stir. He had missed the boy as the ‘seeing’ had coincided with the football game that the whole town had been waiting for, the Italian POWs had beaten the local club 14-0, despite their hero Jayaram’s cavalry-like dashes across the field.
‘Kaveri,’ he said in sudden panic, ‘you’re not getting married!’
And while everybody else started laughing, his sister burst into a fresh flood of tears.
Much later, much much after the wedding, when Rukmini was almost completely eaten away with cancer, it emerged that Shivaswamy whom she had entrusted with the task of making ‘discreet’ enquiries about the boy—he may be quite a catch but she had to satisfy herself on certain vital counts—had met an old friend on his way and stopped off at a coffee house to talk to him. He had sent his son Chamu, all of twenty-four and newly turned father, and Setu, brother of the bride-to-be, to make the necessary enquiries. The two boys had in turn encountered a shendi cart on their way, the covering of palmyra leaves still fresh upon the barrels of liquor. What do you say, Setu, Chamu had said, do you still want to go further? For a moment Setu had hesitated, for he was not used to disobeying his mother. But even he knew that the liquor cart was the ultimate sign of auspiciousness, a sign that the gods themselves had blessed this union. Moreover, as Shivaswamy said, his father had set his heart on the match. It would be a propitious new beginning for the family. A proposal from Vishwanath Rao was not to be treated lightly, or turned down because of some vague cock-and-bull stories that were floating around. A man in his position was bound to attract envy. Jealous people might say all sorts of things. We have seen the shendi cart. That is enough. Let us return, Setu said. As you wish, Chamu replied, and they turned back without meeting the people who knew the boy well.
Moreover, with all the confidence of a fourteen-year-old who had just accomplished a task of fateful intervention, Setu felt that he was in the astral know. How else would he have intercepted Timrayee and read the note from Shanta to his sister, in two seconds flat, the time it took to walk from the gate to the porch, even as she sat in the porch, reading a book? And did they think they could fool him with that poetic twaddle? His sister must have forgotten how well he could read her mind and that any puzzle that she was able to solve, he was always able to unravel before she could. Did she think she could barter her heart away, so … so cheaply, when the unspoken rule was that her heart was not hers to give as she pleased, neither was his. The rule he would apply to himself, he had applied to her.
The note contained just two lines. Two lines boxed into a rectangle with a cross on top. Tomorrow, before the sun sets, the birds
will sing, it said. Tomorrow we will lift the lid off the sky, the fireworks with sound into the future. The big meeting is tomorrow in the evening in the church square, he had told his father. Shyam, C.G.K. Sir’s son, is the one who is leading it and they are planning something serious. He is an expert at making bombs, he had added for good measure. The district commissioner knows about C.G.K. Sir. Tell him to ask his son Mukunda. His father had done the rest. In such panicky times, people were extremely suggestible, particularly those in high office. And on that cocky high he had said to Chamu, I fixed Shyam, I fixed him for good.
The shendi cart was just the thing, Mylaraiah assured him. They had done right in not pursuing the matter. Besides, if Vishwanath Rao found out that they had been making ‘enquiries’ about him, he might get offended. They had reported to Rukmini that all was fine. As for the boy’s mother, about whom Rukmini had been so particular, Shivaswamy had written that she was a good cook, a woman who ran the large household of dependents very capably, so Kaveri would live like a queen—she’d have no work to do.