A Matter of Time

by Shashi Deshpande

  It is a bloodless duel this time, both of them are unimpassioned and restrained. She does not ask him any questions, she tells him—how it has been for them, the feeling of displacement, the questions and innuendoes they have to face, the sense of shame and disgrace. She speaks to him of Sumi, of the change in her, of Charu and her desperation, her feeling of having been let down. She is finding it hard to stay cool now, anger is slowly rising in her, but she still holds it on a leash. She calls him a callous father—‘it was Seema’s birthday, you know that, you could have sent her a letter, she was waiting, we could all see that’—a cruel husband, an unfeeling man.

  And then, finally, comes the question: Why did you get married at all, why did you have children?

  Her eyes are fixed on his face, a cold and dispassionate regard.

  There is a long pause, she can see he is deliberating his answer, finally deciding not to say anything at all.

  ‘It’s too late to think of that now, Aru. It serves no purpose arguing about these things.’

  When she is sure there is no more to come from him, she speaks. ‘I’m going to see a lawyer.’

  There is no doubt what this is intended to be: it is a threat.

  ‘It’s not important what you do to me now, Aru. It’s what you’re doing to yourself that’s wrong.’

  ‘It’s too late to think about me now, isn’t it? Too late to show your concern.’

  And on that little bit of childish spite she walks out. Both of them have been too engrossed in their conversation to notice that it has begun raining. Aru takes an angry pleasure in not wiping the seat of the scooter, in the discomfort of the wet seat. By the time she moves out of the small lane, the drizzle has become a downpour. She keeps going mechanically, her head down against the streaming rain, still in that world of hostility and pain. It takes her a while to realize that she has lost her way. Looking about, she finds herself in a place she has never seen, a lane lined by old-fashioned tiled houses that open straight on to the road. She makes a tentative turn and finds herself in equally unfamiliar territory. She comes to a crossroad and gets off her scooter, gasping slightly as the rain streams down her face, trying to find her bearings, to orient herself.

  A motorcycle stops by her. ‘Need any help?’ the rider asks her in English.

  She gives the person a wary look. But his visor is down and she can see nothing of his face.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I’m lost.’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ When she has explained, he says, ‘Follow me,’ and starts his engine. Suddenly he stops and peels off his waterproof jerkin. ‘Wear this.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’ll be okay.’

  She looks down doubtfully at the jerkin before putting it on. It’s too large, the sleeves come way below her palms. She can feel, rather than see, the man’s smile and she smiles herself as she rolls up the sleeves.

  ‘Right, let’s start.’

  She finds her spirits rising as she follows him in and out of narrow lanes he seems very familiar with. A peculiar kind of exultation fills her as they move along the unknown streets, this unknown rider and she. The sound of the rain and of their two vehicles fills her ears to the exclusion of everything else, so that later, when she remembers this strange dreamlike ride, it comes back as if in a vaccuum, as if they were the only two persons on the road. She knows he is controlling his speed so that she can keep up with him, nevertheless when he finally stops, she is some way behind.

  ‘Now,’ he says when she comes up to him and can see that they have touched a main road, ‘take that road, it goes straight to the City Station. And from there ....’

  ‘I know my way now. And thank you,’ she says, belatedly perhaps, for he has already restarted his engine, its sound drowning her voice. But he raises his hand as if he has heard her—or is he saying farewell? She watches his figure recede, become smaller and is just about to start her scooter when she remembers the jerkin.

  ‘Oh my God!’ She thinks of following him, tries to speed up, but it’s no use, she has already lost him.

  When she gets home she lets the jerkin dry on the seat of her scooter before she takes it in. For some reason, she does not want to talk to anyone about it. She bundles it into a plastic bag and pushes it into the lowest shelf of their wardrobe. For a while, each time she opens the wardrobe, she gets a whiff of the unfamiliar odour of a strange person and thinks of the figure on the motorcycle, riding ahead of her, heedless of the pouring rain, leading her out of those confusing lanes.

  And then an uneasiness creeps in: I must return the jerkin to him. But how do I do that? Put an ad in the local paper?

  Will the stranger who gave his jerkin to a girl on a scooter....

  Your jerkin is with me. Come and get it.

  Where are you, Sir Walter Raleigh?

  Aru does not believe in fairy tales; her disconcerting questions, even as a child, had made this very clear. Nor is she going to start believing in them now. Nevertheless, the thought that she will meet the man some day, that they will recognize each other instantly, is a fantasy that she builds in her mind, one that she carefully tends and nurtures. The story always ends in mutual recognition. There never is any more.

  Aru is indulging in sciamachy. She has the frustrated look of a person combating a shadow, a shadow that absorbs her anger and gives her nothing in return. As for me, it was not only her questions that daunted me, it was her look as well, the clear-eyed, judging gaze of the young female, weighing me up, finding me wanting. Don’t look at me like that, I wanted to say. This look is for others, for other males, it’s to protect you from them, it’s not meant for me, your father.

  But I could not say it. I’d opted out, I’d abdicated from that position, I cannot get back into it when it suits me. And so I said nothing. But her question comes back to me now, after she has gone and I know I was right in thinking of Aru’s questions as the Yaksha’s questions. How, unless you are a Yudhishtira, do you answer them both truthfully and wisely?

  ‘Why did you marry? Why did you have children?’

  It was fated. Kalyani said that. You were meant to come here, to live with us, to marry my Sumi.

  If it was indeed preordained, it means that my leaving Bombay, my studying in Shivpur, my getting a job in Bangalore, coming to know about the outhouse behind Kalyani’s house—all these were part of it. Or do we go back, even further back in time, to Sumi’s ancestors leaving their homeland and coming here with the Peshwa’s army, to my own family history ....

  Preordained. Only the movies can elevate marriage to such a pedestal, making it the culminating event of a lifetime, of several lifetimes. Only Kalyani can believe that all these things happened so that Sumi and I could meet.

  Why did I marry Sumi?

  Because I met her—it’s as simple as that. I knew it the night I escorted her and Kalyani back home after her school drama, the moonlight filtering through the trees creating a fascinating chiaroscuro on Sumi’s face, while Kalyani walked between us, innocent and unaware of what was happening. Along with the knowledge, there was a frisson of danger too. I should have walked away from her then, as I had in Shivpur, turning my back on Girija and her demands. But this time I didn’t. And I, who had been only a spectator, found myself getting obsessed by her presence, watching with immense pleasure the unshaded light of her person set against the dark shadows of her home.

  Why didn’t I leave? Is there, in fact, a plan we cannot grasp, and cannot overturn either, with our own puny actions? A predesigned pattern we cannot see because we are part of it? I remember trying to explain to Sumi that football is not just a mindless game as she thought it, it’s not just a lot of grown men kicking a ball about, as she said. I tried to tell her that there is a plan behind all that aimless kicking, the seemingly haphazard passing. That all those actions which seemed futile and unconnected were in reality part of a plan, a working towards an end—a goal.

  I think of this when I remember the conversation I
overheard in the bus. Was that part of the plan? Would I have married Sumi if I hadn’t overheard the conversation? I will never know the answer to that; to try and get at the truth now is impossible. I know this, however: it was when I heard them speak that my desire shaped itself into a definite thought. The truth, that I was going to marry Sumi, was already there, waiting for me. It was at that moment, after listening to them, that I came into collision with it.

  They were in the seat just ahead of me, two young men of about my age, so absorbed in their talk that they gave the feeling of being in some quiet, isolated place by themselves. And I, sitting behind them, listening to them, became part of it too, a ghostly third in their conversation. It was a long journey, from one bus terminus to another. The bus stopped at halts and crossroads, people got off and on, they shoved, scrambled for seats, swayed in the aisle, the conductor gave out tickets, called out the names of stops—all this must have happened. But for me there were only those two men and their talk.

  They were discussing the feelings of one of them towards a girl, a neighbour, who was, I gathered, in love with him. She had made her feelings clear, subtly, yet, it seemed, unmistakably. It was the man who was not sure of his feelings. He was confused; his confusion hung like a cloud about him. He was speaking to his friend about it, asking him: What do I do?

  ‘She’s a good girl, I like her, but ....’

  He spoke of what it was that was holding him back. ‘She’s not of our caste, she does not speak our language. What will my parents say?’

  But I could guess that this was not the real problem, that the problem lay within him, making him unsure of himself. Or am I ascribing my own feelings to him? Sometimes I wonder whether I really overheard the conversation. Did I? Or did I imagine it, make it out of my own confused mind, my own ambivalent feelings towards marriage? And was I the other man too, telling me what I wanted to hear? ‘Marry her,’ the friend said, and he said it over and over again. ‘Marry her, she’s a good girl, she’ll make you a good wife, I am sure of that. Marry her.’

  No, I did not imagine it, I did hear it, the bus ride is still too vivid for me to have any doubts about that. But even today I cannot get over the strangeness of it, for they spoke as if for my benefit, the problem was mine, the advice for me. It was like hearing strangers relating my story, it was like hearing the end of my story in a strange place.

  So I married Sumi. And I knew I was right, it was my body that told me this truth. I never had any doubts about my feelings for her. The night she came to my room, I told her to go back home, but the thought of her going away had been like death.

  After marriage, there were no more doubts. I knew I needed her, her warmth, her humanness, her womanness. The life of the body—why do the saints disdain it so? It is through our bodies that we find our first connections to this world. I knew it when I saw Aru as a baby, her tiny mouth open, ceaselessly searching for the nipple, the milky fountain, for the softness and warmth of her mother’s breast. Yes, for me it was right to live with Sumi, I know that even now.

  And there were my children. Why did you have children? I could have answered that question: I wanted it all. And I did everything—caring for my babies, tending them, caressing them—with joy and passion. Those hours in the night when I was alone with them (it was always I who woke up, Sumi could sleep through a baby’s hungry howling, but for me the smallest rustle, the tiniest whimper was enough), holding the small warm bundles in my arms, I was filled with an emotion I had never known until then.

  The life of the body—yes, I revelled in it. Sumi’s fragrant woman’s body, the searingly clean little-girls’ bodies of my children—these gave me great happiness.

  But I glimpsed it even then, the truth that would soon confront me, I saw it when Sumi put the baby to her breast. For I knew, when I looked at them, that they belonged together as I never did. Even when Sumi was impatient, when she showed a flash of temper as she often did for being deprived of her sleep, they were together in that magic circle. Woman and child. And I was outside. A man is always an outsider.

  I envied Sumi for this. And for this, too: for a woman, from the moment she is pregnant, there is an overriding reason for living, a justification for life that is loudly and emphatically true. A man has to search for it, always and forever.

  I have faith and therefore I know who Krishna is, Sanjaya told Dhritirashtra.

  I believe and therefore it exists. Stop believing and it is over in the blinking of an eyelid.

  The body shrinks from annihilation—Camus is right when he says this. But there is no choice. The life of the body has to end. It was my body that told me the truth once again, my body that could lie beside Sumi night after night, quiescent, feeling nothing. After the earlier humiliation of my inability to sustain my excitement, of being unable to go on, this was peaceful. But I could not avoid the truth, I knew it was over.

  When it is so possible, no, so easy, to argue out my case with the secret adversary who’s always lying in wait for me in my mind, why was I struck dumb before Aru? Why could I not give my daughter the answers she so badly needs to have?

  But how could I have said this to Aru: Marriage is not for everyone. The demand it makes—a lifetime of commitment—is not possible for all of us.

  No, I can say these things only to Sumi. And I am still waiting for her to come to me.

  EACH TIME GODA comes to visit, she brings with her a stainless steel box of ‘something I made just today—I thought you might like it ...’

  ‘You are lying, Goda-mavshi. Do you think I don’t know you’ve given up making sweets since Bhauji-kaka’s diabetes? I also know what you’re doing—you’re trying to fatten me up.’

  ‘And is that wrong? You need it. Look at you, look at those bones,’ Goda says with the contempt of a woman whose own comfortable plumpness was always considered an asset.

  Sumi knows it’s true, what both Kalyanj and Goda are never tired of telling her—that she has lost weight. But she feels that what she has shed is unwanted matter; what now remains is the essential. Her fine-boned body, which gives an appearance of fragility, feels full of energy. Whenever she looks into the mirror, which for so good-looking a woman she rarely does, she thinks: This is the real me.

  Now that Sumi’s face has lost its rounded contours, the resemblance between her and Aru is suddenly marked. An air of gravity links them to each other and, though neither of them realizes it, to Manorama, Kalyani’s mother, whose picture hangs in the hall. There are sudden flashes of resemblance connecting the three women, the different generations, creating a sense of continuity in the house.

  Sumi, unaware of this, has increasingly begun feeling an intruder in her parents’ house. We’re interlopers, she thinks, my daughters and I. Just passing through.

  From where has this idea come to her? From her childhood? From the conversation between Kalyani and Goda? (Not from anything said, perhaps, but from the silences that seem to put the unsaid words in parentheses, emphasizing them, making them significant.) Or, from the walls of this house that seem to cry out that the very reason for their existence was a son?

  A son is born to me, dear friend, a son is bom to me.

  It was Goda who sang the song at Nikhil’s naming ceremony, a song full of joy, a woman sharing her joy in the birth of her son with her friends.

  Nine months I bore the pain and now my house is filled with light.

  Sumi saw it then, the adoration of the male child. It must have been this way in the stable in Bethlehem, in Nanda’s house on the banks of the Yamuna in Gokul. The male child belongs.

  ‘I have no right to be here,’ Sumi says to her father. ‘I feel a parasite.’

  Each time she enters this room, it is like taking a step back into childhood. Nothing in the room has changed since then, except for the music system which is a recent acquisition. The same books are still piled on the shelves and on the low window sills. And, in some way, as it often happens, the room seems to have taken on, through the
years, the personality of the man inhabiting it, so that there is something guarded about it, an air of reserve, the very light in it being carefully doled out by the long narrow windows.

  ‘You don’t know how easy it is to become a parasite.’

  ‘Parasite? What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s Ramesh ready to give me money, and Devi and Premi, of course. And now you’re asking me if I need any money. It’s so easy for me to take it from all of you, to go on living here free, sponging on you.’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense. This is your home. You belong here.’

  His voice is stern, but the words penetrate her armour. Her throat works, she is afraid she will lose control over herself.

  ‘And don’t speak of parasites.’ He uses the English word as she had done. ‘I would never encourage you to be one, I always wanted you to be independent.’

  Sumi is never allowed to forget it, she is always reminded that the room entombs not just her father’s ambition for himself, but his ambitions for her as well. She was to fulfil the ambition he had given up when he came back here at his dying sister’s request, she was to take up where he had left off, become a distinguished lawyer, and—who knows?—perhaps a judge, like Premi’s father-in-law, the man who had once been Shripati’s colleague.

  It had seemed an honour at first, a privilege to be allowed to enter this room, to touch the books, to open them. By the time she was a girl, dusting them was nothing more than a boring chore. And when she realized why her father was letting her do these things, it became the prisoner’s stone-breaking duty; she wanted none of it. When she married Gopal, she walked out on everything.

  ‘I’m looking for a job, Baba. I have some money right now, but I’ll need a job soon.’

  ‘A teacher’s job? Have you got anything?’

  ‘Only the vague promise of one. A temporary place. A teacher is going abroad for six months, her daughter’s having a baby. But that, if I get it at all, will only be next term.’