A Matter of Time

by Shashi Deshpande

  ‘Sleeping, Arundhati? Wake up, you have to direct us now.’

  When she gets home, for a moment Aru is dazed by the bright lights, the sound of everyone talking at once. But she is soon part of it, listening to Charu’s and Sumi’s animated discussion, straightening the plates that Charu has set all askew, pouring water into the glasses ....

  ‘Aru, hey, Aru,’ Charu bangs a spoon on a plate to draw her attention. ‘Get the curds from the fridge.’

  ‘What a noisy girl this one is! Girls should be gentle and soft.’

  ‘Ha! When I’m gone, you’ll miss me, Amma, I bet you’ll long for my voice.’

  One day I will remember this, I will look back and see us and think how happy we were. Why can’t I feel that happiness now? Why can’t I get it at this moment when I want it so much?

  ‘Anything wrong, Aru?’ Charu asks later.

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘You’re very silent.’

  ‘A little tired, nothing else.’

  How can I say it, even to Charu, that today I saw the face of grief on a woman?

  ‘I’LL LET YOU know when I can come,’ Surekha has told Aru, but by now Aru knows enough of her ways to not be surprised when she turns up unannounced. Aru returns home to find her with Kalyani, the two of them chatting like old friends, Surekha relaxed and easy as Aru has not seen her until now. She cuts short Aru’s apologies with ‘why should you be sorry? I didn’t warn you I was coming today. I found I had some work this side of town and took a chance.’

  ‘Sumi’s not at home, Amma?’

  ‘She should be back soon.’

  ‘Relax, Arundhati, I’ll wait. So you call your mother by name, do you?’

  ‘Listen to that, Aru. I always tell these girls they shouldn’t do that. It’s not right.’

  ‘My mother would have agreed with you. I was just speaking to your grandmother about my mother, Aru. She reminds me a bit of her. My mother was a tiny person, too. I know,’ Surekha laughs at their involuntary look. ‘I’m like my father. He was huge, really huge. Only our horoscopes match, nothing else does, my mother used to grumble. But their tempers matched too. You should have heard their arguments! You should have been a lawyer instead of me, my father used to tell my mother.’

  ‘Your father was a lawyer?’

  ‘My father, my uncle, my brother—yes, we’re a lawyers’ family. But I never thought I’d join the gang, I never wanted to be a lawyer.’

  ‘It’s like Premi’s family. They’re all lawyers too. Her husband, his brother, his father, his grandfather—you must have heard of them, her father-in-law was a judge and his father a very famous lawyer.’

  ‘Who?’

  When Kalyani mentions the name, Surekha is suitably impressed and Kalyani is pleased.

  ‘But tell me,’ she pursues the thread Surekha has left dangling, ‘why didn’t you want to be a lawyer?’

  ‘Because my father was one. Because he wanted me to be one. Because I thought the law was only for the rich.’

  “Your father must have been very pleased when you changed your mind.’

  ‘Oh, it was too late for that. He was dead by then.’

  Kalyani clucks sympathetically. ‘That’s sad. It must have hurt you.’

  “Yes, it did, I felt terrible. If only I had known he was going to die, I thought then, I’d have acted differently. But,’ she gives a wry smile, ‘we can’t change our behaviour because someone will die some day. Mortality—that’s a terminal disease all of us suffer from.’ She says this sentence in English. ‘But let that go. I’m talking too much—as usual. No more coffee for me. And what’s your name? I don’t want to call you Amma.’

  ‘Kalyani.’

  ‘What a beautiful name.’

  Kalyani has the look of a pleased child. ‘My father chose it. My grandfather thought of it actually. It seems that when he was told of my birth, he said—it’s a good day for us then. And he recited: Shreyasam, Shivam, Bhadram, Kalyanam, Mangalam, Shubham.’ Kalyani intones the words in a sing-song manner. ‘And my father said—right, we’ll name her Kalyani.’

  ‘That’s a lovely story.’

  ‘She isn’t just Kalyani, she’s Kalyanibai Pandit.’ Aru’s tone is fond and teasing.

  ‘Pandit—is that your surname? Of course, I saw the board outside. Listen, is Shripati Pandit your husband?’

  ‘He’s my grandfather,’ said Aru.

  ‘Why, he’s a lawyer too, isn’t he? Why didn’t you say so? He was my brother’s teacher, my brother admired him, he used to speak a great deal about him.’

  Surekha becomes aware of Kalyani’s silence, a silence so dense and hard that Surekha’s words bounce back at her. And Kalyani’s face has the blank look of a retarded person. It’s impossible not to recognize the fact that something has happened. Surekha’s torrent of words abruptly ceases. She makes no effort to conceal the fact that this is deliberate. ‘I must go,’ she says. But as she gets to the door, Sumi enters.

  The meeting, it is immediately clear, is not a success. Sumi does not want to talk to Surekha, the few replies that she gives are grudgingly given. Aru tries to apologise.

  ‘You don’t have to do that. Don’t take the load of other people’s actions on yourself.’

  ‘Are you sure you’d like to meet my father, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes, I’m not so easily frightened. Find out when he’s free—either tomorrow or the day after. And let me know.’

  It’s Gopal’s idea that they meet in Cubbon Park. ‘Perfect,’ Surekha says. ‘It’s ages since I went there. The gulmohar will have started blooming, gives me a chance to see them.’

  Gopal is already waiting for them when they get there, sitting on the curb near the King’s statue. The beds have been dug up in readiness for the monsoon planting and manure is piled up in heaps everywhere.

  ‘Would you like me to go away?’ Aru asks after introducing them.

  ‘Yes, wait for me in the car.’

  Surekha lets herself down gingerly beside Gopal, awkwardly balancing her bulk on the narrow edge of the curb. Then she says something to Gopal, about the strong odour of the manure perhaps, for she puts her sari to her nose and the two of them move to a bench. Aru keeps a watchful eye on them from a distance, like a parent watching her child fraternise with another. Will they be friends? Or will they quarrel?

  When Surekha begins speaking and Gopal listens to her with his usual air of courteous attention, Aru relaxes. She buys a paper cone of peanuts from a vendor who’s been waiting patiently for her to give in to his importuning, and sits munching, waiting for them to have done talking.

  ‘Your wife doesn’t approve of me. She thinks I’m encouraging Arundhati to go on with this.’

  ‘You’ve met Sumi?’

  ‘Yes. She’s beautiful.’

  ‘You should have seen her as a girl. Though I think she was at her best after Aru’s birth. But there’s more to Sumi than her looks. And she has no vanity at all about her appearance. She’s proud of her quickness, her memory, but ....’

  ‘You speak like a doting husband.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes. And yet you left her.’

  ‘My parents died when I was eight, they were crushed by a bus.’

  Even as Gopal begins speaking, it flashes through his mind: why am I telling a strange woman this?

  ‘They died together. You know all those Hindi film songs about living together and dying together? When I hear them, it is of my parents I think and of how their bodies were so fused together in death that they could not be separated. I heard someone say that and I’ve never forgotten it. Well, what I’m trying to say is—our journeys are always separate, that’s how they’re meant to be. If we travel together for a while, that’s only a coincidence.’

  ‘And therefore you left your wife?’

  Gopal laughs. ‘No, not for that. I suppose you want to know the real reason?’

  ‘No, I don’t. As a lawyer, it makes no difference to me whether you walked ou
t for a bad reason or a noble one. Yes, certain things matter: were you cruel? Is there another woman? Otherwise the reason why you left her is of no significance whatsoever.’

  ‘What does the law consider significant?’

  ‘That you fulfil your legal responsibility of maintaining your wife and children.’

  ‘We can’t always live by the rules, can we? Even lawyers know that. There are things like human emotions.’

  ‘Yes, and that’s where the law comes in. If your emotions damage someone else, the law takes account of that. People speak of the law of the jungle, but that’s some kind of a law too. It’s lawlessness that’s destructive and leads to chaos. But’, suddenly she smiles, and it’s like dropping a mask, ‘why am I speaking of the law? I haven’t come here as a lawyer.’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I’m trying to see if I can help Aru. Do you know Aru blames herself for your walking out?’

  Gopal’s look of astonishment is reply enough.

  ‘Yes, she says she accused you of being a coward—something to do with an article you wrote and then retracted ....’

  ‘But Aru is right. I was frightened.’

  At this, Surekha sits up and takes notice of this man who so frankly admits to fear. To accuse a man of cowardice is to chip away at the base of the pedestal of his manhood. If, after this, a man is still standing, you have to respect him. Surekha understands Aru’s feeling about her father, her desire to not let him go.

  ‘You must have seen fight scenes in movies. They’re so stylized, they’re almost artistic and one begins to think it’s really like that. So it was a shock when they attacked me. There was no “fight director” there to give it shape. They came at me all together, they hit me with their fists, their feet, anywhere, everywhere. Of course I was frightened. And much after it was over, when I saw the bruises—they healed so slowly, it was as if they’d injected some indelible dye under my skin—I was frightened all over again. I began to think that the marks were a map of my cowardice.’

  ‘Is that why you withdrew your article?’

  ‘No, not because of that. No, not only because of that. There was something else.’ He pauses for a moment, his decision not to elaborate shows on his face. ‘But let that go. We were speaking of Aru, not of me. The problem is that Aru wants to put the world right.’

  ‘When I was her age, I wanted to put the world right too. I was sure a revolution is the answer. Blow up all the baddies and all will be well. My father told me to read the story of Nahusha. I didn’t know it then, I didn’t even know it was in the Mahabharata. I read it much later, after my father’s death, and now I know why he wanted me to read it. It tells us that every revolution carries within it the seed of its own destruction. One oppression only replaces another.’

  ‘So you’re not a—I mean, are you a ...?’

  ‘Say it, say it, it’s not a four-letter word.’ Her smile reveals teeth of remarkable whiteness and evenness. ‘I am a feminist, oh yes, I am. I am on the side of women. I know that we’re all of us in this awesome game together, but the rules are almost always against women. I believe things have to change.’

  ‘I don’t understand how feminists can argue that a man is responsible for his family. If you reject patriarchy, you must reject all these things based on patriarchy too.’

  ‘It should be that way, shouldn’t it? But until patriarchy is thrown out as a whole, we still need to see that the rules are observed.’

  ‘So you’re here to get justice for a wronged woman.’

  ‘No, I’m here to see Aru’s father. I wanted to see the man who could walk out on such a daughter.’

  Gopal’s face clearly shows that he hadn’t expected this. Until now, he has not taken the conversation seriously. He has enjoyed it, no more—Surekha is astute enough to have guessed this; but now he begins to take note of this woman, of what she is saying.

  ‘For the desire for sons is the desire for wealth and the desire for wealth is the desire for the worlds. No, no, not my words, it’s from the Upanishads,’ he says in reply to her look of mute inquiry. ‘I’ve always thought that the love for daughters is less tainted, more disinterested.’

  ‘And yet you walked out on them.’

  ‘They don’t need me any more. There was a time when I used to wake up in a cold sweat thinking of dying, of leaving my children fatherless. I thought I had an obligation to stay alive because of them. But that’s over.’

  ‘They don’t need you? You’re fooling yourself. Is there any moment when our need for one another ceases? Well,’ she gets up and dusts herself with large thwacks, ‘I promised Aru I’d meet you and I’ve done that. And I know I’m right in telling her to get on with her life, to put all this behind her. But can I say one thing to you? I don’t know why I’m asking you that question, I’m going to say it anyway. There are no second chances. Aru, your wife, your other daughters will survive this, it’s amazing how we manage to survive the most terrible things. But you will have to live with this thought—there are no second chances.’

  Aru, chewing her fingernails, looking now, for all the world, like the anxious chaperone of a romantic couple, sees them shaking hands formally as they part, something she has almost never seen Gopal do and she wonders what it means.

  ‘No second chances’—what was she trying to tell me? I keep hearing the words and like words heard over and over again, they become just a collection of letters and sounds, devoid of any sense, any meaning.

  No second chances ...?

  And there’s Premi’s letter—she’s never written to me, not once in all these years. That itself makes the letter significant. But is there something else in it, something that I’m missing? The letter puzzles me. There is nothing in it about Sumi and me, about what I have done. Yet as I read it, I have a sense of Premi continuing the conversation she had with me when she was here.

  How can it be? Premi’s letter is about her work, about the Fertility Clinic which she says they may soon have to close down.

  ‘It’s a luxury, they say, in a public hospital, something we cannot afford. Do they realize what they’re saying? It means that parenthood is for the rich. I wish these administrators, these budget-balancers would see the couples who come to us, the desperation of the women, the things they’ve done, the temples and dargas they’ve visited, the quacks they’ve gone to, the pills and powders they’ve swallowed, the amulets they’ve tied on, the trees they’ve circumambulated ....’

  Yes, of course, that’s it, now I understand. Premi is telling me about parenthood, she thinks I need to be told what it is. I don’t blame her for thinking so, but Premi speaks from her experience as a mother, and what good is that to me? I heard Shankar speaking of his mother, almost apologising, it seemed, for his inability to protect his wife from his mother. ‘She gave me birth, she brought me up, she looked after me ....’

  That’s a debt we can never repay, it’s a burden we can never lay down. Women will never understand this, they don’t need to, they are luckier: the day they become mothers themselves, they have repaid their debt, they are unburdened and free. What is fatherhood set against this weight, this certainty of motherhood?

  I don’t need Premi to remind me of my being a father, anyway. I knew what fatherhood was the day I felt the taut mound of Sumi’s body that was Aru, I knew it when I looked at the frail bit of humanity in the cradle, I knew it when I held the tiny body in my arms. And it was then that the fear started. The baby seemed so vulnerable, her link to life so tenuous—how could she possibly survive? How could I make sure she did? I realized then that life is nothing but a battle against death, a battle that we ultimately lose.

  Yama was wise when he refused to answer Nachiketas’ questions about death. Wiser, in truth, than the wondrous boy who would not give up. The surprising thing is—how is it that Nachiketas didn’t see through Yama when he fobbed him off finally with the idea of immortality? Immortality is only a placebo.

  But P.K. believed in i
mmortality. And to him immortality meant children; children, he said, are the means by which we can cheat death, they are our way of achieving immortality. As long as there are children, we will never be totally annihilated, the play will never end, the curtain will never come down.

  P.K.—transparent as a windowpane washed clean by the rain. I grew up in his care, his face is to me the face of fatherhood, he showed me what fatherhood is. But Premi thinks me a thoughtless, callous man who needs to be reminded of fatherhood. In her eyes I have nullified all that I have done for my children by my one act of desertion. I cannot blame Premi; she has seen only the dark side of fatherhood. After marriage Premi moved away from here, she became defiantly a different person, but she has not escaped, she still carries within her the desolate land of her father’s rejection. Camus is right. We carry our places of exile within us. It entered into me too, the day I learned the truth about my parents.

  I think of Charu, a chubby four-year-old Charu, her little face wise and knowing, saying, when we spoke of a time before she was born: Then, I was in my mother’s stomach. Laying her head, her ear, on Sumi’s body, her face intent and grave, as if she could hear the trapped echoes of her unborn self within. Sitting up then and smiling at us, her face beatific, triumphant, fulfilled. Telling us: I know my beginnings.

  Yes, we need to know our beginnings. Without that we are forever exiles, forever homeless. It was only after the Pandavas, all five of them, met their real fathers, that they were fully armed and ready for war. Armed with knowledge.

  But we don’t really have to go out in search of our beginnings; it lies in us, embedded in our beings, difficult to get rid of. Karna didn’t need the armour Kunti had put by him when she abandoned him as a baby; the knowledge of his Kshatriyahood was part of him, it was through this knowledge that he reached an idea of himself.

  ‘You bastard of a Brahmin’—I heard the abuse when they fell upon me and the words kept coming back to me later, they hurt me as much as the physical injuries. My father had disclaimed his identity as a Brahmin out of disgust when they reviled him for marrying his brother’s widow, I had ignored it all my life; being a Brahmin meant nothing to me. And yet, they charged me with having written my article from the platform of Brahminism. Ultimately, I was nothing more than a ‘bastard of a Brahmin’.