A Matter of Time

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A Matter of Time Page 23

by Shashi Deshpande

‘I told you, Charu, I’ve always said it’s no use just burying your head in books. You become good for nothing else. Look at me now ....’

  ‘Yes, Hrishi, we’re looking. Go on.’

  ‘I have an alternative.’

  ‘Ah! Your restaurant.’

  ‘You can be a waitress there, Charu, I’ll let you keep all the tips. If you get any, that is.’

  ‘Me become a waitress! Me not get admission! What do you mean? I can get a seat in any college I want. I’m a clever girl, yes, I am.’ And then Charu covers her face in mock modesty. ‘Did I really say that?’

  It’s that kind of an evening. ‘Sssh,’ Goda says fearfully when the voices and the laughter become loud. But when Aru goes up to her grandfather a little later, she finds him in an easy mood. ‘What’s that you’ve got for me? You know I don’t eat much in the evenings.’

  ‘That’s why I’ve brought you just a slice of cake. It’s home-made. Devi-mavshi made it.’

  ‘All right, I’ll have that.’ Then he adds, ‘I haven’t given you anything for your birthday.’

  ‘You don’t have to. You’re paying for my computer classes.’

  ‘But an eighteenth birthday is an important event. Legally, you’re a person now. What can I give you that can measure up to the significance of that? Let me think of something.’

  She notices that he has brought in his washed clothes but, unusually for him, left them unfolded.

  ‘Shall I fold them, Baba?‘

  He lets her fold them and put them away, again such an unusual occurence that she asks him, ‘Are you all right, Baba?’

  ‘Of course, I am. Why shouldn’t I be? You go down and enjoy yourself. Take that plate away. And I don’t want anything tonight, just a glass of milk.’

  On her way down, she hesitates. There is something so melancholy in the thought of him sitting alone there that she has a strong impulse to go back and join him. But the certainty that he will reject her company, that he will send her away, makes her dismiss the thought.

  After everyone has gone and the room and the table have been cleared, Sumi, who has been waiting for the right moment, tells them about her job. ‘I have a job,’ she says and her tone makes it seem as if she’s crying out ‘Hallelujah’. And then, calming down, she tells them what it is and where.

  Charu is the first to react, suddenly and to her own surprise, bursting into tears. It’s the loud and unabashed grief of a child.

  ‘I can’t believe it, you’re leaving us and going away, how can you do that?’

  When she hears that Seema is going with her mother, that Seema knows about the job already, that she was the first to be told, her grief becomes louder, more uncontrollable.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ she says between her sobs, ‘it’s not fair.’

  Aru, watching silently, envies her sister the ease and openness with which she can display her jealousy. So flamboyantly exhibited, it sheds its dark hue and becomes a simple, childlike emotion.

  ‘Let her go, child, let her go. You’re going away, too, aren’t you?’ Kalyani comforts Charu, making an effort to staunch her tears with her sari.

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘And I’ll be coming home often, Charu. Devgiri is less than an overnight journey. You can come, too, whenever you have holidays.’

  When Aru leaves them, Charu, a little shamefaced, is wiping her tears, but is still unconsoled.

  ‘You didn’t say anything, Aru.’ Sumi comes to her a little later.

  ‘Charu didn’t give me a chance.’

  ‘Say it now.’

  ‘It’s over.’

  ‘What’s over?’

  ‘Our family life. When Papa went I thought, I hoped, we would get it back some day, it was still possible, I could dream of it, but now—I don’t know ....’

  ‘That kind of a family life would have been over anyway, if not now, if not this year, the next year or the year after. The only difference is that Gopal and I would have been together. Now we’ll be on our own.’ Impulsively she adds, ‘Be happy for me, Aru. This is the first thing in my life I think that I’ve got for myself. I was sure I wouldn’t get it, there’s my age, it’s against me, and I have no experience at all. But one of the members of the Board saw my play ....’

  ‘Your play?’

  ‘The one I wrote for the school. ‘The Gardener’s Son’. They want someone for their Dramatics course. And so ....’

  ‘I haven’t read your play. May I?’

  ‘Do you want to? Don’t expect too much, it’s only for children. It’s gone for typing, when it comes back, I’ll give it to you. And do you know, Aru, I’m already thinking of another one. It feels so good, you can’t imagine! I’ve been so lazy all my life. And now suddenly I want to do so many things.’

  Aru, looking at Sumi’s face, remembers the diamonds flashing out at her from the box, sparkling in the sudden light.

  ‘It’s only a year since—since we came here and everything has changed.’

  ‘Charu said the same thing the other day. But it goes on all the time, doesn’t it? Change, I mean. One day is never exactly like another, each moment is different. When you think of it, we are always on the brink of uncertainty.’

  ‘I’ll be left alone here.’

  ‘No, you won’t. There’s Amma and Baba. I feel good to think that you’ll be with them.’ Suddenly anxious, she asks, ‘You’ll be all right, won’t you?’

  It’s verging on a plea. Aru recognises this, says, ‘Yes,’ and bursts into tears.

  ‘More waterworks.’

  Sumi’s voice is resigned, but she holds her daughter close and tries to soothe her. ‘You’ll come to me often, I’m getting my own place, just a room and a kitchen, but we can be together ....’

  It has rained during the night. They wake up to a freshness and a coolness. The oppressive heat has lifted, at least for now, though the early morning sun holds within itself the threat of an eventual punishing heat. Sumi, standing out in the yard, savours the smell of wet earth, the best smell there is, she thinks. There’s something primitive in us that rushes out to meet this fragrance of water and earth mingling, there’s the promise of rebirth in it.

  ‘Do you need the scooter, Aru?’

  ‘Only in the evening. You can have it now. Where are you going?’

  ‘Bank, Post Office, market—lots of little things. I’ll be back in an hour.’

  Sumi finds her father at the gate, looking unusually undecided and hesitant. How old he looks—the thought strikes her again. Even his back is not as straight as it used to be, he seems so bent ....

  ‘Where are you going, Baba?’

  ‘The bank.’

  ‘Come on, I’ll take you, I’m going there myself.’

  ‘I can walk, you know I always walk.’

  ‘Give me a chance to take you for a ride, Baba.’ She is smiling as she says it, speaking in English. You can walk back, can’t you? That should satisfy you.’

  He looks at her suspiciously, as if wary of such good humour.

  ‘All right. You’re an obstinate girl, Sumitra.’

  ‘Girl?’ And, after a moment, ‘Sumitra?’

  ‘That’s your name, isn’t it? I gave it to you.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Premlata—that was my sister’s choice, I didn’t like it, but she wanted it. Madhav, now, was mine.’

  ‘Madhav?’

  He has settled himself on the pillion behind her and she can’t see his face. Negotiating her way carefully over the bumpy stones at the gate, she puzzles over it. Madhav? She has moved out on to the main road when it comes to her that he is speaking of the boy who was lost, the child who was the cause of it all. Why is he speaking of him now, the first time maybe, after all the years? And to her? She turns round and sees a kind of brooding tenderness on his face. At the sight, for a moment, a very brief moment, it’s as if a veil of darkness has lifted, revealing a world beyond, bathed in a mellow luminous light. A picture in which everythin
g is sharp and clear, in which there are no shadows at all.

  She is about to speak, to say something, when his hoarse, strangled cry recalls her to the present. She looks ahead and sees the bus hurtling towards them. ‘This is it’—the words spring into her mind. She tries to swerve, there is a moment of pure terror as she realizes it is too late, there is a tremendous sound and then darkness and silence.

  Prasad brings the news home, Prasad, who, on his way to work, finds the road blocked and, moving through the crowd, sees and recognises the two mangled bodies. Shripati, flung off the scooter some distance away to land under the wheels of another vehicle, is dead. Sumi, barely alive, has been taken to hospital.

  They get the news of her death in the afternoon. Aru has just come home, sent back by Premi who has driven straight to the hospital from the airport, when the phone rings. She picks it up, listens and without saying a word puts it down. She looks at Kalyani and Goda, her lips move but no words emerge. They are not needed; the two women know. Kalyani immediately turns to Goda, crying out in a terrible voice, a voice Aru will never forget, ‘Look at me, Goda, look at me.’ And even as Goda tries to put her arms around her, she slumps to the floor in a slow motion sequence, leaving Goda standing, her arms still shaped to Kalyani’s body.

  Aru, breaking out of her paralysis, rushes to Kalyani and kneeling by the huddled body says, ‘Amma, I’m here, I’m your daughter, Amma, I’m your son, I’m here with you, Amma, I’m here ....’

  Over and over again the same words, until her voice trails away and for a moment there is a hush, a deathly hush, which is broken by the sound of Goda’s soft keening.

  Nobody ever makes plans for coping with the aftermath of death. Yet, as if some ancient knowledge has been stored in each person, in every family, things are immediately set in motion. And, like something that has been rehearsed earlier until it is flawless and word-perfect, the macabre drama of a funeral is enacted without stumbling.

  ‘Aru won’t trust any of us, she’ll organize her own wedding,’ Sumi had said, half in exasperation, half in admiration. Now, while Gopal and Ramesh struggle with the formalities of two accidental deaths, it is Aru who takes charge at home, doing all the things that have to be done. As for the others, all of them, even Devaki, so proud of her competence and efficiency, seem to have been stunned into immobility. Rohit, watching Aru from a distance, thinks she has the concentration of a rope-walker, holding the weight of her grief in her two hands, not as if it is a burden, but to balance herself.

  ‘I like it here. Hundreds of people.’

  ‘Hundreds, Nikki?’

  ‘No, thousands.’

  Nikhil is not with them as yet, he is to come the next day with his father, but his words return like a prophecy of this day.

  There are hundreds of people—family, friends, colleagues—most of them for Sumi, people who have been caught, if only for a while, in the enchantment of her being. Nagaraj is there, his face solemn, his cap and dark glasses, for some reason put away; nobody recognizes him, nor does he try to speak to anyone. He looks at Sumi and goes away, carrying with him the image of a woman who brought something he could not understand into his life. Manju comes with Shankar and sits silently among the women, thinking of the touch of Sumi’s hand on her arm that evening, of the smile on her face.

  It is a strangely silent concourse. Nobody speaks, nor is there any loud display of sorrow, not even from the family. Charu is the only exception. Standing against the wall from where she watches the two white-shrouded figures with almost unblinking concentration, she suddenly breaks into a sob, a sob that seems to come out of her without her volition, almost without her knowledge.

  And then it comes, the most terrible moment of all, when Sumi and her father are to be taken away. Even now there is no breaking down, no sounds but the slithering of bare feet on the floor and soft murmurs from the men who are to carry the bodies out. Premi, who has been sitting stoically by her father, stands up when the pallbearers approach; shuffling like an old woman, she moves backwards until her groping hands can feel the wall. She leans against it and closes her eyes, but she can still hear the grunts as they lift the bodies, there’s an involuntary sound, like a gasp, from someone.

  Suddenly unable to bear it, she goes inside where Charu is standing, her face, like a punished child, to the wall. Premi turns her gently around. The girl’s eyes are wide open and tearless, but filled with a fear that finds an echo in Premi’s erratic heartbeats. They stand as if frozen into that attitude until a medley of sounds from outside, of cars and scooters starting simultaneously, arouses them. Realizing what it means, Charu runs out. Aru is there and the two sisters watch their mother and grandfather leave the house for the last time. They stand in an utter silence, as if their breaths, their very heartbeats have stopped, until the last car, the last scooter has disappeared. Only then do they move, only then do they start breathing again; and the pain begins. They come back inside to find everyone converging on Kalyani, Kalyani who has not moved, not even when they took away the bodies, from the place where she was sitting by her daughter. Suddenly the isolation breaks and they are together, holding one another, sobbing in harsh wordless sounds, all of them, except Aru, who stands looking down at the blank spaces where the bodies had been, a puzzled look on her face.

  Late at night, when some of them have fallen into an exhausted sleep, the house is woken up by a cry. It is a cry of pain, like that of a woman in labour. Premi wakes up, wonders what or who it was and when it is not repeated, thinking it was a dream, she tries to get back to sleep. Only Goda knows that it was Kalyani, suddenly sitting up and crying out the name by which she had called the man who was later to become her husband, crying at last for him, as if only by going back to her childhood, to her earlier relationship with him, can she mourn him. Goda holds her close, wipes her tears and in a while Kalyani quitens down. While the two women lie awake in the dark, there is a strange sound, as if the house has exhaled its breath and shaken itself before settling down into a different rhythm of breathing.

  It is raining heavily, the rain falling with a monotonous steadiness, drops of exactly the same size falling in exactly the same place. The skies, the river and the rain seem to come together in an angry, noisy accord. The menacing rumble of thunder finds an echo in the depths of the river, a resonance that comes back and joins the skies once again.

  Gopal, sitting under a tree that had promised shelter when the rain began, is watching the river, the swiftness of its flow impeded, it seems, by its turbulence, as if it is tripping over itself in its haste. Gopal is doing his mourning for his dead here, now, in private. Until now, he has held himself in with an iron self-control, he has stayed aloof, remained in the background, so that it has seemed that Sumi has been mourned as a daughter, a mother, a sister and friend—but not as a wife.

  Gopal, staring at the river, is remembering with a sense of wonder, the placid river of the morning into which they had mingled the ashes of both father and daughter. He is thinking of the word the priest had said at the end of the small ceremony.

  ‘Runamukta’. They are free now, free of all human debts. Gopal had made a sudden exclamation at that and the priest, hearing him, had turned to him and said, ‘What is it? What is the matter?’ And then added, ‘You must not grieve for them.’ Words which he must have repeated mechanically, hundreds of times, to so many different mourners. And yet Gopal, looking at the old man standing in the knee-deep water, his mud-coloured dhoti flowing about him, his craggy face softened by the white stubble of his beard, had felt that his sharp worldly-wise eyes held the essence of wisdom.

  He knows it all. Letting the ashes of the dead float away with the river, he has seen it all, he knows how ephemeral it is, not just human lives, but the grief and the mourning of the living. Everything passes, nothing remains.

  Runamukta. Yes, Sumi is free, but at the cost of her body, of life itself. Is this freedom?

  “You must not grieve for the dead.’

&nbs
p; Yes, don’t grieve, because they have not gone, they are still with us, they will always be with us: this is what they tell us, this is what we want to believe. But Sumi’s body has gone, there is nothing left of it. Even the few bones and ashes, which was all that the flames left of her, have been dissolved in the river. We live through our bodies, we relate to the world, to others, through our bodies. Without the body there is nothing left; how can we evade this truth?

  If I could believe that Sumi has gone to a region of everlasting peace and happiness, if I could think—maudlin thought—that we will meet again sometime ....

  No, I can’t; there is only this nothingness, this blankness.

  But there’s P.K.’s theory, that death only means that your role is over and you go backstage into the darkness while the play goes on. I had laughed at him, at his idea, then. I can no longer laugh, I want to believe in it. And yet, this monstrously large black shadow of death, reducing everything to insignificance, makes me wonder: does this play matter?

  This is the philosophy of the burning ground. P.K. would have called it that. I know that once I move away from this time, things will go back to their normal size. I will learn to live with the knowledge that Sumi is dead, accepting the fact, putting it in its place.

  And yet, if Sumi has truly gone, if there is nothing left of her, why do I, sitting by this river, see her clearly? I can see her floating in it, her body weightless, her face serene, smiling at me. I see her sitting on the river bank, her child in her arms, her face gleaming and beautiful in the twilight. I see her painted clown’s face turning to me as we walked in the dappled moonlight under the trees.

  Gopal, denied that glimpse of duality which Sumi was granted the moment before her death, the duality that ends all fragmentation and knits the world together, despairingly gives up his struggle to understand. And now, when he ceases to think, suddenly there comes to him a moment as when the body is fighting fever, all sensation heightened, sharpened to a fine point of acuity. He has a feeling of stepping out of his body, out of this plane of existence, of seeing time, past, present and future, existing simultaneously within him. It is like seeing a pageant, a pageant that both frightens and dazzles him, a pageant, the meaning of which eludes him.

 

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