My Story

by Kamala Das

  When we left by train at last, we found as the occupant of one berth a well-known Congress woman who was delighted to meet our uncle and together they enjoyed a lengthy conversation that lasted until three in the morning. My mother-in-law was tired and slept soundly on the train. I lay near the baby listening to the talk which sounded hypocritical and comic. I have always been cherishing certain high principles, said the lady and my uncle said, of course, of course, what else should a lady cherish...

  25

  A Desire to Die

  Before I returned to Bombay, my husband, on the advice of his best friend, had sold our flat at Hari Nivas and moved into a rented one at Khar to be near him. He probably felt that such a move would alter favourably the nature of our marriage. I had brought with me a cook, an ayah for the baby son and a fifteen-year-old maid to help me with my toilet although we could hardly afford such a retinue.

  My husband left for his office every morning before nine and returned at ten in the night after our son had fallen asleep in his room on the babycot beneath which the old ayah spread out her own mattress. There was no opportunity for the father to get to know the child, or to learn to regard him as a distinct personality.

  Children are intuitive about people and feel more than adults a sense of rejection, and by and by he began to dislike his father who was only an ominous presence at the house on Sundays.

  Often he rose from his bed at midnight to come knocking at my door weeping aloud for me while the old woman mumbled comforting words sleepily and in a raucous voice. My husband hated those midnight scenes and shouted at all three of us. One night the two-year-old was locked up in the kitchen and left to lie there on its cold floor bawling.

  I felt miserable. I had lost whatever emotional contact I once had with my husband who was at that time busy preparing for his superiors, a Rural Credit Survey Committee Report and had no time at all for his family. His nerves were perpetually on edge and I did not once try to argue with him. I let him take my body every night, hoping that the act would relax his nerves and make him tranquil. At night after all had slept, I sat in our tiny sitting room, sobbing and trying hard to believe in a destiny that might change for the better.

  It was true that I had my friends, the ladies of the neighbourhood who came every morning to taste what my cook had made for my lunch and to sit on our sofas and gossip, but each of them basked in the warmth of a successful marriage and could never, never, understand why I was so different and felt so deprived.

  I could not admit to all that my marriage had flopped. I could not return home to the Nalapat House a divorcee, for there had been goodwill between our two families for three generations which I did not want to ruin. My grand-uncle, the poet Narayana Menon had married from my husband’s family and, besides, my best friend in the world, Malati, was a member of that family.

  My parents and other relatives were obsessed with public opinion and bothered excessively with our society’s reaction to any action of an individual. A broken marriage was as distasteful, as horrifying as an attack of leprosy. If I had at that time listened to the dictates of my conscience and had left my husband, I would have found it impossible to find another who would volunteer to marry me, for I was not conspicuously pretty and besides there was the two-year old who would have been to the new husband an encumbrance.

  I did not have the educational qualifications which would have got me a job either. I could not opt for a life of prostitution, for I knew that I was frigid and that love for my husband had sealed me off physically and emotionally like a pregnancy that made it impossible for others to impregnate afterwards. I was a misfit everywhere. I brooded long, stifling my sobs while in the four tiny rooms of our home slept soundly the husband, the son, the old ayah, the cook and the young maid.

  Once when my husband was away in Orissa on an official tour, my son ate some castor seeds which he plucked from a hedge and became violently sick. After the incessant vomiting the child turned blue and his skin became leathery. He resembled a puppet fashioned to look like an old man, with dark rings under his eyes and limbs that moved jerkily while he uttered shrill little cries sounding like a bird’s. He kept calling out to me although I was the one who held him in my arms and rubbed his rigid back, while he threw up quantities of greenish vomit.

  Our doctor who was an old man, seemed visibly upset. He tried to comfort me by saying that God was never unkind without a purpose which only He knew. The doctor brought to our house at midnight, when everything else failed, the well-known paediatrician, Dr. Patel, who began to inject glucose into the child’s veins. I left the group and went to my kitchen where I lay on the floor praying for his recovery. In my thoughts then, there was only the beautiful, the incomparably beautiful face of Guruvayoor’s Krishna and his smile. Childishly I vowed that I would remove all my ornaments and lay them at the idol’s feet if the child was saved. A few minutes later the child fell asleep and his breathing became normal.

  The child’s illness was a shock. The growing misery inside me, the darkness that lay congealed, removed from my face all that was once pretty. I was like a house with all its lights put out. 1 walked up and down in our rooms wearing a torn saree and although my legs ached for rest, the movement went on and on as if they were propelled by some evil power. I stopped washing my hair. My husband told me that I was going mad. Perhaps I was, but it was not within my power to arrest its growth.

  At this time my husband turned to his old friend for comfort. They behaved like lovers in my presence. To celebrate my birthday they shoved me out of the bedroom and locked themselves in. I stood for a while wondering what two men could possibly do together to get some physical rapture, but after some time my pride made me move away. I went to my son and lay near him. I felt then a revulsion for my womanliness. The weight of my breasts seemed to be crushing me. My private part was only a wound, the soul’s wound showing through. Why are you weeping, Amma, asked my little son and I shook my head, saying nothing, nothing...

  Whenever I lay clutching my husband’s feet at night, I felt that his love was never to be mine. It had luckier takers. One night I left my sleeping family and went up to our terrace to gaze down at the winding road that led up to Danda and the fishing colony. There were puddles of moonlight in the courtyard and on the roads.

  I wanted for a moment to fling myself down, to spatter the blanched brilliance of the moonlight with red blood stains. The moon moved in haste as though it had a date to keep. Under the lamp-post a mad beggar was doing a solo dance lifting his emaciated hands in the air and muttering to himself. The rhythm of his grotesque dance seized my legs. My hair fell loose around my face. I felt then that I was dancing on the most desolate pinnacle of the world. The dance of the last human being...

  When I returned home climbing down the dirty stairs, I walked with the slow tread of a somnambulist. I lit the reading lamp in our sitting room and began to write about a new life, an unstained future.

  Wipe out the paints, unmould the clay.

  Let nothing remain of that yesterday...

  I sent the poem to the journal of the Indian P.E.N. the next morning. My grief fell like drops of honey on the white sheets on my desk. My sorrows floated over the pages of magazines darkly as heavy monsoon clouds do in the sky...

  26

  The Psycho-analyst

  My old ayah was a vulgar, talkative woman who liked to wander around making friends with the curious neighbours who paid her money in exchange for delicious gossip or some tobacco which she could tuck between her broken teeth.

  She was particularly friendly with the bachelors of the lodges nearby, where, on Sunday afternoons while we lay asleep, she went to unload tales, imaginary or real. She used to mention their names and praise their generosity, but I ignored such talk or paid little heed.

  I hated her loud voice and the gaudy way she dressed, nearly always in a red blouse; and with her eyes darkened with kajal and her mouth reddened with betel.

  One night, while my hus
band was away in Assam on an official tour and I was lying asleep with a handkerchief tied round my brow to quiet a headache, there was a knock on my bedroom door. Then the door opened and I saw the dark forms of my ayah and a thickset man approaching my bed. Don’t you worry, said my ayah. This is the man I talked to you about, the one who used to ask me often about you. He wants to talk to you...

  I sat up on the bed in shock and dazed with horror. Why do you bring a stranger to me at this time of the night, I asked the old woman. I am not going to hurt you, said the man as he drew closer to me. Go away, please go away, I cried, but my voice sounded weak even to my ears. The old woman left us and closed the door, mumbling something. I realized then that the stranger had bribed her to gain admission into my room at night.

  This was to be a rape-scene. I have a headache, I am miserably ill, I said. Be kind to me and leave me alone. The man threw himself down on my body with two strange groans. He smelt of stale liquor and under his weight my limbs became rigid and I wished to raise myself to vomit. Soon enough, after an incomplete rape, he rolled off my body and lay inert at the foot of the bed hugging my cold feet. He kissed my toes. Won’t you forgive me, child, he asked me. I was silent. Will you talk about this to people, he asked me. His mouth on my skin was hot. I shall forgive you, I whispered, but go away, go away...Then he fell asleep.

  I rose to go near my son who stirred from his sleep and threw his arm around me. My heart thumped wildly. When I woke up, it was past seven and the rooms were filled with the yellow sun. I went to my room and looked under the bed. I opened the wardrobe to peer in. What are you looking for, asked the ayah. Was it only a nightmare, the stench of liquor and the tearing pain? When I talked about the midnight visitor, the old woman muttered aloud, child, you are mad...

  From the next day I began to share my bedroom with my son Monoo. We had devised a form of amusement which was unique. I would hide under the bed behind the hanging counterpane and talk to the child, disguising my voice. I am Krishna, I would tell him. I have come from Vrindavan to talk to you. And Monoo would believe it and begin a long conversation with the God-child, asking Him what He had for breakfast and what games. He played later. Monoo made friends with all the major Gods of the Hindus this way, talking to them while they hid beneath his bed. Often I would hold up a packed gift of sweets, saying that it was a gift from Vrindavan. Monoo would only see the tips of my fingers which would have been painted blue with blue ink. Won’t you come to my birthday party, Monoo asked Krishna and He said of course I shall be there...

  There was an imaginary life running parallel to our real life. I filled his childhood with magic and wonder. Always he smiled with the sheer happiness of being alive. He sat on my knee looking like the infant Krishna...

  When I became pregnant for the second time, the foundations of my sanity were shaken. Suddenly I took to eating meat and fish. I became short-tempered and temperamental.

  During the eighth month of my pregnancy, I went home to Nalapat to be with my grandmother who was distressed to see the change in me. I would sit still, staring at a dot on the wall for one or two hours, as though hypnotized. Has the child forgotten how to laugh, asked my grandmother. Why has such a change come over her...?

  My grandmother believed that all pregnant women needed to be given whatever they wished to eat or drink. So when I told her that I had a craving to drink some alcoholic beverage, she made arrangements for smuggling a bottle into the house, getting my husband’s uncle to disguise the bottle so as to make it look like a harmless iron tonic. It was brandy. I did not know how it was to be drunk. My grandmother mixed a few spoonfuls with warm water and gave it to me at bedtime. I sat up that night, writing poetry. My face seemed to swell and there was a warmth moving in me that soothed my nerves.

  I was at that time staying in the–new bungalow called Sarvodaya, a few yards away from the Nalapat House. During my tenth month I was addicted to drinking Draksharishta, an ayurvedic preparation made from grapes and molasses. The drink used to intoxicate me, remove from me all the bitterness learnt from life, and make me a happy-looking girl. One night in my drunkenness, I groaned while lying asleep and immediately my parents rushed to my bedside.

  There was a grand pain moving within me, like a whale turning on its belly all of a sudden in the sea. What is wrong, Amy are you getting any pain, asked my father. We heard you moan in your sleep.

  In half an hour the child was born. I put aside my sense of decorum and shrieked aloud at the final stage of labour. The midwife kept telling me that I ought to relax. My father, pacing up and down on the portico downstairs, came running up the stairs when he heard the baby cry. It was a little curly-haired boy. We named him Priyadarsin.

  My grandmother and my mother-in-law undertook the task of nursing me back to health. I was given chicken-broth, liver soup, eggnog and rice mixed with fried garlic. In the mornings a maidservant named Unnimayamma rubbed scented oils and a paste of turmeric on my body and after half an hour washed the stuff off with water reddened with Thetchi leaves. My colour reddened and my body grew plump with her administrations. But I could not abandon the habit of staring at the spots on the walls.

  On my return to Bombay I found my unease growing. I wished to escape from my home and walk on and on until at last my feet reached the end of the world. I did not think then that such a traveller would only reach ultimately his starting place and that our ends, our real destinations, are our beginnings.

  One’s real world is not what is outside him. It is the immeasurable world inside him that is real. Only the one who has decided to travel inwards, will realize that his route has no end. But at twenty, I was ignorant of these facts. So I went through the red ribbon of road that led to the deserted seashore of Danda. I sat on the folded nets of the fishermen and stared at the sea, but its turbulence only aggravated my restlessness.

  My husband was advised to call in a psychiatrist. I had begun to shed my clothes, regarding them as traps. My old ayah wept guilty tears whenever she saw me in this demented condition. One day the psychiatrist arrived. I had painted two pictures that very week and they showed demons mating with snakes. He examined my pictures before examining me. He read the poems I had composed for my personal diary. He prescribed bromides for me and left the house. She needs rest, he said, and lots and lots of sleep...

  After a day or two my husband took me to Lonavala for a change. There was a heavy and freezing rain, drenching the little hotel we stayed in. My husband dressed me in his woollen trousers and a blue sweater. He fed me hot chicken soup. For hours I lay with my head against his chest, listening to the unpredictable rhythm of the monsoon.

  27

  Sedation

  Madness is a country

  Just around the corner

  Whose shores are never lit

  But if you go there

  Ferried by despair

  The sentries would ask you to strip

  At first the clothes, then the flesh

  And later of course your bones

  Their only rule is freedom

  Why, they even eat bits of your soul

  When in hunger,

  But when you reach that shore

  That unlit shore

  Do not return, please do not return...

  During my nervous breakdown there developed between myself and my husband an intimacy that was purely physical. It started at the Central Hotel in Lonavala. I was put on bromides, and like the mist floating over hill-stations in the mornings there was a murkiness veiling my consciousness. My senses were like lotuses that folded themselves into tight buds at sunset-hour. The contours of my world had gradually blurred.

  After bathing me in warm water and dressing me in men’s clothes, my husband bade me sit on his lap, fondling me and calling me his little darling boy. I accepted with gratitude his tenderness which was but lust, loud and savage, for it seemed like a good substitute for love. I was by nature shy.

  Whenever he tried to strip me of my clothes, my shyne
ss clung to me like a second skin and made my movements graceless. Each pore of my skin became at that moment a seeing eye, an eye that viewed my body with distaste. But during my illness I shed my shyness and for the first time in my life learned to surrender totally in bed with my pride intact and blazing.

  But this idyll was short-lived. I was taken away to Malabar and put in charge of an Ayurvedic physician who prescribed cooling lotions for my head. I stayed not at Nalapat but at Sarvodaya, the modern bungalow of my parents and spent all my waking hours with my friends who were unmarried and carefree. One day my grandmother requested me to spend a night at the old house with her.

  We shall talk far into the night, she said, it will be like old times... She kept a lighted lamp on the window-sill and waited for me to go there after my dinner. The night was windy and my father did not let me leave the house. The Nalapat house was four hundred years old. Its rafters used to tremble in the wind. I do not want you to spend a night in that ramshackle house, said my father.

  At four in the morning I woke up and went up to the verandah to look out. The winds had died down but the lamp was still burning on the window-sill. It symbolized for me the loneliness of old age. My grandmother did not talk about her disappointment. She had perhaps realized that the grandchild who had once lain against her body at night to fall asleep had grown out of the need for the kind of love that only the old could give.

  Tragedy is not death but growth and the growing out of needs. I had become to her a stranger, a young woman who had secrets tucked away in her heart, but when after total recovery, I climbed into the car which was to take me to the railway station, my grandmother approached me with reddened eyes and asked, you will come for VISHU (the Kerala new year) in April, won’t you... and, being a practised teller of white lies, I held her rough hands in mine and murmured, yes, of course, of course...

  Before the second week of April she passed away. She was orthodox and very puritanical. I did not wish ever to cause her unhappiness by my unconventional way of thinking. So when I heard that she had died, a part of me rejoiced at my newfound freedom, while another felt only a deep desolation.