by Kamala Das
When I told my second son that I had planned to return to them as a ghost after my death in the hospital, he said please don’t do that, we shall all be so afraid of you... His words left me crushed. I was at that moment more ignorant, more naive. I was naive enough to promise my husband that I would return in all the coming births as his wife.
In actuality who is he? Who am I? Who are these three boys who call themselves my children? We are burdened with perishable bodies which strike up bonds which are also unreal and perishable. The only relationship that is permanent is the one which we form with God. My mate is He. He shall come to me in myriad shapes. In many shapes shall I surrender to His desire. I shall be fondled by Him. I shall be betrayed by Him. I shall pass through all the pathways of this world, condemning none, understanding all and then become part of Him. Then for me there shall be no return journey...
44
The Fourteen Days’ War
This then was our only inheritance, this ancient
Virus that we nurtured in the soul so
That when at sundown the Muezzin’s high wail sounded from
The mosque, the chapel-bells announced the angelus, and
From the temple rose the Brahmin’s assonant chant, we
Walked with hearts grown scabrous with a hate illogical,
And chose not to believe what we perhaps vaguely sensed,
That it was only our fathers’ lunacy speaking,
In three different tones babbling, slay them who do not
Believe, or better still, disembowel their young ones
And scatter on the streets their meagre innards. Oh God,
Blessed be your fair name, blessed be the religion,
Purified in the unbelievers’ blood, blessed be
Our sacred city, blessed be its incarnadined glory...
When the war for the liberation of Bangladesh was going on, my eldest son was down with an attack of jaundice. One particularly dark evening while I was standing on the terrace of our flat, I heard the loud siren begin to wail. I could see the sea beyond the grey buildings looking dark as tar.
For days on end we had been discussing the war and its prospects and I knew that if there was to be a raid on Bombay the Pak planes would enter from the West over the sea, our neighbour. Our house was near the docks. To its left was the sprawling Sachivalaya where the ministers worked on their files and to the right was situated the new Radio and T.V. centre. What a lark it would be for the Pak bombers to swoop down on us!
The residents of the building had sent to each house a note requesting all to run down the stairs whenever the siren sounded and to huddle themselves near the stairs at the basement. The lift was not to be used for the emergency. So I had anyway decided to stay up in our sixth floor flat with our ailing son and, if need be, die with dignity rather than get crushed like a pack of rodents near the stairs in the basement.
The rest of my family felt that they could not leave us alone, and so all of us made an air-raid shelter in our boxroom, laying a mattress on its floor for the sick one and stocking its shelves with water, loaves of bread, a first-aid kit and a shovel.
When I first heard the siren I remained on the terrace. For a few minutes the city became unnaturally silent. The darkness of the sky seemed damp. There was not one star visible. Then from the northwest rose four red lights. Behind them in a pretty formation arrived a few more red lights. I thought they were the Pak planes. I went in to inform my family that the planes were near at hand. My husband and my second son seemed panic-stricken. Within another minute we heard loud bangs all around us and believed that we were getting bombed.
In those days we had in our drawing room a bronze idol of Ganesh which I worshipped each morning after my bath. I lit the lamp in front of him and sat down to pray. My little son climbed into my lap. The red sindur that I had sprinkled on his golden body seemed like blood to me at that moment. Was my Ganapati a wounded soldier?
The siren’s baby-wail unnerved me. It sounded like a baby crying out in fear. Then I discovered with a jolt that I loved the city of Bombay and did not want it to be hurt, ever. In Malabar when little babies are being bathed, the nurse-maids sing a song that goes like this: “little legs, grow and grow, little hands, grow and grow...” I wanted to take the weeping city in my arms and sing soothing songs to it. I showered on it my blessings while the loud reports vibrated around our building. Dear city, let new merchandise fill your markets. Let the wealthy devotees ring the bells at your temples everyday. Let your courtesans grow sleek and beautiful day by day. Let your gardens resound with children’s laughter. Let the haughty ladies who promenade on your Marine Drive grow haughtier, lovelier...
It was with relief that we heard that the planes were chased away by the anti-aircraft guns. Our house usually fills itself with writers and economists in the evening. Some of us were opposed to the Government’s policy of helping Bangladesh and its refugees. Frankly we considered Bangladesh a pain in the neck. We knew that helping them would fracture our economy and win for us only fleeting praise from the international scene. We had enough hungry people of our own, enough homeless ones who slept on the pavements and under awnings. Often, returning from some dinner at the Taj Mahal Hotel, we had seen on its many doorsteps old men lying curled up braving the rain and coughing their lungs out. And coming home I would see from my verandah the large empty buildings of the Sachivalaya, the State Bank of India and the All India Radio all shuttered and padlocked, with all that space going waste.
I have often wondered why the Government cannot pass an order that all huge buildings must let out their basement hall for the homeless during the harsh monsoons and during the winter. Every hotel can be made to spend one-tenth of its daily earnings in feeding the poor. Charity is India’s ancient tradition. There is no harm in reviving it when the times are hard. The British influence has changed the urban people’s attitude towards beggary. They shout at those who arrive near the gate with outstretched arms. Do not encourage beggary, they shout at those who feel tempted to share their meal with the poor.
The newspapers are to be blamed for this callousness that has become fashionable. If one of them had the decency to report the giving away of alms by some charitable-minded person other kind people would follow the example if only to get some publicity. I long to read in the newspapers one story, just one little story, of someone giving away a few clothes to the poor, a few blankets in winter, some fruits for the children who wander on the roads picking up their lunches from the garbage heaps. We read only of the crimes and of the empty statements made by the ministers at some conference or other. The papers fill us with disgust. Why are the good deeds never reported? To the west of our house is a park where an old man comes with two attendants every day to distribute oranges or mangoes to the poor children who wait for his arrival from the early hours of the morning. I am filled with pride when I watch him give the fruits to the little ones.
Disease and pain matured me. I forgot the art of localising my love. I found it easy to love nearly all those who came to see us. Even to my husband I became a mother. He had to learn to adjust to my metamorphosis, for in his eyes even my broken-down doll of a body was attractive. It was not what it was years ago. Impartially I scrutinised its news and its virtues. It was like a cloth doll that had lost a few stitches here and there. The scars of operations decorated my abdomen like a map of the world painted crudely by a child. My breasts had a slight sag. And yet this form continued to beguile my poor husband. It upset him when I turned deeply religious.
I had shed carnal desire as a shake might shed its skin. I could no longer pretend either. I was no longer bed-worthy, no longer a charmer of lecherous men. But my poems had been read by several people. My articles on free love had titillated many. So I continued to get phone calls from men who wanted to proposition me. It was obvious to me that I had painted of myself a wrong image. I was never a nymphomaniac. Sex did not interest me except as a gift I could grant to my husband to make him ha
ppy. A few of our acquaintances tried to touch me and made indiscreet suggestions. I was horrified. When I showed my disgust at their behaviour they became my bitterest critics and started to spread scandals about me. If I were really promiscuous and obliging I would not have gained the hate and the notoriety that my indifference to sex has earned for me.
45
For Each, An Escape Route
On sedatives
I am more lovable
Says my husband
My speech becomes a mist-laden terrain,
The words emerge tinctured with sleep,
They rise from still coves of dreams
In unhurried flight like herons,
And my ragdoll-limbs adjust better
To his versatile lust. He would if he could
Sing lullabies to his wife’s sleeping soul,
Sweet lullabies to thicken its swoon.
On sedatives
I grow more lovable
Says my husband...
As a marriage, in the conventional sense, mine was a flop. There were silences between the two of us that seemed to me interminable, although at times I broke them by a word or two about our little son or about the grocer’s bill.
As a plaything for slow Sunday afternoons and for the nights, I had deteriorated much in quality. I could not even feign lust, leave alone feel it. It needed strong tranquillisers to tame my body into an acquiescent posture beneath my virile mate.
For 32 years ever since he graduated from the Loyola College, bagging a medal for Economics, he had been working for the Reserve Bank and for the Cause of the Indian Agriculturist. As far back as I can recollect, his skin always smelt of the office files which were to be found under pillows and between the sheets, giving me the uneasy feeling of having rivals in my bed.
When I was young and needed his companionship for my emotional stability, he had sent me away to my grandmother for six months, only to be able to devote even his soul to the completion of a Rural Credit Survey Committee Report which his favourite boss was at that time obsessed with. Such subservience to his superiors may have built up his lacklustre career briefly for a while, but it certainly destroyed my pride in him.
Therefore when he told me, taking me into his confidence for the first time, that his new superior was unreasonably brutal with him, I only felt a sense of spiteful elation. I would have laughed aloud but another look at his ashen face made me control my mirth. I discovered with a shock that he had changed imperceptibly with the dreary long years of the Reserve Bank routine. He had aged prematurely. Grey wisps of hair made for his lace an untidy frame. His teeth had become discoloured and bad. All that he knew well was the Agricultural Report which was such an inconsequential component in the large jigsaw of his life.
I felt very sorry for him all of a sudden. What makes this man hate you so, I asked him. I don’t know, he said, feebly, perhaps he doesn’t like my colour, my looks...
Every evening he brought his files home and once a week he flew to other cities hugging the papers on which he had worked half the night. And yet his boss was petty with him, waiting to catch him trip, so that he may be removed and a favourite installed in his place.
My husband had the feeling that the schemes that entailed foreign aid were not really helpful to the small farmer, but only helped the big agriculturist. He met with rude rebuttals or stony silences, pregnant with accusations. Whenever he voiced his misgivings Bureaucracy expected the smooth running of machines, the files moving from stale hand to stale hand for the initiallings, but never, for a moment, wanted independent thinking to crop up like a loosened nail. Thinking was as bad as a blockage in the bowels of a computer. All the answers would then emerge wrong and very inconvenient.
If my husband had had a different kind of family, he would have learned to eat his humble pie quietly and without any fuss. But both our eldest son and I believed in socialism. We believed in one being scrupulously honest to oneself.
One day at the airport, early in the morning, while my husband and a few others of the Reserve Bank were waiting to catch a plane, his boss for no justifiable reason humiliated him. When the witnesses to the scene who were his prudent colleagues vanished in a trice to save their own skins, my husband walked up to the telephone booth and phoned me. His voice was shaky, quivering like a sick man’s. I only asked him, why do you always pick on me, my husband said on the phone, narrating the incident. He muttered abuses and snarled at me, he said.
I was angry. Resign immediately, get out of this humiliating job, we shall go to Nalapat House and live with dignity, I cried over the phone. Although we had as family friends, ministers, politicians and members of Parliament, none could help us although they were aware that an honest, hardworking man was being tormented. My husband, when he does not stoop, stands six feet without his shoes, whereas the bully who made him lose his self-confidence, was a tiny marionette of a man who had the jerky movements of a tin-soldier.
It was of no use telling my husband to ignore the thrusts. His health broke down. His thyroid got affected. It was great torment for me and for my sons to see him suffer such ignominy at the hands of lesser men. I packed up my bags and left for my home in Malabar, carrying with me my third son.
I wanted my husband to think over the prospect of resigning from the Bank to settle down with me on my estate. For a proud Dravidian humble pie of any kind is the unhealthiest diet. It was time that my husband realised it. His colleagues boycotted him. None came forward to sympathise with him when he was ordered to vacate his chair and his room in three hours’ time. People like us who believe in the essential dignity of human beings are always left isolated.
My elder son Monoo went to Trivandrum to work under the guidance of Dr K.N. Raj. This move pleased me. I sincerely believe in fraternising with one’s own type. If you have to survive, sanity and all, you must stick willy nilly to your own intellectual caste. Others can only misjudge you. For sheer survival Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, Leonard Wolfe, Saxon Sydney Turner and a few others of intellectual eminence huddled together in their famous Bloomsbury group, wary of infiltrators, for they knew that outside its barriers, they were doomed to feel excluded and lonely.
When I reached Malabar, my relatives looked askance at me. Why was I without my husband? Had my outspoken autobiography that had been heraldically serialised in a well-known Malayali journal, finally brought about a separation? Was my 24 year old marriage on the rocks?
I ignored their questions and set myself the task of cleaning up the old house. There were scorpions behind every photograph hung on the wall, lithe dark ones that curled up their tails when I lifted the picture and exposed them to the sun. Bats flew about in the evening but during the day hung in clusters like some dark fruit from the rafters of the bathrooms. My child was terrified of these creatures, and of the civet cats that moved noisily on the ceilings. Each time one of them caught a mouse, the snarl and the squeak were frightening to the two of us who slept on our four-poster bed beneath the wooden ceiling.
Let us go back to Bombay, he cried on the first night after our return to Nalapat. I wrapped him in one of my soft silk sarees and lay near him, holding his little form in a tight embrace. This is our home, I told him. This is where we belong...
I have never heard the wind sing as beautifully as at Nalapat over the tree-tops and the three ponds and at times, running up from the seashore, all smelling of fish and of the tar of the fishing boats. I engaged seven servants to look after our needs. The house had a desolate air and there were stories circulated in the locality of its many ghostly inhabitants.
My chief maid was a 70 year-old woman named Kalyani Amma who told me that I ought to abandon the city-clothes and wear the traditional attire of the Nair woman. You must wear lots and lots of gold, she said. Otherwise at the temple pond where I go to bathe, the women will make fun of me. So I turned traditional. I gave away all my sarees to the typists of the village who were aspiring to move away to
towns for new jobs and took to wear the dress of my ancestresses, the three yards of white cloth as underwear and the two and a half as overwear. The white blouse and the heavy gold jewellery. The sandal paste drawn in a line on the forehead.
My servants were happy with me. I reclaimed the land and began to cultivate it. I sang ballads with my field-hands as they sowed the seed, standing knee deep in the mud. The mistress of the Nalapat house is back, they cried out in sheer happiness. At that moment I regretted the years spent in Bombay, Delhi and in Calcutta separated from my house, my trees and my fields.
Each big tree at Nalapat had had on its bark, two feet above its base, my name engraved on it with a knife, but all except the fragrant Nirmatala were cut down. I wept at the arid look of the yard where once there were large shady trees that filtered the noonday sun, to make it fall soft as twilight on the white sand where we played as children. Even the old mango tree facing my grandmother’s room was nowhere to be seen. When my grandfather lay dying, he had told his wife that the mango tree had dolls all over its branches, lovely dolls beckoning to him with their sunny smiles. Its absence hurt me like the death of a grandmother.
I walked around like a lost woman among the wild ferns, looking for old landmarks. I had taken a sentimental journey to my childhood-home. I did not want to return to the impersonal city and its tension; once again in disillusionment.
I cleared the snake shrine of all its weeds, scraped the lichen off the idols and lit the stone lamps. I engaged a carpenter to repair the garners where in my grandmother’s days the harvested grain used to be stored. My child learnt carpentry from him. We bought two cows.
It was an idyllic existence. My husband, coming to us on leave, found us looking fat and sleek. He felt tempted to resign from the Reserve Bank and settle down with us, but he said, let us wait for another year, let Chinnen complete his College education. Bombay was a mistake, he said.