Samskara

by U. R. Ananthamurthy

  In spite of several squeezes of lemon, Manjunatha’s head was light. Trying to say something, all he could say was, “Chandri, Chandri.”

  Shripati waxed quite enthusiastic: “Whatever anybody may say, whatever brahmins bray—I swear—what do you say?—in a hundred- mile radius is there any woman as lovely, as bright, as good, as Chandri? Take a count. If you find one, I’ll give up my caste. What does it matter if she’s a whore? You tell me, didn’t she behave better than any wife with Naranappa? If he drank too much and vomited, she wiped up the mess. She even wiped ours up, didn’t she? Anytime, even at midnight, when he woke her up she cooked and served him, all smiles. Which brahmin woman would do so much? Stupid shaven widows!” He spat out the last words.

  Manjunatha uttered one of the three English words he knew: “Yus, yus.”

  “If you give Manjunatha a drink, he’ll speak English,” Nagaraja laughed.

  The talk turned again to girls. They measured and judged all the lowcaste women. Only Naranappa had known anything about his affair with Belli, so Shripati listened to their conversation quite calmly. It was good these fellows didn’t set their eyes on Belli. Even if they did, they would be afraid to touch an untouchable. All for the best.

  Shripati, uncorking the second bottle, said, “Our best friend is lying there dead, rotting! No one to take care of his rites. And what are we doing here, having a good time?” Then he started crying. His crying fit spread contagiously to the other young men. They embraced each other.

  Shripati said, “Who are the real he-men here?”

  “Me, me, me, me,” shouted all four.

  Nagaraja looked at the girl-faced Manjunatha who did all the girls’ roles, and said, “Che, Che, you’re our heroine, you’re Sadarame, Shakuntale,” and gave him a kiss.

  “If you’re real men, I’ll tell you something. If you agree, I’ll say you’re great. Okay? Naranappa was our dear friend. What have we given him in return? Let’s take his body secretly and cremate it ourselves. What do you say? Get up,” said Shripati, egging them on, filling their glasses. They drank noisily; then, without a thought, they staggered and weaved across the river, guided by Shripati’s flashlight. In the dark night, there was not a soul anywhere. The liquor had gone straight to their heads; they went into the agrahara, to Naranappa’s door, gave it a push, and went in fearlessly. The liquor had made them insensitive to the stench. They went upstairs. Shripati beamed his flashlight all around. Where? Where? Naranappa’s corpse was nowhere. All five of them suddenly feared for their lives. Nagaraja said, “Ha, Naranappa has become a spirit, and has walked away!” As soon as he said that, they dropped the bag of liquor bottles and all five ran for their lives.

  When Half-Wit Lakshmidevamma, sleepless, opened her thunderous door and came out into the agrahara street to curse everybody, she saw them. She shrieked, “Look, look at the demons!” And let out a long belch: Hee . . . eey!

  III

  The brahmins, miserable that Praneshacharya did not return even late at night, shut their doors and windows tight, held their noses against the horrid stench that turned and brought their bowels up into their mouths, and tried to sleep. They tossed about on the cold floors in hunger and fear. As if from another world, there were footsteps in the night, the sound of cartwheels, the pitiful wail of Lakshmidevamma’s dog-like howl and her belches. Their very life-breaths quaked, as if the agrahara had suddenly emptied itself into a desolate forest, as if the protecting gods had left them to their own devices. In house after house, children, mother and father seemed to become one shapeless mass, hugging each other and shivering in the dark. When night was over, the sun’s rays descended through the holes in the rafters and brought courage in little circles of light in the dark houses. They all got up slowly, unbolted the doors and looked out. Vultures, birds of carrion. Again, the vultures, driving away the crows, sitting obstinately on the rooftops. The men tried to shoo them away, clap at them. But they didn’t budge. Downhearted, the brahmins blew their sacred conches and beat their gongs. Hearing in the dawn the auspicious sounds heard only on the twelfth day of the moon, Praneshacharya came out baffled. In a perplexity he couldn’t undo, he walked in and out, out and in, snapping his fingers, saying, “What shall I do? What shall I do?’ When he gave his wife her usual medicine as she lay groaning in the dining room, his hands trembled and spilled the medicine. As he held it to her lips, as he looked into his broken wife’s pitted eyes, those helpless visionless symbols of his self-sacrifice and duty as a householder—he felt his legs twitch and double-up, as if in troubled sleep, as if in a dream he fell dizzily into bottomless nether-worlds. At the end of the beaten path of a quarter-century of doctor-patient relations, of affection and compassion,—he seemed to see an abyss. He shivered in an attack of nausea. He imagined all the stinks assailing his nostrils, all issuing from that source. Like a baby monkey losing hold of his grip on the mother’s body as she leaps from branch to branch, he felt he had lost hold and fallen from the rites and actions he had clutched till now.

  Did he clutch this duty, this dharma, to protect this wife lying here lifeless, a pathetic beggar-woman—or did the dharma, clinging to him through the action and culture of his past, guide him hand in hand through these ways? He did not know. When he married her he was sixteen, she twelve. He had thought he should renounce the world, become a sanyasi, live a life of self-sacrifice. That was the ideal, the challenge, of his boyhood days. So he had married a born invalid deliberately. He’d left her in the grateful house of her father, gone to Benares, studied to become “the Crest-Jewel of Vedanta Philosophy,” and had come back. Here was the Lord’s ordeal for him, waiting, to test him whether he had the strength to live and act by non-attachment—that was why He had given an ailing invalid wife into his hands. He would serve her, delighting in that knowledge. He had cooked for her, fed her the wheat-gruel he had himself made, done meticulously every act of daily worship for the gods, read and explicated the holy texts for the brahmins—Ramayana, Bharata, Bhagavata, etc.—hoarded his penances like a miser his money. A hundred thousand mantras chanted and counted this month, another hundred thousand the next, a couple of hundred thousand for the eleventh day of the moon. Million by million, he counted his earnings, penances reckoned on the beads of his basil-bead rosary.

  Once a Smarta pundit had gone and argued: Your idea that only men of “Goodness” can reach salvation, isn’t that only a form of hopelessness? Doesn’t it mean the disappointment of a human hope, desiring a thing and not getting it? In men of “Darkness” (he had replied) there’s no desire for salvation in the first place. How can such clods feel disappointed by not getting what they don’t want? No one can say, “I’ll become a ‘Man of Goodness’; one can only say truly “I am a ‘Man of Goodness.’ ” Only such natures crave and hunger for the Lord’s grace.

  “I am born with one such ‘Good’ nature. This invalid wife is the sacrificial altar for my sacrifice.” With such thoughts had he begun to cultivate his salvation. Naranappa too was a test of his “Good” nature. Now every one of his beliefs seemed to have turned topsy-turvy, returning him to where he had started in his sixteenth year. Which is the way? Where is the path that will not lead to the brink of an abyss?

  Bewildered, he lifted her as he did every day in his arms to take her for her bath, though he was bothered by the conches and gongs out in the street. When he poured the bath water over her, he noticed her sunken breasts, her bulbous nose, her short narrow braid, and they disgusted him. He felt like screaming, “Stop it! Stop it!” to the brahmins out there blowing conches and beating gongs against the vultures. For the first time his eyes were beginning to see the beautiful and the ugly. He had not so far desired any of the beauty he’d read about in the classics. All earthly fragrance was like the flowers that go only to adorn the god’s hair. All female beauty was the beauty of Goddess Lakshmi, queen and servant of Lord Vishnu. All sexual enjoyment was Krishna’s when he stole the bathing cowgirls’ garments, and left them naked in the
water. Now he wanted for himself a share of all that. He wiped the water off his wife’s body, laid her on the bed he’d made, and came out again. The din of conch and gong abruptly stopped; his ears seemed to drown in a sudden depth of silent water. “Why did I come here? Did I come looking for Chandri? But Chandri isn’t here.” This bedridden woman, and that other woman who suddenly pressed his hand to her breast—what if both should leave him? For the first time, a desolation, a feeling of being orphaned, entered his inmost sense.

  The brahmins, who had finally chased off the birds of prey, lifted their cadaver faces, came in a herd to climb his verandah and looked at him questioningly. When they saw the Acharya unresponsive and hesitant, they were afraid. The Acharya looked into the brahmins’ eyes looking up to him for guidance, like homeless orphans; they had transferred on to his head the whole burden of their brahminhood. Looking into those eyes, the Acharya felt not only remorse, but a lightness in the thought he was now a free man, relieved of his responsibility to lead the way, relieved of all authority. “What manner of man am I? I am just like you—a soul driven by lust and hate. Is this my first lesson in humility? Come, Chandri, tell them, relieve me of the guru’s burden,” he thought, and looked around. No, she wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere there. Urvashi, she had walked away. He was afraid to say openly, to say explicitly that he too had shared in Naranappa’s pleasure. His hand sweated and grew cold. The desire, natural to mere mortals, to tell lies, to hide things, to think of one’s own welfare, arose in him for the first time. He couldn’t find the courage to shatter the respect and faith these people had placed in him. Is this pity, self-preservation, habit, inertia, sheer hypocrisy? The Sanskrit chant, learned by heart and recited daily, turned over and over in his mind: “I am sin, my work is sin, my soul is sin, my birth is in sin.” No, no, even that is a lie. Must forget all words learned by heart, the heart must flow free like a child’s. When he caressed Chandri’s breast, it didn’t occur to him to say, “I am sin.” Now he was quite happy Chandri wasn’t here to shame him. Thoughts after waking are different from the thoughts when one is unaware. He became aware, this life is duplicity. Now he’s really involved in the wheel of karma. To relieve this misery, he must lose awareness again and embrace her, must wake up in that misery, for absolution one must return to her. The wheel, the wheel of karma. This is the life of “Passion.” Even if he had left desire, desire had not left him.

  Troubled, unable to bring out a word, he left the seated brahmins where they were and went into the worship room. He recited God’s many names—according to routine. If he didn’t tell the truth—if it burns like embers poured into one’s lap—he could never face Maruti again, could not tend the invalid woman with a clear heart. “O Lord, tide me over this confusion—has Chandri come? Will she blurt it out?” Anxious, in dread, he came out. The brahmins were still waiting. The vultures had returned to sit on the rooftops. The Acharya closed his eyes, drew a long breath, and gathered courage. But the words that came out of his mouth were: “I’m lost. I couldn’t get Maruti to say anything. I know nothing. You do whatever your hearts say.”

  The brahmins were startled. Garudacharya exclaimed, “Che, Che! That cannot be.” Dasacharya, who had some life in him today because he had eaten a bellyful the previous day, said:

  “What shall we do then? Let’s go to the Kaimara agrahara. Let’s ask Pundit Subbannacharya there. Not that he would know what our own Acharya couldn’t find. If he doesn’t know, we can go straight to the monastery and see the Swami. How long can we creep about in this agrahara, without food, keeping a dead body in this stench? It also gives us a chance to visit our guru. Also, the thirteenth day is a public worship day at the monastery. What do you say? We’ll walk to Kaimara and change our polluted sacred threads. Won’t the brahmins there offer us a meal? You shouldn’t eat in the agrahara where a dead body lies uncremated, but is there any objection to eating in Kaimara? What do you say?”

  All the brahmins said, “Yes, Yes.” Lakshmanacharya remembered that Venkannacharya in Kaimara had said he would buy from him a hundred leaf-cups and a thousand dry eating-leaves. He could take those when he went there. And Garudacharya had some business with the guru. Praneshacharya felt relieved by this suggestion; a burden lifted, his fatigue vanished.

  Dasacharya, very happy at his words being accepted, said: “We’ll have to leave the agrahara for at least three days. What will happen to our women and children? Let’s send our families to our in-laws!”

  Everyone agreed.

  IV

  Durgabhatta got back home, full of curses; he felt he was being dirtied by the company of these Madhva bastards, lovers of shaven widows; he got his bullock-carts ready and went away to his mother-in-law’s place with his wife and children. Lakshmanacharya packed his banana leaves and leaf-cups. Dasacharya packed some puffed rice for the road, roused wife and children for their journey, packed off Lakshmidevamma also to Lakshmana’s in-laws! By the time all the brahmins came to Praneshacharya’s front yard, his wife had started her period. The Acharya said, “I can’t come with you now, I can’t leave my bedridden wife.” The brahmins understood, and started out on the road to Kaimara hurriedly, not worrying any more about the vultures on the roofs.

  When they reached Kaimara, the heat of day had cooled into evening. They bathed, changed their sacred threads, wore their sandal-paste caste-marks and gathered on Subbannacharya’s verandah. The pundit said, “You must eat first.” The brahmins, waiting just for that suggestion, poured down hot steaming rice and saru into their bellies till it touched the Supreme Spirit inside. Then they crowded around Subbannacharya in a state of happy languor. Subbannacharya was an astrologer: he had to know whether the time of Naranappa’s dying was malignant or benign, then he could think about the proper rites. So he put on his spectacles, spread out the almanac, counted and consulted some sea-shells, and said, “Malignant.” He shook his head, saying, “How can I advise when Praneshacharya himself couldn’t?” Dasacharya was pleased by this, and they started out again for the monastery, happy that they could get a share of the offerings of the great worship there.

  “It’s already dark. Stay here tonight and go early in the morning,” the Kaimara people said, and the brahmins didn’t refuse their hospitality. But when they woke up early in the morning, Dasacharya lay weak in bed, running a fever. They tried to rouse him. He was in a coma.

  Garudacharya explained that it might be mere indigestion, maybe he ate too much. The poorer brahmins felt sorry that the poor man would miss the great worship-service and the feast. They got up in a hurry, had a wash, ate flattened rice in yoghurt, and walked twenty miles to reach another agrahara by nightfall. They stayed and dined there that night, but when they woke up early next morning, Padmanabhacharya was down with high fever. It must be the fatigue of all that walking, they thought; and left him there. They had to walk another ten miles to reach the monastery. Whey they reached there, the big drum was sounding for noon-time worship.

  V

  Not a creature was visible in the agrahara except his bedridden menstruating wife, some crows and vultures. Praneshacharya was alone. No sounds of worship or ritual. A terrible leery silence had settled on the place. Assaulting the nostrils with the fact that seven houses away a human corpse was rotting, lodging itself in the very sources of breath was the horrible stench; with the vultures sitting on house after house, it pestered the mind, not permitting any oblivion. When he went to the gods’ room, he saw to his disgust a rat reel inauspiciously counter-clockwise, fall on its back and die. He picked it up by its tail and threw it to a vulture outside. As he came in, he was startled by the raucous cries of crows and vultures; so he came out again. He couldn’t bear to lift his eyes to the deathly silent noonday heat of the sun. He shooed at the birds ineffectively and came in. Distressed by hunger, unable to bear it any longer, he gathered some plantains into the lap of his dhoti, bathed, crossed the stream, and ate them in the shade of a tree. His hunger was stilled. He remembered the
darkness in which Chandri had fed him the plantains from her lap.

  Did he take her then out of compassion? That is doubtful. His body’s tigerish lust, taking on the form of pity and compassion, tamed by a righteousness which had brought him this far—it could be nothing else. At the touch of Chandri’s breast, the animal leaped to its natural self and bared its teeth. Naranappa’s words came to his mind: “Let’s see who’ll win, you or me . . . go to sleep in the arms of Matsyagandhi, the fragrant fisherwoman.” He’d also told him a parable about how every act of ours reverses itself in its results. Not through Naranappa, but through him and his wilfulness, his action, the life of this agrahara must have turned topsy-turvy. He’d heard that a young lad went to the riverbank and slept with an outcaste girl there, after hearing his description of Shakuntala. The Acharya’s fantasy dragged in all the untouchable girls he’d never thought of; stripped them and looked at them. Who is it? Who could it be? Belli, of course; yes, Belli. Imagining her earth-coloured breasts he had never before reckoned with, his body grew warm. He felt wretched at his fantasy. Naranappa had said mockingly: to keep your brahminhood, you must read the Vedas and holy legends without understanding, without responding to their passion. Embedded in his compassion, in his learning, was an explosive spark, which was not there in the others’ stupidity. Now the tamed tiger is leaping out, baring its teeth. . . .

  His hands itched to go caress Belli’s breasts, thirsting for new experience. So far he didn’t even live; doing only what was done, chanting the same old mantra, he had remained inexperienced. Experience is risk, assault. A thing not done before, a joining in the dark of the jungle. He’d thought experience was fulfilment of what one wanted, but now it seemed it was the unseen, the unpredicted, thrust into our life like breasts, entering it. Just as he had received the touch of woman, did Naranappa receive the touch of God in the dark, unbidden? Responding gently to rainfall, stirring in the soft pressure of the earth, the hard seed breaks into sprout. If one is wilful, it dries into a hard shell. Naranappa was such a wilful shell; now dead, he rots. Till I touched Chandri, I too was a shell, counterwill to his will. Just as naturally as the body’s desires reach out to me, not leaving me even when I think I have left them, why shouldn’t God come and touch me, unwilled by me?”